Abstract Picaresque fiction, or the so-called tale of roguery, focuses mainly on the adventures of a male protagonist. Although women characters rarely take the lead, they mark significant transitions in the narrative syntax. Mothers, wives, and lovers reject stereotypical role models and are invested with the potential of initiating the picaro to his life stages. This study will concentrate on the wife as a catalyst of semiotic value beyond her appointed role, exploring a corpus of four works published between 1554 and 1626: Lazarillo de Tormes, The Unfortunate Traveller, Guzmán de Alfarache, and El Buscón. In these narratives, wives oppose their fate of pure Objects in a conjugal contract, and become Subjects, Antagonists or Destinators, assertive "actants" (Greimas) in the semiotic grammar of narrative. My purpose is to re-evaluate, in deep-structure narrative terms, the significance of women characters in the largely male-centred, misogynist picaresque.


This paper deals with the well-known problem of constructing Lyapunov functions for a nonlinear system and the approximation of the basin of attraction associated with a given attractive equilibrium point. Following a paper by Spelberg-Korspeter et al., the problem is studied by means of perturbative methods, with particular focus on the time-reversed Van Der Pol model. As a difference, the theory is reformulated in terms of the Lie transform method, introduced by Giorgilli et al., which, remarkably, does not require any inverse function arguments to produce the inverse transformations during the normalization process. This will be shown to be, also in this case, a key feature in terms of concrete applications. The nonautonomous perturbation theory developed by the authors in previous works allows an effortless extension of such a construction to the (aperiodically) time-dependent case.This paper deals with the well-known problem of constructing Lyapunov functions for a nonlinear system and the approximation of the basin of attraction associated with a given attractive equilibrium point. Following a paper by Spelberg-Korspeter et al., the problem is studied by means of perturbative methods, with particular focus on the time-reversed Van Der Pol model. As a difference, the theory is reformulated in terms of the Lie transform method, introduced by Giorgilli et al., which, remarkably, does not require any inverse function arguments to produce the inverse transformations during the normalization process. This will be shown to be, also in this case, a key feature in terms of concrete applications. The nonautonomous perturbation theory developed by the authors in previous works allows an effortless extension of such a construction to the (aperiodically) time-dependent case.


We describe an 81-year old man presenting with ileus and two rare, pathologically distinct entities: gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) and Crohn's disease. Within Meckel's diverticulum a polypous tumor, 3 cm in diameter, with preserved lumen was found. In the area of the terminal ileum, coecum and colon ascendens inflamed bowel loops were fixed together with fibrous adhesions. Partial resection of the ileum with end-to-end anastomosis and right hemicolectomy with resection of the terminal ileum and end-to-end ileotransverse anastomosis were performed. Pathohistological and immunohistochemical examination revealed the polypous tumor as GIST. Changes in terminal ileum, coecum and colon ascendens were referred as Crohn's disease. Although adenocarcinoma is well known in chronic, long-standing inflammatory bowel disease, other primary intestinal tumors are rare in those patients. Furthermore, Crohn's disease can be a part of differential diagnosis of ileus, also in such an old man.


Background: Recombinant human lactoferrin (rhLF) has previously suggested serving as food additive due to the natural iron binding properties that provide anti-microbial activity. Recombinant cows have been produced that express hLf in milk. However, the potential allergenicity of hLf has not been previously assessed. This research is conducted to evaluate the potential allergenicity of rhLF as a prerequisite for food use.
Methods: A comparison was made of the bioactivity, physicochemical properties and glycosylation profile between rhLF and natural hLF. The amino acid sequence of hLf was compared to known allergens. Additionally, the stability of hLf in pepsin and a human serum IgE test was conducted.
Results: The amino acid identity between rhLF and the minor allergen bovine lactoferrin was 71.4%. However, every human is exposed to hLf constantly without demonstrated allergies. The rhLF was digested rapidly by pepsin and was not specifically bound by IgE using serum from patients who are allergic to egg and milk.
Conclusion: Based on these results, the potential allergenicity of rhLF as produced in bovine milk is quite low. It may be added into formula powder or food to improve nutrition composition.


We report a case of chronic alcoholic pancreatitis with obstructive jaundice due to compression of the common bile duct by pancreatic pseudocyst. Ultrasonography and computed tomographic scan on admission demonstrated an 8 cm cystic lesion located at the head of the pancreas. Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) revealed a segment of narrowing at the distal common bile duct which was compressed by the pancreatic pseudocyst. Communication between the cyst and pancreatic duct was also noted. Bacteriological examination of cystic contents yielded the growth of Proteus vulgaris, Morganella morganii, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The patient was treated with broad-spectrum antibiotic, endoscopic sphincterotomy, endoscopic nasopancreatic duct drainage, and transpapillary pancreatic endoprosthesis. Jaundice subsided gradually during admission and a marked reduction of pancreatic pseudocyst was found 18 months after discharge.


Surveys for juvenile Mythimna convecta throughout the agricultural and arid regions of eastern Australia were conducted from 1986 to 1989. Armyworm populations north of 33 degrees S were generally dominated by M. convecta, and further south by Persectania ewingii. M. convecta was most widely distributed in spring. Incidence during autumn and winter ranged from very low in Victoria to high in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. Summer infestations were found mostly on the south-east coast where favourable habitats were abundant. Colonised habitats included extremely arid regions, where small numbers of larvae were associated with grasses in temporary watercourses, and the higher-rainfall, eastern regions. The largest infestations occurred in south-east Queensland and north central and north-east New South Wales, particularly after heavy autumn rains. There appeared to be two generations of M. convecta over the autumn/winter period: the first a synchronised event starting on the autumn rains and the second commencing in June/July and comprising a wide spread in age distribution. The progeny of the winter generation are probably the source of most economic outbreaks. Mythimna convecta larvae were collected from subtropical and temperate grasses. In the former, most larvae were found in tussocks, particularly of Dichanthium sericeum and Chloris truncata, which provided a dense, fine-leaf crown and canopy. After good autumn rainfall and vegetative growth, the wiry-stemmed tussocks, including Astrebla spp. and C. ciliaris, were also common hosts. The temperate grasses, particularly Avena fatua and Hordeum leporinum, were the main winter hosts although the greatest densities were found only in thick swards of growth, particularly those that contained dried grass. Two of the largest surveys, in autumn 1987 and 1988, followed periods of heavy rain and provided strongly contrasting results. The 1987 survey of central and south-west Queensland located no M. convecta larvae, indicating that densities were below detection thresholds. The paucity of larvae was attributed to lack of suitable atmospheric conditions to assist moth immigrations and absence of adequate populations in potential source areas. The 1988 survey revealed a major outbreak of M. convecta larvae in south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales. The area received record rains during early April of that year, and the outbreak probably arose from moth migrations from the east and south-east coast. An outbreak of similar scale occurred after further heavy autumn rains in 1989.


Adult male mice of the ICR/Swiss Webster strain received a single intragastric administration of methylmercuric chloride 1,000 ppm, at dose levels of 5,10,15,20,25 and 30 mg/kg of body weight. The animals were killed six hours later. Tissue samples from the duodenum were fixed in 10% neutral buffered formalin for light microscopy. Chromosome clumping was observed in dividing cells at all dose levels, resembling a C-mitotic effect. It would lead to reduced mitotic cell formation on account of the subsequent lysis of the arrested metaphases. The cytostatic effect was brought about by the inactivation of the microtubule spindle fiber polymerization mechanism induced by methylmercuric chloride. There was a direct positive correlation between the varying dose levels of methylmercury and the proportion of cells arrested in metaphase in the crypts of the duodenum.


A hybrid analytic-systematic (HAS) coarse-grained (CG) lipid model is developed and employed in a large-scale simulation of a liposome. The methodology is termed hybrid analytic-systematic because one component of the interaction between CG sites is variationally determined from the multiscale coarse-graining (MS-CG) methodology, whereas the remaining component utilizes an analytic potential. The systematic component models the in-plane center-of-mass interaction of the lipids as determined from an atomistic-level MD simulation of a bilayer. The analytic component is based on the well-known Gay-Berne ellipsoid-of-revolution liquid-crystal model and is designed to model the highly anisotropic interactions at a highly coarse-grained level. The HAS CG approach is the first step in an "aggressive" CG methodology designed to model multicomponent biological membranes at very large length and time scales.


Cascade Failure behaviour within power distribution networks was modelled and implemented in the programming language R. The power transported by each line in a network was calculated using DC flow analysis and compared to the capacity of the line. Lines were removed from the network and the flows were recalculated to simulate the behaviour of line protection devices. The model was used to demonstrate the varying degrees of failure which will occur depending on the spare capacity within a network at the time a failure occurs and depending on which line experiences the initial fault.


Inhibitory effects of curcumin are well documented on colon cancer cells, with minimal side effects on normal cells. Mechanisms mediating opposite effects of curcumin on normal vs cancer cells, remain unknown. We examined possible differential effects of curcumin on stem-cell-marker, DCLK1 in non-transformed (HEK-C, NCM460) vs transformed/cancer (HEKmGAS, HCT-116) cells. Curcumin (10-25μM) significantly inhibited growth of HEKmGAS/HCT-116 cells in a dose-dependent manner, with no significant effects on HEK-C cells. Surprisingly, transcript levels of DCLK1-S were increased by 3-10 fold in non-transformed cells, but decreased by 50-80% in transformed cells, which correlated with activation/inhibition of transiently transfected intron V promoter-reporter constructs in response to curcumin. Several cis elements, including NFκB binding sites, identified in intron V promoter, may play a role in transcribing DCLK1-S. Significant down-regulation of DCLK1-S by curcumin correlated with significant inhibition of NFκBp65 binding to intron V promoter in a ChIP assay. L-isoform of DCLK1 (DCLK1-L) was mainly expressed by non-transformed/normal cells, due to possible epigenetic silencing of DCLK1-L 5'promoter in cancer cells. The 5' promoter was positive for several cis elements including TCF/β-catenin binding sites. Since Wnt/β-catenin pathway is up-regulated in many cancer cells, transiently transfected 5' promoter-reporter constructs were activated by several fold in HEKmGAS/HCT-116 cells compared to that in non-transformed cells; curcumin significantly inhibited TCF expression and β-catenin binding to the 5' promoter in a ChIP assay. However, since 5' promoter is silenced in many cancer cells, significant effects of curcumin were not measured on DCLK1-L transcript in cancer cells. Curcumin did not inhibit DCLK1-L transcript in non-transformed cells, suggesting that pathways other than Wnt/β-catenin likely up-regulate DCLK1-L expression in normal cells, which may not be inhibited by curcumin. Role of other transcriptional factors in differential expression of S and L forms in non-transformed vs transformed cells remains unknown, which likely contributes to stimulatory vs inhibitory effects of curcumin on non-transformed vs transformed cells. It is speculated that significant differences in inhibitory effects of curcumin on transformed vs non-transformed cells may be due to significant differences in pathways inducing transcriptional activation of the promoters transcribing DCLK1-S/L isoforms. These differences may allow us to develop promoter-specific inhibitors for targeting cancer stem cells while sparing normal stem cells. This work was supported by NIH Grant to PS (R01CA09795909). Citation Format: Shubhashish Sarkar, Malaney O' Connell1, Stephanie M. Moya, Pomila Singh. Curcumin either stimulates or inhibits expression of short isoform of stem-cell-marker DCLK1 (DCLK1-S) in non-transformed vs transformed cells, resulting in stabilization/inhibition of growth, respectively. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2574. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-2574


This paper examines institutional investors' propensity to invest in a relatively unknown asset class of listed private equity. Based on data provided by LPEQ, Preqin and Scorpio Partnership covering 171 institutional investors in Europe in 2008–2010, we find allocations are primarily a function of size, type, location, decision-making authority and liquidity preferences. Investment in listed private equity is more commonly made by institutions that are smaller, private (not public) pension institutions, institutions that have a preference for liquidity, quick access, and administrative and cash flow management simplicity, and institutions that are based in the UK, Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands. As well, institutions are less likely to invest in listed private equity when investment decision-making is empowered to an alternative asset class team.


Thermal measurement and management is crucial in three dimensional integrated circuits (3DICs) technology because increasing temperature stress is one of the main challenges due to high power density. Because of the physical adjacency and use of Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) as thermal exchangers between the stacked layers, the thermal profiles of the layers are highly correlated with each other. Any planar hotspot in a layer in a 3DIC is converted to a volumetric spatial hotspot. Run time thermal management in 3DICs requires proper monitoring and measurement of these spatial hotspots inside the chip. Having spatial hotspots and high thermal correlation between layers is a motivation for designing 3D thermal sensors. A new ring oscillator based 3D thermal sensor is proposed in this paper. Use of this sensor will reduce total number of needed sensors to monitor a typical whole 3DIC by 48% with same reading error in comparison with use of conventional 2D sensors.


Homoclinic orbits play an important role in the study of qualitative behavior of dynamical systems. Such kinds of orbits have been studied since the time of Poincar e. In this paper, we discuss how to use variational methods to study the existence of homoclinic orbits of Hamiltonian systems.


Planar Fourier capture arrays (PFCAs) are optical sensors built entirely in standard microchip manufacturing flows. PFCAs are composed of ensembles of angle sensitive pixels (ASPs) that each report a single coefficient of the Fourier transform of the far-away scene. Here we characterize the performance of PFCAs under the following three non-optimal conditions. First, we show that PFCAs can operate while sensing light of a wavelength other than the design point. Second, if only a randomly-selected subset of 10% of the ASPs are functional, we can nonetheless reconstruct the entire far-away scene using compressed sensing. Third, if the wavelength of the imaged light is unknown, it can be inferred by demanding self-consistency of the outputs.


The behavior of the renormalized spin 2-point function in the O(3) and dodecahedron spin model are investigated numerically. The Monte Carlo data show excellent agreement between the two models. The short-distance behavior comes very close to standard theoretical expectations, yet it differs significantly from it. A possible explanation of this situation is offered.


SPECT/CT images in patients have demonstrated the ability of [99mTc]Tc-EDDA/HYNIC-Lys(Nal)-Urea-Glu ([99mTc]Tc-iPSMA) to detect tumors and metastases of prostate cancer. Considering that theranostics combines the potential of therapeutic and diagnostic radionuclides in the same molecular probe, the aim of this research was to estimate the biokinetics and dosimetry of 177Lu-DOTA-HYNIC-Lys(Nal)-Urea-Glu (177Lu-iPSMA) in healthy subjects and analyze the response in patients receiving 177Lu-iPSMA therapeutic doses. 177Lu-iPSMA was obtained from lyophilized formulations with radiochemical purities >98%. Whole-body images from five healthy subjects were acquired at 20 min, 6, 24, 48, and 120 h after 177Lu-iPSMA administration (185 MBq). The image sequence was used to extrapolate the 177Lu-iPSMA time-activity curves of each organ to adjust the biokinetic model and calculate the total number of disintegrations (N) that occurred in the source regions. N data were the input for the OLINDA/EXM code to calculate internal radiation doses. Ten patients (median age: 68 y; range 58–86 y) received from 1 to 4 cycles of 177Lu-iPSMA (3.7 or 7.4 GBq) every 8–10 weeks. Response was evaluated using the 68Ga-PSMA-ligand-PET/CT or 99mTc-iPSMA-SPECT/CT diagnostic images and serum PSA levels before and after 177Lu-iPSMA treatment. The blood activity showed a half-life value of 1.1 h for the fast component (T1/2α = ln2/0.614), 9.2 h for the first slow component (T1/2β = ln2/0.075), and 79.6 h for the second slow component (T1/2γ = ln2/0.008). The average absorbed doses were 0.23, 0.28, 0.88, and 1.17 Gy/GBq for the spleen, liver, kidney, and salivary glands. A total of 18 cycles were performed in 10 patients. A PSA decrease and some reduction of the radiotracer uptake (SUV) in tumor lesions occurred in 60% and 70% of the patients, respectively. 177Lu-iPSMA obtained from kit formulations showed high tumor uptake with good response rates in patients. The results obtained in this study warrant further clinical studies to establish the optimal number of treatment cycles and for evaluating the effect of this therapeutic agent on survival of patients.


This paper presents a research work which investigates experimentally the performance of a tension control system realized by a controlled disc brake. An experimental set-up was established by using a creel with step motor controlled disc brake, laser distance sensor, yarn tension sensor and a 2-unit winding machine. A software was developed in C programming language to read yarn tension and bobbin diameter data and then to control the disc brake by step motor drive. Experimental investigation was carried out with three different cotton yarn counts and unwinding speeds. It was shown that yarn tension changed from full to empty bobbin at a significant amount depending mainly on yarn number and unwinding speed. The feedback tension control system based on adjusting level of braking responded well to short, medium and long term tension variations and enabled unwinding tension control mostly within ±1 cN deviation from the adjusted value.


It is well known that the presence of invisible or faint companions of some stars has been predicted before these companions were actually discovered by telescopic means. The classic examples are Sirius and Procyon, for which Bessel in 1844 predicted, from irregularities in their proper motions, the existence of faint companions, which were discovered in 1861 and 1896, respectively, with powerful telescopes. C Cancri is a triple system consisting of two bodies A and B that revolve around each other in about 60 years, and a third body C that revolves around AB in about 677 years, but in an irregular way, which according to Seeliger can be explained by the presence of a dark body, revolving around C in 18 years. Later investigations give 17 years for this period, and it seems established that this fourth body is present, though it has never been found visually or spectroscopically. In I; Ursae Majoris the two components revolve around each other in 59.9 years, but Norlund found a perturbation with a period of 1.8 years in their motion and suggested the presence of an invisible companion. Earlier, Wright had announced that the bright component is a spectroscopic binary, and an examination of his plates indicated a period very close to the period of 1 . 8 years found by Norlund and later confirmed by Hertzsprung from photographic observations of the system. C Aquarii has recently been investigated by Strand.1 Its period is 400 years, but the deviations of the observations from Keplerian motion are large and regular, indicating the presence of a third, invisible body which revolves around one of the visible components in a circular orbit with a period of 25 years. Modern trigonometric parallax observations constitute the most accurate determinations of relative positions of stars. They are so accurate that it should well be possible, as pointed out by


Based on the study about the geological background of Beiya Gold Deposit, numerical simulation was conducted about the three-dimensional structural stress field for Beiya Gold Deposit by applying finite element theory and by employing a linear elasticity model. Results of the simulation indicate that the Beiya syncline is a faulted basin, and a hidden fracture occurs in the west wing of the syncline. Under the action of the EW-trending compressive force, four nearly NS-trending fractures (groups) were generated in the stress stretching areas of the two wings of the syncline, and these fractures constitute favorable tectonic positions for the upward intrusion of porphyry magma and the occurrence of Au-Pb-Zn polymetallic deposits.


This book charts a visual history of South Asian Britain from 1858 to the present. Written by Susheila Nasta and compiled with Florian Stadtler, it figures Britain's first Asian MPs and suffragettes as well as documenting the often forgotten histories of the working-classes: the lascars and ayahs settled in Britain from the mid nineteenth century and before. This book opens a window on to the complexity and depth of the South Asian presence in Britain offering new archival material drawn from a range of repositories in the UK, the US and South Asia. The visual images are accompanied by a narrative explicating the main historical moments and figures.


An increasing number of low-enthalpy geothermal power plants are being implemented in the Munich area with holes drilled into the Malm Formation (Upper Jurassic carbonates) to depths greater than 3000 m, where temperatures in excess of 100°C are encountered. Optimal development of geothermal productivity requires exploration of the geological structure, as well as information on the karstification of the Malm. Seismic surveys, including reprocessed older 2D lines from hydrocarbon exploration, new 2D lines filling gaps, and 3D surveys, are increasingly used for geothermal exploration. A geothermal power plant at Unterhaching, near Munich, has been producing heat and electrical power since 2009. A high resolution 3D seismic volume has been acquired over an area of 27 km2 for hydrological modelling purposes at the Gt2 reinjection well, located within the southern suburbs of Munich. First results show preferential hydraulic pathways along reactivated fault zones within the Malm reservoir which were partly active until the Aquitanian (Early Miocene). Additionally, a great number of sinkholes have been identified at the top Malm, located along fault zones which constitute new possible targets for geothermal exploration.


In a previous publication The Board's Responsibility for Information Technology Governance, (with Kara Altenbaumer-Price) we examined: The IT Governance Institute's Executive Summary and Framework for Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology 4.1 (COBIT®); reviewed the Weill and Ross Corporate and Key Asset Governance Framework; and observed "that in a survey of audit executives and board members, 58 percent believed that their corporate employees had little to no understanding of how to assess risk." We further described the new SEC rules on risk management; Congressional action on cyber security; legal basis for director's duties and responsibilities relative to IT governance; major sources of IT risk; schematic for an IT governance framework; suggested fundamental questions every board should ask; examined board structure, composition and required IT governance skills; litigation risks and a recital of recent cases; mitigating risk through insurance; and the importance of business continuity planning. As the result of the proliferation of cyberattacks during 2010 and 2011, the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance announced new disclosure guidance for cybersecurity issues during October, 2011. It has become apparent that newly-disclosed attacks on Information Technology infrastructure have reached crisis proportions. Therefore, a focus on IT governance must be a major priority of management and every corporate board. Issues involving Information Technology are uniquely complex and involve engineering skills that quickly become obsolete in this era of rapid technological change. Here, suggestions are offered about the value of a Chief Information Security Officer and recommendations are made for improving cybersecurity. An examination of recent threats will hopefully assist in bringing a greater understanding of their nature and increased focus on IT governance to the agenda in every boardroom.


Knowledge of microbial composition and antimicrobials' susceptibility to periodontal abscesses is vital for their successful treatment. The current study aims to provide a thorough overview of the clinical and microbial features of periodontal abscesses of the local community. The study was carried out at Rehman College of Dentistry, Peshawar, Pakistan between December 2019 to March 2020. Clinical measurements and microbial samples were collected from 45 subjects. Microbial samples were anaerobically cultured for the growth of selected bacterial species. E-test was used to assess the susceptibility of bacterial species grown from the patient samples to amoxicillin, azithromycin, metronidazole, and tetracycline. The majority of affected patients had preexisting chronic periodontitis. All abscesses clinically demonstrated bleeding on probing and suppuration. The periodontal abscess was most commonly associated with lower incisors and canines, followed by lower molars and then upper incisor and canine teeth. Fusobacterium spp. (73%) was the most frequently detected species followed by Prevotella intermedia/nigrescens (65%), Porphyromonas gingivalis (46%) and Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans (24%). The detected clinical isolates of certain bacteria demonstrated resistance to all tested antibiotics except azithromycin. We conclude that Fusobacterium spp., P. intermedia/nigrescens, P. gingivalis, C. rectus, T. forsythia and A. actinomycetemcomitans are closely associated with periodontal abscess. Bacterial species associated with periodontal abscess demonstrated some level of antimicrobial resistance to amoxicillin, metronidazole and tetracycline while antibiotic resistance to azithromycin could not be demonstrated.


Federated Learning (FL) facilitates distributed model development to aggregate multiple confidential data sources. The information transfer among clients can be compromised by distributional differences, i.e., by non-i.i.d. data. A particularly challenging scenario is the federated model adaptation to a target client without access to annotated data. We propose Federated Adversarial Cross Training (FACT), which uses the implicit domain differences between source clients to identify domain shifts in the target domain. In each round of FL, FACT cross initializes a pair of source clients to generate domain specialized representations which are then used as a direct adversary to learn a domain invariant data representation. We empirically show that FACT outperforms state-of-the-art federated, non-federated and source-free domain adaptation models on three popular multi-source-single-target benchmarks, and state-of-the-art Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) models on single-source-single-target experiments. We further study FACT's behavior with respect to communication restrictions and the number of participating clients.


AbstractObjective:To investigate the role of the methylation of p21 and p53 gene in laryngeal cancer and laryngeal cancer cell line Hep-2.Method: Methylation of p21 and p53 gene were detected by methylation specific PCR(MSP) in 46 cases with paired cancer tissues and adjacent tissues. Hep-2 cell line was treated with 5-azacytidine at different time points, and Hep-2 cell growth was detected using the MTT assay. Hep-2 cell line was treated with 5-azacytidine at different time points, and then apoptosis was detected by the TUNEL assay. The expression difference of p21 mRNA was detected by RT-PCR method before and after intervention. p21 promoter CpG island methylation status was tested by MSP before and after intervention.Result: The incidence was 45.7% of p21 gene promoter CpG island methylation in 46 cases of laryngeal cancer, while methylation rate in adjacent tissues was 10.9%. There were significant differences between cancer tissues and adjacent tissues(P<0.05).The incidence was 6.5% of p53 gene promoter CpG island methylation in 46 cases of laryngeal cancer, while methylation rate was 4.3% in adjacent tissues,no significant difference of p53 gene methylation was found in laryngeal cancer and counterparts adjacent tissues(P>0.05). The effect of Hep-2 proliferation inhibition interfered by 5-azacytidine was gradually increased over time in a time-dependent manner. Meanwhile, interfered by 5-azacytidine increased the apoptosis in a time-dependent manner. After interference by 5-azacytidine, p21 gene is activated. The expression of p21 mRNA was significantly higher. The p21 gene methylation degree in laryngeal cancer cell line Hep-2 was 43.13%±0.79%. After 5-azacytidine intervention, the degree of methylation was obviously decreased and even showed unmethylation.Conclusion:There was p21 gene promoter CpG island hypermethylation in laryngeal cancer and laryngeal cancer cell line Hep-2, which was a molecular event distinguished laryngeal cancer from normal laryngeal tissue. There was p53 gene promoter CpG island hypomethylation in laryngeal cancer and laryngeal cancer cell line Hep-2.Inactivation of the gene may occur by gene mutation forms and others. Demethylation of drug 5-azacytidine can induce p21 gene promoter CpG island demethylation modification, change the regulation of tumor cell cycle genes in cells and promote tumor cell apoptosis.


Abstract.
 Anthropogenic effects on ecosystems are one of the main causes of reduction in the planet's biodiversity. The present study aimed to assess the effect of habitat disturbance on the body condition of the Colombian endemic lizard Anolis antonii. Two populations from the department of Tolima (Colombia) were chosen for this work, one located in a secondary forest and the other in an agricultural area. Between January–June 2014, visual encounter surveys were simultaneously performed from 7:00–18:00 h in both habitats. Individuals were captured manually and sex, snout-vent length (SVL) and body mass (BM) were recorded for each. The Body Condition Index (BCI) was calculated from the residuals of the linear regression between BM and SVL, which was compared between the two populations (60 adults in the secondary forest and 52 in the agricultural area). No significant variation in SVL or BM was recorded in the inter- and intra-population comparisons, but the BM of lizards was closely related to SVL and the BCI of the population from the agricultural area was significantly lower than that of the secondary forest population. These results indicate that habitat disturbance as a consequence of agricultural practices has a negative impact on the body condition of A. antonii, which could reduce its abilities to compete and survive.


A new method for employed electron-electron (e-e) and electron-ion (e-i) interactions in Monte Carlo particle based simulators is presented. By using a corrected Coulomb force in conjunction with a proper cutoff range, the "double" counting of the long range interaction is eliminated while reducing the simulation time for molecular dynamics by a factor of 1000. The proposed method naturally incorporated the multi-ion contributions, local distortions in the scattering potential due to the movement of the free charges, and carrier-density fluctuations. The doping dependence of the low-field mobility obtained from three-dimensional (3-D) resistor simulation closely follows experimental results, thus proving the correctness of the proposed approach.


InGaN-GaN multiquantum-well (MQW) metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetectors (PDs) with the unactivated Mg-doped GaN cap layer were successfully fabricated. It was found that we could achieve a dark current by as much as six orders of magnitude smaller by inserting the unactivated Mg-doped GaN cap layer. For MSM photodetectors with the unactivated Mg-doped GaN cap layer, the responsivity at 380 nm was found to be 0.372 A/W when the device was biased at 5 V. The UV-to-visible rejection ratio was also estimated to be around 1.96 times 103 for the photodetectors with the unactivated Mg-doped GaN cap layer. With a 5-V applied bias, we found that minimum noise equivalent power and normalized detectivity of our PDs were 4.09 times 10-14 W and 1.18 times 1013 cmmiddotHz0.5W-1, respectively. Briefly, incorporating the unactivated Mg-doped GaN layer into the PDs beneficially brings about the suppression of dark current and a corresponding improvement in the device characteristics.


We present a detailed balance analysis of current density-voltage modeling of a single-nanowire solar cell. Our analysis takes into account intrinsic material nonidealities in order to determine the theoretical efficiency limit of the single-nanowire solar cell. The analysis only requires the nanowire's absorption cross-section over all angles, which can be readily calculated analytically. We show that the behavior of both the current and voltage is due to coherent effects that arise from resonances of the nanowire. In addition, we elucidate the physics of open-circuit voltage enhancement over bulk cells in nanowires, by showing that the enhancement is related to the removal of resonances in the immediate spectral vicinity above the bandgap.


A combination of stresses as it occurs on the field poses more challenges to crop production than individual stress. Crops' response to single stress also differs from that of combined stresses. The morpho-physiological responses of two cowpea varieties (IT89KD-288 and IT99K573-1-1) to a combination of stresses (water deficit stress and high light intensity) were investigated at different growth stages. Three levels of light intensities (L3: 259 Lux- 36%, L2: 394 Lux-55% and L1: 710.2 Lux-100%) were imposed using one, two and zero layer(s) of the net, respectively, while, water deficit stress at four levels (W1: no water stress; 0-5 bars, W2: moderate water stress; 5-15 bars, W3: moderately-severe; 15-40 bars and W4: severe water stress; 40 -70 bars) was imposed differently at vegetative and reproductive growth stages. Data were collected on the cowpea yield, Leaf Temperature (LT), Chlorophyll (C), Photosynthesis (P), Stomatal Conductance (SC) and Canopy Transpiration Rate (CTR). Exposure to W4 under L1 considerably reduced cowpea yield by 80% compared to those grown under L3 and full watering. Reduced light intensity enhanced cowpea grain yield irrespective of water deficit stress and IT89KD-288 was superior to IT99K573-1-1. Reduction in light intensity also increased the SC from 55.18 in L1 to 76.88 in 36 % L3. Full light intensity without water stress (100% light intensity), increased C content, while severe water stress reduced the C content and CTR. Photosynthesis was, however, reduced under low light intensity compared to 100% light intensity. It was also observed that water deficit stress imposed at the reproductive stage did not affect P, CTR and SC unlike that of the vegetative stage. In conclusion, reduced light intensity enhanced cowpea tolerance to water deficit and increased yield. Cowpea response was dependent on growth stage, variety and severity of stress.


Extracting information from full documents is an important problem in many domains, but most previous work focus on identifying relationships within a sentence or a paragraph. It is challenging to create a large-scale information extraction (IE) dataset at the document level since it requires an understanding of the whole document to annotate entities and their document-level relationships that usually span beyond sentences or even sections. In this paper, we introduce SciREX, a document level IE dataset that encompasses multiple IE tasks, including salient entity identification and document level N-ary relation identification from scientific articles. We annotate our dataset by integrating automatic and human annotations, leveraging existing scientific knowledge resources. We develop a neural model as a strong baseline that extends previous state-of-the-art IE models to document-level IE. Analyzing the model performance shows a significant gap between human performance and current baselines, inviting the community to use our dataset as a challenge to develop document-level IE models. Our data and code are publicly available at https://github.com/allenai/SciREX .


Abstract This contribution focuses on letters written by private soldiers from Denmark around the middle of the 19th century. It investigates whether there were statistically significant differences in the orthographic skills between the social groups into which the rural male population could be classified at that time. Apart from the writers' social rank, I look at the correlation between the percentage of norm divergence and the correspondents' place and time of birth, as well as the length of the letter and the repeated use of specific types of divergences by the correspondents.


For many years there has been a consensus that early linguistic experience exerts a profound and often permanent effect on the perceptual abilities underlying the identification and discrimination of stop consonants. It has also been concluded that selective modification of the perception of stop consonants cannot be accomplished easily and quickly in the laboratory with simple discrimination training techniques. In the present article we report the results of three experiments that examined the perception of a three-way voicing contrast by naive monolingual speakers of English. Laboratory training procedures were implemented with a small computer in a real-time environment to examine the perception of voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated stops differing in voice onset time. Three perceptual categories were present for most subjects after only a few minutes of exposure to the novel contrast. Subsequent perceptual tests revealed reliable and consistent labeling and categorical-like discrimination functions for all three voicing categories, even though one of the contrasts is not phonologically distinctive in English. The present results demonstrate that the perceptual mechanisms used by adults in categorizing stop consonants can be modified easily with simple laboratory techniques in a short period of time.


Group-contribution values are presented and, together with those already developed for the aliphatic hydrocarbons (10, 11), make possible the evaluation of both van der Waals' constants for the naphthenic hydrocarbons. These constants can be used to produce the critical temperatures, pressures, and volumes of these compounds entirely from a knowledge of their chemical structure.

Critical constants have been calculated for several naphthenes, and from a comparison of them with the constants resulting from the methods of Riedel (5, 6) and Lydersen (3) it was found that the critical constants calculated by these three methods were in fair agreement for naphthenes having short alkyl side chains and progressively deviated from each other as the chains were permitted to lengthen. An appraisal has been made on five naphthenes along the lines proposed by Sondak and Thodos (9) in order to see whether these calculated critical constants properly represent the vapor-pressure function resulting from vapor-pressure data found in the literature for these hydrocarbons.

Critical constants have been produced for more than fifty naphthenes, for which vapor-pressure data are available in the literature, and will be used in a separate, comprehensive vapor-pressure study for hydrocarbons of this type.


In order to maintain popular support or at least acquiescence, autocrats must control the rapacious tendencies of other members of the governing elite. At the same time, the support of this elite is at least as important as the support of the broader population. This creates difficult tradeoffs and limits the autocrat's ability to enforce discipline. We explore this issue in the context of Chinese leader Xi Jinping's ongoing anti-corruption campaign. There have been two schools of thought about this campaign. One holds that it is nothing but a cover for intra-elite struggle and a purge of Xi's opponents, while the other finds more credibility in the CCP's claim that the movement is sincere. In this article, we demonstrate three facts, using a new dataset we have created. First, we use the political connections revealed by legal documents and media reports to visualize the corruption network. We demonstrate that although many of the corrupt officials are connected, Xi's most prominent political opponent, Bo Xilai, is less central by any network measure than other officials who were not viewed as challenging Xi's leadership. Second, we use a recursive selection model to analyze who the campaign has targeted, providing evidence that even personal ties to top leaders provided little protection. Finally, using another comprehensive dataset on the prefectural-city level, we show that the provinces later targeted by the corruption campaign differed from the rest in important ways. In particular, it appears that promotion patterns departed from the growth-oriented meritocratic selection procedures evidence in other provinces. Overall, our findings contradict the factional purge view and are more consistent with the view that the campaign is indeed primarily an attempt to root out systemic corruption problems.


Repetitive DNA in the mammalian genome is a valuable record and marker for evolution, providing information about the order and driving forces related to evolutionary events. The evolutionarily young 1.709 satellite IV DNA family is present near the centromeres of many chromosomes in the Bovidae. Here, we isolated 1.709 satellite DNA sequences from five Bovidae species belonging to Bovini: Bos taurus (BTA, cattle), Bos indicus (BIN, zebu), Bubalus bubalis (BBU, water buffalo) and Tragelaphini tribes: Taurotragus oryx (TOR, eland) and Tragelaphus euryceros (TEU, bongo). Its presence in both tribes shows the sequence predates the evolutionary separation of the two tribes (more than 10 million years ago), and primary sequence shows increasing divergence with evolutionary distance. Genome organization (Southern hybridization) and physical distribution (in situ hybridization) revealed differences in the molecular organization of these satellite DNA sequences. The data suggest that the sequences on the sex chromosomes and the autosomes evolve as relatively independent groups, with the repetitive sequences suggesting that Bovini autosomes and the Tragelaphini sex chromosomes represent the more primitive chromosome forms.


Introduction: Several factors play the role of barriers to GP-s and most of them avoid discussing the erectile dysfunction (ED) problem with their patients, even though a part of the patients hope the doctor would initiate such a discussion. Taking into account the relationship of ED with a number of socially significant diseases, these barriers impede the diagnostic process. Objective: To identify possible barriers to Bulgarian primary care physicians to address and discuss the ED problem with their patients. Materials and methods: The opinions of 12 GP-s from the town of Plovdiv, randomly selected, were studied using qualitative research methods, interview with standard open-ended questions, asked by the research investigator. An audio recording was made and transcribed by the interviewer and by two other research investigators. The obtained data are the result of a consensus. Results: Even though the majority of participants point out that doctors do not avoid and should not avoid commenting on problems, related to the sex life of their patients, only one participant declared to always raise this issue before them. Constraining factors (barriers), pointed out by the colleagues, are lack of training in this aspect of health, also lack of training in asking intimate questions, the perception that sex problems of patients are not among "essential" diseases, associated with "survival", refusal of the patient, lack of time, waiting for the patient to raise this issue first and "personal taboos" of the doctor himself. The respondents point that doctors share the same inhibitions as their patients, as they are a part of the same society and are influenced by various cultural factors. Other factors, that play role of a barrier, are patient – physician gender discordance, lack of confidence and lack of experience with the patients with ED, physician personal sexual experience, when doctors do not apply holistic approach and when physicians do not percept ED as a disease. Conclusion: This survey is the first of its kind in Bulgaria. The results of the survey show that a variety of factors, including factors, related to doctor's personality, acts as barriers that impede doctors from proactively asking about and discussing sexuality issues and ED in particular. The overcoming of these barriers would present an opportunity to improve the therapeutic result.


This paper presents analysis of issues related to civil society (CS) participation in the Peace Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) for Northern Uganda as conceptualised by the government of Uganda (GoU). This was a prospective study considering that PRDP implementation started in July 2009and will be completed in 2011. Gulu District was selected because it is one of the districts that were largely affected by the Lord"s Resistance Amy (LRA) conflict and it is assumed that CS activities have been at the centre of interventions to deal with the conflict and recovery. The study explores different ways in which civil society organisations (CSOs) have participated in the process of PRDP and analyses the underlying reasons behind CS participation in PRDP. I rely on Arnstein's (1969) ladder of participation to analyse the different aspects of CS participation. This paper argues that CS participation in PRDP is narrow, greatly manipulated and controlled by the government and highly influenced by the major foreign donors" agendas it may not influence the process to have empowered communities in northern Uganda. -- Relevance to Development Studies --
Globally, CS participation in the development process is considered part and parcel of the development processes by different actors as noted in Stiles (2000:32). There are various discussions of the concept CS about what it means or does not mean as Burnell (2009:69). The role of CS in development process is another contested arena as this study will show. This study shall con-tribute to the current debates about participation of CSOs in the current main framework of development using PRDP in Gulu district of Uganda as a case study.


This paper presents the suitable depth of cut, spindle speed and feed rate that will be chosen during machining. If thus parameters are not considered, this can provoke abnormal tool behavior such as chatter. Chatter will limit the tool life which only can be use for just a few times. To predict the chatter occurs, the parameters will be use are spindle speed, depth of cut and feed rate. CNC machine will be use. This process will base on dynamic cutting force model for ball end milling. The selections of cutting tool are depends on the process that will done where the chatter can be observed during this machining process. Cold work tool steel (AISI-D2) chosen as a material and its parameter is 100x100x25 mm. Cutter used was high speed steel 2 flute ball nose. Force dynamometer will be use to measure force and 27 tests will be done to observe the chatter occur. Analysis done by referring the result that be measured by force dynamometer. The chatter in ball end milling can be detected from the calculated cutting forces and their frequency spectra. A comparison of the predicted and measured cutting forces demonstrated that the proposed method provides accurate results.


Functional PtII ppy-type complexes (ppy = 2-phenylpyridine anion) with pyridine and chloride monodentate ligands are prepared, which show high electroluminescence efficiencies.


Mining counterfactual antecedents became a valuable tool to discover knowledge and explain machine learning models. It consists of generating synthetic samples from an original sample to achieve the desired outcome in a machine learning model thus helping to understand the prediction. An insightful methodology would explore a broader set of counterfactual antecedents to reveal multiple possibilities while operating on any classifier. Thus, we create a tree-based search that requires monotonicity from the objective functions (a.k.a. cost functions); it allows pruning branches that will not improve the objective functions. Since monotonicity is only required for the objective function, this method can be used for any family of classifiers (e.g., linear models, neural networks, decision trees). However, additional classifier properties speed up the tree-search when it foresees branches that will not result in feasible actions. Moreover, the proposed optimization generates a diverse set of Pareto-optimal counterfactual antecedents by relying on multi-objective concepts. The results show an algorithm with working guarantees that enumerates a wide range of counterfactual antecedents. It helps the decision-maker understand the machine learning decision and finds alternatives to achieve the desired outcome. The user can inspect these multiple counterfactual antecedents to find the most suitable one and have a broader understanding of the prediction.


Abstract Studies have demonstrated that both mortality and severe illness rates exist significant difference in different gender COVID-19 patients, but the reasons are still very mysterious to date. Here, we firstly find that the survival outcome of female patients is better to male patients through analyzing the 3044 COVID-19 cases. Secondly, we identify many important master regulators [e.g. STAT1/STAT2 and zinc finger (ZNF) proteins], in particular female patients can express more ZNF proteins and stronger transcriptional activities than male patients in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Thirdly, we discover that ZNF protein activity is significantly negative correlation with the SARS-CoV-2 load of COVID-19 patients, and ZNF proteins as transcription factors can also activate their target genes to participate in anti-SARS-CoV-2 infection. Fourthly, we demonstrate that ZNF protein activity is positive correlation with the abundance of multiple immune cells of COVID-19 patients, implying that the highly ZNF protein activity might promote the abundance and the antiviral activity of multiple immune cells to effectively suppress SARS-CoV-2 infection. Taken together, our study proposes an underlying anti-SARS-COV-2 role of ZNF proteins, and differences in the amount and activity of ZNF proteins might be responsible for the distinct prognosis of different gender COVID-19 patients.


TARGET AUDIENCE – Researchers and clinicians interested in the differentiation between hemorrhagic and calcified brain lesions. PURPOSE – Characterization of brain lesions as hemorrhages or calcifications is an important clinical neuroimaging task. The gold-standard technique for this is computed tomography (CT), on which both types of lesions appear hyper-dense, but calcifications have a higher CT number (HU>100). Major pitfalls of CT are the low sensitivity toward small hemorrhages and its use of ionizing radiation, which is generally to be avoided. Differentiation between calcifications and hemorrhages with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a major challenge and has been subject to intense research over the past decade. In the clinical community susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) MRI phase images are often considered to be a viable source of information on the lesion type, on the basis that hemorrhages are more paramagnetic and calcifications more diamagnetic than surrounding parenchyma. This results in opposed effects on the MRI phase. Depending on the vendor of the MRI system hemorrhages and calcifications are considered to have bright and dark phase values in their center, respectively, or the other way around. This approach is clinically established in many hospitals, although it is well-known that MRI phase only indirectly reflects tissue magnetic susceptibility because it critically depends on the geometric shape of susceptibility inclusions and on their orientation relative to the main magnetic field. In this work we demonstrate the limitations of phasebased lesion characterization in a simple numerical model. METHODS – Numerical model: We created a simple numerical model to illustrate the dependence of the lesion phase on the orientation of the lesion relative to the main magnetic field. A homogeneous ellipsoid with semi-major axis (x,y,z) of 50, 30 and 10 voxels was created on a 256 numerical grid in MATLAB (2013b, The MathWorks, Natick, MA). We chose an ellipsoid lesion shape because of its simplicity and because both elongated longitudinal lesions and spherical lesions are opposite extreme cases of an ellipsoid. The lesion was modelled relatively large with respect to the grid size to avoid discretization artifacts. The absolute lesion size is irrelevant for this simulation, because only the strength of the field perturbation due to a susceptibility inclusion scales with its size while the distribution pattern remains invariant. The ellipsoid's susceptibility was chosen to be +0.5 ppm (paramagnetic) relative to the surrounding tissue, a typical susceptibility value for hemorrhages in the human brain, while calcifications could be modeled as -0.5ppm (diamagnetic). We carried out the simulations only for a paramagnetic lesion and did not repeat the simulation for a diamagnetic lesion because the simulations are invariant with respect to the polarity of the susceptibility distribution. Results for a diamagnetic lesion can be directly obtained from the results of the simulation using the paramagnetic lesion by multiplication with -1. Experimental design: The magnetic field perturbation due to the lesion was computed by fast forward field calculation and converted to phase at 20 ms and 3 Tesla, typical for SWI experiments. We successively repeated the phase computation for different orientations of the ellipsoid lesion relative to the main magnetic field, mimicking different orientations of an ellipsoid lesion in the brain. However, instead of rotating our lesion model, we rotated the magnetic field direction in steps of 2° from 0° to 180° around the x-axis, beginning with the magnetic field in the customary +z-direction. To compare simple direct analysis of the phase values to a comprehensive numerical analysis of the phase distribution pattern, each phase dataset was fed into a recently proposed method for quantifying the susceptibility from phase, quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM). This technique has previously been used as a quantitative means to characterize lesions based on phase and has been validated by CT. Here, we used the simplest QSM technique, thresholded k-space division (TKD; threshold 0.1). Analysis: We measured the mean phase and susceptibility values inside of the lesions as a function of the rotation angle. RESULTS – Figure 1 shows mean phase (left) and mean calculated susceptibility (right) inside the lesion as a function of the rotation angle for both a paramagnetic (black) and a diamagnetic (orange) lesion. A separation between hemorrhage and calcification is impossible due to the overlap of the curves. Calculated susceptibility values were clearly separated and, apart from minor deviations, were consistent with the model input magnetic susceptibility of ±0.5 ppm. The small deviations from ±0.5 ppm can be attributed to the simplicity of the QSM reconstruction algorithm (TKD). Figure 2 shows phase and reconstructed susceptibility maps (QSM) for different orientations (indicated by the black arrows) of the paramagnetic model. As expected, both phase and magnetic susceptibility were constant throughout the lesions but the phase values inside the lesions depended on the orientation (red arrows). While the external magnetic field perturbation of the lesion changed with orientation, the polarity of the field was constant when assessed in the direction of the magnetic field (bright; blue arrows). This observation is important, as the slice orientation in SWI is usually chosen perpendicular to the main magnetic field, allowing assessment of the field perturbation of the lesion along the direction of the blue arrows in Figure 2. DISCUSSION – Our simulation illustrated that a separation between paramagnetic and diamagnetic lesions is not possible based on phase values inside the lesion, due to the phase being dependent on orientation with the magnetic field. Consequently, the mean phase inside lesions must not be used as a criterion for differentiating between hemorrhages and calcifications. However, our results also indicate that if slices are oriented strictly perpendicular to the main magnetic field, a lesion may be characterized by observing its external field (Figure 2). While this strategy has been used heuristically in several studies, it should be noted that it is only valid for ellipsoid lesions and cannot be generalized to arbitrary shapes. Further research is required on the generalization of this observation to other lesion shapes, which has, to the best of our knowledge, not been carried out. Furthermore, in the clinical setting correct alignment of the imaging slab often cannot be guaranteed, potentially leading to false diagnosis even if a lesion has a perfectly ellipsoid shape. QSM has been shown in this and other studies to overcome the non-locality and orientation dependence of MRI phase and to allow a specific differentiation of hemorrhagic and calcified lesion. QSM should generally be preferred over direct phase measurements for lesion characterization. CONCLUSION – It is impossible to differentiate between hemorrhagic and calcified brain lesions based only on SWI phase values of voxels inside a lesion. This strategy should not be used in clinical routine imaging. QSM provides a means to objectively characterize lesions based on all available information.


Introduction: Providing affordable, accessible, quality health services is critical to attaining Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Despite this, progress in many Pacific Island countries and territories could be faster. Digital health is an advancement in information communication technology that is anticipated to change health care delivery.
Methods:  A systematic review of the literature and 5-years of Pacific Heads of Health, Pacific Health Ministers, and WHO's (Western Pacific) Regional Committee meeting reports was conducted. In addition, an umbrella review of the literature pertaining to digital health's use to address health systems challenges in low-and middle-income countries was undertaken and key-informant interviews with policymakers, digital health managers, technical advisors, development specialists, and donors were held. Data was thematically analysed using an inductive approach. Finally, a series of consultations were held with Pacific Health Information Network members to test findings and refine recommendations.
Results/Discussion: Four broad UHC-related challenges and associated priority digital health responses were identified. The challenges identified were a need to: (i) build systems for the collection and timely exchange of health data to support clinical management and health system planning; (ii) address barriers to accessing quality health care services (particularly in rural areas); (iii) improve mechanisms for communication between health staff and functions of the health system, and (iv) address workforce training and essential skills development. Priority digital health responses identified include electronic health and patient information systems, telehealth, digital stock and supply chain management systems, technology-supported collection and linkage of population data, digitally enabled health worker-to health-worker communication and digital clinical decision-making.
Conclusion: While digital health can enhance health system function through accelerated access to and exchange of information, it does not replace fundamental health systems components such as a sufficient skilled health workforce, supply chains, health reporting, financing, or governance. Where adopted appropriately, digital health offers opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of established health enterprises and improve access to equitable and quality health care.


Abstract Neuropathology in Huntington's disease (HD) known to project to areas that process olfactory information raises the questions of which olfactory function, if any, is most affected in HD, and how to explain such dysfunction in terms of olfactory sensitivity and cognition. These questions were studied by comparing HD patients and controls (matched for age, gender, and education) on absolute detection, intensity discrimination, quality discrimination, short-term recognition memory, and lexical- and picture-based identification for odor. Taste or vision were used as comparison modalities. The results suggest that whereas odor-recognition memory is not affected in patients with HD, these patients have impaired olfactory functioning with respect to absolute detection, intensity discrimination, quality discrimination, and identification. The three latter impairments were significantly explained by poor detection sensitivity. Odor identification was the function most affected. (JINS, 1995, I, 281–290.)


MicroRNAs are short noncoding 18-25 nucleotide long RNA which bind and inhibit mRNA. Currently, there are over 1000 known human microRNAs, and microRNAs control over 50% of mammalian protein coding genes. MicroRNAs can be overexpressed or repressed in different diseases and inhibition or replacement of microRNAs is a promising area of study for therapeutics. Here we review the current knowledge of microRNA therapy, and discuss ways in which they can be utilized. We also discuss different methods of delivery of miRNA, and current clinical trials of microRNA-based therapies for disease. Finally we discuss the current limitations in the field, and how these limitations are being overcome.


Abstract Magnetorheological (MR) fluids provide an elegant means to enhance vibration control in primary vehicle suspensions. Such fluids can rapidly modify their flow characteristics in response to a magnetic field, so they can be used to create semi-active dampers. However, the behaviour of MR dampers is inherently non-linear and as a consequence, the choice of an effective control strategy remains an unresolved problem. Previous research has developed a method to linearize the damper's force/velocity response, to allow implementation of classical control techniques. In the present study, this strategy is used to implement skyhook damping laws within primary automotive suspensions. To simulate the vehicle suspension, a two-degree-of-freedom quarter car model is used, which is excited by realistic road profiles. The controller performance is investigated experimentally using the hardware-in-the-loop-simulation (HILS) method. This experimental method is described in detail and its performance is validated against numerical simulations for a simplified problem. The present authors demonstrate that feedback linearization can provide significant performance enhancements in terms of passenger comfort, road holding, and suspension working space compared with other control strategies. Furthermore, feedback linearization is shown to desensitize the controller to uncertainties in the input excitation such as changes in severity of the road surface roughness.


At the time of diagnosis more than 65% of patients with colorectal cancer have advanced disease and require chemotherapeutic treatment. However, colorectal tumors demonstrate pronounced heterogeneity, leading to significant individual variation in sensitivity to standard chemotherapeutic drugs. Tools for assessing chemosensitivity and tailoring therapeutic regimens to the individual patient are therefore urgently needed. A promising approach is to isolate viable cancer cells from patient tissue and to test the chemosensitivity of the individual tumor in vitro. The aim of the current study was to establish primary colorectal cancer cell cultures from patient tissue and investigate if the cultured cells retain important characteristics of the original tumor. Small cell clusters were isolated from colorectal tumor tissue and allowed to form cell spheroids in suspension culture. The cell type composition of patient spheroids was characterized by immunostaining with cell type specific antibodies. Spheroid size was monitored over time and growth curves established for each patient. The distribution of proliferating and apoptotic cells in the spheroids was assessed by staining for specific markers. The 3D culture system was verified as a tumor model by comparing the results obtained for the spheroids to paraffin-embedded sections of the original tumors. Successful spheroid culture was obtained from more than 80% of tissue samples. Immunostaining confirmed that the primary cultures were composed of colorectal cancer cells, without significant contaminations by other cell types. Growth could be observed as an increase in spheroid size. The dominating cell populations of the original tumor could generally be identified in the derived spheroids as well. In summary, spheroid cultures of colorectal cancer cells can be established from tumor tissue of individual patients with a high success rate and the formed spheroids retain important cellular characteristics of the original tumor. Culture of colorectal cancer cells as spheroids represents a promising method for establishing primary cultures for chemotherapeutic screening of the individual patient. Citation Format: Maria Jeppesen, Grith Hagel, Anders Glenthoj, Ole Thastrup, Lars Nannestad Jorgensen, Jacob Thastrup. Spheroid culture of colorectal cancer cells from patient tumor tissue preserves important cellular characteristics of the parental tumor. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2718. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-2718


BACKGROUND
Macrophage accumulation is a prominent feature in many forms of glomerulonephritis. Local proliferation of macrophages within the kidney has been described in human and experimental glomerulonephritis and may have an important role in augmenting the inflammatory response. The current study examined the relationship between local macrophage proliferation and renal expression of macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF).

METHODS
A total of 118 renal biopsies of patients with a wide range of glomerulonephridities were examined for M-CSF protein and macrophage proliferation (KP1+PCNA+cells) by single and double immunohistochemistry staining, respectively.

RESULTS
Biopsies of thin membrane disease (TMD) with histologically normal kidney showed M-CSF protein expression by 33% of cortical tubules, while glomerular M-CSF expression was limited to resident macrophages and some podocytes. Glomerular M-CSF expression increased significantly in proliferative forms of glomerulonephritis, with M-CSF staining of infiltrating macrophages, podocytes and some mesangial cells. Segmental areas of strong M-CSF expression, particularly in crescents, co-localized with KP1+PCNA+ proliferating macrophages. There was also an increase in tubular M-CSF expression in most types of glomerulonephritis. Tubular M-CSF staining was strongest in areas of tubular damage and co-localized with KP1+ macrophages, including KP1+PCNA+ proliferating macrophages. Many interstitial macrophages and alpha-smooth muscle actin-positive myofibroblasts showed strong M-CSF staining. Statistical analysis showed a highly significant correlation between M-CSF expression and local macrophage proliferation in both the glomerulus and tubulointerstitium. Glomerular and tubular M-CSF expression gave a significant correlation with renal dysfunction.

CONCLUSIONS
Glomerular and tubulointerstitial M-CSF expression is up-regulated in human glomerulonephritis, being most prominent in proliferative forms of disease. This correlated with local macrophage proliferation, suggesting that increased renal M-CSF production plays an important role in regulating local macrophage proliferation in human glomerulonephritis.


A number of observations have appeared in the literature indicating that haloperidol may be of value in the treatment of children with certain types of behaviour disorder (Haberlandt, 1963; Rogers, 1965). There has, however, been a dearth of controlled observations to support these impressions, though there is evidence that the drug is of value in the tics of Gilles de la Tourette's disease (Connell et al., 1967). The present paper reports a controlled pilot study of haloperidol in overactive and aggressive children.


A simple tool, called the maximum ratio, is described that serves as a measure of closeness among comparable estimates and as the basis of a test for determining that at least one of the estimates under comparison will be more than 100..cap alpha..% of the target parameter away from the target parameter being estimated where 0 < ..cap alpha.. < 1.


Abstract We here present the general outline of the project "Open up, Sky!", a pilot project of astronomy education in a Juvenile detention institution in Sardinia, Italy. The project is still in progress, and we report here the first preliminary results.


Background: Hypospadias repair is a common pediatric operation. Several kinds of dressings are currently available, with their benefits and side effects. Aim: The aim of our study was to introduce a new method of dressing, by pouring several layers of cyanoacrylate (CA) glue as the dressing, in hypospadias surgery. Materials and Methods: Twenty out of the 61 patients with hypospadias, with a mean age of 13.5 months, were enrolled in this study. Forty-one had conventional dressing (pressure wrap dressing), while CA glue was used in 20 patients. CA glue was applied around the penis and its base four times and each time it took one minute to dry. All patients were followed postoperatively for two weeks and six to twelve months, for early and late complications, respectively. Results: One out of 20 developed wound hematoma, one had skin necrosis with infection, and edema was present in all. All these were easily diagnosed and managed rapidly. In the group treated with conventional methods, there were five infections, seven hematomas, all the patients in the group had edema and painful removal of the dressing, and 10 needed repeat dressing. Conclusions: CA glue is impermeable to urine and stool, and prevents edema and hematoma. Used in several layers, it is a good alternative dressing in hypospadias surgery.


The ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN) of the cat is encapsulated by a marginal shell which is anatomically distinct from the central core of the VCN. Physiologically, little is known about the marginal shell. We report here a new finding that the marginal shell of the anteroventral cochlear nucleus (AVCN) in the unanesthetized decerebrate cat contains neural units which were weakly driven or not driven acoustically. The locations of the single units were histologically determined. Our observations also included other neural units of the marginal shell which were strongly driven acoustically; the latter results will be reported separately. The present physiological findings, together with previous anatomical findings of vestibular and somatosensory inputs to the AVCN marginal shell, suggest that some neurons of the AVCN marginal shell receive non-auditory sensory inputs besides weak auditory inputs and that these may play a role in multi-sensory processing.


Background Arterial stiffness assessed by pulse wave velocity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The incidence of cardiovascular events remains high in diabetics. However, a clinical prediction model for elevated arterial stiffness using machine learning to identify subjects consequently at higher risk remains to be developed. Methods Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and support vector machine-recursive feature elimination were used for feature selection. Four machine learning algorithms were used to construct a prediction model, and their performance was compared based on the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve metric in a discovery dataset (n = 760). The model with the best performance was selected and validated in an independent dataset (n = 912) from the Dryad Digital Repository (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m484p). To apply our model to clinical practice, we built a free and user-friendly web online tool. Results The predictive model includes the predictors: age, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and body mass index. In the discovery cohort, the gradient boosting-based model outperformed other methods in the elevated arterial stiffness prediction. In the validation cohort, the gradient boosting model showed a good discrimination capacity. A cutoff value of 0.46 for the elevated arterial stiffness risk score in the gradient boosting model resulted in a good specificity (0.813 in the discovery data and 0.761 in the validation data) and sensitivity (0.875 and 0.738, respectively) trade-off points. Conclusion The gradient boosting-based prediction system presents a good classification in elevated arterial stiffness prediction. The web online tool makes our gradient boosting-based model easily accessible for further clinical studies and utilization.


Digitalization causes disruptive changes in leadership practices. Understanding digitalization is thus important yet our review of the literature shows that: (1) the science and practice of leadership are still immature and need more research; and (2) the current driving force of changes in leadership is the long-time neglected contextual factor. In our paper, we aim to tackle both, theoretical and practical needs in leadership research. The theoretical part of our paper starts with a review of leadership literature. The old ways of leading people will not work in the creative economy where the competitive advantage of organizations is founded on learning, creativity, and innovation. We introduce an emerging leadership paradigm where trust, collaborative learning, co-creation, sharing and communicating in networks, connecting people dominate rather than commanding and controlling. The empirical part of our paper is exploratory where we seek to identify the implications of digitalization by answering two questions: How is digitalization changing current and future leadership practices? Who are the digileaders? We rely on the findings of a qualitative survey that targets middle managers as active business practitioners in Finland. Our survey focuses on two areas: (1) the current and future leadership tasks and practices of middle managers; and (2) the competencies and qualifications of digileaders. We also aim at identifying those leadership tasks that could be digitalized in the future. We discuss the overall impact of digitalization on leadership practices.


Supercontinuum (SC) can be generated directly from a random fiber laser (RFL). However, its spectral bandwidth and flatness need to be further optimized for many practical applications. To solve this issue, a RFL based on random distributed Rayleigh scattering in photonic crystal fiber is demonstrated for the first time in this paper. The experimental results revealed that compared with the traditional single or double clad fiber, photonic crystal fiber not only can provide random distributed feedback effectively, but is also a superior nonlinear medium for SC generation which can realize better spectral width and flatness. A flat SC covering 400 nm to 2300 nm is obtained directly from a RFL based on photonic crystal fiber and the corresponding 20 dB bandwidth is more than 1600 nm, which is the widest ever reported to the best of our knowledge. The optical rogue waves caused by solitonic collisions can explain the instability of the output pulses in the time domain. This work proves that photonic crystal fiber can be used in RFL to provide random distributed feedback as well as nonlinear medium for spectrum broadening, and the spectral width and flatness of the generated SC is as good as the conventional method of using a high peak power pulsed laser to pump a piece of photonic crystal fiber, which can greatly reduce the cost of the SC and enrich the research scope of SC as well as RFL.


Ontology is a conceptualization of a domain into machine readable format. Ontologies are becoming increasingly popular modelling schemas for knowledge management services and applications. Focus on developing tools to graphically visualise ontologies is rising to aid their assessment and analysis. Graph visualisation helps to browse and comprehend the structure of ontologies. A number of ontology visualizations exist that have been embedded in ontology management tools. The primary goal of this paper is to analyze recently implemented ontology visualization tools and their contributions in the enrichment of users' cognitive support. This work also presents the preliminary results of an evaluation of three visualization tools to determine the suitability of each method for end user applications where ontologies are used as browsing aids with a case of Diabetes data..


The structure and delivery of clinical services at an adolescent psychiatric community residential program (PCR), located in New Jersey, was evaluated and compared to national clinical guidelines in order to determine the effectiveness of the services being delivered. A multitude of demographic and clinical variables were examined through the review of 70 closed medical records over a 5-year period. An exploration of the history, rationale, and effectiveness of residential treatment services for adolescents is also presented, along with recommendations for the delivery of more effective clinical services. PROGRAM EVALUATION v Table of


ABSTRACT Background The first-person experiences of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) is an important area of research. It can support clinical and ethical practice, and nuance and expand on insights offered by diagnostic and treatment-oriented research approaches. In this study, we aimed to develop knowledge about how persons who were recently diagnosed with BPD experience being in relationships with themselves and others. Methods We conducted in-depth life-world interviews with 12 women recently diagnosed with BPD. The interviews focused on their lived experiences of relationships to self and others. All participants gave their informed consents to participate. We analysed the data with a structured approach to reflexive thematic analysis, conducted as a team-based approach. Results We extracted an overarching theme, "Reaching for firm holdings", that is the most abstract interpretation of participants' experiences. The five subordinate themes ("Captive of emotions", "Keeping undeservedness at bay", "Distrusting oneself", "Dependence as stability" and "The uncertainty of reaching out") are specific constituents of the overarching theme, and provide detail and variations across individual accounts. Conclusions The results suggest that the experience of relationship to self and others of people recently diagnosed with BPD entails feeling insecure, unsafe and frightened. We report five themes that describe ways participants seek to cope with this situation. The results indicate that their experiences encompass turning to others, or to objects, for feelings of safety. As such, the experience of relationship to self and others in the context of receiving a BPD diagnosis seemed to entail finding and evolving strategies to protect a vulnerable self. Self-harm, suicide attempts and addiction all seemed to be ways of handling and tolerating chaotic and frightful emotions. One major limitation of our study is that only people who identified as female were recruited to participate in the study.


Many researchers have noted that web search queries are often ambiguous or unclear. We present an approach for identifying the popular meanings of queries using web search logs and user click behavior. We show our approach to produce more complete and user-centric intents than expert judges by evaluating on TREC queries. This approach was also used by the TREC 2009 Web Track judges to obtain more representative topic descriptions from real queries.


IMPORTANCE
Interventions based on behavioral science might reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing.

OBJECTIVE
To assess effects of behavioral interventions and rates of inappropriate (not guideline-concordant) antibiotic prescribing during ambulatory visits for acute respiratory tract infections.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Cluster randomized clinical trial conducted among 47 primary care practices in Boston and Los Angeles. Participants were 248 enrolled clinicians randomized to receive 0, 1, 2, or 3 interventions for 18 months. All clinicians received education on antibiotic prescribing guidelines on enrollment. Interventions began between November 1, 2011, and October 1, 2012. Follow-up for the latest-starting sites ended on April 1, 2014. Adult patients with comorbidities and concomitant infections were excluded.

INTERVENTIONS
Three behavioral interventions, implemented alone or in combination: suggested alternatives presented electronic order sets suggesting nonantibiotic treatments; accountable justification prompted clinicians to enter free-text justifications for prescribing antibiotics into patients' electronic health records; peer comparison sent emails to clinicians that compared their antibiotic prescribing rates with those of "top performers" (those with the lowest inappropriate prescribing rates).

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Antibiotic prescribing rates for visits with antibiotic-inappropriate diagnoses (nonspecific upper respiratory tract infections, acute bronchitis, and influenza) from 18 months preintervention to 18 months afterward, adjusting each intervention's effects for co-occurring interventions and preintervention trends, with random effects for practices and clinicians.

RESULTS
There were 14,753 visits (mean patient age, 47 years; 69% women) for antibiotic-inappropriate acute respiratory tract infections during the baseline period and 16,959 visits (mean patient age, 48 years; 67% women) during the intervention period. Mean antibiotic prescribing rates decreased from 24.1% at intervention start to 13.1% at intervention month 18 (absolute difference, -11.0%) for control practices; from 22.1% to 6.1% (absolute difference, -16.0%) for suggested alternatives (difference in differences, -5.0% [95% CI, -7.8% to 0.1%]; P = .66 for differences in trajectories); from 23.2% to 5.2% (absolute difference, -18.1%) for accountable justification (difference in differences, -7.0% [95% CI, -9.1% to -2.9%]; P < .001); and from 19.9% to 3.7% (absolute difference, -16.3%) for peer comparison (difference in differences, -5.2% [95% CI, -6.9% to -1.6%]; P < .001). There were no statistically significant interactions (neither synergy nor interference) between interventions.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Among primary care practices, the use of accountable justification and peer comparison as behavioral interventions resulted in lower rates of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory tract infections.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01454947.


To the Editor.— The special communication, "Problem-Oriented Approach to Practice" (238:414, 1977), by Tufo et al demonstrates how problem-oriented medical records (POMRs) make analysis easier by recording visits in codable, retrievable formats. I disagree with the conclusions drawn by the authors. In all other phases of medical practice, to assess hypotheses controls are necessary to determine the difference between causation and association. The reported study has problems with both internal and external validity. The demographics and process of the practice were not held constant over the time of the assessment. Occurrences at the end of the investigation may be purely the result of changes associated with the passage of time, not with the use of the POMR format. The lack of controls reduces the ability to generalize to other situations, thus eliminating external validity. Determination of association with the record system is not appropriate, let alone causal conclusions. The economic


The Western Australian camaenid genera Plectorhagada and Strepsitaurus have morphological similarities and mutually exclusive ranges near Cape Range. Sequences of ctyochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and 16S mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genes confirmed that the two genera are genetically close sister clades. Targeted sampling showed that Strepsitaurus, which is confined to Cape Range, lies within a hole in the distribution of the more broadly distributed Plectorhagada that occurs on the coastal strip surrounding Cape Range. Species of the two genera meet at the transition between the rocky Cape Range and the sandier coastal areas, providing a rare example of the close replacement of genera. Within each genus, mtDNA sequences confirmed the monophyly and genetic distinctness of species, with few exceptions that show the need for additional work, and with the addition of three new species in the Cape Range area. As is typical of Australian camaenids, distributions of congeneric species are mutually exclusive, but in some cases close proximity is associated with contrasting habitats, such as gorge endemics versus the species on top of Cape Range. In sympatry, Strepsitaurus rugus (Cotton, 1951) and Strepsitaurus williami Solem, 1997 are separated by microhabitat. These local associations with habitat indicate that ecological differences, and not simply allopatric divergence, contribute to the lack of sympatry between closely related Australian camaenids. © 2015 The Linnean Society of London


A measurement is reported of the ratio of branching fractions R ð J / ψ Þ ¼ B ð B þ c → J / ψτ þ ν τ Þ / B ð B þ c → J / ψμ þ ν μ Þ , where the τ þ lepton is identified in the decay mode τ þ → μ þ ν μ ¯ ν τ . This analysis uses a sample of proton-proton collision data corresponding to 3 . 0 fb − 1 of integrated luminosity recorded with the LHCb experiment at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. A signal is found for the decay B þ c → J / ψτ þ ν τ at a significance of 3 standard deviations corrected for systematic uncertainty, and the ratio of the branching fractions is measured to be R ð J / ψ Þ ¼ 0 . 71 (cid:2) 0 . 17 ð stat Þ (cid:2) 0 . 18 ð syst Þ . This result lies within 2 standard deviations above the range of central values currently predicted by the standard model.


We report the case of a 74-year-old woman with a history of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and pacemaker who presented to the hospital with new onset New York Heart Association class IV congestive heart failure. Transthoracic echocardiography revealed a markedly dilated right ventricle with normal right ventricular systolic function. There was moderate pulmonary hypertension with an estimated pulmonary artery systolic pressure of 60 mm Hg. Her echocardiogram 1 year earlier had demonstrated normal right ventricular size and systolic function, and no pulmonary hypertension. Additional transthoracic imaging with saline contrast study through a left peripheral vein demonstrated the presence of a dilated coronary sinus with a persistent left superior vena cava. Color Doppler demonstrated turbulent flow within the coronary sinus with evidence of significant left-to-right shunting. Cardiac catheterization revealed a massively dilated left main coronary artery aneurysm with an arteriovenous fistula into the left superior vena cava and coronary sinus. The calculated Qp/Qs was 2:1. The patient underwent 2 unsuccessful attempts at percutaneous intervention to occlude the arteriovenous fistula. She then underwent successful surgical closure of the coronary arteriovenous fistula. The important role of intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography in guiding this technically challenging surgical case is discussed.


Abstract Massive accumulation of glycogen in the follicles of Scotophilus heathi during the period of delayed ovulation was noticed. The follicles which survive for prolonged periods are morphologically specialized. The accumulation of glycogen was noticed in the granulosa cells. The egg cytoplasm, thecal cells and interstitial cells were almost devoid of glycogen. The first sign of a glycogen deposit in the ovary was noticed during the recrudescence phase (October) in late pre-antral follicles. Most of the morphologically healthy late pre-antral and antral follicles showed a positive reaction with PAS and Best carmine from October to early February. Morphologically atretic follicles showed only a mild glycogen accumulation. Little or no glycogen accumulation was noticed in some of the healthy late-antral follicles before ovulation during late February and early March. HCG-induced antral follicles during quiescence also did not show any accumulation of glycogen. The study suggests that glycogen laden follicles are not suitable for ovulation and may be the reason for the occurrence of delayed ovulation in S. heathi.


Here, we report strong evidence for a role of the FNDC3B gene in craniofacial development. Chromosomal microarray identified deletions at 3q26.31 in two patients with dysmorphic facial features. Parental FISH studies demonstrated that they are de novo; therefore, these two 3q26.31 microdeletions likely contribute to the patients' dysmorphic features. Interestingly, the minimal region of overlap contains only the FNDC3B gene. Ffibronectin domain III‐containing protein 3B (FNDC3B), also known as factor for adipocyte differentiation‐104 (FAD104), was first identified as a positive regulator of adipogenesis in a mouse model. Excitingly, further studies in a mouse model have recently demonstrated that FNDC3B is required for normal calvarial bone formation and negatively regulated calvarial cell differentiation through inhibition of BMP/Smad signaling. fndc3b‐deficient mice have multiple cranial and skeletal malformations, such as craniosynostosis‐like premature calvarial ossification, and skeletal deformities in the anterior fontanel and femurs. In summary, we report the first two patients with de novo 3q26.31 microdeletions. Both have dysmorphic features, consistent with the phenotypes seen in fndc3b‐deficient mice in animal studies, which imply a critical role of FNDC3B in human craniofacial development. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Human Resource Management has a significant influence on the success and development of a company. This research analyses the most important variable in human resources that influences one's success and organizational performance. This research uses literature review methodology by examining journals on the influence of human personality, competency, and spirituality on organizational performance over the past ten years. The scientific analysis uses the concept of learning and developing in the Pumping HR Model. The results show that personality, competency, and spirituality at work are critical and directly affect organizational performance improvement. According to the Pumping HR model, the three variables can be structured like a complete tree by analogy with the roots of stems and fruits or leaves, which describes the variables that must be prioritized hierarchically. Based on this sequence, the root analogy is spirituality, while the stem analogy is competence, and the fruit or leaf analogy is performance. Personality is in a position between the root and stem, which is known as part of the preconscious in Iceberg's theory.


Background PERMANOVA [1] is currently the most commonly used method for testing community-level hypotheses about microbiome associations with covariates of interest. PERMANOVA can test for associations that result from changes in which taxa are present or absent by using the Jaccard or unweighted UniFrac distance. However, such presence-absence analyses face a unique challenge: confounding by library size (total sample read count), which occurs when library size is associated with covariates in the analysis. It is known that rarefaction (subsampling to a common library size) controls this bias, but at the potential costs of information loss and the introduction of a stochastic component into the analysis. Methods Here we develop a non-stochastic approach to PERMANOVA presence-absence analyses that aggregates information over all potential rarefaction replicates without actual resampling, when the Jaccard or unweighted UniFrac distance is used. We compare this new approach to three possible ways of aggregating PERMANOVA over multiple rarefactions obtained from resampling: averaging the distance matrix, averaging the (element-wise) squared distance matrix, and averaging the F-statistic. Results Our simulations indicate that our non-stochastic approach is robust to confounding by library size and outperforms each of the stochastic resampling approaches. We also show that, when overdispersion is low, averaging the (element-wise) squared distance outperforms averaging the unsquared distance, currently implemented in the R package vegan. We illustrate our methods using an analysis of data on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in which samples from case participants have systematically smaller library sizes than samples from control participants.


Experimental studies of the surface tension and the density were carried out by means of the maximum bubble pressure method and the dilatometric technique and next, they were compiled with the results of over 12 years of research of the liquid pure components, binary and multicomponent alloys, with the aim to create the SURDAT database of the Pb-free soldering materials. In the last years, a modification of SURDAT has been conducted. The new version, beside the earlier data of the physical properties, also contains such data as: the viscosity data, selected data of the mechanical and electrical properties, the DTA data and the meniscographic study results (contact angle, wetting time, wetting force and interfacial tension). Additionally, the data base of the heat properties, worked out at NIST (National Institute of Standard and Technology from Boulder in Colorado) has been implemented.


Malnutrition is a common finding amongst our elders. The causes of malnutrition are multifactorial and although they have been extensively studied, they are not entirely understood. Both physiological and pathological processes of aging put this population at a higher risk of being undernourished. These may be related to social, financial, psychological and/or physiological changes directly or indirectly associated to growing old. Age associated changes increase the risk of malnutrition in older individuals. These alterations range from problems in taste and smell perception, which were previously thought to be the main cause of anorexia in this population, to alterations in either the concentration or efficacy of the previously mentioned feeding modulators. Increased intestinal malabsorption together with an altered pancreatic exocrine response to different diets, further contributing to subclinical malabsorption in the elderly population aged and may account in part for the malnutrition observed in this group. Although not directly caused by the aging process, several conditions such as anorexia nervosa, cancer, infectious conditions, and inflammatory processes are associated with decreased food intake and weight loss. These conditions present with elevated levels of immunoregulatory substances known as cytokines. Each of these cytokines has multiple effects and play a leading role in the pathophysiology and maintainance of malnutrition in these situations.