As an increasing amount of manufacturing employment has relocated to the Global South, the developed economies of the Global North have sought new ways of competing within the global economy. In part they have done so through the promotion of the so-called 'knowledge-based economy' (KBE) constituted by innovations and new markets in high-tech industries like telecommunication, information technology, and the life sciences. A KBE discourse has become a central plank of policy at the national and European levels. This raises a series of questions, however, about the ability of less-favoured regions to compete for knowledge-based activities, given existing conditions of uneven development and the unequal distribution of knowledge assets between regions in the developed economies. In this respect, particularly critical to regional outcomes are the forms of economic coordination and governance that emerge in knowledge-based commodity chains. Engaging with recent debates concerned with global commodity chains, this paper builds on the idea that economic governance is increasingly alliance driven, entailing a diverse set of geographies and trust-based relationships between a variety of organisations that include small innovative firms, large multinational corporations, and national (and subnational) policy actors. These forms of governance open up new opportunities for less-favoured regions, although these continue to be constrained by already existing power relations between regions.


Portrait images often suffer from undesirable shadows cast by casual objects or even the face itself. While existing methods for portrait shadow removal require training on a large-scale synthetic dataset, we propose the first unsupervised method for portrait shadow removal without any training data. Our key idea is to leverage the generative facial priors embedded in the off-the-shelf pretrained StyleGAN2. To achieve this, we formulate the shadow removal task as a layer decomposition problem: a shadowed portrait image is constructed by the blending of a shadow image and a shadow-free image. We propose an effective progressive optimization algorithm to learn the decomposition process. Our approach can also be extended to portrait tattoo removal and watermark removal. Qualitative and quantitative experiments on a real-world portrait shadow dataset demonstrate that our approach achieves comparable performance with supervised shadow removal methods. Our source code is available at https://github.com/YingqingHe/Shadow-Removal-via-Generative-Priors.


Reduction of adverse events depends on accurate detection. The utility of a Trigger Tool to detect and classify severity of adverse events in an intensive care unit of a paediatric university hospital was compared to voluntary reporting. Sixty patient records were randomly selected from 314 admissions over three months. Events detected by the Trigger Tool were classified by two independent investigators as insignificant, minor, moderate, major or catastrophic. Examination of each record required, on average, 40 minutes. Ninety-eight adverse events (1.66/patient) were detected in 59 available records. Mean admission was 2.77 days. The incidence of adverse events was 59.9 per 100 patient days or 0.60 events per patient per day. The number of events detected by the Trigger Tool was related to duration of admission (r=0.70, P < 0.0001) and risk of mortality on admission (r=0.50, P=0.0001) but not to age. The inter-rater agreement on detection of adverse events was good. Investigator One detected 66 adverse events while Investigator Two detected 93 events (kappa 0.63). Of the 61 events detected by both investigators, the agreement of classification of severity was very good (kappa 0.89). Of the 56 events rated similarly by both investigators, 13 (23%) were insignificant, 19 (34%) were minor, 17 (30%) were moderate, 4 (7%) were major and 3 (6%) were catastrophic. Only four adverse events had been reported voluntarily, of which two were detected using the Trigger Tool. Whereas the Trigger Tool is a simple, efficient and robust method, voluntary reporting is inadequate and captures very few adverse events in the intensive care unit environment.


Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) rapidly stimulate polymorphonuclear leukocytes (neutrophils) in vitro to produce superoxide anion (O2-). This response results from activation of various intracellular signal transduction pathways and appears to occur in a structure-specific fashion. Individual PCB congeners, varying in pattern and extent of chlorination, were tested for their ability to stimulate production of O2- and/or to enhance the response to protein kinase C activation by phorbol myristate acetate (PMA). Neutrophils were isolated from retired breeder, male, Sprague-Dawley rats and exposed to either vehicle, 10 or 50 microM PCB for 30 min at 37 degrees C. PMA (0 or 20 ng/ml) was added for an additional 10 min, and O2- generated during the incubation period was measured. 2,2'-Dichlorobiphenyl (2,2'-DCB), 2,4'-DCB, or 3,3'-DCB (50 microM) stimulated neutrophils to produce O2-. Incubation of neutrophils with 4,4'-DCB, 3,3',4,4',5-pentachlorobiphenyl (3,3',4,4',5-PeCB), 3,3',4,5,5'-PeCB, or 2,2',3,3',4,4'-hexachlorobiphenyl (2,2',3,3',4,4'-HCB) did not result in generation of O2-. Of the various congeners, 2,4'-DCB elicited the greatest production of O2-. Exposure to 10 microM 2,2'-DCB, 2,4'-DCB, 3,3'-DCB, or 2,2',3,3',4,4'-HCB prior to addition of PMA caused a significant increase in the amount of O2- produced, greater than that seen with either compound alone. PMA-stimulated O2- production was unaffected by prior exposure to 4,4'-DCB, 3,3',4,4',5-PeCB, or 3,3',4,5,5'-PeCB. In separate experiments, 3,3',4,4',5-PeCB inhibited the amount of O2- produced in response to activation with either 3,3'-DCB or 2,4'-DCB. Thus, it appears that congeners which are noncoplanar are capable of stimulating neutrophil O2- production. Coplanar congeners with high affinity for the Ah receptor do not activate neutrophils to produce O2- and may inhibit this response. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that PCBs stimulate neutrophil O2- production by a mechanism that is structure-specific and dependent on the chlorine substitution pattern of the biphenyl rings. Molecular modeling suggested that the sum of atomic charges on chlorine atoms is the most important descriptor for congeners which stimulate O2- production. The angle of rotation and the difference in energy between the highest occupied molecular orbital and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital are integrative descriptors which, along with the sum of chlorine atomic charges, are associated with this biological activity.


Part I. FUNDAMENTALS. 1. Introduction. Characteristics of soil behavior.Idealizations and material modeling. Historical review of plasticity in soil mechanics. Nonlinear stress analyses in geotechnical engineering. Need, objectives and scope. References. 2. Basic Concept of Continuum Mechanics. Introduction. Notations. Stresses in three dimensions. Definitions and notations. Cauchy's formulas, index notation, and summation convention. Principal axes of stresses. Deviatoric stress. Geometrical representation of stresses. Strains in three dimensions. Definitions and notations. Deviatoric strain. Octahedral strains and principal shear strains. Equations of solid mechanics. Equations of equilibrium (or motion). Geometric (compatibility) conditions. Constitutive relations. Summary. References. Part II. MATERIAL MODELING-BASIC CONCEPTS. 3. Elasticity and Modeling . Introduction. Elastic models in geotechnical engineering. Linear elastic model (generalized Hooke's law). Cauchy elastic model. Hyperelastic model. Hypoelastic model. Uniqueness, stability, normality, and convexity for elastic materials. Uniqueness. Drucker's stability postulate. Existence of W and v. Restrictions - normality and convexity. Linear elastic stress-strain relations. Generalized Hooke's law. A plane of symmetry. Two planes of symmetry (orthotropic symmetry). Transverse and cubic isotropies. Full isotropy. Isotropic linear elastic stress-strain relations. Tensor forms. Three-dimensional matrix forms. Plane stress case. Plane strain case. Axisymmetric case. Isotropic nonlinear elastic stress-strain relations based on total formulation. Nonlinear elastic model with secant moduli. Cauchy elastic model. Hyperelastic (green) model. Isotropic nonlinear elastic stress-strain relations based on incremental formulation. Nonlinear elastic model with secant muduli. Cauchy elastic model. Hyerelastic model. Hypoelastic model. Summary. References. 4. Perfect Plasticity and Modeling. Introduction. Deformation theory. An illustrative example. Variable moduli models. Flow theory. Yield criteria. Flow rule. Basic requirements. Perfect plasticity models. Tresca and von Mises models. Coulomb model. Drucker-Prager model. Prandtl-Reuss stress-strain relations. Generalized stress-strain relations. Stiffness formulation. General description. Stiffness coefficients. Summary. References. 5. Hardening Plasticity and Modeling. Introduction. Flow theory. Loading function. Hardening rule. Flow rule. Drucker's postulate. Hardening plasticity models. Lade-Duncan model. Lade model. Nested yield surface models. Generalized multi-surface models. Bounding surface models. Prandtl-Reuss stress-strain relations. Prandtl-Reuss equations. Matrix form of Prandtl-Reuss equations. Generalized stress-strain relations. Incremental stress-strain relations. Isotropic hardening. Kinematic hardening. Mixed hardening. Stiffness formulation. General description. Stiffness coefficients. Summary. References. PART III.


Abnormalities in endothelin-1 (ET-1) pulmonary metabolism have been reported in patients with pulmonary hypertension, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In this study we have evaluated the 24-hour urinary excretion of ET-1 in COPD patients both during acute exacerbation and stable phase of the disease. ET-1 plasma and urinary levels were measured in 13 COPD patients on admission to the hospital for an acute exacerbation and at the recovery period. Ten healthy volunteers were also studied. Determination of plasma and 24-Hour urinary ET-1 levels were carried out with a radioimmunoassay test. Plasma ET-1 levels in COPD patients were similar during exacerbation and recovery and were not significantly different from those in the healthy subjects. 24-hour urinary excretion of ET-1 was increased in COPD patients during acute exacerbation; it decreased during recovery, but remained elevated when compared to normal subjects. A negative correlation was found between arterial oxygen pressure and ET-1 excretion; no correlation was found between plasma and urinary ET-1 values. In conclusion, COPD patients excrete higher amounts of ET-1 compared to healthy subjects. Urinary ET-1 values are further increased during acute exacerbation of the disease.


Received Jul 11, 2018 Revised Aug 8, 2018 Accepted Aug 17, 2018 The aim of this research was to find out the impact of emotional intelligence to the social adjustment ability of the primary students in Muhammadiyah Karangwaru Yogyakarta Elementary School. The population involved in this research is all of the 5th grade students of Muhammadiyah Karangwaru Yogyakarta, who are 80 students. The sampling technique used here was Sampling Jenuh which then resulted 54 students as the samples of the research. The writer used questionnaire in collecting the data of the research. The approach used in the research was expost facto quantitative. Meanwhile in analyzing the data, the writer used simple regression test and test requirement. The result of the reserach shows that there is a positive and significant impact of emotional intelligence towards the social adjustment ability of the students. The acceptance hypothesis is showed through regression anlysis of Fcal which is 21.495 with significancy is 0.000. It can be defined that the ability of the students' social adjustment can be improved through the improvement of their emotional intelligence. Based on the research result, this research suggests that it would be better if the learning process in the school gives more focus on the emotional intelligence formation which can affect to the development of social adjustment ability of the students. It is because the social adjustment ability constitutes a predictor of someone's successful life in the future. Keyword:


Predictions for ten years of methane gas emissions in research are conducted on wastewater. To predict the emissions of methane gas ten years first calculated the level of methane gas emissions. Then made predictions to know the emissions of methane gas produced by domestic wastewater for the last ten years. This domestic wastewater from rusunawa. The calculation of methane gas emissions is carried out with reference to the method developed by IPCC 2006. Based on calculations, household wastewater generates methane gas emissions in 2007 of 5648.75 kgCH4 / year or 8610.91 m3 / year and continues to increase each year. The methane emission prediction result yields the equation y = 1538x2 + 5836x + 16610 to predict methane gas emissions over the next ten years. While the conversion of electrical energy in 2007 amounted to 770.90 kWh and increased every year along with the increase in methane gas emissions. The prediction result of electrical energy yields the equation y = 137,7x2 + 522x + 1487 to predict electric energy ten years ahead.


Prompt tuning (PT), where a small amount of trainable soft (continuous) prompt vectors is affixed to the input of language models (LM), has shown promising results across various tasks and models for parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT). PT stands out from other PEFT approaches because it maintains competitive performance with fewer trainable parameters and does not drastically scale up its parameters as the model size expands. However, PT introduces additional soft prompt tokens, leading to longer input sequences, which significantly impacts training and inference time and memory usage due to the Transformer's quadratic complexity. Particularly concerning for Large Language Models (LLMs) that face heavy daily querying. To address this issue, we propose Decomposed Prompt Tuning (DePT), which decomposes the soft prompt into a shorter soft prompt and a pair of low-rank matrices that are then optimised with two different learning rates. This allows DePT to achieve better performance while saving over 20% memory and time costs compared to vanilla PT and its variants, without changing trainable parameter sizes. Through extensive experiments on 23 natural language processing (NLP) and vision-language (VL) tasks, we demonstrate that DePT outperforms state-of-the-art PEFT approaches, including the full fine-tuning baseline in some scenarios. Additionally, we empirically show that DEPT grows more efficient as the model size increases. Our further study reveals that DePT integrates seamlessly with parameter-efficient transfer learning in the few-shot learning setting and highlights its adaptability to various model architectures and sizes.


BACKGROUND
Platelets contain a complex known as GPIb-IX-V. The receptor for vWF is located in GPIbalpha. The number of functional receptors decreases during thrombin activation of platelets. This study was performed to evaluate the percentage of platelets displaying the GPIbalpha -IX complex on their surface.

MATERIAL/METHODS
We studied 51 healthy term newborns (21 females and 30 males). Blood was collected from the umbilical artery and vein immediately after severance of the umbilical cord, using a Diatube TM CTAD Vacutainer System. The GPIbalpha-IX complex was tested with CD42b-PE antibody, using a EPICS XL flow cytometer.

RESULTS
Practically no differences were observed in the percentage of platelets demonstrating CD42b in venous blood (18.59%) and arterial blood (19.37%). The percentage of platelets bearing the CD42b molecule is higher in male newborns (20.58%) than female (17.38%). Healthy control adults demonstrated an increased percentage of CD42b on platelets (30.4%) in comparison to newborns (18.98%).

CONCLUSIONS
The sex of neonates affects the tested complex: higher values were noted in males. The particular umbilical vessel (vein or artery) has no effect on the percentage of platelets bearing CD42b.


Two crystal forms, rhombohedral and hexagonal, of a homing endonuclease from Thermoproteus sp. IC-061 (I-Tsp0611) were obtained by the hanging-drop and sitting-drop method, respectively. The hexagonal crystals belong to space group P6(3)22, with unit-cell parameters a = b = 111.4, c = 97.6 A, and diffract to 3.2 A resolution on beamline BL44 at SPring-8 (Harima, Japan). The rhombohedral crystals belong to space group R32, with unit-cell parameters a = b = 95.4, c = 192.9 A, and diffract to 2.7 A resolution using a Cu Kalpha rotating-anode generator with an R-AXIS VII detector. The crystal asymmetric unit contained one protein molecule and the solvent contents of the two crystal forms were estimated to be 68.3 and 67.6% by volume, respectively.


Aims Fungal endophytes of cool-season grass species produce alkaloids toxic to herbivores, affecting food webs in agricultural and natural ecosystems. Field studies about the effects of endophytes on herbivores are rare and show contradictory results, leading to uncertain conclusions about the nature of endophyte–grass symbiosis. We asked whether the environmental contexts of local and regional scales and predation could modify the effects of endophytes on herbivores. Methods In a full factorial field experiment, we quantified the abundance of the aphid species Rhopalosiphum padi on the potted host grass Lolium perenne, which was either infected or uninfected with the endophytic fungus Neotyphodium lolii. Predators were either excluded or had free access to the pots with the aphids. One hundred and sixty grass pots were located in two regions on altogether 40 grassland sites, half of the sites intensively and half extensively managed. We tested the importance of endophyte infection, study region, management intensity of grasslands, predation and all twoway interactions on aphid abundance. Important Findings Endophyte infection reduced aphid abundance significantly in one study region only. In both regions, we found that the impacts of aphidophagous predators and grassland management intensity on aphid abundance were substantially stronger and more consistent than that of endophytes on aphid abundance. Pots excluding predators and pots placed on extensive grasslands contained higher aphid abundance. The impact of predators and management on aphid abundance were not modified by the endophyte. We conclude that the effect of endophytes on herbivores can be weak in field experiments and depends on environmental context at a regional scale. Hence, more field research efforts are necessary to detect the relative importance of endophytes and the environmental context on biotic interactions in ecosystems.


Mitral valve repair is preferable to mitral valve replacement because of low rate of thromboembolism, resistance to endocarditis, excellent late durability, and no need for anticoagulation in the majority of patients. This article describes 2 novel techniques for repairing the anterior mitral leaflet prolapse. The extended chordal transfer is achieved by transferring an extended segment of posterior mitral leaflet and, rotational chordal transfer, by rotating the transferred segment either vertical or horizontal. Both techniques are simple and reproducible. It uses patient's own natural chorda and eliminates the problem of knotting and determination of appropriate chordal length faced with other techniques.


In September 2011, the I-64 Sherman Minton Bridge over the Ohio River between New Albany, IN and Louisville, KY was closed due to the detection of cracks in fracture-critical tie chord members. The bridge remained closed for over five months while non destructive testing and repairs were performed. Metallurgical evaluations were conducted by Applied Technical Services, Inc. (ATS) on 21 cores extracted from fracture critical members of the bridge. The cores were reported to contain rejectable indications as identified by visual inspection (VT), magnetic particle inspection (MT), ultrasonic testing (UT) and/or radiographic testing (RT). The purpose of this investigation was to determine the nature and cause of the flaws and if there was any evidence of active propagating cracks. Of the 21 cores examined, 11 contained surface flaws within the vertical butt welds or heat-affected zones. One core contained a major subsurface planar discontinuity. Five cores contained minor subsurface indications. The base metal properties were consistent with high yield strength, quenched-and-tempered low alloy steel, i.e. "T1 ® "/ASTM A514. The weld metal properties were also consistent with low alloy steel. All flaws and other weld discontinuities observed both at and below the surface of the web members were associated with the original tie chord welds or subsequent early weld repairs. These flaws were formed during or shortly after welding while in the fabrication shop. Fracture mechanics calculations determined that at a critical flaw size, temperatures below 30° F (-1.1°C) could possibly result in failure of the bridge. Metallurgical analysis of the flaws revealed no evidence of active crack growth due to fatigue, corrosion fatigue or stress corrosion. The flaw surfaces exhibited intergranular separation along with mixed mode brittle and ductile features characteristic of hydrogen-induced cracking. The fracture critical members of the tie chords box girders were reinforced by bolted steel plates and the bridge placed back in service in February, 2012.


Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) analysis has been performed on maghemite–poly(4-vinylpyridine) nanocomposites prepared by in situ precipitation from iron–polymer coordination compounds. According to electron microscopy observations, the nanocomposites contain isolated spherical particles with a narrow size distribution, uniformly distributed throughout the polymer matrix. The scattering intensity of nanocomposites has relevant contributions from both the polymer and the nanocomposites, showing features characteristic of multiscale structured systems, namely two power laws and a Guinier regime. The data have been analysed in terms of Beaucage's unified approach and it is found that the maghemite particle size increases with the iron/polymer weight ratio used in the preparation of the nanocomposites. SAXS curves also feature a bump that was analysed as arising from a second particle population or from interactions. Magnetization and transmission electron microscopy results give arguments favouring the latter interpretation. It is found that the maghemite particle sizes vary linearly with the iron weight ratio used in the preparation of the nanocomposites.


A new concept of epitaxial silicon (Si) wafers (NC epi.) in which p-(n-) thin-film layers are grown on p - (n - ) Czochralski (CZ)-Si substrates (substrate resistivity: approximately 10 Ω cm) is proposed for metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) ultra large-scale integrated circuits (ULSI's) as a starting material. A thickness of 0.3-I μm for the epitaxial layer (p - /p - structure) is shown to be sufficient for improving the gate oxide integrity for MOS-ULSI's. The epitaxial layer grown on Si substrate greatly reduces weak spots in the gate oxide layer by covering microdefects in the CZ-Si represented by crystal originated particle (COP). The p - /p - thin-film epitaxial structure results in very controlled resistivity for the electrically active region in the device, which in turn results in a lower growth cost and higher feasibility for use in current ULSI's. The features of NC epi. in combination with proximity gettering is presented. An application of NC epi. in shallow-trench isolation processes discussed considering retrograde-type well-tub. The amenability of epitaxial wafers to wafer enlargement (over 300 mm) is discussed to eliminate bad effects of COP.


This paper deals with collaborative robotics by highlighting the main issues linked to the interaction between humans and robots. A critical study of the standards in force on human–robot interaction and the current principles on workplace design for human–robot collaboration (HRC) are presented. The paper focuses on an anthropocentric paradigm in which the human becomes the core of the workplace in combination with the robot, and it presents a basis for designing workplaces through two key concepts: (i) the introduction of human and robot spaces as elementary spaces and (ii) the dynamic variations of the elementary spaces in shape, size and position. According to this paradigm, the limitations of a safety-based approach, introduced by the standards, are overcome by positioning the human and the robot inside the workplace and managing their interaction through the elementary spaces. The introduced concepts, in combination with the safety prescriptions, have been organised by means of a multi-level graph for driving the HRC design phase. The collaborative workplace is separated into sublevels. The main elements of a collaborative workplace are identified and their relationships presented by means of digraphs.


This study revisits the northern mode of East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) variation and investigates its response to global warming based on the ERA dataset and outputs from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) models. Results show that the observed variation in East Asian surface air temperature (EAT) is tightly coupled with sea level pressure variation in the expanded Siberian high (SH) region during boreal winter. The first singular value decomposition (SVD) mode of the EAT and SH explains 95% of the squared covariance in observations from 1961 to 2005, which actually represents the northern mode of EAWM variation. Meanwhile, the first SVD mode of the EAT and SH is verified to be equivalent to the first empirical orthogonal function mode (EOF1) of the EAT and SH, respectively. Since the leading mode of the temperature variation is significantly influenced by radiative forcing in a rapidly warming climate, for reliable projection of long-term changes in the northern mode of the EAWM, we further employ the EOF1 mode of the SH to represent the northern mode of EAWM variation. The models can well reproduce this coupling between the EAT and SH in historical simulations. Meanwhile, a robust weakening of the northern mode of the EAWM is found in the RCP4.5 scenario, and with stronger warming in the RCP8.5 scenario, the weakening of the EAWM is more pronounced. It is found that the weakening of the northern mode of the EAWM can contribute 6.7% and 9.4% of the warming trend in northern East Asian temperature under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively.


This book is an enquiry into the concept of the 'self', transcending the barriers of 'non-self' and realizing the non-dual Consciousness within and without. This concept is the central theme of Advaita Vedanta. The Drg-drsya-viveka is a short treatise of forty-six Sanskrit verses which analyses the illusory perceptions of names and forms in the states of dreams and waking as well. The commentator gives a scientific explanation of the meaning of Self and Non Self, helping the reader to discriminate and separate the observer (drk) from the observed objects (drsya).


This study aimed to produce cellulose-based conductive fabrics with electrical conductivity and flexibility. Bacterial cellulose (BC) and three chemical cellulose (CC), namely methyl cellulose (MC), hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPMC) and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) were in situ polymerized with aniline and the four conductive cellulose fabrics were compared and evaluated. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectroscopy analysis confirmed that three CC-PANI composites displayed longer and more stable polymerization pattern than BC-PANI because of the different polymerization method: bulk polymerization for BC-PANI and emulsion polymerization for CC-PANI, respectively. The electrical conductivity of BC-PANI and CC-PANI were ranging from 0.962 × 10−2 S/cm to 2.840 × 10−2 S/cm. MC-PANI showed the highest electrical conductivity among the four conductive cellulose fabrics. The flexibility and crease recovery results showed that MC-PANI had the highest flexibility compared to BC-PANI, HPMC-PANI, and CMC-PANI. These results have confirmed that the electrical conductivity and flexibility were influenced by the type of cellulose, and MC-PANI was found to have the best performance in the electrical conductivity and flexibility.


Nonclassical ions or carbonium ions have multi-center bonding from delocalized sigma or pi electrons. The 2-norbornyl cation, its derivative 6,6-difluoro-2-norbornyl cation, tris-homocyclopropenyl cation, 7-norbornenyl cation, and 4-cyclopentenyl cation and their corresponding silicon analogues were studied in this work. All carbocations have topologically different 3c-2e systems. The magnitude of all delocalization indexes between each atomic pair of the 3c-2e bond can be used to predict homoaromaticity. The silicon analogues have a topologically different 3c-2e bond from their corresponding carbocation.


We investigate quantum tomography in scenarios where prior information restricts the state space to a smooth manifold of lower dimensionality. By considering stability we provide a general framework that relates the topology of the manifold to the minimal number of binary measurement settings that is necessary to discriminate any two states on the manifold. We apply these findings to cases where the subset of states under consideration is given by states with bounded rank, fixed spectrum, given unitary symmetry or taken from a unitary orbit. For all these cases we provide both upper and lower bounds on the minimal number of binary measurement settings necessary to discriminate any two states of these subsets.


This article seeks to explain the recent resurgence in national memories of the Jabidah Massacre – the killing of dozens of Muslim recruits undergoing clandestine training, allegedly in preparation for the infiltration and destabilization of Sabah. We argue that the ways in which the memories of this incident have been forgotten, remembered and appropriated by different groups in the past four decades were determined by the shifting political needs and interests of elite politicians, Moro nationalists and civil society groups.


An energy transport model taking into account the effects of Alfv~n ion cyclotron fluctuations is presented to explain the hot-ion-mode experiments of tandem mirror GAMMA 10. The energy transport equations for the electron and ion including the ion temperature relaxation due to the quasilinear effects of unstable Alfv6n ion cyclotron modes are derived based on a point model and are solved numerically for the steady state. It is shown that the numerical results obtained from the present model can well explain the experimental results in the hot-ion-mode of GAMMA 10.


This paper presents the results of three-dimensional finiteelement analyses of circular foundations on the surface of homogeneous, purely cohesive soil. The foundations were assumed to adhere fully to the soil, and compressive, tensile and shear stresses may develop at the interface between the footing and the soil. The predicted ultimate response of the foundations to combined vertical, moment and horizontal loading was compared with other available theoretical predictions. A three-dimensional failure locus is presented for these foundations, based on the numerical predictions. An equation that approximates the shape of the failure locus is also suggested, and this provides a convenient means of calculating the bearing capacity of circular foundations on a uniform clay and subjected to combined loading.


Dust plasma is a new field of physics which has developed rapidly in recent decades. The study of dust plasma has received much attention due to its importance in the environment of space and the Earth. Dust acoustic waves are generated because of the inertia of dust mass while the restoring force is provided by the thermal pressure of electrons and ions. Since dust acoustic waves were first reported theoretically in unmagnetized dust plasma by Rao et al., they have become a research hot spot. In this paper, the excitation of dust acoustic waves by a gravity field in a dust plasma is analyzed. According to the control equations of dust plasma motion and employing multiscale analysis and perturbation method, we have obtained a (3+1)-dimensional ZK model. Because of the space property of dust plasma, (3+1)-dimensional ZK equation is more suitable than KdV equation and (2+1)-dimensional ZK equation to describe the real dust acoustic waves. Then, the (3+1)-dimensional time-space fractional ZK (TSF-ZK) equation describing the fractal process of nonlinear dust acoustic waves is given for the first time. To further explore how dust acoustic waves change energy as they travel, we discuss the conservation laws of the newmodel. Moreover, we study the exact solution of (3+1)-dimensional TSFZK equation by using extended Kudryashov method. Finally, based on the exact solution, we further investigate the effect of the parameter k, the charge properties of dust particle Zd0, the fractional order values α, β, γ, and θ, the temperatureTd, the gravity g, and the collision frequency β0 and β1 on the properties of dust acoustic waves by a gravity field in dust plasma.


The AN69 ST membrane was designed to render the surface of the native polyacrylonitrile polymer less cationic. This was achieved by layering the membrane with the polycationic biopolymer polyethyleneimine. This new membrane is able to bind heparin to its surface, through electrical interactions, without altering the reactivity of the sulfonate groups of the membrane, regularly distributed in the membrane bulk. The kinetics of unfractionated or low-molecular-weight heparins were studied in vitro and in vivo in sheep. Encouraging results were obtained indicating that heparin-coated hemodialyzers are potent anticoagulants. Priming the AN69 ST membrane-equipped hemodialyzer with heparin, as in regular hemodialysis, could allow drastic reduction of heparin consumption in hemodialysis.


An unusual tumor of the neck in a 56-year-old female is reported. The tumor was composed of tubules and small cords of epithelial cells dispersed in the fibromyxoid and adipose stroma. At the periphery, the tumor was not encapsulated and its border was intermingled with the subcutaneous fat. Lack of decapitation secretion and the absence of long tubules suggested an eccrine origin; however, in some of the tumor areas, the cells showed brightly eosinophilic copious cytoplasm that may indicate an apocrine differentiation. As an area of chondroid metaplasia was identified, the diagnosis of a mixed tumor was rendered. This unusual type of skin adnexal neoplasm with unique relation of the epithelial component to the surrounding adipose tissue requires differentiation with the primary cutaneous and metastatic carcinomas.


Soil fertility assessment is a key for sustainable planning of a particular area. Thus, the present study was conducted to assess the soil fertility status of the Regional Agricultural Research Station, Parwanipur, Bara, Nepal. The study area is situated at the latitude 27°4'40.9''N and longitude 84°56'9.85"E at 75masl altitude. Altogether 76 soil samples were collected based on the variability of land at 0-20 cm depth. The texture, pH, OM, total N, available P2O5, K2O, Ca, Mg, S, B, Fe, Zn, Cu and Mn content in the samples were determined following standard analytical methods. Arc-GIS 10.1 was used for soil fertility mapping. The soil structure was angular blocky, and varied between grayish brown (10YR 5/2) and dark grayish brown (10YR 4/2) in color. The sand, silt and clay content were 24.41±0.59%, 54.57±0.44% and 21.03±0.32%, respectively and categorized as silt loam and loam in texture. The soil was moderately acidic in pH (5.67±0.09), low in organic matter (0.74±0.04%) and available Sulphur (0.8± 0.1 ppm). The total nitrogen (0.06±0.001%), available boron (0.59±0.08ppm) and available zinc (0.51±0.05ppm) were low. Furthermore, available potassium (50.26±2.95ppm), available calcium (1674.6±46.3ppm) and available magnesium (175.43± 8.93ppm) were medium. Moreover, available copper (1.36±0.06 ppm) and available manganese (16.52±1.12 ppm) were high, while, available phosphorus (77.55±6.65 ppm) and available iron (85.88±7.05 ppm) were found high. It is expected that the present study would help to guide practices required for sustainable soil fertility management and developing future agricultural research strategy in the farm.


Abstract This study aimed to evaluate changes in total body water (TBW) in soccer athletes using a deuterium oxide dilution method and bioelectrical impedance (BIA) formulas after 7 days of creatine supplementation. In a double-blind controlled manner, 13 healthy (under-20) soccer players were divided randomly in 2 supplementation groups: Placebo (Pla, n=6) and creatine supplementation (CR, n=7). Before and after the supplementation period (0.3 g/kg/d during 7 days), TBW was determined by deuterium oxide dilution and BIA methods. 7 days of creatine supplementation lead to a large increase in TBW (2.3±1.0 L) determined by deuterium oxide dilution, and a small but significant increase in total body weight (1.0±0.4 kg) in Cr group compared to Pla. The Pla group did not experience any significant changes in TBW or body weight. Although 5 of 6 BIA equations were sensitive to determine TBW changes induced by creatine supplementation, the Kushner et al. 16 method presented the best concordance levels when compared to deuterium dilution method. In conclusion, 7-days of creatine supplementation increased TBW determined by deuterium oxide dilution or BIA formulas. BIA can be useful to determine TBW changes promoted by creatine supplementation in soccer athletes, with special concern for formula choice.


Objective High rates of partial insertion have been reported for cochlear implant (CI) recipients of long lateral wall electrode arrays, presumably caused by resistance encountered during insertion due to cochlear morphology. With recent advances in long-electrode array design, we sought to investigate (1) the incidence of complete insertions among patients implanted with 31.5-mm flexible arrays and (2) whether complete insertion is limited by cochlear duct length (CDL). Study Design Retrospective review. Setting Tertiary referral center. Methods Fifty-one adult CI recipients implanted with 31.5-mm flexible lateral wall arrays underwent postoperative computed tomography to determine the rate of complete insertion, defined as all contacts being intracochlear. CDL and angular insertion depth (AID) were compared between complete and partial insertion cohorts. Results Most cases had a complete insertion (96.1%, n = 49). Among the complete insertion cohort, the median CDL was 33.6 mm (range, 30.3-37.9 mm), and median AID was 641° (range, 533-751°). Two cases of partial insertion had relatively short CDL (31.8 mm and 32.3 mm) and shallow AID (542° and 575°). Relatively shallow AID for the 2 cases of partial insertion fails to support the idea that CDL alone prevents a complete insertion. Conclusion Complete insertion of a 31.5-mm flexible array is feasible in most cases and does not appear to be limited by the range of CDL observed in this cohort. Future studies are needed to estimate other variations in cochlear morphology that could predict resistance and failure to achieve complete insertion with long arrays.


Objective: This pilot study aimed to describe the difficulties and educational needs of Indonesian midwives working in a government hospital and thereby propose possible solutions towards improving the quality of childbirth care. Methods: This study had a qualitative exploratory design. Focus group discussions were conducted with 22 Indonesian midwives working in a government hospital. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Results: These Indonesian midwives felt they faced difficulties in providing quality care such as "shortage of resources to provide health services", "lack of resources for professional continuing education", "insufficient evidence-based practice", "difficulty in providing care due to cultural background", and "challenges teaching students". Therefore, these difficulties contributed to their uncertainty about the quality of the care they could provide. They desired continuing education to update their knowledge and skills and fill the gap between theory and actual practice. They wanted more in-depth information about "pregnancy", "delivery", "puerperium", "neonates", and "emergencies". These topics reflected the wide range of care needed by the diverse group of Indonesian women who visited government hospital. Conclusions: Indonesian midwives working in a government hospital had difficulties in providing quality care for women with different needs and backgrounds due to the shortage of midwives, and lack of hospital beds and lack of essential equipment. Even though midwives wanted to learn or update their knowledge and skills to fill the gap between theory they learned in school and the demands of actual practice, the opportunity to have training was very limited.


This paper presents a robust class of estimators for the parameters of a deterministic signal in impulsive noise. The proposed technique has the structure of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) but has an extra degree of freedom: the choice of a nonlinear function (which is different from the score function suggested by the MLE) that can be adjusted to improve robustness. The effect of this nonlinear function is studied analytically via an asymptotic performance analysis. We investigate the covariance of the estimates and the loss of efficiency induced by nonoptimal choices of the nonlinear function, giving special attention to the case of /spl alpha/-stable noise. Finally, we apply the theoretical results to the problem of estimating the parameters of a sinusoidal signal in impulsive noise.


BACKGROUND/AIMS
Glucose metabolism has been proven as an essential process for proliferating keratinocytes, which highlights the importance of glucose transporter-1 (GLUT1) not only in the onset of psoriasis but also in the progression and severity of this inflammation-driven disease. In this study, we attempted to find a connection between proinflammatory cytokines (IL-6, IL-17, IL-23, IL-36, TNF-α), a skin inflammation inducing agent - imiquimod (IMQ) and GLUT1 expression.

METHODS
Human keratinocyte HaCaT cell line was incubated with exogenous cytokines: IL-6, IL-17A, IL-23, IL-36, TNF-α at a final concentration of 100 ng/ml, or with 1 µM of IMQ, for 48 h. Following the stimulation, glucose uptake and GLUT1 expression were evaluated. The activity of GLUT1 was measured in the presence of a selective GLUT1 inhibitor, BAY-876. The expression of GLUT1 was examined by immunofluorescence and quantified by qPCR, Western blotting and densitometry.

RESULTS
The results from qPCR analysis showed that the administration of exogenous IL-6, IL-17, IL-23 and IL-36 to HaCaT cells resulted in upregulation of GLUT1-encoding SLC2A1 gene, while TNF-α had no significant effect. The same results were confirmed by immunofluorescence analysis, as the fluorescent intensity of GLUT1 was elevated following cytokine and IMQ stimulation. Western blot and densitometry showed that all examined cytokines, as well as IMQ, increased GLUT1 expression. HaCaT cells displayed an improved intracellular 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) uptake and GLUT1 activity after stimulation by exogenous cytokines and IMQ. The highest uptake of 2-DG was observed after IL-23 stimulation (1.93x) and the lowest after TNF-α stimulation (1.07x). BAY-876 inhibited the 2-DG uptake compared to control.

CONCLUSION
Our findings suggest that cytokines and IMQ may play a key role in regulating GLUT1 expression in HaCaT cells. We believe that GLUT1 overexpression could potentially be utilized in the targeted treatment of psoriasis.


This article reports flow behavior around a suspended cube obtained using three-dimensional (3D) lattice Boltzmann method (LBM)-based simulations. The Reynolds number (Re) range covered is from 84 to 770. Four different flow regimes are noted based on the flow structure in this range of Re: steady axisymmetric (84 ≤ Re ≤ 200), steady nonaxisymmetric (215 ≤ Re ≤ 250), unsteady nonaxisymmetric in one plane and axisymmetric in the other plane (276 ≤ Re ≤ 300), and unsteady nonaxisymmetric in streamwise orthogonal planes (339 ≤ Re ≤ 770). Recirculation length and drag coefficient follow inverse trend in the steady flow regime. The unsteady flow regime shows hairpin vortices for Re ≤ 300 and then it becomes structureless. The nature of force coefficients has been examined at various Reynolds numbers. Temporal behavior of force coefficients is presented along with phase dependence of side force coefficients. The drag coefficient decreases with increase in Reynolds number in the steady flow regime and the side force coefficients are in phase. Drag coefficients are compared with established correlations for flow around a cube and a sphere. The side force coefficients are perfectly correlated at Re = 215 and they are anticorrelated at Re = 250. At higher Reynolds numbers, side force coefficients are highly uncorrelated. This work adds to the existing understanding of flow around a cube reported earlier at low and moderate Re and extends it further to unsteady regime at higher Re.


Thin films of semiconducting and unsorted carbon nanotubes (CNT) are prepared on a transparent and flexible cyclic olefin polymeric substrate. The CNT biocompatibility is analyzed using L929 mouse fibroblasts and Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells. Highly conductive poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) films are also tested on the same substrate as an alternative conductive polymer for electrode material. The cell morphology and viability are recorded on the different material systems. This leads to the possibility of integrating a complete solution-processable electronic sensor, combined with the benefit of a flexible substrate, which shows better response due to its soft interface to biological matter.


Abstract Dupont's lark Chersophilus duponti was categorized globally as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List in 2005, largely because of reported declines in Spain and an estimated population of 2,000–3,000 breeding pairs in Morocco. However, the range and size of the species' North African populations were still unknown, despite being critical for assessment of the species' global conservation status. Here we report on the breeding distribution of Dupont's lark in Morocco, probably the largest population in its North African range, as well as on its preferred habitat, population density and size. Fieldwork and analysis of satellite images were combined to locate suitable habitat for the species, assess its presence (eliciting territorial calls by broadcasting the males' songs and calls), and estimate densities using 83 km of linear censuses. Total number of birds located was 461 (305 from song playback and 156 from transects) across an extent of occurrence of c. 11,000 km2, comprising 2,067 km2 of suitable habitat and an effective area of occupancy of 1,645 km2. Mean density was 0.60 ± SD 0.52 birds per 10 ha and was highest in dense stands of Stipa tennacissima. Our estimate of Dupont's lark breeding population in Morocco is c. 15,400 singing males (lower and upper limits 11,220–20,167, respectively). Evidence of habitat loss and degradation was found in one of the main areas of the species' distribution in Morocco, although this does not seem to be a general pattern in the lark's Moroccan range. Further studies are required of the dynamics of suitable habitat for the species to prevent long-term consequences for the conservation of Dupont's lark and other bird species of the steppe.


Headache following lumbar puncture is a well known and well described complication. Various manoeuvres have been tried to prevent post lumbar puncture headache--the commonest being bed rest for 4 to 24 hours following lumbar puncture, though its value is questionable. Randomised controlled clinical trial was done to evaluate the effect of 24 hours bed rest on the incidence and severity of post lumbar puncture headaches. Two hundred and eight patients were randomly allocated to either the ambulant or the bed rest group. Patients were interviewed by a single investigator on days 0, 1, 2 and 7 about the presence and nature of headache. Other relevant clinical and laboratory data pertaining to the lumbar puncture was collected. The overall incidence of post lumbar puncture headache was 17%; 15% in the ambulant and 18% in the bed rest group. Of the patients who had headaches, severe headache was observed in 57% in the ambulant and 12% in the bed rest group (p = 0.02). Other variables did not alter the outcome of headaches. Bed rest does not appear to alter the incidence of post lumbar puncture headaches, but reduces the severity in those who get headaches, after a lumbar puncture.


Here we develop a simple electrochemical method to fabricate novel multibranched root-tailed nanorod arrays by a novel electrochemical technique. A formation mechanism of the thick barrier layer and the root-tailed nanorod is proposed. Using this template-assisted method, three-dimensional nanorod arrays were prepared in a controlled manner, which helped to clarify the growth processes close to the bottom of the nanopores. The nanobranched wire, distinct from previous one-dimensional nanowires, should have potential applications in three-dimensional nanoelectronics and nanophotonics.


Postweaning performance data were obtained on 401 group-fed, purebred Angus calves from 24 selected sires (12 high- and 12 low-feed-conversion sires) from 1983 through 1986 at the Northwestern Branch of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. Body measurements of progeny were taken from 1983 through 1986 for hip height and backfat, whereas others, except chest measurements (depth and width) that were available only in 1985, were taken from 183 progeny born in 1985 and 1986. The objective of this portion of the study was to determine whether differences in linear body measurements exist between progeny of high- and low-feed-conversion sires. Differences between progeny of high- and low-feed-conversion sires tended to exist (P < .10) for heart girth (176.3 +/- 1.2 vs 173.2 +/- 1.2 cm) and were significant for backfat thickness (.94 +/- .01 vs .87 +/- .02 cm). No significant differences were observed for hip height (115.3 +/- .5 vs 115.5 +/- .5 cm), chest depth (58.8 +/- .6 vs 57.4 +/- .6 cm), chest width (44.4 +/- .5 vs 44.0 +/- .5 cm), head width (21.2 +/- .2 vs 21.1 +/- .2 cm), head length (42.4 +/- .3 vs 41.6 +/- .3 cm), muzzle circumference (41.0 +/- .4 vs 41.6 +/- .3 cm), length between hooks and pins (46.7 +/- .5 vs 46.2 +/- .5 cm), length between shoulder and hooks (94.9 +/- 1.0 vs 93.1 +/- 1.0 cm), or volume (361,199 +/- 4,885 vs 352,718 +/- 5,026 cm3).


Emerging studies in the enigmatic area of bioactive lipids have made many exciting new discoveries in recent years. Once thought to play a strictly structural role in cellular function, it has since been determined that sphingolipids and their metabolites perform a vast variety of cellular functions beyond what was previously believed. Of utmost importance is their role in cellular signaling, for it is now well understood that select sphingolipids serve as bioactive molecules that play critical roles in both cancer cell death and survival, as well as other cellular responses such as chronic inflammation, protection from intestinal pathogens, and intrinsic protection from intestinal contents, each of which are associated with oncogenesis. Importantly, it has been demonstrated time and time again that many different tumors display dysregulation of sphingolipid metabolism, and the exact profile of said dysregulation has been proven to be useful in determining not only the presence of a tumor, but also the susceptibility to various chemotherapeutic drugs, as well as the metastasizing characteristics of the malignancies. Since these discoveries surfaced it has become apparent that the understanding of sphingolipid metabolism and profile will likely become of great importance in the clinic for both chemotherapy and diagnostics of cancer. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the current state of chemotherapeutic agents that target sphingolipid metabolism that are undergoing clinical trials. Additionally, we will formulate questions involving the use of sphingolipid metabolism as chemotherapeutic targets in need of further research.


Intergenerational practice has been found to enhance the wellbeing of people living with dementia, and raise awareness of dementia amongst younger generations in several countries globally. The need for intergenerational interventions is recognised in Welsh policy, however, there is currently a limited evidence base for their potential. The aim of this study was to develop, pilot and evaluate an intergenerational intervention, linking university students with care home residents living with dementia. The intervention aimed to enhance the wellbeing of people living with dementia, who may be at risk of social isolation, and raise awareness of dementia among university students, who may form part of the social care workforce in the future. The intervention involved shared activities based on preparing and sharing food, a meaningful activity that is sometimes lacking in care homes in Wales. The intervention was designed to provide relationship, collaboration, comfort, and equality to participants, which form the basis of person-centred care and contact theory. A pragmatic mixed methods research design was adopted, underpinned by the principles of an experimental framework. Data was gathered from participants and care home staff using Dementia Care Mapping, activity feedback sheets, questionnaires and focus groups. In sum, the thesis found that the intervention generally enhanced the mood and engagement of residents living with dementia, and the attitude of students towards dementia. The study provides additional nuanced insights that similar studies have not provided. The findings of this thesis highlighted a need for attachment to people outside of the environment in which they live, amongst plwd in the care home context. IG Interventions delivered in care homes provide the potential to meet this need. Feedback from care staff indicated that the intervention was suitable for a care home environment, and that observing plwd completing the activities prompted them to consider additional opportunities for residents to become engaged in preparing their own food. This study indicated that preparing and sharing food provides a meaningful basis for IG interventions, and that the benefits of IG interventions reported in other countries can be realised in Wales.


The major goal of a pre-sales phase is to provide customers with a compelling offer that exactly fits their needs. For its creation not only sales but also requirements engineering activities take place. The latter are needed to translate the customers' needs to features, to efforts, and eventually to costs. Although this sounds like business as usual, compared to conventional requirements engineering, there are substantial differences: the pre-sales phase entails challenges (e.g., a limited duration, a steadily moving target or the supplier's pre-investment) having a tremendous impact on all of these activities. With their conventional approach requirements engineering professionals are doomed to fail. However, an appropriate requirements engineering approach for the pre-sales phase remains to be defined. To address this issue the principal idea is to investigate typical customer engagement types and to conduct a risk analysis revealing the details of the pre-sales phase's challenges. The results deliver the basis informing the design of a new and capable approach. This article contributes the resulting concept and tools for successful pre-sales requirements engineering. They provide the risk responses and exit criteria to the pre-sales phase's challenges. The proposed approach even turns analysts into "boxers" when tackling one of the most difficult pre-sales problems: the moving target.


The objective of this paper is to nd a parametric representation for the vocaltract log-area function that is directly and simply related to basic acoustic characteristics of the human vocal-tract. The importance of this representation is associated with the solution of the articulatory-to-acoustic inverse problem, where a simple mapping from the articulatory space onto the acoustic space can be very useful. The method is as follows: Firstly, given a corpus of log-area functions, a parametric model is derived following a factor analysis technique. After that, the articulatory space, de ned by the parametric model, is lled with approximately uniformly distributed points, and the corresponding rst three formant frequencies are calculated. These formants de ne an acoustic space onto which the articulatory space maps. In the next step, an independent component analysis technique is used to determine acoustic and articulatory coordinate systems whose components are as independent as possible. Finally, using singular value decomposition, acoustic and articulatory coordinate systems are rotated so that each of the rst three components of the articulatory space has major in uence on one, and only one, component of the acoustic space. An example showing how the proposed model can be applied to the solution of the articulatory-to-acoustic inverse problem is given at the end of the paper. 2


This paper is concerned with the hybrid dynamics and stability of a planar rigid body supported by two frictional contacts in a gravitational field. The stability of equilibrium postures is investigated under initial perturbations which may involve sliding or separation of the contacts. The paper formulates the hybrid dynamics induced by collisions and impacts at the two contacts. The Zeno behavior of bouncing and clattering motion converging to limit points of one- or two-contact re-establishment are analyzed, and a condition guaranteeing convergence to a Zeno point is derived. Finally, this condition is combined with the results of the companion paper to derive sufficient conditions for stability of frictional two-contact equilibrium postures of a planar rigid body.


Exposure and risk assessments were conducted to evaluate the relative safety of mixing/loading work of indoxacarb between wettable powder (WP) and water dispersible granule (WG). Hand exposure was monitored using cotton gloves while inhalation exposure was measured using personal air monitor. Method validation for the exposure monitoring was established successfully through several experiments. Limit of determination and limit of quantitation were 0.25 and 1 ng, respectively. R 2 of calibration curve linearity was more than 0.9999 and reproducibility was 0.7-6. Recovery of indoxacarb from gloves, solid sorbent and glass fiber filter at three different levels was 81.5-108.8%. Trapping efficiency and breakthrough tests gave 981.5- 108.8% of recovery. During mixing/loading procedure, hand exposure amount (75 percentile of 30 repetitions) for indoxacarb WP was 6 folds (459.8 mg/kg a.i) than that of WG (81.4 mg/kg a.i). This result indicates that WG has less drift than WP thanks to its granular type of formulation. Inhalation amount was 10 ?8 -10 ?7 % of spray mixture prepared and 10 ?4 -10 ?3 % of hand exposure. In inhalation case, no significant differences were observed between two formulations. Margin of safety was calculated for risk assessment using male Korean average body weight and acceptable operator exposure level as the important exposure factors. Mixing/ loading procedures for both of the formulations were considered to be of least risk because calculated MOS values were more than 1.


The concept of the Anthropocene has reintroduced politics of denial at the centre of critical studies of international relations. This article interrogates Bruno Latour's explanation of climate change denial with reference to an ontological difference between Modernity and the Anthropocene, together with his advocacy for a new language beyond the Modern gaze. Our aims are twofold: to disclose how Latour's posthuman critique risk reproducing prevalent forms of climate change denial in the global North, and to question what falls outside Latour's dualistic frame: the heterogenous ways through which climate change and the Anthropocene is met across the globe; the ambiguous relation with nature through which modernity was formed; the modernist genealogy of Anthropocene discourse, and lastly how discourses of global governance have absorbed posthumanist critique in its attempt to naturalise postcolonial power relations. At stake, we argue, is critical theory's paradoxical complicity in the denialism it seeks to critique.


Electro-codeposition was used to prepare the Co and Co-Mn3O4 precursor coatings on ferritic stainless steel E-brite. Plated samples were exposed at 800°C in air for different durations (i.e., 10 min and 4 h) for thermal conversion of the deposited layer to a spinel coating. The converted layer was characterized with scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive spectroscopy (SEM/EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results showed that after 10 min heat treatment, the plated Co layer was not fully oxidized and converted into a double-layer microstructure with an inner CoO layer and outer Co3O4 layer, while for the Co-Mn3O4 layer, the Mn3O4 particles were not completely dissolved into the oxide layer. After 4 h of exposure, the surface layer was fully converted into the Co3O4 or (Co,Mn)3O4 spinel coating. Though the Mn content in (Co,Mn)3O4 was relatively low, the Mn-doped spinel coating was advantageous over the pure cobalt spinel coating, as the thermally grown Cr2O3 scale at the coating/substrate interface was more compact and protective. Co diffusion from the deposited layer into the alloy substrate was observed for both coatings.


Patient‐reported outcomes (PROs) measure quality of life, symptoms, patient functioning, and patient perceptions of care; they are essential for gaining a full understanding of cancer care and the impact of cancer on people's lives. Repeatedly captured facility‐level and/or population‐level PROs (PRO surveillance) could play an important role in quality monitoring and improvement, benchmarking, advocacy, policy making, and research. This article describes the rationale for PRO surveillance and the methods of the Patient Reported Outcomes Symptoms and Side Effects Study (PROSSES), which is the first PRO study to use the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer's Rapid Quality Reporting System to identify patients and manage study data flow. The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the Commission on Cancer, and RTI International collaborated on PROSSES. PROSSES was conducted at 17 cancer programs that participated in the National Cancer Institute Community Cancer Centers Program among patients diagnosed with locoregional breast or colon cancer. The methods piloted in PROSSES were successful as demonstrated by high eligibility (93%) and response (61%) rates. Differences in clinical and demographic characteristics between respondents and nonrespondents were mostly negligible, with the exception that non‐white individuals were somewhat less likely to respond. These methods were consistent across cancer centers and reproducible over time. If repeated and expanded, they could provide PRO surveillance data from patients with cancer on a national scale. Cancer 2016;122:344–351. © 2015 American Cancer Society.


We describe the challenges of resource creation for a resource-light system for morphological tagging of fusional languages (Feldman and Hana, 2010). The constraints on resources (time, expertise, and money) introduce challenges that are not present in development of morphological tools and corpora in the usual, resource intensive way.


The mainstay of therapy for chronic kidney disease is control of blood pressure and proteinuria through the use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE-Is) or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) that were introduced more than 20 years ago. Yet, many chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients still progress to end-stage kidney disease—the ultimate in failed prevention. While increased oxidative stress is a major molecular underpinning of CKD progression, no treatment modality specifically targeting oxidative stress has been established clinically. Here, we review the influence of oxidative stress in CKD, and discuss regarding the role of the Nrf2 pathway in kidney disease from studies using genetic and pharmacologic approaches in animal models and clinical trials. We will then focus on the promising therapeutic potential of sulforaphane, an isothiocyanate derived from cruciferous vegetables that has garnered significant attention over the past decade for its potent Nrf2-activating effect, and implications for precision medicine.


In this paper a new species of larva of Podothrombium is described from China. Unit of measurements used in the text is micron. Terminology used in the description is adapted from Robaux (1974). Podothrombium paucisetarum sp. nov. (figs. 1-7)Larva: Body color red in life. Idiosoma 644(540-760) long, 424(360-500) wide.Dorsal side of idiosoma: Anterior scutum with a pair of nude sensillae and 3 pairs of barbed setae. Posterior end of the scutum convex. Lateral to the postlateral angles of the scutum two pairs of eyes with eye plates. Posterior to scutum a small scutellum. Measurements of the scuta as shown in the text. Besides two scuta, idiosoma dorsally with 47(44-52) setae, each with a setal platelet, arranging in 6 rows. fD = 47(44-52).Ventral side of idiosoma: Coxa Ⅰ and Coxa Ⅱ contiguous, and with a urstigma between them. Coxa Ⅰ ventrally with one barbed seta near the two ends of the anterior side each, dorsally with one small nude seta on anterior basal end. Coxa Ⅱ and Coxa Ⅲ each with one barbed seta near the basal end. fCx = NBB-B-B. Between Coxa Ⅲ a pair of sternal setae, barbed, with setal platelets at their base. fSt = O-O-B. Posterior to Coxa Ⅲ 37(34-40) ventral setae, each with a setal platelet. fV=37(34-40). Anal opening small, near the posterior end of idiosoma.Gnathosoma: Dorsal side of cheliceral base with a pair of small nude setae. Palpal tro-chanter small, without seta, femur and genu with one barbed seta each, tibia with 3 nude setae, the one near the tibia claw thicker than the other two. Tibia claw simple. Palpal tarsus with 2 barbed seate, 6 eupathidiae and one solenidia. fPp = 0-B-B-NNNl-BBωσξ. Sclerotized digi-tus mobilis with one denticle. Geleal setae small and nude. Posterior to geleal setae a pair of long and barbed setae.Legs: Each leg with 6 segments, fSp = 6-6-6. Excluding claw, length of leg Ⅰ, Ⅱ and Ⅲ502(488-520), 454(445-470) and 503(495-515) respectively. Length of tarsus Ⅰ, Ⅱ and Ⅲ 114(108-120), 101(100-105) and 113(105-120) respectively. Each tarsus with two claws and one empodium. Leg chaetotaxy as shown in fable 1.Types: Holotype, collected by Zhang Zhi-Qiang in Boshan County, (31.4N, 121 AE) Shanghai on I986-V-7. Paratypes collected by Zhang Zhi-Qiang Hong Mei and Yu Hong in Shanghai on 1986-V-7, 1982-V-15 and 1984-V-7 respectively. All types deposited in the Department of Biology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.Host: AphididaeRemarks: This new species differs from all known larvae of the genus markedly. Comparisons of the key characters of all known larval Podothrombium as shown in table 2.


There is an under-recognized potential for cities to use urban green infrastructure to contribute to avian biodiversity conservation. At the global scale, climate change and growing urbanization are primary global drivers leading to decline and homogenization in world bird populations. Birds are fundamental and intricate species in ecosystems, and even in urban areas, act as indicator and regulator species contributing to healthy ecosystem function. While many cities have recognized the economic and social benefits associated with green spaces, such as the vast benefits ecosystem services provide to the urban dweller, the use of green spaces to concurrently contribute to avian conservation through habitat provisioning is currently deficient. This research provides a global comparative analysis to determine crucial variables in urban green spaces necessary to provide ecosystem services for the urban dweller while simultaneously supporting urban bird populations, particularly forest, grassland, and generalist bird species. It pushes for reform in existing management, norms, and principles that restrict green spaces' contribution towards avian conservation and acts as an ecological and conservation dialogue for policy makers, design-build and related professionals, and urban residents. The necessary abiotic, biotic, design, and management variables for urban forests and parks, residential gardens, and green roofs to support avian diversity are discussed, and management strategies and approaches are defined. Using these green spaces has the potential to create valuable avian habitat within our urban areas, which is increasingly important in light of growing urbanization and changing climatic conditions.


The lead user concept has attracted a lot of attention from scholars and practitioners alike. However, different studies apply different conceptualizations and measures of the lead user construct. Such variation in measurement of the construct make it almost impossible to consolidate findings from prior lead user research, which in turn hampers the accumulation of insights on the concept itself. This is also a challenge with respect to managerial practice: due to different interpretations of the concept, managers and R&D staff find it difficult to identify lead users for workshops and cooperation, and companies are often unable to transfer results from lead user projects to new product and business development. As a result, they only rarely repeat their work with lead users. The aim of this article is therefore to provide some thoughts and guidance on the conceptualization and measurement of the lead user construct.


We examine the use of three techniques, graph cuts, isoperimetric minimization and random-walk partitioning for the interactive segmentation of cardiovascular medical images. These methods can often be used effectively without heavy reliance on learned or explicitly encoded priors. We illustrate, through the use of a toy problem, the basic difference in the performance characteristics of the methods. Subsequently, the suitability of each method to a particular segmentation application in the cardiovascular imaging domain is demonstrated.


Iron impurities are believed to act as deep acceptors that can compensate for the n-type conductivity in as-grown Ga2O3, but several scientific issues, such as the site occupation of the Fe heteroatom and the complexes of Fe-doped β-Ga2O3 with native defects, are still lacking. In this paper, based on first-principle density functional theory calculations with the generalized gradient approximation approach, the controversy regarding the preferential Fe incorporation on the Ga site in the β-Ga2O3 crystal has been addressed, and our result demonstrates that Fe dopant is energetically favored on the octahedrally coordinated Ga site. The structural stabilities are confirmed by the formation energy calculations, the phonon dispersion relationships, and the strain-dependent analyses. The thermodynamic transition level Fe3+/Fe2+ is located at 0.52 eV below the conduction band minimum, which is consistent with Ingebrigtsen's theoretical conclusion, but slightly smaller than some experimental values between 0.78 eV and 1.2 eV. In order to provide direct guidance for material synthesis and property design in Fe-doped β-Ga2O3, the defect formation energies, charge transitional levels, and optical properties of the defective complexes with different kinds of native defects are investigated. Our results show that VGa and Oi can be easily formed for the Fe-doped β-Ga2O3 crystals under O-rich conditions, where the +3 charge state FeGaGai and −2 charge state FeGaOi are energetically favorable when the Fermi level approaches the valence and conduction band edges, respectively. Optical absorption shows that the complexes of FeGaGai and FeGaVGa can significantly enhance the optical absorption in the visible-infrared region, while the energy-loss function in the β-Ga2O3 material is almost negligible after the extra introduction of various intrinsic defects.


Although inflation expectations are one of the most important and influential macroeconomic variables today, there are no established methods to measure them in an accurate manner. Given that inflation expectations are usually heterogeneous among agents, they are so in terms not only in their average levels but also in their variances or distributions. Unfortunately, few surveys ask the agents about their subjective probability distributions of these expectations, while most surveys ask solely for their point estimates. Binder (2015) proposes a novel and innovative methodology to estimate the individual subjective probability distribution from the surveyed point estimates. In this study, we analyze the consistency between the estimated uncertainty measure proposed by Binder (2015) and the variances based on the subjective probability distribution from our original survey results. We find that the correlation between Binder's measure and subjective variances are not necessarily distinct once we control for the impact of individual characteristics. However, we find her method of estimating the subjective variances of inflation expectations to be useful even though its contribution is somewhat limited.


Penile strangulation with concomitant scrotal entrapment by a steel ring is an extremely rare urological emergency that requires immediate intervention. Any delay may lead to irreversible complications. Metal rings increase penile engorgement and are usually associated with an attempt to improve sexual pleasure or to maintain a prolonged erection. The removal of steel rings can be challenging and may require a multidisciplinary approach. We present a unique case report of an 18-year-old male with a penoscrotal steel ring retained for 24 hours that was safely removed using an angle grinder as a surgical tool.


The gradual increase in wildfires has caused frequent trips and outages along electrical transmission lines, which is a serious threat to the operational stability of power grids. A self-adaptive wildfire detection algorithm has been developed and tested in this paper. Most of existing wildfire detection methods employed fixed thresholds to identify potential wildfire pixels while the background pixels were ignored. By calculating two-dimensional histogram of the brightness temperatures of mid-infrared channel, the threshold selection is self-adaptive and potential pixels containing scenes of fire can be distinguished automatically. Based on the two-dimensional Otsu method and contextual test algorithm, an improved wildfire detection algorithm that uses multitemporal Visible and Infrared Radiometer (VIRR) data is described. The wildfire detection results within three kilometers of electrical transmission lines demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which has accurate low-temperature wildfire detection ability.


Author(s): Nguyen, Jacqueline Phuong Anh | Abstract: Many crop plants, like soybean and canola, have pods that open to release seeds. However, the molecular mechanism of this pod-opening process is not well understood. I have studied two genes, called SCRAMBLED (SCM) and QUIRKY (QKY), that regulate this process in Arabidopsis thaliana. SCM encodes for a leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase and QKY encodes for a transmembrane protein with C2 domains. Mutations in these genes cause the plants to have small, twisted, and non-shattering pods contrasting to wild type pods, which are long, straight, and shattering. I carried out a double mutant analysis to determine if SCM and QKY genes function in the same genetic pathway. scm qky double mutants show very similar phenotypes to scm and qky phenotypes indicating that both genes function in the same genetic pathway. Using yeast two-hybrid assay, I showed that SCM and QKY proteins do not bind to each other in yeast. In addition, I screened a flower cDNA library using the yeast two-hybrid system for interactors of QKY, SCM extracellular domain, and SCM kinase domain. I found many interactors of SCM in yeast. However, so far, knock-out mutants of the genes did not show scm-like phenotypes. Further tests need to be done in order to determine if any of these putative interactors of SCM actually bind to SCM in Arabidopsis


Today, with the increasing transition to electric vehicles (EVs), the design of highly energy-efficient vehicle architectures has taken precedence for many car manufacturers. To this end, the energy consumption and recovery rates of different powertrain vehicle architectures need to be investigated comprehensively. In this study, six different powertrain architectures—four independent in-wheel motors with regenerative electronic stability control (RESC) and without an RESC, one-stage gear (1G) transmission, two-stage gear (2G) transmission, continuously variable transmission (CVT) and downsized electric motor with CVT—were mathematically modeled and analyzed under real road conditions using nonlinear models of an autonomous hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle (HFCEV). The aims of this paper were twofold: first, to compare the energy consumption performance of powertrain architectures by analyzing the effects of the regenerative electronic stability control (RESC) system, and secondly, to investigate the usability of a downsized electrical motor for an HFCEV. For this purpose, all the numerical simulations were conducted for the well-known FTP75 and NEDC urban drive cycles. The obtained results demonstrate that the minimum energy consumption can be achieved by a 2G-based powertrain using the same motor; however, when an RESC system is used, the energy recovery/consumption rate can be increased. Moreover, the results of the article show that it is possible to use a downsized electric motor due to the CVT, and this powertrain significantly reduces the energy consumption of the HFCEV as compared to all the other systems. The results of this paper present highly significant implications for automotive manufacturers for designing and developing a cleaner electrical vehicle energy consumption and recovery system.


The systematic procedure for realizing lowpass and bandpass leapfrog ladder filters using only active elements is presented. The proposed architecture is composed of only two fundamental active building blocks, i.e., an operational amplifier(OA) and a Current Controlled Conveyor II (CCCII), without external passive element requirement, making the approach conveniently for further integrated circuit implementation with systematic design and dense layout. The characteristic of the current transfer function can be adjusted by varying the external bias currents of CCCIIs. As illustrations to demonstrate the systematic realization of current-mode ladder filters, a 3rd-order Butterworth low-pass filter and a 6th-order Chebyshev bandpass filter are designed and simulated using PSPICE.


Although five years have passed since Manhattan's Twin Towers were destroyed, rebuilding projects atop the ruins remain mired in an ideological tug-of-war that offers an exemplary window into how memorial aesthetics and public art become constituted into national mythologies. Ground Zero has been commodified into t-shirts, patriotic coffee mugs with the slogan "Never Forgive, Never Forget," and sundry tourist bric-a-brac; director Oliver Stone's current thriller in the making, the eponymous Ground Zero, promises to further cloud the space with the simulacra of Hollywood spectacle. Amongst all this media alchemy, both 9/11's pretext (the mounting factors that led to such terrorism) and post-text (the consequence of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan) have been virtually dissolved. This essay argues for a radical intervention into these visual politics by reading Ground Zero through the work of Walter Benjamin. Benjamin remains one of most perceptive writers on the intersection between aesthetics and the flow of signs in capitalist society; his unfinished masterpiece, the Arcades Project (Das Passagen-Werk), articulates an especially useful mode of "dialectical seeing" which provides a framework for critiquing Ground Zero's nationalist inscriptions.This essay will follow the mode of Benjamin's flâneur - a type of urban, meandering visionary where seeing is an exercise in archeology, a peeling off the surfaces of things – to explore artworks that lie on the periphery of Ground Zero. These various public sculptures and art projects, largely made before 2001, speak critically to America's own complicity in the events of Sept. 11th while suggesting several effective memorial possibilities that have been lost in subsequent hubris. The burgeoning literature on Ground Zero memorialization has unjustly neglected these adjacent artworks, and to bring their forgotten aesthetics into the overt politics at Ground Zero's center further ignites what Benjamin called a "profane illumination," a disjunctive break that shatters religious and political continuums. More than ever, Ground Zero stands with an untouchable halo of the sacred. Powerful lobbying groups for families of 9/11 victims have successfully demanded that the foundational footprints of the towers be kept open "from bedrock to infinity" in the Reflecting Absence memorial at the site; such lobbies have also effectively expelled two intended cultural centers at Ground Zero for being "outrageously un-American" and "sacrilegious." As will be demonstrated, these other artworks can interrupt this monocular focus by forcing our gaze to thread the ruins with other, profane representations - from the unsettling torture photographs that have emerged out of Abu Ghraib prison to the ongoing absence of Iraqi dead in the American press – and thereby undo the reconstitution of memorial aesthetics into the logic of war.


Wind Energy Conversion Systems are the most striking renewable energy resources available to generate the electricity. Doubly-fed Induction Generator (DFIG) based wind turbine with variable speed is the most common wind turbine in the growing wind market. In any WECS, power flow must be maintained at all instant irrespective of any fault in the system. This paper deals with fault tolerant control (FTC) of DFIG based WECS. To have a better performance fault is detected & isolated with the help of NN. This intelligent computing technique provides better close loop performance during faulty conditions. The performance of the system under various modes of operation and FDI scheme are carried out using computer simulation. The simulation tool used is MATLAB/SIMULINK.


Federated noisy label learning (FNLL) is emerging as a promising tool for privacy-preserving multi-source decentralized learning. Existing research, relying on the assumption of class-balanced global data, might be incapable to model complicated label noise, especially in medical scenarios. In this paper, we first formulate a new and more realistic federated label noise problem where global data is class-imbalanced and label noise is heterogeneous, and then propose a two-stage framework named FedNoRo for noise-robust federated learning. Specifically, in the first stage of FedNoRo, per-class loss indicators followed by Gaussian Mixture Model are deployed for noisy client identification. In the second stage, knowledge distillation and a distance-aware aggregation function are jointly adopted for noise-robust federated model updating. Experimental results on the widely-used ICH and ISIC2019 datasets demonstrate the superiority of FedNoRo against the state-of-the-art FNLL methods for addressing class imbalance and label noise heterogeneity in real-world FL scenarios.


The tourism industry, which has shown exceptionally high rates of development in recent decades in the world economy, allows tourist destinations, which usually have limited resources for industrial development, to achieve income levels in industrialized regions, and with a balanced and effective government policy even overcome the effects of socio-economic crises. individual countries. One of the conditions for the successful existence of a tourist destination is the need to constantly monitor the level of its competitiveness by various criteria to identify strengths and weaknesses and, accordingly, to develop tactics and strategies for the development of the industry at different levels of management. The main criteria for the competitiveness of the destination is the compliance of the main tourist product of the territory to the needs of consumers. Various methods are used to assess the potential of tourist destinations, based on the defined capacity of the territories and the relationship to its potential, the load on resources and infrastructure, the definition of climatic, natural locations, economic indicators, etc. The definition of methods as a result of competitive analysis is the basis for building a reputable strategy for the development of the destination and subsequent vectors of positioning and the tourist world arena. Namely, it is expressed in the fact that as a result of the measures taken to manage the reputation management of the tourist destination, the competitive environment improves, the market develops, the infrastructure improves, which leads to the competitiveness of the tourist destination.


Human cystic echinococcosis (HCE), a zoonotic infection of the larval stage of Echinococcus granulosus, has high effect on public health in human population all around the world. Iran is one of the most important endemic areas in the Middle East. This systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the seroprevalence of HCE in Iranian population. An electronic search for articles from 1985 until April 2015 was performed using data bases PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, Magiran, IranMedex, Iran Doc, and Scientific Information Database (SID) both in English and in Persian. A random-effects meta-analysis was used to combine results from individual studies. The information was analyzed by STATA version 11.1. A total of 33 articles met our eligibility criteria and were included in a meta-analysis. The pooled estimate of the prevalence of HCE based on random-effects model was estimated 6.0% (95% CI: 4.0%, 7.0%). The prevalence of the disease significantly increased with age and prevalence rate in males was significantly lower than females (p < 0.001). The using of CIE or CCIEP method was also significantly greater than the other methods (p < 0.001). There was a publication bias in prevalence of studies. HCE is highly prevalent in Iran. Public education for preventive strategies and finally reducing transmission of the parasite and infection in population is needed.


Precise positioning detection for conventional trains, track maintenance trains, and track equipment is essential to improve safety and efficiency of train operation and movement in a railway network. Project "Technology development on the positioning detection of 400km/h class railroad with high precision" has been conducted by Korea Railroad Research Institute. This paper presents preliminary results of train positioning detection using localization sensors and a measurement system, which selects and analyzes the used sensors. We expect to make application to train control system or autonomous train driving by enhancing location detection technology based on these results.


There is evidence that many businesses are investing in complex technological innovations such as enterprise information systems with the aim of improving their operations. This technological innovation, however, tends to have a disproportionate focus on either the purity of the system (system effectiveness), or the operational effectiveness. The resulting lack of alignment is detrimental to the long-term enterprise benefits because of failure to achieve the real value of innovation. Although the literature has discussed system effectiveness and operational effectiveness extensively, there has not been a comprehensive discussion in regard to the alignment between the system effectiveness outcomes of a technological innovation and the operational effectiveness outcomes. This study explores the linkages and interactions between the two previously defined models, examining the influence of several organisational factors, such as strategies, on achieving an alignment that maximises benefit to the enterprise. This research uses a qualitative approach, based on unstructured and structured interviews with employees at different levels of two large service organisations, to build on the existing literature and to further confirm and refine a theoretical framework.


BACKGROUND
The affinity and specificity of protein reabsorption by proximal tubular cells have been investigated using techniques for monitoring endocytosis, demonstrating a high capacity but low affinity process. It is not known whether uptake is through binding to a single binding site/receptor with differing affinities, or if there are several classes of binding sites receptors, each specific for differing proteins or groups, such as, high or low molecular weight proteins.

METHODS
We have developed a novel technique for analyzing the kinetics of protein binding to tubular cells using a optical biosensor system. We have studied the binding of cultured LLCPK cells to albumin and RBP immobilized onto the sensor. By adding increasing concentrations of competing proteins [varying in molecular weight from 66,000 to 11,800 D and pI from 4.6 to 9.2 as represented by albumin, alpha1-microglobulin (alpha1M), retinol binding protein (RBP), cystatin C and beta2-microglobulin (beta2m)], specific and inhibitable cell binding was demonstrated.

RESULTS
Equilibrium constants, KA, could be calculated from the reciprocal of the protein concentration causing 50% inhibition in binding rate. These were: albumin = 8.0 x 10(4) M(-1), alpha1M = 2.0 x 10(5) M(-1), RBP = 2.7 x 10(4) M(-1), cystatin C = 2.0 x 10(4) M(-1), beta2m = 4.2 x 10(3) M(-1). There were no significant differences between the measured KA's whether RBP or albumin were immobilized on the surface.

CONCLUSIONS
All the proteins gave similar shaped inhibition profiles, suggesting that there is one binding site/receptor for all proteins studied, regardless of molecular weight or charge, but there are differing affinities for each protein.


PURPOSE To present a summary of the recommendations for the treatment and follow-up for the biochemical recurrence of castration-resistant prostate cancer (PCa) as acquired through a questionnaire administered at the Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference for Developing Countries. METHODS A total of 27 questions were identified as relating to this topic. Responses from the clinician were tallied and are presented in percentage format. Topics included the use of imaging in staging, treatment recommendations across different patient scenarios of life expectancy and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) doubling time, and follow-up for nonmetastatic castration-resistant PCa. RESULTS A consensus agreed that in optimal conditions, positron emission tomography-computed tomography with prostate-specific membrane antigen would be used although in limited resource situations the combined use of CT of the abdomen and pelvic (or pelvic MRI), a bone scan, and a CT of the thorax or chest x-ray was recommended. In cases when PSA levels double in < 10 months, more than 90% of clinicians agreed on the use of apalutamide or enzalutamide, regardless of life expectancy. With a doubling time of more than 10 months, > 54% of experts recommended no treatment independent of life expectancy. More than half of the experts, regardless of resources, recommended follow-up with a physical examination and PSA levels every 3-6 months and imaging only in the case of symptoms. CONCLUSION The voting results and recommendations presented in this document can be used by physicians to support management for biochemical recurrence of castration-resistant PCa in areas of limited resources. Individual clinical decision making should be supported by available data.


Current immunosuppressive strategies are aimed at abrogating the allospecific T‐cell response against donor tissues or organs. However, little information is yet available on the potential influences of these drugs on innate immune responses. In order to address this, we have employed a whole blood model. Human whole blood was pretreated with sirolimus, cyclosporine A or tacrolimus in therapeutic as well as supra therapeutic doses, and subsequently stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), peptidoglycan (PepG) or lipoteichoic acid (LTA). Plasma cytokine analyses revealed a potent inhibitory effect of sirolimus on interleukin(IL)‐10 production induced by all bacterial products tested. In contrast, cyclosporine A and tacrolimus inhibited the tumour necrosis factor (TNF)‐α production in response to LPS, but not to PepG and LTA. Using a quantitative mRNA analyses, we also observed that sirolimus significantly decreased the IL‐10 mRNA accumulation to sub‐basal levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). This suggests that the sirolimus inhibits IL‐10 production by interfering with the IL‐10 gene transcription. However, the molecular mechanism of this inhibition remains unclear. Based on the present study and observations by others, we postulate that the clinical use of the sirolimus may be associated with a dysregulated innate immune response to bacterial infection and thus an increased risk of hyperinflammation and sepsis.


This paper examines the impact of corporate alliances on corporate investment decisions in a network setting. Well-connected firms are centrally located in alliance networks. I hypothesize that more centrally located firms are exposed to greater information flows through the networks and, therefore, possess informational advantages. The informational advantages of central firms allow them to rely less on the information in their stock prices for making investment decisions. Supporting this hypothesis, firms with a higher centrality exhibit lower investment-to-price sensitivity. This finding is robust to a variety of network centrality measures and endogeneity in alliance formations. Notably, the effect of centrality is not the same across alliance types. More integrated forms of alliances including joint ventures, technology transfer, R&D agreements, and manufacturing agreements seem to exert a stronger influence on the investment-to-price sensitivity. In fact, only the centrality based on these alliances shows a positive impact on both market valuations and announcement effects, suggesting that these alliance networks likely convey value-enhancing information. Overall, my results show that alliance networks are conduits of information that impact corporate investment decisions.


PURPOSE
We report our experience with 5 patients with bladder exstrophy who underwent creation of a Mainz II pouch.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We retrospectively reviewed the results of the Mainz II pouch as a primary urinary diversion in 2 and a secondary urinary diversion in 3 patients. Each patient underwent multiple surgeries, including osteotomy in 1. All patients were followed postoperatively on a yearly basis.

RESULTS
All patients are continent and the upper urinary tract is stable.

CONCLUSIONS
The Mainz II pouch is appropriate for children born with a small fibrotic bladder, and as a salvage procedure for those who have endured multiple reconstructive procedures and remain incontinent. Furthermore, this procedure deserves serious consideration in children residing in developing countries.


Starting from certain 3D non-abelian dual systems, we discuss a number of related dual systems in 2D, some of which are obtained by dimensional reduction. The dualities relate massive scalar and vector fields, and may be relevant for string theory in the context of massive type IIA supergravity. Supersymmetric extensions of the models are also presented.


This work explores the application of the concept of thanatosensitivity over personal information management in order to reduce impact on the bereaved after an individual's death. Our objectives are to contribute to the academic cross-disciplinary discussion on the following interwoven topics: personal information management, online personal identity, thanatosensitivity, digital death and digital afterlife. We aim to develop a new topic, thanatosensitive information management (TIM), and to create a web-based platform which would provide a safe environment to consult and exchange the information about TIM and that would be accessible and understandable by a broader public. Our current technology rarely acknowledges death, and the amount of the literature on the subject is limited. We mapped the current situation in form of a website to present our findings to the audience.