[1] Although snowfall is an important component of global precipitation in extratropical regions, satellite snowfall estimate is still in an early developmental stage, and existing satellite remote sensing techniques do not yet provide reliable estimates of snowfall over higher latitudes. Toward the goal of developing a global snowfall algorithm, in this study, a Bayesian technique has been tested for snowfall retrieval over land using high-frequency microwave satellite data. In this algorithm, observational data from satellite- and surface-based radars and in situ aircraft measurements are used to build the a priori database consisting of snowfall profiles and corresponding brightness temperatures. The retrieval algorithm is applied to the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B data for snowfall cases that occurred over the Great Lakes region, and the results are compared with the surface radar data and daily snowfall data collected from National Weather Service stations. Although the algorithm is still at an ad hoc stage, the results show that the satellite retrievals compare well with surface measurements in the early winter season, when there is no accumulated snow on ground. However, for the late winter season, when snow constantly covers the ground, the snowfall retrievals become very noisy and show overestimation. Therefore, it is concluded that developing methods to efficiently remove surface snow cover contamination will be the major task in the future to improve the accuracy of satellite snowfall retrieval over land.


Worldwide use of synthetic cannabinoids (SCs) is rapidly increasing, in part due to the generation of numerous new compounds, sidestepping legal restrictions. Their detection using standard toxicology panels is difficult, due to their vast heterogeneity and lack of structural resemblance to cannabinoids. Sympathetic overactivity and arterial spasm play a role in some of the life-threatening reactions to SCs, such as coronary or cerebral vasoconstriction. Here we report a patient with repeated consumption of SCs that led to mesenteric ischemia and death. A 29-year-old man was frequently evaluated in the Emergency Medicine Department for recurrent transient crampy abdominal pain, associated with the use of the SCs colloquially known as "Mr. Nice Guy." He was finally hospitalized with a protracted attack, associated with diarrhea and leukocytosis. Initial evaluation including computed tomography was unremarkable. Diarrhea and leukocytosis gradually resolved, but bouts of hypertension and abdominal pain occurred in association with repeated consumption of the SCs. On the fifth hospital day, the patient developed abrupt abdominal pain, associated with profound shock and signs of peritoneal irritation and succumbed within an hour. Postmortem CT scan was consistent with intestinal perforation most probably due to a nonobstructive mesenteric infarction. There was no evidence of a single vessel infarction.


Self-Adaptive Software (SAS) can reconfigure itself to adapt to the changing environment at runtime, aiming to continually optimize conflicted nonfunctional objectives (e.g., response time, energy consumption, throughput, cost, etc.). In this article, we present Feature-guided and knEe-driven Multi-Objective optimization for Self-Adaptive softwAre (FEMOSAA), a novel framework that automatically synergizes the feature model and Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) to optimize SAS at runtime. FEMOSAA operates in two phases: at design time, FEMOSAA automatically transposes the engineers' design of SAS, expressed as a feature model, to fit the MOEA, creating new chromosome representation and reproduction operators. At runtime, FEMOSAA utilizes the feature model as domain knowledge to guide the search and further extend the MOEA, providing a larger chance for finding better solutions. In addition, we have designed a new method to search for the knee solutions, which can achieve a balanced tradeoff. We comprehensively evaluated FEMOSAA on two running SAS: One is a highly complex SAS with various adaptable real-world software under the realistic workload trace; another is a service-oriented SAS that can be dynamically composed from services. In particular, we compared the effectiveness and overhead of FEMOSAA against four of its variants and three other search-based frameworks for SAS under various scenarios, including three commonly applied MOEAs, two workload patterns, and diverse conflicting quality objectives. The results reveal the effectiveness of FEMOSAA and its superiority over the others with high statistical significance and nontrivial effect sizes.


UNLABELLED
Thromboembolic (TE) and hemorrhagic (H) complications are the most significant problems in patients treated with oral anticoagulants (OA) after implantation of artificial valvular prostheses of heart. This problem was discussed in worlds scientific literature, but was not comprehensive investigated in Polish population of patients. The aim of the study was to assess the frequency of TE and H complications and their influence on mortality and morbidity and to determine the risk factors related to clinical and hemodynamical patients status.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Between December 1997 and December 1998, 358 patients hospitalized in our Department were qualified for cardiac surgery. There were 177 women and 181 men with a mean age 56.9+/-10.3 (range 21-80 years), who underwent 144 mitral, 172 aortic, 42 both artificial heart valve replacement. All patients were followed prospectively.

RESULTS
Follow up was 100% complete and averaged 36.7+/-12.1 months. The total follow-up was 1109.8 pty. Linearized incidents of death was 2.1%/pty (30 patients). TE events were in 30 patients (2.7%/pty). H events occurred in 46 patients (4.15%/pty). The TE and H complications were the most important causes of morbidity and mortality in observed population of patients after mechanical heart valve replacement. Frequency of complications was inside the broad spectrum of values presented in the literature.

CONCLUSIONS
The independent risk factors of death were: lower EF (RR: 1.06; CI 95%: 1.02-1.08), advanced functional NYHA class in presurgery period (RR: 3.5; CI 95%: 1.1-8.2) and advanced functional NYHA class in postsurgery period (RR: 7.5; CI 95%: 3.6-15.5). The independent risk factor of TE as well H complications was an advanced functional NYHA class in perioperative period (respectively for TE and H complications RR: 4.2; CI 95%: 1.9-8.9 and RR: 3.2; CI 95%: 1.5-6.7). In the group with artificial heart valve in reference to the severe (class III) complications of postoperative period-independent risk factors were atherosclerosis risk factors (hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes and smoking) (RR: 2.4; CI 95%: 1.3-5.6).


In this study, the authors investigate the outage probability of underlay cognitive radio systems with relay selection. In particular, they consider a secondary multi-relay network operating in the amplify-and-forward (AF) mode and only the `best' relay is selected, which satisfies an index of merit. The proposed selection strategy takes into consideration the effect of primary user (PU) interference. That is, the authors assume that the secondary multi-relay network is exposed to unwanted interference from a neighboring PU network. They derive a closed-form outage probability expression and further present a thorough asymptotic diversity order analysis of the underlying scenario. A simulation study is presented to corroborate the analytical results and to have further insight into the performance of the proposed selection strategy.


Bone is a component of the skeletal-locomotor system but also functions as an immunological organ that harbors hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. Since the immune and skeletal systems are closely related through a number of shared regulatory molecules including cytokines and receptors, bone can be affected in various immune disorders. Rheumatoid arthritis is a typical disease in which the immune system affects the bone metabolism. The enhanced activity of osteoclasts by the activation of Th17 cells causes the joint destruction in rheumatoid arthritis. Studies on bone destruction associated rheumatoid arthritis have highlighted the importance of the interplay between the immune and bone systems, and promoted the new interdisciplinary field of "osteoimmunology". Furthermore, recent studies have suggested that regulation of bone tissues by IL-17 is more complicated than we had expected. IL-17-prodcuing cells contribute to new bone formation at the enthesis in ankylosing spondylitis, and IL-17-producing γδ T cells promote bone regeneration by acting on the mesenchymal stem cells in bone fracture healing. It would be necessary to comprehensively understand the interplay between the immune and bone systems for elucidation of the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of various diseases that involves the two systems.


Measuring racial inequalities in the labor market. How much racial inequality is there in Brazilian labor market? What has been the impact of the latest transformations in work relations on it? Can we compare the Brazilian situation to other countries? These questions don't have today an objective answer. This is due, mostly, to the absence of measures which could allow us to make long term and regional comparisons of different racial inequalities situations. Our proposal is to provide new indicators to evaluate racial inequalities in both the occupational and income structure in Brazil. Our results show that whites/non-whites gaps widened since the 1980s. They allow us to affirm, in addition, that racial inequalities are today worst in Brazil than in countries that adopted affirmative action laws to fight discrimination.


Despite positive growth of restaurant industry in Malaysia but on the other side of coin, this industry always associated with having low pay, long working hours, lack of benefits, hard work, physically exhausting, and underappreciated thus increasing job stress among employees. The job-related stress is a growing concern among the restaurant operators as it has a significant impact on the performance and productivity of employees. Additionally, excessive and unmanageable stress can be damaging to employees' health as it affects their mental and physical wellbeing. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify possible determinants and its influence towards job stress at workplace. The primary data of this study was derived from quantitative method, strictly to Malaysian non-managerial employees only and were distributed to 700 employees who were currently working in casual dining restaurants in Klang Valley area. After screening and data checking, a total of 487 self-completed questionnaires were usable for analysis with 69.6% of response rate. A multiple regression was run to predict job stress and three variables were used that are work environment, workload, and job autonomy. Results found that work environment and workload were statistically significantly predictor of job stress with F (4, 483) = 28.131, p < .0005, R2 = .149. These two variables added statistically significantly to the prediction, p < .05 and will be discussed further in this paper. Findings obtained in this study could suggest to owners and restaurant operators to highlight factor that could contribute to job stress and strategize proactive measures to minimize stress and ultimately retain their employees in the industry.


Social workers and welfare recipients operate within the same institutional framework and share a working and/or lived knowledge of poverty, but they occupy different social and economic positions. To gain a better understanding of intergroup attitudes, the author compared how social workers and welfare recipients explain poverty and perceive the welfare system. The results highlight important similarities and differences between the two groups. Although the author did not find differences for individualistic attributions, welfare recipients regarded prejudice as playing a greater role in causing poverty than did social workers. Welfare recipients also expressed stronger support for increased welfare funding and progressive welfare policies than did social workers. The author discussed implications for strengthening interclass alliances, particularly the relationship between social service providers and welfare recipients.


In experiments with rats and mice there was shown the ability of carnosine (beta-alanyl-L-histidine) to depress accumulation of lipoperoxidative products in blood serum and to increase the yield of spleen endocolonies in irradiated animals. There were investigated duration of the protective action and compared effects of single and prolonged administration of carnosine. Carnozine restores the postradiative decrease in the cytochrome P-450 content in rat liver microsomes. Besides, the ability of carnosine to prevent the postradiative decline in the activity of UDP-glucoronyltransferase. Some possible mechanisms of its radioprotective action are discussed.


Abstract The determination of hydrogen (H2) concentration together with the products of microbial reduction reactions in a trichloroethylene dechlorinating system is conducted to delineate the ongoing predominant terminal electron accepting processes (TEAP). Formate was used as electron donor and synthetic Fe minerals or environmental samples were used as the substrate. Iron(III) and Mn(IV) reduction limited microbial dechlorination by the mixed anaerobic culture by decreasing the level of H2 in the system. The H2 measurements indicated that the H2 concentration at which different TEAPs occur can overlap and thus these TEAPs can therefore occur concurrently rather than exclusively. Difference in Fe(III) bioavailability and hence, Fe(III) reduction partially explain this wide range. The distinction between dechlorination and other microbial reduction processes based on H2 threshold values is not feasible under such conditions, though there appears to be a relation between the rates of H2 consuming process and the observed H2 level.


Indonesian tourism was chosen to be the topic that could be interesting to be analyzed as in the late years; the country image has been decreasing due to bombing issues, terrorism issues and economic crisis. Besides, based on the data that the writer had obtained, the numbers of Dutch tourists were decreasing slightly higher than the other European countries. Some research, including primary and secondary research, had been done to reach the most accurate result. The aim of the research is to show whether or not any relation between the decrease on numbers of Dutch tourists and the negative issues towards Indonesia. The result showed that most of the respondents who had never been to Indonesia were less interested to visit Indonesia due to the negative image that the country possessed. Realizing this finding, the writer had some suggestions which were related to building new positioning and renewing marketing strategy to establish positive image and attract more Dutch tourist or even international tourist visiting Indonesia in future years.


This report is the second in a series of programs made possible by a grant to Grantmakers In Health (GIH) from The Commonwealth Fund to bring grantmakers together with experts in policy, practice, and research to exchange information and ideas about key health issues facing the nation. On June 17, 1999, GIH convened a small group of grantmakers along with officials from the Health Care Financing Administration and other experts in consumer education, managed care, and health services research for an Issue Dialogue on managed care and the elderly. Intended to both share lessons learned and stimulate new ideas, the Issue Dialogue proved to be a lively and insightful forum on what health funders can do to support development of consumer information, tools, and program models for this vulnerable population. This Issue Brief brings together key points from the day's discussion with factual information on managed care within the Medicare program and grantmaker activities drawn from a background paper prepared for Dialogue participants.


Background The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of methods for screening for retrocochlear pathologies based on auditory evoked brainstem responses (ABRs). The study compared the sensitivity, specificity, and effectiveness of these 3 techniques. Material/Methods The methods were: (i) standard ABR utilizing click-evoked responses, (ii) stacked ABR based on derived-band responses, and (iii) ABRs evoked by tone-pips (ABR TP). The methods were tested on patients with retrocochlear pathologies confirmed by MRI-Gd, normal-hearing subjects, and patients with cochlear hearing loss. The system and software used in the tests was NavPro AEP v.6.2.0 (BioLogic – Natus). Prior to testing, all subjects were given comprehensive audiologic and otologic examinations, including MR imaging. Sensitivity and specificity functions and predictive values of methods were determined. Results The stacked ABR method as realized in the NavPro system exhibited high sensitivity but specificity was very low, due to the high variability of stacked ABR amplitudes. The standard ABR method had good specificity, but low sensitivity in cases of small tumors (below 1 cm in diameter). Best sensitivity and specificity was obtained with the ABR TP method. Conclusions The stacked ABR method allows small acoustic tumors to be detected, but produces high percentage of false positive results. The ABR TP method offers good sensitivity and specificity, and relatively high predictive value. The best option would be to use a two-stage screening, consisting of a standard ABR in the first stage and an ABR TP test in the second.


Data from a large number of patients (1918) treated with rioprostil, H2-antagonists and placebo, are analysed to examine the safety profile of rioprostil in the treatment of active gastric ulcer or active duodenal ulcer. Rioprostil is administered to 1000 of those patients. Patients who dropped out of the studies and those with adverse drug reactions are classified and compared within different subgroups. The overall dropout rate for rioprostil patients is 8.8%: 2.3% of these because of adverse reactions. The incidence of adverse reactions during rioprostil treatment is 20.9%, with more than 60% of these having gastrointestinal symptoms, mainly appearing in the first week of therapy. Comparisons show a higher incidence of symptoms with rioprostil treatment than with ranitidine treatment because of the gastrointestinal symptoms. Possible differences are found between groups in sex, age, and drug dose. The analysis of laboratory variables does not show clinically important changes as a result of rioprostil treatment.


This study examines the annual cycle of energy and time expenditure in a
small folivorous marsupial, the common ringtail possum, Pseudocheirus peregrinus.
Particular attention was given to the energy expended in lactation by the females. Field
metabolic rate (FMR) and water flux were measured using an isotopic technique
(doubly labeled water). Feeding rates were estimated from measurements of FMR in
conjunction with information on the composition of the diet and a digestibility study.
FMR's and subsequent feeding rates estimated by the doubly-labeled water technique
do not include the proportion of food consumed which is diverted to milk solids and is
not metabolised by the mother. The amount of energy transferred directly to the young
ringtail possum via the milk was estimated from measurements of milk composition
and production.
Reproduction in the common ringtail possum in Tasmania was seasonal, with
the majority of births (mean litter size 1.8) in late autumn and early winter. In general,
the young leave the pouch during early spring and are fully weaned by the early
summer months.
There was no significant seasonal variation in the energy expenditure or water
influx of males. The mean FMR of males and non-lactating females was approximately
2.5 times basal metabolic rate which is consistent with the hypothesis that a low total
energy cost of free existence (or field metabolic rate) is a characteristic shared by
arboreal folivores. Females showed significant changes in water influx and energy
expenditure according to their lactational status. The greatest metabolisable energy
expenditure was that of females during Phase 3 of lactation (30% above nonreproductive
metabolism). Water influx was correspondingly high in these females
(36% above non-lactating females).
In general, ringtail possums in both the field and captivity lactated for
approximately seven months. However, the length of lactation was shorter in females
which bred twice in a year. The composition of the milk varied throughout lactation. A
peak in milk solids and energy content coincided with emergence of the young from
the pouch. Milk solids represented around 18% (w/w) with milk fat representing only
10% of milk solids. Milk production peaked during Phase 3 of lactation. The dilute
milk with a relatively low fat content combined with a long period of lactation result in
slow growth of the young.
Peak milk energy output was 154.5 kJ.kg-0·75 .d-1 and peak metabolisable
energy allocation during lactation was 763.2 kJ.kg-0.75 .d-1. These were lower than
values available for other herbivores. However, the total output of milk energy by
ringtail possums ( 11 MJ/kg) and total metabolisable energy allocation during
reproduction (23.4 MJ/kg) were similar to estimates available for other herbivores. The
lactational strategy of the ringtail possum has been selected, most likely, in order to
spread the energy demands of reproduction over time due to constraints on the rate of
energy intake imposed by a leaf diet. The total energy requirement for reproduction (34.4 Ml/year, or 14% of total annual energy budget) suggests that the ringtail also has
a relatively low overall energy investment in reproduction.
Estimates of total body water made from isotopic dilution and measurements
of body mass suggest that females utilise body fat stored during the early stages of
lactation to cope with the additional energy required for late lactation. However,
reproduction is apparently timed such that late lactation coincides with the increased
production of young foliage. Therefore females may also increase their food and water
intake during late lactation by consuming young foliage.
Differences were found in the composition of milk collected from wild and
captive animals. Chemical analyses of the leaves eaten suggested that these differences
were due to variations in diet composition. It was, therefore, proposed that the intraand
inter-population variation in reproductive traits shown by the common ringtail
possum may be related to variations in milk composition and/or production caused by
variations in diet quality.


increase in OPC (p < 0.05). By comparison, Medicare Part D resulted in significant TRx increases for ten drugs (and no decreases), eight showed ARP increases and two had ARP decreases (p < 0.05). Interestingly, seen drugs decreased OPC while two increased (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: NICE HTAs had mild effects on the prescription utilization and costs in the US, while Medicare Part D caused fundamental changes to the market parameters measured. The influence of NICE decisions on the US market should be monitored as HTAs are expected to play a more significant role in the advent of Medicare Part D Reimbursement.


An extended decentralised supervisory control framework of discrete event systems is considered, in which a certain number of local supervisors are required to disable a controllable event. The mutual observability, which is an extended concept of the conventional co-observability, is presented to increase the system's efficacy. Based on the mutual observability, the authors investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of the extended decentralised supervisory control.


Vision Transformers have shown great promise recently for many vision tasks due to the insightful architecture design and attention mechanism. By revisiting the self-attention responses in Transformers, we empirically observe two interesting issues. First, Vision Transformers present a queryirrelevant behavior at deep layers, where the attention maps exhibit nearly consistent contexts in global scope, regardless of the query patch position (also head-irrelevant). Second, the attention maps are intrinsically sparse, few tokens dominate the attention weights; introducing the knowledge from ConvNets would largely smooth the attention and enhance the performance. Motivated by above observations, we generalize self-attention formulation to abstract a queryirrelevant global context directly and further integrate the global context into convolutions. The resulting model, a Fully Convolutional Vision Transformer (i.e., FCViT), purely consists of convolutional layers and firmly inherits the merits of both attention mechanism and convolutions, including dynamic property, weight sharing, and short- and long-range feature modeling, etc. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of FCViT. With less than 14M parameters, our FCViT-S12 outperforms related work ResT-Lite by 3.7% top1 accuracy on ImageNet-1K. When scaling FCViT to larger models, we still perform better than previous state-of-the-art ConvNeXt with even fewer parameters. FCViT-based models also demonstrate promising transferability to downstream tasks, like object detection, instance segmentation, and semantic segmentation. Codes and models are made available at: https://github.com/ma-xu/FCViT.


OBJECTIVES
The effectiveness of one-to-one preventive dental education provided by dental undergraduate students for improving elementary school-aged children's oral self-care skills, diet-related knowledge, and diet behavior was tested.

METHODS
The sample consisted of 106 children between the ages of 5 and 12 years who attended the same school. Oral self-care skills were assessed by undergraduate dental students using a tooth-brushing assessment form, and diet knowledge and behaviors by means of a questionnaire. The effectiveness of education (two one-to-one sessions) was evaluated by measuring the post-educational changes in the children's oral self-care skills, diet knowledge, and behavior.

RESULTS
There were significant improvements in the means (sd) of tooth-brushing skill scores (range: 0-18) from 6.2 (4.0) at the baseline to 8.4 (4.1) at the first and to 10.3 (3.0) at the second follow-up. Total tooth-brushing time (in seconds) significantly increased from 76.0 (59.1) at the baseline to 110.7 (74.3) at the first follow-up then decreased to 102.6 (73.1) at the second follow-up. The means (sd) of diet knowledge scores (range: 0-30) improved significantly from 18.5 (5.6) at the baseline to 23.0 (7.3) at the first and to 24.5 (4.0) at the second follow-ups. The means (sd) of weekly sugar intake scores (range: 0-18) significantly decreased from 4.9 (2.1) at the baseline to 3.1 (2.0) at the first follow-up and remained unchanged until the second follow-up.

CONCLUSIONS
One-to-one dental education improved children's oral self-care skills, diet-related knowledge, and diet behavior. The post-educational improvements were maintained for 6 months in older children but not in the younger children.


his new feature in MP highlights experiences, opinions, and advice from NACE International's Fellows, who are honored for their distinguished contributions in the field of corrosion and its prevention. NACE Fellows make up a broadly based forum through which technical and professional leaders serve as advisors to the association. This month, MP is pleased to publish the contribution of Robert Baboian, FNACE, who is in the original class of NACE Fellows named in 1993.


Iterations are one of the most successful mechanisms in software development to ensure that the resulting system is satisfactory. Due to its strengths, various kinds of iterations have been integrated to software development with varying goals. In this paper, we consider different types of iterations related to software development, including prototyping, incremental development, sprints as in e.g. Scrum, and iterations as defined in Lean Startup. The goal is to understand the relations between the types of iterations, and to find out what kind of similarities and differences they have with each other. As a result, we find that while the goals are different, it is possible for the iterations to coexist, so that one form of iteration is used as a tool to complete the goals of another.


Although the consequences of stress and hypercortisolemia for the rodent hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) are well known, little is known about other species. For pigs, tethered housing represents a well‐established chronic stressor that shares many similarities with restraint paradigms, as evidenced by profound changes in behavior and autonomic and endocrine dysfunction, including flattened cortisol rhythms and hypercortisolemia—all conditions that may threaten hippocampal viability in rat. Here, we studied structural parameters of the porcine DG after 5 months of tethered housing in relation to basal saliva cortisol measured antemortem. We further investigated whether any neuropathology or alterations in apoptosis had occurred in the left hippocampal hemisphere. Stereological analysis revealed high correlations between DG volume and neuron number in individual animals in both hemispheres. Within individual animals, neuron numbers of the left and right lobes were not correlated. Notably, basal cortisol was negatively correlated with volume and neuron number of the left, but not the right DG. Although obvious neuropathology was absent, apoptosis was present in DG and alveus and less so in CA areas. Despite the short window of time during which apoptosis is detectable, their stereologically estimated numbers in the DG, but not in other regions, were negatively correlated with cortisol. In conclusion, our data indicate for the first time a profound lateralization in the relationship between DG structure, apoptosis, and basal cortisol after stress in pigs. Five months of chronic stress failed to induce lasting neuropathology. Although accumulating changes in apoptosis could have contributed to the structural DG alterations, further studies should reveal whether stress has been instrumental, or whether the differences between animals were present from birth onward. The present lateralization after stress is, however, consistent with lateralized hippocampal volume changes in stress‐related human disorders and suggests that these effects are not limited to this species alone. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Objective: The objective of the study was to determine the factors that influence the surgical delay of hip fracture in older adults. Materials and methods: An observational, descriptive, and prospective study, which includes patients over 60 years with a diagnosis of hip fracture, admitted to the orthopedics service, from March 2018 to June 2019. The causes of surgical delay and the number of patients surgically operated before 48 h after admission until surgery were stratified as well as the number of days of hospital stay, complications, and costs related to surgical delay. Results: Seventy-eight patients were admitted to the study. The average hospital stay was 156 ± 66.5 h. The main complication was delirium and the average cost of hospitalization was $ 44,770.93 ± 16,080.40 Mexican pesos. Sixty-six patients suffered surgical delay and 12 (15.38%) underwent surgery in < 48 h. The causes of the delay were the non-availability of an operating room (66.66%), decompensation of comorbidities (24.24%), and use of antiplatelet agents or anticoagulants (9.09%). Conclusions: The causes of delay found are likely to be modified and resolved by the orthopediatric team, with the main objective of surgical care within the first 48 h of hospitalization.


Scavenger receptor BI (SR-BI) is a cell surface receptor that binds high density lipoproteins (HDL) and mediates selective uptake of HDL cholesteryl esters (CE) in transfected cells. To address the physiological role of SR-BI in HDL cholesterol homeostasis, mice were generated bearing an SR-BI promoter mutation that resulted in decreased expression of the receptor in homozygous mutant (designated SR-BI att) mice. Hepatic expression of the receptor was reduced by 53% with a corresponding increase in total plasma cholesterol levels of 50-70% in SR-BI att mice, attributable almost exclusively to elevated plasma HDL. In addition to increased HDL-CE, HDL phospholipids and apo A-1 levels were elevated, and there was an increase in HDL particle size in mutant mice. Metabolic studies using HDL bearing nondegradable radiolabels in both the protein and lipid components demonstrated that reducing hepatic SR-BI expression by half was associated with a decrease of 47% in selective uptake of CE by the liver, and a corresponding reduction of 53% in selective removal of HDL-CE from plasma. Taken together, these findings strongly support a pivotal role for hepatic SR-BI expression in regulating plasma HDL levels and indicate that SR-BI is the major molecule mediating selective CE uptake by the liver. The inverse correlation between plasma HDL levels and atherosclerosis further suggests that SR-BI may influence the development of coronary artery disease.


Abstract Mothers with histories of alcohol and drug addiction have shown greater difficulty parenting young children than mothers with no history of substance misuse. This study was the second randomized clinical trial testing the efficacy of Mothering From the Inside Out (MIO), a 12-week mentalization-based individual therapy designed to address psychological deficits commonly associated with chronic substance use that also interfere with the capacity to parent young children. Eighty-seven mothers caring for a child between 11 and 60 months of age were randomly assigned to receive 12 sessions of MIO versus 12 sessions of parent education (PE), a psychoeducation active control comparison. Maternal reflective functioning, representations of caregiving, mother–child interaction quality, and child attachment were evaluated at baseline and posttreatment and 3-month follow-up. Mother–child interaction quality was assessed again at 12-month follow-up. In comparison with PE mothers, MIO mothers demonstrated a higher capacity for reflective functioning and representational coherence at posttreatment and 3-month follow-up. At 12-month follow-up, compared to PE cohorts, MIO mothers demonstrated greater sensitivity, their children showed greater involvement, and MIO dyads showed greater reciprocity. As addiction severity increased, MIO also appeared to serve as a protective factor for maternal reflective functioning, quality of mother–child interactions, and child attachment status. Results demonstrate the promise of mentalization-based interventions provided concomitant with addiction treatment for mothers and their young children.


An analysis of frequency control techniques for inverter based ring oscillators is presented. The aim of this study is to aid the circuit designer in architecture selection appropriate for a specific application. A brief discussion on ring oscillators is presented followed by an overview of the various control schemes. The circuits are realized in a 40 nm CMOS technology and simulated using Spectre. Based on simulation results the different control schemes are characterized in terms power consumption, tuning range and noise performance so as to guide the designer about the control scheme selection.


Allele frequencies of six short tandem repeat (STR) loci were determined in a Caucasian urban sample of La Plata city and three Amerindian sample populations of Argentina. Allele frequencies showed differences between urbans and Amerindians, and among Amerindians as well. The degree of genetic differentiation of subpopulations was mainly due to the Amerindian contribution. Mapuche, Mocovi, and pooled Amerindian populations showed little evidence of HW disequilibrium, and association of alleles. In the urban sample, there is no evidence of population substructuring. Forensic probabilities of exclusion and matching showed high differences between the population groups. Finally, La Plata sample did not show differences with Caucasians from other geographic regions.


Background: Patient education is a substantial factor for the management of inveterate diseases. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of patient education given by clinical pharmacist using different (verbal and web-based) education techniques on the adherence and illness perception of hypertensive patients. Methods: It is a prospective observational study. Patients selected were randomly assigned to 2 groups: Verbal Based Education Group (VBEG) and Web Based Education Group (WBEG). Patients' adherence and hypertension illness perception were measured using "Medication adherence selfefficacy scale-short form (MASES-SF)" and "Illness Perception Questionnaire-revised (IPQ-R)" at the baseline meeting. 1 month after baseline meeting, patient education was given to patients and 4 months after patient education, the questionnaires were repeated. The scores were evaluated and statistically analyzed. Results: Of the 120 patients (60 VBEG and 60 WBEG) available for total follow-up at 5 months, after patient education total score of Medication adherence self-efficacy scale-short form increased in both groups. The cumulative percentage change in statistically significant questions was found to be higher in WBEG (62,3%) than in the VBEG (40,4%). After education mean scores of the 7 subscales of illness representation part of IPQ-R were significantly increased in both groups (p<0,05). The cumulative percentage change for five subscales was found to be higher in WBEG (38,8%) than in the VBEG (26,7%). Conclusion: Our study shows that patient education has positive effect both on patient adherence and hypertension illness perception of hypertensive patients, regardless of education technique. This study had also shown that WBE had similar positive effects with VBE when driven by clinical pharmacist.


The severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is linked to an increasing number of risk factors, including exogenous (environmental) stimuli such as air pollution, nicotine, and cigarette smoke. These three factors increase the expression of angiotensin I converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a key receptor involved in the entry of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)—the etiological agent of COVID-19—into respiratory tract epithelial cells. Patients with severe COVID-19 are managed with oxygen support, as are at-risk individuals with chronic lung disease. To date, no study has examined whether an increased fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2) may affect the expression of SARS-CoV-2 entry receptors and co-receptors, including ACE2 and the transmembrane serine proteases TMPRSS1, TMPRSS2, and TMPRSS11D. To address this, steady-state mRNA levels for genes encoding these SARS-CoV-2 receptors were assessed in the lungs of mouse pups chronically exposed to elevated FiO2, and in the lungs of preterm-born human infants chronically managed with an elevated FiO2. These two scenarios served as models of chronic elevated FiO2 exposure. Additionally, SARS-CoV-2 receptor expression was assessed in primary human nasal, tracheal, esophageal, bronchial, and alveolar epithelial cells, as well as primary mouse alveolar type II cells exposed to elevated oxygen concentrations. While gene expression of ACE2 was unaffected, gene and protein expression of TMPRSS11D was consistently upregulated by exposure to an elevated FiO2. These data highlight the need for further studies that examine the relative contribution of the various viral co-receptors on the infection cycle, and point to oxygen supplementation as a potential risk factor for COVID-19.


Silicon germanium bipolar CMOS (SiGe BiCMOS) process technology is gaining increasing popularity for RF circuits in wireless applications due to high performance, low cost, high yield and higher levels of integration with mixed signal and digital CMOS circuits. Four test circuits were designed and fabricated in Conexant's 0.18 /spl mu/m SiGe BiCMOS process to evaluate the performance benefits provided by this state of the art process technology. The RF performance achieved in this process clearly makes this a process of choice for future RFIC products.


Forests in the piedmont of VA may be a good alternative location for land application of biosolids. The objectives of this study were to quantify nutrient availability and tree growth in a loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantation following the application of different biosolids types, at different rates, and at two different times. The study was installed in September 2005, in a thinned loblolly pine plantation, located in Amelia County in the piedmont of VA. The study was established as a randomized complete block design with nine treatments. The treatments are three different biosolids types (lime stabilized, anaerobic digested, and pelletized), conventional fertilizer (Urea + diammonium phosphate), and seasonal applications (fall or winter). Biosolids increased soil nitrogen (N) availability and tree growth one growing season after application compared to the control treatment. Results for this study indicate that biosolids may be a good alternative to fertilizers to increase forest growth while providing additional sites for the land application of biosolids.


Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of a school-based social skills training program on peer relationships in children and adolescents and to assess the plan for effective school-based mental health services. Methods: The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Promotion Team of Bugok National Hospital conducted 7-sessioned school-based social skills training for elementary and middle school students (n=90). Changes in peer relationships were evaluated before and after application of the program using a name generator question. Results: The social skills training program increased peer relations, indicating significant changes in social network indices. Conclusion: The social skills training program positively influenced peer relationships. The school-based social skills training program can be expected to have positive effects on school-based mental health services. Future investigation is needed to validate the long term effects of this program.


Contemporary patterns of mammalian species richness on islands are influenced by well‐understood biogeographical variables. Whether or not mammalian orders differ in their rates of persistence, however, remains uncertain. Our aims were to assess the persistence of four mammalian orders on Australo‐Papuan continental shelf islands in relation to the faunas within adjacent zoogeographic provinces. We also aimed to define New Guinea's mammalian zoogeographic provinces quantitatively.


The recent development of REDD+ mechanisms require reliable estimation of carbon stocks, especially in tropical forests that are particularly threatened by global changes. Even if tree height is a crucial variable to compute the above-ground forest biomass, tree heights are rarely measured in large-scale forest census because it requires consequent extra-effort. Tree height have thus to be predicted thanks to height models. Height and diameter of all trees above 10 cm of diameter were measured in thirty-three half-ha plots and nine one-ha plots throughout the northern French Guiana, an area with substantial climate and environmental gradients. We compared four different model shapes and found that the Michaelis-Menten shape was the most appropriate for the tree biomass prediction. Model parameters values were significantly different from one forest plot to another and neglecting these differences would lead to large errors in biomass estimates. Variables from the forest stand structure explained a sufficient part of the plot-to-plot variations of the height model parameters to affect the AGB predictions. In the forest stands dominated by small trees, the trees were found to have rapid height growth for small diameters. In forest stands dominated by larger trees, the trees were found to have the greatest heights for large diameters. The above-ground biomass estimation uncertainty of the forest plots was reduced by the use of the forest structure-based height model. It demonstrates the feasibility and the importance of height modeling in tropical forest for carbon mapping. Tree height is definitely an important variable for AGB estimations. When the tree heights are not measured in an inventory, they can be predicted with a height-diameter model. This model can account for plot-to plot variations in height-diameter relationship thank to variables describing the plots. The variables describing the stand structure of the plots are efficient for this. We found that variables describing the plot environment (rainfall, topography,...) do not improve the model much. (Resume d'auteur)


There are controversial views and discussions on surgical treatment of small cell lung cancer. A retrospective study covering the period from 1959 through 1983 has been conducted by the authors to analyse resective approaches to lung cancer. A total of 2,039 resections for lung cancer included operations on 354 small cell carcinomas according to the WHO nomenclature. Operations were performed on 265 cases of small cell lung cancer by the end of 1977. These were subdivided by stages, with survival rates being determined. An overall five-year survival rate was recorded from 22.8 per cent of the cases with 43.0 per cent in Stage Ia und 21.4 per cent in Stage Ib. Hence, resection of small cell lung cancer is fully supported by the authors for Stage Ia and is conditionally supported for Stage Ib, whereas complex radiotherapy and chemotherapy should be applied to small cell lung cancer in the advanced Stage II and III.


This paper is concerned with the natural vibration characteristics of a rectangular plate with a rectangular hole in contact with the water. The addressed problem was solved by using the Rayleigh-Ritz method combined with the Green function method. This study presents the numerical approach, numerical results and experimental results. In addition, the validity of the approximate formula which mainly depends on the so-called non-dimensionalized added virtual mass incremental factor and the natural mode shape change due to the presence of the water were investigated. Experiments were also carried out to validate theoretical results. The theoretical results are in good agreement with the experimental results. It was found that the effect of a square hole on the natural frequencies of the square plate in contact with water is different from the effect of a square hole on the natural frequencies of the square plate in air and the approximate formula can predict lower natural frequencies in water with a good accuracy.


The last several years have seen a rapid increase in smart phone use. Android offers an open-source software platform on smart phones, that includes a Linux-based kernel, Java applications, and middleware. The Android middleware provides system libraries and services to facilitate the development of performance-sensitive or device-specific functionalities, such as screen display, multimedia, and web browsing. Android keeps track of which applications make use of which system services for some pre-defined functionalities, and which application is running in the foreground attracting the user's attention. Such information is valuable in capturing application characteristics and can be useful for resource management tailored to application requirements. However, the Linux-based Android kernel does not utilize such information for I/O resource management. This paper is the first work, to the best of our knowledge, to attempt to understand application characteristics through Android architecture and to incorporate those characteristics into disk and network I/O management. Our proposed approach, Aciom (Application Characteristics-aware I/O Management), requires no modification to applications and characterizes application I/O requests as time-sensitive, bursty, or plain, depending on which system services are involved and which application receives the user's focus. Aciom then provides differentiated I/O management services for different types of I/O requests, supporting minimum bandwidth reservations for time-sensitive requests and placing maximum bandwidth limits on bursty requests. We present the design of Aciom and a prototype implementation on Android. Our experimental results show that Aciom is quite effective in handling disk and network I/O requests in support of time-sensitive applications in the presence of bursty I/O requests.


In this study, five different compatible taper equations were used for Brutian pine (Pinus brutia Ten.) trees within the border of Asar Forest Sub-district in Antalya Forest Management Directorate of Antalya Forest District Regional. These five equations were produced from the equations of Max & Burkhart (1976), Jiang et al. (2005) and 3 different models of Kozak (1988). The fitting results of these equations were compared. As a result of the comparison that made according to success criteria's, the equation of Jiang et al. (2005) with 95.95% model explanation was found to be more successful in predicting stem diameter of Brutian pine. The suitability of Jiang et al. (2005) of the equation was tested by using an independent data group with paired sample t test and it was concluded that the equation can be applied to the study area at p <0.05 significance level. In this regard, it can be concluded that it is possible to obtain more accurate and consistent estimations of stem diameters for Brutian pine (Pinus brutia Ten.) stands by using this equation.


Weekly captures from January 2000 to January 2002 enabled us to study the abundance and life cycle of the variegated grasshopper, Zonocerus variegatus (Orthoptera: Pyrgomorphidae), in the humid forest zone of Southern Cameroon. We found that Z. variegatus was present throughout the year in the forest reserve and the human‐influenced zones of Yaounde and Mbalmayo in two univoltine populations, which had unequal abundance and durations. The separation of the two populations was clearer in the Yaounde and Mbalmayo developed zones than in the Mbalmayo forest reserve (undeveloped zone). The abundance of Z. variegatus varied according to the post‐embryonic stage, sex, year and season. Hatching and coupling took place during the dry and rainy seasons, whereas oviposition occurred only in the rainy season. In Cameroon, the type of life cycle of Z. variegatus observed in the humid forest zone of the south is different from that of the "Sudanian and Sahelian" zones.


Background Despite the availability of multiple therapies for treatment of RA in the US, there exists a high rate of discontinuation/change of therapy. This may be attributed to multiple factors including: loss of efficacy, adverse effects, patient/physician preference, access and/or expectation bias. This study was designed to examine initiation of biologic therapies within the US CORRONA database and characterize reasons for their discontinuation. Methods In the CORRONA registry, patients meeting the following criteria during calendar years 2002-2011 were included: age >18; RA onset age >16 years; and ≥6 months follow-up after initiation of first or subsequent biologic therapy, defined as a visit ≥180 days after initiation of biologic therapy. Biologic agents included TNF inhibitors (TNFi's) and non-TNFi's. Treatment discontinuation was defined as the first report of stopping initial therapy or initiation of a new biologic at/or between visits on a follow-up MD questionnaire. Up to 3 reasons for discontinuation were captured. Results 6209 patients (78.5% female; mean age 57.6±12.8, median RA duration 8 years; 43.4% biologic naïve, 26.1% CDAI >22) met inclusion criteria. 5010 (80.7%) were receiving TNFi's and 1199 (19.3%) non-TNFi's. Overall median time to discontinuation/change of therapy was 25.1 months: 82.2% remained on initiated treatment at 6 months and 67.3% at 1 year. Median time to discontinuation was 26.5 months in those receiving TNFi's (n=5010) vs 20.5 months for non-TNFi's (n=1199) [log rank p<0001]. Overall proportions of patients receiving TNFi's vs non-TNFi's remaining on treatment were 82.5%, 68.2% and 52.2% at 6, 12, and 24 months vs 80.9%, 63.4% and 46.0%, respectively. Of 3584 discontinuations, reasons were captured for 1763 including: loss of efficacy: 35.8%; safety: 20.1%; MD/patient preference: 27.8%/ 17.9% and access to treatment: 9.0%. In patients receiving TNFi's: percentages were 34.2, 20.8, 27.5, 17.9 and 9.6% and non-TNFi's: 44.2, 16.8, 29.1, 17.9 and 6.0% respectively. Those 5010 initiating TNFi's had shorter RA duration, lower disease activity, mHAQ, pain and fatigue scores than 1199 initiating non-TNFi's. Biologic naïve patients (n=2693) had slightly higher durability although not significant [log-rank p=0.0601]. In multivariate analyses, the strongest predictors of discontinuation were higher CDAI and mHAQ scores, patient report of anxiety/depression, and year of biologic initiation. Conclusions Patients in the US discontinue roughly 1/3rd of biologic therapies at 1 year, and 1/2 by 2 years. Rates and recorded reasons for treatment discontinuation were similar for both TNFi's and non-TNFi biologics. Lack of efficacy was the single most common reason for discontinuation, although others reported were multifactorial and in part reflect expectations on the part of both patients and physicians. Disclosure of Interest V. Strand Consultant for: CORRONA, Inc., S. Williams Shareholder of: AstraZeneca, Employee of: AstraZeneca, P. Miller Shareholder of: AstraZeneca, Employee of: AstraZeneca, K. Saunders Employee of: CORRONA, Inc., S. Grant Employee of: Axio Research LLC, J. Kremer Shareholder of: CORRONA, Inc., Employee of: CORRONA, Inc.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide information on lubricant contamination by biodiesel using vibration and neural network.Design/methodology/approach – The possible contamination of lubricants is verified by analyzing the vibration and neural network of a bench test under determinated conditions.Findings – Results have shown that classical signal analysis methods could not reveal any correlation between the signal and the presence of contamination, or contamination grade. On other hand, the use of probabilistic neural network (PNN) was very successful in the identification and classification of contamination and its grade.Research limitations/implications – This study was done for some specific kinds of biodiesel. Other types of biodiesel could be analyzed.Practical implications – Contamination information is presented in the vibration signal, even if it is not evident by classical vibration analysis. In addition, the use of PNN gives a relatively simple and easy‐to‐use detection tool with ...


Charimachilis petrophilus Kaplin, sp. n. is described from Donetsk region of Ukraine. New species is most similar to C. taurica Kaplin, 2021 and C. rostoviensis Kaplin, 2020 but differs from them by the ratio lengths of contact line and compound eyes, by number of hyaline spines on dorsal surface of 5–7th articles of maxillary palpus, by ratio of lengths of stylus and urocoxites VIII and IX, and by number of divisions in posterior gonapophysis. New species is also similar to C. ukrainensis Stach, 1958 and C. wahrmani Wygodzinsky, 1959 but distinguishes from them in the ratio of contact line to eye length, the distance between inner margins of ocelli to total width of compound eyes, the lengths of stylus and urocoxite IX, and from C. wahrmani also in the number of divisions in gonapophyses VIII and IX.


During the Skylab period from June 1973 to January 1974 approximately 1500 type III metre-wave radio bursts or burst groups were reported (Solar Geophysical Data Prompt Reports). The longitudinal distribution of these type III bursts closely resembles that of sunspots and of the coronal transients observed above 2 R⊙ by the white-light coronagraph on Skylab. White light ejection transients appear as large loop or blob-like structures which carry material outward from the Sun and rearrange the corona. In front of the main, bright structures there are weak enhancements of brightness, termed forerunners (Jackson and Hildner 1978; Jackson 1978). In this paper we enquire into whether or not type III bursts are in any way related to the onset of solar mass ejections indicated by coronal transients.


Propositions intending to shape a veritable sociology of cinema have marked the intellectual history of the 20th century. The most remarkable of these is undoubtedly that of Siegfried Kracauer who tried to reply appropriately to the question "How should we consider the cinema film when we look at it through the eyes of a sociologist?". It is this approach and its repercussions that this paper will look at in general. An approach and its consequences which will be illustrated by the multiple angles of analysis that a cinematic work such as Star Wars by George Lucas is capable of raising today, in the opinion of those who are attempting to define the place held by cinema as a popular art within our society.


The thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) is crucial for the modulation of sleep-related oscillations. The caudal and rostral subpopulations of the TRN exert diverse activities, which arise from their interconnectivity with all thalamic nuclei, as well as other brain regions. Despite the recent characterization of the functional and genetic heterogeneity of the TRN, the implications of this heterogeneity for sleep regulation have not been assessed. Here, using a combination of optogenetics and electrophysiology in C57BL/6 mice, we demonstrate that caudal and rostral TRN modulations are associated with changes in cortical alpha and delta oscillations, and have distinct effects on sleep stability. Tonic silencing of the rostral TRN elongates sleep episodes, while tonic silencing of the caudal TRN fragments sleep. Overall, we show evidence of distinct roles exerted by the rostral and caudal TRN in sleep regulation and oscillatory activity.


In this paper we present a novel segmentation approach that performs fuzzy clustering and feature extraction. The proposed method consists in forming a new descriptor combining a set of texture sub-features derived from the Grating Cell Operator (GCO) responses of an optimized Gabor filter bank, and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) outputs. The new feature vector offers two advantages. First, it only considers the optimized filters. Second, it aims to characterize both micro and macro textures. In addition, an extended version of a type 2 fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm is proposed. The extension is based on the integration of spatial information in the membership function (MF). The performance of this method is demonstrated by several experiments on natural textures.


In this study, to understand mechanical characteristic of hybrid reinforced concrete by PVA-fiber 6 mm and PP-fiber 50 mm, which are organic fiber replaced macro-fiber with PP-fiber, four mixed Hybrid Organic Fibers Reinforced Concrete (HFRC) is compared with one mixed plain concrete without fiber reinforcement. Volume portion of the fibers are limited under one percent. The result presents that hybrid reinforcement of the organic fibers cannot maximize stiffness and ductility behavior of the steel fiber reinforcement. however, in comparison to plain concrete, it is confirmed that meaningful relation between toughness index and equivalent flexural strength with advanced ductility behavior. Also, in the case of concrete hybrid reinforced by organic fiber, when the volume portion of the fiber increases, ductility also increases. PP-fiber, which is macro fiber, has more effect on the flexural behavior of concrete than PVA-fiber, which is micro fiber, does. The result also shows that it decrease chloride penetration in chloride penetration test.


Brain tissue from normal individuals with incidental Lewy bodies and cell loss in pigmented substantia nigra neurons (asymptomatic Parkinson's disease) and age‐matched control subjects without nigral Lewy bodies was examined biochemically. There was no difference in dopamine levels or dopamine turnover in the caudate and putamen of individuals with incidental Lewy body disease compared to control subjects. There were no differences in levels of iron, copper, manganese, or zinc in the substantia nigra or other brain regions from the individuals with incidental Lewy body disease compared to those from control subjects. Similarly, ferritin levels in the substantia nigra and other brain areas were unaltered. There was no difference in the activity of succinate cytochrome c reductase (complexes II and III) or cytochrome oxidase (complex IV) between incidental Lewy body subjects and control subjects. Rotenone‐sensitive NADH coenzyme Q1 reductase activity (complex I) was reduced to levels intermediate between those in control subjects and those in patients with overt Parkinson's disease, but this change did not reach statistical significance. The levels of reduced glutathione in substantia nigra were reduced by 35% in patients with incidental Lewy body disease compared to control subjects. Reduced glutathione levels in other brain regions were unaffected and there were no changes in oxidized glutathione levels in any brain region. Altered iron metabolism is not detectable in the early stages of nigral dopamine cell degeneration. There may be some impairment of mitochondrial complex I activity in the substantia nigra in Parkinson's disease. The marked reduction in nigral reduced glutathione levels suggests this to be an important early change in the process of oxidative stress underlying Parkinson's disease.


There is a volcanic area in Hatay, Turkey with currently limited agricultural activities; however, its ecological prop- erties make it a plausible choice for protected fruit and vegetable production. The different soil properties of the area might be useful for plant growing in the future. In this study, we determined selected plant nutrients and heavy metal concentrations of eight soil and rock types from the region, along with those of ten different species of fruits and vegetables representing the region's flora and agricul- tural activities. We found significant differences in all the micronutrients and heavy metal concentrations among the media samples. Overall, the highest concentrations were recovered from growing media. For example, one medium had the highest concentrations of Cu, Cd and Zn. Similarly, the plant samples had significant differences in micronu- trients and heavy metal concentrations. Almond leaf sam- ples were in the highest mean groups for Mg, Na, Fe, Al and Cr, while cucumber had the highest values for Zn and Ni. The highest Pb levels were recovered from uncultivated olive. Comparisons of our results to those of others in the related literature indicated that only two of our results were above the accepted levels: the almond Fe and holy oak B concentrations. In conclusion, our samples from the vol- canic area in Hatay were not dangerously contaminated with heavy metals, and utilization of this area for agricultural purposes poses no apparent threat.


This observational study reported patient data derived from the emergency files of a primary health care (PHC) center in Greece, with the aim of providing potential solutions for a well-organized, well-structured, and effective social healthcare system. This series was conducted at a single urban PHC center in Greece between August 2017 and March 2020. A total of 83,592 patient visits were registered. The mean patient age was 42.5 years (range: three months to 93 years). Demographics, presenting complaints, and the need for patients who visited the healthcare center to be referred to tertiary hospitals were examined. Further perspectives and future strategies to strengthen the national PHC system were addressed. The most common reasons for visits were pathological (33.6%), followed by general surgery (21.2%) and orthopedics (18.1%). Pediatric conditions accounted for 12% of visits, cardiological conditions accounted for 8.6%, and dental problems accounted for 6.8%. The majority of the patients (n = 81,317, 97.3%) were managed within the health center, and only 2.7% of cases (n = 2275) needed to be referred to a secondary or tertiary healthcare structure. Reasons for patient referral included the severity or complexity of the patient's situation, lack of a specific medical specialty, and the unavailability of overnight laboratory tests. The PHC center remains the cornerstone of a high-quality healthcare system. A well-structured PHC unit can improve health outcomes and decongest secondary and tertiary health care.


The present study is aimed to detect the nutritional composition and fatty acids profile of two different Mullet species caught from the/a fish barrier in Koycegiz Lagoon (Mugla, Turkey) over a period of 12 months. A nutritional composition (protein, lipid, moisture and ash) and fatty acids profile were carried out for each commercially important mullet species; Mugil cephalus and Chelon saliens using standard measurement methods and gas chromatography (GC), respectively. The nutritional composition of the species showed differences depending on the harvesting and spawning seasons. Two mullet species had the highest fat content (P<0.05) in spawning time, while moisture content was low (P<0.05) during the same period. Predominant fatty acids for two different mullet species were myristic acid, palmitic acid and stearic acid as saturated (SFA); palmitoleic acid, oleic acid and cis-11-eicosenoic acid as monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs); linoleic, cis-8, 11, 14- eicosatrienoic, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). The nutritional and fatty acid composition content of species varied due to the harvesting season, reproduction period and age of the fish. The results exhibited that mullet species during the reproductive period have higher lipid content and fatty acid composition, especially in terms of EPA and DHA.


Ecotourism usually has an educational value packed in the form of natural beauty and is in the countryside. Lampung has many potential ecotourism, one of which is located in West Coast district. This research was conducted in March 2019 to April 2019 in Pahmungan Village, central Coastal district, West Coast Regency, Lampung province.  The Pekon or the village of Pahmungan has an area of 2,600 ha, Pekon Pahmungan is located at 5 ° S and 103 ° E and is 4 km from the centre of the district government, 32 km from the county capital, and 287 km to the provincial capital. Data collection methods used are methods of surveys, interviews, and GIS while the method of data analysis used is a qualitative descriptive method. The purpose of this research is the development of tourism potentials and make the route of ecotourism Intermap in Pahmungan village. The tools used in this study are GPS (Global Positioning System), Camera, Compass, Laptop, and ArcGis application. The object in this research is the ecotourism object that exists in Pahmungan village that will be obtained through the observation of field surveys and interviews with local communities. The results of this research are reflected in the mapping of tourist interpretation lines in which the mapping is an ecotourism pathway that includes various tours in the village Pahmungan. Ecotourism in the village of Pahmungan is not well managed but there are already several community who began to build the development of tourist destinations especially the waterfall tourism, with the program interpretation programs can support the development of Ecotourism and provide comfort for visitors.


We examine the relative effectiveness of three environmental activist strategies: Exit (divestment of shares), Boycott (of goods), and Voice (proxy-voting). We consider a four-period economy with two firms, green and brown, where the brown firm generates pollution (e.g. carbon emissions). A costly abatement technology is available, though without activism, the brown firm's manager, who maximizes shareholder value, will not abate even though it is socially optimal to do so. Boycott is always at least as effective as Exit and Voice is most effective, requiring the fewest activists to implement provided the brown firm is small. We find that successful divestment can create a time series in which green shares outperform brown shares, but then crash, underperforming brown shares. Over the long run in this setting, if activism is successful, brown shares underperform green shares in the long run. If activism does not succeed, activists have paid a high price for green shares and bear the cost of activism going forward. JEL classification codes: D62, G12, L21


The compound dimethyl‐2‐iodobenzoylphosphonate is unusual in that it forms well‐ordered crystals that clearly show short iodine‐oxygen interactions in which both the iodine and the oxygen are in their normal oxidation states. These interactions were studied using a new hybrid quantum mechanical–molecular mechanical approach that employs a polarizable molecular mechanics component. The electric field at the molecular mechanics atoms was calculated from a distributed multipole expansion of the wave function; this induced dipoles on the molecular mechanics atoms. The electrostatic potential in a spherical shell around the induced dipoles was reproduced through induced charges on the atomic center and those bonded to it using an analytical (rather than numerical) procedure. The new atomic charges (induced charges plus permanent charges) were then able to interact with the quantum mechanical entity and polarize the wave function. The procedure was iterated to convergence. The calculations show that the iodine atom becomes more positive in the crystal environment (modeled by a chain of three molecules of dimethyl‐2‐iodobenzoylphosphonate). Thus, while the cooperative effects of the crystal environment may not be the only feature stabilizing this unusual interaction, they do play a significant role in reducing the otherwise unfavourable iodine–oxygen monopole–monopole interaction. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 21: 478–482, 2000


Special education continues to suffer from chronic and persistent teacher shortages. For example, in 2000-2001, nearly 53,000 special education teachers, 12% of the teaching force, were less than fully certified, affecting more than 800,000 students with disabilities. In addition, many school districts lose special education teachers as the school year progresses, particularly in urban and rural areas. Since traditional sources of teacher supply, college and university preparation programs, have been unable to meet the growing demand for special education teachers, alternative routes to certification (ARC) have proliferated. Recognizing that there is a need for highly qualified special education teachers, it is essential that we develop innovative and creative alternatives to get interested individuals prepared, licensed, and into classrooms serving students with learning disabilities. As noted in the following statement, the Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD) agrees that strategies for recruiting and developing highly qualified professionals are necessary. Still, we must ensure that ARC programs deliver research-based teacher preparation and that graduates of such programs meet agreed-upon professional standards. ********** No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the proposed Individuals with Disabilities with Education Act (IDEA) have encouraged the development of alternative routes to certification (ARC) in special education. Even prior to these legislative efforts, ARC in special education had become a growth industry. In 1995, Buck, Polloway, and Mortorff-Robb found that 24 states offered ARC programs in special education, an increase of 19 states since 1991. Recently, it was found that 34 states offer more than 175 different ARC options, with California and Texas accounting for the largest number (Rosenberg, Boyer, Sindelar, & Misra, 2003). Analyses of the School and Staffing Survey (Connelly, 2003) indicate that over 15% of those who hold certification in special education earned it through an ARC; among those who are uncredentialed and seeking certification, 24% report being in an ARC program. Factors contributing to the proliferation of ARC in special education include (a) the persistent and growing shortage of special education teachers affecting over 800,000 students with disabilities, (b) the acute need for personnel from underrepresented groups, and (c) criticism from political action groups outside the profession and professionals within the profession (e.g., Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1999) that traditional approaches to teacher preparation are self-serving, bloated, and over-regulatory. Unfortunately, our collective knowledge base of ARC programs in special education does not match either the growth or current levels of interest in and advocacy for such programs. Rosenberg and Sindelar (2001), in a comprehensive review of the literature, found very little on the nature and efficacy of specific programs in the professional literature. They asserted that the avail able literature represented merely the tip of the ARC iceberg and that a large underground economy for teaching credentials is in place in many areas of the nation. CLD recognizes the need for highly qualified general and special education teachers. For those responsible for the recruitment and retention of qualified special education professionals, in particular, there is a most troubling trend: As the number of children with special education needs increase, it is increasingly difficult to find highly qualified personnel who want to pursue a career in special education. …


Central America is a region that shares ecosystems, river basins, and protected areas. The development of projects, plans or activities likely to produce transboundary impacts need to be appropriately considered, and an EIA process established and anchored in regional policies and legislation. This book, analyses the relevant initiatives on transboundary EIA in the world, and advances the basic elements of a regional agreement on EIA in a transboundary context for Central America.


Abstract This paper proposes a wireless hull monitoring system that is quick to install as a short-term monitoring solution. Hull measurements have the potential to increase the accuracy of ship response predictions at a lower cost than computer simulation or towing tank models. The performance of the wireless monitoring system is validated on the all-aluminium United States Coast Guard Response Boat-Medium. The system is designed to measure ship motions and hull strain responses during high-speed operations and in harsh weather conditions. An analytical framework is developed to extract sea states from inertial measurements recorded at the ship centre-of-gravity and in a bow compartment. To assess the fatigue life of the hull during harsh weather operations, response amplitude operators (RAOs) are empirically derived to map sea states to root mean square accelerations and strain cycles measured from a high-stress hull element. A RAO that maps sea state to consumed fatigue in the hull, so termed a consumed fatigue operator (CFO), is presented which can assist in the management of an asset over its life cycle. The study reveals reliable hull monitoring during a one-week sea trial. RAO and CFO fit to hull response data are proven to provide accurate estimates.


Hybrid optical correlators, which use spatial light modulators and solid state imagers to interface computers and optical Fourier correlators, will allow the rapid changing of filters and digital pre- or post-correlation processing in vision systems. However, optical correlation (particularly with phase-only filtration) is notoriously sensitive to mismatches of rotation and magnification between the reference image and the input image. Such sharpness is not always desirable if the correlation pattern is to be used in a control system. Two methods of conforming the response of an inherently sharp-response optical correlation to an in plane rotation between reference and object images are discussed. The objective is to condition the correlation for better suitability to a vision--controlled system. The first method is controlled convolutional blurring of a reference image followed by construction of a matched filter (perhaps implemented as a phase-only filter). An alternative is discussed in more detail: it is a synthesis from sharp filters, so weighted as to produce a specified off--center behavior.


ABSTRACT: This article discusses three toxins commonly encountered by dogs in the home environment. Theobromine, which is found in chocolate, can result in vomiting, diarrhoea and seizures. The ingestion of grapes and raisins can result in acute renal failure unless aggressive treatment is instituted. Paracetamol – although largely being displaced by ibuprofen – is licensed for use therapeutically in dogs and can have a significant toxic effect if an overdose is given.


The continuous femoral nerve block is an effective method of analgesia after knee surgery. We report a case with acute compression syndrome of the femoral nerve caused by a subfascial hematoma. The symptoms developed 30 h after induction of the block. Immediate decompression brought pain relief and prevented permanent neurologic sequelae.


Abstract Over a large zonal extent of the central and eastern Pacific, the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) is located to the north of the equator. Collocated with this ITCZ is a zonal band of warm sea surface, where the highest sea surface temperatures (SST) along a meridian are found. A one-dimensional coupled ocean–atmosphere model that neglects zonal variations is used to investigate this problem of latitudinal asymmetry in the tropical climate. The equatorially symmetric model solution is found to be unstable to infinitesimal disturbances and equatorial asymmetries develop spontaneously. A linear instability that is stationary in space and antisymmetric about the equator is responsible for the unstable transition of the model from the symmetric state. The destabilizing mechanism involves a positive feedback between the scalar wind speed and SST through surface evaporation, which is illustrated with a simple low-order model that contains only two SST grid points, one in each hemisphere. The exist...


Breaking of inductive currents with use of vacuum circuit breaker is related to a problem of current chopping before its natural zero crossing. Due to the energy trapped in oscillatory circuit consisting of transformer's inductance and capacitance, the voltage across circuit breaker contacts starts to oscillate. Breaking of dielectric withstand can lead to multiple arc re-ignitions, which can result in generation of waveforms with high steepness and overvoltage peak values. In the present article, the principle of those phenomena was explained. Simulation results of circuit breakers opening operation in medium voltage network consisting of transformer with photovoltaic panels connected at low voltage side was also presented.


The most general gravitational action that yields second-order field equations in d spacetime dimensions is a sum of contributions associated with all even dimensions below d. Each contribution is given by the continuation to dimension d of the Euler characteristic of a lower dimension. The Hamiltonian for that general theory is constructed. At high curvatures it is multiple valued.


For decades, Newcastle disease (ND) has long been recognized as a frontline viral disease that constrains poultry production throughout Africa. The need to update on the epidemiology of the disease is rife, due to the increasing importance of poultry farming. In addition, poultry farming serves as the top animal food source globally. However, in Africa, the greater population of poultry is reared under traditional and conventional husbandry methods. This hugely impedes the ability of management practices to be correctly embraced in limiting or excluding viral pathogens in the poultry production chain. We conducted this review to consolidate recently published studies in the field and provide an overview of the disease. We reviewed original studies conducted on ND, the current taxonomic classification of the virus, clinical signs of the disease, and laboratory diagnostic methods available for virus detection and typing. This review additionally examined the control methods currently used, including available or circulating vaccines, vaccinations, recent vaccine findings, and the main variants of the virus present in West Africa. More specifically, we present a review of the current status and available information on the disease in Côte d'Ivoire. The lack of up-to-date and relevant information on the current prevalence, socio-economic impact, and ethnoveterinary medicine used against ND is probably the main limitation for appropriate and effective decision-making for better control of this disease in Côte d'Ivoire.


Distinct applications of the tools of statistical mechanics to address several unconnected complex observations in interdisciplinary science are explained in four parts. The first deals with the memory function formalism and its application to varied topics: the origin of irreversibility, photosynthesis, sensitized luminescence, stress distribution in granular compacts, and magnetic resonance imaging. The second focuses on techniques of nonlinear equations applied to problems ranging from the Davydov soliton and the discrete nonlinear Schrodinger equation, to the propagation of epidemics and the Fisher equation. The third part discusses a few meeting places for the twin procedures of memory methods and nonlinear techniques. The fourth describes miscellaneous applications based on the Fokker‐Planck and the Boltzmann equations to topics of current interest in ceramic science and condensed matter physics.


The physics of strange quark matter in the core of compact stars and recent compact star data is reviewed. Emphasis is put on the possible existence of a third family of strange quark stars.


New Zealand rabbits with pairs of electrodes implanted chronically in the RFM, dorsal hippocampus, LSN and HM were tasted for electroencephalographic changes in the dorsal hippocampus, lateral septal nucleus and medial habenular nuclei in response to electric stimulation of the mesencephalic reticular formation and after slow i.v. and i.m. injection with the pineal peptidic extract "Crinofizin". Stimulation of RFM with a rectangular current of variable tension (1.5--4 volts) induced synusoidal waves on the EEG of the dorsal hippocampus, LSN and HM with a frequency of 4 to over 8 c/s persisting throughout the electric stimulation. Intramuscular administration of 10 ml pineal extract in doses of 2 ml every 48 hrs led to changes in the EEG traces in that the mean frequency of the synusoidal waves decreased from 3.8 c/s to 1.4 c/s whereas the mean amplitude of the waves was almost threefold the mean amplitude of the background traces.


The aim of the study was (a) to establish ethnicity-specific differences in such morphological parameters of the proximal phalanges (PP) as the bone length and the width of diaphysis in male children and adolescents from Tajikistan and Western India and (b) to develop regression equations for determining their age based on the size of the PP. Materials and methods. Three hundred and sixty-two X-ray images of the right hand of male subjects were examined. All subjects originated from Tajikistan and Mumbai, India, and aged from 6 to 17 years. The relationship between the subjects' age and the length of the PP (LPP) and the width of the diaphysis of the PP (WPP) was investigated using a simple linear regression and correlation analysis. The LPP and WPP dependence on age was determined using one-way ANOVA and the Kruskal–Wallis test followed by post-hoc analysis by age groups. Results. LPP and WPP of the subjects from Tajikistan and India correlated with age, with the correlation coeffi cient exceeding 0.5. In both ethnic groups, the correlation coefficients for LPP vs. age was greater than 0.8. The correlation coefficient for WPP vs age ranged from 0.68 to 0.77 in Tajiks and from 0.58 to 0.69 in Indians. Simple linear regression models were developed to predict the age from LPP ( R 2 > 0.6), except for LPP 5 for Tajiks. The LPP 5 values in Tajiks and the WPP values in both ethnic groups showed weak R 2 , which ranged from 0.35 to 0.53. Eleven significant differences were identified between the ethnic groups of the same age with respect to LPP and WPP. Conclusion. PP length was a better age predictor than the diaphysis width. The most reliable predictor for both ethnic groups was LPP 2. The PP parameters did not change uniformly over time. The PP demonstrated especially intensive growth between 12 and 15 years. The most significant differences in LPP and WPP between two ethnic groups were found for the ages of 8 and 15–16 years, with LPP and WPP in Tajiks exceeding those in Indians.


A method for producing antihydrogen by the + Ps → + e- reaction is described. Included are the calculated capture cross sections, and short descriptions of the electrostatic slow positron beam, positronium-formation, and the antiproton ion trap to be used for antihydrogen production. With present available technology, collimated monoenergetic beams with an energy of a few keV and an intensity in the order of one per second can be produced by this method. Possible enhancements of this rate are discussed.


The present invention provides a new and unique method and apparatus for communicating information between two nodes, points or terminals in a wireless local area network (WLAN), where a variable multicast and/or broadcast listening interval and associated signalling is allowed between the two nodes, points or terminals in the wireless LAN network. The two nodes, points or terminals include an access point (AP) or other suitable network node or terminal and a station (STA) or other suitable network node or terminal in the WLAN. The AP and the STA can indicate its capability to support a flexible multicast and broadcast listening interval by using new fields in Beacon and Probe Response frames and in (Re)Association Request Frames. The multicast and broadcast service is setup by using Multicast and Broadcast Service Setup signalling.


Estimation of Distribution Algorithms have been proposed as a new paradigm for evolutionary optimization. This paper focuses on the parallelization of Estimation of Distribution Algorithms. More specifically, the paper discusses how to predict performance of parallel Mixed Bayesian Optimization Algorithm (MBOA) that is based on parallel construction of Bayesian networks with decision trees. We determine the time complexity of parallel Mixed Bayesian Optimization Algorithm and compare this complexity with experimental results obtained by solving the spin glass optimization problem. The empirical results fit well the theoretical time complexity, so the scalability and efficiency of parallel Mixed Bayesian Optimization Algorithm for unknown instances of spin glass benchmarks can be predicted. Furthermore, we derive the guidelines that can be used to design effective parallel Estimation of Distribution Algorithms with the speedup proportional to the number of variables in the problem.


This paper examines whether Official Development Assistance (ODA) is disproportionately allocated to countries that need to make the most progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We expect MDG-sensitive distribution of foreign aid – or a good donor-recipient match – to be guided by the principles of the Global Partnership for Development. When we apply the MDG-sensitivity criteria for aid allocation, the results indicate that ODA allocation since the Millennium Declaration has become more MDG-sensitive – ODA is given to countries that need it most. While such trends in aid disbursements are commendable, total aid flows, however, fall short of promised levels.


The Gullfaks Field located in block 34/10 of the Norwegian Sector, is one of the major fields offshore Norway. The field has been in production since 1987. The Gullfaks Field is regarded as a challenge to history match due to its complexity in faulting and communication pattern. In 1993 a project was launched to history match the production from the eastern part of the Brent Group. A joint operator/consultant multi-disciplinary team was established for the task to ensure optimisation and consistency of available data, as well as utilising experience from the field and earlier simulation models. Prior to initialising the model, a thorough data evaluation was performed and a pressure communication model was established. The grid was constructed honouring the geological model, in particular the fault pattern and angles. The simulation model was initialised according to the pre-established communication model, and no major adjustment to the communication pattern was necessary during the history matching. The reservoir energy was history matched as the first step by altering communication across faults, rock compaction and aquifer support. The water production was history matched thereafter, by altering the reservoir transmissibility in well areas, horizontal barriers and relative permeability curves. The history matched simulation model fulfilled the pre-specifications in terms of matching the RFT pressures within +/- 5 bars. The water production was matched satisfactorily and water saturation was in accordance with GST and PLT logs. During the history matching process, adjustments in the model were always carefully checked for their physical validity before being implemented in the model. This resulted in a history matched model without artificial, non-physical features. The model is currently in use for production predictions for the Brent Group in the eastern part of the field. Only minor modifications in local transmissibility has been implemented during the one and a half years since this project was finalised.


This paper addresses the design of a partly-parallel cascaded FFT-IFFT architecture that does not require any intermediate buffer. Folding can be used to design partly-parallel architectures for FFT and IFFT. While many cascaded FFT-IFFT architectures can be designed using various folding sets for the FFT and the IFFT, for a specified folded FFT architecture, there exists a unique folding set to design the IFFT architecture that does not require an intermediate buffer. Such a folding set is designed by processing the output of the FFT as soon as possible (ASAP) in the folded IFFT. Elimination of the intermediate buffer reduces latency and saves area. The proposed approach is also extended to interleaved processing of multi-channel time-series. The proposed FFT-IFFT cascade architecture saves about N/2 memory elements and N/4 clock cycles of latency compared to a design with identical folding sets. For the 2-interleaved FFT-IFFT cascade, the memory and latency savings are, respectively, N/2 units and N/2 clock cycles, compared to a design with identical folding sets.


Dissolved oxygen (DO) effectively indicates the health and self-purification capacity of waterbodies. However, since DO is a non-optically active parameter and has little impact on the spectrum captured by satellite sensors, research on estimating DO by remote sensing at multiple spatiotemporal scales are limited. In this study, the support vector regression models were developed and validated using the remote sensing reflectance derived from both Landsat and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and synchronous DO measurements, water temperature and sampling coordinates of Lake Huron (N = 206) and three other inland waterbodies (N = 282) covering different latitudes. Using the developed models, spatial distributions of the annual and monthly DO since 1984 and the annual monthly DO since 2000 in Lake Huron were reconstructed for the first time. The impacts of five climate factors on DO were analyzed. Results showed that the developed models had good robustness and generalization (average R2 = 0.91, root mean square percentage error = 2.65%, mean absolute percentage error = 4.21%), and performed better than random forest and multiple linear regression. The monthly DO estimation by Landsat and MODIS data were highly consistent (average R2 = 0.88). Note that the model performance was limited for samples beyond the range of the training set. From 1984 to 2019, the oxygen loss of Lake Huron was 6.56%. The DO of Lake Huron showed obvious seasonal regularity of decreasing from spring to summer and increasing from summer to autumn. Since 2000, DO of Lake Huron has shown a decreasing trend in the same month of different years. Air temperature, incident shortwave radiation flux density and precipitation were the main climate factors affecting annual DO of Lake Huron. This study demonstrated that Landsat and MODIS data could be used for long-term DO retrieval at multiple spatial and temporal scales. As data-driven models, adding variables related to the target parameter and extending the training set to cover more water quality conditions could effectively improve model performance.


In this work reconstruction from a finite number of projections using ridge functions within the framework of parallel beam geometry is considered. Theoretically, ridge functions are continuous solutions of a system of integral equations and their sum results in the minimal norm solution of the reconstruction problem. In practice, discretized versions of ridge functions are considered to obtain reconstruction from real data. Discrete projection data are modeled with the help of natural pixels. Analytical inversion formulas based both on ridge functions and natural pixels are derived. Results of numerical experiments are discussed.


In the framework of a stochastic optimization problem, it is assumed that the stochastic characteristics of optimized system are estimated from randomly right‐censored data. Such a case is frequently encountered in time-to-event or lifetime studies. The analysis of precision of such a solution is based on corresponding theoretical properties of estimated stochastic characteristics. The main concern is to show consistency of optimal solution even in the random censoring case. Behavior of solutions for finite data sizes is studied with the aid of randomly generated example.


Abstract : This report describes the Single Interface to Multiple Systems (SIMS) project, which is developing a tool to automatically invoke services to perform the tasks of information systems users. Most of these tasks involve multiple software servers that differ vastly in their functional capabilities, their view of the world, and their input and output languages (e.g., databases and expert systems). Before a user can determine if a server can perform the required task, he must first understand the language and services provided by each server, and then express the task in the terms used by the server. In contrast, SIMS allows the user to specify a task in a service-independent language. Our approach is dynamic in that SIMS determines which server will satisfy the request when the task is defined. SIMS performs logical integration, where the servers remain separate, but a common model makes them appear as if they were providing a single virtual service. Logical and dynamic integration allow the system of which SIMS is a part to be more easily designed and maintained. Keywords: Code reusability, Error recovery, Execution monitoring, Framework, Multiple software servers, Hierarchical planning, Software integration, User interfaces.


Abstract A fossil from the Early Eocene London Clay flora of southern England provides the earliest confirmed seed record of Myristicaceae (Magnoliales). The specimen, which was fractured transversely to show internal structure, reveals prominent longitudinal ruminations of the kind found today only in the Myristicaceae. We describe this fossil as Myristicacarpum chandlerae sp. nov. and discuss its phylogenetic and biogeographic implications. Its Early Eocene age might seem to contradict molecular evidence that Myristicaceae diversified in the Miocene, but this depends on whether it belongs in the crown group of the family or on the stem lineage leading to it. To address this question, we review the distribution of ruminations, aril type, and seed size and shape on a molecular and morphological phylogeny of extant Myristicaceae. Myristicacarpum chandlerae resembles some extant genera and not others in presence of ruminations, small size, and elongate shape, but these characters are highly homoplastic in living Myristicaceae and are equally consistent with a position in the crown group or on the stem lineage. However, biogeographic arguments favor a pre-Miocene age for the crown group. Myristicaceae join a growing list of taxa in which modern-appearing fossils predate ages inferred from molecular divergences.


We consider the problem of distributed estimation of a deterministic vector parameters using in clustered wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The paper using the method of multipliers in conjunction with a block coordinate descent approach, we demonstrate how the resultant algorithm can be decomposed into a set of simpler tasks suitable for distributed implementation based on maximum likelihood estimators (MLE) in nonlinear and non-Gaussian data models. the iterative algorithms based on the communication between nodes and the head node that generate a local estimation, and the head nodes can be seen as the neighbor node of all the other nodes in the cluster, it can broadcast its estimation in the cluster, and the local iterates converge to the global MLE, We prove that these algorithms have guaranteed convergence to the desired estimator when the sensor links are assumed ideal. Furthermore, corroborating simulations demonstrate the merits of the novel distributed estimation algorithms.