This chapter reviews the history of the molecular clock, its impact on molecular evolution, and the controversies surrounding mechanisms of evolutionary rate variation and the application of the clock to date species divergences. We review current molecular clock dating methods, including maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods, with an emphasis on relaxing the clock and on incorporating uncertainties into fossil calibrations.


In knowledge-based system (KBS) applications where the number of facts in the knowledge base is very large, the amount of information that is needed for effective explanation support can become too voluminous to be stored in main memory. The authors present an approach to modeling and managing the information needed for explanation rising a relational database. It is shown how different types of explanation can then be produced by appropriate queries on this database. The authors formulate representative queries for some major types of explanation using ESQL, an extension of structured query language (SQL). >


The phenomenon of coronary-subclavian steal is defined as the reversed blood flow in a coronary artery, through internal mammary artery graft towards medial-distal subclavian artery, which happens due to severe stenosis or total occlusion of the proximal portion of the latter. It is a rare but significant cause of cardiac ischemia after coronary artery bypass surgery and it can cause a syndrome of the same name and with typical manifestations. We have reported the case of a patient with this disease, who underwent percutaneous angioplasty with stent implantation, and we also reviewed the literature on the subject.


Effective management of iron overload in thalassaemia requires monitoring both for iron toxicity and the effects of excessive chelation. Careful monitoring together with adherence to established regimens using desferrioxamine (DFO) results in a 78% survival rate at 40 years of age at UCLH, with steadily improving survival as progressive cohorts receive chelation earlier in life. By contrast, survival is considerably below this in non-specialist centres. The prognostic significance of the measures being used in monitoring should be known so that decisions about chelation management are evidence-based. Serum ferritin measurement, although easy to perform frequently, is subject to variability and falsely high or falsely low values in relation to body iron are frequently obtained. However, there is evidence that persistently high ferritin values above 2500 microg/l have poor prognostic significance in patients treated with DFO. Liver iron predicts total body iron in a more predictable way than serum ferritin in thalassaemia. Liver iron concentrations of 15 mg/g dry weight appear to predict those patients who develop heart failure in subjects treated with DFO. The prognostic significance of this measurement or indeed other measurements of iron overload in patients treated with other chelation regimens is not known. Recent advances with MRI imaging have aroused interest in its use for monitoring patients with thalassaemia. A recent publication suggests a relationship between left ventricular ejection fraction and cardiac T2*, the value of which shortens with increasing iron concentrations in the liver and hence by inference in the heart. The prognostic value of this technique has not yet been demonstrated in prospective studies and hence changes in therapy based on this measurement alone should be considered with caution at this time. The value of monitoring to decrease morbidity from iron overload is also discussed, particularly with reference to the estimation of iron deposition in the pituitary.


1. With changes in the agricultural policy for rural areas in the UK, there is increased pressure to develop management protocols for indigenous and sown swards based on grazing by ruminant species other than sheep and cattle, e.g. goats, red deer and South American camelids. This can only be achieved through a greater understanding of the feeding behaviour of these species grazing on vegetation communities typical of the hills and uplands.

2. This paper describes the organic matter intake, diet digestibility and activity time of goats, red deer and South American camelids grazing three vegetation types typical of upland ecosystems in Scotland: a sown grassland (Lolium perenne-dominated), an indigenous grassland (Nardus stricta-dominated) and a dwarf-shrub community (Calluna vulgaris-dominated). Intake and digestibility of organic matter (OM) were measured by the n-alkane technique, and activity time was measured using vibracorders.

3. For all species OM digestibility of the diet was higher on the sown sward than on the indigenous communities, and higher on the indigenous grassland than on the dwarf-shrub community. There were no consistent patterns to between-species differences in OM digestibility.

5. When expressed on a metabolic liveweight basis, there was no consistent pattern to the seasonal differences in OM intake (OMI) between species or within species between vegetation types.

6. Irrespective of season, grazing session or vegetation type, activity time of the goats was significantly lower than that of either the red deer or camelids.

7. The conclusions of the study are that these species differ in their foraging strategy, particularly on indigenous communities where heterogeneity in resource dispersion and availability is higher. Goats and camelids maintain diet digestibility at the expense of intake, whereas red deer maintain intake.


Abstract If a colleague of mine, whose opinion I respect, disagrees with me about some claim, this might give me pause regarding my position on the matter. The Equal Weight view proposes that in such cases of peer disagreement I ought to give my colleague's opinion as much weight as my own, and decrease my certainty in the disputed claim. One prominent criticism of the Equal Weight view is that treating higher-order (indirect) evidence in this way invariably swamps first-order (direct) evidence. While the opinions of our peers matter in our deliberations, the Equal Weight view counter-intuitively requires that evidence of mere disagreement is more important than standard kinds of evidence. I offer a proposal for how we should idealize epistemic agents that identifies the variable feature of disagreements that accounts for the shifting significance of direct and indirect evidence in different disagreement contexts. Specifically, by idealizing epistemic agents as deriving functions that characterize the non-subjective relationship between a body of evidence and the reasonableness of believing the various propositions supported by that evidence, we can accommodate the intuition to compromise that motivates the Equal Weight view, without accepting the counter-intuitive results.


Despite the growing popularity of participatory video as a tool for facilitating youth empowerment, the methodology and impacts of the practice are extremely understudied. This paper describes a study design created to examine youth media methodology and the ethical dilemmas that arose in its attempted implementation. Specifically, elements that added "rigor" to the study (i.e., randomization, pre- and post-measures, and an intensive interview) conflicted with the fundamental tenets of youth participation. The paper concludes with suggestions for studying participatory media methodologies that are more in line with an ethics of participation.


To the Editor: We believe that the study by Dr Ost and colleagues of duration of anticoagulation following venous thromboembolism is missing important data on bleeding risk that are needed for clinicians and patients to make fully informed decisions about how long to continue secondary prophylaxis. Randomized trials often report lower bleeding rates than do studies of community outpatients. This discrepancy may be due to closer monitoring of international normalized ratio, better education of participants about food and drug interactions, or stringent participant selection. The appropriate incidence rate ratio for bleeding is not one pooled from clinical trials, but from epidemiologic studies, which are lacking. As a surrogate, if rates of major bleeding are 0.4% per year without warfarin, and 1% per year to 7.22% per year with warfarin, the number needed to harm with 1 additional year of anticoagulation may be approximately 14 to 167. Alternatively, clinicians could identify patients at high risk for bleeding by using validated scores, which are imperfect but more reliable than intuitive estimates alone. Bleeding may be more likely shortly after initiating anticoagulation and also after several years of anticoagulation, due to aging or development of comorbid conditions. The relevant question from the perspective of the patient who has successfully completed a period of prophylaxis is: given that the patient has not sustained bleeding while receiving anticoagulation to this point, when does the risk of continuing anticoagulation outweigh the risk of recurrent venous thromboembolism (approximately 20 cases/ 1000 patient-years)? This question must be revisited as the patient ages, medications are added, and comorbid conditions develop. From a societal perspective, costeffectiveness analysis needs to incorporate accurate community bleeding estimates. However, we recognize that methodological limitations of meta-analysis make these questions difficult to answer. Finally, by restricting the analysis of "the risk period while receiving lifelong therapy" to the period from time B to time C in their Figure 1, the authors might have overestimated the risk of recurrent venous thromboembolism in patients treated with fixed-duration therapy by giving undue weight to the "period of increased risk," which elsewhere has been called "the catch-up phenomenon." Any overestimate with respect to the risk of recurrence during fixed-duration therapy does not change the lesson from this meta-analysis: the longer anticoagulation is prolonged, the narrower the rate difference becomes. This diminishes the absolute benefit of prolonging anticoagulation as the years go by. Further studies are needed to define the point at which, given individual patient characteristics, the benefit of continuing anticoagulation no longer justifies the risks.


Si3N4 films were deposited on n-type silicon substrate by the radio frequency magnetron sputtering technique. The current–voltage (I–V) characteristics of Au/Si3N4/n-Si (metal–insulator–semiconductor) Schottky diodes were investigated in the temperature range of 160–400 K. Experimental results show an abnormal increase in the zero-bias barrier height (BH) (ΦBo) and a decrease in the ideality factor (n) with increasing temperature. This behavior is attributed to barrier inhomogeneities by assuming a Gaussian distribution (GD) of BHs. The conventional Richardson plot (ln(Io/T2) versus 1000/T) exhibits a linearity above about 300 K. The values of activation energy (Ea) and Richardson constant (A*) were found to be 0.350 eV and 1.242 × 10–3 A cm−2 K−2 from the slope and the intercept at the ordinate of the linear region of this plot, respectively. Also, we attempted to draw a ΦBo versus q/2kT plot to determine evidence of the GD of BHs, and the values of and σs = 0.137 eV for the mean BH and zero-bias standard deviation, respectively, were obtained from this plot; then, a modified ln(Io/T2) − q2σs2/2k2T2 versus q/kT plot gives and A* as 0.992 eV and 108.228 A cm−2 K−2, respectively. This value of A* is very close to the theoretical value of 112 A cm−2 K−2 for n-type Si.


Summary
Judged by the yield of infective virus, good infection of cowpea mesophyll protoplasts with alfalfa mosaic virus is obtained when protoplasts are resuspended at 0 °C in 0.5 m-mannitol, 0.01 m-potassium phosphate, pH 5.6, containing 1 µg/ml poly-l-ornithine and about 2 µg/ml virus. At 25°C, virus infectivity is first detectable 12 h after inoculation and increases exponentially in the next 12 h. Forty hours after inoculation about 1 to 5 × 106 virus particles are produced per living protoplast. As with intact leaves, a mixture of bottom component, middle component and top component b nucleoprotein is required for the infection of protoplasts.
Virus multiplication is not sensitive to chloramphenicol (200 µg/ml) but is completely inhibited by cycloheximide (10 µg/ml) applied at any point in the growth cycle. Actinomycin D (10 µg/ml) interferes with an early step in virus replication.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of the different types of gastric polyps in the Daniel Alcides Carrión Hospital between the years of 2014 and 2016, and also define the endoscopic and histopathological characteristics of the lesions.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
7559 endoscopic reports were reviewed, in which 148 gastric polyps were found. The patients age and sex as well as the localization, number, size and macroscopic and microscopic aspects of the polyps were recorded.

RESULTS
The prevalence of gastric polyps was 1.9%; 74.3% of these were found in women with an average age of 61.5 years. 59.4% of the gastric polyps found were singular, and the majority were located on the body and antrum of the stomach. 74.29% of the polyps were less than 1 cm in diameter and 83.64% of these were sessile when seen macroscopically. According to the histological type, it was found that the majority of gastric polyps were hyperplasic (76.4%), followed by fundic gland polyps (17.5%) and gastric adenomas (6.1%). It was also found that multiple gastric polyps were associated with fundic gland polyps while singular polyps were most likely hyperplastic or adenomas.

CONCLUSION
The prevalence of fundic gland polyps has increased, while the other types of polyps have maintained their estimated prevalence.


Pain perception in non-mammalian vertebrates such as fish is a controversial issue. We demonstrate that, in the fish Leporinus macrocephalus, an imposed restraint can modulate the behavioral response to a noxious stimulus, specifically the subcutaneous injection of 3% formaldehyde. In the first experiment, formaldehyde was applied immediately after 3 or 5 min of the restraint. Inhibition of the increase in locomotor activity in response to formaldehyde was observed, which suggests a possible restraint-induced antinociception. In the second experiment, the noxious stimulus was applied 0, 5, 10 and 15 min after the restraint, and both 3 and 5 min of restraint promoted short-term antinociception of approximately 5 min. In experiments 3 and 4, an intraperitoneal injection of naloxone (30 mg.kg−1) was administered 30 min prior to the restraint. The 3- minute restraint-induced antinociception was blocked by pretreatment with naloxone, but the corresponding 5-minute response was not. One possible explanation for this result is that an opioid and a non-preferential μ–opioid and/or non-opioid mechanism participate in this response modulation. Furthermore, we observed that both the 3- and 5- minutes restraint were severely stressful events for the organism, promoting marked increases in serum cortisol levels. These data indicate that the response to a noxious stimulus can be modulated by an environmental stressor in fish, as is the case in mammals. To our knowledge, this study is the first evidence for the existence of an endogenous antinociceptive system that is activated by an acute standardized stress in fish. Additionally, it characterizes the antinociceptive response induced by stress in terms of its time course and the opioid mediation, providing information for understanding the evolution of nociception modulation.


The aim of the study was to compare the tactical performance, anthropometric indicators, and physical capabilities between different maturational groups in young soccer players. Study participants were 48 soccer players (14.80±1.52 years). Anthropometric measurements of weight, height, and trunk-cephalic height were carried out. Peak height velocity (PHV) was used as a relative indicator of somatic maturity. For evaluation of physical capabilities, the sit-and-reach test, Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1, handgrip test, modified abdominal test, and vertical jumps (Counter Movement Jump and Squat Jump) were performed. Tactical performance was achieved through the System of Tactical Assessment in Soccer (FUT-SAT). For statistical analysis, non-hierarchical k-means Cluster Analysis, One-Way ANOVA, and the Pearson correlation coefficient were used. The results indicated that early players in the maturational process presented higher values in the performance of physical capabilities such as aerobic endurance and lower limb muscle strength (P<0.01). Tactical principles "offensive coverage", "offensive unity", and "concentration" were executed more frequently by the Post-PHV group than the Pre-PHV (P<0.05). Significant correlations were observed between PHV and the principles "offensive coverage" (r=0.32), "offensive unity" (r=0.39), and "concentration" (r=0.38). These results suggest that advancement in maturational classification has little influence on the management of gaming space.


Deciphering the mechanism behind the lack of growth during the prolonged low abundance phase of cyclic populations represents a major challenge due to the lack of data. However, long-term capture-mark-recapture datasets can help resolve this question through demographic analyses. We analysed the demography and movements of cyclic brown lemmings on Bylot Island, Canada, with a 16-yr (2004-2019) live-trapping program and looked for inversely density-dependent factors that could contribute to a prolonged low phase. We found that the proportion of females in the population was inversely density-dependent with a strong male-biased sex ratio at low densities but not at high densities. In contrast, survival of adult females was higher than adult males, but both had lower survival at low densities than at high ones. Distances moved by both adult males and females were density-dependent, and proportion of females in reproductive condition was weakly density-dependent. Individual body condition, measured as monthly change in body mass, was not density-dependent. Overall, the strong malebiased sex ratio at very low densities suggests a loss of reproductive potential due to the rarity of females and appears to be the most susceptible demographic factor that could contribute to the prolonged low phase in cyclic brown lemmings. What leads to this sexbias in the first place is still unclear, but indirect evidence suggests that this may be due to a higher vulnerability of nesting females to predation in winter than males.


Total ionizing dose and displacement damage testing is performed to characterize and determine the suitability of candidate electronics for NASA spacecraft and program use.


The purpose of this study was to improve the learning outcomes of class V students in Mathematics learning with the elaboration learning model. The research undertaken was Classroom Action Research through 3 cycles, each cycle consisting of one meeting. The stages of each cycle are planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. In the first cycle the learning completeness index was 77.78%, in the second cycle and cycle it increased to 88.89%. With the class average value of 77.78 in the first cycle, 87.04 in the second cycle and 87.78 in the third cycle. From this classroom action research, it can be concluded that the application of the elaboration learning model can improve student learning outcomes in learning Mathematics on the scale of SD Negeri Panulisan Barat 01, Dayeuhluhur District, Cilacap Regency.


The beam profile monitor is a wire scanner comprising of an isolated L-shaped tungsten wire driven at 45" through the beam by a stepping motor controlled by a microprocessor system. Three measuring methods have been investigated : the secondary emis-sion, the change of resistance of the wire, and the observation with a scintillator of the interactions taking place in the wire. Profiles of beams with 6x10' to 3 x 1011 ehave been measured, some of them in the vicinity of the e-/e+ converter at the LAL ORSAY linac. An economical S-band waveguide monitor has been designed to follow the beam position changes during the 12 ns pulse of LIL. It consists of a waveguide pick-up with a 2-4 GHz bandpass, of a voltage controlled phase shifter and of a double balanced mixer used as a phase detector. The S-band components are located close to the pick-up and are small enough to be easily shielded.


Studies on the use of space and habitat selection of threatened species are useful for identifying factors that influence fitness of individuals and population viability. However, there is a considerable lack of published information regarding these factors for the European wildcat ( Felis silvestris ). Serra da Malcata Nature Reserve (SMNR), a mountainous area in the eastern centre of Portugal, hosts a stable wildcat population which constitutes a priority in terms of conservation. We studied space use and habitat selection of female wildcats in SMNR with the following objectives: 1) to describe seasonal space use and habitat selection and 2) to obtain information on priority habitats for wildcats in order to develop a proper conservation strategy. We used radio-telemetry as the basic tool for our study and we analysed habitat selection using an Euclidean distance-based approach to investigate seasonal and annual habitat selection by wildcats. We detected that during spring females exhibit smaller home ranges and core areas. Females exhibited habitat selection for establishing home ranges from the available habitats within the study area. In fact, females selected Quercus pyrenaica forests and Quercus rotundifolia and Arbutus unedo forests positively and avoided Erica spp. and Cistus ladanifer scrubland and other habitats. Quercus pyrenaica forests and Quercus rotundifolia and Arbutus unedo forests are important habitats for female wildcats because they provide shelter and food resources, such as small mammals. They also contain elevated tree cavities which can be use as dens. In contrast, Erica spp. and Cistus ladanifer scrubland is an extremely dense habitat with low associated biodiversity and so wildcats avoid it. We believe that this habitat, as well as pine stands, do not provide food and cover resources for wildcats. Home ranges with higher percentage of these habitat types tend to be larger, since females are required to use larger areas to meet their resource requirements. Our results emphasize the importance of the remaining autochthonous forests in wildcat conservation. Therefore, we recommend that current habitat policy for restoration and conservation should be continued and expanded in order to substantially increase the amount of natural forested land in Serra da Malcata.


The stability of the equilibrium of axisymmetric drops suspended from a horizontal circular orifice is studied mathematically in this paper. For axisymmetric perturbations it has been shown by Pitts (1976) that limit point instability occurs at the positions of maximum volume, or of maximum internal pressure at the point of support, depending on whether the drop is held at constant volume, or at constant pressure head respectively. Here a criterion is given for asymmetric instabilities. It is shown that bifurcation of the equilibrium into an asymmetric mode, with azimuth wave-number m = 1, will occur when the profile of the drop becomes horizontal at the point of support. For a drop grown from an initial horizontal plane interface calculations show that when the orifice radius a is greater than 3.219... in units of the capillary length, onset of this instability will precede the axisymmetric instability. When a reaches the value 3.812... the m = 1 instability sets in at the plane interface, and we recover the earlier results of Plateau (1873) and Maxwell (1875) on the instability of horizontal plane interfaces. Higher order instabilities are briefly discussed, and it is shown that modes m = 2, 3, 4,... will not precede the m = 1 mode for a drop suspended in this way.


MYCN, an oncogenic transcription factor of the Myc family, is a major driver of neuroblastoma tumorigenesis. Due to the difficulty in drugging MYCN directly, revealing the molecules in MYCN regulatory networks will help to identify effective therapeutic targets for neuroblastoma therapy. Here we perform ChIP-sequencing and small RNA-sequencing of neuroblastoma cells to determine the MYCN-binding sites and MYCN-associated microRNAs, and integrate various types of genomic data to construct MYCN regulatory networks. The overall analysis indicated that MYCN-regulated genes were involved in a wide range of biological processes and could be used as signatures to identify poor-prognosis MYCN-non-amplified patients. Analysis of the MYCN binding sites showed that MYCN principally served as an activator. Using a computational approach, we identified 32 MYCN co-regulators, and some of these findings are supported by previous studies. Moreover, we investigated the interplay between MYCN transcriptional and microRNA post-transcriptional regulations and identified several microRNAs, such as miR-124-3p and miR-93-5p, which may significantly contribute to neuroblastoma pathogenesis. We also found MYCN and its regulated microRNAs acted together to repress the tumor suppressor genes. This work provides a comprehensive view of MYCN regulations for exploring therapeutic targets in neuroblastoma, as well as insights into the mechanism of neuroblastoma tumorigenesis.


Strong geomagnetic activity is a hazard to electronics and electric power facilities. Assessment of the actual geomagnetic activity level from local magnetometer monitoring therefore is of importance for risk assessment but also in earth sciences and exploration. Wavelet based signal processing methods are applied to extract meaningful information from magnetic field time series in a noisy environment. Using a proper feature vector a local geomagnetic activity index can be derived under not ideal circumstances using computer intelligence methods. Locally linear radial basis function nets and self organizing maps are discussed in this context as data based process models. Key–Words: geomagnetism, signal processing, wavelets, neuro fuzzy modelling, self organizing map


ABSTRACT King Tamatoa III, paramount chief of Raiatea, in what became known as the Society Islands, wore a sacred red feather girdle or maro 'ura on special occasions. Reproduced here is an account of the girdle by the missionary Lancelot Threlkeld, recalling the year 1821 when Tamatoa showed him the girdle and stated his intention of presenting it to the London Missionary Society. Threlkeld highlighted the human sacrifices made in the course of the maro's manufacture and the paranormal powers attributed to the maro. Because maro 'ura belonged to competing chiefly lineages, the discussion below leads to the question of whether there were two maro 'ura held by the competing lineages on Tahiti, only one of which was the so-called Wallis maro 'ura.


In this paper, we present the results of experiments aiming to validate a two-dimensional typology of affective states as a suitable basis for affective classification of texts. Using a corpus of English weblog posts, annotated for mood by their authors, we trained support vector machine binary classifiers to distinguish texts on the basis of their affiliation with one region of the space. We then report on experiments which go a step further, using four-class classifiers based on automated scoring of texts for each dimension of the typology. Our results indicate that it is possible to extend the standard binary sentiment analysis (positive/negative) approach to a two dimensional model (positive/negative; active/passive), and provide some evidence to support a more fine-grained classification along these two axes.


Tourism is one of the most developing branches of service sectors. The paper deals with a key area of a Central-Eastern-European country (Hungary) from the European perspective, i.e. tourism. Tourism provides a remarkable ratio of GDP, thus its importance is inevitable. Tourism destination management (TDM in further text) organisations are local building stones of this important branch. These organisations received remarkable development funds in the previous budget period. The aim was to turn tourism into a competitive and innovative branch. Quadruple helix model - approach to innovation systems provides the opportunity to include the fourth helix - the media-based civic society - into the innovation performance, thus its performance influences the efficacy of the given innovation system. The paper assumes that these TDM organisations, as media-based civil organisations, appear as enterprises that are responsible for touristic innovation performance. The research objective is to prove, or deny that these institutions are important workshops of innovation. A survey research was conducted. In the meantime, feedback was collected about the structure, comprehensiveness and the logical structure of the questionnaire. Cooperation characteristics, the correlations between the innovation performances, the factors generating innovation and the reason for innovation are presented. The results of the study can be used by the state-governed tourism management, the vocational organisations and the Hungarian Tourism Ltd. in the process of establishing the framework of calls, and operational models in order to make international comparisons (with other countries).


Experimental research has shown that one of the key factors affecting the behaviour of reinforced concrete structures strengthened with externally-bonded fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) is the bonding behaviour between concrete and FRP laminates. As a complement to experimentation, this paper proposed the use of serial/parallel mixing theory in numerical simulation, which is a tool for studying the behaviour of the concrete-FRP epoxy interface. An example is presented which analyses beam test simulation results and compares them with the experimental results.


Testicular cancer is a rare malignant tumor. In the structure of general cancer incidence, this nosology accounts for about 1–1.5% of cases. Among this pathology, about 90–95% is due to testicular germ cell tumors. Currently, testicular cancer is a potentially treatable solid tumor with a 10-year survival rate of more than 95% upon timely diagnosis and proper treatment. In this regard, early diagnosis and treatment of this pathology is an urgent task today. The article presents a clinical observation of the treatment of a patient with a testicular germ cell tumor. The presented clinical case demonstrates the successful conduct of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and further orchifuniculectomy in the presence of distant metastases namely in case of a non-seminomic form of a testicular germ cell tumor. The approach to treating patients with testicular tumors must be individualized and take into account both the potential gain and the potential risks of the treatment being performed.


We present a model for capturing musical features and creating novel sequences of music, called the Convolutional-Variational Recurrent Neural Network. To generate sequential data, the model uses an encoder-decoder architecture with latent probabilistic connections to capture the hidden structure of music. Using the sequence-to-sequence model, our generative model can exploit samples from a prior distribution and generate a longer sequence of music. We compare the performance of our proposed model with other types of Neural Networks using the criteria of Information Rate that is implemented by Variable Markov Oracle, a method that allows statistical characterization of musical information dynamics and detection of motifs in a song. Our results suggest that the proposed model has a better statistical resemblance to the musical structure of the training data, which improves the creation of new sequences of music in the style of the originals.


Abstract The effects of hybridization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) with carbon black (CB) and the structure-property relationships of nanocomposites based on hydrogenated nitrile-butadiene rubber/hydrogenated carboxylated nitrile-butadiene rubber blends were extensively studied. MWCNTs used in this work were modified through acid treatment to improve the dispersion of MWCNTs in the rubber matrix and the surface interaction between MWCNTs and matrix. Synergistic interaction between CB and MWCNTs increased the tensile modulus and tear strength of nanocomposites. The effect of MWCNTs on the transport properties invoked an increment in the thermal conductivity of the nanocomposites. A combination of 10 phr (parts per hundred rubber) MWCNTs with 40 phr CB dramatically increased the modulus at 100% elongation, tear strength, and thermal conductivity of the nanocomposite by 66%, 28%, and 36%, respectively, compared with those of nanocomposite filled with 40 phr CB.


Tiny machine learning (tinyML) has emerged during the past few years aiming to deploy machine learning models to embedded AI processors with highly constrained memory and computation capacity. Low precision quantization is an important model compression technique that can greatly reduce both memory consumption and computation cost of model inference. In this study, we focus on post-training quantization (PTQ) algorithms that quantize a model to low-bit (less than 8-bit) precision with only a small set of calibration data and benchmark them on different tinyML use cases. To achieve a fair comparison, we build a simulated quantization framework to investigate recent PTQ algorithms. Furthermore, we break down those algorithms into essential components and re-assembled a generic PTQ pipeline. With ablation study on different alternatives of components in the pipeline, we reveal key design choices when performing low precision quantization. We hope this work could provide useful data points and shed lights on the future research of low precision quantization.


MCLA-129 is an ADCC-enhanced common light chain bispecific human IgG1 Biclonics® antibody specifically targeting the receptor tyrosine kinases EGFR and c-MET. It inhibits activation and downstream signaling of EGFR and c-MET induced by their respective ligands EGF and HGF and promotes elimination of tumor cells via Antibody-Dependent Cell-Mediated Cytotoxicity (ADCC) and Antibody-Dependent Cell-Mediated Phagocytosis (ADCP). MCLA-129 was developed to overcome c-MET signaling-dependent EGFR TKI-resistance mechanisms and was identified during an unbiased screening campaign with a focus on inhibition of ligand-induced proliferation and migration of cancer cells. Selectivity of MCLA-129 for tumor cells is achieved by simultaneously targeting both EGFR and c-MET. MCLA-129 blocks EGF and HGF binding to EGFR and c-MET, respectively, and consequently inhibits their ligand-induced phosphorylation. MCLA-129 was shown to bind critical residues on EGFR and c-MET for EGF and HGF ligand binding. GlymaxX® low fucose glycoengineering technology was used to enhance the mononuclear cell ADCC activity of the bispecific antibody. MCLA-129 demonstrated potent dose-dependent ADCC and ADCP against all NSCLC cell lines tested, which positively correlated with the EGFR and c-MET expression levels on the target cells. Significant inhibition of tumor growth of NCI-H1975EGFR L858R, T790M and HCC827/ER1EGFR del (E746, A750), c-MET amplified NSCLC cell line derived tumors was observed following MCLA-129 treatment. MCLA-129 can overcome HGF-mediated EGFR-TKI resistance, as demonstrated by testing a non-ADCC enhanced version of this antibody in a panel of NSCLC cell lines in vitro and orthotopic tumors in vivo showing that it inhibits EGFR and c-MET activity. Significant tumor regression was observed following treatment of immunodeficient xenograft NSG-hHGFki mice bearing orthotopic tumors established from HCC827EGFR del (E746, A750) cells. In addition, in an acquired erlotinib EGFR TKI resistance model, treatment of mice harboring tumors as big as >500 mm3 led to significant reduction of tumor size which persisted after the treatment period. Taken together these data demonstrate that MCLA-129 is a potent inhibitor of tumor growth applying various mechanisms of action, including inhibition of c-MET and EGFR signaling, ADCC and ADCP. MCLA-129 holds promise as a potential treatment for patients with NSCLC and other cancers, and warrants clinical evaluation. Citation Format: David J. de Gorter, Alexandre Deshiere, Martijn van Rosmalen, Christian Wohn, Berina Eppink, Tristan Gallenne, Rinse Klooster, Li Mao, Wenxin Xu, Liang Deng, Qingyu Shu, Wei Liu, John de Kruif, Mario Di Matteo, Massimiliano Mazzone, Mark Throsby, Cecile A. Geuijen. The bispecific antibody MCLA-129 impairs NSCLC tumor growth by targeting EGFR and c-MET, inhibiting ligand-induced signaling and promoting ADCC and ADCP [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021; 2021 Apr 10-15 and May 17-21. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(13_Suppl):Abstract nr 952.


A series of cyclodextrin/scutellarin inclusion complexes were prepared from a-cyclodextrin, b-cyclodextrin and 2-hydroxypropyl-b-cyclodextrin with scutellarin (SCU), and their inclusion complexation behaviors, such as stoichiometry, complex stability constants and inclusion mode, were investigated by means of UV/Vis spectroscopy, H NMR and 2D NMR. The results showed that the SCU could be efficiently encapsulated in the cyclodextrin cavity in aqueous solution to produce complexes that were more soluble than free SCU. The enhanced binding ability of cyclodextrins towards SCU was discussed from the viewpoint of the size/shape-fit and multiple recognition mechanism between host and guest.


We present a measurement of the cross-correlation between the MagLim galaxies selected from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) first three years of observations (Y3) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 4 (DR4), reconstructed over $\sim 436$ sq.deg. of the sky. Our galaxy sample, which covers $\sim 4143$ sq.deg., is divided into six redshift bins spanning the redshift range of $0.20<z<1.05$. We adopt a blinding procedure until passing all consistency and systematics tests. After imposing scale cuts for the cross-power spectrum measurement, we reject the null hypothesis of no correlation at 9.1\sigma. We constrain cosmological parameters from a joint analysis of galaxy and CMB lensing-galaxy power spectra considering a flat \LCDM model, marginalized over 23 astrophysical and systematic nuisance parameters. We find the clustering amplitude $S_8\equiv \sigma_8 (\Omega_m/0.3)^{0.5} = 0.75^{+0.04}_{-0.05}$. In addition, we constrain the linear growth of cosmic structure as a function of redshift. Our results are consistent with recent DES Y3 analyses and suggest a preference for a lower $S_8$ compared to results from measurements of CMB anisotropies by the Planck satellite, although at a mild level ($<2 \sigma$) of statistical significance.


Maize (Zea mays L.) landraces are an important source of genes for improving commercial germplasm. Today, drought tolerance and grain quality are major challenges in maize cultivation due to climatic changes and population growth. The Maize Research Institute genebank has a drought tolerant collection, which includes 13 landraces (from the former Yugoslavia) and 12 introduced populations (from different countries). These accessions were analyzed for protein, oil, starch and tryptophan contents, in order to identify drought tolerant accessions with high grain quality. Also, simple sequence repeat (SSR) analysis with specific primers for opaque2 recessive allele (o2) was carried out. All analyzed accessions showed high levels of protein. Oil content ranged from 3.75 % to 5.40 % and starch content from 67.5 % to 71.30 %. Average protein content was not different (p < 0.01) between landraces and introduced populations. Starch and oil contents were higher in introduced populations at 0.84 % and 0.39 %, respectively (p < 0.01). Twenty-three accessions had high levels of tryptophan content. A high percentage of kernel type 1 and 2 indicated the presence of endosperm hardness modifier genes. Recessive o2 allele was found in most of the accessions. Absence of o2 in some high tryptophan accessions indicated action of another mutation. In two high tryptophan accessions an unknown band was detected. Absence of negative correlations between proteins, tryptophan and oil makes certain accessions suitable for use in the simultaneous improvement of target genotypes for these traits. Identified drought tolerant, high quality accessions can be used in breeding programs aimed at nutritional improvement of maize grown under drought conditions.


The article analyzes the aspiration of the interwar political and cultural elite of Lithuania to turn Klaipėda Regionacquired in 1923 into integral part of the state of Lithuania by construing collective memory that wouldunify Lithuania Minor and Major. The attention is focussed exclusively on the initiatives whose authors werethe political and cultural elite of Lithuania that identified itself with the tradition of Lithuania Major. KEY WORDS: collective memory, Lithuanian nationalism, Lithuania Minor, Rambynas, Martynas Jankus. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ahuk.v24i0.296


Recent years have seen abundant literature, in law and the social sciences, addressing the significance of "soft law," "self-regulation," and "private law-making" and analyzing the potential implications of "governance" in general for the trajectory of law. This Article is grounded in and oriented towards this broad theoretical and conceptual terrain by pointing at empirical phenomena that mark a shift towards market-embedded forms of social regulation. I specifically discuss the Equator Principles, a self-regulatory blueprint for overseeing the social and environmental performance of project-finance initiatives. I argue for an understanding of the process in terms of a general moralization of markets, in and of itself a product of neo-liberal conceptions of governance. I posit that one implication of this process is that socially-oriented norm-making and norm-enforcement merge with the instrumental and utilitarian logic of markets.


Clinical question What is the best treatment for bacterial conjunctivitis? Results Topical antibiotics expedite recovery from bacterial conjunctivitis. The choice of antibiotic usually does not affect outcome. Implementation Recognition of key distinguishing features of bacterial conjunctivitis Pitfalls that can be recognized in the history and physical examination Choice of antibiotic When to refer for specialist treatment.


Although previous research has identified cognitive styles that distinguish individuals with bipolar disorder (BD), individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD), and individuals without mood disorders from one another, findings have been inconsistent. The current study included 381 participants classified into a BD group, a MDD group, and a no mood disorder group. To differentiate between these groups, this study evaluated cognitive styles with a battery of traditional and more recently-developed measures. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analyses were used to determine the discriminate ability of variables with significant between group differences. Results supported that BD and MDD may be characterized by distinct cognitive styles. Given work showing that interventions for MDD may not be effective at treating BD, it is important to directly compare individuals with these disorders. By clarifying the overlapping and divergent cognitive styles characterizing BD and MDD, research can not only improve diagnostic validity, but also provide more efficacious and effective interventions.


Barley straw serves as livestock feed and mulch for soil and water conservation in the mixed barley-livestock systems of the Ethiopian highlands. High demand for barley straw biomass in the system creates competition between the two uses. This study aimed to identify the determinants of the utilization of barley straw for mulch and feed. Data on the production and use of barley straw were collected from 236 households using a structured questionnaire. Use of the straw for the purposes of soil mulch at three levels, 0–15% (marginal mulching), 15–35% (optimal mulching), 35–100% (over-mulching), was analyzed using a multinomial logit model. The optimal proportion of barley straw used as soil mulch was positively affected by the educational level of the household head, family size, distance between cropping land and homestead, number of equines in the household and amount of straw production. Female-headed households were more likely to mulch less than the optimal amount of barley straw. In general, the more the farmer's exposure to formal extension, the less the proportion of barley straw used for soil mulching. This study provides guidance for the proportional utilization of barley straw. This will contribute to the design of appropriate biomass utilization strategies in barley-livestock farming systems.


Malicious certificate authorities (CAs) pose a significant threat to the security of the Internet of Things (IoT). Existing CA auditing schemes primarily rely on passive detection and public data collection, lacking real-time and comprehensive monitoring. In this paper, we propose a novel double-authentication preventing signature scheme based on an SM2 algorithm, referred to as Dap-SM2. We further enhance its functionality by introducing Self-C2AD, a CA auditing mechanism with self-enforcement. In our proposed mechanism, any malicious CA that generates two certificates with different descriptions (such as public key and basic information) for the same IoT device will immediately lose its private key. To ensure the security of our proposed scheme, we provide a detailed security analysis of Dap-SM2. The analysis demonstrates that our Self-C2AD mechanism meets the necessary security requirements, offering robust protection against malicious CAs. Additionally, we conduct an efficiency evaluation and present experimental data to illustrate the promising potential of our construction for future IoT applications. By introducing the Dap-SM2 scheme and the Self-C2AD mechanism, we address the critical issue of malicious CAs in the IoT domain. Our approach provides real-time and comprehensive auditing capabilities, surpassing the limitations of existing schemes. The security analysis confirms the effectiveness of Dap-SM2, while the efficiency evaluation and experimental data demonstrate its suitability for practical IoT applications. In summary, our work presents a novel solution to combat the threat of malicious CAs in the IoT context. The Dap-SM2 scheme, coupled with the Self-C2AD mechanism, offers enhanced security and real-time auditing capabilities. The security analysis validates the robustness of our approach, while the efficiency evaluation and experimental data showcase its potential for future IoT deployments.


The possibilities and need for adaptation and mitigation depends on uncertain future developments with respect to socio-economic factors and the climate system. Scenarios are used to explore the impacts of different strategies under uncertainty. In this chapter, some scenarios are presented that are used in the ADAM project for this purpose. One scenario explores developments with no mitigation, and thus with high temperature increase and high reliance on adaptation (leading to 4oC increase by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels). A second scenario explores an ambitious mitigation strategy (leading to 2oC increase by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels). In the latter scenario, stringent mitigation strategies effectively reduces the risks of climate change, but based on uncertainties in the climate system a temperature increase of 3oC or more cannot be excluded. The analysis shows that, in many cases, adaptation and mitigation are not trade-offs but supplements. For example, the number of people exposed to increased water resource stress due to climate change can be substantially reduced in the mitigation scenario, but even then adaptation will be required for the remaining large numbers of people exposed to increased stress. Another example is sea level rise, for which adaptation is more cost-effective than mitigation, but mitigation can help reduce damages and the cost of adaptation. For agriculture, finally, only the scenario based on a combination of adaptation and mitigation is able to avoid serious climate change impacts.


Marriage relationship and marriage life is essential phenomena in life. Marriage, which has an important effect on individuals' psychological wellbeing, is the stage of stepping into a new life. The satisfaction achieved from marital relationships plays an important role in shaping the satisfaction one will receive from life. In this research the main subject was the investigation of marriage satisfaction in women in terms of sexual quality of life and cognitive distortions. Relationship between marriage satisfaction and demographic data were evaluated additionally. Marital Life Scale, Sexual Life Quality Scale and Cognitive Distortions Scale were used as data colletion tools. These scales were applied to 322 married women living in Ankara. SPSS 22 program was used to analyze the data obtained from the scales. After the determination of sociodemographic data, the relationship between sexual life quality, marital satisfaction, and cognitive distortions were tested by Pearson correlation analysis. The results showed that all the variables were correlated with each other. The mean scores of marital satisfaction were compared between groups with low sexual quality and high sexual quality via independent sample t test. It was found that women with higher sexual satisfaction had higher satisfaction with marriage than women with low sexual satisfaction. According to the results of independent sample ttest, women who use cognitive distortions more often have decreased marital satisfaction than those who use cognitive RESEARCH ARTICLE Refereed & Index & Open Access Journal journalofsocial.com 2020 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL, HUMANITIES AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES 2020 6 (22): 70-87 71 distortions less. In addition, marital satisfaction was evaluated according to sociodemographic variables by the analysis of independent sample t test and Kruskal-Wallis test. Women who were married by flirting, those who work and those who have no children were found to have more satisfaction from marriage than women who were blindly married, those who do not work and those who have children. When the education level is analyzed, it is seen that women who have bachelor and master degree have higher marital satisfaction than those who graduated from high school and below.


Summary A study was designed to determine the effects of heated and unheated human, calf, rabbit, guinea pig and mouse serum on rates of phagocytosis and digestion of P-32 labeled Histoplasma capsulatum by peritoneal macrophages obtained from control and immunized mice. The results obtained were as follows:
 1.Ingestion rates by macrophages from normal and immune mice were not significantly different in the presence of heated or unheated heterologous and homologous sera. 2.Macrophages from immunized mice digested H. capsulatum more rapidly than those from normal mice in the presence of heated and unheated human, rabbit, guinea pig and mouse serum and unheated calf serum, but not in the presence of heated calf serum. 3.Heat labile factors in unheated sera induced transitory increases in rates of cytopepsis of H. capsulatum ingested by both normal and "immune" phagocytes. 4.Cytopeptic rates of both cell populations were highest in the presence of heated and unheated mouse or guinea pig serum, whereas the rates in the presence of heated human, rabbit, or calf serum were not significantly different. Unheated rabbit and calf sera induced intermediate rates of digestion by the phagocytes.


Hard times give rise to greater demand for protection. International trade rules include provisions that allow for raising barriers to aid industries when they suffer economic injury. Yet widespread use of flexibility measures may undermine the trade system and worsen economic conditions. How do states balance these conflicting pressures? This article assesses the effect of crises on cooperation in trade. We hypothesize that governments impose less protectionism during economic crisis when economic troubles are widespread across countries than when they face crisis in isolation. The lesson of Smoot–Hawley and coordination through international economic institutions represent mechanisms of informal governance that encourage cooperation to avoid a spiral of protectionism. Analysis of industry-level data on protection measures for the period from 1996 to 2011 provides support for our claim that under conditions of shared hard times, states exercise strategic self-restraint to avoid beggar-thy-neighbor policies.


Background The spatial Principal Component Analysis (sPCA, Jombart 2008) is designed to investigate non-random spatial distributions of genetic variation. Unfortunately, the associated tests used for assessing the existence of spatial patterns (global and local test; Jombart et al. 2008) lack statistical power and may fail to reveal existing spatial patterns. Here, we present a non-parametric test for the significance of specific patterns recovered by sPCA. Results We compared the performance of this new test to the original global and local tests using datasets simulated under classical population genetic models. Results show that our test outperforms the original global and local tests, exhibiting improved statistical power while retaining similar, and reliable type I errors. Moreover, by allowing to test various sets of axes, it can be used to guide the selection of retained sPCA components. Conclusions As such, our test represents a valuable complement to the original analysis, and should prove useful for the investigation of spatial genetic patterns. Keywords; eigenvalues; sPCA; spatial genetic patterns; Monte-Carlo


Concept-based interpretations of black-box models are often more intuitive for humans to understand. The most widely adopted approach for concept-based interpretation is Concept Activation Vector (CAV). CAV relies on learning a linear relation between some latent representation of a given model and concepts. The linear separability is usually implicitly assumed but does not hold true in general. In this work, we started from the original intent of concept-based interpretation and proposed Concept Gradient (CG), extending concept-based interpretation beyond linear concept functions. We showed that for a general (potentially non-linear) concept, we can mathematically evaluate how a small change of concept affecting the model's prediction, which leads to an extension of gradient-based interpretation to the concept space. We demonstrated empirically that CG outperforms CAV in both toy examples and real world datasets.


With the rapid development of RFID technologies, RFID has been introduced into applications such as supply chain management, inventory control, sampling inspection, 3-D positioning and object tracking. Usually, the reader accesses all the tags in its interrogation region while some applications may only need to identify the tags in a specified area which is smaller than the reader's interrogation region. This paper concerns the essential problem of estimating cardinality of tags in the specified area. The key novelty of our solution builds on an estimation synopsis that can capture key counting information by moving the reader as well as a simple operation. With the help of this data structure, a BS can be obtained which only contains the target tags. By computing the number of 1 in the BS, we can easily get cardinality |E| of the tags in the specified area. We conduct extensive experiments to examine this design and the results shows that our solution achieves high efficiency. Because it not requires any modification of tags and can be implemented with only one reader and some passive RFID tags, the proposed method is easy to deploy in a practical system.


Direct photoelectrochemical (PEC) etching of submicron diffraction gratings in n-InP and n-Ga-InAsP has been studied using laser interference holography. In this technique the semiconductor is placed in an electrolyte and electrically biased to form a depletion region at the sample surface. A 2-mole HF/0.5-mole KOH solution was used in these experiments. Etching is controlled by the laser beam intensity at the electrolyte-crystal interface and for n-type materials occurs by an oxidative decomposition reaction involving photogenerated holes. Holographic exposure of the sample results in selective photoetching since the light-to-dark etch rate ratio is > 100:1. Development of such a maskless technique for producing gratings has potential application in the fabrication of distributed feedback (DFB) lasers which are currently made by a multistep photoresist process.


ABSTRACT In Jordan, there is a deficiency in postnatal care provided to women and their newborns. This study investigated the feasibility of initiating postnatal home visits in Jordan. Thirty Jordanian mothers who had recently given birth were recruited from two governmental hospitals in the northern region of Jordan to participate in a qualitative study through face-to-face, voice-recorded interviews. The findings revealed that initiating postnatal home visits as part of postnatal care was well-received by the participants. Mothers' views and perceptions regarding postpartum home visits play an integral role in finding areas to improve postnatal services.


This article documents the experiences of childless Pakhtun women of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as narrated by them. These narratives present primary data on the most significant issue about which research studies are relatively scarce. This exploratory study drawing upon in-depth interviews of 45 childless women and 20 men in the 3 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through convenient purposive sampling techniques, presents a narrative of the physical and mental health and lifestyle behaviours of childless women and men currently within 25-60 years of age. Research findings indicate that childless women become more anxious about their social and economic security and hopelessness escalates as the end of childbearing approaches. Further, their self-esteem goes low and depression, anxiety, and grief goes up. Stigmatization, conjugal dissonance and stereotypical attitudes of society injure their selfidentity. This empirical study recommends more studies to be undertaken on the plight of childless persons.


In this paper we consider an incomplete market framework and explain how to use jointly observed prices of the underlying asset and of some derivatives written on this asset for an efficient pricing of other derivatives. This question involves two types of moment restrictions, which can be written either for a given value of the conditioning variable or can be uniform with respect to this conditioning variable. This distinction between local and uniform conditional moment restrictions leads to an extension of the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), a method in which all restrictions are assumed uniform. The Extended Method of Moments (XMM) provides estimators of the parameters with different rates of convergence: the rate is the standard parametric one for the parameters which are identifiable from the uniform restrictions, whereas the rate can be nonparametric for the risk premium parameters. We derive the (kernel) nonparametric efficiency bounds for estimating a conditional moment of interest and prove the asymptotic efficiency of XMM. To avoid misleading arbitrage opportunities in estimated derivative prices, an XMM estimator based on an information criterion is introduced. The general results are applied in a stochastic volatility model to get efficient derivatice prices, to measure the uncertainty of estimated prices and to estimate the risk premium parameters.


Abstract Holoprosencephaly (HPE) is a severe and complex malformation caused by incomplete cleavage of the prosencephalon and incomplete development of paramedian structures. Many causes have been recognized as responsible for this malformation including maternal diabetes, chromosomal abnormalities, and heterozygous mutations, involving four major genes (SHH, Z1C2, SIX3, and TGIF) and other less frequently reported genes. HPE has frequently been reported as a feature of complex malformative syndromes such as Smith–Lemli–Opitz syndrome, CHARGE syndrome (acronym of Coloboma, Heart defects, choanal Atresia, Retardation of growth and/or development, Genitourinary malformation and Ear abnormalities), and Rubinstein–Taybi syndrome. Moreover, children with HPE may present with other anomalies aside from those of the brain and face, including endocrine disorders such as diabetes insipidus, adrenal hypoplasia, hypogonadism, thyroid hypoplasia, and growth hormone deficiency. We report a boy with typical clinical signs of HPE including neuroradiologic findings resembling severe congenital hydrocephalus. The patient also presented with a specific metabolic anomaly consisting of recurrent episodes of hypernatremia.


Foresight's Spring 2011 issue included Robert Rieg and Ramona Schoder's article "Corporate Prediction Markets: Pitfalls and Barriers" on the hurdles that must be overcome to properly establish a corporate prediction market (CPM). They enumerated four principal obstacles: (1) identifying the appropriate subject to be forecast; (2) defining the subject clearly enough for people to know what they are betting on; (3) motivating and securing an adequate number of participants; and (4) embedding the CPM within the corporate culture. Their conclusion: only selective use of a CPM would be feasible and practical. In the following response, Foresight's Prediction Market Editor Andreas Graefe notes that certain of the challenges can readily be overcome, and that a promising role for CPMs lies ahead – if the conditions for success are better understood. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2011


Channel state information (CSI) at the base station (BS) is crucial to achieve beamforming and multiplexing gains in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. State-of-the-art limited feedback schemes require feedback overhead that scales linearly with the number of BS antennas, which is prohibitive for 5G massive MIMO. This paper proposes novel limited feedback algorithms that lift this burden by exploiting the inherent sparsity in double-directional MIMO channel representation using overcomplete dictionaries. These dictionaries are associated with angle of arrival and angle of departure that specifically account for antenna directivity patterns at both ends of the link. The proposed algorithms achieve satisfactory channel estimation accuracy using a small number of feedback bits, even when the number of transmit antennas at the BS is large—making them ideal for 5G massive MIMO. Judicious simulations reveal that they outperform a number of popular feedback schemes and underscore the importance of using angle dictionaries matching the given antenna directivity patterns, as opposed to uniform dictionaries. The proposed algorithms are lightweight in terms of computation, especially on the user equipment side, making them ideal for actual deployment in 5G systems.


Single-use plastic waste has become a growing concern in daily life. Community leaders are implementing programs to reduce the use of single-use plastic and change consumer behavior. This study, using the social cognitive theory framework for sustainable consumption, examines the reciprocal relationship among the following three factors: personal (green consumer values), environmental (bans and rebate/reward programs), and behavioral (consumer decision-making related to single-use plastic waste). The study surveyed consumers (N = 330) across the United States who watched a video on the effects of single-use plastic waste on health and well-being. The results indicate that states with bans or rebate/reward programs tend to have higher green consumer values and consumers in those states report less use of single-use plastic waste. Education level also has a significant impact on green consumer values and plastic waste usage. The study provides a resource guide for decision makers to implement programs in five areas: (1) Business Resources, (2) Public Policy Resources, (3) Non-Profit Resources, (4) Education Resources, and (5) Personal Resources. The study also suggests potential areas for future research.


A 24 h incubation study was conducted in situ in Manly Dam reservoir, Sydney, Australia. The study aimed to evaluate the relative effectiveness of grazing on phytoplankton by a resident macrozooplankton community, dominated by the cladoceran Ceriodaphnia and some copepods, in comparison with grazing by added, non-resident Daphnia carinata in the absence of the resident macrozooplankton community. Although there was some variability in the measured grazing rates among incubation bottles (volume: 1.28 L), D. carinata with a mean body size of 30.8 μg dry weight were more efficient grazers than the reservoir macrozooplankton community with a mean body size of 2.5 μg dry weight. The weight-specific clearance rate of D. carinata was 2–65 times higher than that of the resident reservoir community for five taxa of reservoir phytoplankton examined. In comparing the evidence from the literature on the limited ability of D. carinata to graze on cyanobacteria, a management strategy using D. carinata for the reduction of phytoplankton biomass may need to be considered separately from one designed to specifically control undesirable taxa, such as the cyanobacteria Microcystis and Anabaena.


In this paper, an improved method for simulating logic networks using modern spreadsheet programs is presented. This method is based on simulating the basic blocks that constitute a logic network and in connecting these blocks together. The user interface is customized using toolbars, menus, help, dialog sheets and other advanced spreadsheet features. It is characterized by its low cost, flexibility and simplicity.


The effects of cortical superfusion of various chemical agents on the inhibition of the discharge of cortical neurons evoked by caudate nucleus stimulation were studied in urethane anesthetized rats. The post-stimulus inhibition (PSI) was unaffected by cortical superfusion with bicuculline, 6-amino-methyl 3-methyl-4H, 1, 2, 6-benzothiadiazine-1, 1-diazidehydrochloride (TAG) and atropine. The PSI was readily and reversibly blocked by cortical superfusion or i.v. injection of strychnine independently of both strychnine capability of eliciting epileptiform activity, and of the degree of excitation produced by the drug. Two animals with poor or absent PSI showed appearance of PSI after glycine topical application. These data suggest that in the rat neocortex, glycine may mediate the inhibitory effect resulting from caudate stimulation.


In irrigation systems all over the world, water is not only used for the irrigation of agricultural crops, but for a whole range of domestic and other purposes as well. When groundwater is unavailable or of low quality, people may even depend on the irrigation system to provide them with drinking water. Examples from dry regions in different countries have shown that water in irrigation canals is used for laundry mainly on site, while water for domestic purposes is collected for use in the compound. In Morocco and Pakistan special reservoirs have been constructed for the storage of irrigation water for domestic purposes. Often this water is used for cooking and drinking without treatment. While the consumption of untreated surface water poses certain risks to human health, the higher availability of water through the presence of irrigation systems may actually provide health benefits. Water‐washed and even water‐borne diseases are reduced with increased use of water for personal and domestic hygiene. Adapted design and targeted water management could enhance the health benefits from multiple use of irrigation water and hence increase the value of water for irrigation, or rather, for rural development. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Phenotypic heterogeneity in cancers is associated with invasive progression and drug resistance. This heterogeneity arises in part from the ability of cancer cells to switch between phenotypic states, but the dynamics of this cellular plasticity remain poorly understood. Here we apply DNA barcodes to quantify and track phenotypic plasticity across hundreds of clones in a population of cancer cells exhibiting epithelial or mesenchymal differentiation phenotypes. We find that the epithelial-to-mesenchymal cell ratio is highly variable across the different clones in cancer cell populations, but remains stable for many generations within the progeny of any single clone—with a heritability of 0.89. To estimate the effects of combination therapies on phenotypically heterogeneous tumours, we generated quantitative simulations incorporating empirical data from our barcoding experiments. These analyses indicated that combination therapies which alternate between epithelial- and mesenchymal-specific treatments eventually select for clones with increased phenotypic plasticity. However, this selection could be minimized by increasing the frequency of alternation between treatments, identifying designs that may minimize selection for increased phenotypic plasticity. These findings establish new insights into phenotypic plasticity in cancer, and suggest design principles for optimizing the effectiveness of combination therapies for phenotypically heterogeneous tumours.


A prototyped data mining system, DBLearn, was developed in Simon Fraser Univ., which integrates machine learning methodologies with database technologies and efficiently and effectively extracts characteristic and discriminant rules from relational databases. Further developments, of DBLearn lead to a new generation data mining system: DBMiner, with the following features: (1) mining new kinds of rules from large databases, including multiple-level association rules, classification rules, cluster description rules, etc., (2) automatic generation and refinement of concept hierarchies, (3) high level SQL-like and graphical data mining interfaces, and (4) client/server architecture and performance improvements for large applications. The major features of the system are demonstrated with experiments in a research grant information database.


In the paper are reviewed the data from the literature and the personal observations of the authors which indicate that the vagus nerve trunks have a mixed fiber structure, different from that indicated by the classical descriptions of the vagus nerves. A series of details are presented, concerning the radius of distribution of vagal emanations in the sub-diaphragmatic territory. Special stress is laid on the innervation of the surgical aspects are mentioned, and of pathological physiology, with theoretical implications, as well of practical importance for troncular vagotomy.


Currently, it is still a great challenge to obtain copper-based high-efficient dropwise condensation heat transfer (CHT) interfaces via template-free electrodepositing technologies. Here, we report that the density of template-free electrodeposited copper nanocones can maximally reach 1.5 × 106 /mm2 by the synergistic control of substrate surface roughness, poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) molecular weight and PEG concentration. After thiol modification, the densely-packed copper nanocone samples can present low-adhesive superhydrophobicity and condensate microdrop self-jumping function at ambient environment. Condensation heat and mass transfer characterizations show that the CHT coefficient of copper surfaces can maximally enhance 98% for 20℃ vapor and 51% for 40℃ vapor by in-situ growth of superhydrophobic densely-packed copper nanocones. Although the dropwise condensation mode can change from the jumping mode to the mixed jumping and sweeping mode and the shedding-off mode along with the increase of surface subcooling and vapor temperature, the CHT performance of nanosample is still superior to that of the contrast flat hydrophobic surface during the whole testing range of surface subcooling. As vapor temperature increases to 80℃, the CHT performance of nanosample is inferior to that of the contrast sample. The CHT enhancement under low-temperature vapor should be ascribed to the enhancement of small-drop mass transfer ability caused by low-adhesive superhydrophobicity nature of nanosample surfaces. Their performance degradation mainly results from increased drop-drop drag force along with the increase of surface subcooling and vapor temperature. In sharp contrast, the CHT deterioration under high-temperature vapor should be ascribed to larger drop-surface adhesion and drop-drop drag force. The former is caused by vapor penetration while the latter is caused by the dramatically increased nucleation density and growth rate of condensates. These findings would help design and develop copper-based high-efficiency condensation heat transfer interfaces.


If death is a harm then it is a harm that cannot be experienced. The proponent of death's harm must therefore provide an answer to Epicurus, when he says that 'death, is nothing to us, since when we are, death is not present, and when death is present, then we are not'. In this paper I respond to the two main ways philosophers have attempted to answer Epicurus, regarding the subject of death's harm: either directly or via analogy. The direct way argues that there is a truth-maker (or difference-maker) for death's harm, namely in virtue of the intrinsic value the subject's life would have had if they had not died. The analogy argues that there are cases analogous to death, where the subject is harmed although they experience no pain as a result. I argue that both accounts beg the question against the Epicurean: the first by presupposing that one can be harmed while experiencing no displeasure as a result and the second by conflating a de re with a de dicto reading of death's harm. Thus, I argue, until better arguments are provided, one is best to agree with Epicurus and those who follow him that death is not a harm.


Abstract. A detailed thin-section-based micromorphological and
microstructural study of the glacial diamicts exposed at the sea cliff of
Dwasieden (M1, M2, M2) has revealed that all units can be related, in their entirety or in several parts, to subglacial conditions during the repeated readvance
of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet. These readvances are characterised by
polyphase deformation of the diamicts resulting in the development of
ductile and brittle structures and localised water-escape structures.
Subsequent alteration under periglacial conditions has been documented for
the chalk and till units M1 and M2.


Abstract Carnivorous plants inhabit nutrient-poor soils and capture insects to supplement the nutrients that can be acquired from the soil. However, most carnivorous plants also utilize insect pollinators, potentially leading to a "pollinator-prey conflict." The phenology of pitcher and flower development in Sarracenia alata was examined in order to determine whether this species might avoid pollinator-prey conflict by phenological differences in the production and activity of flowers and traps. In two sites examined in different years, the phenological patterns of flower and pitcher development were significantly different. Less than 1% of plants had flowers and pitchers active at the same time. These phenological differences in activity patterns of flowers and pitchers result in little opportunity for pollinator-prey conflict in this species but may have evolved for other reasons.


Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2, WS2, MoSe2, WSe2, and MoTe2 received a lot of attention recently due to their atomic thickness in combination with an optical band gap in the visible or infrared. These properties render them a promising material class for new opto-electronic devices. Strong spin-orbit coupling together with the absence of inversion symmetry leads to an emission of polarized photoluminescence after excitation with circularly polarized light. Therefore, the K and K' valley of the semiconductor can be selectively addressed by left and right handed circularly polarized light, which is interesting for valleytronic applications. To understand the mechanisms governing the creation and destruction of valley polarization, time-resolved experiments are necessary. While stationary photoluminescence experiments show nearly perfect valley polarization, indicating very slow intervalley scattering processes, first valley-selective pump-probe experiments yielded a strong signal immediately after optical excitation in both the pumped and unpumped valley, suggesting a small valley polarization. To understand this behavior, we performed a joint experiment-theory study on the time-resolved valley dynamics in atomically thin WS2. We find strong intervalley Coulomb coupling governing the dynamics in the atomically thin semiconductor. Our results are also applicable to the other transition metal dichalcogenides MoS2, MoSe2, and WSe2, where strong intervalley Coulomb coupling is expected.


Introduction: The objective of this study was to see the effect of fuzzy intensification (INT) operator on enhancement of scintigraphic image. Materials and Methods: Nuclear medicine physician (NMP) provided 25 scintigraphic images that required enhancement. The image pixels value was converted into fuzzy plane and was subjected to contrast INT operator with parameters of INT operator i.e., cross-over = 0.5 and number of iterations = 1 and 2. The enhanced image was again brought back into spatial domain (de-fuzzification) whose intensity value was in the range 0–255. NMP compared the enhanced image with its input image and labeled it as acceptable or unacceptable. The quality of enhanced image was also accessed objectively using four different image metrics namely: Entropy, edge content, absolute mean brightness error and saturation metrics. Results: Most of the enhanced images (18 out of 25 images) obtained at cross-over = 0.5 and number of iterations = 1 are acceptable and found to have overall better contrast compared to the corresponding input image. Four images (two brain positron emission tomography scan and two I-131 scan) obtained at cross-over = 0.5 and with iteration = 2 are acceptable. Three input images (one dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), one I-131 and one I-131- metaiodo-benzyl-guanidine (MIBG) scan) were better than their enhanced images. Conclusions: The enhancement produced by fuzzy INT operator was encouraging. Majority of enhanced images were acceptable at cross-over = 0.5 and number iterations = 1.


Retroperitoneal abscess is a serious complication of diverticular disease. Its management involves several options, ranging from conservative management to surgery. Elective colectomy is most often thought to be mandatory after a percutaneous drainage given the high rate of recidive. However, in patients with high risk for surgery, percutaneous drainage is often the main therapeutic alternative. We report a case of a 80-year-old woman, who was diagnosed to have a retroperitoneal abscess complicating a sigmoid diverticulitis. Ultrasound-guided percutaneous drainage allowed to drain 1500cc of pus and gas. The cytobacteriological examination was positive for: Streptococcus spp and Alkalescens dispar. The therapeutic outcomes were uneventful and despite we did not realize a colectomy because the patient was at high risk for surgery, there was no recidive after a 2-year-follow-up period. Percutaneous drainage can be a therapeutic alternative in patients with high risk for surgery in diverticular abscess of big size.


To help fibromyalgia syndrome's diagnosis, the authors propose the use of Back Pain Classification Scale (BPCS), verbal test for pain analysis, able to distinguish between organic and functional disease. Two-hundred patients suspected for fibromyalgia and forty controls completed the questionnaire and so it was possible correctly to distinguish patients with organic disease from those affected by fibromyalgia. The authors conclude that BPCS can represent a useful tool for fibromyalgia diagnosis.


As Texas and the Caribbean recover from the North Atlantic hurricane season, it
is time for coastal communities to reflect on what makes a resilient community
in the face of more frequent storm events, rising sea levels and changing coastal
flooding patterns. How would you be affected? Would we fare any better in
Australia?


In principe, general relativity seems to allow the existence of closed timelike curves (CTC). However, when quantum effects are considered, it is likely that their existence is prevented by some kind of chronological protection mechanism, as Hawking conjectured. Confirming or refuting the conjecture would require a full quantum theory of gravity. Meanwhile, the use of simulations could shed some light on this issue. We propose simulations of CTCs in a quantum system as well as in a classical one. In the quantum simulation, some restrictions appear that are not present in the classical setup, which could be interpreted as an analogue of a chronology protection mechanism.


【Objectives : The purpose of this study is to investigate splenic constipation syndrome(脾約證) in Shanghanlun by comparing 179 & 247 provisions. Methods : Including Shanghanlun, several texts which contain Cheng Wu-ji, Wan Mi-zhai, Qian Huang, Zhu Gong, Fang You-zhi, Yu Jia-yan, Zhang Lu, Cheng Ying-mao, Zhang Xi-ju, Chen Xiu-yuan, Wu Qian, Xu Ling-tai, You Zai-jing, Zhu Dan-xi's opinion about the splenic constipation syndrome were chosen and comparative consideration was carried out. Results & Conclusions : The following conclusions could be drawn. 247 provisions in Shanghanlun is different from 179 provisions because the beginning of the each splenic constipation syndrome is different. The difference between 179 & 247 provisions are proved by comparing Mild Purgative Decoction which is used Taiyangyangming splenic constipation syndrome and Fructus Cannabis Pill which is used Dorsal pedal pulse splenic constipation syndrome. Cheng Wu-ji's opinion that 179 & 247 provisions is different is meaningful because he is first investigated the different beginning of the splenic constipation syndrome. Several annotator's opinion which oppose Cheng Wu-ji is majority and they set a high value on Jangbu(臟腑) factor. Several annotator's opinion which agree Cheng Wu-ji is minority and they set a high value on splenic constipation syndrome also begins from Taiyangbing. The concept of overlapping of Taiyangyangming is different from the concept of Taiyangyangming. Consequently 179 & 247 provisions has to be distinguished.】


The article discuss the impact derived of the public policies adopted by brazilian government about the expansion of agribusiness activities that causes deforestation and social impacts in the Amazonian and Cerrados regions.


Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an autosomal recessive neuromuscular disease characterized by progressive skeletal muscle denervation due to deterioration of the alpha-motoneurons and consequently by the occurrence of hypotonia, muscle weakness, atrophy. The aim of our research is to demonstrate the potential impact of SMN2 gene copies on the development of one of the three types of SMA patients in the period from 2001 to 2013 year. The study included 74 patients (44 females and 30 males) fulfilling clinical diagnostic criteria for SMA. The patients were classified in a particular category of SMA (type 1, 2 or 3). Ability to sit/walk unaided was taken as the main criterion in the patient classification. 8 patients were classified as type 1 (11.3%), 27 as type 2 (38%), while 36 (50.7%) as type 3 of SMA. Homozygous gene deletions SMN1 was represented in 72/74 (97.2%) of the patients. Remaining two patients are compound heterozygotes with an absence of one SMN1 allele and a small mutation in the other. The number of SMN2 gene copies was significantly lower in SMA type 1 patients than in SMA type 2 and type 3 patients, which showed a highly statistically significant difference (p < 0.001). In this study we found that the number of copies of SMN2 gene correlated with the phenotype of SMA patients by decreasing the severity, which can be used as one of the indispensable prognostic parameters of disease.


Among children referred to our genetic clinics for mental or growth retardation we identified 8 of their mothers with the fetal alcohol syndrome. This was complete in 5 and partial in 3. All of their alcoholic mothers had died. Most of the patients were unwed mothers with mental retardation and no elementary education. One of them was also alcoholic and her third offspring had the syndrome. The etiology of this syndrome and possible preventive measures are discussed.


This paper suggests an HEVC 1-D forward transform hardware architecture that supports four TU sizes (4×4, 8×8, 16×16, and 32×32) and yields high throughput. In the proposed transform hardware architecture, coefficient multiplication is required for all TU sizes using a common computation unit equipped with a shifter and adder. Based on the synthesis results using the TSMC 180nm CMOS process and on video of QFHD, maximum operation frequency is 400MHz. The proposed transform can achieve a high throughput rate of 10-Gpels/cycle with 159k of gate area. In addition, it treats all the TU sizes of 4×4, 8×8, 16×16, and 32×32 in 38 cycles equally.


Along with hypoxia, severe bacterial infection, and abnormal pH, continuous inflammatory response hinders diabetic wounds from healing. It leads to the accumulation of large amounts of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and therefore prevents the transition of diabetic wounds from the inflammatory phase to the proliferative phase. In this work, a nanohybrid double network hydrogel with injectable, self-healing, and tissue adhesion properties based on a platinum nanozyme composite (PFOB@PLGA@Pt) was constructed to manage diabetic wound healing. PFOB@PLGA@Pt exhibited oxygen supply capacity and enzyme catalytic performance accompanied by pH self-regulation in the entire phases of wound healing. In the first stage, the oxygen carried by perfluorooctyl bromide (PFOB) can ameliorate the hypoxia and boost the glucose oxidase-like catalyzed reaction of Pt NPs, leading to a lowered pH environment with gluconic acid. As a result, the NADH oxidase-like, peroxidase-like, and oxidase-like multiple enzyme activities were activated successively, leading to synergistic antibacterial effects through the production of ROS. After the bacterial infection had cleared, the catalase-like and superoxide dismutase-like activities of Pt NPs reshaped the redox microenvironment by scavenging the excess ROS, which transitioned the wound from the inflammatory phase to the proliferative phase. The microenvironmentally adaptive hydrogel treatment can cover all phases of wound healing, showing the significant promoting effect in the repair of diabetic infected wounds.


Orthostatic tolerance may be defined as the ability of humans to maintain cerebral perfusion and consciousness upon movement from a supine or sitting position to the upright posture; for example, subjects can stand suddenly or be tilted to the head-up body position. Similar but not identical physiological responses can be induced by positive G(sub Z) (head to foot) acceleration or exposure to lower body negative pressure (LBNP). The objective is to suddenly shift blood to the lower body to determine how effectively cardiovascular and neural-hormonal compensatory responses react to maintain blood pressure. In the most precise method for measuring tolerance, individuals would be stressed until they faint (syncope). However, the potential consequences and discomforts of such a test usually prohibit such a procedure so that few investigators actually induce syncope. In a more common approach, subjects are exposed to a given level of stress, for example, head-up tilt for 15 min, and any increases in heart rate or decreases in blood pressure are interpreted as indicators of progress toward syncope. Presumably, the greater the perturbation of heart rate and blood pressure, the closer to "tolerance," i.e., point of unconsciousness. Another more appropriate approach is to induce a progressively increasing hypotensive stress until pre-determined physiological responses or pre-syncopal symptoms appear. The physiological criteria may include a sudden drop in systolic blood pressure (greater than 25 mm/min), a sudden drop in heart rate (greater than 15 beats/min), or a systolic blood pressure less than 70 mmHg. The most common pre-syncopal symptoms include lightheadedness, stomach awareness or distress, feelings of warmth, tingly skin, and light to profuse sweating. Usually a combination of physiological responses and symptoms occurs such that, on different days, the tolerance time to the same orthostatic protocol is reproducible for a given individual. The assumption is that by taking subjects to near fainting, one can determine their tolerance. This latter pre-syncopal approach is better for estimating orthostatic or hypotensive tolerance than the former measurement of heart rate and blood pressure responses to a given stress. There is considerable variability in individual responses to orthostasis. For example, some subjects are "heart-rate responders" and have a pronounced cardiovascular response similar to that when performing moderately hard aerobic exercise, whereas others may experience pre-syncopal symptoms with very little increase in heart rate. Some individuals have a slow, gradual fall in blood pressure to orthostasis, and others have little change in blood pressure until a sudden precipitous fall in pressure occurs just prior to fainting. With both tilt and LBNP tests there is a low correlation between heart-rate or blood-pressure responses to a sub-tolerance stress as a measure of pre-syncopal limited orthostatic-hypotensive tolerance.


This paper presents a recurrent fuzzy neural network (RFNN) controller to provide sensorless speed control for the two-phase linear brushless DC motor. It is not easy to arrange current and speed sensors along the linear motor's required railway. The RFNN controller has the capability of tracing the system dynamics due to the inherent learning function. With the help of RFNN controller, the conventional PID control can be made to provide better performance by tracing the system dynamics. The paper will demonstrate dynamic performance improvement scenarios. The recurrent structure also enhances the conventional fuzzy neural network (FNN) controller with embedded memory function. The results from experimental evaluation indicate that the PID with RFNN controller can provide better performance than the conventional PID controller.


We study one-parameter families of quasi-periodically forced monotone interval maps and provide sufficient conditions for the existence of a parameter at which the respective system possesses a non-uniformly hyperbolic attractor. This is equivalent to the existence of a sink-source orbit, that is, an orbit with positive Lyapunov exponent both forwards and backwards in time. The attractor itself is a non-continuous invariant graph with negative Lyapunov exponent, often referred to as 'SNA'. In contrast to former results in this direction, our conditions are ${\mathcal{C}}^{2}$-open in the fibre maps. By applying a general result about saddle-node bifurcations in skew-products, we obtain a conclusion on the occurrence of non-smooth bifurcations in the respective families. Explicit examples show the applicability of the derived statements.


Results from recent molecular epidemiologic studies suggest that the core circadian genes play a role in breast tumorigenesis, possibly by influencing hormone regulation or other pathways relevant to cancer. In order to further evaluate this hypothesis, we conducted a genetic and epigenetic association study of the circadian regulator TIMELESS in breast carcinogenesis. We detected significant associations between two tagging SNPs (rs2291738 and rs7302060) in the TIMELESS gene and breast cancer among 441 breast cancer cases and 479 cancer‐free controls, with apparent effect modification by ER/PR status. The presence of the C allele of rs7302060 was found to be associated with reduced breast cancer risk (OR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.54–0.99). In addition, both the G/G genotype of rs2291738 and the C/C genotype of rs7302060 were associated with reduced risk of breast cancer among ER‐ or PR‐positive breast cancer cases (OR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.22–0.97 and OR, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.17–0.78, respectively). We also observed a significant association between stage II, III, and IV breast cancers and TIMELESS promoter hypomethylation in peripheral blood lymphocytes (OR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.13–0.96) in 80 breast cancer cases and 80 age‐matched controls, which is corroborated by documented overexpression of TIMELESS in breast tumor tissue compared to adjacent normal tissue. Our findings support the hypothesized role of circadian genes in breast tumorigenesis, and identify a set of circadian biomarkers for breast cancer susceptibility. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Pseudomonas fragi has the ability to grow between 0 and 35 degrees C and grows optimally at 30 degrees C. Cellular proteins from mid-log-phase cells growing from 4 to 34 degrees C were labeled with L-[35S]methionine during 1 generation time and analyzed by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. The electrophoretic patterns revealed differences in the patterns of protein synthesis over this temperature span. A qualitative comparison of cellular proteins led to their separation into five thermal classes. The first class contained proteins whose relative rates of synthesis were unaffected by the growth temperature. Three other classes included proteins with optimal expression at 4 to 10, 15 to 20, and 25 to 30 degrees C. A fifth class contained proteins which were more specifically synthesized at a supraoptimal growth temperature (34 degrees C). Two low-molecular-mass proteins, designated C7.0 and C8.0, were highly concentrated at 4 to 10 degrees C, and their relative rates of synthesis steadily increased with decreasing temperature. Polyclonal antibodies were separately raised against these two proteins. Immunological analyses revealed cross-reaction between these two proteins and between two additional low-molecular-mass proteins which were maximally produced at elevated temperatures. Antisera directed against C8.0 recognized the major cold shock protein of Escherichia coli, CspA, indicating the presence of similarities between these proteins.


Abstract. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is one of the most promising technologies in surveying and mapping,city management, forestry, object recognition, computer vision engineer and others. However, it is challenging to efficiently storage, query and analyze the high-resolution 3D LiDAR data due to its volume and complexity. In order to improve the productivity of Lidar data processing, this study proposes a Hadoop-based framework to efficiently manage and process LiDAR data in a distributed and parallel manner, which takes advantage of Hadoop's storage and computing ability. At the same time, the Point Cloud Library (PCL), an open-source project for 2D/3D image and point cloud processing, is integrated with HDFS and MapReduce to conduct the Lidar data analysis algorithms provided by PCL in a parallel fashion. The experiment results show that the proposed framework can efficiently manage and process big LiDAR data.


The treatment of relapsed multiple myeloma is based in part on the degree of previous exposure and resistance to commonly used drug classes. For patients with a first relapse, an anti-CD38 antibody–based combination is preferred unless patients have already received these agents, in which case a carfilzomib-based option can be an excellent choice. For patients with more refractory disease, a bispecific antibody is an emerging choice, but CAR T-cell therapy should also be considered for some patients; other options include salvage autologous transplantation, recycling of previous therapies, and selinexor-based therapies. Emerging new classes of drugs in development are poised to broaden the treatment possibilities for relapsed disease.


A new version of High Dimensional Model Representation (HDMR) is presented in this work. Vector HDMR has been quite recently developed to deal with the decomposition of vector valued multivariate functions. It was an extension from scalars to vectors by possibly using matrix weights. However, that expansion is based on an ascending multivariance starting from a constant term via a set of appropriately imposed conditions which can be related to orthogonality in a conveniently chosen Hilbert space. This work adds more flexibility by introducing certain matrix valued univariate support functions. We assume weight matrices proportional to unit matrices. This work covers only the basic issues related to the fundamental elements of the new approach.


To make water strider robot (WSR) walk on the water, the robot's dynamics modeling and control algorithms are discussed in the paper. The dynamics equations of WSR and dynamics equations concerning the actuator (motor) are established. Considering the motion's non-holonomic feature of the WSR, and inaccurate equations themselves, a fuzzy control method is applied in the paper. After calibration of the sensor, on the basis of fitting motor voltage and rotation speed, a fuzzy controller is developed to allow the robot approaching the light source target and tracking the trajectory of the target. Finally Matlab/Simulink is used to simulate autonomous motion of water strider robot. Simulation results show the effectiveness and accuracy of the approach.