Abstract Angular color distribution uniformity has been one of the most relevant properties in the development of white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs), since color consistency and uniformity are crucial factors in quality evaluation of a WLED. Here, particularly considering the need to overcome the poor chromaticity usually associated with WLED, we introduce a new design for the remote-phosphor package, namely a three-layered or triple-layer (TL) phosphor structure. Using three phosphor layers in packaging a WLED can result in higher color quality and luminous efficacy, compared to the double-layer (DL) configuration. In the present study, the results of using three remote phosphor layers indicate that although the structure using three layers has a lower color rendering index, the color quality scale is better than that available from the package with two layers. Additionally, the color-deviation values in the TL structure are smaller than in the dual-layer one, especially at high color temperatures (7,700 K and 8,500 K). Besides, in comparison with the DL model, the TL package increases the luminous flux by 1.4%–2%. Therefore, the TL remote phosphor structure possesses the greatest potential in enhancing the WLED quality.


Background With a decrease in heroin's purity and availability in the European drug market, Hungarian opioid dependent patients started to substitute heroin with novel psychoactive substances (NPS) and especially with synthetic cathinones. Goal This study aims to assess whether clients of opioid substitution treatment (OST) with and without a history of synthetic cathinone use during therapy differ in (1) the rate and type of experienced childhood trauma, (2) the way they cope with negative life events, (3) their motivation to change substance use behavior, (4) the rate of treatment retention. Methods A total of 198 clients of an outpatient centers (Nyírõ Gyula National Institute of Psychiatry and Addictions, Budapest) OST were asked to provide information about their general substance use experiences, including the consumption of NPS during treatment, their childhood traumatic experiences (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire), cognitive emotion regulation strategies (Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire), their motivation to change substance use behavior (University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale) and current psychiatric symptoms (Brief Symptom Inventory). Baseline data was collected in the summer of 2015, while 4 years follow-up data on treatment retention was obtained in the summer of 2019. Results The majority of the clients were male (N = 141, 71.2%), receiving methadone as a substitute for opioids (N = 178, 89.9%), while mean age of the full sample was 39.7 (SD = 6.8). Based on a logistic regression model, the odds for past year synthetic cathinone use was higher among clients with more severe psychiatric symptoms (B = 0.8, OR = 2.2, p < 0.01) and among clients who were in treatment for a shorter period of time (B = 0.1, OR = 0.9, p < 0.05). Synthetic cathinone use during treatment was further associated with less adaptive strategies to cope with negative life events. Synthetic cathinone use was also a risk factor for reduced treatment retention (B = −0.8, OR = 0.4, p < 0.05) and was associated with lower odds of being member of a latent class with less severe psychopathological profile (B = −0.9, OR = 0.4, p < 0.05). Conclusion Synthetic cathinone use during treatment is associated with poorer treatment outcomes and might be characterized by more severe psychiatric symptoms and amotivation to change substance use among opioid dependent clients.


Illinois Beach State Park (IBSP) represents the last contiguous 6.5 mile pristine shoreline within the State of Illinois. Geologically speaking, the park sits atop a migratory beach-ridge characterized by sand ridges separated by low wetland swales which are home to over 650 species, some of which are rare and threatened. The land itself provides a visual history of the layering of the primary frontal dune marching lakeward as the beach-ridge migrated south. Human development, however, has stabilized the beach ridge to the north, cutting off sand supply to the park. The very coastal process that created this landform will eventually lead to its ruin. Approaching this problem, a number of hydrodynamic and sediment morphology numerical models were used to determine the areas of highest erosion rate within the park.


The three funtions of vegetative life could serve to understand three gnoseological positions. Knowledge as if -als ob- it were nutrition, growth and generation, these three positions have been held by Kant, scholasticism and idealism respectively.


Background The function of IκB kinase α (IKKα) in the brain is largely unknown. This study examined the effects of IKKα on autophagy after cerebral ischemia. Methods Permanent distal middle cerebral artery occlusion (dMCAO) was conducted in C57/BL6 mice. Oxygen-glucose deprivation/reperfusion (OGD/R) was performed to mimic ischemia injury in neuro-2A (N2A) cells in vitro. Autophagy activation was assessed by detecting the ratio of microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3β (LC3B)-II/LC3B-I and Cyto-ID autophagic fluorescence. The infarct volume was verified by 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Neurological functions were evaluated using the modified Garcia test. Cell death after dMCAO was confirmed with terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay. To determine the role of IKKα, small interfering RNA (siRNA) was transfected into N2A cells or injected intracerebroventricularly. Results IKKα and LC3B II/I expression levels were increased both in OGD/R treated N2A cells and dMCAO mice. Under the same conditions, IKKβ expression was not altered. IKKα siRNA significantly decreased the infarct volume and the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) related to brain edema, and promoted the neurological outcomes after dMCAO. Furthermore, inhibition of IKKα attenuated ischemia- induced the conversion of LC3B I to LC3B II both in vitro and in vivo. In addition, IKKα siRNA alleviated the formation of autophagic vacuoles and LC3 positive puncta after cerebral ischemia. Conclusions These findings indicate that IKKα, but not IKKβ, plays a critical role in ischemia-induced autophagy. Inhibition of IKKα protects the brain from ischemia injury and this may have potential benefits in stroke therapy.


Fifty yeasts belonging to the genera Candida, Pichia, Saccharomyces, Cryptococcus, Rhodotorula and Trichosporon were identified by classical methods and by the API 20C AUX system. The commercial system correctly identified 92% of the species, with the need for additional tests in 16% of cases. The results were interpreted with good, very good and excellent identification.


The damage induced by two over-the-row harvesters was studied in several olive cultivars in two high-density orchards (1250 trees ha-1) in central Italy. A self-propelled harvester was used on 14 cultivars ('Arbequina', 'Ascolana Dura', 'Carboncella', 'Coroncina', 'Lea', 'Leccio Corno', 'Maurino', 'Mignola', 'Nostrale Di Rigali', 'Piantone di Mogliano', 'Piantone di Falerone', 'Raggia', 'Rosciola' and 'Rosciola Colli Esini') in a 4-year-old olive orchard, and a tow-behind harvester was used on 10 cultivars ('Arbequina', 'Ascolana tenera', 'Don Carlo®', 'FS17®', 'Maurino', 'Piantone di Falerone', 'Piantone di Mogliano', 'Rosciola', 'Sargano di Fermo' and 'Tosca®') in a 5-year-old olive orchard. Trees were pruned into a conical shape from planting by removing inter-row branches that were too long and to create a continuous slender hedge. The bark damage and limb breakages were monitored in 20 homogeneous trees per cultivar after harvest. Among the local cultivars, 'Maurino' and 'Piantone di Mogliano' appeared to be highly suitable for mechanical harvest and comparable with 'Arbequina'. For other cultivars, such as 'Piantone di Falerone', the initial suitability declined as the trees aged, indicating the need to evaluate plant flexibility over time. The number of branches per tree and the longitudinal diameter of the canopy were better predictors of bark and limb damage. The most vigorous and dense cultivars were most susceptible to damage. These results provide crucial information on the adaptability of local, national and international olive cultivars to high-density planting and their suitability for over-the-row harvesting.


This Article describes three approaches to benefit corporation statutes, which it terms the Model Approach, the Delaware Approach and the Colorado Approach. It discusses numerous conceptual problems with the Model Approach, most of which are repaired in the Delaware Approach, and most or all of which would be repaired in the Colorado Approach, It discusses the politics that led Colorado to adopt the Delaware Approach in the face of orthodox opposition to the Colorado Approach, and encourages greater design innovation in order that the benefit corporation story, assuming it is a meaningful one, does not become a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."


Fungal diseases in agronomically important plants such as grapevines result in significantly reduced production, pecuniary losses, and increased use of environmentally damaging chemicals. Beside the well-known diseases, there is an increased interest in wood-colonizing fungal pathogens that infect the woody tissues of grapevines. In 2015, a traditional isolation method was performed on grapevine trunks showing symptoms of trunk diseases in Hungary. One isolate (T15142) was identified as Kalmusia longispora (formerly Dendrothyrium longisporum) according to morphological and phylogenetic analyses. To evaluate the pathogenicity of this fungus on grapevines, artificial infections were carried out under greenhouse and field conditions, including the CBS 824.84 and ex-type CBS 582.83 strains. All isolates could be re-isolated from inoculated plants; however, varying virulence was observed among them in terms of the vascular necrosis caused. The incidence and severity of this symptom seemed to be congruent with the laccase-producing capabilities of the isolates. This is the first report on the ability of Kalmusia longispora to cause symptoms on grapevines, and on its possible dependence on laccase secretion.


Real-time and human-interpretable decision-making in cyber-physical systems is a significant but challenging task, which usually requires predictions of possible future events from limited data. In this paper, we introduce a time-incremental learning framework: given a dataset of labeled signal traces with a common time horizon, we propose a method to predict the label of a signal that is received incrementally over time, referred to as prefix signal. Prefix signals are the signals that are being observed as they are generated, and their time length is shorter than the common horizon of signals. We present a novel decision-tree based approach to generate a finite number of Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specifications from the given dataset, and construct a predictor based on them. Each STL specification, as a binary classifier of time-series data, captures the temporal properties of the dataset over time. The predictor is constructed by assigning time-variant weights to the STL formulas. The weights are learned by using neural networks, with the goal of minimizing the misclassification rate for the prefix signals defined over the given dataset. The learned predictor is used to predict the label of a prefix signal, by computing the weighted sum of the robustness of the prefix signal with respect to each STL formula. The effectiveness and classification performance of our algorithm are evaluated on an urban-driving and a naval-surveillance case studies.


This article is a reflection on the ethics of practiving law for business, building on the career of Scott Boras, who acts as agent and lawyer for professional baseball players. The reflection wonders at the clout corporate lawyers have over their clients, mentioning, of course, some personal experiences (back before the invention of moveable type) from the author's two years in a large business-oriented law firm, as well as on Mr. Boras's significant influence in the baseball world. The object, finally, is ethical reflection on such things as the particular a lawyer has when she in "in house" rather than in a firm and working for other clients. The principal ethical guidance the author explores is the Biblical prophets, where much of the danger in the enterprise, as well as much of the moral influence employed, turned on the fact that the prophet was an insider.


When overcoming environmental constraints, nature shows the capacity to generate hybrid hard-soft morphing continuum structures at very low cost at almost any scale. Human attempts to replicate nature-like systems to overcome modern engineered solutions, based on classical rigid mechanics, commonly lead to hyper-redundant and complicated designs. Novel trends like soft robotics or continuum robotics are showing new successful directions but mostly at small sizes. It is still a challenge to achieve accessible and cost-efficient scalable nature-like solutions. The earliest research towards digital materials focused on proving reversibility of their assembly, their low relative densities vs. ultra-high stiffness ratios and scalability properties. Now we can find architected metamaterials with many kinds of exotic physical properties. This thesis will focus on digital materials with custom mechanical properties. Recent work showed the capacity to generate controlled mechanical anisotropies as embedded compliancy, chirality, and auxeticity. That enables generating continuum macroscopic foams with controlled deformation that could preserve some properties and help bring simplicity to overcome tasks that, with classic rigid-joint mechanical systems, would require a very complex system. Equally important, many of the modern engineering solutions that would require digital materials are very dependent on their outer shape. Literature shows less acclaim for providing an accurate shape to these digital materials. Some of the strategies proposed have been based on hierarchical strategies or reducing the overall size of the building blocks but these findings conflict with the many of the claimed premises. This thesis is proposing a folded solution that will integrate onto the continuum structure and provide a desired shape that is structurally efficient while respecting its intrinsic degrees of freedom. As a whole, this thesis explores if heterogeneous digital materials can provide all the mechanical needs of a movable structure integrated. This thesis tries to mimic nature's engineering strategies by joining the kinematical and shape-form needs into a single material system composed of a discrete building block core and a folded outermold-line layer. As examples, this thesis recreates a water snake and a morphing wing inspired by birds camber morphing. 3 Thesis Supervisor: Neil Gershenfeld Title: MIT Professor and Director of the Center for Bits and Atoms


NMR measurements of 19F chemical shift anisotropy and 1H-19F dipolar couplings provide unprecedented information on the molecular orientations of two fluorine-containing statin drugs within the heterogeneous environment of reconstituted high-density lipoprotein (rHDL) nanoparticles, a drug delivery system under clinical investigation.


Urban spatial structure is increasingly characterized by decentralization, dispersion, concentration, and multiple centers. In Istanbul, dual development processes have been observed in the course of time. The first process is continuous urban expansion with low density development which was triggered mainly by squatter settlements at the periphery and recently occurring high density mass housing development due to low land values. The second process is the intensification and/or renewal process within built-up areas in the central parts of Istanbul. In this paper, density and land value gradient analysis has been used to analyze urban structural change in terms of core-peripheral relationship in Istanbul. A GIS database is set up to obtain density, land value, distance measures, visualize spatial patterns, and calculate density and land value gradient. In general, standard urban models predict a pattern of negative exponential density gradients within cities, where there is a gradual decline in population density and land value from the center of the city to its outskirts. In the Istanbul case, negative exponential density and land value gradients is observed even though Istanbul has the changing urban structure from monocentric to polycentric. Furthermore, the fact that the change in land value at peripheries has been higher than that of the central zones and the increase in density changes at peripheries shows that the macro-form of Istanbul has demonstrated both urban expansion and urban intensification characteristics from past to present.


Hydrogels are three‐dimensional (3D) crosslinked hydrophilic polymer networks that have garnered tremendous interests in many fields, including water treatment, energy storage, and regenerative medicine. However, conventional synthetic polymer hydrogels have poor biocompatibility. In this context, polysaccharides, a class of renewable natural materials with biocompatible and biodegradable properties, have been utilized as building blocks to yield polysaccharide‐based hydrogels through physical and/or chemical crosslinking of polysaccharides via a variety of monomers or ions. These polysaccharide‐derived hydrogels exhibit peculiar physicochemical properties and excellent mechanical properties due to their unique structures and abundant functional groups. This review focuses on recent advances in synthesis and applications of polysaccharide‐based hydrogels by capitalizing on a set of biocompatible and biodegradable polysaccharides (i.e., cellulose, alginate, chitosan, and cyclodextrins [CDs]). First, we introduce the design and synthesis principles for crafting polysaccharide‐based hydrogels. Second, polysaccharide‐based hydrogels that are interconnected via various crosslinking strategies (e.g., physical crosslinking, chemical crosslinking, and double networking) are summarized. In particular, the introduction of noncovalent and/or dynamic covalent interactions imparts polysaccharide‐based hydrogels with a myriad of intriguing performances (e.g., stimuli–response and self‐recovery). Third, the diverse applications of polysaccharide‐based hydrogels in self‐healing, sensory, supercapacitor, battery, drug delivery, wound healing, tissues engineering, and bioimaging fields are discussed. Finally, the perspectives of polysaccharide‐based hydrogels that promote their future design to enable new functions and applications are outlined.


In the area of software engineering, software measurement is
not new, it was around 26 years since Halstead originally proposed
a family of software measures, collectively known as software
science. The magnitude of costs involved in software development
and maintenance magnifies the need of a scientific foundation to
support programming standards and management decisions by
measurement.
This research aims at developing a compiler for a subset of
Pascal language in which an evaluation for a number of software
metrics has been incorporated. Lex and Yacc have been used to generate the lexical analyser and syntax analyser for the proposed
compiler. While the other components of the compiler and the
metrics evaluation routines have been written in C language. The
proposed compiler was implemented under Linux operating system.
Three metrics have been incorporated to the proposed compiler,
which are : Halstead's metrics, McCabe's metric, and Call-Graph
metric. The software metrics will be produced in the common
metrics format, which is used in SCOPE project.
Attribute grammars have been used to build the proposed
compiler to evaluate the software metrics in the parsing time of the
compilation process and to use a well-defined approach to the
software metrics evaluation process.


The rights of victims of crime, particularly the right to be heard and have their experience validated, are often neglected in the criminal justice process. Where the offender is diverted into the mental system for treatment and particularly when the offender subsequently avails of a mental health defence and is acquitted, victims may not understanding the process and may feel aggrieved at the outcome. When an offender with a mental illness responds to treatment and rehabilitation and begins to negotiate leave from hospital preparatory to reintegration into the community, it may be very difficult for victims to accept the transition. As a result of the recommendations of the Butler Review of the Mental Health Act in Queensland, there are now quite innovative provisions which recognise the rights of victims and further enhance the confidence of the public in the safety, transparency and accountability of the process of disposition and community leave of offenders with mental illness. The provisions may provide a model for other jurisdictions.


Recently, the use of diverse renewable energy resources has been intensively expanding due to their technical and environmental benefits. One of the important issues in the modeling and simulation of renewable energy resources is the extraction of the unknown parameters in photovoltaic models. In this regard, the parameters of three models of photovoltaic (PV) cells are extracted in this paper with a new optimization method called turbulent flow of water-based optimization (TFWO). The applications of the proposed TFWO algorithm for extracting the optimal values of the parameters for various PV models are implemented on the real data of a 55 mm diameter commercial R.T.C. France solar cell and experimental data of a KC200GT module. Further, an assessment study is employed to show the capability of the proposed TFWO algorithm compared with several recent optimization techniques such as the marine predators algorithm (MPA), equilibrium optimization (EO), and manta ray foraging optimization (MRFO). For a fair performance evaluation, the comparative study is carried out with the same dataset and the same computation burden for the different optimization algorithms. Statistical analysis is also used to analyze the performance of the proposed TFWO against the other optimization algorithms. The findings show a high closeness between the estimated power–voltage (P–V) and current–voltage (I–V) curves achieved by the proposed TFWO compared with the experimental data as well as the competitive optimization algorithms, thanks to the effectiveness of the developed TFWO solution mechanism.


Purpose Siglec-7 is an NK-receptor that negatively regulates cell activation via its intracellular tyrosine-based inhibitory motif (ITIM) when bound to its ligands, sialic acid-containing glycans of glycoproteins and glycolipids. Recent reports identified Siglec-7 on T cells and showed that it is capable of negative regulation of TCR signaling. As part of a larger study identifying novel differentiating markers between TH1 and TH2 lymphocytes in respiratory illness, we aimed to determine whether Siglec-7 is differentially expressed between TH1 and TH2 lymphocytes. Methods A novel antibody cocktail was used to negatively enrich TH1 and TH2 cells from the PBMCs of healthy volunteers. Microarrays allowed determination of differential gene expression. RT-PCR was performed for selected targets. Protein markers were studied using flow cytometry before and after activation. Results Isolates were > 95% pure TH cells with enriched TH1 (90.3%) and TH2 (84.1%) subsets. Expression profiling showed differential expression of Siglec-7 mRNA between TH1 and TH2 cells (TH1:TH2 ratio = 3.1). RT-PCR showed lower expression of Siglec-7 in TH1 cells (TH1:TH2 = 0.64 ± 0.06). Flow studies of resting and activated TH1 and TH2 lymphocytes showed increased expression of Siglec-7 from (mean ± SEM) 59.7 ± 16.5% of cells (mean fluorescence intensity = 24.1 ± 3) to 43.4 ± 24% of cells (19.3 ± 4.5) (p = NS) for TH1 cells and from 70.4 ± 13.3% of cells (48.3 ± 5.6) to 48.2 ± 24.5% of cells (29.6 ± 3.2) (p = NS) for TH2 cells. Conclusions We found marked expression levels of Siglec-7 on both quiescent and activated TH1 and TH2 fractions. The abundance of this receptor suggests that it may play an important role in regulating TH cell activation as it does on NK cells. This also implies that there may be value in examining the role of TH cell Siglec-7 in the immune response to influenza A and B, which express neuraminidase, a sialidase that cleaves sialic acid from glycoproteins.


Over- or underestimation of field capacity (FC) of agricultural soils could misguide soil and water management and this might have negative agronomic and environmental impacts. The study sought to identify the moisture tension for reliably estimating in the laboratory the FC of some sandy soils with low-activity clay minerals and at different levels of structure development in Nsukka agroecological zone in southeastern Nigeria. Fifty-four samples of topand subsoils under contrasting vegetation cover at three locations in the zone were analyzed for texture, organic matter contents, bulk density and total porosity. Saturated hydraulic conductivities (Ksat) of the samples were equally determined. Water-conducting and water-filled porosities at each of 0.06-, 0.10- and 0.33-bar tensions were implied from water retention data at the respective tensions. The soils were categorized based on their levels of structure development using a structural stability index [(organic matter: silt+clay) %] as follows: very low ( 7.5%) stability soils. Series of simple correlation tests were run among the waterconducting porosities at the various tensions and the Ksat of the soils. In each case, the soil was assumed to have attained FC at that moisture tension which the associated water-conducting porosity showed significant positive correlation with the Ksat. Our results revealed that the 0.06-bar tension overestimated the FC of the soils. The 0.10-bar tension, the commonly used moisture tension for the purpose in the study area, proved suitable only for soils within the moderate to high structural stability category. From all indications, the 0.33-bar tension best corresponded to the FC of the less structurally developed soils in the other two categories. The level of soil structure development should therefore be considered before deciding the suitable moisture tension for the determination of FC of these and similar soils in other tropical locations. Keywords: Coarse mineral soils, field moisture capacity, saturated hydraulic conductivity, structural stability, water-conducting pores


The purpose of this paper is to explore Pamphilia's construction of her own subject as a woman and prince through her relationship with Cupid in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Petrarchan discourse conventionally includes the danger of subjection and loss of self of the poet-lover. Mary Wroth creates a female persona Pamphilia to explore the emotional and psychological struggles in her experiences of love and dramatizes the conflict between passionate surrender and self-affirmation of female self in Pamphilia's relationship with Cupid which appears as sometimes a mischievous boy and some times a mature and virtuous monarch. Cupid is in Jung's terms Pamphilia's animus, which envisages her self-sovereignty as a woman and prince. As a lover Pamphilia wants to subject herself to Cupid to gain his favor, and yet she finds herself so intrigued by the infantile and self-centered aspects of love, the mischievous boy Cupid. Her subjugation in love is analogous to her subordinate relationship to men in a patriarchal society, and so threatens her princely subject that has been constructed by a discipline of dominance and rule. The contradictory female and male aspects of her subject often entrap her in the labyrinths of love. She thus seeks a new type of relationship in love, and in the "Crowne of Sonetts" turns to a just and esteemed monarch Cupid. By fully yielding to the wise and virtuous Cupid's sovereignty, Pamphilia finds herself empowered by his virtue, now her virtue, constancy that ensures her the sovereignty over her self as well as her kingdom.


The success of the 'query by example' paradigm for content based retrieval has lowered the interest of the research community in the development of new interaction paradigms. Nevertheless, in many contexts this can be inadequate, due to the difficulty for many users to paint significant examples and the impossibility-in many cases-of reproducing complex scenes. 3D interfaces and virtual reality based interaction paradigms offer new possibilities to overcome these limitations. In the prototype system presented, a virtual world can be interactively customized by adding objects to a predefined scene and editing object properties in terms of colours and textures. The system allows the user to navigate the 3D scene. While navigating the virtual world, the user is given the opportunity of taking some photographs used to query by content a database of images.


We have reviewed the literature and described experience in treating Ewing's sarcoma and osteosarcoma before and during the era of intensive systemic chemotherapy. Local control of Ewing's sarcoma may relate to increasing doses of radiation, especially when intensive chemotherapy is administered also. Problems of radiation enhancement by chemotherapy have caused us to reconsider time‐dose and volume parameters in treating these patients. The role of radiation in osteogenic sarcoma is limited to patients with inoperable lesions and metastases.


Because of its rarity in children the diagnosis of diaphragmatic hernia due to trauma is often delayed, sometimes resulting in gastrointestinal or respiratory complaints or obstruction of the small intestine. Eleven children with rupture of the diaphragm were seen between 1950 and 1977. All injuries were due to blunt trauma sustained in automobile-related accidents; all involved the left hemidiaphragm. Nine children had associated injuries, most commonly fractures, and injury to the head and spleen. In six children the diaphragmatic rupture was recognized and treated at the time of injury. The other five presented with gastrointestinal or respiratory symptoms from 2 months to 3 years after the trauma. Repair was through the abdomen in 10 patients and the chest in 1. There was only one death from an associated severe craniocerebral injury. Complications developed in five surviving patients but were relatively minor.


Gold catalysis has proven to be an important breakthrough for organic synthesis. The tunable nature of gold catalysts, the unique properties of gold, and the mild reaction conditions required in many gold-catalyzed reactions have all contributed substantially to this metal's popularity in catalysis. However, gold-catalyzed reactions still suffer from limitations such as low turnover numbers (TON). Optimization of the catalysts and reaction conditions may significantly improve the efficiency of gold-catalyzed reactions. In this review, we will present leading examples of counterion or additive-regulated gold catalysis from a mechanistic perspective. We will pay special attention to the physical properties of counterion/additive, such as gold affinity and hydrogen bond basicity, and discuss their effects on the reactivity of gold catalysts.


The paper develops a web-based system for dynamic vehicle routing problem. After proposing the architecture of the system, we develop a dynamic route evaluation model for modeling the responses of vehicles to real-time traffic information, and use a hybrid optimization algorithm to plan the routes of vehicles in dynamic network. The input data of the system includes route attributes provided via a database that is hosted on a server, and real-time travel information depends primarily on a GSM wireless communication component. Current locations of the vehicles are determined by embedded wireless mobile communication terminals we have designed. The proposed system has been evaluated by simulation experiment. It has been found that the proposed system quite efficient in finding real-time shortest paths where the network traffic information changes dynamically.


A high step-up PWM non-isolated dc–dc converter with soft switching is proposed in this paper. The converter has minimum auxiliary elements to achieve high power density and high voltage gain. The ZVS operation of the main power switch results in negligible capacitive turn-on losses. Since the duty cycle of the auxiliary switch is narrow and its operation is under ZCS condition, the losses that the auxiliary circuit imposes are not significant. Also, all the diodes are operated under soft-switching conditions solving the reverse recovery problem. All the inductors are coupled on only one magnetic core, reducing size and conduction losses. Compared to the hard switched counterpart, the electromagnetic interference of the proposed converter is reduced. Furthermore, the output voltage of the proposed converter is controlled by an integral sliding mode control strategy during the load variations. Also, the proposed integral sliding mode control strategy has been compared with the PI control strategy, improving the transient response and the robustness under load variations while the switching frequency is constant. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed converter are verified by practical laboratory results which are obtained from a 250W prototype.


Chronic inflammatory disease of bones and joints (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis, gout, etc.), but also acute bone injury and healing, or degenerative resorptive processes inducing osteoporosis, are associated with structural remodeling that ultimately have impact on function. For instance, bone stability is predominantly orchestrated by the structural arrangement of extracellular matrix fibrillar networks, i.e., collagen-I, -IV, elastin, and other proteins. These components may undergo distinct network density and orientation alterations that may be causative for decreased toughness, resilience and load bearing capacity or even increased brittleness. Diagnostic approaches are usually confined to coarse imaging modalities of X-ray or computer tomography that only provide limited optical resolution and lack specificity to visualize the fibrillary collagen network. However, studying collagen structure at the microscopic scale is of considerable interest to understand the mechanisms of tissue pathologies. Multiphoton Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) microscopy, is able to visualize the sterical topology of the collagen-I fibrillar network in 3D, in a minimally invasive and label-free manner. Penetration depths exceed those of conventional visible light imaging and can be further optimized through employing decalcification or optical clearing processing ex vivo. The goal of this proof-of-concept study was to use SHG and two-photon excited fluorescence (2-PEF) imaging to mainly characterize the fibrillary collagen organization within ex vivo decalcified normal mouse metatarsus bone and joint. The results show that the technique resolved the fibrillar collagen network of complete bones and joints with almost no artifacts and enabled to study the complex collagen-I networks with various fiber types (straight, crimped) and network arrangements of mature and woven bone with high degree of detail. Our imaging approach enabled to identify cavities within both cortical and trabecular bone architecture as well as interfaces with sharply changing fiber morphology and network structure both within bone, in tendon and ligament and within joint areas. These possibilities are highly advantageous since the technology can easily be applied to animal models, e.g., of rheumatoid arthritis to study structural effects of chronic joint inflammation, and to many others and to compare to the structure of human bone.


Respiratory syncytial (RS) virus was grown in Vero cells and fixed for electron microscopy at various stages of maturation. Both filamentous and round or kidney-shaped particles, either with (complete) or without (incomplete) internal structure, were observed. All four morphological forms were identical with respect to their reactivity with ferritin-labeled antibody to RS virus. Freezeetching revealed a structural feature apparently unique for RS virus, namely helical striations around the core on the internal aspect of the envelope. This specific configuration was already detectable during the early stages of viral differentiation of the host cell membrane. Concentration of free virus by zonal ultracentrifugation of culture fluids onto sucrose cushions yielded predominantly filamentous forms up to 10 μm in length.


An ingestible capsule for colorectal cancer screening, based on ionizing-radiation imaging, has been developed and is in advanced stages of system stabilization and clinical evaluation. The imaging principle allows future patients using this technology to avoid bowel cleansing, and to continue the normal life routine during procedure. The Check-Cap capsule, or C-Scan ® Cap, imaging principle is essentially based on reconstructing scattered radiation, while both radiation source and radiation detectors reside within the capsule. The radiation source is a custom-made radioisotope encased in a small canister, collimated into rotating beams. While traveling along the human colon, irradiation occurs from within the capsule towards the colon wall. Scattering of radiation occurs both inside and outside the colon segment; some of this radiation is scattered back and detected by sensors onboard the capsule. During procedure, the patient receives small amounts of contrast agent as an addition to his/her normal diet. The presence of contrast agent inside the colon dictates the dominant physical processes to become Compton Scattering and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), which differ mainly by the energy of scattered photons. The detector readout electronics incorporates low-noise Single Photon Counting channels, allowing separation between the products of these different physical processes. Separating between radiation energies essentially allows estimation of the distance from the capsule to the colon wall, hence structural imaging of the intraluminal surface. This allows imaging of structural protrusions into the colon volume, especially focusing on adenomas that may develop into colorectal cancer.


A mobile satellite system (MSS) propagation experiment at 1.5 GHz was performed near the east coast of the United States in central Maryland during December 1987 using the MARECS-B2 satellite as a transmitter platform. A receiving system in a vehicle measured signal fades caused by shadowing and multipath from roadside trees and utility poles. The propagation degradations were characterized for a system of three roads previously examined using a helicopter as the transmitter platform. The objectives of the MARECS-B2 MSS tests were to: (1) establish cumulative fade distributions for the particular satellite geometry for both rural and suburban roads; (2) validate the consistency of previous roadside tree measurements which employed a helicopter as the transmitter platform for the same system of roads; (3) obtain an additional set of fade levels at a lower angle hitherto not measured in central Maryland; and (4) combine the satellite-acquired data set with previous helicopter results and establish an analytic, empirically derived function describing the cumulative fade distributions for a family of path angles. An analysis of the satellite data has demonstrated the successful achievement of these objectives. >


Inventures, Lisbon House, 116 Wellington Street, Leeds, LS1 4LT. Tel: 0113 205 1800, £125+VAT DECONTAMINATION BY MANUAL CLEANING, e-LEARNING CD-ROM – ICNA Even today, a tour of Norfolk parish churches shows the effects of the Black Death, with church building work forever halted in mid-construction and permanently abandoned villages – now reverted to farmland. Even AIDS fades into insignificance compared to an epidemic that killed a significant proportion (perhaps a quarter) of Europe's population in a few years. The subject is one likely to have had a great appeal to author Susan Scott, as she is a historian specialising in social demography, parish registers and the like. Christopher Duncan is Liverpool University emeritus professor of Zoology, and therefore well versed in the habits of rats and fleas. Traditional teaching is that plague spread through the rat population by means of the rat flea, and the latter could accidentally infect humans. Plague could then spread directly from person to person on occasions. The spread of the Black Death through Europe is well described – with all its accompanying horrors. The authors quote John Clyn, a friar minor in the convent of Kilkenny in 1349, who described the effects of the plague in Ireland. He also wrote: 'I... waiting for death till it come... have reduced these things to paper, and lest the writing perish with the writer and the work with the workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work... if haply any man survive'. On the paper follows in a different hand 'here it seems the author died'. Grim stuff – could it return? The current work was stimulated by a study of the parish records of Penrith by Susan Scott. These suggested to her that they did not support the traditional view of plague, and the book reports the results of further investigations, which revealed that rats could not have been responsible for the Black Death, as they did not exist in England at the time (although Chaucer writes in the Pardoner's tale – of 'going to the apothecary to buy rat poison'.). After many detailed studies – including that of the 'plague village' of Eyam – a very good case for overturning traditional views is made. The authors have some intriguing data on resistance to the Black Death, and why it died out. Not a change in the rat population, but the presence of a CCR5-∆32 mutation conferring resistance. They are to some extent confrontational and dismissive of other work, such as the finding of plague bacterial genes in ancient human remains. The book goes at a fast pace – sometimes it is difficult to keep up with the wide spread of ideas. It ends in the current century, with comments on bioterrorism, AIDS, and SARS – even MRSA gets a mention. A return of a major epidemic seems quite possible – and indeed an interview with the chief medical officer in the UK screened on television while I was reading the book confirmed that this is one of his worries too, although he is more concerned with influenza than plague.


Background Initiation of DMARD-therapy in the 'window of opportunity' is thought to result in more effective modification of the processes underlying Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). Objectives We questioned whether this effect is true or hyped and therefore performed a systematic literature review. Methods Medical literature databases up to June 2012 were systematically reviewed for cohort studies and randomized controlled trials reporting outcome data of early RA in relation with symptom duration at treatment initiation. The quality of these studies was assessed by two independent reviewers using a criteria scoring system of 15 items. Studies were dichotomized with the median score (79%) as cut-off. Best-evidence synthesis was applied to determine the level of evidence per outcome category. A meta-analysis was performed on the studies reporting on achieving DMARD-free sustained remission (the reverse of disease persistency). Results Out of 836 screened articles, 18 fulfilled the selection criteria and were not duplicates. Nine were scored as high-quality. Remission (various definitions) and radiographic progression were frequently studied outcomes. There was strong evidence for an association between symptom duration and radiographic progression. A meta-analysis on datasets evaluating DMARD-free sustained remission showed that symptom duration was independently associated with such remission both univariable and multivariable after adjustment of age, sex, treatment, rheumatoid factor and erythrocyte sedimentation rate; HR 0.989 (95%CI 0.983-0.995) per week increase in symptom duration (see figure 1 ). A moderate level of evidence was observed for studies on various other remission outcomes. Image/graph Conclusions There is strong evidence that prolonged symptom duration is associated with radiographic progression. Furthermore, symptom duration is associated with disease persistency in a meta-analysis, supporting the presence of a 'window of opportunity'-effect. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


As part of a project that identified the specific literacy skills required it ten occupations, this report provides two levels of instructional 'information about industrial maintenance mechanics. FactiiaI data,are presented,in Parts I tnd II for use in decision making by program developers, administrators, teachers, and counselors. These secttons note the specific literacy requirements (reading, writing, listening, speaking, tind mathematics) that were .identified at three job sites and in three vocational training programs. Part III presents instructional metho4s/materials that adult basic education'teachers can use to devel0 literacy skills while imparting job related knowledge. The lessen format is based on a directed reading activity and includes vocabulary and concept, development, sentence and organizational structure, silent reading, and skill development4 Appendixes list the techhical vocabulary that industrial maintenande mechanics reed to know, the 100 words that represent 45% of the language sampled for the,entire project, and occupational literacy requirements for the ten occupations that wete studied. (AEA)


Rationale: Bronchial foreign body aspiration is a critical condition that jeopardizes the respiratory function of children. Prompt diagnosis and removal of the foreign body can reduce occurrence of foreign body complications and mortality. Aspiration of spherical plastic beads is rare, and the bead is difficult to retrieve. Patient concerns: An 8-year-old girl developed cough, transient throat wheezing, and intermittent cough after she accidentally inhaled a plastic bead 7 hours ago. Chest computed tomography scan revealed a round shadow 1.2 cm in diameter in the right main bronchus. Diagnoses: Foreign body in the right main bronchus. Interventions: Retrieval by balloon-tipped catheter via flexible bronchoscopy was undertaken. Outcomes: The bead was successfully retrieved and the child recovered uneventfully. Lessons: Foreign body aspiration in children constitutes a medical emergency in severe cases. Flexible bronchoscopy and balloon-tipped catheter retrieval can be used as an effective noninvasive treatment for aspiration of plastic beads.


Liposomes are vesicle-shaped particles whose walls are composed of lipid molecules ( the main constituent is a double layer phospholipid which wraps the liquid compartment inside. Liposomes can be made from natural ingredients in the form of natural phospholipid derivatives mixed with fat chains (eg phosphatidylcholine) by dispersing. Liposomes from papaya leaf extract (Carica Papaya Linn) are made with the aim of increasing the effectiveness of the drug and biocompatible work, as well as protecting healthy tissue from the toxic effects of the drug. The process of making liposom papaya leaf extract using the sonication method by mixing soybean lecithin with papaya leaf extract. Then do the heating and sonication. This method is done to reduce particle size. The aim of this study was to produce an extract of liposomes from papaya leaf phospholipid formulations using a combination of heating and sonication.The method to produce liposomes with a size of <150 nm using a combination of heating 40 ○ C for 40 minutes and stirring using ultraturrax at a speed of 15,000 rpm for 30 minutes, then stirring with a sonicator for 30 minutes.The results showed the liposome nano papaya leaf extract formulation from soybean lecithin by the PSA (Particle Size Analyzertype 1090 / Cilas) method. The liposome product was in the form of liquid, light green and milk white and odorless. Particle size distribution is obtained in the range of 0.04 μm 500.00 μm / 100 Classes and an average pH of 5.45.


We develop a model based on stochastic loss networks to characterize the dynamics and uncertainty in general workforce management and optimization. We formulate profit maximization problems with serviceability constraints under different assumptions on demand and supply. Though these optimization problems are in general nonlinear programming problems, we are able to observe some intrinsic properties of the functions that facilitate efficient computation of the optimal solution. Numerical results demonstrate that our model provides capacity planning decisions that yield better results than available in current practice


In this paper, we studied the relationship between the morphological development of the solid-liquid interface and the needle-like stress zones in Czochralskimethod-grown YAG single crystals doped with Nd. The experimental results established that the needle-like stress zones were originated from the solute (Nd) -rich zones due to constitutional supercooling. By studying the needle-like stress zones with photo-elasticity method, the stress in these zones was found to be axially symmetrical comperssive. We have also studied dislocation arrays along the boundaries of solute (Nd)-rich zones by means of etching method and birefringence observation, and measured the dis location density. The measured density agrees roughly with the value estimated according to the theory of misfit dislocations.


Real-time location systems are often required in industrial applications. In addition to securely determining an item's location, these systems also need to accommodate energy-limited tracking tokens. Distance-bounding protocols enable a Verifier to cryptographically determine an upper-bound on the physical distance to a Prover by measuring the round-trip time of specially designed challenge-response messages. This type of protocols serve as countermeasure to three common attacks on location-based systems and have been extensively studied with the goal of achieving optimal security bounds for the respective attacks. In this paper, we propose a new energy-efficient distance-bounding protocol that protects against all three common attacks in a distance-bounding scenario with improved security bounds. We provide a new approach to combining the response registers and Prover's key to determine responses. Furthermore, the protocol design allows offline pre-computation of the function <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi>f</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="hancke-ieq1-2761702.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> used to determine the Prover's response registers. This results in faster protocol execution, the reader does not wait for the tag to compute any cryptographic function during the protocol execution, and also allows passive tokens to effectively use residual energy after the preceding transaction to compute response registers for the next protocol run.


A reinforced concrete beam is normally used as a skeletal frame to withstand the loads on the building. However, a long-span beam requires a larger beam section due to the concerns of excessive deflection and failure. Under such circumstances, a large portion of beam strength is used to sustain its own weight which is uneco-nomical. This problem could be overcome by reducing some portions of concrete using lightweight materials like polystyrene. The replacement should technically be applied without affecting the structural performance of the beam. This study aimed to develop an optimum design of a lightweight beam by incorporating poly-styrene in the conventional reinforced concrete beam. The specimens were tested with a static load using the four-point load test to investigate the behavior of the beam. The effects of the parameters, such as the spacing of the polystyrene, and the number of reinforcements were observed. The performance of the beams was evaluated in terms of the ultimate load ( P u ), strength-to-weight ratio ( s-w ratio), ductility ( 𝛥 ), and failure mechanism. The results show that the lightweight beam, with 11.8% concrete replacement, outperformed the conventional beam by 47% to 61%, in terms of the s-w ratio.


When designing fully-convolutional neural network, there is a trade-off between receptive field size, number of parameters and spatial resolution of features in deeper layers of the network. In this work we present a novel network design based on combination of many convolutional and recurrent layers that solves these dilemmas. We compare our solution with U-nets based models known from the literature and other baseline models on speech enhancement task. We test our solution on TIMIT speech utterances combined with noise segments extracted from NOISEX-92 database and show clear advantage of proposed solution in terms of SDR (signal-to-distortion ratio), SIR (signal-to-interference ratio) and STOI (spectro-temporal objective intelligibility) metrics compared to the current state-of-the-art.


Abstract The manner in which species partition space and time to minimize competition for shared, limited resources has been a major focus of theoretical and empirical ecology. Although numerous examples exist of intra-guild dietary separation among coexisting species, studies of spatio-temporal partitioning among species sharing a single food type are rare. We investigated spatio-temporal patterns of multi-species predation on individually-marked moose Alces alces calves in an Alaskan boreal forest community where moose are the only large herbivore, and constitute the primary prey of coexisting black bears Ursus americanus, brown bears U. arctos and gray wolves Canis lupus. The two most closely related predators, black bears and brown bears, overlapped temporally and spatially in their consumption of moose calves, as indicated by univariate analyses. Moreover, both bear species segregated spatially from wolves when killing moose calves. Hence, our study appears to support key predictions of predator coexistence on a shared resource: namely, that bears and wolves differentiate spatially or temporally in their use of a pulsed prey, presumably to minimize competition.


Emerging vehicle automation and communication systems (VACS) may contribute to the mitigation of motorway traffic congestion on the basis of appropriate traffic control strategies. Based on appropriate VACS-based actuators, future traffic control may incorporate vehicle speed control and lane-assignment or lane-changing recommendations. To this end, an appropriate traffic flow model is needed, both for control strategy design and as a no-control base case for comparative evaluation studies. In this context, this paper presents a novel first-order multi-lane macroscopic traffic flow model for motorways which is mainly intended for use within a related optimal control problem formulation. The starting point is close to the well-known cell-transmission model (CTM), which is modified and extended to consider additional aspects of the traffic dynamics, such as lane changing and the capacity drop. The model has been derived with a view to combine realistic traffic flow description with a simple (piecewise linear) mathematical form, which can be exploited for efficient optimal control problem formulations. Although the model has been primarily derived for use in future traffic conditions including VACS, it may also be used for conventional traffic flow representation. In fact, the accuracy of the proposed modelling approach is demonstrated through calibration and validation procedures using conventional real data from an urban motorway located in Melbourne, Australia.


Public relations is the practice of managing a communication process that aims to build mutual goodwill and trust between organizations and their publics with the help of publicity, information and positive image building efforts. Public information is the public relations approach which aims for providing mutual goodwill and trust by sharing the organization-related information with target audience in complete openness and honesty. Public Information, firstly introduced by Ivy Ledbetter Lee in the United States of America during 1920's, became prominent as a public relations model which provided an innovative viewpoint on commercial and organizational communication policies. In time, public information practices in public relations began to be utilized for building and maintaining political trust and support of target audience. In this study, application methods of public information activities as a political public relations action and their benefits provided to organization are outlined.


Objective: The Menopause-Specific Quality-of-Life (MENQOL) questionnaire was developed as a specific tool to measure the health-related quality-of-life of postmenopausal women. Thus far, the Chinese version questionnaire has not been subjected to psychometric assessment with a large sample. This study aims to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Chinese version of the MENQOL specific to postmenopausal women in China. Methods: A total of 1,137 menopausal symptomatic and 491 menopausal asymptomatic women from eight cities in China were recruited using a convenience sampling method. Psychometric properties were evaluated by descriptive statistics, validity, and reliability. Reliability was assessed for each subscale of the MENQOL through internal consistency reliability with Cronbach's &agr; and intersubscale correlations. Item-domain correlations, principal components analysis (PCA), and confirmatory factor analysis were performed to determine construct validity. t tests were used to compare the differences between the menopausal symptomatic and asymptomatic women and to evaluate the discriminate validity. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between MENQOL scores and the Kupperman index to assess criterion-related validity. Results: The most common symptoms in Chinese menopausal symptomatic women were "experiencing poor memory" (94.4%), "feeling tired or worn out" (93.8%), "aching in muscle and joints" (89.4%), "low backache" (86.9%), "decrease in physical strength" (86.6%), "aches in back of neck or head" (86.2%), "difficulty sleeping" (83.6%), "accomplishing less than I used to" (83.4%), "feeling a lack of energy" (83.3%), "change in your sexual desire" (81%), and "hot flash" (80.7%) among others. The symptoms of "increased facial hair" were rarely seen (9.9%). The vasomotor domain, as well as psychosocial, physical, and sexual domains showed high reliability (Cronbach's &agr; 0.84, 0.87, 0.89, and 0.86, respectively). Item-domain correlation analysis showed that all items correlated more strongly with their own domains than with other domains. In the PCA, after deleting the "increased facial hair" item, items in the vasomotor, sexual, and psychosocial subscales loaded on their respective domains by and large, and items in the physical subscale divided into two factors. The PCA revealed a latent structure of the Chinese version of MENQOL nearly identical to the original MENQOL domains. The confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the questionnaire fits well with a four-domain model. The MENQOL can discriminate between menopausal symptomatic women with asymptomatic women as it showed good discriminate validity. Criterion-related validity was confirmed by a significant correlation between MENQOL scores and the Kupperman index. Conclusions: This study showed that Chinese version of MENQOL has good psychometric properties and would be suitable to measure the health-related quality-of-life of Chinese menopausal women except for item 21 (increased facial hair).


MRI reconstruction techniques based on deep learning have led to unprecedented reconstruction quality especially in highly accelerated settings. However, deep learning techniques are also known to fail unexpectedly and hallucinate structures. This is particularly problematic if reconstructions are directly used for downstream tasks such as real-time treatment guidance or automated extraction of clinical paramters (e.g. via segmentation). Well-calibrated uncertainty quantification will be a key ingredient for safe use of this technology in clinical practice. In this paper we propose a novel probabilistic reconstruction technique (PHiRec) building on the idea of conditional hierarchical variational autoencoders. We demonstrate that our proposed method produces high-quality reconstructions as well as uncertainty quantification that is substantially better calibrated than several strong baselines. We furthermore demonstrate how uncertainties arising in the MR econstruction can be propagated to a downstream segmentation task, and show that PHiRec also allows well-calibrated estimation of segmentation uncertainties that originated in the MR reconstruction process.


In this correspondence, the average coset weight distributions of Gallager's low-density parity-check (LDPC) code ensemble are investigated. Gallager's LDPC code ensemble consists of regular mtimesn-LDPC matrices with column weight j and row weight k. The average coset weight distribution can be derived by enumerating the number of parity-check matrices in the ensemble satisfying certain conditions. Based on combinatorial arguments, a formula for the average coset weight distribution will be proved. From the formula, we can show some properties of the average coset weight distributions such as equivalence classes of syndromes, symmetry of the distributions, and a lower bound on coset weight


Enzymatic modification, using a protease from Bacillus licheniformis (Subtilisin A), was carried out on polyamide 6.6 (PA6.6) fabric to make it more amenable to water-based nanocoatings used to impart electrical conductivity. The modified PA6.6 fibers exhibit a smoother surface, increased hydrophilicity due to more carboxyl and amino groups, and larger ζ-potential relative to unmodified polyamide. With its improved hydrophilicity and surface functionality, the modified textile is better able to accept a water-based nanocoating, composed of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) stabilized by sodium deoxycholate (DOC) and poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA), deposited via layer-by-layer assembly. Relative to unmodified fabric, the enzymatically modified fibers exhibit lower sheet resistance as a function of PDDA/MWCNT-DOC bilayers deposited. This relatively green technique could be used to impart a variety of useful functionalities to otherwise difficult-to-treat synthetic fibers like polyamide.


Abstract. Despite the great success of machine learning, its applications in climate dynamics have not been well developed. One concern might be how well the trained neural networks could learn a dynamical system and what can be the potential applications of this kind of learning. Detailed studies show that the coupling relations or dynamics among variables in linear or nonlinear systems can be well learnt by reservoir computer (RC) and long short-term memory (LSTM) machine learning, and these learnt coupling relations can be further applied to reconstruct one series from the other dominated by common coupling dynamics. In order to validate the above conclusions, toy models are applied to address the following three questions: (i) what can be learnt from different dynamical time series by machine learning; (ii) what factors significantly influence machine learning reconstruction; and (iii) how to select suitable explanatory or input variables for the reconstructed variable for machine learning. The results from these toy models show that both of RC and LSTM can indeed learn coupling relations among variables, and the learnt implicit coupling relation can be applied to accurately reconstruct one series from the other. Both of linear and nonlinear coupling relations between variables can influence the quality of the reconstructed series. If there is a strong linear coupling between variables, all of variables can be taken as explanatory variables for the reconstructed variable, and the reconstruction can be bi-directional. However, when the linear coupling among variables is much weaker, but with stronger nonlinear causality among variables, the reconstruction quality is direction-dependent and it may be only uni-directional. We propose using convergent cross mapping causality (CCM) index ρa→b to determine which variable can be taken as the reconstructed one and which can be taken as the explanatory variable. For example, the Pearson correlation between the average Tropical Surface Air Temperature (TSAT) and the average Northern Hemispheric SAT (NHSAT) is as weak as 0.08, but the CCM index of that NHSAT cross maps TSAT is ρN→T = 0.70, it means that NHSAT could be taken as the explanatory variable. Then we find that TSAT can be well reconstructed from NHSAT by means of RC. However, the reconstruction quality in the opposite direction is poor, because the CCM index of that TSAT cross maps NHSAT is only ρT→N = 0.24. These results also provide insights on machine learning approaches for paleoclimate reconstruction, parameterization scheme, and prediction in related climate studies.


Increasing Participation in Research – Breast Cancer (INSPIRE-BrC) aims to increase therapeutic clinical trial participation rates among black patients with breast cancer and examine the relationship between the intervention and attitudes/beliefs on the decision to participate. The study was opened in mid-March of 2014. Increasing black patients9 participation in cancer clinical trials is particularly important because of the population9s lower survival rate. Accrual to clinical trials remains low among the general population (1 to 3%), with recruitment of blacks the lowest of all groups at 0.5 to 1.5%. Clinical trials are key to developing new methods to prevent, detect, and treat cancer. Methods: INSPIRE-BrC is a prospective nonrandomized clinical trial. A sample size of 123 black patients with breast cancer at five MedStar sites (two in the District of Columbia and three in the Baltimore area) will view a 15 minute, culturally tailored video about clinical trials, which targets six cultural and attitudinal barriers to participation. The six cultural and attitudinal barriers to participation that have been documented in literature and verified by the MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Washington Cancer Institute experience are: 1) Fear and distrust of the medical establishment (doctors, scientists and the government); 2) Concern about the ethical conduct of investigators (e.g., Tuskegee Syphilis Study); 3) Fear of losing one9s rights by signing a research informed consent document ; 4) Worry that investigators will treat poor or minority patients unfairly (e.g., the patient becomes a guinea pig); 5) Loss of privacy; and 6) Lack of knowledge and awareness of clinical trials (e.g., what would be done, what would be expected from them and what are the expected risks and benefits of the research presented at participant9s comprehension level). A pre-test/post-test method is used to determine the impact of the video on three variables — likely participation in therapeutic clinical trials; attitudes toward therapeutic clinical trials (assessed based on the six barriers); and actual trial enrollment. We will use the Attitudes and Intention to Enroll in therapeutic clinical Trials (AIET) questionnaire in which items were all adapted from existing scales that measured concepts similar to those assessed in this study. Each of six attitudinal barriers measured represent a subscale on the AIET consisting of five items, each assessed on a 5-point Likert-type scale. Responses are scored 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Somewhat Disagree; 3=Not sure/Neither; 4=Somewhat Agree; 5=Strongly Agree. Expected Findings: We hypothesize that the intervention will increase clinical trial enrollment compared to our 2012 clinical trial enrollment baseline rate of 6% (22/384) for black patients with breast cancer in five MedStar hospitals. The primary outcome measure is the proportion of black patients with breast cancer who agree to participate in a therapeutic clinical trial among those who sign consent to INSPIRE-BrC. Study findings have the potential to increase patient recruitment as a promising tool for rapid dissemination of a theory-driven, evidence-based model to enhance clinical trial accrual among black patients with cancer. INSPIRE- BrC Enrollment as of July 28, 2014 MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center - 5 MedStar Georgetown University Hospital - 6 MedStar Harbor Hospital -7 MedStar Union Memorial Hospital - 7 MedStar Washington Hospital Center - 40 Total - 65 Citation Format: Brandi N. Robinson, Sandra M. Swain. Increasing Participation in Research - Breast Cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Seventh AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 9-12, 2014; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2015;24(10 Suppl):Abstract nr A18.


The dynamic characteristics of a free-piston stirling engine(FPSE) with regard to the working frequency is investigated from theoretical and experimental studies. The FPSE is modeled as a two degree-of-freedom linear vibration system. A theoretical expression on the working frequency is derived from the instability condition for self-excitation based on the linear vibration model. A -type free-piston stirling engine is fabricated for experimental studies, and its working frequency is measured on various heater temperatures. Comparisons between the theoretical and experimental results reveal that the working frequency of the test FPSE depends on both the temperature of the compression space and the temperature difference between the expansion and compression spaces.


Author(s): Almutairi, Sarah J | Advisor(s): Read, Benjamin L | Abstract: Is China rising in the Arab Gulf region as it is in other parts of world? Does China rise politically and militarily as well as economically in the region? Does its rise represent a golden opportunity for Arab Gulf states? Does China challenge the United States in the Arab Gulf region? What are the strategic responses of the Arab Gulf states toward China's rise? There is an ongoing debate among scholars of international relations (IR) and Asian studies regarding China's rise, its forms and types, its impacts on hegemonic power, international order, states' internal and external politics, and states' strategic responses toward this rise. Realists argue that any rising power will ultimately challenge the dominant power, seek to change the international order to its favor, attract or coerce by utilizing its increasing economic and military powers the other states to do what it needs and demands. In their view China is not an exception. This dissertation contributes to these discourses by examining if China is rising in the Arab Gulf region, what type is this rise, what it means to the Arab Gulf monarchies, and what are their strategic responses toward it. This dissertation finds the following: first, although China's recent increase in prominence and power is profoundly affecting some parts of the world, China is rising only economically in the Arab Gulf region. This rise is an 'infant energy-oriented economic rise.' Importing and exporting oil represent the bulk of Sino-Arab Gulf economic ties. In spite of ongoing and planned investments between China and the Arab Gulf states, these investments are mostly in the energy sector and relate mainly to building oil refineries and storage facilities in China in order to increase oil trade between the two sides. Also, although the Arab Gulf states and China are members in many economic forums and dialogues, these forums are merely 'talk shows' without any influence in strengthening ties between the two sides. Moreover, Arab Gulf states do not play a significant role in China's One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR). It can be stated that the mutual economic interests in energy sector are the wheels that have driven China's infant economic rise and paved the way for it.Secondly, China's rise today represents a limited opportunity for Arab Gulf states. China's increased economic power is not translated into superior security and military power. Also, although China and the Arab Gulf states are increasing their economic/energy ties, their security and military ties are insignificant compared to Arab Gulf states' ties with their traditional ally, the United States. Therefore, China lacks the ability to provide the Arab Gulf states with the security they need. Four factors set limits on China–Arab Gulf security and military ties: first China's support and strong political, economic, and military ties with rival states, namely, Iran and Syria. Second, China's influence over the Arab Gulf states' traditional allies specifically, Pakistan. Third, the Arab Gulf states' alliances with the United States. Although the US-Arab Gulf ties have witnessed major political tensions after the events of September 11 and the Arab Spring, the United States will continue to be, for the next few decades, the region's protector. Fourth, China's fear of being entangled in the region's security issues and their impacts on China's internal stability, mainly the fear of Sunni radical Islam and its links to and impact on Muslims in China.Thirdly, the Arab Gulf states studied here—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman—are pursuing a "dual hedging" strategy against China and the United States. The strategy has two dimensions. First, they are hedging against the danger that China poses to them by its stance on the region's security issues. The Arab Gulf states find that China's approach in their region is threatening their stability and survival. Therefore, while maintaining and increasing their economic and commercial ties with China, they are also strengthening military ties with the United States as well as taking steps on their own to build their militaries. This first dimension of the strategy enables them to cope with indirect threats that China poses to them because of its position regarding the Arab Gulf region's security matters and support of Iran and Syria. Second, the Arab Gulf states are hedging against the possibility that the United States might someday abandon them. They are utilizing growing economic and commercial ties with China to signal to the U.S. that the Arab Gulf region is no more dominated by the United States. And there is a new power in their region that is willing to strengthen its ties with them without irritating them by interfering in their internal political issues, a new rising power that is perceived by the U.S. as threat to its power and hegemony. Finally, a new rising power that made the U.S. change its foreign and security policies toward the Arab Gulf and 'pivot to Asia.' The Arab Gulf states realize that maneuvering between the two powers, the U.S. as the security power, and China as the economic power, is their only strategic choice to fulfil their security and economic needs simultaneously, therefore, securing themselves externally and internally.Fourth, it is Iran, not Saudi Arabia, which is viewed by China as its primary strategic ally, economic, and security partner in the region. China and Iran cooperate extensively and comprehensively in economic, political, and security aspects. Both are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which is a vital organization in Central Asia, that paves the way for them to upgrade and solidify their security, political, and economic cooperation.This dissertation applies qualitative methods of research, including online archival research, physical archival research and interviews. Personal interviews with political officials, retired diplomats, scholars, writers, and journalists were conducted in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.


ABSTRACT Using time-kill methodology, we investigated the interactions of an imipenem-colistin combination against 42 genetically distinct Klebsiella pneumoniae clinical isolates carrying a blaVIM-1-type gene. Irrespective of the imipenem MIC, the combination was synergistic (50%) or indifferent (50%) against colistin-susceptible strains, while it was antagonistic (55.6%) and rarely synergistic (11%) against non-colistin-susceptible strains (with synergy being observed only against strains with colistin MICs of 3 to 4 μg/ml). The combination showed improved bactericidal activity against isolates susceptible either to both agents or to colistin.


Background: The purpose of the study was to evaluate the increased correction possible with a mid shaft rotational osteotomy with the stability and ease of fixation associated with a scarf osteotomy. Materials and Methods: Between September 1999 and September 2006, 63 patients underwent operative repair of 77 Tailor's bunion deformities. Twenty eight patients (36 feet) were available for a final review (nine males and 19 females). A further seven patients (nine feet) completed a questionnaire. The mean followup period for the 28 patients reviewed in clinic was 6.5 years, (79.5 months; SD, 22). Results: Eighty-six percent were completely satisfied, 11.4% were satisfied with reservations and 3% were dissatisfied. Ninety-one percent considered themselves better than before their surgery while 8.6% felt they were no better. Ninety-one percent of patients said they would undergo surgery under the same conditions again. Preoperatively, the mean 4–5 intermetatarsal angle measured on weightbearing X-rays was 9.9 degrees (SD, 2.2), the mean postoperative intermetatarsal angle was 5.7 degrees (SD, 2.0). The mean preoperative AOFAS score was 44.1 (SD, 14.5) and the mean postoperative score at 6-month review was 91.8 (SD, 20.2). The AOFAS score at final review was 88.1 (SD, 11.6). Conclusion: The rotational scarf osteotomy was a reliable procedure for the correction of Tailor's bunion deformities. The osteotomy allowed for early mobilization and had few associated complications. The rotational scarf osteotomy facilitated correction of the intermetatarsal angle while maintaining excellent sagittal and transverse plane stability. Level of Evidence: IV, Case Series


The polymorphic behaviour of the aromatic ketone, benzophenone, which is a conformationally flexible molecule and forms crystal structures dominated by van der Waals intermolecular interactions, is examined. Crystallization of this material from the undercooled molten state yields the two known polymorphic forms, i.e. the stable alpha-form and the metastable beta-form. The relative, energetic stabilities are examined using both crystal lattice and molecular conformational modelling techniques. Examination of nano-sized faceted molecular clusters of these forms, with cluster sizes ranging from 3 to 100 molecules, reveals that at very small cluster size (< 5 molecules) the relative energetic stability of clusters representative for the two forms become very similar, indicating that for high melting undercooling (i.e. small critical cluster size for nucleation) crystallization of the metastable beta-phase becomes more likely. Detailed analysis of the variation in molecular conformations within the simulated molecular clusters reveals more disordered three-dimensional structures at small compared to larger cluster sizes. The conformational disorder was found to be higher for the metastable beta-form. This observation, together with the lower stability of clusters for this form is indicative of the difficulty in achieving crystallization of the metastable beta-form from the melt, which requires a considerable undercooling.


In this issue, the UK Radiopharmacy Group presents its third report on the Quality Assurance of Radiopharmceuticals. This concentrates on facilities which prepare only short-lived materials (shelf-life <24 hours) on site, which covers the majority of units within the UK, but is applicable to all radiopharmacies. As has come to be expected, the advice is comprehensive and provides sound interpretation of both current and potential legislation/regulations/guidelines. It will enable existing units to carry out a rapid audit of their documentation and prove invaluable to those planning new facilities. Given the litigious milieu in which we now practise, this is a timely document.


Dermabrasive compositions for skin resurfacing are disclosed. Therapeutic compositions disclosed are derived from Porifera species, specifically sponges, and more specifically fresh water sponges. One disclosed embodiment is derived from Spongilla species and is formulated with pharmaceutically acceptable excipients.


This study was conducted to characterize different dietary oils commonly used in broiler chicken production. Soybean oil (SYO), Palm-kernel oil (PKO), Sheabutter (SHO), Coconut oil (CO) and Groundnut oil (GNO) were each assayed for their physical and chemical characteristics using standard procedures. The CO had higher (P<0.05) saponification value (14.55mg/KOH) compared to SHO (60.80mg/KOH), which was lowest. ThePKO had significantly higher (P<0.05) acid value (mgKOH/g) (3.65), comparedwithSHO(0.90). The GNOhad the highest (18.08) for iodine value while PKO (4.71). Peroxide value was highest (P<0.05) in PKO (76.73) and lowest in SYO (4.98). Fatty acid profile was significantly affected by dietary oil sources. The SYBO was higher (P<0.05) in arachidonic acid (2.25) compared with CO (0.07) while Linoleic acid was highest in CO (19.72) compared to GNO (18.05) that had the lowest value. Linolenic acid concentration was higher in GNO (3.14) than SHO (0.16). The CO (8345.06±57.79) had the highest levelof totalcarotene compared withSHO (1550.26 ±12.43) while GNO was highest in .45) content while PKO was lowest (25.59 ± 0.35).The different oils have variedinherent chemical compositionswhichwhen deployed as ingredient,may have different impact on performance of broiler chickens


This cumulative work summarizes seven manuscripts published between 2007 and 2012. These
studies use marine and on-shore tephrostratigraphy as a tool to quantify and identify the timing, extent,
and causes of geological processes taken place at subductions zones.
In many subduction-related regions on Earth, highly explosive plinian volcanic eruptions generate
buoyant, tephra bearing eruption columns capable of penetrating up to 40 km into the stratosphere,
where they reach a neutral level of buoyancy and spread laterally. Such eruption clouds drift with the
prevailing wind over nearby oceans, gradually dropping their ash load over areas that sometimes can
be larger than 106 km2. The resulting ash layers are best preserved in non-erosive marine environments
and thus provide the most complete record of volcanic activity. Wide aerial distribution across sedimentary
facies boundaries, near-instantaneous emplacement, correlative chemical signatures, and the
presence of minerals suitable for radiometric dating make ash layers an excellent stratigraphic marker
in marine sediments and provide constraints on the temporal evolution of both, the volcanic source
region and the ash-containing sediment facies.
On-shore stratigraphic successions of tephra layers are generally based on the distinct composition
of tephras. In west-central Nicaragua for example (section 2.1), late Pleistocene to Holocene
tephras were emplaced by highly explosive eruptions, with a combined erupted mass of 184 Gt (DRE),
that are distributed into 9 dacitic to rhyolitic eruptions (84%) and 4 basaltic to basaltic-andesitic eruptions
(16%). Widespread eruptive masses from explosive volcanism are usually underestimated, even
when the most distal parts of the on-shore distribution fans, normally not preserved in terrestrial environments,
are included. If on-shore tephras can be correlated to offshore deposits like those in Central
America (sections 2.2 and 2.3), the revised erupted magma mass show that the tephras account for
65% of the total arc magma output. This enables the minimum estimation of long-term average magma
production rate at each volcano and over whole arcs. Using their unique compositional signatures,
tephras facilitate the determination of provenance as well as the reconstruction of emplacement processes
of volcanoclastic marine sediments, in accordance with regional geotectonic settings (section
2.4). Ash layers in marine sediments offshore Central America can provide time constraints for submarine
landslides at the continental slope, as they probably act as weak layers where sliding initiates
(section 2.5). Variations in the sedimentation rates on the slope, constrained by bracketing tephras of known age, can be attributed to periods of intense erosion on land likely triggered by tectonic processes.
In the case of the incoming plate these changes can be due to changes in bend-faulting activity
across the outer rise, which elicit erosion and re-sedimentation. Additionally, ash layers in Central
America can help determine the duration of active and inactive periods in the multi-stage growth history
of fluid venting sites (section 2.6). Cyclicity in the marine tephra record along the Pacific Ring of
Fire yields a statistically significant detection of a spectral peak at the obliquity period, which is related
to crustal stress changes associated with ice age mass redistribution and therefore supports the presence
of a causal link between variations in ice age climate, continental stress field, and volcanism
(section 2.7).
To summarize, the seven manuscripts presented here highlight the benefit of tephrostratigraphy as
a major tool in geology, and show that the tephra record on-shore and, especially in the marine environment,
have a spectrum of possible applications to decipher the causes and temporal variability of
geological processes.


October 13, 2022 Type Package Title K-Sample Rank Tests and their Combinations Version 1.2-9 Date 2019-05-20 Author Fritz Scholz [aut, cre], Angie Zhu [aut] Maintainer Fritz Scholz <email@example.com> Depends SuppDists Imports methods, graphics, stats Description Compares k samples using the Anderson-Darling test, Kruskal-Wallis type tests with different rank score criteria, Steel's multiple comparison test, and the Jonckheere-Terpstra (JT) test. It computes asymptotic, simulated or (limited) exact P-values, all valid under randomization, with or without ties, or conditionally under random sampling from populations, given the observed tie pattern. Except for Steel's test and the JT test it also combines these tests across several blocks of samples. Also analyzed are 2 x t contingency tables and their blocked combinations using the Kruskal-Wallis criterion. Steel's test is inverted to provide simultaneous confidence bounds for shift parameters. A plotting function compares tail probabilities obtained under asymptotic approximation with those obtained via simulation or exact calculations. License GPL (>= 2) LazyLoad yes NeedsCompilation yes Repository CRAN Date/Publication 2019-05-20 21:50:03 UTC


Direct fired oxy-fuel combustion provides a promising method for heat addition into a supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power cycle. Using this method of thermal energy input into the cycle allows for potentially higher fuel to bus bar cycle efficiency. In addition, the nature of the sCO2 power cycle lends itself to easy and efficient capture of 99% of the CO2 generated in the combustion process. sCO2 power cycles typically operate at pressures above 200 bar, and due to the high degree of recuperation found in these cycles, have a very high combustor inlet temperature. Past works have explored combustor inlet temperatures high enough to be in the autoignition regime. The inlet temperatures which will be explored in this work will be limited to 700°C, which will allows for very different combustor geometry than that which has been studied in the past. While this combustor inlet temperature is lower than that previously studied, when combined with the extremely high pressure, this poses several unique and difficult design challenges.
 In order to explore these unique design conditions a reliable and robust CFD solution method was developed. This reliable CFD solution methodology enables rapid iteration on various geometries. This paper will explore the CFD modeling setup and the assumptions which were made in the absence of well experimental data in this combustor regime. Exploration of methodology to account for possible variations in chemical kinetics due to the lack of validated kinetic models in the current literature will also be discussed.
 The results from the CFD runs will be discussed and the combustor design, and next steps to complete a detailed combustor design will also be discussed. This work will enable future work in the development of oxy-fuel combustors for direct fired sCO2 power. This promising technology enables the use of fossil fuels with up to 99% carbon capture, while maintaining an overall cycle efficiency competitive with natural gas combined cycle power plants.


An autoecious rust fungus, Puccinia carduorum Jacky (Uredinales), imported from Turkey has been introduced for the biological control of musk thistle in Virginia. Studies were conducted to determine if this rust can be transmitted by the three thistle herbivores, Cassida rubiginosa Muller (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), Trichosirocalus horridus (Panzer), and Rhinocyllus conicus Froelich (Coleoptera: Curculionidae). Fifty adults of each species were introduced to diseased plants and subsequently transferred to healthy test plants. Fifty adults introduced on and transferred to rust-free plants served as control. Spore dispersal by adults of the three coleopteran species was confirmed. Under greenhouse conditions, pustules developed within two weeks on some test plants where spore-carrying insects were introduced. Most of the urediniospores were observed on setae of legs of all adults.


Zero-shot learning casts light on lacking unseen class data by transferring knowledge from seen classes via a joint semantic space. However, the distributions of samples from seen and unseen classes are usually imbalanced. Many zero-shot learning methods fail to obtain satisfactory results in the generalized zero-shot learning task, where seen and unseen classes are all used for the test. Also, irregular structures of some classes may result in inappropriate mapping from visual features space to semantic attribute space. A novel generative mixup networks with semantic graph alignment is proposed in this article to mitigate such problems. To be specific, our model first attempts to synthesize samples conditioned with class-level semantic information as the prototype to recover the class-based feature distribution from the given semantic description. Second, the proposed model explores a mixup mechanism to augment training samples and improve the generalization ability of the model. Third, triplet gradient matching loss is developed to guarantee the class invariance to be more continuous in the latent space, and it can help the discriminator distinguish the real and fake samples. Finally, a similarity graph is constructed from semantic attributes to capture the intrinsic correlations and guides the feature generation process. Extensive experiments conducted on several zero-shot learning benchmarks from different tasks prove that the proposed model can achieve superior performance over the state-of-the-art generalized zero-shot learning.


This paper presents a control technique based on distributed population dynamics under time-varying communication graphs for a multi-agent system structured in a leader-follower fashion. Here, the leader agent follows a particular trajectory and the follower agents should track it in a certain organized formation manner. The tracking of the leader can be performed in the position coordinates x, y, and z, and in the yaw angle φ. Additional features are performed with this method: each agent has only partial knowledge of the position of other agents and not necessarily all agents should communicate to the leader. Moreover, it is possible to integrate a new agent into the formation (or for an agent to leave the formation task) in a dynamical manner. In addition, the formation configuration can be changed along the time, and the distributed population-games-based controller achieves the new organization goal accommodating conveniently the information-sharing graph in function of the communication range capabilities of each UAV. Finally, several simulations are presented to illustrate different scenarios, e.g., formation with time-varying communication network, and time-varying formation.


ABSTRACT Introduction: While some cholesteryl ester transfer protein inhibitors have had their clinical study interrupted because of no or adverse effects on cardiovascular disease, anacetrapib (MK-0859) is being evaluated in Phase III cardiovascular outcomes trials. We review its pharmacokinetic properties. Areas covered: The apparent anacetrapib terminal elimination half-life after a single dose is 9–62 h in the fasted state and 42–83 h in the fed state. After repeat administrations, a biphasic elimination profile with a long terminal elimination phase (~60–80 h) was observed, although the effective half-life was ~20 h. The steady state appeared to be reached after ~7 days of dosing with 0.85- to 2.8-fold accumulation for AUC0–24 and Cmax, respectively. The unchanged drug is mainly eliminated with feces; renal impairment does not seem be a limitation to the use of the drug. However, liver impairment could cause an increase in the anacetrapib level, especially when associated with CYP3A4 inhibitors, since it is a moderately sensitive CYP3A substrate. Expert opinion: Given the interesting pharmacokinetic profile, and if the preliminary data on cardiovascular outcomes is confirmed, anacetrapib could find a relevant role as a moderately expensive drug between standard lipid-lowering treatment and the new expensive PCKS9 inhibitors.


This study investigates the economic burden and healthcare resource utilization of receiving early or late capecitabine and trastuzumab as second-line anthracyclineor taxane-based treatments for inoperable advanced breast cancer (IABC). Data was retrieved from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan. The demographic characteristics, healthcare resource utilization, and economic burden of patients with IABC receiving capecitabine and trastuzumab for 0–3, 3–6, 6–9 and 9–12 months after anthracyclineor taxane-based treatments were analyzed. 1,629 women newly diagnosed with IABC were recruited. IABC incidence rates reduced from 9.75% in 2004 to 7.35% in 2006. However, the proportion of patients receiving capecitabine or trastuzumab after anthracyclineor taxane-based treatments increased. Inpatient admissions (times/year), length of hospital stay (days/year), and outpatient visits (visits/year) did not differ significantly for the 2004–2005, 2005–2006 and 2006–2007 cohorts of patients with IABC receiving capecitabine and trastuzumab at different time points. The 1-year healthcare cost and outpatient, inpatient, and total costs (USD/year) differed significantly for trastuzumab but not for capecitabine. The conclusion indicated that early or late capecitabine or trastuzumab administration after first-line anthracycline or taxane-based treatments did not exhibit a change in healthcare resource utilization. In addition, the 1-year healthcare costs did not differ significantly for patients with IABC receiving early or late capecitabine. However, patients with IABC receiving trastuzumab continue to face an economic burden.


The standards for usability and interaction design for Web sites and software are well known. While not everyone uses those standards, or uses them correctly, there is a large body of knowledge, best practice, and proven results in those fields, and a good education system for teaching professionals "how to." For the newer field of Web application design, however, designers are forced to reuse the old rules on a new platform. This book provides a roadmap that will allow readers to put complete working applications on the Web, display the results of a process that is running elsewhere, and update a database on a remote server using an Internet rather than a network connection.

Web Application Design Handbook describes the essential widgets and development tools that will the lead to the right design solutions for your Web application. Written by designers who have made significant contributions to Web-based application design, it delivers a thorough treatment of the subject for many different kinds of applications, and provides quick reference for designers looking for some fast design solutions and opportunities to enhance the Web application experience. This book adds flavor to the standard Web design genre by juxtaposing Web design with programming for the Web and covers design solutions and concepts, such as intelligent generalization, to help software teams successfully switch from one interface to another.

* The first interaction design book that focuses exclusively on Web applications.
* Full-color figures throughout the book.
* Serves as a "cheat sheet" or "fake book" for designers: a handy reference for standards, rules of thumb, and tricks of the trade.
* Applicable to new Web-based applications and for porting existing desktop applications to Web browsers.

Table of Contents

Contents
Chapter 1: What is a Web Application?
Chapter 2: The Browser Framework
Chapter 3: Data Input
Chapter 4: Data Retrieval: Search
Chapter 5: Data Retrieval: Filtering and Browsing
Chapter 6: Data Output: Reports
Chapter 7: Data Output: Printed Forms
Chapter 8: Interacting with Output
Chapter 9: Designing Graphs And Charts
Chapter 10: Graph Types Based on Use
Chapter 11: Designing Diagrams
Chapter 12: Diagram Types
Chapter 13: Designing Geographic Maps
Chapter 14: Interacting with Geographic Maps
Chapter 15: Types of Maps
Appendix A: Web Application Design Worksheets
Appendix B: Quality Testing
Appendix C: Usability Testing
Appendix D: Design Checklists
Glossary
References
For Further Reading