Man is always for hungry for innovation. Over the last decade there has been spark to significantly increase the human mental and physical power for extended life spans. This innovation is taking shape day by day by the efforts of some leading computer scientists, neuroscientists, nanotechnologists and researchers, who are at the forefront of technological development. They are thinking and taking challenge to alter the human condition at their will. They are trying to fine tune the human condition. Undoubtly with the pace of technology and research, it will be possible to face the prospect of such technologies as real artificial intelligence, new kinds of cognitive tools that combine artificial intelligence with new interface technology, powerful new molecular biological engineering and non-biological molecular nanotechnology. In the coming decades, technologies like genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology will transform human condition. A strange new world is unfolding - nightmarish to some, Utopian to others. Soon we'll have the power to reshape our children's genes, build machines that think, and upload our minds into computers. This paper has attempted to understand the concept and implementation of transhumanism and its vision. The paper has defined in short the transhumanism, its evolution and possibilities from the academic point of view.


A portable tertiary frequency standard, adjustable over a small range, is described. The frequency determining element is a tube‐maintained tuning fork, adjustment of whose frequency over a relatively small range is accomplished by changing the position of movable weights on the prongs. Calculations are simplified by the design of the fork, which permits the assumption of lumped constants.The weights may be moved while the fork is running without interfering with its operation. Indication of their position is by means of a pointer reading on a scale graduated directly in frequency units. A precise method of calibration is given. Mechanical arrangements are described for obtaining a uniformly spaced scale, and the possibility of using such a scale in correcting for the temperature coefficient of the fork material is discussed.The relative accuracy of such a fork is greater, the smaller the range of frequency adjustment. In the present development, adjustment may be made over a range of plus and minus three...


The methods employed in time-reversal imaging are applied to radar imaging problems using multistatic data collected from sparse and unstructured phased array antenna systems. The theory is especially suitable to problems involving the detection and tracking (locating) of moving ground targets (MGT) from satellite based phased array antenna systems and locating buried or obscured targets from multistatic data collected from phased array antenna systems mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The theory is based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) of the multistatic data matrix K and applies to general phased array antenna systems whose elements are arbitrarily located in space. It is shown that the singular vectors of the K matrix together with knowledge of the Green function of the background medium in which the targets are embedded lead directly to classical time-reversal based images of the target locations as well as super-resolution images based on a generalized Multiple-Signal-Classification algorithm recently developed for use with the K matrix. The theory is applied in a computer simulation study of the TechSat project whose goal is the location of MGTs from an unstructured and sparse phased array of freely orbiting antennas located above the ionosphere.


Advancements in the systems and synthetic biology fields have proved that biology can be engineered. The development of computer-aided design (CAD) tools has contributed to advancements in these fields. Mathematical modeling and simulation methods are important assets of CAD tools that are frequently applied to the systems and synthetic biology fields. Modeling and simulation methods are used to understand or predict the behavior of a biological system being studied. However, many modeling efforts in those fields face a reproducibility problem, where many published models are not reproducible. In order to address such issue, standards have been created for the representation of biological models. A major advantage of standards is that they enable model reuse and sharing. The leading standard representation of biological systems is the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML). The SBML standard is used to describe how biological processes affect and modify biological entities in a system. Such standard has been widely used to describe biochemical networks, cell signaling path, and gene regulation, among others. Unfortunately, not all models use SBML since there are many biological systems that SBML is incapable of representing efficiently, such as heterogeneous cellular populations. This dissertation explores extensions to SBML for the efficient representation of large heterogeneous cellular populations and simulation methods that can simulate such complex models efficiently. Since cellular populations are inherently hierarchical, this dissertation proposes an efficient simulator for hierarchical SBML models. Since the hierarchical structure is preserved in the proposed simulator, the hierarchical simulator is a perfect fit for handling hybrid models. However, no one has explored the coupling of different modeling formalisms within the same SBML model. Hence, this dissertation proposes a methodology that can be used to describe hybrid models. Such methodology is demonstrated by using dynamic flux balance analysis (DFBA) models as examples, and such models can be successfully exchanged between tools. This dissertation also discusses extensions to the SBML data model to support regular structures in the form of arrays. Arrays is well-suited for population models since population models use large regular structures. Another application of arrays is microsimulation of disease models, where a population of individuals with unique characteristics need to be model. With the proposed arrays extension, simulators need to scale in order to handle the increase complexity that the arrays extension introduces. Hence, this dissertation also proposes an efficient simulation method that takes advantages of arrays.


Recently, several papers have demonstrated that neural networks (NN) are able to perform the feature extraction as part of the acoustic model. Motivated by the Gammatone feature extraction pipeline, in this paper we extend the waveform based NN model by a second level of time-convolutional element. The proposed extension generalizes the envelope extraction block, and allows the model to learn multi-resolutional representations. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) experiments show significant word error rate reduction over our previous best acoustic model trained in the signal domain directly. Although we use only 250 hours of speech, the data-driven NN based speech signal processing performs nearly equally to traditional handcrafted feature extractors. In additional experiments, we also test segment-level feature normalization techniques on NN derived features, which improve the results further. However, the porting of speech representations derived by a feed-forward NN to a LSTM back-end model indicates much less robustness of the NN front-end compared to the standard feature extractors. Analysis of the weights in the proposed new layer reveals that the NN prefers both multi-resolution and modulation spectrum representations.


We propose a new method for quick and accurate partial image retrieval from a huge number of images based on a predefined distance measure. The proposed method utilizes vector quantization (VQ) on multiple layers, namely color, block, and feature layers. This can greatly reduce the amount of calculation needed for partial image retrieval. Experiments indicate that the proposed method can detect partial images that are similar to queries through 1000 images within 4 seconds. This is approximately 30 times faster than the method to which multistage VQ is not applied.


Nanocrystalline (TiC x + SiC)/C (sample 1) and TiC 0.3 N 0.7 + SiC + Si 3 N 4 (sample 2) materials were prepared by the non-hydrolytic sol-gel method. Sample 2 was obtained from sample 1 by annealing in an NH 3 atmosphere at 1623K. It was composed of aggregates of cubic SiC+TiC x N 1-x nanoparticles (10 to 30 nm in size) with a small amount of Si 3 N 4 nanofibers. A very narrow electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) line arising from magnetic localized centers could be observed in both samples. An analysis of the temperature dependence of the EPR parameters (g-factor, linewidth, integrated intensity) unveiled the existence of three different temperature ranges. At low temperature, in particular, spin reorientation processes plausibly influencing the character of magnetic interaction were registered. The thermal annealing, on the other hand, was recognizable as a modifier of magnetic transition within the nanocomposite, as well as of the prevailing interaction mechanism for each major temperature regime. The model of exchange coupled two spin systems (localized defects and conduction electrons) in the bottleneck regime was applied to explain the observed behavior of the EPR signal.


Solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) has been used as a synthetic tool to prepare monodisperse mesogen–oligopeptide conjugates with novel molecular architectures. Building upon previous success in this area, we have extended our methodologies to include a mesogenically substituted l-glutamic acid residue, and incorporated this derivative, as well as the l-lysine derivative previously reported, into a variety of new structures. Some novel liquid crystalline materials have been discovered. Bothalpha;-helical and beta;-sheet secondary structures have been explored as alternative scaffolds for the pendant mesogenic groups. The helical systems show most promise in terms of their ease of synthesis and handling, but at the relatively lower levels of mesogenic substitution studied so far, compared to the previously reported homo-oligopeptide materials, mesophases are not observed. The beta;-sheet materials prepared are rather insoluble and too high melting to have any practical value as thermotropic materials without further manipulation of their structures.


Delusive poisoning is a special kind of attack to obstruct learning, where the learning performance could be significantly deteriorated by only manipulating (even slightly) the features of correctly labeled training examples. By formalizing this malicious attack as finding the worst-case distribution shift at training time within a specific ∞-Wasserstein ball, we show that minimizing adversarial risk on the poison data is equivalent to optimizing an upper bound of natural risk on the original data. This implies that adversarial training can be a principled defense method against delusive poisoning. To further understand the internal mechanism of the defense, we disclose that adversarial training can resist the training distribution shift by preventing the learner from overly relying on non-robust features in a natural setting. Finally, we complement our theoretical findings with a set of experiments on popular benchmark datasets, which shows that the defense withstands six different practical attacks. Both theoretical and empirical results vote for adversarial training when confronted with delusive poisoning.


As a most frequently used and effective tool, control charts is an effective way for a company to improve product quality and productivity. It can also be used in monitoring the spare parts of equipment, preventing the equipment failure and reducing the maintenance costs. As the research object, the parameter of hazard rate is estimated by assuming that the hazard rate of spare parts obeying exponential distribution, the parameters of control chart is calculated by the economic model. The attributes control chart model is constructed on the condition of knowing the equipment failure parameters. At last, a case is given to verify the validity of the model. This control chart will be able to make the equipment hazard rate declined significantly by periodic preventive maintenance and process control.


Normative beliefs tend to play a significant role in the context of online buying, having both direct and moderating effects. The results of the structural equation modeling indicate a direct effect of normative beliefs on the intention to buy online. Also, the magnitude of the relationship between online trust and perceived risk depends on the level of normative beliefs, showing that the effect of online trust on perceived risk varies as a function of the level of the moderator variable. This findings yield serious managerial implications to the extent that online buying can be stimulated through trust building and referent groups pay a significant role in installing a trust environment.


Occupational therapy practice in partnership with self-help groups is consistent with the principles of client-centred practice and health promotion. This qualitative research study examined the meanings and interactional mechanisms of effective partnerships with a theoretical sample of 47 health professionals, including seven occupational therapists, and 49 self-help group members. Inductive analysis of semi-structured interview transcripts resulted in a number of themes: roles of health professionals and self-help group members, relationships between them, characteristics of effective partnerships, tensions/barriers to effective partnerships, and strategies to promote partnerships. Themes with particular implications for occupational therapy practice include trust and trust building; knowledge, empathy and understanding; and the balance of power between health professionals and self-help group members. Effective partnership relationships require a continued commitment by occupational therapists, other health professionals and self-help group members to understand the experiences and perceptions of each other.


Surgeons today are being called upon to treat patients of all ages for portal hypertension because of its associated symptoms of gastrointestinal hemorrhage, ascites, and congestive hypersplenism. The efficacy of decompressive shunting procedures has been demonstrated repeatedly in persons with extrahepatic or intrahepatic types of portal venous obstruction.* The majority of symptomatic patients are amenable to the conventional splenorenal or portacaval shunt. However, there remain four sizable groups of patients for whom such established procedures are impossible: (1) the "postsplenectomy bleeder" with cavernomatous changes in the portal vein itself, (2) the patient with preexistent thrombosis and recanalization of the portal vein and its major tributaries, (3) the person with excessive bleeding at surgery from periportal or perisplenic collateral vessels, and (4) the small child in whom the difficulties of obtaining an adequate-sized, patent portal-to-systemic venous shunt may be almost insurmountable. In each such case, the primary problem is that of


OBJECTIVES
Evaluation of the clinical effect of systemic amoxicillin and metronidazole adjunctively to mechanical debridement at furcation sites.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
This is an exploratory per-protocol collective subanalysis from a prospective, randomized, double-blind, multi-centre trial (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00707369) on the effect of adjunctive systemic amoxicillin 500 mg plus metronidazole 400 mg (3×/day, 7 days) use on furcation involvement in moderate to severe periodontitis. Outcome was the change in frequency of classes of furcation involvement after 27.5 months. Therapy comprised mechanical debridement in conjunction with antibiotic or placebo administration, and maintenance therapy at three months intervals.

RESULTS
Three hundred and forty-five patients (175 placebo, 170 antibiotics) with 6576 furcation sites (class 0 2956; class I 2370; class II 886; class III 364) were examined (3472 placebo, 3104 antibiotics). Pocket reduction/attachment gain at the furcation sites was noticeably better after antibiotics (1.2/0.6 mm) than after placebo (0.7/0.2 mm) 27.5 months after therapy. However, most furcation degrees were unchanged (placebo 61.5%/antibiotics 62.2%), more sites improved than deteriorated (20.3%/18.2%, 22.1%/15.7% respectively) and no differences in the change of furcation degrees between treatments could be detected.

CONCLUSION
Compared to placebo, prescription of adjunctive systemic antibiotics failed to show clinically relevant benefit with regard to furcation class involvement.


The purpose of the study was to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional centralised marking and explore possibilities and challenges of introducing conveyor belt marking at Zimbabwe Open University. Individual interviews were carried out for students enrolled in both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the Faculty of; Arts and Education, Commerce and Law, Applied Social Science and Science and Technology. Lecturers who have been involved in centralised marking were purposefully sampled to answer questionnaires. It was established that students understudy were more supportive of using belt marking unlike the Lecturers who pointed out too many challenges before implementing it. The challenges identified to be experienced in belt marking were organisation and management of the marking process. It was indicated that the varying level of commitment among markers, discipline, their speed at marking and mastery of content related to some questions posed great challenge to belt marking. Belt marking supervisors had to mark their own scripts, moderating those of group members and doing other administrative tasks. The solutions to the challenges involved identifying subject specialists across the University departments, staff recruitment and in service training for Staff. There was need for Departmental Chairpersons and Subject Coordinators across Faculties need to liaise with each other for the smooth running of the marking sessions. If ever belt marking was to be introduced in Open and Distance Learning institutions, there is need to revamp the whole system through training, staffing rationalisation and recruitment of permanent staff in the departments.


The genesis of the European university dates back to the Middle Ages. It was then that the original university models that would be transformed in the subsequent centuries were developed. It seems that we are currently observing yet another stage of this ongoing transformation entailing challenges that result from the progressing, multifaceted process of verifying the model of W. von Humboldt's classical university. There is a trend indicating that after the common reception of the idea of enterprising university, European universities are now faced with the need to adapt to the reality of knowledge-based economy. Undoubtedly, one of the key aspects related to the direction of said changes revolves around the security of academic financing. There is a growing pressure on universities to become active participants in the process of developing knowledge-based economy. Under these new circumstances, universities seem, on the one hand, predestined to play a significant role in the same, and on the other, faced with the threat of decline resulting from the gradual limitation of access to public financing. They now find themselves at the centre of the financial game of budgetary subsidisation. Public spending in this sphere is strongly affected by the given country's overall financial standing and the adopted public spending policies. In ageing Europe, politicians cannot afford to ignore the needs of a wide group of voters who are more inclined to support arguments advocating increased financing of e.g. the healthcare system, rather than young people's education. In this context, it becomes apparent that universities must take active steps towards securing additional financing from the so-called third revenue stream, primarily the private sector. The research financing target of 3% GDP, adopted in the Lisbon and Barcelona Declarations (over 20 years ago), has yet to be achieved in Western Europe, despite intensive reforms implemented to that end. In this context, European universities continue to trail significantly behind their North American counterparts. At the same time, in order to maintain their historically high social standing and prestige, such institutions must not ignore relevant social and economic expectations.


OBJECTIVE
To analyze the schistosomiasis endemic situation and understand its transmission trend in Jiangling County from 2004 to 2013, so as to improving the schistosomiasis control.

METHODS
The relevant data of schistosomiasis were collected and analyzed statistically in Jiangling county from 2004-2013.

RESULTS
The human prevalence of schistosomiasis was decreased from 10.22% in 2004 to 0.63% in 2013 with the descend rate of 93.84%, and the notable descend rate was 76.92% from 2009-2013. The cattle infection rate was decreased yearly from 7.59% in 2004 to 0 in 2013. The appearance rate of frames with living Oncomelania hupensis snails and the infection rate of snails reduce by 17.53% and 100% respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
After 10-year control, the endemic situation of schistosomiasis in Jiangling County decreases and is at a low level. However, the risk factors of transmission still exist. Therefore, the comprehensive control measures still should be enhanced continuously.


Objective: To extend closed-loop modeling of the heart-rate reflex (HRR) by including the dynamic effects of concurrent changes in blood CO2 tension. This extended dynamic model can be used to generate physio-markers of "baroreflex gain" (BRG) and "chemoreflex gain" (CRG) that allow quantitative assessment of the possible impact of pathologies upon HRR. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is used as an example. Methods: The proposed data-based closed-loop modeling methodology estimates the forward and reverse dynamic components of the model via Laguerre kernel expansions of two open-loop models using spontaneous time-series data collected in 45 MCI patients and 15 controls. The BRG and CRG physio-markers are subsequently computed for each subject via simulation of the obtained closed-loop model for unit-step change of arterial pressure or blood CO2 tension, respectively. Results: Both open-loop and closed-loop HRR modeling revealed that MCI patients exhibit significantly smaller CRG relative to controls (p<0.001), but not significantly different BRG. Furthermore, the closed-loop model captured the dynamic effect of sympathetic activity as resonant peak around 0.1 Hz (Mayer wave) in the chemoreflex and baroreflex transfer functions (not captured via open-loop modeling). This may prove valuable in advancing our understanding of how sympathetic activity impacts HRR in various pathologies. Conclusion: The extended HRR model, incorporating the dynamic effects of concurrent changes of blood CO2 tension, revealed significantly reduced chemoreflex gain (but not baroreflex gain) in MCI patients. Furthermore, the closed-loop model captured the sympathetic influence around 0.1 Hz. Significance: Multivariate closed-loop dynamic modeling is valuable for understanding physiological autoregulation.


Previous attempts to develop Q fever vaccines were less successful in that the vaccines caused unacceptable side effects or failed to be protective. In this study, we tested the efficacy of a mixture of eight recombinant Coxiella burnetii (C. b.) proteins in sublethal challenge infections with mice. Eight potential C. b. virulence genes (Omp, Pmm, HspB, Fbp, Orf410, Crc, CbMip, and MucZ) were overexpressed in E. coli as his-tagged fusion proteins and partially purified. All recombinant proteins but rPmm proved to be antigenic in BALB/c mice when administered as protein mixtures. For efficacy testing, mice were immunized with an adjuvanted mixture of the eight recombinant proteins and subsequently challenged intraperitoneally with the C. b. isolate Nine Mile RSA493 (1.8 108 C. b.). Only animals vaccinated with the licensed Q fever vaccine Q-VaxTM (vaccination control) exhibited milder symptoms and minor gain of spleen and liver weights. In summary, clinical examinations and dissection of mice immunized with the eight recombinant C. b. proteins did not indicate a protective immune response after test infection.


Multicellular organisms are primarily required to establish a distinct internal environment to maintain homeostasis. As a result, all internal and external surfaces of organs, such as skin, stomach, and intestines, are covered with various kinds of epithelia. In order to work efficiently as a barrier, intercellular spaces of these epithelial sheets are strictly sealed by junctional complexes. Likewise, microvascular-associated brain endothelial cells are linked by intercellular junctions. The main structures responsible for the barrier properties are tight junctions (1,2). These intercellular structures are located at the most apical section of the plasma membrane of adjacent cells (Fig. 1A), whereas adherens junctions are found in the basal part of the cell membrane. Tight junctions also act as an intramembrane fence that prevents the intermixing of apical and basolateral lipids in the exocytoplasmic leafiet of the plasma membrane. Points of cell-cell contact are sites where integral proteins of two adjacent membranes meet within the cellular space (Fig. 1B). The adjoining membranes make contact at intermittent points, rather than being fused over a large surface area. The integrity/permeability of tight junctions can be assessed by transendothelial electric resistance (TEER) measurements. In this chapter we describe the molecular composition of tight junctions and their role in several intercellular signaling pathways and leukocyte migration.


Roadways are inevitable components in any human managed landscape across the world, with the sole objective to facilitate transportation. Reserve forests are not an exception to this situation. A roadway being a potential factor in influencing biodiversity, this study checks the possibility of relationship between the distance of tree communities from roads and the basic characteristics (diversity and density) of the communities in a protected forest. 30 distinct plots were studied across two ranges in BRT Tiger Reserve, Karnataka. For each plot, its average distance and minimum distance from a road and also from specific road types were calculated. In order to check the relationship of distance from road and community characteristics, correlation tests were carried out. It is inferred that the distance from internal roads and community characteristics does not possess any relationship in a reserve forest scenario. Though the possibility of influence by internal roads over tree communities is rendered nil in this study, cautious execution of road-based operations with-in the reserve forests in future is highly recommended.

 Key words: Biodiversity conservation, correlation analysis, distance from roads, forest landscapes.


Laguna Mormona (Baja California, Mexico) is a coastal sabkha that contains a variety of microbial (cyanophycean and bacterial) mat communities. Studies conducted during 1971-76 concentrated on the microstructure, macrostructure, and degradation of these microbial mats and aragonitic stromatolites and the information they provide that is relevant to the interpretation of Proterozoic stromatolites, silicified microbial mats, and their contained microfossils. Abnormally high rainfall in 1979-80 flooded the sabkha to depths exceeding 1 m and profoundly affected these microbial communities by lowering the salinity of the water and depositing 5-10 cm of very fine grained, organic-rich mud over most of the microbial mats. The water level has returned to normal, and diatoms, cyan phytes, and bacteria locally form millimeter-thick mats upon this mud in areas that previously contained well-developed mats; however, it is unclear whether these mats will eventually attain the thickness (up to 30 cm) of their predecessors. End_of_Article - Last_Page 267------------


Yang–Baxter type models are integrable deformations of integrable field theories, such as the principal chiral model on a Lie group G or σ-models on (semi-)symmetric spaces G/F. The deformation has the effect of breaking the global G-symmetry of the original model, replacing the associated set of conserved charges by ones whose Poisson brackets are those of the q-deformed Poisson–Hopf algebra U q ( g ) . Working at the Hamiltonian level, we show how this q-deformed Poisson algebra originates from a Poisson–Lie G-symmetry. The theory of Poisson–Lie groups and their actions on Poisson manifolds, in particular the formalism of the non-abelian moment map, is reviewed. For a coboundary Poisson–Lie group G, this non-abelian moment map must obey the Semenov-Tian-Shansky bracket on the dual group G * , up to terms involving central quantities. When the latter vanish, we develop a general procedure linking this Poisson bracket to the defining relations of the Poisson–Hopf algebra U q ( g ) , including the q-Poisson–Serre relations. We consider reality conditions leading to q being either real or a phase. We determine the non-abelian moment map for Yang–Baxter type models. This enables to compute the corresponding action of G on the fields parametrising the phase space of these models.


Background Disease registries are a very useful tool to clarify and analyze in clinical practice differences between patients regarding epidemiology, prognostic, therapeutic efficacy, quality of life and socio-economic characteristics. Objectives To evaluate the main differences at the beginning of the current biological therapy between the prevalent and incident patients included in REGISPONSERBIO. Methods REGISPONSERBIO is a Spanish multicenter (17), prospective registry (3 year-follow-up, with clinical controls every six months) of patients with axial SpA (ASAS criteria) under biological treatment. All patients included should be under biologic treatment and have a minimum data set necessary to achieve the main objectives planed for the registry. The inclusion period extended between September 2013 and December 2014. The registry included two groups of patients: a) prevalent cases (patients receiving biological treatment prior to baseline visit) b) incident cases (patients who started biological therapy at the inclusion in the registry). In all patients the following data was collected at baseline: age, disease and treatment duration, gender, HLA B27, Body Mass Index (BMI), BASDAI, BASFI, CRP, ESR, metrological data, ASQoL, WAPAI, extra-articular manifestations, comorbidities, radiological study, biological treatment at the time of inclusion in the registry and concomitant treatments. For this study, characteristics between prevalent and incident cases were compared using t-Student and chi-square tests. Results are shown as mean (standard deviation) or relative frequencies. Results This registry included 258 patients, 174 out of 258 (67%) were prevalent cases. The group of prevalent patients showed higher disease evolution: 15 (11) vs 8 (11) years (p<0.001), higher proportion of males: 144 (83%) vs 57 (69%) (p=0.01), less proportion of non radiographic axial spondylarthritis: 6 (3%) vs 12 (14%) (p=0.001) and higher proportion of HLA-B27 positive 145 (84%) vs 57 (69%) although this latter result did not reach statistical significance (p=0.06). Conclusions The observed data suggest that the profile of patients starting biological therapy seems to be changing in the last years. Disclosure of Interest None declared


In the dominant paradigm for designing equitable machine learning systems, one works to ensure that model predictions satisfy various fairness criteria, such as parity in error rates across race, gender, and other legally protected traits. That approach, however, typically ignores the downstream decisions and outcomes that predictions affect, and, as a result, can induce unexpected harms. Here we present an alternative framework for fairness that directly anticipates the consequences of decisions. Stakeholders first specify preferences over the possible outcomes of an algorithmically informed decision-making process. For example, lenders may prefer extending credit to those most likely to repay a loan, while also preferring similar lending rates across neighborhoods. One then searches the space of decision policies to maximize the specified utility. We develop and describe a method for efficiently learning these optimal policies from data for a large family of expressive utility functions, facilitating a more holistic approach to equitable decision-making.


Introduction: If and how various ways of expressing oneself creatively might help heal and resolve mental problems is a question that has been discussed for decades. Creative writing is typically used as an add-on to traditional therapy rather than being an integrated part of the therapy. There is a lack of research into the effect of implementing creative writing as an add-on to therapy for alcohol dependence. The aim of this study was to introduce creative writing to chronic alcohol-dependent clients. Method: A creative writing course was held as a pilot study with six workshops each lasting two hours. Six clients recruited from a harm reduction unit in a Danish alcohol treatment centre and suffering from chronic alcohol-use disorder participated in the workshops. The workshops were led by two professional authors experienced in teaching creative writing. At the end we conducted three interviews: one with the clients, one with the therapist and one with the authors. The interviews were analysed with a focus on the clients' perspective. Findings: In the analysis, we found that writing can give the clients a lower self-esteem, make them fear failure, and it can be too private. We also found that writing can increase the clients' self-confidence and unity in the group, give them new nuances of life, stimulate their brain, give zest for life, and improve relations between clients and care providers. Further, we identified a few points of importance to be added to the organization of the workshops. Conclusion: We found that clients suffering from alcohol-use disorder participating in creative writing profited from increased self-confidence, a sense of unity, were better able to appreciate the nuances of life, experienced stimulating brain activity, had more zest for life, and that the intervention improved relations between clients and care providers.


Managing climate change is synonymous to managing cities and their growth. To shoulder the challenge of climate change adaptation, informal settlement upgrading in the global south has amounted to the importance of being attuned with the growth of its city and region at large. Changing the paradigm of on-site upgrading to being community-driven and city-led with domestic funding unlocks potentials for community resilience building, especially in countries that strive for inclusive growth. This research looks into informal settlement development dynamics and its resilience stance in conjunction of the metropolitan growth in three Southeast Asian countries. Greater Manila Area, Bangkok Metropolitan Region and Hanoi Capital Region serve as the backdrop for this investigation. The research mainly addresses informal settlement upgrading roles, mechanism and approaches for resilience building in these three metropolises, meanwhile also unveiling their city-regional development needs. The methodological approach of this study is highly participatory, demonstrating a hybrid of multi-spectrum stakeholder workshops, online surveys (due to COVID), expert interviews, project interim reports and correspondence with the local expert team in the three countries, etc. The paper attempts at providing a cross-country appraisal of the central strategies of informal settlement upgrading, related institutional constellations and upgrading applications along with the three metropolises' urban development. This attempt accentuates the pressing needs of mitigating multi-facet vulnerability of informal communities, who are the most adversely affected by climate change and rampant urbanization. Further, this research will also reveal the mindset change of how decision-makers and the public contemplate upgrading objectives, e.g., recasting secure tenure instruments.


A silver-copper (Ag-Cu) nanopaste that formulated by mixing Ag and Cu nanoparticles with an organic binder and solvent system for high-temperature die-attach application has been reported. Various weight percent of Cu nanoparticles (20-80 wt%) was loaded in the nanopaste, in order to investigate its effect on physical and electrical properties of the sintered nanopaste at 380 °C without application of external pressure. X-ray diffraction results showed that Ag97Cu3, Ag1Cu99, and CuO phases were formed in sintered nanopaste. Porosity of the sintered nanopaste was increased as the loading of Cu increased. A reversed trend has been recorded in the density of the sintered samples. Surface micrographs and topographs were examined by scanning electron microscope and atomic force microscope, respectively. The structural properties obtained from both characterizations were in agreement. Electrical study showed that the sintered nanopaste has electrical conductivity ranging between 2.27×105 and 0.81×105 (Ω-cm)-1 with a reducing value as the loading of Cu increases. These values, supported by other complementary characterizations results, have demonstrated that this nanopaste is able to be considered as the alternative die-attach material for high-temperature applications.


Since the discovery of the first inhibitors of HIV replication, drug resistance has been a major problem in HIV therapy due in part to the high mutation rate of HIV. Therefore, the development of a predictive animal model is important to identify impending resistance mutations and to possibly inform treatment decisions. Significant advances have been made possible through use of nonhuman primates infected by SIV, SHIV, and simian-tropic HIV-1 (stHIV-1), and use of humanized mouse models of HIV-1 infections. In this review, we describe some of the findings from animal models used for the preclinical testing of integrase strand transfer inhibitors. These models have led to important findings about the potential role of integrase strand transfer inhibitors in both the prevention and treatment of HIV-1 infection.


In the Corpus Hippocraticum and in tragedy, γκος is difficult to translate, for it corresponds to a very primitive notion, intuitively implying a confusion between two aspects that were gradually distinguished: 1) a thing's bulk or extension, and 2) an appreciation, as a function of its bulk and its extension, of the load represented by this thing, or its weight. This explains why the term usually designates something that has a certain mass. As an indefinite quantity of formless matter, this is probably a notion which was used by medio-Platonists, strongly influenced by Stoicism, to understand matter the Timaeus. In Plotinus' polemic against the Stoics, γκος, which refers to a magnitude with resistance bereft of qualities, is thus situated at a level intermediate between matter (λη), bereft of all determination, and the body (σμα), which is endowed with magnitude and qualities. In the Sentences, Porphyry uses the term γκος 30 times in its technical sense, almost as often as Plotinus in the whole of the Enneads. This is probably because he felt uncomfortable with Plotinus' notion of matter bereft of all determination, including magnitude.


A single-chain antibody, derived from a human monoclonal antibody that recognizes the CD4 binding region of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) envelope protein, has been designed for intracellular expression in eukaryotic cells. The single-chain antibody is composed of an immunoglobulin heavy-chain leader sequence and heavy- and light-chain variable regions that are joined by an interchain linker. The antibody is stably expressed and retained in the endoplasmic reticulum and is not toxic to the cells. The antibody binds to the envelope protein within the cell and inhibits processing of the envelope precursor and syncytia formation. The infectivity of the HIV-1 particles produced by cells that express the single-chain antibody is substantially reduced. These studies illustrate the feasibility of designing antibodies that bind and inactivate molecules intracellularly. Antibodies that act on target molecules within cells should provide a useful tool for research as well as for control of infectious and other diseases.


NoSQL (Not only SQL) data stores become a vital component in many big data computing platforms due to its inherent horizontal scalability. HBase is an open-source distributed NoSQL store that is widely used by many Internet enterprises to handle their big data computing applications (e.g. Facebook handles millions of messages each day with HBase). Optimizations that can enhance the performance of HBase are of paramount interests for big data applications that use HBase or Big Table like key-value stores. In this paper we study the problems inherent in misconfiguration of HBase clusters, including scenarios where the HBase default configurations can lead to poor performance. We develop HConfig, a semi-automated configuration manager for optimizing HBase system performance from multiple dimensions. Due to the space constraint, this paper will focus on how to improve the performance of HBase data loader using HConfig. Through this case study we will highlight the importance of resource adaptive and workload aware auto-configuration management and the design principles of HConfig. Our experiments show that the HConfig enhanced bulk loading can significantly improve the performance of HBase bulk loading jobs compared to the HBase default configuration, and achieve 2~3.7× speedup in throughput under different client threads while maintaining linear horizontal scalability.


High-throughput phenotyping is playing an increasingly important role in many areas of agriculture. Breeders will use it to obtain values for the traits of interest so that they can estimate genetic value and select promising varieties; growers may be interested in having predictions of yield well in advance of the actual harvest. In most phenotyping applications, image analysis plays an important role, drastically reducing the dependence on manual labor while being non-destructive. An automatic phenotyping system combines a reliable acquisition system, a high-performance segmentation algorithm for detecting fruits in individual images, and a registration algorithm that brings the images (and the corresponding detected plants or plant components) into a coherent spatial reference frame. Recently, significant advances have been made in the fields of robotics, image registration, and especially image segmentation, which each individually have improved the prospect of developing a fully integrated automatic phenotyping system. However, so far no complete phenotyping systems have been reported for routine use in a production environment. This work catalogs the outstanding issues that remain to be resolved by describing a prototype phenotyping system for a production tomato greenhouse, for many reasons a challenging environment.


The most important standard in technology services management is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). The literature review developed shows that one of the most important questions to answer is finding the sequence of processes to be implemented, mainly in small companies with few resources. The purpose of this paper is to show a methodology that defines an optimal specific sequence of processes for each small company depending on internal and external parameters. The main contribution of this paper is a proven methodology to obtain a particular sequence of ITIL processes specifically adapted to each company, based on a mathematical and statistical model that uses data from a web survey. Its application generates an optimal sequence of ITIL processes. The methodology has been applied with successful results in a real case, and it shows specific benefits over the previous approaches. The main learning objective of this research is a proven method to obtain an optimal sequence of processes for the implementation of ITIL in small companies. Finally, some future works are presented.


Abstract In the analysis of logic programs, abstract domains for detecting sharing properties are widely used. Recently, the new domain ${\mathtt{ShLin}^{\omega}}$ has been introduced to generalize both sharing and linearity information. This domain is endowed with an optimal abstract operator for single-binding unification. The authors claim that the repeated application of this operator is also optimal for multibinding unification. This is the proof of such a claim.


Subungual exostosis is a benign osteocartilaginous tumor of the ungual apparatus, particularly of the toes. It affects both sexes equally, more frequently in the second and third decades of life. We describe a 6‐year‐old girl who came to our attention because of the enlargement of a pinkish nodule in the distal part of the nail bed of the first toe, progressively elevating the nail plate. History, X‐ray imaging and histopathologic examination led us to confirm our clinical suspicion, excluding any other possible cause of the subungual mass. The peculiar features of this clinical entity, and the possibility of effective treatment by practical surgical techniques, are discussed.


Abstract Provenance analysis of siliciclastic sedimentary rocks gives indications of the tectonic evolution and setting of source regions and the rocks contained in them. The composition of sedimentary rocks ideally reflects the nature of these regions, and only indirectly the tectonic setting of the basin where the erosional debris is deposited. This makes it possible to interpret Late Devonian to Early Carboniferous metasedimentary basement rocks of the Andes in southernmost Chile as having been deposited at a passive margin, despite geochemical indications of an active margin setting for the source rocks, and the position of the metasediments in the backstop of an accretionary wedge. Major and trace elements point to felsic source rocks from an active margin environment. The Nd model ages of 1170–1490 Ma indicate that the source rocks were part of an old continental crust in the Late Palaeozoic. The ɛNd(T) values range between −7 and −2. These characteristics, in combination with the regional geology, suggest that the geochemical signal is dominated by rocks formed at an active margin, which later acted as feeders for the sediments deposited in a passive-margin environment. If corroborated by research in progress this emphasizes the problem of deducing the tectonic setting of a depositional basin from provenance data.


This document sets out to describe a curriculum
evaluation project undertaken for the subject "Community
Work" which is part of the Welfare Certificate Course,
Hobart Technical College.
1983 was the first year "Community Work" was
taught using a new, extended curriculum for the subject.
As it was the first year of implementation, it seemed
particularly appropriate and necessary to closely evaluate
this new curriculum.
Although much thought, research, time and effort
had gone into the development of the new curriculum, it was
clear to the designer that such development was not perfect
and did not end with the last page of the curriculum document.
Indeed, evaluation is understood to be an integral part of
curriculum development. The word 'development' implies an
ongoing advancement through stages of growth. These stages
of growth are seen to be revealed and urged on by the process
of evaluation. Logically, advancement and growth are linked to
improvement. In order to identify which innovations bring
improvement, the worth and value of the curriculum must be determined. Determining the worth and value of the curriculum
is the basic goal of this evaluation project. Although
evaluation may serve numerous roles, this basic, over-riding
goal remains of prime importance,(Scriven, 1967,39).
The role curriculum evaluation has in any particular
educational context varies greatly. The curriculum evaluation
examined in this project takes on several roles to enable
achievement of the basic goal. One role undertaken is the
appraisal of the outcomes of student learning and understanding
in all of their ramifications. This appraisal is not limited
to the final outcomes or to meeting stated objectives but also
the degree and level at which students are developing their
understanding and learning. Another role of this evaluation exercise is in
determining the value of the curriculum itself. An effort to
determine this is made through asking certain types of questions
about the curriculum such as: How well does it perform with
regard to certain criteria such as the purposes for which it was
designed? Are the purposes for which it was designed valid?
How appropriate and effective are the processes, materials, and
content in light of the purposes envisioned? Is the curriculum
appropriate for the needs and capabilities of the specific group
of students? Is the instructional approach used serving to best
fulfill the needs and purposes of the curriculum?


Co-expression of EP2 and EP3 subtypes of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) receptors (R) by U937 human monocytic cells permitted comparative studies of desensitization of each subtype. Specific binding of [3H]PGE2 to membranes of U937 cells showed a Kd of 2.9 +/- 0.3 nM (mean +/- SEM) and a Bmax of 40.5 +/- 1.0 fmol/mg protein, and was competitively inhibited by PGE2 > or = PGE1 > PGF2 alpha > PGD2 > PGI2. EP2 R and EP3 R mRNA were detected by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and Northern blots. EP3 R expression was demonstrated by inhibition of [3H]PGE2 binding with the EP1/EP3 agonist sulprostone [50% inhibitory concentration (IC50 = 3.3 +/- 0.6 nM)] and the EP3/EP2 agonist M&B 28767 (IC50 = 2.1 +/- 0.3 nM), but not with the EP1 antagonist SC-19220. EP2 R protein was identified by Western blot analysis using specific rabbit IgG antibodies to an amino-terminal peptide of the EP2 R. EP2 R transduced PGE2 stimulation of significant increases in cellular [cAMP]i [50% effective concentration (EC50 = 20 +/- 2.5 nM)], and EP3 R mediated sulprostone inhibition of forskolin elevation of [cAMP]i (IC50 = 1.3 +/- 0.4 nM). Pretreatment of U937 cells with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), which activates protein kinase C (PKC), for 1 hr reduced the total number, but not the affinity, of PGE2 R by down-regulating principally EP2 R. In contrast, a 24-hr exposure to PMA, which is known to down-regulate PKC, suppressed both the total number and affinity of PGE2 R on U937 cells with concurrent reductions in EP2 R and EP3 R. The down-regulation of EP2 R by PMA at 1 hr was blocked by staurosporine, an inhibitor of PKC, whereas the down-regulation of EP3 R by PMA at 24 hr was blocked by indomethacin. Pretreatment of U937 cells with PGE2 for 1 and 24 hr reduced both the binding affinity and the total number of PGE2 R, by co-ordinate suppression of the EP2 R and EP3 R. Desensitization of EP2 R and EP3 R for 1 hr with PGE2 suppressed subsequent PGE2-evoked chemokinetic responses to PGE2, whereas selective down-regulation of EP2 R alone by PMA for 1 hr had no effects on U937 cell migration. Thus expression of each subtype of PGE2 R is regulated independently and EP3 R, but not EP2 R, transduces PGE2 effects on migration of mononuclear phagocytes.


This paper examines the perceived threats from terrorism in six organizations in the travel and leisure sector in the UK. These organizations are particularly exposed to such extreme threats. This paper examines how managers in organizations deal with uncertainty where probabilities are impossible or difficult to define and examines how they face the challenge of interpreting and acting upon these interpretations. Theoretically the paper draws upon two lenses: organizational resilience and institutional perspectives. The former assumes managers can act autonomously to increase organizational resilience. The latter argues that systemic features of organization are more accurate explanations of why managers and organizations fail to spot threats and impending disasters. The data indicate that perceptions of uncertainty and threats from terrorism and theories of action differ in and between organizations depending upon factors such as the accuracy and completeness of information; previous experience of terrorist events and whether or not these threats were prioritized over other uncertainties. Three organizations in the aviation industry prioritize threats from terrorism, whilst three organizations in the leisure and travel sector do not. Managers in the aviation industry tend to take a proactive, organizational resilience stance towards uncertainty, whilst managers in the other organizations are more reactive, or take little action, with systemic features of organization taking precedence over decisions and actions.


This letter presents an experimental realization of a subterahertz metallic gradient index (GRIN) lens multibeam antenna operating at 355 GHz. The antenna is composed of a surface-wave Luneburg lens based on a bed of nails and a feeder array of nine WR-2.2 waveguides. The lens and the feeding structures are fabricated by the same high-precision 3D printing technique and are metalized using magnetron-sputtering gold coating. The antenna has been measured, showing good reflection coefficients below −12.5 dB at all ports and multiple independent beams covering a range of ±60°, which agree very well with the simulation. The measured gains are above 16 dBi and the scan loss is below 1.2 dB. This work demonstrates a novel manufacture and implementation approach for metallic multibeam lens antennas at subterahertz frequencies.


Aim: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is often associated with other chronic diseases. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and prevalence of chronic comorbidities in patients with COPD and to assess their influence on the effects of pulmonary rehabilitation (PR). Method: 183 patients were included multidisciplinary comprehensive PR program between July 2007 and September 2010 in our outpatient PR center. All patients were grouped according to the following comorbidity categories: 0 (absence of comorbidity), 1 and >=2 (depending on the number of comorbidity). Incremental Shuttle Walking Test (ISWT) and Endurance Shuttle Walking Test (ESWT) was used to evaluate exercise capacity, Medical Research Council (MRC) for the perception of dyspnea, St. George9s Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) for quality of life, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) for psychological evaluation and BMI, fat-free mass (FFM), fat-free mass index (FFMI) analyzing for body composition. Results: 131 patients reported at least one chronic comorbidity added to COPD. Metabolic (systemic hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidaemia) and heart diseases (chronic heart failure, coronary heart disease) were the most frequently reported comorbid combinations (88 and 23, respectively).Statistically significant improvement was determined in ISWT and ESWT (p Conclusion: Chronic comorbidities are very frequent in patients with COPD undergoing PR. Comorbidities does not preclude access to effectiveness of rehabilitation.


Antiproteases play diverse roles in nature, from regulating protease activity to innate defense against microorganisms. Recently, antiproteases have been shown to play important roles in HIV pathogenesis including, inhibiting HIV binding and replication and reducing activation and inflammation of susceptible cells. They have also been implicated as one of the initial host responders, in plasma, to control replication of HIV. More recently, antiproteases expressed at the mucosal surface have been linked to reduced susceptibility to HIV infection in HIV‐exposed sero‐negative individuals. These factors are expressed in the epithelial layer of the female genital tract, thus at the frontline of defense against mucosal infection. This review focuses on the specific antimicrobial roles of antiproteases, focusing on serpins and cystatins, with an emphasis on their known and potential roles in HIV infection. Their potential as therapeutic interventions to combat HIV is also discussed.


OBJECTIVE
To observe the effect of three-stage sequential method (TSSM) on interleukin-5 (IL-5) mRNA expression in the lung tissue of asthmatic rat model treated with steroid.

METHODS
SD rats were randomly divided into 8 groups, the normal control group (GA), the model group (GB), the model with steroid intervention group (GC) and the 5 treated groups (GD - GH). Excepting those in the GA, all rats were established into the asthma model and rats in GC-GH were intervened by dexamethasone, with the dosage reduced by 0.1 mg/kg per week starting from the 3rd week and withdrawn completely till the 7th week. At the same time, rats in GD - GH were treated with TSSM, and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd recipe of TSSM, as well as pulmicort respules (as positive control) respectively. IL-5 mRNA expression in the lung tissue of rats was detected at different time points by in situ hybridization.

RESULTS
Comparisons of GD with other groups in IL-5 mRNA expression showed: it was remarkably lowered than that in GB and GC at all time points (P < 0.01); compared to GH, the difference was insignificant at the end of the 2nd week, but significant at the end of the 7th and 9th week (P < 0.01); as for the difference between GD with GE, GF and GG, it showed very significant difference (P < 0.01) at all the time points besides that at the end of the 2nd week, it showed insignificance to GE (P > 0.05) and significance to GF (P < 0.05). The dynamic changes of IL-5 mRNA expression in GD during the steroid withdrawal period showed the lowering was more significantly at the end of the 7th and 9th week than that at the end of the 2nd week (P < 0.05, P < 0.01), but its levels were equal at the former two time points; its lowest level appeared at the end of the 9th week, which approaching the level in GA (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSION
Three-stage sequential method could remarkably inhibit IL-5 mRNA expression in the lung tissue of asthmatic rats undergoing steroid treatment.


We propose a quantum information based scheme to reduce the temperature of quantum many-body systems, and access regimes beyond the current capability of conventional cooling techniques. We show that collective measurements on multiple copies of a system at finite temperature can simulate measurements of the same system at a lower temperature. This idea is illustrated for the example of ultracold atoms in optical lattices, where controlled tunnel coupling and quantum gas microscopy can be naturally combined to realize the required collective measurements to access a lower, virtual temperature. Our protocol is experimentally implemented for a Bose-Hubbard model on up to 12 sites, and we successfully extract expectation values of observables at half the temperature of the physical system. Additionally, we present related techniques that enable the extraction of zero-temperature states directly.


A new multivariate time series model with time varying conditional variances and covariances is presented and analysed. A complete analysis of the proposed model is presented consisting of parameter estimation, model selection and volatility prediction. Classical and Bayesian techniques are used for the estimation of the model parameters. It turns out that the construction of our proposed model allows easy maximum likelihood estimation and construction of well-mixing Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. Bayesian model selection is addressed using MCMC model composition. The problem of accounting for model uncertainty is considered using Bayesian model averaging. We provide implementation details and illustrations using daily rates of return on eight stocks of the US market.


We illustrate a novel wireless local area network multiple access control (WLAN MAC) protocol whose allocation policy adopts a strategy similar to the token ring: the mobile stations access the channel upon receiving the token and release the channel by passing the token to the next user. The traffic is divided in two classes: guaranteed bandwidth (GB) and best effort (BE). The base station indirectly controls the traffic access by allotting the tokens and the bandwidth is shared by the same users with a decentralized contention-less protocol in the case of the GB users and on a contention basis for the BE users. The MAC protocol proposed the physical layer adopts a multicarrier code division multiple access multiplexing technique, which mitigates the linear distortions of broadband transmission and allows one to divide the frequency and time resources in elementary units that can be associated to the 'token'. The specification on the average and peak delay and rate are guaranteed by limiting the number of users passing the token and fixing a deadline to release the token. At the same time, similar to a reservation based protocol, the token strategy avoids collisions and is able to guarantee efficiently the integrity of the transmitted data.


In order to examine which factors were important for achieving a ≥5 year survival time in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with distant metastasis, 268 NSCLC patients who received first-line chemotherapy between January 2004 and December 2007 were retrospectively examined. The median survival time of the patients was 14 months, with 22 surviving for ≥5 years, 48 for ≥2 years, but <5 years, and 198 surviving <2 years. Multivariate analysis determined that never having smoked, a good performance status, relapse following thoracic surgery and intra-thoracic metastasis were significantly favorable prognostic factors, while abdominal metastasis was a significantly poor prognostic factor. The ≥5 years and ≥2–5 years groups had significantly more favorable prognostic factors than the <2 years group. The never-smoked status was a particularly important factor for ≥5 years of survival. The ≥5 years and ≥2–5 years groups achieved a significantly more favorable response to first-line chemotherapy, and a greater number of regimens, total months of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment and cytotoxic agent treatment cycles compared with the <2 years group. In total, ~50% of the patients received palliative radiotherapy. In the ≥5 years group, patients with EGFR drug-sensitive mutations achieved ≥5 years of survival mainly by EGFR-TKI therapy, while those without EGFR mutations achieved ≥5 years of survival by continuing effective cytotoxic agents. Achievement of >5 years of survival was found to correlate with the presence of favorable prognostic factors, response to first-line chemotherapy, provision of appropriate EGFR-TKI therapy according to genetic testing results, continuing effective cytotoxic regimens and the use of radiotherapy as local therapy.


This paper uses a recently completed study to illustrate how adaptive trial designs can increase efficiency of psychiatric drug development. The design employed allowed a continuous reassessment of the estimated dose-response such that patients were randomized in a double-blind fashion to one of seven doses of the investigational drug, placebo, or active comparator. The study design also permitted early detection of futility allowing for early study termination. By using the adaptive trial design approach, only 202 patients were needed to make the determination of futility. In contrast, a conventional design would have required enrollment of 450 patients and considerably more time and expense to reach the same conclusion. Adaptive trial designs are important at this time when many pharmaceutical companies are abandoning the development of psychiatric medications because of the inefficiency of conventional approaches.


Isolated pulmonary valve endocarditis (PVE) is a rare condition. Known risk factors in previous case reports were intravenous drug abuse and congenital heart disease. Epidemiology of PVE has been changing. It is now being reported specially following invasive healthcare-related procedures even in patients with structurally normal heart. Vast majority of patients present with respiratory symptoms and diagnosis of endocarditis may be challenging unless there is high index of suspicion. Various microorganisms had been isolated as aetiological agents; however, Enterococcus faecalis is being increasingly isolated. PVE mostly managed conservatively with intravenous antibiotics with option for surgical intervention in specific situations. We present a patient with isolated PVE due to E. faecalis following colonoscopy and polypectomy with predisposing risk factor of alcohol excess, mimicking clinically as pneumonia and radiologically as a neoplastic lesion.


The aim of this study was to report outcome data and prognostic factors from a large cohort of pathologic stage II endometrioid type endometrial carcinoma. One hundred forty-two stage IIA–B patients were included. A central histopathologic review was performed. Follow-up ranged from 2 to 217 months with a median of 61 months. End points of the study were local and locoregional recurrence rates, distant metastasis–free survival (DMFS), disease-free survival (DFS), and disease-specific survival (DSS). The local failure rate was 5.1% for stage IIA patients and 10.8% for stage IIB patients. Grade was the only significant prognostic factor for local failure. With respect to DMFS, DFS, and DSS, grade 3 showed to be the most prominent prognostic factor in multivariate analyses. Lymphvascular space involvement combined with grades 3 and 2 and myometrial invasion greater than 0.5 also showed to be significant for DMFS and DFS. Our study showed grade 3 to be the most important single independent predictive factor for locoregional and distant recurrences in endometrial carcinoma stage II


This paper provides evidence that the statutory incidence of taxes can play an important role in determining the behaviour of taxpayers. Using administrative data for Ireland, we find that short-run earnings responses to social security contributions are stronger when formally levied on employees rather than employers. This is despite both taxes being remitted by employers, and goes against the prediction of standard economic models that predict the irrelevance of statutory incidence


Considerable progress has been made in the understanding of the risk factors for venous thromboembolism (VTE). The clinical applications of molecular techniques have allowed identification of important inherited, yet not uncommon, risk factors for VTE, such as mutations that cause Factor V Leiden and prothrombin G20210A. However, advances in our understanding have raised several questions regarding the need for, and duration of anticoagulation. At the end of the treatment period, low molecular weight heparins have become the drugs of choice and standard-of-care for VTE. In this review, cost effective diagnostic approaches for patients with suspected deep vein thrombosis, and recommended treatment options using evidence-based approaches, are described.


Coordinated changes in energy metabolism develop to support gestation and lactation in the periparturient dairy cow. Maternal physiology involves the partitioning of nutrients (i.e. glucose, amino acids and fatty acids (FA)) for fetal growth and milk synthesis. However, the inability of the dairy cow to successfully adapt to a productive lactation may trigger metabolic stress characterized by uncontrolled adipose tissue lipolysis and reduced insulin sensitivity. A consequence is lipotoxicity and hepatic triglyceride deposition that favors the development of fatty liver disease (FLD) and ketosis. This review describes contemporary perspectives pertaining to FA surfeit and complex lipid metabolism in the transition dairy cow. The role of saturated and unsaturated FA as bioactive signaling molecules capable of modulating insulin secretion and sensitivity is explored. Moreover, the metabolic fate of FA as influenced by mitochondrial function is considered. This includes the influence of inadequate mitochondrial oxidation on acylcarnitine status and the use of FA for lipid mediator synthesis. Lipid mediators, including the sphingolipid ceramide and diacylglycerol, are evaluated considering their established ability to inhibit insulin signaling and glucose transport in non-ruminant diabetics. The mechanisms of FLD in the transition cow are revisited with attention centered on glycerophospholipid phosphatidylcholine and triglyceride secretion. The relationship between oxidative stress and oxylipids within the context of insulin antagonism, hepatic steatosis and inflammation is also reviewed. Lastly, peripartal hormonal involvement or lack thereof of adipokines (i.e. leptin, adiponectin) and hepatokines (i.e. fibroblast growth factor-21) is described. Similarities and differences in ruminant and non-ruminant physiology are routinely showcased. Unraveling the lipidome of the dairy cow has generated breakthroughs in our understanding of periparturient lipid biology. Therapeutic approaches that target FA and complex lipid metabolism holds promise to enhance cow health, well-being and productive lifespan.


There is agreement amongst political scientists and other scholars that there is a relationship between democracy, development and good governance. Democracy is a solid foundation for political and economic development. Democracy is also the best tool for managing social and economic conflict. There is also agreement that elections are central to the development of democracy in any country. Whilst elections on their own cannot guarantee development they are an important instrument through which all groups, including the most vulnerable, elect rulers of their choice. Once elected into power, these rulers assume the political power and authority to determine and shape national socio-economic policies and programmes that should result in better standards of living for the electorate whilst at the same time respond to the demands of economic globalisation. These rulers also decide on who forms the machinery of government, namely the executive, the judiciary, et cetera.


Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common skin condition treated by dermatologists all over the world. Guidelines for management and treatment of AD have appeared in Europe, USA and Russia recently. the paper contains comparison of European, American and Russian guidelines. Definition of AD, epidemiology, pathophysiology of the disease, clinical features, diagnostic criteria, and risk factors are consistently matched. the analysis demonstrated that guidelines do not contain serious contradictions and principal differences thus stressing their supplementation of each other.


With the increased interest in using Immersive Virtual Worlds (IVWs) such as Second Life to augment and amplify teaching or to develop communities of practice, the author engaged graduate students, all current K-12 teachers, in a qualitative study to examine their attitudes about communicating for the first time in a virtual setting represented by an interactive avatar. This study sought to determine if students were able to discern degrees of expertise in other avatars by providing encounters with guests who had a significant amount of experience navigating in a virtual world. The study examined Second Life as a synchronous discussion tool for a higher education setting and finds it lacking in some respects, but is able to make recommendations about training instructors to exhibit behaviours that may inspire confidence while leading a class in such a setting. Keywords: synchronous communication; avatars; Second Life DOI: 10.1080/09687760802526673


ABSTRACT Normal walking includes coordinated and controlled movement of the legs and arms. However, patients following stroke often present with inappropriate motor control which limits coordinated movement patterns of the affected limbs. This study aimed to compare the effects of rhythmic arm swing and arm fixation during treadmill walking in patients with poststroke hemiparesis. We used an alternating study design with multiple baselines across subjects. Three patients with chronic stroke participated in this study. During treadmill walking, rhythmic arm swing and arm fixation conditions were alternately applied. Outcome measures included the 10-meter walk test (10MWT) and energy expenditure index (EEI). In the intervention phase, all subjects showed significantly greater improvements in the 10MWT and EEI scores for rhythmic arm swing condition compared to those for arm fixation condition (p < 0.05). 10MWT improvement rates: Subject 1—34.81% vs. 15.75%; Subject 2—40.00% vs. 17.95%; and Subject 3—38.08% vs. 21.85%; and EEI improvements: Subject 1—23.19% vs. 14.08%; Subject 2—26.15% vs. 20.43%; and Subject 3—22.99% vs. 14.49%. These findings suggest that rhythmic arm swing is clinically feasible as a more favorable option to enhance the effects of treadmill walking training. However, larger studies with a different study design are needed to be able to make any judgment about the usefulness of the treatment.


Essay 1: Constructing a Social Accounting Matrix for Sardinia.
Recently, the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) has been resurrected as a policy analysis tool and, in the last decade, attention has been paid to SAM multipliers, as well as to the use of the SAM as a benchmark for computable general equilibrium models. This paper construct a SAM for the regional economy of sardinia that can be used for policy evaluation and impact analysis. A mixture of approaches is used from simple compilation and decomposition metheds to procedures for matrix estimations and matrix balancing.
 Essay 2: R&D Investment and External Knowledge Spillovers: an investigation of the impact of R&D subsidy on a recipient region in a computable general equilibrium model.
In this paper we present a computable general equilibrium model for the region of Sardinia (Italy) with the purpose of evaluating the capacity of R&D policies to affect the long run rate of growth. The model incorporates induced technical change (ITC) obtained through knowledge accumulation, and external knowledge spillowers. It runs out that the cost of R&D policies may change according to the wage setting prevailing in the region. Furthermore, the capacity of such a policy to generate knowledge spillowers from international and interregional trade is quite modest. Ideed, the capacity of the regional system to internalize the innovations embedded in the importde goods is partially offset by increase in internal efficiency that lowers the spillower intensity through a reduction in the share of imports.
 Essays 3: An applied regional intertemporal general equilibrium model: does the forward looking model fit the usual regional closures?
We present a stylized regional intertemporal forward-looking model able to take into account regional economic features, an area that is not well developed in the literature. The main difference from standard applications is the role of savings and its implication for the balance of payments. Though maintaining dynamic forward-looking behaviour for agents, the rate of private saving will be exogenously determined, and so no neoclassical financial adjustment is needed. Also, we focus on the similarities and the differences between myopic and forward looking models, highlighting divergences between the main adjustment equations and the resulting simulation outcomes.


Keujruen Blang is a person who has particular abilities in agricultural management and arrangement and served as assistant of village head in prospering the farmers. Keujruen blang have criteria such as persevering personality, discipline, experienced and master the customary law of agriculture. This thesis describes the results of research on the customary institution's utilization of Keujruen Blang: Gabungan Perkumpulan Petani Pemakai Air (Association Of Water User Farmer; GP3A) in increasing rice production in Pidie Regency. This research is important to be carried out because the existence of ofKeujruen blang is really needed by the peasant community in the farming activities of rice fields. This study uses descriptive qualitative and quantitative methods; the research method used to create an overview of the situation or event with the accumulation of data obtained. Based on the results of the study, it is known that the role and function of Keujruen Blang in driving the cooperation of the peasant community not yet maximized. What already done is only carrying out pragmatic routine activities, so as a result it does not touch on the subject matter of the decline in the spirit of Gotong Royong (mutual cooperation). Members of Keujruen Blang are not yet aware of their main task; the motivator of the peasant community. Besides, Keujruen Blang also hasn't owned the notary registration as an institution that is legally recorded in the district. The institution does not have a clear vision, mission and goals and the lack of facilities and resources available in the district in improving the ability of the institution's capability. The non-optimal function of the irrigation system also becomes a major obstruction to the development of Keujruen Blang. Besides, other problems are related to the weaknesses of local leadership, lack of educating organizational structure, lack of government participation, and part of the substance of the customary rules are less relevant to the conditions of the peasant society nowadays. In order to minimize the problems that occur in Keujruen Blang, it requires a traditional leadership reorientation from the fixed role (the implementation of routine tasks only) to the role of a agent of change, who is able to reform the organization, improve irrigation, raise awareness of the peasants and the government, and redefinition of customary rules and Keujruen Blang.


This paper discusses an alternative to conditioning that may be used when the probability distribution is not fully specified. It does not require any assumptions (such as CAR: coarsening at random) on the unknown distribution. The well-known Monty Hall problem is the simplest scenario where neither naive conditioning nor the CAR assumption suffice to determine an updated probability distribution. This paper thus addresses a generalization of that problem to arbitrary distributions on finite outcome spaces, arbitrary sets of `messages', and (almost) arbitrary loss functions, and provides existence and characterization theorems for worst-case optimal probability updating strategies. We find that for logarithmic loss, optimality is characterized by an elegant condition, which we call RCAR (reverse coarsening at random). Under certain conditions, the same condition also characterizes optimality for a much larger class of loss functions, and we obtain an objective and general answer to how one should update probabilities in the light of new information.


When treating traumatic sports injuries, glucopuncture (GP) is a new treatment modality with an interesting benefits risk ratio. GP is defined as the clinical application of multiple glucose 5% injections into soft tissues to modulate pain and to support tissue repair. Unfortunately, no large randomized clinical trials have confirmed its effectiveness so far. This article describes a clinical case of traumatic periostitis treated with GP. It invites the medical community for further basic-science and clinical studies to clarify the potential benefits of local glucose 5% injections for traumatic periostitis in professional athletes.


Phishing in mobile applications is a relevant threat with successful attacks reported in the wild. In such attacks, malicious mobile applications masquerade as legitimate ones to steal user credentials. In this paper we categorize application phishing attacks in mobile platforms and possible countermeasures. We show that personalized security indicators can help users to detect phishing attacks and have very little deployment cost. Personalized security indicators, however, rely on the user alertness to detect phishing attacks. Previous work in the context of website phishing has shown that users tend to ignore the absence of security indicators and fall victim of the attacker. Consequently, the research community has deemed personalized security indicators as an ineffective phishing detection mechanism.
We evaluate personalized security indicators as a phishing detection solution in the context of mobile applications. We conducted a large-scale user study where a significant amount of participants that used personalized security indicators were able to detect phishing. All participants that did not use indicators could not detect the attack and entered their credentials to a phishing application. We found the difference in the attack detection ratio to be statistically significant. Personalized security indicators can, therefore, help phishing detection in mobile applications and their reputation as an anti-phishing mechanism should be reconsidered.
We also propose a novel protocol to setup personalized security indicators under a strong adversarial model and provide details on its performance and usability.


Experiments have been established in order to study the antagonistic effect of cyclophosphamid treatment on the antibiotic activity of gentamicin in vivo. An immunodepressive state in mice (50 % reduction of neutrophil polymorphonuclear) was obtained with a 5 day treatment of cyclophosphamid, at the dose of 15 mg/kg. The mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with 10 LD50 of Klebsiella pneumoniae. Antibiotherapy was applied in 2 ways differing with the dose of gentamicin given twice a day by subcutaneous route (either 2.5 or 25 mg/kg) and with the time at which treatment was started (either at 1 or at 2 h after bacterial challenge). The gentamicin activity decreases in immunosuppressed mice when antibiotic is applied with a low dose (2.5 mg/kg), 1 h after infection challenge. This effect disappears when gentamicin is given with high doses (20 mg/kg) or when antibiotherapy is delayed (2 h after infection challenge). In this case, mortality is important and close to non immunodepressed mice.


This case report demonstrates the treatment of a Class III malocclusion, in a twelve-year-old girl, using a unique combination of a removable functional appliance, the "four-way sagittal" appliance and fixed appliance therapy. Efficient and effective correction of malocclusion was attained, following use of the "four-way sagittal" appliance. This appliance was designed on the Denar Witzig articulator, a powerful instrument in providing the clinician with a three-dimensional perspective plus the ability of changing the location of the TMJ on the articulator. A significant increase in the maxillary length and maxillary width was achieved.


Wound infections are the primary cause of sepsis in burn wound patients and increase burn-related morbidity and mortality. Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria induce infections in burn wounds. Conventional antimicrobial therapy is recognized as the most successful therapeutic intervention to combat infections of burn wounds. Unfortunately, antimicrobial resistance could be catastrophic and lead to treatment failure. Burn wound infections need topical treatment. Phages as an alternative for antibiotics can be used as a monotherapy for infections with antibiotic-resistant pathogens or can be applied in combination with antibiotic therapy. Phages are species-specific bacterial natural viruses. Worldwide, many phage-producing companies are emerging. However, not many countries implement phage therapy in their patient management. Clinical trials are needed to convince the health care system in those countries that do not have confidence in phage therapy in infectious diseases. This study reviewed several aspects of phage therapy in burn wound patients.


Prostate cancer cells alter identity to resist therapy One means by which cancer cells evade therapies involves their ability to reprogram to a cell type that no longer depends on the cellular pathway being targeted by the treatments. Hormone deprivation therapies that suppress androgen receptor (AR) signaling are the mainstay of treatment for metastatic prostate cancer. However, prostate cancers can become resistant to this approach by losing dependence on androgen hormones. On pages 84 and 78 of this issue, Mu et al. (1) and Ku et al. (2), respectively, contribute to our mechanistic understanding of this remarkable plasticity in cell identity, which allows cancers to thrive.


This study analyzes the effects of eliminating fuel subsidies on the labour market, focusing on oil producing countries with significantly underpriced fuel commodities. The Islamic Republic of Iran is used as a case study. Two alternative options are analyzed, with the extra revenue from subsidy elimination redistributed back to household as extra income versus directing the revenue into increased investment. A purpose-builit static and dynamic CGE model is deployed in conjunction with a unique Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of Iran. It is shown that the current structure of the economy is heavily biased towards industries that are crude oil and fuel intensive in production. Redistributing the extra revenue back to households would not be enough to overcome these distortions. The labour market suffers under such a scenario, even though Real GDP and household welfare rise. Industries contract due to the Dutch Disease effect and the more expensive inputs, causing overall production and employment to decline. Channelling the extra income into investment, however, improves the labour market's fortune dramatically in the long run. Firstly, there is increased capital accumulation due to the rise in investment. Secondly, the structure of the Iranian economy shifts. Capital is directed towards non-fuel or crude oil intensive industries, allowing the economy to adjust away from its current reliance on industries dependent on these inputs. Consequently, employment of all types of labour in the economy experience a marked rise.


The angiogenic phenotype has been characterized in a mouse model involving the human papillomavirus type-16 (HPV-16) oncogenes that develops cervical cancers via lesional stages analogous to those in humans. These studies revealed intense angiogenesis in high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasias (CIN-3) and carcinomas. Matrix metalloprotease-9 (MMP-9), a pro-angiogenic protease implicated in mobilization of VEGF, appeared in the stroma concomitant with the angiogenic switch, expressed by infiltrating macrophages, as occur in humans. Preclinical trials sought to target MMP-9 and angiogenesis with a prototypical MMP inhibitor and with a bisphosphonate, zoledronic acid (ZA), revealing both to be anti-angiogenic, producing comparable effects to a MMP-9 gene knockout in impairing angiogenic switching, progression of pre-malignant lesions, and tumor growth. ZA treatment increased neoplastic epithelial and endothelial cell apoptosis without affecting hyperproliferation, indicating ZA was not anti-mitotic. The analyses revealed cellular and molecular targets of ZA's actions: ZA suppressed MMP-9 expression by infiltrating macrophages, and inhibited metalloprotease activity, reducing association of VEGF with its receptor on angiogenic endothelial cells. Given its track record in clinical use with limited toxicity, ZA holds promise as an unconventional and safe MMP-9 inhibitor for antiangiogenic therapy of cervical cancer, and potentially for additional tumors and other diseases where MMP-9 expression by infiltrating macrophages is evident.


An arrangement of bending and structural imperfection in a plastic optical fiber (POF) for a displacement measurement system has been investigated. An evaluation on the output power of the POF caused by the displacement which induced the bending alongside the POF's structural imperfection was determined. The experimental measurement clearly revealed that the sensor exhibited an increasing sensitivity and better resolution for the shorter sensor and more structural imperfection. Additionally, the sensor can be applied for measuring the displacement in the range of 15 mm by means of infrared LED. The maximum sensitivity of 0.2401 �W/mm and the finest resolution of 4.2 �m were obtained by the sensor length of 6 cm with 3 structural imperfections. The proposed displacement sensor offers a very simple design, high sensitivity and resolution, low fabrication cost and good suitability for large displacement measurements.


Despite the fact that women now comprise half of the medical student and resident populations, women remain underrepresented in prominent leadership positions in academia. Women are challenging themselves to live up to the expectations of their professional peers, society, and their patients in order to 'have it all.' These pressures are leading to professional and personal dissatisfaction. Is this a problem that will resolve itself as the younger generations of female physicians graduate into faculty positions, or does it require more attention from both male and female medical professionals?


A simple interaction potential for nuclear reactions is considered. This permits a clear understanding of the physical ideas underlying the current theoretical models used to explain the nature of 'molecular states'. The latter have been proposed as a possible explanation for the intermediate structure observed in the cross sections of some light-ion reactions.


A non-filtering isolated perfused rat kidney model was developed to determine renal oxygen consumption in the absence of tubular reabsorption. The oxygen consumption in the absence of filtration was 3.1 +/- 0.8 micron of O2/min/g. This "basal" value was substantially higher than that of 2.0 micron of O2/min/g calculated by extrapolation of a plot of sodium reabsorption vs. oxygen consumption in filtering kidneys. It was also found that ouabain 10(-4) M decreased oxygen consumption in non-filtering kidneys and acetazolamide increased it in a dose dependent fashion. Furosemide did not change "basal" oxygen consumption. In filtering kidneys, the ratio of sodium reabsorbed to oxygen consumed averaged 36.8 muEq of Na/mumole of O2. It is concluded that basal oxygen consumption is not a fixed quantity and can be changed by experimental manipulations thereby changing the relation between transport activity and oxygen consumption.


Recent years have witnessed the success of many online social media websites. Social images are usually associated with user-provided descriptors called tags, and thus tag-based search can be easily accomplished by using the descriptors as index terms. However, the existing methods frequently return results that are irrelevant or noisy with low-quality. It is argued that the relevance and quality are two important measures for a user friendly summarizing the returned images. In this paper, we propose a relevance-quality ranking method considering both image relevance and image quality. First, a relevance-based ranking scheme is utilized to automatically rank images according to their relevance to the query tag, which reckons the relevance scores based on both the visual similarity of images and the semantic consistency of associated tags. Then, quality scores are added to the candidate ranking list to accomplish the relevance-quality based ranking. Experimental results on NUS-WIDE image collection demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


This study examined the relationship between regional urbanization and the local transmission and establishment of parasites in the salt marsh fish, Fundulus heteroclitus. To determine the relative importance of abiotic and biotic factors across local and regional scales, we quantified the parasite community in Fundulus heteroclitus collected from 6 sites selected to reflect a gradient of urbanization (determined by variation in impervious surface). A total of 630 fish was studied, with 105 collected per site in 4 collection periods from 2015-16: concurrently, we measured local abiotic parameters and regional landscape descriptors. Trace metal concentrations differed between sites, but the relationship between contaminant concentration and urbanization was not consistent. Algal biomass, determined through measurement of chlorophyll a, was significantly higher in urbanized sites, but there was not a corresponding increase in total nitrogen or total phosphorus concentrations. Parasite component communities were different between sites, with the pattern primarily associated with the presence or absence of a complex life-cycle digenean, Lasiotocus minutus. The most consistent predictors of parasite infracommunity richness within F. heteroclitus were host size, % regional salt marsh, and regional patch density. Our data demonstrate that measures of regional urbanization do not have a consistent effect on the local abiotic environment and that parasite infracommunity richness is best explained through the consideration of regional abiotic and local biotic factors. This study demonstrates how anthropogenically driven landscape change influences fine-scale parasite transmission and parasite species richness.


Moyamoya disease (MMD) is a rare cerebral vasculopathy with limited information on the associated cognitive and emotional sequelae, particularly presenting in a psychiatric setting. We present the case of a 25-year-old female with a history of MMD and depressive disorder. She underwent revascularization surgery following an ischemic stroke at age 15 years. Magnetic resonance imaging at the time of the current assessment revealed markedly abnormal appearance in the anterior cerebral circulation with extensive periventricular collateral vasculature involvement. Neuropsychological assessment data revealed deficits in inhibition and problem-solving, consistent with frontal lobe dysfunction. We discuss the importance of further research on the neuropsychological sequelae of MMD.


Purpose: To identify the pattern and psychosocial characteristics of alcohol and other psychoactive substance use among patients admitted to a drug treatment unit of a regional psychiatric hospital in Benin City, Nigeria. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 90 in-patients was conducted over a 6 month period, using a specially designed questionnaire to elicit socio-demographic and personality characteristics. Patterns of psychoactive substance use were obtained by self reporting and corroborated from case notes. Associated psychiatric diagnoses were recorded according to
clinicians' diagnosis using to the ICD-10. Results: Majority of respondents were single (86.7%), male (92.2%), and unemployed (62.2%) with up to 12 years formal
education (52.2%) and raised by both parents (60%) in
polygamous family settings. Most (52.2%) misused a
combination of psychoactive substances. Some (41.1%) had been using these substances for over 7 yr prior to admission. Psychiatric co-morbidity was infrequent (60%) and the commonest psychiatric diagnosis seen was schizophrenia (23.3%). A minority reported a history of parental use of psychoactive substances. Shy, reserved and sociable traits were seen in a minority of respondents.
Conclusion: Combinations of psychoactive substances are
usually misused by young males from polygamous family
settings. Cannabis use accounts for a high proportion of inpatient admissions. The successful management of substance use disorders needs preventive social strategies among vulnerable groups in resource-poor settings like ours.

Keywords: psychoactive substance use, psycho-social, sociodemographic characteristics.