In spring/summer of 2022, amid backbreaking crises and sanctions, the Islamic Republic pushed a 'population rejuvenation policy' with a 'double-urgent' legislative priority through Parliament, the Guardian Council, and readied it for quick implementation, despite extensive public opposition to its debatable mechanisms. This article argues that the Islamic Republic is less concerned with the future graying of Iran's population, and more worried about rebuilding its eroding political base. It has realized that its supporters have become outnumbered by secular-minded Iranians. Under the bland term of "population rejuvenation", the regime is putting in place incentives that are more acceptable to its conservative and compliant followers and rejected by more progressive citizens. The mechanisms include inter alia such disputed institutions as child marriage, temporary unions, or legal polygamy, and are promoted through generous financial incentives. By contrast, family planning services are considerably reduced and are at high cost to poorer women. In this manner, the regime hopes to bring about a differential fertility rate between its dependents and its detractors, which will over time increase the share of the former over the latter group, and keep political representation in its favor. This ideological approach is not new. In fact, the methods of the Islamic Republic are akin to the "great replacement theory"– a term used by white supremacists, Christian nationalists, and rightwing Western groups to represent the view that their demographic share is dwindling relative to their more secular opponents. In the West, too, under euphemistic slogans such as "family values "or "saving the unborn," these groups have pushed for decades pro-natalist policies that target women's reproductive rights and limit access to contraception and abortion – essentially limiting women's choices to plan their lives. Behind the crowning moment of the Dobbs case – the overturning of the right to abortion in Roe v Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court – lies the belief that reproductive rights have facilitated "white replacement". And, by taking away these rights, white women will have more children and thus increase the white population's share vis-à-vis non-whites, particularly since the latter has gained consistently more political power and representation.


Background: Patients suffering from Graves' disease (GD) are quite frequent in endocrine clinical practice. In particular, overt hyperthyroidism may be complicated by serious adverse events and requires careful treatment, but its management has changed over the years in both the USA and European Union (EU). Objectives: To evaluate the current diagnosis and management of patient's with GD in Italy, and compare results with those obtained in previous similar surveys in the USA and EU. Methods: Members of the Italian Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AME) were asked to participate in a Web-based survey on management of GD. Results: In total, 947 responses were obtained. The preferred diagnostic modality in Italy is TSH receptor antibody determination in conjunction with ultrasound, while radioactive iodine uptake/scan is preferred in the USA. Methimazole (MMI) 20-30 mg/day with a β-blocker is the initial treatment of choice in Italy and the EU, whereas the USA opts more frequently for radioactive therapy. If Graves' orbitopathy occurs, orbit CT/MRI scans are more often obtained in Italy and the EU than in the USA. In case of planned pregnancy in 6-12 months, surgery is more frequently suggested in Italy than in the EU and USA. Propylthiouracil is generally preferred to MMI in the first trimester. Conclusions: Italian endocrinologists have shown significantly different patterns in diagnosis and management of GD compared to both the USA and EU.


ABSTRACT Background: As a result of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, many residents evacuated and were exposed to changes in their living environment and socioeconomic status, and to persistent stressors. Past studies have suggested the potential for these circumstances to contribute to long-term changes to population health. Objective: The objective of this study was to gain a better understanding of long-term health effects of evacuation, by evaluating the risk of non-communicable diseases among evacuees from Minamisoma City (one of the closest municipalities to the power plant) until 2017. Methods: The study evaluated data from annual health check-ups for residents aged 40–74 years covered by National Health Insurance (who are largely self-employed) from 2010 to 2017 administered by Minamisoma City. Diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension were defined from the results of blood sampling. Annual changes in age-adjusted prevalence were estimated by evacuation scenario. We also performed an inverse-probability weighting (IPW) analysis to adjust for baseline covariates in 2010 and estimated the differences in the risk of diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension by evacuation scenario as of the 2017 health check-up in reference to the no-evacuation group. Results: A total of 1,837 individuals were considered in this study. Regardless of evacuation scenario, there was statistical evidence suggesting an upward and a downward trend in diabetes and hypertension from 2010 to 2017, respectively, while hyperlipidemia showed no remarkable change. IPW analyses demonstrated that disease risks in 2017 did not differ significantly among people with different evacuation scenarios. Conclusions: Region-specific factors played an important role in the health effects of the evacuation. Our findings have important implications for the need of an assessment of the health effects of evacuations in more localized manner. Further research in this area will strengthen the communities' preparedness for future disasters that require mass evacuation.


This article examines the debate between advocates of patients' rights and relatives' rights through a study of the new Israeli Mentally Sick Persons Law of 1991. It indicates a duality in the legal treatment of relative-patient relations. On the one hand, relatives are assigned with the role of patients' de facto guardians. On the other hand, patients could be involuntarily hospitalized in order to protect their relatives' right to a normal way of life. Some attempts to resolve this apparent incoherence are discussed and the limitations imposed by the freedom principle are identified. It is argued that the focus should be upon the realities of an interpersonal relationship and not on some presupposed classification which has small legal relevance.


The purpose of the article based on the analysis of archival sources and official documents, highlights the process of formation of local social security bodies in the Ukrainian SSR during the formation of the totalitarian regime. Find out the features of the social policy of the Soviet state and its political and ideological priorities in the social sphere. Determine the objective and subjective reasons for the failure of local social security bodies to provide full assistance to those in need. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of scientific character, objectivity, historicism. Methods: general scientific (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and special-historical (problem-chronological, structural-synthetic, comparative). To identify the size of the social contingent of persons under guardianship, the author used elements of the statistical method. Scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the history of the formation of the Soviet social security system in provinces, cities and districts actually became the subject of this study for the first time. The author analyzed the structural and functional changes in the work of local social security bodies, which led to the centralization of the administrative apparatus and the decentralization of functions and the mechanism of servicing those in need. Conclusions. The formation of the local social security system went through two periods: the first lasted from February 1919 to June 1920, during which an independent three-stage social security system was formed in the Ukrainian SSR. The second falls on 1921-1925, during which there were significant functional changes in social security due to the transition to NEP. The first period was characterized by a philanthropic orientation of the social security organs, coverage of all categories of the population, and during the NEP there was a strict policy of "denationalization" of social security. The state has shifted many responsibilities of social self-sufficiency to the cooperation of disabled people, social insurance agencies and various committees of mutual assistance. The middle link has lost the coordination functions of assigning pensions and other benefits, turning into an organizational, inspection and instructor unit.


The present study aimed at preparing a program based on Fiqh Al Nawazel (Contemporary Issues Islamic Jurisprudence) for developing the analytical thinking skills and awareness of the Contemporary Jurisprudence Issues among the intermediate stage students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To fulfill this purpose, the researcher prepared a list of the analytical thinking skills in the Fiqh curriculum and other dimensions for the awareness of  Contemporary Jurisprudential Issues among the first grade students of the intermediate stage. Moreover, he prepared a test for measuring the analytical thinking skills and a rubric for the awareness of Contemporary Jurisprudential Issues among the students of the first grade intermediate stage, and verified its validity and reliability. The researcher prepared a program for  the study based on the Jurisprudence of Al-Nawazel, including thirteen Jurisprudential Nazilah. The participants of the study were 37 students from the first grade, intermediate stage. The results revealed the effectiveness of the program in developing the analytical thinking skills in Fiqh curriculum, in developing the main analytical thinking skills, and the students' awareness of the contemporary jurisprudence issues as a whole, and in its different dimensions (cognitive, practical and affective). Moreover, the results showed a positive correlational relationship at the level of  0.01 between developing the analytical thinking skills in the jurisprudence Fiqh curriculum and developing the awareness of Contemporary Jurisprudential Issues.


Bridge structural failure happens as the lack of monitoring. The existence of bridge structural health monitoring system is necessary for bridge maintenance due to its ability to process data and provide the information of structural health level. This research is performed to design a deep neural network model for classifying structural integrity with high accuracy. The model requires input data in the form of F-statistic, which is derived from structural vibration data. In the current approach, the vibration data are obtained from numerical analysis by means of the finite element methods. As much as 17.493 vibration cases are generated for five levels of structural integrity, namely, healthy conditions and conditions of 1%, 5%, 10%, 20% damage level. The neural network model consists of one input layer of 20 neurons, six hidden layers with 12 neurons per layer, and one output layer of 5 neurons. The model is trained by using Adam optimizer. The results show that the model is able to accurately classify the structural damage at 83.3% accuracy, and the majority of the false predictions occur in differentiating the healthy structural condition from those of 1% damage.


OBJECTIVES
Our study of cardiac outpatients participating in a mental health screening program aimed to explore: a) sub-ethnic differences in the severity and/or prevalence of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation, and b) whether intrusion and avoidance symptoms of distress equally or differentially predict severity of depression among sub-ethnic groups.

DESIGN
Five hundred ninety Caucasian (n = 103) and immigrant Hispanic (n = 487) cardiac outpatients were recruited. Participants completed measures of depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms and were categorized into sub-ethnic groups according to regional and national origins.

RESULTS
For regional comparisons, South American and Caribbean Hispanic patients exhibited greater symptoms of depression than US born Caucasians (UBC). Significant differences in the proportion of patients screening positive for depression were found among regional subethnic groups. When these groups were further stratified by national origin, Colombian and Dominican patients demonstrated higher levels of depression than UBC patients. Dominican patients reported greater levels of distress than UBC patients. Significant differences in rates of positive depression screens were found among comparisons between UBC and Hispanic national sub-ethnic groups. Finally, stepwise regression analyses revealed that intrusion symptoms predicted depression severity better than avoidance symptoms among all of sub-ethnic groups tested.

CONCLUSION
The findings suggest that collapsing ethnic sub-groups into catchall ethnic labels may undermine high resolution screening strategies for concurrent medical and psychiatric conditions.


The broad applicability of super-resolution microscopy has been widely demonstrated in various areas and disciplines. The optimization and improvement of algorithms used in super-resolution microscopy are of great importance for achieving optimal quality of super-resolution imaging. In this review, we comprehensively discuss the computational methods in different types of super-resolution microscopy, including deconvolution microscopy, polarization-based super-resolution microscopy, structured illumination microscopy, image scanning microscopy, super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging microscopy, single-molecule localization microscopy, Bayesian super-resolution microscopy, stimulated emission depletion microscopy, and translation microscopy. The development of novel computational methods would greatly benefit super-resolution microscopy and lead to better resolution, improved accuracy, and faster image processing.


The haem monooxygenase cytochrome P450cam has been engineered to oxidise the gaseous alkanes butane and propane to butan-2-ol and propan-2-ol, respectively, by the use of bulky amino acid substitutions to reduce the volume of the substrate pocket and thus improve the enzyme-substrate fit: the F87W/Y96F/T101L/V247L mutant oxidizes butane with a turnover rate of 750 min-1 and 95% yield based on NADH consumed while the wild-type enzyme has an activity of 0.4 min-1 with 4% yield.


The levels of E-type prostaglandins were measured in patients with facial and headaches. The data on the prostaglandin levels suggest that the severity of pain syndrome should be taken into consideration in relieving the pain, and then the nosology should be considered. The use of drugs influencing the prostaglandin turnover in treating patients with facial and headaches is discussed.


Background Circular RNAs (circRNAs) were reported to play an important role in regulating tumor pathogenesis. The molecular mechanism of circRNAs in cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) remains poorly understood. We aimed to identify the circRNAs differentially expressed, and to investigate the role of a novel circRNA, hsa_circ_0065898, in regulating proliferation, migration, and invasion in CSCC. Methods The online Kaplan-Meier Plotter was used to analyze the relationship between miRNA expression and overall survival. Bioinformatics tools, such as R, Cytoscape, and Perl, were used to analyze the Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and regulatory network. The expression level of hsa_circ_0065898 in CSCC cell lines was evaluated using quantitative polymerase chain reaction in vitro. The cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) and transwell assays were used to assess cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. Results circRNA expression data (GSE102686) was downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus database, and this included data from 5 CSCC patients and 5 normal tissues. 13 differentially expressed circRNAs were identified, which included 9 upregulated circRNAs and 4 downregulated circRNAs. GO enrichment analysis showed that the target genes of miRNAs associated with hsa_circ_0065898 were enriched in ubiquitin-protein transferase activity, ubiquitin-like protein transferase activity, core promoter sequence-specific DNA binding, mRNA 3'-UTR AU-rich region binding, core promoter binding, and so on. KEGG showed that the Hippo and p53 signaling pathways played significant role in the pathway network. Hsa_circ_0065898 was significantly overexpressed in the CSCC cell lines. Hsa_circ_0065898 facilitated cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in CSCC. Conclusions This study identified differentially expressed circRNAs and constructed the regulatory network of hsa_circ_0065898 targeting microRNAs and mRNAs. We demonstrated that hsa_circ_0065898 promoted CSCC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. Hence, hsa_circ_0065898 might be useful as a biomarker for CSCC diagnosis and targeted therapy.


Training deep CNNs to capture localized image artifacts on a relatively small dataset is a challenging task. With enough images at hand, one can hope that a deep CNN characterizes localized artifacts over the entire data and their effect on the output. However, on smaller datasets, such deep CNNs may overfit and shallow ones find it hard to capture local artifacts. Thus some image-based small-data applications first train their framework on a collection of patches (instead of the entire image) to better learn the representation of localized artifacts. Then the output is obtained by averaging the patch-level results. Such an approach ignores the spatial correlation among patches and how various patch locations affect the output. It also fails in cases where few patches mainly contribute to the image label. To combat these scenarios, we develop the notion of hyper-image representations. Our CNN has two stages. The first stage is trained on patches. The second stage utilizes the last layer representation developed in the first stage to form a hyper-image, which is used to train the second stage. We show that this approach is able to develop a better mapping between the image and its output. We analyze additional properties of our approach and show its effectiveness on one synthetic and two real-world vision tasks - no-reference image quality estimation and image tampering detection - by its performance improvement over existing strong baselines.


HPV vaccination is recommended for all children ages 11-12, with catch up for females to age 26 and males to age 21, for prevention of HPV-associated cancers, which disproportionately affect African Americans. However, uptake of HPV vaccine has lagged far behind that of other adolescent vaccines recommended for the same ages (meningococcal and Tdap), and completion was lower among African Americans than whites until 2013. The purpose of this study was to pilot test a culturally-appropriate social marketing intervention targeting parents of African American pre-adolescents to increase initiation and completion of the 3-dose HPV vaccine series, using a community-engaged approach. A Community Advisory Board (CAB) and Teen and Parent Committee participated in the development of the intervention. While the messages were developed to be culturally-appropriate for African American parents based on formative research, the CAB wanted to ensure that the intervention was designed to be appropriate for use with families of diverse backgrounds. The goal of the "Bug Your Doc: Get 3 Shots!" social marketing intervention was to encourage parents to ask their child9s doctor for all three pre-teen vaccines, including HPV vaccine, when they update their immunization record for 7th grade entry. This strategy aimed to "normalize" the HPV vaccine as just another routine vaccination for both boys and girls, rather than treating HPV vaccine as different. The messages focused on parents9 desire to protect their children from harm (serious illnesses). Intervention materials included a short educational video, website (www.get3shots.org), promotional flyer, and refrigerator magnet. We used a two-group, delayed crossover design to pilot test the intervention materials with groups of parents in a workshop format, compared to a workshop on an unrelated topic. Participants were recruited through community-based organizations and university email listservs, and were able to attend the different workshops at the same location. We enrolled a convenience sample of 36 parents of 5th and 6th grade boys and girls (73% African American), of whom 29 completed two-month follow-up before crossover. Based on parent self-reports, very few children had already received any dose of the HPV vaccine at baseline, which was not significantly different between study arms (0% control, 12.5% intervention). By two month follow up, 43.8% of the parents in the intervention arm reported that they had obtained the HPV vaccine for their child, compared to no change in the control arm (0%). This difference was significant at p Citation Format: Pamela C. Hull, Elizabeth A. Williams, Dineo Khabele, Caree R. McAfee, Maureen Sanderson. Bug Your Doc: Get 3 shots! – A culturally appropriate social marketing intervention to increase HPV vaccination. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eighth AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 13-16, 2015; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2016;25(3 Suppl):Abstract nr A57.


Most of the 26 new O (O77-O102) and 10 new H (H42-H50) and H1a1d antigens were found in various P. shigelloides strains isolated from man and other mammals, birds, fish, and water and water insects, not only in the Czech Republic but also in 12 foreign countries.


Importance
Clinical evidence of the potential treatment benefit of mechanical thrombectomy for posterior circulation distal, medium vessel occlusion (DMVO) is sparse.

Objective
To investigate the frequency as well as the clinical and safety outcomes of mechanical thrombectomy for isolated posterior circulation DMVO stroke and to compare them with the outcomes of standard medical treatment with or without intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) in daily clinical practice.

Design, Setting, and Participants
This multicenter case-control study analyzed patients who were treated for primary distal occlusion of the posterior cerebral artery (PCA) of the P2 or P3 segment. These patients received mechanical thrombectomy or standard medical treatment (with or without IVT) at 1 of 23 comprehensive stroke centers in Europe, the United States, and Asia between January 1, 2010, and June 30, 2020. All patients who met the inclusion criteria were matched using 1:1 propensity score matching.

Interventions
Mechanical thrombectomy or standard medical treatment with or without IVT.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Clinical end point was the improvement of National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores at discharge from baseline. Safety end point was the occurrence of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage and hemorrhagic complications were classified based on the Second European-Australasian Acute Stroke Study (ECASSII). Functional outcome was evaluated with the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score at 90-day follow-up.

Results
Of 243 patients from all participating centers who met the inclusion criteria, 184 patients were matched. Among these patients, the median (interquartile range [IQR]) age was 74 (62-81) years and 95 (51.6%) were female individuals. Posterior circulation DMVOs were located in the P2 segment of the PCA in 149 patients (81.0%) and in the P3 segment in 35 patients (19.0%). At discharge, the mean NIHSS score decrease was -2.4 points (95% CI, -3.2 to -1.6) in the standard medical treatment cohort and -3.9 points (95% CI, -5.4 to -2.5) in the mechanical thrombectomy cohort, with a mean difference of -1.5 points (95% CI, 3.2 to -0.8; P = .06). Significant treatment effects of mechanical thrombectomy were observed in the subgroup of patients who had higher NIHSS scores on admission of 10 points or higher (mean difference, -5.6; 95% CI, -10.9 to -0.2; P = .04) and in the subgroup of patients without IVT (mean difference, -3.0; 95% CI, -5.0 to -0.9; P = .005). Symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage occurred in 4 of 92 patients (4.3%) in each treatment cohort.

Conclusions and Relevance
This study suggested that, although rarely performed at comprehensive stroke centers, mechanical thrombectomy for posterior circulation DMVO is a safe, and technically feasible treatment option for occlusions of the P2 or P3 segment of the PCA compared with standard medical treatment with or without IVT.


Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced regular patters of career guidance. Globally everything has stopped: projects were postponed, and workplaces were closed but this situation has pushed career counselors to search for new opportunities about how career guidance could be carried out. The pandemic has intensified existing challenges in society, adding complexity for the processes of a transition of educational systems towards digitalization and have intensified the need for remote career guidance. Young people become particularly vulnerable to the digital divide. Career development support has been at risk with the emergence of an unpredictable future. However, career guidance during the pandemic can serve as a tool for understanding the situation in depth and searching for new opportunities that exist, by helping individuals to overcome anxiety. While practicing physical distancing, career counselors have kept active professional networks in assisting their clients with their needs. The operation of career guidance has been transferred mainly to the online format and has required the counselors to develop new skills and competencies. The methodology employed in this study included interviews with individual career counselors about the main challenges and solutions discovered during the lockdown. Career counselors were questioned also about how they shaped a more sustainable and flexible online career guidance system. They revealed details about their struggles and hopes encountered in the situation of crises. The authors point to critical areas for improvement that career counselor can provide to their clients during the lockdown.


Abstract Trains of short pulses in the manner of 'delays alternating with nutations for tailored excitation' (DANTE) have been applied to the Pake patterns of protons of water molecules trapped in a static powdered sample of barium chlorate monohydrate. The spin dynamics in the course of such experiments have been investigated by means of numerical simulations and compared with the ideal refocusing that can be achieved under magic-angle spinning (MAS). Solid echoes yield essentially undistorted lineshapes, in contrast to direct excitation without refocusing that leads to severe dispersions of the phases because of inhomogeneous interactions such as homonuclear dipolar couplings and anisotropic chemical shifts. The selectivity of DANTE sequences allows one to access 'slices' of the Pake pattern that can be related to particular crystallite orientations. Single-crystal spectra can therefore be extracted from powder spectra. A similar behavior is expected for both dipolar and quadrupolar echoes.


This paper lends fresh support to the hypothesis that large angular displacements of the earth's rotation axis relative to the entire mantle have occurred on a geological time scale, owing to the gradual redistribution (or decay or manufacture) of density inhomogeneities within the earth by the same convective processes that are responsible for continental drift. The first of our three contributions is a pedagogic theorem that rigorously illustrates this mechanism of polar wandering for a 'quasi-rigid body'. That theorem states that any slow changes in shape of such a body preserve as an adiabatic invariant the solid angle traced out by its angular momentum vector as viewed from its principal axes. Thus, if the body were once set spinning about the axis with the greatest moment of inertia, it would always continue to spin almost exactly about the same principal axis no matter how that axis moves through the deforming body. The second and main contribution is our refutation of the widely accepted notion that the earth's figure shows unmistakable signs of the faster spin rate of the past. If correct, the degree of permanence of the rotation bulge so inferred by G. J. F. MacDonald (1963, 1965) and D. P. McKenzie (1966) would have been an effective impediment against any significant polar wandering of the earth as a whole. However, we show here that, after subtraction of the hydrostatic flattening, the remaining or nonhydrostatic part of the earth's inertia ellipsoid is distinctly triaxial. Such a triaxial shape, as well as the coincidence of the present rotation axis with the principal axis having the largest of the nonhydrostatic moments of inertia, is indeed to be expected of any randomly evolving, nearly spherical object without too much 'memory' for its past axis of rotation. Finally, we discuss briefly some statistical aspects of polar wandering on the assumption that the earth is such an object.


The purpose of the researcher was to investigate mathematics anxiety in 6th grade students. The five independent variables investigated were gender, race, socioeconomic status, English language proficiency, and mathematics achievement level. The dependent variable was the scores from the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale-Elementary. The sample consisted of 151 students in the 6th grade, with the exception of the last composite null hypothesis. Due to lack of English speaking proficiency, a number of students did not take CTBS achievement tests; therefore, sample size for comparisons involving mathematics achievement level was reduced to 104. A status survey factorial design was employed using a three-way analysis of variance (general linear model). Five composite null hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance. A total of 17 comparisons were made with 17 recurring. Of the 17 comparisons were for main effects and 12 for interactions. Of the 5 main effects 4 were statistically significant at the .05 level. Of the 12 interactions 3 were statistically significant at the .05 level. The results of the present study appeared to support the following generalizations: 1. students with low achievement in mathematics have more mathematics anxiety than those with average achievement and greater; 2. the race and socioeconomic level of students should be interpreted concurrently; 3. the race, socioeconomic level, and gender of students should be interpreted concurrently; 4. the race and English as a Second Language status should be interpreted concurrently; and 5. students have low mathematics anxiety.


Internal carotid artery (ICA) plaques constitute one major source of retinal and cerebral brain embolism. Current guidelines recommend optimal treatment of cardiovascular risk factors and recanalization based on the degree of ICA stenosis. However, ICA plaque composition, motion, vascularization, and local hemodynamics have only received limited attention as potential and independent risk factors for plaque rupture. The European Carotid Surgery Trial (ECST) showed an increased risk of stroke recurrence even in moderate stenosis if the plaque surface was ulcerated in angiography. Further indicators of plaque instability and thus vulnerability were established by native or contrast-enhanced two-dimensional duplex ultrasound, CT, and MRI. Due to high soft tissue contrast, multi-contrast MRI seems to be ideally suited to identify plaque compositions that are prone to rupture, although data from large clinical trials proving the independent predictive value of plaque morphology are lacking. The role of cardiovascular risk factors for atherosclerosis of the common carotid artery is well established. Nevertheless, little is known concerning the impact of local hemodynamics on plaque development, progression, and rupture. Wall shear stress, the friction force acting on the endothelium of the vessel wall, was shown to be able to induce local atherosclerosis and vulnerable plaques in animal models. Plaque movement and deformation was limited to investigations using ultrasound in order to identify plaques at risk. Similarly, models to calculate tensile plaque stress seem to be able to identify peak mechanical stress acting on plaque surfaces that make such regions susceptible to rupture. In this review, current evidence regarding the correlation of plaque location, composition, and local hemodynamics at the carotid artery bifurcation will be presented. Moreover, the potential benefit of a future comprehensive and individual risk assessment will be discussed.


BACKGROUND
Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors such as rapamycin have shown modest effects in cancer therapy due in part to the removal of a negative feedback loop leading to the activation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt (PI3K/Akt) signaling pathway. In this report, we have investigated the role of FOXO1, a downstream substrate of the PI3K/Akt pathway in the anticancer efficacy of rapamycin.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Colon cancer cells were treated with rapamycin and FOXO1 phosphorylation was determined by Western blot. Colon cancer cells transfected with a constitutively active mutant of FOXO1 or a control plasmid were treated with rapamycin and the antiproliferative efficacy of rapamycin was monitored.

RESULTS
Rapamycin induced the phosphorylation of FOXO1 as well as its translocation from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, leading to FOXO1 inactivation. The expression of an active mutant of FOXO1 in colon cancer cells potentiated the antiproliferative efficacy of rapamycin in vitro and its antitumor efficacy in vivo.

CONCLUSION
Taken together these results show that rapamycin-induced FOXO1 inactivation reduces the antitumor efficacy of rapamycin.


Several studies at the beginning of the century demonstrated that extensive practice enables subjects to adequately perform two language tasks presented simultaneously. This result was recently confirmed by Hirst et al. These authors concluded that practice eventually results in the ability to attend to both tasks simultaneously, since evidence shows that both primary and secondary tasks are processed semantically. Two arguments are presented showing that this conclusion is questionable. First, the processing of category and semantic relationships between words and sentences can be automatic. Second, the conclusion that true divided attention is possible after training can only be made if evaluated against several criteria of automatic performance. Hirst et al. reported data pertaining to only one of these criteria. Therefore this study is inconclusive and fails to elucidate the nature of the changes in processing that occur.


Mettupalayam is located at 11.3000°N 76.9500°E. It has an average elevation of 314 metres (MSL). Mettupalayam is situated on the bank of Bhavani River at the foot of the Nilgiri mountains. Population density, distribution pattern of herbivores is very important for conservation as the presence of herbivore population represents the carnivores' activity of that particular habitat. Both herbivores and carnivore population density are important for management and conserving a particular habitat especially the biodiversity hot spots that sustain the existence of wild animals having a qualified and balanced habitat meeting out the pyramidal quotients that are required for the effective functioning of the bio-system and the flow of energy between the tiers. The line transects and distance sampling methodology was used to estimate population densities of both the carnivores and herbivores in Mettupalayam Forest Range especially in the three elephant corridors, The Jaccanari-Vedar Colony corridor, Kallar-Jaccanari corridor, Kallar- Nellithurai corridor. Hence, considering the potentiality of long term conservation value and existing and growing human population in the Mettupalayam Forest Range it is essential to know the status and distribution pattern of herbivores for conservation management. The aim of this paper was to identify the major herbivore population in the elephant corridors so as to get the overview of the bearing effect of these species, the co-existing interactions and its habitat utilization.


Ureteral involvement due to Crohn's disease occurs in 3% to 6% of cases. Herein, we present a case of a 22-year-old woman with ileocolic Crohn's disease with right hydronephrosis due to compression of the ureter that was resolved with a 3-stage, minimally invasive procedure (preoperative percutaneous nephrostomy, ureteral stent placement, and sequential laparoscopically assisted ileocolectomy). Percutaneous right nephrostomy drainage permitted us to prevent renal damage before surgery, and successive ureteral double-J catheter placement minimized the risk of ureteral damage during the laparoscopic procedure. The safety and feasibility of sequential minimally invasive management of ileocolonic Crohn's disease involving the right ureter was assessed, and a good cosmetic result was achieved.


A methodology for stabilization of robotic systems by means of a feedback control is presented. Its main advantage is that the gains in the control law are selected on the basis of information concerning the input (control) signal only (its previous values, its constraints, etc.). The control signal is thus in some way self-supported. This overcomes the problem of most existing control methodologies which first evaluate a model of the robot dynamics and then incorporate elements of that model in a control law. This increases computational complexity. The strategy brings simple, model-free, effective algorithms that guarantee practical tracking. They are realistic from the engineering standpoint and can be implemented using current microprocessor technology. >


Citizen participation in online political debate and the Internet's effect on Chinese society have become an important research field. However, few studies so far have examined the use of interactive functions by Chinese newspaper websites to facilitate online discussion of civil issues, or the quality of public debate on the websites of Chinese online newspapers. Using the concept of the public sphere as its theoretical framework, this article aims to advance this line of inquiry through content analysis of the Guangzhou Daily website—Dayoo.com—to explore both the potential and the limits of the Internet in fostering civic engagement. Key variables measured include the quantity of posts and participants, topicality, nature of the argument (i.e. justification, complexity and civility), and responsiveness and homogeneity of contributions. Findings suggest that a political public sphere in Chinese cyberspace is emerging at the incipient stage, where the quality of discourse has reached a certain level but is not yet mature in terms of the complexity of dialogue and the exposure to disagreement.


New highly conductive, active and stable Ni steam reforming catalysts were prepared through a method consisting of the calcination of a hydrotalcite-like compound electrodeposited in a single step on FeCrAlloy foams.


In a recent study, whole-exome and transcriptome sequencing identified potentially actionable findings that led to effective treatments for some children with advanced and rare cancers. The findings demonstrate that genomic sequencing data can be effectively integrated into the clinical management of pediatric patients.


The National Synchrotron Light Source-II (NSLS-II) storage ring at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) will be equipped with 54 dipole magnets having a gap of 35 mm, and 6 dipoles having a gap of 90 mm. Each dipole has a field of 0.4 T and provides 6 degrees of bending for a 3 GeV electron beam. The large aperture magnets are necessary to allow the extraction of longwavelength light from the dipole magnet to serve a growing number of users of low energy radiation. The dipoles must not only have good field homogeneity (0.015% over a 40 mm x 20 mm region), but the integral transfer functions and integral end harmonics of the two types of magnets must also be matched. The 35 mm aperture dipole has a novel design where the yoke ends are extended up to the outside dimension of the coil using magnetic steel nose pieces. This design increases the effective length of the dipole without increasing the physical length. These nose pieces can be tailored to adjust the integral transfer function as well as the homogeneity of the integrated field. One prototype of each dipole type has been fabricated to validate the designs and to study matching of the two dipoles. A Hall probe mapping system has been built with three Group 3 Hall probes mounted on a 2-D translation stage. The probes are arranged with one probe in the midplane of the magnet and the others vertically offset by ±10 mm. The field is mapped around a nominal 25 m radius beam trajectory. The results of measurements in the as-received magnets, and with modifications made to the nose pieces, are presented.


Assessments of regional differences in the accessibility and capacity of health services often rely on indicators based on data from the permanent residents of a given region. However, a patient does not always use health services in their place of residence. The objective of this article is to evaluate the influence of spatial healthcare accessibility on regional differences in the provision and take-up of health services, using outpatient diabetology in Czechia as a case study. The analysis is grounded in monitoring the differences in the patient's place of residence and the location of the healthcare provided. Anonymized individual data of the largest Czech health insurance company for 2019 are used (366,537 patients, 2,481,129 medical procedures). The data are aggregated at the district level (LAU 1). It has been identified that regions where patients travel outside their area of residence to access more than half of their healthcare needs are mostly in local/regional centres. Moreover, these patients increase the number of medical services provided in local/regional centres, often by more than 20%, which has been reflected in greater healthcare capacity in these centres. To assess regional differences, it is important to take the spatial healthcare accessibility into account and also consider why patients travel for healthcare. Reasons could be the insufficient local capacity, varied quality of health services or individual factors. In such cases, healthcare actors (health insurance companies, local government etc.) should respond to the situation and take appropriate action to reduce these dissimilarities.


Cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease continues to be a major problem for lung transplant recipients. In CMV-seropositive individuals, we detected two types of CMV-specific responses: a self-restricted response stimulated by soluble CMV antigen (sCMV-Ag) and a non-self-restricted response induced by CMV-infected cells (cCMV-Ag). Lung transplant recipients who develop the CMV-specific self-restricted T helper response have a low risk of recurrent CMV disease. In contrast, during CMV disease, lung transplant recipients exhibit only the non-self-restricted T helper responses. We characterized the T cell activation and the kinetics of cytokine production of sorted CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from PBLs of CMV seropositive donors. The two types of CMV antigens induced cytokine production in both T cell subsets. We also performed competitive RT-PCR for Granzyme B (GB) in BAL cells of lung transplant recipients prior to, during and following CMV disease. CMV disease was associated with increase in GB gene expression when was accompanied by acute cellular rejection while it remained low in patients with CMV disease that did not have a complicated course. In summary, CMV-activated T cells within the allograft may produce inflammatory cytokines and effector molecules that may promote allograft rejection.


Parasitism is a relationship between the organisms in which one lives as a parasite on another and is the main health problem of cattle and all other domesticated ruminants all over the world. The major problems in cattle confronted are; Fascioliasis , Paramphistomiasis etc because of presence of various helminthes parasites in the GIT (gastrointestinal tract) of the cattle resulting in huge economic losses to livestock industry. The present study was designed to investigate the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasitism of cattle and therapeutic efficacy of albendazole with the dose rate of 5mg/kg body weight in tehsil Tandlianwala, Faisalabad, in the months of January to April, 2017. For this purpose, a total of 384 cattle were selected and fecal samples were directly collected per rectum with sterilized gloves for every animal in plastic containers. The collected fecal samples were managed and inspected using qualitative practices (floatation and sedimentation) and measurable parasitological practices using McMaster egg counting approaches. Those fecal samples positive for Strongyles , Trichuris, Toxocara , and Monezia were subjected to egg yield (eggs per gram, EPG) of feces count using McMaster egg counting practice and the degree of infestation was branded. It was deduced from the results that out of 384 animals; 146 animals were infested with mentioned worms showing 38.02% prevalence of the gastrointestinal parasites in cattle in the months of January, February, March and April in Tehsil Tandlianwala, Faisalabad. Furthermore, the infested animals were treated using albendazole and  103 animals were recovered with it revealing 70.54% therapeutic efficacy of the drug.


Objective: To determine the effect of availability of clinical information from an integrated electronic health record system on pregnancy outcomes at the point of care. Materials and methods: We used provider interviews and surveys to evaluate the availability of pregnancy-related clinical information in ambulatory practices and the hospital, and applied multiple regression to determine whether greater clinical information availability is associated with improvements in pregnancy outcomes and changes in care processes. Our regression models are risk adjusted and include physician fixed effects to control for unobservable characteristics of physicians that are constant across patients and time. Results: Making nonstress test results, blood pressure data, antenatal problem lists, and tubal sterilization requests from office records available to hospital-based providers is significantly associated with reductions in the likelihood of obstetric trauma and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. Better access to prenatal records also increases the probability of labor induction and decreases the probability of Cesarean section (C-section). Availability of lab test results and new diagnoses generated in the hospital at ambulatory offices is associated with fewer preterm births and low-birth-weight babies. Discussion and conclusions: Increased availability of specific clinical information enables providers to deliver better care and improve outcomes, but some types of clinical data are more important than others. More available information does not always result from automated integration of electronic records, but rather from the availability of the source records. Providers depend upon information that they trust to be reliable, complete, consistent, and easily retrievable, even if this requires multiple interfaces.


Drs Banerjee, Heald, and Harris make an important contribution to our understanding of cutaneous Ki-1 positive anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL).' Their comment that lymphomatoid papulosis (LYP), regressing atypical histiocytosis (RAH), and cutaneous Ki-1 positive ALCL, however, are the same disease under different names requires critical comment. They describe both LYP and RAH as diseases presenting with cutaneous lesions which regress and recur, and indeed most authorities would regard these clinical features as essential to their diagnosis. Accordingly, the authors' belief that cases 2, 8, 9, 11 and 12 could be regarded as examples of LYP or RAH is illogical; regression was absent in these cases. LYP, following its original description by Macaulay, continues to defend successfully its position as a specific disease entity.2 Macaulay's description of LYP representing


Problem statement: Imported Holstein Friesian dairy cattle are exposed to hot arid climate in feedlot management in Kuwait. Desert climate is extreme reaching high 45-50°C in summer and low -4oC in winter at day and night respectively. High calf mortality, poor reproduction and milk yields were main constraints to viable dairying. The objectives of this study were to assess the magnitude of calf mortality, its causes; implement strategic intervention measures for improving calf survival rates and evaluate dairy herd performance. Approach: Two scenarios were used: (1) studying dairy herd performance without applying intervention measures and (2) introducing improved management with interventions. Performance of the herds of situations 1 and 2 were compared. Three classes of dairy herds, pre-weaned calves, heifers and first lactation cows born in Kuwait were used. Results: Implementing intervention measures resulted in significant (p = 0.001) reduction of crude calf mortality rates from a mean of 43.6% to a low 4.67%. Growth rates of calves and heifers increased significantly, resulting in breeding of locally raised heifers at 15 mo age instead of usual practice of breeding at 18-22 mo. Feed cost was significantly reduced by 14-25% by early breeding of heifers. Herd culling rate was reduced from 62-33% and conception rates increased by 41%. The milk yield was increased by 1.25-1.50 fold through replacing the imported cows by locally born heifers. Adult cattle mortality rates reduced from high 9 to a low 1%. Case study showed that locally born and reared dairy herd formed a mean of 65.8% of total dairy cattle in cooperating farms. Conclusion: A systematic applied research studies in the commercial dairy farms had resulted in a visible improvement in the performance of all categories of locally born dairy herds and they were better adapted to the local hostile climate.


One of the most successful applications of Holography,in recent years,has been its use as an optical security technique.Indeed the general public's awareness of holograms has been greatly enhanced by the incorporation of holographic elements into the VISA and MASTERCHARGE credit cards.Optical techniques related to Holography,are also being used to protect the currencies of several countries against the counterfeiter. The mass production of high quality holographic images is by no means a trivial task as a considerable degree of expertise is required together with an optical laboratory and embossing machinery.This paper will present an overview of the principal holographic and related optical techniques used for security purposes.Worldwide, over thirty companies are involved in the production of security elements utilising holographic and related optical technologies.Counterfeiting of many products is a major criminal activity with severe consequences not only for the manufacturer but for the public in general as defective automobile parts,aircraft components,and pharmaceutical products, to cite only a few of the more prominent examples,have at one time or another been illegally copied.


Well-differentiated fetal type adenocarcinomas used to be classified as subtype of pulmonary blastomas until recently. Today it is considered a rarely seen type of adenocarcinoma, characterized by low malignant potential and low mortality. In this article, we report a patient who was found to have a well-differentiated fetal type adenocarcinoma, following left lower lobectomy. We believe that the identification of this cancer subtype in patients with lung carcinoma will reduce unnecessary radical treatment methods beyond surgery. Key words: Well differentiated Fetal Adenocarcinoma; Lung Cancer, Pulmonary Blastomas.


Plug seedlings of 'Bouquet Purple' Dianthus (Dianthus Baratus × chinensis) were planted on 15 cm centers in 1.2 m wide beds amended with two applications of cured municipal solid waste/biosolids co-compost at rates of 1.5, 3.0, and 6.0 m/100 m of bed space on 9 January 2002. The experimental design was a randomized complete block design with three replications. 'Bouquet Purple' is an interspecific hybrid of two Dianthus species and is a tall cut-flower Dianthus with potential for cut-flower growers in Florida. The first flowers were harvested on 15 March 2002 and the experiment terminated on 6 May 2002. Maximum harvest occurred on April 8. Results showed that increased rates of compost amended media positively influenced growth parameters such as quality, stem length and yield. The control yielded 2.1 marketable stems (greater than 45 cm stem length) per plant and as compost rate increased yield was 3.6, 4.0 and 7.1 harvested quality stems per plant respectively. These findings were expected from results previously reported on sunflower and results on other crops in the extensive literature on compost amended media. After the end of April, the yield of non-commercial grades dominated production while stems greater than 45 cm ceased for all treatments. Further, the study demonstrates the potential for 'Bouquet Purple' as a specialty cut flower in Florida with high sustained yields of quality flowers as a cool season premium cut flower.


On December 18, 2013, a group of researchers from LAPAC, the Laboratory of Automation and Prototyping for Architecture and Construction, at the University of Campinas, had a video-conference with Prof. Branko Kolarevic, from Calgary University. Although the main objective of the talk was to discuss the question of digital fabrication and its impacts in the making of buildings, each researcher had the opportunity to ask something about their own topic of research, which are all related to computational design: parametric modeling, the use of programming in the creative process, responsive architecture and evolutionary computation. Among these researchers were students with different backgrounds – architecture, civil engineering, mechatronics and computer science – and at different levels, from undergrads to PhD candidates.


Enteric adenoviruses have been shown to be a substantial cause of pediatric gastroenteritis in various parts of the world, and are considered to be the second most common cause of viral gastroenteritis, next to rotavirus in young children. Genetic characterization of 95 adenovirus isolates obtained from patients with acute gastroenteritis between 2002 and 2007 from the southern regions of Ireland, were characterized by PCR analysis, restriction endonuclease (RE) analysis and sequencing analysis. All isolates were found to be of adenovirus type 41 origin. Genetic analysis of seven hypervariable regions (HVRs) located within the hexon gene has revealed a high level of amino acid sequence homology in samples over the course of this study, with a very close relationship to the D22 genome type. The D22 genome type has been detected in several other countries, thus suggesting Irish isolates have common genome types with other stains worldwide. This is the first such study undertaken in the south of Ireland, to type and genetically characterize adenoviral gastroenteritis isolates, and has revealed a high level of conservation within the isolated analyzed. J. Med. Virol. 79:1518–1526, 2007. © Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


The adsorption of the cationic surfactant BDDAC on a hydrophilic smectite (montmorillonite) surface has been investigated, especially in the range of low coverage ratios where surfactant ions are adsorbed through cation-exchange with the counterions of the clay. The surfactant coions (Cl(-)) were found to be adsorbed simultaneously with the cationic part after a complete alkyl ammonium ion-exchange of montmorillonite (CEC). We observe that organoclay particles remain flocculated in aqueous medium in almost all the range of adsorption isotherms up to 1.38 CEC and afterward redisperse incompletely. The intercalation of surfactant in the interlamellar space was followed by X-ray measurements. Fluorescence spectroscopy was used to obtain information about the adsorption layer at the interface. A calculation from geometrical considerations and from adsorption isotherms shows that below 1.38 CEC, there is a flat double layer in the interlamellar space and after this amount of adsorbed surfactant, an interstratified clay-surfactant mixed system is formed. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.


The Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP) is a 15-year program of theGovernment of Indonesia. It has been working at several sites in Indonesia since 1998 to achievesustainable use of coral reefs through the delegation of management authority to local communities.The establishment of effective models for participatory and community-based management is the core ofthis program. The model for community-based management includes community participation,community capacity building, promotion of alternative income generation, establishment of coral reefmanagement plans, community marine sanctuaries and community reef watcher programs. This paperdescribes the experiences and lessons learned in Phase I of the COREMAP Project in implementingcommunity-based reef management at Senayang and Lingga Islands, Riau Province. It is argued thatthe involvement of the community in the planning and implementation process of coral reef managementwill improve the management and conservation of coral reef ecosystems. It is hoped that the Indonesianexperience will contribute to the comparative literature on coral reef management.


ABERRANT epithelial tissues have been described in appendicular mucosa which showed lymphoid hyper-manv situations in the bodv, but aDDarentlv in no plasia and a diffuse infiltration with plasma cells and instance has ectopic mucos~-been &&bed in the lymphocytes ; occasional eosinophils also were present ; appendix.


We tackle the problem of Clifford isometry compilation, i.e, how to synthesize a Clifford isometry into an executable quantum circuit. We propose a simple framework for synthesis that only exploits the elementary properties of the Clifford group and one equation of the symplectic group. We highlight the versatility of our framework by showing that several normal forms of the literature are natural corollaries. We report an improvement of the two-qubit depth necessary for the execution of a Clifford circuit on an LNN architecture. We also apply our framework to the synthesis of graph states and the codiagonalization of Pauli rotations and we improve the 2-qubit count and 2-qubit depth of circuits taken from quantum chemistry experiments.


Off-pump coronary surgery does not eliminate the risks of ischemia-reperfusion injury. The main objective of this study was to describe the extent and time course of changes in myocardial metabolism and development of myocardial injury associated with revascularization. Coronary sinus and arterial blood samples for measurement of troponin I, creatine kinase MB, lactate, glutathione, and interleukin-6 were taken from 23 patients prior to grafting, after completion of each anastomosis, and up to the 1st postoperative morning. The results were evaluated together with parameters of cardiac function. Release of lactate, creatinine kinase MB, and troponin I into the coronary sinus was evident after completion of the 1st graft, and increased over time. During the procedure, only trace amounts of oxidized and reduced glutathione were detected in coronary sinus and arterial blood. Significant increases in interleukin-6 were found in coronary sinus samples after 5 and 20 min of reperfusion. Surgical trauma during off-pump coronary surgery is sufficient to activate an inflammatory response in the myocardium, together with unfavorable metabolic conditions to cause myocardial necrosis.


ABSTRACT Coral reefs are in global decline mainly due to increasing sea surface temperatures triggering coral bleaching. Recently, high salinity has been linked to increased thermotolerance and decreased bleaching in the sea anemone coral model Aiptasia. However, the underlying processes remain elusive. Using two Aiptasia host–endosymbiont pairings, we induced bleaching at different salinities and show reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS) release at high salinities, suggesting a role of osmoadaptation in increased thermotolerance. A subsequent screening of osmolytes revealed that this effect was only observed in algal endosymbionts that produce 2-O-glycerol-α-D-galactopyranoside (floridoside), an osmolyte capable of scavenging ROS. This result argues for a mechanistic link between osmoadaptation and thermotolerance, mediated by ROS-scavenging osmolytes (e.g., floridoside). This sheds new light on the putative mechanisms underlying the remarkable thermotolerance of corals from water bodies with high salinity such as the Red Sea or Persian/Arabian Gulf and holds implications for coral thermotolerance under climate change. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper. Summary: Using the coral model Aiptasia, we show increased thermotolerance at high salinities, concomitant with a reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS) release by algal endosymbionts. This suggests a mechanistic link between osmoadaptation and thermotolerance, mediated by ROS-scavenging osmolytes.


The paper reviews a new research field that develops evolutionary and behavioural approaches for the modeling of financial markets. The main objective is to create a plausible alternative to the conventional Walrasian equilibrium theory based on the hypothesis of full rationality of market players. Rather than maximizing typically unobservable individual utility functions, traders/investors are permitted to have a whole variety of patterns of strategic behaviour depending on their individual psychology. The models considered in this field combine elements of evolutionary game theory (solution concepts) and stochastic dynamic games (strategic frameworks).


At the end of the Pacific War, 200–400 Japanese ex-soldiers stationed in Malaya joined the Malayan Communist Party guerrillas out of fear of retribution by victorious Allied soldiers or to fulfil Japan's promise to liberate Malaya from colonial rule. However, the MCP led by Lai Teck decided not to wage armed struggle after the Japanese surrender, and Lai Tek ordered the execution of a number of Japanese. Those who remained fought for the liberation of Malaya during the Emergency, but by the late 1950s most of this group had either been killed in action, succumbed to disease, or surrendered. When the MCP ceased armed struggle in December 1989, just two Japanese remained with the group. This article uses Japanese and Malayan documents, including those of the Malayan Communist Party, to identify Japanese who joined the guerrillas as a first step toward allowing historians to evaluate their role.


Coronary neovascularisation is a known phenomenon in cases of collateral formation. But the same entity has also been seen but less described in a chronic thrombus or tumors formed in atrial chambers. Here we present interesting images where neovascularisation with fistula formation was evident on angiography into a left atrial thrombus which was documented on echocardiography and also intraoperatively. This phenomenon might explain and avoid unusual anxiety when noted on angiography for the first time.


The Artis aquarium has had difficulty maintaining a reasonable temperature in the recently install mammoth sea water tanks during the peak of summer. At this time the approximately 400 000 liters of water may be as much as 3 degrees Celsius too hot. This represents a considerable amount of energy to dissipate. Any solution to this problem must take into account the limited budget of the zoo, the heritage status of the building and the health of the fish in the tank. In this report, we analyse the major sources of energy entering and leaving the system. From this analysis, we find that the most effective method of reducing the water temperature is to increase the amount of evaporation from the system.


The unique aspects of neutron scattering in biology rely largely on the extraordinary parameters of interaction of neutrons with hydrogen nuclei. The origin of isotopic and spin incoherent scattering and its possible implication for neutron diffraction from protein crystals are described. The impact of a change in the coherent scattering length of hydrogen nuclei with isotopic substitution and spin polarization is illustrated by a number of applications in structural biology, which show clearly the complementarity to x-ray diffraction. A more detailed account is given of polarized neutron scattering from dynamically polarized spin systems. Experimental evidence for the existence of selectively polarized proton spin domains and their use in structural studies is presented.


Cats and dogs being humanity's favoured domestic pets occupy a large portion of the internet and of our digital lives. However, augmented reality technology — while becoming pervasive for humans — has so far mostly left out our beloved pets out of the picture due to limited enabling technology. While there are well-established learning frameworks for human pose estimation, they mostly rely on large datasets of handlabelled images, such as Microsoft's COCO (Lin et al., 2014) or facebook's dense pose (Güler et al., 2018). Labelling large datasets is time-consuming and expensive, and manually labelling 3D information is difficult to do consistently. Our solution to these problem is to synthesize highly varied datasets of animals, together with their corresponding 3D information such as pose. To generalize to various animals and breeds, as well as to the real-world domain, we leverage domain randomization over traditional dimensions (background, color variations and image transforms), but as well as with novel procedural appearance variations in breed, age and species. We evaluate the validity of our approach on various benchmarks, and produced several 3D graphical augmentations of real world cats and dogs using our fully synthetic approach.


The paper describes an approach for the integration of transparent security mechanisms into de-centralized mobile application scenarios. This becomes necessary as the communication among various devices migrates to wireless technologies at a progressive rate, finally leading to pervasive computing scenarios. Our result is a modular and heterogeneous architecture based on a high-capacity middleware. In this regard, the Web services technology is a guarantor for modularity as well as flexibility. It allows the integration of special tasks applying high security and mobility on different layers. This paper describes basic technologies used in such a system as well as selected aspects of a realized prototype.


We use three dimensional facial shape information for human face identification. We propose a new method to represent faces as 3D registered point clouds. Fine registration of facial surfaces is done by first automatically finding important facial landmarks and, then, establishing a dense correspondence between points on the facial surface with the help of a 3D face template-aided thin plate spline algorithm. After the registration of facial surfaces, similarity between two faces is defined as a discrete approximation of the volume difference between facial surfaces. We call this similarity the point set difference (PSD). A second method proposed is the use of implicit polynomial invariants. Experiments done on the 3D RMA dataset show that the PSD algorithm performs as well as the point signature method, and it is statistically superior to the implicit polynomial based technique, point distribution model-based method and the 2D depth imagery technique. In terms of computational complexity, the proposed algorithm is faster than the point signature method.


The temperature-sensitive missense suppressor supH and amber suppressor supP in Escherichia coli are mutations of the serU and leuX genes, respectively. The supH tRNA, tRNA(SerCAA), is expected to recognize UUG codons, which are normally read by tRNA(LeuCAA) and tRNA(LeuUAA), coded for by the leuX gene and the leuZ gene, respectively. We show that supP and supH are incompatible and that strains carrying both supP and a restrictive rpsL allele are temperature sensitive. It is suggested that the temperature sensitivity of both supH and supP strains is caused by deficient reading of UUG codons by tRNA(LeuUAA).


Four studies demonstrated that affective preferences persevere even if the cognition that gave rise to the affect is invalidated. In Study 1, participants learned associations between Chinese ideographs and their English meanings that were either positively or negatively valenced; subsequently, they were informed that these meanings were incorrect. Despite this cognitive invalidation, the affect associated with the ideographs persevered. Studies 2 and 3 ruled out alternative explanations. Study 4 showed that invalidating information containing opposite affective valence succeeded in changing the affective perseverance, whereas the neutral cognitive invalidation of Studies 1 through 3 did not. The present research provides an empirical demonstration of affective perseverance, specifying the conditions where affective preferences do and do not persevere when confronted with invalidating information. Discussion centers on issues of underlying mechanism and implications for other psychological phenomena.


OBJECTIVE
To understand the knowledge, usage, applicability of the standard and the suggestions on the implementation of Criteria for Control and Elimination of Malaria (GB 26345-2010) among malaria prevention and control staff of disease control and medical institutions at all levels in Yunnan Province, so as to provide the evidence for the implementation and revision of the standard.

METHODS
Malaria prevention and control workers at 192 institutions in 16 prefectures and cities of Yunnan Province were surveyed. The malaria prevention and treatment workers at county-level center for disease control and prevention (CDCs), county-level medical institutions and township hospitals in Tengchong City and Yingjiang County of Yunnan Province were investigated on the spot. The knowledge and usage, problems and recommendations encountered in the implementation of the standard were collected.

RESULTS
Totally 444 questionnaires were collected, of which 428 were valid and the valid rate of questionnaires was 96.4%. Among them, the proportion of those who knew the standard was 86.7% (371/428), and the channel of knowledge acquirement was mainly the education and training, accounting for 50.7% (188/371). The total awareness rate of objective indicators in the standard content was 65.9% (282/428). Among the frequency of utilization, the "occasional use" of this standard was the majority, accounting for 33.6% (144/428). Among the applications, the highest proportion of applying to the "regular malaria prevention and control work" was 59.3% (191/322), and only 19.3% (62/322) applied to the "assessment for malaria elimination". In the standard suitability assessment, the proportion of considering the standard to be fully applicable was 91.3% (391/428), and the proportion of considering the standard to be revised was 8.7% (37/428). The agencies where the respondents were located have taken corresponding measures to promote the implementation of the standard. A total of 43 proposals for the implementation of the standard were collected, relating to personnel and supporting conditions.

CONCLUSIONS
Combined with the actual situation, the standard should be strengthened practically. At the same time, the standard learning, training, and publicity should be strengthened to raise the implementation level. Its implementation in Yunnan Province should be sequentially consolidated and steadily promoted.


Aims: - Diagnosis of Interstitial lung diseases (ILD) is a multidisciplinary approach involving clinical data, a pulmonologist, radiologist & pathologist. The present study was carried out in an attempt to diagnose ILD based on clinical and radiographic presentation without support of lung biopsies. Method:- A series of consecutive 63 cases of ILDs presenting to us were thoroughly examined including detaill history, physical examination, Lab investigations and HRCT Chest. The patients were then tried to classified according to ATS/ERS international multidisciplinary consensus classification. Results:- With best of our clinical skills and HRCT evaluation, we were able to identify single disease / pattern in 57 patients (90.4%) out of the series of 63 patients. In 4 patients (6.3%) we were not able to reach any diagnosis, while in 1 patient each (1.6%) we could narrow down the differential diagnosis to two entities and up to three entities respectively. The split of these diagnosed cases are described in given table. Interpretation:- In majority of cases of ILD we were able to diagnose 57 cases (90.4%) without a need for Histopathology.


In-work benefits, which provide financial supplements to employees in low-wage jobs, are an instrument of active labour market policy used to encourage the labour market integration of low-skilled workers and the long-term unemployed. This paper argues that although government subsidies increase overall wages, employees interpret them as a signal that employers are unwilling to behave according to the norm of reciprocity. This leads to negative side-effects on employment stability, counteracting the positive effects of additional income on employment stability. The present article tests these hypotheses using a survey of in-work benefit recipients, with non-recipients as a comparison group. The method of propensity score matching is applied to eliminate all compositional differences between benefit recipients and non-recipients except for the source of their income. It is shown that in-work benefits lead to perceived violations of reciprocity. However, whether this explains why in-work benefits are not successful in promoting employment stability remains an open question.


Due to the rapid growth of mobile networks, network operators need to expand their coverage and capacity. Addressing these two needs is challenging. One factor is the requirement for cost-efficient transport via heterogeneous networks. In order to achieve this goal, Internet connectivity is considered a cost-efficient transport option by many operators for small cell backhaul. This thesis project investigates if a small cell network's requirements can be fulfilled by utilizing Internet connectivity for backhaul. In order to answer this question several measurements have been made to assess different aspect of live networks and compare them with the network operator's requirements. Different measurement protocols are utilized to evaluate some of the key network characteristics, such as throughput, jitter, packet loss, and delay. These measurement protocols are described in this thesis. Moreover, improving the bandwidth available in real-time (BART) measurement method was one of the main achievements of this thesis project. Evaluation of the measurement results indicates that fiber based access together with Internet connectivity would be the best and cheapest solution as a backhaul for small cell network in comparison with almost all of the other types of broadband access technologies. It should be noted that asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) and cable-TV access networks proved to be unable to meet the requirements for small cell backhaul. This project gives a clear picture of the current broadband access network infrastructure's attributes and highlights the possibility of reducing backhaul costs by using broadband Internet connectivity as a backhaul transport option.


Background: Medistinal teratomas compose 20% of childhood mediastinal tumors, 10% of all teratomas and it is an uncommon cause of respiratory distress in neonatal period.
Method: We report a newborn with mediastinal teratoma presenting with respiratory distress and superior mediastinal syndrome. The 6x 4x 2,5 cm mass adjacent to the right upper lung was totally resected.
Results: Histopathologically Grade 2 immature teratoma with an intact looking capsule, and components of immature cartilage, mesenchymal and neuroepithelial tissue was identified Chemotherapy was not administered. At the 6th month of her follow up, the AFP level was 18 ng/ml in concordance with her age. No recurrence was observed.
Conclusions: Most of benign mediastinal teratomas grow slowly and do not manifest symptoms until early puberty. Chest X-ray, thorax ultrasonography, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging are useful in identifying the localization and association of mass with peripheral tissues. Treatment of the mediastinal teratomas in children under the age of fifteen is total surgical excision.


The objective of this study was to evaluate the consequences for safety and health of split sleep versus consolidated sleep by comparing the effects of consolidated nighttime sleep, split sleep, and consolidated daytime sleep on total sleep time, performance, subjective state, and biomedical measures that correlate with health outcomes over the long term. An in-residence laboratory study was conducted on 53 healthy participants making a between-group comparison of nighttime, split, or daytime sleep across a 5-day simulated workweek. The effect of the three sleep conditions was measured on sleep by polysomnography (PSG), performance by the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT), high fidelity driving simulator, digit-symbol substitution task (DSST), and subjective state, as well as the long-term health-related biomedical measurements of blood glucose, interleukin 6 (IL-6), leptin, testosterone, and blood pressure (BP). In comparison to consolidated nighttime sleep or split sleep, participants in the daytime sleep condition slept less and were subjectively sleepier. While performance, mood, and BP were unaffected by sleep condition, there were elevations in glucose and testosterone in the daytime sleep condition at the end of the workweek. With respect to total sleep time and sleepiness, the findings of the present study suggest that split sleep is preferable to consolidated daytime sleep. This finding has implications for any revision of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) rules governing sleeper berth use in commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers.


The tumor associated antigen OVA66 which is firstly defined by serological analysis of human ovary cancer of recombinant cDNA expression library, has been demonstrated to be highly expressed in the majority of malignant tumors. We constructed a eukaryotic expression vector pFlag-OVA66 to establish an OVA66 stably over-expressed mouse fibroblast NIH3T3 cell line. The OVA66 over-expressed NIH3T3 cells exhibited several significantly malignant changes, the S and G2/M phage was markedly increased whereas the G1/G0 phage was decreased in the total cell cycle, indicating that the over-expression of OVA66 is able to promote cell cycling and proliferation. MTT and colony formation assay validated that OVA66 promotes the cell growth and colony formation in vitro. NIH3T3 cells with the over-expression of tumor antigen OVA66 displayed more resistance to the cell apoptosis induced by 5-FU. In vivo assay of the tumor xenograft studies in nude mice revealed the OVA66 over-expressed NIH3T3 cells were capable of forming tumors in the nude mice compared to the NIH3T3-mock cells with low expression of OVA66. Analysis of the phosphorylation of AKT and ERK1/2 stimulated with serum indicated a hyper activation of ERK1/2 MAPK and PI3K/AKT pathway in OVA66 stably over-expressed NIH3T3 cells. The results suggesting that OVA66 as a novel tumor antigen with its strong tumorigenic ability might be a novel target for the early detection, prevention and treatment of tumor in the future.


The production of a hemolytic exotoxin (Hly) termed listeriolysin O (LLO) is a major determinant of the virulence of the Gram-positive bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. As determined by lethal inoculum size, LLO- strains of L. monocytogenes generally are several orders of magnitude less virulent than their LLO+ counterparts. The generation of protective anti-Listeria T cell immunity also has been shown to depend on the LLO phenotype of the bacteria present during primary infection, although the cellular basis of this observation is not known. The experiments described here address the role of LLO in regulation of the expression of class II MHC (Ia) molecules by murine macrophages. Because Ia expression by macrophages and other APC is thought to be a central factor in the generation of T cells specific for bacterial Ag, we have tested the hypothesis that the failure of LLO- strains to elicit anti-Listeria T cell responses might be secondary to an inability of these strains to stimulate increases in macrophage Ia levels. Our results show that the macrophage Ia response after i.p. injection of L. monocytogenes correlates strongly with the LLO phenotype of the bacteria. The presence of LLO+ organisms, even at very small numbers (as few as 10), elicits a striking increase in Ia expression by peritoneal macrophages. In contrast, even at very high numbers (up to 10(6) per mouse), LLO- bacteria fail to stimulate a strong Ia response. We also have analyzed macrophage Ia expression after injection of lysates of Escherichia coli expressing recombinant LLO protein. Similar to the results obtained with LLO+ and LLO- L. monocytogenes, we have observed Ia induction only with LLO+ lysates. Ia induction by this crude recombinant LLO preparation can be inhibited by cholesterol or heat. Furthermore, supernatants derived from cultures of LLO+ (but not LLO-) L. monocytogenes can cause Ia induction when administered via i.p. injection. Taken together, these findings suggest that the failure of macrophages to respond to LLO- organisms with an increase in Ia expression may be a major underlying cause of the failure of these bacteria to induce Listeria-specific protective T cell immunity. Furthermore, we propose that the induction of macrophage Ia expression in response to bacterial toxins such as Hly may represent one component of a set of early, innate immune mechanisms, and that this induction may provide a critical "bridge" to later, acquired, Ag-specific immune processes.


Extracellular microelectrodes have been widely used to measure brain activity, yet there are still basic questions about the requirements for a good extracellular microelectrode. One common source of confusion is how an electrode's impedance affects the amplitude of extracellular spikes and background noise. Here we discuss how an electrode's impedance affects data quality in extracellular recordings, which is crucial for both the detection of spikes and their assignment to the correct neurons. This study employs commercial polytrodes containing 32 electrodes (177 μm2) arranged in a dense array. This allowed us to directly compare, side-by-side, the same extracellular signals measured by modified low impedance (~100 kOhm) microelectrodes with unmodified high impedance (~1 MOhm) microelectrodes. We begin with an evaluation of existing protocols to lower the impedance of the electrodes. The poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT-PSS) electrodeposition protocol is a simple, stable, and reliable method for decreasing the impedance of a microelectrode up to tenfold. We next record in vivo using polytrodes that are modified in a 'chess board' pattern, such that the signal of one neuron is detected by multiple coated and non-coated electrodes. The performance of the coated and non-coated electrodes is then compared on measures of background noise and amplitude of the detected action potentials. If the proper recording system is used, then the impedance of a microelectrode within the range of standard polytrodes (~ 0.1 to 2 MOhm) does not significantly affect data quality and spike sorting. This study should encourage neuroscientists to stop worrying about one more unknown.


The effect of 7 synthetic derivatives of 3-nitrobenzofurane, 3-nitroindol and nitrovynil hydoquinone on tumor growth in F1(C57Bl х CBA) mice with subcutaneously inoculated Erlich's carcinoma (EC) was studied. It was demonstrated that upon 4 daily subcutaneous injections of 5-hydroxy-6,7-dichlor-3-nitrobenzofurane water suspension with a single dose of 400 μg/kg or 5-hydroxy -2-(2-dimethylaminopropene-1-il)-3-nitrobenzofurane with a single dose of 200 μg/kg the growth of EC was inhibited significantly up to 61 67 % with respect to tumor volume, which is supported by significant reduction of tumor weight upon the treatment period up to 24 %. We have observed that the efficacy of treatment was recorded as early as 4 day after the beginning the therapy and remained at the significant level declining to 48 49 % after 1 week of treatment. The continuation of therapy failed to retain the achieved effect. All of tested compounds proved well tolerable in case of long-term administration at the dosages applied. The results obtained provide a basis for subsequent studies of these nitro derivatives in other tumor growth models.


Fluvial deposits of the S. Maria di Ciciliano Formation crop out near Montecastrilli (Terni), in the southwestern branch of the Tiberino Basin.  Many specimens of plants ("mummified" woods, fruits and seeds), freshwater molluscs, ostracods, vertebrate bones and coprolites were collected at Torre Picchio. This small outcrop contains a fairly rich record of fruits and seeds, among which about 50 species were identified; the most frequent invariably belong to submerged, floating and emergent aquatic herbs, possibly because these were buried not far from their place of growth, thus representing the ancient local vegetation.  The fruits and seeds of woody plants, including several exotic elements, were transported from neighbouring areas and indicate a paleoclimate similar to the present day, though slightly wetter.  Among molluscs, three distinct assemblages were found, indicating fluvial, swampy and lacustrine environment, respectively.  They contain taxa of biochronological interest, most of them typical of Early Pleistocene deposits (late Villafranchian), but making their first appearance in the Late Pliocene (Middle Villafranchian). One species, Margarifera ( Pseudunio ) auricularia , represents the oldest record everywhere, since it was known, so far, only from the Middle Pleistocene upwards.  As palaeoenvironmental indicators, the ostracods complete the information given by molluscs.  Vetrebrates are represented by large and small mammals, rare birds, reptiles, amphibians and some fishes.  A great number of coprolites was collected as well.  The mammal assemblage shows affinities with the Costa S. Giacomo and Olivola F. U. (Middle and Late Villafranchian, Late Pliocene). Mimomys medasensis , an Iberoccitane element, is signaled for the first time in Italy.  From the geological point of view, the S. Maria di Ciciliano Fm. is interfingering with the marine Chiani-Tevere Fm., which is mostly Santernian in age and lies unconformably on the Middle Pliocene cycle. Only in some areas representing a structural low, the continuous transition between the lower portion of this unit and Late Pliocene deposits may be observed before the heteropic episodes.  This fact suggests some inconsistencies between chronostratigraphy and biochronology in the examined area because some taxa indicate a latest Pliocene age.  A heterochrony in the extinction of some species of plants and animals is suggested as a possible solution to the problem.


Backgrounds/Aims: It has been reported that urinary oxidative stress markers are higher in diabetic patients with proteinuria. We performed the present study to elucidate the relationship between urinary excretion of oxidative stress markers, albumin excretion, and histological changes, and to confirm the potential utility of oxidative stress markers for clinical treatment. Methods: Diabetic db/db mice or nondiabetic db/m mice were administered candesartan (10 mg/kg/day) or hydralazine (50 mg/kg/day) for 18 weeks. Results: Thirty-week-old male db/db mice treated with control vehicle revealed elevated urinary excretion and immunohistological levels of 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine in glomeruli when compared to db/m mice. Treatment with candesartan, but not hydralazine, reduced these values to levels in db/m mice. Increased mesangial expansion, urinary excretion of albumin and 8-isoprostane, and glomerular immunohistological levels of nitrotyrosine in db/db mice were also decreased markedly by candesartan but not hydralazine. Interestingly, correlations between levels of albumin and oxidative stress markers in urine were very high, even when groups undergoing long-term (44 weeks) treatment were included (correlation coefficient 0.767 with respect to 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine, 0.888 with respect to 8-isoprostane). Conclusion: It is anticipated that urinary concentrations of oxidative stress markers will be direct barometers of glomerulus-derived oxidative stress and glomerular injury in diabetic nephropathy.


At an interface between two materials physical properties and functionalities may be achieved, which would not exist in either material alone. Epitaxial inorganic interfaces are at the heart of semiconductor, spintronic, and quantum devices. First principles simulations based on density functional theory (DFT) can help elucidate the electronic and magnetic properties of interfaces and relate them to the structure and composition at the atomistic scale. Furthermore, DFT simulations can predict the structure and properties of candidate interfaces and guide experimental efforts in promising directions. However, DFT simulations of interfaces can be technically elaborate and computationally expensive. To help researchers embarking on such simulations, this review covers best practices for first principles simulations of epitaxial inorganic interfaces, including DFT methods, interface model construction, interface structure prediction, and analysis and visualization tools.


Environmental impacts of the livestock sector are proportional to consumption levels. To assess the relative consumption of livestock animals within the diets of dogs, cats and people, this study examined their dietary energy needs within the US in 2020, and globally in 2018. Also studied were US pet food ingredients, and environmental sustainability indicators for plant- and animal-based foods consumed globally. Relative consumptions of average livestock animals were: US: dogs– 17.7%, cats– 2.3%, humans– 80.0%; and globally: dogs– 7.7%, cats– 1.2%, humans– 91.1%. Full transition to nutritionally-sound vegan diets would spare from slaughter the following numbers of terrestrial livestock animals annually (billions): US: dogs– 1.7, cats– 0.2, humans– 7.8, and globally: dogs– 6.0, cats– 0.9, humans– 71.3, as well as billions of aquatic animals in all dietary groups. Very large impact reductions were also associated with land and water use, emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), acidifying and eutrophifying gases, and biocide use, in all dietary groups. If implemented globally, nutritionally-sound vegan diets would free up land larger than the following nations: dogs–Saudi Arabia or Mexico, cats–Japan or Germany, humans–Russia–the world's largest country–combined with India. Such diets would save freshwater volumes greater than all renewable freshwater in the following nations: dogs–Denmark, cats–Jordan, humans–Cuba. Such diets would reduce GHGs by amounts greater than all GHG emissions from following nations: dogs–South Africa or the UK, cats–Israel or New Zealand, humans–India or the entire EU. The numbers of additional people who could be fed using food energy savings associated with vegan diets exceeded the 2018 human populations of the following nations: dogs–the entire European Union, cats–France or the UK, humans–every single nation or collective region on Earth, as defined by the World Bank. All of these estimates are conservative.


Eleven boys with growth hormone (hGH) deficiency received human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) stimulation tests for the assessment of Leydig cell function before, during, and after 1 year of treatment with somatotrophin. Two patients entered puberty during the course of the study protocol. Analysis of the data in nine prepubertal boys revealed an augmentation of testosterone (T) responses to hCG in the presence of hGH. In six of these individuals in whom dihydrotestosterone (DHT) was determined, a similar augmentation in responsiveness of this steroid was found in the presence of hGH. Three prepubertal boys exhibited poor T responses to the basal hCG test with only partial improvement following hGH. In man growth hormone may be an important permissive factor in Leydig cell activity during periods of changing testicular function such as occur in utero or during puberty.


Stretchable graphene thermistors with intrinsic high stretchability were fabricated through a lithographic filtration method. Three-dimensional crumpled graphene was used as the thermal detection channels, and silver nanowires were used as electrodes. Both the detection channel and electrodes were fully embedded in an elastomer matrix to achieve excellent stretchability. Detailed temperature sensing properties were characterized at different strains up to 50%. It is evident that the devices can maintain their functionalities even at high stretched states. The devices demonstrated strain-dependent thermal indices, and the sensitivity of the thermistors can be effectively tuned using strain. The unique tunable thermal index is advantageous over conventional rigid ceramic thermistors for diverse and adaptive applications in wearable electronics.


Since the introduction of emission standards for gas turbines in the late '70s and early '80s, the gas turbine industry has responded with a variety of combustion and cleanup alternatives that have improved emissions. While the emissions were being reduced, the cost of control, and the negative environmental impacts were often significant.Thanks to a technological breakthrough, catalytic combustion has now been achieved, and can fulfill the promise of low cost NOx elimination without the high cost of SCR or the operational problems associated with Lean Pre-Mix.Copyright © 1998 by ASME


Objective: To directly compare the prevalence of chemosensory dysfunction (smell and taste) in geographically distinct regions with the same questionnaires. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed to evaluate the self-reported symptoms among adults (older than 18 years) who underwent COVID-19 testing at an ambulatory assessment center in Canada and at a hospital in Israel between March 16, 2020, and August 19, 2020. The primary outcome was the prevalence of self-reported chemosensory dysfunction (anosmia/hypomsia and dysgeusia/ageusia). Subgroup analysis was performed to evaluate the prevalence of chemosensory deficits among the outpatients. Results: We identified a total of 350 COVID-19–positive patients (138 Canadians and 212 Israelis). The overall prevalence of chemosensory dysfunction was 47.1%. There was a higher proportion of chemosensory deficits among Canadians compared to Israelis (66.7% vs 34.4%, P < .01). A subgroup analysis for outpatients (never hospitalized) still identified a higher prevalence of chemosensory dysfunction among Canadians compared to Israelis (68.2% vs 36.1%, P < 0.01). A majority of patients recovered their sense of smell after 4 weeks of symptom onset. Conclusion: Although the prevalence of chemosensory deficit in COVID-19 was found to be similar to previously published reports, the prevalence can vary significantly across different geographical regions. Therefore, it is important to obtain regionally specific data so that the symptom of anosmia/dysgeusia can be used as a guide for screening for the clinical diagnosis of COVID-19.