Tsunami deposit is useful geological evidence of paleotsunami to understand its recurrence interval and size. In fact, the 869 Jogan earthquake tsunami, which has been well studied since late 1980s, is considered as possible predecessor of the 2011 Tohoku-oki tsunami event. In order to better understand identification criteria of the tsunami deposit and how to evaluate size of paleotsunami from the deposits, it is important to conduct field survey soon after the tsunami events because characteristics of initial wave, topography and source of sediments are well known. The tsunami deposit research is now regarded as an important work for future tsunami risk assessment. Sedimentological Society of Japan has taken initiative and acted to organize workshops and field trips to better understand characteristics of tsunami deposits and such efforts will be continued. Since the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake and associated mega-tsunami, the Japanese Government has encouraged its people to prepare for largest-possible mega earthquakes and tsunamis generated in the Suruga and Nankai troughs, southwest Japan. The government also presented selection of earthquakes and tsunamis for hazard assumption based on scientific knowledge such as analysis of ancient documents and surveys of tsunami deposits and coastal topography. Many researchers of Paleosciences Society have examined paleotsunami deposits from cored deposits and trenches on the coastal area of Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. No geological evidences of the largest-possible mega tsunamis have been found on the study areas. On 11 March 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake hit the Tohoku district of Japan, and the associated tsunami devastated the Pacific coastal areas of the district. The disaster caused widespread damage to many museums, libraries and archives. The Agency for Cultural Affairs started the recovery of cultural assets on 1 April 2011. Museum rescue projects are promoted by the Committee for the Multi-Organizational Co-Operative Project for Preserving and Restoring Cultural Assets Damaged by Tsunami on March 11th, 2011, mainly at the Iwate Prefectural Museum, by the initiative of the Japanese Museum Association. Initially, the purpose of the rescue projects was to save cultural and other properties damaged during the disaster, and accordingly the natural history specimens were mostly not subject to saving and/or restoring. Therefore, the science community such as the Union of Japanese Societies for Natural History, including museums of natural history, offered voluntary activities to save the specimens from the damaged and destroyed museums. Natural history collections provide information invaluable for many fields of earth and planetary sciences, playing an essential role to understand the formation of the solar system, the history of the Earth, the evolution of life, environmental change, energy and resources, natural disasters, and so on. Japan Geoscience Union should make an effort for revival of natural history research and education in the current education system. This paper reports what actions did Tohoku Geographical Association have taken after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The association's headquarter is situated in the affected area, and have many associate who have experienced the disaster. It argues what an academic society and academics at the disaster area can and cannot do. The Japan Association for Quaternary Research (JAQUR) is a group devoted to the study of the Quaternary period (the last 2.6 million years). This group comprises geologists, geographers, paleontologists, zoologists, botanists, soil scientists, anthropolo-gists, archeologists, geophysicists, geochemists, engineers, and others interested in Quaternary studies. The feature of this association is that multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary researches of members'own and their joint researches are implemented because it aims at not a specific field of academic study but the Quaternary period and it publishes these accomplishments as the official organ Quaternary Research (Daiyonki-kenkyu). While researches of the environmental and disaster issues are based on efforts of members'own, we hereby introduce the efforts to address the environmental and disaster issues in this association with a focus on the papers published through the official organ.Ifthe papers published in the official organ with regard to the environmental and disaster issues are compiled, basic phenomena to review the environmental and disaster issues are argued in many papers. It is assumed that it is also the role of this association related to Quaternary study to publish the basic knowledge extensively through the official organ, etc. in order to consider clar-ifications of causes, mitigation and evaluation of issues, etc. for efforts of various researchers and scientific societies to address the environmental and disaster issues from now on. How the Association for the Geological Collaboration in Japan (AGC Japan) contended with the issues of environment and disaster The JMA performs work, on the basis of science and technology, to monitor and forecast typhoons, localized heavy rainstorms, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic activity, climate change and so forth. To monitor and forecast these natural phenomena, we constantly strive to incorporate the products of the most up-to-date science and technology and to improve our disaster risk reduction (DRR) and weather information. In recent years we have seen the worst series of disasters , such as the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the torrential rain dropped on the Kii Peninsula by severe tropical storm Talas in 2011, and the eruption of Ontakesan in 2014. These terrible natural disasters have shown what we need to improve in order to protect human life from disasters: the accuracy of our monitoring and forecasts, suitable mechanisms for communication to utilize information relating to evacuation, and also attitudes, awareness and information literacy so that individual citizens can take appropriate actions for DRR. Accordingly, we are working to improve our technology development and the resulting information, and to collaborate with various institutions on efforts for public awareness and education about the uses of DRR information. For effective DRR responses to protect life, it is important to concentrate on and promote improvements in information that contributes to the DRR responses being put into practice by the staff of disaster response bodies and by citizens. In regard to the science and technology that supports this, as well as natural science?refining our monitoring and forecasting technology?we must consider social science aspects such as, with forecasts featured by uncertainty, how the information is actually put to use by society. This presentation will introduce the JMA's latest efforts towards effective mechanisms for DRR taking account of society's wishes, and will explain the significance of the technology development and fundamental research required to support these efforts on the technological side. The discussion will explore several urgent issues for the JMA, in particular the current and future directions of the following topics for improving our technology development: Developing technology to monitor and forecast the localized heavy rain and tornadoes associated with cumulonimbus clouds that suddenly appear and grow 2) Accurately predicting line-shaped precipitation and nighttime localized rainstorms caused by backbuilding; upgrading and improving the precision of quantitative forecasting technology 3) Improving forecasts of tropical cyclonetrack and intensity up to five days ahead 4) Developing technology for the accurate warnings of tsunamis from major ocean trench type earthquakes, such as the Nankai Trough megathrust earthquake that is expected to occur in the future 5) Improving the prompt issue of level 2 and 3 volcanic warnings after the early detection of phreatic eruption and the accurate issue of level 4 and 5 volcanic warnings when transitions to magma eruptions are identified The major medium-term issue for this technology development is research supporting the work of the JMA, which is being conducted mainly at weather research institutions in collaboration with universities and related bodies. In this session, discussion will be encouraged about the direction of research in relation to a renewed shared understanding of the significance of JMA's role in society and to further strengthen collaboration with researchers and experts in different scientific associations to resolve technical issues. Real-time prediction of strong ground motion is a strong tool for prevention/mitigation of earthquake disaster, and it has been applied for earthquake early warning (EEW). In early 1990s, Mexico started their EEW system for Mexico City, and railway companies in Japan also began their systems. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has been operated nationwide in Japan for general public since 2007, and possible use of such systems has been investigated in many countries. In this presentation, we will explain EEW methods, performance of its actual operation of JMA EEW since 2007, especially for the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake (M9.0) and its aftershocks, and future prospects based on lessons learned from the Tohoku Earthquake. EEW methods are classified into three categories: (1) prediction of propagation, (2) prediction of S wave from P wave, (3) prediction of earthquake rupture. Regarding (3), many researchers have described their controversial opinions. At current JMA system, methods of (1) and (2) are adopted, but that of (3) is not used. first people get aware "what EEW?" has been an important research project for improving EEW system. While many researchers investigated methods for quickly determination of extent of fault rupture and for discrimination of multiple events, a new technique was proposed in which the process of determination of hypocente


Background: Ballet dancers have high prevalence rate of 34-62% of ankle and foot injuries.
Purpose: To primarily increase the awareness regarding the risk factors that lead to ankle and foot injuries among ballet dancers.
Methods: 123 ballet dancers, aged between 18-25 years of age, with an experience in ballet for minimum one year from various dance schools and institutes of Mumbai were interviewed via validated questionnaire over a period of 5 months.
Results: Majority of the ballet dancers had an experience between 4-8 years. 74% of the dancers were aware regarding ankle and foot injuries. But, 91% among them were only aware regarding ankle sprain to be the most common injury while being unaware of the other injuries. It was found that dancers did not consider factors like 'improper partner work, tightness of muscles, unsuitable dance floor and improper footwear' to be the risk factors for ankle and foot injury. The results showed that 82% were aware regarding physiotherapy being helpful for ballet dance injuries, yet only 35% of them had taken physiotherapy treatment after an injury with 17% of ballet dancers soldiering even after the first sign of injury.
Conclusion: Majority of ballet dancers were aware regarding risk factors like: Tightness of muscles > Inadequate warm up/cool down exercises > Improper footwear > Unsuitable dance floor. While awareness regarding injuries was: Ankle sprain (91%) > Forefoot sprain and stress fracture (48% & 47%) respectively > Hallux rigidus and nail problems (46%) > Achilles and Flexor hallucis (42%).


In this essay I critique two influential accounts of rational autonomy in common schooling that conceive liberalism as an ideal form of life, and I offer an alternative approach to democratic education that views liberal theory as concerned with coexistence among rival ways of living. This view places moral agency, not rational autonomy, at the heart of schooling in liberal societies—a moral agency grounded in initiation into dynamic traditions that enable self-definition and are accompanied by exposure to life-paths other than one's own. This alternative challenges the tendency in large diverse democracies (such as those of the US and the UK) to prefer common to particularistic schools, thereby placing many types of faith and secular schools on a more equal footing and providing moral justification for education in the national cultures of small liberal republics (such as Denmark, Israel and Lithuania) that maintain special relationships to particular groups while acknowledging the rights of all citizens. I call this approach the pedagogy of difference.


This article aims to analyze some recent changes in the German industrial relations system mainly characterized by the rise of employment protection and employment promotion as new goals of collective bargaining. During the era of full-employment collective bargaining was essentially an instrument to improve working conditions whereas, with regard to a constant mass-unemployment, it becomes ever more to be understood as an instrument to save threatened jobs and to create new jobs. The most important strategies of employment protection and of employment promotion recently developed by the actors of collective bargaining in Germany, such as various forms of working time 'flexibilization', shall be analyzed in the article.


This paper presents results from the first U.S. based data collection effort to quantify non-hardware, business process costs for PV systems at the residential and commercial scales, using a bottom-up approach. Annual expenditure and labor hour productivity data are analyzed to benchmark business process costs in the specific areas of: (1) customer acquisition; (2) permitting, inspection, and interconnection; (3) labor costs of third party financing; and (4) installation labor. Annual cost and labor hour data were collected from 87 installers. After eliminating outliers, the survey sample consists of 75 installers, representing approximately 13% and 4% of 2010 added PV installations at the residential and commercial scales, respectively. Results indicate that business process costs benchmarked in this analysis (including assumed permitting fees) total $1.52/W for residential systems (ranging from $0.66/W to $1.66/W between the 20 th and 80 th percentiles). For commercial systems, the survey results suggest business process costs of $0.99/W for systems 250kW (ranging from $0.17/W to $0.78/W between the 20 th and 80 th percentiles). We conclude that business process costs present significant opportunities for efficiency gains and cost reductions.


A new drug called Aducanumab has been circulating the medical news for a while along with many questions. To answer these questions, it is imperative to understand Alzheimer's disease.  This research was done by reading other articles and observing scans to truly comprehend the premise of the problems. It was found that Alzheimer's is caused by the clumping of amyloid-beta proteins and tau proteins which kill the neuron. The drug, that is in question, is an immunotherapeutic drug that is prescribed for moderately severe cases of Alzheimer's. The trials were done on a variety of people and different stages of Alzheimer's. They tested different doses and compared the values to a placebo. This was all monitored by MRI scans to any decrease in amyloid plaque and to monitor the possible systems. Through the observation of different trials and testing, it is still not clear if the drug truly works and is worth taking. In some studies, Aducaumab has been seen to work positively and had a substantial difference in the amount of plaque reduced compared to the placebo values. However, some of the later studies say otherwise because there is not much plaque reduction and the symptom called ARIA-E. This drug is different in its approach from other drugs in the sense that it actually targets the amyloid plagues. According to a neuro physician, many doctors are willing to give this medication a try and closely monitor a patient if the patient falls under the right category for treatment. Overall, questions about this drug are still yet to be answered.


This is the first study entirely devoted to analysing the content of the European Commission's observations in CJEU copyright referrals, with an emphasis on the online/digital dimension. It examines the Commission's view of the EU copyright acquis in relation to economic rights, exceptions and limitations and enforcement, and evaluates it in light of international and EU law. The observations have been sometimes consistent with case law, but this has not been so in a number of topical instances. This article suggests that all this signals an (unsuccessful) attempt on the side of the Commission to persuade the CJEU to depart from consolidated case law, justified more by policy considerations rather than a rigorous reading of the law and earlier jurisprudence.


Abstract Background Worldwide breast cancer morbidity and mortality was still positioned in the top. Epidemiological data for breast cancer in Bali was not available although is essential for planning health measures. This study aimed to summarise the demographics of breast cancer subjects in Sanglah Genral Hospital from 2012-2019 and emphasize variables that related. Methods This is a descriptive study, collecting all breast cancer subjects data from January 2012 to 2019. All data from the cancer registry were analyzed and tabulated. Data were described as count and percentages. Reasoning analysis was done by looking at the counts from year to year. Information for counting age standardized rate was taken in national census data of population in Bali. Literature review if articles were also screened for the filtering out of the data regarding epidemiology of breast cancer in worldwide for comparison. Results A total of 1627 cases from 2012 to 2019 were included in this study for analysis. The incidence of breast cancer increase from 187 cases to 364 cases from 2013 to 2016. The age-standardized incidence rate was 84.33 per 100.000 women Balinese population. Most cases were found in advanced stages, stage IIIB (29.38%) and stage IV (22.56%). The most common tumor status found was T4 (49.78%), N1 (41.49%), and 22.5% were found to have metastasis. Lung metastasis dominated all the metastasis cases with the rate of 42.35%. Majority of histopathology subtypes in breast cancer subjects were invasive carcinoma of non special type (NST) (78.8%), followed by invasive lobular carcinoma (12.4%). From 1627 subjects, only 1160 (71.3%) had subtype tested, with luminal B subtype dominated the cases (36.5%). Conclusions Geographical and phenotypical variations differ from breast cancer subject epidemiology. Thus, statistical data should be done in each region for a better diagnosis and treatment care. Legal entity responsible for the study The authors. Funding Has not received any funding. Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


ABSTRACT Fluoride is the mainstay of dental caries prevention, and yet current applications offer incomplete protection and may not effectively address the infectious character of the disease. Therefore, we evaluated the effectiveness of a novel combination therapy (CT; 2 mM myricetin, 4 mM tt-farnesol, 250 ppm of fluoride) that supplements fluoride with naturally occurring, food-derived, antibiofilm compounds. Treatment regimens simulating those experienced clinically (twice daily for ≤60 s) were used both in vitro over a saliva-coated hydroxyapatite biofilm model and in vivo with a rodent model of dental caries. The effectiveness of CT was evaluated based on the incidence and severity of carious lesions (compared to fluoride or vehicle control). We found that CT was superior to fluoride (positive control, P < 0.05); topical applications dramatically reduced caries development in Sprague-Dawley rats, all without altering the Streptococcus mutans or total populations within the plaque. We subsequently identified the underlying mechanisms through which applications of CT modulate biofilm virulence. CT targets expression of key Streptococcus mutans genes during biofilm formation in vitro and in vivo. These are associated with exopolysaccharide matrix synthesis (gtfB) and the ability to tolerate exogenous stress (e.g., sloA), which are essential for cariogenic biofilm assembly. We also identified a unique gene (SMU.940) that was severely repressed and may represent a potentially novel target; its inactivation disrupted exopolysaccharide accumulation and matrix development. Altogether, CT may be clinically more effective than current anticaries modalities, targeting expression of bacterial virulence associated with pathogenesis of the disease. These observations may have relevance for development of enhanced therapies against other biofilm-dependent infections.


Allium tuberosum Rotter (garlic chives) is a species of plant native to the Chinese province and naturalized elsewhere in Asia and around the world. In Korea, chives are boiled and used as seasoned vegetables or as soup ingredients, and are also used for chive kimchi and cucumber pickles. This paper describes experimental results for chlorophyll content and efficiency with drought stress and soil acidity on garlic chives. Analytical determination of total chlorophyll (a, b) was performed with spectrophotometer. Chlorophyll fluorescence analysis was used to measure photosynthetic parameters with the Imaging-PAM Chlorophyll Fluorometer. The content of total chlorophyll was 0.711 at 80% moisture. The content for chlorophylls a, b, and total were 0.333, 0.151, and 0.390 at 10% moisture, respectively. The simple type of regression showed the relation between chlorophylls as a function of acidity. The slope factors for chlorophyll content (a, b, and total) were 0.866, 0.903, and 0.910, respectively. The current fluorescence yield (Ft) was increased to the decrease of water in soils. The maximal PSII quantum yield, Fv/Fm was the highest at 70% moisture among nine moisture percentage stages. The slope factors of Ft, Fm (maximum fluorescence yield), Fv (quenched state), and Fv/Fm for chlorophyll efficient indicators were -0.873, 0.977, 969, and 0.897, respectively. Water stress decreased chlorophyll a, chl b, chl (a + b) contents, and the chl a/b ratio in the A. tuberosum. Low soil pH also affected the chlorophyll content and efficiency of A. tuberosum.


Background: Leptospirosis and brucellosis are zoonosis worldwide distributed that have great economic importance, especially in goats. This study aimed to carry out a cross-sectional study to determine the prevalence of anti-Leptospira spp. and anti-Brucella abortus antibodies and to determine epidemiological variables associated to infection by these ethiological agents in goats. Materials, Methods & Results: Serum samples were collected from 1055 goats of 95 properties distributed in 18 regional centers of Parana State from April to August of 2010. Collected samples were submitted to microscopic agglutination test (MAT) for the detection of anti-Leptospira spp. antibodies with 22 reference serovars: Australis, Bratislava, Autumnalis, Butembo, Castellonis, Bataviae, Canicola, Fortbragg, Whitcombi, Cynopteri, Grippotyphosa, Hebdomadis, Copenhageni, Icterohaemorrhagiae, Panama, Pomona, Pyrogenes, Hardjo, Wolffi, Shermani, Tarassovi and Londrina 1 (L1). The samples were also submitted to buffered acidified plate antigen test (BAPA) and 2-mercaptoethanol test (2-ME) to detect anti-Brucella abortus antibodies. The results obtained from epidemiological and serological study were analysed by Epi Info 3.5.3. We observed 9.9% (104/1055) of goats reagents in at least one serovar of Leptospira spp. and no reagent animal to Brucella abortus. The variables that were statistically significant with leptospirosis were: production type meat, sewer destination in dry sump, frequent abortion, shared use of pastures, slaughter of animals on the property, the presence of pigs and wild animals such as deer and capybaras on the property. Discussion: This was the first study about antibodies prevalence against Leptospira spp. and Brucella abortus in goat herds from Parana State. The presence of both animal species were statiscally associated to risk of leptospirosis. It is necessary avoid the acess of these animals in herds, decreasing the dissemination of the agent. The production type meat is a form of creation in which the animals have no care of zookeepers and continuous veterinary care. The final destination of sewage was statistically associated to risk of leptospirosis in goats and this is a big problem in rural properties, requiring greater attention of authorities for proper disposal of this wastewater, reducing water and food contamination. Among the variables related to management, the herds that used rented pasture or shared pastures also were statistically associated to risk of leptospirosis in goats; with the sharing of pastures a greater flow of animals transiting in the pickets occurs, allowing not only flocks of goats, but other species also, to use the same pastures and become more exposed to certain diseases. The slaughter of pigs, sheep, cattle and goats on the property is a problem for animal and human health due to lack of sanitary inspection. Abortion is one of the main clinical signs of leptospirosis in farm animals, particularly goats. The knowledge of these results will be useful to develop control programs for the disease in Parana State herds.  The absence of circulating anti-Brucella abortus antibodies in goat herds has also been reported in other Brazilian States.


PRIOR TO THE WAR WITH Spain in 1898, officers of the U.S. Army were members of a parochial and slowly modernizing professional group. Recent scholarship has challenged the long-held opinion that the officer corps was severely isolated from civilian society during the late nineteenth century, as suggested by Samuel Huntington and others.1 A small group of American officers serving as military attaches in the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century experienced the internationalism that other sectors of American society had made routine.2 As Graham Cosmas has written, "the basic agenda for Army reform was set well before the outbreak of war with Spain."3 The military attaches were part of that reform impulse. At their foreign posts, the American officers responded to the needs of the resident U.S. minister or ambassador but also worked according to task lists provided by the Military Information Division (MID) of the War Department. Specifically, they developed contacts with military officers of their respective host nations and other military and naval attaches of nations posted to that same host country. Normally, the senior attache, regardless of nationality, functioned in the capacity of coordinator in both official group and social situations. This international, cosmopolitan outlook was absorbed by American officers and carried back to their units and subsequent staff assignments in the United States. The work of the American attaches did not produce much direct transfer of information from foreign military establishments to the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, but it did create an awareness of how other military systems dealt with problems and issues confronting the American military. In a reciprocal way, officers of foreign nations were posted as attaches in Washington, D.C., so the same cross-cultural dissemination of ideas and practices occurred there as well. This is not to discount the obvious intelligence-gathering function of the military attache when he was serving abroad.4 John Greenwood, in his study of military observers in the Russo-Japanese War, concludes that not much of importance happened within the American military establishment as a result of the observers' reports to the MID and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) of the Navy Department. He was certainly correct that no important policy or doctrinal issue was implemented or changed as a result of what had been learned by American observers in Manchuria.5 However, the American observers and military attaches who witnessed in Manchuria the new technology of war-machine guns, rapid-firing field artillery pieces, functional logistics, and tactical intelligence operations-did convey that information back to the MID and the ONI. Some of the information found its way into technical bulletins and pamphlets; other information was shared within the bureaus of government. What has not been proven to date is whether any such activity had a direct bearing on improved technology or operational procedures in the American army or navy. The water had been poured in the trough, but the horses may not have drunk any of it. Beginnings An inward-looking nation for the first seventy-five years of its existence, the United States had no pressing need for military information from abroad. Aside from identifying textbooks needed at the U.S. Military Academy and an occasional study of foreign fortifications, American contacts with other military systems were infrequent and in response to specific requests.6 After the Civil War, it was common for American officers to seek opportunities outside the normal routine of life within the service or garrison. Some sought adventure overseas with foreign armies, but most regular officers either stuck it out or resigned in favor of civil life. For those who were not fighting Indians, there were opportunities for education, both civil and professional.7 In the late 1880s the military services, other agencies of the federal government, and business corporations were adding intelligence bureaus to their organizations. …


In this paper, Human Visual System (HVS) characteristics are modeled using a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) for robust image watermarking. The fuzzy input variables corresponding to luminance sensitivity, edge sensitivity computed using threshold and contrast sensitivity computed using variance are fed to a FIS driven by ten Fuzzy inference rules. The FIS produces a single output weighting factor which is used to embed a randomly generated normalized watermark with in the host image in the DCT domain. The signed image has good perceptual quality and is subject to StirMark image processing attacks. The high computed value of PSNR indicates robustness of the embedding algorithm. The watermark is extracted from the signed image using famous Cox's algorithm. The embedded and recovered watermarks are used to compute SIM(X, X∗) correlation parameter which shows that the extraction process is quite successful and the algorithm has good practical applications.


The family medicine theories of the delivery of comprehensive, continuous, personalised, clinical and family-orientated care to the majority of peoples in Africa describes an ideal that is worth striving for. Family medicine could be positioned to take a leadership role in helping to define and organise the complexity of health systems that will deliver the care in a systematic, focused, coordinated and sustainable manner for the benefit of the individuals, families and communities in Africa.


Eclogite, high-grade blueschist, and amphibolite blocks occur within the Mesozoic Otter Point Formation of southwestern Oregon and are inferred to have been tectonically emplaced by eastward-directed overthrusting involving Colebrooke Schist and serpentinite.

Eclogite from southwestern Oregon is very similar in bulk chemistry and mineralogy to the well-studied eclogite of California.

Calculations of phase equilibria at load pressures of 7 and 10 kb and T = 400°C to 550°C suggest that many of the hydrates found in eclogite could have been stable at very low H2O fugacities. The lack of lawsonite and the presence of almandine-grossular garnet set a maximum limit on H2O fugacity for a given Ps-T.

Chemically, Group C eclogite from Oregon and California characteristically is nepheline normative and is enriched in normative diopside relative to basaltic compositions. The present chemistry of this eclogite may be the result of metasomatism in an ultramafic environment with low a SiO2 and high a Ca, but outside the stability field of serpentine.

The generally high jadeite content of clinopyroxene from Group C eclogite compared with Group A and Group B eclogite is largely a function of bulk rock chemistry. Crystallization under low a SiO2 conditions stabilizes jadeite in clinopyroxene at lower Ps for a given T.


This paper presents an innovative approach to enhancing explainable image retrieval, particularly in situations where a fine-tuning set is unavailable. The widely-used SPatial verification (SP) method, despite its efficacy, relies on a spatial model and the hypothesis-testing strategy for instance recognition, leading to inherent limitations, including the assumption of planar structures and neglect of topological relations among features. To address these shortcomings, we introduce a pioneering technique that replaces the spatial model with a topological one within the RANSAC process. We propose bio-inspired saccade and fovea functions to verify the topological consistency among features, effectively circumventing the issues associated with SP's spatial model. Our experimental results demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms SP, achieving state-of-the-art performance in non-fine-tuning retrieval. Furthermore, our approach can enhance performance when used in conjunction with fine-tuned features. Importantly, our method retains high explainability and is lightweight, offering a practical and adaptable solution for a variety of real-world applications.


By means of a new method (double staircase) concentration pairs of equal intensity for the sweet compounds acesulfame-K, aspartame, cyclamate-Na, saccharine-Na, dextrose and glucitol were determined with sucrose on 6 or 7 equidistant scaled levels, respectively, with 4 repetitions. The parameters maximal intensity Rm, the concentration coefficient b and the mean Rm/b, respectively, are calculated for each substance from the known parameters for sucrose using the exponential function R = Rm(1-e-bS/Rm), which describes the sweetness intensity R in dependence of the concentration S. For exact determination of the maximal intensity the upper concentration level was fixed at very high degree. Additionally, the relative sweetness of each concentration level of each substance is calculated. In all cases the exponential function is valid without limitation. The statistical parameters are homogenous and are laying within the applied staircase method. Systematical deviations could not be found.


Seventy-one eyes with exudative senile maculopathy (hemorrhagic or serous detachment of the pigment epithelium in patients 50 years and older) were managed and studied with fluorescein angiography and treated with argon laser photocoagulation. Perifoveal-macular "horseshoe" treatment was done for foveal lesions and direct treatment was done for extrafoveal lesions. The prognosis for vision is comparatively reduced when the lesion is foveal rather than extrafoveal, when the detachment is hemorrhagic rather than serous, and when a subretinal neovascular membrane is present (as shown by fluorescein angiography preoperatively) rather than when it is absent. Postoperatively, patients were reevaluated and follow-up examinations with the use of fluorescein angiography were done.


One of the main contemporary challenges in the field of computers and education is to provide gamified educational systems tailored according to the students' gamer types to be most effective than traditional counter-tailored gamified educational systems in terms of students' learning aspects. In order to start to solve this problem, we proposed an approach to tailor gamified educational systems based on the students' gamer types. An instance of the proposed approach was implemented and an empirical experiment with 121 elementary students was conducted in order to comparatively evaluate the tailored and the counter-tailored versions of the system in terms of students' concentration and flow experience. The main results indicate that for some gamer types the tailored system was more effective, however, in some cases, the flow experience and concentration was larger in the counter-tailored version of the system, surprising and contradicting the expectation of recent theoretical studies and making room for further studies in this field. A second empirical experiment was conducted in order to identify which are the most suitable gamification element for each gamer type, allowing us to provide a guideline for tailor gamified educational systems based on students' gamer types.


This paper describes a method for selecting one single pronunciation from a set of alternatives. Two types of reductions are described – base form reductions and inflected form reductions. The strategies are different because the inflected forms have to take care of two properties of Norwegian: The language allows for many spelling alternatives, both in base forms and inflected forms, and many morphological inflection types license pronunciation alternatives. A comprehensive pronunciation lexicon with more than 65000 base forms is used, and it is demonstrated that it is possible for users of the lexicon to derive their own stylistic preferences.


The proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the context of smart homes entails new security risks threatening the privacy and safety of end users. In this paper, we explore the design space of in-network security for smart home networks, which automatically complements existing security mechanisms with a rule-based approach, i. e., every IoT device provides a specification of the required communication to fulfill the desired services. In our approach, the home router as the central network component then enforces these communication rules with traffic filtering and anomaly detection to dynamically react to threats. We show that in-network security can be easily integrated into smart home networks based on existing approaches and thus provides additional protection for heterogeneous IoT devices and protocols. Furthermore, in-network security relieves users of difficult home network configurations, since it automatically adapts to the connected devices and services.


This review deals with the transcriptional regulation of heat shock or stress genes that are present in every organism studied to date. While some of these genes are expressed constitutively and appear to be involved in basic cellular processes such as protein synthesis and maturation, assembly of protein complexes, and intracellular trafficking, others are normally silent or are expressed at low levels. Expression of the latter genes is enhanced when cells are subjected to stressful conditions such as elevated temperature and other physical and chemical insults or at specific stages of organismal development. The upregulation of these genes correlates with the development of tolerance to subsequent, similar insults. Upregulation following environmental insults appears to be mediated by heat shock transcription factor. This article summarizes what is known about the promoters of regulated stress genes in higher eukaryotes and the mechanisms by which heat shock transcription factor or developmental regulators control their activation. Recent data pointing to a possible connection between the activation of stress genes and general signal transduction pathways are also discussed, as they suggest an integration of the stress response and other cellular control mechanisms.


We extend the applicability of the Generalized Linear Sampling Method (GLSM) [2] and the Factorization Method (FM)[14] to the case of inhomogeneities where the contrast change sign strictly inside the obstacle. Both methods give an exact characterization of the target shapes in term of the far eld operator (at a xed frequency). One of the key ingredient to prove this exact characterization is based on a factorization of the far eld operator. This factorization involves three operators which should exhibit speci c properties. This paper is concerned with the extension of the coercivity property required on one of them to the case of sign changing contrast both for isotropic and anisotropic scatters with possibly di erent supports for the isotropic and anisotropic parts. We fnally validate the method through some numerical tests in two dimensions. AMS classi cation scheme numbers: 35R60, 35R30, 65M32


Phenolphthalein, C20H14O4, crystallized in the noncentrosymmetric space group Pna2(1) with two crystallographically inequivalent molecules. Each of these is linked to four others of its own type by four hydrogen bonds having Odonor...Oacceptor distances ranging from 2.631 (4) to 2.787 (4) A. While chains of hydrogen bonds propagate in a number of directions in this structure, cyclic hydrogen bonding is not observed. 3',3"-Dinitrophenolphthalein, C20H12N2O8, crystallized in the centrosymmetric space group Pbcn with a single molecule in the asymmetric unit. Each molecule is linked to three others by four hydrogen bonds having Odonor...Oacceptor distances ranging from 2.572 (4) to 3.274 (3) A. Although chains of hydrogen bonds are prominent in this structure, cyclic hydrogen bonding also occurs and forms dimers. As expected on the basis of the excess of potential acceptor O atoms over donors in both structures, significant C-H...O interactions are also abundant.


In this article, an assessment is made of media images and representations ofimmigration and ethnic minorities in Portugal, focusing on the late-1990s andthe early years of the 21st century. Globalisation factors and the Europeancontext are considered, as well as the specifics of Portugal, with the major representation/construction and presentation cycles being introduced. The role of thepress is underlined, although the main focus is on Portuguese television's role inthe creation of stereotypes of immigrant communities. The coverage of thesethemes is being analysed by Portuguese and European regulators through theimplementation of scientific studies and training programmes for journalists.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the benefits of CT angiography (CTA) in preoperative mapping of anterolateral thigh perforator flap (ALTPF) for reconstruction of defect after head and neck cancer resection.

METHODS
Twenty-four patients underwent reconstruction of postoperative defect with ALTPF from March 2011 to March 2014 were retrospectively reviewed. According to the imaging methods used for examining perforating artery, these patients were divided into two groups: color Doppler flow imaging (CDFI)-group and CTA-group, 12 patients in each group. The surgical results of all patients were evaluated for consistency in number of perforating artery, operation time and flap-related complications.

RESULTS
Only one of all patients had complete flap necrosis, with an overall flap survival rate of 95.83%. All perforating branches showed with preoperative CTA were found in operation (12/12), significantly higher than CDFI-group (8/12). The mean operation time of CTA-group was significantly shorter than that of CDFI-group (Unilateral neck dissection: (6.80±0.53) vs (8.39±0.75) h, bilateral neck dissection: (8.79±0.97) vs (10.96±0.26) h, both P<0.05). Flap-related complication occurred in one case in CTA-group, but in 5 cases in CDFI-group.

CONCLUSIONS
CTA can accurately provide anatomical information of perforator vessels and guide preoperative design of ALTPF to improve operative outcomes, including the decrease in operation time and surgical injury.


Genetic and environmental factors have been shown to work together to alter cancer risk. In this study we evaluate previously identified gene and lifestyle interactions in a candidate pathway that were associated with colon cancer risk to see if these interactions altered gene expression. We analyzed non-tumor RNA-seq data from 144 colon cancer patients who had genotype, recent cigarette smoking, diet, body mass index (BMI), and recent aspirin/non-steroidal anti-inflammatory use data. Using a false discovery rate of 0.1, we evaluated differential gene expression between high and low levels of lifestyle exposure and genotypes using DESeq2. Thirteen pathway genes and 17 SNPs within those genes were associated with altered expression of other genes in the pathway. BMI, NSAIDs use and dietary components of the oxidative balance score (OBS) also were associated with altered gene expression. SNPs previously identified as interacting with these lifestyle factors, altered expression of pathway genes. NSAIDs interacted with 10 genes (15 SNPs) within those genes to alter expression of 28 pathway genes; recent cigarette smoking interacted with seven genes (nine SNPs) to alter expression of 27 genes. BMI interacted with FLT1, KDR, SEPN1, TERT, TXNRD2, and VEGFA to alter expression of eight genes. Three genes (five SNPs) interacted with OBS to alter expression of 12 genes. These data provide support for previously identified lifestyle and gene interactions associated with colon cancer in that they altered expression of key pathway genes. The need to consider lifestyle factors in conjunction with genetic factors is illustrated.


A new concept for modeling the overlap between devolatilization and char oxidation was extended to various coal types. Quasi-steady mass transfer analysis around a single coal particle with devolatilization was performed, and the overlap between devolatilization and char oxidation was modeled with a semi-parallel reaction model. The semi-parallel reaction model can capture the differences in the char oxidation rates of each coal by a single fitting parameter called the inhibition factor. The combustion simulation of the single coal particle indicated the superiority of the semi-parallel reaction model over the previously reported modeling concepts because the semi-parallel reaction model could describe the decrease in char oxidation rate during devolatilization, which is not represented by other reaction models. Although the inhibition factor is not correlated with the proximate analysis of the volatile matter, it is correlated with the temperature at which the rate-controlling step of char oxidation shifts. This is because the proximate analysis does not include information on char reactivity. Therefore, it is suggested that the inhibition effect of devolatilization on char oxidation strongly correlates with the parameter that describes the sensitivity of char oxidation to the mass transfer processes of the oxidant.


The background of this research is low of mathematics learning outcomes of class VIII4 of 22 Junior High School Pekanbaru in second semester of the 2016/2017 academic year. Subject of this research are 38 students, consist of 19 male and 19 female student with heterogenous level of academic capabilities. The type of this research is the Classroom Action Research that has purpose to improve the learning proses and to increase student's mathematic learning outcomes by applied the cooperative learning with Talking Stick Type. This research consists of two cycles that each cycle composed of 4 stages, such as planning, implementation, observation and reflection. At every end of a cycle, math achievement test will be held. The research instrument consists of learning devices that involve Syllabus, Lesson Plan and Worksheet, and instrument data collector that involve the observation sheet and math achievement test. Observation sheets is analyzed by narrative descriptive analysis and math achievement test analyzed by statistic descriptive analysis. The result of the research showed that implementation of learning process on cycle II had happened improvement from implementation on cycle I. Weakness on cycle I is improved on implementation cycle II according with planning of improvement after reflection cycle I. Number of students that reach Minimum Mastery Criteria increase from basic score to daily test II. The number of students who reach Minimum Mastery Criteria on basic scor, daily test I and daily test II are respectively 18 person (47,36%), 23 person (60,52%) and 30 person (78,94%). Results of this research indicates that application of Cooperative Learning with Talking Stick Type can improve learning process and increase mathematics learning outcomes from the students of class VIII4 of 22 Junior High School Pekanbaru in second semester of the 2016/2017 academic year at Basic Competencies 5.3 Calculates the surface area and volume of the Beam, Cube, Prism and Pyramid.


Fast closure of rock fractures has been commonly observed in the initial stage of fluid flow experiments at environmental temperatures under low or moderate normal stresses. To fully understand the mechanisms that drive this fast closure, the evolution of local stresses acting on contacting asperities on the fracture surfaces prior to fluid flow tests needs to be evaluated. In this study, we modeled numerically the asperity deformation and failure processes during initial normal loading, by adopting both elastic and elastic–plastic deformation models for the asperities on a real rock fracture with measured surface topography data, and estimated their impact on initial conditions for fluid flow test performed under laboratory conditions. Compared with the previous models that simulate the normal contact of a fracture as the approach of two rigid surfaces without deformations, our models of deformable asperities yielded smaller contact areas and higher stresses on contacting asperities at a given normal stress or normal displacement. The results show that the calculated local stresses were concentrated on the contacts of a few major asperities, resulting in crushing of asperity tips. With these higher contact stresses, however, the predicted closure rates by pressure solution are still several orders of magnitude lower than that of the experimental measurements at the initial stage of fluid flow test. This indicates that single pressure solution may not likely to be the principal compaction mechanism for this fast closure, and that the damages on contacting asperities that occur during the initial normal loading stage may play an important role. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Background and Aims: One of the most commonly used human movements that plays an essential part of many daily activities and competitive or group sports is gait. Gait initiation is the first step after changing from static to dynamic status of walking and gait termination is the last step before changing from dynamic to static status. By accepting the effect of the properties of floor coverings, people's age, diseases, and musculoskeletal disorders on biomechanical parameters of human's movement, it seems that not only the pattern of muscular activity and the biomechanical parameters of gait initiation and gait termination are different from the routine gait, but these variables are influenced by individual's conditions and various surfaces on which people move on, too. On the other hand, people's imbalance and fall often occur at gait initiation or gait termination. Identifying kinematic and kinetic parameters of gait initiation and gait termination provides useful information to recognize the disturbances of this phase of gait, its pathology, and performance correction. The aim of the present study is reviewing studies carried out since the end of the twentieth century on biomechanical variables of gait initiation and gait termination in different groups and different conditions. Materials and Methods: Searching articles was done from databases including PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Mendely, using "gait initiation, gait termination, kinematics, and kinetics" keywords. More than 300 articles on the pattern of muscle activity and biomechanical parameters of gait initiation and gait termination were found. After studying and deleting articles with similar results and articles on therapeutic protocols from the total number of articles, more than 40 articles that were directly related to the subject matter were studied. Results: From among the papers located, several studies were about planned and unplanned gait initiation or gait termination, gait initiation or gait termination on different floor coverings, in various age groups or people with musculoskeletal disorders. Conclusion: According to the articles studied, it can be stated that different motor strategies are used at gait initiation at low and high velocities and the young and old groups always uses different muscle activity patterns in different phases of gait initiation. It seems that athletes and active people benefit from better muscle strength and shorter reaction times to prevent collapse and injury making use of compensatory mechanisms.


Abstract. Understanding the projection performance of hydrological models under
contrasting climatic conditions supports robust decision making, which
highlights the need to adopt time-varying parameters in hydrological
modeling to reduce performance degradation. Many existing studies model
the time-varying parameters as functions of physically based covariates;
however, a major challenge remains in finding effective information to
control the large uncertainties that are linked to the additional parameters
within the functions. This paper formulated the time-varying parameters for
a lumped hydrological model as explicit functions of temporal covariates and
used a hierarchical Bayesian (HB) framework to incorporate the spatial
coherence of adjacent catchments to improve the robustness of the projection
performance. Four modeling scenarios with different spatial coherence
schemes and one scenario with a stationary scheme for model parameters
were used to explore the transferability of hydrological models under
contrasting climatic conditions. Three spatially adjacent catchments in
southeast Australia were selected as case studies to examine the validity of
the proposed method. Results showed that (1) the time-varying function
improved the model performance but also amplified the projection uncertainty
compared with the stationary setting of model parameters, (2) the proposed HB
method successfully reduced the projection uncertainty and improved the
robustness of model performance, and (3) model parameters calibrated over
dry years were not suitable for predicting runoff over wet years because of
a large degradation in projection performance. This study improves our
understanding of the spatial coherence of time-varying parameters, which
will help improve the projection performance under differing climatic
conditions.


Being parents who can take care their children are actually can be done by anyone as long as they are patient and willing to study. The wise parents will give significant effect toward the kids' growth and development. In the future, they will be "someone" that is affected by their parenting. Normally, there are no parents who wish their children to have miserable and unhappy future. Unfortunately, the parents are not rarely found to make mistakes and it affects badly to them. It happened because of the parents' lack of knowledge and understanding. Parenting plays a significant role for early childhood, when the parents educate their children very well, the parents educate them from the family environment, and parenting emphasizes the big role of family to them and gave the lesson to know themselves, as well as to know the family environment to form the kids' character firstly. Parenting also helps children to find out their position based on their sex in the environment of family, society, and country. Parenting helps children to know the values or rules to make them follow the rules so that they can be accepted by the surrounding. Parenting also encourages children in search of worldly or hereafter science which is beneficial for their life. Parents also need to be on the watch for their intercommunication with mates or surrounding because there must be either positive or negative impact in it. Parents also need to give sincerely love to their children so that they never feel alone and lonely. Parenting should be given accordingly with the children's ability to make them not in a force feeling with the parenting. Therefore, parenting has a significant role in educating early childhood.
Keyword : parenting, early childhood education, early childhood growth and development.


A conceptual diagram to convey the nature and development of landforms on Earth from its inception at the start of the solar system to the current day. Originally published by McGraw-Hill Education (USA)in 2006, was subsequently used as an exemplar of scientific diagram design in 'Illustration: A Theoretical and Contextual Perspective' 2007 ISBN 978-2-940373-51-2.


Aim: Although consumers seem to attach great importance to sustainability and even demand companies to produce their products in an environmental friendly way, consumers' green purchasing behaviour lags far behind: an attitude-behaviour gap exists. In addition, young consumers are the ones that could and should make the difference in green purchasing behaviour in the future. The present study investigates how the attitude-behaviour gap among young consumers can be minimized.
 Methods: Two studies were conducted. By conduction focus group discussions (N=27), in study A is a deeper understanding of young consumers' attitude-behaviour relation and possible explaining factors thereof has been gained. In study B, a questionnaire (N=267) is used as a method to test 17 factors on their influence on the attitude-behaviour relation, measured by three types of green attitudes and three measures of green purchasing behaviour.
Results: Results show that an attitude-behaviour gap only exists between the attitude towards sustainability and green purchasing behaviour, but not when it concerns the attitude towards green products and the attitude towards purchasing green products. The factors which positively influence the attitude-behaviour relation are: consumer awareness, receiving health benefits, willingness to pay price premium, subjective norm, perceived consumer effectiveness, perceived motivation of the organization, availability of products, willingness to spend the shopping time on purchasing green products and receiving local community benefits. The perceived price of green products negatively influences the attitude-behaviour relation.
Conclusion: The present study contributes to the understanding of the attitude-behaviour relation in young consumers' green purchasing behaviour and shows that this relation is complex. However, the attitude-behaviour relation can be strengthened by communication efforts. Practical implications and future research suggestions are discussed.


In this article, the effect shelflike topography has on the stability of a jet that flows along the smooth shelf is addressed. The linear stability problem is solved to determine for which nondimensional parameters a shelf can either destabilize or stabilize a jet. These calculations reveal an intricate dependence of growth rate on topography. In particular, the authors determine that retrograde topography (with the shallow water on the left) always stabilizes the jet (in relation to the flat-bottom equivalent), whereas prograde topography (with the shallow water on the right) can either stabilize or destabilize the jet depending on the particular values of the Rossby number and topographic parameters. For Rossby numbers of order 1 and larger, prograde topography is strictly stabilizing. For small Rossby numbers, small-amplitude topography destabilizes whereas large topography stabilizes. The nonlinear evolution of these instabilities is explored to confirm the predictions from the linear theory and, also, to illustrate how stabilization is directly related to fluid transport across the shelf.


In the present study, we attempted to assess the safety and the risk of cordocentesis under ultrasound guidance for fetal blood sampling. Forty-five cordocenteses in 43 cases were carried out. These forty-three cases included 23 nonimmunologic hydrops fetalis, 12 congenital fetal malformations, 3 chromosome aberrations, 3 Rh isoimmunization, and 2 idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. Gestational age when cordocentesis was performed ranged from 17 to 39 weeks of gestation. In 42 (93.3%) out of 45 procedures, pure fetal blood was obtained. Postpuncture bleeding was observed in 17 cases (37.8%). In 12 (70.6%) out of 17 cases, bleeding stopped within 2 minutes. In only one case, bleeding continued for 11 minutes and cesarean section was performed due to fetal distress. Cardiotocogram obtained after cordocentesis revealed no ominous signs in the other 44 procedures. The other complications, including premature rupture of the membranes, premature labor, and intrauterine infection, did not occur during or after this procedure. There were no cases in which any kind of injury to the placenta or umbilical cord was observed.


Because sugarcane average unit yield was affected by multiple factors in its growth and its inherent law was lack of external correlation data mining, the precise of the prediction method was low. Recently, the adaptive of modern intelligent genetic neural network algorithm for multi-factor effect has been strong, and the prediction accuracy has been high, but with which in sugarcane average unit yield prediction the researches are few. In this paper, based on the characteristics of external factor variable, the input multiple factors of sugar varieties, weather, etc. are optimized by multiple regression model, and the weight and threshold and the network structure of neural network model are optimized by the genetic model of SGA/IGA, etc., which improves the adaptive fitness of genetic BP neural network model. Moreover, an example comparison of this algorithm and the gray linear system, S-BP, SGA-BP, IGA-BP on sugarcane average unit yield prediction is made. The results show that the integrated prediction accuracy and effectiveness of the improved genetic BP (IGA-BP) algorithm model on sugarcane average unit yield is optimal. This research provides a means of accurate prediction for sugarcane market price in significant fluctuations.


The simultaneous consideration of economic and environmental objectives in batch production scheduling is today a subject
of major concern. However, it constitutes a complex problem whose solution necessarily entails production trade-offs.
Unfortunately, a rigorous multiobjective optimization approach to solve this kind of problem often implies high
computational effort and time, which seriously undermine its applicability to day-to-day operation in industrial practice.
Hence, this work presents a hybrid optimization strategy based on rigorous local search and genetic algorithm to efficiently
deal with industrial scale batch scheduling problems. Thus, a deeper insight into the combined environmental and economic
issues when considering the trade-offs of adopting a particular schedule is provided. The proposed methodology is applied
to a case study concerning a multiproduct acrylic fiber production plant, where product changeovers influence the problem
results. The proposed strategy stands for a marked improvement in effectively incorporating multiobjective optimization in
short-term plant operation.


Proper inventory control policy and the optimal price for the items has always been one of the main topics of scientific research and industry. On the other hand, there are many products in the market witch are classified as deteriorating items. Therefore the problem of determining optimal price and optimal inventory policy for this type of items is very important. In this paper a 3 echelon supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, a distributor and a retailer is considered. There is only a single type of item with constant deterioration. Demand is deterministic and replenishment is instantaneous. The purpose of this study is to increase the total profit by determining the optimum values of the product price (p) and ordering cycle (T) of distributor. Since the products are deteriorating, some part of the initial stored inventory is lost. Therefore, distributor disposes the spoiled items and replaces them with the same amount of sound items. The replacement in the storehouse of the distributor is also instantaneous. Finally, numerical examples are presented to elaborate the model and sensitivity analysis is performed on the values of some parameters.


The mandible, which holds the lower teeth, comprises the majority of the lower third of the maxillofacial skeleton and is of utmost functional importance. Complex mandibular movements are afforded by the masseter, temporalis, medial pterygoid, lateral pterygoid muscles, and temporomandibular joints. Given that the maxilla is stationary, mastication is dependent on mandibular movement. In certain populations, masticatory function related to dental status is a significant determinant of nutritional status. Being an edentulous geriatric patient without complete dentures was shown to be an independent risk factor for malnutrition. This suggests the importance of functional occlusion.Occlusion is the articulation between the mandibular and maxillary dental arch. Static and dynamic occlusal relationships can be described in many ways. Understanding the occlusal contact relationship impacts the providers' ability to design and place dental implants, implement orthodontic braces, fit dentures, re-establish masticatory function, and restore a patient's native bite after maxillofacial trauma.


Far-infrared and submillimeter photometry of 10 low-mass star formation regions containing embedded IRAS sources is presented. These new observations define the peak of the spectral energy distributions of these objects and provide more precise estimates of their bolometric luminosities. Two new sources, L1527 and L483, are among the reddest known low-mass objects, with spectral energy distribution peaks at 100-200 microns and extremely steep IRAS slopes. These cold sources have spectra which are similar to blackbodies of 30-40 K but have significant excess emission on the Wien side. Models of the spectral energy distributions using a spherically symmetric core structure indicate that these sources have visual extinctions greater than 1000 mag. However, models with these large extinctions predict too little near-infrared emission. A nonspherically symmetric distribution of circumstellar material may play a role in the generation of the extra near-infrared emission. 64 refs.


Thrombin-activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor (TAFI) is a human plasma zymogen that acts as a molecular link between the coagulation and fibrinolytic cascades. TAFI can be activated by thrombin and plasmin but the reaction is enhanced significantly when thrombin is in a complex with the endothelial cofactor thrombomodulin (TM). The in vitro properties of TAFI have been extensively characterized. Activated TAFI (TAFIa) is a thermally unstable enzyme that attenuates fibrinolysis by catalyzing the removal of basic residues from partially degraded fibrin. The in vivo role of the TAFI pathway, however, is poorly defined and very little is known about the role of different activators in regulating the TAFI pathway. In the present study, we have constructed and characterized various TAFI mutants that are resistant to activation by specific activators. Based on peptide sequence studies, these mutants were constructed by altering key amino acid residues surrounding the scissile R92-A93 bond. We measured the thermal stabilities of all our mutants and found them to be similar to wild type TAFI. We have identified that the TAFI mutants P91S, R92K, and S90P are impaired in activation by thrombin or thrombin-TM, thrombin alone, and thrombin alone or plasmin, respectively. The TAFI mutants A93V and S94V were predicted to be resistant to activation by plasmin but this was not observed. The triple mutant, DVV was not activated by any of the aforementioned activators. Finally, we have used in vitro fibrin clot lysis assays to evaluate the antifibrinolytic potential of our variants and were able to correlate their effectiveness with their respective activation kinetics. In summary, we have developed activation resistant TAFI variants that can potentially be used to explore the role of the TAFI pathway in vivo.


Abstract The aim of the paper is to determine the effect of the developed differentiation approach related to mathematics education of gifted students going to secondary school when compared with the programme of noticing individual differences applied in Science Art Centre on achievement and creative thinking skills of gifted students. In the present paper, in the scope of quantitative research, the model of pre test-post test with control group was used. The working group of the research consists of twelve 6th grade gifted students going to Science Art Centre in Istanbul. When the experimental group to whom the activities designed based on differentiated approach were applied compared with the control group to whom the activities designed related to individual differences noticing programme were applied, achievement scores, creative thinking skills based on fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration scores and creative thinking skills based on curiosity, imagination, risk-taking and complexity increased in a significant way.


The plasmonic character of monolayer silicene is investigated by time-dependent density functional theory in the random phase approximation. The energy-loss function of the system is analyzed, with particular reference to its induced charge-density fluctuations, i.e., plasmon resonances and corresponding dispersions, occurring in the investigated energy-momentum region. At energies larger than 1.5eV, two intrinsic interband modes are detected and characterized. The first one is a hybridized pi-like plasmon, which is assisted by competing one-electron processes involving sp2 and sp3 states. The second one is a more conventional pi-sigma plasmon, which is more intense than the pi-like plasmon and more affected by one-electron processes involving the sigma bands, with respect to the analogous collective oscillation in monolayer graphene. At energies below 1eV, two extrinsic intraband modes are predicted to occur, which are generated by distinct types of Dirac electrons (associated with different Fermi velocities at the so-called Dirac points). The most intense of them is a two-dimensional plasmon, having an energy-momentum dispersion that resembles that of a two-dimensional electron gas. The other is an acoustic plasmon that occurs for specific momentum directions and competes with the two-dimensional plasmon at mid infrared energies. The strong anisotropic character of this mode cannot be explained in terms of the widely used Dirac-cone approximation. As in mono-, bi-, and few-layer graphene, the extrinsic oscillations of silicene are highly sensitive to the concentration of injected or ejected charge carriers. More importantly, the two-dimensional and acoustic plasmons appear to be a signature of the honeycomb lattice, independently of the chemistry of the group-IV elements and the details of the unit-cell geometry.


This paper reports on the experimental results for selection of Saccharomyces carlsbergensis CNMN-Y-15 yeast strain with high potential for ergosterol biosynthesis; determination of morpho-cultural and physiologo-biochemical characteristics of this yeast strain; establishment of the effect of low-intensity millimeter waves on ergosterol biosynthesis. Research results contributed to the elaboration of technological flow for obtaining of high yield of ergosterol from yeasts. The significant increasing of ergosterol content is possible due to the utililization of optimized nutritive medium with manganese acetate (0.012 g/L) and glucose (40.0 g/L); the treatment of inoculum with low-intensity millimeter waves for 20-30 minutes.


Observations made on 21 occupations between 1993 and 2016 of GO-SHIP line SR1b in eastern Drake Passage show an average temperature of 0.53°C deeper than 2000 dbar, with no significant trend, but substantial year-to-year variability (standard deviation 0.08°C). Using a neutral density framework to decompose the temperature variability into isopycnal displacement (heave) and isopycnal property change components shows that approximately 95% of the year-to-year variance in deep temperature is due to heave. Changes on isopycnals make a small contribution to year-to-year variability but contribute a significant trend of -1.4±0.6 m°C per year, largest for density (?n)?>?28.1, south of the Polar Front (PF). The heave component is depth-coherent and results from either vertical or horizontal motions of neutral density surfaces, which trend upward and northward around the PF, downward for the densest levels in the southern section, and downward and southward in the Subantarctic Front and Southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current Front (SACCF). A proxy for the locations of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) fronts is constructed from the repeat hydrographic data and has a strong relationship with deep ocean heat content, explaining 76% of deep temperature variance. The same frontal position proxy based on satellite altimeter-derived surface velocities explains 73% of deep temperature variance. The position of the PF plays the strongest role in this relationship between ACC fronts and deep temperature variability in Drake Passage, although much of the temperature variability in the southern half of the section can be explained by the position of the SACCF. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


The municipality of Crowsnest Pass is situated in a rare east-west corridor bisecting the Rocky Mountains in Southwestern Alberta and Southeastern British Columbia. Highway 3, which runs the length of the Pass, is a major transportation route supporting over 13,000 vehicles per day. Wildlife mortality, due to collisions with vehicles, has been identified as a major human-safety and wildlife-conservation issue on this stretch of highway with approximately 109 large mammal deaths per year. Another immediate threat to wildlife populations in the region is the proposed expansion and realignment of Highway 3. The expanded highway footprint and increased traffic will likely affect wildlife use in the area. It is therefore important that decision makers acquire information on where wildlife are most likely to cross the road to ensure effective mitigation measures. Currently, information pertaining to wildlife movement in the Pass is limited. Road Watch in the Pass is an innovative, community-based research project that engages local citizenry in reporting wildlife observations along Highway 3 through the Crowsnest Pass in southwestern Alberta, Canada. Through the use of a Web-based GIS, interested citizens can participate in data collection that will be instrumental to decision makers in reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions and for developing mitigation measures for highway expansion. Road Watch was designed to test and profile the use of local knowledge and volunteer data collection in the Crowsnest Pass by providing land managers and the community with valuable baseline information related to wildlife highway crossings. The goals of the project are to collect, analyze, and communicate information highlighting crossing locations of wildlife along the highway based on local knowledge and observations, as well as to engage the citizenry of the pass in local issues relating to wildlife movement and safety. The project was launched in November 2004 after considerable communication with decision makers in the Pass and the hiring of a local project coordinator. There are currently 51 active participants using the website and interactive mapping tool. The 51 participants have recorded over 581 large mammal sightings. These results are provided to the community on a regular basis through the local media, project website, and email messages. Although the project is still new in inception, preliminary results indicate that the community is successfully engaged with an average of five new volunteers joining Road Watch each month. Each volunteer has contributed an average of 12 observations, with 59 percent of the participants submitting observations on more than one occasion. The number of individual observations ranges from one to 167. Participants have recorded the full compliment of large mammals that occur in the pass, including: 243 mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), 106 big horn sheep (Ovis canadensis), 66 white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), 64 unidentified deer species (Odocoileus spp.), 35 elk (Cervus elaphus), 30 moose (Alces alces), 11 coyotes (Canis latrans), seven black bears (Ursus americanus), three wolves (Canis lupus), three mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus), three grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) and two cougars (Puma concolor), with the exception of wolverine (Gulo gulo) and lynx (Lynx canadensis). Road Watch observations provide a valuable supplement to mortality data and have the potential to greatly enhance the existing information base. For example, the percentages of species observations from Road Watch correlate to the recorded levels of wildlife mortality, with mule deer as the highest recorded species from both data sources. From preliminary comparisons of these two data sources, we have identified zones with high Road Watch observations corresponding with low mortality records. This may indicate that there are areas where wildlife are successfully crossing, which has important implications for highway mitigation. Road Watch is an innovative initiative that will generate a unique dataset resulting from a comparative anlysis of knowledge sources. Preliminary results demonstrate that this approach increases the knowledge base by providing new emerging knowledge that would not have been explicit from a single source. This initiative also provides the opportunity for the Crowsnest Pass community to actively engage in an important wildlife-conservation issue. This information will be important to citizens in the community and local decisionmakers in relation to human safety and wildlife conservation around Highway 3.


Sephadex G-25 fractions of chick embryo extract affect the differentiation of cloned embryonic pigmented epithelial cells (PE) in culture. Both tyrosinase activity and amounts of melanin are markedly affected by the extract fractions. 5-Hydroxyindole decreased melanin accumulation in PE cells while alpha-methyl-p-tyrosine had no apparent effect on the process. Melanin disposal as well as biosynthesis may be important in controlling the accumulation of pigment in PE cells under culture conditions. Triiodothyronine greatly increased visible pigmentation and affected the morphology of cultured PE cells.


Objective: Abdominal scar endometriosis is a recognized condition that has been described following a wide variety of gynaecological procedures. We report a case of endometrioma, presenting as a painful subumbilical swelling, mimicking an incarcerated incisional hernia. Clinical Presentation: A 35-year-old woman presented with a painful subumbilical swelling that had been present for 6 months, but had increased in size and become more painful the day prior to admission. Her past medical history included four caesarean sections. Physical examination revealed a firm, tender and irreducible subumbilical nodule with no cough impulses, mimicking a small incarcerated incisional hernia. Intervention: Exploratory laparotomy through the same lower midline incision revealed a subcutaneous swelling resembling an organized chocolate cyst of endometriosis. Apart from intra-abdominal adhesions, no connection to intra-abdominal structures was identified. Histopathology of the specimen was consistent with abdominal scar endometriosis. Conclusion: Endometrioma was diagnosed in this 35-year-old woman following histological examination of a specimen removed during laparotomy. It is recommended that endometrioma should be considered in the differential diagnosis of subcutaneous, scar-related hernias and various abdominal wall masses following gynaecological operations.


Diarrhea is a common condition seen among soldiers in both garrison and deployed environments. Although the vast majority of soldiers with diarrhea will recover uneventfully with supportive care, clinicians should also maintain suspicion for less common causes and perform a thorough physical exam. We report the case of a young, healthy soldier with chronic diarrhea and progressively worsening abdominal distention that began during his deployment to Honduras who was subsequently found to have a large intra-abdominal desmoid tumor. Desmoid tumor is a rare and benign neoplasm that typically appears on the extremity, abdominal wall, intra-abdominal space, and occasionally in the chest wall. This tumor may be associated with abdominal distension and gastrointestinal complaints. A large tumor can compress organs, causing local tissue damage and, in rare cases, death.


Rats were exposed to repeated episodes of hydropenia for periods of 5 and 16 weeks, and structural alterations of renal medulla were investigated by light and electron microscopy. The hydropenia induced, within the inner medulla, focally severe structural changes in the tubular and endothelia and loss of interstitial cells. The findings present evidence that repeated episodes of hydropenia are capable of inducing cellular alterations of the renal medulla, particularly in the interstitial cells.


Abstract We prospectively analysed the microbiological isolates of all febrile/infectious episodes occurring at our haematology unit during 2 consecutive 18-month periods. Microbiologically documented infections (MDI) and antibiotic resistance were correlated with type and status of haematological disease, neutropenia, levofloxacin prophylaxis, central venous catheter and clinical outcome. Three hundred and ten MDI were observed and 369 pathogens were isolated. Gram-negative bacteria represented 49.3% and Gram-positive bacteria 40.9% of all pathogens. Fungal infections represented only 8.9% of MDI. A significant decrease in Staphylococcus aureus (p < 0.001) and an increase in enterococci, viridans streptococci and Pseudomonas spp. (p = 0.004) were observed during the second period. Four multiresistant (Multi-R) Pseudomonas were isolated, all during the last 12 months. The death rate in MDI was 8.7%, bacteria accounting for 70.4% of them. Enterococci, streptococci and Pseudomonas spp. infections were involved in 44.4% of MDI with an unfavourable outcome. Multi-R pathogens were involved in 4 cases (3 vancomycin-resistant enterococci and 1 Multi-R Pseudomonas), their death rate being 25%. Multivariate analysis showed that an infection due to a mycotic or a Multi-R pathogen was associated with an unfavourable outcome. The recent emergence of enterococci, viridans streptococci and Pseudomonas spp., particularly if Multi-R, is a major concern in haematological patients.


The increasing availability of digital data reflecting economic and human development, and in particular the availability of data emitted as a by-product of people's use of technological devices and services, has both political and practical implications for the way people are seen and treated by the state and by the private sector. Yet the data revolution is so far primarily a technical one: the power of data to sort, categorise and intervene has not yet been explicitly connected to a social justice agenda by the agencies and authorities involved. Meanwhile, although data-driven discrimination is advancing at a similar pace to data processing technologies, awareness and mechanisms for combating it are not. This paper posits that just as an idea of justice is needed in order to establish the rule of law, an idea of data justice – fairness in the way people are made visible, represented and treated as a result of their production of digital data – is necessary to determine ethical paths through a datafying world. Bringing together the emerging scholarly perspectives on this topic, I propose three pillars as the basis of a notion of international data justice: (in)visibility, (dis)engagement with technology and antidiscrimination. These pillars integrate positive with negative rights and freedoms, and by doing so challenge both the basis of current data protection regulations and the growing assumption that being visible through the data we emit is part of the contemporary social contract.


We use machine learning methods and high-dimensional detailed financial data to predict the direction of one-year-ahead earnings changes. Our models show significant out-of-sample predictive power: the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristics curve (AUC) ranges from 67.52 to 68.66 percent, significantly higher than the 50 percent of a random guess. The annual size-adjusted returns to hedge portfolios formed based on the prediction of our models range from 5.02 to 9.74 percent. Our models outperform two conventional models that use logistic regressions and small sets of accounting variables, and professional analysts' forecasts. Analyses suggest that the outperformance relative to the conventional models stems from both nonlinear predictor interactions missed by regressions and the use of more detailed financial data by machine learning. JEL codes: C53; G12; G17; M41


This study examines social distance as a basic component of students' attitudes towards foreigners. The methodological approach in this research is designed to provide answers to the question: Does social distance play any role in the context of international tourism? The Bogardus Social Distance Scale was applied. A total number of 162 questionnaires were correctly completed by Polish and Ukrainian students (quota by nationality, age, gender and level of education). The survey was conducted in 2018. The research appears to show a statistically significant relationship between the respondents' declared attitude towards the Muslims and the Gypsies and the willingness to visit the country where such people reside. The findings have shown that there was no statistical relationship between the respondents' attitudes presented towards otherness and the fact that the respondent might know somebody who is a representative of the researched nationalities. The paper contains recommendations for the development of international tourism, especially destination marketing organizations (DMOs). It is recommended to use the social distance measure to set priority directions for inbound tourism when developing tourism marketing strategies, along with taking into account cultural diversity in the individual regions of Poland.


The structures of the 1:1 molecular adducts of the herbicide 3-amino-1H-1,2,4-triazole (amitrole, 3-AT) with 5-nitrosalicylic acid (5-NSA), 3-amino-2H,4H-1,2,4-triazolium 5-nitrosalicylate, CHN.CH NO, (1), and 3,5-dinitrosalicylic acid (DNSA), 3-amino-2H,4H-1,2,4-triazolium 3,5-dinitrosalicylate, CHN.CH NO, (2), have been determined by X-ray diffraction and refined to residuals R = 0.035 and 0.037 for 1355 and 826 observed reflections, respectively. In both adducts, the acid protonates the hetero N atom of the amitrole ring. For (1), both molecules are involved in a network structure in which all available proton-donor and acceptor atoms, including the nitro O atoms, participate in hydrogen bonding. For (2), the two-dimensional sheet structure involves those atoms comprising the proximal sites of the interacting molecules, with limited interaction through the nitro O atoms.


High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is one of the most used sweeteners in the food industry. Health concerns regarding the consumption of HFCS-containing foods have developed in parallel with the increasing amount of people who become overweight. This study was conducted to investigate whether HFCS-containing peach nectar (pn-HFCS) consumption has more detrimental effects on anthropometrical and biochemical parameters compared with sucrose-containing peach nectar (pn-sucrose). Fifty-day-old Sprague Dawley rats were divided into three groups and were fed (A) pn-HFCS + ad libitum chow, (B) pn-sucrose + ad libitum chow and (C) only ad libitum chow for 7 months. The percentage change in body weight (PCBW), body mass index (BMI), and Lee index were calculated, and serum triglyceride, glucose, insulin and leptin concentrations were measured. The PCBW, BMI, Lee index, serum triglyceride, glucose, insulin and leptin concentrations were insignificant among the three groups. We can suggest that peach nectar consumption resulted in more energy intake than the control and since pn-HFCS group consumed more chow than the pn-sucrose group. The results show that long term daily HFCS or sucrose consumption in peach nectar is not associated with weight gain and does not stimulate metabolic changes in Sprague Dawley rats.


In this note, we propose partially linear models with least squares support vector machines (LS-SVMs) for nonlinear ARX models. We illustrate how full black-box models can be improved when prior information about model structure is available. A real-life example, based on the Silverbox benchmark data, shows significant improvements in the generalization ability of the structured model with respect to the full black-box model, reflected also by a reduction in the effective number of parameters.


Pasteurella multocida is a common cause of infection in humans subsequent to bites or scratches by dogs and, particularly, cats. This infection usually results in superficial skin and soft tissue infections. Sonography can be used for diagnosing inflammatory conditions affecting tendons, including acute and chronic tenosynovitis. P. multocida teno‐ synovitis is rare, and the diagnosis can be missed if adequate tests are not performed. We report 2 cases of P. multocida tenosynovitis of the hand and wrist in which sonography played a valuable role in assessing the affected tissues and guiding fine‐needle aspiration of fluid accumulations in the involved tendon sheaths. The diagnosis was confirmed microbiologically in each case. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Ultrasound 31:159–162, 2003


Purpose To reassess the underlying pathophysiology of acute posterior multifocal placoid pigment epitheliopathy (APMPPE) and relentless placoid chorioretinitis (RPC) through comparison with the non-inoculated eye of the von Szily animal model of neurotropic viral retinal infection. Methods Narrative review. Results Literature reports of isolated neurotropic viral entities and rising serological viral titers in APMPPE after presentation support a potential direct infective etiology. In general, viral transport along axons results in mitochondrial stasis and disruption of axoplasmic flow. Clinical manifestations of axoplasmic flow disruption in APMPPE/RPC may signify the passage of virus along the neuronal pathway. From a case series of 11 patients, we demonstrate a timely, spatial, and proportional association of optic disc swelling with APMPPE lesion occurrence. Signs within the inner retina appear to precede outer retinal lesions; and acute areas of outer nuclear layer (ONL) hyperreflectivity appear to be the result of coalescence of multiple hyperreflective foci resembling axonal spheroids (which occur as a consequence of axoplasmic disruption) and follow the Henle fiber layer neurons. Underlying areas of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) hyper-autofluorescence follow ONL hyperreflectivity and may signify localized infection. Areas of apparent choriocapillaris hypoperfusion mirror areas of RPE/Bruch's membrane separation and appear secondary to tractional forces above. Increases in choroidal thickness with lesion occurrence and focal areas of choriocapillaris hypoperfusion are observed in both APMPPE/RPC and the von Szily model. Conclusions The neurotrophic infection model provides significant advantages over the existing primary choriocapillaris ischemia hypothesis to account for the range of imaging signs observed in APMPPE and RPC.


The system consisting of the plant Passiflora caerulea, the ants that visit its extrafloral nectaries and the larvae of the Gulf fritillary butterfly (Agraulis vanillae) that feed on the plant provides an opportunity to explore the effect of one ecological interaction on another. The objective of this work was to study the effect of the mutualism between the ants and the plant on the antagonism between the butterfly larvae and the plant. The general hypothesis tested was that ants protect the plant from the attack of the larvae "in exchange" for the nectar they receive. An ant exclusion experiment was conducted to explore whether their presence affects the presence of eggs and larvae and the damage they produce. This experiment was carried out at Parque Natural Municipal Ribera Norte (PNMRN), located in the San Isidro party, in the province of Buenos Aires, between September 2011 and March 2012. Five different ant morphotypes were recorded on P. caerulea. According to what was expected, there was a negative effect of the ants on the number of eggs and larvae of A. vanillae. However, the presence of ants did not affect the level of herbivory damage observed. In other words, the protection mutualism had a negative effect on the herbivore attacked (in this case, the butterfly), but did not seem to have the expected positive effect on the defended plant (the Passiflora). This reflects the complexity of tripartite interactions in plant-herbivore-ant systems and the multiple factors that may influence how the species involved are affected. From the point of view of the conservation of biodiversity and its functions in a threatened environment, it is remarkable to have registered the occurrence of these interactions in a small urban nature reserve such as PNMRN.https://doi.org/10.25260/EA.188.8.131.52.635


Exactly how cell division and cell fate determination are related during embryonic development has been a mystery. In the fruit fly, for example, one possibility is that the two waves of cell division (mitosis) that sweep through the developing eyes set the genetic switches that enable the cells to respond to developmental signals from their neighbors. But by engineering flies with a human gene that prevents the second mitotic wave, researchers show in this issue of Science (p. 983) that cell division is not required for the subsequent round of differentiation, although it is necessary for the eye to have adequate numbers of all cell types. A similar pattern may occur elsewhere in development, biologists speculate.


Background The COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of most cardiac therapy centers. One of the solutions was to adapt the existing cardiac rehabilitation (CR) program in an institute to a remote approach offered by home-based telerehabilitation. The aim of this study was to measure the cardiorespiratory effects of telerehabilitation compared to conventional center-based CR. Methods Patients were assigned to two 3-week CR programs: telerehabilitation and conventional center-based CR. The telerehabilitation group wore a connected watch to monitor heart rate (HR) and gave their perception of effort according to a modified Borg scale. The exercise training (four sessions/week) consisted of 1-h aerobic endurance and strength training session at the target HR zone determined by results based on cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) and perception of effort, respectively. The exercise protocol was the same for conventional CR participants except the duration of session that lasted 2 h instead of one. The week before and after the training program, peak oxygen uptake (VO2 peak), oxygen uptake at first ventilatory threshold (VO2 at VT1), peak workload, percent of predicted maximum HR, and the absolute differences in HR and systolic blood pressure between maximum and recovery at 1 and 3 min were measured using a CPET. A two-way ANOVA with one repeated measure and one independent factor was performed. Results Fifty-four patients (mean age: 61.5 ± 8.6 years, 10 women) equally split in the two groups were included in this experiment. A significant increase was observed in both groups on VO2 peak (telerehabilitation: 8.1 ± 7.8% vs. conventional: 10.1 ± 9.7%, p < 0.001), VO2 at VT1 (telerehabilitation: 8.8 ± 4.4% vs. conventional: 7.3 ± 19.0%, p = 0.02) and peak workload (telerehabilitation: 16.6 ± 18.9% vs. conventional: 17.2 ± 7.0%, p < 0.001) after the 3-week telerehabilitation and conventional CR, respectively. No significant difference was noticed between both groups. Conclusion A 3-week exercise program improved patients' cardiorespiratory fitness. Telerehabilitation was as effective and represents a safe alternative CR program during the COVID-19 period. In the future, this approach could facilitate the continuity of care for patients unable to participate in center-based CR.


Proceedings: AACR 104th Annual Meeting 2013; Apr 6-10, 2013; Washington, DC

PIM1 kinase is overexpressed in many tumor types including lymphomas and prostate cancer, where it is known to cooperate with the MYC oncogene in promoting tumorigenicity. PIM1 enhances MYC stability and transcriptional activity. Knowledge of the vulnerabilities of Pim1-expressing tumor cells will be of great value in efforts to develop novel anti-cancer therapeutics. Here we have used RNAi screening to identify genes whose depletion is detrimental to Pim1-overexpressing cells. We screened a collection of 570 siRNAs targeting cell cycle, apoptosis, serine-threonine kinase and tyrosine kinase genes for their effects on the viability of Pim1-expressing RWPE1 prostate epithelial cells. We identified the mitotic regulator polo-like kinase (PLK1) as a gene whose depletion is particularly detrimental to the viability of Pim1-expressing prostate cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Inhibition of PLK1 by shRNA or by the chemical inhibitor BI2536 in prostate cancer xenograft model resulted in a dramatic inhibition of tumor progression in Pim1-overexpressing cells. Interestingly Pim1-overexpressing cells are more prone to mitotic arrest followed by apoptosis. Furthermore, inhibition of Plk1 activity led to the reduction of MYC protein levels both in vitro and in vivo. These results suggest that PLK1 inhibition may be particularly effective against PIM1-expressing tumors due, at least in part, to the fact that PLK1 inhibition reduces MYC protein levels.

Citation Format: Sarki Abdulkadir, Riet Vander Meer, Meejeon Roh. RNAi screen identifies a synthetic lethal interaction between Pim1 overexpression and Plk1 inhibition. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5185. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-5185

Note: This abstract was not presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013 because the presenter was unable to attend.