For the problem of tracking vehicles on freeways using machine vision, existing systems work well in free-flowing traffic. Traffic engineers, however, are more interested in monitoring freeways when there is congestion, and current systems break down for congested traffic due to the problem of partial occlusion. We are developing a feature-based tracking approach for the task of tracking vehicles under congestion. Instead of tracking entire vehicles, vehicle sub-features are tracked to make the system robust to partial occlusion. In order to group together sub-features that come from the same vehicle, the constraint of common motion is used. In this paper we describe the system, a real-time implementation using a network of DSP chips, and experiments of the system on approximately 44 lane hours of video data.


The towers of Hanoi game is well known. The basic version, a favorite example for many authors, is often used in introductory textbooks on computer programming to demonstrate the elegance of writing recursive code. Here, a simple iterative optimal algorithm for the towers of Hanoi problem is presented.


The Wavelet Galerkin Method for solving partial differential equations leads to the problem of computing integrals of products of derivatives of wavelets. This paper studies the problem from the point of view of stationary subdivision schemes. One of the main results is to identify these integrals as components of the unique solution of a certain eigenvector-moment problem associated with the coefficients of the refinement equation. Asymptotic expansions for the corresponding subdivision schemes form an important ingredient of our approach.


Background The genetic landscape of intestinal (INT) and pancreatobiliary (PB) type ampullary cancer (AC) has been evolving with distinct as well as overlapping molecular profiles. Methods We performed whole-exome sequencing in 37 cases of AC to identify the targetable molecular profiles of INT and PB tumors. Paired tumor-normal sequencing was performed on the HiSeq 2500 Illumina platform. Results There were 22 INT, 13 PB, and two cases of mixed differentiation of AC that exhibited a total of 1,263 somatic variants in 112 genes (2–257 variants/case) with 183 somatic deleterious variants. INT showed variations in 78 genes (1–31/case), while PB showed variations in 51 genes (1–29/case). Targetable mutations involving one or more major pathways were found in 86.5% of all ACs. Mutations in APC, CTNNB1, SMAD4, KMT2, EPHA, ERBB, and Notch genes were more frequent in INT tumors, while chromatin remodeling complex mutations were frequent in PB tumors. In the major signaling pathways, the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3)/AKT and RAS/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways were significantly mutated in 70% of cases (82% INT, 46% PB, p = .023), with PI3/AKT mutation being more frequent in INT and RAS/MAPK in PB tumors. Tumor mutation burden was low in both differentiation types, with 1.6/Mb in INT and 0.8/Mb in PB types (p = .217). Conclusions The exome data suggest that INT types are genetically more unstable than PB and involve mutations in tumor suppressors, oncogenes, transcription factors, and chromatin remodeling genes. The spectra of the genetic profiles of INT and PB types suggested primary targeting of PI3/AKT in INT and RAS/RAF and PI3/AKT pathways in PB carcinomas.


Inability of antioxidants to scavenge effect of free radicals generated in the body results in various health disorders for which free radicals have been implicated. The increasing quest for plant based novel compounds of medicinal relevance led to the comparative study of antioxidant activities of extracts from different parts of the ethnomedicinally utilized Blighia unijugata. Samples were collected and authenticated (Department of Botany) at University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria and separated into leaf, stem bark, root, flower and fruit. Flower and fruit were extracted separately in methanol (labeled MBuFM and MBuFsM respectively), the leaf, stem bark and root extracts were obtained sequentially first with 100% hexane (MBuLH, MBuSH, and MBuRH), and then with equal mixture of ethyl acetate and methanol (MBuLf1, MBuSt1, and MBuRt1). Antioxidant activity evaluations was done using hydrogen peroxide assay. Their 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) values were determined by regression analysis on Microsoft excel. % inhibition of hydrogen peroxide was between 52.28% 82.41% which is comparable to that of the two standards: Vitamin C and Butylhydroxyl Anisole (BHA) used (58.05%-85.63%). IC50 values for the hydrogen peroxide scavenging activities of all the extracts studied gave the following trend: MBuFM>MBuSt1=MBuSH=MBuRt1>MBuLH>MBuFsM=MBuLf1>MBuRH, with their corresponding IC50 values being 0.0056 > 0.0057 = 0.0057 = 0.0057 > 0.0059 > 0.0060 = 0.0060 > 0.0064 (mg/ml) respectively. Our results indicate that the five parts studied are potential good sources of free-radical scavenging compounds, which support the ethno-medicinal application of Blighia unijugata as anti-ageing agent.


The paper presents a field case based upon a reservoir operated by Saga Petroleum in the North Sea. The reservoir stress path was determined from a series of minifrac and fall off analyses and step rate tests on various appraisal tests and injection wells. The results show a strong heterogeneity of the stress path with a large difference between the heavily faulted Southern part of the field and the more quiet Central part of it. The stress path was further confirmed by a series of mud loss incidents during drilling that are briefly summarised. Furthermore, in the case of two injectors, the step rate tests were performed after a significant re-pressurisation of the reservoir -i.e. 30 and 70 bars respectively. Such tests gave extremely low fracturation pressures compared to what was the reservoir stress path upon depressurisation. In fact, the fracturation pressures measured are consistent with the maximum depletion but not the reservoir pressure at the time of the test. In other words, the total minimum stress in the reservoir seems to be governed by the maximum depletion of the zone and not by the present level of pore pressure. Two wells from another North Sea reservoir will also be presented showing a similar behaviour upon repressurisation. Note that such an observation is consistent with one measurement performed on Ekofisk and published earlier on. These observations of heterogeneous and irreversible stress paths will be analysed and compared to other observations such as the behaviour of surface subsidence during aquifer depletion and repressurisation. In particular, it is shown that the reservoir stress path is compatible with a rigid plastic behaviour of the rock mass that has already been more or less observed in the case of the Venice subsidence. However, core measurements do not seem to obey such behaviour. The difference can then be attributed to scale effects as the stress measurements via fracturing tests affect large rock volumes. As a consequence, the results reported here give an insight about what could be the rheological behaviour of a reservoir rock mass at a very large scale. Possible applications to large scale rock mechanics modeling such as compaction, subsidence, hydraulic fracturing, are then highlighted. Finally, the practical consequences of such a state of affairs in terms of reservoir management are drawn.


Corona is a partial electrical discharge and its inception depends on the gas density, which is affected by the ambient pressure and temperature. During times of power disruption, it may be necessary to overload certain feeders for a limited time, resulting in conductors running at temperatures above normal. The layer of air adjacent to the conductor is also heated. In this paper the effect of the higher temperature on corona is investigated experimentally. The effect of higher conductor temperatures on the corona inception levels is pointed out in particular.


A 2-D dust crystal levitated in the sheath of a modified Gaseous Electronics Conference reference cell is manipulated by heating or cooling the lower electrode. The dust charge is obtained by measuring the global characteristics of the levitated crystal obtained from top-view pictures. From the force balance, the electric field in the sheath is reconstructed. From the Bohm criterion, we conclude that the dust crystal is levitated mainly above and just below the classical Bohm point.


Background : Examination of existing research on posttraumatic adjustment after disasters suggests that survivors' posttraumatic stress levels might be better understood by investigating the influence of the characteristics of the event experienced on how people thought and felt, during the event as well as afterwards. Objective : To compare survivors' perceived post- and peritraumatic emotional and cognitive reactions across different types of disasters. Additionally, to investigate individual and event characteristics. Design : In a European multi-centre study, 102 survivors of different disasters terror attack, flood, fire and collapse of a building were interviewed about their responses during the event. Survivors' perceived posttraumatic stress levels were assessed with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R). Peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception were rated retrospectively. Influences of individual characteristics, such as socio-demographic data, and event characteristics, such as time and exposure factors, on post- and peritraumatic outcomes were analyzed. Results : Levels of reported post- and peritraumatic outcomes differed significantly between types of disasters. Type of disaster was a significant predictor of all three outcome variables but the factors gender, education, time since event, injuries and fatalities were only significant for certain outcomes. Conclusion : Results support the hypothesis that there are differences in perceived post- and peritraumatic emotional and cognitive reactions after experiencing different types of disasters. However, it should be noted that these findings were not only explained by the type of disaster itself but also by individual and event characteristics. As the study followed an explorative approach, further research paths are discussed to better understand the relationships between variables. For the abstract in other languages, please see Supplementary files under Reading Tools online


Current datum more than 2 yr after lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS) for emphysema is limited. This prospective study evaluates pre-LVRS baseline and 5-yr results in 26 symptomatic patients (mean age 67 +/- 6 yr) (mean +/- SD) who underwent bilateral, targeted upper lobe stapled LVRS using video-assisted thoracoscopy. Baseline forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV(1)) was 0.7 +/- 0.2 L (mean +/- SD), 29 +/- 10% predicted. Following LVRS, with none lost to follow-up, mortality due to respiratory failure at 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 yr was 4%, 4%, 19%, 31%, 46%, and 58%, respectively. Increase above baseline for FEV(1) > 200 ml and/or FVC > 400 ml at 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 yr post-LVRS was noted in 73%, 46%, 35%, 27%, and 8% of all patients; decrease in dyspnea grade >/= 1 in 88%, 69%, 46%, 27%, and 15%; and elimination of initial oxygen dependence in 18 patients in 78%, 50%, 33%, 22%, and 0%, respectively. Expiratory airflow improved due to the increase in both lung elastic recoil and small airway intraluminal caliber. Five patients decreased FEV(1) 141 +/- 60 ml/yr and FVC 102 +/- 189 ml/yr over 3.8 +/- 1.2 yr post-LVRS, similar to their pre-LVRS rate of decline. In the 11 patients who survived 5 yr, at 0.5-1.0 yr post-LVRS peak increase in FEV(1) was 438 +/- 366 ml, with a decline of 149 +/- 157 ml the following year and 78 +/- 59 ml/yr over 4.0-4.5 yr. Bilateral LVRS provided palliative clinical and physiological improvement in 9 of 26 patients at 3 yr, 7 at 4 yr, and 2 at 5 yr.


This paper presents NORX8 and NORX16, the 8-bit and 16-bit versions of the authenticated cipher NORX, one of the CAESAR candidates. These new versions are better suited for low-end systems—such as "internet of things" devices—than the original 32-bit and 64-bit versions: whereas 32-bit NORX requires 64 bytes of RAM or cache memory, NORX8 and NORX16 require just 16 and 32 bytes, respectively. Both of the low-end variants were designed to retain the security properties of the initial NORX and be fast on small CPUs. Keywords-authenticated encryption, lightweight, CAESAR


Automobile Engineering is a branch of applied engineering that involves incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software and safety engineering as applied to design manufacture and operate automobiles.

The Advances in Automobile Engineering Journal provides an open access platform to Automotive Engineering. The objective of the journal is to help scholars gain recognition with their innovation in automobile domain. The journal publishes most reliable source of information on the discoveries and current developments in the form of Original Research Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Short Communications, etc. making them freely accessable to researchers worldwide.

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Why Special Issue

This special issue has been introduced to recognize those researchers who are with us from the starting of the Conference and kept their believe with us regarding the quality of the conference and the publication. Their continuous support make the Conference as well as the supporting journal to the conference successful and recognized by the international experts. Here in honor to those supporters, those speakers, those submitters, those researchers we are releasing the special issue with the abstracts accepted for the conference, full length articles submitted to the conference and with the short communication submitted to the conference.


Purpose To present outcomes of transurethral removal (TUR) of intravesical or intraurethral mesh after midurethral slings. Materials and Methods This was a retrospective chart review of 23 consecutive women: 20 with intravesical mesh and 3 with intraurethral mesh. Results To remove the mesh, transurethral resection with an electrode loop (TUR-E) was used in 16 women and transurethral resection with a holmium laser (TUR-H) was used in 7. The median follow-up was 2.1 months. Twenty-six percent of the women (6/23) had a mesh remnant: 6.2% (1/16) of the women treated with TUR-E and 71.4% (5/7) of the women treated with TUR-H. Of the 5 women treated with TUR-H, 3 underwent concomitant transvaginal removal. On the follow-up cystoscopic exam, a mesh remnant was observed in 3 women (1 treated with TUR-E and 2 treated with TUR-H). Vesico-vaginal fistulas were found in 2 women during and after TUR-E, respectively. Stress urinary incontinence recurred in 1 woman. Conclusions TUR-E has a high success rate but carries a risk of bladder perforation. Complete resection using TUR-H depends on the location of the mesh and the range of motion of the instrument.


The electrochemical insertion of Rb into carbonaceous materials, including graphite, was achieved herein. Rubidium ions were reversibly inserted into and extracted from graphite via electrochemical processes using different non-aqueous electrolytes containing rubidium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)amide (RbTFSA) salts in carbonate esters, glymes, and ionic liquids, similar to the process used for other lighter alkali metal ions such as Li+ and K+. The chemical compositions of the rubidiated graphite were determined to be RbC8, RbC24, and RbC36 at each step of the electrochemical reduction process. Graphite underwent a phase transition to RbC8 exhibiting a stage-1 structure, with stage-3 RbC36 and stage-2 RbC24 as intermediates, as confirmed by ex situ and in situ X-ray diffraction and ex situ Raman spectroscopy, similar to the electrochemical phase evolution of staged potassium graphite intercalation compounds (K-GICs). Furthermore, Rb was reversibly inserted into and extracted from graphitizable and non-graphitizable carbons such as pitch-derived soft carbon and commercial hard carbon, along with other alkali metals such as Li, Na, and K.


Five 5,10,15,20-tetra(4-pyridyl)porphyrin (TPP) areneruthenium(II) derivatives and a p-cymeneosmium and two pentamethylcyclopentadienyliridium and -rhodium analogues were prepared and characterized as potential photosensitizing chemotherapeutic agents. The biological effects of all these derivatives were assessed on human melanoma tumor cells, and their cellular uptake and intracellular localization were determined. All molecules, except the rhodium complex which was not cytotoxic, demonstrated comparable cytotoxicity in the absence of laser irradiation. The ruthenium complexes exhibited excellent phototoxicities toward melanoma cells when exposed to laser light at 652 nm. Cellular uptake and localization microscopy studies of [Ru 4(eta (6)-C 6H 5CH 3) 4(TPP)Cl 8] and [Rh 4(eta (5)-C 5Me 5) 4(TPP)Cl 8] revealed that they accumulated in the melanoma cell cytoplasm in granular structures different from lysosomes. The fluorescent porphyrin moiety and the metal component were localized in similar structures within the cells. Thus, the porphyrin areneruthenium(II) derivatives represent a promising new class of organometallic photosensitizers able to combine chemotherapeutic activity with photodynamic therapeutic treatment of cancer.


Proceedings: AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011‐‐ Apr 2‐6, 2011; Orlando, FL

Heat shock protein (HSP) 90 is a molecular chaperone that modulates stability of several client proteins, many of which are key regulators of signaling pathways in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The potential for simultaneously targeting multiple effectors makes HSP90 an appealing therapeutic target. Here, we evaluated the biological activity of HSP990, a novel HSP90 inhibitor (Novartis Pharma AG) in a panel of adult glioma primary xenograft lines (n=15). HSP990 treatment resulted in a dose-dependent growth inhibition with IC50 values in the low nM range in each of the primary lines. HSP990 caused G2/M cell cycle arrest and apoptosis-induction within 72 hours of treatment. In addition, treatment with HSP990 resulted in up-regulation of HSP70, and decrease in activity of client proteins AKT, CDC2, CDC25C and activation of caspase 8 and 3, in tested cell lines. A range of sensitivity based on EGFR status was observed. EGFR-amplified cells showed depletion of client proteins and growth inhibition at lower dose of HSP990 (10nM) than wildtype EGFR cells (30nM). Furthermore, neurosphere formation assays revealed that HSP990 was effective against the growth of glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs) in 6 tested glioblastoma xenograft lines (IC50 less than 10nM).These results suggest that that both cell cycle effects and induction of apoptosis are mechanisms governing HSP990 activity against glioblastoma. Further studies are warranted to characterize the mechanisms by which HSP990 exerts its anti-glioma effects which in turn may provide valuable insights in developing HSP990 as a novel personalized GBM treatment based on specific molecular signatures.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2898. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-2898


This paper proposes a control strategy to optimize power output performance of wind energy conversion system. In order to obtain optimum power output from a wind turbine generator system, it is necessary to drive the wind turbine at an optimal rotor speed for a particular wind speed. Fuzzy logic based control algorithm is implemented with the embedded microcontroller which will track the maximum power point (MPP) by generating appropriate generator load references. The designed controller then forces the system to operate towards the dictated load reference. This paper discusses the low cost implementation of fuzzy logic based MPP algorithm in a 8-bit microcontroller using the tools and techniques to generate optimized real time code in C which will demonstrate how maximum power point tracker might provide elegant and efficient solution for increasing the efficiency of wind energy conversion systems, based on experimental results rather than on mathematical models. The proposed concept is verified and results are presented.


cAMP and cGMP are known to suppress vascular smooth muscle cell (SMC) proliferation. In this study, our aim was to delineate the molecular mechanism underlying cAMP and cGMP suppression of cell cycle transition in human SMCs. cAMP inhibits both platelet-derived growth factor-stimulated cyclin-dependent kinase (cdk) 2 and cdk4 activation through upregulation of the cdk2 inhibitor p27(Kip1) and downregulation of cyclin D1 expression, which leads to a complete arrest of the cells in phase G(1). In contrast, cGMP inhibits cyclin D1 expression, inhibits cdk4 activation, and delays platelet-derived growth factor-mediated cdk2 activation, resulting in a delay in G(1)/S transition. A transient increase in p27(Kip1) in cdk2 immunoprecipitates, without changes in total cellular p27(Kip1) levels, correlates with the delay in cdk2 activation caused by cGMP. Thus, cAMP and cGMP differentially affect cell cycle through distinct regulation of cell cycle molecules in human SMCs.


A biofilm airlift suspension (BAS) reactor and an undivided flow cell equipped with a boron-doped diamond (BDD) anode and a stainless-steel cathode were used to investigate the effects of varying operating conditions on process performance in the biological and electrochemical oxidation of a mixture of naphthalenesulfonates contained in the infiltration water of a contaminated industrial site. The experiments were aimed at evaluating the feasibility of process integration and the criteria for optimization (i.e. how to maximize degradation efficiency with minimum energy consumption) in combined biological and electrochemical oxidation of scarcely biodegradable compounds. Because of high reactor biomass concentration and long biomass retention time, the BAS reactor achieved a high degradation capacity (up to 6.8 kg COD m−3 d−1). On the other hand, owing to the recalcitrant character of some of the aromatic sulfonates in the leachate, the overall degradation efficiency did not exceed 70% based on COD measurements. All naphthalene-mono- and -disulfonates (except naphthalene-1,5-disulfonate) were completely degraded in the BAS reactor, whereas more complex molecules (e.g. naphthalenetrisulfonates) were more recalcitrant to biological oxidation. These compounds were completely mineralized by electrochemical oxidation using a boron-doped diamond anode. The energy consumption and the time required for the complete mineralization of the infiltration water decreased from 80 kWh m−3 and 4 h to 61 kWh m−3 and 3 h for the oxidation of raw and biologically pretreated leachate, respectively. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry


Detection of facial features such as eye, nose and mouth in the human face images is important for many applications like face identification or recognition systems. Independent components analysis (ICA) is an unsupervised learning method which decorrelates the higher-order statistics in addition to the second-order moments. Recently, it is used as a technique for face recognition. In this study, ICA applied on a patch image is used as a method to extract the eye which is the most salient and stable feature among all the facial features. The variance of grey intensity in the eye region and ICA are combined together to detect rough eye window. The ICA basis images are computed using the FastICA algorithm; that computes independent components by maximising non-Gaussianity of the whitened data distribution using a kurtosis maximisation process. After detecting rough eye window, intensity information is used to localise eye centre point. The proposed method is evaluated on different databases XM2VTS, BioID and FERET and experimental results demonstrate improved performance over the existing methods. In addition, a high detection rate of 93.3% can be achieved on 600 images with glasses. A comparison between the proposed method and the most recent published methods which focus on eye window detection is also reported.


Neutron reflectometry was used to monitor structural variations in surface-supported dimyristoylphosphatidycholine (DMPC) bilayers induced by the addition of Triton X-100, a surfactant commonly used to aid solubilization of membrane proteins, and the coaddition of a membrane spanning nonionic amphiphilic triblock copolymer, (PEO117-PPO47-PEO117, Pluronic F98). Surfactant addition causes slight compression of the bilayer thickness and the creation of a distinct EO layer that increases the hydrophilic layer proximal to the supporting substrate (i.e., a water and EO gap between the lipid bilayer and quartz) to 6.8 ± 0.4 Å. Addition of the triblock copolymer into the DMPC:Triton X-100 bilayer increases the complexity of (broadens) the lipid phase transition, further compresses the bilayer, and continues to expand the proximal hydrophilic layer thickness. The observed structural changes are temperature dependent with transmembrane polymer insertion achieved at 37 °C, leading to a compressed membrane thickness of 39.2 ± 0.2 Å and proximal gap of 45.0 ± 0.2 Å. Temperature-driven exclusion of the polymer at 15 °C causes partitioning of the polymer into the proximal space generating a large hydrogel cushion 162 ± 16 Å thick. An intermediate gap width (10-27 Å) is achieved at room temperature (22-25 °C). The temperature-driven changes in the proximal hydrophilic gap dimensions are shown to be reversible, but thermal history causes variation in magnitude. Temperature-driven changes in polymer association with a supported lipid bilayer offer a facile means to reversibly control both the membrane characteristics as well as the separation between membrane and solid substrate.


BACKGROUND
Many patients with advanced cancers have associated gastrointestinal (GI) obstruction. Parenteral nutrition (PN) is indicated in patients with a dysfunctional GI tract, but the role of PN in patients' survival is still controversial. The present study was retrospectively conducted to verify if there are any long-term survivors living for more than 1 year after initiation of PN without food or drink in patients with malignant GI tract obstruction resulting from advanced cancers.

METHODS
One hundred fifteen adult patients with malignant GI obstruction were identified over a 6-year period at a palliative-care setting. Their median age was 51 years (range, 31-74 years), and 62 (54%) were women and 53 men (46%). All selected patients had malignant GI tract obstruction and started PN treatment after cessation of energy intake to time of death. Survival expectancy as a criterion was analyzed in all patients.

RESULTS
The median time from initiation of PN to death was 6.5 months. Eleven patients survived >or=1 year and 2 patients have been alive for almost 4 years later after cessation of energy intake.

CONCLUSIONS
PN can be expected to obtain a longer survival for the patient with GI tract obstruction caused by advanced cancer.


In computer vision, the analysis of image contents plays a significant role to perform intelligent tasks such as object recognition and image retrieval. These contents can be low-level visual features or colour information within an image. For content-based image retrieval (CBIR), several methods have been proposed that focus on either low-level visual features extraction or the colour information, and very few works can be seen that retrieve the images by fusing both types of contents. Consequently, this work addresses the problem of combining low-level visual features with colour information that helps to improve the retrieval accuracy of CBIR. The proposed strategy extracts the low-level visual salient features with features from accelerated segment test feature descriptor and quantises the salient keypoints into a feature vector. The colour information of the image is extracted and segmented with non-linear L*a*b* colour space and quantised into a feature vector. The similarity for both the feature vectors including visual and colour features is computed and combined together. The top-rank images are retrieved for the obtained feature vector using the distance metric. The experimental results on two standard benchmark datasets show the improved efficiency and 85% accuracy of the proposed strategy over state-of-the-art methods.


Background: With over more than 200 million operations performed per year worldwide, there seems to be an urgent need for a checklist to ensure an errorless surgical procedure. WHO surgical safety checklist(SSC) is one, which can help in minimising intraoperative and post-operative errors. In addition, it can also serve as a tool to encourage teamwork and communication among the hospital staff members.
Methods: This 1 yearlong study was conducted in 2 parts, in the first held pre checklist implementation phase, complications and mortalities were recorded retrospectively and compared with post checklist implementation phase data. Total of 244 patients participated in the first phase and 236 patients were enrolled in the post checklist implementation phase. Compliance and compatibility with the checklist was tested by a questionnaire given to staff members.
Results: Marked reduction in both intraoperative and post-operative complications was documented after checklist implementation. Intraoperative complications went down from 6.14% to 2.12% and post-operative from 6.56% to 3.38%. Similarly, intraoperative mortality rate scrolled down from 3.87% to 0.85% after checklist implementation. Regarding the compliance of the study, 95.3% of our hospital staff was in favour of introducing the WHO SSC as a routine practice in our hospital.
Conclusion: WHO SSC is the need of the hour in order to reduce the intraoperative and post-operative complications. Incorporating WHO SSC in health care setup will not only result in improved health care quality but will surely reduce the cost burden in health sector.


In this work, stabilized f-ZrO2 ceramic samples with the compositions of (Zr0.82Y0.09Eu0.09)O1.91, (Zr0.82Y0.09Tb0.09)O1.91 and (Zr0.82Y0.09Eu0.045Tb0.045)O1.91 were studied. The elemental composition was studied by electron probe microanalysis, and the luminescent properties were studied by local cathodoluminescence (CL). An analysis of the Eu3+ CL spectra confirmed the stabilization of the cubic phase in ceramics at room temperature. The study of the obtained CL spectra, the 5D4-7F5Tb3+ band luminescence decay kinetics, CL images and excitation spectra showed europium sensitization by terbium in (Zr0.82Y0.09Eu0.045Tb0.045)O1.91. Keywords: f-ZrO2, Eu3+, Tb3+, Ceramics, Sensitization, Cathodoluminescence


Recent spectroscopic observations of a few thousand partially obscured galaxies in the Vela constellation revealed a massive overdensity on supercluster scales straddling the Galactic Equator (l $\sim$ 272.5deg) at $cz \sim 18000$km/s. It remained unrecognised because it is located just beyond the boundaries and volumes of systematic whole-sky redshift and peculiar velocity surveys - and is obscured by the Milky Way. The structure lies close to the apex where residual bulkflows suggest considerable mass excess. The uncovered Vela Supercluster (VSCL) conforms of a confluence of merging walls, but its core remains uncharted. At the thickest foreground dust column densities (|b| < 6 deg) galaxies are not visible and optical spectroscopy is not effective. This precludes a reliable estimate of the mass of VSCL, hence its effect on the cosmic flow field and the peculiar velocity of the Local Group. Only systematic HI-surveys can bridge that gap. We have run simulations and will present early-science observing scenarios with MeerKAT 32 (M32) to complete the census of this dynamically and cosmologically relevant supercluster. M32 has been put forward because this pilot project will also serve as precursor project for HI MeerKAT Large Survey Projects, like Fornax and Laduma. Our calculations have shown that a survey area of the fully obscured part of the supercluster, where the two walls cross and the potential core of the supercluster resides, can be achieved on reasonable time-scales (200 hrs) with M32.


In spite of the efficacy of tricuspid annuloplasty, there remain occasional cases in which tricuspid valve replacement (TVR) is indicated. There is to date no late follow-up data on the Carpentier-Edwards porcine bioprosthesis (CEPB) in the tricuspid position. We present a series of twelve consecutive cases of TVR with the CEPB. Ten patients had multiple valve replacements. The duration of follow-up was 5 to 50 months (mean 27.7 months) on all patients. The operative mortality was 18% (2/12), with 82% (10/12) actuarial 5-year survival. The mean valve follow-up was 2.3 years per prosthesis. Ten patients were in the New York Heart Association (NYHA) Class IV preoperatively. Postoperatively, eight patients moved to Class II, one to Class III and one remained unchanged. There was no valve replacement necessary. Subclinical pulmonary emboli were detected by lung scan in one patient for 4.3% events per year. Echocardiography revealed no evidence of orifice thrombus or leaflet calcification. In our opinion, the Carpentier-Edwards bioprosthesis can be used safely in the tricuspid position with satisfactory functional results.


Building materials are not only the material basis of construction, but also an important carrier of regional architectural culture. With the development of The Times, building materials have also changed. How to use traditional and modern materials to show the regionality and contemporaneity of architecture is an unavoidable problem in the development of regional architecture and the goal of architectural creation. Taking Huizhou contemporary regional architecture as examples, this paper discusses the material expression of Huizhou contemporary regional architecture through three ways: the modern expression of traditional materials, the regional expression of modern materials and the juxtaposition of old and new materials.


Eye contact and eye gaze behaviors within communication contexts are considered vital to clear linguistic transmission. Although much research has been done on eye contact and gaze behaviors, surprisingly little literature exists in this area concerning deaf populations. Due to linguistic necessity, certain factors influencing gaze behaviors during communication will differ between hearing and deaf groups. The present article explains a sequential model of eye gaze and eye contact behaviors (Patterson, 1982) developed and researched among hearing populations and explores possible similarities and differences in these behaviors in deaf people. It is found that characterizations of eye contact and eye gaze behaviors applied to hearing populations are not completely applicable to deaf groups. Empirical research is needed to validate the ideas presented here, and future research directions are indicated.


Owing to the importance of the sulfonate group in organic and pharmaceutical chemistry a theoretical study at an ab initio level has been carried out for this ionic group. The geometric, electronic and energy properties of the methyl- and phenyl-sulfonate anions have been calculated by optimizing with the Hartree–Fock (HF) 6-31G* and 6-31 + G* basis sets and including correlation effects at the second-order Moller–Plesset (MP2) level. In addition, the harmonic vibrational frequencies and the zero-point vibrational energy of the different conformers of these compounds have been evaluated.The results show that the inclusion of diffuse functions does not affect the geometrical description of the sulfonate group. However, both optimizations provide a flatter pyramidal disposition for this hypervalent sulfur atom when compared with the experimental values. It has been found that the inclusion of correlation effects seems to be necessary for a good electronic description of these anions. In the case of methylsulfonate a minimum and a transition structure were located and the rotational barrier evaluated. Phenylsulfonate has a flatter rotational profile and only two structures were fully optimized and characterized. Using the assumption that there is a relation between the population of conformers in the crystalline phase and that in the gas phase, a rotational barrier for the phenylsulfonate anion is suggested.


Two forms of optimal dynamic interpolation are discussed. Two cost functions are considered. The first cost function penalizes acceleration; the second penalizes both acceleration and velocity excursion. Both have been applied to the L1011-100 vertical guidance problem, and results are presented. A flight management system's (FMS) vertical flight plan is used to obtain way points which serve as inputs to the dynamic interpolation algorithm. The algorithm produces reference commands which are issued to a certified FAA L1011-100 model and an autopilot. The resulting dynamic behavior is compared to the results obtained from reference commands produced by an L1011-like commercial aircraft's FMS model. Cubic spline solutions for the two different dynamic interpolation cost functional minimization problems are presented.<<ETX>>


Morphologic features and electrical membrane properties of neurons in the substantia gelatinosa (SG) of the caudal spinal trigeminal nucleus (the medullary dorsal horn; MDH) were examined in the rat. Intracellular recording and biocytin‐injection combined with histochemical staining were performed in horizontal slices. Twenty‐four SG (lamina II) neurons were recorded stably and stained successfully. Both projection neurons (PNs; n = 9) that sent axons to regions outside the MDH and intrinsic neurons (INs; n = 15) that sent axons only to the MDH were observed. The INs were divided into those with dense axonal arborization (INDAs; n = 7) and those with sparse axonal arborization (INSAs; n = 8). In the PNs, the dendrites with spines spread to all MDH layers (laminae I–III). The main axons sent collaterals within the SG and rostrally, caudally, or medially to laminae I and III of the MDH, interpolar spinal trigeminal nucleus, spinal tract of the trigeminal nerve, or upper cervical cord segments. In the INDAs, the dendrites arising from the rostral and caudal pole of the cell bodies mainly extended rostrally and caudally parallel to the rostrocaudal axis of the SG: the dendritic trees were elongated and oval in shape and were confined within the SG. The axonal field of each INDA, a dense mesh of axonal processes, was elongated and oval in shape and almost was confined within the SG. In the INSAs, a small, round cell body was located in the center of each dendritic field, which usually was limited within the SG. Axonal processes ran radially to spread to all layers of the MDH, constituting round or oval axonal fields. The three groups of SG neurons showed more or less different intracellular responses to current injections. In particular, adaptation of spike frequency, hyperpolarizing sag, and rebound excitation were observed in the PNs and INSAs but not in the INDAs. Slow ramp depolarization and slow afterdepolarization were recorded only in INDAs. J. Comp. Neurol. 411:399–412, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Background Low- and middle-income countries bear a disproportionate amount of the global burden of disease from emergency conditions. To improve the provision of emergency care in low-resource settings, a multifaceted World Health Organization (WHO) intervention introduced a toolkit including Basic Emergency Care training, resuscitation area guidelines, a trauma registry, a trauma checklist, and triage tool in two public hospital sites in Uganda. While introduction of the toolkit revealed a large reduction in the case fatality rate of patients, little is known about the cost-effectiveness and affordability. We analysed the cost-effectiveness of the toolkit and conducted a budget analysis to estimate the impact of scale up to all regional referral hospitals for the national level. Methods A decision tree model was constructed to assess pre- and post-intervention groups from a societal perspective. Data regarding mortality were drawn from WHO quality improvement reports captured at two public hospitals in Uganda from 2016–2017. Cost data were drawn from project budgets and included direct costs of the implementation of the intervention, and direct costs of clinical care for patients with disability. Development costs were not included. Parameter uncertainty was assessed using both deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses. Our model estimated the incremental cost-effectiveness of implementing the WHO emergency care toolkit measuring all costs and outcomes as disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) over a lifetime, discounting both costs and outcomes at 3.5%. Results Implementation of the WHO Toolkit averted 1,498 DALYs when compared to standard care over a one-year time horizon. The initial investment of $5,873 saved 34 lives (637 life years) and avoided $1,670,689 in downstream societal costs, resulted in a negative incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, dominating the comparator scenario of no intervention. This would increase to saving 884 lives and 25,236 DALYs annually with national scale up. If scaled to a national level the total intervention cost over period of five years would be $4,562,588 or a 0.09% increase of the total health budget for Uganda. The economic gains are estimated to be $29,880,949 USD, the equivalent of a 655% return on investment. The model was most sensitive to average annual cash income, discount rate and frequency survivor is a road-traffic incident survivor, but was robust for all other parameters. Conclusion Improving emergency care using the WHO Toolkit produces a cost-savings in a low-resource setting such as Uganda. In alignment with the growing body of literature highlighting the value of systematizing emergency care, our findings suggest the toolkit could be an efficient approach to strengthening emergency care systems.


Recent evolution of the Italian industrial system shows how the concepts of localization/delocalization of economic production processes have very little to do with geographical and administrative borders. In this context, a very important and discussed element of complexity is represented by the evaluation of competitiveness. Problems regarding the concept and its proper measurement require a deep elaboration and regard the context of analysis, the information and the available statistical data sources. This book aims at discussing this complex phenomenon from a critical viewpoint both at a macro (economic systems) and at a micro (firms) level showing that they are intrinsically integrated.


Background Pedestrians in motorized vehicle crashes constitute the largest group of traffic fatalities worldwide. Excessive speed is the primary contributory factor in crashes. The relationship between impact speed and the risk of pedestrian fatality has generated discussions concerning the safe speed for areas with high pedestrian traffic. Methods Four electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, COMPENDEX, SCOPUS) were searched to identify relevant studies. Two authors independently assessed records retrieved in adherence to the PRISMA statement. The included studies reported data on pedestrian fatalities or injury severities from motorized vehicle crashes where the impact speed was known. Summary odds ratios (OR) were obtained using meta-regression models. Time trends and publication bias were assessed. Results The following results are preliminary as the study is still ongoing. A total of 57 studies were collected for a full-text assessment, and 27 of them met inclusion criteria and 20 were included in the meta-analysis. Of these, 15 focused on fatal crashes and 5 focused on non-fatal crashes. These analyses found that when the impact speed is increased by 1 km/h, the odds for pedestrian fatality increases on average by 11%, (OR=1.11, 95% CI: 1.10 to 1.12). The risk of fatality reaches 5% at an impact speed of 28 km/h, 10% at 36 km/h, 50% at 57 km/h, 75% at 67 km/h and 90% at 78 km/h. Publication bias and time trend bias among included studies were found and assessed. Conclusions Pedestrian fatality risk increased monotonically with impact speed, as well as the risk for AIS2+ and AIS3+ injuries. These results can help inform road safety policy makers regarding appropriate speed for areas of high pedestrian travel.


Our preliminary results are reported in the investigation of the tyrosine phosphorylation cascade triggered by the stimulation of the insulin receptor in the adipocyte cell line 3T3‐L1 using a mini two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis approach. The minigel format, 8 × 10 cm, was found sufficiently resolving and reproducible to study complex biological samples while considerably increasing throughput and lowering costs compared to larger gel formats. Consequently, we used the minigel format to rapidly screen a large number of samples, of which only the most relevant were then analyzed by optimized, preparative two‐dimensional gels. The accurate localization and relative quantification of tyrosine‐phosphorylated proteins was performed using a nonradioactive triple labeling method. After transfer onto polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) membranes, proteins were stained with Sypro Ruby to verify the separation quality and to localize the general region of interest for immunostaining. The membranes were subsequently blocked with polyvinylpyrrolidone‐40 and probed with the relevant antibodies for visualization of the phosphorylated proteins by chemiluminescence. Finally, membranes were stained with colloidal gold to obtain a pattern reminiscent of the silver staining of a polyacrylamide gel. We believe that the presented strategy can be generalized for any gel application in which a protein has to be detected and identified based on its immunoreactivity.


Background and Aim ±10% of women has a depression during pregnancy and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) are frequently used. After the use of SSRI's approximately 30% of neonates show adverse effects. We studied different policies in the Netherlands in term neonates after maternal SSRI use and findings of standard 48-hour monitor observation and glucose testing. Methods A questionnaire about local policy in neonates after maternal SSRI use was performed in all Dutch hospitals. Next to this we describe the occurrence of incidents and hypoglycemia in a 5.5-years cohort of term neonates (n=138), in which standard monitor observation and glucose testing was performed. Results The questionnaire response rate was 79%. Standard observation is conducted in 96% of the hospitals, 77% on the maternity ward and 23% on the neonatology ward, using a monitor. The majority (n=53, 73%) observes neonates for 48 hours (range 12–72 hours). Standard glucose testing is performed in 12% of hospitals. Ambulatory follow-up is performed in 30% of hospitals. Our cohort study showed that if no incidents occurred during the first 24 hours of observation, no incidents will occur thereafter. Glucoses were below cut off value in 12% mainly at 1 hour after birth, resolving with oral feeding. Conclusions There are many differences in postnatal care for neonates born after maternal SSRI use. Based on our cohort study it seems unnecessary to prolong monitor observation after 24 hours if no incidents occurred. Standard glucose testing should not be performed.


The authors rated 30 probands with senile dementia of the Alzheimer type and 30 healthy controls for depression at the beginning of a longitudinal study and 1 year later. Significant degrees of depression were not found in either group at either time.


ABSTRACT The orf245 gene is located immediately upstream of, and divergently transcribed from, the replication initiation gene, rep, of the Staphylococcus aureus multiresistance plasmid pSK1, and related genes have been found in association with a range of evolutionarily distinct replication genes on plasmids from various gram-positive genera. orf245 has been shown previously to extend the segregational stability of a pSK1 minireplicon. Here we describe an investigation into the basis of orf245-mediated stabilization. orf245 was not found to influence transcription of pSK1 rep, indicating that it is not directly involved in plasmid replication. This was confirmed by demonstrating that orf245 is able to enhance the segregational stability of heterologous theta- and rolling-circle-replicating replicons, suggesting that it encodes a plasmid maintenance function. Evidence inconsistent with postsegregational killing and multimer resolution mechanisms was obtained; however, the intergenic region upstream of orf245 was found to mediate orf245-dependent incompatibility, as would be expected if it encodes a cis-acting centromere-like site. Taken together, these findings implicate active partitioning as the probable basis of the activity of orf245, which is therefore redesignated par. Since it is unrelated to any gene known to play a role in plasmid segregation, it seems likely that pSK1 par potentially represents the prototype of a novel class of active partitioning systems that are distinguished by their capacity to enhance plasmid segregational stability via a single protein-encoding gene.


Question answering systems should help users to access knowledge on a broad range of topics and to answer a wide array of different questions. Most systems fall short of this expectation as they are only specialized in one particular setting, e.g., answering factual questions with Wikipedia data. To overcome this limitation, we propose composing multiple QA agents within a meta-QA system. We argue that there exist a wide range of specialized QA agents in literature. Thus, we address the central research question of how to effectively and efficiently identify suitable QA agents for any given question. We study both supervised and unsupervised approaches to address this challenge, showing that TWEAC - Transformer with Extendable Agent Classifiers - achieves the best performance overall with 94% accuracy. We provide extensive insights on the scalability of TWEAC, demonstrating that it scales robustly to over 100 QA agents with each providing just 1000 examples of questions they can answer.


Political speech animation in Kenya can be a complicated affair allowing both the speaker and the audience to equally participate in speech animation. The audience could use the dialogue opportunity to re-direct what the speech topic should be thus assigning new topics or could even influence the direction of the ongoing speech topic.
On the other hand the speech animator uses dialogue as a gauging device of his ideas and his own popularity as a member of political class, for control and coercion, engaging the audience that could otherwise feel bored and leave the rally, discussing stage managed topics, allowing the audience to lead directions in what could be an otherwise controversial topic leading to impoliteness on the part of the speech animator.
Dialogue structure in Kenya is arguably present in most speeches though to a lesser degree in formal speeches but to a greater extent in extemporaneous oral speeches. Success in speech making has got to do with mastering how to sustain both the expected monologue structure but also the dialogic structure where the audience is passive and active at the same time.


An analytical solution to the three-dimensional telegraph equation is presented. This equation has recently received some attention but so far the treatment has been one-dimensional. By using the structural similarity to the Klein-Gordon equation, the telegraph equation can be solved in closed form. Illustrative examples are used to discuss the qualitative differences from the diffusion solution. A comparison with a numerical test-particle simulation reveals that some features of an intensity profile can be better explained using the telegraph approach.


Activity-based travel demand models use the notion of tours or trip chains as the fundamental building blocks of daily traveler activity-travel patterns. Travelers may undertake a variety of tours during the course of a day, and each tour may include one or more stops where individuals participate in and devote time to the pursuit of activities. This paper presents a framework capable of simulating the complete composition of a tour and offers an approach to model the mix of activities and the time allocated to various activities in a tour. Embedded in the framework is a multiple discrete-continuous extreme value modeling component that was used to model the simultaneous decisions of participating in one or more activities in the course of a tour and of allocating time to each of the activities in the tour. The model was estimated with travel survey data collected in 2008 in the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area in Arizona. Validation and policy simulation exercises were conducted to examine the efficacy of the model. The model was found to perform well in replicating tour patterns in the estimation sample and responded in a behaviorally intuitive manner in the context of a policy sensitivity test.


Selective Mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder often diagnosed in early childhood and characterized by persistent failure to speak in certain social situations but not others. Diagnosing SM and monitoring treatment response can be quite complex, due in part to changing definitions of and scarcity of research about the disorder. Subjective self-reports and parent/teacher interviews can complicate SM diagnosis and therapy, given that similar speech problems of etiologically heterogeneous origin can be attributed to SM. The present perspective discusses the potential for passive audio capture to help overcome psychiatry's current lack of objective and quantifiable assessments in the context of SM. We present supportive evidence from two pilot studies indicating the feasibility of using a digital wearable device to quantify child vocalization features affected by SM. We also highlight comparative analyses of passive audio capture and its potential to enhance diagnostic characterizations for SM, as well as possible limitations of such technologies.


Texturing of superconductors is essential to achieve high critical current densities. For coatings or coated conductors the symmetry-anisotropy of the substrate has a major impact on the formation of a biaxial texture. The substrate symmetry is broken for example by a rolling texture in the RABiTS process or by anisotropic damage in the IBAD process. However, anisotropy can also be introduced by using multiphase substrates, providing an anisotropic but regular arrangement of the individual phases. Such an arrangement leads to anisotropic growth conditions owing to the different properties of the phases involved. Moreover, nucleation is probably influenced by the aligned boundaries between the substrate phases. As a preliminary result obtained from infiltration of regularly arranged fibres, preferred growth along the fibre directions is observed.


This paper presents an outline of the design requirements for the integration of renewable energy conversion and storage within a building's energy infrastructure. Prominent in shaping the requirements is the need to identify and leverage building side flexibility towards the electricity grid; this includes consideration of the building loads, on-site storage and generation. Building side flexibility is considered within the framework of Demand Side Management to explore possible load pattern modification strategies of the building. These include enhancing self-consumption of generated energy (for example charging the battery with excess solar-power, charging battery during off peak hours and discharging it during peak hours in combination with valley filling and load shifting). The integration of renewable and storage systems in buildings should therefore facilitate supportive flexible operation scenarios that provides support in the form of increased stability to the power grid. This type of dynamic energy management should also in future be integrated in building energy management systems.


The authors report the use of bilateral posterolateral approach by transversoarthropediculectomy with corporectomy in dorso lumbar rachidian pathology. They discuss the advantages and inconvenience of this approach before propose its indications.


The oxidation of L-cysteine by the outer-sphere oxidants [Fe(bpy)2(CN)2]+ and [Fe(bpy)(CN)4]- in anaerobic aqueous solution is highly susceptible to catalysis by trace amounts of copper ions. This copper catalysis is effectively inhibited with the addition of 1.0 mM dipicolinic acid for the reduction of [Fe(bpy)2(CN)2]+ and is completely suppressed with the addition of 5.0 mM EDTA (pH<9.00), 10.0 mM EDTA (9.010.0) for the reduction of [Fe(bpy)(CN)4]-. 1H NMR and UV-vis spectra show that the products of the direct (uncatalyzed) reactions are the corresponding Fe(II) complexes and, when no radical scavengers are present, L-cystine, both being formed quantitatively. The two reactions display mild kinetic inhibition by Fe(II), and the inhibition can be suppressed by the free radical scavenger PBN (N-tert-butyl-alpha-phenylnitrone). At 25 degrees C and micro=0.1 M and under conditions where inhibition by Fe(II) is insignificant, the general rate law is -d[Fe(III)]/dt=k[cysteine]tot[Fe(III)], with k={k2Ka1[H+]2+k3Ka1Ka2[H+]+k4Ka1Ka2Ka3{/}[H+]3+Ka1[H+]2+Ka1Ka2[H+]+Ka1Ka2Ka3}, where Ka1, Ka2, and Ka3 are the successive acid dissociation constants of HSCH2CH(NH3+)CO2H. For [Fe(bpy)2(CN)2]+, the kinetics over the pH range of 3-7.9 yields k2=3.4+/-0.6 M(-1) s(-1) and k3=(1.18+/-0.02)x10(6) M(-1) s(-1) (k4 is insignificant in the fitting). For [Fe(bpy)(CN)4]- over the pH range of 6.1-11.9, the rate constants are k3=(2.13+/-0.08)x10(3) M(-1) s(-1) and k4=(1.01+/-0.06)x10(4) M(-1) s(-1) (k2 is insignificant in the fitting). All three terms in the rate law are assigned to rate-limiting electron-transfer reactions in which various thiolate forms of cysteine are reactive. Applying Marcus theory, the self-exchange rate constant of the *SCH2CH(NH2)CO2-/-SCH2CH(NH2)CO2- redox couple was obtained from the oxidation of L-cysteine by [Fe(bpy)(CN)4]-, with k11=4x10(5) M(-1) s(-1). The self-exchange rate constant of the *SCH2CH(NH3+)CO2-/-SCH2CH(NH3+)CO2- redox couple was similarly obtained from the rates with both Fe(III) oxidants, a value of 6x10(6) M(-1) s(-1) for k11 being derived. Both self-exchange rate constants are quite large as is to be expected from the minimal rearrangement that follows conversion of a thiolate to a thiyl radical, and the somewhat lower self-exchange rate constant for the dianionic form of cysteine is ascribed to electrostatic repulsion.


Restrictions imposed by diffraction on schlieren electron density measurements are discussed. Applicability criteria are derived. It is shown that diffraction partly compensates for the advantage of longer wavelengths: while the deflection angles increase with lambda(2), the gain in measuring precision increases only with radicallambda. The criteria are not restricted to a particular spectral range. However, they were derived with special regard to extending schlieren methods to the far infrared (FIR).


The global market's growth influences the increasing need of English speaking proficiency for many professions. Hence, non-English department students equip themselves with English speaking proficiency. Some take courses in some informal institutions; others make their own independent English club. A group of metacognitive Civil Engineering students in Indonesia formed a Speaking Club to facilitate their learning. The research aimed to measure the metacognitive awareness of some Civil Engineering students during their independent learning activities. The analysis was done by using the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI). To triangulate the data, interviews, observation and critical reflection were used. From the research it could be concluded that independent learning can be facilitated and born from cooperative learning. Cooperative learning builds up learners' motivation through peer feedbacks and monitoring done by a tutor. Metacognitive awareness was built upon the realization of clear learning objectives, followed by self-determination, and planning. Consistency is also required to sustain self-regulated learning.


Objective The association between metastasis to the lymph node posterior to the right recurrent laryngeal nerve (LN-prRLN) and cN0 papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) located in the thyroid isthmus remains unknown; therefore, our goal was to analyze the characteristics of LN-prRLN metastasis of cN0 PTCs of the thyroid isthmus and determine its potential predictors. Patients and methods This retrospective study included patients who underwent bilateral central neck dissection between January 2018 and January 2021. The specimen was divided into five groups of prelaryngeal lymph node (LN), pretracheal LN, left paratracheal LN, lymph node anterior to the right recurrent laryngeal nerve (LN-arRLN), and LN-prRLN. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to assess the association between the clinical pathologic variables and LN-prRLN metastases. Surgical complications were presented descriptively. Results A total of 357 patients were included, LN-prRLN metastasis occurred in 23 (6.4%) patients, and LN-prRLN was positive only when there were other LN metastases, especially LN-arRLN metastases. Other independent risk factors for LN-prRLN included foci numbers ≥2, tumor size ≥5.0 mm, and extrathyroidal extensions. The rates of permanent hypoparathyroidism and vocal cord paralysis were 1.1% and 2.0%, respectively. Conclusion LN-prRLN metastases should not be ignored in cN0 PTC located in the thyroid isthmus; however, its dissection is a safe procedure, and the status of LN-arRLN can be a reliable predictor for LN-prRLN metastases.


We report on a patient with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), classified as refractory anaemia with excess of blasts-2, and histiocytoid Sweet's syndrome. The skin lesions disappeared after initiation of corticosteroids and doxycycline. Remarkably, two months later a complete remission of the MDS occurred. Fourteen months later both the skin lesions and the MDS relapsed. Antileukaemic activity following reversion of the impaired cellular immunity due to an increased number of natural killer cells in his bone marrow may be responsible for this rare event. Inhibition of T-cell mediated myelosuppression by corticosteroids or a proapoptotic effect of doxycycline may have attributed as well.


Life's changes and maturation will require continued growth, personally and professionally. In the last period of time this objective has became really hard to achieve, not only because of pandemic conditions around the world in terms of health protection and the volatility of work labor lately, but also because the social side of our personalities and the spiritual aspect of human identity have been severely tested. Nowadays, the majority of Romanian universities are coping to these challenges. In these trouble times, we all started looking for ways in which we could be more efficient or "work smarter" in order to maintain the feeling of normality in our lives. The need for counselling is constantly increasing for all participants to education (students and teachers) as well as for the employees, as general. Before any other reframing levels of analysis, the first step in someone's career counselling process begins from analyzing the self-perspective, in terms of personal qualities (strong points and weaknesses), personal needs, aspirations and professional interests. According to these issues, this paper is aimed to present the good experience of implementation a career counselling training program, included in the project "Scholarships for entrepreneurial education of doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers", financed through the European structural funds. The project has been implemented in University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest in partnership to University DUNAREA DE JOS from Galati. Despite the fact that the focus of project's activities has been on entrepreneurial competences' development, as the title of project emphasized, the career counselling activities represented one of the most important and appreciated project's activity. The target group's level of satisfaction regarding this project's activity has been analyzed in the research described in this paper, proving its authentic value in order to highly increase the awareness of participants for continuous need of reflection on their motivation and aspirations about career. The quantitative research-based is aimed to analyze the participants' perceptions and opinions referring to professional counselling program's implementation, in terms of topics approached, effect and impact on developing their key abilities, such as: communication, planning and evaluation, decision making, management of socio-emotional skills, information about labor market etc.


Mast cells (MCs) are critical for allergic reactions but are also important in inflammatory processes. Stimulation by neuropeptides, such as substance P (SP) and neurotensin (NT), leads to release of preformed molecules stored in numerous MC secretory granules and newly synthesized proinflammatory mediators, including tumor necrosis factor, C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 8, and vascular endothelial growth factor. Here, we investigate the role of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling in the stimulation of cultured human LAD2 MCs by NT or SP, as well as the inhibitory effect of the natural flavonoids 3′,4′,5,7-tetrahydroxyflavone (luteolin) and its novel structural analog 3′,4′,5,7-tetramethoxyflavone (methoxyluteolin). Stimulation by NT (10 μM) or SP (1 μM) increases (P < 0.0001) gene expression (after 6 hours) and release (after 24 hours) of tumor necrosis factor, C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 8, and vascular endothelial growth factor. This occurs via activation of both mTOR complexes, as denoted by the increased phosphorylated (p) protein levels (P < 0.0001) of the downstream mTORC1 substrate pp70S6KThr389 and mTORC2 component pmTORSer2448. Pretreatment of human MCs using the mTORC1 inhibitor rapamycin, the mTORC1/mTORC2 inhibitor Torin1, or the two flavonoids decreases both gene expression and release (P < 0.0001) of all three mediators. Methoxyluteolin is a more potent human MC inhibitor than luteolin or Torin1, implicating other MC protein targets in addition to the mTOR complex. These findings indicate that mTOR is partially involved in the neuropeptide stimulation of MCs, but the novel flavonoid methoxyluteolin inhibits the response entirely, suggesting that it may be developed for treatment of allergic and inflammatory diseases.


1. The adjacent, undifferentiated, uninucleated cells of the lateral meristem or cambium are of two distinct shapes and sizes: (1) small, more or less isodiametric initials which are of the same general order of magnitude as the cells of the terminal meristem and embryo; and (2) large, elongated initials which in certain cases may attain a length of more than 10,000 micra and a volume of 10,000,000 cubic micra. The large initials may be induced to divide to form small initials, and the latter to regenerate elongated cells of normal dimensions. Thus, the cambium affords an unusually favorable medium for the study of a number of fundamental physiological and cytological problems. 2. A study of the cambium reveals the fact that there is a very-much greater variability in the size of meristematic cells in plants than was suspected by Sachs or Strasburger, and that the working sphere of the nucleus is by no means so restricted as assumed by these investigators. 3. Although the larger cambial initials of Pinus strobus tend to have larger nuclei, the nucleocytoplasmic-relation varies within wide limits and the diploid number of chromosomes is constant. The conditions in the cambium do not support Winkler's view that there is a close correlation between chromosomal number (chromosomal mass) and cell size in the somatic tissue of plants, and that giant cells are hyperchromatic. 4. The process of cell plate formation in the cambium is a remarkable phenomenon, and one which is significant in discussing the relative merits of various theories concerning the dynamics of karyokinesis and cytokinesis. 5. The newly formed partition membranes in the cambial initials frequently intersect the side walls at angles of varying degrees of acuteness, which is in contradiction to Errera's (Plateau's) Law of Minimal Area.


Abstract Considerable attention in bioethics has been devoted to moral expertise and its implications for handling applied moral problems. The existence and nature of moral expertise has been a contested topic, and particularly, whether philosophers are moral experts. In this study, we put the question of philosophers' moral expertise in a wider context, utilizing a novel and global study among 4,087 philosophers from 96 countries. We find that despite the skepticism in recent literature, the vast majority of philosophers do believe in moral expertise and in the contribution of philosophical training and experience to its acquisition. Yet, they still differ on what philosophers' moral expertise consists of. While they widely accept that philosophers possess superior analytic abilities regarding moral matters, they diverge on whether they also possess improved ability to judge moral problems. Nonetheless, most philosophers in our sample believe that philosophers possess an improved ability to both analyze and judge moral problems and that they commonly see these two capacities as going hand in hand. We also point at significant associations between personal and professional attributes and philosophers' beliefs, such as age, working in the field of moral philosophy, public involvement, and association with the analytic tradition. We discuss the implications of these findings for the debate about moral expertise.


ABSTRACT:Aims: The aim of this study was to assess the impact of screening and teaching interventions for sleep–wake disturbances in parents of childhood patients with epilepsy. Methods: This was a prospective, descriptive study using convenience sampling. After informed consent was obtained from eligible parents who agreed to participate, study questionnaires were administered. All parents were provided with an individualized teaching intervention. Study tools were readministered 8–12 weeks later to evaluate if the individualized teaching intervention altered or improved sleep–wake disturbances. Results: The t value for the paired t test of the Epworth Sleepiness Scale prescore and postscore was 0.000 with a two-tailed probability value of 1.000, and the t value for the paired t test of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index prescore and postscore was 0.713 with a two-tailed probability value of .492, indicating no significant difference between pre and post Epworth Sleepiness Scale or Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores. Conclusions: A sleep hygiene teaching intervention for parents of children with epilepsy was not effective in this setting of an inner-city epilepsy monitoring unit in changing postintervention scores on measures of both nighttime sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. These results must be interpreted with caution secondary to the small number included in the initial phase of this study. A larger number of participants will be needed to verify these findings. If the results remain consistent with a larger number, studies evaluating variables of cause may be helpful to determine more effective interventions.


Aims Acid rain is considered one of the three most serious environmental disasters worldwide, disrupting the normal physiological metabolism of plants and inhibiting their growth. As important parts of soil biota community, both earthworms and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can promote the growth of plants under adverse conditions. However, whether them can improve the stress tolerance of plants under simulated acid rain stress remains to be explored.Methods Illumina high-throughput sequencing was used to conduct a relevant redundancy analysis (RDA) of soil microbial community structure and plant growth factors, and a structural equation model (SEM) was constructed for maize biomass and a biological index to study the mechanisms by which earthworms and mycorrhizal fungi affect maize stress resistance under simulated acid rain stress. Results Earthworms promoted the absorption of soil organic matter by maize; promoted the growth of the root system; and increased the hormone levels of GA3, ABA and IAA; ultimately improving the stress resistance of maize. Mycorrhizal fungi increased the relative abundance of plant growth-promoting rhizosphere bacteria, increased the levels of plant hormones and antioxidant enzymes, and improved the stress resistance of maize. Earthworms promoted infection by mycorrhizal fungi, and the interaction between earthworms and mycorrhizal fungi increased the root IAA content and the Shannon index of rhizosphere bacteria.Conclusions Both earthworms and mycorrhizal fungi can improve the stress resistance of maize through underground regulation. They interacted in increasing the root IAA content and the Shannon index of rhizosphere bacteria and alleviated the simulated acid rain stress of the aboveground part of the maize.


The increasing occurrence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) extended-spectrum β-lactamase- (ESBL) and/or AmpC β-lactamase- (AmpC) producing Enterobacterales in irrigation water and associated irrigated fresh produce represents risks related to the environment, food safety, and public health. In South Africa, information about the presence of ESBL/AmpC-producing Enterobacterales from non-clinical sources is limited, particularly in the water–plant-food interface. This study aimed to characterize 19 selected MDR ESBL/AmpC-producing Escherichia coli (n=3), Klebsiella pneumoniae (n=5), Serratia fonticola (n=10), and Salmonella enterica (n=1) isolates from spinach and associated irrigation water samples from two commercial spinach production systems within South Africa, using whole genome sequencing (WGS). Antibiotic resistance genes potentially encoding resistance to eight different classes were present, with blaCTX-M-15 being the dominant ESBL encoding gene and blaACT-types being the dominant AmpC encoding gene detected. A greater number of resistance genes across more antibiotic classes were seen in all the K. pneumoniae strains, compared to the other genera tested. From one farm, blaCTX-M-15-positive K. pneumoniae strains of the same sequence type 985 (ST 985) were present in spinach at harvest and retail samples after processing, suggesting successful persistence of these MDR strains. In addition, ESBL-producing K. pneumoniae ST15, an emerging high-risk clone causing nosocomical outbreaks worldwide, was isolated from irrigation water. Known resistance plasmid replicon types of Enterobacterales including IncFIB, IncFIA, IncFII, IncB/O, and IncHI1B were observed in all strains following analysis with PlasmidFinder. However, blaCTX-M-15 was the only β-lactamase resistance gene associated with plasmids (IncFII and IncFIB) in K. pneumoniae (n=4) strains. In one E. coli and five K. pneumoniae strains, integron In191 was observed. Relevant similarities to human pathogens were predicted with PathogenFinder for all 19 strains, with a confidence of 0.635–0.721 in S. fonticola, 0.852–0.931 in E. coli, 0.796–0.899 in K. pneumoniae, and 0.939 in the S. enterica strain. The presence of MDR ESBL/AmpC-producing E. coli, K. pneumoniae, S. fonticola, and S. enterica with similarities to human pathogens in the agricultural production systems reflects environmental and food contamination mediated by anthropogenic activities, contributing to the spread of antibiotic resistance genes.


Predicting the future states of surrounding traffic participants and planning a safe, smooth, and socially compliant trajectory accordingly are crucial for autonomous vehicles (AVs). There are two major issues with the current autonomous driving system: the prediction module is often separated from the planning module, and the cost function for planning is hard to specify and tune. To tackle these issues, we propose a differentiable integrated prediction and planning (DIPP) framework that can also learn the cost function from data. Specifically, our framework uses a differentiable nonlinear optimizer as the motion planner, which takes as input the predicted trajectories of surrounding agents given by the neural network and optimizes the trajectory for the AV, enabling all operations to be differentiable, including the cost function weights. The proposed framework is trained on a large-scale real-world driving dataset to imitate human driving trajectories in the entire driving scene and validated in both open-loop and closed-loop manners. The open-loop testing results reveal that the proposed method outperforms the baseline methods across a variety of metrics and delivers planning-centric prediction results, allowing the planning module to output trajectories close to those of human drivers. In closed-loop testing, the proposed method outperforms various baseline methods, showing the ability to handle complex urban driving scenarios and robustness against the distributional shift. Importantly, we find that joint training of planning and prediction modules achieves better performance than planning with a separate trained prediction module in both open-loop and closed-loop tests. Moreover, the ablation study indicates that the learnable components in the framework are essential to ensure planning stability and performance. Code and Supplementary Videos are available at https://mczhi.github.io/DIPP/.


Abstract: This paper reviews some of the general study on the design, analysis and fabrication of composite leaf spring. Leaf springs are one of the oldest suspension components they are still frequently used, especially in commercial vehicles. The literature has indicated a growing interest in the replacement of steel spring with composite leaf spring.The suspension system in a vehicle significantly affects the behavior of vehicle, i.e. vibration characteristics including ride comfort, stability etc. Leaf springs are commonly used in the vehicle suspension system and are subjected to millions of varying stress cycles leading to fatigue failure. A lot of research has been done for improving the performance of leaf spring. Lot of materials are used for leaf spring .but it is found that fiberglass material has better strengthcharacteristic and lighter in weight as compare to steel for leaf spring. In this paper the author is reviewed few papers on use of alternate materials and effect of material on leaf spring performance. Keywords: steel leaf spring, ANSYS, PRO-E software.


: Most commentators have assumed that Lucretius's symmetry argument against the fear of death is flawed. There remains, however, dispute as to what the flaw is. After establishing what I understand the target of Lucretius's argument to be (a desire for a longer life as such), I argue for a novel interpretation of what the flaw is, namely, that extending one's life into the time before one was actually born would be an uncertain bet for one who wanted to extend his life, whereas extending one's life beyond the time one actually dies is a sure bet. This account of what the flaw is has the particular merit of relying only on simple concepts used in everyday reasoning and thus can explain why Lucretius's argument gains no traction even in the absence of sophisticated philosophical analysis.


A digitally implemented automatic gain control (AGC) technique developed for a modem receiver design is described. The modem's signal-processing software is integrated with the AGC, thereby allowing the designer to have control over the overall performance and characteristic features of the modem at a lower cost. Such features include complex functions such a equalization freeze, data carrier, and voice detect. By eliminating a hardware-implemented AGC, an overall system cost reduction is accomplished. The AGC has been incorporated in a commercial QAM/DPSK/FSK modem design, where its performance has been shown to be comparable to that of current approaches.<<ETX>>


The dynamic-routing problem in a packet-switching telecommunication network is addressed by a receding-horizon approach. The nodes of the network must accomplish the following tasks: (i) generating routing decisions to minimize the expected total delay, spent by messages in the network, on the basis of local information and possibly of some data received from the neighboring nodes; (ii) computing their routing strategies by measuring local variables and exchanging a small amount of data with other nodes. The first task leads to regard the nodes as the cooperating decision makers of a team organization. The second task calls for a computationally distributed algorithm. To solve this team optimal control problem two main approximating choices have been done: (1) the use of a receding-horizon framework, and (2) the use of a given structure for each decision maker, in which a finite number of parameters have to be determined to optimize the packet routing. Among the various possible fixed-structure functions, feed-forward neural networks have been chosen for their powerful approximation capabilities. The neural approximation of such team-optimal routing strategies is computed in a numerical example, and used in network routing simulations performed by means of NS-2, in order to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the methodology.


We attempt to interpret the relative line intensities in the soft X-ray spectrum of Al III ions emitted from a Penning discharge, on the assumption that the 2p53s2 and 2p5(3s3p 3P) autoionizing levels are excited predominantly by inner-shell ionization from Al II ground and metastable levels, respectively. The plasma has been spectroscopically diagnosed and the Al III soft X-ray spectrum predicted using a collisional radiative model incorporating the experimental plasma parameters and theoretical predictions for the properties of the autoionizing levels. The model includes collisional inner-shell ionization from Al II levels by fast electrons, inelastic collisions with cold Maxwellian electrons and radiative and autoionization decays. The comparison between the experimental and the predicted relative line intensities seems to confirm that most of the 2p5(3s3p 3P) Al III levels have large radiative branching ratios. This conclusion is supported also by a comparison between Al III and Mg II spectra obtained in similar excitation conditions. Several 2p63p 2P-2p5(3s3p 3P)2P, 2D Al III transitions having radiative yields close to one and large gain cross sections, may be of interest for soft X-ray lasing.


Cantor's proof of this result [2, §2] makes use of nested intervals, but today a proof based on another ingenious idea of Cantor is more popular, namely the diagonal method, which he introduced in 1891 to prove the uncountability of 2 [3]. However, Cantor himself did not employ diagonalization directly in the proof of uncountability of R, but gave a rather intricate derivation of ∣ ∣2 ∣ ∣ = |R| in [4, §4]. The origin of the now standard argument for


Background: The rate of unsafe abortions in Kenya increased from 32 per 1000 women of reproductive age in 2002 to 48 per 1000 women in 2012-- one of the highest in Sub- Saharan Africa. Abortion-related stigma has been linked to high levels of unsafe abortions. Objective: To explore the perspectives of women seeking abortion services in public and private health facilities in regions with high as well as low incidence of unsafe abortions in Kenya on abortion-related stigma. Design: A comparative qualitative study. Setting: Selected public and private health facilities offering post abortion care services in Machakos and Trans Nzoia Counties Subjects: Women seeking abortion related services in private and public health facilities in Machakos and Trans Nzoia Counties. Results: Abortion-related stigma manifested in various forms including verbal abuse such as ridicule and name calling, isolation, physical abuse and denial of services. The stigma was in form of self-stigma, from the community and from health providers. Due to stigma, women preferred to seek information on abortion only from trusted friends and close relatives, regardless of their reliability so as to keep abortion confidential. Private facilities were reported as the main facilities where women could get an abortion confidentially, but costly compared to public facilities. As a result, women who could not afford private facilities chose to self-induce and present in a health facility to seek post abortion (PAC) care as the only way to access services, regardless of the dangers. Young single women seeking abortion services reported higher levels of stigma from health providers compared to older married women. Perception that abortion was illegal in Kenya perpetuated stigma and prevented women from seeking safe abortion services due to fear of being arrested. Conclusion: Stigma associated with abortion is a major barrier to women seeking and receiving safe, comprehensive abortion care. Therefore, understanding abortion-related stigma is a critical step to designing measures to address barriers to women accessing safe reproductive health services.


Based on the 1) personality changes observed following heart transplantations; 2) the two-way, dynamic, ongoing dialog between the brain and the heart and its reflection as alterations in heart rate variability; 3) the prominent role of amygdala in cardiovascular regulation during rapid eye movement sleep and 4) the importance of rapid eye movement sleep in the developing brain to establish proper neuronal circuits and its memory consolidation effect; 5) the role of cardiac neural crest cells in heart development and 6) the effects of Atrial and Brain Natriuretic Peptides; I hypothesize that the heart, particularly the SA node, could function in emotional memory processing and storage in collaboration with related brain regions. Moreover, intervention to SA node in certain psychiatric diseases with underlying unwanted memories and life experiences could be a novel choice of therapy.


In the last fifty years, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) incrementally transformed human rights in Europe. The effects and role of states in this transformation is oft debated, problematizing the degree to which national sovereignty is unwillingly diminished or conversely the willingness of states to allow this evolution and expansion. Yet much less is known about the historical and present role of social activists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in ECtHR litigation. I argue that the evolution of the Convention system was and continues to be critically linked to a dynamic interaction between civil society and the ECtHR. The legitimacy of this process remains a fine balance between societal inclusion and domestic government support.


Late haematopoietic changes were followed within 12-16 months after single whole body irradiation with the dose of 8 Gy. Permanently increased frequency of occurrence of cytopathologically altered leukocytes was observed in peripheral blood in irradiated animals as well as certain disorder of erythropoietic system. At the end of period followed the splenomegalia accompanied with marked macroscopic and microscopic changes was occurred. With simultaneous increase of occurrence of erythroblasts in peripheral blood the changes above are considered to be a symptom of erythroleukaemia.


An experiment was conducted to evaluate the response of five nitrogen levels viz. 0.10, 0.13, 0.16, 0.19 and 0.22g N, from broiler droppings, towards increase in fish weight, organoleptic quality of flesh and meat:bone ratios. A panel of twelve trained judges evaluated the colour (live), texture, softness and flavour of fish meat after two minutes steam cooking. The meat.bone ratios of three fish species under all the six treatments showed inverse relationship with their weight gains. However, 0.16 g nitrogen level gave the best meat:bone ratio of 23.98:1. Among all the three fish species, Cirrhina mrigala exhibited the best meat:bone ratio in all the treatments, followed by Labeo rohita and Catla catla. Taste of fish was not affected by the five fertilization treatments, however, the control fish earned signifieantly .less taste scores. Both Labeo rohita and Cirrhina mrigala came up as the best species in presenting quality meat to the judges, particularly based on their meat:bone ratios.


We study the daily trading volume volatility of 17,197 stocks in the US stock markets during the period 1989-2008 and analyze the time return intervals τ between volume volatilities above a given threshold q. For different thresholds q, the probability density function P(q)(τ) scales with mean interval 〈τ〉 as P(q)(τ)=〈τ〉(-1)f(τ/〈τ〉), and the tails of the scaling function can be well approximated by a power law f(x)∼x(-γ). We also study the relation between the form of the distribution function P(q)(τ) and several financial factors: stock lifetime, market capitalization, volume, and trading value. We find a systematic tendency of P(q)(τ) associated with these factors, suggesting a multiscaling feature in the volume return intervals. We analyze the conditional probability P(q)(τ|τ(0)) for τ following a certain interval τ(0), and find that P(q)(τ|τ(0)) depends on τ(0) such that immediately following a short (long) return interval a second short (long) return interval tends to occur. We also find indications that there is a long-term correlation in the daily volume volatility. We compare our results to those found earlier for price volatility.


Aim: To compare diets
between obese and non-obese in healthy older subjects. Methods: Forty-five
obese and eighty-seven non-obese older subjects were recruited and their
habitual factors that may contribute to obesity were assessed. Intakes of
food by food-group in the obesity and non-obesity groups were checked using a
visual type presentation of model nutriational balance chart (MNBC). Results:
Average intake ratio of food relative to ideal food intake was significantly
higher in the obesity group than the non-obesity group. The relationship of
obesity and exercise or habitual activities was not significant. Conclusion:
Food intake is a primary factor of obesity but regular exercise or habitual
activities is not a key factor for obesity in older subjects. Since exercise
habit is difficult to achieve in older subjects, particularly those who are
obese, food control using the present visualtype MNBC would be one strategy
forthe management of obesity.


Background: Bronchitis is a term that describes inflammation of the bronchial tubes (bronchi and the smaller branches termed bronchioles) that results in excessive secretions of mucus into the tubes, leading to tissue swelling that can narrow or close off bronchial tubes. Bronchial tubes extend from the trachea and terminate at the alveoli in the lungs. The bronchial system resembles an inverted tree and is sometimes termed the "bronchial tree." A few authors include the trachea and upper airway in the definition of bronchitis. There are two major types of bronchitis, acute and chronic. Chronic bronchitis differs from acute bronchitis in several ways, for example, pathology, progression of disease, major causes, treatments, and prognosis. Recurrent incidences of acute bronchitis are the first steps that can lead to developing chronic bronchitis, according to some doctors and researchers. Chronic bronchitis is defined as a cough that occurs every day with sputum production that lasts for at least 3 months, two years in a row. This definition was developed to help select uniform patient populations for research purposes, for example, to study medication therapies for treatment of chronic bronchitis. Objectives: To assess the efficacy and safety of Curcumin capsule in Patients with cough due to Chronic Bronchitis. Conclusion : The study concludes that, TEST (CURCUMIN) due to its anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effect it is more efficacious and safer in comparison to PLACEBO (B) in treatment of cough due to chronic bronchitis and also alleviating the symptoms of chronic bronchitis along with improvement in immunity.


OBJECTIVES
To find the prevalence of anemia in adult males and non-pregnant females of rural north Indian population.

METHODS
During an epidemiological survey on hypertension in rural population of north India (n=2559), a random sample of 215 individuals underwent blood investigations including hemoglobin estimation.

RESULTS
The overall prevalence of anemia in 16-70 years of age group was 47.9% (n=215), being 50% (n= 136) among females and 44.3% (n=78) among males. Low socioeconomic status, illiteracy and lower body mass index, were associated with higher prevalence of anemia.

CONCLUSIONS
The finding of higher prevalence of anemia in adult males need further investigation and corroboration in other studies. The intervention for anemia should be directed on the community as a whole.


Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable research effort in the community during the past couple of years. One of the most challenging issues so far is the extension of network lifetime with regards to small battery capacity and self-sustained operation. Endeavors to save energy have been made on various frontiers, ranging from hardware improvements over medium access and routing protocols to network clustering and role changing strategies. Only weak attention has been paid to the detection of erroneous nodes which can be also used for lifetime extension of WSNs. In contrast to some authors, regarding detection of failures in communication as error detection, we focus on faulty sensor readings. In this work we present an efficient error detection algorithm which detects erroneous nodes within the network based on neighborhood relations. The results of our algorithm enables direct reactions of concerned nodes or network parts without expensive involvement of any kind of central computing instances.


Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) use measurements of the voluntary brain activity for driving a communication system, by means of the activation of mental tasks. In recent literature, a novel activation paradigm, based on the self-induction of emotions, has been proposed and some classification strategies for self-induced emotions have been designed, together with a modular framework for the implementation of binary BCIs. We extended the BCI system, to manage the multi-class scenario, in order to increase the number of recognizable commands, thus improving the efficacy of the communication. The objective was to provide a correction function that would allow the increase of the accuracy, without the overhead of a verification method. A poll oriented classification algorithm was used in conjunction with a matrix based graphic interface to allow the user to communicate through three self-induced emotional states: the disgust produced by remembering a bad odor, the good sensation produced by remembering the odor of a good fragrance and a relaxing state. The proposed system was tested on a healthy subject. Preliminary results were reported and discussed.