Purpose
Continuous improvement initiatives such as Lean in Higher Education (HE) institutes are an emerging topic for research. Under pressure to do more with less, institutes of HE are increasingly adopting the tools and methods of lean to improve their quality practices. Nevertheless, institutes of HE differ significantly from business organizations. The purpose of this study was to examine the critical success factors (CSFs) of continuous improvement in this homogeneous industry. Two other contextual factors, implementation approach and national culture, are examined.

Design/methodology/approach
A mixed methods approach, combining Q-methodology, online surveys and interviews, was used to investigate the CSFs of lean implementation in HE. Participants were recruited from an international network of lean practitioners in HE. Using Q-methodology, three perspectives of CSFs in HE were identified.

Findings
Lean implementation at institutes of HE is characterized by a bottom-up approach, involving mostly supporting processes. Contrary to business organizations, the role of management in the implementation of Lean in HE is limited and attention should instead be directed to employee empowerment and customer focus. The findings also showed that, at least for institutes of HE, organizational culture is more influential than national culture.

Practical implications
When management involvement is limited, a bottom-up implementation of lean is recommended, centered on improving university-wide supporting processes, promoting cross-departmental cooperation and overcoming the silo mentality. This approach requires an emphasis on a specific set of CSFs, namely, employee empowerment, sharing success stories and training.

Originality/value
The study findings enrich conceptually based lean implementation frameworks for HE that advocate a top-down implementation approach.


A simple system of synovitis classification is proposed based on histomorphological evaluation of 400 random specimens of synovial tissue. It discriminates between two types of diagnosis: 1) one with a high degree of information, being called C-synovitis (synovitis with a characteristic or diagnostic histomorphological pattern), where the clinical diagnosis can be predicted on the basis of the histomorphological pattern, 2) a second type of diagnosis with a lower degree of information, being called NC-synovitis (synovitis with non-characteristic or non-diagnostic morphological findings in the synovial membrane). We subdivided NC-synovitis into 4 subgroups and determined the RA-probability of each subgroup in order to permit clinical use of the proposed histomorphological classification. In addition, by using immunoperoxidase staining methods for immunoglobulins the subgroups were shown to have different quantities of extravasally deposited immunoglobulins in the synovial membrane. The subgroup with the highest RA-probability also turned out to have the highest amount of extravasally deposited immunoglobulins.


Predicting mobility-related behavior is an important yet challenging task. On the one hand, factors such as one's routine or preferences for a few favorite locations may help in predicting their mobility. On the other hand, several contextual factors, such as variations in individual preferences, weather, traffic, or even a person's social contacts, can affect mobility patterns and make its modeling significantly more challenging. A fundamental approach to study mobility-related behavior is to assess how predictable such behavior is, deriving theoretical limits on the accuracy that a prediction model can achieve given a specific dataset. This approach focuses on the inherent nature and fundamental patterns of human behavior captured in that dataset, filtering out factors that depend on the specificities of the prediction method adopted. However, the current state-of-the-art method to estimate predictability in human mobility suffers from two major limitations: low interpretability and hardness to incorporate external factors that are known to help mobility prediction (i.e., contextual information). In this article, we revisit this state-of-the-art method, aiming at tackling these limitations. Specifically, we conduct a thorough analysis of how this widely used method works by looking into two different metrics that are easier to understand and, at the same time, capture reasonably well the effects of the original technique. We evaluate these metrics in the context of two different mobility prediction tasks, notably, next cell and next distinct cell prediction, which have different degrees of difficulty. Additionally, we propose alternative strategies to incorporate different types of contextual information into the existing technique. Our evaluation of these strategies offer quantitative measures of the impact of adding context to the predictability estimate, revealing the challenges associated with doing so in practical scenarios.


A previous communication (Fagian, M. M., Pereira da Silva, L. and Vercesi, A. E. (1986) Biochim. Biophys. Acta 852, 262-268) indicated that intramitochondrial calcium inhibits oxidative phosphorylation by decreasing the availability of adenine nucleotides to both the ADP/ATP translocase and the F0F1-ATP synthase complex. In this work we analyzed the interactions of calcium-nucleotide and magnesium-nucleotide complexes with the ATP synthase during catalysis of ATP in equilibrium with [32P]Pi exchange and net synthesis of ATP by submitochondrial particles. Concerning the ATP in equilibrium with [32P]Pi exchange reaction, calcium was ineffective as divalent cation when assayed alone. Furthermore, the addition of calcium increased the magnesium concentration required for half-maximal activation of the exchange, without changing Vmax. With respect to net ATP synthesis, the inhibition by calcium was shown to be due to formation of the CaADP- complex, which competes with MgADP- for the active site of the F0F1-ATP synthase. Moreover, ATP hydrolysis was competitively inhibited by CaATP2-, showing that calcium is able to interact with the enzyme in both forward and backward reactions in the same manner. That high calcium concentrations are required for significant inhibition of ATP synthesis indicates that this inhibition is relevant under conditions in which cytosolic calcium concentrations rise to pathological levels. Therefore, this mechanism may be responsible, in part, for the decrease in cellular ATP content that has been observed to occur when calcium accumulates in the cytosol.


Supply and order lead times can have substantial effects on operations performance and perceived customer service, particularly under uncertain customer demand. Certain customers place a high premium on shorter order lead times, while others may be willing to trade a longer lead time for a lower price. This paper studies a problem in which a supplier wishes to determine the best positioning of a product with respect to order lead time and price. We consider a continuous review inventory replenishment system, where the difference between the procurement lead time and promised sales order lead time influences both cycle stock and safety stock costs, and procurement costs may increase as a result of investment in procurement lead time reduction. We provide models and methods for determining the best combination of price and sales lead time for systems with high economies of scale when demand depends on both sales lead time and price. Our results indicate that for a broad range of practical settings, such systems employ a pure make-to-stock policy or a policy that sets sales lead time equal to the procurement lead time at optimality.


The training of junior doctors has undergone major changes in recent years. There is now more structure, with defined assessment time points leading to a Certificate of Specialist Training. This certificate provides documentation indicating that the trainee has undergone a satisfactory period of training and that they are sufficiently competent to practise as a specialist, unsupervised. The changes have led to re-examination of the role of, and educational provision for, research training as well as clinical training. In this article we review these issues and argue that the development of masters educational programmes may help to address several concerns.


Lateralization of cognitive functions impacts many behaviours related to fitness and, in most species, varies greatly among individuals. Laboratory and field studies have suggested that within-species variation in lateralization is partly due to phenotypic plasticity. For example, in fish, prey that have experienced predation risk during early ontogeny develop highly lateralized phenotypes, and this lateralization often favours prey in evading predators. In contexts other than predation, plasticity of lateralization has also been reported for adult fish. Therefore, we asked whether adult fathead minnows, Pimephales promelas, exposed to high predation risk would also show plasticity linked to increase lateralization. We exposed minnows to conspecific alarm cues for up to 8 days to simulate predation risk and tested their lateralization with a standard detour test. The treatment affected lateralization but in an unexpected direction: Individuals exposed to high predation risk showed lower lateralization scores compared to control fish. In addition, fish within groups exposed to risk reduced the variability in their directionality of lateralization; that is, they showed a similar turning preference in the detour task. Our study suggests that lateralization can vary in response to predation risk in adult fish. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).


This paper presents an object-oriented approach for building distributed systems. An example taken from the field of computer integrated manufacturing systems is taken as a guideline. According to this approach a system is built up through three steps: control and synchronization aspects for each class of objects are treated first using PROT nets, which are a high-level extension to Petri nets; then data are introduced specifying the internal states of the objects as well as the messages they send each other; finally the connections between the objects are introduced by means of a data flow diagram between classes. The implementation uses ADA as the target language, exploiting its tasking and structuring mechanisms. The flexibility of the approach and the possibility of using a knowledge-based user interface promote rapid prototyping and reusability.


The study evaluated the bacteria quality of freshwater fish caught from Oguta and Agulu Lakes. A total of 24 fish samples consisting of 12 samples from each Lake were sampled for four months. The fish samples were transported to the laboratory, processed and compared. Using a sterile scapel and a pair of sterile scissors, section of fish scales, gills, gut, skin, liver, intestine and gonads were removed and subjected for bacteriological analysis. A total of eight (8) bacteria isolates were identified from the fish samples. The bacterial isolates were Escherichia coli, Aerobic mesophlic bacteria, Salmonella typhi, Listera monocytogen, Vibrio cholerae, Coliforms and Staphylococcus aureus. The gill yielded the maximum isolation rate of 4310(22.3%) of the total bacteria isolates from fish of Oguta Lake, while scale had the maximum isolation rate of 2530(27.1%) of the total isolates from fish of Agulu Lake. The common isolates namely Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi and Coliforms of the family Enterobacteriaceae formed 79.9% of the total bacteria isolates from Oguta Lake fish and 74.1% from Agulu Lake fish. Staphylococcus aureus was insignificant in Oguta Lake fish (19, 0.1%) but was prominent in Agulu Lake fish where it contributed 150 (1.6%) of the total isolates. Of all the bacteria species identified, only Escherichia coli was isolated from the body parts of fish of both Lakes. Aerobic mesophilic bacteria and Staphylococcus aureus were encountered only in the scales and gut of fish of both Lakes. Salmonella typhi occurred only in the scale of Oguta fish. Vibrio parahaemolyticus was recorded only in the gonads of fish of Oguta Lake and in the intestinal parts of fish of Agulu Lake. The study revealed that the fish from both Lakes is of poor quality and this has a serious health implication. Therefore, sewage should be properly treated before disposal into aquatic ecosystems. Fish should be harvested with unpolluted water as well as handled with caution at post harvest.


Background: Intervention under ultrasonography (US) guidance has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. This study aimed to assess the treatment response to US-guided musculoskeletal interventions in daily practice. Methods: This retrospective study sought to identify the treatment response to US-guided interventions in different tissues conducted between January 2017 and December 2018. The treatment response to various US-guided interventions in different tissues was recorded. The response was further classified into positive response and negative response according to the improvement of symptoms or satisfaction of the treatment. Results: Among the 605 interventions included for data analysis, a positive response rate of 81% was observed in this study for all US-guided interventions, ranging from 70% to 88% in different categories. Conclusion: This real-world analysis demonstrated the effectiveness of various US-guided interventions without serious complications. We recommend US as a useful guidance for a variety of injections.


ABSTRACT Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) nuclear antigen 3C (EBNA3C) is essential for primary B-cell transformation. In this report we show that cyclin A, an activator of S phase progression, bound tightly to EBNA3C. EBNA3C interacted with cyclin A in vitro and associated with cyclin A complexes in EBV-transformed lymphoblastoid cell lines. Importantly, EBNA3C stimulated cyclin A-dependent kinase activity and rescued p27-mediated inhibition of cyclin A/Cdk2 kinase activity by decreasing the molecular association between cyclin A and p27 in cells. Additionally, phosphorylation of the retinoblastoma protein, a major regulator of cell cycle progression, was enhanced both in vitro and in vivo in the presence of EBNA3C. Cyclin A interacted with a region of the carboxy terminus of EBNA3C, shown to be important both for stimulation of cyclin A-dependent kinase activity and for cell cycle progression. This provides the first evidence of an essential EBV latent antigen's directly targeting a cell cycle regulatory protein and suggests a novel mechanism by which EBV deregulates the mammalian cell cycle, which is of critical importance in B-cell transformation.


Clinical and experimental studies have shown that opisthorchii tend to evade tumour growth foci to colonize more distant areas of the liver. When modelling tumours with various carcinogens in the setting of superinvasive opisthorchiasis, the intensity of invasion is reduced both before the formation of neoplasms (>120 days) and after the development of tumours of various histogeneses (liver, pancreas, and stomach) (>240 days). Egg production was observed to increase with the decrease in the number of parasites in the liver. The smallest changes in the infestation intensity indicators and egg production were observed in the experimental stomach tumours (p > 0.05). A partial hepatectomy in the setting of opisthorchiasis did not affect the number of parasites in the ecological niche (liver) or the production of eggs by the helminth. With the deterioration of the vegetation state, parasite clumps of opisthorchii increase egg production under the conditions of distress.


In this study, polycrystalline lead magnesium niobate–lead titanate (PMN–PT) was explored as an alternative piezoelectric material, with a higher power density for energy harvesting (EH), and comprehensively compared to the widely used polycrystalline lead zirconate titanate (PZT). First, the size distribution and piezoelectric properties of PZT and PMN–PT raw powders and ceramics were compared. Thereafter, both materials were deposited on stainless-steel substrates as 10 μm thick films using the aerosol deposition method. The films were processed as {3–1}-mode cantilever-type EH devices using microelectromechanical systems. The films with different annealing temperatures were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and dielectric behavior measurements. Furthermore, the mechanical and electrical properties of PMN–PT- and PZT-based devices were measured and compared. The PMN–PT-based devices showed a higher Young's modulus and lower damping ratio. Owing to their higher figure of merit and lower piezoelectric voltage constant, they showed a higher power and lower voltage than the PZT-based devices. Finally, when poly-PMN–PT material was the active layer, the output power was enhanced by 26% at the 0.5 g acceleration level. Thus, these devices exhibited promising properties, meeting the high current and low voltage requirements in integrated circuit designs.


A lot of researches find negative volatility risk premium in options market. We can make a trading profit by exploiting the negative volatility premium. This study proposes negative volatility risk premium hypotheses in the KOSPI 200 stock price index options market and empirically test the proposed hypotheses with intra-day short straddle strategy. This strategy sells both at-the-money call option and at-the-money put option at market open and exits the position at market close. Using MySQL 5.1, we create our database with 1 minute option price data of the KOSPI 200 index options from 2004 to 2009. Empirical results show that negative volatility risk premium exists in the KOSPI 200 stock price index options market. Furthermore, intra-day short straddle strategy consistently produces annual profits except one year.


The L protein of Bunyamwera virus (BUNV; family Bunyaviridae) is an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, 2238 aa in length, that catalyses transcription and replication of the negative-sense, tripartite RNA genome. To learn more about the molecular interactions of the L protein and to monitor its intracellular distribution we inserted a 14 aa V5 epitope derived from parainfluenza virus type 5, against which high-affinity antibodies are available, into different regions of the protein. Insertion of the epitope at positions 1935 or 2046 resulted in recombinant L proteins that retained functionality in a minireplicon assay. Two viable recombinant viruses, rBUNL4V5 and rBUNL5V5, expressing the tagged L protein were rescued by reverse genetics, and characterized with respect to their plaque size, growth kinetics and protein synthesis profile. The recombinant viruses behaved similarly to wild-type (wt) BUNV in BHK-21 cells, but formed smaller plaques and grew to lower titres in Vero E6 cells compared with wt BUNV. Immunofluorescent staining of infected cells showed the L protein to have a punctate to reticular distribution in the cytoplasm, and cell fractionation studies indicated that the L protein was present in both soluble and microsomal fractions. Co-immunoprecipitation and confocal microscopic assays confirmed an interaction between BUNV L and N proteins. The recombinant viruses expressing tagged L protein will be highly valuable reagents for the detailed dissection of the role of the BUNV L protein in virus replication.


The progenitors of some supernovae (SNe) exhibit outbursts with super-Eddington luminosities prior to their final explosions. This behavior is common among SNe IIn, but the driving mechanisms of these precursors are not yet well-understood. SNHunt 275 was announced as a possible new SN during 2015 May. Here we report on pre-explosion observations of the location of this event by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and report the detection of a precursor about 500 days prior to the 2015 May activity (PTF 13efv). The observed velocities in the 2015 transient and its 2013 precursor absorption spectra are low (1000–2000 km s−1), so it is not clear yet if the recent activity indeed marks the final disruption of the progenitor. Regardless of the nature of this event, we use the PTF photometric and spectral observations, as well as Swift-UVOT observations, to constrain the efficiency of the radiated energy relative to the total kinetic energy of the precursor. We find that, using an order-of-magnitude estimate and under the assumption of spherical symmetry, the ratio of the radiated energy to the kinetic energy is in the range of 4 × 10−2 to 3.4 × 103.


ABSTRACT
Febrile neutropenia is an oncologic emergency with serious consequences. Granulocyte colony stimulating factors (G-CSFs), used to stimulate neutrophil production to prevent febrile neutropenia, can cause bone pain in more than 25% of patients. Severe bone pain may not respond to acetaminophen, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), opioids, or dose reduction of the G-CSF agent. A study found that patients taking loratadine had fewer treatment-associated adverse reactions and discontinuations than those on naproxen. Although more research is needed, loratadine's tolerability, ease of administration, and potential benefit mean that it should be considered for management of pegfilgrastim-associated bone pain. This article describes a patient whose G-CSF-induced bone pain was completely alleviated by loratadine.


Carbon neutrality in municipalities can be achieved by combining individual heating and district heating solutions involving the use of renewable energy sources. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages, but the best solution depends on the specific circumstances of each municipality. As an environmentally friendly and efficient energy use, a decentralised heat supply contributes to achieving energy conservation and emissions reduction goals. Decentralised energy use, such as solar collectors with thermal energy storage or biomass as a resource, reduces dependence on centralised heat generation and transmission. The appropriate infrastructure for connection to district heating networks has not yet been built. On the other hand, it is easier to make investments to construct proper infrastructure in the case of large-scale centralised heat supplies. Moreover, a centralised heat supply with renewable energy sources can provide more inhabitants with renewable heat energy. Within the framework of the study, the possibilities of using renewable energy sources in one of the municipalities of Latvia—the Carnikava parish of Ādaži Municipality—are analysed. The study examines two scenario complexes including individual heating solutions in buildings or district heating solutions with a centralised approach. The study evaluates several alternatives to increase the share of RES (solar collectors, biomass, heat pumps, etc.) in the centralised heat supply. To evaluate individual RES solutions in various municipal buildings, this study evaluates alternatives with different technical solutions that increase the use of RES in heat supply.


On the Falklands question, David Cameron has been the most robust British Prime Minister since the late Margaret Thatcher. He has accused the Argentine government led by President Christina Kirchner of being 'colonial like' in its campaign to 'recover' the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas). This article teases out two aspects of the current UK policy towards the Falklands and wider region: first, the Falklands are increasingly imagined as a strategic 'gateway' to the wider region including Antarctica. Resource interests do play a major role in this geographical imagination and in a post-Afghanistan era, there might be additional UK military capacity to support the UK presence. Second, the Coalition government is, more than ever, determined to promote and protect the 'wishes' of the Falkland Islands community to self-determine their own future. This has, in turn, given added confidence to the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) to organize a referendum in March 2013. There is going to be no return to a more ...


Herein, we report the development of an improved system for the Cu-catalyzed enantioselective reductive coupling of ketones and allenamides through the optimization of the allenamide to avoid an on-cycle rearrangement. High enantioselectivities could be obtained for a variety of ketones. Use of the acyclic allenamides described herein selectively generated anti-diastereomers in contrast to cyclic allenamides that were previously shown to favor the syn-form. A rationale for this change in diastereoselectivity is also presented.


In this article, we consider a system consisting of multiple interdependent assets, and a set of defenders, each responsible for securing a subset of the assets against an attacker. The interdependencies between the assets are captured by an attack graph, where an edge from one asset to another indicates that if the former asset is compromised, an attack can be launched on the latter asset. Each edge has an associated probability of successful attack, which can be reduced via security investments by the defenders. In such scenarios, we investigate the security investments that arise under certain features of human decision making that have been identified in behavioral economics. In particular, humans have been shown to perceive probabilities in a nonlinear manner, typically overweighting low probabilities and underweighting high probabilities. We show that suboptimal investments can arise under such weighting in certain network topologies. We also show that pure strategy Nash equilibria exist in settings with multiple (behavioral) defenders, and study the inefficiency of the equilibrium investments by behavioral defenders compared to a centralized socially optimal solution.


Abstract Mercier, J. R., Kopp, D. T., McDavid, W. D., Dove, S. B., Lancaster, J. L. and Tucker, D. M. Measurement and Validation of Benchmark-Quality Thick-Target Tungsten X-Ray Spectra below 150 kVp. Pulse-height distributions of two constant potential X-ray tubes with fixed anode tungsten targets were measured and unfolded. The measurements employed quantitative alignment of the beam, the use of two different semiconductor detectors (high-purity germanium and cadmium-zinc-telluride), two different ion chamber systems with beam-specific calibration factors, and various filter and tube potential combinations. Monte Carlo response matrices were generated for each detector for unfolding the pulse-height distributions into spectra incident on the detectors. These response matrices were validated for the low error bars assigned to the data. A significant aspect of the validation of spectra, and a detailed characterization of the X-ray tubes, involved measuring filtered and unfiltered beams at multiple tube potentials (30–150 kVp). Full corrections to ion chamber readings were employed to convert normalized fluence spectra into absolute fluence spectra. The characterization of fixed anode pitting and its dominance over exit window plating and/or detector dead layer was determined. An Appendix of tabulated benchmark spectra with assigned error ranges was developed for future reference.


Oxidative coupling of oxime and b-dicarbonyl compounds dominates in a b-dicarbonyl compound/oxime/ Cu(II)/t-BuOOH system; in the absence of oxime, oxidative coupling of t-BuOOH and a b-dicarbonyl compound (Kharasch peroxidation) takes place. The proposed conditions for oxidative coupling of oximes with dicarbonyl compounds require only catalytic amounts of copper salt and t-BuOOH serves as a terminal oxidant. The C–O coupling reaction proceeds via the formation of tert-butoxyl, tertbutylperoxyl and iminoxyl radicals. Apparently, tert-butylperoxyl radicals oxidize oxime into iminoxyl radical faster than they react with b-dicarbonyl compounds forming the Kharasch peroxidation product. Iminoxyl radicals are responsible for the formation of the target C–O coupling products; the yields are up to 77%.


According to the Ministry of Public Education's (MEP) English teaching syllabus for elementary school (first cycle grades 1 to 3 and second cycle grades 4 to 6), the pedagogical approach that is prevalent to achieve the national goal is the Action-Oriented Approach. In concordance to MEP's theoretical support, it is through the phonemic awareness development that English teachers must introduce the reading and writing skills. This study took place in two Educational Regions: San José Central and San José Norte. The researchers analyzed the effectiveness of the methodology used by first through third grade (First Cycle) English teachers and designed three workshops to enhance their pedagogical mediation of phonemic awareness. The main finding was a gap between the approach stated in the new English program in terms of the phonological awareness and the development of best practices in the didactic plan, «Task Cycle», to scaffold young learners' process of reading and writing.


Abstract The total amounts of carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in the mainstream smoke of a burning cigarette during a steady draw were measured by a non-dispersive infrared (IR) technique for a variety of flow rates. The temperature profiles in the cigarette were also measured under the same flow conditions. The data were used in a diffusion model to estimate the concentrations of these gases downstream of the pyrolysis zone. The contribution of pyrolysis in the generation of these gases was calculated using a kinetic model. The remaining CO and CO2 are attributed to processes occurring in the combustion zone. The calculated mean concentrations of carbon oxides behind the pyrolysis zone are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data. The contributions of pyrolysis and combustion to the formation of CO were found to be approximately 1/3 and 2/3 respectively. The results show that the peak temperature rises with an increase in the mainstream flow rate in the limited range of 0 to 200 mL/min. As a result, the concentrations of carbon oxides behind the pyrolysis zone also increase with the flow rate and reach plateaus at higher flow rates.


In this article we review and discuss data of the use and mechanisms of action of autovaccines. The idea of autovaccination is that killed microorganisms could be used not only in prevention, but also in the treatment of infections. Autovaccines are prepared individually from strains of microorganisms isolated from the patient. The pathogens are inactivated and then administered in increasing concentrations. Autogenous vaccines permit treatment of infections caused by bacteria against which no preventive vaccine has been available.
Autovaccine therapy has a long history, it have been used since the beginning of the 20th century to treat chronic infections. From the literature is known, that autovaccines have been used for treatment diseases' of the skin, bones, joints, digestive organs, genitals, periodontal, eye, ears, nose and respiratory system the history of the half-century use of auto vaccines has shown that they may be a promising alternative in the treatment of chronic infections.
However from the middle of the 20th century autovaccines have been forgotten because of efficient antibiotic therapies. But now rapid spread of multiresistant bacterial and fungal strains enforces the development of new strategies to combat chronic infections. In view of the variability of the bacterial species, personalized approaches could hold promise for patients with recurrent or chronic infection. Therefore interest to autovaccines returns.
Autovaccines have been used to treat ongoing chronic infection but their mechanism of action is still unknown. Recently, the results of several studies have been published that examined the effects of autovaccines on the immune system. But published data are quite inconsistent and incomplete. Therefore further research is required in this area.
So clinical studies from the early 1900s and novel autovaccination approaches suggest an alternative strategy to antibiotic therapy.


PURPOSE
To explore whether volumetric measurements of 3D-CUBE sequences based on baseline and early treatment time can predict neoadjuvent chemotherapy (NCT) efficacy of locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).

MATERIAL AND METHOD
73 patients with LARC were enrolled from February 2014 to January 2018. All patients underwent MRIs during the baseline period before NCT (BL-NCT) and the first month of NCT (FM-NCT), and tumor volume (TV) was measured using 3D-CUBE, and tumor volume reduction (TVR) and tumor volume reduction rate (TVRR) were calculated. In addition, tumor invasion depth, tumor maximal length, range of tumor involvement in the circumference of intestinal lumen and distance from inferior part of tumor to the anal verge were measured using baseline high-spatial-resolution T2-weighted MRIs. All patients were categorized into sensitive and insensitive groups based on post-surgical pathology after completion of the full courses of NCT. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to analyze the value of different MRI parameters in predicting efficacy of NCT.

RESULTS
Statistically significant differences in TV of BL-NCT, TVR and TVRR from BL-NCT to FM-NCT were detected between sensitive and insensitive groups (P < 0.05, respectively). The areas under the curves (AUC) of ROC of TVR and TVRR in predicting efficacy of NCT (0.890 [95% CI, 0.795∼0.951], 0.839 [95% CI, 0.735∼0.915]) were significantly better than that of TV (0.660 [95% CI, 0.540∼0.767]) (P < 0.05, respectively).

CONCLUSION
Reconstruction of 3D-CUBE volume in the first month of NCT is necessary, and both TVR and TVRR can be used as early predictors of NCT efficacy.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of simulated visual impairment on the reading speed and reading eye movements of young, normally‐sighted observers. Afocal diffusing filters (Ryser occlusion foils) were used to create three levels of impairment and eye movements were recorded using a spectacle‐mounted, infra‐red limbal reflection system. Reading speed decreased significantly (P<0.01) as the level of impairment increased. Eye movement analysis revealed the main contributory factors to be increased fixation durations, shorter sac‐cades (resulting in increased numbers of forward saccades per line) and, to a lesser extent, increased time required for page navigation. The results suggest that in order to achieve optimal reading speeds, print size should be at least four times the acuity threshold and that print contrast should be at least twenty times contrast threshold.


X-ray microtomography enables three-dimensional imaging at sub-micron resolution with elemental and chemical state contrast. The 1 - 4 KeV energy region is promising for microtomography of biological, microelectronics, and materials sciences specimens. To capitalize on this potential, we are constructing a tomographic scanning x-ray microscope for 1 - 4 KeV x rays on a spherical grating monochromator beamline at the advanced photon source. The microscope, which uses zone plate optics, has an anticipated spatial resolution of 100 nm and an energy resolution of better than 1 eV.


Graa's work critically examines the continual rebirth of cultural romances on the part of literary intellectuals. His disdain for contrived rejections of modernity and for grand destructive gestures is combined with his intense appreciation of the romantic sensibility. "Fact and Symbol" embodies Graa's views of the enterprise of cultural sociology in which both words are given equal play.


Given a flow network with variable suppliers and fixed consumers, the minimax flow problem consists in minimizing the maximum flow between nodes, subject to flow conservation and capacity constraints. We solve this problem over acyclic graphs in a distributed manner by showing that it can be recast as a consensus problem between the maximum downstream flows, which we define here for the first time. In addition, we present a distributed algorithm to estimate these quantities. Finally, exploiting our theoretical results, we design an online distributed controller to prevent overcurrent in microgrids consisting of loads and droop-controlled inverters. Our results are validated numerically on the CIGRE benchmark microgrid.


In this study, the optimal tracking performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) networked control systems is investigated. The system under consideration is finite-dimensional, linear time-invariant over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel between the controller and the plant. The power of the tracking error is adopted as the measure of the performance and is minimised subject to the channel input power constraint searching through all stabilising two-parameter controllers. It is shown that, under the channel input power constraint, the optimal tracking performance is closely dependent on non-minimum phase zeros, unstable poles of the plant and the characteristics of the signals and the channel. Finally, computer simulations are provided to illustrate the analytical results obtained.


Bulk superconductivity (SC) has recently been observed in the Al-Zn-Mg quasicrystal (QC). To settle the several fundamental issues on the SC on the QC, we perform a systematic study on an attractive Hubbard model on the Penrose lattice. The first issue is the Cooper instability under an infinitesimal attractive interaction on the QC without a Fermi surface. We start from the two-electron problem outside the filled Fermi-sea, where we vigorously prove that an infinitesimal Hubbard attraction can lead to the Cooper instability as long as the density of state is nonzero at the Fermi level, which provides the basis for the SC on the QC. Our numerical results yield that the Cooper pairing always takes place between a time-reversal partner, satisfying the Anderson's theorem. On this basis, we perform a mean-field (MF) study on the system, at both the zero and finite temperatures. The MF study also shows that an arbitrarily weak attraction can lead to the pairing order, with the resulting pairing state well described by the BCS theory. The second issue is about the superfluid density on the QC without translational symmetry. It's clarified that although the normal state of the system locates at the critical point of the metal-insulator transition, the pairing state exhibits real SC, carrying finite superfluid density that can be verified by the Meissner effect. Further more, our study reveals a fundamental difference between the SC on the periodic lattice and that on the QC: while the paramagnetic superfluid density in the former case vanishes at zero temperature, that in the latter case is nonzero due to the lack of translational symmetry, reflecting the consumption of superfluid density from the scattering by the non-periodic structure. These properties of the SC on the Penrose lattice revealed here are universal for all QC lattices.


Deformation and damage processes in brittle and quasi-brittle materials, such as rock and concrete, are strongly influenced by their heterogeneous nature, related to their formation processes. The presence of heterogeneities leads in fact to noticeable variation in material properties values: it is of extreme importance that a numerical model which aims to realistically, reliably reproduce with low computational effort deformation and damage processes is able to include the effect of laminations, micro-cracks, voids and other types of heterogeneities; this is even more important when a numerical models has to reproduce the propagation of fractures. This thesis presents the development of a numerical framework for the simulation of crack propagation in shale rocks and concrete which also looks at the optimisation problem in the sense of computational efficiency (defined as optimal computational time needed to obtain realistic and accurate results). The numerical framework for crack propagation developed in this thesis is a variational phase-field model based on a finite elements smeared approach, able to automatically and realistically capture crack initiation processes for a variety of loading conditions; this numerical framework is based on the relation between potential energy associated to body deformation and the energy released during fracture formation. Heterogeneity is considered in the model by means of a stochastic approach based on the assumption that some mechanical properties of heterogeneous brittle materials (such as fracture energy) follow a non-Gaussian Weibull distribution. To guarantee adequate convergence of the results, Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) method has been used in combination with the developed stochastic methodology. A non-linear dimensionality reduction technique has been developed and incorporated in the algorithm to reduce the computational effort required for the generation of sample realisations. The methodology has been validated using experimental results from both laboratory tests on shale rocks and literature on fracture in concrete. Results show that the developed algorithm is capable of realistically reproducing the mechanical behaviour of the chosen case studies, showing an applicability to problems where cracks propagate in mode-I, mode-II and mixed-mode I and II, guaranteeing a fast generation of sampling realisations of realistic stochastic fields and convergence of results after a maximum of 130 MCS analyses. This methodology can be applied to materials with random spatially-distributed variations of mechanical properties and to those showing laminar natural formations.


The study was conducted to evaluate the growth performance and nutrient digestibility of fattening Uda rams fed Alkali treated neem kernel cake. The experiment was conducted at the Teaching and Research Farm of Usmanu Danfodiyo University. Sixteen Uda rams were randomly allotted to treatment diets A, B, C and D with 0, 8.33, 16.67 and 24.99% levels of inclusion of ATNKC, respectively. The study lasted for 105 days consisting of 84 days feeding trial and 21 days of digestibility trial which comprised of 14 days for adaption and seven days for collection of feaces. The dry matter digestibility for all the nutrients in the control and test diets was comparable. The performance of the sheep in treatment B recorded the best ADG of 166.67g/day and highest dry matter intake in treatment A. It was recommended in the study that alkali treated neem kernel cake can be safely included in feed of sheep up to 24.99% for the rams.


Objectives & Background Appropriate activation of multi-disciplinary trauma teams improves outcome for severely injured patients, but can disrupt normal service in the rest of the hospital. Derriford Hospital uses a two-tiered trauma team activation system. The emergency department (ED) trauma team is activated in response to a significant traumatic mechanism; the hospital trauma team is activated when this mechanism co-exists with physiological abnormality or specific anatomical injury. The aim of this study was to compare characteristics, process measures and outcomes between patients treated by ED or hospital trauma teams to evaluate the approach in a UK setting and to estimate any cost savings involved. Figure 1 outlines the composition and activation criteria of the teams. Abstract 014 Figure 1 (a) ED trauma team activation and (b) Hospital trauma team activation. Methods A retrospective database review was performed, using the TARN database and the local source trauma database. All patients who activated a trauma team between 1 Apr 12 to 30 Sep 12 were included. Patients were categorised according to the type of trauma team activated to receive them. Data included time to primary survey X-rays, time to CT, time to intubation, numbers discharged from ED, ICU admission, injury severity score (ISS), and mortality. Cost savings associated with activating an ED rather than hospital response were extrapolated from previously described methodology. Results During the study period 456 patients activated a trauma team, 358 ED and 98 hospital (see Figure 2). Patients seen by the ED team were significantly less likely to have severe injury or require hospital admission, intubation, emergency operation or blood transfusion. Differences in time taken to key investigations were statistically but not clinically significant. The cost saving of avoiding hospital team activation for those patients not requiring specialist care was estimated at £180,663 per annum. Abstract 014 Figure 2 Statistics comparing Hospital and ED calls. Conclusion A two-tiered trauma team activation system is an efficient, safe and cost-effective way of dealing with trauma patients presenting to a Major Trauma Centre in the UK.


We studied some cell mediated immunologic assay in a normal population and in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the bronchus. In cancer patients lymphocyte mitogen stimulation with PHA and PWM did not show any significant difference from normal population; PPD antigenic stimulation was lower in eight patients of ten. E-total rosette forming cells count was reduced, there was no difference in E-active rosette forming cells. Electrophoretic mobility of lymphocytes showed that a part of lymphocytes have a lower electrophoretic cell migration. Lymphocytes subpopulations isolated by E rosetting technique are different in cancer patients from subpopulations separated by electrophoresis; in controls similar subpopulations were obtained by the two methods. In cancer patients cell mediated immunity shows altered functions which is though not uniformly modified. We think that serum factors and cells with blocking action cause these effects rather than intrinsic changes of lymphocytes.


The C9 Fred Davis and Yvonne Leroux Fonds at the Archives of Ontario is comprised of textual and photographic materials that primarily document the 1930's Canadian phenomenon, the Dionne Quintuplets; Davis was their official photographer and Leroux, was their nurse. This Fonds, although important to Canadian history, had a similar fate to many archivally held collections, in that improper processing made the collection challenging to discover and navigate through. This applied thesis discusses the literature research, and overall development and creation of a finding aid. It also examines the development of a current finding aid completed to the Archives of Ontario's standards, which logically organized the collection and links the material physically and intellectually.


Outlier detection is a crucial part of robust evaluation for crowdsourceable assessment of Quality of Experience (QoE) and has attracted much attention in recent years. In this paper, we propose some simple and fast algorithms for outlier detection and robust QoE evaluation based on the nonconvex optimization principle. Several iterative procedures are designed with or without knowing the number of outliers in samples. Theoretical analysis is given to show that such procedures can reach statistically good estimates under mild conditions. Finally, experimental results with simulated and real-world crowdsourcing datasets show that the proposed algorithms could produce similar performance to Huber-LASSO approach in robust ranking, yet with nearly 8 or 90 times speed-up, without or with a prior knowledge on the sparsity size of outliers, respectively. Therefore the proposed methodology provides us a set of helpful tools for robust QoE evaluation with crowdsourcing data.


The mathematical and physical basis of the SHIP computer program which embodies a finite-difference, implicit numerical procedure for the computation of hydrogen injected into a supersonic airstream at an angle ranging from normal to parallel to the airstream main flow direction is described. The physical hypotheses built into the program include: a two-equation turbulence model, and a chemical equilibrium model for the hydrogen-oxygen reaction. Typical results for equilibrium combustion are presented and exhibit qualitatively plausible behavior. The computer time required for a given case is approximately 1 minute on a CDC 7600 machine. A discussion of the assumption of parabolic flow in the injection region is given which suggests that improvement in calculation in this region could be obtained by use of the partially parabolic procedure of Pratap and Spalding. It is concluded that the technique described herein provides the basis for an efficient and reliable means for predicting the effects of hydrogen injection into supersonic airstreams and of its subsequent combustion.


The functional morphology of the alimentary canal of copepodite and chalimus stages of Lepeophtheirus salmonis (Kroyer, 1837) is described and compared with that found in other copepods studied to date.

The buccal cavity passes into a gut comprising three major regions: foregut (oesophagus), midgut and hindgut. The foregut and hindgut both posscss a cuticular lining whereas the midgut is lined with specialized epithelial cells. The midgut is divided into three recognizable zones, namely anterior midgut caecum, anterior midgut and posterior midgut. Three main types of epithelial cell are recognizable in the midgut: vesicular cells, microvillous cells and basal cells which correspond to the cell types normally described in other parasitic and free-living copepod species.

Digestion is thought to occur in the midgut and be mediated by the epithelial cells that line it. Although several glands appear to discharge into the area of the buccal cavity, none was seen to interface to any other area of the gut. There was no evidence for the involvement of commensal gut bacteria in food digestion.


The trend of research towards more sustainable materials is pushing the application of biopolymers in a variety of unexplored fields. In this regard, hydrogels are attracting significant attention as electrolytes for flexible electrochemical devices thanks to their combination of ionic conductivity and mechanical properties. In this context, we present the use of cellulose-based hydrogels as aqueous electrolytes for electrochemical devices. These materials were obtained by crosslinking of hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) with divinyl sulfone (DVS) in the presence of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), creating a semi-IPN structure. The reaction was confirmed by NMR and FTIR. The small-amplitude oscillatory shear (SAOS) technique revealed that the rheological properties could be conveniently varied by simply changing the gel composition. Additionally, the hydrogels presented high ionic conductivity in the range of mS cm−1. The ease of synthesis and processing of the hydrogels allowed the assembly of an all-in-one electrochromic device (ECD) with high transmittance variation, improved switching time and good color efficiency. On the other hand, the swelling ability of the hydrogels permits the tuning of the electrolyte to improve the performance of a printed Zinc/MnO2 primary battery. The results prove the potential of cellulose-based hydrogels as electrolytes for more sustainable electrochemical devices.


The integration of BPM and SOA has the potential to lead to increased agility, lower development and maintenance costs and a better alignment between business and IT. However, it still requires large efforts by highly skilled personnel. The Service-Targeted Policy-Oriented WorkfLow Approach attacks this problem by integrating workflows and services with policies to clearly distinguish between the core process description and the variations. This paper presents a first assessment of the impact of the approach on the design of business processes. To this end, we exploit a case study, namely the activation of VoIP services by a re–seller of telecommunication services.


The performance of neural code search is significantly influenced by the quality of the training data from which the neural models are derived. A large corpus of high-quality query and code pairs is demanded to establish a precise mapping from the natural language to the programming language. Due to the limited availability, most widely-used code search datasets are established with compromise, such as using code comments as a replacement of queries. Our empirical study on a famous code search dataset reveals that over one-third of its queries contain noises that make them deviate from natural user queries. Models trained through noisy data are faced with severe performance degradation when applied in real-world scenarios. To improve the dataset quality and make the queries of its samples semantically identical to real user queries is critical for the practical usability of neural code search. In this paper, we propose a data cleaning framework consisting of two subsequent filters: a rule-based syntactic filter and a model-based semantic filter. This is the first framework that applies semantic query cleaning to code search datasets. Experimentally, we evaluated the effectiveness of our framework on two widely-used code search models and three manually-annotated code retrieval benchmarks. Training the popular DeepCS model with the filtered dataset from our framework improves its performance by 19.2% MRR and 21.3% Answer@l, on average with the three validation benchmarks.


Background Acculturation could cause grave health consequences in international students. However, there is a shortage of research into how acculturative stress might affect international students' quality of life in light of their academic standing and experience. The lack of research is particularly pronounced among Chinese international students, representing the largest body of international students studying in the United States (U.S.). Thus, to bridge the research gap, this study aims to examine the interplay between international students' acculturative stress, academic standing, and quality of life among a nationally representative sample of Chinese international students studying in the United States. Methods An online survey that gauges Chinese international students' levels of acculturative stress, academic standing, and quality of life was developed. Over 350 higher education institutions across the United States were approached, including public universities, private universities, and community colleges, among which approximately 220 institutions responded positively and supported survey distribution. A total of 751 students completed the survey. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to examine the associations between students' acculturative stress, academic standing, and quality of life. Results Findings reveal that acculturative stress negatively affects all four domains of Chinese international students' quality of life, irrespective of their academic standing. Data analyses also show that compared to master's and doctoral students, undergraduates experience the highest levels of acculturative stress. Furthermore, a significant difference emerged among undergraduate and doctoral international students' acculturative stress levels, but not among undergraduate and master's students, or master's and doctoral students. Conclusion Our study found that, compared to master's and doctoral students, undergraduates had more significant acculturative stress associated with lower levels of quality of life. This finding highlights the potentially positive role of academic experience – while acculturative stress deteriorates international students' quality of life, students' academic standing and experience could be the protective factor in the equation. Future research could further examine how universities and colleges can capitalize on their academic apparatuses and resources to improve international students' academic performance and students' acculturation experience and quality of life.


This study presents the development of predictive models (for a single or a group of wells) to proactively manage water production in a heavy oil field in North Kuwait (average 16 °API crude, ~100 cp at 100 °F). Each resulting model is based on reservoir and time-dependent wellbore mechanical parameters that were obtained through several well tests. The primary goal is to be able to predict the water cut based on a well's current as well as "possible near-future" operating conditions.
 The exercise involves using advanced predictive methodologies. Standard parameters (referred to as features) include water cut as the response variable along with pump intake pressure, total liquid production, pump speed, and surface unit power consumption among others as response variables. Random ForestsTM (RF), Alternating Conditional Expectations (ACE) and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) algorithms were tested. Features were primarily grouped based on clustering. The predicted results are compared to history. The resulting models are further extended to generate type curves for future water cut prediction for different combinations of the operating parameters.
 MLR and ACE based predictive models showed promising results. These algorithms also provided a way to characterize the influence of different features on the model outcome (i. e. predicting historical water production). The model quality significantly improves when only time-dependent features are used. The static parameters (e.g. permeability, perforation stand-off to oil-water contact, pump size) do not appear to have a big impact on improving the model score. Also, improvements were observed by introduction of principal component analysis (PCA) followed by clustering. The generated type curves allow the prediction of the near-future water production and to proactively adjust a well's operating parameters.
 A predictive model is a time-saving tool compared to full range dynamic simulation. This provides a means to the engineers to establish an operating envelope for a well (or a group of wells) to manage water production. This is also a precursor to a full-scale machine learning process that could be implemented for automatically updating models when the quantity of data is expected to be massive in the coming years.


The design of a radio frequency identifier (RFID) tag sensor based on the modulated scattering technique (MST) is presented. The tag works in the X band at 10 GHz and achieves an operative range of about 10 m with a limited amount of power. The power supply required by the transponder is obtained from the interogating electromagnetic field with a customised rectifying Chockcroft-Walton multiplier circuit. The communication between the reader and the tag is obtained using the standard EM4102 RFID protocol, the information is carried on by modulating the load of the tag antenna with a suitable switch circuit. The antenna tag, the rectifying circuit and the switch have been optimised to reach the maximum operative range. A tag prototype has been designed, fabricated and experimentally assessed. The obtained experimental results are quite good.


Objective: To study the association of portal vein thrombosis in umbilical vein catheterized neonates. Study design: Prospective study. Subjects: Neonates in NICU with umbilical vein catheterization. Methods: Doppler ultrasound was performed for all neonates within 24-48 hours of catheter insertion, followed by 48-72 hours after its removal and weekly until hospital discharge or clot resolution. Diagnosis of Portal vein thrombosis was made, its extent, location and size was noted. Result: 30 newborns were screened for portal vein thrombosis. Among them, 17 (57.2%) babies had clinical sepsis, 14(46.7%) had blood transfusion and 7 (23.3%) had calcium infusion through the umbilical vein. Portal vein thrombosis was observed in 3 out of 30 babies (10%). 2 babies had the umbilical tip in inferior vena cava and one baby had in main portal vein. Color Doppler revealed, two babies had partial non-occlusive thrombus in the left portal vein and one baby had in the main portal vein. On follow up, the thrombus of all the babies had resolved by 1-2 weeks. All the 3(100%) neonates with thrombosis received calcium infusion through the umbilical vein and its association was found to be statistically significant with a P Value of 0.086. Conclusions: Calcium transfusion through umbilical vein catheterization is associated with term portal vein thrombosis, though most of them are clinically silent and resolve spontaneously. Ultrasound can be used as effective tool in early detection of the thrombus and hence as a guide for catheter removal.


The effect of different NP sources viz., urea + single super phosphate (SSP), Ammonium nitrate (AN) + SSP, ammonium sulphate (AS) + SSP, Urea + Triple super phosphate (TSP), AN + TSP and AS + TSP on the growth and grain yield of maize was studied in the Agronomic Research Area, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad during the year 1997. A quadruplicated experiment was arranged in a randomized complete block design measuring a net plot size of 3m × 8m. The combination of ammonium sulphate and single super phosphate produced significantly higher plant height, leaf area plantG and grain yield (5.41 t haG) than all other combinations. The increased yield was mainly associated with higher 1000-grain weight. Number of cobs plantG and number of grain rows cobG were statistically similar in all combinations of NP sources. The combination of AS + SSP seems to be the most suitable one for obtaining higher grain yield of maize in Faisalabad conditions.


Collecting opinions from multiple crowd workers has been proved to be very effective to reach into a prompt and robust decision. There are many real-life applications (like smart city planning and urban development) where public (skilled or unskilled) opinions play a better role in comparison with single expert opinion. A spectrum of algorithms has already been proposed for obtaining robust consensus judgment from multiple crowd opinions. In most of the problems, for a particular question we receive a single opinion with multiple options. But in this article, we have proposed a new research problem termed as constrained judgment analysis problem that consists of the questions having multiple opinions. More-over, some constraints among the options are required to be satisfied while giving opinions. In this constrained judgment analysis, the traditional way of decision making, like majority voting, weighted voting or probablistic model, cannot be applied directly due to the purpose of constraint satisfaction. In this work, we have also proposed a probabilistic method for obtaining final solution for constrained judgment analysis problem and demonstrated its efficacy over a synthetic dataset, thereby proving its utility in resource allocation for smart city planning.


BACKGROUND
Both contact force monitoring (CFM) and unipolar signal modification (USM) are guides for ablation, which improve the efficacy of pulmonary vein isolation of atrial fibrillation. We sought to compare the outcomes of atrial fibrillation ablation guided by CFM or USM.

METHODS
A total of 136 patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation underwent a circumferential pulmonary vein isolation using CF sensing ablation catheters and were randomly assigned to undergo catheter ablation guided by either CFM (CFM-guided group: n=70) or USM (USM-guided group: n=66). In the USM-guided group, each radiofrequency application lasted until the development of completely positive unipolar electrograms. In the CFM-guided group, a CF of 20 g (range, 10-30 g) and minimum force-time integral of 400 g were the targets for each radiofrequency application. The primary end point was freedom from any atrial tachyarrhythmia recurrence without antiarrhythmic drugs at 12-months of follow-up.

RESULTS
The cumulative freedom from recurrences at 12-months was 85% in the USM-guided group and 70% in the CFM-guided group (P=0.031). The incidence of time-dependent and ATP-provoked early electrical reconnections between the left atrium and PVs, procedural time, fluoroscopic time, and average force-time integral, did not significantly differ between the 2 groups. The radiofrequency time for the pulmonary vein isolation was shorter in the USM-guided group than CFM-guided group but was not statistically significant (P=0.077).

CONCLUSIONS
USM was superior to CFM as an end point for radiofrequency energy deliveries during the pulmonary vein isolation in patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in terms of the 12-month recurrence-free rate.

CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION
URL: https://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/index.htm. Unique identifier: UMIN000021127.


BACKGROUND
Immunoneutralization of elevated circulating levels of endogenous digitalis-like Na/K-ATPase inhibitors (i.e. cardiotonic steroids (CTS)) represents a novel approach in the treatment of preeclampsia (PE). Recently we demonstrated that DigiFab (Fab fragments of affinity-purified ovine digoxin antibody) restores PE-induced inhibition of Na/K-ATPase in erythrocytes ex vivo. Previously magnesium ions were shown to antagonize digitalis-induced toxicity, which is mediated by Na/K-ATPase inhibition. We hypothesized that magnesium sulfate would potentiate the effect of DigiFab in the reversal of CTS-induced Na/K-ATPase inhibition.

METHODS
To test this hypothesis, we studied the ex vivo effect of DigiFab on Na/K-ATPase activity in erythrocytes from patients with PE in the absence and in the presence of 3 mmol/L magnesium sulfate.

RESULTS
Compared with 11 normotensive pregnant subjects (29 ± 1 years; gestational age = 39.0 ± 0.2 weeks; blood pressure = 111 ± 2/73 ± 2 mm Hg), the 12 patients with PE (30 ± 1 years; gestational age = 37.9 ± 0.3 weeks; blood pressure = 159 ± 5/99 ± 3 mm Hg) had plasma levels of marino-bufagenin increased 3-fold (1.38 ± 0.40 vs. 0.38 ± 0.10 nmol/L; P < 0.01) and activity of Na/K-ATPase in erythrocytes was inhibited (1.16 ± 0.11 vs. 2.80 ± 0.20 μmol Pi/ml/h; P < 0.01). Ex vivo, DigiFab (1 µg/ml) restored erythrocyte Na/K-ATPase activity (1.72 ± 0.13 µmol Pi/ml/h; P < 0.01), and 3 mmol magnesium sulfate potentiated the effect of DigiFab (2.30 ± 0.20 µmol Pi/ml/h; P < 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS
Magnesium is capable of increasing the efficacy of immunoneutralization of marinobufagenin-induced Na/K-ATPase inhibition.


Using altimetry data of the Topex/Poseidon satellite available since early 1993, we show that the eastern Mediterranean sea level has been continuously rising during 1993–1999, at a rate up to 20 mm/yr southeast of Crete. Sea level rise is also observed in the Algerian‐Provencal basin as well as in the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas. The north Ionian sea, on the other hand, shows an opposite trend, i.e., a sea level drop during the past seven years. Sea surface temperature trends are strongly correlated to sea level trends, indicating that at least part of the observed sea level change has a thermal origin. The recent Mediterranean sea level rise observed by Topex/Poseidon may be related to the warming trends reported from hydrographic cruises in the intermediate and deep waters of the eastern basin since the early 1990s, and of the western basin since the 1960s.


Mathematical modelling of physical and mechanical properties of plastic foam as well as numerous practical applications requires knowledge of foam structural characteristics. A necessity exists to determine the characteristics of the spatial structure of inhomogeneous materials comprising inclusions of other material, e.g., polyurethane foam without destructing the material and analysis of each element. A methodology is elaborated for preparing highly porous plastic foam specimens and investigation of foam strut-like structure with light microscopy (LM) by taking images in three mutually perpendicular planes. A mathematical model is developed for highly porous plastic foam for the determination of probability density functions of its building elements—polymeric struts': (a) length and (b) angles, using LM images in three mutually perpendicular planes. Computer codes are created and parameters of distribution functions for strut's length and angles are calculated using experimental data for verification. A good correspondence of the modelling results with experimental data is proved to exist. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 39477.


The relationship between fiduciary transfer of ownership for security purposes and pledge as the ways to ensure the fulfilment of the obligation is examined in the article. The usefulness of the distinction of mentioned ways of ensuring the fulfilment of the obligations as two essentially different rights in nature is substantiated. The article endorses the feasibility to qualify a pledge as a proprietary right to another's property. The article reveals that according to national civil law the pledge is a quasi – ownership right unlike the fiduciary transfer of ownership for security purposes which expressly designated by law as a kind of ownership for the property. It is suggested that the pledge and the fiduciary ownership for security purposes should be related as special and model right accordingly. It is proved that the difference between mentioned proprietary ways of ensuring the fulfilment of the obligation are: functional relationship of primary obligation (pledge is accessory means of ensuring the fulfilment of the obligation which shall be terminated after termination of primary obligation whereas fiduciary ownership is non – accessory thus it is not terminated immediately after termination of primary obligation); degree of autonomy of security estate including bankruptcy proceedings (to a fiduciary ownership object, separated from personal fiduciary's property, does not apply the moratorium on satisfaction of creditors' claims, the property secured by fiduciary ownership is not part of the debtor's liquidation mass, by contrast the pledged object is part of the liquidation mass and falls within the scope of such moratorium); foreclosure procedure (recovery of pledge object as a rule is done on execution by a court decision, as opposed to fiduciary ownership for security purposes which allow fiduciary to recovery the security property without reference to judicial procedure through the sale it to any third party and makes it possible to take ownership of it without restrictions on use and disposal).


TiO2 is a highly active photocatalyst, sometimes obtained with nanometric particle size, which improves its behavior but makes its removal from aqueous media more difficult. To avoid this drawback, this work aims to obtain a photocatalyst easily removable from aqueous media using magnetism. The core@shell system (Co,Mn) Fe2O4@TiO2 was prepared by adding commercial (Co,Mn)Fe2O4 nanoparticles to the titanium polymeric resin synthesized by the modified Pechini method. Optimization of photocatalyst properties was achieved by variation of the TiO2:ferrite ratio, synthesis temperature and time, followed by their evaluation in photodegradation of an azo dye. The highest efficiency was attained when anatase was the major crystalline phase, whereas TiO2:ferrite ratio was limited to 90% to retain the magnetic properties, which enabled its removal from aqueous media using simple magnets. The system (Co,Mn)Fe2O4@TiO2, synthesized with 90% TiO2 and calcined at 500 °C for 8 h, presented a discoloration of 76.3% after 16 h of exposure to UV light.


A generalized method for calculating both radiation and surface-wave losses is developed for microstrip discontinuities. The losses are determined by a rigorous Poynting vector analysis where the current distribution over the microstrip discontinuities is a result of a full-wave moment method solution. The power loss mechanism of such microstrip discontinuities as open-end, right-angle-bend, gap and stub lines, EMC lines, and rectangular patches are investigated. A self-consistency check of the result based on power conservation is performed to confirm the numerical results. It is found that, above a certain frequency, the surface-wave loss becomes more important than the radiation loss. >


Abstract Circular economy has gained increasing attention the last decade, and more often the main focus is on the large  global circles addressing recycling of materials rather than the "inner circles" that address maintenance/repair and reuse. In this article we investigate one such inner circle ofthe circular economy namely repair of smartphones which extends the lifetime of products and adds to a local economy. Local repair of smartphones has increased in the resent years in Denmark. These loop-closing businesses not only extend the useful lifetime of smartphones; they also entail both environmental benefits and economic value creation. We map the extent ofthe repair sector and investigate the drivers and barriers for its emergence. The study builds on desk studies for identification of repair companiesand telephone interviews with 33 out of 90 identified companies. The mapping of the businessesshows that the repair of smartphones constitute viable business opportunities, and that the main driversarerelated to the economic business potentials as well as motivated entrepreneurs who spot a market potential.The study concludes that the local circular economy within smartphone repair is due to large consumer willingness-to-pay for repair and maintenance services, and this can extend the lifetime of the smartphones. There are some special characteristics that limit the possibility to apply the results directly to other product groups, but further analysis of how to facilitate repair shops within other product groups are interesting in order to facilitate the development of local circles in a circular economy not only in Denmark but also in other countries.   Keywords : Circular economy; Smartphone;Repair; Remanufacturing.


Information extracted from aerial photographs has been used for many practical applications such as urban planning, forest management, disaster relief, and climate modeling. In many cases, labeling of information in the photo is still performed by human experts, making the process slow, costly, and error-prone. This article shows how a convolutional neural network can be used to determine the location of ground control points (GCPs) in aerial photos, which significantly reduces the amount of human labor in identifying GCP locations. Two convolutional neural network (CNN) methods, sliding-window CNN with superpixel-level majority voting, and superpixel-based CNN are evaluated and analyzed. The results of the classification and segmentation show that both of these methods can quickly extract the locations of objects from aerial photographs, but only superpixel-based CNN can unambiguously locate the GCPs.


The pathogenesis of urate crystal deposition is reasonably well understood, and with appropriate urate-lowering therapy (ULT) and lifestyle advice, the objective of management is cure. Nonetheless, many patients with gout continue to experience frequent and recurrent episodes of gout and progression of their disease. This is because the condition is often misdiagnosed, or diagnosed late, and treatment is frequently suboptimal.1 2 These concerns led to the development of evidence-based recommendations relating to the diagnosis and management of gout by a task force from the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR). The EULAR recommendations were developed using a combination of research-based evidence and expert consensus, and provide a valuable resource for physicians.1 2

The current diagnosis and management …


To design a micelle which has a hydrophilic inner shell formed with vancomycin and a hydrophobic outer shell formed with cinnamaldehyde, vancomycin and cinnamaldehyde will be linked with the schiff base reaction, and then a further research on its properties will be conducted. Vancomycin, a good hydrophilic antibiotic drug, is highly effective in the treatment of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Cinnamaldehyde, owning the effects of sterilization and antisepsis, has obvious curative effect on fungi and is a hydrophobic drug. When vancomycin was reacted with cinnamaldehyde via schiff base reaction, self-assembled micelles, formed by their hydrophobic differences, were given with not only synergistic bactericidal action but also increasing the cycle time of drugs in vivo. At the same time, its pH response performance enhanced antibacterial properties and drug efficacy of micelles. This study focused on the preparation of micelles modified by cinnamaldehyde.


Growth hormone (GH) regulates whole body metabolism, and physical exercise is the most potent stimulus to induce its secretion in humans. The mechanisms underlying GH secretion after exercise remain to be defined. The aim of this study was to elucidate the role of estrogen and pituitary type 1 deiodinase (D1) activation on exercise-induced GH secretion. Ten days after bilateral ovariectomy, animals were submitted to 20 min of treadmill exercise at 75% of maximum aerobic capacity and tissues were harvested immediately or 30 min after exercise. Non-exercised animals were used as controls. A significant increase in D1 activity occurred immediately after exercise (~60%) in sham-operated animals and GH was higher (~6-fold) 30 min after exercise. Estrogen deficient rats exhibited basal levels of GH and D1 activity comparable to those found in control rats. However, after exercise both D1 activity and serum GH levels were blunted compared to sedentary rats. To understand the potential cause-effect of D1 activation in exercise-induced GH release, we pharmacologically blocked D1 activity by propylthiouracil (PTU) injection into intact rats and submitted them to the acute exercise session. D1 inhibition blocked exercise-induced GH secretion, although basal levels were unaltered. In conclusion, estrogen deficiency impairs the induction of thyroid hormone activating enzyme D1 in the pituitary, and GH release by acute exercise. Also, acute D1 activation is essential for exercise-induced GH response.


Enterococcus faecalis is a pathogen that persists in medicated root canals. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the E. faecalis proteases, serine protease and gelatinase, and the collagen-binding protein (Ace) contribute to adhesion to the root canal. Scanning electron microscopy was used to examine dentin binding by four E. faecalis strains: OG1RF, the wild type, and three mutant derivatives of OG1RF, TX5128, TX5243 and TX5256 deficient in serine protease and gelatinase, serine protease, and Ace, respectively. For each strain, 20 root halves were exposed to 3 x 10(9) to 5 x 10(9) cells/ml for 6 h, and 50 fields per root half were examined for adherent bacteria. Statistical analysis revealed that adherence of OG1RF was significantly greater than the mutant strains (P < 0.001), while significant differences were not detected between the protease mutants. The data indicate that serine protease and Ace aid E. faecalis binding to dentin, while the role of gelatinase is uncertain.


Use of game-theoretic models to address patrolling applications has gained increasing interest in the very last years. The patrolling agent is considered playing a game against an hostile possible intruder. In this paper, we adopt a game-theoretic approach for finding an efficient strategy for a patrolling mobile robot.


ABSTRACT Programmes which offer integrated services were analysed to identify model international and domestic programmes serving adults with neurodevelopmental disorders. Programmes were assessed according to 11 need domains identified in a previous study: supervision, transportation, housing, communication, finances/employment opportunities, activities of daily living/instrumental activities of daily living training, socialisation opportunities, enhanced adult-centred medical care, psychological, medical equipment, and sexual health education. In addition, programmes which served adults within six diagnosis comprising intellectual disability (ID), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), cerebral palsy (CP), spina bifida (SB), Down syndrome (DS), and Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) were considered. Only three international and three domestic programmes demonstrated the required criteria to be considered a comprehensive model programme. Identified model programmes provided at least eight of the 11 needs, while only two programmes served all identified domains. This study offers insight into the needs provided, which can be used to inform modifications and development of existing and new programmes. It illustrates the necessity for programmes to focus on social and sexual needs as much as medical and health services. Consequences of gaps in provided services can have direct implications on the biopsychosocial functioning of individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders including a lowered quality of life.


Recently, there has been an increasing interest in identifying named entities with nested structures. Existing models only make independent typing decisions on the entire entity span while ignoring strong modification relations between sub-entity types. In this paper, we present a novel Recursively Binary Modification model for nested named entity recognition. Our model utilizes the modification relations among sub-entities types to infer the head component on top of a Bayesian framework and uses entity head as a strong evidence to determine the type of the entity span. The process is recursive, allowing lower-level entities to help better model those on the outer-level. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first effort that uses modification relation in nested NER task. Extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms state-of-the-art models in nested NER tasks, and delivers competitive results with state-of-the-art models in flat NER task, without relying on any extra annotations or NLP tools.


The odor occurring in the sewage system induces the displeasure, the disgust such as the headache, the vomit, etc. and increases the spiritual stress and disturbs the pleasant life of residents. These odors occur mainly in the area of combined sewage system treatment, being created in the personal sewage treatment plant such as septic tank and are incoming to sewage pipes and emitted to the outside through the manhole and the receiver, etc.; and this causes odors to the people. The Hydrogen Sulfide, the Methyl Mercaptan, the Ammonia, etc. are materials causing the odor, the more serious issue of odor is occurring since the septic tank of degradation process is being applied. The primary cause of odor is the decomposition of human feces in the septic tanks and sewage disposal facilities. The purpose of this study is reduction of hydrogen sulfide using air supplying and SOB(Sulfur-Oxidizing Bacteria). As a result of this study of the air supply system and the SOB media equipment by air supply, in case the air is injected to SOB media compared to the injection of air only, the removal efficiency the hydrogen sulfide was average 3.4 times higher.


Abstract Based on interviews, this article explores how obstetrician-gynaecologists in Switzerland deal with and respond to the risk of malpractice claims. It describes the factors associated with the interviewees' perceived increasing risk of litigation, as well as three attitudes towards the use of consent forms as a means of managing such a risk. This article suggests that the perceived risk of claims is closely linked to the physicians' perception of how external regulation shapes their professional autonomy.


The purpose of the paper was to evaluate the probability of the top event in the fluidity test by Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). One of the important tests used in the foundry practice is the test of the fluidity. Fluidity is the ability of the molten metal to fill the cavity of the molds and create a cast. The AlSi10MgMn (EN 1706) alloy with 5 or 10.54 % of silica was the experimental material. The melted alloy was cast into "horizontal" three-channel mold to test its fluidity. The pouring temperatures were between 605 and 830 °C. In some cases, the experiment was not successful, for a some reasons. This fact led to a waste of time, energy, potential risk of accident, confusion among participants, especially "beginners" founders and became an impulse for the analysis of creation and possible events of fault for the fluidity test using the FTA. It has been found that for the probability of the top event in examined process was disproportionately high (0.29824). The Monte Carlo method was used for the simulation of the effect of decreasing the probability of basic events on the probability of the top event – the fault of the fluidity test.


ABSTRACT Cryptococcus curvatus ATCC 20509 is a commonly used nonmodel oleaginous yeast capable of converting a variety of carbon sources into fatty acids. Here, we present the draft genome sequence of this popular organism to provide a means for more in-depth studies of its fatty acid production potential.


Abstract Objective: Establish the prognostic value for graft loss of urinary neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (uNGAL), kidney injury molecule-1 (uKIM-1), interleukin-18 (uIL-18), and heat shock protein 72 (uHsp72) in kidney transplant recipients (KTR) with acute kidney injury (AKI). Methods: Biomarkers were measured in 67 KTR with AKI caused by different entities. Results: After 1 year, 11 KTR with graft loss had higher uNGAL compared to KTR without loss (p < 0.001). There were no differences for uKIM-1, uIL-18 and uHsp-72. uNGAL >200 ng/mL had 84% sensitivity and 86% specificity for graft loss (ROC AUC: 0.89, 95% CI: 0.81–0.97). uNGAL may be useful to predict graft loss after AKI.


During the medieval period, the Armenian world was composed of two major poles, Great Armenia, which fell under Seljuk domination, and Cilicia, a principality, then an Armenian kingdom. Contacts continued between these two areas, particularly on a religious level. Armenian Christianity remained unified, and meetings of bishops were, for example, the source of trips, embassies and councils. In the same way, the Catholicos sends letters to all Christians, through the intermediary of emissaries who travel from one place to another. Cultural Contacts continue, with the circulation of manuscripts between Great Armenia and Cilicia.


Scholars and practitioners debate whether to expand the scope of the right to be forgotten—the right to have certain links removed from search results—to encompass global search results. The debate centers on the assumption that the expansion will increase the incidence of link removal, which reinforces privacy while hampering free speech. We develop a game-theoretic model to show that the expansion of the right to be forgotten can reduce the incidence of link removal. We also show that the expansion does not necessarily enhance the welfare of individuals who request removal and that it can either improve or reduce societal welfare. Our analysis has implications for understanding the impact of the global expansion of the right to be forgotten on privacy and free speech.


We have utilized a novel variation on the conventional denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) technology, which we term rapid DHPLC, combining changes in instrumentation, cartridge technology and analysis conditions to enable significant increases in throughput to be achieved. In addition, the use of a novel proof-reading polymerase for sample amplification with a low misincorporation rate enables simplification of the DHPLC patterns and hence enhanced mutation detection recognition. This scheme for increasing DHPLC throughput has been tested by scanning the transforming growth factor (TGF) beta3 gene for the presence of mutations for which there is limited published or on-line data available regarding the presence of gene polymorphisms. TGFbeta isoforms have multiple roles in cell division, growth, proliferation, transformation and differentiation. TGFbeta3 is a TGFbeta cytokine isoform, and has an important role in embryogenesis, cell differentiation and wound healing. The TGFbeta3 gene consists of seven exons and six introns spanning 43 000 bp of the human genome on chromosome 14q23-24. The rapid DHPLC approach enabled scanning of all seven exons and part of the promoter region (1000 bp upstream from exon 1 in the 5'-flanking regions) of the TGFbeta3 gene in 95 Caucasian individuals in only 8 days, in comparison to the 17 days it would have previously taken. Mutations were clearly identified in the promoter region of the TGFbeta3 gene but were absent from the exonic regions. Understanding the genetic variations affecting the TGFbeta3 gene is important as this molecule has multiple regulatory functions on a variety of cell types.


Recently Middleton 1 described a case of hypertrophied prostate of enormous weight; namely, 557 Gm. He considered this the largest one ever surgically removed. It may be of interest to readers of The Journal to hear about another man with this condition operated on in the Central Provincial Hospital in 1918. The enucleated prostate weighed 705 Gm. and is the largest hypertrophied prostate ever surgically removed as well as the largest one on record in the world's literature. 2 L. A. L., a farmer, aged 80, admitted to the hospital Sept. 1, 1918, during the preceding twenty years had suffered from various urinary troubles and from time to time from acute urinary retention. During the past ten years he had catheterized himself three times a day, and occasionally slight bleeding resulted. The day before admission severe bleeding and dysuria had occurred. At the time of admission to the hospital the


The sheep tick, Ixodes ricinus L. (Acari: Ixodidae), is an important vector of many pathogens of medical and veterinary significance. Determining vector abundance is a requisite of assessing potential vector‐borne disease risk. Estimation of tick abundance is often conducted by blanket drag sampling a site, conducted at one time point during the day. The time of day chosen for sampling can vary, is not widely standardized and is often unreported by the investigator. This study investigated whether the time of day chosen for sampling had an effect on tick collection at an open grassland coastal site in North Devon, U.K., during May 2019 to July 2019. Tick abundance for both adults and nymphs in the evening period was more than twice that found in the mid‐day sampling period. Overall abundance differed with site aspect, ground temperature and relative humidity. This study shows that for this open grassland recreational site, the time of day chosen for sampling has important implications for tick collection and the assessment of the relative risk of human exposure to ticks and tick‐borne infections.


In order to validate the reported precision of space-based atmospheric composition measurements, validation studies often focus on measurements in the tropical stratosphere, where natural variability is weak. The scatter in tropical measurements can then be used as an upper limit on single-profile measurement precision. Here we introduce a method of quantifying the scatter of tropical measurements which aims to minimize the effects of short-term atmospheric variability while maintaining large enough sample sizes that the results can be taken as representative of the full data set. We apply this technique to measurements of O(3), HNO(3), CO, H(2)O, NO, NO(2), N(2)O, CH(4), CCl(2)F(2), and CCl(3)F produced by the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment-Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS). Tropical scatter in the ACE-FTS retrievals is found to be consistent with the reported random errors (RREs) for H(2)O and CO at altitudes above 20 km, validating the RREs for these measurements. Tropical scatter in measurements of NO, NO(2), CCl(2)F(2), and CCl(3)F is roughly consistent with the RREs as long as the effect of outliers in the data set is reduced through the use of robust statistics. The scatter in measurements of O(3), HNO(3), CH(4), and N(2)O in the stratosphere, while larger than the RREs, is shown to be consistent with the variability simulated in the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model. This result implies that, for these species, stratospheric measurement scatter is dominated by natural variability, not random error, which provides added confidence in the scientific value of single-profile measurements.


Interoperability refers to the ability of a Digital Library to work cooperatively with other Digital Libraries in an attempt to provide higher quality services to users. There are many approaches to achieve some degree of interoperability and one such approach involves the creation and use of Open Archives. The OAI is an initiative to develop and promote interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. The OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) provides an application-independent interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting. OAI-PMH enables automated distribution of any kind of metadata, which may be aggregated into searchable databases by "harvesting" systems. It has reached version 2.0, intended for stable, production services.


The unusual event with double cores reported by KGF in 1979 cannot be, as suggested by the authors, produced by either neutrinos or muons, but is rather likely to be produced by a heavy and neutral particle C" from the cosmic rays.


LASERS have a crucial significance in dental field to overcome some of the disadvantages offered by that of the conventional armamentarium such as drilling sound, anxiety, fear related to conventional handpiece etc. Lasers can be used on both soft and hard tissues and over the time it has proved amenable results. Therefore, modern concepts based on minimal invasive dentistry led to application of Lasers in various fields of dental care. Despite of its Pros and Cons, its advantages makes Laser a ray of hope for the dentistry. This book encompasses the application of Lasers in different aspects of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics. The text book has simple and easy language and its contents has been taken from various standard journals, textbooks, e-books, website etc.


«Empire» is a metaphor become an intellectual fad due to the success of Hardt & Negri's book and to the aggressive imperialism of the USA under G.W. Bush. Its plausibility comes from the crisis of the State, the expansion of deregulated global markets, and the struggle between several social actors to lead collective management of global problems. Thus «empire» is a potentially performative wish or fantasy which veils the struggle among the global corporate-financial oligarchy, the UN, and the «Other World is Possible» Movement, to create and control keynesian monetary and tax regulating institutions, etc., at world scale. This conflict can be analysed at political-geostrategic level, at economic or class level, and at civil society or social movements level. What might actually be at issue is global normative unification under one single moral Law.


The political system of "Parliamentary Democracy" which the Constituent Assembly adopted was built on the ideals of democratic republic, popular sovereignty and secularism. In India, because of its heterogeneous political-socio-economic structure, it was decided to implement this concept owing to the notion that a political representative would act as a catalyst to integrate the country. The politicians were seen as personifications of social service, leadership, and sacrifice by the people of the Country. People were expecting Gandhian ideology in politics. But today, India's growing criminalization of politics is an important element of the political life of the country. The emerging scandals and occurrences in government are an indication of loot and malfeasance in governance. From the viewpoint of the law and order, one can notice a clear decline over the decades, and the situation now is such that getting convictions for significant offences has become a lot more difficult. This is because politicians turn to criminals during the time of elections. When criminals and antisocial elements are under pressure from law enforcement agencies, they also go to politicians to seek support. As a result, the process of obtaining incriminating evidence in criminal investigations is greatly hindered by the politicians. Now things have only gotten worse. As criminals realize that politicians can be elected through the use of muscle power, more and more of them try to run for office themselves. A good number of them have contested for the elections and been elected as well. In fact, there are several of them who now hold ministerial positions. Recent experience has shown that if someone is elected to a legislative or ministerial position- all criminal charges against him go into drawers where they are forgotten about forever. The fall-out in other sectors has been no less devastating, since political criminalization has devastated the health and clean functioning of our democratic political system.


This study of 65 children and adolescents hospitalized for psychiatric problems revealed a history of incest in 37.5% of the nonpsychotic female subjects. Ten percent of the psychotic girls and about 8% of all the boys had such a history. A comparison of the nonpsychotic girls who had a history of incest and those who had no known history of incest or sexual abuse showed no specific effects of incest. It seems that social and psychological pathology serious enough to warrant hospitalization is not a simple effect of incest itself but is a consequence of severe family disorganization and the resulting ego impairment.


Human skeletal muscle is a vital organ involved in movement and force generation. It suffers from deterioration in mass, strength, and regenerative capacity in sarcopenia. Skeletal muscle satellite cells are involved in the regeneration process in response to muscle loss. Tocotrienol, an isomer of vitamin E, was reported to have a protective effect on cellular aging. This research is aimed at determining the modulation of tocotrienol-rich fraction (TRF) on the gene expressions of stress-induced premature senescence (SIPS) human skeletal muscle myoblasts (CHQ5B). CHQ5B cells were divided into three groups, i.e., untreated young control, SIPS control (treated with 1 mM hydrogen peroxide), and TRF-posttreated groups (24 hours of 50 μg/mL TRF treatment after SIPS induction). The differential gene expressions were assessed using microarray, GSEA, and KEGG pathway analysis. Results showed that TRF treatment significantly regulated the gene expressions, i.e., p53 (RRM2B, SESN1), ErbB (EREG, SHC1, and SHC3), and FoxO (MSTN, SMAD3) signalling pathways in the SIPS myoblasts compared to the SIPS control group (p < 0.05). TRF treatment modulated the proliferation capacity of SIPS myoblasts through regulation of ErbB (upregulation of expression of EREG, SHC1, and SHC3) and FoxO (downregulation of expression of MSTN and SMAD3) and maintaining the renewal of satellite cells through p53 signalling (upregulation of RRM2B and SESN1), MRF, cell cycle, and Wnt signalling pathways.