Recently, an attractive clustering approach named multi-exemplar affinity propagation (MEAP) has been proposed as an extension to the single exemplar based Affinity Propagation (AP). MEAP is able to automatically identify multiple exemplars for each cluster associated with a super exemplar. However, if the cluster number is a prior knowledge and can be specified by the user, MEAP is unable to make use of such knowledge directly in its learning process. Instead it has to rely on re-running the process as many times as it takes by tuning parameters until it generates the desired number of clusters. The process of MEAP re-running may be very time consuming. In this paper, we propose a new clustering algorithm called KMEAP which is able to generate specified K clusters directly while retaining the advantages of MEAP. Two kinds of new additional messages are introduced in MEAP in order to control the number of clusters in the process of message passing. The detailed problem formulation, the derived updating rules for passing messages, and the in-depth analysis of the proposed K-MEAP are provided. Experimental studies demonstrated that K-MEAP not only generates K clusters directly and efficiently without tuning parameters, but also outperforms related approaches in terms of clustering accuracy.


Today there is an increasing request for high-throughput communication payloads in satellite communications. Capacity in the order of 100 Gbit/s is becoming available and further significant improvement is expected in the coming years. A key element in order to guarantee this high performance is constituted by the multibeam antennas, able to generate multiple narrowly focused spot beams with frequency and polarisation reuse. Direct radiating arrays are able to generate multibeam coverage with a single aperture with the possibility of reconfiguring the coverage and the power distribution among the beams. Sparse arrays permit to reduce the number of radiators and to increase the DC to RF power efficiency by exploiting a 'space tapering' instead of an 'amplitude tapering', typically adopted in periodic arrays to control the sidelobe level. In this study, a deterministic procedure for the design of large planar sparse arrays is extended to the case, where the antenna, from a geostationary satellite, has to generate a multibeam coverage on the full Earth. The synthesis procedure is presented and validated with several numerical examples illustrating the scanning losses, array pattern deformation during the scanning and grating lobe effects.


Ontology plays the central role in the information system. A novel framework for data mining process is proposed, using ontology repository to integrate domain knowledge. Ontobase ontology repository is an implementation of our design to allow users and agents to retrieve ontologies and metadata through open Web standards and ontology service. Key features of the system include the use of XML metadata interchange to represent and import ontologies and metadata, the support for smooth transformation and transparent integration using ontology mapping and the use of ontology services to share and reuse domain knowledge in a generic way. Some examples show that Ontobase is useful in supporting data mining process


Tracking is the main factor which limits the safe working electric stress of insulation in power system applications. Polymer samples have been tested in laboratory conditions according to ASTM D2303 on accelerated inclined plane tracking test. In this paper, a model based on improved Weibull statistics is proposed for estimating the breakdown time of polymeric insulating materials with borax. The confidence intervals of the Weibull shape parameter and the Weibull scale parameter are determined for the borax concentration values using the Weibull 7++ program.


Requirements volatility is an important risk factor for software projects. Software measures can help in quantifying and predicting this risk. In this paper, we present the results of a correlational study with the goal of predicting requirements volatility for a medium size software project. Based on the data collected from two industrial software projects for four measures of size of requirements (number of actors, use cases, words, and lines), we have evaluated prediction models for requirements volatility. These models can help project managers to estimate the volatility of requirements and minimize the risks caused by volatile requirements, like schedule and cost overruns. In cross systems validation our best model showed a mean magnitude of relative error (MMRE) of 0.25, which can be considered reliable. In an earlier study, we showed that decisions solely based on developers perception of requirements volatility are, instead unreliable. Predictions models, like the ones presented here, can therefore help taking more reliable decisions.


We used a visual-search method to investigate the role of shadows in the rapid discrimination of scene properties. Targets and distractors were light or dark 2-D crescents of identical shape and size, on a mid-grey background. From the dark stimuli, illusory 3-D shapes can be created by blurring one arc of the crescent. If the inner arc is blurred, the stimulus is perceived as a curved surface with attached shadow. If the outer arc is blurred, the stimulus is perceived as a flat surface casting a shadow. In a series of five experiments, we used this simple stimulus to map out the shadow properties that the human visual system can rapidly detect and discriminate. To subtract out 2-D image factors, we compared search performance for dark-shadow stimuli with performance for light-shadow stimuli which generally do not elicit strong 3-D percepts. We found that the human visual system is capable of rapid discrimination based upon a number of different shadow properties, including the type of the shadow (cast or attached), the direction of the shadow, and the displacement of the shadow. While it is clear that shadows are not simply discounted in rapid search, it is unclear at this stage whether rapid discrimination is acting upon shadows per se or upon representations of 3-D object shape and position elicited by perceived shadows.


Low CD4 lymphocyte count was a marker for neurological disease in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1); but is now less common among patients with access to highly active antiretroviral therapy. In this study, the authors determine the reliability of self-reported CD4 nadir and its predictive value for neurological status. The authors identify a high degree of reliability (r = .90). After adjusting for age, current CD4 count, and duration of HIV-1, CD4 nadir relates to a current diagnosis of HIV-associated dimentia (HAD) (odds ratio [OR]: 1.395 (1.106–1.761), P = .005) and distal symmetric polyneuropathy (DSPN) (OR: 1.479 (1.221–1.769, P < .001).


Specimens related to the Lenticulina Lamarck, 1804, - Saracenaria Defrance in de Blainville, 1824, - Vaginulinopsis Silvestri, 1904, morphologic plexus but which possess distinctive cribrate apertures are recorded from Pliocene strata (Zones N.18-N.21) in a well located on the Texas continental shelf. These specimens represent a new genus of the family Nodosariidae Ehrenberg, 1838, herein designated Cribrolenticulina. A new species Cribrolenticulina akersi is described and designated as the genotype. Morphologic variation and taxonomic affinities of the new genus are discussed. Apertural modifications, both chemical and mechanical are described.


The analysis of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and associated imaging properties of an integrative synthetic-aperture imaging technique is extended to include the effects of an explicitly nonredundant aperture. This requires modification of the image estimator that has been used previously. In the case of a nonredundant transmitter and point receiver, which corresponds to a coherently illuminated object in an analogous optical system, no useful image is formed. As the receiver size increases, the system is capable of forming an image of increasing fidelity to an object that in the counterpart analogous system is illuminated with light of decreasing spatial coherence. As the receiver aperture enlarges, the image should become independent of coherent artifacts just as in the case of imaging with a redundant transmitter. Curves of SNR versus receiver-to-transmitter diameter ratio are given that compare the redundant and the nonredundant cases. The SNR is somewhat lower at all receiver sizes for the nonredundant transmitter aperture.


Objectives This study used longitudinal, narrative data to identify trajectories of recovery among homeless adults with mental illness alongside the factors that contribute to positive, negative, mixed or neutral trajectories over time. We expected that participants who received Housing First (HF) would describe more positive trajectories of recovery than those who were assigned to Treatment as Usual (TAU; no housing or support provided through the study). Design Narrative interview data were collected from participants at baseline and 18 months after random assignment to HF or TAU. Setting Participants were sampled from the community in Vancouver, British Columbia. Participants Fifty-four participants were randomly and purposively selected from the larger trial; 52 were interviewed at baseline and 43 were reinterviewed 18 months after randomisation. Method Semistructured interviews were conducted at both time points. For each participant, paired baseline and follow-up narratives were classified as positive, negative, mixed or neutral trajectories of recovery, and thematic analysis was used to identify the factors underlying different trajectories. Results Participants assigned to HF (n=28) were generally classified as positive or mixed trajectories; those assigned to TAU (n=15) were generally classified as neutral or negative trajectories. Positive trajectories were characterised by a range of benefits associated with good-quality, stable housing (eg, reduced substance use, greater social support), positive expressions of identity and the willingness to self-reflect. Negative, neutral and mixed trajectories were characterised by hopelessness ('things will never get better') related to continued hardship (eg, eviction, substance use problems), perceived failures and loss. Conclusions HF is associated with positive trajectories of recovery among homeless adults with mental illness. Those who did not receive housing or support continued to struggle across a wide range of life domains. Findings are discussed with implications for addressing services and broader social change in order to benefit this marginalised population.


Falling or tripping among elderly people living on their own is recognized as a major public health worry that can even lead to death. Fall detection systems that alert caregivers, family members or neighbours can potentially save lives. In the past decade, an extensive amount of research has been carried out to develop fall detection systems based on a range of different detection approaches, i.e, wearable and non-wearable sensing and detection technologies. In this paper, we consider an emerging non-wearable fall detection approach based on WiFi Channel State Information (CSI). Previous CSI based fall detection solutions have considered only time domain approaches. Here, we take an altogether different direction, time-frequency analysis as used in radar fall detection. We use the conventional Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) to extract time-frequency features and a sequential forward selection algorithm to single out features that are resilient to environment changes while maintaining a higher fall detection rate. When our system is pre-trained, it has a 93% accuracy and compared to RTFall and CARM, this is a 12% and 15% improvement respectively. When the environment changes, our system still has an average accuracy close to 80% which is more than a 20% to 30% and 5% to 15% improvement respectively.


The temperature device (10, 20) has a sensor on a base plate (31) with contacts (32, 33, 34) that contact the sensor. The sensor has a chip body (2, 12) with a recess that is covered by a membrane (13) and is manufactured via reactive ionisation. The sensor may have a heat-sensitive region (14) together with a row switch made from two thermo-electric materials


Background: Public health is a collective responsibility of everybody. Private sector plays a key role in the functioning of many sectors in both developed and developing countries which includes provision of public health services. However, there is dearth of studies on the role of private health delivery institution in public health programs in Ghana. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the role of private health care delivery institutions in public health programs in Ghana.Methods: Resource dependency theory was used as the theoretical framework. The study used mixed method to derive the advantages of both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The sample size was fifteen private healthcare facilities in Greater Accra region. It of ten private for-profit healthcare facilities and five mission facilities. Records of public health activities of the private health care institutions from 2015 to 2019 were collected from the selected health facilities for the quantitative analysis. In-depth interview was used to gather the qualitative data. Descriptive statistics and Welch two sample t-test simple to analyse the quantitative data. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data.Results: The results of the study indicate that, private for-profit healthcare facilities were not taking part in designing public health programs in Ghana. However, the mission facilities were consulted in the policy making process due to their organised nature. Conclusion: There is also a significant difference in the number of public health cases undertaken by mission and private for-profit health care facilities. The study indicates that private health care facilities undertake a lot of public health programs. However, mission facilities accommodate more public health cases due to the support they received from the state and other organisations in terms of resources.


The new Federal Law of the Russian Federation on Foreign Investments in Companies Having Strategic Importance for State Security and Defence, n° 57 - FZ (new law), signed by then - president…


OBJECTIVE
To determine the feasibility, safety, and potential clinical efficacy of intravenous (IV) doxycycline therapy for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), as well as its possible effects on serum and urinary markers of collagen breakdown.

METHODS
The exploratory trial was designed as a 16-week, single-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Eligible subjects with active seropositive or erosive RA were randomly allocated into 3 treatment groups: doxycycline 200 mg IV, azithromycin 250 mg orally, or placebo. The blinded IV study drug was administered once daily for the first 3 weeks by home self-infusion and then weekly for the next 8 weeks, concurrent with the blinded oral study drug at the prescribed doses. The primary end points were the change between baseline and week 4 in the tender joint count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and urinary excretion of pyridinoline.

RESULTS
The trial was stopped prematurely after enrollment of 31 patients. Three subjects were withdrawn because of worsening arthritis, and 1 patient was withdrawn when newly diagnosed with breast cancer. Infusion-related events occurred in 13 (42%) of 31 patients, but none were serious. There were 4 serious adverse events unrelated to the study drug, including a new diagnosis of breast cancer in 3 cases and hospitalization for abdominal pain in 1 case. No significant differences were observed across treatment groups in any of the 3 primary clinical end points.

CONCLUSION
Although IV doxycycline therapy was generally well-tolerated by patients in this trial, it did not show any evidence of reducing disease activity or collagen crosslink production.


The relevant facts in this case are that K, the appellant, a 27-year-old music teacher was arrested on 18 January 2002 and, pending further investigation, was placed in detention. He had been suspected of having committed acts of indecent assault on boys under the age of 16 years. The magistrate refused an application for his release on bail. After unsuccessfuly appealing to the Johannesburg High Court, K, with leave of the court a quo, successfully appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
Indecent assault on a person under the age of 16 years is included in Schedule 5. The State failed to present evidence of the arrest of K on specific charges and no formal charge-sheet which contained relevant detailed information on the charges had been drawn up. Furthermore, the State refused K's legal representative access to the docket. The reason provided for this refusal being that it would prejudice the continuing investigation. In his judgment on behalf of the court, Heher AJA observed that the State should have presented evidence in justification of its reliance on section 60(11)(b). This could have been done by the production of a certificate in terms of section 60(11A)(c). Notwithstanding the fact that Heher AJA did not rule out the possibility that the High Court in Prokureur-Generaal, Vrystaat v Ramokhosi (1997 1 SACR 127 (O) 156) might have been correct in finding that section 60(11) is only applicable if the detainee is accused of "'n definitiewe, omlynde en verstaanbare misdaad", he assumed that "the State had done enough to bring the matter within the terms of the section".According to the (second- or third-hand) information placed before the court it would appear that the acts complained of by the state witness boiled down to "grooming" which comprises "acts designed to prepare participants for a more adventurous stage of sexual exploration". This includes the showing of pornographic videos, indulging in suggestive games with boys, non-erotic massaging of the bodies of the boys with oil or cream and sharing a bed with them at night (10). In her judgment the magistrate proceeded from the following definition of indecent assault:"Indecent assault is not only an offence where the accused has to touch the private parts of the children or otherwise but also any immoral or indecent act which is in its nature or circumstances indecent or immoral" (quotation and emphasis by Heher AJA (10)).


Background: Increased awareness regarding the importance of patient safety issues has led to the proliferation of theoretical conceptualizations, frameworks, and articles that apply safety experiences from high-reliability industries to medical settings. However, empirical research on patient safety and patient safety climate in medical settings still lags far behind the theoretical literature on these topics. Purpose: The broader organizational literature suggests that ease of reporting, unit norms of openness, and participative leadership might be important variables for improving patient safety. The aim of this empirical study is to examine in detail how these three variables influence frontline staff perceptions of patient safety climate within health care organizations. Methodology: A cross-sectional study design was used. Data were collected using a questionnaire composed of previously validated scales. Findings: The results of the study show that ease of reporting, unit norms of openness, and participative leadership are positively related to staff perceptions of patient safety climate. Practice Implications: Health care management needs to involve frontline staff during the development and implementation stages of an error reporting system to ensure staff perceive error reporting to be easy and efficient. Senior and supervisory leaders at health care organizations must be provided with learning opportunities to improve their participative leadership skills so they can better integrate frontline staff ideas and concerns while making safety-related decisions. Finally, health care management must ensure that frontline staff are able to freely communicate safety concerns without fear of being punished or ridiculed by others.


This study aimed to assess whether nicotine prevented glutamate neurotoxicity in PC12 cells, and to identify the molecular mechanisms of any effects. The results showed that glutamate neurotoxicity in PC12 cells could be prevented by treatment with nicotine at concentrations of 10 nmol x l(-1) - 1 mmol x l(-1). This effect was in turn found to be inhibited by the application of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) antagonist mecamylamine. Nicotine significantly decreased the basal level of intracellular free Ca(+2) and enhanced the buffering action on Ca(+2) overload induced by high concentrations of glutamate (5 mmol x l(-1)). In addition, nicotine treatment up-regulated the mRNA and protein expression of apoptosis-related factors including bcl-2 mRNA and protein, but down-regulated the expression of bax mRNA and protein. It is concluded that the protective effects of nicotine against the neurotoxicity induced by glutamate are mediated by nAChRs, due to the increased buffering action on Ca(+2)and the modulation of apoptotic processes.


Non-axisymmetric free-boundary equilibrium computations are shown to represent nonlinearly saturated external kink modes and external kink-like sidebands coupled to pressure-driven infernal modes. In this study of edge harmonic oscillations associated with QH-mode plasmas, two different driving mechanisms for external kink type-modes are identified. It is found that standard current-driven external kinks are linearly unstable, and nonlinearly stable in a wide parameter range, especially where qedge ≲ m/n. But, where standard current-driven kinks are linearly stable coupling of pressure-driven infernal modes can cause instability, and their upper sideband drives edge corrugations that appear to have external kink features. Both types of modes are identified with the VMEC equilibrium code, and the spectra are compared favourably with those of linear numerical approaches and analytic methods. Pressure-driven external infernal modes are shown to robustly occur in sophisticated modelling where the separatrix effect on the q profile is accounted for.


Conditionals are often divided into two categories: real conditional and unreal conditional. This paper will only discuss the former. As for the latter, it has been explained comparative exhaustively both in traditional grammar and contemporary grammar. In fact, real conditional is much more difficult than it is thought, because people have not described it as exhaustively as unreal conditional.


From decades' tuberculosis (TB) affecting individual and a huge number of people die every year. It causes ill-health among millions of individuals each year and ranks as the second leading cause of death from an infectious disease worldwide. The number of TB deaths has been unacceptably increased to a large extent, and most cases are preventable if people get in time access to health care for a diagnosis and the right treatment. Multi-drug resistance is the fact that in TB patients are growing rapidly and difficult to treat. Treatment of MDR-TB is more complicated and longer than treatment of TB with no resistance. With advancements in the therapy of TB, now ideal treatments have been developed, and many combination therapies are well recommended for MDR. The development of MDR-TB can be caused by a treatment that is inadequate, given the drug susceptibility pattern of the MTB strain. Few cohort studies provided information on treatment regimens and drug resistance profiles before treatment and at failure or recurrence or genotyping information at failure or recurrence. To monitor the development of acquired drug resistance we suggest that given sufficient resources are available, TB treatment cohort studies or surveillance systems measure both the drug resistance profile and genotype information before starting treatment and at failure or recurrence. The emergence of MDR-TB and XDR-TB, the


Abstract In order to gain an understanding of the spatial connections and representativeness of instrumental and proxy climatic data from particular sites, a 30-year data set for a network of 87 stations in Argentina and Chile has been analyzed. In this paper the results for precipitation are presented. These show three dominant patterns of year-to-year variability which together account for more than 40% of the total variance. Two methods have been used to show how these patterns are linked to variations in the general circulation. Significant correlations are found between precipitation variations and fluctuations in each of four indices of the general circulation: an index of the Southern Oscillation; an index of the pressure difference across the Antarctic between Tasmania and the Falkland Islands region., the latitude of the high-pressure belt off the coast of Chile; and an index of the pressure difference across the tropical Atlantic Ocean. An unexpected link is found between the pressure fluctuatio...


Salvianolic acid A (Sal A) has been shown to prevent and treat ischemic cardiovascular, as well as cerebral vascular diseases. However, little is known about Sal A in renal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. In this study, a renal I/R injury model in rats and a hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) model to damage proximal renal tubular cells (HK-2) were used to assess whether Sal A halts the development and progression of renal I/R injury. As compared with vehicle treatment, Sal A significantly attenuated kidney injury after renal I/R injury, accompanied by decreases in plasma creatinine, blood urea nitrogen levels, the number of apoptosis-positive tubular cells, and kidney oxidative stress. Sal A also activated phosphorylated protein kinase B (p-Akt) and phosphorylated-mammalian target of rapamycin (p-mTOR) compared with vehicle-treated I/R injury rats. In H/R-injured HK-2 cells, Sal A can reduce the levels of reactive oxygen species in a dose-related manner. Similar to the results from in vivo experiments, in vitro Sal A also increased the protein expression of phosphorylated-eukaryotic initiation factor 4E binding protein 1 (p-4EBP1) compared with vehicle. Furthermore, the cytoprotective activity of Sal A was inhibited by LY294002 and rapamycin. These findings indicate that Sal A can ameliorate renal I/R injury and promote tubular cell survival partly via the Akt/mTOR/4EBP1pathway. Sal A could be a candidate compound to prevent ischemic tissue damage.


Accurate power flow analysis is essential to system operators for planning, design, analysis, and control of power networks. The accuracy of power flow analysis can be increased significantly by including the weather-dependent characteristics of the system. In this manuscript, a novel weather-dependent power flow algorithm is proposed and studied in comparison to the very well-known conventional power flow. The weatherdependent power flow algorithm is novel in the sense that it is explicitly parameterised in terms of typically available measured weather parameters (ambient temperature, solar irradiance, wind speed, and wind angle) to perform a fully-coupled weatherdependent power flow analysis. Using this algorithm, the IEEE 30-bus power network was studied utilising real weather data by performing three year-long steady-state time-series power flow analyses. The study demonstrates that the proposed weatherdependent power flow algorithm accurately estimates the branch resistances, the system states (current and voltages), the power losses, the branch flows, and the branch loadings. These are made possible because the proposed algorithm accurately estimates branch conductor temperature due to the coupling of power flow with the nonlinear heat balance model. An analysis of the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is also presented.


Considers structural inertia in organizational populations as an outcome of an ecological-evolutionary process. Structural inertia is considered to be a consequence of selection as opposed to a precondition. The focus of this analysis is on the timing of organizational change. Structural inertia is defined to be a correspondence between a class of organizations and their environments. Reliably producing collective action and accounting rationally for their activities are identified as important organizational competencies. This reliability and accountability are achieved when the organization has the capacity to reproduce structure with high fidelity. Organizations are composed of various hierarchical layers that vary in their ability to respond and change. Organizational goals, forms of authority, core technology, and marketing strategy are the four organizational properties used to classify organizations in the proposed theory. Older organizations are found to have more inertia than younger ones. The effect of size on inertia is more difficult to determine. The variance in inertia with respect to the complexity of organizational arrangements is also explored. (SRD)


Literature data on the use of organic dyes in constant memory optical discs and information recording by semiconductor laser irradiation in the 780–830 nm range are summarised and systematised. Questions on the suitability of the properties of different classes or organic dyes for the main requirements of optical information-recording media have been considered. Future trends in the development of the field of organic dyes for the laser recording of discrete information have been defined. Bibliography includes 232 references.


Writing about technology, especially writing guides for technology, has often been compared to hitting a moving target or trying to nail gelatin to a wall. In fact, the process is more akin to trying to nail smoke to a wall; at least one can hold gelatin in place. Changes in the technology landscape happen at such a pace that a guide composed a year ago is nearly obsolete, while anything greater than five years old often has little more than historical value. So, when writing a guide for technology, it is important to focus on concepts that will hold true over time rather than dwelling on particular providers or specific systems. With a few exceptions, Library Technology Buying Strategies falls neatly into this category. Of equal importance, the book meets its stated objective: "My aim is to provide substance beyond the buzzwords and hype" (viii).


Android is currently the most popular smartphone operating system. However, users feel their private information at threat, facing a rapidly increasing number of malware for Android which significantly exceeds that of other platforms. Antivirus software promises to effectively protect against malware on mobile devices and many products are available for free or at reasonable prices. Their effectiveness is supported by various reports, attesting very high detection rates. However, a more detailed investigation is required in order to understand the real risk level arising from malware for the Android platform. Neither do the exceedingly high numbers of different malware variants reflect the real threat in comparison to other platforms, nor do the results of testing antivirus software against a set of already known malware samples (retrospective tests) provide a clear picture of the capabilities and limitations of antivirus software on the Android platform. The primary objective of this report is thus to help corporate and private users to assess the real risk level imposed by Android malware on the one hand, and the protection level offered by antivirus software on the other hand. For this purpose, we discuss how malware spreads and which limitations antivirus apps are subject to. We then evaluate how well Android antivirus software performs under realworld conditions, as opposed to retrospective detection rate tests. Based on our findings, we give recommendations for private and corporate users and sketch possible future solutions to overcome some of the current issues of antivirus software. For this report, we conducted various tests on several antivirus apps for Android. As we aim to reflect real-world threats better than retrospective tests, in which antivirus software is tested for recognizing known malware samples, our test setup considers the ability to cope with typical malware distribution channels, infection routines, and privilege escalation techniques. We found that it is easy for malware to evade detection by most antivirus apps with only trivial alterations to their package files. In order to test different malware detection techniques, we also used a newly developed proof of concept malware. This proof of concept malware demonstrates advanced functionality which is not present in most of today's Android malware, and is intended to determine how Android antivirus software will deal with unknown and upcoming malware. Fraunhofer AISEC On the Effectiveness of Malware Protection on Android 2


OBJECTIVE
To find the characteristics of p53 gene mutation in epithelial ovarian cancer and to analyze the relationship between p53 mutation and FIGO stage.

METHODS
p53 mutations in exon 5 to 7 were detected by single-strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) and sequencing technique.

RESULTS
8 of 46 tumor tissues demonstrated a SSCP band shift in the region of the gene. All of them have been characterized to represent DNA alterations by sequencing, including 8 point mutations (6 missence, 1 silent mutation and 1 in intron) and a 1-base pair insertion (introducing a stop codon downstream). Overall, 88.9% of mutation were transitions, and most of them are G-->A transitions (7/8, 87.5%). 62.5% of the mutation were found in 175 and 245 codon. The percentage of the mutation in stage I and stage II was 20.0%, and in stage III and stage IV was 16.7% (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSION
The arising of p53 mutations in ovarian cancer is due to spontaneous error in DNA synthesis and repair. Codon 175, 245 are the two mutational hot spots. There is no relationship between the mutation of p53 gene and FIGO stage in epithelial ovarian cancer.


Background: Exposure to black carbon particulate matter, predominately generated by diesel vehicles, is associated with a wide range of adverse effects on respiratory health. Since London is one of the most polluted cities for black carbon (BC) in Europe, ways that individuals may mitigate their own exposure are of interest. One option is to use commercially available websites to plan lower exposure commuting routes. This study assessed the feasibility of this approach. Methods: A researcher carried a personal BC monitor (Aethalometer, AE51) together with a Global Positioning System (GPS) whilst taking a route from Whitechapel (East) to Moorgate (Central) using main roads, from 4pm to 7pm. A potential low exposure route was then generated using an urban walking route planner, www.walkit.com and BC exposure re-assessed. BC was expressed as i) mean BC (ng/m 3 /5 min), and ii) the number of peaks >10,000 ng/m 3 /5 min, and assessed on 3 separate occasions for both routes. Comparisons were done by t test. Results: There was no significant difference in mean exposure between the main road and Walkit routes (Figure). However, there was a significant difference between the routes for exposure to BC peaks >10,000 ng/m 3 (Figure, *P<0.05).
 Conclusion: This feasibility study shows the use of Walkit to plan a low pollution route differentially reduces exposure to BC peaks.


In the second decade of the XXI century the role of tourism destination attractiveness is becoming increasingly important for destination management. Competition in tourism market moves from ordinary service quality to provision of unforgettable emotional experience for tourists. The main purpose of the present study is to identify the perception of the tourism destinations based on the number of factors related to its tourist attractiveness. The content analysis method was used to analyze the on-line tourist feedback data immensely available in Social Media and in travel related sites. The collected data made it possible to procure the information which is necessary to understand the perceived attractiveness of the destinations and key destination appeal factors that are important for Russian leisure travelers. Results of the present study demonstrate key attractiveness factors or destination 'properties' that were unveiled as the most important for Russian leisure tourists. The study targeted five main Spanish tourism destinations that initially were determined by in-depth interview with a number of Russian nationals who had visited Spain at least once. The research results can be useful for Spanish Tourism Organization Representation office in Russia as well as for the other national tourism organizations in order to promote their respective destinations for Russian travelers focusing on main attractiveness factors identified in this study.


In the paper, the authors are presenting the outcome of web scraping software allowing for the automated classification of source code. The software system was prepared for a discussion forum for software developers to find fragments of source code that were published without marking them as code snippets. The analyzer software is using a Machine Learning binary classification model for differentiating between a programming language source code and highly technical text about software. The analyzer model was prepared using the AutoML subsystem without human intervention and fine-tuning and its accuracy in a described problem exceeds 95%. The analyzer based on the automatically generated model has been deployed and after the first year of continuous operation, its False Positive Rate is less than 3%. The similar process may be introduced in document management in software development process, where automatic tagging and search for code or pseudo-code may be useful for archiving purposes.


The paper discusses several aspects of Wikipedia as an online community. It analyses the role of public opinion in discussions, disputes, and the solution of conflictsamong the users of the online encyclopaedia. Noelle-Neumann's (1974, 1984) Theory of public opinion as social control is used as a theoretical background to analysethree levels of public opinion in Wikipedia: The meta-level, the discussion-level, and the article-level. The use of the Mediawiki-software for content-analyses is discussed and illustrated by a qualitative analysis of a case study. Subject of the casestudy is a fierce dispute about design and content of user pages in the German language version of Wikipedia.


Despite considerable advancements in cell membrane-camouflaged nanocarriers to leverage natural cell functions, artificial nanocarriers that can accurately mimic both the biological and physical properties of cells are urgently needed. Herein, inspired by the important effect of the stiffness and deformability of natural red blood cells (RBCs) on their life span and flowing through narrow vessels, we report the construction of RBC membrane-camouflaged nanocarriers that can mimic RBCs at different life stages and study how the deformability of RBC-derived nanocarriers affects their biological behaviors. RBC membrane-coated elastic poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate hydrogel nanoparticles (RBC-ENPs) simulating dynamic RBCs exhibited high immunocompatibility with minimum immunoglobulin adsorption in the surface protein corona, resulting in reduced opsonization in macrophages and ultralong circulation. Furthermore, RBC-ENPs can deform like RBCs and achieve excellent diffusion in tumor extracellular matrix, leading to improved multicellular spheroid penetration and tumor tissue accumulation. In mouse cancer models, doxorubicin-loaded RBC-ENPs demonstrated superior antitumor efficacy to the first-line chemotherapeutic drug PEGylated doxorubicin liposomes. Our work highlights that tuning the physical properties of cell membrane-derived nanocarriers may offer an alternative approach for the bionic design of nanomedicines in the future.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this article is to relate the story of the Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital and offer evidence regarding the lost days of chiropractic hospitalization and inpatient care.

DISCUSSION
The number of chiropractic facilities offering inpatient care peaked in the period between World Wars I and II. Little information is available about the vast majority of these facilities. One of them was the Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital in Waukon, Iowa. The proprietor was Roy C. Bakkum, DC; he and his wife, Jessie H. Bakkum, DC, opened their 30-bed facility in 1936. Patients received hole-in-one chiropractic adjustments, rest, and nursing care at this facility. Dr Roy Bakkum not only envisioned chiropractors as true primary caregivers but also implemented that vision to the best of his ability. He saw chiropractic as the principal type of health care that the vast majority of people should receive, even as inpatients; instead of being the usual and customary type of hospital care, pharmaceutical and surgical intervention would be called on only as needed. Mainly because of economic pressures, the Bakkums' facility closed in 1950.

CONCLUSION
The Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital may have been fairly typical of small chiropractic facilities offering inpatient care. Like many private hospitals of various kinds, the Bakkums' facility closed in the post-World War II period, primarily because of economic and political losses. This article traces the history of one chiropractic facility to add historical context to chiropractors' long struggle to own and operate chiropractic hospitals.


Cultural factors are often absent from analyses of economic change and development, divorcing the nature of social places from the economic spaces within which they are situated. However, the cultural community traits of places may influence the prevailing entrepreneurial culture of these places in the form, for example, of entrepreneurial capacity. As a means of examining the missing link between placed-based community and economy, this study establishes a number of community culture measures and assesses how these are associated with place-based measures of entrepreneurship. The study finds significant links between community culture and attitudes to entrepreneurship at the local level. For instance, it is found that caring and more feminine attitudes and activities are negatively associated with stronger local entrepreneurial cultures. Observance of social rules, social cohesion and embracement of work and education, on the other hand, are positively associated with stronger, more enterprising business cultures, suggesting that a cohesive community increases the entrepreneurial confidence of individuals. It is concluded that community cultural characteristics such as social cohesion represent a potential strength which policymakers can potentially enhance as an economic development tool to stimulate entrepreneurship.


We investigate the use of self-tracking data and unsupervised mixed-membership models to phenotype endometriosis. Endometriosis is a systemic, chronic condition of women in reproductive age and, at the same time, a highly enigmatic condition with no known biomarkers to monitor its progression and no established staging. We leverage data collected through a self-tracking app in an observational research study of over 2,800 women with endometriosis tracking their condition over a year and a half (456,900 observations overall). We extend a classical mixed-membership model to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of the data at hand (i.e., the multimodality of the tracked variables). Our experiments show that our approach identifies potential subtypes that are robust in terms of biases of self-tracked data (e.g., wide variations in tracking frequency amongst participants), as well as to variations in hyperparameters of the model. Jointly modeling a wide range of observations about participants (symptoms, quality of life, treatments) yields clinically meaningful subtypes that both validate what is already known about endometriosis and suggest new findings.


Background: There are two limiting factors for determining the dental implant fixture length in mandibular posterior edentulous region: Inferior dental canal and submandibular fossa. Purpose: Submandibular fossa augmentation is a suggested way to overcome the problem of lingual undercut beneath the mylohyoid ridge in implant dentistry. Materials and Methods: Patients with lingual posterior bony undercut that interferes with the placement of a standard implant with a length of 10 mm were enrolled in this study. Results: This method was used for eight patients in 10 sites. Increased implant length and decreasing the chance of sublingual hematoma due to lingual cortical plate perforation are the results of this study. Conclusions: Submandibular fossa augmentation is a new technique to improve the maneuver of oral surgeons to increase dental implant length in the presence of deep lingual bony undercut.


The present invention provides methods and compositions useful in the treatment or prevention of cardiovascular disorders in individuals for whom therapy with a COX-1 enzyme inhibitor is not feasible due to sensitivity, intolerance, or resistance to the inhibitor. Additionally, the invention provides methods of treating cardiovascular disorders in an individual who is receiving a therapeutically effective dose of a TP modulator and is instructed or advised to avoid and/or not to take aspirin or another COX-1 inhibitor.


Soxhlet extraction of oil from seeds of Vitelleria paradoxa was carried out using n-hexane as the solvent. Standards methods were adopted in the analysis of the physiochemical properties; moisture content, melting point, total ash content, pH, specific gravity, iodine value, saponification value, acid value, free fatty acid value and ester value were all evaluated. The oil recovery rate was good with 32.6% yield, moisture content of 3.1%, melting point of 52oC and pH 5.7. Total ash content was 50.3%, specific gravity of 0.9 g/cm3, iodine value 39 mg/L, saponification value 224.6 mgKOH/g, acid value 59.9 mgKOH/g free fatty acid (FFA) 29.9 mgKOH/L and ester value 164.7 mg/L. The results shows that oil from Vitelleria paradoxa seed holds the potentials for wider applications in foods, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, lubricants and soap making.


OBJECTIVE
To quantify screening rate for gestational diabetes mellitus and completion of oral glucose tolerance test in rural and remote Western Australia.

DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS
Retrospective audit of 551 antenatal records from women of 16 years and older without pre-existing diabetes and with singleton pregnancies delivered in 2013.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Number of women recorded screened for gestational diabetes mellitus in second or third trimester using oral glucose tolerance test or other tests; gestational diabetes mellitus rate.

RESULTS
Only 278 (50.5%) women were screened with oral glucose tolerance test; 113 (20.5%) had no record of any screening related to gestational diabetes mellitus. In a nested mixed-effects logistic regression model, women with a previous gestational diabetes mellitus diagnosis, two or more risk factors (excluding ethnicity) or high-risk gestational diabetes mellitus ethnicity other than Australian Aboriginal were more likely to be screened, while Australian Aboriginal women were less likely to be screened with oral glucose tolerance test. Clinicians reported patient and clinician factors and logistical difficulties as reasons for the oral glucose tolerance test not being completed at their site. Of those screened with oral glucose tolerance test, a high rate of gestational diabetes mellitus was diagnosed (14.7% versus Western Australia state-wide average of 7.4%).

CONCLUSION
Adherence to oral glucose tolerance test screening in rural Western Australia is inadequate for effective screening for gestational diabetes mellitus. Screening was not acceptable or available for a significant proportion of women at risk. Efforts to improve oral glucose tolerance test adherence and exploration of alternative gestational diabetes mellitus screening strategies are required.


BACKGROUND: (blind field). METHODS: Expression profiling, molecular subgrouping and analysis of somatic copy number alterations were conducted on multiple independent cohorts of patient tumour samples to examine intermediates of the MET signaling pathway in medulloblastoma. To examine the in vitro and in vivo effects of foretinib treatment; MET signalling biochemical analysis; migration and invasion assays; and foretinib pharmacokinetic studies were performed. Medulloblastoma xenografts and transgenic mouse models were used to evaluate foretinib treatment in vivo. RESULTS: We analyzed three large non-overlapping cohorts of medulloblastoma patients (discovery cohort, n = 199; validation cohort 1, n = 439; validation cohort 2, n = 285) and demonstrated that cMET, known to be involved in tumor progression and dissemination, is a marker of sonic hedgehog (SHH) medulloblastoma. Importantly, immunohistochemical analysis of activated cMET (phosphorylated cMET) in another independent patient cohort (n = 385) revealed that cMET activation correlates with increased tumor relapse and a poor survival in pediatric patients with SHH medulloblastomas, thus defining a subset of patients that may benefit from cMET targeted therapy. We show that foretinib, an FDA approved inhibitor of cMET, suppresses cMET activation, decreases proliferation and induces apoptosis, both in medulloblastoma cell lines and in SHH medulloblastoma xenografts. Furthermore foretinib penetrates the blood-brain barrier and is effective both in the primary and in the metastatic compartments. Treatment of mouse xenografts and of an aggressive transgenic model of metastatic SHH medulloblastoma with foretinib reduced primary medulloblastoma growth, decreased the incidence of metastases by 36% and increased survival by 45%. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide strong rationale for advancing foretinib into clinical trials for SHH-driven medulloblastomas. SECONDARY CATEGORY: Tumor Biology.


The growing complexity of healthcare needs of residents living in long-term care necessitates a high level of professional interdependence to deliver quality, individualized care. Personal support workers (PSWs) are the most likely to observe, interpret and respond to resident care plans, yet little is known about how they experience collaboration. This study aimed to describe PSWs' current experiences with collaboration in long-term care and to understand the factors that influenced their involvement in collaboration. A qualitative approach was used to interview eight PSWs from one longterm care facility in rural Ontario. Thematic analysis revealed three themes: valuing PSWs' contributions, organizational structure, and individual characteristics and relationships. Collaboration was a difficult process for PSWs who felt largely undervalued and excluded. To improve collaboration, management needs to provide opportunities for PSWs to contribute and support the development of relationships required to collaborate.


The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recently authorized oral fluid (OF) as a preferable biofluid for drugs of abuse (DOA) screening compared to urine, and they required that each screening method be confirmed by a laboratory test. We developed a DOA mass spectrometry (MS) assay optimized for undiluted OF as a matching confirmatory test for the EZ-Saliva point of care (POC), split sample, rapid visual test. Using a double isotope ratio standardization, we achieved a limit of detection of <0.3 ng/mL for seven DOAs, with high precision in undiluted patient OF (CV<7.2%), linearity of R2 = 0.99, lack of interference (<1.0%) by a panel of interfering compounds at 1000-fold excess, and a dynamic range of 0-850 ng/mL, from a consented population of N=84 self-reported THC users using the collection device (device yield >90%). Stability from degradation exceeded 72 hours. The lateral flow immunoassay strips of the POC exhibited a dose-dependent response, with a 90% sensitivity and 100% specificity for N=22 self-reported, THC patient OF, digitized for quantitation. We conclude that the split sample POC device in combination with the MS assay meets the SAMHSA stated requirements for a POC test with a laboratory confirmation. Split sample collection has significant advantages because it minimizes potential error created by taking a separate OF sample for laboratory confirmation. We recommend scaling to a larger validation study set and quantification of user OF THC levels that correlate with driver impairment levels.


The dislipidemias are a risk factor well recognized of the cardiovascular diseases and constitute a problem of public health. A descriptive study in 150 patient elders of 30 years with diagnosis of Izquemic Cardiopathyes accomplished itself for the sake of identifying dislipidemias in patients of high cardiovascular risk that they helped the high-technology General Medical Center state James Marino Aragua, at the Republic Bolivariana of Venezuela, that you constituted the sign of study from October 2011 to October 2012. They used quantitative and qualitative variables like weight, age, sex, pathological personal background, risk factors cardiovascular associates, seric levels of total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol VLDL cholesterol. 63 percent of patients with dislipidemias were detected, being hypercholesterolemia the more alteration frequently found. The ages understood between 41 and 60 years evidenced the bigger frequency.


Despite research consistently demonstrating a link between childhood maltreatment and depression, our understanding of the potential mediators of this relationship remains limited. Based on the existing literature and corresponding theories, a theoretical model was constructed to assess the effects of childhood maltreatment, impulsivity, hopelessness, and substance use on adolescent offenders' depression severity. This model was tested for sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and emotional neglect using a series of path analyses. Impulsivity and hopelessness partially mediated the effects of childhood sexual abuse and emotional abuse on depression severity, and fully mediated the effects of childhood physical abuse and emotional neglect. Contrary to expectation, substance use did not mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and depression severity. These results suggest that childhood maltreatment, impulsivity, and hopelessness may be important variables to include in clinical research related to depression in incarcerated youth.


The effect of homogeneous upconversion on the performance of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is analyzed numerically, by means of a set of rate equations model. In particular, the influence of pump power, signal power, and Er/sup 3+/ concentration on the degradation, due to upconversion, is examined. Forward pumping is considered and amplified spontaneous emission, as well as scattering loss are taken into account. In addition, approximate analytical solutions, for the rate equations, which include the effect of the cooperative upconversion, are presented. It is shown that under the considered conditions, these analytical solutions provide a good approximation to the exact numerical solution and thus may be used for the design of such amplifiers.


Ring mail from AarhusDuring the almost two millennia which elapsed from the introduction of ring mail into Europe via the Roman army in the 3rd century BC until body armour went out of general use in the course of the 17th century, ring mail has played a surprisingly major role, despite the weakness of its presence in the archaeological record. When the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century AD, ring mail became the dominant form of armour for almost a millennium. The most commonly occurring piece, the hauberk (fig. 1), appeared with a range of variations from the Roman Empire until long after the general use of armour ceased. The introduction of plate armour in the 14th century led to flexible ring mail developing from general to more specialised use: to protect the parts of the body and joints which non-flexible iron plates were unable to cover and as a supplement to cheap types of armour such as the brigandine (fig. 2). When armour technology had, in general, reached the limit of its usefulness in the 17th century, and in step with a decline in the art of making ring mail apparent through the centuries, this form of armour largely went out of use in Europe. In the Middle East and in Africa it acquired a more ceremonial role, as a status symbol for powerful chieftains, and with no real link to its origin as body armour.Even though the construction of ring mail is easy to explain – four rings are joined together with a fifth and these quintets are then linked together with further rings (fig. 3) – the practical execution of the technique is rather more difficult as, when the rings are correctly assembled, ring mail is only flexible in one direction (fig. 4). As the rings themselves can be made in several different ways – from wire hammered out from ingots or as cut strips of sheet iron or perhaps drawn through a swage or stamped out whole from sheet iron – and they can be assembled in various ways – either riveted, forge-welded or just butted together – this gives many possible permutations for the construction of ring mail. These factors make a useful contribution when determining the type and date of archaeological finds of ring mail.There are five archaeological records of ring mail from Aarhus. The major excavation in Bispetorv yielded two small pieces (fig. 5). These are dated stratigraphically to the 10th century, but they are too small for their original function to be ascertained. The example from 21 Graven (fig. 6) is a long, narrow piece which was probably used to cover an armpit or similar in association with plate armour, but it is not possible to give this a more precise date than the High or Late Middle Ages. Other finds from Aarhus include a brigandine sleeve (fig. 7), dated to the end of the 16th century on the basis of its appearance and construction. The example from 27 Volden (fig. 8) is a well-made ring mail collar, dated to the second half of the 16th century on the basis of European parallels and the quality of its craftsmanship.Ring mail has not, however, completely disappeared. It has enjoyed a veritable renaissance in recent times with butchers, zoo keepers and marine biologists who dive with sharks and other piscine predators. Ring mail's flexibility and toughness has saved many limbs from bites and cuts in modern times, just as it shielded many limbs from ugly wounds in the past.Lea Hillebrenner PindMoesgård Museum


The U.S. Coast Guard will deploy a network of 50 DGPS reference stations by 1996 using the existing marine beacon network to transmit differential GPS corrections to marine users as part of a marine user DGPS service. The stations will provide coverage on the East, Gulf, and West Coasts, as well as the Great Lakes, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Under this study, the authors postulated and evaluated three candidate Wide Area DGPS (WADGPS) network architectures. These architectures would extend the DGPS service architecture to a proposed WADGPS service architecture. This report presents results in broad areas of WADGPS network technology: network architectures and network software. One of the new concepts introduced is that of a fault-tolerant network. This concept incorporates flexible architecture which can reconfigure itself in the event of a failure of any of its components-such as the loss of some of the reference stations in the network. The Model Assessment section examines the error mechanisms which contribute to Differential GPS errors, both for the DGPS (single reference station) service and each of the three WADGPS (multiple reference station) networks. This leads into a presentation of various candidate network algorithms for these three WADGPS networks. In particular, a new algorithm, developed under this contract, is presented which offers improved performance for two of the three WADGPS network architectures over existing algorithms in the literature.


The Cochrane review by Rivara and the Thompsons found evidence that if you bang your head the consequences will be less severe if you are wearing a protective helmet.1 Based on this review they recommend that cyclists should be "encouraged" to wear helmets. The form of encouragement that they favour is compulsion.

We accept the principal finding of their review—that protective helmets protect in the event of an accident —but not the policy conclusions that they derive from it. The issue that divides us is risk compensation —does the behaviour of cyclists change as a consequence of wearing a helmet in ways that offset the protective benefit of helmets in accidents? After briefly referring to selected references from the safety literature on cycling, motorcycling, and driving, Rivara and the Thompsons assert that "the empirical evidence to support the risk compensation theory is limited if not absent". Certainly such evidence is limited or absent from the sources they choose to cite—with a notable exception which we discuss below. We find abundant evidence for risk compensation.

It is important to distinguish between evidence for risk compensation in general—which is overwhelming, and evidence relating to cycle helmets—which is limited. Let us consider the general evidence first. Rivara and the Thompsons recommend readers to consult James Hedlund's article in Injury Prevention entitled "Risky business: safety regulations, risk compensation, and individual behaviour".2 We strongly support their recommendation. They quote James Hedlund: "I believe the evidence is overwhelming that every (our italics) safety law or regulation is not counterbalanced by compensating behaviour". But Hedlund also makes clear that the evidence is overwhelming that some laws and regulations, as well as safety measures voluntarily adopted, are counterbalanced by compensating behaviour. He states:

"We all change our behaviour in response to changes in our environment. Safety …


Asymmetric carbon-carbon bond-forming reaction at the 2-position of a pyrrolidine ring was achieved. The reaction involved a chiral Ti(IV) catalyzed coupling between 1 -methoxycarboyl-2-methoxypyrrolidine and silyl enol ethers to afford 2-substituted pyrrolidines with up to 53 % ee.


Person re-identificacion consists of reidentificating person through a set of images that is taken by different camera views. Despite recent advances in this field, this problem still remains a challenge due to partial occlusions, changes in illumination, variation in human body poses. In this paper, we present an enhanced Triplet CNN based on body-parts for person re-identification (AETCNN). We design a new model able to learn local body-part features and integrate them to produce the final feature representation of each input person. In addition, to avoid over-fitting due to the small size of the dataset, we propose an improvement in triplet assignment to speed up the convergence and improve performance. Experiments show that our approach achieves very promising results in (CUHK01) dataset and we advance state of the art, improving most of the results of the state of the art with a simpler architecture, achieving 76.50% in rank 1.


The purpose of this study was to compare the short-term effects of an intensive lifestyle modification (ILM) program on lipid peroxidation and antioxidant systems in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Twenty-two patients in the control group continued to receive their conventional treatment with lipid-lowering drugs, whereas 22 patients in the experimental group were assigned to intensive lifestyle modification (ILM) without taking any lipid-lowering agent. The ILM program comprised dietary advice on low-fat diets, high antioxidants and high fiber intakes, yoga exercise, stress management and smoking cessation. After 4 months of intervention, patients in the experimental group revealed a statistically significant increase in plasma total antioxidants, plasma vitamin E and erythrocyte glutathione (GSH) compared to patients in the control group. There was no significant change in plasma malondialdehyde (MDA), a circulating product of lipid peroxidation, in either group. We concluded that the ILM program increased circulating antioxidants and reduced oxidative stress in patients with CAD.


An enantioselective organocatalyzed Henry reaction was reported using chiral ammonium aryloxides as Bronsted base organocatalysts. A wide range of aliphatic and aromatic aldehydes along with several nitroalkanes are tolerated providing the corresponding enantioenriched β-nitroalcohols with moderate to high diastereomeric ratios and up to 83 % ee. An inversion of the diastereoselectivity was observed when changing from aromatic to aliphatic aldehydes. Transition state models were proposed in order to account for this phenomenon.


Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study if actively managed exchange-traded funds (AMETFs) and actively managed mutual funds (AMMFs) are complements or substitutes. It also tests if there are tax or liquidity clientele effects. Design/methodology/approach - The study investigates the relation between individual AMMF flows and aggregate AMETF flows as well as individual AMETF flows and aggregate AMMF flows. A 2013 tax change is used to analyze if a tax clientele effect exists between the AMETF and AMMF markets. The authors use differences in investor groups for institutional vs retail fund share classes to test for liquidity clientele effects. Findings - The authors find that equity and mixed AMETFs and AMMFs are substitutes, although not perfect substitutes. Taxation-related differences between the two products create a clientele effect for fixed income and mixed funds where tax-sensitive investors are more likely to substitute AMETFs for AMMFs surrounding tax increases. There is weak evidence that institutional investors may prefer AMETFs more than retail investors because of their enhanced liquidity. Originality/value - This is the first study to investigate the flow relation between AMETFs and AMMFs. The fast-paced growth of the AMETF area coupled with the substitutability between the two products and tax advantages of AMETFs has the capability to gain significant market share from AMMFs in the future.


Serum samples of 9350 individuals belonging to different high risk groups were tested for HIV Infection by ELISA and western blot technique. 9 samples were found to be positive. Two of them belonged to indigenous people of Assam and the infection was transfusion/transplant associated and acquired outside the state during the course of medical treatment. Two were IDUs from Nagaland requiring treatment in a local hospital at Dibrugarh, Assam. Five were from floating population temporarily residing in Assam with history of heterosexual promiscuity. Overall seropositivity rate was 0.97/1000. It is felt that HIV infection in Upper Assam has not penetrated deeply and is at a manageable level and the spread of infection can be prevented through IEC programmes.


Villages and towns, generally spaced 0.5 km apart, are densely distributed in suburban area of Suzhou city. Urbanization has been going on quickly for recent two decades in Suzhou region; the GDP ratio in 2003 is 18% higher than the previous year. Meanwhile, in the suburbs of Suzhou, the villages and small towns have been sprawling gradually in size. However, their spatial distribution form remains unchanged. This study mainly includes the following steps. First, we selected three sampling areas around Suzhou city from satellite images in the year 2000, with 172,145 and 73 villages and small towns in each sampling area, and the densities of villages and towns in sampling areas are 2.2, 4.2 and 3.6/km2 separately. Secondly, based on GIS software, we obtained an outline map of villages and towns in the three sampling areas in vector form, and calculated area for each village or town. We classified these 390 villages and small towns by their areas, and found that the area of most villages is at the range of ten thousand to seventy thousand m2. Thirdly, we extracted pattern information of short and long axes of polygons of villages and towns from each sampling area, and found out the average length is 121 m at short axis and 428 m at long axis in the whole study area. Comparing satellite images of 1986 with those of 2000, and with the aid of vector map, we can find out that the directions of long axes of villages and towns were mainly affected by river course in the past, and influenced obviously by road course in recent decade. Finally, depending on the distance values between villages or towns, we suggest that if the distance is shorter than 400 m, the smaller village should be merged into a bigger village or town nearby.


This thesis examines the artistic patronage of Gil de Albornoz (d. 1367), Archbishop of Toledo (1338-1350), Cardinal priest of S. Clemente (1350-1366) and Cardinal bishop of Sabina (1356-1367). The first chapter delineates his early career in Spain until he left for Avignon in 1350. The analysis of documentary and archaeological evidence re-defines his input in the cathedral of Toledo, and the importance of his Augustinian foundation in Villaviciosa del Tajuna. The second chapter concentrates on the legations of Albornoz in Italy, and the fortified palaces and castles he commissioned along the Lands of St. Peter as he achieved success in his mission. This thesis focuses on a limited number of the most representative fortresses and palaces. The third chapter analyses Albornoz's artistic patronage on a private basis, and concentrates on his burial chapel of St. Catherine in the Lower Church of San Francesco in Assisi and the Collegio di Spagna in Bologna. The fourth chapter dissects his will and the surviving objects in Toledo. Comparison with the testamentary donations of contemporary cardinals provides a parameter within which to measure his relevance as an artistic patron. Finally, the fifth chapter concentrates on the important sepulchre in the chapel of St. Ildefonso in the Cathedral of Toledo and its context.


Continuous seismic observations at Iwo-jima, an active volcanic island belonging to the Izu-Ogasawara island arc, have detected remote triggering of microearthquakes in and around the island. The remote triggering at Iwo-jima is a phenomenon of an abrupt increase of microearthquake activity at the time of a passage of seismic waves from a distant large earthquake. We examined seismograms of a total of 21 earthquakes with magnitude larger than 7 and within an epicenter distance of 3000 km from Iwo-jima. Remote triggering phenomena were found at four events during the period from 1980 to 1993 : the 1983 west off Tohoku earthquake, the 1984 southeast off Kyushu earthquake, the 1993 southeast off Hokkaido earthquake, and the 1993 Mariana Island earthquake. The largest epicenter distance among them was 2009 km. The initial times of triggering coincide with the theoretical arrival times of surface waves and successive occurrences of earthquakes continued for 6 to 15 min, suggesting that dynamic stress or strain caused the remote triggering phenomena at Iwo-jima. As a well-developed hydrothermal system is suggested in shallow depths beneath Iwo-jima, volcanic fluids presumably play an important role in remote triggering.


We consider quasi maximum likelihood (QML) estimation for general non-Gaussian discrete-ime linear state space models and equidistantly observed multivariate L\'evy-driven continuoustime autoregressive moving average (MCARMA) processes. In the discrete-time setting, we prove strong consistency and asymptotic normality of the QML estimator under standard moment assumptions and a strong-mixing condition on the output process of the state space model. In the second part of the paper, we investigate probabilistic and analytical properties of equidistantly sampled continuous-time state space models and apply our results from the discrete-time setting to derive the asymptotic properties of the QML estimator of discretely recorded MCARMA processes. Under natural identifiability conditions, the estimators are again consistent and asymptotically normally distributed for any sampling frequency. We also demonstrate the practical applicability of our method through a simulation study and a data example from econometrics.


We investigated the effects of growth duration on the morphological, structural, and photoelectrochemical properties of TiO2 nanorods grown on a TiO2-buffered fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate using the hydrothermal method. From the study, we found that the photoelectrochemical properties were mainly dependent on the nanorod length and (002) XRD peak intensity, which indicates vertical growth of the TiO2. The morphological and structural properties of the TiO2 nanorods largely affect their photoelectrochemical properties. The photocurrent density was increased when the growth duration was increased from 1 hour to 4 hours, and then changed little above 4 hours. Consequently, the highest photocurrent density, 0.897 mA/cm (at 1.0 V vs. SCE), was obtained from the 8 hour-sample which had good morphological and structural properties. We used field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) for analysis of the morphological properties, x-ray diffraction (XRD) for structural properties and three-electrode potentiostat for photoelectrochemical properties. †(Received April 7, 2016; Accepted July 7, 2016)


In this study, we focus on a specific application,
the modeling and simulation of drug release from cardiovascular drug eluting stents.
In particular, we analyze the drug release dynamics from the stent
coating, where the drug is initially stored, to the surrounding arterial wall.
The main challenge consists in accounting for multiple space scales.
To this purpose, we derive suitable boundary conditions accounting for
the smaller scales on the macroscopic model.
This approach, applied to drug delivery, significantly cuts down
the computational cost of the numerical simulations and
allows us to consider a realistic problem setting.


Background. Essential Thrombocythemia (ET) and Polycythemia Vera (PV) are two chronic myeloproliferative diseases with prolonged survival, but with a high rate of vascular complications, mainly arterial thrombosis (AT). For this reason, clinical guidelines recommend the use of aspirin for primary and secondary prophylaxis. There are no data on the efficacy and safety of tienopyridine antiplatelet drugs (ticlopidine, clopidogrel), which could be useful alternatives in patients with contraindication or when aspirin is unable to prevent thrombotic event. Aims. To estimate the frequency of thrombotic and hemorrhagic complications, in ET and PV patients treated with ticlopidine in comparison with patients taking aspirin, in single institution, prospective cohort study. Patients and method. Data from 246 PV (143 males, 58%), median age at diagnosis 63 years (range 20–89) and 339 ET (114 males, 33.6%) patients, median age 62 (range 20–95) consecutively diagnosed from 1985 to 2005 were analyzed. Risk factors for arterial thrombosis (diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, smoking, cardiovascular disease, previous AT) were present in around 30% of patients. At diagnosis, median values of hemoglobin, leukocyte and platelet level in ET and PV were 137 and 180 g/L, 9.3 and 11 x 109/L, 888 and 582 x 109/L, respectively. After diagnosis, aspirin (100–300 mg daily) was given to 270 patients (155 ET, 57%), in 70 of them (25%) for secondary prophylaxis; ticlopidine (250 mg twice day) was administered to 84 patients with a previous history of gastric ulcer, gastritis or allergy to ASA (48 ET, 57%), in 19 of them (22%) for secondary prophylaxis. In 216 (137 ET, 63%) patients no antiplatelet drug was given. The two treated group had similar cardiovascular risk profile, higher than in those untreated. Cytoreductive treatment was given to 87 (32%) patients in ASA, 14 (17%) in ticlopidine and 61 (28%) in those not on antiplatelet treatment (p=0.02). An higher percentage of patients received hydroxyurea in ASA group compared with ticlopidine (19.6% vs 8.6%). Warfarin was administered to 10 patients for atrial fibrillation or venous thrombosis (not analyzed). 2 cases were lost from follow-up. All PV patients were phlebotomized to reduce hematocrit level. Results. After a median follow-up of 7.8 years (very similar in the 3 groups of patients), 29 (14.5%) thrombotic events (5 fatal) among 200 ASA patients and 18 (27.7%, 1 fatal) among 65 ticlopidine patients treated for primary prophylaxis were recorded (p=0.016). In 216 not-treated patients, 40 (18.5%) thromboses were recorded. Major hemorrhages (need of transfusions, surgical intervention or hospital admission) were 17 (8.5%) in ASA, 8 (12.3%) in ticlopidine (p= 0.299) and 25 (11.6%)) in not-treated patients (p= 0.392 between antiplatelet treated and not treated patients). Thrombotic rates for patients in primary prophylaxis were 0.4%, 0.8% and 2.5% in patients on ASA, ticlopidine and not-treated, respectively. Conclusion. In a cohort of ET and PV patients, ASA therapy appears more effective than ticlopidine in the primary prevention of thrombosis, without a significative increase of hemorrhagic risk in comparison with ticlopidine or untreated patients. This increased efficacy should be further investigated by stratifying patients accordingly to cytoreductive treatment.


Objectives: The primary lymphoma of the central nervous system is a cancer rare. The diagnosis of this tumoral entity must be considered as an emergency considering the therapeutical involved. Therefore, we report this entity while reporting diagnostic challenges. Patients and Methods: Unfortunately, the conventional clinical and imaging signs can be confusing and might contribute to delay the diagnosis process of potentially curable pathological entity. The diagnosis confirmation in immunocompetent patients is based on a stereotaxic biopsy. Results and Conclusion: In this paper, we report a case illustrating the contribution of multimodal imaging including diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor MRI, perfusion MRI, and proton MR spectroscopy to the diagnostic approach of the atypical primary lymphoma of the central nervous system.


Threats to ecosystem services and biodiversity are some of the most important contemporary policy problems facing the planet. Consisting of four papers, the motivation for this thesis is threefold: to understand the different ways of defining the benefits humans receive from the environment, how the public may be able to understand more nuanced scientific aspects of biodiversity, and how forest policy instruments are used to encourage family forest owners to safeguard ecosystem services and biodiversity on their properties.

Paper I describes the different ways in which ecosystem services are uniquely defined in the broad ecosystem services literature. Paper II investigates how respondents to a stated preferences survey value a little-known species with an important biodiversity characteristic relative to a familiar species of lesser biodiversity importance. The interpretation of Paper II is that using multiple flagship species targeted toward different members of the general public may be a way to use unfamiliar yet ecologically important species for public outreach purposes. Papers III and IV investigate how family forest owners in Sweden interact with and think about forest policy instruments aimed at preserving biodiversity on their forest properties.

The result of Paper I shows that conceptual ecosystem services definitions exist on a spectrum with some definitions being more characteristic of natural sciences, some more characteristic of economics, and some existing between the natural science and economics definitions. Paper II confirms the appeal of an unfamiliar species with a unique biodiversity characteristic relative to a more familiar species is not limited by geographic distance, but the appeal of such biodiversity may include areas close to its habitat. Paper III shows Swedish family forest owners who are interested in taking environmental efforts on their properties and stay out of forest stewardship certification may be more skeptical of state action to secure biodiversity in Swedish forests. Finally, Paper IV shows the benefits of targeting different kinds of instruments to different kinds of ownership objectives may be limited.

Findings from this thesis may contribute to better environmental policy by improving conservation public outreach efforts and by clarifying the opportunities and challenges of engaging family forest owners in achieving public policy goals.


The Royal College of Obstetricians and emerged in these discussions. Overall, the majority of respondents were open to using this practice in Gynaecologists (RCOG) library recently responded to a question about whether there was any evidence about the practice of offering a cold drink to a pregnant woman in order to encourage fetal movement or improve the reactivity of a cardiotocograph (CTG) trace. Their search conversations with midwives and other practice, which led me to have a number of practitioners about their experience of this. In the highlighted a dearth of research into this common first of two articles on this topic, I explain the theory and describe the range of responses that certain situations, but they felt it vital that it was used within a framework of providing individualised care and applying common sense.


The biogeochemical pools of fossil organic matter in permafrost, mainly the carbon pool, are subject in current research to estimate the quality, quantity and the potential release into the modern cycles maintained by permafrost thaw and accelerated by arctic warming. Organic matter freeze-locked in perennially frozen ground of the northern circumpolar region accumulated over tens of thousands of years during the last glacial and interglacial periods. A part of this permafrost region is composed of ice-rich silts penetrated by large ice wedges, resulting from sedimentation and syngenetic freezing accompanied by wedge-ice growth driven by certain climatic and environmental conditions during the late Pleistocene. These unique materials are called Yedoma deposits.
This study focuses on the area of potential Yedoma deposit occurrence in Siberia and Alaska and on nitrogen which has mostly a subordinate role in current studies, but is also an important source of greenhouse gas N2O.
Based on the most comprehensive data set of total nitrogen (TN) concentrations in permafrost, our study aims to estimate the present pool of nitrogen stored in the different stratigraphic units of the Yedoma region.
Nitrogen stock calculations will be based on bootstrapping techniques using resampled observed values. The total mean pool size estimate will be derived afterward for every of the 10,000 bootstrapping runs, resulting in 1 mean calculated from 10,000 observation-based bootstrapping means. The conceptual formula for the nitrogen stock calculation is:
TN budget [Gt] = (deposit thickness [m] × coverage [m²] × bulk density [g/cm³] × (100-WIV/100) × (TNwt%/100))/ 1,000,000,000; TN: total nitrogen; WIV: wedge-ice volume
In conclusion, we expect a substantial amount of nitrogen sequestered in the Yedoma region, which is expected to be released after thaw, probably mitigating the current nitrogen limitation of Arctic tundra ecosystems.


This paper aims to discuss the application of grey theory to the supplier selection problem. In the Introduction part, the author concludes the weakness of several existing methods to the supplier selection problem and proposes that the grey system theory would be more suitable than others due to its nature and characteristics. After putting forward a set of comprehensive evaluation index system, including Quality, Price, Delivery and Service four main categories, the combination weight for each factor is got through AHP and entropy method. In the Case Study part, the grey relation decision-making method, one useful tool in the grey system theory, is applied to one example. It estimates the four candidates and defines the best supplier.


Modern (bio)electroanalysis is currently in consonance with the demands of green chemistry owing to both the intrinsic characteristics of electrochemical transduction and the unique features offered by electrochemical devices to minimize the use of reagents, organic solvents and hazardous substances. Remarkable efforts have been made in recent years in the preparation of modified electrode substrates involving non-toxic materials and greener protocols, more biological than chemical, to perform the electrochemical measurements or pretreat the sample. It is also notable in this context the particular attention that has been paid to the development of environmentally friendly electrochemical sensors involving paper, molecularly imprinted polymers and ion-selective electrodes. In addition, the replacement of organic solvents by eco-friendly solvents (ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents and supercritical fluids) and the growing interest in developing methodologies capable of reducing the sample size and the amount of waste products, mainly by miniaturization of the electrochemical approaches and their coupling with continuous techniques, are novel approaches to be considered in green electroanalysis. All these relevant aspects are discussed and illustrated in this chapter through a critical approach to representative studies selected from the recent literature.


Title of thesis: A VLSI Design for Phase Synchronization of Two Globally Coupled Oscillators Hua Luo, Master of Science, 2017 Thesis directed by: Professor Robert W. Newcomb Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Phase synchronization of globally coupled oscillators is a common phenomenon in almost every branch of science including chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, and electronics. It has various applications such as laser arrays, chemical and electrical oscillators, metronomes, pathological synchronization in Parkinson's disease, and synchronized oscillation of neurons. In this thesis, we study and design globally coupled oscillators with a focus on biological applications. We mathematically analyze one of the most widely studied models of globally coupled oscillators proposed by Matthews et al.. Based on this model, we design two globally coupled oscillator systems in Simulink. Simulation results show that our systems work perfectly as synchronized globally coupled oscillators. We then design a two-channel globally coupled oscillator system with integrated circuits using ON Semiconductor's 0.5 μm CMOS technology and a ±5 V power supply. Simulation results in PSpice show that the two channels get synchronized in less than one cycle and they can oscillate at frequencies less than 1 Hz. A VLSI Design for Phase Synchronization of Two Globally Coupled Oscillators


Recent advances in life science technology have prompted the need to develop microcapsule delivery systems that can encapsulate many different functional or active materials such as drugs, peptides, and live cells, etc. The encapsulation technology is now commonly used in medicine, agriculture, food, and other many fields. The application of biodegradable microcapsule systems can not only effectively prevent the degradation of core materials in the body or the biological environment, but also improve the bioavailability, control the release and prolong the halftime or storage of core active materials. Various wall materials, preparation methods, encapsulation processes, and release mechanisms are covered in this review, as well as several main factors including pH values, temperatures, particle sizes, and additives, which can strongly influence the encapsulation efficiency, the strength, and release of microcapsules. The improvement of coating materials, preparation techniques, and challenges are also highlighted, as well as application prospects.


XML is becoming the universal format for data exchange between applications. Recently, the emergence of Web services as standard means of publishing and accessing data on the Web introduced a new class of XML documents, which we call intensional documents. These are XML documents where some of the data is given explicitly while other parts are defined only intensionally by means of embedded calls to Web services.When such documents are exchanged between applications, one has the choice to materialize the intensional data (i.e. to invoke the embedded calls) or not, before the document is sent. This choice may be influenced by various parameters, such as performance and security considerations. This paper addresses the problem of guiding this materialization process.We argue that, just like for regular XML data, schemas (ala DTD and XML Schema) may be used to control the exchange of intensional data and, in particular, to determine which data should be materialized before sending a document, and which should not. We formalize the problem and provide algorithms to solve it. We also present an implementation that complies with real life standards for XML data, schemas, and Web services, and is used in the Active XML system [3, 1].


Dedifferentiated liposarcoma (DDLPS) is an aggressive adipogenic cancer with poor prognosis. DDLPS tumors are only modestly sensitive to chemotherapy and radiation, and there is a need for more effective therapies. Genetically, DDLPS is characterized by a low tumor mutational burden and frequent chromosomal structural abnormalities including amplification of the 12q13-15 chromosomal region and the MDM2 gene, which are defining features of DDLPS. The MDM2 protein is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets the tumor suppressor, p53, for proteasomal degradation. MDM2 amplification or overexpression in human malignancies is associated with cell-cycle progression and worse prognosis. The MDM2–p53 interaction has thus garnered interest as a therapeutic target for DDLPS and other malignancies. MDM2 binds p53 via a hydrophobic protein interaction that is easily accessible with synthetic analogues. Multiple agents have been developed, including Nutlins such as RG7112 and small molecular inhibitors including SAR405838 and HDM201. Preclinical in vitro and animal models have shown promising results with MDM2 inhibition, resulting in robust p53 reactivation and cancer cell death. However, multiple early-phase clinical trials have failed to show a benefit with MDM2 pathway inhibition for DDLPS. Mechanisms of resistance are being elucidated, and novel inhibitors and combination therapies are currently under investigation. This review provides an overview of these strategies for targeting MDM2 in DDLPS.


Many mobile applications have been developed to apply deep learning for video analytics. Although these advanced deep learning models can provide us with better results, they also suffer from the high computational overhead which means longer delay and more energy consumption when running on mobile devices. To address this issue, we propose a framework called FastVA, which supports deep learning video analytics through edge processing and Neural Processing Unit (NPU) in mobile. The major challenge is to determine when to offload the computation and when to use NPU. Based on the processing time and accuracy requirement of the mobile application, we study three problems: Max-Accuracy where the goal is to maximize the accuracy under some time constraints, Max-Utility where the goal is to maximize the utility which is a weighted function of processing time and accuracy, and Min-Energy where the goal is to minimize the energy under some time and accuracy constraints. We formulate them as integer programming problems and propose heuristics based solutions. We have implemented FastVA on smartphones and demonstrated its effectiveness through extensive evaluations.


Open hole logging of wells with adverse hole conditions and high deviations is now becoming more commonplace due to newly developed conveyance and acquisition systems. In many cases it can be impractical to obtain logs due to the cost and downside risk of doing so. On the flip side though, having this information can often significantly impact future drilling and completion decisions and possibly the ultimate success of a field. There is now a system available that features an innovative hollow bit design. This design allows for mutiple methods of deployment of a specially designed slim logging string through the drill pipe and bit into open hole. Basic log information can be obtained in real time on wireline below the bit, in memory while tripping out with pipe, or a combination between the two depending on conditions. The specific method chosen depends on the well design and hole conditions. Added flexibility to ream, circulate, and even drill just prior to logging is also possible. The rig time to run logs, along with the associated cost and risk, can be minimized using this system when compared to other methods that are currently available. An overview of this system's conveyance methods and equipment components will be presented along with some examples that illustrate its use in a variety of situations and wellbores, including horizontal wells.


The objective of the study is to analyze the principles of strategic planning in SMEs in the tourism sector in the city of Riohacha, as well as to carry out a documentary review of the theory that frames the study of these variables, to constitute an important bibliographic material to support the future research. This study bases its methodology on documentary analysis since it has analyzed what has been written and published by different authors and researchers, through their works related to the principles of strategic planning in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the tourism sector. Among the main contributions made by this research, it is established that thanks to the proposed documentary analysis, it was possible to know the most general and most important aspects within the management of SMEs in terms of strategic planning, addressing areas such as personnel management, inventory management, and design of marketing strategies, among others, which allow building theoretical foundations for the generation of new knowledge in this regard.


In acute experiments in anesthetized rabbits the changes of the pulmonary hemodynamics following myocardial ischemia in the region of the descendent left coronary artery were studied in control animals and after the blockade of alpha-adrenoreceptors by phentolamine or N-cholinoreceptors of autonomic ganglia by hexamethonium. Following myocardial ischemia in control animals the pulmonary artery pressure and flow decreased, the pulmonary vascular resistance was elevated not significantly, the cardiac output decreased more than pulmonary artery flow. Following myocardial ischemia after the blockade of alpha-adrenoreceptors the pulmonary artery flow and cardiac output decreased in the same level and the pulmonary vascular resistance was decreased. In these conditions the pulmonary artery pressure decreased more than in control animals, meanwhile the pulmonary artery flow was decreased in the same level as in the last case. Following myocardial ischemia after the blockade of N-cholinoreceptors the pulmonary hemodynamics changes were the same as they were following myocardial ischemia in the control rabbits, the cardiac output decreased more than pulmonary artery flow. The disbalance of the cardiac output and pulmonary artery flow changes in the case of myocardial ischemia was caused by the pulmonary vessel reactions following activations of the humoral adrenergic mechanisms.


OBJECTIVES
Perimetry in children can be challenging due to low cooperation and short attention span. Especially during the pre-surgical work-up of children with pharmaco-refractory epilepsies, however, diagnosing homonymous visual field defects (HVFDs) can be crucial for planning surgical strategies. Here, we evaluated "campimetry" for visual field testing in children. Furthermore, we analyzed strabismus and anomalous head posture as clinical signs for HVFDs.

METHODS
Campimetry and a standard orthoptic examination were performed in 18 patients (age range: 3 y 2 m-18 y) who underwent epilepsy surgeries in our center during the study period, and in 11 additional patients (age range: 2 y 10 m-22 y 10 m) with suspected or confirmed HVFDs.

RESULTS
In 16/18 patients of our unselected surgery cohort, pre- and postoperative campimetry was successfully completed. Of these, only 7/16 patients had intact visual fields pre- and postoperatively, while 5/16 patients already showed preoperative HVFDs and 4/16 patients suffered newly acquired HVFDs as calculated consequences of the surgery. Regarding clinical signs, strabismus (mostly esotropia) and anomalous head posture were specific indicators of HVFDs (strabismus: 6/12 with HVFDs vs 1/18 without; anomalous head posture: 8/12 with HVFDs vs 0/18 without).

CONCLUSIONS
For perimetry in children with limited cooperation, we suggest campimetry as it allows early detection and fast delineation of HVFDs. This is particularly important in pediatric epilepsy surgery patients, who display a surprisingly high proportion of HVFDs (9/16). Both, strabismus and anomalous head posture can indicate such HVFDs. Therefore, clinicians should pay attention to these clinical signs, especially in the context of epilepsy surgery.