Twenty-one patients seen in a temperate climate who had a clinical diagnosis of brachioradial pruritus are presented. The history and clinical manifestations of the patients indicate that the symptoms were neuralgiform and caused by cumulative sun exposure.


The Reinforcement of Character Education (PPK) program was started in 2019 and has been implemented in various schools including the Yogyakarta City elementary schools. This study aimed to describe the readiness of schools in implementing and evaluating this program in Yogyakarta City. This study used a descriptive quantitative approach. The sample was determined using simple random sampling techniques and consisted of 119 schools. The results showed that only 5% of the schools were ready to implement the program; schools had not yet implemented the PPK program, and had not yet optimized the associated triple education function, namely concerning family, schools and communities. PPK implementation was through the curriculum and habituation in schools because all teachers understood it. Only 4% of schools were ready to evaluate the program, because schools did not have well organized program evaluation teams. This showed that schools need to get assistance in implementing and evaluating PPK, to ensure that it is successful in helping to build character.
Keywords: school readiness, program implementation, reinforcement of character education program


1. This paper describes a method for measuring static eye reflexes in restrained but unanaesthetized fish. 2. Ocular counter-rotation in response to movement round the transverse axis of the body was studied in detail by means of denervation experiments and changes in the direction of incident light. 3. Both body position, measured by the labyrinths and light direction, measured by the eyes, contribute to counter-rotation. 4. Round about the normal attitude of the fish ocular counter-rotation is proportional to the angular deviation of the body from horizontal. 5. The gain of the system measured this way can change according to the excitability of the fish but the proportional relationship is retained.


Abstract. A study was undertaken to improve upon the prognosticative capability of
Environment and Climate Change Canada's (ECCC) UV Index forecast model. An
aspect of that work, and the topic of this communication, was to investigate
the use of the four UV broadband surface irradiance fields generated by
ECCC's Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) numerical prediction model to
determine the UV Index. The basis of the investigation involves the creation of a suite of routines
which employ high-spectral-resolution radiative transfer code developed to
calculate UV Index fields from GEM forecasts. These routines employ a
modified version of the Cloud-J v7.4 radiative transfer model, which
integrates GEM output to produce high-spectral-resolution surface irradiance
fields. The output generated using the high-resolution radiative transfer
code served to verify and calibrate GEM broadband surface irradiances under
clear-sky conditions and their use in providing the UV Index. A subsequent
comparison of irradiances and UV Index under cloudy conditions was also
performed. Linear correlation agreement of surface irradiances from the two models for
each of the two higher UV bands covering 310.70–330.0 and 330.03–400.00 nm
is typically greater than 95 % for clear-sky conditions with associated
root-mean-square relative errors of 6.4 and 4.0 %. However,
underestimations of clear-sky GEM irradiances were found on the order of
 ∼  30–50 % for the 294.12–310.70 nm band and by a factor of
 ∼  30 for the 280.11–294.12 nm band. This underestimation can be
significant for UV Index determination but would not impact weather
forecasting. Corresponding empirical adjustments were applied to the
broadband irradiances now giving a correlation coefficient of unity. From
these, a least-squares fitting was derived for the calculation of the UV
Index. The resultant differences in UV indices from the high-spectral-resolution irradiances and the resultant GEM broadband irradiances are
typically within 0.2–0.3 with a root-mean-square relative error in the
scatter of ∼  6.6 % for clear-sky conditions. Similar results are
reproduced under cloudy conditions with light to moderate clouds, with a
relative error comparable to the clear-sky counterpart; under strong
attenuation due to clouds, a substantial increase in the root-mean-square
relative error of up to 35 % is observed due to differing cloud radiative
transfer models.


Long hours, pressure to meet deadlines, lacking a sense of belonging, and fear of failure are just some of the stressors that affect Computer Science students and professionals alike, leading to burnout, anxiety, and depression. Although this issue is by no means unique to the field of computing, there is significant need for awareness and support around student mental health in the CS education community. In this timely and important session, panelists will discuss the mental health issues that affect CS students, present resources that are available to students and educators, and describe their efforts to create and foster a culture of understanding and support within their communities.


This paper presents a health-related area-level multiple environmental classification of the UK and examines ecological associations with health. This classification, akin to a geodemographic profile of the environment, classifies small areas across the UK into seven environment types ranging from 'Industrial' to 'Sunny, clean and green'. The data for the classification were gathered from a range of agencies, rendered to Census Area Statistic Wards (n = 10 654) and processed through a two-stage clustering technique to create a Multiple Environmental Deprivation Classification, or MEDClass. In order to explore the utility of MEDClass, this paper presents an empirical investigation into the extent to which the type of physical environment one lives in can influence self-reported health and mortality rates. The findings suggest that while physical environment 'type' makes a modest contribution towards our understanding of health inequalities, socio-economic deprivation remains the most important challenge for those seeking to address these inequalities. In conclusion we suggest that human geographers should embrace a broader conceptualisation of the environment and in particular, re-engage with traditional aspects of the physical environment.


Although the shorter scan time enabled by DLRecon has potential to reduce motion related image degradation, it cannot remove or mitigate such artifacts. The periodically rotated overlapping parallel lines with enhanced reconstruction (PROPELLER) or similar techniques can reduce motion artifacts in shoulder MRI, however usually takes a longer time to acquire. Recently, DLRecon for PROPELLER has been developed. Accelerated PROPELLER sequence with DLRecon showed improved image quality and comparable interobserver agreement for shoulder pathology compared to standard PROPELLER acquisition with conventional reconstruction, despite the shorter scan time (45% reduction).


Allium iatrouinum from Evvia Island (W Aegean, Greece) and A. pycnotrichum from Mt. Parnon (SE Peloponnisos, Greece) are described and illustrated. They belong to A . sect. Cupanioscordum , which includes ca. 24 species so far, mainly distributed in the Mediterranean region. Both species are diploid/dysploid (2 n = 2x = 14), related to each other and also related to other dysploid members of the A. cupanii group, especially A. hirtovaginatum (W Turkey) and A. maghrebinum (Tunisia, Algeria). The new species grow in rocky habitats and occur in restricted mountain areas, where they flower in summer, mostly from July to August.


Background: The South African Constitution affords everyone the right to access healthcare services, but in children the care must ensure survival. Aim: This study aimed to determine whether there was access to equitable paediatric oncology services for the management of neuroblastoma in South Africa. Setting: Paediatric oncology services in South Africa between 2000 to 2014. Methods: A literature review was carried out, focussing on access to healthcare in South Africa for children with neuroblastoma. Services were classified in accordance with the International Society of Paediatric Oncology resource settings for neuroblastoma diagnosis. Supplementary data from a retrospective study of the management of neuroblastoma in South Africa were evaluated. Results: The neuroblastoma care services in South Africa were not uniformly resourced and accessible across the provinces. Two provinces (2/9 provinces) had excellent healthcare services that included access to transplant facilities, whilst three (3/9 provinces) had no services. Traveling distances to healthcare services pose major challenges, whilst number of medical staff providing oncology care were unequally distributed. The Constitution did not define basic healthcare for children, nor did the National Cancer Control plan acknowledge childhood cancer as a defined entity without provision until 2022. Conclusion: Children diagnosed with neuroblastoma do not have equitable access to healthcare as stated in the South African Constitution. The case of neuroblastoma highlights the inequitable access to childhood care as a whole in South Africa. As the health of children is a national priority, it is therefore necessary to sensitise policymakers to the needs of children with cancer.


Abstract : There has been increased interest in monitoring foreign students while maintaining the long tradition of permitting international scholars to study in the United States. There are three main avenues for students from other countries to temporarily come to the United States to study, and each involves admission as a nonimmigrant. The three visa categories used by foreign students are F visas for academic study, M visas for vocational study, and J visas for cultural exchange. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implemented an electronic foreign student monitoring system. When Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, it added statutory language mandating that the Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretaries of State and Education, develop by January 1, 1998, a program to collect data on foreign students from at least five countries, and mandated that by 2003, the data collection include all countries. IIRIRA required the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to collect the information electronically "where practical." The USA Patriot Act of 2001 included provisions to expand the foreign student tracking system and authorized appropriations for the system, which was supposed to be funded through fees, paid by the students. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 increased monitoring of foreign students and closed perceived loopholes. The foreign student monitoring system created by the former INS, and mandated in IIRIRA, is referred to as the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). SEVIS, which automated an existing manual data collection process, became operational for all incoming students on February 15, 2003, the deadline for all institutions which had previously been approved to admit foreign students to apply for SEVIS certification and enter all new students into the SEVIS system.


Traditional market indicators have pointed to an overvalued stock market throughout the 1990s, because the dividend yield dropped to a record low and the market-to-book ratio reached a record high. Despite the indicators, the stock market has performed well, leading market watchers to question whether these indicators behave differently now than they have in the past. This article examines the predictive power of these measures and addresses the claim that the dividend yield and market-to-book ratio are no longer valid indicators. We find that share repurchase activity has not been especially high through most of the 1990s and that, adjusting for buybacks, the dividend yield remains low. Likewise, the market-to-book ratio remains at a record high once charges for retiree health liabilities have been taken into account.


Out of Afaf Meleis' forty years of research and practice comes ""Transition Theory"", based on the work of nurses as they manage the developmental, health and illness, and organizational transitions of patients and families. A collection of over 40 articles published from 1975 through 2007, ""Transitions Theory"" covers developmental, situational, health and illness, organizational, and therapeutic transitions. Each category includes an introduction written by Dr. Meleis, the originator of ""Transitions Theory"", in which she offers her historical and practical perspective. Each section also includes a previously unpublished paper, written by an expert in the field. The book concludes with Dr. Meleis' vision for the future of Transition Theory research and practice.


It has been shown that thyroliberin and its synthetic analogue PR-546 injected into the lymphatic sacs (4.10(-7)-4.10(-9) g/kg) or applied to the medulla oblongata in the bulbar frogs (4.10(-10)-4.10(-12) g/kg) significantly increase the rate of motor respiratory volleys in the hypoglossal nerve. In preparations with the irregular level of the activity of the respiratory center, these drugs enhanced stabilization of the initial level of the rhythm of motor respiratory discharges.


Medicinal plants are important in the treatment of human diseases. Phytochemicals that possess anti-diabetic and anti-inflammatory activity, and modulate pathways involved in obesity and glucose metabolism. In folk medicine, a single plant may be used to treat various diseases owing to the presence of phytochemical varieties in plants. The qualitative analysis showed that the preliminary phytochemical analysis of Ruellia prostrata revealed presence of tannin, saponins, flavonoids, steroids, terpenoids, triterpenoids, anthroquinones and polyphenol while emodins, anthocyanins were absent in both extract. Alkaloids and glycosides were present only ethanol extract. Coumarins were present only aqueous extract. . The in vitro anti-diabetic potential of plant extract was confirmed through α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibition methods. Anti-inflammatory activity of Ruellia prostrata was also confirmed.


The more advanced development of science and technology makes every cosmetic company to create a good brand image so it can provide the attraction of purchasing decision through the use of celebrity endorsers. This article aims to determine the effect of brand image and celebrity endorser on the purchasing decision of wardah cosmetic (based on the study of Muslimah in Bogor). The population in this article is muslimah in Bogor who have bought and used wardah cosmetic, and 100 muslimah as the sample. The sampling technique used is non-probability sampling. The data used in this article are primary and secondary data. The data analysis technique used is descriptive analysis and multiple linear regression analysis using the SPSS 16 program.


The majority of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) fail to derive any durable responses from single agent immune checkpoint blockade therapy. This refractory state originates from PDAC's unique tumor microenvironment that is densely populated by immunosuppressive myeloid cells while excluding most antitumor CD8 T cells.1 In addition, PDAC is highly hypoxic and exhibits poor vascularity, both qualities which further limit antitumor immunity.2 3 We showed that the hypoxia-activated prodrug TH-302 (Evofosfamide) potentiates immunotherapy responses.4 Mechanistically, TH-302 decreases intratumoral hypoxia and initiates normalization of the tumor vasculature. While TH-302 facilitates a cellular remodeling process that diminishes tumor hypoxia, the nature of the vascular remodeling involved remains unknown, as do the downstream consequences for the composition of the tumor microenvironment and responsiveness to immunotherapy. We hypothesized that anti-angiogenic therapy and Evofosfamide might cooperate to normalize tumor vasculature and diminish hypoxia.TH-302 and a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (VEGFR-2) blocking antibody were used to treat several syngeneic murine models, including orthotopic pancreatic cancer and a transplantable model of prostate cancer. Immunofluorescence and flow cytometry were used to assess intratumoral hypoxia, vessel normalization, and tumor immune infiltrate.We find that anti-VEGFR-2 (DC101) in combination with TH-302 demonstrates a cooperative benefit to combat both orthotopically implanted pancreatic cancer and transplantable prostate cancer. Combination therapy reduces intratumoral hypoxia, leads to pruning of the tumor vasculature, and increases the infiltration of endothelial cells into hypoxic regions. Across models, the combination of DC101 and TH-302 significantly enhance CD8 T cell function and limits their exhausted state. At the same time, tumor associated macrophages exhibit decreased expression of M2-like features. Similar to other anti-angiogenic therapies, combination DC101 and TH-302 leads to an increased frequency of PD-L1 expressing cells. Concurrent anti-PD-1 failed to provide any additional therapeutic benefit, which in part may be due poor CD8 T cell infiltration. Instead, we find that CD40 agonist therapy is improved when combined with TH-302 and DC101.TH-302 and DC101 utilize unique yet complementary mechanisms to improve the survival of mice challenged with pancreatic or prostate tumors. This combination relieves hypoxia and simultaneously reinvigorates T cell function and reduces macrophage mediated immunosuppression. In this setting, CD40 agonist therapy provides an additive benefit in prolonging mouse survival. Put together, these data indicate that targeted hypoxia reduction with anti-angiogenic therapy remodels the tumor microenvironment and enhances immunotherapy responses in PDAC.Bear AS, Vonderheide RH, O'Hara MH. Challenges and opportunities for pancreatic cancer immunotherapy. Cancer Cell. 2020;38(6):788–802. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2020.08.004. Epub 2020 Sep 17. PMID: 32946773; PMCID: PMC7738380.Koong AC, Mehta VK, Le QT, Fisher GA, Terris DJ, Brown JM, Bastidas AJ, Vierra M. Pancreatic tumors show high levels of hypoxia. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2000;48(4):919–22. doi: 10.1016/s0360-3016(00)00803-8. PMID: 11072146.Olive KP, Jacobetz MA, Davidson CJ, Gopinathan A, McIntyre D, Honess D, Madhu B, Goldgraben MA, Caldwell ME, Allard D, Frese KK, Denicola G, Feig C, Combs C, Winter SP, Ireland-Zecchini H, Reichelt S, Howat WJ, Chang A, Dhara M, Wang L, Rückert F, Grützmann R, Pilarsky C, Izeradjene K, Hingorani SR, Huang P, Davies SE, Plunkett W, Egorin M, Hruban RH, Whitebread N, McGovern K, Adams J, Iacobuzio-Donahue C, Griffiths J, Tuveson DA. Inhibition of Hedgehog signaling enhances delivery of chemotherapy in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer. Science 2009;324(5933):1457–61. doi: 10.1126/science.1171362. Epub 2009 May 21. PMID: 19460966; PMCID: PMC2998180.Jayaprakash P, Ai M, Liu A, Budhani P, Bartkowiak T, Sheng J, Ager C, Nicholas C, Jaiswal AR, Sun Y, Shah K, Balasubramanyam S, Li N, Wang G, Ning J, Zal A, Zal T, Curran MA. Targeted hypoxia reduction restores T cell infiltration and sensitizes prostate cancer to immunotherapy. J Clin Invest 2018;128(11):5137–5149. doi: 10.1172/JCI96268. Epub 2018 Oct 15. PMID: 30188869; PMCID: PMC6205399.


Big data is the collection of large and complex data sets that are difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The invention of online social networks, smart phones, fine tuning of ubiquitous computing and many other technological advancements have led to the generation of multiple petabytes of both structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. These massive data sets have lead to the birth of some distributed data processing and storage technologies like Apache Hadoop and MongoDB. To tackle the security issues in Hadoop, the Kerberos protocol has been introduced in its second edition. However, this technological movement has created some security loopholes in the processing and storage of the data sets. This paper tries to list some of the directions research on Big Data challenges has taken for the past five years together with their corresponding Use cases.


Ferraro and Simpson (2002) argue that when markets are competitive, direct payments for environmental services are more cost effective in achieving environmental goals than indirect payments, say, for capital. However, when eco-entrepreneurs face non-price rationing in input or output markets, as is typical for e.g. credit in developing countries for, we show that interventions which relax constraints can be more cost-effective than direct payments. One corollary of this is that such indirect payments can be preferred to direct payments by interveners (e.g. NGOs) and eco-entrepreneurs alike. Both of these outcomes are more likely when constraints are severe.


Purpose
This study aims to develop the Al-Si-Mg metal matrix composite, reinforced distinctly with lime stone powder (LSP; 12% by weight) and Al2O3 (12% by weight), and compare their mechanical properties and tribological performance.

Design/methodology/approach
The composites are fabricated through stir casting process. In view of the previous work, the Al-LSP composite with LSP reinforcement (12 Wt.%) shows enhanced mechanical properties and tribological performance, as compared with other weight percentages.

Findings
Though the Al-LSP composite is less expensive, it shows similar hardness, tensile strength and specific strength, when compared with Al- Al2O3 composite. However, the Al-LSP composite exhibits significant enhancement of above three properties, when compared with Al-Si-Mg metal. The systematic factorial design of experiments is obtained through Taguchi OA [L9]. The tribological performance is estimated through wear rate (WR-mm3/m) and coefficient of friction (CF) by varying the operating parameters of sliding distance (SD), load (L) and sliding velocity (SV). According to ANOVA results, the optimal condition of WR for all the tested materials is L1SD3SV1. Further, the optimal condition of CF is L1SD1SV3 for Al-LSP and Al-Si-Mg metal, while L2SD3SV2 is for Al-Al2O3 composite. The regression equation predicts the measured experimental values within error band of ± 8 percentage.

Originality/value
A comparison of two composite materials (Al-LSP and Al-Al2O3) with same weight fractions (12%) shows almost same trend in both the mechanical and tribological testing process. However, the developed Al-LSP composite exhibited better properties than the Al-Al2O3 and Al-base. Therefore, Al-LSP can be suggested for automotive applications (i.e., connecting rod, cylinder liners, camshaft) and structural applications (such as frames, over hanging supports), without compromising in desirable original with properties of constituents in the new material, which is achievable for looking to the end uses.


Resurfacing hip implants differ in macro-and microstructure. Manufacturing related parameters like clearance or carbon content influence the wear behaviour of these metal-on-metal bearings. The aim of this study was to analyse the main macro- and micro-structural differences of commercially available resurfacing hip implants. Ten different commercially available resurfacing hip implant designs were included in this investigation: BHR ® (SmithN DePuy ASR®: cup; Eska BS®: head). Commercially available resurfacing hip implants differ in design and manufacturing parameters, including macro- and microstructure, which are critical in achieving low wear and ion release. This study was designed to aid in the understanding of clinical observations. Also, specific information is now available for surgeons choosing an implant designs.


Four members of the mammalian ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporter G subfamily are thought to be involved in transmembrane (TM) transport of sterols. The residues responsible for this transport are unknown. The mechanism of action of ABCG1 is controversial and it has been proposed to act at the plasma membrane to facilitate the efflux of cellular sterols to exogenous high-density lipoprotein (HDL). Here we show that ABCG1 function is dependent on localization to intracellular endosomes. Importantly, localization to the endosome pathway distinguishes ABCG1 and/or ABCG4 from all other mammalian members of this superfamily, including other sterol transporters. We have identified critical residues within the TM domains of ABCG1 that are both essential for sterol transport and conserved in some other members of the ABCG subfamily and/or the insulin-induced gene 2 (INSIG-2). Our conclusions are based on studies in which (i) biotinylation of peritoneal macrophages showed that endogenous ABCG1 is intracellular and undetectable at the cell surface, (ii) a chimeric protein containing the TM of ABCG1 and the cytoplasmic domains of the nonsterol transporter ABCG2 is both targeted to endosomes and functional, and (iii) ABCG1 colocalizes with multiple proteins that mark late endosomes and recycling endosomes. Mutagenesis studies identify critical residues in the TM domains that are important for ABCG1 to alter sterol efflux, induce sterol regulatory element binding protein-2 (SREBP-2) processing, and selectively attenuate the oxysterol-mediated repression of SREBP-2 processing. Our data demonstrate that ABCG1 is an intracellular sterol transporter that localizes to endocytic vesicles to facilitate the redistribution of specific intracellular sterols away from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER).


Syndecan-3 (N-syndecan) is a transmembrane heparan sulfate proteoglycan expressed predominantly in the nervous system in a developmentally regulated manner. Syndecan-3 has been suggested to play a role in the development and plasticity of neuronal connections by linking extracellular signals to the regulation of the cytoskeleton. To study its physiological functions, we produced mice deficient in syndecan-3 by gene targeting. The mutant animals are healthy, are fertile, and have no apparent defects in the structure of the brain. We focused on characterizing the functions of the hippocampus, a brain area where expression of syndecan-3 is prominent in adults. Mice lacking syndecan-3 exhibited an enhanced level of long-term potentiation (LTP) in area CA1, while basal synaptic transmission and short-term plasticity were similar to those in wild-type animals. Further, the mutant mice were not responsive to the syndecan-3 ligand heparin-binding growth-associated molecule, which inhibits LTP in area CA1 in wild-type animals. Behavioral testing of the syndecan-3-deficient mice revealed impaired performance in tasks assessing hippocampal functioning. We suggest that syndecan-3 acts as an important modulator of synaptic plasticity that influences hippocampus-dependent memory.


This course Guide is intended primarily to BU students taking the writing course - Irony in Contemporary Culture (WR 150) taught by Professor Cory Charpentier


Solid state nuclear track detectors (SSNTDs) are widely used to measure various types of ionizing radiation. Thus, studying the physical parameters of SSNTDs, such as the bulk etch rate, the track etching efficiency and detector sensitivity which could affect the registration efficiency, is important. This paper presents a simple technique used to study the dependence of those characteristic physical parameters of SSNTDs on the alpha-particle energy. The detector sensitivity and the alpha track diameter were found to decrease exponentially with increasing alpha-particle energy's, which implies that the SSNTDs can be used as alpha-particle spectrometers. The bulk etch rates of the LR-115 and the CR-39 detectors were found to be 3.75 ± 0.21 µm h−1 and 1.72 ± 0.14 µm h−1, respectively. Moreover, the calibration coefficients of the LR-115 and the CR-39 detectors, placed in a diffusion cup with a fiberglass filter exposed to radon source inside a 50 L calibration chamber (supplied by Genitron, Germany), were found to be 0.036 ± 0.004 and 0.17 ± 0.03 [α-tracks cm−2 per (Bq m−3 day)], respectively.


Defects and disturbances are significant issues in the construction industry, that they can impact on the outcome of projects. Most of organizations endeavor continuously for improving their businesses and to be more successful compared to other competitors. The aim of the study is identification of the biggest defects in the Swedish construction industry and investigation of the relation between contract type and biggest defects for different building types. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative methods, beside abductive approach are used. A set of secondary data are used which are collected from 313 projects through survey based on 452 telephonic interviews carried out with client and site manager in different building projects whom oversee implementing these projects from client organization. A model was suggested by authors, based on understanding of construction context. Defects are grouped in several categories based on this model, such as external, input and process defects. Two types of contracts were investigated, which are design bid build and design build contract. Thirteen different type of buildings were investigated. Discussion was made to find the relation between the three variables of the main research question, including building type, contract type and defects. A set of the biggest defects was identified that includes 35 different defects. At the end as the study result, there is relation between building type and different contract type, based on defects. This relation shows that for each building type there is contract type which is more appropriate.


This paper provides new evidence on unemployment durations for individuals in Great Britain using a three state Markov framework in a competing risk setting and a nationally representative data set. The analysis is based on the premise that an individual's movements between labour market states can be represented by a Markov process. The modelling procedure combines the dynamic properties of the search approach to unemployment while using the labour supply decision at each moment in time in response to the expected wage to include participation decisions. Using this framework, we are able to determine the effect of individual characteristics, including the expected wage, on labour market behaviour. The model is estimated separately for men and women, and for young and mature workers, to investigate whether labour market behaviour differs for these groups. The validity of the Markov assumptions are tested using different model specifications, and changes in the model over calendar time are also presented.


Many applications of intelligent systems require reasoning about the mental states of agents in the domain. We may want to reason about an agent's beliefs, including beliefs about other agents; we may also want to reason about an agent's preferences, and how his beliefs and preferences relate to his behavior. We define a probabilistic epistemic logic (PEL) in which belief statements are given a formal semantics, and provide an algorithm for asserting and querying PEL formulas in Bayesian networks. We then show how to reason about an agent's behavior by modeling his decision process as an influence diagram and assuming that he behaves rationally. PEL can then be used for reasoning from an agent's observed actions to conclusions about other aspects of the domain, including unobserved domain variables and the agent's mental states.


Multimedia has become one of the cornerstones of our 21st century society and, when combined with mobility, has enabled a tremendous evolution of our society. However, joining these two concepts introduces many technical challenges. These range from having sufficient performance for handling multimedia content to having the battery stamina for acceptable mobile usage. When taking a projection of where we are heading, we see these issues becoming ever more challenging by increased mobility as well as advancements in multimedia content, such as introduction of stereoscopic 3D and augmented reality.
The increased performance needs for handling multimedia come not only from an ongoing step-up in resolution going from QVGA (320x240) to Full HD (1920x1080) a 27x increase in less than half a decade. On top of this, there is also codec evolution (MPEG-2 to H.264 AVC) that adds to the computational load increase. To meet these performance challenges there has been processing and memory architecture advances (SIMD, out-of-order superscalarity, multicore processing and heterogeneous multilevel memories) in the mobile domain, in conjunction with ever increasing operating frequencies (200MHz to 2GHz) and on-chip memory sizes (128KB to 2-3MB). At the same time there is an increase in requirements for mobility, placing higher demands on battery-powered systems despite the steady increase in battery capacity (500 to 2000mAh). This leaves negative net result in-terms of battery capacity versus performance advances.
In order to make optimal use of these architectural advances and to meet the power limitations in mobile systems, there is a need for taking an overall approach on how to best utilize these systems. The right trade-off between performance and power is crucial. On top of these constraints, the flexibility aspects of the system need to be addressed. All this makes it very important to reach the right architectural balance in the system.
The first goal for this thesis is to examine multimedia applications and propose a flexible solution that can meet the architectural requirements in a mobile system. Secondly, propose an automated methodology of optimally mapping multimedia data and instructions to a heterogeneous multilevel memory subsystem. The proposed methodology uses constraint programming for solving a multidimensional optimization problem.
Results from this work indicate that using today's most advanced mobile processor technology together with a multi-level heterogeneous on-chip memory subsystem can meet the performance requirements for handling multimedia. By utilizing the automated optimal memory mapping method presented in this thesis lower total power consumption can be achieved, whilst performance for multimedia applications is improved, by employing enhanced memory management. This is achieved through reduced external accesses and better reuse of memory objects. This automatic method shows high accuracy, up to 90%, for predicting multimedia memory accesses for a given architecture.


Most of the existing research in assembly pathway prediction/analysis of virus capsids makes the simplifying assumption that the configuration of the intermediate states can be extracted directly from the final configuration of the entire capsid. This assumption does not take into account the conformational changes of the constituent proteins as well as minor changes to the binding interfaces that continues throughout the assembly process until stabilization. This paper presents a statistical-ensemble based approach which provides sufficient samples of the configurational space for each monomer and the relative local orientation between monomers, to capture the uncertainties in their binding and conformations. Furthermore, instead of using larger capsomers (trimers, pentamers) as building blocks, we allow all possible sub-assemblies to bind in all possible combinations. We represent this assembly graph in two different ways. First, we use the Wilcoxon signed rank measure to compare the distributions of binding free energy computed on the sampled conformations to predict likely pathways. Second, we represent chemical equilibrium aspects of the transitions as a Bayesian Factor graph where both associations and dissociations are modeled based on concentrations and the binding free energies. Results from both of these experiments showed significant departure from those one would obtain if only the static configurations of the proteins were considered. Hence, we establish the importance of an uncertainty-aware protocol for pathway analysis, and provide a statistical framework as an important first step towards assembly pathway prediction with high statistical confidence.


We have studied the effects of vanadate on the rotational motion of the calcium adenosine-triphosphatase (Ca-ATPase) from sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR), using saturation-transfer electron paramagnetic resonance (ST-EPR). Vanadate has been proposed to act as a phosphate analogue and produce a stable intermediate state similar to the phosphoenzyme. This study provides evidence about the physical state of this intermediate. In particular, since ST-EPR provides a sensitive measure of microsecond protein rotational mobility, and hence of protein-protein association, these studies allowed us to ask (a) whether the vanadate-induced protein association observed in electron micrographs of SR vesicles also occurs under physiological (as opposed to fixed, stained, or frozen) conditions and (b) whether vanadate-induced changes in protein association also occur under conditions sufficient for enzyme inhibition but not for the production of large arrays detectable by electron microscopy (EM). At 5 mM decavanadate, a concentration sufficient to crystallize the ATPase on greater than 90% of the membrane surface area in EM, ST-EPR showed substantial immobilization of the spin-labeled protein, indicating protein-protein association in the unstained vesicles. Conventional EPR spectra of lipid probes showed that lipid hydrocarbon chain mobility is unaffected by decavanadate-induced protein crystallization in SR, suggesting that changes in protein-protein contacts do not involve the lipid hydrocarbon region. At 5 mM monovanadate, a concentration sufficient to inhibit the ATPase but not to form crystals detectable by EM, no changes were observed in ST-EPR or conventional EPR spectra of either protein or lipid.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Introduction: Breast cancer in men is a rare disease, accounting for only 0.2 - 1.5% of all malignant tumors in men. Objective: To describe the sociodemographic data, clinical and paraclinical manifestations, treatment, and recurrence in a sample of patients diagnosed with male breast cancer at a private institution. Methods: Descriptive, retrospective study of an institutional database, in the period 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2020. Demographic, clinical and paraclinical data were collected from the medical records and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: The prevalence of breast cancer in men in the sample was 0.44%, median age 73 years. The most frequent symptom was breast mass (n = 5; 100%), median tumor size 2.5 cm (range 1.6 to 5 cm) and ductal histological type (n = 5; 100%). All 5 cases had hormone receptor expression, without HER2 overexpression; stage was locally advanced in 60% (n = 3) (stage IIB-IIIA / B) and metastatic in one case. Mastectomy was performed in 80% of cases (n = 4). The median follow-up was 23 months and relapse was found in 20% (n = 1), with an average time to relapse of 184 months. Conclusions: In the sample studied, breast cancer in men presented in the seventh decade of life as advanced stage mass, with high hormonal sensitivity. Mastectomy was the main treatment, and most required chemotherapy.


Mobile Commerce is Electronic Commerce on Mobile devices to purchase goods or services in wireless environment. The development of new applications of electronic commerce that require the payment of small amount of money to purchase services or goods opens new challenges in the security and privacy fields. In this paper we present a new efficient and secure micropayment scheme for merchants and the privacy of the customers and also guarantee no financial risk. In addition, the proposed system defines a fair exchange between the micropayment and the desired good or service. In this fair exchange, the anonymity and untraceability of the customers are assured. Keywords: Electronic Commerce, Anonymity, Untraceability, Security, Financial risk, Micropayment


The hadron calorimeter for the CERN ISR experiment R807 is of the fission compensating type, using 238U as absorber. The possibility of replacing part of the uranium by more easily accessible material without destroying the good properties of a pure uranium-scintillator calorimeter has been investigated.


China's search for energy resources in Southeast Asia can help deepen China–ASEAN relations in cooperative terms. It can also be a cause for possible conflicts. Rising energy prices, fears of supply scarcity, and rapid increase in oil-import dependence in China and ASEAN countries have helped drive resource nationalism among regional governments and local communities. In the South China Sea, the question of access to maritime energy resources is interlinked with national sovereignty issues, making the South China Sea disputes more complex. This chapter will try to analyse two critical questions: whether the potential energy reserves in the South China Sea has contributed to aggravating these territorial disputes and thus intensified regional suspicions of China's hegemonic ambition; or whether these potential energy reserve can instead provide a means for the parties to seek cooperative and collaborative solutions, and thus improve China– ASEAN relations. MARITIME ENERGY RESOURCES AND THE "SOVEREIGNTY DILEMMA" In the South China Sea, maritime energy nationalism is often tied to disputes over territorial claims and fishing rights. Maritime energy resource nationalism is exacerbated by some speculative estimates that the ocean floor is rich of energy resources. Politics, both domestic and diplomatic, supports a predilection for optimistic assessments from the claimant states. Although geographic evidence suggests that the actual prospective areas are quite small, as most of the seabed lacks the characteristics to be seriously prospective, some countries' estimates on South China Sea resource reserves are at a high level. Some international sources have suggested that the South China Sea could be "Asia's Mediterranean", a "new Persian Gulf ", and leading Chinese sources give estimates of the potential oil resources that are far higher than other estimates. In November 2012, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) estimated that the South China Sea held 125 billion barrels of oil (bbo) and 500 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas beneath the South China Sea. In January 2013, the U.S. Geographical Survey published a much lower estimate of 11 bbo in proved and probable reserves, and 190 tcf of gas in undiscovered resources.


Treatment of 'Dewar hexafluorobenzene'(DHFB, hexafluorobicyclo[2,2,0]hexa-2,5-diene) with the anions [Re(CO)5]– or [(π-C5H5)Fe(CO)2]– leads mainly to a replacement of a vinylic fluorine by the anionic group with retention of the bicyclo[2,2,0]-structure. The reactionof DHFB with enneacarbonyldi-iron is complex; the two compounds (DHFB)Fe(CO)4 and (DHFB)[Fe(CO)4]2 have been characterised. Tetrakis(triphenylphosphine)platinum, acetylacetonatobis(ethylene)rhodium, or chlorocarbonylbis(diphenylmethylphosphine)iridium react with DHFB to give the complexes (Ph3P)2Pt(DHFB), (C2H4) acac Rh(DHFB), and (Ph2PCH3)2(CO)ClIr(DHFB) in all of which the Dewar structure is retained. Reaction of the platinum derivative with iodine regenerates DHFB. Hydridopentacarbonylrhenium adds rapidly to both double bonds of DHFB to give C6H2F6[Re(CO)5]2. The reaction of pentacarbonyltrimethyltinmanganese with DHFB is complex; decafluorodiphenyl and C6F6HMn(CO)5 have been identified as products.


Lentil ( Lens culinaris Medik.) is an important protein rich pulse crop in the Indian subcontinent, West Asia, North Africa and parts of Europe, Oceania and North America. Sulfate assimilation constitutes a significant part in growth, yield and development of crop plants. However, our knowledge regarding sulfate assimilation in any grain legume is poor. Main aim of the present study was therefore to reveal the antioxidant defense response of lentil mutants which are impaired at either point of branches in sulfate assimilation. Two lentil mutants namely apkLc1 (deficient in adenosine 5´-phosphosulfate kinase activity) and aprLc1 (deficient in adenosine 5´-phosphosulfate reductase) were isolated in 0.15% ethyl methane sulfonate-treated M 2 progeny of lentil cv. L 414. The apkLc1 mutant exhibited improved growth performances accompanied by stimulated antioxidant defense components like GSH and AsA-GSH cycle enzymes. Despite poor phenylalanine lyase (PAL) activity, the apkLc1 mutant did not suffer oxidative damage due to low level of H 2 O 2 and lipid peroxidation. Contrastingly, aprLc1 mutant suffered oxidative damage and growth inhibition due to low AsA and GSH pool and reduced antioxidant defense. The result suggests partitioning of S between APR and APK in two different mutants in different ways and APR mutation was found more detrimental for plant growth performances, biomass accumulation and seed yields than APK mutation at branching point of S assimilation.


ABSTRACT Purpose Although retinoblastoma is rare but can be deadly in some severe cases. To find novel therapeutic targets for retinoblastoma, we explored the potential role of lncRNA NKILA in retinoblastoma. Results We found that, comparing to healthy controls, NKILA was downregulated, while lncRNA XIST was upregulated in plasma of retinoblastoma patients and they were inversely correlated. Downregulation of NKILA distinguished early-stage patients from healthy controls. Overexpression of lncRNA NKILA mediated the downregulation of XIST in retinoblastoma cells, while XIST overexpression failed to significantly affect NKILA. Overexpression of NKILA resulted in decreased, while XIST overexpression resulted in increased proliferation, migration and invasion rates of retinoblastoma cells. In addition, rescue experiment showed that XIST overexpression attenuated the effects of NKILA overexpression on cancer cell behaviors. Conclusions Therefore, NKILA inhibits retinoblastoma possibly by downregulating XIST, but the causality has not been fully validated.


BACKGROUND
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors leading to cardiometabolic diseases. The association between metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been evaluated previously, but none of those studies looked at cardiac autonomic functions in these patients. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of metabolic syndrome on heart rate turbulence, which plays an important role in the development of CVD.

METHODS
Thirty-seven patients (17 females and 20 males) were included in the metabolic syndrome group and 37 subjects (19 females and 18 males) were included in the control group. Heart rate turbulence (HRT) indices [turbulence onset (TO) and turbulence slope (TS)] were calculated from 24-hr ambulatory electocardiographic recordings.

RESULTS
At least one of the TO or TS values were within the abnormal range in 62% of the patients within the metabolic syndrome group. In the control group, at least one of the TO or TS values were within the abnormal range in 27% of the subjects.

CONCLUSIONS
Our study results indicate that cardiac autonomic function is impaired even in the absence of overt cardiac disease in patients with metabolic syndrome. Further studies are needed to elucidate the prognostic significance and clinical implications of impaired autonomic functions in patients with metabolic syndrome.


The Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) uses a large time projection chamber. Each of the 136,600 pads is instrumented with a waveform digitizer, implemented in custom low noise preamplifier/shaper and switched capacitor array/ADCs ICs. The system is highly integrated with all analog functions mounted on small cards that plug into the TPC. Detector mounted readout boards multiplex data from 1152 channels onto a 1.5 Gbit/sec fiber optic link to the data acquisition system.


We propose and experimentally demonstrate an approach in generating a pair of polarity-reversed ultra-wideband (UWB) monocycle pulses by using a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) and a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). The monocycle polarity is controlled by adjusting the bias voltage of the MZM to make the bias point located at the positive or the negative slope of the modulation curve. The generated UWB monocycles with different injection currents of SOA, different bias voltages of MZM, different optical pulse widths, and different optical carrier wavelengths are experimentally studied and analyzed. The bi-phase modulation (BPM) of monocycle pulse by applying nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) data to the radio frequency (RF) port of MZM is also proposed and investigated.


This article revisits two of the most iconic Thai monstrosities, phi pop and phi krasue , whose changing representation owes equally as much to local folklore, as to their ongoing reinterpretations in  popular culture texts, particularly in film and television. The paper discusses two such considerations, Paul Spurrier's P (2005) and Yuthlert Sippapak's Krasue Valentine (2006), films that reject the long-standing notion that animistic creatures belong in the  countryside and portray phi pop and phi krasue 's adaptation to city life. Though commonplace, animistic beliefs and practices have been deemed incompatible with the dominant discourses of  modernization and urbanization that characterise twenty-first century Thailand. Creatures like phi pop and phi krasue have been branded as uncivilised superstition and ridiculed through their unflattering portrayals in oddball comedies. This article argues that by inviting these monsters to relocate to contemporary Bangkok, Spurrier and Sippapak redefine their attributes for the modern urban setting and create hybrids by blending local beliefs and cinematic conventions. The creatures' predatory character is additionally augmented by the portrayal of the city as itself  vampiric. The article therefore reads these predatory spirits in parallel with the metaphor of the female vampire – a sexually  aggressive voracious creature that threatens male patriarchal order and redefines motherhood.


ABSTRACT This article was developed from a paper presented at the Unesco World Philosophy Day Symposium hosted by the University of South Africa, 21 November 2006, under the theme 'Philosophy and 159 years of Africa's Independence.' It explores the subject through the prism of African humanity from the perspectives of Western philosophy, traditional African philosophy and contemporary African philosophy, exposing the weaknesses of each in their treatment of the African. Throughout, the article endeavours to deconstruct the elitist self-image of the discipline and concludes by questioning the utility of philosophy in enhancing development in modern Africa.


The Rancho el Papalote area is 35 km north of Chihuahua City and includes Minas Terrazes. The oldest rocks are highly fractured (17% dilation), massive Cretaceous biomicrites, containing rudistid bioherms, that crop out on ridges and peaks surrounded by volcanic rocks of two eruptive periods. The older volcanics are altered rhyolite and/or dacite flows, flow breccias, and minor lithic tuffs. The flow breccias are thickest around Cerro Choloma which may represent a vent. A boulder breccia containing limestone and chert clasts is along the limestone-older volcanic contact. The younger volcanics are rhyolite ash flows with minor basalt and andesite flows. There are at least five cooling units. A 44-m.y. (initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio = 0.7048) old vitric-crys al tuff (22% phenocrysts, sanidine/quartz = 4.5) overlies the older volcanics 1 km west of the ranch buildings. The "Red Platy," an ash-flow rhyolite, overlies the 44-m.y. tuff and is a distinctive marker bed. A small dike cutting the tuff may represent a vent for the Red Platy. The remaining units, vitric tuffs in the eastern part of the area, dip gently east and are cut by northwest-trending normal faults. The first of these ash flows has a basal lithic zone and contains 3% sanidine phenocrysts (Or 45). The next unit is vesicular at its base and has 6% sanidine phenocrysts. The youngest ash flow contains sanidine, quartz, and fayalite phenocrysts (sanidine/quartz = 1, phenocrysts = 4%). A basalt above the Red Platy contains distinctive gabbroic xenoliths. On the south the older volcani s are overlain by an andesite flow. At Minas Terrazas, copper deposits occur in skarns near a felsic intrusive. These skarns are mainly andradite and contain small amounts of pyrite and chalcopyrite. End_of_Article - Last_Page 756------------


Background and Aim: Participating in decision making is an important patient's right observance of which by nurses is an essential need of hospitalized adolescents. The aim of this study was to assess and compare nurses and hospitalized adolescents` perceptions about the importance and observance of hospitalized adolescents ` decision making. Materials and Method: It was a cross sectional study, 175 nurses and 180 hospitalized ill adolescents who had inclusion criteria were selected by convenience sampling, The data were collected using two parallel self-completed questionnaires. Data were analyzed by SPSS software and using Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results: No statistically significant difference was found between nurses` and hospitalized ill adolescents` perceptions of importance and observance of hospitalized adolescents ` decision making. In addition, the results showed that, from nurses' point of view, participation in care was the most important item, while adolescents believed that the presence of support person had the most importance. Both nurses and adolescents believed that the presence of support person was mostly observed. Conclusion: According to the findings, from perception of two groups, hospitalized adolescents ` decision making is important and moderately respected. Nurses can improve quality of care by recognotion and remove shackles of observance.


Slavery and its stubborn legacy of system racism are realities hard to own up to in a country like Canada that typically sees itself as polite, civil, and peaceable-a fair country. In recent years, however, academics and authors have been filling in some of the shameful silences and correcting some of the distortions of the historical and literary records, particularly as regards enslaved women, recognizing, for one thing, that storytelling is a method of resisting injustice, and, for another, that neglecting these stories is a kind of violence. This paper examines Afua Cooper's The Hanging of AngA©lique, a story dating to 1734; The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave. Related by Herself, from 1831; and two recent neo-slave novels, Dionne Brand's At the Full and Change of the Moon, 1999, and Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes, 2007. The answer to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's famous question, "Can the Subaltern Speak"," may well be yes.


The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013 (PAHPRA) enhances emergency use authorities with respect to both approved and unapproved medical countermeasures (MCMs). PAHPRA authorities can also be critical to preserving tort liability protections for public health stakeholders, since these protections are often contingent upon appropriate authorizations for the MCMs utilized. This article details the evolution of emergency use authorities and liability protections, analyzes how these separate legal doctrines can intersect in practice, and discusses implications for facilitating preparedness and response activities and for protecting associated personnel.


This article examines two intrinsically linked periodical publications: Others: A Magazine of the New Verse (1915–1919) and Others: An Anthology of the New Verse (1916–1920) both edited by Alfred Kreymborg. To date, scholarship on the publications has focused either on the magazine or, to a lesser extent, on the anthology, but never on the dynamic between the two publications. The article begins by considering the way both publications challenged the boundaries of medial form in an effort to better characterize the respective functions of the magazine and the anthology in the Others dynamic. It demonstrates how the anthology, an annual publication, allowed Kreymborg to reclaim editorial agency over the Others brand, facilitating a secondary round of editing of the magazine's contents. By creating a secondary selection of poems increasingly collated by guest editors, Kreymborg was able to further shape the representation of the duo. The restoration of the Others anthology to the history of the Others project sheds new light on key contributors and resultantly requires us to further nuance our understanding of the Others magazine as a largely inclusive project. In uncovering the role the Others anthology played in the Others dynamic, this article ultimately underscores the need to include the serially published modernist anthology in our understanding of the diverse and interrelated modernist media ecology.


In the past decade, considerable effort has been made to construct biomimetic scaffolds from electrospun nanofibers for engineering different tissues. However, one of the major concerns with electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds is that the densely arranged architecture of fibers and small pores or voids between fibers hinder efficient cellular infiltration or prevent three dimensional (3D) cellular integration with host tissue in vivo after implantation. To overcome this problem, many concepts or strategies applicable during the electrospinning or post-electrospinning procedures have been proposed to enlarge pore size of electrospun scaffolds. This article addresses the issues of pore geometry and cellular infiltration of electrospun scaffolds, and first reviews the fabrication solutions/approaches applied to achieve larger micropores in electrospun mats. The evidence and potential for fostering cellular infiltration using these improved porous scaffolds are then discussed. Finally, it is hoped that this will enable us to better exploit viable technologies or develop new ones for constructing ideal nanofibrous architecture for fulfilling specific tissue engineering needs.


Topiramate is an antiepileptic drug that can also be used for migraine prophylaxis, weight control, and even for methamphetamine dependence; the dosage margin is wide, and the list of side effects is shorter than with other anticonvulsants. We present the case of a 35-year-old man with a disseminated rash of the trunk and extremities after treatment with 25 mg of topiramate daily as a prophylactic migraine treatment. This case report is useful, as this patient was not polymedicated and had a score of 7 on the Naranjo Adverse Drug Reaction Probability Scale. The patient was diagnosed as atypical DRESS syndrome and resolved satisfactorily with symptomatic treatment and topiramate withdrawal; slowly, the lesions regressed. He required no further drugs for the dermatologic condition.


The paper presents a technique for error correction based on modular correcting codes, providing error correction in two information symbols using a single control character. The algorithms of error detection and correction and decoder structure have been developed. The proposed technique of detecting errors based on modular correcting codes is characterized by a lower surplus in comparison with the previously developed modular correcting codes.


Since the passage of the 1977 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, a great deal of information has been assembled about vehicle inspection and maintenance (I/M) programs. Laboratory studies, surveys, and investigations of operating I/M programs have been conducted to quantify the costs and benefits and to project the impact of these programs on air quality. This report compiles and summarizes the latest technical information available from these studies for the use of policy makers and planners. The facts and figures in this report have been gathered from the technical reports referenced at the end of the document. Interested readers are encouraged to obtain these reports for additional information.


The literature in public administration has advanced various propositions to promote ethical behavior. Local governments have undertaken various efforts in that direction. Those efforts are considered critical for building ethical leadership and culture in the long run. Based on a literature review and use of Social Learning Theory, we identify four building blocks of an ethics infrastructure for public organizations. Employing a comprehensive survey of local governments, this paper shows that displaying awareness and knowledge of ethics, enforcing rules and norms, demonstrating policy support for ethical behavior, and incentivizing the right behaviors are key building blocks of ethics infrastructure that still need improvement in local governments. The reality of ethics infrastructure revealed by the survey is far from the idealism promoted in the literature. We discuss the results and offer some insights and remedies.


Connectionist models with a backpropagation learning rule are known to have a serious problem. Such models exhibit catastrophic interference (or forgetting) with sequential training. Having learned a set of patterns, if the model is trained on another set of patterns, its performance on the first set can dramatically deteriorate very rapidly. The present study reconsiders this issue with four simulations. The model learned arithmetic facts sequentially, but the interference was only modest with random (hence approximately orthogonal) inputs. Essentially the same result was obtained when the inputs are made less orthogonal by adding irrelevant elements. Reducing the number of hidden units did not have major effects. This study suggests that the interference problem has been somewhat overstated.


The treatment of rat embryo secondary cultures with DMBA or DMBA‐3H for 5,9, or 24 h resulted in chromosome damage consisting mainly of chromatid type aberrations. There was an increase in the percentage of labelled nuclei and metaphases with increasing length of exposure. In terms of incidence of chromatid lesions, the largest telocentric chromosome (No. 2) was the most susceptible of the autosomes. Banding pattern analysis demonstrated that the region associated with negative band 2q24 of the No. 2 chromosome had the highest number of lesions. An increased accumulation of DMBA‐3H label occurred in approximately the same chromatid area of a small fraction of cells exposed for either 5 or 9 h prior to mitosis. The complete loss of DMBA‐3H chromosomal labelling after DNAse treatment suggests that the visible grains represent carcinogen‐bound DNA. After DMBA and BrdUrd, there was an increase in the number of sister chromatid exchanges compared to controls treated with BrdUrd only; the location of the exchange points on chromosome No. 2 was similar in samples treated with either DMBA and BrdUrd or BrdUrd alone. Additional experiments with thymidine‐3H showed that the non‐random chromatid lesions on chromosome No. 2 may result from endogenous radiation from the incorporated tritium. These studies demonstrate that a specific chromosome may be affected by diverse agents and that chromatid lesions frequently occur at the site of sister chromatid exchanges.


In egocentric action recognition a single population model is typically trained and subsequently embodied on a head-mounted device, such as an augmented reality headset. While this model remains static for new users and environments, we introduce an adaptive paradigm of two phases, where after pretraining a population model, the model adapts on-device and online to the user's experience. This setting is highly challenging due to the change from population to user domain and the distribution shifts in the user's data stream. Coping with the latter in-stream distribution shifts is the focus of continual learning, where progress has been rooted in controlled benchmarks but challenges faced in real-world applications often remain unaddressed. We introduce EgoAdapt, a benchmark for real-world egocentric action recognition that facilitates our two-phased adaptive paradigm, and real-world challenges naturally occur in the egocentric video streams from Ego4d, such as long-tailed action distributions and large-scale classification over 2740 actions. We introduce an evaluation framework that directly exploits the user's data stream with new metrics to measure the adaptation gain over the population model, online generalization, and hindsight performance. In contrast to single-stream evaluation in existing works, our framework proposes a meta-evaluation that aggregates the results from 50 independent user streams. We provide an extensive empirical study for finetuning and experience replay.


The dominant theoretical paradigm originating in the work of Cas Mudde conceives of populism as a thin-centered ideology that focuses on the antagonism between people and elites against the backdrop of popular sovereignty. While this framework has contributed significantly to an improved scientific analysis of populism, it is argued in this article that its ideological connotations are ill-conceived both conceptually and methodologically, and that its normative implications and failure to acknowledge the graded nature of populist behavior hinder the further evolution of the field of populism studies. Combining insights from the work of Ernesto Laclau and the proponents of frame theory, the article suggests dropping the ideological clause and simply conceiving populism as a discursive frame. The article contends that frame analysis reveals a strong fit between discursive elements and cognitive features of populism, furnishing solid methodological foundations to conduct empirical research and encouraging cooperation with neighboring fields of social science.


Resulting from research into what really makes presentations so successful, this book's approach combines the language and skills needed to give effective presentations. The book is aimed at intermediate to upper intermediate students and employs simple rhetorical techniques. It shows how to deliver complicated subject matter clearly and effectively and employs models for clarifying and dealing with questions. The skills training is step-by-step and the open format allows for personalized input. An accompanying cassette is available, whose recordings are designed to improve delivery.


It is now well established that extreme ultraviolet (EUV) mask multilayer roughness leads to wafer-plane line-width roughness (LWR) in the lithography process. Analysis and modeling done to date has assumed, however, that the roughness leading to scatter is primarily a phase effect and that the amplitude can be ignored. Under this assumption, simple scattering measurements can be used to characterize the statistical properties of the mask roughness. Here, we explore the implications of this simplifying assumption by modeling the imaging impacts of the roughness amplitude component as a function of the balance between amplitude and phase induced scatter. In addition to model-based analysis, we also use an EUV microscope to compare experimental through focus data to modeling in order to assess the actual amount of amplitude roughness on a typical EUV multilayer mask. The results indicate that amplitude roughness accounts for less than 1% of the total scatter for typical EUV masks.


Cerebrospinal fluid is investigated in biomarker studies for various neurological disorders of the central nervous system due to its proximity to the brain. Currently, only a limited number of biomarkers have been validated in independent studies. The high variability in the protein composition and protein abundance of cerebrospinal fluid between as well as within individuals might be an important reason for this phenomenon. To evaluate this possibility, we investigated the inter- and intraindividual variability in the cerebrospinal fluid proteome globally, with a specific focus on disease biomarkers described in the literature. Cerebrospinal fluid from a longitudinal study group including 12 healthy control subjects was analyzed by label-free quantification (LFQ) via LC-MS/MS. Data were quantified via MaxQuant. Then, the intra- and interindividual variability and the reference change value were calculated for every protein. We identified and quantified 791 proteins, and 216 of these proteins were abundant in all samples and were selected for further analysis. For these proteins, we found an interindividual coefficient of variation of up to 101.5% and an intraindividual coefficient of variation of up to 29.3%. Remarkably, these values were comparably high for both proteins that were published as disease biomarkers and other proteins. Our results support the hypothesis that natural variability greatly impacts cerebrospinal fluid protein biomarkers because high variability can lead to unreliable results. Thus, we suggest controlling the variability of each protein to distinguish between good and bad biomarker candidates, e.g., by utilizing reference change values to improve the process of evaluating potential biomarkers in future studies.


Objective The aim of this article is to review the current applications of artificial intelligence in thoracic surgery, from diagnosis and pulmonary disease management, to preoperative risk-assessment, surgical planning, and outcomes prediction. Background Artificial intelligence implementation in healthcare settings is rapidly growing, though its widespread use in clinical practice is still limited. The employment of machine learning algorithms in thoracic surgery is wide-ranging, including all steps of the clinical pathway. Methods We performed a narrative review of the literature on Scopus, PubMed and Cochrane databases, including all the relevant studies published in the last ten years, until March 2021. Conclusion Machine learning methods are promising encouraging results throughout the key issues of thoracic surgery, both clinical, organizational, and educational. Artificial intelligence-based technologies showed remarkable efficacy to improve the perioperative evaluation of the patient, to assist the decision-making process, to enhance the surgical performance, and to optimize the operating room scheduling. Still, some concern remains about data supply, protection, and transparency, thus further studies and specific consensus guidelines are needed to validate these technologies for daily common practice. Keywords Artificial intelligence (AI); thoracic surgery; machine learning; lung resection; perioperative medicine


: The article covers general methodologic approach to using safety evaluation for justifying longer length of service for special complexes "Radon" landfills. The authors present results of the specified approach approbation exemplified by Research-Industrial complex "Radon".


Dendritic cells and macrophages are crucial cells that form the first line of defense against pathogens. They also play important roles in the initiation of an adaptive immune response. Experimental work with these cells is rather challenging. Their abundance in organs and tissues is relatively low. As a result, they cannot be isolated in large numbers. They are also difficult to transfect with cDNA constructs. In the murine model, these problems can be partially overcome by in vitro differentiation from bone marrow progenitors in the presence of M-CSF for macrophages or GM-CSF for dendritic cells. In this way, it is possible to obtain large amounts of these cells from very few animals. Moreover, bone marrow progenitors can be transduced with retroviral vectors carrying cDNA constructs during early stages of cultivation prior to their differentiation into bone marrow derived dendritic cells and macrophages. Thus, retroviral transduction followed by differentiation in vitro can be used to express various cDNA constructs in these cells. The ability to express ectopic proteins substantially extends the range of experiments that can be performed on these cells, including live cell imaging of fluorescent proteins, tandem purifications for interactome analyses, structure-function analyses, monitoring of cellular functions with biosensors and many others. In this article, we describe a detailed protocol for retroviral transduction of murine bone marrow derived dendritic cells and macrophages with vectors coding for fluorescently-tagged proteins. On the example of two adaptor proteins, OPAL1 and PSTPIP2, we demonstrate its practical application in flow cytometry and microscopy. We also discuss the advantages and limitations of this approach.


Objective Peripheral nerve field stimulation (PNFS) is a promising modality for treatment of intractable facial pain. However, evidence is sparse. We are therefore presenting our experience with this technique in a small patient cohort. Methods Records of 10 patients (five men, five women) with intractable facial pain who underwent implantation of one or several subcutaneous electrodes for trigeminal nerve field stimulation were retrospectively analyzed. Patients' data, including pain location, etiology, duration, previous treatments, long-term effects and complications, were evaluated. Results Four patients suffered from recurrent classical trigeminal neuralgia, one had classical trigeminal neuralgia and was medically unfit for microvascular decompression. Two patients suffered from trigeminal neuropathy attributed to multiple sclerosis, one from post-herpetic neuropathy, one from trigeminal neuropathy following radiation therapy and one from persistent idiopathic facial pain. Average patient age was 74.2 years (range 57–87), and average symptom duration was 10.6 years (range 2–17). Eight patients proceeded to implantation after successful trial. Average follow-up after implantation was 11.3 months (range 5–28). Using the visual analog scale, average pain intensity was 9.3 (range 7–10) preoperatively and 0.75 (range 0–3) postoperatively. Six patients reported absence of pain with stimulation; two had only slight constant pain without attacks. Conclusion PNFS may be an effective treatment for refractory facial pain and yields high patient satisfaction.


In an earlier paper, the authors (1997) developed a technique called "relative temporal analysis" to study the performance of timed Petri nets, where depending on the temporal constraints imposed on the transitions, conflict was possible between the processes modelled by the Petri net. The essence of the technique focused on the transformation of the real time trajectory of the processes into a time domain where only their relative shifts were considered. Within this domain the shifts are limited to a bounded and well defined region. Here, we extend this technique to more complex systems where structural conflict is also possible. Within a regenerative cycle of the system, each and every path should be followed according to a set of prespecified frequencies. We use the relative temporal technique to synthesize an optimal sequential controller to schedule these paths.


BACKGROUND
In 1997 a set of 53 clinical indicators developed by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) and the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) Care Evaluation Programme (CEP), was introduced into the ACHS Evaluation and Quality Improvement Programme (EQuIP). The clinical indicators covered 20 different conditions or procedures for eight specialty groups and were designed to act as flags to possible problems in surgical care.

METHODS
The development process took several years and included a literature review, field testing, and revision of the indicators prior to approval by the College council. In their first year 155 health-care organizations (HCO) addressed the indicators and this rose to 210 in 1998. Data were received from all states and both public and private facilities.

RESULTS
The collected data for 1997 and 1998 for some of the indicators revealed rates which were comparable with those reported in the international literature. For example, the rates of bile duct injury in laparoscopic cholecystectomy were 0.7 and 0.53%, respectively; the mortality rates for coronary artery graft surgery were 2.5 and 2.1%, respectively; the mortality rates after elective abdominal aortic aneurysm repair were 2.5 and 3.7%, respectively; and the post-tonsillectomy reactionary haemorrhage rates were 0.9 and 1.3%, respectively. Results for some indicators differed appreciably from other reports, flagging the need for further investigation; for example, the negative histology rates for appendectomy in children were 18.6 and 21.2%, respectively, and the rates for completeness of excision of malignant skin tumours were 90.7 and 90%, respectively. The significance of these figures, however, depends upon validation of the data and their reliability and reproducibility. Because reliability can be finally determined only at the hospital level they are of limited value for broader comparison.

CONCLUSION
The process of review established for the indicator set has led to refinement of some indicators through improvement of definitions, and to a considerable reduction in the number of indicators to 29 (covering 18 procedures), for the second version of the indicators (which was introduced for use from January 1999). The clinical indicator programme, as it has with other disciplines, hopefully will provide a stimulus to the modification and improvement of surgical practice. Clinician ownership should enhance the collection of reliable data and hence their usefulness.


Objective: The mothers of children diagnosed with atopic dermatitis (AD) may be impacted in many different ways. Aim of the present study was to compare quality of life, anxiety, depression, and alexithymia symptoms between mothers of children diagnosed with AD and mothers of healthy children.
Method: The study included 34 mothers of children who were diagnosed with AD between June 2012 and July 2013 and 35 mothers of healthy children. In the study, Short Form 36 (SF-36) Health Survey was used to evaluate quality of life, while the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) was used to evaluate alexithymia level, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was used to evaluate anxiety symptoms, and the Beck Depression Scale (BDS) was used to evaluate depression symptoms.
Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the mothers of AD patients and control subjects in terms of quality of life, anxiety, depression, and alexithymia. In addition, there was no significant difference in disease severity or symptoms scale scores between the two groups.
Conclusion: These results may suggest that mothers' mental health is not affected in the early stage of the disease. In later stages of the disease, mothers of children with AD may become psychologically affected. Long-term follow up studies are required to clarify this distinction.


Irrespective of the popularity and demonstrated effectiveness of ultrasound tomography (UT) for damage evaluation, reconstruction of a precise tomographic image can only be guaranteed when a dense transducer network is used. However, a network using transducers such as piezoelectric wafers integrated with the structure under inspection unavoidably lowers local material strength and consequently degrades structural integrity. With this motivation, an implantable, nanocomposite-inspired, piezoresistive sensor network is developed for implementing in situ UT-based structural health monitoring of carbon fibre–reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates. Individual sensors in the network are formulated with graphene nanosheets and polyvinylpyrrolidone, fabricated using a spray deposition process and circuited via highly conductive carbon nanotube fibres as wires, to form a dense sensor network. Sensors faithfully respond to ultrasound signals of megahertz. With ignorable intrusion to the host composites, the implanted sensor network, in conjunction with a UT approach that is enhanced by a revamped reconstruction algorithm for the probabilistic inspection of damage–based imaging algorithm, has proven capability of accurately imaging anomaly in CFRP laminates and continuously monitoring structural health status, while not at the cost of sacrificing the composites' original integrity.


Previous studies have investigated the cognitive processes of simultaneous interpreting and translation using eye-tracking. No study has yet utilized eye-tracking to investigate cognitive load and cognitive effort in dialogue interpreting. An eye-tracking study was conducted on two groups of interpreters (experienced and inexperienced) with varying language backgrounds during a staged dialogue interpreting session. The aim of the study was to explore gaze patterns in dialogue interpreting in relation to the interpreters' action and translation direction. The results indicated there were differences in gaze patterns depending on the action and the language used. Participants averted gaze more when interpreting into the allophone language (the L2 for a majority of the participants in this study). This may indicate that interpreting into L2 in a dialogue may involve more cognitive effort than interpreting into L1. Finally, gaze patterns did not differ significantly between inexperienced and experienced dialogue interpreters.


Regular physical activity is related to many factors in a university student's environment. The coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdown have restricted many elements of our environment. The aim of this study was to evaluate students' physical activity and sedentary behaviour at two points in time: before and during the coronavirus lockdown. As a secondary aim, we also wanted to look at changes resulting from other factors (alcohol, tobacco, diet, stages of change, symptoms of anxiety/depression and sociodemographic characteristics). We conducted an observational, cross-sectional, pre-post study with two cut-off points. Two hundred and thirteen students took part in the study. The main dependent variables were physical activity and sitting time, measured using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire—Short Form (IPAQ-SF). Parametric and non-parametric tests were used for paired and unpaired data, as well as group-stratified analysis. During lockdown, both weekly physical activity (MD: −159.87; CI: −100.44, −219.31) and weekly sitting time increased (MD: −106.76; CI: −71.85, −141.67). In the group analysis, differences were observed in relation to gender, year of study, BMI, alcohol consumption, tobacco use, symptoms of anxiety/depression, Mediterranean diet, living situation and stage of change. The results showed an increase in both physical activity and sitting time globally and by group.


Compared to acute or community settings, forensic psychiatric settings, in general, have been reported to make greater use of antipsychotic polypharmacy and/or high dose pharmacotherapy, including overdosing. However, there is a scarcity of research specifically on offender patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), although they make up a large proportion of forensic psychiatric patients. Our study, therefore, aimed at evaluating prescription patterns in offender patients compared to non-offender patients with SSD. After initial statistical analysis with null-hypothesis significance testing, we evaluated the interplay of the significant variables and ranked them in accordance with their predictive power through application of supervised machine learning algorithms. While offender patients received higher doses of antipsychotics, non-offender patients were more likely to receive polypharmacologic treatment as well as additional antidepressants and benzodiazepines. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate a homogenous group of offender patients with SSD in comparison to non-offender controls regarding patterns of antipsychotic and other psychopharmacologic prescription patterns.


An ordered monolayer is found to form at the free surface of semi-fluorinated alkane melts, F(CF2)12(CH2)nH, a few degrees above the bulk freezing point. X-ray and surface tension measurements show the monolayer to assume one of two different structures, depending on n. For n ~ 10 the structure is fully crystalline, while for n ~ 18 it has only short-range in-plane order. This can be assigned to packing frustration of the different diameter F and H blocks, for chain lengths where their respective intermolecular interactions become comparable.


Abstract. We have generated sub-millimetre resolution DEMs of weathered rock surfaces using SfM photogrammetry techniques. We apply a close-range Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry-based method in the field and use it to generate high-resolution topographic data for weathered boulders and bedrock. The method was pilot tested on extensively weathered Triassic Moenkopi Sandstone outcrops near Meteor Crater in Arizona. Images were taken in the field using a consumer grade DSLR camera and were processed in commercially available software Agisoft Photoscan to build dense point cloud. Dense point clouds were registered to a local 3D coordinate system (x, y, z) which was developed using a specially designed triangle coded control target and then exported as Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). The accuracy of the DEMs was validated under controlled experimental conditions. A number of checkpoints were used to calculate errors. We also evaluated the effects of image and camera parameters on the accuracy of our DEMs. We report a horizontal error of 0.5 mm and vertical error of 0.3 mm in our experiments. Our approach provides a low-cost method, for obtaining very high-resolution topographic data on weathered rock surfaces (area


Globally connected and commodified digital means of communication offer a wealth of information across age-bands and across formal and informal sites of learning, yet few students obtain systematic training in transforming this information to knowledge that is tailored to their level of understanding and to the settings of learning. This gap between access to unsorted and often unsolicited information across boundaries of space, learning and generation and training in the formation of valid knowledge poses a threat to democratic societies that are based on informed citizens' joint debate and decision-making. This article addresses the gap between students' information access and their knowledge formation and discusses the challenges and possible solutions with empirical focus on the transition between upper-secondary and tertiary education. Globally connected social network sites ('social media') are key information sources for many students. Owing to their commodified, algorithmic and non-transparent character, these sites offer little guidance in terms of validation and verification of claims. I propose Media and Information Literacy (MIL) as an important means of minimizing the gap between information access and sound knowledge formation. This is because MIL goes beyond training of access to digital technologies and information search and retrieval. It also trains skills in applying communication technologies for validation, critique and knowledge production. I discuss the challenges posed to education to apply (MIL) as a key pathway to minimizing the gap in order to advance public value and societal resilience and suggest that educational systems shift their focus from teaching to learning in tandem with more inclusive approaches to where learning takes place.


Machine learning from explanations (MLX) is an approach to learning that uses human-provided explanations of relevant or irrelevant features for each input to ensure that model predictions are right for the right reasons. Existing MLX approaches rely on local model interpretation methods and require strong model smoothing to align model and human explanations, leading to sub-optimal performance. We recast MLX as a robustness problem, where human explanations specify a lower dimensional manifold from which perturbations can be drawn, and show both theoretically and empirically how this approach alleviates the need for strong model smoothing. We consider various approaches to achieving robustness, leading to improved performance over prior MLX methods. Finally, we show how to combine robustness with an earlier MLX method, yielding state-of-the-art results on both synthetic and real-world benchmarks.


The article discusses the satisfaction of employees, which affects customer satisfaction through quality service, which ultimately leads to higher financial results. Currently, in most cases, attraction of new customers is more expensive than retaining old ones, therefore the formation of loyalty has become an important task of each organization. The success of the organization depends not only on customer loyalty, but loyalty of staff and, moreover, one is connected with other. The employee, loyal to his company always strives to present the organization with the best hand; he is more involved in the proposed product or service. Accordingly, the consumer, feeling such commitment and sincerity towards the company from its employees, receives at least positive feelings from communication, and a maximum more quickly decides to purchase, and encourages the organization and the employee his friends and, most importantly, becomes more loyal. Satisfaction and loyalty of employees are the main factors that affect a customer loyalty and, consequently, the overall effectiveness of the organization. It starts from the assumption that the employees have the same characteristics as the customers (satisfaction, involvement, loyalty), and the company, as in the case with customers, interested in long-term relationships with them. In this case, employees spread values of the organization in the external environment, interacting not only with existing customers of the company, but also engaging new customers.


The emergent Zero touch Service and Management (ZSM) paradigm aims to automate the orchestration and management of running network slices, in Beyond 5G networks (B5G), with an unprecedented level of scalability. To achieve this vision, ZSM calls for a large usage of advanced deep learning algorithms, in order to dynamically build efficient decisions. In this context, Federated deep Learning (FL) proved their efficiency in not only building collaborative deep learning models, among several network slices, but also ensuring the privacy and isolation of such network slices. Indeed, FL-based solutions give "machine-centric" decisions about running network slices and their performance, which will be then executed/applied by managers, i.e., slice manager staff/module. However, FL-enabled solutions do not provide any details about why and how such decisions were made, and thus such decisions cannot be properly trusted/understood by slice managers. To alleviate this issue, we leverage eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) paradigm that aims to improve the transparency of black-box FL decision-making process. In particular, XAI helps to explain the FL-based decisions to make them interpretable/trustable by network slices managers. In this paper, we design a novel XAI-powered framework to explain FL-based decisions. We first build a deep learning model in federated way, to predict key performance indicators (KPI) of network slices. Our FL-based KPI prediction is useful for the configuration and the management of network slice lifecycle, especially for the Service Level Agreement (SLA) violation and the network slice re-configuration. Then, we develop several XAI models on the top of our FL-based model, such as SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME), RuleFit, and Partial Dependence Plot (PDP), to enhance the level of trust, credibility (of the local data/model), transparency, and explanation of the FL-based decisions, while adhering the data privacy, to different B5G network stakeholders, such as slice managers. Experiments results show the efficiency of our XAI-powered framework, to explain FL-based decisions related to latency KPI predictions.


Significant correlations among amylograph characteristics or other relating properties of rice starch and flour were recognized by orderly rearrangement of previously obtained data. Linear regression of peak viscosity on breakdown was available for detecting a deteriorative damage of rice starch and grain. Alpha-amylase in white rice did not have close relation with peak viscosity of the flour. The ratio of breakdown to consistency and the corrected peak viscosity calculating the coincidence of the slurry concentration were significantly correlated with the starch iodine blue value and rigidity of the cold paste body respectively.


Abstract The present study describes the synthesis of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) using an extremophilic actinobacterial cell-free extract, supplied with aqueous zinc acetate solution. Crystalline nature, morphological features, and polydispersed nanoparticles size (15–30 nm) were identified by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force and electron microscopic analysis with dynamic light scattering (DLS) study. The interaction between biomolecules and ZnO-NPs was analyzed using Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy (FT-IR). Furthermore antibacterial, antioxidant activities, and cell viability test of ZnO-NPs were systematically evaluated. The present study opens a new avenue for the actinobacterial synthesis of oxide nanoparticles.


Nonoscillation criteria are established for a class of higher order elliptic equations defined in conical domains. There has been considerable interest in recent years in establishing oscillation and nonoscillation criteria for elliptic equations. We refer the reader to the books by C. A. Swanson [7] and K. Kreith [4], where extensive bibliographies may be found. While most of the interest has centered on second and fourth order equations, Allegretto [1] and Noussair and Yoshida [6] have recently established nonoscillation criteria for higher order equations. All of these results however, except for one of the criteria of [6], were obtained for the case where the unbounded domain considered was the complement of a sphere. It is the purpose of this paper to establish some nonoscillation criteria for higher order elliptic equations which are defined in domains contained, at infinity, in cones of angle not greater than it/2. Our criteria, unlike the result of [6] mentioned above, will depend both on the angle of the cone considered and on the dimension of the underlying Euclidean space. We remark that the introduction of eigenvalues or of other quantities which may prove, in general, difficult to calculate has been deliberately avoided in the presentation. Let Í2 be an unbounded domain of w-dimensional Euclidean space Em. We denote points of Em by x = (x,, . . . , xm) and differentiation with respect to x, by D¡, i = 1, . . . , m. For any subdomain F of ß, we denote by ||-1| (F) the LP(F) norm and by (•, •) the L2(F) inner product. If F is obvious from the context we write ||-1| for ||\\p(F) etc. We consider the differential expression L formally given in the standard multi-index notation by Lu = (-\)n 2 Da (aaßDßu) a^u, aaß = aßa. \a\-\ß\-n The coefficients of L are defined in S2, real, and sufficiently regular so that all Received by the editors June 28, 1976. AMS (MOS) subject classifications (1970). Primary 35B05, 35P15.


The Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration is issuing this final order to temporarily schedule the synthetic opioid, 3,4-dichloro-N-[2-(dimethylamino)cyclohexyl]-N-methylbenzamide (also known as U-47700), and its isomers, esters, ethers, salts and salts of isomers, esters and ethers, into schedule I pursuant to the temporary scheduling provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. This action is based on a finding by the Administrator that the placement of U-47700 into schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act is necessary to avoid an imminent hazard to the public safety. As a result of this order, the regulatory controls and administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions applicable to schedule I controlled substances will be imposed on
persons who handle (manufacture, distribute, reverse distribute, import, export, engage in research, conduct instructional activities or chemical analysis, or possess), or propose to handle, U-47700.


Abstract Federalism is always torn between the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity. Defining the federal structure of a country by finding the welfare-maximizing amount and design of government layers is challenging. Thereby, the financial endowment of different layers of government which they need to fulfill their respective tasks is an important aspect. European countries have chosen quite different federal designs to address the question of an optimal degree of fiscal decentralization. The aim of this paper is to analyze these different approaches for Germany, Italy, and the European Union. Parallels can be found in that all the three entities share a form of institutional asymmetry, a kind of fiscal bailout system, and a sort of fiscal equalization scheme.


Justice is intrinsically distributive; it distributes by its rules. 'Distributive' or 'social' justice redistributes by overruling them. It has theories that do not start 'from here'. It has no rules; it makes claims instead. Both its names are fraudulent aliases, 'social' perhaps less blatantly so. Satisfaction of a claim in 'social' justice depends on politics and tends to favour the poorer half of society. This commands general sympathy, but sympathy does not make it any less unjust.