The fact that sociology was born during the period of the Industrial Revolution does not authorize us to consider its discourse as lacking in philosophical elements that are rooted in a previous age. Neither can we consider as fully accomplished its role for modernity, nonetheless today, in an after-modern climate (in the sense of Donati 2009), sociology is trying to escape the prejudice of modern ethics to go beyond the clichés of postmodernity (Ardigò 1989). Filled with self-reflexivity and reductionist dichotomies, the twenty-first-century sociologist feels the need to "own factual reality again" and to rediscover "a new metaphysics of the social world" (Donati 1993). If self-consciousness is in the world, sociology, perhaps, has to go beyond science and turn into "globology" (Arnason 1990), or into a sociology on a global scale, which looks at how world unification has occurred. In order to accomplish this, it has to be careful about what it was able to do best in the past: "to foresee and to enhance sustainable change," to be aware of the "relational connections," which no mathematics will ever be able to show, to build new "memes," and to decide to accelerate or to go against the phenomena it encounters in its observation. Society in the twenty-first century will go beyond postmodern stagnation and turn into something new (After-modernity? Hyper-modernity? Trans-modernity?) if it is to be helped by the interpretations of sociology. Notwithstanding the endeavors to change, most Westernized countries are trapped in the lib-lab model, while China argues for a complete reconfiguration of the concepts of public and private, states and market, freedom and controls, copyright and copyleft. What is going to happen in the future? Are we going to fall into a technocratic and authoritarian form of neo-modernization? Are we going to rediscover the system of exchanging gifts? Are we going to create a fully "relational" society, going beyond the Hegelian categories of right and left? It will be the role of a "strong and relational" sociology to identify all the "viable" scenarios and to prepare its advent in symbolic terms.


In the present work, three different atmospheric plasma sprayed (APS) alumina coatings 8 were fabricated using three fused and crushed alumina powders of different particle size fine, 9 medium and coarse. The influence of the particle size on thermal properties and micro-structural 10 features of the produced coating were investigated by thermal insulation test and detailed image 11 analysis technique, respectively. The analyzed micro-structural features include the total porosity, 12 pore size (fine, medium, and large) and cracks. All types of cracks were considered in calculations 13 as voids and were evaluated according to their sizes as pores. All spray parameters except the 14 particle size were fixed throughout the spraying process. The results revealed that the fine starting 15 powder has produced the densest coating with the lowest total porosity and that the total porosity 16 increases with an increasing particle size. This was expected as powders of smaller particle size will 17 reach a higher in-flight temperature and velocity than powders of bigger particle sizes as long as 18 the same spray parameters are applied. However, a detailed image analysis investigation on the 19 three produced coatings showed that the fraction of fine pores and cracks versus the total porosity 20 is substantially higher in coatings produced by using fine starting powders than those produced 21 using medium and coarse powders. In this work, a connection between the thermal insulation and 22 the porosity fraction, which includes fine pores and cracks, was revealed. 23


Background Achievement of radiographic remission in RA is dependent on early patient identification and effective triaging to enable prompt referral to enable tight control treatment strategies. Assessment within 12 weeks of symptom onset i.e. the "window of opportunity" is reportedly associated with less joint destruction and a higher likelihood of achieving remission. Based on RF or anti-CCP2 testing at the primary care level, approximately one half of early RA patients may test negative and not be referred. Further, since referral times can often be lengthy, rheumatologists in consult with GPs require more sensitive, disease specific tools to prioritize the referral of patients who are at greatest risk for radiographic progression. 14–3-3η is a soluble diagnostic RA marker that is involved in the pathophysiology of the disease and informs joint damage progression. Objectives The aim of this study was to examine the combined benefit of 14–3-3η and anti-CCP2 testing in early undifferentiated polyarthritis to inform radiographic progression rate. Methods Serum 14–3–3η levels were measured at baseline in 331 patients with recent onset polyarthritis (Sherbrooke EUPA), for which a follow up of at least 60 months was completed. Mean (SD) age was 60 years, 62% were female, and median (IQR) duration of symptoms was 4 (1.7–5.7) months. Radiographic progression was defined as a change in Sharp/van der Heijde score, ΔSHS≥1 at 18, 30, 42, and 60 months. Differences in mean ΔSHS based on 14 -3-3η positivity was assessed using the Mann-Whitney U-test at the diagnostic cut-off of ≥0.19 ng/ml. ANOVA analysis was performed to assess the significance of 14–3-3η and anti-CCP2 co-expression with radiographic progression over 60 months. Results At baseline, 46% and 40% of patients were positive for 14–3-3η and anti-CCP2, respectively. Together, 14–3-3η or anti-CCP2 captured 55% of patients. Of these, 58% were positive for both markers whereas 42% were positive for one or the other. Over the course of 60 months, mean (SD) radiographic progression from baseline was significantly higher in 14–3-3η seropositive patients when compared with seronegative patients, 10.0 (15.6) vs. 6.3 (13.40) p=0.022. Radiographic progression based on biomarker co-expression analysis shows that patients who were positive for both anti-CCP2 and 14–3-3η had the most significant changes in radiographic outcomes over 60 months. Timepoint Group n Mean ΔSHS ± SD p-value Baseline to 60 months Both negative 144 6.22±13.91 0.024 Only 14–3–3η positive 47 6.43±12.09 Only anti-CCP2 positive 25 6.40±10.01 Both positive 100 11.66±16.76 Conclusions Early undifferentiated polyarthritis patients who are positive for 14–3-3η and anti-CCP2 have more radiographic progression over 60 months. 14–3-3η positive status can assist with prioritization of high joint damage risk patient referrals to rheumatologists. References de Rooy DPC et al. Rheum. 2011. 50:93. Disclosure of Interest G. Boire Grant/research support from: The 14–3-3eta measurements were performed free of charge by Augurex, Augurex remaining totally blinded to clinical data. All the analyzes were performed in Sherbrooke without sharing of clinical data of individual patients with Augurex personnel., N. Carrier: None declared, A. de Brum Fernandes: None declared, P. Liang: None declared, A. Masetto: None declared, Y. Gui Employee of: Augurex Life Sciences Corp., J. Savill Employee of: Augurex Life Sciences Corp., S. Michienzi Employee of: Augurex Life Sciences Corp., H. Menard: None declared, W. Maksymowych Consultant for: Augurex Life Sciences Corp., (Co-inventor of 14–3-3η), A. Marotta Employee of: Augurex Life Sciences Corp., (Co-inventor of 14–3-3η)


Background Elective open heart surgery is associated with troponin release in some cases due to myocyte necrosis. Objectives The aim of this study was to measure cardiac troponin I (cTnI) preoperatively in elective CABG after remote ischemic preconditioning. Methods Twenty-eight patients were selected for elective CABG. They were randomized to receive remote ischemic preconditioning (induced by three 5-min cycles of inflation with a pneumatic tourniquet and 5-min deflation between inflation episodes as reperfusion). Outcomes Primary outcomes were cardiac troponin I levels at 6 and 24 hours after the procedure, and the secondary outcomes included creatine phosphokinase, lactate dehydrogenase, and serum creatinine levels. Hemodynamic changes were evaluated between the treatment and control groups. Results Cardiac troponin I at 6 hours after preconditioning was significantly lower compared to the control group (P = 0.036), and after 24 hours, there was still a significant difference between the two groups (P < 0.05). Conclusions Remote ischemic preconditioning reduces ischemic biomarkers during coronary artery bypass graft and attenuates procedure-related cardiac troponin I release and eventually reduces cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction, chest pain, and hemodynamic changes after cardiac surgery.


We recently described the boundary-like expression pattern of the extracellular matrix molecule tenascin-C (Tnc) in the developing mouse olfactory bulb (OB) (Shay et al., 2008). In the present study, we test the hypothesis that Tnc inhibits olfactory sensory neuron (OSN) axon growth in the developing OB before glomerulogenesis. The period of time before glomerular formation begins, when axons remain restricted to the developing olfactory nerve layer (ONL), is crucial for axon sorting. Here, we show with in vitro analyses that OSN neurite outgrowth is inhibited by Tnc in a dose-dependent manner and that, in stripe assays, axons preferentially avoid Tnc. Using Tnc-null mice, we also show that that glomerular development is delayed in the absence of Tnc. In wild-type mice, OSN axons coalesce into immature or protoglomeruli, which further differentiate and segregate into glomeruli. Glomeruli are first identifiable as discrete structures at birth. In null mice, glomeruli appear immature at birth, remain fused to the ONL, and have a significantly larger diameter compared with wild-type controls. By postnatal day 4, null glomeruli are indistinguishable from controls. Thus, OSN axons appear delayed in their coalescence into glomerular structures. These data correlate with behavioral reports of Tnc-null mice, which are delayed by 24 h in their acquisition of an olfactory behavior (de Chevigny et al., 2006). Collectively, these data demonstrate that Tnc is an inhibitory boundary molecule in the developing OB during a key period of development.


Untreated natural gas is a colorless and an odorless substance, difficult to detect in ambient air. Odorization is is process of adding an odor to natural gas, and it is crucial for safe gas consumption, as it allows a lay person to detect gas leakages and to take measures to eliminate them. An important development for the gas sector is the emergence of biomethane- biogas upgraded to the quality to natural gas- that can be injected into the natural gas network. Just like natural gas, biomethane has to be odorized in order to possess a characteristic alarming 'gas' smell. Biomethane is increasingly recognized as an equivalent to natural gas in legal terms: e.g. Third Energy Package applies in equal measure to both biomethane and natural gas. This is also the case in the Dutch national legislation. In view of the above issues, an important question arises, and namely: Are the legal developments on European and Dutch national level in relation to biomethane translating into an equal legal regime applicable to its odorization in comparison to natural gas? The current paper applies theoretical framework embedded in institutional economics as a starting point and employs functionalist perspective as the method of legal comparative analysis. The paper reaches the conclusion that on the European and Dutch national levels there is no divergence between the legal regimes as applicable to natural gas and respectively to biomethane. Whereas in terms of legal provisions related to the odorization of both gases on a more technical and applied level some discrepancies are indeed identified, it is established that these differences are dictated by the technical and market aspects of the current Dutch practices of biomethane production and injection into the natural gas grid, rather than by regulatory disconnection between technology development and legal system.


ABSTRACT The aim of our research was to assess if the pain and discomfort following each quarterly onabotulinumtoxinA (BTA) injection given to prevent daily headaches/migraines is circadian time-dependent so as to determine the best administration time for least discomfort and minimal follow-up pain. A total of 61 diurnally active patients with a medical history of chronic migraine headaches and undergoing preventative BTA injection therapy for the first time were enrolled in the study. Patients were randomly assigned to morning or afternoon clinics, but had the ability to choose within the assigned clinic the injection time that best fits their schedule. 155 units of BTA was administered by following the standardized PREEMPT injection protocol. Patients reported the typical time of sleep onset and wakeup time for the week prior to injections. Patients then self-reported three levels of pain in the head and neck area: prior to BTA injections, immediately after, and 24 h after BTA injections. This was carried out by marking the pain level on 100 mm visual analog pain scale. Descriptive summaries were frequencies and percentages for categorical data and medians and quartiles for continuous variables. Demographic variables of gender, race, and age were tested using Chi-Square. Groups of morning versus afternoon patients were compared using the non-parametric Wilcoxson's Rank Sum Tests and student T tests. All analysis was done in SAS for Windows Version 9.4. 38 (62%) patients were injected during morning clinic and 23 (38%) during afternoon clinic. There was no difference in gender, race, and age variables between morning and afternoon patients. 67% of the patients experienced increased pain following the initial injection. Higher pain score was more frequent following morning than afternoon injections (78% vs. 50%, p = .021). The 24 h post-injection pain level was also significantly higher in patients injected in the morning than afternoon (64% vs. 28%, p = .024). Performing BTA injections for migraine prevention during the morning was associated with significantly more treatment-related discomfort, both immediately and 24 h after injection. Scheduling diurnal active patients with stable circadian sleep/wake routine for afternoon BTA injections appears beneficial for decreasing treatment-related discomfort and potentially increase compliance to therapy.


Emergency medical services have been organized to meet the needs of adult patients. A study was undertaken to determine the training in pediatrics offered to paramedics and emergency medical technicians throughout the United States and the equipment carried by prehospital care provider agencies. Most training (50%) takes place at colleges and universities and the remainder at hospitals and emergency medical services agencies. Many programs (40%) have less than ten hours of didactic training in pediatrics and 41% offer ten hours or less of clinical experience. Some programs offer no training in pediatric emergency medicine. The most common deficiencies in pediatric equipment included backboards, pediatric drugs, resuscitation masks, and small intravenous catheters. More attention to training and equipping prehospital personnel for pediatric emergencies may help to improve outcomes of out-of-hospital resuscitations of infants and children.


Statistical colour models may be used to characterise regions of interest within images or sequences of images. In this work two types of model, one based on underlying Gaussian statistics and one using a Bingham distribution, are compared on both a theoretical and an experimental level. It is shown that when certain conditions hold, the Bingham model tends to have superior performance but that the performance of the Gaussian model degrades more slowly as these assumptions are relaxed.


Responding to one of the key recommendations of the transition from apartheid to a democratic South Africa, the government promulgated the South African Geographical Names Council Act No. 118 of 1998.1 The aim of this policy was to change the names of public places and roads. The City of Durban (eThekwini) started implementing this policy in 2006. However, the implementation process was dominated by political organizations with minimal participation by other civil society groups and a total nonparticipation of religious groups such as churches. For instance out of the 182 new names that were promulgated, only two of them (Denis Hurley and Diakonia) were drawn from the religious sector. The aim of this paper is to highlight the contestations and contradictions around the monumentalization of the history of South Africa through the geographical renaming process. It seeks to critically examine the implications for the non-participation of the religious sector in the geographical renaming process. The paper is concluded with a few propositions that can be embarked upon in order to enable effective and meaningful engagement in such a process in order to evince a generally inclusive and broadly accepted list of geographical names, representing most of the key sectors of society, rather than the dominant political organizations.


The advantages of digital media such as the Internet and CD-ROMs lie in the fact that their contents are easy to duplicate, edit, and distribute. These advantages, however, are double-edged swords, because they also facilitate unauthorized use of such contents. Data embedding, which places information into the contents themselves, is an approach to address this issue. Embedded information can be used, for example, for copyright protection, theft deterrence, and inventory. This paper discusses our work on embedding data into three-dimensional (3D) polygonal models of geometry. Given objects consisting of points, lines, polygons, or curved surfaces, the data embedding algorithms described in this paper produce polygonal models with data embedded. Data are placed into 3D polygonal models by modifying either their vertex coordinates, their vertex topology (connectivity), or both. A brief review of related work and a description of the requirements of data embedding is followed by a discussion of where, and by what fundamental methods, data can be embedded into 3D polygonal models. The paper then presents data-embedding algorithms, with examples, based on these fundamental methods. Additional


This study compares and contrasts Chinese firms with internationally active value chains that started their internationalization efforts by engaging in international revenue generation or downstream value chain activities (defined as market-seeking firms) versus those that began through international sourcing or upstream value chain activities (defined as resource-seeking firms). Face-to-face survey interviews conducted with firm managers during the autumn of 2011 yielded complete data for 308 Chinese firms. Our findings suggest firms that start their internationalization process by engaging in "market-seeking" behavior showcase better performance than those that begin by engaging in "resource-seeking" activities. In addition, financial indicators are found to be strong factors that discriminate between market-seeking and resource-seeking Chinese firms.


This paper addresses the potential need for European public policy actions in the area of mobile communications, in particular of developments towards 4th generation networks (4G). The paper is based on work conducted for the EC/JRC/IPTS/ESTO project "The Future of Mobile Technologies in EU: Assessing 4G Developments". The paper first reviews developments of 3G and 4G technologies in Japan, Korea, China and the USA. It briefly addresses potential costs and benefits of competition in infrastructures. The paper states that initiatives in Europe for technologies beyond 3G tend to address research issues, while players in Asia and the USA are aiming at sales of 4G‐equipment supposed to start as soon as possible. In conclusion, nine options for policy makers are presented, such as to stimulate 2.5G and 3G data markets, to analyse actual spectrum use, to continue analysing approaches competing with UMTS, to estimate costs and benefits of new approaches to spectrum regulation, and to evaluate steps towards frequency allocation.


Stutzerimonas is a recently proposed genus within the Pseudomonadaceae comprising strains in the formerly phylogenetic group of Pseudomonas stutzeri. At least sixteen named species have to be included in the genus, together with 22 genomovars of Stutzerimonas stutzeri. To clarify the taxonomy of Stutzerimonas, a core-genome phylogeny of 200 strains in the genus was inferred and monophyletic strains with average nucleotide identities (ANIb) with values equal to or higher than 95 were grouped in the same phylogenomic species. A total of 45 phylogenomic species within the genus Stutzerimonas were detected in the present study. Sixteen phylogenomic species correspond to already named species, although three of them are not yet validated and two are proposed in the present study. A synonymy was detected between P. kunmingensis and S. chloritidismutans, both members of phylogenomic species 3, with a prevalence of the S. chloritidismutans name. The correspondence of the phylogenomic species to the genome taxonomy database classification (GTDB taxonomy) is discussed. Combining phylogenomic and phenotypic data, two novel species are described (Stutzerimonas frequens and Stutzerimonas degradans) and two species descriptions are emended (Stutzerimonas perfectomarina and Stutzerimonas chloritidismutans).


The regulation of oligopeptides production is essential in understanding their ecological role in complex microbial communities including harmful cyanobacterial blooms. The role of chemical communication between the cyanobacterium and the microbial community harboured as epibionts within its phycosphere is at an initial stage of research and little is understood about its specificity. Herein, we present insight into the role of a bacterial epibiont in regulating production of cyanobacterial oligopeptides microviridins, well-known elastase inhibitors with presumed anti-grazing effects, in an ecologically important cyanobacterial genus Nostoc. Heterologous expression and identification of specific signal molecules from the epibiont suggest the role of a quorum sensing-based interaction. Further, physiological experiments show an increase in microviridin production without affecting cyanobacterial growth and photosynthetic activity. Simultaneously, oligopeptides presenting a selective inhibition pattern provide support for their specific function in response to the presence of cohabitant epibionts. Thus, the chemical interaction revealed in our study provides an example of an interspecies signalling pathway monitoring the bacterial flora around the cyanobacterial filaments and induction of intrinsic species-specific metabolic responses. IMPORTANCE The regulation of cyanopeptide production beyond microcystin is essential to understand their ecological role in complex microbial communities, e.g. harmful cyanobacterial blooms. The role of chemical communication between the cyanobacterium and the epibionts within its phycosphere is at an initial stage of research and little is understood about its specificity. The frequency of cyanopeptide occurrence also demonstrates the need to understand the contribution of cyanobacterial peptides to the overall biological impact of cyanopeptides on aquatic organisms and vertebrates including humans. Our results shed light on the epibiont control of cyanopeptide production via quorum sensing mechanisms and we posit that such mechanisms may be widespread in natural cyanobacterial bloom community regulation.


The authors tested the hypothesis that personalized messages in a multimedia science lesson can promote deep learning by actively engaging students in the elaboration of the materials and reducing processing load. Students received a multimedia explanation of lightning formation (Experiments 1 and 2) or played an agent-based computer game about environmental science (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). Instructional messages were presented in either a personalized style, where students received spoken or written explanations in the 1st- and 2nd-person points of view, or a neutral style, where students received spoken or written explanations in the 3rd-person point of view. Personalized rather than neutral messages produced better problem-solving transfer performance across all experiments and better retention performance on the computer game. The theoretical and educational implications of the findings are discussed. Classic research in psychology has shown that people react differently to situations that involve personal reference. This is the case of the well-known cocktail party effect, in which a person who is attending to one conversation is able to detect his or her own name in a separate conversation that is taking place simultaneously in the same room (Cherry, 1953). Another robust phenomenon is the self-referential effect, in which retention is facilitated by having people process information by relating it to aspects of themselves (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977). As with other factors in human learning and memory, the question arises as to whether personal reference effects can be extended and used in the area of multimedia learning. For example, it is possible to teach a computer-based science lesson with higher or lower levels of self-referenc ing by varying the communication style used in the explanations (Turco, 1996). In the studies reported in the literature, high self-referencing has been created by


Background: Mucocutaneous manifestations of inflammatory bowel diseases are relatively common; the mean incidence is around 10% at the time of diagnosis. However, during follow-up, an increased variety of skin lesions, granulomatous cutaneous disease, reactive skin eruptions, nutritional defiencies, and other associated conditions may develop. Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of the mucocutaneous manifestations and their association with gender, duration of disease, arthritis, location of the bowel disease, and disease activity. Methods: Fifty-six patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 36 patients with Crohn disease (CD) who were in follow-up in the Istanbul Medeniyet University Göztepe Training and Research Hospital Department of Gastroenterology were included in the study. Whole-body dermatologic examinations were performed for all patients, and patient files were evaluated for mucocutaneous manifestations. Results: Of the 92 patients, 49 (53.26%) presented with at least one mucocutaneous manifestation (58.9% of patients with UC and 44.4% of patients with CD). Of these, 38 (41.3%) had at least one reactive skin eruption. Aphthous stomatitis was noted in 33 patients (35.86%) and became the most common mucocutaneous manifestation. Granulomatous cutaneous diseases were detected in 18 patients (19.57%), and none of the patients had a nutritional deficiency–associated skin condition. Only 3 patients (3.26%) had erythema nodosum and 2 patients (2.17%) had pyoderma gangrenosum. Conclusions: We found that mucocutaneous manifestations of inflammatory bowel diseases are more common than thought and are more common in UC than in CD. No association was detected between mucocutaneous manifestions and gender, duration of disease, arthritis, location of the bowel disease, and activity of the disease.


Histopathological and ultrastructural examinations of muscles in broilers, receiving tiamulin and ionophoric anticoccidials were carried out. Myo- and cardiomyopathies, originating from primary mitochondria lesions were followed by ATP deficiency, oedema, degeneration and necrosis of myocytes. This process is reversible and manifested by slow regeneration of muscles.


This study investigates interaction during equestrian dressage trainings, focusing on the trainer's communication with horse and rider. The study is based on interaction analyses of 15 video record ...


Melanoma cells driven by mutant B-RAF are sensitive to vemurafenib (PLX4032), which selectively inhibits BRAF/MEK/ERK1/2 signaling. Despite initial tumor shrinkage, most responders in the trials experienced tumor relapse over time. Furthermore, approximately 5–15% of patients show tumor progression. These findings indicate that resistance mechanisms will hamper the clinical efficacy of vemurafenib. We have previously shown that a stemness factor, FOXD3, is upregulated following inhibition of B-RAF-MEK signaling in mutant B-RAF melanoma cells. Here, we show that siRNA-mediated knockdown of FOXD3 significantly enhanced the cell death response after PLX4032 treatment in mutant B-RAF melanoma cell lines. Additionally, ectopic expression of FOXD3 in nonadherent cells significantly reduced cell death in response to PLX4720 treatment. Genome wide analyses revealed that FOXD3 significantly increased expression of ERBB3 through direct binding to a known enhancer region of the ERBB3 gene. Knockdown of endogenous FOXD3 reduced ERBB3 upregulation after treatment with PLX4032. Furthermore, activation of ERBB3 in the presence of ligand was enhanced by B-RAF inhibition in an ERBB2-dependent manner. Treatment with the EGFR/ERBB2 inhibitor, lapatinib, in combination with PLX4032/4720 significantly reduced viability in both in vitro and in vivo assays. These data indicate that upregulation of FOXD3 is an adaptive response to B-RAF inhibitors that enhances ERBB3 signaling and promotes a state of drug resistance.


There are various ways how to improve and develop teachers' competencies, namely selfmonitoring, audiotape & video tape recordings, student's expectation, student's test results, & classroom observation. They can be used as tools to evaluate the teacher's competencies. Classroom observation program is the teacher's professional development program in SMART EI, a boarding school for marginalized students of Indonesia. Descriptive research used in this study is to describe teacher's competencies in teaching situation in classroom, that is teacher aspects (personality, mastery of subject matter, voice, clarity of explanation, openness to student's opinion), teaching methodology aspects (organization, contextual, provoke critical thinking, motivator, class management, questioning technique), and student aspects (attention, participation, class starts on time). Subjects of this study is 30 teachers who are teaching in SMART Ekselensia Indonesia. The data instruments consist of the results of class observation and notes of teachers' reflection after teaching. The quantitative and qualitative methods used to analyze the data collected from the classroom observations. Based on the results of data analysis found a few things as follows: (1) there is a significant correlation between teaching experience and teacher aspects; (2) no significant correlation between teaching experience and teaching methodology aspects; (3) there is a significant correlation between teacher aspects and student aspects, (4) there is a significant correlation between teaching methodology aspects and student aspects, (5) the teachers in SMART EI, at average have taught for 5,4 years, and they also teaching experience the longest 10 years and the shortest 8 months.


Imagining urban space as being comfortable or fearful is studied as an effect of people's connections to their residential area communication infrastructure. Geographic Information System (GIS) modeling and spatial-statistical methods are used to process 215 mental maps obtained from respondents to a multilingual survey of seven ethnically marked residential communities of Los Angeles. Spatial-statistical analyses reveal that fear perceptions of Los Angeles urban space are not associated with commonly expected causes of fear, such as high crime victimization likelihood. The main source of discomfort seems to be presence of non-White and non-Asian populations. Respondents more strongly connected to television and interpersonal communication channels are relatively more fearful of these populations than those less strongly connected. Theoretical, methodological, and community-building policy implications are discussed.


Kyungmo Lee Studies of Event Management have been actively approached by tourism view since 1970s in western countries, while various different approaches of special events were unsystematically made by event related fields in Karea. The purpose of this study is to examine the academic concept of Event Management studies related to special events and festivals. In this research, the general thries of special event, the development of event and tourism and research tendency of event studies were reviewed with the concerned document. Findings from the documentary study of special events and festivals were; 1. the basic components of special event are parpose, duration, place, participant and program with the characteristics of planning, positiveness and rareness. 2. event tourism will increase to rret the need of increasing tourist who pursuing the tive holidays and cultural experiences. 3. the research of special events and festivals has been mainly done in Canada, U.S.A, Australia and New Zealand, focusing on the subjects of economic impact of event, marketing and sponsorship management.


—Software vulnerabilities have posed huge threats to the cyberspace security, and there is an increasing demand for automated vulnerability detection (VD). In recent years, deep learning-based (DL-based) vulnerability detection systems have been proposed for the purpose of automatic feature extraction from source code. Although these methods can achieve ideal performance on synthetic datasets, the accuracy drops a lot when detecting real-world vulnerability datasets. Moreover, these approaches limit their scopes within a single function, being not able to leverage the information between functions. In this paper, we attempt to extract the function's abstract behaviors, figure out the relationships between functions, and use this global information to assist DL-based VD to achieve higher performance. To this end, we build a Behavior Graph Model and use it to design a novel framework, namely VulBG . To examine the ability of our constructed Behavior Graph Model, we choose several existing DL-based VD models ( e.g., TextCNN , ASTGRU , CodeBERT , Devign , and VulCNN ) as our baseline models and conduct evaluations on two real-world datasets: the balanced FFMpeg+Qemu dataset and the unbalanced Chrome+Debian dataset. Experimental results indicate that VulBG enables all baseline models to detect more real vulnerabilities, thus improving the overall detection performance.


References 1 Cook TM The concept of surgical operating list 'efficiency': a formula to describe the term. Anaesthesia 2008; 63: 98. 2 Pandit JJ, Westbury S, Pandit M A reply. Anaesthesia 2008; 63: 98–9. 3 McIntosh C, Dexter F, Epstein RH. The impact of service-specific staffing, case scheduling, turnovers, and firstcase starts on anaesthesia group and operating room productivity: a tutorial using data from an Australian hospital. Anesthesia and Analgesia 2006; 103: 1499–516. 4 Rai M, Pandit JJ. Day of surgery cancellations after nurse-led preassessment in an elective surgical centre: the first 2 years. Anaesthesia 2003; 58: 692–9. 5 Pandit JJ, Carey A. Estimating the duration of common elective operations: implications for operating list management. Anaesthesia 2006; 61: 768–76. 6 Pandit JJ, Westbury S, Pandit M. The concept of surgical operating list 'efficiency': a formula to describe the term. Anaesthesia 2007; 62: 895– 903.


The gate structure dependence of the blocking capability of lateral power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect-transistors (MOSFETs) on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) film is investigated. Experimental results of the breakdown voltage with varying the gate electrode and gate oxide lengths are presented, and are compared with those of the devices fabricated on a n-type substrate. The breakdown voltage of the SOI devices is insensitive to the surface design around the gate structure, which is quite different from that of the devices on the n-type substrate.


Abstract In the wake of sustainable construction entering the mainstream, many developing countries are either currently pursuing green building guidelines or are planning to pursue them in the near future. This research attempts to formulate an implementation strategy for the rapid adoption of these guidelines for the developing nations. This implementation strategy is based on the detailed review of the major green building guidelines globally and contextual information of Indian society collected through a survey questionnaire. The proposed strategy shows that it is important for green building initiatives to identify: the organizations that accelerate the adoption of green building guidelines in a society, the incentives and barriers associated with the green building guidelines, and the necessary motivations for the adopter organizations. An informed approach in the form of this implementation strategy might potentially contribute to the acceleration of green building guidelines' adoption in developi...


We performed transcatheter closure of an atrial septal defect (ASD) using an Amplatzer device in three patients, 2 women and 1 male child, aged 12, 54, and 4 years, respectively, coursing with ostium secundum ASD. Two with left to right shunt and the third with bidirectional shunt. The transesophageal echocardiogram revealed ASD with diameters of 13, 15, and 10 mm, the diameter with expanded catheter balloon was of 30, 26, and 17 mm, respectively. The superior border of the atrial septum was bigger than 5 mm in all three patients, whereas the inferior border could not be found through echocardiography in the patients aged 12 and 4 years. Amplatzer devices of 30, 26, and 17 mm were implanted, the inferior border of the first two could be supported on the aortic wall and the superior border on the septum. We observed a 100% occlusion in these two cases through ecocolor-Doppler. In the third patient, an inferior border of 16 mm and a superior border of 8 mm were determined, achieving and immediate and fast installation of the device with 100% occlusion. All three patients were in stable conditions, asymptomatic and without shunt at their one-month follow-up as revealed by a trans-thoracic echocardiography. It is concluded that the Amplatzer device is technically easy to install and yields adequate results even in patients with ample ASD and without inferior border of the inter-atrial septum.


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There has been established in the article the correlation and regression relationship between the factors of the country's development and the level of environmental safety on the basis of identifying the patterns of certain factors sets influencing the volume of harmful emissions into the atmosphere. On the basis of modeling, there has been carried out the analysis of individual groups of factors influencing the volumes of harmful emissions in the countries selected for the study. The nature and degree of influence of the selected factors on the resulting indicators (volumes of harmful emissions) have been determined. It has been found that the number of these factors is significantly higher in France than in Ukraine. This is due to both the political and economic situation in the country. The level of energy efficient technologies implementation and environmental restructuring of business entities are no less significant. The ranking of factors has been carried out based on the value of the correlation coefficient within a separate group and each country. There are also highlighted differences in the research results and their reasons.


Metastasis is a major cause of mortality in Breast Cancer (BC) patients in part due to lack of clinically established targeted therapies. Among the different types of BC, triple negative BC (TNBC) (ER-, PR-, HER2-) has been associated the most with poor prognosis and survival due to early metastasis to other organs and a lack of clinically established targeted therapies. Hence, elucidating novel mechanisms that regulate metastasis would lead to the development of targeted therapies and new treatments for TNBC and metastatic breast cancers.

It is now well accepted that solid tumors, including those in the breast, have an inflammatory microenvironment. Receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) is a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily of cell surface molecules which has been associated with chronic inflammation, which in turn enhances the progression of various cancers [1]. We have shown that RAGE is expressed in a panel of aggressive BC cell lines and TNBC tissues [3]. High RAGE expression was also observed in lymph node and distant metastases patient samples. In addition, we observed that high RAGE expression was associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer [3]. RAGE has also been shown to play important role in various cancers including pancreatic cancer. Under hypoxic environment, RAGE was shown to interact directly to mutant KRAS and upregulate HIF1α that leads to the development of pancreatic cancer [2].

We have shown that RAGE deficiency inhibits the growth of murine breast cancer tumor cells [3]. RAGEdeficient mice have shown less chemically-induced inflammation [1]. Furthermore, we have shown that RAGE neutralizing antibody treatment significantly inhibited breast cancer metastasis in an intracardial mouse model [3]. RAGE is a multi-ligand receptor and binds to several inflammatory ligands such as advanced glycation end products (AGE), high mobility group box 1 peptide (HMGB-1), amyloid-β peptide and the S100 family of proteins. Our mechanistic investigation has revealed that RAGE mediates its functional effects in breast cancer by binding to S100A7 [3]. S100A7 is a small molecular weight calcium-binding protein [4]. Although a number of putative functions have been proposed for S100A7, its biological role, particularly in BC, remains to be defined [4]. Phylogenetic analyses have shown the mouse ancestor mS100a7a15 to be most related to human S100A7 [5]. It has been shown that mS100a7a15 is up-regulated during carcinogen-induced mammary tumorigenesis. However, the direct functional role of mS100a7a15 in disease progression is not well-characterized. We have shown that mS100a7a15 overexpression induced hyperplasia in mammary glands of these transgenic mice [5]. Upon binding to ligands, RAGE activates its downstream signaling mechanisms that augment and maintain chronic inflammatory conditions [1]. We have also shown that S100A7 enhances NF-kB activation and its nuclear translocation in TNBC cells. These features of RAGE make it an ideal candidate for therapeutic strategies against inflammation induced cancers.

The link between inflammation and cancer has been postulated for a long time because of the presence of inflammatory cells in the tumor microenvironment, including myeloid cells and tumor associated macrophages (TAMs) [6]. These cells have been shown to significantly enhance tumor growth and the metastasis of various tumors and are key inhibitors of anti-tumor immunity [6]. In addition, collaborative interactions of tumor cells with TAMs have been associated with poor prognosis in BC [6]. TAMs have also been shown to play an important role in enhancing metastasis and drug resistance [6]. Therefore, inhibition of TAM accumulation and recruitment is a promising strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of immune-based therapies against tumors [6]. We and others have shown that RAGE is also expressed on immune cells [3, 5, 7]. RAGE expression was detected in different cell types present within the tumor microenvironment including macrophages. In addition, RAGE has been shown to be present in the microglia in the gliomas. Chen et al (2014) have shown that RAGE signaling in glioma TAMs regulates angiogenesis most likely by MMP9 [8]. We also showed in breast cancer mouse model that blocking of RAGE signaling significantly inhibited tumor growth, metastasis and angiogenesis through inhibition of MMP9+ TAMs [3]. In addition, RAGE also binds to S100A8/A9 to recruit myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) and thereby enhance cancer growth and metastasis [7]. These studies suggest that RAGE could enhance tumor growth and metastasis through regulating tumor microenvironment.

Overall, our results indicate that RAGE could be used as a novel therapeutic target and biomarker for TNBCs. Furthermore RAGE/S100A7 signaling through paracrine and endocrine mechanisms in epithelial as well as TAMs plays an important role in linking inflammation to breast cancer development and metastasis (Fig. (Fig.1).1). In addition, RAGE also binds to S100A8/A9 to recruit myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) and thereby enhance breast cancer growth and metastasis.

Figure 1

Role of S100A7/RAGE-signaling axis in breast cancer growth and metastasis


The Environmental Report 1997 is prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as required by DOE Order 5400.1 and DOE Order 231.1, by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The results of LLNL's environmental monitoring and compliance effort and an assessment of the impact of LLNL operations on the environment and the public are presented in this publication.


The steady-state saturated flow of an incompressible power-law  fluid  through  a porous channel limited by two impermeable flat plates is modeled using a mixture theory, which considers fluid and porous matrix as superimposed continuous constituents of a binary mixture. After some simplifying assumptions, the mechanical model gives rise to a coupled system of ordinary differential equations that is simulated by employing a Runge-Kutta method coupled with a shooting strategy. Despite the strong  nonlinearity  of  the  problem,  this  simple methodology provides stable and accurate results, for both shear-thinning and shear-thickening behaviors.


HIP proxies play an important role in the transition from the current
Internet architecture to the HIP architecture. The major function of
HIP proxies is to make up legacy (or Non-HIP) hosts as HIP hosts and
enable them to communicate with HIP hosts without upgrading their
protocol stacks. In this document, the legacy hosts served by proxies
is referred to as the Made-up Legacy (ML) hosts. Currently, various
design solutions of HIP proxies have been proposed for different
working circumstances, and the effectiveness of these solutions can be
influenced by various factors (e.g., the information of HIP hosts
maintained in DNS servers, the position where a proxy is located,
etc.). In this document, we attempt to investigate these solutions in
detail and compare their performance in different scenarios.


There are few Permian reptiles of greater interest at the present time than the peculiar one I briefly described in this journal' three years ago as Araeoscelis gracilis. At the time of the description the material in the University collections had not been prepared, and it was in the hope of acquiring additional material from the Craddock bone-bed near Seymour, Texas, whence the type specimens came, that I have delayed the publication of further details concerning the genus. Unfortunately the bone-bed seems to be exhausted, at least so far as Araeoscelis is concerned. The material of the University has now been worked up thoroughly by Mr. Miller, and is sufficient to reveal nearly all the details of the skeletal structure of this strange reptile, which in many ways departs widely from all other known reptiles of the Texas deposits. The object of the present paper is to describe briefly the structure of the skull for the information of others working on allied material. The full description of the skeleton, with illustrations, will be published later. The skull, as shown in the accompanying figures, will not require a detailed description at this time. Suffice it to say that the structure of the temporal region is determined positively, save perhaps the precise union of the squamosal and jugal. The absence or vestigial condition of the lacrimal I am also confident about. The skull in life may have been slightly narrower than is shown in the figure; I do not think it could have been wider. It has been suggested, especially by Huene, that Araeoscelis shows affinities with the lizards. The structure of the skull confirms this suggestion in a startling way. Really about all that seems necessary to convert Araeoscelis from a "theromorph" into a primitive squamate reptile is the reduction of the squamosal from


【This study examined the characteristics of 45 sects of seven new aboriginal religious groups in Korea including Jeungsan sect, Tangun sect, Soowoon sect, Won Buddhism, Bongnam sect, Gahksedo sect, Shamanism sect that had given a considerable influence on the modem Korean society since the end of 19th century through the field study and the review of documents. The purpose of the study was to elucidate how their religious ideas were reflected in their ceremonial costumes and what characteristics these costumes had. The results were as follows: 1. The new religious groups in Korea modified or mixed the designs or the names of existing outfits to convey their ideas or beliefs through their costumes. 2. The costumes of new religious groups had common characteristics of the times, Korean tradition and ancestor worship. 3. All the ceremonial costumes symbolized the creeds and ideas of each religion in their names, designs, and colors. The names of the costumes such as Way-Robe, Law-Robe, and Ceremony-Robe, and of the headpieces such as Sky-Crown, Lotus-Crown, Ceremony-Crown, and Sevenfold-Crown, for instance, were related with Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The most common design of costume was consisted of traditional hanbok and some type of headpiece and robe for men, and hanbok modified to Western-style for women. Most sects adopted hanbok as their ceremonial costume, but they tend to simplify its design. The color scheme of the costumes reflected the influence of the Yul-Yang and Five Elements idea but the colors varied depending on seasons and occasions to suit their creeds and philosophy. 4. These religious costumes were worn at various ceremonies, ritual, and various anniversary services for the master and other dignitaries of the sect to render greater piety to those gatherings, to distinguish the sect from other religious groups, to clarify the meaning of the ceremony, and to heighten the devout feelings of the participants. Thus, the structure (the symbol, names, and types of the outfit, and their color scheme) and religious background of the costumes of the new aboriginal religious groups in Korea turned out to have inherited and mixed various elements of traditional Korean outfits and those of existing religions to symbolize their religious ideas.】


The interaction between the binary micelles self-assembled by polystyrene-block-poly (acrylic acid) (PS-b-PAA) and polystyrene-block-poly (amino propylene-glycol methacrylate) (PS-b-PAPMA) in water was discussed in this paper. The results show the interaction between the binary micelles under a suitable condition results in the formation of a kind of special micelles called half-bred micelles through polymer chain exchanging between PS-b-PAA micelles and PS-b-PAPMA in water. A possible mechanism of chain exchanging is suggested for formation of the half-bred micelles.


A hierarchical model is derived for MPEG video. This model is developed so as to represent the bit-rate variations of MPEG video at two different time scales/levels: scene level and frame level. Various evaluations show that the proposed model not only matches very good the statistical characteristics with the real MPEG video but also predicts accurately the network performance of an ATM multiplexer.


Nonlinear silicon photonic devices have attracted considerable attention thanks to their ability to show large third-order nonlinear effects at moderate power levels allowing for all-optical signal processing functionalities in miniaturized components. Although significant efforts have been made and many nonlinear optical functions have already been demonstrated in this platform, the performance of nonlinear silicon photonic devices remains fundamentally limited at the telecom wavelength region due to the two photon absorption (TPA) and related effects. In this work, we propose an alternative CMOS-compatible platform, based on silicon-rich silicon nitride that can overcome this limitation. By carefully selecting the material deposition parameters, we show that both of the device linear and nonlinear properties can be tuned in order to exhibit the desired behaviour at the selected wavelength region. A rigorous and systematic fabrication and characterization campaign of different material compositions is presented, enabling us to demonstrate TPA-free CMOS-compatible waveguides with low linear loss (~1.5 dB/cm) and enhanced Kerr nonlinear response (Re{γ} = 16 Wm-1). Thanks to these properties, our nonlinear waveguides are able to produce a π nonlinear phase shift, paving the way for the development of practical devices for future optical communication applications.


OBJECTIVE
Prenatal depression is a major public health problem that is barely treated. Based on existing literature, depression during this period is associated with negative consequences for the mother and the baby. Therefore it is important to make an adequate screening in this population. The aim of this study was to determine the discriminant validity and cut-off of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-2) as a screening tool to identify the depression in pregnant women living in Spain.

METHODS
The sample included 1,019 female participants, aged between 19 and 45 years, who participated voluntarily, and received prenatal care during the first trimester. Participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, PHQ-2 andPHQ-9. The research has been developed within the Obstetrics and Gynecology department at two public hospitals in two different Spanish Regions. The research was conducted between 2014 and 2016 performing a ROC curve analysis to determine the discriminative capacity and cut-off for PHQ-2.

RESULTS
11,1 % out of 1019 participants were diagnosed with depression. The area under the curve of PHQ-2 was 0,84 p smaller than 0,001. With the cutoff 2 the sensitivity and specificity of 85,4 % and 79,5% respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
A score Equal or greater than 2 is an appropriate cut-off in PHQ-2 to detect depression during pregnancy. The use of PHQ-2 could precede PHQ-9 as a brief screening tool for antenatal depression in obstetric settings.


Internal positivity offers a computationally cheap certificate for external (input-output) positivity of a linear time-invariant system. However, the drawback with this certificate lies in the its realization dependency. Firstly, computing such a realization requires to find a polyhedral cone with a potentially high number of extremal generators that lifts the dimension of the state-space representation, significantly. Secondly, not all externally positive systems posses an internally positive realization. Thirdly, in many typical applications such as controller design, system identification and model order reduction, internal positivity is not preserved.
To overcome these drawbacks, we present a tractable certificate of external positivity based on finding second-order cones. In particular, the certificate is guaranteed to succeed, whenever it is feasible for any minimal realization. Nonetheless, it is also revealed that neither second-order cones nor polyhedral cones can provide a necessary certificate. Finally, we exemplify the potential of our certificate based on three applications. We discuss how our certificate an be used to find externally positive approximations of nearly externally positive systems, which as demonstrated can help to reduce system identification errors. The same algorithm is used then to design state-feedback controllers that avoid over- and undershooting. Lastly, we present modifications to generalized balanced truncation such that external positivity is preserved.


The article is devoted to the description of the results of the auditory analysis of the texts belonging to a judicial discourse. The immediate aim of the article is to identify the peculiarities of the intonation organization of the oral English court speeches. The object of the study is judicial discourse as a special type of institutional discourse of persuasive type. The subject of the study is the peculiarities of the intonation organization of oral court speeches, proclaimed during court hearings by a defence counsel and a prosecutor. To achieve the aim, a phonetic study of the perceived prosodic characteristics of speech realizations of court speech was carried out, in the process of which the subjective method of scientific observation was used, which contains auditive and auditory analysis of the selected objects as well as determining the phonological status of the studied units; quantitative analysis made it possible to interpret the data obtained empirically during the auditory analysis. The conducted auditive and auditory analysis made it possible to draw certain conclusions concerning the intonation organization common for the studied oral texts of judicial discourse. The identification by the auditors of parts of the court speeches of the prosecutor and the defence counsel proved the validity of their division into the compositional parts and made it possible to conclude that there are certain linguistic factors that allow to identify parts of the text with the high degree of probability. The leading intonation parameter for achieving or strengthening the convincing effect of the speeches is considered the tempo. The melodic component of intonation, namely the melodic contour, has also proved to be a powerful intonation means of influencing and achieving a persuasive effect, while loudness is not considered to be an important intonation parameter involved in persuasion. The conducted study has identified the role of the components of intonation (pitch, loudness and tempo) in the implementation of the function of persuasion of the institutional discourse.


This study evaluated the effects of physically effective neutral detergent fiber (peNDF) and undigested neutral detergent fiber (uNDF) on eating behavior, ruminal fermentation and motility, barrier function, blood metabolites, and total tract nutrient digestibility for finishing cattle. Six Simmental heifers (668 ± 28.4 kg BW) were used in a replicated 3 × 3 Latin square (21 d periods) balanced for carry-over effects. Treatments included a control (CON; Table 1) with no forage peNDF and minimal uNDF (peNDF: 0.0%, and uNDF: 4.88 ± 0.01; 95.15% barley grain, 4.51% vitamin and mineral supplement, and 0.34% urea on a DM basis). Pelleted wheat straw (PELL) was included at 10% of dietary DM by replacing barley grain to provide added uNDF but no forage peNDF (peNDF: 0.00%, and uNDF: 6.78 ± 0.02%). Finally, chopped wheat straw (STR) was included as a replacement for pelleted wheat straw to provide forage peNDF and uNDF (peNDF: 1.74 ± 0.06%, and uNDF: 6.86 ± 0.03%). Dry matter intake was not affected (P = 0.93) by treatments. Cattle fed CON spent less time ruminating (P = 0.010) and had less meals/d (P = 0.035) when compared with cattle fed STR, with those fed PELL being intermediate but not different from other treatments. Cattle fed CON had lesser ruminal pH (P = 0.020), and a greater duration that pH was < 5.5 (P = 0.020) as compared to cattle fed STR, with those fed PELL being intermediate but not different. Cattle fed CON and PELL had greater total short-chain fatty acid concentration (P = 0.003) and molar proportion of propionate (P < 0.001) when compared with cattle fed STR. Cattle fed STR had greater (P = 0.010) total ruminal pool size when compared with cattle fed CON and PELL. Cattle fed CON had greater (P = 0.043) duration between ruminal contractions when compared with cattle fed STR, with those fed PELL being intermediate. Cattle fed CON had greater serum amyloid A (P = 0.003) and haptoglobin (P < 0.001) concentration when compared with the other treatments. Cattle fed CON had greater dry matter (P < 0.001) digestibility when compared with the other treatments. In conclusion, inclusion of PELL and STR impacted eating behavior, but only STR affected ruminal fermentation, ruminal motility, systemic inflammation, and total tract nutrient digestibility in finishing cattle. These results are interpreted to suggest that the combination of peNDF and uNDF may be better than uNDF alone to adequately capture biological effects of NDF in high-concentrate diets.


One of the products of pig iron production is blast furnace gas. Its pressure energy can be used, among other things, by including an expansion turbine with subsequent production of electricity. The contribution discusses the possibilities of calculating the thermodynamic quantities of blast furnace gas as a mixture of gases. The state equation of an ideal gas does not apply accurately enough over a wide range of temperatures and pressures. The inaccuracy of the ideal gas state equation generally increases with decreasing temperature and increasing pressure. To verify the dependence of gas thermodynamic quantities on pressure and to calculate state quantities under normal conditions, I present the so-called Benedict-Webb-Rubin equation, which can be easily derivable, so that from the pressure formula it is possible very easily to obtain formulas for other thermodynamic variables, is sufficiently precise and the values of constants are set for a large number of gases.


Abstract Objective The objectives of this study were to develop a method for modeling obese pedestrians and to investigate effects of obesity on pedestrian impact responses and injury outcomes. Methods The GHBMC (Global Human Body Model Consortium) 50th percentile male pedestrian model was morphed into geometries with 4 body mass index (BMI) levels (25/30/35/40 kg/m2) predicted by statistical body shape models. Each of the 4 morphed models was further morphed from a standing posture into 2 other gaits (toe-off and mid-swing), which resulted in a total of 12 (4 BMIs × 3 postures) models. Each model was used to simulate vehicle-to-pedestrian impact under 2 impact velocities. Pedestrian kinematics and injury measures were analyzed focusing on lower extremities. Statistical analyses were performed to examine significance of obesity on concerned injury measures. Results Peak values of the bending moment at tibia, force at medial collateral ligament (MCL), bending angle at knee joint, and contact force between vehicle and pedestrian increased significantly (P < .05) with increased BMI. By analyzing kinematics of the lower extremity, the overall vehicle-to-pedestrian impact was divided into 2 phases: "initial contact" and "tibia rebound." For obese pedestrians, the added mass caused a higher tibia bending moment in the initial contact phase, and the greater moment of inertia led to greater bending angle and MCL force in the tibia rebound phase. Statistical analyses also revealed that pre-impact posture and impact velocity had significant effects on all injury measures. Conclusions Obesity could significantly increase the risk of pedestrian lower extremity injuries due to the inertial effect from the added mass. Pre-impact posture and impact velocity also significantly affect pedestrian injury measures. Future vehicle designs for pedestrian protection should consider populations with obesity. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using parametric human modeling to account for population diversity in injury prediction.


OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to examine real-world differences in healthcare resource utilization of indolent non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (iNHL) patients treated with first-line ibrutinib monotherapy (IM) or first-line bendamustine + rituximab (BR) combination therapy using U.S. administrative claims data.
 METHODS: The MarketScan® Research Databases were used to identify patients aged 18 years or older with commercial or Medicare supplemental insurance plans based on their first prescription (index date) of either IM or BR therapy between 02/01/2014 and 08/30/2017. Patients were required to be diagnosed with iNHL and be treatment naïve, as well as be continuously enrolled (CE) for 6 months prior to and at least 30 days following the index date. All-cause and iNHL-related healthcare resource utilization (e.g., inpatient admission (IP) and emergency room (ER) visits) were evaluated during a 12-month follow-up period from the index date among the subset of patients with 12 months of continuous enrollment and reported per-patient per-month (PPPM). Statistical differences in the distribution of IP and ER visits between the IM versus BR therapy groups were estimated using chi-squared test for categorical variables and t-test for continuous variables.
 RESULTS: A total of 1,544 iNHL patients were identified, with 207 patients in the IM cohort and 1,337 patients in the BR cohort. The IM cohort was significantly older (mean = 68.3 years; SD = 11.8) then the BR cohort (mean age = 62.1 years; SD = 11.1). The proportion of females was significantly (p<.05) lower in the IM cohort (36%) relative to the BR cohort (49%). The two cohorts did not differ in comorbidity as assessed by National Cancer Institute Comorbidity Index score (IM=0.7 vs. BR=0.8, p=0.40). The results of the comparisons between the two groups with 12 months of follow-up (IM = 110; BR = 745) are provided in Table 1. For all-cause healthcare utilization, the proportion of IM patients experiencing at least one IP admission was significantly higher than the BR cohort as were the PPPM number of admissions. The proportion of patients with at least one ER visit was similar in the IM and BR cohorts. However, the average PPPM number of ER visits was significantly higher in the IM cohort relative to the BR cohort. A similar pattern was found for the iNHL-related healthcare utilization variables with one exception. The proportion of patients with at least one iNHL-related ER visit was significantly higher in the IM relative to the BR cohort.
 Conclusions: The current study examined differences in healthcare utilization among iNHL-patients treated in a front-line setting with either ibrutinib or BR combination therapy. Results indicated that not only did more ibrutinib patients experience an IP admission and ER visits, including both all-cause and iNHL-related, but they also experienced more repeat admissions and ER visits. These real-world findings highlight the importance of considering the healthcare resource utilization of iNHL patients which may be associated with their first-line therapy.

 Irwin: Teva: Consultancy. Zhang:Teva: Consultancy. Wilson:Teva: Consultancy. Hoehn:Teva: Employment. Szabo:Teva: Employment. Tang:Teva: Employment.


Self-assembly of small peptide derivatives affords supramolecular nanofibrils that possess characteristic features of amyloid oligomers. Acting as de novo amyloid oligomers, the nanofibrils effectively inhibit the tumor progression both in vitro and in vivo, which demonstrates a new type of anticancer approach and may provide new insights for inverse comorbidity between cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.


Laparoscopy and hysteroscopy procedures commenced recently in our center and no study has been done on them yet. Also, there is paucity of information in our environment on comparison of laparoscopy/hysteroscopy findings with hysterosalpingography (HSG) amongst infertile women. The purpose of this study was to evaluate pattern of the abnormalities detected on HSG in infertile women and to compare them with laparoscopy and hysteroscopy findings. A prospective study of 220 consecutive patients who had HSG between December, 2011 and May, 2013, at Department of Radiology, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Zaria, Nigeria was conducted. Clinical notes and radiological findings were analyzed for demographic data, uterine status, tubal and pelvic abnormalities. Findings were correlated with those of laparoscopy and hysteroscopy. Data was analyzed using EPI Info version 3.3.2 for windows. Of the 72 women with tubal occlusion on HSG, 46 (63.89%) women had laparoscopy with dye test. HSG demonstrated unilateral tubal occlusion in 35 (76.09%) women and bilateral tubal occlusion in 11 (23.91%) women. The laparoscopy with dye test also demonstrated unilateral tubal occlusion in 34 (73.91%) women and bilateral tubal occlusion in 10 (21.74) women. The difference in the findings of both tests on tubal patency was not statistically significant (p>0.05). All the 26 women with uterine adhesion on HSG had diagnostic hysteroscopy which confirmed all the cases. There was no difference in the findings of both tests (p>0.05). Both HSG and diagnostic laparoscopy are effective in evaluating tubal patency with no significant difference in accuracy. Also both HSG and hysteroscopy are effective in evaluating intrauterine adhesions with no difference in accuracy.

 Key words: Abnormalities, hysterosalpingography, laparoscopy/hysteroscopy, infertility.


The Scottish referendum of 2014 encouraged massive public debate, including on Scotland's scientific performance and its ability to harness innovation and increase global competitivens. The science base in Scotland has traditionally been strong with world leading universities driving development of science. However, the science base has not translated well into innovation. This paper uses statistical data, over 30 interviews and two workshops/focus groups with business and policy leaders to analyse the key scientific and industrial dynamics feeding into the debate and investigate the potential impact of enhanced autonomy on the Scottish innovation system.


This is the review component of the report on small area estimation theory that was prepared as part of Southampton's involvement in the EURAREA "Enhancing small area estimation techniques to meet European Needs" project IST 2000-26290 in the European Union's Fifth Research And Technological Development Framework Programme.


Nuclear stress placement is a complex issue involving grammar, semantics, pragmatics, and information structure. This study examined the nuclear stress placement patterns in reading recordings produced by lower-intermediate and advanced adult EFL learners in China, and assessed the effects of explicit training on controlled production of nuclear stress. It was found that different types of nuclear stress presented asymmetrical difficulties to EFL learners. Production of some types showed more resistance to improvement, while others seemed more susceptible to explicit training, but with only short-term effects. Thus, EFL pronunciation teachers should give priority to those types of nuclear stress that are sensitive to explicit training and spend less time on those types that are either resistant to explicit training or that can be implicitly picked up by learners in the long run.


Atomically resolved scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) results are shown for substitutionally doped boron atoms in the hexagonal carbon network of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). STM images of boron-doped HOPG reveal not only a clear change in the electronic structure of the surface graphene network, but also one that directly affects the electronic structure of the graphene layer from the HOPG surface which is very exceptional for STM measurements. The boron atom site in the graphene network appears as the brightest area in the image including the six adjacent carbon atoms which have relatively higher intensity than normal carbon atoms in the STM image. The average boron-to-boron distance in the basal plane is consistent with Raman spectroscopy results. These structural results suggest that the graphite planes can be tailor made both atomically and electronically, and that boron doping can contribute to controlling the properties of the hexagonal carbon network in order to modify its properti...


The existence of residual stresses locked-in prefabricated displacement piles is a well-known problem and has been addressed by a number of researchers in the last decades. This is not the case with cast in situ piles: as a consequence of concrete curing, pile-soil interaction starts soon after concrete casting, causing stress changes in terms of both normal and shear stresses. Such circumstance has been confirmed by few experimental evidences, reported in the paper, in saturated or dry soil conditions. In order to evaluate the influence of residual stresses on the subsequent pile response to axial loading, a broad parametric study has been carried out by means of numerical modelling. Particular focus is given to the effects induced on the shaft friction of floating bored piles embedded in wet and dry sandy soils. The results have been interpreted with the aim of highlighting errors commonly made if a stress-free pile is assumed when interpreting a specific load test results on instrumented piles and/or arranging general design methods.


In this research, a multi-objective optimal design of a scroll compressor lower frame was approximated, and the design parameters of the lower frame were selected. The sensitivity of the design parameters was induced through a parameter analysis, and the thickness was determined to be the most sensitive parameter to stress and deflection. All of the design parameters regarding the mass are sensitive factors. It was formulated for the problem about stress and deflection to be caused by the axial load. The sensitivity of the design variables was determined using an orthogonal array for the parameter analysis. Using the central composite and D-optimal designs, a second polynomial approximation of the objective and constraint functions was formulated and the accuracy was verified through an R-square. These functions were applied to the optimal design program (NSGA-II). Through a CAE analysis, the effectiveness of the central composite and D-optimal designs was determined.


Press release is a technical and journalistic process that has an aesthetic and functional character. It is an important step in publishing the newspaper, which is concerned with presenting the editorial material on the page in an attractive and eye-catching manner. The sharp competition between newspapers of different directions has led to the search for ways to confirm their survival and continuity and to highlight their personality. Printing and adapting it in line with the content and general policy of the newspaper.Among the most prominent developments that the press has witnessed in terms of digital computer technology and network communication technology (the Internet), is the emergence of electronic press websites, which prompted designers and directors to find new methods and techniques, to design and produce pages, taking advantage of what the Internet provides of patterns, journalistic technical templates and new technologies in the field of Press directing, as the Internet has contributed to the development of press production through the emergence of new directing methods, and a set of design programs and programming languages ??for websites.


Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 45, 2004

2024

FdUMP[10] is a 10mer of FdUMP, the thymidylate synthase (TS) inhibitory metabolite of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). We studied the mechanism by which FdUMP[10] inhibits cell growth and induces apoptosis. COMPARE analysis of the data from the NCI 60 cell line screen revealed unexpected mechanistic similarities for FdUMP[10] with camptothecins (CPTs), suggesting that FdUMP[10] possesses a mechanism of action possibly related to topoisomerase I (top1) inhibition. In this study, we found that FdUMP[10] is much more potent than 5-FU (160-fold and 600-fold, respectively) toward P388 (mouse leukemia) and HCT116 (human colon adenocarcinoma) cells. P388/CPT45 cells that are highly-resistant to CPT as a consequence of top1-deficiency are highly cross-resistant to FdUMP[10], but not to 5FU. Intense DNA fragmentation following exposure to FdUMP[10] was observed by alkaline elution in P388 and HCT116 cells. Interestingly, FdUMP[10] induced the trapping of top1-DNA complexes both in P388 and HCT116 cells when these complexes were detected with the Immuno Complex of Enzyme (ICE) bioassay. These top1-DNA complexes could only be partially reduced by co-treatment with the broad-spectrum caspase inhibitor Z-VAD.FMK in FdUMP[10] treated HCT116 cells, while Z-VAD.FMK almost had no effect on top1-DNA complexes formation in P388 cells treated with FdUMP[10]. In such case, we propose that the top1-DNA complexes result from trapping of top1 at misincorporation sites (uracil and fluorouracil incorporation) resulting from potent TS inhibition by FdUMP[10]. In conclusion, FdUMP[10] is a markedly more potent antitumor agent than 5-FU. Trapping of top1- DNA complexes in cells by FdUMP[10] could be one of the mechanisms of action. FdUMP[10] mainly targets the DNA pathway, and is mechanistically distinct from 5-FU which targets both RNA and DNA pathways. FdUMP[N] compounds may be more efficacious than 5-FU or alternative FPs in cancer chemotherapy.


Isolates of Leptosphaeria maculans, the fungus that causes blackleg of canola, were randomly sampled from seven sites in both eastern Australia and Western Australia. Amplified fragment length polymorphism and restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses showed a low degree of genetic differentiation between isolates of L. maculans from these sites. There were small, weakly significant differences in genetic diversity of isolates when grouped according to the cultivar, age of the plants and the region from which the isolates were sampled. However, distinct populations were not observed. There was an even distribution of mating types, as shown by a PCR assay using idiomorph-specific primers.


Abstract Dipole-dipole electrical resistivity tomographic method was applied to investigate the subsurface cavities at Staff Welfare Hospital & School Quetta. A total of 890-meter profile line was covered along five smaller profile lines and fracture zones with maximum 21 meters interval. The cavity system along profile line-1 and 2 was very restricted and had no direct impact on infrastructure while major cavity beneath the building was traced at profile line-3 and line-4 thus constituting a ~20m wide cavity system with 3-4 small interconnected cavities between depths of 7 to 21 meters. This system was also traced at profile line-4 at a depth of 10 meters having a reduced width of 10m. At profile line-5, a few other cavities were detected that proved imperceptible due to limitations in data acquisition. To conclude, the cavity systems traced in profile line-3 and profile line-4 were the most perilous ones and are commonly the foremost reason for building collapse.


Author(s): Tang, Xun | Advisor(s): Yang, Tao | Abstract: Similarity search is important for many data-intensive applications to identify a set of similar objects. Examples of such applications include near-duplicate detection and clustering, collaborative filtering for similarity-based recommendations, search query suggestion, and data cleaning. Conducting similarity search is a time-consuming process, especially when a massive amount of data is involved, and when all pairs are compared. Previous work has used comparison filtering, inverted indexing, and parallel accumulation of partial intermediate results to expedite its execution. However, shuffling intermediate results can incur significant communication overhead as data scales up.We have developed a fast two-stage partition-based approach for all-pairs similarity search which incorporates static partitioning, optimized load balancing, and cache-conscious data traversal. Static partitioning places dissimilar documents into different groups to eliminate unnecessary comparison between their content. To overcome the challenges introduced by skewed distribution of data partition sizes and irregular dissimilarity relationship in large datasets, we conduct computation load balancing for partitioned similarity search, with competitiveness analysis. These techniques can improve performance by one to two orders of magnitude with less unnecessary I/O and data communication and better load balance. We also discuss how to further accelerate similarity search by incorporating incremental computing and approximation methods such as Locality Sensitive Hashing. Because of data sparsity and irregularity, accessing feature vectors in memory for runtime comparison incurs significant overhead in modern memory hierarchy. We have designed and implemented cache-conscious algorithms to improve runtime efficiency in similarity search. The idea of optimizing data layout and traversal patterns is also applied to the search result ranking problem in runtime with multi-tree ensemble models.


Milk fraud has been a recurring problem in Brazil; thus, it is important to know the effect of most frequently used preservatives and neutralizing substances as well as the detection capability of official tests. The objective of this study was to evaluate the analytical sensitivity of legislation-described tests and nonspecific microbial inhibition tests, and to investigate the effect of such substances on microbial growth inhibition and the persistence of detectable residues after 24/48h of refrigeration. Batches of raw milk, free from any contaminant, were divided into aliquots and mixed with different concentrations of formaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, sodium hypochlorite, chlorine, chlorinated alkaline detergent, or sodium hydroxide. The analytical sensitivity of the official tests was 0.005%, 0.003%, and 0.013% for formaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, and hypochlorite, respectively. Chlorine and chlorinated alkaline detergent were not detected by regulatory tests. In the tests for neutralizing substances, sodium hydroxide could not be detected when acidity was accurately neutralized. The yogurt culture test gave results similar to those obtained by official tests for the detection of specific substances. Concentrations of 0.05% of formaldehyde, 0.003% of hydrogen peroxide and 0.013% of sodium hypochlorite significantly reduced (P<0.05) the microbial counts in milk after 24 and 48h refrigeration. Formaldehyde and sodium hypochlorite remained detectable in milk after 48 and 24h of refrigeration, respectively; while hydrogen peroxide could not be detected after 24h. Official tests for the detection of milk fraud by the addition of preservatives and neutralizing substances present limitations and may be ineffective in detecting milk adulteration.


The main artificial neural networks (ANN)‐based retrieval algorithms developed at the Institute of (IFAC) are reviewed here. These algorithms aim at retrieving the main hydrological parameters, namely the soil moisture content (SMC), the plant water content (PWC) of agricultural vegetation, the woody volume of forests (WV) and the snow depth (SD) or snow water equivalent (SWE), from data collected by active (SAR/scatterometers) and passive (radiometers) microwave sensors operating from space. Taking advantage of the fast computation, ANN are able to generate output maps of the target parameter at both local and global scales, with a resolution varying from hundreds of meters to tens of kilometres, depending on the considered sensor. A peculiar strategy adopted for the training, which has been obtained by combining satellite measurements with data simulated by electromagnetic models (based on the radiative transfer theory, RTT), made these algorithms robust and site independent. The obtained results demonstrated that ANN are a powerful tool for estimating the hydrological parameters at different spatial scales, provided that they have been trained with consistent datasets, made up by both experimental and theoretical data.


This chapter elucidates the concept of social bookmarking, its benefits in digital libraries as well as the implications of its use on the intellectual property rights of the creators of the bookmarked works. The author concludes that digital libraries can use social bookmarking as a means of increasing access to and sharing of information resources; improve web searching; as well as to enhance collaboration in the creation and use of information. Since social bookmarks are, by and large, public descriptions of and pointers to the original resources, digital libraries do not infringe the intellectual property rights of their creators. Nonetheless, the libraries should watch against copying large volumes of content from the original resource as this may be construed as an intellectual competition with the bookmarked resource. Digital libraries are advised to develop and apply social bookmarking policies to streamline their use of social bookmarks.


At present, satellite and aerial remote sensing are common ways to collect data for territorial resources monitoring in most countries, but they are not effective or rapid enough. Compared with traditional ways of obtaining images, the UAV based platform for photogrammetry and remote sensing is a more flexible and easy way to provide high-resolution images with lower cost. So building UAV based platforms is becoming a hot field throughout the whole world. However, there are also some problems with UAV images, e.g. the views of UAV images from UAV are smaller than those of traditional aerial images, so these images with small views should be pasted together in order to increase the visual field. Therefore, mosaicking UAV images is a critical task. The homographies between sequence images will be affected by the accumulated errors, which will lead to drifts of the position of each image in the mosaic. In this paper, we introduce a two-step optimization method for mosaicking UAV sequence images which can correct the homographies and improve the position of each image in the mosaic. Experimental results will also be presented. Index Terms—UAV, sequence images, mosaicking, optimization


A new theory, the intrinsic component theory, is proposed for electrocardiography. This theory is based on the temporal characteristics rather than spatial orientations of the current sources and sinks in the heart. The theory may be stated as follows: the electrical activities of the heart may be decomposed into spatially nonorthogonal, stationary sets of current sources and sinks. The time variations of the magnitudes of all the sources and sinks belonging to the same set follow a single pattern of an intrinsic component which is orthogonal (uncorrelated) in the time domain to all other intrinsic components. The physical interpretation of intrinsic components is new to electrocardiography, although the mathematical tool employed is the well-known eigenvalue process. The intrinsic component theory, applied to a single dipole, provides us with a mathematical foundation for vectorcardiogram rotation, and a better basis for pathological ECG comparison and classification, especially by digital computers.


Workplace spirituality has steadily been gaining attention in the last couple of years. Many researchers have investigated the role of "workplace spirituality" with the aim of generating research data that would firmly entrench this construct as vital in the workplace. This article proposes the relationships between workplace spirituality, job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors. It examines the relationship between three workplace spirituality components–meaning and purpose in work, recognition of an inner life or spirit and interconnectedness with the various forms in which organizational citizenship behaviours manifest, mediated by the job satisfaction experienced by the employees. This study can provide significant inputs to promote managerial effectiveness, change management, leadership, holistic performance and growth of organizations, through environments which promote workplace spirituality.


Sickle cell anemia is associated with several systemic complications and life-threatening crises. The use of hydroxyurea, which increases hemoglobin F level in patients with sickle cell disease, is associated with reduction in disease severity, diminution in the frequency of veno-occlusive crises and other complications as well as improvement in the quality of life. There are specific indications for the use of hydroxyurea in patients with sickle cell disease and there are certain tools to monitor its effectiveness. Hydroxyurea has been shown to be a safe medication even on long-term administration. However, close monitoring and regular follow up of patients from clinical and laboratory sides are essential to ensure early discovery of toxicity, adherence to the prescribed treatment in addition to continued and long-lasting response to therapy. In this literature review: the complications of sickle cell anemia as well as the available therapeutic modalities will be highlighted and the role of hydroxyurea in the management of patients with the disease will be discussed thoroughly.


The capacity to successfully, positively engage with the cognitive capacities of critical thinking has become the benchmark of employability for many diverse industries across the globe and is considered critical for the development of informed, decisive global citizenship. Despite this, education systems in several countries have developed policies and practices that limit the opportunities for students to authentically participate in the discussions, debates, and evaluative thinking that serve to develop the skill set and mindset of critical thinkers. This writing examines the status of critical thinking in four different contexts across the globe as reflected in educational policies and academic experiences as a preface to investigating actual classroom practices and possible impacts the support of critical thinking skills may have on the potential development of the global citizens of the future. Each vignette reflects the contextualized difficulties that are presented by social and cultural concerns and traditions of making meaning. These stories of education also illustrate the various ways in which the skills and capacities of critical thinking are interpreted in different contexts and address the negative nuances with which thinking critically has become associated. Finally, a pedagogical model of teaching, which may support student development of the skill set of critical thinking within the boundaries of social and cultural mindsets, has been developed.


BACKGROUND
The enzyme 5-lipoxygenase catalyzes the metabolism of arachidonic acid to form products that have been implicated in the airway obstruction of asthma. We hypothesized that if products of the 5-lipoxygenase pathway are important in mediating this obstruction, then prevention of their formation should decrease the severity of an induced asthmatic response.

METHODS
In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study, we examined the effect of A-64077, a 5-lipoxygenase inhibitor, on the bronchoconstriction induced by hyperventilation of cold, dry air in 13 patients with asthma. The completeness of 5-lipoxygenase inhibition was confirmed by examining the profile of eicosanoids produced in whole blood ex vivo after activation with the calcium ionophore A-23187.

RESULTS
A-64077 decreased the mean (+/- SEM) ionophore-induced synthesis of leukotriene B4, a 5-lipoxygenase product, by 74 percent (from 265.3 +/- 30.3 to 69.5 +/- 21.5 ng per milliliter, P less than 0.001), but it did not affect the ionophore-induced synthesis of thromboxane B2, a cyclooxygenase metabolite of arachidonic acid (80.0 +/- 17.1 ng per milliliter before A-64077 vs. 75.8 +/- 14.3 ng per milliliter after A-64077). In concert with the selective inhibition of 5-lipoxygenase by A-64077, the amount of cold, dry air (expressed as respiratory heat exchange) required to reduce the forced expiratory volume in one second by 10 percent was increased by 47 percent after A-64077 (3.0 kJ per minute for placebo vs. 4.4 kJ per minute for A-64077, P less than 0.002). Similar results were obtained when minute ventilation was used as an indicator of outcome (27.5 liters per minute for placebo vs. 39.8 liters per minute for A-64077, P less than 0.005).

CONCLUSIONS
Selective inhibition of 5-lipoxygenase by A-64077 is associated with a significant amelioration of the asthmatic response to cold, dry air, suggesting that 5-lipoxygenase products are involved in this response. This approach may be useful in the treatment of asthma.


Major projects of the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Accelerator Technology Division are discussed, covering activities that occurred during the last six months of calendar 1982. The first sections report highlights in beam dynamics, accelerator inertial fusion, radio-frequency structure development, the racetrack microtron, CERN high-energy physics experiment NA-12, and high-flux radiographic linac study. Next we report on selected proton Storage Ring activities that have made significant progress during this reporting period, followed by an update on the free electron laser. The Fusion Materials Irradiation Test Facility work is discussed next, then progress on the klystron development project and on the gyrocon project. The activities of the newly formed Theory and Simulation Group are outlined. The last section covers activities concerning the accelerator test stand for the neutral particle beam program.


Chronic ambulatory peritoneal dialysis is associated with a number of metabolic abnormalities. These include lipid abnormalities, most commonly hypertriglyceridemia, increased VLDL and decreased HDL-cholesterol levels; carbohydrate abnormalities, a result of the absorption of large quantities of glucose; protein losses, consisting of albumin and amino acid losses; and a propensity to obesity. The pathogenesis and possible consequences of these abnormalities are discussed.


PurposeThis paper investigates the extent, the determinants and the change in the gender pay gap in Vietnam in the period 2010–2016 in order to provide suggestions for policy adjustment to narrow gender pay inequality more effectively.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs the propensity score matching (PSM) method to examine inequality in pay between female and male earners sharing identical characteristics. The analysis is conducted for both the full sample and various characteristic-based subsamples. This procedure is conducted for 2010 and 2016 separately to discover the change in gap and inequality during this period.FindingsThe matching results based on the data sets taken from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) 2010 and 2016 affirm that gender income inequality in Vietnam, though persisted, decreased significantly in 2016 compared to 2010, and was insignificant in many subsamples in 2016. In addition to the observable determinants including educational level, occupation, economic sector and industry, unobservable factors are proved to also play an important role in creating the gender pay gap in Vietnam.Practical implicationsThe research findings suggest that policies aimed at mitigating gender pay inequality should take into account both observable characteristics and unobservable factors such as unobservable gender differences that affect wages and gender discrimination in pay.Originality/valueThis is the first study using a matching technique to investigate gender wage gap in Vietnam. With up-to-date data, longer research period and the superiority of the method used in dealing with sample selection bias, the results obtained are more robust, more detailed and reliable.


ABSTRACT To explore the diversity of bacterial endophytes of rhizomes of bamboo growing in the central part of India; five Bamboo species were collected and investigated. The culturable endophytic bacteria were isolated by serial dilution and culture-dependant method and their diversity was studied with a 16S rDNA sequence analysis. Consequently, a total of 31 endophytic bacteria isolated from these bamboo species, and the isolates were affiliated to 17 different genera. Proteobacteria was the dominant phylum with the highest diversity containing 11 genera and Staphylococcus, Herbaspirillum, Pseudomonas and Stenotrophomonas being the most frequently observed genera. The Microbacterium, Chryseobacterium, and Chitinophaga were the solitary representative of classes Actinobacteria, Flavobacteria, and Sphingobacteria, respectively. The diversity of bacteria was greater in Dendrocalamus species than in Bambusa species. Based on the putative identity of isolates and their functional roles as reported in the literature, the isolated bacterial endophytes seems to be the promising sustainable bioresource for bioaugmentation of plant growth particularly bamboos in tropical areas including forest.