The atomic and electronic structures of heme complexes with His, Gly, and Cys residues (Heme-His, Heme-Gly, and Heme-Cys) in the fifth coordination position of the Fe atom and with oxygen and nitrogen oxide molecules in the sixth Fe position were studied by the semiempirical quantum-chemical method PM3. A comparative analysis of internuclear distances showed that the strength of chemical bonding between the ligand molecules (oxygen and nitrogen oxide) is greater for Heme-Cys than for Heme-His and Heme-Gly complexes. Consequently, the strengthening of the chemical bond of the oxygen (or nitrogen oxide) molecule with Heme-Cys substantially weakens the chemical bond in the ligand molecule. The Mulliken population analysis showed that the electronic density of ligand (oxygen or nitrogen oxide) p-orbitals is transferred to the d-orbitals of the Fe atom, whose charge, calculated according to the Mulliken analysis, formally becomes negative. In the Heme-His complex with oxygen, this charge is substantially greater than in the complex with NO, and the oxygen molecule becomes polarized. No oxygen polarization is observed in the Heme-Cys complex, and the electron density (judging from the change in the Fe charge) is transferred to the coordinated sulfur atom. This is also characteristic of Heme-Cys complexes with nitrogen oxide. An analysis of charges on the atoms indicates that the character of chemical bonding of the oxygen molecule in Heme-Cys and Heme-Gly complexes is similar and basically differs from that in the case of the Heme-His complex. The English version of the paper: Russian Journal of Bioorganic Chemistry, 2004, vol. 30, no. 2; see also http://www.maik.ru.


A 76-year-old woman being treated with sodium valproate for bipolar depression presented with a 4 day history of acute confusion and tremulousness. She had apnoeic episodes, reduced conscious level and generalised myoclonic movements. Her plasma valproate concentration was 848 µmol/l (normal 300–600 µmol/l). Administration of naloxone 0.8 mg led to rapid clinical improvement. Naloxone may be useful in reversing the features of chronic valproate toxicity.


The relationship between pustulosis palmaris et plantaris (PPP) and immune complexes was studied in 17 patients who underwent tonsillectomy. By means of the Clq-binding test, immune complexes were detected in a considerable number of sera from these patients. Patients with a high serum level of immune complexes which decreased following tonsillectomy were found to benefit by a remarkable improvement in their skin lesions. There was a close association between the degree of improvement in skin lesions following tonsillectomy, and the changes in circulating immune complex levels after tonsillectomy. Immunofluorescence showed that all 6 patients with PPP tested had deposits of IgG, IgM, IgA or C3 in their skin lesions. These results suggest that PPP may be an immune complex disease, and that it may be closely associated with the tonsil as a focus for the release of antigens or immune complexes.


Antibiotic use in food-producing animals and associated public health risks are of global concern. A cross sectional study was conducted to determine the pattern antimicrobials use in poultry farms in Ibadan, between February and July, 2009. Thirty poultry farmers were interviewed with structured questionnaires on the patterns of antibiotic usage, knowledge of withdrawal period and antibiotics resistance. Also, 90 cloacal swabs were collected for isolation, characterization and Salmonella spp susceptibility to antibiotics from the farms. Ninety percent of the respondents frequently administered different antibiotics obtained from veterinary retail shops or drugs vendors and salespersons to their chickens. Eighty five percent (85%) of the respondents engaged in self medication without veterinary diagnosis of diseases or prescription. Eighty six percent of the respondents routinely administered most of these antibiotics as feed additives to prevent disease or as growth promoters or egg boosters. Treatment records and dosages were not properly documented in most of the surveyed farms. Only 20% of the respondents had the understanding of withdrawal periods while 80% of the respondents did not practice withdrawal for the fear of economic losses and were not aware of the effects of such practices on the consumers of poultry products. Salmonella species were isolated from 43.3% of the cloacal swabs, the isolates exhibited different patterns of multi-drug resistance. The results indicated unregulated and indiscriminate use of antibiotics by poultry farmers could account for the widespread antibiotics resistance among the Salmonella strains and food safety risks. There are urgent needs for national monitoring of antimicrobial resistance in Nigeria and veterinary public health extension education among poultry farmers on good agricultural practice, responsible usage of veterinary drugs and on the health risks of antibiotics resistance in food-borne pathogens. Strict regulation of food-animal production in Nigeria is also recommended to assure food safety. Keywords : Antibiotics, Resistance, Salmonellosis, Poultry


The motions of particles dispersed in liquid crystals can be influenced by the application of an electric field, the effect depending on the field frequency and field amplitude. Sandwich cells under the application of electric field are widely used as the tool in order to investigate the fundamental research relating to electro-optic display technology. Therefore, the aim of this experimental work is to find and investigate novel motion of the particles dispersed in the liquid crystal phases, held within a sandwich cell.For the liquid crystal?particle systems in the sandwich cells in this thesis, the particle shapes, temperature and cell geometry are all shown to have an influence on the regime of the particle?s motions, with different phenomena observed using three different phases of liquid crystals. The experiments are designed to find and investigate the novel motion of the micron sized silica particles in the liquid crystal phases. In the chiral nematic phase, spherical particles are shown to exhibit linear motion, which is related to the electrophoretic mobility. Such spherical particles are also observed to show circular motion which is found to have a field dependency that can be related to Quincke rotation. A maximum frequency for motion occurs which is found to possibly be related to the effect of the ion diffusion in the liquid crystal-particle composite system. The direction of the circular motion is found to be independent of the handedness of the chiral nematic material.In the isotropic phase of a chiral nematic liquid crystal, the spherical particles do not exhibit any linear motion, which shows the system does not follow the traditional electrophoresis observed in normal isotropic liquids. The circular motion of the spherical particle that is observed in the isotropic phase is analysed in terms of the Quincke rotation and again shows the Maxwell relaxation time.The electric-field induced motion of elongated particles in four different nematic systems is examined. In this case of planar aligned systems, linear motion is observed, in which the velocity shows a minimum for particles of the same length as the cell gap. A novel field-induced defect texture appears in the homeotropic device containing a nematic liquid crystal of negative dielectric anisotropy. Interestingly, the motion of the particle is found to be strongly coupled with the defects formed.


The North Atlantic Ocean undergoes pronounced basin-wide, multi-decadal variations. The corresponding fluctuations in sea surface temperature (SST) have become known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) or Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV). AMV is receiving increasing attention for three key reasons: (1) it has been linked to climate impacts of major socio-economic importance, such as Sahel rainfall; (2) it may temporarily mask anthropogenic global warming not only in the North Atlantic Sector, but over the Northern Hemisphere (NH); and (3) it appears to be predictable on decadal timescales. This chapter provides an overview of current understanding of AMV, summarizing proposed mechanisms, our ability to simulate and predict it, as well as challenges for future research.


A simple model for the stress-strain behaviour of a tough fibre-reinforced ceramic matrix composite, based on a single continuum damage mechanics parameter, has been used to study the behaviour of two kinematically determinate, one-dimensional, structures. The structures have been chosen to represent a class of components in which the fibre axes coincide predominantly with the maximum principal tension stress direction. It has been shown that the damage evolution due to the monotonic application of load results in stress redistribution, and that the load displacement characteristics of the structures reflect the characteristics of the stress—strain curve. The size of the predominant load bearing section influences the stress redistribution and hence the smoothness of the load-displacement curve. Approximate methods, based on the concepts of representative materials and structures, have been developed for the rapid prediction of the load-displacement characteristics which can be used at the early, or conceptual, stages of design.


Weather index insurance plays an important role in helping farmers avoid their economic loss from weather risk. There is increasing numbers of pilot areas of weather index insurance in China while the studies show its take-up has been disappointing low in many other developing countries. This study aims to explore the status of weather index insurance and its processing problems in China through the factors influencing farmers' willingness to pay for Low-Temperature Index-based Mandarin Orange Insurance in Nangfeng County. The Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis is conducted for the influencing factors, including strike level, premium, pay-out, planting cost, effect of low temperature, insurance claim process, trust in insurance and government subsidy. The result shows the combination of expensive premium, low payout, high planting cost, low government subsidy and distrust in insurance company causes farmers' unwillingness to pay for Low Temperature Index-based Mandarin Orange Insurance, among which distrust is core factor. Expensive premium, low payout, high planting cost and low subsidy from government are main influencing factors.


This paper describes an architecture of a three input one output bit scalable fuzzy processor. The synthesis is made from a VHDL description. The data path and functional units dimension are defined by a small number of parameters in the highest level entity. The knowledge base und the membership functions are stored in distinct units in the circuit description for an easy control strategy modification,


Monetary economists have long recognized a tension between the benefits of fractional reserve banking, such as the ability to undertake more profitable (long‐term) investment opportunities, and the difficulties associated with it, such as the risk of insolvency for each bank and the associated losses to bank liability holders. I show that a specific banking arrangement (a joint‐liability scheme) provides an effective mechanism for ensuring the ex post transfer of reserves from liquid banks to illiquid banks, so it is possible to select a socially efficient reserve ratio in the banking system that preserves the safety of bank liabilities as a store of value and maximizes the rate of return paid to bank liability holders.


Abstract: In this paper, I compare aspects of Heidegger's and Dewey's thinking and argue that such a comparison is educationally promising. I develop this argument primarily by examining each author's understanding of art, which shows striking similarities. Both Dewey and Heidegger iframed art and aesthetics as favorite noetic experiences, conceiving of them as something that not only completed thinking but that were necessary for thinking to happen. I also argue, however, that, through the lens of art, we can reframe and better understand some aspects of their thinking, namely, Dasein's projecting in Heidegger and the gap between experience and thinking in Dewey. These correspondences, in turn, allow us to conceive of education as "leap" and "transcendence," an understanding that is related to the human duty of bearing and preserving our groundless condition.


Photo exposure correction is widely investigated, but fewer studies focus on correcting under and over-exposed images simultaneously. Three issues remain open to handle and correct under and over-exposed images in a unified way. First, a locally-adaptive exposure adjustment may be more flexible instead of learning a global mapping. Second, it is an ill-posed problem to determine the suitable exposure values locally. Third, photos with the same content but different exposures may not reach consistent adjustment results. To this end, we proposed a novel exposure correction network, ExReg, to address the challenges by formulating exposure correction as a multi-dimensional regression process. Given an input image, a compact multi-exposure generation network is introduced to generate images with different exposure conditions for multi-dimensional regression and exposure correction in the next stage. An auxiliary module is designed to predict the region-wise exposure values, guiding the mainly proposed Encoder-Decoder ANP (Attentive Neural Processes) to regress the final corrected image. The experimental results show that ExReg can generate well-exposed results and outperform the SOTA method by 1.3dB in PSNR for extensive exposure problems. In addition, given the same image but under various exposure for testing, the corrected results are more visually consistent and physically accurate.


More than ten years ago McCarty et al. described the RS3PE syndrome based on their study of 23 patients. Numerous additional cases have since been reported. In addition to the isolated or "pure" type which probably forms part of the clinical spectrum of polymyalgia rheumatica, inflammatory swelling with pitting edema of the dorsum of the hands and/or feet can be observed in different inflammatory rheumatic diseases as well as in haematological and solid malignancies.


The objective of this report is to promote increased understanding of decision making processes and hopefully to enable improved decision making regarding high-consequence, highly sophisticated technological systems. This report brings together insights regarding risk perception and decision making across domains ranging from nuclear power technology safety, cognitive psychology, economics, science education, public policy, and neural science (to name a few). It forms them into a unique, coherent, concise framework, and list of strategies to aid in decision making. It is suggested that all decision makers, whether ordinary citizens, academics, or political leaders, ought to cultivate their abilities to separate the wheat from the chaff in these types of decision making instances. The wheat includes proper data sources and helpful human decision making heuristics; these should be sought. The chaff includes ''unhelpful biases'' that hinder proper interpretation of available data and lead people unwittingly toward inappropriate decision making ''strategies''; obviously, these should be avoided. It is further proposed that successfully accomplishing the wheat vs. chaff separation is very difficult, yet tenable. This report hopes to expose and facilitate navigation away from decision-making traps which often ensnare the unwary. Furthermore, it is emphasized that one's personal decision making biases can be examined, and tools can be provided allowing better means to generate, evaluate, and select among decision options. Many examples in this report are tailored to the energy domain (esp. nuclear power for electricity generation). The decision making framework and approach presented here are applicable to any high-consequence, highly sophisticated technological system.


Technological advancements have made it possible to deliver mobile health interventions to individuals. A novel framework that has emerged from such advancements is the just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI), which aims to suggest the right support to the individuals when their needs arise. The micro-randomized trial (MRT) design has been proposed recently to test the proximal effects of these JITAIs. In an MRT, participants are repeatedly randomized to one of the intervention categories of various components, at a scale of hundreds or thousands of decision-points over the study. However, the extant MRT framework only considers the components with a fixed number of categories. We propose a novel extension of the MRT design, by allowing flexible addition of more categories to the components during the study, in a spirit analogous to adaptive platform trials. Accordingly, we develop a methodology to allow for simultaneous comparisons of varying numbers of categories over a given study period. The proposed methodology is motivated by collaboration on the DIAMANTE study, which learns to adaptively deliver multiple complex kinds of text messages to encourage physical activity among the patients with Diabetes and Depression. We apply a methodology similar to the generalized estimating equation approach on the longitudinal data arising from the proposed MRT, to develop novel test statistics for assessing the proximal effects and deriving the associated sample size calculators. We conduct simulation studies to evaluate the sample size calculators, based on both power and precision. We have developed an R shiny application of the sample size calculators.


Fertility preservation has received unprecedented attention nowadays. In addition to cryopreservation and re-implantation of embryos, oocytes, and ovarian tissue pieces, in vitro culture system for follicles/oocytes has been considered as an alternative strategy for fertility preservation. Since the metabolic dynamics and required nutrients are not entirely the same in different stages of follicular development, optimization of each culture step is needed. In this paper, literature regarding culture conditions in three steps were analyzed. Known additives in activation stage included 740Y-P, bpV(HOpic), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), human serum albumin (HSA), ITS, growth differentiation factor 9 (GDF9), bone morphogenetic protein 15 (BMP15), and cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), with different degrees of activation promotion and potential detrimental effect on DNA integrity. For isolated follicles growth stage, actin A, FSH, basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), estradiol were proved to improve development or proliferation. As for maturation, addition of growth hormone, melatonin, C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), GDF9, cilostamide, or forskolin helped to regulate maturation rate or improve oocyte quality. Based on previous sequential culture system for human follicles, optimization is needed to achieve higher maturation rate and better oocyte quality, pursuant to current review, which demonstrated the effects of various additives on different stages.


The book consists of texts and legislation focused on recent
legal issues of intellectual property, data protection and
e-government. It is destined primarily for the use as a
textbook at the Summer School of ICT Law 2009, Wroclaw, Poland.


To economically solve problems for rainwater renovation, stormwater treatment at the early stage is needed for the storage and reuse of safe rainwater. One of the alternatives changes the conventional rainwater drain into an unclogging elastic surface filter (UESF). UESF manufactured with the ethylene propohlene diene monomer (EPDM) has a merit of not only primary treatment of stormwater but also rapid restoration of its permeability by hammering after surface pollutions. Accordingly, in this study, the durability of pavement materials is evaluated by measuring the permeability of UESF and prefabricated prototype called G-block after the removal of surface pollutants. Also, the relationship between coefficient of restitution and recovery rate is estimated. The permeability is measured again after the removal of surface pollutants to calculate the recovery rate. As a result, the permeability of UESF and G-block is much greater than the general permeability standard of 0.01 cm/s. After hammering, the permeability is recovered and the recovery rates of UESF and G-block are 22.22 and 55.6%, respectively. Therefore, it proved that UESF and G-block could improve the permeability and recovery rate for the field application and renovate the conventional rainwater drain for rainwater recycling at urban sites.


Background: As of 2017, an estimated 5.5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Information and support for individuals with ADRD and their caregivers are critically needed. Technological advancements have provided patients and caregivers with tools that can provide information and education in areas such as improving awareness about the disease, disease management, and caregiving skills training. Mobile applications (apps) are an example of these tools. Studies have been conducted to assess the content of mobile apps focused on other health issues such as diabetes, weight management, and cancer; however, little is known about ADRD-related mobile apps. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review of apps focused on ADRD. Objective: The objective of this study was to review the content of ADRD-related mobile apps. Methods: ADRD-related mobile apps were searched using keywords such as "Alzheimer", "Alzheimer's Disease" and "Dementia" in the App store for iOS-supported apps and Google Play Store for Android-supported apps. Apps were included for final review based on description, and inclusion and exclusion criteria. Three reviewers coded characteristics of the app (e.g. developer, version, number of installations, user ratings), target users, purpose, content of information provided, and technical aspects. Descriptive statistics, including frequencies and percentages, were used to analyze the data. Results: A total of 38 apps were included in the review (16 were only available in iOS; 9 were only available in Android; 13 apps were available in both operating systems). IT companies developed 36.8% of the apps reviewed, followed by non-profit organizations (18.4%), and health-consulting organizations (10.5%). Very few apps were developed by government agencies (5.3%) or pharmaceutical companies (5.3%). Most apps were intended for caregivers of individuals with ADRD (63.2%), followed by the general population (44.7%). The main purpose of the apps was for disease management (55.3%), skills training (42.1%), disease and treatment information (34.2%), and to improve disease awareness (29.0%). Very few apps had a goal of providing peer support (2.6%). Most of the content was focused on caregiving (63.2%) and disease management (50.0%). Other information frequently presented included signs and symptoms of ADRD (34.2%), types of ADRD (31.6%), financial and legal issues (29.0%), resources for supporting patients (29.0%), and healthy lifestyle for ADRD prevention (29.0%). Few apps contained information about differences between typical aging and ADRD symptoms (13.2%), and health insurance option for ADRD patients (10.5%). Few apps had video (23.7%) or audio (2.6%) lectures or tutorials. Interactive features were limited; few apps had a function of sharing (18.4%), an app community (10.5%), or sending reminders (7.9%). Conclusions: ADRD mobile apps that provide caregiving information can potentially benefit individuals who are supporting ADRD patients. Most ADRD mobile apps reviewed did not cover certain aspects related to ADRD, such as how to differentiate ADRD symptoms from typical aging. In addition, information provided by the apps was mainly presented in the form of text with limited audio/video options. There are opportunities for further development of ADRD apps with respect to content and format. [iproc 2017;3(1):e44]


In this paper, we present a simple and efficient normalized signed regressor LMS (NSRLMS) algorithm, that can be applied to ECG signal in order to remove various artifacts from them. This algorithm enjoys less computational complexity because of the sign present in the algorithm and good filtering capability because of the normalized term. As a result it is particularly suitable for applications requiring large signal to noise ratios with less computational complexity. Simulation studies shows that the proposed realization gives better performance compared to existing realizations in terms of signal to noise ratio.


The scaling of large language models has greatly improved natural language understanding, generation, and reasoning. In this work, we develop a system that trained a trillion-parameter language model on a cluster of Ascend 910 AI processors and MindSpore framework, and present the language model with 1.085T parameters named PanGu-{\Sigma}. With parameter inherent from PanGu-{\alpha}, we extend the dense Transformer model to sparse one with Random Routed Experts (RRE), and efficiently train the model over 329B tokens by using Expert Computation and Storage Separation(ECSS). This resulted in a 6.3x increase in training throughput through heterogeneous computing. Our experimental findings show that PanGu-{\Sigma} provides state-of-the-art performance in zero-shot learning of various Chinese NLP downstream tasks. Moreover, it demonstrates strong abilities when fine-tuned in application data of open-domain dialogue, question answering, machine translation and code generation.


Emotional Intelligence is defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand and manage emotions in oneself and others. This ability plays a central role in predicting academic success: the university field emotionally engages students, and high emotional competences, not only cognitive ones, could be the key for a brilliant and successful academic career. The present study aimed to explore the role of the EI in predicting academic success on Italian undergraduate students of the University of Bari. High abilities of perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions were expected to be associated with academic success, in terms of years of achieving a degree, degree mark and the average exam marks. Results confirmed that emotionally intelligent students will be " over time " successful college students.


Increasingly, mental health services in resource-limited settings are being delivered by lay health workers with limited professional training. This study compared beliefs and attitudes about mental illness among church-based lay health workers in Enugu, Nigeria with no psychiatric training (n=59) and medical trainees with different levels of exposure to psychiatric care from two teaching hospitals in Nigeria; University of Ibadan (n=150) and Imo State University (n=83). A 43-item self-report questionnaire was used to assess their beliefs and attitudes. Exploratory factor analysis using varimax rotation identified four distinct constructs. Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA) was used to compare these constructs across the three groups. Factor analysis identified four domains representing F1) social acceptance F2) normalization of social roles F3) non-superstitious causation of mental illness and F4) stress and trauma as causes of mental disorders. Students at the hospital with a more active, psychiatry training program had significantly higher scores than other groups on three of the four factors (F4=0.91 vs 0.72, 0.32; F1=0.60 vs 0.50, 0.53; F3=0.55 vs 0.40, 0.30), while the church-based lay health workers did not differ from students at the medical school providing minimal psychiatric training on two of the four factors (F1=0.53 vs 0.50; F3=0.30 vs 0.40). Availability of psychiatric education and emphasis on mental health services may have a positive impact on the progressiveness of beliefs and attitudes about mental illness.


Web browsers are among the most important but also complex software solutions to access the web. It is therefore not surprising that web browsers are an attractive target for attackers. Especially in the last decade, security researchers and browser vendors have developed sandboxing mechanisms like security-relevant HTTP headers to tackle the problem of getting a more secure browser. Although the security community is aware of the importance of security-relevant HTTP headers, legacy applications and individual requests from different parties have led to possible insecure configurations of these headers. Even if specific security headers are configured correctly, conflicts in their functionalities may lead to unforeseen browser behaviors and vulnerabilities. Recently, the first work which analyzed duplicated headers and conflicts in headers was published by Calzavara et al. at USENIX Security [1]. The authors focused on inconsistent protections by using both, the HTTP header X-Frame-Options and the framing protection of the Content-Security-Policy.We extend their work by analyzing browser behaviors when parsing duplicated headers, conflicting directives, and values that do not conform to the defined ABNF metalanguage specification. We created an open-source testbed running over 19,800 test cases, at which nearly 300 test cases are executed in the set of 66 different browsers. Our work shows that browsers conform to the specification and behave securely. However, all tested browsers behave differently when it comes, for example, to parsing the Strict-Transport-Security header. Moreover, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox behave differently if the header contains a character, which is not allowed by the defined ABNF. This results in the protection mechanism being fully enforced, partially enforced, or not enforced and thus completely bypassable.


Abstract Medulloblastoma (MB) is one of the most common central nervous system tumors in children. At present, the vital role of immune abnormalities has been proved in tumorigenesis and progression. However, the immune mechanism in MB is still poorly understood. In the present study, 51 differentially expressed immune-related genes (DE-IRGs) and 226 survival associated immune-related genes (Sur-IRGs) were screened by an integrated analysis of multi-array. Moreover, the potential pathways were enriched by functional analysis, such as 'cytokine–cytokine receptor interaction', 'Ras signaling pathway', 'PI3K-Akt signaling pathway' and 'pathways in cancer'. Furthermore, 10 core IRGs were identified from DE-IRGs and Sur-IRGs. And the potential regulatory mechanisms of core IRGs were also explored. Additionally, a new prognostic model, including 7 genes (HDGF, CSK, PNOC, S100A13, RORB, FPR1, and ICAM2) based on IRGs, was established by multivariable COX analysis. In summary, our study revealed the underlying immune mechanism of MB. Moreover, we developed a prognostic model associated with clinical characteristics and could reflect the infiltration of immune cells.


BACKGROUND
Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has shifted toward earlier and more aggressive therapy with tra- ditional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and biologics. However, the extent to which these agents are used in current clinical practice in the United States (U.S.) has not been systematically evaluated.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This analysis of a large claims database assessed patterns of use of biologics within clinical practice in a broad U.S. population with RA. We identifed two cohorts of adults with RA using Thomson Healthcare MarketScan Research databases. Patients newly diagnosed with RA between 1999 and 2004 with 12 months or more of continuous enrollment prior to diagnosis and with 24 months or more post-diagnosis were included in one cohort. The second cohort included RA patients who appeared to be newly treated with biologic therapy and had continu- ous enrollment for 12 months or more prior to frst use of a biologic agent and 18 months or more following initial treatment. A total of 16,752 patients, newly diagnosed with RA, and 8218, new to biologics therapy, were included.

RESULTS
Utilization of biologics increased from 3% of patients in 1999 to 26% in 2006. Patients initiated biolog- ics both as monotherapy (30%) and in combination with methotrexate (36%). Regimen modifcations were frequent, with a large percentage of patients requiring addition or subtraction of methotrexate.

CONCLUSIONS
The use of biologics to treat RA is increas- ing, either as monotherapy or in combination with another DMARD. Modifcations to drug regimens are frequent and episodes are often of comparatively short duration.


Alkenylzirconium nucleophiles made in situ by the hydrozirconation of terminal alkynes undergo dynamic kinetic asymmetric allylic alkenylation with racemic allyl bromides to give enantioenriched products.


CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) are a critical component of the adaptive immune system because they mediate contact-dependent cytolysis and produce proinflammatory cytokines. Although both of these CTL activities require T cell receptor (TCR) activation these functions are not always coordinately invoked, suggesting that signaling pathways downstream of the TCR can be selectively activated to guide specific functional outcomes. Here we investigated the role of Discs large homolog 1 (DLG1) alternative splice variants, DLG1 i1A-i1B and DLG1 i1B, in coupling proximal TCR signals to select downstream pathways to specify cytotoxicity and proinflammatory cytokine transcription in CD8+ T cells. We found that DLG1 i1A-i1B, but not DLG1 i1B selectively directs TCR-induced p38/NFAT-dependent proinflammatory cytokine production by binding Lck, promoting alternative p38 activation and downstream NFAT mediated upregultion of IFNγ and TNFα gene expression. Conversely, DLG1 i1A-i1B mediated alternative p38 activation had no effect on actin polymerization, granzyme B gene expression, granzyme B release, or degranulation. Rather, either DLG1 variant expressed in CD8+ T cells promoted antigen-induced degranulation, suggesting that both DLG1 variants have p38-independent activity guiding granule-dependent cytotoxicity. Thus CD8+ T cells contain two distinct DLG1 scaffolds that act as molecular conduits for proximal TCR signals to allow differential CTL functional responses.


Accurate land cover classification information is a critical variable for many applications. This study presents a method to classify land cover using the fusion data of airborne discrete return LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and CASI (Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager) hyperspectral data. Four LiDAR-derived images (DTM, DSM, nDSM, and intensity) and CASI data (48 bands) with 1 m spatial resolution were spatially resampled to 2, 4, 8, 10, 20 and 30 m resolutions using the nearest neighbor resampling method. These data were thereafter fused using the layer stacking and principal components analysis (PCA) methods. Land cover was classified by commonly used supervised classifications in remote sensing images, i.e., the support vector machine (SVM) and maximum likelihood (MLC) classifiers. Each classifier was applied to four types of datasets (at seven different spatial resolutions): (1) the layer stacking fusion data; (2) the PCA fusion data; (3) the LiDAR data alone; and (4) the CASI data alone. In this study, the land cover category was classified into seven classes, i.e., buildings, road, water bodies, forests, grassland, cropland and barren land. A total of 56 classification results were produced, and the classification accuracies were assessed and compared. The results show that the classification accuracies produced from two fused datasets were higher than that of the single LiDAR and CASI data at all seven spatial resolutions. Moreover, we find that the layer stacking method produced higher overall classification accuracies than the PCA fusion method using both the SVM and MLC classifiers. The highest classification accuracy obtained (OA = 97.8%, kappa = 0.964) using the SVM classifier on the layer stacking fusion data at 1 m spatial resolution. Compared with the best classification results of the CASI and LiDAR data alone, the overall classification accuracies improved by 9.1% and 19.6%, respectively. Our findings also demonstrated that the SVM classifier generally performed better than the MLC when classifying multisource data; however, none of the classifiers consistently produced higher accuracies at all spatial resolutions.


Dengue fever is a widespread disease that can occur outside tropical areas. Several thousand French military personnel are exposed to this infectious risk each year and exposure is expected to rise with the creation of a professional army and the increasing number of foreign missions. As a result, dengue fever has become a major priority for the Armed Services Health Corps (ASHC). A system of epidemiological surveillance based on the active participation of all military physicians has been designed by the ASHC to collect and analyze all data relevant to cases of dengue fever involving French military personnel stationed overseas or at home. The purpose of this study is to present data compiled for the period from 1996 to 1999. Analysis of these data demonstrated that the incidence of dengue fever peaked in 1997 due to epidemic outbreaks occurring in French Polynesia and Martinique. In response to these outbreaks control measures were adapted especially in regard to vector control. This study shows that the system of surveillance implemented by the ASHC is an effective but still perfectible tool.


We demonstrate all-optical tunable delays in optical fiber at communication data rates via dispersion and wavelength conversion using nonlinear spectral broadening and filtering. A second wavelength-conversion stage is implemented such that the output wavelength of the delay generator is the same as the input wavelength. With this scheme, we achieve continuously tunable delays over a range of 250 ps for 5.4-ps-long pulses at a data rate of 10 Gb/s. The delay generator does not exhibit any measurable pulse distortion and offers potential scalability to data rates as high as 60 Gb/s. The reconfiguration rate of the delay generator is limited by the tuning speed of the bandpass filter used in the wavelength-conversion stage.


This thesis focuses on the study of marked Gibbs point processes, in particular presenting some results on their existence and uniqueness, with ideas and techniques drawn from different areas of statistical mechanics: the entropy method from large deviations theory, cluster expansion and the Kirkwood--Salsburg equations, the Dobrushin contraction principle and disagreement percolation.

We first present an existence result for infinite-volume marked Gibbs point processes. More precisely, we use the so-called entropy method (and large-deviation tools) to construct marked Gibbs point processes in R^d under quite general assumptions. In particular, the random marks belong to a general normed space S and are not bounded. Moreover, we allow for interaction functionals that may be unbounded and whose range is finite but random. The entropy method relies on showing that a family of finite-volume Gibbs point processes belongs to sequentially compact entropy level sets, and is therefore tight.

We then present infinite-dimensional Langevin diffusions, that we put in interaction via a Gibbsian description. In this setting, we are able to adapt the general result above to show the existence of the associated infinite-volume measure. We also study its correlation functions via cluster expansion techniques, and obtain the uniqueness of the Gibbs process for all inverse temperatures β and activities z below a certain threshold. This method relies in first showing that the correlation functions of the process satisfy a so-called Ruelle bound, and then using it to solve a fixed point problem in an appropriate Banach space. The uniqueness domain we obtain consists then of the model parameters z and β for which such a problem has exactly one solution.

Finally, we explore further the question of uniqueness of infinite-volume Gibbs point processes on R^d, in the unmarked setting. We present, in the context of repulsive interactions with a hard-core component, a novel approach to uniqueness by applying the discrete Dobrushin criterion to the continuum framework. We first fix a discretisation parameter a>0 and then study the behaviour of the uniqueness domain as a goes to 0. With this technique we are able to obtain explicit thresholds for the parameters z and β, which we then compare to existing results coming from the different methods of cluster expansion and disagreement percolation.

Throughout this thesis, we illustrate our theoretical results with various examples both from classical statistical mechanics and stochastic geometry.


IMPORTANCE
Morphometric assessment has emerged as a strong predictor of postoperative morbidity and mortality. However, a gap exists in translating this knowledge to bedside decision making. We introduced a novel measure of patient-centered surgical risk assessment: morphometric age.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the relationship between morphometric age and posttransplant survival.

DATA SOURCES
Medical records of recipients of deceased-donor liver transplants (study population) and kidney donors/trauma patients (morphometric age control population).

STUDY SELECTION
A retrospective cohort study of 348 liver transplant patients and 3313 control patients. We assessed medical records for validated morphometric characteristics of aging (psoas area, psoas density, and abdominal aortic calcification). We created a model (stratified by sex) for a morphometric age equation, which we then calculated for the control population using multivariate linear regression modeling (covariates). These models were then applied to the study population to determine each patient's morphometric age.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS
All analytic steps related to measuring morphometric characteristics were obtained via custom algorithms programmed into commercially available software. An independent observer confirmed all algorithm outputs. Trained assistants performed medical record review to obtain patient characteristics.

RESULTS
Cox proportional hazards regression model showed that morphometric age was a significant independent predictor of overall mortality (hazard ratio, 1.03 per morphometric year [95% CI, 1.02-1.04; P < .001]) after liver transplant. Chronologic age was not a significant covariate for survival (hazard ratio, 1.02 per year [95% CI, 0.99-1.04; P = .21]). Morphometric age stratified patients at high and low risk for mortality. For example, patients in the middle chronologic age tertile who jumped to the oldest morphometric tertile have worse outcomes than those who jumped to the youngest morphometric tertile (74.4% vs 93.2% survival at 1 year [P = .03]; 45.2% vs 75.0% at 5 years [P = .03]).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Morphometric age correlated with mortality after liver transplant with better discrimination than chronologic age. Assigning a morphometric age to potential liver transplant recipients could improve prediction of postoperative mortality risk.


This chapter examines some of the challenges of educational change in the context of current research into the new language and literacy practices developing around the use of new technologies in the classroom. The complex and often conflicting expectations of various educational stakeholders is expressed in the call for teachers to return to the systematic teaching of basic literacy skills, while concurrently learning about, and engaging students with, new information and communication technologies (ICT). The rationale behind the push for ICT in schools is examined through the lens of a critical methodology that foregrounds the need to know how knowledge is produced, and who benefits most from prevailing educational practices. Discrepancies, gaps, silences and tensions within and across educational discourses are discussed in the context of a recent study that demonstrates how changing language practices can destabilise concepts such as literacy, knowledge, and information, and result in new understandings of what it means to be human in the Information Age. Foucauldian Genealogical Discourse Analysis and Constructivist Grounded Theory are also presented as compatible methods for examining how language and other signifying practices figure not only as stabilising elements of socio-cultural processes but also as mechanisms of change.


A structural monitoring system based on cheap and wireless monitoring system is investigated in this paper. Due to low-cost and low power consumption, micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) is suitable for wireless monitoring and the use of MEMS and wireless communication can reduce system cost and simplify the installation for structural health monitoring. For system identification using wireless MEMS, a finite element (FE) model updating method through correlation with the initial analytical model of the structure to the measured one is used. The system identification using wireless MEMS is evaluated experimentally using a three storey frame model. Identification results are compared to ones using data measured from traditional accelerometers and results indicate that the system identification using wireless MEMS estimates system parameters with reasonable accuracy. Another smart sensor considered in this paper for structural health monitoring is Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) which is a type of piezoelectric material. PZT patches have been applied for the health monitoring of structures owing to their simultaneous sensing/actuating capability. In this paper, the system identification for building structures by using PZT patches functioning as sensor only is presented. The FE model updating method is applied with the experimental data obtained using PZT patches, and the results are compared to ones obtained using wireless MEMS system. Results indicate that sensing by PZT patches yields reliable system identification results even though limited information is available.


A composting treatment was employed in an effort to improve the processability of rice husks. Changes in the chemical composition, physical structure, and rheological properties of modified rice husks were analyzed. The results indicated that the average diameter of compost-treated samples was significantly higher than that of the untreated samples because they were able to adhere to each other by the bacterial protein. Scanning electron microscopy images showed that the epidermis became rugged and lumpy because the composition of rice husks (cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and pectin) was partially decomposed, an effect confirmed by the chemical composition and FTIR analysis. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that the composted samples had better thermal stability than the untreated ones. Stress-strain curves showed that the treated samples displayed a moderately significant change of slope at about 0 to 10% strain, and they had better mechanical properties than untreated samples. Juxtaposing the rheological properties of both untreated and treated samples determined that the latter had higher apparent viscosity as a result of degradation and bacterial protein effects. All results indicated that the composting treatment changed the physical, chemical, and rheological properties of the rice husks, which are beneficial for its utilization and processability.


I prove that every adapted Brownian bridge on a geodesically complete connected Riemannian manifold is a semimartingale including its terminal time, without any further assumptions on the geometry. In particular, it follows that every such process can be horizontally lifted to a smooth principal fiber bundle with connection, including its terminal time. The proof is based on a localized Hamilton-type gradient estimate by Arnaudon/Thalmaier.


Recent works of opinion expression identification (OEI) rely heavily on the quality and scale of the manually-constructed training corpus, which could be extremely difficult to satisfy. Crowdsourcing is one practical solution for this problem, aiming to create a large-scale but quality-unguaranteed corpus. In this work, we investigate Chinese OEI with extremely-noisy crowdsourcing annotations, constructing a dataset at a very low cost. Following Zhang el al. (2021), we train the annotator-adapter model by regarding all annotations as gold-standard in terms of crowd annotators, and test the model by using a synthetic expert, which is a mixture of all annotators. As this annotator-mixture for testing is never modeled explicitly in the training phase, we propose to generate synthetic training samples by a pertinent mixup strategy to make the training and testing highly consistent. The simulation experiments on our constructed dataset show that crowdsourcing is highly promising for OEI, and our proposed annotator-mixup can further enhance the crowdsourcing modeling.


Undergraduate science courses typically rely on teaching assistants (TAs) to teach introductory laboratory classes. However little research investigates how to support TAs to implement reform-based teaching in undergraduate settings, and in particular, what factors may influence TAs' motivation to teach within reform-based instructional contexts. This qualitative study used an Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT) framework of motivation to explore: (1) TAs' expectancy beliefs and subjective values of project-based inquiry laboratory contexts; (2) relationships among expectancy and subjective value of teaching and reported effort in teaching, and (3) factors (e.g., teaching beliefs, prior teaching and instructional experiences) that may relate to TAs' motivation for teaching. Data sources included open-ended surveys and interviews of six purposefully selected TAs. Results revealed that TAs held varied views on their ability to be successful and their perceived value of teaching in an inquiry-based laboratory context. TAs' beliefs and subjective value for teaching appeared to be informed by TAs' prior experiences with inquiry and interactions with students. Results provide insight into what may motivate TAs to teach within inquiry-based undergraduate science settings. Results underscore the importance of reform-based instruction in undergraduate settings.


In this paper, we describe a novel method for constructing probabilistic robust disturbance rejection control for systems contain uncertain data in which a scenario optimization method is used to deal with the nonlinear and unbounded uncertainties. For anti-disturbance, a reduced order disturbance observer is considered and a state-feedback controller is designed. Sufficient conditions are presented to ensure that the resulting closed-loop system is stable and a prescribed H∞ performance index is satisfied. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the techniques proposed and analyzed.


Abstract The global political economy is organized around the pursuit of economic growth. Yet scholars of International Political Economy (IPE) have been surprisingly slow to address its wide-ranging implications and, thus, to advance debates about post-growth alternatives. The premise of the article is that for IPE to deepen its grasp of the escalation of contemporary socioecological crises both analytically and normatively, it needs to put the growth question front and center. To problematize the pursuit of economic growth from an IPE perspective, we bring together research on green growth, post-growth/degrowth, sustainability transitions and socioecological transformation. More specifically, we develop an analytical framework that revolves around four pathways of reorganization toward socioecological sustainability: (1) modification, (2) substitution, (3) conversion and (4) prefiguration. We use illustrative examples from the plastics and food sectors to show how the post-growth pathways of conversion and prefiguration could interact to trigger change for sustainability. Notably, our discussion reveals that conversion, which requires a strong state for developing post-growth institutions, is the least traveled pathway in both sectors. This insight points to a strategic priority for post-growth proponents and an urgent research agenda for IPE scholars.


The cold-cavity modal characteristics of an antiresonant optical waveguide-type cylindrical vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) are investigated through numerical simulations using a three-dimensional (3-D) bidirectional beam propagation method (BD-BPM) and a full-vector axisymmetric finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Good agreement between the BPM- and FDTD-computed radial mode profiles as well as the mode-dependent radiation losses is obtained. The results of this paper establish the accuracy of the BD-BPM technique for simulating this class of devices and confirm effective-index method predictions that antiresonance conditions for cylindrical geometry devices (i.e., VCSELs) differ from those of planar geometry devices (i.e., edge emitters).


Discrimination is a presuppose privileges where provide to the each separate group for the safety of the data which is stored .discrimination is two type direct and in direct discrimination is supported sensitive data . Direct discrimination is supported sensitive data. In direct discrimination is supported unrestricted information . In existing system standard algorithm is used. Sometimes the data should be lost. In this data model sensitive information should be free. It doesn't successfully handle the indirect discrimination problems which are associated to direct discrimination. In the system using the new techniques to prevent the sensitive information .Discrimination deterrence methods In term of data quality and discrimination detach for both direct and indirect discrimination


We propose to study the renormalization operator acting on critical $\mathcal{C}^r$ circle mappings. (More precisely, the operator acts on critical commuting pairs.) Assuming that there is a Banach manifold of critical analytic commuting pairs on which the renormalization operator acts hyperbolically (with non-trivial hyperbolic attractor), we prove that, for r > 2, the operator remains hyperbolic with the same expanding subspaces when acting on $\mathcal{C}^r$ commuting pairs. By this we mean that the tangent renormalization operator admits a hyperbolic splitting with the same unstable subbundle.


Ontologies compartmentalize types and relations in a target domain and provide the semantic backbone needed for a plethora of practical applications. Very often different ontologies are developed independently for the same domain. Such "parallel" ontologies raise the need for a process that will establish alignments between their entities in order to unify and extend the existing knowledge. In this work, we present a novel entity alignment method which we dub DeepAlignment. DeepAlignment refines pre-trained word vectors aiming at deriving ontological entity descriptions which are tailored to the ontology matching task. The absence of explicit information relevant to the ontology matching task during the refinement process makes DeepAlignment completely unsupervised. We empirically evaluate our method using standard ontology matching benchmarks. We present significant performance improvements over the current state-of-the-art, demonstrating the advantages that representation learning techniques bring to ontology matching.


Horticultural and extensive crops in the states of Aguascalientes, Durango and Zacatecas, located in northern central Mexico are susceptible to being infected with viruses transmitted by the sweet potato whitefly Bemisia tabaci Genn. (SPWF). SPWF populations can coexist in this region with another species, the greenhouse whitefly (Trialeurodes vaporariorum Westwood) (GHWF), the objective of the work was to confirm the presence of SPWF and GHWF in commercial plots of horticultural and extensive crops and areas of Undergrowth in northern central Mexico. During 2017, variable amounts of whitefly were collected in randomly selected plots of chili, beans, tomatoes, melons, watermelons and a patch of weeds. In most of the sampled plots populations of SPWF and GHWF coexist, although the number of GHWF was generally higher than that of SPWF.


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of passive ultrasonic irrigation (PUI) using intermittent or continuous flushing and conventional manual irrigation (CMI) on the cleaning of main and simulated lateral root canals.MATERIAL AND METHOD: The root canals of 24 artificial teeth were prepared and simulated lateral canals were made in the medium and apical thirds of the root. The specimens were divided into three groups: G1- CMI, G2- PUI 1 (intermittent flushing) and G3- PUI 2 (continuous flushing). Root canals were filled with contrast solution and the roots were radiographed pre- and post-irrigation. The digital images were transferred to Image Tool 3.0 software and the areas of root canal completely filled with contrast, and after irrigation with contrast remnant, were measured to obtain percentage data. Statistical analysis between groups was performed by ANOVA and Tukey tests.RESULT: In the apical third, G2 and G3 (PUI) groups showed higher percentage of cleaning than G1 (CMI) (p<0.05).CONCLUSION: Passive ultrasonic irrigation using intermittent flushing promoted a higher cleaning of simulated lateral canals than conventional manual irrigation in the apical third. There were no differences between groups in the main root canal and the middle third.


It is practical value for determination the teenagers whether the age is full of the legal responsibility age of 18 years old or not by estimating skeletal age of sternal end of clavicle. The traditional methods mainly based on X-ray radiography. However, sternal end of clavicle and adjacent lung, bronchus, sternum, rib, transverse process of thoracic vertebra are overlapped each other. As a result of overlapping, there will be obtained false negative or positive film reading results when according to X-ray observation of epiphyseal growth of sternal end of clavicle, which directly affect the scientificalness and accuracy of estimating of skeletal age. In recent years, the scholars at home and abroad have started to use thin layer CT scan technology to estimate skeletal age of the sternal end of clavicle. With the 2D and 3D CT recombination technology, the accuracy of the film reading distinctly improves by making the shape, size and position of epiphysis displayed clearly. This article reviews the application and research progress of thin layer CT scanning technology in estimating skeletal age of sternal end of clavicle at home and abroad, analyzes the superiority and value of thin layer CT scan technology, which applied to skeletal age of sternal end of clavicle.


The 3L-Person 2022 workshop was held in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, on October 25, 2022. The workshop aimed to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners from different domains and regions, who are interested in exploring the opportunities and challenges of information and communication technologies (ICT) for lifelong learning and professional development. The workshop addressed various topics related to the design, development, evaluation, and application of ICT for education and training, such as personal learning environment design, advanced ICT for professional retraining and training in the workplace, blended and remote learning/teaching with emerging ICT, educational robots, databases and language technologies for open learning and research, ICT in education of a person with special needs, ICT in education safety and security, ICT-support of STEM education and professional career, and synthetic learning environment. The workshop featured 13 papers selected by a diverse and qualified program committee. The workshop also facilitated the discussion and networking among the participants,who shared their experiences and insights on the emerging trends and issues in this interdisciplinary field. This paper presents the theme, aims, topics of interest, program committee, accepted papers, and outcomes of the workshop.


—Abstract—Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA) explores the strong and weak aspects of a product. There are many online platforms that allow users to review commercial products while others to aggregate those opinions across millions of reviews at the aspect level. Such analysis is of high regard to potential customers and manufacturers to make profitable decisions. However, the existing ABSA models do not highlight the reasons behind the strengths and weaknesses of the aspects. Moving a step forward, opinion reason mining explores the reasons for the aspects being appreciated or criticized. We propose opinion reason mining framework ORMFW that uses topic model to generate aspects as groups of aspect terms which are refined using paradigmatic word associations. Polarity is evaluated for each aspect using a dictionary based approach. Furthermore, it incorporates syntagmatic word associations to map the aspects to their respective reason terms against a sentiment polarity. Results on twitter dataset reveal that the proposed ORMFW framework efficiently and effectively identifies the prominent opinion reasons in relation to their aspects.


New bicyclic conidine iminosugars 1d and 1e were synthesized from D-glucose. Thus, D-glucose was converted to sugar beta-amino acids 3a and 3b in good yields. Individual treatment of 3a/3b with the Mukaiyama reagent afforded sugar beta-lactams 4a/4b that on reduction with LiAlH(4)/AlCl(3) gave azetidines 5a/5b with a sugar appendage. Reductive aminocyclization of sugar azetidines 5a/5b afforded the corresponding conidine iminosugars 1d/1e. Based on the (1)H NMR and DFT calculation studies the conformation of 1d was assigned as half chair A2 and that of 1e as a boat B2. The glycosidase inhibitory activities of 1d and 1e such as alpha-mannosidase, alpha-glucosidase and alpha-galactosidase were studied. The alpha-amylase activity was compared with acarbose. Compound 1d was found to be a moderate inhibitor of glycosidases while 1e was noticed to be a good inhibitor of alpha-mannosidase and a moderate inhibitor of other glycosidases. These results were substantiated by molecular docking studies using WHAT IF software and the AUTODOCK 3.0 program.


Basal iridectomy is a pupillary bypass having a prophylactic role, when made on an eye with potential glaucoma, and a curative role when performed on an eye with primary narrow angle glaucoma in the reversible stage of the disease. The authors present their experience on 37 eyes, using Charleux-Etienne's technique that, compared with Chandler's technique is more advantageous: the limb remains intact for a possible future operation, it is simple, rapid, without risks, efficient and elegant.


The present paper is the second part of a combined (experimental and computational) study on stall cells (SCs) on a rectangular wing. In the first part, tuft data were used in order to geometrically characterize a stabilized SC resulting from a localized spanwise disturbance introduced by a zigzag tape. Here, pressure measurements on the model and in the wake and aerodynamic polars at midspan are reported. The wing model had an aspect ratio value of 2, the Reynolds number was 106 and the range of angles of attack (α) was from −6° to 16°. Experimental results confirm previous findings. Furthermore, two-dimensional and three-dimensional Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes RANS simulations are used in order to better understand the structure of SCs. 3D simulations reproduce the experimental data with a 3° delay in α and permit a qualitative analysis. It is found that the SC vortices start normal to the wing surface and extend downstream in the wake; the evolution of the SC vortices in the wake is in strong interaction with the separation line vortex and the trailing edge line vortex; as the SC vortex develops downstream in the wake, its centreline is contracted towards the SC centre; the wing wake is pushed upstream at the centre of the SC and downstream at the sides by the SC vortices; spanwise lift and drag distributions always attain their minimum at the SC centre. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This paper presents the results obtained using the rapid demagnetization method in the case of an NdFeB magnet and a new hybrid core. The developed core consists of three basic elements: an NdFeB magnet, Terfenol-D, and a specifically developed metallic alloy prepared by means of a suction casting method. The main goal of proposing a new type of core in the event of rapid demagnetization is to partially replace the permanent magnet with another material to reduce the rare-earth material while keeping the amount of generated electricity at a level that makes it possible to power low-power electrical devices. To "capture" the rapid change of magnetic flux, a small number of coils were made around the core. However, the very low voltage level at very high current required the use of specialized electronic transducers capable of delivering a voltage level appropriate for powering a microprocessor system. To overcome this problem, a circuit designed by the authors that enabled voltage processing from low impedance magnetic circuits was used. The obtained results demonstrated the usefulness of the system at resonant frequencies of up to 1 MHz.


The purpose of this study was to investigate if there were differences in the perceived safety climate experienced by contingent employees as compared to the perceptions of permanent workers' safety climate. Knowledge of these differences will help safety professionals provide better safety training and working conditions for contingent workers. Safety climate is defined as employees' perceptions of safety polices, procedures, and practices (Kath, Marks, & Ranney, 2010). The population for the study included employees who work for a manufacturer of office products located in Tennessee. A total of 813 employees participated in the study with a response rate of 87% of the total population of 973 employees. The data was collected using a census. Participants solicited for this study included contingent and permanent employees of three facilities. Data were collected using the Hall Safety Climate Instrument. Data were entered into a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 20.0. Items stated in reverse order were coded to result in a higher score for each item, consistent with a more positive safety climate. Climate was measured using t-tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA). A mean of 1 to 3.4 is considered negative and a mean of 3.5 to 5 is considered positive. The study found that there was significant difference between the safety climate perceptions of contingent and permanent employees. There was no significance between the safety climate themes that were measured by the Hall Safety Climate Instrument. There were significant differences in factors that included: education, gender, length of employment, and department where employee works.


Optically sectioned detection of fluorescence immunoassays using a confocal microscope enables the creation of both homo- and heterogeneous planar format assays. We report a set assays requiring optically sectioned detection using a model system and analysis procedures for separating signals of a surface layer from an overlying solution. A model sandwich assay with human immunoglobulin G as the target antigen is created on a glass substrate. The prepared surfaces are exposed to antigen and a FITC-labeled secondary antibody. The resulting preparations are either read directly to provide a homogeneous assay or after wash steps, giving a heterogeneous assay. The simplicity of the object shapes arising from the planar format makes the decomposition of analyte signals from the thin film bound to the surface and overlayer straightforward. Measured response functions of the thin film and overlayer fit well to the Cauchy-Lorentz and cumulative Cauchy-Lorentz functions, respectively, enabling the film and overlayer to be separated. Under the conditions used, the detection limits for the homogeneous and heterogeneous forms of the assay are 2.2 and 5.5 ng/ml, respectively. Planar format, confocally read fluorescence assays enable wash-free detection of antigens and should be applicable to a wide range of assays involving surface-bound species.


Hot-carrier solar cells (HCSC) can potentially overcome the Shockley-Queisser limit, by having carriers at a higher temperature than the lattice. To this end, the carriers need to thermalize slower than power is generated by absorbing photons. In thin films, a hot-carrier distribution can only be achieved with very high incident power, by saturating the thermalization channels. Ultra-thin absorbers have a smaller thermalization rate, due to fewer channels. However, they typically absorb only a limited amount of light, which prevents them from reaching high efficiencies. Light trapping is an excellent way to increase significantly the amount of light absorbed in an ultra-thin material. Yet, studies on the coupling between light trapping and hot carriers are still lacking, due to the complexity of the whole system. We analyze numerically and experimentally how light trapping can enable high-efficiency HCSC. This manuscript presents the progress towards the experimental demonstration of the enhancement of the hot-carrier effect with light trapping. 280 nm-thick devices have successfully been reported on a gold mirror using epitaxial lift-off (ELO) and gold-gold bonding. These devices have been characterized by photoluminescence spectroscopy. Hot carriers with a temperature 37 K above lattice temperature were measured, in accordance with theoretical predictions. We are now working towards the ELO of absorbers 10 times thinner, on which we will implement light trapping to increase the carrier temperature.


OBJECTIVE
This study compared susceptibility to oxidation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL) of non-diabetic and diabetic (Type 2) men and examined the response of diabetic men to antioxidant supplementation (alpha-tocopherol, beta-carotene and ascorbate).

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Twenty adult non-diabetic and 20 diabetic men were recruited. Oxidation of LDL was assessed by four different assay systems, and the extent of oxidation was assessed by four different measurements. Diabetic men received eight weeks of placebo ("baseline"), twelve weeks of antioxidant supplements ("treated") and eight weeks of placebo ("post-treatment"). Supplements provided 24 mg of beta-carotene, 1000 mg of ascorbate and 800 IU of alpha-tocopherol daily.

RESULTS
With Cu oxidation at 37 degrees C, thiobarbituric reactive substances (TBARS) formation was significantly higher (p=0.032) and loss of free amine groups was significantly greater (p=0.013) in the LDL from diabetic subjects than controls. Antioxidant supplementation of diabetic subjects significantly decreased all parameters of LDL oxidation with Cu at 30 degrees C and 37 degrees C. At 30 degrees C the lag phase increased from 55 to 129 minutes (p<0.0001); conjugated diene formation decreased from 1.23 to 0.62 OD units (p<0.0001); TBARS formation decreased from 78 to 33 nmoles MDA/mg LDL protein (p<0.0001); and free amine loss decreased from 41 to 12% (p<0.0001). With Cu oxidation at 37 degrees C, similar changes occurred.

CONCLUSIONS
These studies indicate that the LDL from diabetic subjects are more susceptible to oxidation than LDL from non-diabetic subjects. Supplementation of diabetic subjects with antioxidant vitamins significantly decreases susceptibility of LDL to oxidation by Cu. These studies are consistent with epidemiological and intervention studies suggesting that antioxidant vitamin use significantly decreases risk for coronary heart disease.


Abstract: Shallow geothermal energy can be exploited in any location by ground heat exchangers (GHE), which consist of pipes placed either horizontally in trenches or vertically in boreholes in the ground. The cost of the GHE is primarily determined by the pipe cost per unit length and the total required length. For a given type of ground and completion conditions, the main parameter that affects the required length of a GHE is the thermal conductivity of the pipe material. The preferred pipe construction materials are usually high density polyethylene (HDPE) as the plastic with the highest thermal conductivity, in a much lesser extent cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) for relatively higher temperature applications, and even stainless or galvanized steel in some other installations. In this paper, alternative metallic materials with higher thermal conductivity as well as thermoplastics available in market were evaluated for shallow geothermal use. The evaluation was made in terms of expected GHE service life based on literature review of buried piping systems, estimation of the required GHE length per unit energy output by computer simulations and cost estimation using current market prices. A R T I C L E H I S T O R Y


ABSTRACT Underwater vocalisations of Weddell seals Leptonychotes weddellii were recorded approximately 1400 km apart at Casey and Davis, Antarctica. Recordings were made during the 1992 and 1997 breeding seasons at Davis and during the 1997 season at Casey. Two observers independently analysed four attributes (start and end frequency, duration and number of elements) of narrow bandwidth calls from each location and time. There were few observer differences when the calls were grouped into four broad types (Trills, Descending Whistles, Ascending Whistles and Mews). Ascending Whistles and Mews were rare at Casey but common at Davis. Descending Whistles occurred significantly more often at Davis. Except for Trills, discriminant function analyses indicated less variation between the call attributes at Davis in 1992 and 1997 than between either of the Davis data sets and that from Casey. Vocalisation differences between Weddell seals from different areas can be detected by measuring common attributes of narrow bandwidth calls.


The generation of graph-structured data is an emerging problem in the field of deep learning. Various solutions have been proposed in the last few years, yet the exploration of this branch is still in an early phase. In sequential approaches, the construction of a graph is the result of a sequence of decisions, in which, at each step, a node or a group of nodes is added to the graph, along with its connections. A very relevant application of graph generation methods is the discovery of new drug molecules, which are naturally represented as graphs. In this paper, we introduce a sequential molecular graph generator based on a set of graph neural network modules, which we call MG^2N^2. Its modular architecture simplifies the training procedure, also allowing an independent retraining of a single module. The use of graph neural networks maximizes the information in input at each generative step, which consists of the subgraph produced during the previous steps. Experiments of unconditional generation on the QM9 dataset show that our model is capable of generalizing molecular patterns seen during the training phase, without overfitting. The results indicate that our method outperforms very competitive baselines, and can be placed among the state of the art approaches for unconditional generation on QM9.


Author(s): Lepczyk, Christopher A.; Lohr, Cheryl A.; Cox, Linda J. | Abstract: A large component of natural resources management is ultimately about understanding people. Such is the issue with feral cats, a species whose biology is well understood, but management can be contentious. Hawai'i in particular is an important location in understanding the human dimensions side of feral cat management given the archipelago's isolation, tropical climate, cultural history, and native biodiversity. Using both human dimensions and economic approaches, we sought to address the following questions: 1) Do stakeholders want to see changes in feral cat abundance? 2) What damages or benefits are correlated with stakeholder's desired abundance of cats? 3) Which feral cat management techniques would stakeholders prefer to see employed? and, 4) Is it more cost effective to control feral cat abundance with trap-neuter-release (TNR) programs or trap and euthanize (TE) programs? To address our questions, we conducted both a statewide survey of 6 stakeholder groups across the state of Hawai'i and developed a benefit-cost model coupled with a population model to evaluate TNR vs. TE. We found that across stakeholder groups a large majority of respondents would like to see a reduction in feral cats, and that support for different management options varied somewhat by stakeholder group. Overall, TNR was the least supported management option across stakeholder groups. Similarly, in a benefit-cost analysis, TNR was more expensive than TE across all range of scenarios. Our findings indicate that although there are differences amongst stakeholders in terms of attitudes and management preferences, that there is a strong consensus that the problem needs to be addressed.


Transmission electron energy-loss spectrometry has been used to determine the energy dependence of the cross-sections for the L-shell ionisation of aluminium and silicon and the results have been compared with atomic calculations.


Acromegaly involves cardiovascular complications mostly due to the presence of hypertension, diabetes and atherosclerosis. However the appearance of cardiac decompensation and arrhythmias in the absence of predisposing factors tends to support the hypothesis of a specific myocardiopathy caused by excess GH. In order to assess the existence and course of subclinical cardiac alterations, 8 acromegaly patients were examined: 4 males and 4 females aged 31-56 with GH levels of 24-70 ng/ml (M + CD X 47 +/- 16) and no cardiovascular symptoms. One of the patients had moderate hypertension and 2 reduced glucose tolerance. The basal ECG showed sporadic ventricular extrasystoles in 2 cases and alterations compatible with left ventricular hypertrophy in another, while the effort ECG produced an asymptomatic depression of the ST segment in the hypertensive patient. The chest X-ray was normal in all cases. The echocardiography study investigated: the thickness of the interventricular septum (IVS = 13.9 +/- 2.8 mm), the thickness of the posterior wall of the left ventricle (LPW = 10.6 +/- 2.9 mm), the septum/posterior wall ratio (IVS/LPW = 1.3 +/- 0.2 the diastolic diameter (DD = 15.4 +/- 11.4 mm), the fraction of shortening (FS = 39.1 +/- 14.5%), the ejection fraction (EF = 64.1 +/- 18.4%) and revealed asymmetrical septal hypertrophy in 3 cases, concentric hypertrophy in another two. In two cases the DD and EF were distinctly altered. The patients were re-examined 2-4 years after surgical or radiation treatment. GH levels (M +/- SD = 10.3 +/- 10.1 ng/ml) were normal in 4 cases and still high, though lower in another two. The remaining two patients had borderline GH levels with high Sm-C. The ECG and chest X-ray were unchanged while echocardiography revealed a significant deterioration in heart function as far as DD (56.4 +/- 10.8 mm, p less than 0.05) were concerned with frankly pathological results in 4 and 3 cases respectively. These data confirm the view that most acromegalic patients present subclinical abnormalities in cardiac function and that the evolution of these is slightly influenced by the reduction in GH and Sm-C. levels. In fact, while the persistence of high GH and Sm-C. levels may explain the progression of cardiac alterations in some cases, it does not in others. It is also emphasised that echocardiography appears to be the most sensitive non-invasive technique for the diagnosis and follow-up of cardiac involvement in acromegaly.


Introduction: The associations between psychological stress and gut microbiota composition are not fully understood. This study investigated associations between psychological stress and gut microbiota composition and examined the potential modifying effects of age, sex, and ethnicity on such associations. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted using PubMed, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Embase databases for studies published until November 2021 which examined associations between psychological stress and gut microbiota composition. Results: During the search process, 10,790 studies were identified, and after screening, 13 met the eligibility criteria and were included. The median sample size was 70, and the median age of participants was 28.0 years. Most of the included studies did not report associations between measures of alpha- and beta diversity of the gut microbiota composition and psychological stress. A few studies reported that the Shannon index, Chao 1, Simpson index, and weighted UniFrac were negatively associated with psychological stress. Significant reductions in several taxa at the phyla-, family-, and genus-levels were observed in participants with higher psychological stress. At the phylum level, the abundance of Proteobacteria and Verrucomicrobia were negatively associated with psychological stress. At the family-level, no more than two studies reported associations of the same microbiota with psychological stress. At the genus level, the following results were found in more than two studies; psychological stress was negatively associated with the abundance of Lachnospira, Lachnospiraceae, Phascolarctobacterium, Sutterella, and Veillonella, and positively associated with the abundance of Methanobrevibacter, Rhodococcus, and Roseburia. However, it was not possible to determine the influence of age, sex, or ethnicity due to the limited studies included. Conclusion: Our findings provide evidence that psychological stress is associated with changes in the abundance of the gut microbiota. Larger sample longitudinal studies are needed to determine the causal relationship between psychological stress and the gut microbiota.


The existence of both temperature-sensitive (N) and temperature-insensitive (A) rat transformants, isolated after infection with simian virus 40 tsA mutant, is reported. Both types can be isolated as dense foci. Foci appearing after infection of rapidly growing cells were temperature sensitive. Infection of cells arrested at confluence gave rise to foci that were temperature insensitive. Transformants isolated by the agar assay (conditions under which normal cells are unable to grow) were also temperature-insensitive. N-transformants remained temperature sensitive upon entering the resting state at the restrictive temperature and upon re-entering the growth cycle at the permissive temperature. They also remained temperature sensitive under a variety of conditions restrictive for nontransformed cells. Thus, the state of the cell in the first few days after infection fixes the cells. Thus, the state of the cell in the first few days after infection fixes the cell as an N- or A-transformant. Various models for transformation are discussed, including one proposing that the virus interacts in two ways with a central cell mechanism controlling growth. The maintenance of the transformed phenotype would be dependent on T-antigen in N-transformants but independent of T-antigen in A-transformants.


Neomycin sulfate was injected intramuscularly in calves. Blood and tissue samples were taken at zero, one, two, four, six, eight and 24 hours after administration. The tissues with high levels (greater than 10 mug/g) of drug at the one hour period were kidney cortex and medulla, urine, blood serum and the injection site. By 24 hours after administration only the kidney cortex and urine had high levels of neomycin. The drug could not be detected in any brain tissues and very small amounts (less than 1 mug/g) were present in the bile, thymus and vitreous humor. Levels greater than 5 mug/g were present in lung tissues for less than four hours but were greater than 2 mug/g for more than 24 hours.The mean level in the injection site was greater than 700 mug/g at one hour but only trace amounts were found at 24 hours.On the basis of the tissue drug concentration intramuscularly administered neomycin was suggested as therapeutically useful for respiratory and urinary tract infections caused by susceptible bacteria.


Analog and digital electronic subjects are part of the electronic engineer degree but its taught is not easy because they are founded in opposite methodologies. The electronic design in the digital field is centered in the use of microprocessor and FPGA based circuits using high level programing/configuring languages. The counterpart analog design is traditionally based in the use of elementary components associated with macroblocks such operational amplifiers in order to built-up the wanted mission circuit. Some few components, as the FPAA, are analogically configurable in a similar manner already used with the FPGA. However the use of this kind of components is not straightforward once is necessary acquire some concepts not taught in the traditionally analog electronic classes. The current work present an innovative remote lab to support teaching of the FPAAs.


The hygienic control of polluted surface waters has to be correlated with measurements of the decomposition rate of heterotrophic microbial populations. Starting in 1970 different methods have been tested for this purpose. Uptakekinetic studies of radioactive labelled substrates as well as automated BOD-registrations can not be handled as flow systems. Flow-Microcalorimetry (heat-conduction-principle) could be an easier approach to test the activity of heterotrophic aquatic populations. Probes from a trickling-filter outflow, from an oxidation pond and from a small river were tested simultaneously in a Flow-Microcalorimeter (LKB, 2107, Fig. 1) and a Drop-Microcalorimeter (WADSO, 1974 (fig. 2)) after adding 200 mug/L of Glucose. The resulting voltage/timecurves (Fig. 4,5,6) show a good correlation to the heterotrophic capacity of the probes. The minimal detectable continnous heat effect was 1 muW corresponding to a (relative) activity of 5.6-10(4) bacterial colonies/ml on Difco agar (counts after 48 hours incubation at 22 degrees C incubation temperature). A modification of the Flow-Microcalorimeter using a 5-10 times larger reaction vessel could enable the system to be used also in testing scarcely polluted surface waters and for toxicity tests of surface water samples.


Embryo implantation is a highly synchronized bioprocess between an activated blastocyst and a receptive uterus. In mice, successful implantation relies on the dynamic interplay of estrogen and progesterone; however, the key mediators downstream of these hormones that act on blastocyst competency and endometrium receptivity acquisition are largely unknown. In this study, we showed that the expression of osteopontin (OPN) in mouse blastocysts is regulated by ovarian estrogen and uterine micro-environment. OPN mRNA is up-regulated in mouse blastocyst on day 4 of pregnancy, which is associated with ovarian estrogen secretion peak. Hormone treatment in vivo demonstrated that OPN expression in a blastocyst is regulated by estrogen through an estrogen receptor (ER). Our results of the delayed and activated implantation model showed that OPN expression is induced after estrogen injection. While estrogen treatment during embryo culture in vitro showed less effect on OPN expression, the tubal ligation model on day 3 of pregnancy confirmed that the regulation of estrogen on OPN expression in blastocyst might, through some specific cytokines, have existed in a uterine micro-environment. Collectively, our study presents that estrogen regulates OPN expression and it may play an important role during embryo implantation by activating blastocyst competence and facilitating the endometrium acceptable for active blastocyst.


This is the following paper after the first study for inside vehicle wireless communication system design with UWB (Ultra Wide Band) technology which was presented in ITST 2007. 1)In this paper, it is descried why UWB technology will be good for intra vehicle wireless communications and provides more detail UWB propagation analysis. Then multipath environment model intra vehicle is created in addition existing UWB simulation model. Wireless communication gain loss of intra vehicle multipath environment becomes around 4dB degradation against AWGN (Adaptive White Gaussian Noise) based on several multipath gain loss simulations to identify intra vehicle environment effect in this paper. According to this multipath gain loss analysis, UWB technology is capable high speed wireless communication intra vehicle environments with 4dB gain loss against AWGN. These analyses suggest technology challenges for intra vehicle wireless communication how to improve from WiMeida2) specification UWB to Intra vehicle UWB.


Society's social and cultural awareness for the importance of historic buildings is leading to a generalized effort for preservation. Most ancient buildings desperately need retrofit in order to mitigate the effects of material aging, of intensive use and of the pathologies resultant from natural disasters. The systemization of seismic retrofitting is the expected course of action. In Portugal, the implementation of the Eurocodes represents the first step towards the regulation of seismic retrofit of ancient wood and masonry buildings and it is being accompanied by the recovery of traditional constructive techniques, as this Master's thesis witnesses. In the first part of this paper, a structural characterization of ancient buildings is established by studying its material properties, its building systems and its failure mechanisms. Afterwards, the most common strengthening methodologies are reviewed, specifying its employability according to its purpose's fulfilment. For a successful design of seismic strengthening, the proceeding ought to be based on experimental and numerical studies. Thus, this paper mainly focuses on the assessment of ancient buildings' non linear behaviour. Therefore, in the second part of this paper, two walls of a 19 Century building in the city of Catania are idealized into equivalent frames. The numerical models designed are submitted to a non linear Static Pushover Analysis and to a non linear Incremental Dynamic Analysis. The main purpose is to contribute to the development and discloser of a numerical model to easily and efficiently perform non linear static and dynamic analyses of ancient masonry buildings, on current software (SAP2000 ®). The strengthening design ought to be based on this sort of analyses.


A novel eco-routing navigation strategy and energy consumption modeling approach for electric vehicles are presented in this work. Speed fluctuations and road network infrastructure have a large impact on vehicular energy consumption. Neglecting these effects may lead to large errors in eco-routing navigation, which could trivially select the route with the lowest average speed. We propose an energy consumption model that considers both accelerations and impact of the road infrastructure, also separating the costs of all the possible turning movements in the transportation network by means of the adjoint graph. The approach makes use of only aggregated data available from existing map services. We demonstrate that the proposed strategy is more effective and reliable than the existing approaches in predicting vehicle energy consumption and in suggesting an energy-efficient route.


Speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities in micro-architecture processors have raised concerns about the security of Intel SGX. To understand clearly the security impact of this vulnerability against SGX, this paper makes the following studies: First, to demonstrate the feasibility of the attacks, we present SgxPectre Attacks (the SGX-variants of Spectre attacks) that exploit speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities to subvert the confidentiality of SGX enclaves. We show that when the branch prediction of the enclave code can be influenced by programs outside the enclave, the control flow of the enclave program can be temporarily altered to execute instructions that lead to observable cache-state changes. An adversary observing such changes can learn secrets inside the enclave memory or its internal registers, thus completely defeating the confidentiality guarantee offered by SGX. Second, to determine whether real-world enclave programs are impacted by the attacks, we develop techniques to automate the search of vulnerable code patterns in enclave binaries using symbolic execution. Our study suggests that nearly any enclave program could be vulnerable to SgxPectre Attacks since vulnerable code patterns are available in most SGX runtimes (e.g., Intel SGX SDK, Rust-SGX, and Graphene-SGX). Third, we apply SgxPectre Attacks to steal seal keys and attestation keys from Intel signed quoting enclaves. The seal key can be used to decrypt sealed storage outside the enclaves and forge valid sealed data; the attestation key can be used to forge attestation signatures. For these reasons, SgxPectre Attacks practically defeat SGX's security protection. Finally, we evaluate Intel's existing countermeasures against SgxPectre Attacks and discusses the security implications.


A survey across Germany was undertaken from 2016-2019 to evaluate effects of management system (organic vs conventional), pedo-climatic conditions and crop rotation history on faba bean root health status, diversity of major root rot pathogens and yield. Root rot incidence was generally low and there was no effect of the management system on the spectrum of pathogens isolated. Among the most common fungal species identified, frequencies of Fusarium redolens and Didymella pinodella were significantly higher in roots from organic fields compared with conventional and lower was observed for F. avenaceum, F. tricinctum and F. culmorum. Faba bean roots were colonized at similar rates by F. equiseti and the members of the F. oxysporum (FOSC) and F. solani (FSSC) species complexes in both management systems. Almost no legumes had been grown in the 5-11 years preceding the conventional faba beans surveyed while legumes had almost always been present during this period in the organic fields. This difference in rotational histories between the farming systems led to apparent cropping systems effects on the isolation frequencies of several species. For example, D. pinodella was ubiquitous in organic fields with a high frequency of legumes in the rotations but much rarer and often absent in conventional fields. Pedo-climatic conditions, particularly cool conditions at sowing and plant emergence and/or during the vegetative season favored most of the most prevalent Fusarium species identified in this study. In organic systems, yields correlated negatively with D. pinodella and F. redolens frequencies whereas higher levels of F. tricintum in faba bean roots had a positive correlation with yield. In conventional systems, faba bean yields depended more on the total precipitation before sowing and during the main growing season but were also negatively correlated with the frequencies of FOSC and F. culmorum. Phylogenetic analysis based on the TEF1 alpha locus indicated that the FSSC isolates mainly belonged to the F. pisi lineage. In contrast, the FOSC isolates were placed in 9 different lineages, with a conspicuous dominance of F. libertatis that has until now not been associated with any leguminous host.


Accurate parameter identification of serial robots is of paramount importance to achieve satisfactory performance in performing highly dynamic tasks or obtaining realistic simulations. Focusing on the issue of optimizing excitation trajectory in the parameter identification process, a novel optimization algorithm is proposed by taking into account the interplay among different optimization criteria, in which the initial optimization index is introduced. To this end, the Lie-theory-based dynamic identification approach is introduced to illustrate the impact of trajectory optimization for the identification result, and we conduct a one-way analysis of torque prediction variance to determine whether significant improvements have been made or not. Finally, an experimental comparison between several optimization criteria is implemented for a 7 degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) Franka collaborative robot, the findings show that the proposed approach is capable of minimizing the overall trajectory optimization time while ensuring the identification robustness as compared to several other optimization criteria, which can offer a significant advantage in achieving fast and robust identification.


We report a case of pulmonary non-tuberculous mycobacteriosis caused by Mycobacterium szulgai. A thirty-nine-year-old man with no relevant significant past history underwent an annual medical check. His chest X-ray and CT scan showed an infiltrative shadow with a cavity in the right upper lobe. As it was suggestive of pulmonary tuberculosis, he was referred to our hospital. Smear tests of his sputum, gastric fluid, and transbronchial fluid showed no mycobacterial organisms, but culture of the samples revealed growth of mycobacteria. The organism was identified as M. szulgai using a DNA-DNA hybridization method, and the case was diagnosed as pulmonary non-tuberculous mycobacteriosis caused by M. szulgai. By anti-mycobacterial drug treatment with isoniazid, rifampicin, and ethambutol, the infiltrative shadow on chest roentogenogram and CT showed improvement. Culture of his sputum and gastric fluid showed no growth of mycobacteria after starting treatment.