Tereshchenko Ludmila - Deputy Head, Department of Administrative Legislation and Process, Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of Russian Federation, Doctor of Juridical Sciences, Honoured Lawyer of Russian Federation. Address: 34 Bol'shaya Cheryomushkinskaya str., Moscow, 117134, Russian Federation. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com paper studies the issues related to applying cloud technologies in state administration. Though cloud technologies are not in active use in this country, the tendency of widening its application is evident. Program documents have been adopted to envisage national platforms of cloud services. Currently, cloud services of foreign providers are being used, which raises issues related to information security and the possibility to apply them by state and municipal bodies. The current legislation is being analyzed in the view of the current limitations in the use of cloud technologies in state administration. The author concludes that the current legislation does not impose any direct bans against the possibility of applying cloud technologies but the bans and restrictions may be related to a certain kind of information: state secret, confidential information, types of secrets, obligation of parties to obtain a written permission of the other party to transfer the information to a third party. Hence, prohibition of cloud services of Russian state and municipal organs, other organizations involving state and local authorities may affect the character of the processed information and the legal regime set for it. Applying cloud technologies is justified by a number of contracts with various degrees of control over the processed and stored in the clouds information, which influences the decision on applying clouds. One of the causes why cloud calculations may be restricted in use relates primarily to transferring some functions to a clouds provider and thus loss of control over own data. The user does not always have enough and reliable information to assess the security of the cloud technologies used by the provider, guarantees to keep this information and ensure the control over maintaining this regime of information.


The study on the nexus between Boko Haram, causes and its effect on Nigeria economy examines the causes of Boko Haram and its effect on Nigeria economy. In as much as poverty is acclaimed to be major cause of Boko Haram, its progenitors capitalized on it to fan the embers of its recruitment thereby deriding Nigeria's economy. The recruitment of the youthful population was for them to see that they have magic wand for their emancipation. However, the analysis of various economic indices is seen to lean heavily on other indicators which aid the recruitment drive of Boko Haram against the state. The disaggregation of various economic indicators has also tilted towards other factors aside poverty as the reason for terrorism. The period of boom in Nigeria economy was mismanaged which wasfuelled by the trajectory of successive misrule over the years which also failed to put in place structures for economic growth. These theories are examined as we employ qualitative and descriptive research approach to understand the nexus between the causes of Boko Haram and its effect on Nigeria economy. The study explored various theories and theoretical discussin the literature in this regard. The study discovers that causes of Boko haram are multivariate and their effect includes ideology, Islamic fundamentalism, economic, social, poverty and religious bigotry.The result of the research reveals that ideology and religious fundamentalism are sine qua non to the effect by Boko Haram destructive tendencies against Nigeria state and central to the movement's long existence.The paper therefore recommends among others reorientation of the youth, empowerment of the impoverished and synergy among the security agencies.


PURPOSE
The objective of this study was to compare treatment outcomes among subjects with complete arch fixed prostheses in the maxilla, supported by implants or a combination of natural teeth and dental implants.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Twenty-one subjects with maxillary tooth- and implant-supported fixed prostheses and 21 subjects with maxillary implant-supported fixed prostheses were identified and included in the study. All abutment teeth in the group with tooth- and implant-supported prostheses were provided with cemented copings that incorporated threads for vertical locking screws. Frameworks were fabricated with a gold alloy that was veneered with acrylic resin or ceramic materials. All frameworks were screw-retained to implants and copings. Frameworks in the group with implant-supported prostheses were fabricated with milled titanium or gold alloy to which denture teeth and resin base material were applied. All prostheses had a minimum of 8 units, at least 4 of which were in one quadrant. Subjects in both groups were mailed a questionnaire consisting of 15 questions focused on various factors related to treatment outcome, such as oral function and patient satisfaction.

RESULTS
The response rate was 86%. Both groups reported a high satisfaction rate for most items with few regretting their choice of treatment. Most individuals in both groups reported great improvement in chewing ability and few reported phonetic disturbances. No statistically significant differences were found between the groups.

CONCLUSION
The results of the present study showed similarity in questionnaire responses between the 2 groups of participants. High satisfaction was reported both among subjects who received a complete arch fixed prosthesis in the maxilla supported by dental implants only, as well as among those whose prostheses were supported by a combination of natural teeth and dental implants.


IMPORTANCE
Robust and psychometrically sound performance-based outcome measures are needed for clinical trials of occupational therapy interventions for children with autism.

OBJECTIVE
To demonstrate a systematic approach for choosing psychometrically sound performance-based outcome measures of daily living skills and socialization for use in clinical trials of occupational therapy interventions for children with autism.

DESIGN
Rapid literature review to identify appropriate measures for studies with this population followed by quality indicator ratings and a nominal group process.

SETTING
University.

PARTICIPANTS
Four experts in autism and pediatric outcome measurement. Outcomes and Measures: Twenty-one outcome measures of daily living skills and socialization were identified and reviewed.

RESULTS
Seven measures met the inclusion criteria. The Assessment of Motor and Process Skills and the Evaluation of Social Interaction-Second Edition, received the highest ratings and group consensus. Several other measures were also scored highly.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Careful assessment of psychometric properties is an important component of choosing outcome measures for a clinical trial, but burden of assessment and study objectives are important considerations. What This Article Adds: This project demonstrates use of a systematic process for choosing outcome measures for a planned clinical trial.


Cooling is fundamental to quality of life in a warming world, but its growth trajectory is leading to a substantial increase in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The world is currently locked into vapor-compression air conditioning as the aspirational means of staying cool, yet billions of people cannot access or afford this technology. Non–vapor compression technologies exist but have low Technological Readiness Levels. Important alternatives are passive cooling measures that reduce mechanical cooling requirements and often have long histories of local use. Equally, behavioral and cultural approaches to cooling play a vital role. Although policies for a circular economy for cooling, such as production and waste, recovery of refrigerants, and disposal of appliances, are in development, more efforts are needed across the cooling life cycle. This article discusses the knowledge base for sustainable cooling in the built environment and its significant, interconnected, and coordinated technical, social, economic, and policy approaches. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


The attempt to describe the bell-shape dependence of the critical temperature of high-$T_{c}$ superconductors on charge carriers density is made. Its linear increase in the region of small densities (underdoped regime) is proposed to explain by the role of the order parameter phase 2D fluctuations which become less at this density growth. The critical temperature suppression in the region of large carrier densities (overdoped regime) is connected with the appearance (because of doping) of the essential damping of long-wave bosons which in the frame of the model proposed define the mechanism of indirect inter-fermion attraction.


Food waste is a complex organic substrate that is also potentially hosting a variety of microbial species. In Malaysia, the large amount of food waste that is available can cause health and environmental issues due to inadequate management that has created problems such as greenhouse gas emission and release of wastewater. The utilization of food waste for value-added products is an attractive solution to reduce the accumulation of food waste, however, demands a pretreatment step to prepare the food waste for a specific production process. One interesting application of food waste is for the production of biohydrogen, which requires food waste to be free from hydrogen-consuming bacteria (HCB). This study aims to investigate the effect of physical pretreatment on food waste and suggest the best pretreatment parameters. Food waste samples were pretreated with heat at 70 °C, 80 °C and 90 °C for 15 and 30 minutes and UV radiation for 10, 15 and 30 minutes before being cultured in aerobic condition. The reduction in aerobic bacteria was measured. Heat pretreatment at 70 °C for 15 and 30 minutes could be considered as the best pretreatment compared to the other since it recorded the highest reducing sugar concentration. Heat pretreatment at 70 °C for 15 and 30 minutes and UV radiation pretreatment for 15 minutes had a bactericidal effect and able to remove HCB. There is a high possibility that bacteria 2, 7 and 8 were hydrogen-producing bacteria (HPB).


INTRODUCTION
we have tested the hypothesis that treatment with a mycobacterial preparation that modulates the antibody response, would diminish restenosis in a rat angioplasty model.

MATERIALS/METHODS
male Sprague-Dawley rats were used. All immunisations were given subcutaneously. Group A (control) received normal saline on days 0, 21, and 42. Group B received SRL172 on days 0, 21, and 42. Group C received SRL172 on days 0, 21, and 42, and hsp65/Incomplete Freund's on days 21 and 42. Group D received hsp65/Freund's on days 21 and 42. Right common carotid arteries were balloon-injured on day 63 using a standard technique known to produce MIH and animals were sacrificed on day 77. For each carotid 6 microm cross sections were cut from paraffin blocks. Cross-sectional areas were measured by computerised planimetry.

RESULTS
balloon injury resulted in MIH in all animals. Data represents mean+/-SEM for the percentage of area enclosed within the internal elastic lamina occupied by MIH (% MIH); which for groups A, B, C, and D was 85+/-11, 24+/-3, 27+/-7, and 17+/-3 respectively. All the treatment groups had significantly less MIH when compared to the control group but no statistically significant difference was found between any of the treatment groups.

CONCLUSIONS
this is the first report that immunomodulation with mycobacterial material suitable for use in man, can reduce MIH. Since such modulation has low risk, this raises the prospect of an important new therapeutic modality to combat restenosis.


Over the past few years, wireless sensor networks received tremendous attention for monitoring physical phenomena, such as the temperature field in a given region. Applying conventional kernel regression methods for functional learning such as support vector machines is inappropriate for sensor networks, since the order of the resulting model and its computational complexity scales badly with the number of available sensors, which tends to be large. In order to circumvent this drawback, we propose in this paper a reduced-order model approach. To this end, we take advantage of recent developments in sparse representation literature, and show the natural link between reducing the model order and the topology of the deployed sensors. To learn this model, we derive a gradient descent scheme and show its efficiency for wireless sensor networks. We illustrate the proposed approach through simulations involving the estimation of a spatial temperature distribution.


The M and S molecular forms of Anopheles gambiae are undergoing speciation as they adapt to heterogeneities in the environment, spreading malaria in the process. We hypothesized that their divergence despite gene flow is facilitated by reduced recombination at the centromeric (proximal) end of the X chromosome. We sequenced introns from 22 X chromosome genes in M and S from two locations of West Africa where the forms are sympatric. Generally, in both forms nucleotide diversity was high distally, lower proximally, and very low nearest the centromere. Conversely, differentiation between the forms was virtually zero distally and very high proximally. Pairwise comparisons to a close relative, the sibling species Anopheles arabiensis, demonstrated uniformly high divergence regardless of position along the X chromosome, suggesting that this pattern is not purely mechanical. Instead, the pattern observed for M and S suggests the action of divergent natural selection countering gene flow only at the proximal end of the X chromosome, where recombination is reduced. Comparison of sites with fixed differences between M and S to the corresponding sites in A. arabiensis revealed that derived substitutions had been fixed in both forms, further supporting the hypothesis that both have been under selection. These derived substitutions are fixed in the two West African samples and in samples of S from western and coastal Kenya, suggesting that selection occurred before the forms expanded to their current ranges. Our findings are consistent with a role for suppressed genetic recombination in speciation of A. gambiae.


Author(s): Kusum, Amlan | Advisor(s): Gupta, Rajiv | Abstract: The need for efficiently managing Big Data has grown due the large sizes of data sets encountered by real-world Big Data applications. For example, large-scale graph analytics involves processing of graphs that have billions of nodes or edges. Because of the compute- and data-intensive nature of data analytics, programmers face multiple challenges in trying to achieve efficiency. This dissertation presents two novel approaches for handling data to scale up the performance of Big Data applications.The first approach supports multiple in-memory physical representations (data structures) for data and dynamically selects, or switches to, the best representation for the given data/workload characteristics. For example, in a graph processing application, where the graph evolves over time, our approach switches to the best data structure as the characteristics of the graph (e.g., graph density) change over time. Similarly, in a key-value store, upon changes in relative frequencies of different types of queries over time, we switch to a more efficient data structure for that query load. Our programming and compiler support produces adaptive applications that automatically switch data structures on-the-fly with little overhead and without the developer worrying about safety. Our evaluation shows running that our adaptive applications enjoy average speedups of 1.6x for graph applications and average throughput increase of 1.4x for a key-value store, compared to their non-adaptive versions. The second approach employs data transformations to create alternate data representations to accelerate shared memory and out-of-core applications. A large input graph is transformed into smaller graphs using a sequence of data transformations. Execution time reductions are achieved using a processing model that effectively runs the original iterative algorithm in two phases: first, using the reduced input graph to reduce execution time; and second, using the original input graph along with the results from the first phase for computing precise results. In the context of out-of-core applications this model is used to reduce I/O cost by creating a smaller graph that can be held in memory during the first phase. For parallel graph applications, our approach yields speedups of up to 2.14x and 1.81x for in-memory and out-of-core processing respectively, compared to applications running on untransformed data.


BACKGROUND
Due to the appearance of communicable microbial diseases and the toxicity related with presently used several antimicrobials such as β-lactam antibiotics, tetracyclines, quinolones, macrolides, glycopeptides (vancomycin) etc, demand for new antimicrobial agents has become great concern in new technologies to improve efficacy and safety.

METHODS
In search of new antimicrobial agents with higher potency, some N-substituted benzimidazole derivatives (4, 5a-5h & 6) were obtained by chloroacetylation of benzimidazole followed by reaction with different amines which were characterized by spectroscopic methods. All the target compounds were evaluated for their antibacterial and antifungal activity against microorganisms using two fold serial dilution method.

RESULTS
Among the compounds evaluated, compounds 4 and 5d exhibited potent activity against Bacillus thuringiensis and Candida albicans while showed moderate activity against Escherischia coli when compared to amoxicillin and fluconazole. Compound 5a shown significant activity against tested microorganisms.

CONCLUSION
From the current study it may be concluded that synthesized compounds are fulfilling in terms of their structural distinctiveness and marked biological properties. These compounds might be encouraged to initiate a new class of antimicrobial agents.


Band gap modification in Ne+-ion implanted In1−xGaxAs/InP (x=0.25, 0.33, 0.40, 0.47, 0.54, 0.61, 0.69) and InAsyP1−y/InP (y=0.32) quantum well structures has been studied by low temperature (12 K) photoluminescence spectra. The maximum usable high temperature anneal for inducing the compositional intermixing using an InP proximity cap is found to be ∼700 °C for 13 s. A second low-temperature (300 °C) anneal, following the high-temperature (700 °C) anneal, is found to induce greater band gap changes than the simple one-step anneal at 700 °C. The changes are found to be approximately proportional to the difference of bandgap energy between the well and the barrier materials; the proportionality coefficient increases with ion dose and reaches a maximum at a dose of ∼2×1013 cm−2. At higher doses, the proportionality coefficient decreases. The band gap changes are explained qualitatively based on the InGaAsP binary composition diagram.


A comprehensive investigation was conducted in order to evaluate the quality of the groundwater in Zarand plain of Chatrood region which supplies drinking water of Zarand city. Zarand plain with longitude of 55°, 46-َ 57°,7 َand latitude of 30°,20 َ-31°,44 َis one of Iran's plains located in sub-basin of Daranjir desert. Groundwater of Zarand plain supplies drinking water of many cities and villages located in and near the plain. Samples were collected from 11 water wells used as drinking water sources in Zarand plain "Chatrood region", at least once at the middle of each month. By means of the standard methods, a number of parameters were analyzed for each sample for the period of 7 years from 1996 to 2003. Tests included measuring pH, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solid, total hardness, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, bicarbonate, sulfate, chloride, and nitrate ions. Data analysis was done by using t and Z-Test. Results indicated that water quality of water wells during studied period did not show any undesireable change. The quality of each parameter in drinking water wells of Zarand plain was within permissible limit and did not exceed neither the Iran's standards nor WHO guidelines. Meanwhile, the quality of raw water resources of the plain in the final year of experiment was within "good" potability limit based on Schuller's diagram; it means raw water resources still kept its quality. Although the quality of Zarand plain water resources comply with Iran's standards and WHO guidelines increasing trend of water consumption and consecutive droughts in the studied region as well as severe water shortage, ask for conservation, preservation and monitoring of water resources.


A gravity survey at 292 points in an area of about 1700 km2 over the Aso volcanic region was made by using Worden and La Cost & Lamberg geodetic gravimeters from 1964 to 1966. Bouguer gravity anomalies over this area are characterized by a strong negative anomaly on the Aso caldera and positive anomalies on the south-western flank of somma of the Aso caldera. The gravity low of the Aso caldera shows characteristic feature of the "low anomaly type caldera" as is pointed out by Yokoyama. On the south-western flank of the somma of the Aso caldera, the oldest formation consists of semi-shist (Sanbagawa System) and outcrop of basalt is also being found by geological surveys. The gravity high which reaches to 22 mgal at the center coincides with the distribution of basaltic formation. It reveals, therefore, the high density of material such as basaltic or metamorphic rocks. The underground structure of the Aso caldera was computed from the observed gravity data by using the sin x/x method. For the computations, models of basement layer and overlying layer, reasonable density contrast between two layers and the depth of datum-plane were assumed. Thus, several models were obtained which are, however, the first approximated ones.


Guinea pig hearts were perfused with Krebs-bicarbonate solution to which glucose, pyruvate, acetate, β-hydroxybutyrate, or octanoate was added. Heart extracts were prepared in the presence of 13 mM caffeine and assayed for phosphofructokinase activity. When assays were done at pH 6.9 (a pH which allows demonstration of allosteric regulation), extracts from glucose-perfused hearts had high enzyme activity, while extracts from pyruvate-, β-hydroxybutyrate-, and octanoate-perfused hearts had very low activity. Extracts from acetate-perfused hearts had intermediate activity. The reduction in phosphofructokinase activity in pyruvate-perfused hearts was correlated with increased tissue citrate levels. Furthermore, when enzyme activity was determined as a function of fructose-6-P concentration, a sigmoid curve was obtained for extracts of pyruvate-perfused hearts and a hyperbolic curve was obtained for extracts of glucose-perfused hearts. Addition of isoproterenol to the perfusate antagonized the effect of pyruvate. The data provide direct evidence for allosteric control of the enzyme in intact tissue by intermediary metabolites of aerobic metabolism.


Recent Administration proposals would expand federal support of local public education, especially for urban schools that serve students from poor families. These education initiatives include subsidizing the hiring of more teachers to lower class sizes in the early grades, encouraging of grade retention as an important feature of local accountability requirements, and providing greater federal subsidies of borrowing by schools to finance construction projects. After describing these initiatives and discussing what is known or not known about their likely effects, I turn to the local public finance literature to examine the empirical importance of school quality in metropolitan location decisions.


The paper presents a rigorous full-wave analysis of corrugated circular waveguides. The propagation properties are determined from a classical eigenvalue problem with no recourse to space harmonics. A set of vector edge-conditioned basis functions is used to guarantee numerical efficiency. The speed of the method allows the accurate determination of the entire dispersion diagram of a large number of modes. Results are presented and compared with available data to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the approach.


Randomized controlled trials have shown a higher risk of postoperative hypoxemia and delayed extubation with opioid free anesthesia (OFA), compared with opioid anesthesia. The practice of OFA is not standardized. The objective of this study is to investigate the association between dexmedetomidine administration protocol used and the occurrence of postoperative respiratory complications. This work is a retrospective, propensity score-adjusted study (inverse probability of treatment weighting) conducted between January 2019 and September 2021 in a French tertiary care university hospital, and has included 180 adult patients undergoing major digestive surgery. Comparison of two anesthesia protocols: with a continuous intravenous maintenance dose of dexmedetomidine following a bolus (group B+M, n = 105) or with bolus dose alone (group B, n = 75). The main outcome measure was a composite respiratory endpoint within 24 hours of surgery. There was no significant difference in the incidence of overall respiratory complications as assessed by the primary endpoint. Nevertheless, there were more patients with postoperative hypercapnia in group B+M than in group B (16% vs. 2.5%, P = 0.004). Patients in group B+M were extubated later than patients in group B (40 minutes [20 to 74] versus 20 minutes [10 to 50], P = 0.004). Our study showed negative results for the primary endpoint. However, data on the increased risk of postoperative hypercapnia in patients receiving a maintenance dose of dexmedetomidine are new. Other prospective randomized studies with greater power are necessary to confirm these data and to make OFA safer, by reducing the prescribed doses of dexmedetomidine. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


Digital communication by means of memes illustrates a synergistic effect of the interactive mode of participation in cyberspace. Despite a significant contribution of the Internet era to the popularization of the term 'meme,' the origin and development of this term are hardly known by Internauts. They usually use this term without reference to an original concept of meme, which was proposed by Richard Dawkins on the grounds of the Darwinian theory of natural selection. The paper revisits that evolutionary conceptualization of meme as an analogue of gene and the process of cultural transmission which was to explain the spread of memes among a certain human population by analogy with biological evolution. It aims to argue that aspiration of memetics towards gaining a scientific status cannot be fulfilled unless meme is redefined in accordance with the theoretical requirements of cultural studies. The provided argumentation is based on the socio-regulative theory of culture and supports scepticism about naturalistic reductionism that is represented by the analysed evolutionary approach to cultural phenomena.


Clostridium novyi alpha-toxin and C. difficile toxins A and B (all 200 to 300 kDa) and C. botulinum C2-I toxin (50 kDa) caused a delayed and persistent retraction and rounding of microinjected cells. Microinjected phalloidin acted fast and reversibly. Unlike C2-I toxin, phalloidin passed through the intercellular junctions. Specific antitoxin applied to the medium did not prevent the action of microinjected C. novyi or C. difficile toxin B. Microinjected antitoxin protected against the toxins applied with the medium or injected into the same cells.


Abstract:This essay examines biblical and early modern discourses of Christian universalism promising the incorporation of racialized and gender-nonconforming believers. One such figure is the eunuch. In biblical and premodern thought, eunuchs would have brought together gender nonconformity and racialized difference as figures in Western Christian writing for the miraculous potential of divine grace. The article emphatically takes the eunuch not as an ancestor of the modern nonbinary or transgender person, but rather as a historically and geographically specific instance of the violent erasure that occurs when racialized and gender-nonconforming persons are treated as figures of the particularity that Christian universalism (or neoliberal inclusivity) transcends. The valorization of the fair male body is especially pronounced in early modern devotional lyrics, which draw upon biblical depictions of transdevotion—the ecstatic transcendence of the black and gender-nonconforming body to achieve a white and masculine soul—to conceptualize the experiences of faith, penitence, and salvation. This kind of poetry reveals the imbrications of racial and gender nonconformity that provide the parameters of universalist discourses past and present.


During the summer of 2002, we used GPR to map the distribution of sub-bottom sand and gravel in two Cape Cod lakes as part of a lake reconstruction program. The reconstruction effort had been hampered by concentrations of gravel, which cannot be removed by the extraction tubes. A pair of freshwater lakes formed through retrogressive succession over a coastal salt marsh. Nutrients from surrounding septic systems congested the lakes with algae and other vegetation. Current water depths range from less than 5 to approximately 10 feet. The influx of nutrients has been stopped and a lake reconstruction program initiated. The reconstruction process induces subsidence by pumping sub-marsh sand up over the lake-bottom mud and peat. This has the beneficial effects of increasing lake depth and improving conditions for recreational use. The distribution and volume of "minable" sub-bottom sand is crucial to the lake reconstruction program. We used a GSSI SIR-2000 GPR system with 100-MHz bistatic high-power antenna for the mapping. Electronics and antennas were placed in a fiberglass boat, and traverses followed ropes marked with floats at 25-foot intervals. The client provided survey control and post-survey vibracores at selected locations.


Abstract. In Switzerland, two ground-based ozone microwave radiometers are operated in the vicinity of each other (ca. 40 km): the GROund-based Millimeter-wave Ozone Spectrometer (GROMOS) in Bern (Institute of Applied Physics) and the Stratospheric Ozone MOnitoring RAdiometer (SOMORA) in Payerne (MeteoSwiss). Recently, their calibration and retrieval algorithms have been fully harmonized, and updated time series are now available since 2009. Using these harmonized ozone time series, we investigate and cross-validate the strato–mesospheric ozone diurnal cycle derived from the two instruments and compare it with various model-based datasets: the dedicated GEOS-GMI Diurnal Ozone Climatology (GDOC) based on the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS-5) general circulation model, the Belgian Assimilation System for Chemical ObsErvations (BASCOE) – a chemical transport model driven by ERA5 dynamics, and a set of free-running simulations from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM). Overall, the two instruments show very similar ozone diurnal cycles at all seasons and pressure levels, and the models compare well with each other. There is a good agreement between the models and the measurements at most seasons and pressure levels, and the largest discrepancies can be explained by the limited vertical resolution of the microwave radiometers. However, as in a similar study over Mauna Loa, some discrepancies remain near the stratopause, at the transition region between ozone daytime accumulation and depletion. We report similar delays in the onset of the modelled ozone diurnal depletion in the lower mesosphere. Using the newly harmonized time series of GROMOS and SOMORA radiometers, we present the first observations of short-term (sub-monthly) ozone diurnal cycle variability at mid-latitudes. The short-term variability is observed in the upper stratosphere during wintertime, when the mean monthly cycle has a small amplitude and when the dynamics are more important. This is shown in the form of strong enhancements of the diurnal cycle, reaching up to 4–5 times the amplitude of the mean monthly cycle. We show that BASCOE is able to capture some of these events, and we present a case study of one such event following the minor sudden stratospheric warming of January 2015. Our analysis of this event supports the conclusions of a previous modelling study, attributing regional variability of the ozone diurnal cycle to regional anomalies in nitrogen oxide (NOx) concentrations. However, we also find periods with an enhanced diurnal cycle that do not show much change in NOx and where other processes might be dominant (e.g. atmospheric tides). Given its importance, we believe that the short-term variability of the ozone diurnal cycle should be further investigated over the globe, for instance using the BASCOE model.


: In this study, a novel animal model for the breast cancer treatment which contains hyperthermia is proposed. For this main purpose a low cost, interstitial, bioimplant antenna by short ended single slot design is proposed to heat the cancerous tissues. Both the theoretical background of the proposed system and the simulation and measurement results of antenna design are presented. An artificial tissue phantom model has been created under laboratory conditions and then the utility of the proposed antenna has been tested on this model. Artificial tissues have been heated by 25W to (41-44 ◦ C) in a short time like 25 s. Temperature measurement is performed in real-time and wireless by a digital temperature sensor using an embedded system platform. In addition, the effectuality of the proposed hyperthermia system has been tested by the study on live mice. For this purpose, breast cancer tissues created under laboratory conditions have been transferred to experimental group Balb/c mice to induce breast cancer. According to the results of hyperthermia treatment, the breast cancer has been inhibited by the proposed hyperthermia system. All studies have been animal care with ethics committee approval. All experiments have been repeated three times by at least two observers independently. The results of this study give hope that the breast cancer treatment method using this new antenna could be used in humans in the future. For this, the number of such types of ablation studies using this type of antenna should increase.


Understanding the physical basis of the structure, stability and function of proteins in solution, including extreme environmental conditions, requires knowledge of their temperature and pressure dependent volumetric properties. One physical-chemical property of proteins that is still little understood is their partial molar volume and its dependence on temperature and pressure. We used molecular dynamics simulations of aqueous solutions of a typical monomeric folded protein, staphylococcal nuclease (SNase), to study and analyze the pressure dependence of the apparent volume, Vapp, and its components by the Voronoi-Delaunay method. We show that the strong decrease of Vapp with pressure (βT = 0.95 × 10(-5) bar(-1), in very good agreement with the experimental value) is essentially due to the compression of the molecular volume, VM, ultimately, of its internal voids, V. Changes of the intrinsic volume (defined as the Voronoi volume of the molecule), the contribution of the solvent to the apparent volume, and of the contribution of the boundary voids between the protein and the solvent have also been studied and quantified in detail. The pressure dependences of the volumetric characteristics obtained are compared with the temperature dependent behavior of these quantities and with corresponding results for a natively unfolded polypeptide.


In many applications, data is collected in batches, some of which are corrupt or even adversarial. Recent work derived optimal robust algorithms for estimating discrete distributions in this setting. We consider a general framework of robust learning from batches, and determine the limits of both classification and distribution estimation over arbitrary, including continuous, domains. Building on these results, we derive the first robust agnostic computationally-efficient learning algorithms for piecewise-interval classification, and for piecewise-polynomial, monotone, log-concave, and gaussian-mixture distribution estimation.


Translation motion control along given trajectory for a car is investigated. System control uses only one input sensor - object velocity that allows calculating velocity error, and additionally determining error variation depending on velocity differences in a small time interval. Results show that systems with fuzzy logic elements are very stable and allow us to maintain levels of velocity in horizontal directions as well as other movement control in normal road situations like slopes, and additionally taking into account system vibration parameters.


Real estate factors, such as property ownership, size and age, are generally not accounted for in research on revealed relocation decisions of firms. This is remarkable, as entrepreneurs often suggest that real estate characteristics at the property level provide an explanation for firm relocation behaviour in addition to more-frequently tested drivers of firm relocation. We assess the role of real estate determinants, focusing on firms in urban residential neighbourhoods, differentiating between firms located in residential and commercial properties. We find that property ownership is negatively related to relocation likelihood, while being located in property with multiple users is positively related to relocation likelihood. For firms in residential properties high property age and large property size limits firm relocation. Our findings confirm that real estate characteristics are important determinants for relocation likelihood of firms, suggesting that the structure of neighbourhood housing stocks can be linked to the mobility pattern of local firms.


In this paper we accurately revisit the mechanical exfoliation and layer number determination of MoS2. By modelling the exfoliation itself as a random vertical (lateral) exfoliation (fragmentation) phenomenon, a rationale is given to optimise the number of iterations in the scotch-tape peeling technique and we rigorously demonstrate that since the second cleavage the occurrence of monolayers is the most likely. For the unambiguous layer number identification, experiments have been carried out with a unified complementary approach based on optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy, resonant and non resonant Raman spectroscopy, and photo-luminescence spectroscopy. The experimental analysis has been carried out on a statistically significant set of few-layer MoS2 flakes (from one to five layers). The work stresses the strong need of such complementary multi-technique approach to really unambiguously determine the layer number of flakes (that neither optical microscopy, nor AFM alone can give). Optical microscopy contrast analysis experiments (carried out on flakes deposited onto 270 nm SiO2/Si(1 0 0) substrates) demonstrate that for few-layer MoS2 (from the mono to the epta-layer) the optical contrast is weakly depending on the radiation wavelength and is a non-monotonic function of the layer number. Thus, flakes from ten to twelve layers exhibit the same contrast of monolayers, as demonstrated by parallel AFM analysis. AFM clearly shows that the stacking between the silicon oxide substrate and the first MoS2 layer is strongly unpredictable and likely depending on the degree of surface contamination of the substrate. A parallel systematic resonant Raman study is performed ranging from one to five layers clearly exhibiting systematic layer dependent spectral features in the one-five layers range. For the first time a layer estimation number based on a quantitative analysis of resonant Raman and PL spectra is proposed.


Plant Pathology
Native tree populations in many parts of the world are threatened by alien pathogens, which are often imported inadvertently via the trade in living plants. Hill et al. estimate the likely economic cost of the current epidemic affecting ash ( Fraxinus excelsior ) in Britain. They find that ash dieback, caused by the fungal pathogen Hymenoscyphus fraxineus imported from continental Europe in ash saplings, may cost £14.8 billion over the next 100 years, with half of that amount accrued over the coming decade. Most of the cost is in lost economic services such as recreation, avoided runoff, and carbon sequestration, although there are also substantial costs incurred by felling dead trees and replanting. The authors point out that these potential costs dwarf the value of the plant trade.

Curr. Biol. 29 , R315 (2019).


Introduction Pneumocystis is a ubiquitous fungal pathogen that causes pneumonia (PCP) and pulmonary sequelae in HIV-infected individuals and other immunocompromised populations. With the success of anti-retroviral therapy for HIV-infected individuals the frequency of PCP in that population has decreased, however, PCP remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in individuals with hematologic and solid malignancies, and in individuals treated with immunosuppressive therapies for autoimmune diseases, and following bone marrow and solid organ transplantation. Despite the clinical need, there is no approved vaccine to prevent PCP in vulnerable populations. The ultimate goal of the field is to develop an effective vaccine that can overcome immune deficits in at risk populations and induce long-lasting protective immunity to Pneumocystis. Toward this goal, our laboratory has established a model of PCP co-infection in simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-infected non-human primates (NHP) and identified a recombinant protein sub-unit vaccine, KEX1, that induces robust anti-Pneumocystis immunity in immune-competent macaques that is durable and prevents PCP following simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-induced immunosuppression. Type I, or invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells have the potential to provide B cell help under conditions of reduced CD4+ T cell help. Methods In the present study, we used the SIV model of HIV infection to address whether therapeutic vaccination with the iNKT cell-activating adjuvant α-galactosylceramide (α-GC) and KEX1 (α-GC+KEX1) can effectively boost anti-Pneumocystis humoral immunity following virus-induced immunosuppression. Results Immunization of antigen-experienced NHPs with α-GC+KEX1 during the early chronic phase of SIV-infection significantly boosted anti-Pneumocystis humoral immunity by increasing memory B cells and antibody titers, and enhanced titer durability during SIV-induced immunosuppression. This therapeutic vaccination strategy boosted anti-Pneumocystis immune responses during SIV-infection and contributed to protection against Pneumocystis co-infection in KEX1-vaccinated macaques. Conclusion These studies present a novel strategy for stimulating durable anti-Pneumocystis humoral immunity in the context of complex, chronic SIV-induced immunosuppression and may be further applied to immunization of other immunosuppressed populations, and toward other common recall antigens.


It has been recently pointed out by Mithani-Vilenkin [1-4] that certain emergent universe scenarios which are classically stable are nevertheless unstable semiclassically to collapse. Here, we show that there is a class of emergent universes derived from scale invariant two measures theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking (s.s.b) of the scale invariance, which can have both classical stability and do not suffer the instability pointed out by Mithani-Vilenkin towards collapse. We find that this stability is due to the presence of a symmetry in the "emergent phase", which together with the non linearities of the theory, does not allow that the FLRW scale factor to be smaller that a certain minimum value a0 in a certain protected region.


A procedure for recording the electroretinogram (ERG) and the visual evoked potential (VEP) in conscious, nonstressed dogs was investigated. The animals were trained to adapt to a semirestraining support that permitted free head movement. The ERG and VEP were recorded, respectively, through contact lens-type electrodes consisting of double gold rings and previously implanted cortical electrodes. Just before the light stimulus was given, the eye of the dog was directed toward the lamp by gentle manipulation of the head. Using this recording procedure, typical waveforms of the ERG consisting of an a-wave followed by a b-wave and oscillatory potentials on the rising slope of the b-wave were recorded from fully dark-adapted dogs. During the course of dark-adaptation, the amplitudes of these waves increased and reached a fully developed shape 15-30 min after start of the adaptation. Stable ERG and VEP were recorded repeatedly for a long period of time. These results indicate that this procedure for recording the ERG and VEP is suitable for long-term visual toxicity studies of drugs in conscious and relatively nonstressed dogs.


Professor Lennart Lindh has had his focus on programmable logic for over 20 years. He wants to throw out the present von Neumann architecture and replace it with FPGAs that can handle data in parallel and with much less overhead. The switch would cut back cost and also reduce the development time compared to today's embedded systems with processors and tangled code. - The unique thing with FPGAs is that the development continues so rapidly, which makes the price go down all the time for boards, components and tools. It is really incredible and thats the reason why I and many others will continue to work with FPGAs, says Lennart Lindh. He is a veteran of the programmable logic and an all-rounder who likes to start new projects. The base has for a long time been Malardalens University, where he has built up both education and research. But since a year ago, he is a professor in Jonkoping where he was born. In addition to the professorship, which is half-time, he tries to educate the industry, writes books and organizes the conference FPGA World. He also likes to spends November and part of December, far from the darkness and gloomy weather in Sweden. Building blocks boost productivity When I meet him a rainy summer day in Vasteras where he still lives, he talks passionately about today's component-based design methods, where you can take complete IP blocks, much like when you buy a door or window to a house-building, instead of writing all the code from scratch. The component-based thinking has been a major productivity boost for both software and hardware. - But you must know what you're doing. Even inserting a door has its problems at a lower level of abstraction. Many business leaders believe they can work only on the higher abstraction levels, it is completely wrong. If we get that type of students in classes in embedded systems, then there is a risk that you get problems that causes delays and extra costs. Engineering skills are incredible important and you do not learn that college but rather in the industry. At the same time the component-based way of thinking is an opportunity for Swedish companies. - The things the companies want to keep as secrets, they can design as a component, like a black box. But few Swedish companies have taken the opportunity to earn money selling components. Some exceptions exists like Mocean Labs who developed a Most-block for Xilinx library. Also a few consultant companies like ORSoC, BitSim and Prevas has some components. In addition, Xilinx does part of the development of its soft processor MicroBlaze in Sweden, so the knowledge of component based design exist in the country. - There is an opportunity for more companies. FPGA-companies as Xilinx and Altera have similar frameworks to manage hardware and software components so as a component supplier you can sell through them. In addition, the job only has to be done once if you write the code in VHDL and do not use special functions. - If you follow certain design rules you can synthesize VHDL code for a new FPGA-circuit an indefinitely number of times and even transfer the design to an ASIC. Lennart Lindh, however, believes that more research is needed on how to do design on a combination of software and hardware to get the entire design to be independent of the technology. For each new generation, the code has to be recompiled, but the functions and timing behavior of the component will not change. If we get there, the hardware is at the same abstraction level as the software is today. If you have written a program in C you should be able to move it to a new processor and get the same functions, the only problem is that the time-behavior may change. In 1999 Lennart Lindh started Real Fast, a company involved in training and consultancy. The company also sold IP components. It was a real-time kernel and an UDP hardware acceleration originated from research at Malardalen University. The business was sold in 2006 and 2007. - I felt shattered by running a company. A lot of the work is not about technology, and in the end you have to choose what you want to do. Both worlds are fun but I prefer to work with technology and it suits me better to be at the academy. Through his own company Agstu he remains involved with training for the industry. - If you have done research, you should train people and also write books about the new knowledge. Otherwise, it falls into oblivion and then all the research money is wasted. All the course materials for industry and for students at Bergen University College, Malardalen University and the Jonkoping University are the same. But teaching methods are different. - Those who come from the industry has often worked with FPGAs for some years, they have a more solid knowledge. Some even know more than me in certain areas, which leads to interesting discussions. The lab fits in the portfolio Lennart Lindh tries to spend November and December in warmer countries than Sweden. A couple of years he has been in India and Thailand but also in the Canary Islands. - It's fantastic, really something I can recommend if you have the possibility. It gives so many side effects, with new contacts and the possibility to work undisturbed. A few times I've been invited by the university. Other years, I write books and do research. I have my FPGA-board, a computer and the Internet. That's is my entire lab. Lennart Lindh's view on the Internet changed when he was a member of a research project which did development for Mentor Graphics. The project had members from United States, England and India. Cooperation run smoothly with weekly virtual meetings over the Internet and by exchanging reports. The same technique could be used to connect the few, scattered FPGA-researchers in the Nordic countries. - It's a vision I have, that the Universities don't work independently, but rather work together, but it requires money and I do not know if we can get funding for it. Has created a meeting place The FPGA World Conference, which he started with David Kallberg five years ago is the embryo of a Swedish network for programmable logic. FPGA World has since the start, in Vasteras in the autumn of 2004, grown to become an established event which annually brings together approximately 200 FPGA-professionals. This fall, the conference and its associated mini-exhibition also takes place in Copenhagen and the status of the academic part has been increased. The accepted academic papers are published by the sub-department Sigbed, within the research organization ACM. Lennart Lindh would also like to try to forge closer ties with the FPGA-companies. - It would be good to have a connection with San Jose. Now that I have good contacts with Altera I'll try to get a foothold in their research lab so I can send the graduate students over there. As we all know the two major FPGA companies have a continuously ongoing duel, but the fact that Lennart Lindh nowadays mostly work with Altera is not to bee seen as a position in the match. - I had worked a long time with Xilinx, so I switched because I wanted to broaden my views. Request more support from industry Most FPGA manufacturers have an extensive program to help universities. Among other things the give the students their own development boards and they can download free tools for development. Altera has also arranged special student competitions and announce the winners at the FPGA World conference. - I would be happy to see more FPGA suppliers support the interest among young people to learn more about the FPGA technology. Despite contests and other gimmicks, the interest for hardware among students is very weak. In fact so weak that the information technology courses that Lennart Lindh created at Malardalen University has folded. What remains is simply the software group. - The larger universities have fared better and Engineering continues to attract students to the electronics and embedded systems, although there are not as many as in the 90s. In Jonkoping, he is planning to build a small research group that will have a large network to the best research environments around software/hardware for embedded systems. - Of course I will continue with accelerators for operation system with entirely new functions that are not possible to implement in software alone. But the orientation depends on what the sponsors want, I myself would like to investigate how to make complex embedded systems, without von Neuman Architecture. The idea is to examine the design methodology and techniques to make embedded systems exclusively in hardware, without any processor cores but also systems with a combination of software and hardware. Sooner or later, there will be a change of the system It was proven by one of his graduate students in the early 2000s. Four out of five embedded systems such as ABB used, were possible to make cheaper and with decreased development time, by dropping the CPU and only use a FPGAs without any hard or soft processor cores. The solution is perhaps comfortable when you develop an embedded system for a coffee machine but not that obvious for larger systems. Lennart Lindh is worried that Swedish companies are too conservative, they believe that software is the technology front for embedded systems. - It's quite clear that there will be changes in technology, we must constantly be alert. As hardware costs approach zero we must concentrate on the development cost.


AIM
To identify the most-cited articles in ophthalmic epidemiology over the last decade.

METHODS
We performed a cited reference search on articles that were included in the ISI Web of Science database using the terms "Epidemi*" AND "ophthalm*" AND "population*" during year 2006 to 2016. TOP 100 most cited articles (T100) in ophthalmic epidemiology were short listed and analysed using bibliometrics.

RESULTS
These top 100 articles in ophthalmic epidemiology were cited between 61 to 333 times. Of these T100 articles, 36% originated from United States, and 34% were published in the Ophthalmology journal. The three major topics identified were age-related macular degeneration (AMD, n=23), glaucoma (n=16) and visual impairment (n=12). The top-cited article was a study on outdoor activities and its association with the prevalence of myopia in school-aged children, published in 2008.

CONCLUSION
This bibliometric analysis provides useful insights into the current development in ophthalmic epidemiology in the past decade and can help recognizing the quality of the researches, discoveries, and trends steering ophthalmic epidemiology.


The past decade has produced an increased ecological interest in sonic environments, or soundscapes. However, despite this rise in interest and technological improvements that allow for long-term acoustic surveys in various environments, some habitats' soundscapes remain to be explored. Ponds, and more generally freshwater habitats, are one of these acoustically unexplored environments. Here we undertook the first long term acoustic monitoring of three temperate ponds in France. By aural and visual inspection of a selection of recordings, we identified 48 different sound types, and according to the rarefaction curves we calculated, more sound types are likely present in one of the three ponds. The richness of sound types varied significantly across ponds. Surprisingly, there was no pond-to-pond daily consistency of sound type richness variation; each pond had its own daily patterns of activity. We also explored the possibility of using six acoustic diversity indices to conduct rapid biodiversity assessments in temperate ponds. We found that all indices were sensitive to the background noise as estimated through correlations with the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, we determined that the AR index could be a good candidate to measure acoustic diversities using partial correlations with the SNR as a control variable. Yet, research is still required to automatically compute the SNR in order to apply this index on a large data set of recordings. The results showed that these three temperate ponds host a high level of acoustic diversity in which the soundscapes were variable not only between but also within the ponds. The sources producing this diversity of sounds and the drivers of difference in daily song type richness variation both require further investigation. Such research would yield insights into the biodiversity and ecology of temperate ponds.


An ultrawideband receiver antenna system is proposed. The radiating element is a transverse electromagnetic horn antenna, featuring a negative impedance converter at lower frequencies. The voltage standing-wave ratio (VSWR) is less than 2.0 in the bandwidth from 20 MHz to 2.5 GHz. A good agreement between the measurements of the fabricated system and the simulated results is observed. Sample applications include direction finding, broadband communication systems, radar systems, and electromagnetic compatibility measurement systems.


"An Ethical Dilemma: A Case from the Aviation Industry" John R. Ledgewood, Tamilla Curtis, and Anastassia Vilderson. Vol 9 Issue 3 (2016) Abstract: This case is based on a real situation and covers aspects of unethical decision-making practices in the airline industry. EastJet, an airline company based in eastern Europe is a small regional air carrier, struggling to achieve profitability in a limited niche market. EastJet's executive team is expected to make significant cost cuts and show positive changes in the airline's financial situation. Newly appointed Onboard Services Manager Emma Banks joins the company and discovers unethical practices related to catering cost calculations and tax evasion. Students are asked to analyze the ethical dilemma Emma faced and to assess possible outcomes based on the information provided in the case and class discussions.


Background Inhibition of sympathetic activity and renin–angiotensin system with renal denervation (RDN) was proved to be effective in managing refractory hypertension, and improving left ventricular (LV) performance in chronic heart failure. The inhibition of sustained sympathetic activation prevents or delays the development of cardiac fibrosis and dysfunction that occurs after myocardial infarction and ischemia–reperfusion (I/R) injury. The translational efficiency of RDN remains to be defined in preclinical animal studies. Objectives This study investigated the therapeutic role of RDN in adverse remodeling and intramyocardial inflammation in myocardial ischemia–reperfusion (MI/R) injury. Methods Herein, 15 minipigs were subjected to 90-min percutaneous occlusion of the left anterior descending artery followed by reperfusion. Eight animals received simultaneous RDN using catheter-based radiofrequency ablation (MI/R-RDN). Cardiac function and infarct volume were measured in vivo, followed by histological and biochemical analyses. Results The infarct volume in I/R-RDN pigs reduced at 30 days postreperfusion, compared to I/R-Sham animals. The levels of catecholamine and cytokines in the serum, kidney cortex, the border, and infarcted regions of the heart were significantly reduced in I/R-RDN group. Moreover, the gene expression of collagen and the protein expression of adrenergic receptor beta 1 in heart were also decreased in I/R-RDN mice. Additionally, RDN therapy alleviated myocardial oxidative stress. Conclusion RDN is an effective therapeutic strategy for counteracting postreperfusion myocardial injury and dysfunction, and the application of RDN holds promising prospects in clinical practice.


Acceptance of new agricultural technology can lead to significant increase in productivity, income and improve livelihood of rural poor farmers in Nigeria. The study assessed adoption behaviour of the beneficiaries of Multinational (New Rice for Africa) NERICA Rice Dissemination Project in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique in a multistage sampling procedure was used to select 52 beneficiary rice farmers. Data were collected through the use of structured interview schedule and analysed using mean score, adoption index, multiple regression and factor analysis. The results revealed that majority (80.4%) of rice farmers were males, average age of the farmers was observed to be 40years and average farming experience of the famers was found to be 19years. Also, results showed high adoption score for planting distance, early planting, late planting and harvesting duration (61%), fertilizers use (95%) and herbicides use (75%), while water efficiency methods (26%) and improved rice varieties (48%) of the NERICA disseminated technologies had low adoption. Regression analysis indicated that only age and number of years spent in school influenced adoption decisions of rice farmers. The perceived serious constraints to adoption of improved NERICA rice technologies were menace of birds on rice field (M = 4.96), menace of grass cuter (M = 4.47), high cost of labour (M = 3.41), poor access to road (M = 3.61) amongst others. Also, the perceived not serious constraints to adoption of improved NERICA rice technologies were lack of sufficient land (M =1.96), untimely availability of improved NERICA rice varieties (M = 1.92), inadequate knowledge about rice processing techniques (M = 1.78), inadequate access to NERICA rice varieties (M = 1.59) and incompatibility of innovations conflict between technology and norms of the people (M = 1.59). Therefore, the study recommends that researchers should increase farmers' participation and interaction of local and ecological knowledge to enhance generation of socially, economically and ecologically adaptable rice varieties. Key words : New Rice for Africa (NERICA), adoption, rice farmer, technologies


In this study, corrosion behaviour of Al–12Si-20Mg-XTi alloys (Ti content varied between 0 and 4 wt.%) was investigated. Characterizations of the alloys were carried out by microstructural examinations and corrosion tests. Microstructural results showed that precipitation of the Mg2Si phases was observed in Al-12Si-20Mg-XTi alloy matrix as two different morphologies; i.e. as a polyhedral primary particle and as a chinese script. Upon addition of Ti, Al3Ti intermetallic precipitated in the alloy. Corrosion tests were carried out by immersing the alloys in "30 g/l NaCl+10 ml/l HCl" solution. Evaluation of corrosion was determined by measuring weight loss for 24 hours and by potentiodynamic polarization tests. Corrosion resistance of the alloy was approximately constant with 1 wt % Ti addition whereas at higher additions, the corrosion rate increased.


Objectives: To determine the expression of miR-92-1 in HCC patients and correlate them with clinicopathological data. Study Design: A Cross sectional study. Place of Study: Samples were collected from Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center Karachi, Civil Hospital Karachi and Asian Institute of Medical Sciences Hyderabad. Duration of Study: January 2014 to December 2014. Materials and Methods: 150 patients of hepatocellular carcinoma were divided into two groups on the basis of etiologic agent. HCC patients with chronic viral hepatitis B were labeled as group-I, whereas those with chronic viral hepatitis C in group-II, compared with 75 healthy control individuals in group-III. Results: The results showed that miR-92-1 expression was decreased in patients with HCC when compared with controls. Down regulation was seen more pronounced in HCC cases with chronic viral hepatitis C. A significant correlation was found between the expression of miR-92-1 and AFP level 20-200 ng/ml and Child Pugh score B. However no correlation was found between the expression of miR-92-1 and age, gender, fibro scan, tumor distribution, tumor size, tumor metastasis and BCLC stage. Conclusion: miR-92-1 is down regulated in HCC patients with significant correlation with serum AFP level between 20-200 ng/ml.


ABSTRACT This paper examines the formation of citizens and their differences in and through the contemporary mathematics education reforms in Turkey. The analysis focuses on how internationally designated mathematical competencies assemble with the nation-specific trajectories and revitalise cultural priorities. Curricular techniques, which aim at improving mathematics teaching and learning, simultaneously order proper and improper modes of action and participation. The orderings include the formation of children as active and responsible for their learning opportunities where they continually make plans and control themselves. The analysis makes visible how seemingly neutral pedagogical tools to teach and learn mathematics assemble with the formation of desired citizens for the globalised world and act upon children who diverge from those globally proposed norms. Cultural-pedagogical translation processes in mathematics education reforms provide a critical confrontation with the differentiation practices of self and Other.


Bandwidth, latency, system speed, and, of course, the size of future microprocessor systems all highly depend on interconnection technologies. Interconnection will become the key performance bottleneck as semiconductor technology improvements continue to reduce feature size. In this article, we describe the use of on-chip area I/O for future microprocessor systems on the basis of a case study we made of an Intel Pentium system. Area I/O is simply a method of locating I/Os over the entire chip instead of just the periphery. We show that system designers can achieve significant performance gains with area I/O and size reductions at both the system and chip levels. We also explain how area I/O in conjunction with high-density interconnects leads to a new package and chip partitioning concept.


By now, if all had gone to plan, England would be reaping the early benefits of a national database of patients' medical records spanning primary and secondary care. Patients would have the comfort of knowing that their records could soon be accessed wherever they were treated; the ability to monitor outcomes might already be suggesting better ways of doing things; and researchers might be starting to interrogate anonymised datasets to generate and test hypotheses.

But all did not go …


A neutral phosphorescent coordination compound bearing a benzimidazole ligand, Ir(pbi)(2)(acac) (Hpbi = 1,2-diphenyl-1H-benzo[d]imidazole; Hacac = acetylacetone), is demonstrated to be the first example of a sulfur-free iridium complex for the detection of Hg(2+) cations with high selectivity and sensitivity. Ir(pbi)(2)(acac) shows a multisignaling response towards mercury(II) ions through UV-vis absorption, phosphorescence and electrochemistry measurements. Upon addition of Hg(2+) ions, solutions of this complex change from yellow to colorless, which could be observed easily by the naked eye, while its phosphorescence turns from bright green (λ(PLmax) = 520 nm) into faint skyblue (λ(PLmax) = 476 nm), and the detection limit is calculated to be 2.4 × 10(-7) mol L(-1). (1)H NMR spectroscopic titration as well as ESI-MS results indicate that the decomposition of Ir(pbi)(2)(acac) in the presence of Hg(2+) through rupture of Ir-O bonds is responsible for the significant variations in both optical and electrochemical signals.


In the past 15 years, the idea of "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) has become an important part of contemporary business life. This paper looks at CSR through a social-economics lens, examining the role of broadly-held social values in shaping its objectives, identifying the sources of market pressures on firms to bring their operations into better conformity with these values, and examining how these pressures work in practice through a case study of the "No Dirty Gold" campaign. It is argued that an important part of the effectiveness of CSR rests in informational abundance: because information and communication technologies like the internet make it much easier to publicize ethically problematic behavior by firms, it is much easier to get mainstream consumers and investors (whose behavior is not systematically shaped by ethical concerns) to participate in efforts to sanction them. The case study points to both the promise and the limitations of relying on CSR to improve the social responsibility of the profit system.


Objectives: Supplementation of probiotics and supplementation of zinc during acute gastroenteritis in children have been shown to exert positive effects on diarrhea duration and severity. Our aim was to evaluate a new diet enriched with zinc and probiotic bacteria in the treatment of acute gastroenteritis in young children. Methods: In a double blind prospective study, 65 children aged 6–12 months were randomized to receive 6 × 109 colony forming units of Streptococcus thermophilus, Bifidobacterium lactis, Lactobacillus acidophilus (2 × 109 of each strain), 10 mg of zinc/day, and 0.3 grams of fructo-oligosaccharides in the supplemented group (n = 33) or placebo (n = 32), given in a soy protein based rice cereal. For each child, age, sex, weight, degree of dehydration, the presence of fever or vomiting, stool frequency and consistency were recorded daily until diarrhea resolution. Results: Diarrhea resolution occurred after 1.43 ± 0.71 days in the supplemented group vs. 1.96 ± 1.24 in the control group (p = 0.017). In the subset of children who presented with vomiting, time to vomiting resolution was 0.27 ± 0.59 vs. 0.81 ± 0.91 days in the supplemented and control groups, respectively (p = 0.06). On day 3, there was only 1 child with watery stools in the supplemented group versus 10 children in the control group (p = 0.02). Conclusions: In our series, the feeding of a cereal containing Streptococcus thermophilus, Bifidobacterium lactis, Lactobacillus acidophilus and zinc, reduced the severity and duration of acute gastroenteritis in young children. However, whether this combination is better than either the addition of probiotics or zinc alone is yet to be determined.


The increasing demand for hydrocarbon made it a challenge to maintain the oil production and maximize recoverable reserves in mature fields. Interconnected flowline surface network, of oil producing wells, varying in reservoir pressure, connected to a single processing facility, resulted in network bottlenecks and other flow assurance issues. This study objective is to predict the temperature changing effect on hydraulic flow behavior and optimize the most precise multiphase flow correlation for the selected fields.
 The severity of bottlenecks can be profoundly affected by seasonal temperature changes, which require studying and pre-planning to reduce or avoid production losses. A flowline network model had been built and analyzed in-house using a commercial steady-state multiphase flow simulator for one of company's Gathering Centres (GC). GC-XY problematic, high pressure, headers were considered, which are receiving production from several fields in Kuwait. For representative results; comparisons were done for the prediction of multiphase flow correlations in horizontal and inclined pipelines.
 The predictions of the Beggs & Brill (1975), the Baker & Gabb (1988), the Dukler et al. (1969), the Mukherjee and Brill (1983), and the Oliemans (1976) correlations and the Xiao (1990) mechanistic model were evaluated in this study. The comparison was limited to a temperature range from −5 to 55 Celsius degrees, light oil with API above or equal 30 degrees, and 6 inches flowline inner diameter. The study displays statistical error comparison between the predictions of each multiphase flow model used and suggests a correlation for the applied conditions in the selected field. Bottlenecks had been found in the network model, and a variety of solutions were proposed and simulated to overcome the bottleneck severity due to temperature changes. The results findings show a significate potential is reducing the bottlenecks severity up to 40 percent in the designed network and production enhancement of 18,000 barrels daily.
 Detailed criteria and calculations were stated to compare and select the most accurate multiphase flow correlations for the chosen fields. Also, the project explains a procedure to model the suggested solutions and find the expected enhancement of production. Temperature overestimation can lead to severe bottlenecks, which require dedicated and reliable studies to minimize the losses due to heat transfer effect on oil viscosity and flow behavior.


Taking advantage of the proliferation of wireless communication devices, we could well develop advanced transportation information systems based on inter-vehicle communication (IVC), in which drivers can have faster response to incidents and are able to communicate critical information in wake of disasters. Whether such IVC systems are feasible or not is highly related to the performance of multihop connectivity. Existing analytical studies of multihop connectivity, however, usually assume Poisson distribution of communication nodes or uniform distribution of vehicles on a road, and simulation-based studies are not suitable for real-time applications with computationally costly traffic simulators. In this paper, we present an analytical model for multihop connectivity of IVC in a traffic stream, in which positions of vehicles are all known through observations, traffic simulators, or traffic theories. After introducing most-forwarded-within-range communication chains and node- and hope-related events, we derive a recursive model of node and hop probabilities and further define a number of performance measures of multihop connectivity. We then apply the model to study multihop connectivity of IVC in both uniform and non-uniform traffic and obtain results consistent with those in literature. The new analytical model is efficient without repeating traffic simulations while capable of capturing the impact of arbitrary distribution patterns of vehicles. Thus it is suitable for evaluating connectivity of IVC for different traffic congestion patterns and extended for studies of other situations.


Abstract Public participation in the development and implementation of natural resource management plans has been widely adopted by lead natural resource management agencies. The literature suggests that evaluation of participation initiatives has largely focused on the perspective of proponents, and when it has addressed participant needs, has primarily explored satisfaction with process. This paper reflects on the authors' attempts to evaluate both the process and the outcomes of participation, and to do so by drawing on the perspectives of participants. The approach adopted involved iteratively cycling between the literature and participant perspectives of the purpose, process and outcomes of participation to identify, and test the validity of, a set of criteria to evaluate both processes and outcomes. The intention was to identify an approach that could be used by practitioners to refine the evaluation of public participation in different settings. The specific research setting was the development of the East Gippsland Floodplain Management Strategy.


Seeds of five yellow foxtail [Setaria lutescens (Weigel) Hubb.] biotypes, collected from Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and California, were tested for dormancy and germination characteristics. Seeds of the California biotypes, while dormant at time of dispersal, germinated readily following a 4-month after-ripening period in dry storage. California biotype seeds did not require stratification. The eastern biotypes also showed high initial dormancy. Prolonged dry storage (16 months) or stratification overcame this dormancy to varying degrees. All five biotypes germinated over the range of 15 to 35 C, but the California biotype exhibited much higher germination at 35 C than any eastern biotype. The California biotype germinated more rapidly, by 1 to 3 days, at any given temperature than the eastern biotypes. These differences in dormancy and germination requirements between the five biotypes are considered as evidence to support a hypothesis of genetically controlled, physiological differences between geographically separated biotypes.


Only 60-70% of fertilized eggs may result in a live birth, and very early fetal loss mainly goes unnoticed. Outcomes that can only be ascertained in live-born children will be missing for those who do not survive till birth. In this article, we illustrate a common bias structure (leading to 'live-birth bias') that arises from studying the effects of prenatal exposure to environmental factors on long-term health outcomes among live births only in pregnancy cohorts. To illustrate this we used prenatal exposure to perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in school-aged children as an example. PFAS are persistent organic pollutants that may impact human fecundity and be toxic for neurodevelopment. We simulated several hypothetical scenarios based on characteristics from the Danish National Birth Cohort and found that a weak inverse association may appear even if PFAS do not cause ADHD but have a considerable effect on fetal survival. The magnitude of the negative bias was generally small, and adjusting for common causes of the outcome and fetal loss can reduce the bias. Our example highlights the need to identify the determinants of pregnancy loss and the importance of quantifying bias arising from conditioning on live birth in observational studies.


Background: The assessment of nutritional status of a child is essential in the clinical practice. Several
clinical and laboratory parameters are being used for this purpose, of which height and weight play a
major role. This study was carried out to correlate the eruption of permanent teeth with anthropometric
measurements among school children.
Method: This cross sectional study was carried out among 983 school children between the age group of
4-14 years. The height and weight were measured using standardized scales. Eruption of permanent teeth
were examined clinically. The classification of stunting and underweight was carried out based on CDC
standards.
Results: Stunting was present in around 10% of each age group upto 7 years, followed by 20-30% between
7-8.9 years. From 9-11 years, stunting was present in around 40% of the participants and beyond 10 year, it
was present in around 50% of the participants.
Conclusion: Although this study has not demonstrated statistical significance, it has elucidated the increased
prevalence of malnutrition with advances in age with respect to both stunting and underweight, warranting
adequate addressing of the nutritional needs of the school children.


The study was carried out to determine the Effect of Concentrations of Vestaline®(Pendimethalin) herbicide on Growth Performance of Clarias gariepinus juveniles. The toxicity test was carried out using 180 healthy fish of mean weight 27.97±0.03g which were divided into six treatments with each treatment having ten fish and the setup was in triplicate. The fish were exposed to 0mg/l (control), 1.89mg/l, 3.79mg/l, 5.68mg/l, 7.57mg/l and 9.46mg/l) concentrations of Vestaline®(Pendimethalin) herbicide for eight weeks during which the fish were fed at 3% of their body weight twice daily and weights measured weekly. Data obtained were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) at P<0.05using Minitab. The results showed retard growth as compared to the control. Growth parameters such as Specific Growth Rate and Food Conversion Efficiency decreased (P<0.05) with increase in concentrations. Poor Food conversion Ratio and poor percentage weight gain were also recorded. Vestaline®(Pendimethalin) herbicide from the study had negative influence on Clarias gariepinus weights and ability to utilize feed.


Helminth-free lambs (approx 4 months old) were inoculated SC with a purified metabolite of exsheathed third-stage Haemonchus contortus larvae. The metabolite was obtained from in vitro cultivation and was identified as XL3FA1. After 3 periodic XL3FA1 inoculations, lambs were challenge exposed with H contortus. Multiple vaccinations with XL3FA1 did not inhibit the development of worm populations in the lambs; however, worm egg production seemed to be inhibited.


Fifteen new triazole compounds containing thiophene groups were synthesized and their structures were confirmed by means of 1H NMR, IR, MS spectroscopies and elemental analyses. The preliminary biological tests show that the titled compounds exhibit some activities of fungicides and plant growth regulators.


Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus is an accepted treatment for the motor complications of Parkinson's disease. The therapeutic mechanism of action remains incompletely understood. Although the results of deep brain stimulation are similar to the results that can be obtained by lesional surgery, accumulating evidence from functional imaging and clinical neurophysiology suggests that the effects of subthalamic nucleus‐deep brain stimulation are not simply the result of inhibition of subthalamic nucleus activity. Positron emission tomography/single‐photon emission computed tomography has consistently demonstrated changes in cortical activation in response to subthalamic nucleus‐deep brain stimulation. However, the technique has limited spatial and temporal resolution, and therefore the changes in activity of subcortical projection sites of the subthalamic nucleus (such as the globus pallidus, substantia nigra, and thalamus) are not as clear. Clarifying whether clinically relevant effects from subthalamic nucleus‐deep brain stimulation in humans are mediated through inhibition or excitation of orthodromic or antidromic pathways (or both) would contribute to our understanding of the precise mechanism of action of deep brain stimulation and may allow improvements in safety and efficacy of the technique. In this review we discuss the published evidence from functional imaging studies of patients with subthalamic nucleus‐deep brain stimulation to date, together with how these data inform the mechanism of action of deep brain stimulation. © 2011 Movement Disorder Society


This article aims to discuss the main roles of natural history museums and to show how these purposes have evolved and adapted throughout the museums' history, as a response to the development of natural sciences and societal change, from their creation in the 18th century to the present. It strives to demonstrate how the balance between research, teaching and disseminating knowledge to the public has successively shifted, without ever forsaking any of these functions. It is focused on Portuguese museums, but examining their place within international trends.


Data visualizations are standard tools for assessing and communicating risks. However, it is not always clear which designs are optimal or how encoding choices might influence risk perception and decision-making. In this paper, we report the findings of a large-scale gambling game that immersed participants in an environment where their actions impacted their bonuses. Participants chose to either enter a draw or receive guaranteed monetary gains based on five common visualization designs. By measuring risk perception and observing decision-making, we showed that icon arrays tended to elicit economically sound behavior. We also found that people were more likely to gamble when presented area proportioned triangle and circle designs. Using our results, we model risk perception and decisions for each visualization and provide a ranking to improve visualization selection.


Tritan color vision defects have been found in four individuals of a five member family, revealing an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance with a variation of test results within the family. Three males have been observed to be carrying both inherited tritan and deutan defects. Several popular color vision tests are shown to differ in the ability to detect color defective individuals. Arrangement color vision tests failed to detect deutan defects and various plate tests are solely designed to screen for red/green defects. Primary interest was given to those standard tests used in the cinical setting.


Abstract: Background: Child sexual abuse is a widespread global problem and a violation of human rights. Although many studies have been conducted in this field in the world, the information and knowledge of child sexual abuse in Iran is still limited. This study aims to review the current knowledge in the area of child sexual abuse in Iran, and the related laws. Methods: The research systematic review covers the scientific literature and gray literature in Persian and English in Iranian and international databases from the beginning to June 2021 as well as Ira-nian laws on child protection. Results: Our study shows that in Iran knowledge on child sexual abuse is limited. The prevalence of child sexual abuse is estimated to be 1.5 to 32.5%; the risk factors for child sexual abuse encompass substance abuse, low literacy and education, parents living separately and divorce, poverty and poor socioeconomic status, and living in large families. The consequences of child sexual abuse are anxiety, depression, and social problems. Effective local interventions focused on parents and abused children have been conducted to raise awareness and prevent psychosocial harms as well as reduce aggression and physical and mental problems of chil-dren. Existing laws do not specifically address child sexual abuse. Conclusions: The findings showed that knowledge of child sexual abuse in Iran is limited, scattered and in-consistent and there is no suitable definition and tool for measuring child abuse in Iranian stud-ies. National and effective interventions for the prevention of child sexual abuse have not been performed and the consequences of child sexual abuse have also not been well studied. Thus further studies are required to estimate the prevalence of child sexual abuse at the national level and to assess the factors related to child abuse, its consequences, prevention methods and development of existing laws and policies with a special focus on child sexual abuse.


This paper proposes hybrid TDMA-CSMA for virtualized wireless networks, aiming to meet their isolation requirements. In this scheme, high-load users with non-empty queues are proper and potential candidates for TDMA, while others can compete using p-persistent CSMA. At each superframe, AP decides on TDMA-CSMA scheduling by taking into account traffic parameters of users and slice reservations to maximize the network utilization, while maintaining slice isolation. The corresponding optimization problem is formulated to dynamically schedule users for TDMA phase and optimally pick p parameter for remaining CSMA users. Using complementary geometric programming (CGP) and monomial approximations, an iterative algorithm is developed to find the optimal solution. The simulation results reveal the performance gains of the proposed algorithm in improving the throughput and keeping isolation in a virtualized wireless network.


Ovarian Cancer: Diagnosis and Treatment We wish to mention three studies that advocate better prevention of ovarian cancer, since the disease is fatal in six of 10 affected women after several years (9600 new cases and 5500 deaths every year). ● Early detection for a better prognosis by means of screening is not in sight, according to a random ized controlled study (1) of transvaginal ultrasound with tumor marker test CA 125. The mortality in the screening group was 3.1 per 10 000 women years; the rate achieved by usual preventive care measures was 2.6/10 000. Screening 20 000 women would therefore lead to one less death due to ovarian cancer. The study investigated 80 000 women over 12 years. ● A possible preventive intervention in women at high risk of being carriers of BRCA mutations is bilateral adnexectomy at age 30, for example. This would be associated with an acceleration of all aging processes by 20 years, with sequelae including osteoporosis, coronary heart disease, neurodegenerative disorders. For carriers of the BRCA1 mutation, a US study (2) calculated the following: castration at age 40 can be expected to result in a 15% higher total survival rate (absolute value) in the following 30 years of life. Even earlier castration would not entail any further reduction in the risk of cancer (2). ● This means that hormonal prevention of ovarian cancer is very important. In women taking the contraceptive pill for 10 years the cancer risk is reduced by 50%. This also applies to BRCA carriers, who do not have a higher risk of breast cancer as a result. A meta-analysis of 15 studies (3) compared 2855 breast cancer patients with 2954 healthy carriers of the BRCA mutation. Such a positive study result could not be expected before 1975, when pill dosages were double the current amount. Nowadays, doctors mostly prescribe pills of 20 mg ethinylestradiol, which can be used in the prevention of ovarian cancer. These co-indications of the contraceptive pill should be addressed in women at increased risk of ovarian cancer. DOI: 10.3238/arztebl.2012.0208a


et al., 2000; Brown et al., 2004). In particular, whether or not coincident spikes of pairs of neurons participate in synchronized " cluster-events " cannot be decided on measurements of pairwise correlation alone; this can only be achieved by the systematic assessment of higher-order correlations, i.e., statistical couplings among triplets, quadruplets, and larger groups (Martignon et al., 1995; Staude et al., 2010). Importantly, the nonlinear dynamics of spike generation makes neurons extremely sensitive for synchrony in their input pools (Softky, 1995; König et al., 1996). Ignoring these higher-order correlations in the statistical description of spiking populations is therefore hardly advisable (Bohte et al., 2000; Kuhn et al., 2003). Initially, the main obstacle for assessing the higher-order structure of neuronal populations were limitations in experimental methodology, as until recently state-of-the-art electrophysiologi-cal setups allowed to record only few neurons simultaneously. The advent of multi-electrode arrays and optical imaging techniques, however, now reveals fundamental shortcomings of available analysis tools (Brown et al., 2004). Mathematical frameworks to model and estimate higher-order correlations typically assign one " interaction parameter " for every subgroup of the population, leading to a 2 N − 1 dimensional model for a population comprising N neurons (Martignon et al., 1995, 2000). The associated estimation problem greatly suffers from this combinatorial explosion: the number of parameters to be estimated from the available sample size (a population of N = 100 neurons implies ∼10 30 parameters while 100 s of data provide only ∼10 6 samples) illustrates the principal infeasibil-ity of this approach. In fact, the estimation of such higher-order


In this paper, the effect of process parameter on functionally graded materials (FGMs) of Inconel 625 (IN625) and Austenitic steel (SS304L) deposited by laser directed energy deposition (LDED) are investigated. For this purpose, FGM walls of different gradient of mix of IN625 and SS304L at different layers are deposited on Austenitic steel (SS316L) substrate at different sets of process parameters. For this study, the process parameters considered are laser power ( PL): 1000, 1300 and 1600 W, and scanning speed ( v): 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 m/min. Deposited samples are then subjected to different tests such as energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), microhardness, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), optical microscopy (OM), and nanoindentation. Tests performed on the samples revealed different effects of parameters on the deposition of the FGM wall. Based on the comparison of results of mechanical and metallurgical tests, it is observed that either at PL = 1300 W and/or v = 0.5 m/min, among the considered process parameters, show comparatively better results than the others.


Retinal vein occlusion refers to the closure of the central retinal vein that drains the retina or to that of one of its branches. Central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) is caused by age related changes in the retinal vessels. Bilateral CRVO is a relatively rare event. Only less than 10% cases are bilateral, simultaneous bilateral CRVO is very rare. We are presenting a case report regarding a middle aged patient with history of trauma who presented with bilateral CRVO in the depatment of ophthalmology, BIRDEM General Hospital, Dhaka. After detailed clinical work up and invesigation a diagnosis of bilateral CRVO secondary to trauma was made. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bmj.v43i1.21377 Bangladesh Med J. 2014 January; 43 (1): 33-35


Multilevel inverters with hexagonal and dodecagonal voltage space vector structures have improved harmonic profile compared to two level inverters. Further improvement in the quality of the waveform is possible using multilevel octadecagonal (18 sided polygon) voltage space vectors. This paper proposes an inverter circuit topology capable of generating multilevel octadecagonal voltage space vectors, by cascading two asymmetric three level inverters. By proper selection of DC link voltages and the resultant switching states for the inverters, voltage space vectors, whose tips lie on three concentric octadecagons, are obtained. The advantages of octadecagonal voltage space vector based PWM techniques are the complete elimination of fifth, seventh, eleventh and thirteenth harmonics in phase voltages and the extension of linear modulation range. In this paper, a simple PWM timing calculation method is also proposed. Matlab simulation results and experimental results have been presented in this paper to validate the proposed concept.


Severe anterior segment inflammation after cataract surgery often alerts the ophthalmologist to two main differential diagnoses – toxic anterior segment syndrome (TASS) and acute post-operative endophthalmitis. TASS is a sterile post-operative inflammatory reaction caused by a non-infectious substance that enters the anterior segment, resulting in toxic damage to intraocular tissues. Visual prognosis is usually excellent due to its responsiveness to topical steroids. Sengupta and colleagues found that the mean visual acuity (VA) was 0.11 logMAR (approximately 6/7.5 Snellen acuity) one month after treatment. Classic features of TASS include early (day zero or one post-operatively), intense, painless anterior segment inflammation without vitreous involvement. The hallmark of TASS is its rapid onset, usually within 12 to 24hours. Rarely, TASS can present as delayed onset post-operative inflammation, which canmake it difficult to distinguish from acute post-operative endophthalmitis. Acute post-operative endophthalmitis refers to a serious intraocular inflammatory disorder resulting from direct inoculation of organisms during surgery, causing an infection of the vitreous cavity. Visual prognosis is often poor. Ng and colleagues found that 52.5 per cent of patients had a VA of 6/ 60 or worse at discharge and that one-third of patients in his study had a VA of worse than 6/18 six months after admission for endophthalmitis. Significant predictors of poor visual outcome include an initial VA of light perception or worse and infection by virulent organisms such as Staphylococcus aureus, streptococcal species andGram-negative bacteria. Compared to TASS, infectious endophthalmitis often has a later presentation (peaks between days three and seven), with significant pain and vitritis. These features are summarised in Table 1. Onset, rapidity of symptomprogression and the presence or absence of pain and vitritis are the key differentiating features between TASS and infectious endophthalmitis; however, both conditions can present with poor visual acuity, corneal inflammation and significant anterior chamber reaction. Our case illustrates this diagnostic dilemma, as the patient had features suggestive of both TASS (presentation on day one post-operatively, absence of pain, sporadic occurrence) and endophthalmitis (vitritis).


This study investigated the mechanisms controlling hair follicle development in the Rex rabbit. The Agilent rabbit gene expression microarray was used to determine differentially expressed genes in Rex rabbit foetuses with different wool densities. The expression patterns of selected differentially-expressed genes were further investigated by quantitative real-time PCR. Compared to low wool density rabbits, 1342 differentially expressed probes were identified in high wool density rabbits, including 950 upregulated probes and 392 downregulated probes. Gene ontology analysis revealed that the most upregulated differentially expressed probes belonged to receptors and the most downregulated differentially expressed probes belonged to DNA binding molecules. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis revealed that the differentially expressed probes were mainly involved in the sonic hedgehog (Shh) and Eph signalling pathways. The results also suggest that transforming growth factor-beta 1, growth hormone receptor, and the keratin-associated protein 6.1 genes, as well as the Shh and Eph signalling pathways, may be involved in the regulation of hair follicle developmental in Rex rabbits.