From 1986 to the present, the popular research model organism Caenorhabditis elegans has been thought to completely lack DNA methylation and seems to have lost DNA methylation enzymes from its genomes. In the present study, we report the development of a sensitive and selective assay based on LC-MS/MS to simultaneously measure 5-methyl-2'-deoxycytidine (5-mdC) and 5-hydroxymethyl-2'-deoxycytidine (5-hmdC) in DNA hydrolysates. With the use of isotope internal standards ([2H3]5-mdC and [2H3]5-hmdC) and online solid-phase extraction, the detection limits of 5-mdC and 5-hmdC were estimated to be 0.01 and 0.02 pg respectively, which correspond to a 0.000006% and 0.00001% methylation and hydroxymethylation level. This method was applied to investigate whether DNA methylation/hydroxymethylation exists in C. elegans. The present study for the first time demonstrates that 5-mdC is present in C. elegans genomic DNA (0.0019-0.0033% of cytosine methylated) using LC-MS/MS, whereas another epigenetic modification, 5-hmdC, is not detectable. Furthermore, we found that C. elegans DNA was hypo- or hyper-methylated in a dose-dependent manner by the DNA methyltransferase (DNMT)-inhibiting drug decitabine (5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine) or cadmium respectively. Our data support the possible existence of an active DNA-methylation mechanism in C. elegans, in which unidentified DNMTs could be involved. The present study highlights the importance of re-evaluating the evolutionary conservation of DNA-methylation machinery in nematodes which were traditionally considered to lack functional DNA methylation.


INTRODUCTION
The aim of this study is to report the early and late outcomes of cryopreserved saphenous vein (CSV) in redo infrainguinal bypass and to investigate possible predictors of primary patency loss.

METHODS
All patients who underwent a redo bypass for critical limb ischemia from January 2010 to December 2020 were reviewed. Early and late complications were analyzed and included. The endpoints of the study were all cause mortality, major limb amputation, and primary patency (PP).

RESULTS
Data were collected from 95 patients. Among the entire cohort, 16 (16.8%) patients received a cryopreserved vessel bypass with anastomosis in the popliteal artery and 79 (83.2%) patients had cryopreserved vessel bypasses with distal anastomosis in tibial vessels. Median duration of follow-up was 73 months; during this, period estimated survival at 5 years was 80.5 ± 4% (95% CI, 78.0-91.2) and estimates of freedom from limb amputation was 90.3 ± 3.2% (95% CI, 87.3-98.1). Overall, the estimated primary patency of the bypass was 43.7 ± 6.7% (95% CI, 30.2-51.4). On multivariable analysis, intraprocedural tibial vessel angioplasty (HR = 2.3, p = 0.01), distal anastomosis in tibial vessels (HR = 3.6, p = 0.36), and the use of a composite graft (HR = 2.4, p = 0.01) were independently associated with loss of PP.

CONCLUSIONS
The use of CSV in redo bypass is an effective strategy in salvaging threatened lower extremities and in preventing or delaying limb amputation. Our results confirm that further attempts at revascularization are generally appropriate, even in technically changing patients.


Cooperative learning is a pedagogical framework extensively used in educational contexts worldwide, but some scholars warn that we do not know much about how its claimed outcomes are delivered. The aim of this study was to uncover the connections between cooperative learning contexts and students' task and self-approach goals in physical education. We hypothesized that those students who perceived a stronger cooperative learning context in their classes would also show higher task and self-approach goals. A total of 1328 students (648 females and 680 males) from three different educational stages: primary education (n = 584), secondary education (n = 550) and baccalaureate (n = 194), agreed to participate. Participants' ages ranged between 10 and 20 years (M = 13.11; SD = 2.45). An ex-post-facto, cross-sectional research design was followed. Results showed a direct and significant connection between high-perceived cooperative learning contexts and high students' task and self-approach goals. The odds ratio tests verified this positive association, indicating a 4-times greater probability for students who perceived a strong cooperative learning context in the classroom of having high task and self-approach goals. In the same line, we observed that, as the perception of a cooperative learning context increased, task and self-approach goals also increased. This means that a small change in the class context to make it more cooperative had an impact on the students' achievement goals. Teachers should try to create class contexts where students perceive a strong cooperative learning climate, because it has been connected to adaptive motivational patterns, task and self-approach goals, and these are associated with positive outcomes.


ABSTRACT This paper presents characteristic modern pollen assemblages in relation to various vegetation types from one of the wettest regions of the world. Four characteristic modern pollen assemblages were recorded based on the major pollen taxa recovered from the surface samples. The Pinus—Tsuga—Betula—Quercus—Rhododendron—Chenopodiaceae assemblage was observed in pine forests under cold and wet climate in the region. The broad leaved forests were characterised by the Quercus—Betulaálnus—Rhododendron—Pinusímpatiens assemblage. The evergreen forest assemblage Castanopsis—Mesua—Betula—Magnoliaceae—Dipterocarpaceae—Nepenthes was suggestive of a cold and wet climate due to seasonally high rainfall activity. Grassland was identified by the recovery of a Poaceae—Cyperaceaeásteraceae—Chenopodiaceae—cerealia assemblage in the surface samples under relatively dry climate with seasonal rainfall. The study revealed that the grasslands of East Khasi Hills are not the primary vegetation, but that it is converted from the primary dense forest as evidenced by the recovery of pollen from evergreen and broadleaved taxa in the surface samples. The presence of cerealia in almost all samples strongly indicates human activity in and around the study areas. Ferns, especially Cyathea, Gleichenia and Pyrrosia, in the palynoassemblage were suggestive of wet conditions in the region. Fungal remains such as Meliola, Microthyriaceae and Xylaria along with high organic matter in the palynoassemblage also suggest the same. The thrust of this study was to investigate the characteristic pollen assemblage in the surface samples in relation to the present vegetation of northeast India.


Sustainability and gender have been prominent on the development agenda since the 1980s, but there has been little systematic study of the links between the two. This review draws on ecofeminist theory, feminist political ecology, intrahousehold literature, and natural resource management case studies and reviews to examine how gender shapes the motives, means, and opportunities for men and women to contribute to sustainability. Particular attention is given to evidence on closeness to nature, focus on conservation, rights to resources, opportunities to exploit resources, and constraints to adoption of sustainable practices. Despite early claims that women are naturally more conserving of resources, the empirical literature, in particular, gives a more mixed and nuanced picture. Conservation is influenced not only by gender but also by a host of tangible and intangible factors, including local ecology, context, and culture, that affect incentives and the ability to adopt sustainable extraction and provision practices.


Background: Chest X-ray imaging is one of the most commonly performed daily routine investigations in many of the hospitals and diagnostic centers around the globe. Many people have chest X-rays before surgery, although a diagnosis is made based on the findings in only a few cases and each procedure adds to the radiation dose accumulation. According to the American college of Radiology (ACR), most CXR radiograph are less effective and should only be recommended based on the appropriateness criteria including elderly and high risk patients. Nevertheless the issue of replacing X-rays with other technique remains uncertain and mandates further investigation. To aim of this study was to assess and identify the clinical outcomes of outpatients following chest X-ray imaging performed. Materials and Methods: In total, the data for 185 patients (83 men, 102 female; age range 15 to 90 and above) who underwent chest X-rays were analyzed. This is a retrospective quantitative study design and data was collected from medical records using convenient sampling technique held at King Abdul–Aziz Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in Radiology Department from September, 2017 to March, 2018. Results: Analysis of the collected data of a total of 185 patients revealed that 73.5% of the patients had negative radiological findings, while 26.5% had positive radiological findings. The majority of patients were females, comprising 55.1% of the total sample size, while 44.9% were male patients. Conclusion: From the results of our study, we conclude that that most cases had negative radiological findings regardless of the gender. The daily routine chest radiograph can be avoided by replacing other imaging modalities.


Disk Recording System (DRS) is a systems-integration computer program for a direct-to-disk (DTD) high-speed data acquisition system (HDAS) that records rocket-engine test data. The HDAS consists partly of equipment originally designed for recording the data on tapes. The tape recorders were replaced with hard-disk drives, necessitating the development of DRS to provide an operating environment that ties two computers, a set of five DTD recorders, and signal-processing circuits from the original tape-recording version of the HDAS into one working system. DRS includes three subsystems: (1) one that generates a graphical user interface (GUI), on one of the computers, that serves as a main control panel; (2) one that generates a GUI, on the other computer, that serves as a remote control panel; and (3) a data-processing subsystem that performs tasks on the DTD recorders according to instructions sent from the main control panel. The software affords capabilities for dynamic configuration to record single or multiple channels from a remote source, remote starting and stopping of the recorders, indexing to prevent overwriting of data, and production of filtered frequency data from an original time-series data file.


This study aims to analyze the characteristics of deconstruction-ism expressed in the fashion of Alexander McQueen. The method and contents of this study are as follows. The three large categories for analysis are indeterminacy, decentralization, and intertextuality. The indeterminacy of meaning is divided into unstructured and unorganized factors in fashion, while decentralization can be categorized into cross-gender, subculture, and post-humanism. Lastly, inter-textuality is classified into factors of mixing mode and mixed styles. Materials for analysis were chosen from a total of 616 designs from the website, www.firstview.com, which carries McQueen's collection from 2000 S/S through 2007 F/W. My analysis qualitatively evaluates the frequency of each category and the characteristics of design. The result of this study is as followed. First, the avant-garde facets of inter-textuality are most prominent. In particular, McQueen has introduced retro fashion and ethnic factors of the third world, not to copy them but to create hybrid designs by using pastiches and mixing fashion styles. Moreover, he has enjoyed using two fabrics of different texture in order to inflict a shock and contrast, thus enriching his fashion. Second, the indeterminacy of meaning is the second most frequently shown facet of McQueen's fashion design. McQueen has employed unstructured expression techniques, which dismantle harmony and balance, the basic rule of design, and has presented unorganized images free from basic forms of design. He has made a new attempt to acknowledge clothing as an expressive artwork by allowing clothes to take a complete form when a person actually wears them. Third, the aspects of decentralization were also shown in McQueen's design. His trans-gender clothing dissolves the traditional division of men and women and adopts a mixed gender expression. Furthermore, he has even tried to express a fourth gender by connecting the human with machine or animal or by connecting the material with the non-material.


The practice of overunity generators that is developing in the community is quite worrying due to the lack of clear sources of information. The aim of this research is to provide a conceptual overview of the overunity generator through a description of the system and the energy conversion process in the overunity machine. This concept surgery method uses lab tests to get accurate measurement data. By using the modeling of two dynamos connected into a series circuit, the test is carried out by providing electrical energy with different voltage variations to obtain data in the form of output voltage, output current, and rotational speed. The results obtained indicate that there is lost energy in the overunity generator due to the relatively low engine specifications and the limited ability of the motor and generator to convert energy. Where the output generated by the overunity generator has a very large difference compared to the input energy given. Which means that the overunity of the system has not been fully proven in the practice of overunity generators.

Key word: overunity, generator, lost energy


Inherited bone marrow failure syndromes comprise a heterogeneous group of genetic disorders characterized by dysfunction of hematopoietic stem or progenitor cells. We present a consanguineous pedigree with two siblings with early-onset, progressive bone marrow failure (neutropenia, anemia, thrombocytopenia) associated with trigonocephaply, hyperplastic gingiva, cataract, accessory mammilla, dental changes and mild neurocognitive developmental delay. Pancytopenia at birth as well as non-compaction cardiomyopathy was observed in one of the patients. Bone marrow histology showed marked hypocellularity with decrease of all hematopoietic cell lines but without cellular atypia, monocytosis, blast excess or fibrosis. Fanconi anemia was excluded by mitomycin C induced chromosomal breakage studies. Immunophenotyping of peripheral blood cells showed a reduction of mature B cells, reduced switched memory B cells, whereas the level of activated B-cells and plasma blasts were increased. T cell proliferation upon PHA and specific antigens was normal. Using whole exome sequencing in patients and both parents we could identify a single potentially disease causing homozygous stop codon mutation (NM_001085487: c.1168G>T: p.E390*) in MYSM1 (Myb-Like, SWIRM And MPN Domain-Containing Protein 1). A family with two affected patients carrying the same mutation has been reported previously (Alsultan A et al, Blood 122:3844, 2013). MYSM1 is a Histone H2A deubiquitinase that has previously been implicated in controlling hematopoietic stem cells, progenitor B cells, and NK cells in mice (Nijnik A et al, Blood 119:1370, 2012). MYSM1 protein was absent in patients9 EBV-transformed B cell lines (EBV-LCLs). MYSM1-deficient EBV-LCLs had elevated γ-H2AX levels, indicative of increased genomic instability. Upon exposure to UV light, we observed a sustained expression of p53 and phospho-p53 as well as p38 MAPK and phospho-p38 MAPK in patients9 fibroblasts in comparison to fibroblasts from healthy individuals. In view of the progressive pancytopenia, both siblings underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from 10/10 HLA-matched family donors after reduced intensity conditioning with alemtuzumab, fludarabine and treosulfan at 2 and 4 years of age, respectively. The procedure was well tolerated, and both siblings exhibit full donor hematopoietic reconstitution at 21 and 26 months after transplant. In summary, we here identify a novel human bone marrow failure syndrome caused by MYSM1-deficiency that can be cured by allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


One of the major theoretical methods in understanding polymer translocation through a nanopore is the Fokker-Planck formalism based on the assumption of quasi-equilibrium of polymer conformations. The criterion for applicability of the quasi-equilibrium approximation for polymer translocation is that the average translocation time per Kuhn segment, ⟨τ⟩/NK, is longer than the relaxation time τ0 of the polymer. Toward an understanding of conditions that would satisfy this criterion, we have performed coarse-grained three dimensional Langevin dynamics and multi-particle collision dynamics simulations. We have studied the role of initial conformations of a polyelectrolyte chain (which were artificially generated with a flow field) on the kinetics of its translocation across a nanopore under the action of an externally applied transmembrane voltage V (in the absence of the initial flow field). Stretched (out-of-equilibrium) polyelectrolyte chain conformations are deliberately and systematically generated and used as initial conformations in translocation simulations. Independent simulations are performed to study the relaxation behavior of these stretched chains, and a comparison is made between the relaxation time scale and the mean translocation time (⟨τ⟩). For such artificially stretched initial states, ⟨τ⟩/NK < τ0, demonstrating the inapplicability of the quasi-equilibrium approximation. Nevertheless, we observe a scaling of ⟨τ⟩ ∼ 1/V over the entire range of chain stretching studied, in agreement with the predictions of the Fokker-Planck model. On the other hand, for realistic situations where the initial artificially imposed flow field is absent, a comparison of experimental data reported in the literature with the theory of polyelectrolyte dynamics reveals that the Zimm relaxation time (τZimm) is shorter than the mean translocation time for several polymers including single stranded DNA (ssDNA), double stranded DNA (dsDNA), and synthetic polymers. Even when these data are rescaled assuming a constant effective velocity of translocation, it is found that for flexible (ssDNA and synthetic) polymers with NK Kuhn segments, the condition ⟨τ⟩/NK < τZimm is satisfied. We predict that for flexible polymers such as ssDNA, a crossover from quasi-equilibrium to non-equilibrium behavior would occur at NK ∼ O(1000).


Purpose: To develop and evaluate an integrated multi‐modal image guidance methodology for DBS. Method and Materials: An image guidance methodology was developed to integrate multiple imaging methods as well as atlas and intraoperatively acquired electrophysiology data. Imaging techniques were developed using a 3T MRI to provide unique contrast of specific structures in the brain. A new sequence, the Fast Grey matter Acquisition T1 Inversion Recovery (FGATIR), was developed to produce images that specifically nullified the white matter signal. In addition, diffusiontensorimaging (DTI) tractography was acquired to provide differentiation of target subregions through structural connectivity. These imaging techniques as well as standard (T1, T2 FLAIR, and CT)imaging protocols were integrated on a single platform. This integration was accomplished by the development of a graphical user interface (GUI) to allow for viewing and targeting based off these images along with a deformed atlas and intraoperatively acquired electrophysiology maps. Results: The developed image guidance system allowed for targeting based off all data types mentioned previously. The new imaging techniques developed were compared against intraoperatively acquired microelectrode data. The two novel imaging techniques, FGATIR and DTI tractography, provided elucidation of structure not seen by standard imaging methods and showed good correspondence with microelectrode maps. Contrast measurements for the FGATIR versus T1 and T2 FLAIR showed a higher contrast to noise ratio (CNR) for FGATIR scans. For example, the CNR for ventral lateral thalamus versus the remainder of thalamus was 2.19, 2.81, and 7.27 for T1, T2 FLAIR, and FGATIR, respectively. Conclusion: Our methodology for image guidance in DBS surgery has the potential to allow for direct visualization and targeting of regions that can not be visualized by standard techniques. The integration of all these methods within a single framework demonstrates the potential for multi‐modal image guidance in neurosurgery.


This paper introduces a novel meta-learning algorithm for time series forecasting. The efficient Bayesian multivariate surface regression approach is used to model forecast error as a function of features calculated from the time series. The minimum predicted forecast error is then used to identify an individual model or combination of models to produce forecasts. In general, the performance of any meta-learner strongly depends on the reference dataset used to train the model. We further examine the feasibility of using GRATIS (a feature-based time series simulation approach) in generating a realistic time series collection to obtain a diverse collection of time series for our reference set. The proposed framework is tested using the M4 competition data and is compared against several benchmarks and other commonly used forecasting approaches. The new approach obtains performance comparable to the second and the third rankings of the M4 competition.


The echo responses of a finite elastic circular cylinder, excited by obliquely incident sound waves in water, are difficult to analyze by exact theory. In this paper, an approximate theoretical model based on reradiation of the elastic helical surface waves is presented. The basic expressions, suitable in a certain range of angles of incidence, are derived to estimate the time sequence of echo pulses and the resonance modes of the cylinder. Experimental results are shown, and are compared with the calculated results of the time sequence of echo pulses; both are found to be basically in agreement with each other.


**Abstract
Background.** Very-low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets (VLCKDs) promote benefits for a range of health conditions. However, there is little research elucidating the 'lived experience' of individuals undertaking these diets, and the effects of keto-induction, during adaptation to these diets.
**Objective.** This study aimed to evaluate the subjective experiences of people following a very low carbohydrate, ketogenic diet.
Design. This paper describes the qualitative experiences of twenty-eight non-obese, non-diabetic participants, (2 males, 26 females: age ± SD: 35 ± 4 y) in a randomised controlled trial to test the effects of medium chain triglyceride (MCT) supplementation in a VLCKD on time to nutritional ketosis (NK), symptoms of keto-induction, and mood. The experience provided by the diet was rated by a free-form daily diary entry and post-study focus group. Diary entries and focus group transcription were coded inductively and grouped into common themes.
**Results.** Twenty-three participants completed the 3-week study. Physical effects accounted for over 28% of references. Other results were categorised as; mood, energy and cognition (23%), satiety and hunger (16%), cravings and temptation (11%), and sleep (8%). Overall, 49% of references were classified as 'positive' with 8% neutral, and 43% negative. Positive impressions were higher after participants had achieved nutritional ketosis and negative impressions higher during keto-induction. Negative impressions, both concerning physical symptoms and feelings of mood and well-being, tended towards improvement over the course of the study, and positive impressions improved. However, there was a large variation in responses, and several respondents reported adverse effects throughout the study.
**Conclusion.** Despite challenges, especially gastrointestinal effects, the overall perception of the diet was positive, and it provided benefits for wellbeing, mood, sleep, and sugar cravings which tended towards improvement over the course of the study. Negative experiences decreased as participants adapted to the VLCKD. Most participants continued post-study, using a lower-carbohydrate diet, due to these perceived benefits. Our findings suggest that the experience of a VLCKD is positive but variable. Further research on individual tolerance and response to low carbohydrate diets is warranted.


A preoperative inferior vena cava (IVC) filter is reported to be effective in surgical cases with proximal deep venous thrombosis (DVT) or in which pulmonary embolism (PE) has already developed, and considered to be at high risk of developing secondary fatal PE during or after surgery. However, guidelines for using an IVC filter have yet to be established. The patient in the present report had two huge tumors, ascending colon cancer and renal angiomyolipoma, which occupied the entire right half of the abdomen, coexisting PE, DVT and tumor thrombus in the right renal vein. Secondary PE is fatal in the perioperative period, therefore, the vena cava filters were preoperatively inserted into the supra- and the infrarenal IVC. We successfully removed the tumors without complications. The patient is alive without tumor recurrence and PE or recurrent DVT 1 year and 6 months after surgery. The coexistence of two huge abdominal tumors as potential causes of PE and DVT is extremely rare, and we could have safely undergone the operation, using two vena cava filters in the supra- and infrarenal IVC.


In this major work an economist with long experience as an advisor in developing countries explores the conflict between market forces and political reform that has led straight into Latin America's most serious problems. John Sheahan addresses three central concerns: the persistence of poverty in Latin American countries despite rising national incomes, the connection between economic troubles and political repression, and the relationships between Latin America and the rest of the world in trade and finance, as well as overall dependence. His comprehensive explanation of why many Latin Americans identify open political systems with frustration and economic breakdown will interest not only economists but also a broad range of other social scientists. This is "political economy" in the classical sense of the word, establishing a clear connection between the political and economic realities of Latin America.


Lynx is a large area and high angular resolution X-ray mission being studied by NASA to be presented to the next Decadal Survey for the implementation in the next decade. It aims to realize an X-ray telescope with the effective area similar to Athena (2 m2 at 1 keV) but with the same angular resolution of Chandra and a much larger Field Of View (up 20 arcmin x 20 arcmin). The science of X-ray Surveyor requires a large-throughput mirror assembly with sub-arcsec angular resolution. These future X-ray mirrors have a set of requirements which, collectively, represents very substantial advances over any currently in operation or planned for missions other than X-ray Surveyor. Of particular importance is achieving low mass per unit collecting area, while maintaining Chandra like angular resolution. Among the possible solutions under study, the direct polishing of both thin monolithic pseudo-cylindrical shells and segments made of fused silica are being considered as viable solutions for the implementation of the mirrors. Fused silica has very good thermomechanical parameters (including a very low CTE), making the material particularly well suited for for the production of the Lynx mirrors. It should be noted that the use of close shells is also very attractive, since the operations for the integration of the shells will be greatly simplified and the area lost due to the vignetting from the interfacing structures minimized even if the management of such big (diameter of 3 m) and thin shells have to be demonstrated. In this paper we will discuss a possible basic layout for a full shell mirror and a hybrid concept (segmented plus monolithic shells made of fused silica) as a second solution, for the Lynx/XRS telescope, discussing preliminary results in terms of optical and mechanical performance.


Within the conceptual framework of WLC 2016 we have chosen to explore a transdisciplinary approach of postmodern clothing. Fashion has always been a domain in which sociological, philosophical, political, cultural approaches have spoken about its contents and contexts. Recent sociological studies of fashion have revealed the deep meanings of conceptual clothing and the interwoven network of thoughts that is the starting point for such intellectual approaches. Fashion scholars such as Bradley Quinn, Caroline Evans, Valerie Steele or Malcolm Barnard have underlined the role of conceptual clothing in casting a light upon various social issues and symptoms. Through this paper we want to argument how layers of social meaning transform certain fashion projects in reflexions of the Zeitgeist. In the current socio-political context such investigations do not necessarily offer pertinent answers, but certainly raise more questions and awareness. By focusing on the works of Lucy and Jorge Orta, and Hussein Chalayan, our aim is to explore the different ways in which social changes, urban reconfigurations, and geographical dislocation question our notions of space, form, mobility, and identity. Our research will be a transdisciplinary one, analysing a consistent part of their work from different perspectives in order to reveal their influence on the way in which the design of clothing has taken the responsibility of becoming a shelter, a refuge, a mean of protection against the transient nature of contemporary societies. We will be analyzing Chalayan's three projects, Afterwords (2000), Temporal Meditations (2003), and Absent Presence (2005), and Orta's Refugee Wear (1992), Modular Architecture (1996), and Nexus Architecture (1993–2002). In investigating their works we shall focus on the character of artistic process, employed by both Chalayan and Orta, by using the objects (garments) and the mechanisms of fashion (runway collection) for Chalayan, and the mechanism of performance for Orta.


We discuss the concept of a custom screens builder for network elements management. The builder dynamically creates custom screens on the basis of screen templates. We propose XML-based templates employing a few simple but flexible constructs that significantly augment the SMI (structure of management information) and MIB (management information base) definitions. We also describe implementation details and share experience gained during development work on such a tool.


Aims. The propagation of MHD waves in a structured magnetic flux tube embedded within a straight magnetic environment is studied analytically. The motivation for this analysis comes from the observations of damped loop oscillations indicating the possibility that only part of the loop is homogeneous in the radial direction and from the observation of two simultaneous waves with different speeds in the same magnetic loop in the solar atmosphere. Methods. The general dispersion relation of longitudinal wave propagation is derived for a flux tube configuration consisting of a core, annulus and external region each with straight distinct magnetic field. Modes of oscillation are examined from the general dispersion relation that is suitable for obtaining information not just on oscillations but also on some instability properties of this complex tube structure. Specific attention is given to the modification of the phase speeds and oscillation periods caused by the annulus structure, compared to a single monolithic tube. Results. It is shown that two purely surface modes arise. The relative change in periods due to the additional annulus layer is shown to be rather significant (up to 20% in some cases). In particular we found that in photospheric type annular tubes, periods are less than their counterparts in a monolithic loop while for a dense flux tube in the majority of cases the period was greater than the period of the counterpart monolithic flux tube. Both short and long wavelength approximations are considered for both the symmetrical (sausage) and kink modes. Conclusions. Annular structuring of a magnetic flux tube will reduce or increase periods of the allowed oscillations depending on the type of flux tube considered (either as a magnetic or as a density enhancement). The results are relevant to further our knowledge of solar magneto-seismology. In particular, the obtained results for the kink oscillations may be applicable from photosphere to corona, while the case for the sausage mode is more relevant in the lower part of the solar atmosphere.


The aim of the thesis is to present reflection on the work in the Adventure Playground in the City of Maribor (hereinafter: the Adventure Playground), using principles of playwork. The theoretical part consists of a description of the main characteristics of playwork, explanation on how play is understood among experts, and detailed presentation of the adventure playground as an environment where playwork is carried out. Special attention has been given to employees in adventure playgrounds and their role. The empirical part consists of research findings, namely reflection of the happening in the Adventure Playground that I was part of. The research was based on the following criteria: what opportunities does the play environment offer, what kind of interventions do employees choose, and how children's wishes and needs can be fulfilled in this adventure playground. A part of the content of the theoretical as well as empirical part consists of employees' reflection and influence of personal experience on their work. My findings show that the Adventure Playground as a play environment offers a wide variety of materials and diverse play opportunities that already fulfill various needs of children. Moreover, children can have influence on almost all the aspects of the happening in the playground, except for its opening hours, the amount of materials offered, and issues of safety. Playworkers choose various styles of interventions to keep the play alive, such as play maintenance, simple involvement and medial interventions (i.e. providing additional materials, giving play cues, responding to play cues, withdrawal from play, etc.). Moreover, sometimes they also intervene to end a play.
The thesis also reveals playworkers' assessment of their own work compared to the theory of playwork. As important characteristics of the Adventure Playground they highlighted the following elements: the playground being actually made for children; the importance given to space where children can play without adults; free play; children having opportunities to develop skills that cannot be developed in other environments. At the same time the Adventure Playground is a controlled-risk environment. Assessing their own work, the playworkers highlighted their often too instinctive reactions. The empirical part of my thesis, covering employees' self-reflection and finding reasons for their interventions, what is one of the bases of reflection, provides an important contribution to the field of playwork.


We read with great interest the study by Brooke and colleagues, in which they revealed that a severe hereditary form of peptic ulcer disease known as 'cryptogenic multifocal ulcerating stenosing enteritis' is caused by homozygosity for a truncating mutation in PLA2G4A , causing complete loss of cytosolic phospholipase A2-α (cPLA(2)α).1 We describe below a family with a different truncating mutation to further delineate the PLA2G4A -related phenotype.

The family consists of healthy first cousin parents and 8-year-old triplets, two of whom had been treated for severe peptic ulcer disease since they were 2 years of age. The initial presentation was in the form of abdominal pain, anaemia and blood in stools, and multiple gastric and duodenal ulcers were diagnosed by endoscopy at …


This paper presents a bio-mechatronic approach to the design and fabricate of an artificial arm, focusing on designing artificial shoulder, biceps, wrist and hand. The proposed design provides a novel tool towards upper limb amputee rehabilitation process. Detail 3D designs of the artificial arm are described including an elbow powered by a car's power window motor, DC motor powered wrist and a string actuated Artificial Hand Gripper (AHG) with 5 artificial fingers which acts as a slave that is controlled by a Smart Glove (master). The AHG incorporates a master-slave system which proven suitable for Mirror Visual Feedback (MVF) therapy experimented on subject towards the completion of this research. There are so many hand prostheses which is commercially available, however, due to the disadvantages such as weight, high cost and complex mechanism, this paper on the other hand proposed new ideas on problem solving by providing an artificial arm which gives good cosmetic appearance, functional, low-cost and users friendly.


BACKGROUND
Worldwide, the prevalence of obesity and overweight in industrialized countries and in a substantial number of developing countries is increasing at an alarming rate. Rimonabant is a selective cannabinoid-1 receptor antagonist that has been investigated for its efficacy in reducing body weight and associated risk factors in obese people. Phase III trials are now under way to test the use of rimonabant for long-term weight-loss. Given the prevalence of overweight and obesity, it is important to establish the efficacy and safety of rimonabant.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effects of rimonabant in overweight and obese people.

SEARCH STRATEGY
MEDLINE, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library, LILACS, databases of ongoing trials and reference lists were used to identify relevant trials. The last search was conducted in June 2006.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised controlled trials comparing rimonabant with placebo or other weight loss interventions in overweight or obese adults.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two reviewers independently assessed all potentially relevant citations for inclusion and methodological quality. The primary outcome measures were weight loss change, morbidity and adverse effects occurrence.

MAIN RESULTS
Four studies evaluating rimonabant 20 mg versus rimonabant 5 mg versus placebo in addition to a hypocaloric diet lasting at least one year were included. Compared with placebo, rimonabant 20 mg produced a 4.9 kg greater reduction in body weight in trials with one-year results. Improvements in waist circumference, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglyceride levels and systolic and diastolic blood pressure were also seen. However, the results with rimonabant 5 mg demonstrated a weight reduction which was only 1.3 kg greater when compared with placebo. No clinically relevant effects on plasma lipids and blood pressure were found. Rimonabant 20 mg caused significant more adverse effects both of general and serious nature, especially of nervous system, psychiatric or gastro-intestinal origin. Attrition rates were approximately 40% at the end of one year.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
The use of rimonabant after one year produces modest weight loss of approximately 5%. Even modest amounts of weight loss may be potentially beneficial. The observed results should be interpreted with some caution, though, since the evaluated studies presented some deficiencies in methodological quality. Studies with longer follow-ups after the end of treatment and of more rigorous quality should be done before definitive recommendations can be made regarding the role of this new medication in the management of overweight or obese patients.


Endocrine disturbances are emerging as major side effects of antipsychotic medications. Of particular note is the profile of menstrual disturbance and galactorrhea as a consequence of hyperprolactinemia (A. Weick & P. M. Haddad, 2003), a sequela of antidopaminergic action at the hypothalamopituitary axis. Research into the clinical aspects of this sensitive issue is sparse. The authors completed a cross-sectional descriptive study of 50 patients on conventional antipsychotic medications. The prevalence of menstrual disturbance was 54%, and the prevalence of amenorrhea was 12%. Symptoms of galactorrhea were present in 32% of patients. A history of pregnancy and childbirth was noted to be significantly associated with the development of galactorrhea (p = .01). The authors hypothesized that pregnancy and lactation might sensitize the hypothalamopituitary axis for further development of hyperprolactinemia due to medications.


The relationships of the lesser or red panda, Ailurus, have remained elusive even as any doubts about the identity of the giant panda as a bear have been erased. While usually classified as a member of the Procyonidae (raccoons), recent anatomical studies have suggested that the red panda may not fall in any of the arctoid carnivore families but instead may reflect an early offshoot of the lineage leading to ursids (bears) and pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses). Sequence data from the cytochrome b and 12S genes for multiple representatives of all relevant families support this hypothesis. Such a systematic position makes this threatened species particularly worthy of conservation. Sequence data alone, as well as a combined analysis of the sequence and anatomical data, strongly support a single origin of pinnipeds and their aquatic adaptations, lending some resolution to the general disagreement about familial relationships in this group. These molecular data also support canids as the basal members of this caniform clade, but are unresolved with respect to whether mustelids or procyonids constitute the sister group to the (ursid, pinniped, Ailurus) clade. There is support for the notion that skunks are a genetically divergent and possibly nonmustelid lineage.


Coastal areas are important globally. These areas have also drawn attention of geomorphologists for in-depth studies. Several institutions have made contributions towards analysis, identifications of different geomorphic features and their mapping. Attempts have been made to map oceans and associated coastal geomorphic features. In this paper an effort has been made for the Indian Ocean. There are straits, channels, continental sub-marine margins and continental shelf which form different components of the coastal ocean. They are shaped by land erosion, sub aerial deposition, volcanic, diastrophic, marine erosion and deposition and organisms. The interactions of these features are so variable that the coastal features are almost infinitely complex. The coasts of Indian Ocean realm fall into more than one category. Therefore, a matrix reference can be used with definite colour band to depict each single or compound feature.


Introduction In Zambia, all children born with neural tube defects requiring surgery need to be referred to a tertiary level hospital in Lusaka, the capital city, where the specialists are based. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of mothers accessing health care who had recently given birth to a child with a neural tube defect. Methods and analysis In-depth interviews were conducted with a purposively selected sample of 20 mothers at the tertiary level hospital. The interviews were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim and translated. Content analysis was used to identify codes, which were later collapsed into categories and themes. Findings Five themes emerged: access to health care, access to transport, access to information, concerns about family and support needs. Discussion Barriers to access to health care included geographical barriers and barriers linked to availability. Geographical barriers were related to distance between home and the health centre, and referral between health facilities. Barriers to availability included the lack of specialist health workers at various levels, and insufficient hospital vehicles to transport mothers and children to the tertiary level hospital. The main barrier to affordability was the cost of transport, which was alleviated by either family or government support. Acceptability of the health services was affected by a lack of information, incorrect advice, the attitude of health workers and the beliefs of the family. Conclusion Access to health care by mothers of children with neural tube defects in Zambia is affected by geographical accessibility, availability, affordability and acceptability. The supply-side barriers and demand-side barriers require different interventions to address them. This suggests that health policy is needed which ensures access to surgery and follow-up care.


Research in the spintronics community has been intensively stimulated by the proposal of the spin field-effect transistor (SFET), which has the potential for combining the data storage and process in a single device. Here we report the spin dependent transport on a Fe3O4/GaAs based lateral structured device. Parallel and antiparallel states of two Fe3O4 electrodes are achieved. A clear MR loop shows the perfect butterfly shape at room temperature, of which the intensity decreases with the reducing current, showing the strong bias dependence. Understanding the spin-dependent transport properties in this architecture has strong implication in further development of the spintronic devices for room-temperature SFETs.


An instrument to promote the CO2 emission reductions, taking the Kyoto Protocol goal into account, can be the assignment to energy conversion plants of a monetary charge linked to their specific emission intensity. Once the choice of a charge is defined, the next problem is the choice of a strategy to determine the amount of the imposed charge, named Carbon Tax (CT). In this paper an analytical procedure for the Carbon Tax evaluation is proposed and applied. This approach is based on the concept of Efficiency Penalty of the energy system, that represents the evaluation of the cost of the exergy destroyed inside the system and the cost of the exergy rejected in the biosphere with the plant wastes; the Efficiency Penalty term is coupled with the evaluation of the Index of CO2 Emission, which connects the amount of the CO2 emitted by the plant with the Second Law efficiency of the plant itself. The evaluated charge on the CO2 emissions is defined as Carbon Exergy Tax (CET). The procedure is applied here to the analysis of a 700 MW combined plant burning fossil fuels in two different configurations: a typical natural gas fired combined plant, and a coal fired combined plant burning coal in a Pressurised Fluidised Bed Combustor (PFBC).


Serum amyloid P (SAP) inhibits fibrocyte outgrowth from PBMCs and may therefore play a role in fibrosis. We studied the role of SAP in regulating fibrosis in the kidney where there are very few fibrocytes. In the UUO model of kidney fibrosis, IP or IV SAP (20µg/g) significantly inhibits fibrosis. (11.3% at 14d vs. 5.4%). Similar findings were seen in other models of kidney fibrosis. In transgenic Col1-GFP mice, SAP reduced myofibroblast GFP by 50%, but myofibroblast numbers were not affected, indicating SAP switches off collagen production. SAP does not bind to fibroblasts or reduce collagen production by fibroblasts in vitro. SAP binds to monocytes, Møs and apoptotic cells. Møs are fibrogenic through paracrine signaling to fibroblasts. SAP binds FcγRI, II, III, IV, in mice and inhibits Monocyte/Mø activation, assessed by inflammatory gene transcript levels, and cytokine production in vitro. Primed Møs are susceptible to soluble IgG-mediated activation suggesting SAP inhibits kidney Mø activation by an Fcγ-dependent mechanism. Purified UUO kidney Møs were also less activated and produced more IL10 in mice treated with SAP. To test the role of FcγRs in kidney Mø activation we induced UUO fibrosis in FcRγ-chain KO mice. Compared with controls, fibrosis was attenuated, confirming a role for FcγR-mediated activation of kidney Møs in the development of fibrosis. Our studies point to SAP as a potential therapeutic in the management of progressive fibrosis.


Though data from cell lines are abundant, the reason for the development of resistance to 1-beta-D arabinofuranosylcytosine (ara-C) in vivo remains unresolved. A broad interpatient variation of metabolic parameters has further complicated interpretation of the results. The present study compares ara-C metabolism in leukemic blasts of two patients with newly diagnosed disease, before and after repeated treatment with ara-C containing chemotherapy regimens in vivo. Membrane transport of ara-C was unchanged after treatment. In addition, cell-free extracts of blasts obtained after treatment failure showed an unchanged cytidine deaminase activity. Though deoxycytidine kinase activity in cell extracts was unaltered or increased after treatment failure, the activity in situ, measured as the rate of 1-beta-D-arabinofuranosylcytosine triphosphate (ara-CTP) formation, was decreased. This could be shown to be due to an expansion of the deoxycytidine triphosphate (dCTP) pool. The severalfold increase in dCTP pool was accompanied by a decrease in thymidine triphosphate (dTTP) pool and correlated with a decrease in deoxycytidylate deaminase (dCMP-deaminase) activity in cell free extracts. Low dCMP-deaminase activity had been shown to confer an ara-C resistant phenotype to cell lines in vitro. Data presented in this paper show that a selection for leukemic blasts with low dCMP-deaminase activity can also be favored by ara-C containing treatment regimens in vivo. Our data suggest that this mechanism might contribute to treatment failure.


Purpose: The purpose of this research review is to investigate the efficacy of cryotherapy with dynamic intermittent compression (CDIC) compared to less advanced methods of cryotherapy, after total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Background: The use of cryotherapy after surgery is a common and even standard of practice to help mitigate the side effects post-operatively. Some of these side effects include inflammation, pain, swelling, and stiffness; all of which, if not controlled, can influence recovery and have a detrimental effect on healing and returning to prior level of function. Currently there several different methods and treatment options when it comes to cryotherapy. There has been a steady increase in the number of TKAs each year. The push for patients to leave the hospital and return to work or sport faster is driving the development of better, more advanced modalities to speed up recovery. There are many therapeutic devices that claim to provide a better, faster recovery by delivering continuous cooling and intermittent pneumatic compression that mimics the body's muscular pump. While the benefits of cryotherapy post-operatively have been demonstrated in research, the most effective cryotherapy method is still debated and there is currently limited research investigating the efficacy of more advanced commercial devices. Case Description: The patient is a 68-year-old female presenting to the orthopedic outpatient clinic two days status post right TKA with pain, reduced range of motion, and increased swelling. She had a left TKA two years prior, and had a difficult time controlling her pain and swelling due to her limited tolerance of narcotics and ice, leading to a delayed return of range of motion and functional activities. Methods: A literature review was conducted and numerous databases were searched to find research investigating the efficacy of CDIC devices compared less advanced cryotherapy methods. Discussion: Upon literature review of current evidence, there is very limited high quality and consistent evidence that supports the use and the benefits of a CDIC device over standard ice and compression. With the inconsistency in results among current research and limited use of objective measures, it is difficult to draw a strict conclusion on whether the benefits outweigh the cost. Based on the research, CDIC devices are not seen to be superior to a standard ice bag with compression, and in some studies are seen to be less effective. Considering the cost of a CDIC device and its limited benefits, this method may not be appropriate for the majority of the patient population following TKA. CDIC vs Ice and Compression Post TKA


Wave-induced vibrations, such as whipping and springing, of container carriers have been attracting much attention because of their effects on hull-girder bending moments and fatigue damage. An investigation has been carried out comparing experimental measurements and numerical predictions of symmetric wave-induced loads (i.e. vertical bending moment) of the latest River-sea link container ship design, LPP = 130 m. The dual mission characteristics, namely rivers and open seas, make this type of ship an extremely interesting type of container carrier, particularly in terms of springing and whipping.A backbone beam segmented model is used in the experiments with the focus on springing- and whipping-induced vertical bending moments, for the model travelling at Fn = 0.21 in regular and long-crested irregular head waves, of 2.5m full-scale height or significant wave height. In addition higher order (harmonics) vertical bending moments (VBM) are also extracted from the experiments. The measurements are taken at amidships and the fore and aft quarters. Numerical predictions, for both the full-scale vessel and segmented model, are obtained using the two-dimensional linear hydroelasticity theories, where the hull structure is idealized as a non-uniform beam and the fluid actions evaluated using strip theory.The measured model test results, in relatively moderate conditions based on a particular area of operation for this low-draught vessel, indicate that nonlinear springing accounts for a significant portion of the total wave-induced bending moments in regular and, to an extent, irregular waves and slamming effects are small due to the operational area selected. The numerical predictions in regular waves show that linear hydroelasticity analysis can only predict similar trends in the variation of the VBM and the resonance peak. On the other hand, in long crested irregular waves the linear hydroelasticity analysis provides peak statistics that are commensurate with the measurements. The numerical predictions were obtained for two variants, having L = LPP and L = 0.9 LPP, the latter corresponding to the length of the backbone.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


The theory of Allis and Rose based on the hypotheses of congruence and proportionality is used to formulate the problem of ambipolar diffusion and drift of a plasma of added carriers in a semiconductor in the presence of a magnetic field. These hypotheses together with the linearized equations for the particle flow densities of the electrons and holes permit an expression for the particle flow density of the added carriers to be derived. In its final form this expression is composed of a drift and diffusion term in which the ambipolar group mobility and diffusion coefficient appear as tensorial quantities. These antisymmetric tensors will reduce to the scalar quantities of van Roosbroeck (1953) when the magnetic field is set equal to zero and to the proper tensorial quantities for the added minority carriers in strong extrinsic n or p type semiconductors. Finally, as an illustrative example, the ambipolar continuity equation for the particle density of added carriers is solved as an initial-value problem in an unbounded domain in order to analyze the space and time behaviour of a pulse of added carriers whose initial distribution is a Dirac delta function.


Protein function annotation is vital for identifying disease causative factors and for solving mysteries behind biological system complexities. As manual annotation requires costly and laborious in vitro methods, in silico protein function prediction is preferred nowadays. According to literature, one in five yeast mitochondrial proteins are known to be human disease related. This paper presents a genetic algorithmically weighted heterogeneous data ensemble to classify Saccharomyces cerevisiae proteins under 'mitochondrion organization'(GO:0007005) function defined in Gene Ontology. It consists of five euclidean-distance based nearest neighbour models and three affinity-based neighbourhood models, utilizing protein properties data, four gene expression datasets and protein interactions. The overall prediction is the weighted average of the posterior probability outputs given by the base models. Weights are determined by the standard Genetic Algorithm. The constituted base models show a fair agreement and improve the best performing base classifier by ~ 14.3%.


A case of idiopathic aortic thrombosis in a term neonate is reported. Ultrasound examination led to diagnosis and an embolectomy was carried out. Literature data concerning etiology and treatment of neonatal aortic thrombosis are reviewed.


The radiative transfer (RT) approach is widely used for studying scattering from layered random media with rough interfaces. Although it has been successful in several applications such as remote sensing of atmosphere it is well known that this approach involves certain approximations. In this paper these assumptions and approximations are reexamined and explained. To enable this a statistical approach is employed to this problem and the governing equations for the first and second moments of the wave fields are derived. A transition is hence made to arrive at a system of equations corresponding to that of the RT approach. It is thus found that more conditions are implicitly involved in the RT approach than generally believed to be necessary.


In the title compound, C27H21NO2, the half-chair conformation of the alicyclic rings gives rise to a slightly folded structure of the central tricyclic tetrahydrophenanthridine unit. Tandem intramolecular O—H⋯N and O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds give rise to adjacent S(6) and S(5) rings, respectively, which dictate the conformation of the 5-aryl substituent. In the crystal structure, an intermolecular C—H⋯O contact generates chains parallel to [101]. Short O—H⋯π and C—H⋯π contacts are also observed.


An asymptotic expansion is obtained for an incomplete beta-type integral, which arises in the study of probabilities of large deviations. The expansion obtained yields large deviation results for binomial, quantile, and related probabilities. Our approach is based on a generalized version of Laplace's method.


Nanomechanical computing elements which employ rotational symmetry and motion are designed and analyzed using a bounded continuum model. First, the Boolean logic functions of NOT, AND, OR, and XOR are realized using a helical latch, reset springs, and rod assemblies. Building upon these components, designs for shifters and two-level logic devices are developed. The helical latching mechanism calculates the Boolean output function as a positional displacement from a known reset state, which occurs exactly once during each 360 degrees instruction cycle. Operations of arbitrary word length can be performed by subdividing the logic disc into sectors where each sector operates on a single bit. Throughput can be increased by pipelining multiple-bit operands to yield a speedup which approaches a maximum value of (n+2) as compared to a single-level of non-pipelined logic with n inputs. Generally, speedup is bounded by (n+2)/p where p denotes the number of cycles between initiations of the pipe. An analysis of gate kinematics is performed to determine the device geometries and maximum operating frequencies for both non-pipelined and pipelined operation.


The dynamic performance of a dual-emitter phototransistor (DEPT) was studied. In the static case of a DEPT under a 12.5 µW optical power, the emitter-induced gain effect from photocurrent modulation improves collector photocurrent (88 to 129 µA). For the DEPT as an electro-optical switch with a 2 V supply voltage, the stable electrical logic swing is 0.41 V for a 1 V clock signal. When a short-period clock signal is applied, a clear electrical logic swing larger than 1.2 V is achieved. The emitter-induced gain effect from both photocurrent modulation and junction-voltage modulation is also introduced to clearly describe DEPT dynamic performance.


Objective: To evaluate the pr eoperative endo metria l cancer risk as a guida nce to choose th e typ e of surg ical approach based on European Society for Medical Oncology guideline (200 9). Method: Cross-sectional study involved 73 endometrial cancer patients of Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, from january 200 6 to December 2012 whi ch obt ain ed from medical record. The inclusion criteria wer e endometr ial cancer pati ents with compl ete D&C, ultr asonographic, and postoperative histopathological rep orts. Endometrial cancer risk of recurren ce was classified acco rding to ESMO 2009 and final diagno sis and stage based on FIGO. Result: From 40 5 patients, only 73 patients had compl ete reports. Most of the them were postmenopaus al (54.8 %), non-nulliparity (79 .9%), and obese (49.5%) women.According to risk of recurren cestratification, low, intermediate and high risk were found in 12 patients, 27 patients, and 34 pati ents. Based on FIGO, there were 60.2% early and 39.8% advanced sta ge. In high risk gro up, rates of advan ced stage wer e prominent compar ed to othe r gro ups. There were 38.3% patients with postoper ativ e positive lymph nod es metastases. Conclusion: Most of th e endometrial cancer patients we re pr eoperatively diagnosed as high risk. The commones t stage after surgical examination were me. High risk of recurrence showed more positive lymph node compared to low or intermediat e risk. Result of preoperative histopathological and myometrial invasion compared to postoper ative results wer e showed to be inconsistent Pat ients with ≥ 1/2 myometrial Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 invasion had more positive lymph nodes metastases. Endometrial cancer risks compared to FIGO stage showed the higher the risk, th e more advanced the stage were. Keywords: endometrial cancer, FIGO stage, high risk, histol ogical type, intermediate risk , low risk, lymph node.


AIM
Erectile dysfunction may be observed in up to 80% of patients with Peyronie's disease. An objective evaluation of the erectile function is attempted to work out in patients with Peyronie's disease.

METHODS
Penile deformity, sexual function and penile vascular status were analyzed in 123 patients with Peyronie's disease, who had not received any pertinent treatment.

RESULTS
Penile deformity, palpable plaque and pain on erection were seen in 112 (91%), 97 (78.8%) and 27 (21.9%) of the 123 patients, respectively. Of the 76 patients evaluated by color Doppler ultrasounography, veno-occlusive dysfunction as the vascular component for erectile dysfunction was found in 17 (22.3%), arterial insufficiency in 10 (13.1%) and a mixed picture in 23 (30.2%).

CONCLUSION
The documentation of penile erectile function and the determination of the vascular status using color Doppler ultrasonography can guide the appropriate therapeutic choice.


In this study of erotic transference the phenomenon is defined in the manner of Freud (1915) and Blum (1973). It involves a circumscribed behaviour which consists of an erotic preoccupation with the therapist which often has the quality of an obsession. It is prolonged, usually for months or years, is relatively immutable, and can be seen as a milder variant of de Clerembault's syndrome. It is suggested that the psychic purpose of the preoccupation is to maintain a threatened sense of self. The erotic content of the preoccupation is likely to be a consequence of the sexualization of the early relationship with caregivers, which was impingeing and disruptive of self-development. In an illustrative case, the disturbance of this development was considered to include an impediment to the development of the transitional field, the mother herself replacing the transitional object.


Summary
Background and objective.Although the administration of single-allergen extracts is recommended, there are polysensitized patients who require a different strategy. This study evaluates the effectiveness of an extract containing a mixture of house dust mites (HDM) and mold allergens in polysensitized patients with asthma and/or rhinitis. Methods. Using validated questionnaires, we assessed asthma and rhinitis control and quality of life (QOL) of patients that received a combined immunotherapy of HDM and mold in routine clinical practice. Results. 39 polysensitized patients with asthma and/or rhinitis were included. After 6 months of follow up, asthma control increased significantly from baseline and was maintained at 12 months. However, QOL of asthma patients did not change significantly from baseline to month 6 or 12, but at month 12, 57.9% of them improved their score and 5.3% maintained the same. On the other hand, QOL of 76.9% patients with rhinitis improved significantly at both 6 and 12 months. Conclusions. In this preliminary study, the administration of immunotherapy based on the combination of allergens from HDM and mold, besides being effective, also allows an increase in the quality of life of patients with asthma and/or rhinitis.


Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) refers to a group of inflammatory disorders of the female upper genital tract caused by the spread from the lower genital tract of Chlamydia trachomatis and other organisms. PID can cause chronic pelvic pain, fallopian tube damage, infertility and ectopic pregnancy. Between January 2002 and December 2011, 16,817 female service members met the surveillance case definition for acute PID. Incidence rates were stable at approximately 8 per 1,000 person-years overall and 11 per 1,000 person-years among known high-risk sub-populations (i.e., women 17-24 years old, in the Army, and of black, non-Hispanic race/ethnicity). Twenty-six women were diagnosed with PID within 10 days after medical evacuation from Iraq/Afghanistan. The proportion of servicewomen diagnosed with infertility subsequent to an incident diagnosis of acute PID increased during the period. Rates of PID are higher in the Army than the other Services. This may reflect differences in Service policies for chlamydia screening of new accessions.


approved: Kagan Tumer Coordination is essential to achieving good performance in cooperative multiagent systems. To date, most work has focused on either implicit or explicit coordination mechanisms, while relatively little work has focused on the benefits of combining these two approaches. In this work we demonstrate that combining explicit and implicit mechanisms can significantly improve coordination and system performance over either approach individually. First, we use difference evaluations (which aim to compute an agent's contribution to the team) and stigmergy to promote implicit coordination. Second, we introduce an explicit coordination mechanism dubbed Intended Destination Enhanced Artificial State (IDEAS), where an agent incorporates other agents' intended destinations directly into its state. The IDEAS approach does not require any formal negotiation between agents, and is based on passive information sharing. Finally, we combine these two approaches on a variant of a team-based multi-robot exploration domain, and show that agents using a both explicit and implicit coordination outperform other learning agents up to 25%.


The formative mechanism and characteristics of the initial transient sound field caused by the transient vibration response of a clamped circular plate are analyzed to the external point force with a squared half-period sine-wave time history. The dynamic response of circular plate and acoustic response are expressed by using both the dimensionless parameter β introduced by the group velocity of principal component and the dimensionless parameter γ introduced by the sound speed in the acoustic medium. From the analysis the following results were obtained. First, the propagation behavior of kinetic energy can be seen by observing the period of 0-2/β. Second, dimensionless sound energy radiation pattern from the plate relies on rather βthan γ. Third, the maximum instantaneous sound intensity on the axis of symmetry is formed by sound radiated from principal modal bending waves which are reflected at the edge of the circular plate.


The patient was a 40-year-old woman who was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma of the left posterior thigh. Follow-up positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) examination revealed an intensely FDG-avid lesion that predominantly contained fat in the right postero-lateral chest wall involving the latissimus dorsi. Ultrasound-guided fine needle aspirate and core biopsy confirmed the diagnosis of hibernoma rather than melanoma metastasis.


The purpose of this study was to determine and analyze the managers' perceptions of the preferred colors in the facility designs and personnel clothing by the enterprises that provide fitness service as a recreation facility and to offer suggestions to the institutions. The study was designed as a qualitative research method. A total of 10 business managers among the recreation facility managers in İzmir province who voluntarily participated in this study constituted the study group. The semi-structured Sportif Bakış: Spor ve Eğitim Bilimleri Dergisi, 7(SI1): 1-10, 2020 Araştırma Makalesi www.sportifbakis.com E-ISSN: 2148-905X doi: 10.33468/sbsebd.124 2 interview form developed by the researchers was used as the data collection tool. Data were analyzed using descriptive and content analysis methods, and they were coded under appropriate themes by using Nvivo 10 qualitative analysis program. According to analyzed results, the individuals receiving service from the recreation facility were offered the opportunity to participate in such recreational activities as Zumba, Bokwa-fitness, Pilates, Trx, Fitness, Gymnastics, Swimming, CrossFit, and spinning. "The language of colors" was classified into two categories by the perceptions of managers. In the first category, the colors of green, pink, white, red, grey, black, and yellow were preferred once or more. It was established that motivation and adaptation themes were mostly observed in the central theme of recreation facility by the colors preferred. In contrast, physical health, institutionalization, hierarchical structuring, facility harmony, and group dynamics themes intensify in the central theme of personnel.


Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) worked as surgical resident physician at Leubus (Lubiaz) Psychiatric State Hospital (asylum) in Silesia from August 1884 to April 1885. The asylum had been founded in a converted monastery as recommended by Johann Gottfried Langermann (1768-1832). Its first superintendent was Moritz Gustav Martini (1794-1875). Although no primary documents concerning Kraepelin's stay at Leubus could be found in the archives, the secondary sources and Kraepelin's own publications offer a good perspective on his Leubus period. Thus, his ground-breaking psychopathological study of confusion is based on patients observed at Leubus. Furthermore, it was here that his work on the major paper on falsifications of memory was begun. Kraepelin also finished the second part of his study "On the psychology of the comic" and wrote a postscript to his paper on the validity of Weber's law regarding light sensations. Since the then superintendent Wilhelm Alter (1843-1918) did not object to his residents doing scientific work, Kraepelin encouraged the voluntary resident physician Max Salomon (1860-?) to write a thesis on double-thinking. He also devoted a great deal of his time to writing reviews and to research in experimental psychology. Kraepelin's time at Leubus, similar to his Dresden period, are but a transitional phase for his final return to the university which he had left temporarily because he was disappointed and frustrated by the lack of career opportunities that suited his needs.


The success of self-supervised learning (SSL) has mostly been attributed to the availability of unlabeled yet large-scale datasets. However, in a specialized domain such as medical imaging which is a lot different from natural images, the assumption of data availability is unrealistic and impractical, as the data itself is scanty and found in small databases, collected for specific prognosis tasks. To this end, we seek to investigate the applicability of self-supervised learning algorithms on small-scale medical imaging datasets. In particular, we evaluate $4$ state-of-the-art SSL methods on three publicly accessible \emph{small} medical imaging datasets. Our investigation reveals that in-domain low-resource SSL pre-training can yield competitive performance to transfer learning from large-scale datasets (such as ImageNet). Furthermore, we extensively analyse our empirical findings to provide valuable insights that can motivate for further research towards circumventing the need for pre-training on a large image corpus. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to holistically explore self-supervision on low-resource medical datasets.


Link prediction on knowledge graphs (KGs) has been extensively studied on binary relational KGs, wherein each fact is represented by a triple. A significant amount of important knowledge, however, is represented by hyper-relational facts where each fact is composed of a primal triple and a set of qualifiers comprising a key-value pair that allows for expressing more complicated semantics. Although some recent works have proposed to embed hyper-relational KGs, these methods fail to capture essential inference patterns of hyper-relational facts such as qualifier monotonicity, qualifier implication, and qualifier mutual exclusion, limiting their generalization capability. To unlock this, we present ShrinkE, a geometric hyper-relational KG embedding method aiming to explicitly model these patterns. ShrinkE models the primal triple as a spatial-functional transformation from the head into a relation-specific box. Each qualifier "shrinks" the box to narrow down the possible answer set and, thus, realizes qualifier monotonicity. The spatial relationships between the qualifier boxes allow for modeling core inference patterns of qualifiers such as implication and mutual exclusion. Experimental results demonstrate ShrinkE's superiority on three benchmarks of hyper-relational KGs.


Interactive digital television (iDTV) is a social medium and must therefore be tested in a context as close to real life as possible. This explains why we saw the potential and importance for the involvement of real-life couples in iDTV usability testing. In this article, an experiment that compares single user testing and coparticipation testing with couples for the evaluation of several Flemish iDTV applications is described. The study found that, first, there was less probing needed by the facilitator to think out loud in the think aloud/coparticipation method with couples than in the think aloud/single test user method. Second, couples did not encounter difficulties working together with the iDTV applications. Further, couples did not lose time by discussing irrelevant issues during the test session. A fourth finding is that couples detected more usability hits than single test users. The quality of comments, however, was the same in both conditions. Sixty perecent of the comments consisted of intrinsic suggestions and 40% of general problem detections. Another issue was raised through findings during the test. Couples in general were enthusiastic to participate, put in little effort on their part in the test session, and evaluated the test session as easy and fun to do. On the contrary, single test users in general were not sure whether they would like to participate again in future tests, declared that the test session demanded considerable effort, and evaluated the test session less positively.


Vision will be increasingly important in robotics applications. An object is modeled by critical curves extracted from the object. In the simplest case the object's curve is its outline. A solution to the curve partitioning problem is shown for nonconvex objects. Curves are described in a rotation and translation invariant way. A way to build a combined model database of many classes of objects is presented. A test to insure disjointness of model classes is given. An efficient technique for computing a network of these curves from a gray-level frame is presented. A graph algorithm is presented to match the model in an efficient way, independent of the scaling found in the scene. A technique for computing and classifying more general critical curves from three-dimensional data is developed.


The pediatric obesity epidemic has gathered public and political interest recently. People often choose "diet" or artificial sweetened beverages (ASB) to combat this epidemic, but the obesity incidence continues to rise. First, I review the pediatric studies on the effect of ASB consumption with subsequent food intake. Next, I present pediatric studies of chronic ASB consumption and weight change. Some epidemiologic pediatric studies have supported an association between artificial sweetener use and increased BMI but cannot prove causation. Randomized control trials have provided some evidence of weight loss with ASB ingestion among children, but study limitations may minimize these conclusions. Finally, I summarize the possible mechanisms that may drive potential effects of artificial sweeteners.


The preliminary results of the variability survey in the Þeld of the very young open cluster NGC 6823 are reported. Several dozen variables were found, including the fourteen already known. The new variable stars comprise eight SPB candidates, a δ Sct star, three eclipsing binaries, and a large sample of stars with mostly irregular light variations. The latter group contains over thirty stars that are likely pre-main sequence members of the cluster (© 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)


Context Often the details of neonatal resuscitation are not accurately documented, causing difficulty to understand what exactly happened on retrospect. Problem The standard of documentation of neonatal resuscitation in our unit was not up to standards. Repeated prompts and requests to the team members didnt improve the quality. Assessment of problem and analysis of its causes Following a serious case review, it was identified that the details of resuscitation obtained fro the documentation didn't reflect the true events. This had medico-legal implications as well as there was an inquest. Intervention A structured proforma was conceived to cover the important aspects of a neonatal resuscitation. Study design We retrospectively collected details of resuscitation documentation from the electronic medical records of 42 randomly selected neonates. 21 of them were born during February 2014–August 2014, in the period where no proforma was in use, while the other 21 were born during August 2014–December 2014, a period after the introduction of proforma. Strategy for change We identified the target user group which consisted of a multi-disciplinary team of neonatal doctors, neonatal nurses and members of midwifery team. all the stakeholders from the different staff teams were formally introduced and trained on using the proforma. A formal start date was agreed for the trial. The team was instructed to document the details as per the proforma. The proforma was made readily available in print format in all possible neonatal resuscitation areas. Copies of proforma were also stocked in the resuscitation trolleys and resuscitation bags. Measurement of improvement Data was collected and compared from all categories from before and after the use of proforma. Results are as follows, Documentation of type of bleep call, time of bleep, names of neonatal staff attending improved by 71%, 48%, and 57% respectively. Documenting Apgar scores improved by 38%. Documentation of details of respiratory support improved from 15–71% to 85–100%. Documentation of time of first gasp and first breath were almost 0% before proforma, increased by 58% and 63% respectively. Documentation of use of resuscitation drugs improved from 67% to 100%. No significant difference noted in documentation of intubation details. The percentage of documentation doubled for transportation details. Documentation of resuscitation outcome improved from 0% to 86%. Documentation of parental communication improved from 19% to 75%. (Please see graphs below)Abstract G585(P) Figure 1Abstract G585(P) Figure 2Abstract G585(P) Figure 3 Effects of changes Improved quality of documentation has enabled better understanding of events in the resuscitation for the whole team. This has made the team to have effective communication with the parents/families later. We had informal feedback from the users that in day to day practice and in a stressful situation such as neonatal resuscitation, the structured proforma was very useful. Lessons learnt Improving documentation is always difficult. introducing the proforma made a big difference. We think the prompting nature of the proforma has enabled the users to document the vital details of resuscitation Message for others We recommend that all neonatal resuscitation should be documented on a structured proforma. Following the above results, the proforma is now in regular use in our unit.


One of the goals of reservoir characterization, particularly in mature reservoirs, is to identify unswept regions containing high oil saturation for targeted infill drilling or enhanced recovery. A common approach to the problem is to generate high resolution distribution of reservoir properties such as permeability and porosity and then conduct flow simulations to identify regions of high oil saturation. One possible alternative to flow simulations would be to generate spatial distribution of properties that are related to fluid saturations and then infer fluid saturation distribution through the use of appropriate correlations. In this paper we present a field application to infer interwell water saturation distribution by combining crosswell seismic and well data. First, we use a non-parametric transformational approach to correlate sonic velocity with resistivity and porosity at the wells. An iterative procedure using alternating conditional expectations (ACE) forms the basis for this calibration. Next, stochastic cosimulation is carried out to generate conditional realizations of resistivity and porosity in the interwell region. In this cosimulation, cross-well seismic velocity is considered as the secondary data while resistivity and porosity are treated as primary data. Finally, water saturation distribution is deduced from the resistivity and porosity distributions through the use of Archie's law.


A field soil quality test kit was developed to permit rapid assessment of numerous soil characteristics recognized as basic indicators of soil quality. This study was conducted to determine the accuracy and precision of indicator measurements with the field soil quality test kit. Data collected with the test kit were compared with that from standard laboratory analyses using soils from grassland and cropland on two farms in Stutsman County, North Dakota. Results obtained with the test kit for electrical conductivity, soil pH, soil nitrate, and gravimetric water content compared well with those found by standard laboratory analyses. Significant differences in soil respiration between the field and laboratory methods were attributed to the inclusion of root respiration in the test kit measurement and to differences in sampling time, disturbance, and soil depth. Repeated test kit measurements were, for the most part, no more variable than standard laboratory analyses except when the water status of soils neared saturation. This preliminary evaluation demonstrated the field test kit to be an effective screening tool for point-scale assessment of soil quality by providing accurate and precise data over a range of soil conditions.


The rapid growth of inclusive higher education opportunities for young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) has contributed to improvements in students' academics, employment, social, and independent living outcomes. However, many college programs lack a focus on functional literacy, a critical skill for success in adulthood. This study evaluated whether a functional literacy intervention was associated with an increase in the percentage of reading comprehension strategies implemented accurately for college students with IDD. A multiple probe across functional literacy stimuli (e.g., academic assignments, employment emails, social text messages) was replicated across four students. Results indicated an association between the intervention and percentage of strategies implemented accurately. Suggestions for future research and implications for practice are provided.


The evolutionary success of polyploidy most directly requires the ability of polyploid individuals to reproduce and transmit their genes to subsequent generations. As a result, the sexual system (i.e. the mating system and the sex allocation of a species) will necessarily play a key role in determining the fate of a new polyploid lineage. The effects of the sexual system on the evolution of polyploidy are complex and interactive. They include both aspects of the genetic system, the genetic load maintained in a population and the ecological context in which selection takes place. Here, we explore these complexities and review the empirical evidence for several potentially important genetic and ecological interactions between ploidy and the sexual system in plants. We place particular emphasis on work in our laboratory on the European annual plant Mercurialis annua, which offers promising scope for detailed investigations on this topic. M. annua forms a polyploid complex that varies in its sexual system from dioecy (separate sexes) through androdioecy (males and hermaphrodites) to functional hermaphroditism. © 2004 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2004, 82, 547–560.


During the last ten years, poultry production in the world and particularly, EU has been specific due to new trends, whereby special attention is focused on regulations and procedures that are adopted by European Union (EU), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the World Trade Organization. Legal regulations in EU (standards, directions) are focused on all species and categories of poultry. Based on this, breeding of broiler (meat-type line strains) and production of hatching eggs and day old chickens (incubation) as well as other issues are the focus of this review. This paper presented results of studies carried out using different technological procedures in the breeding of broiler and production of one day old chickens. These showed a full expression of genetic potential of strains, along with preservation of poultry welfare.


Responsive polymer brushes are a category of polymer brushes that are capable of conformational and chemical changes in response to external stimuli. They offer unique opportunities for the control of bio−nano interactions due to the precise control of chemical and structural parameters such as the brush thickness, density, chemistry, and architecture. The design of responsive brushes at the surface of nanomaterials for theranostic applications has developed rapidly. These coatings can be generated from a very broad range of nanomaterials, without compromising their physical, photophysical, and imaging properties. Although the use of responsive brushes for nanotheranostic remains in its early stages, in this review, the aim is to present how the systems developed to date can be combined to control sensing, imaging, and controlled delivery of therapeutics. The recent developments for such design and associated methods for the synthesis of responsive brushes are discussed. The responsive behaviors of homo polymer brushes and brushes with more complex architectures are briefly reviewed, before the applications of responsive brushes as smart delivery systems are discussed. Finally, the recent work is summarized on the use of responsive polymer brushes as novel biosensors and diagnostic tools for the detection of analytes and biomarkers.


This study aims to see the politeness of Indonesian in a printed daily newspaper published in Bali, namely the daily Tribun Bali which presents a page of a column called "Smart Traveler" that discusses tourism objects in Bali. In this study, two points were researched, namely the form of politeness and the form of Indonesian politeness based on the principle of politeness (Leech, 1993). Data obtained naturally by reading the daily Tribun Bali, especially the tourism column "Smart Traveler". Then the data is coded according to the function of the Indonesian language, especially in the field of pragmatics concerning the principle of politeness, and transcribed on the data card. The data then were analyzed using two aspects, namely, first, the data were analyzed to determine linguistic elements such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in a predetermined time. Second, the data were analyzed and presented descriptively, then the results obtained were viewed from a theoretical perspective to find out why that was all that happened. In analyzing the data, the distributional method is used, which is working within the scope of the language itself without connecting things outside it. Keyword: Indonesian function, language function, newspaper column, politeness principles Journal of Applied Studies in Language, Volume 4 Issue 2 (Dec 2020), p. 273—280 p-issn 2598-4101 e-issn 2615-4706 © Politeknik Negeri Bali http://ojs.pnb.ac.id/index.php/JASL


eparation and recovery of C2H6 and C3H8 from natural gas is a potentially economical but challenging subject in the petroleum industry. In this work, we report a stable pillared-layer microporous MOF, Ni(TMBDC)(DABCO)0.5 for the separation of C2H6 and C3H8 from natural gas. Ni(TMBDC)(DABCO)0.5 remained intact structure after exposure to humid air with RH = 100% for days. Derived from the combination of dense and accessible methyl group and methylene group in the channel, Ni(TMBDC)(DABCO)0.5 exhibited strong affinity toward C3H8 and C2H6, with remarkably high capacities of 2.80 mmol/g at 1 kPa and 3.37 mmol/g at 5 kPa for C3H8, as well as 2.93 mmol/g at 10 kPa for C2H6. Its IAST selectivities of C3H8/CH4 and C2H6/CH4 reached 274 and 29, respectively. The complete separation of CH4/C2H6/C3H8 ternary mixture on breakthrough experiment demonstrated the great potential on recovery of C2H6 and C3H8 from natural gas through a Ni(TMBDC)(DABCO)0.5 packed column.


The present experiments were designed to study in female rats during sexual maturation: (1) the hypothalamic release of aspartate (Asp), glutamate (Glu) and glycine (Gly) which are the excitatory amino acids (EAAs) involved in NMDA neurotransmission and of taurine (Tau), a putative inhibitory amino acid of GnRH secretion; (2) the relationships between the effect of estrogen-progesterone (EP) on the release of these EAAs and the secretion of gonadotropins, and (3) the effect of hypothalamic NMDA receptor stimulation on EAAs release by the hypothalamus as well as the effect of EP on this release. The release of EAAs by the anterior preoptic and medial-basal hypothalamic areas (APOA-MBH) is significantly higher in peripubertal than in prepubertal rats (p < 0.01). EP treatment in prepubertal rats (16 days of age) decreased LH and FSH plasmatic levels and also the in vitro release of Asp, Glu, Gly and Tau. Contrary to the observations in prepubertal rats, in 30-day-old peripubertal rats the ovarian hormones significantly (p < 0.01) increased the levels of LH and FSH as well as the release to the medium of these amino acids.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Objective The lymph node posterior to the right recurrent laryngeal nerve (LN-prRLN) is a crucial component of the central lymph nodes (LNs). We aimed to evaluate multimodal predictive factors of LN-prRLN metastasis in patients with papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs), including the clinical data, pathologic data, and preoperative sonographic characteristics of PTCs. Methods A total of 403 diagnosed PTC patients who underwent unilateral, sub-total, or total thyroidectomy with central neck dissection were enrolled in this retrospective study. The clinical data, pathologic data, conventional ultrasound (US) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) characteristics of PTCs were collected and evaluated for predicting LN-prRLN metastasis. Results In this study, 96 PTC patients with LN-prRLN metastasis and 307 PTC patients without LN-prRLN metastasis were included. Univariate analysis demonstrated that PTC patients with LN-prRLN metastasis more often had younger age, larger size, multifocal cancers, A/T < 1, well-margins, microcalcification, petal-like calcification, internal vascularity, centripetal perfusion pattern and surrounding ring enhancement. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the CEUS centripetal perfusion pattern, central LN detected by ultrasound and LN-arRLN metastasis were independent characteristics for predicting LN-prRLN metastasis in PTC patients. Conclusion According to our research, it is essential for clinicians to thoroughly dissect central LNs, particularly LN-prRLNs.


Oscillations in T-wave morphology, particularly T-wave alternans (TWA), have been fundamentally linked to increased susceptibility to ventricular fibrillation (VF). We investigated whether the escalation in complexity of T-wave oscillations before VF is attributable to increased spatial heterogeneity of repolarization. Peak interlead T-wave heterogeneity (TWH) was measured by second central moment analysis of T-wave morphology in epicardial electrograms in dogs during left anterior descending coronary artery occlusion. TWH differentiated cases in which myocardial ischemia provoked VF from those without VF (563 +/- 56 vs. 139 +/- 36 microV, P < 0.01). In the former group, progressive, significant increases in TWH above preocclusion baseline (70 +/- 8 microV) began at 2.25 min after the start of occlusion and were associated successively with TWA (at 155 +/- 19 microV), T-wave multupling (at 386 +/- 100 microV), complex oscillatory T-wave forms (at 560 +/- 76 microV), discordant TWA (at 572 +/- 98 microV), and VF at 4.36 +/- 0.14 min. TWH in precordial ECGs in 12 pigs during angioplasty-balloon-induced myocardial ischemia also discriminated animals that experienced VF (from 90 +/- 14 at baseline to 382 +/- 39 microV, P < 0.05) from those without VF (from 96 +/- 17 at baseline to 199 +/- 61 microV, NS). Ischemia-induced changes in ST segment and T-wave amplitude did not predict VF. Heightened spatial heterogeneity of repolarization, as assessed by second central moment analysis of TWH, underlies TWA and increased risk for ischemia-induced VF. Monitoring spatial TWH from precordial leads could prove useful in stratifying risk for life-threatening arrhythmias.


SUMMARY

Natural open joints in rocks commonly present multiscale self-affine apertures. This geometrical complexity affects fluid transport and heat exchange between the flowing fluid and the surrounding rock. In particular, long range correlations of self-affine apertures induce strong channelling of the flow which influences both mass and heat advection. A key question is to find a geometrical model of the complex aperture that describes at best the macroscopic properties (hydraulic conductivity, heat exchange) with the smallest number of parameters. Solving numerically the Stokes and heat equations with a lubrication approximation, we show that a low pass filtering of the aperture geometry provides efficient estimates of the effective hydraulic and thermal properties (apertures). A detailed study of the influence of the bandwidth of the lowpass filtering on these transport properties is also performed. For instance, keeping the information of amplitude only of the largest Fourier length scales allows us to reach already an accuracy of 9 per cent on the hydraulic and the thermal apertures.


ABSTRACT Colony rooms provide cats with many opportunities to use enrichment, but animal shelters usually have finite resources to provision items. This study examined how cats select enrichment items when given a variety of options. Our goal was to identify whether certain enrichment might be particularly beneficial for different cats. Enrichment was categorized into three categories based on function (soft surfaces for resting, enclosed spaces for security, and vertical surfaces for vantage points). Demographic (sex, source of intake) and non-demographic (length of stay, floor space per cat, people present) features of the cats were entered into models as predictors. For all enrichment categories, the presence of people in the room significantly decreased item use, males used vertical surfaces more, all cats used vertical surfaces more the longer they were at the shelter, and cats that were seized or signed over from hoarding or cruelty cases used enclosed spaces more. Identifying patterns of enrichment use can allow shelters to more effectively distribute limited resources and maximize the welfare of individual cats during their stay at the shelter.