With rising obesity rates, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is predicted to become the main cause of chronic liver disease in the next decades. Rising obesity prevalence is attributed to changes in dietary habits with increased consumption of palatable junk foods, but maternal malnutrition also contributes to obesity in progeny. This study examines whether a maternal junk food diet predisposes offspring to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The 144 rat offspring were fed either a balanced chow diet alone or with palatable junk foods rich in energy, fat, sugar, and/or salt during gestation, lactation, and/or after weaning up to the end of adolescence. Offspring fed junk food throughout the study exhibited exacerbated hepatic steatosis, hepatocyte ballooning, and oxidative stress response compared with offspring given free access to junk food after weaning only. These offspring also displayed sex differences in their hepatic molecular metabolic adaptation to diet-induced obesity with increased expression of genes associated with insulin sensitivity, de novo lipogenesis, lipid oxidation, and antiinflammatory properties in males, whereas the gene expression profile in females was indicative of hepatic insulin resistance. Hepatic inflammation and fibrosis were not detected indicating that offspring had not developed severe steatohepatitis by the end of adolescence. Hepatic steatosis and increased oxidative stress response also occurred in offspring born to junk food-fed mothers switched to a balanced chow diet from weaning, highlighting a degree of irreversibility. This study shows that a maternal junk food diet in pregnancy and lactation contributes to the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in offspring.


Cloud computing is a technology in which the Cloud Service Providers (CSP) provide many virtual servers to the users to store their information in the cloud. The faults occurring on the assignment and dismission of the virtual machines, the processing cost in the allocation of resources must also be considered. The parallel processing of the information on the virtual machines must be done effectively and in an efficient manner. A variety of systems were developed to facilitate Many Task Computing (MTC). These systems aim to hide the issues of parallelism and fault tolerant and they are used in many applications. In this paper, we introduced Nephele, a data processing framework to exploit dynamic resource provisioning offered by IaaS clouds. The performance evaluation of the virtual machines has been evaluated and the allocation and deallocation of job tasks to the specific virtual machines has also been considered. A performance comparison with the well known data processing framework hadoop has been done. Thus this paper tells about the effective and efficient manner of processing the data by parallel processing and allocating the correct resources for the desired task. It also helps to reduce the cost of resource utilization by exploiting the dynamic resource utilization.


In recent years, with the development of graphics processors, graphics cards have been widely used to perform general-purpose calculations. Especially with release of CUDA C programming languages in 2007, most of the researchers have been used CUDA C programming language for the processes which needs high performance computing. In this paper, a scaling approach for image segmentation using level sets is carried out by the GPU programming techniques. Approach to level sets is mainly based on the solution of partial differential equations. The proposed method does not require the solution of partial differential equation. Scaling approach, which uses basic geometric transformations, is used. Thus, the required computational cost reduces. The use of the CUDA programming on the GPU has taken advantage of classic programming as spending time and performance. Thereby results are obtained faster. The use of the GPU has provided to enable real-time processing. The developed application in this study is used to find tumor on MRI brain images.


Background: Multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) are significant public health problems receiving much attention, and rightly so, because of the substantial morbidity, mortality, and cost burden. Objectives: To report the prevalence of selected frequent MCCs with shared risk factors that are leading causes of death; and to quantify the association between diabetes and its comorbidity and shared risk factors. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of 9172 participants in Pennsylvania's 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web Enabled Analysis Tool (WEAT) and SAS Proc Survey were used for all analyses, to account for BRFSS's multistage complex survey design and sample weights. Results: SAS estimated prevalence among ≥35-year-olds were as follows: diabetes (11.9%), heart disease (9.5%), stroke (3.3%), diabetes and heart disease (2.9%), diabetes and stroke (1.0%), heart disease and stroke (1.1%), and diabetes, heart disease, and stroke (0.4%). Adults ≥35 years old with the following characteristics were more likely to have diabetes when self-reporting: obese (adjusted odds ratio [ORAdj] = 4.63, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 3.41-6.30); low income (<$15 000 ORAdj = 2.85, 95% CI = 1.90-4.27; $15 000-$24 999 ORAdj = 2.07, 95% CI = 1.50-2.86; $25 000-$34 999 ORAdj = 2.06, 95% CI = 1.47-2.88; $35 000-$49 999 ORAdj = 1.51, 95% CI = 1.08-2.12); elderly ≥65 years old (ORAdj = 2.84, 95% CI = 1.76-4.56); non-Hispanic black (ORAdj = 2.54, 95% CI = 1.08-6.00); overweight (ORAdj = 1.99, 95% CI = 1.47-2.68); heart disease (ORAdj = 1.94, 95% CI = 1.47-2.56); 45 to 64 years old (ORAdj = 1.88 95%, CI = 1.21-2.93); hypertension (ORAdj = 1.78, 95% CI = 1.39-2.29); stroke (ORAdj = 1.62, 95% CI = 1.05-2.50); high cholesterol (ORAdj = 1.49, 95% CI = 1.18-1.88); physically inactive (ORAdj = 1.33 95% CI = 1.06-1.67); and men (ORAdj = 1.32, 95% CI = 1.04-1.67). Conclusion: Adults with comorbidity and risk factors were 1.3 to 4.6 times more likely to have diabetes, with obesity consistently the strongest risk factor. WEAT's limitations are the predefined categories, inability to restrict to specific age groups and to estimate the prevalence of >2 MCCs. WEAT has considerable potential to advance evidence-based primary care practice and community health programs, such as state-wide programs that target obesity and physical inactivity. The robust capability of SAS to calculate MCC prevalence and adjusted associations with risk factors provides the fundamentals for developing and evaluating primary care services and community health programs.


The formation of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) from putrescine was examined in organs of rats using radioactive putrescine. Radioactive GABA was detected in all the organs of a rat injected intraperitoneally with radioactive putrescine, and the highest radioactivity of GABA was observed in the small intestine. The enzyme involved in this formation was purified from small intestine and identified as a diamine oxidase, histaminase, from the properties of the enzyme. Activity of the enzyme was found in all the organs of rat, and the highest activity was observed in the small intestine.


Novel benzocyclobutene (BCB) film based surface acoustic wave (SAW) humidity sensors were successfully designed and fabricated. A sensitivity of 0.26 dB/RH was successfully demonstrated between 8.6 and 90.6 relative humidity (RH), with a linear relationship between RH level and resonance amplitude. The temperature stability of resonance frequency and amplitude has also been studied.


A traditional philosophy statement can be transformed into a positioning statement that articulates a "vision" for a department of nursing and provides a framework when planning to thrive rather than merely survive in today's changing and competitive health care environment. Internal and external forces appropriately assessed enable nurse executives to empower staff to respond proactively to change and prepare for the future.


The research of immune cells is fundamental to many biological studies. Dendritic cells have the ability to induce a primary immune response in resting naive T cells. The aim of this work is to separate the activated T cells from dendritic cells on a digital microfluidic device where droplets are driven by electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD). The cells suspended in EWOD-driven droplets are separated and concentrated using a high frequency electric signal which generates non-uniform electric fields and dielectrophoresis (DEP) forces exerting on dendritic cells and T cells. Separation and concentration of dendritic cells and T cells are demonstrated in a droplet using EWOD and DEP.


Existing multimodal pathways for patients undergoing acute high‐risk abdominal surgery for intestinal obstruction (IO) and perforated viscus (PV) have focused on rescue in the immediate perioperative period. However, there is little focus on the peri‐operative pathophysiology of recovery in this patient group, as done to develop enhanced recovery pathways in elective care. Acute inflammation is the main driver of the perioperative pathophysiology leading to adverse outcomes. Pre‐operative high‐dose of glucocorticoids provides a reduction in the inflammatory response after surgery, effective pain relief in several major surgical procedures, as well as reduce fatigue and improving endothelial dysfunction.


Taiwan is an active mountain belt created by the oblique collision of the northern Luzon arc with Asia. Late Pliocene extensional collapse of the northern Taiwan mountain belt (NTMB) was accompanied by magmatism that formed the Northern Taiwan Volcanic Zone (NTVZ; 2 8---0 2Ma). The geochemical characteristics of the NTVZ magmas can thus provide constraints both for the mantle source composition and the geodynamic processes operating in the late orogenic stage of the region. The NTVZ volcanic rocks consist dominantly of calc-alkaline andesites and basalts, along with subordinate but heterogeneous lavas including low-K, shoshonitic and ultrapotassic magmas. From the NE to the SW in the NTVZ, the magmas show systematic compositional variations from low-K to calc-alkaline and then shoshonitic. This spatial geochemical variation, characterized by southwesterly increase in potassium and incompatible trace elements, appears to be subparallel to the southwestern part of the modern Ryukyu subduction system. Sr---Nd isotope ratios of the NTVZ volcanic rocks ( Sr/Sr 0 70376---0 70551; Nd/Nd 0 51259---0 51301) suggest that two mantle source components are involved in the magma generation, the asthenosphere and metasomatized subcontinental lithospheric mantle. These two components are represented by the 2 6MaMienhuayu high-Mg basaltic andesites and the 0 2Ma Tsaolingshan high-Mg potassic lavas, respectively. The latter are interpreted to be the products of small-degree melting of a phlogopitebearing, harzburgite lithospheric mantle source metasomatized recently by the nearby Ryukyu subduction zone processes. The Sr---Nd---Pb isotope systematics and specific trace-element ratios of the NTVZ volcanic rocks suggest that melts derived from subducted sediments and fluids released from slab dehydration reactions were both involved in metasomatizing this mantle source. The unique spatial geochemical variation of the NTVZ volcanic rocks can be successfully modelled using variable degrees of partial melting of the mantle source regions, coupled with mixing of different melt components from depleted asthenospheric and metasomatized lithospheric mantle components beneath individual volcanic fields. It is inferred that mixing of melts from specific mantle components and the degree of partial melting are spatially and temporally related to the tectonic evolution of the northern Taiwan region, and not simply due directly to subduction zone processes. The overall NTVZ geochemical characteristics can be explained by various degrees of melting within an ascending region of the asthenospheric mantle, triggered by extensional collapse of the NTMB, and interaction of these melts with overlying fluidand sediment-modified lithospheric mantle. JOURNAL OF PETROLOGY VOLUME 45 NUMBER 5 PAGES 975–1011 2004 DOI: 10.1093/petrology/egh001


To solve the inherent safety problem puzzling the coal mining industry, analyzing the characteristic and the application of distributed interactive simulation based on high level architecture (DIS/HLA), a new method is proposed for developing coal mining industry inherent safety distributed interactive simulation adopting HLA technology. Researching the function and structure of the system, a simple coal mining industry inherent safety is modeled with HLA, the FOM and SOM are developed, and the math models are suggested. The results of the instance research show that HLA plays an important role in developing distributed interactive simulation of complicated distributed system and the method is valid to solve the problem puzzling coal mining industry. To the coal mining industry, the conclusions show that the simulation system with HLA plays an important role to identify the source of hazard, to make the measure for accident, and to improve the level of management.


Globular clusters were thought to be simple stellar populations, but recent photometric and spectroscopic evidence suggests that the clusters' early formation history was more complicated. In particular, clusters show star-to-star abundance variations, and multiple sequences in their colour-magnitude diagrams. These effects seem to be restricted to globular clusters, and are not found in open clusters or the field. In this paper, we combine the two competing models for these multiple populations and include a consideration of the effects of stellar collisions. Collisions are one of the few phenomena which occur solely in dense stellar environments like (proto)globular clusters. We find that runaway collisions between massive stars can produce material which has abundances comparable to the observed second generations, but that very little total mass is produced by this channel. We then add the contributions of rapidly rotating massive stars (under the assumption that massive stars are spun up by collisions and interactions), and the contribution of asymptotic giant branch stars. We find that collisions can help produce the extreme abundances which are seen in some clusters. However, the total amount of material produced in these generations is still too small (by at least a factor of 10) to match the observations. We conclude with a discussion of the additional effects which probably need to be considered to solve this particular problem.


An ELISA was developed to determine serum concentration of apolipoprotein B-100, a major triglyceride-binding protein in very low-density lipoproteins and a putative maker for hepatic lipidosis of dairy cows. Serum apolipoprotein B-100 was prepared electrophoretically, and antibodies to this protein were raised in rabbits. The antiserum prepared was further purified by affinity chromatography, using bovine serum albumin-Sepharose 4B, to remove antibodies to albumin. For the ELISA, addition of 2-mercaptoethanol to the coating buffer (50 mM sodium carbonate, pH 9.6) was required to evaluate apolipoprotein B-100 concentration in serum. The ELISA developed was sensitive (detection limit was 300 to 400 ng/ml of serum) and reliable (coefficients of variance were in the range of 3.3 to 7.6%). By use of the established ELISA, the serum apolipoprotein B-100 concentration was found to be significantly (P < 0.01) lower during the early lactating stage than during other stages of lactation. Reduced hepatic synthesis or secretion of apolipoprotein B-100 during the early lactating stage, together with the excess uptake by the liver of serum nonesterified fatty acids, is suggested to be relevant in the accelerated accumulation of triglycerides in the liver of dairy cows during the periparturient period.


The effect of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) on growth and nutrient uptake of micropropagated cherry rootstocks was evaluated during acclimatization and plant establishment. Two commonly used cherry rootstocks, 'Edabriz' and 'Gisela 5', were propagated through tissue culture and grown in a greenhouse for 16 weeks. Plantlets were inoculated with Glomus clarum, Glomus caledonium, Glomus etunicatum, Glomus intraradices, Glomus mosseae, cocktail (mixture of these species) and indigenous mycorrhiza into three different substrate mixtures. All micropropagated cherry plantlets survived transplanting. After 16 weeks, mycorrhizal plantlets had greater nutrient uptake than non-mycorrhizal plantlets. Roots of inoculated cherry plantlets were heavily colonized with AMF. These results indicated that mycorrhizal inoculation during transplantation from in vitro to ex vitro culture can induce growth responses. The experiments also showed that the mycorrhizal cherry rootstocks were healthier and had higher Zn and P contents when compared to controls for both rootstocks. G. mosseae was one of the most efficient AMF species. Indigenous AMF isolated from Cukurova region also significantly increased the plant growth and nutrient uptake. 'Gisela 5' rootstocks had significantly higher P and Zn contents than 'Edabriz'. Taken together, our results indicate that AMF inoculations enhance growth and development of micropropagated plants which would be beneficial to improve cherry rootstock production.


Biodiesel consists of long chain fatty acid esters derived from vegetable oils, animal fats, and used oils. Biodiesel contains different types, amounts, and configurations of unsaturated fatty acids, which are prone to oxidation. Biodiesel stability is affected by its interaction with atmospheric oxygen, light and temperature, storage conditions, and factors causing sediment formation. It can be classified broadly into three types: oxidation stability, thermal stability, and storage stability. Oxidative degradation occurs in biodiesel upon aerobic contact during storage, as well as upon contact with metal contaminants. Thermal instability focuses on the oxidation rate at higher temperatures, which is characterized by the formation of insolubles and increase in the weight of oil and fat. Storage stability is concerned with interaction between the physical and chemical characteristics of biodiesel with environmental factors, such as light, metal contamination, color changes, and sediment formation. Antioxidant concentration greatly influences engine performance and emission. The BSFC of biodiesel fuel with antioxidants is less than that of fuel without antioxidants. Moreover, an antioxidant can significantly reduce NOx formation during engine operation. Among the available synthetic antioxidants, only three antioxidants (TBHQ, PY, and PG) can significantly increase biodiesel stability. This article presents an overview of the stability of biodiesel, including the methods available for the prediction of its different stability properties. Feasible remedies to improve the stability of biodiesel and the effect of antioxidants in stabilized blends on engine performance and emission are also discussed.


Stratal geometries of salt-floored minibasins provide a record of the interplay between minibasin subsidence and sedimentation. Minibasin subsidence and resulting stratal geometries are frequently interpreted by considering the minibasins in isolation and implicitly assuming that internal geometries are the result of purely vertical halokinetic processes. However, minibasins rarely form in isolation and may record complex subsidence histories even in the absence of tectonic forces. In this study we use numerical models to investigate how minibasins subside in response to density-driven downbuilding. We show that minibasins subsiding in isolation result in simple symmetrical minibasins with relatively simple internal stratigraphic patterns. In contrast, where minibasins form in closely spaced arrays and subside at different rates, minibasins can kinematically interact due to complex patterns of flow in the encasing salt, even during simple density-driven subsidence. More specifically, we show that minibasins can: (1) prevent nearby minibasins from subsiding; (2) induce lateral translation of nearby minibasins; and (3) induce tilting and asymmetrical subsidence of nearby minibasins. We conclude that even in areas where no regional or dominant salt flow regime exists, minibasins can still be genetically related and the minibasin subsidence histories cannot be fully understood if considered in isolation. Thematic collection: This article is part of the Mechanics of salt systems: state of the field in numerical methods collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/mechanics-of-salt-systems


The aim of this project was to design and test a partial attitude determination and control system for a nanosatellite. The reaction wheel system was designed and tested as an actuator for the nanosatellite. This reaction wheel system consists of four reaction wheels mounted in a tetrahedral formation. A rate sensor system was also designed and its viability for this space application was examined. The rate sensor system consists of 3 orthogonally mounted planes, each with three rate sensors mounted on it. Hardware-inthe-loop tests were used along with an air bearing experimentational setup, which created near frictionless circumstances, to prove the effectiveness of the designed reaction wheel setup. The results following from this project were the following: The reaction wheel system proved to be an adequate actuator for this nanosatellite application and the rate sensor system which was analysed proved to be inadequate for a nanosatellite application.


Functional logic languages have a rich literature, but it is tricky to give them a satisfying semantics. In this paper we describe the Verse calculus, VC, a new core calculus for deterministic functional logic programming. Our main contribution is to equip VC with a small-step rewrite semantics, so that we can reason about a VC program in the same way as one does with lambda calculus; that is, by applying successive rewrites to it. We also show that the rewrite system is confluent for well-behaved terms.


A 76-year-old man suffered from swelling stoma for several weeks. A biopsy sample revealed the diffuse infiltration of large lymphoid cells which were positive for CD20, bcl-6, and MUM1. The patient was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, with a non-germinal center B-cell pattern. A whole-body PET-CT scan revealed that the lymphoma was restricted to the stomal site. Bladder reconstruction was undertaken using the ileal conduit: this is the first reported case of lymphoma that developed primarily at the stoma. During the long-term maintenance after bladder reconstruction, clinicians should consider the possibility of lymphoma at the stomal site.


Type inference is convenient by allowing programmers to elide type annotations, but this comes at the cost of often generating very confusing and opaque type error messages that are of little help to fix type errors. Though there have been many successful attempts at making type error messages better in the past thirty years, many classes of errors are still difficult to fix. In particular, current approaches still generate imprecise and uninformative error messages for type errors arising from errors in grouping constructs like parentheses and brackets. Worse, a recent study shows that these errors usually take more than 10 steps to fix and occur quite frequently (around 45% to 60% of all type errors) in programs written by students learning functional programming. We call this class of errors, nonstructural errors. We solve this problem by developing Learnskell, a type error debugger that uses machine learning to help diagnose and deliver high quality error messages, for programs that contain nonstructural errors. While previous approaches usually report type errors on typing constraints or on the type level, Learnskell generates suggestions on the expression level. We have performed an evaluation on more than 1,500 type errors, and the result shows that Learnskell is quite precise. It can correctly capture 86% of all nonstructural errors and locate the error cause with a precision of 63%/87% with the first 1/3 messages, respectively. This is several times more than the precision of state-of-the-art compilers and debuggers. We have also studied the performance of Learnskell and found out that it scales to large programs.


The mammalian cochlea receives feedback from the brainstem medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferents, whose putative 'antimasking' function is to adjust cochlear amplification and enhance peripheral signal detection in adverse listening environments. Human studies have been inconsistent in demonstrating a clear connection between this corticofugal system and behavioral speech-in-noise (SIN) listening skills. To elucidate the role of brainstem efferent activity in SIN perception, we measured ear-specific contralateral suppression of transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions (OAEs), a proxy measure of MOC activation linked to auditory learning in noisy environments. We show that suppression of cochlear emissions is stronger with a more basal cochlear bias in the right ear compared with the left ear. Moreover, a strong negative correlation was observed between behavioral SIN performance and right-ear OAE suppression magnitudes, such that lower speech reception thresholds in noise were predicted by larger amounts of MOC-related activity. This brain-behavioral relation was not observed for left ear SIN perception. The rightward bias in contralateral MOC suppression of OAEs, coupled with the stronger association between physiological and perceptual measures, is consistent with left-hemisphere cerebral dominance for speech–language processing. We posit that corticofugal feedback from the left cerebral cortex through descending MOC projections sensitizes the right cochlea to signal-in-noise detection, facilitating figure-ground contrast and improving degraded speech analysis. Our findings demonstrate that SIN listening is at least partly driven by subcortical brain mechanisms; primitive stages of cochlear processing and brainstem MOC modulation of (right) inner ear mechanics play a critical role in dictating SIN understanding.


At reexamination 67 patients with ureterosigmoidostomies showed no significant alteration of their acid-base and electrolyte metabolism as compared to the preoperative situation and 39 patients with a colonic conduit. If required these patients had received an oral alkali substitution therapy; this proved to be necessary as a permanent measure only in cases with functional and morphological defects of the upper urinary tract. Spells of hyperchloremic acidosis had occurred in 13 patients during the follow-up period and always coincided with attacks of acute pyelonephritis and renal deterioration, often accompanied by irregularities in the substitution. Obviously metabolic problems arise only with a deteriorating urinary tract and timely discovery and treatment of these patients is the main task of the supervising doctor. Although the metabolic imbalances usually respond promptly to an adaptation of the substitution therapy, patients with a predamaged upper urinary tract should not be subjected to ureterosigmoidostomy.


As a responsible player in the global pharmaceutical industry, Sanofi-Aventis recognizes its special responsibility to provide poor countries with access to drugs and vaccines. This is a key component of the Group's approach to sustainable development. As such, the Access to Medicines department draws on Sanofi-Aventis' expertise in order to address major public health issues, starting with the treatment of malaria, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and epilepsy, as well as access to vaccines. The department has four main activities: research and development of new drugs; improvement of existing treatments; information, communication and education of patients and healthcare professionals; and development of a differential pricing and distribution policy adapted to patients' income, with a "no profit-no loss" equilibrium.


We address the problem of view synthesis in complex outdoor scenes. We propose a novel convolutional neural network architecture that includes flow-based and direct synthesis sub-networks. Both sub-networks introduce novel elements that greatly improve the quality of the synthesized images. These images are then adaptively fused to create the final output image. Our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on the KITTI dataset, which is commonly used to evaluate view-synthesis methods. Unlike many recently proposed methods, ours is trained without the need for additional geometric constraints, such as a ground-truth depth map, making it more broadly applicable. Our approach also achieved the best performance on the Brooklyn Panorama Synthesis dataset, which we introduce as a new, challenging benchmark for view synthesis. Our dataset, code, and pretrained models are available at https://mvrl.github.io/GAF .


Abstract The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has revealed major shortcomings in our ability to mitigate transmission of infectious viral disease and provide treatment to patients, resulting in a public health crisis. Within months of the first reported case in China, the virus has spread worldwide at an unprecedented rate. COVID‐19 illustrates that the biomaterials community was engaged in significant research efforts against bacteria and fungi with relatively little effort devoted to viruses. Accordingly, biomaterials scientists and engineers will have to participate in multidisciplinary antiviral research over the coming years. Although tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have historically dominated the field of biomaterials, current research holds promise for providing transformative solutions to viral outbreaks. To facilitate collaboration, it is imperative to establish a mutual language and adequate understanding between clinicians, industry partners, and research scientists. In this article, clinical perspectives are shared to clearly define emerging healthcare needs that can be met by biomaterials solutions. Strategies and opportunities for novel biomaterials intervention spanning diagnostics, treatment strategies, vaccines, and virus‐deactivating surface coatings are discussed. Ultimately this review serves as a call for the biomaterials community to become a leading contributor to the prevention and management of the current and future viral outbreaks.


Correspondence: MKI e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Abstract This study has been attempted to investigate the effects of garlic and turmeric on blood cholesterol level. A total of 20 male guinea pigs of unknown breed weighing 400–600 g were randomly divided into four equal groups (A, B, C, D) with free access to food and water for 30 days. Three groups of animals (B, C and D) were fed either with turmeric or garlic supplemented basal diet and were defined as treated groups while remaining one group (A) was fed only with basal diet and considered control group. The body weight increased significantly (p>0.01) in all the animals with the advancement of age. The administration of turmeric or garlic or both reduced the blood cholesterol level of the animals significantly (p>0.01). At the end of the experiment, the animals were killed and liver was examined for gross and histological changes. Some gross lesions were identified in liver of treated animals but there were no histological changes.


Vane pressure side heat transfer is studied numerically using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) on an aft loaded vane with a large leading edge over a range of turbulence conditions. Numerical simulations are performed in a linear cascade at exit chord Reynolds number of Re = 5.1 × 105 at low (Tu≈0.7%), moderate (Tu≈7.9%) and high (Tu≈12.4%) freestream turbulence with varying length scales as prescribed by the experimental measurements of Varty and Ames (2016). Heat transfer predictions (i.e. Stanton number based on exit condition) on the vane pressure side are in a very good agreement with the experimental measurements and the heat transfer augmentation due to the freestream turbulence is well captured. At Tu≈12.4%, freestream turbulence enhances the Stanton number on the pressure surface without boundary layer transition to turbulence by a maximum of about 50% relative to the low freestream turbulence case (Tu≈0.7%). Higher freestream turbulence generates elongated structures and high-velocity streaks wrapped around the leading edge that contain significant energy. Amplification of the velocity streaks is observed further downstream with max r.m.s of 0.3 near the trailing edge but no transition to turbulence or formation of turbulence spots is observed on the pressure side. The heat transfer augmentation at the higher freestream turbulence is primarily due to the initial amplification of the low-frequency velocity perturbations inside the boundary layer that persist along the entire chord of the airfoil. Stanton numbers appear to scale with the streamwise velocity fluctuations inside the boundary layer. Görtler vortices are not observed for this airfoil geometry.


The topic of spectral line suppression is of major interest in the design of pulse position modulated (PPM) time hopping impulse radio (TH-IR) ultra wideband (UWB) communications systems. Previously pseudo-chaotic time hopping (PCTH) has been introduced to eliminate spectral lines as well as improving bit error rates. In this paper six new convolutional encoders are introduced that have the same constraint lengths and power spectral characteristics as those used in PCTH but with better binary free distance. BERs for hard decision Viterbi decoding are also improved upon by the computation of branch metrics based on the m-ary symbols rather than their binary representations.


We present kinetic modeling results in order to evaluate different mechanistic proposals that have been presented concerning the role of "downstream intermediates" in enamine catalysis. The focus of the debate is the identity and role of aminal intermediates. Are the aminals syn or are they anti, or are both observed? Do they lie on the catalytic cycle, as we suggest, or are they off-cycle species?


Failures, errors, and bugs can corrupt file systems and cause data loss, despite the presence of journals and similar preventive techniques. While consistency checkers such as fsck can detect corruption and repair a damaged image, they are generally created as an afterthought, to be run only at rare intervals. Thus, checkers operate slowly, causing significant downtime for large scale storage systems. We address this dilemma by treating the checker as a key component of the overall file system, rather than a peripheral add-on. To this end, we present a modified ext3 file system, rext3, to directly support the fast file-system checker, ffsck. Rext3 colocates and self-identifies its metadata blocks, removing the need for costly seeks and tree traversals during checking. These modifications allow ffsck to scan and repair the file system at rates approaching the full sequential bandwidth of the underlying device. In addition, we demonstrate that rext3 generally performs competitively with ext3 and exceeds it in handling random reads and large writes. Finally, we apply our principles to FreeBSD's FFS file system and its checker, doing so in a lightweight fashion that preserves the file-system layout while still providing some of the performance gains from ffsck.


In the internet era, data is considered to be the primary asset, and the host or applications in a network are vulnerable to various attacks. Traditional network architectures have centralized authority to provide authentication, authorization, and access control services. In this case, there is a possibility of data mishandling activities from the valuable information available in the given network application. To avoid this type of mishandling, a new technology came into existence known as blockchain. Implementing blockchain technology in the internet of things (IoT) will ensure data integrity, stability, and durability. The authors present a detailed investigation of various IoT applications with blockchain implementation. Blockchain-based mechanisms will improve the security aspects in the traditional network applications related to IoT like insurance policies claiming, personal identification, and electronic health records.


SETTING
In Japan, the incidence of tuberculosis (TB), which had improved continuously from 1951, has shown an upturn since 1997.

OBJECTIVE
An Ad-Hoc National Survey was conducted to review the issues of TB control in Japan and to discuss the future direction of change.

METHODS
TB registries kept at health centres in all prefectures were reviewed for the year 1998. Vital statistics and BCG vaccination records were reviewed separately.

RESULTS
The survey revealed a 34.7% under-estimation of TB deaths in TB registers, and a 11.2% over-estimation of TB cases registered due to a change in diagnosis after registration. For treatment, the four-drug regimen advocated for smear-positive cases was used in only 54.8% of indicated cases, and treatment duration was very long; for example, 18.4% of first-time hospitalised cases over 15 years of age received in-patient care for more than 6 months and 29.8% continued treatment for more than 12 months. Apart from an increasingly elderly population, other factors contributing to an increase in TB included underlying health risk factors for increased susceptibility to TB and socio-economic risk factors for treatment failure. Regarding preventive measures, active case finding by health screening contributed to detection of only 8.7% of new cases aged over 60 years, but BCG vaccination appeared to be preventive among infants under 1 year of age.

CONCLUSION
The National Survey revealed a changing profile of TB in Japan and suggested a need to review and revitalise the TB control programme.


This report summarizes recent developments in a research program for fabricating advanced monolithic and ceramic matrix composite parts using Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM). Both silicon carbide (SiC) and SiC/SiC composites are discussed. The LOM process is used to produce green forms that are then densified using various post processing operations. The monolithic ceramic LOM process was advanced through the implementation of an automated solvent spray bonding step, significant improvement in decubing with new software, and an intensive round ofmechanical characterization. The LOM process for making CMC green forms is fully developed. This entailed implementing a process for making suitable SiC fiber preforms, a laser cutting capability, a decubing strategy, and a binder resin cure procedure. Further research is ongoing for the post processing pyrolysis and reaction bonding steps as discussed herein.


Carbon nanotube is a promising material to fabricate high-performance nanoscale-optoelectronic devices owing to its unique 1-D structure. In particular, different types of carbon-nanotube-infrared detectors have been developed. However, most previous reported carbon-nanotube-IR detectors showed poor device characteristics due to limited understanding of their working principles. In this paper, three types of IR detectors were fabricated using carbon-nanotube field effect transistors (CNTFETs) to investigate their performance: 1) symmetric Au-CNT-Au CNTFET IR detector; 2) symmetric Ag-CNT-Ag CNTFET IR detector; and 3) asymmetric Ag-CNT-Au CNTFET IR detector. The theoretical analyses and experimental results have shown that the IR detector using an individual single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT), with asymmetric Ag-CNT-Au CNTFET structure, can suppress dark current and increase photocurrent by electrostatic doping. As a result, an open-circuit voltage of 0.45 V under IR illumination was generated, which is the highest value reported to date for an individual SWCNT-based photodetector. The results reported in this paper have demonstrated that the CNTFET can be used to develop high-performance IR sensors.


Spanish electrical generation has traditionally included high pollutant energy resources, like fuel or carbon. However, disturbing ever-increase in the average temperature of Planet Earth has led to a search for sustainability in the energy scenario.  Therefore, Spanish electrical generation mix is prone to replace contaminant energy resources by non-contaminant, such renewables. Concretely, Spain is one of the countries with more solar peak annual hours. Nevertheless, having enough space to increase solar fields has been widely question. In this paper, an unrealistic scenario where all the annual Spanish consumption would be covered by photovoltaics is deeply analysed. Considering real electrical Spanish consumption data from 2017, required total quantity of solar panels has been quantified. Additionally, the study takes the hypothesis that all the panels should be placed on Spanish desert zones for two main reasons. First, total solar peak annual hours there are higher than in other Spanish regions. Last, making there the installation would give use to previous wasted zones. Obtained results indicate that around 691 million of 330Wp solar panels would be required for this issue, taking up 492175 km2. This space means only a 0.77% of all Iberian Peninsula. These outcomes clearly show that there is suitable and enough space to increase solar fields in Iberian Peninsula.


Computational linguistics has witnessed a surge of interest in approaches to emotion and affect analysis, tackling problems that extend beyond sentiment analysis in depth and complexity. This area involves basic emotions (such as joy, sadness, and fear) as well as any of the hundreds of other emotions humans are capable of (such as optimism, frustration, and guilt), expanding into affective conditions, experiences, and activities. Leveraging linguistic data for computational affect and emotion inference enables opportunities to address a range of affect-related tasks, problems, and non-invasive applications that capture aspects essential to the human condition and individuals' cognitive processes. These efforts enable and facilitate human-centered computing experiences, as demonstrated by applications across clinical, socio-political, artistic, educational, and commercial domains. Efforts to computationally detect, characterize, and generate emotions or affect-related phenomena respond equally to technological needs for personalized, micro-level analytics and broad-coverage, macro-level inference, and they have involved both small and massive amounts of data.While this is an exciting area with numerous opportunities for members of the ACL community, a major obstacle is its intersection with other investigatory traditions, necessitating knowledge transfer. This tutorial comprehensively integrates relevant concepts and frameworks from linguistics, cognitive science, affective computing, and computational linguistics in order to equip researchers and practitioners with the adequate background and knowledge to work effectively on problems and tasks either directly involving, or benefiting from having an understanding of, affect and emotion analysis.There is a substantial body of work in traditional sentiment analysis focusing on positive and negative sentiment. This tutorial covers approaches and features that migrate well to affect analysis. We also discuss key differences from sentiment analysis, and their implications for analyzing affect and emotion.The tutorial begins with an introduction that highlights opportunities, key terminology, and interesting tasks and challenges (1). The body of the tutorial covers characteristics of emotive language use with emphasis on relevance for computational analysis (2); linguistic data—from conceptual analysis frameworks via useful existing resources to important annotation topics (3); computational approaches for lexical semantic emotion analysis (4); computational approaches for emotion and affect analysis in text (5); visualization methods (6); and a survey of application areas with affect-related problems (7). The tutorial concludes with an outline of future directions and a discussion with participants about the areas relevant to their respective tasks of interest (8).Besides attending the tutorial, tutorial participants receive electronic copies of tutorial slides, a complete reference list, as well as a categorized annotated bibliography that concentrates on seminal works, recent important publications, and other products and resources for researchers and developers.


Botanical composition affects the nutritive value and nutrient degradation kinetics of pastures. However, there is little information about pastures composed of various species. The present study was conducted to evaluate in situ degradation kinetics of dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) of a naturalized non fertilized pasture (NNF), naturalized fertilized pasture (NF), sown pasture with Lolium perenne L. and Trifolium repens L. (RGWC), and sown pasture with Bromus valdivianus Phil., Dactylis glomerata L., Holcus lanatus L., L. perenne and T. repens (MIXED); at three dates of harvest (early-spring, mid-spring and autumn). Duplicate bags were incubated in the rumen of three cannulated cows for 2, 4, 8, 12, 24 or 48 h. Zero-hour bags were washed with water. Ruminal degradation was evaluated according to exponential models with or without lag phase. Pasture chemical composition showed on average low DM, high CP and digestible organic matter (DOMD). Degradation parameters of DM, CP and NDF exhibited strong pasture type*date of harvest interactions. In general, high potential degradability and fractional degradation rates of DM, CP and NDF were observed. Nutrient supply was generally higher for RGWC and NF, especially compared with NNF during autumn. Naturalized fertilized pastures supply similar amounts of nutrients to grazing cattle as sown pastures. However, it is necessary to consider other variables that determine the productive performance such as DM intake and rumen fermentation products.


In scientific writing, the author tries to make a reservation site Banjar Baru drugs at pharmacies with using PHP and MySQL. Booking drugs on this site is based on non-prescription other than that this site also offers a range of ease and convenience in terms of quality of service to the drug in perjualbelikannya. The site is expected to be useful for users in finding information about drugs and medicines in pharmacies ordering Banjar Baru.


Dielectric relaxation spectra of lithia-containing silicate glasses and V2O5-P2O5 glasses respectively have been analysed using a heterophase conductor model developed recently. The model considers the glass as comprising diagonal layers of phases having widely different electrical conductivities. The conducting phase is assumed to have a local conductivity varying sinusoidally with the spatial co-ordinate. Excellent agreement between the experimental data and the theoretical values have been obtained over a broad frequency spectrum. The Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts (KWW) exponent has also been estimated for all the glasses. The exponent appears to be related to the conductivity fluctuation-a higher value of the latter leading a lower value of and vice versa.


Numerous comments have called upon the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to exercise restraint in its treatment of the dissemination of "enduring materials" (e.g., textbooks, journal articles, etc.) that address off-label uses of drug or biological products. This article considers the constitutional protections that apply to enduring materials as examples of commercial speech, and questions whether such materials - even though distributed by manufacturers - might be viewed more properly as scientific speech. Four conclusions will be set forth: 1) enduring materials regarding off-label uses deserve at least as much protection as the Constitution affords commercial speech; 2) there are good reasons to think that such materials deserve a very high level of protection; 3) FDA restrictions on enduring materials are liable to be both constitutionally suspect and futile; and 4) FDA ought, therefore, to repudiate its prior restrictions on the dissemination of enduring materials.


Education is a practice of futurity. It seeks to prepare the minds and bodies that will construct and inhabit the future. Design in the architectural disciplines—the architectures—also prepares buildings (landscape, edifice, city, countryside) for future dwelling.This essay examines the use of the imagination and creativity in the design process and how it may be employed to posit better future worlds despite, and counter to, the prevalence of neoliberal imaginaries. Utopianism as both pedagogical method and design process is presented as is the employment of the senses to bring the site and its materials alive in the embodied imagination. Both are methods for envisioning scenarios for whole ecological, sensual, and emotional worlds to better design for dwelling. Processes of making are shown as interwoven with imagined stories, simulations, and situations in a series of sections. Each section attempts to describe a whole realm of making, thus they are loosely held together within the structure of the essay to allow the reader space for imagination and discovery in the terrae incognitae between.


Summary.  We consider three sorts of diagnostics for random imputations: displays of the completed data, which are intended to reveal unusual patterns that might suggest problems with the imputations, comparisons of the distributions of observed and imputed data values and checks of the fit of observed data to the model that is used to create the imputations. We formulate these methods in terms of sequential regression multivariate imputation, which is an iterative procedure in which the missing values of each variable are randomly imputed conditionally on all the other variables in the completed data matrix. We also consider a recalibration procedure for sequential regression imputations. We apply these methods to the 2002 environmental sustainability index, which is a linear aggregation of 64 environmental variables on 142 countries.


A process for fabricating a large-area hybrid metallic nanostructure array is presented. The structures consist of an array of metal capped dielectric nanopillars and an array of metallic holes, each possessing its individual optical properties. The plasmon response of such structures can be viewed as the collection of plasmons from two geometries to form an interacting system. Experimental results show two peak values in the extinction spectrum for p-polarized incident light. The two peaks in the extinction spectrum were shifted to longer wavelength and shorter wavelength respectively with the addition of absolute ethanol on the structure surface. The narrowest extinction peak appears at normal incidence.


Monitoring of target locations from a remote location is one of the important applications of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). In such image-based WSN applications, resource-constrained sensor nodes need to capture, compress and transmit a large amount of data. However, the large size of the data and the high transmission rates associated with these applications cause rapid depletion of onboard power and increased congestion in the routing channels of the WSN. Together, these two effects cause the degradation of the performance and early death of wireless sensor nodes. In this paper, the performance improvement in WSNs through the implementation of hardware accelerated image compression is demonstrated.


abstract:This article describes the genome browser of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana as an inspiration for the creation of geometric artworks developed with code. Genome browsers are bioinformatic tools that life scientists use to access and visualize genome sequence data from species of interest. The artworks presented are inspired by genome sequence data and provide aesthetic interpretations of genes and their genomic contexts by an individual artist alternatively to the conventional scientific visualization of genome data.


The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the performance of the New Zealand labour market in recent years. In particular how has the performance during the current economic cycle (defined here as since 1996) compared with that in two earlier cycles (1984 to 1989 and 1989 to 1996)? I adopt a broad definition of labour market performance, one that is consistent with the Department of Labour's overarching objective to have New Zealanders enjoying high quality working lives in thriving and inclusive communities. In taking a wide focus, this paper goes for breadth ahead of depth. I provide observations along a wide range of indicators, but often cannot provide robust explanations for these observations. In these instances the main aim of the paper is to highlight areas where more in-depth research is warranted. From this broad but reasonably shallow analysis one gets a remarkably consistent theme: the performance of the New Zealand labour market has improved markedly during the 1990s but there is still scope for further improvements.


Multi-object tracking and segmentation (MOTS) is important for understanding dynamic scenes in video data. Existing methods perform well on multi-object detection and segmentation for independent video frames, but tracking of objects over time remains a challenge. MOTS methods formulate tracking locally, i.e., frame-by-frame, leading to sub-optimal results. Classical global methods on tracking operate directly on object detections, which leads to a combinatorial growth in the detection space. In contrast, we formulate a global method for MOTS over the space of assignments rather than detections: First, we find all top-k assignments of objects detected and segmented between any two consecutive frames and develop a structured prediction formulation to score assignment sequences across any number of consecutive frames. We use dynamic programming to find the global optimizer of this formulation in polynomial time. Second, we connect objects which reappear after having been out of view for some time. For this we formulate an assignment problem. On the challenging KITTI-MOTS and MOTSChallenge datasets, this achieves state-of-the-art results among methods which don't use depth data.


Damage detection is a topic of great importance for structural health monitoring. Many varieties of structural damage can be detected by examining changes in structural response in terms of stiffness. Wavelet transform is a powerful mathematical tool for the processing and time-frequency analysis of transient signals and has great potential to be used in structural damage detection. In FRP-strengthened reinforced concrete and steel sections, stiffness changes can be caused by cracking, yielding of steel components, crushing of concrete, or rupture of FRP panels. With the help of wavelet transform, it is possible to use the continuous measurements of the response to bend or torsional loading to estimate the capacity of the cross section corresponding to the stiffness changes. In this paper, bending of FRP-reinforced steel beams filled by concrete under bending and CFRP-reinforced concrete beams under pure torsion is evaluated. The results show that the location of the damage appears as perturbations in the diagram of discrete wavelet coefficients, which indicate the time of cracking, yielding of steel, crushing of concrete in the compression zone, and rupture of FRP. Therefore, a wavelet transform-based data processing procedure can be used to estimate the cracking and yielding capacities of the beams subjected to torsion, the yielding capacity of the steel and the ultimate capacity of the beams subjected to bending. The results demonstrate a high level of agreement between the estimates obtained from the discrete wavelet transform method and the examined experimental and numerical data.


Activation of inert molecules like CO2 is often mediated by cooperative chemistry between two reactive sites within a catalytic assembly, the most common form of which is Lewis acid/base bifunctionality observed in both natural metalloenzymes and synthetic systems. Here, we disclose a heterobinuclear complex with an Al-Fe bond that instead activates CO2 and other substrates through cooperative behavior of two radical intermediates. The complex Ldipp(Me)AlFp (2, Ldipp = HC{(CMe)(2,6-iPr2C6H3N)}2, Fp = FeCp(CO)2, Cp = η5-C5H5) was found to insert CO2 and cyclohexene oxide, producing LdippAl(Me)(μ:κ2-O2C)Fp (3) and LdippAl(Me)(μ-OC6H10)Fp (4), respectively. Detailed mechanistic studies indicate unusual pathways in which (i) the Al-Fe bond dissociates homolytically to generate formally AlII and FeI metalloradicals, then (ii) the metalloradicals add to substrate in a pairwise fashion initiated by O-coordination to Al. The accessibility of this unusual mechanism is aided, in part, by the redox noninnocent nature of Ldipp that stabilizes the formally AlII intermediates, instead giving them predominantly AlIII-like physical character. The redox noninnocent nature of the radical intermediates was elucidated through direct observation of LdippAl(Me)(OCPh2) (22), a metalloradical species generated by addition of benzophenone to 2. Complex 22 was characterized by X-band EPR, Q-band EPR, and ENDOR spectroscopies as well as computational modeling. The "radical pair" pathway represents an unprecedented mechanism for CO2 activation.


42 breast cancer patients were treated by high-dose chemotherapy (HDC) and autologous peripheral stem-cell transplantation (ASTx) in the Donauspital between 1992 and 1999. 24 patients had stage II/III breast cancer with high risk for relapse. The other 18 patients underwent HDC and ASTx in chemosensitive stage IV. After previous conventional chemotherapy peripheral stem-cells were harvested by one cycle of mobilisation chemotherapy (epirubicin/taxol, FEC 120 or cyclophosphamide) followed by cytokine stimulation. 16 patients were treated by a tandem transplantation (conditioning protocol for 1st ASTx was melphalan 200 mg/m2 and for 2nd transplant it was CTC: cyclophosphamide 6 g/m2; thiotepa 500 mg/m2; carboplatin 800 mg/m2). The other 26 patients received one HDC with CTC as conditioning protocol. The HDC was well tolerated by all patients, there was no transplant-related mortality. The median survival and the progression-free survival (PFS) after HDC and ASTx in stage IV breast cancer patients were 28 and 11 months, respectively. The median survival and PFS were not yet reached in stage II/III patients after 55 months. The actuarial survival and PFS in that patient group were 70% after 55 months. Our data confirm the low risk and good efficacy of HDC and ASTx in breast cancer patients. Nevertheless randomised studies are necessary to evaluate the importance of HDC compared to intensified conventional protocols without ASTx.


Data from the article by Brodsky et al. (2000) have been examined in order to confirm that the fluctuations they report are not random but have a rhythmic basis, thereby verifying their conclusions regarding the existence of periodicity in protein synthesis. Reasons are outlined why oscillations should be expected in all cellular biochemical studies. Associated practical problems are briefly discussed together with comments on the validity and value of less rigorous methods of analysis. The subject of aliasing is raised as justification for doubting the validity of much published data, especially where periodicity has not been suspected. The existence of oscillations indicates the need for a thorough re‐evaluation of our understanding of cell biochemistry.


Uncovered along with Crazy Cock in 1988 by Miller biographer Mary V. Dearborn, Moloch emerged from the misery of Miller's years at Western Union and from the squalor of his first marriage. Set in the rapidly changing New York City of the early twenties, its hero is the rough-and-tumble Dion Moloch, a man filled with anger and despair. Trapped in a demeaning job, oppressed by an acrimonious home life, Moloch escapes to the streets only to be assaulted by a world he despises even more a Brooklyn transformed into a shrill medley of ethnic sights, sounds, and smells. The antagonized Moloch strikes out blindly at everything he hates, battling against a world whose hostility threatens to overwhelm and destroy him."


Objectives. This study aimed to assess the health workforce's service capacities within a health Service Delivery Network (SDN) of an urban poor and a rural poor setting.
Methods. This is a concurrent mixed-methods study implemented in Navotas and Masbate, an urban poor and a rural poor area, respectively. Health needs of the residents were assessed through records review, qualitative methods and a household survey. Health facilities in the identified SDN were assessed using the Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) tool. Training data of Human Resource for Health (HRH) were also obtained.
Results. SDN in the two areas are different in terms of formality where memoranda of agreement were prepared between Masbate facilities but not in Navotas. Health worker to population ratios were 12.1 per 10,000 in Navotas and 2.7 in Masbate, respectively. The primary care facilities in the two sites met the recommended level of trainings for health workers in obstetric care, immunization, childhood nutrition and tuberculosis. There was a lack of post-graduate training in non-communicable diseases in all facilities. Poverty and geography were significant factors affecting health service delivery.
Conclusion. In terms of human resources, both sites have limited number of health workers and the ratios fall far below WHO guideline. Recommendations include: Primary health care staff complement should be increased in the two SDNs. HHRDB should conduct a study to settle the issue of continuing medical education requirements that are not congruent with WHO recommendations. The SDNs should include the access of medicines and commodities by poor patients in private facilities during times of stock outs. Also, during stock outs or unavailability of government health personnel, transportation should be made available via the SDN to transport poor patients to private or nongovernment facilities with the needed personnel. The DOH and HHRDB should investigate innovative strategies for telehealth services that do not require continuous electricity, nor telephone or cellphone signal.


The influence of incubation temperature and substrate on hatching success, duration of incubation and hatchlings' traits in Calotes versicolor was studied experimentally. The eggs were incubated in soil at 1) ambient (27°C±2 s ), 2) ambient temperature and exposed to 35°C for 1 or 3hrs/day, 3) constant 30°C, 33°C and 35°C. In another experiment soil, sand or cotton wool was used as incubation substrate at ambient temperature. Duration of incubation was inversely related to incubation temperature. Hatching success was high at ambient (93%), at 30°C (89%) and for eggs exposed to 1 hr (94%) or 3 hr/day to 35°C (93%) compared to those at 33°C (59%) and 35°C (53%). Egg mass increased until hatching, but with a temporal difference in the gain at different temperatures. At high temperatures, it increased rapidly. Eggs incubated at ambient temperature and 1 or 3 hrs exposure to 35°C produced hatchlings heavier than their sibs that hatched at 30°C, 33°C or 35°C. Smaller size of hatchlings at higher incubation temperatures was due to early hatching and low utilization of yolk. Incubation substrate had no influence on offspring traits but hatching success was low (84 ± 9%) in cotton wool. Thus, incubation of eggs in soil or sand at ambient temperature with a periodic exposure to high tolerable temperature provides an optimum balance between developmental rate, hatching success and hatchling quality in C. versicolor .


WE investigate the impact of fading correlation on multiple antenna reception mobile OFDM systems. Based on the unbiased minimum mean square error criterion we derive the carrier-based optimum combiner. We show that for purely noise-limited systems, the optimum combiner reduces to the well-known maximum ratio combiner (MRC). For these systems, a general performance assessment is performed. We adopt the antenna and the diversity gain, which were recently introduced in [4], and derive a closed form analytical expression for omnidirectional wave incidence. For the interference-limited case, we focus on a single user system with intercarrier interference (ICI) that originates from the channel variations during one OFDM symbol. Then, optimum combining involves knowledge of the spatial interference and noise covariance matrix. The structure of this matrix is investigated and for omnidirectional wave incidence we derive closed-form analytical expressions for the interference correlation coefficients.


Clinical presentation of pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) during immunosuppressive therapy for rheumatic diseases was compared between patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA; n = 7) and those without RA (non-RA; n = 12) based on a chart review. Both RA and non-RA patients with PCP were treated with methotrexate (n = 7) combined with steroids (n = 6) and/or biologics (n = 4). RA–PCP patients were found to have a higher mortality rate than non-RA–PCP patients (3/7 vs. 0/12, respectively; p = 0.036) due to a later exacerbation of interstitial pneumonia and a higher presentation rate of diffuse pulmonary lesions (4/7 vs. 1/12, respectively; p = 0.036) despite lower mean levels of serum beta-d-glucan (314 ± 214 vs. 1139 ± 1114 pg/ml, respectively; p = 0.02) that suggested a lower burden of Pneumocystis jirovecii. In conclusion, PCP in RA patients with existing pulmonary lesions may trigger subsequent progression to lethal interstitial pneumonia.


Would you rather accept a higher tax rate to help government raise its revenues, or would you want the government to develop fairer tax policies which expand the tax base without burdening already compliant taxpayers? How can we discourage noncompliance and promote responsible tax behaviour to ensure the government is able to provide us with quality public goods and services? My research aims to examine the factors that influence individual tax compliance to help design effective and equitable tax policies.


Internationalization of higher education has become a significant feature of the Canadian educational landscape. Considered to be a product of and response to globalization, internationalization is being critiqued for having an economic orientation. This paper will begin with a brief overview of internationalization research in Canada, and the main focus is a conceptual discussion prompted by the relationship between internationalization and globalization. Informed by sociological and cultural studies' accounts of the multiple dimensions of globalization, I argue that an uncritical pursuit of internationalization can result in a reproduction of the economic dimensions of globalization, and yet resistance to commodification can be found in other dimensions of globalization that offer useful theoretical bases for both research and practice in Canadian internationalization. Keywords: internationalization of higher education, globalization, international education


This work recounts the life of Otto Herbert Schmitt who is most widely known as the inventor of the Schmitt trigger, which he developed as a graduate student in the mid-1930s. Schmitt remained an active scientist, engineer, and intellectual until the mid-1990s - six decades that brimmed with energy, effort, and insights. Viewing his life in full context suggests that the Schmitt trigger was a mere prelude to his greatest innovation, which Schmitt fully articulated near the end of his career: the concept of a biomimetic approach to science and engineering - an idea rather than a gadget. Schmitt played instrumental roles in establishing a number of the professional associations that continue to provide vital means of interchange among biophysicists and biomedical engineers.


Lactose intolerance is associated with the inability to digest significant amounts of lactose. Several conditions have symptoms that overlap with those of lactose intolerance. Thus, it is commonly misdiagnosed. There are established investigation procedures that aid diagnosis which include the lactose challenge and the hydrogen breath tests. However, differential diagnosis remains challenging. We aimed at identifying gaps in knowledge regarding lactose intolerance among medical practitioners using a survey consisting of 15 questions. It was completed by 98 doctors. Most questions were answered correctly by more than half of the participants. There was no significant difference in the frequency of correct answers between the different medical specialists or age of participating doctors. Crucially, one question relating to the hydrogen breath test was answered incorrectly by 85% of the participants. This highlights acceptable knowledge of general issues, but not the diagnostic aspects, of lactose intolerance among doctors.


The adsorption, activation and reduction of CO2 over Fex/Cu(100) (x = 1–9) surfaces were examined by density functional theory. The most stable structure of CO2 adsorption on the Fex/Cu(100) surface was realized. The electronic structure analysis showed that the doped Fe improved the adsorption, activation and reduction of CO2 on the pure Cu(100) surface. From the perspective of thermodynamics and kinetics, the Fe4/Cu(100) surface acted as a potential catalyst to decompose CO2 into CO with a barrier of 32.8 kJ mol−1. Meanwhile, the first principle molecular dynamics (FPMD) analysis indicated that the decomposition of the C–O1 bond of CO2 on the Fe4/Cu(100) surface was only observed from 350 K to 450 K under a CO2 partial pressure from 0 atm to 10 atm. Furthermore, the results of FPMD analysis revealed that CO2 would rather decompose than hydrogenate when CO2 and H co-adsorbed on the Fe4/Cu(100) surface.


Optic nerve (ON) aplasia is a rare congenital anomaly. It is characterised by the absence of optic nerve, nerve fibre layer, ganglion cells, and retinal blood vessels. ON aplasia is usually unilateral. Bilateral cases are very rare. We report such a rare case with bilateral ON aplasia and corpus callosum hypogenesis. An 11-month-old male child presented with a history of not seeing or following objects since birth. On examination, the child had microcornea and the absence of an optic disc in both the eyes. In addition, the right eye showed partial aniridia and few rudimentary retinal vessels in the posterior pole, while the left eye showed a chorioretinal coloboma but no evidence of any retinal blood vessels. Flash visual evoked potential was nonrecordable in both the eyes. MRI brain and orbit showed congenital aplasia of the ON on both sides with poorly developed optic chiasm, optic tract, and lateral geniculate body along with the features of corpus callosum hypogenesis. Child had no other systemic or endocrinological abnormalities.


This paper is to evaluate the system level performance of LTE uplink and presents some evaluation methodologies. Joint orthogonal user grouping, proportional fairness scheduling and open loop power control are evaluated in Virtual MIMO single carrier -frequency division multiplexing access (SC-FDMA) systems. Open loop power control is proposed to use in the uplink of LTE. Simulation results show that open loop power control can improve the system throughput, lower system interference condition and satisfy the fairness criterion among users.


By Linda St. Thomas way began work on this year 's celebration If someone told you that you had one in March when they held a series of meetmonth to come up with an organ grinder ings with MHT curators . " The curators and monkey , a mode l ship builder or a point us in the right direction , describing drum maker, what would you do? the Philadelphia July 4 celebration in 1875 Those are a few of the everyday tasks or suggesting traditional small town July 4 that face the Division of Performing Arts activities of the early 20th century, " Closs taffers working on the old-fashioned ter explained. " Then we begin trying to Fourth of July celebration at the Museum of find the right people to recreate the se Hi story and Technology. activities. " By now , Connie Lee , assistant program Many of the events and performances coordinator, probably is known at every held on the July 4 weekend will recall holihobby shop in the Washington area. Her day celebrations of our ancestors. Orators search for a model ship builder began with will recite famous speeches such as Abradozens of calls to the shops inquiring for an ham Lincoln 's Getty sburg Address, Susan experienced builder who could also talk B. Anthony 's " Declaration of the Right s of about hi s craft. Women ," Frederick Douglass' "Fourth of "I called model builder 's associations , July Oration " and Martin Luther King 's "I hobby shops and individual model builders Have a Dream ." Flagmak ers will sew looking from someone who could work Revo lutionary-era flags while a lead soldier while answering hundreds of que sti ons caster and a colonial shoemaker work in the from the crowd ," Lee said. " Just when it Museum's military hi story hall. seemed we would have to give up, one of Just so visitors don ' t forget the true the shops puts us in touch with an experimeaning of the Fourth, bands and fifeenced craftsman who is able to work deand-drum corps will play patriotic music, spite the frequent interruptions of his three and an orator will read the Declaration of children. , . Independence on July 4 at 4 p.m. in an amSometimes one performer gives leads to phitheater on the east side of MHT . another . Last year, for example, the staff In the Hall of Musical Instruments there contacted a man who played Uncle Sam in will be patriotic music played on mechaniTroy , N. Y. , where the Uncle Sam legend cal musical instruments : music boxes , a began during the War of 1812 . Another hurdy gurdy and an old phonograph , all performer casually asked why they were from the Smithsonian 's collections. looking way up in Troy when we had a Free films, the " Boston Tea Party " and great Uncle Sam here , John Rusk of Oxon the "Shot Heard Round the World ," will Hill, Md . Rusk delighted the crowds last be shown in Carmichael auditorium July I , July and will return this year in full cos2, and 3 at noon, I :30 p.m. and 3 p .m. On tume for the celebration July 1-4 . July 4 , the musical" J 776 " will be shown Under the direction of Shirley Cherat I J a.m. and 3 p .m. kasky, DPA staffers have signed up more Outdoor activities will include many than 200 performers for the weekend holiday weekend traditions such as parades, events . cyc li sts' demonstrations , puppet shows, " We are not a g roup of s how biz clown acts, p aper boat sailing and people ," said Cherkasky , who has a masbandstand music. ter' s in sociology from the University of For those who can't just listen to music , Wisconsin a nd worked as a researc h there will be dance instructors to explain sociologist with George Washington Unithe old steps , and everyone wil l be invited versity for six years . " We are more a group to join in . The nightly ~ance prog~ams , of researchers and scholars. Connie Lee , from 6:30 to 8:30 p .m. , WIll be held In the who has worked on past Folklife Festivals amphitheater. It wi. ~1 be a gOO? ~h~nce to and other celebrations , is the recently brush up on your Jtlterbug , VirgInia reel , elected chairman of docents at the Museum ./ (See 'July 4 ' page 4) of Natural Hi story and worked part-time on V . the July 4 celebration until about a month before the event when she began working on it full -time . "Harold Closter has archival experience backed by a B .A. in history and a master 's in folklore . And Irene Holloway, who works on a part-time basis, was a Festival volunteer and volunteer coordinator in past year . She has a master's in Latin and , along with many other activities, has taught English in Thailand. She 's now doing postgraduate work at the University of Maryland in chemistry and physics'for fun '. " Putting together a program like this takes months of research , confe rences with curators and endl ess phone calls to find crafts people and performers with these un usual ski lls ," Cherkasky said . Among the performers will be orators, jugglers and clowns , as well as a drum maker, a call igrapher , a Victorian dance instructor , a sidewalk artist and a lead soldier caster. Hardly the kind of people you find listed in the yellow pages . Cherkasky , Lee , Technical Coordinator Closter and Volunteer Coordinator HolloJohn "Uncle Sam" Rusk and Shirley Cherkasky outside MHT o THE SMITHSONIAN TORCH


Antibiotic use greatly influences the nasopharyngeal carriage of drug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae and is considered to be one of the most important risk factors for carriage of such organisms. Several studies have shown a reduction in the prevalence of resistant strains following reduced antibiotic consumption. This indicates that it may be possible to reduce resistance rates by changing prescribing patterns. Studies suggest that antibiotics present at low levels tend to select strains with low-level penicillin resistance, that intermediate antibiotic levels may pose the danger of selection of pneumococci with high-level penicillin resistance and that attainment of high levels of antibiotics may reduce the selective pressure for penicillin resistance. High-dose beta-lactam (amoxicillin) therapy has been shown to reduce the selection of resistant pneumococci in the nasopharynx. Likewise, short-course antibiotic therapy has reduced colonization by resistant strains. Finally, the effect of the antibiotic appears to differ according to the beta-lactam prescribed. Studies suggest that selection by cephalosporins occurs at higher frequencies than that by amoxicillin; this may be explained by the reduced activity of cephalosporins against penicillin-resistant S. pneumoniae.


In the engineering field, many motion's tracks are too complicated to be described in mathematical expression accurately, and solving this problem by using ADAMS. In this paper, parameters analysis and data processing were discussed based on the analysis of simulation animation and measured curve according to the characteristics of the model, to ensure the accuracy of results. A reasonable track curve can be obtained as long as the simulation errors are acceptable.


In a previous paper, we proposed new silver nanoparticles (SNPs) based antibacterial coatings able to protect eukaryotic cells from SNPs related toxic effects, while preserving antibacterial efficiency. A SNPs containing n-heptylamine (HA) polymer matrix was deposited by plasma polymerization and coated by a second HA layer. In this paper, we elucidate the antibacterial action of these new coatings. We demonstrated that SNPs-loaded material can be covered by thin HA polymer layer without losing the antibacterial activity to planktonic bacteria living in the near surroundings of the material. SNPs-containing materials also revealed antibacterial effect on adhered bacteria. Adhered bacteria number was significantly reduced compared to pure HA plasma polymer and the physiology of the bacteria was affected. The number of adhered bacteria directly decreased with thickness of the second HA layer. Surprisingly, the quantity of cultivable bacteria harvested by transfer to nutritive agar decreased not only with the presence of SNPs, but also in relation to the covering HA layer thickness, that is, oppositely to the increase in adhered bacteria number. Two hypotheses are proposed for this surprising result (stronger attachment or weaker vitality), which raises the question of the diverse potential ways of action of SNPs entrapped in a polymer matrix.


We have demonstrated an Yb:YAG thin disk amplifier capable of delivering picosecond pulses at a repetition rate of up to 200 kHz. At 1030 nm a maximum average power of 62 W and a maximum output energy of 2.3 mJ have been achieved. Extracavity frequency doubling is performed using a BiBO crystal. Reaching conversion efficiencies up to 60% an average power of 28.5 W and a maximum pulse energy of 1.1 mJ at 515 nm have been generated.


Defects of the chest wall are often encountered, and good results can be obtained both cosmetically and functionally from their treatment. We treated 13 patients with full thickness chest wall defects. Follow up ranged from 12 days to 19 months. Three had had recurrent breast carcinoma, seven relapse after excision of a sarcoma, two had had lesions of the chest wall after irradiation, and one had a sternal fistula. Local skin, musculocutaneous and free latissimus dorsi and anterolateral thigh flaps were done to cover soft tissue. Fascia lata, polypropylene (Marlex®) mesh, and Marlex® mesh-methylmethacrylate sandwich prosthesis, were used to stabilise the skeleton in nine patients. Two of the patients died postoperatively, one early. The use of Marlex® mesh-methylmethacrylate sandwich prostheses for the stabilisation of the skeleton and local musculocutaneous flaps for covering soft tissues after resection of three or more ribs is effective.


One of the most common ways of capturing wide eld-of-view scenes is by recording panoramic videos. Using an array of cameras with limited overlapping in the corresponding images, one can generate good panorama images. Using the panorama, several immersive display options can be explored. There is a two fold synchronization problem associated to such a system. One is the temporal synchronization, but this challenge can easily be handled by using a common triggering solution to control the shutters of the cameras. The other synchronization challenge is the automatic exposure synchronization which does not have a straight forward solution, especially in a wide area scenario where the light conditions are uncontrolled like in the case of an open, outdoor football stadium. In this paper, we present the challenges and approaches for creating a completely automatic real-time panoramic capture system with a particular focus on the camera settings. One of the main challenges in building such a system is that there is not one common area of the pitch that is visible to all the cameras that can be used for metering the light in order to nd appropriate camera parameters. One approach we tested is to use the green color of the eld grass. Such an approach provided us with acceptable results only in limited light conditions.A second approach was devised where the overlapping areas between adjacent cameras are exploited, thus creating pairs of perfectly matched video streams. However, there still existed some disparity between di erent pairs. We nally developed an approach where the time between two temporal frames is exploited to communicate the exposures among the cameras where we achieve a perfectly synchronized array. An analysis of the system and some experimental results are presented in this paper. In summary, a pilot-camera approach running in auto-exposure mode and then distributing the used exposure values to the other cameras seems to give best visual results.


Sepsis is a deadly disease, more complex and frequent every day, that requires management from different specialists. The emergency physician is the first and one of the most important physicians that has to deal with the septic critically ill patients, because an appropriate initial management is key to a favorable outcome. In the emergency department it can be hard to predict which patients will become sicker just with information from the vital signs, and it's even harder to predict which patients will require a more intensive medical treatment. That is the reason why there must be more resources to measure tissue perfusion in an early and simple way in the emergency room, so that the emergency physician can manage to establish which patients requires earlier intervention to improve their perfusion state, despite not showing any clinically evident signs that help in the diagnosis of their current state. The goal of this paper is to propose a diagnostic and therapeutic algorithm for the hypoperfused patient with septic shock in the emergency department.


The research aim was to challenge the belief that girls' access to and performance in science education is no longer problematic based on evidence of the continuing low uptake by girls of science courses post 16 and female participation in science related careers. The research hypothesised that affective factors were influential in this and explored through a longitudinal study how girls and boys experience science in Key Stages 3 and 4.

The initial literature review examined research into the relationships between attitudes and gender and the conceptualisation of these constructs. The study drew on this to survey 208 Year 7 and 8 pupils from three community schools about their views of their self-efficacy as science learners, their topic preferences and interest in science. A sub-sample of twenty pupils from each school was interviewed annually through to Year 9 to probe their perceptions of what influenced their experiences and affected their learning.

The data revealed that looking for some concept or construct of attitudes to explain science achievement was not productive to understand either achievement or how pupils feel positioned in relation to science. The second phase of the research, based on a social view of learning and knowledge, focused on 20 case studies of a sub-sample of pupils from one school as they studied science in years 10 and 11. Narrative accounts were derived to show how individuals react to common experiences in science and how this impacts their achievements and liking for science and their future engagement with it. This approach provides insights into attitudes as personal responses to lived experiences in school science and a more subtle view of gender mediation that emerges first from individual experiences out to common influences to reveal that there are no simple relationships between achievement, liking for and engagement in science.


Ivermectin (IVM) and moxidectin (MOX) are used extensively as parasiticides in veterinary medicine. Based on in vitro data, IVM has recently been proposed for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection, a condition for which obesity is a major risk factor. In patients, IVM dosage is based on total body weight and there are no recommendations to adjust dosage in obese patients. The objective of this study was to establish, in a canine model, the influence of obesity on the clearance and steady-state volume of distribution of IVM, MOX, and a third analog, eprinomectin (EPR). An experimental model of obesity in dogs was based on a high calorie diet. IVM, MOX, and EPR were administered intravenously, in combination, to a single group of dogs in two circumstances, during a control period and when body weight had been increased by 50%. In obese dogs, clearance, expressed in absolute values (L/day), was not modified for MOX but was reduced for IVM and EPR, compared to the initial control state. However, when scaled by body weight (L/day/kg), plasma clearance was reduced by 55, 42, and 63%, for IVM, MOX and EPR, respectively. In contrast, the steady-state volume of distribution was markedly increased, in absolute values (L), by obesity. For IVM and MOX, this obese dog model suggests that the maintenance doses in the obese subject should be based on lean body weight rather than total weight. On the other hand, the loading dose, when required, should be based on the total body weight of the obese subject.


Patterned surfaces have proven to be a valuable design to enhance adhesion, increasing hysteresis and the detachment stress at pull-off. To obtain high adhesive performance, soft materials are commonly, used, which easily conform to the countersurface, such as soft polymers and elastomers. Such materials are viscoelastic; i.e., they show rate-dependent properties. Here, the detachment of two half spaces is studied, one being flat and the other having a dimple in the limit of short range adhesion and a power law rate-dependent work of adhesion, as observed by several authors. Literature results have suggested that the dimpled surface would show pressure-sensitive adhesion, showing two possible adhered states, one weak, in partial contact, and one strong when full contact is achieved. By accounting for a power law rate-dependent work of adhesion, the "weak state" may be much stronger than it was in the purely elastic case, and hence the interface may be much more tough to separate. We study the pull-off detachment stress of the dimpled surface, showing that it weakly depends on the preload, but it is strongly affected by the dimensionless unloading rate. Finally, possible implications of the presented results in the detachment of soft materials from rough substrates are discussed.


We discuss the combination of a CARS-imaging system with microfluidics. Such system is a versatile tool to quantify the relative contributions of resonant and non-resonant scattering at the CARS frequency. We will show that the twochannel microfluidic chip employed in combination with deuterated isotopomers as an internal standard allows for fast and quantitative detection of organic molecules by CARS microscopy. The experimental design enables the simultaneous measurement of both the chemically relevant Raman-resonant signal and the non-Raman-resonant background.


Interfaces exist in every geotechnical system in many forms and at multiple scales. Although historically, they are often considered to be the weak link in a system, particularly as the result of a number of unexpected catastrophic failures, new insight gained over the past twenty years by researchers around the world has shown that it is possible to select combinations of materials and design an engineered interface so that it is at least as strong as the surrounding materials. These new insights have been gained as a result of experimental study, numerical modeling and analytical investigation of successful and failed systems. While individual technical papers have been presented and/or published in various forums and proceedings over the years, no technical event has ever been convened for the sole purpose of allowing for exchange of information and ideas pertaining to geotechnical interfaces. The research symposium held in September 2008 in Atlanta Georgia, USA, in conjunction with the Fourth International Symposium on Deformation Characteristics of Geomaterials (IS Atlanta 2008) at the Georgia Institute of Technology on The Characterization and Behavior of Interfaces addressed this deficiency and the papers presented at that event are contained in this publication.IOS Press is an international science, technical and medical publisher of high-quality books for academics, scientists, and professionals in all fields. Some of the areas we publish in: -Biomedicine -Oncology -Artificial intelligence -Databases and information systems -Maritime engineering -Nanotechnology -Geoengineering -All aspects of physics -E-governance -E-commerce -The knowledge economy -Urban studies -Arms control -Understanding and responding to terrorism -Medical informatics -Computer Sciences


Abstract Following the pioneering tracks of John Deely's Four ages of understanding, this essay generates a hybrid model by crossing of Peirce's postmodern concept of mediation and the scholastic Latin Age doctrine of four causes. I then use the model to explain and explore an article from the journal Communio. Peirce's concept provides a unifying framework for the four causes, and allows the investigator to visualize the hierarchical causality inherent in the article's "Latin Age meets postmodern" argument.


Ultrasonic System depends on the principles that are; production of sound waves by a transducer, penetration of them into some media, reflection when they contact with another media or air, transformation of those echo waves into electrical waves and observation of the waves on a screen. That system has been used in industry, medicine and also in dentistry. In dentistry very few researchers studied this topic long time ago. This article gives some information about the parts and the mechanism of the ultrasonic system, how to use it and the effectiveness of the system on detecting dental caries and the erosions.


This presentation presents findings from an evaluation of the Consumer Research Panels (CRP) pilot project. The CRP project was set up by the National Cancer Research Network (NCRN) and Macmillan Cancer Support in three NHS cancer research networks. The project went on over a two-year period. The project's aim was to establish and support a CRP in each network, as a focus for consumer involvement in research in the network. It was intended that CRP activities might include consumers identifying and prioritising research, commenting at early stages of protocol development, and collaborating with local researchers. An independent evaluation of the project was carried out. The evaluation wanted to find out how much consumer involvement in research there was, and what that involvement consisted of. We also wanted to find out how the consumers got to meet and talk with local cancer researchers and whether the fact that a consumer panel existed changed the way that researchers behaved in terms of consumer involvement. To collect this information, we spoke to 116 people, either in groups or individually or by questionnaire. We found that the CRPs had taken quite a long time to become established, and had only really started getting involved in research projects towards the end of the pilot period. The CRPs were becoming recognised as an accessible, expert source of consumer advice and input for local researchers. This input was highly valued by those researchers who had worked with CRPs; however these formed only a minority of researchers. CRP engagement was mainly with academic, non-clinical, non-network research activity. The presentation will draw on key findings to identify the primary 'drivers' and 'barriers' for consumer involvement at the local NHS level


This paper presents a literature review in the area of services marketing and management from 1986 to the present. An electronic library search under the key words "service marketing" supplemented with a manual search yielded 865 articles. These articles are organized into a framework based on the services dimensions (simultaneity, heterogeneity, intangibility and perishability) and the services marketing "7 Ps" (product, price, place, promotion, people, process, physical environment). While greater depth of knowledge in several areas within services is desired, there is a good deal of understanding of many services qualities. Services marketers should begin to export their ideas beyond services.


This study was carried out to determine the effects of environment controls (temperature and shading level) on germination responses and early growth of Allium thunbergii. Germination experiment was performed by pre-treatment (with low temperature and wetting treatments for 0, 20, 40 and 60 days) and temperature controls (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30). And growth experiment was performed by containers (128 and 200 cavities containers) and shading level (full sunlight (control), 35%, 50% and 75% shading). Germination rate of A. thunbergii seeds were, 20 days of seed pre-treatment, the highest at 10oC (81.7%) and the more temperature went up, the more germination rate went down. As a result of surveying container and shading treatments, the height, leaf area, leaf length, leaf aspect ratio (L/W) were higher under 50% shading of 128 (24.2㎝, 2.76㎝2, 22.3㎝ and 223.4, respectively) and 200 (22.6㎝, 2.29㎠, 19.4㎝ and 190.5, respectively) cavities container. The root was grown well under full sunlight. Specially, fresh weight of shoot (leaves+stem) was higher under 50% shading of 128 (0.241g) and 200 (0.212g) cavities container. As a result of surveying the whole experiment, A. thunbergii seeds need to pre-treatment (with low temperature and wetting treatments for 20~40 days) for high germination rate. And it is judged better growth and higher yield by maintaining 50% shading of 200 cavities container.


To assess the value of mass-screening for uterine cervical cancer, we compared data obtained from a "model area" with findings obtained from the whole of Shimane Prefecture. The factors given attention were: Screening ratio, detection ratio and mortality directly related to cancer of the uterine cervix. These data were obtained from 1976-1980. The results are as follows: Screening ratio and mortality rates were 35.7% and 7.8% respectively, in the model area and 8.4% and 11.5% respectively, in Shimane Prefecture. Four years after setting up the "model area", the mortality rate for uterine cervical cancer reached zero. The ratio of cancer detection in the "model area" was 0.204%, that is about twice that in Shimane Prefecture. The ratios of detection of severe dysplasia, carcinoma in situ and infiltrative carcinoma were higher in the "model area" than in Shimane Prefecture. Detection of severe dysplasia and carcinoma in situ was significantly high in the "model area". Therefore, to reduce the mortality rate for cervical cancer, the CAI should be over 350.