In eukaryotes, homologous recombination is an important pathway for the repair of DNA double-strand breaks. We have studied this process in living cells in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae using Rad52 as a cell biological marker. In response to DNA damage, Rad52 redistributes itself and forms foci specifically during S phase. We have shown previously that Rad52 foci are centers of DNA repair where multiple DNA double-strand breaks colocalize. Here we report a correlation between the timing of Rad52 focus formation and modification of the Rad52 protein. In addition, we show that the two ends of a double-strand break are held tightly together in the majority of cells. Interestingly, in a small but significant fraction of the S phase cells, the two ends of a break separate suggesting that mechanisms exist to reassociate and align these ends for proper DNA repair.


The primary objective of the study was to evaluate the taste of two formulations of phenoxymethylpenicillin suspension in children. The two suspensions, designated Test and Standard, differed only in their flavouring and sweetening agents. The secondary objectives were to study age-related differences in taste perception, to evaluate the acceptability of the suspensions, and to determine patient compliance. In 319 children with acute otitis media a taste description was recorded after a single therapeutic dose. The patient's own spontaneous verbal judgements, directly after the dose intake and also 3-4 minutes later, were recorded. The parents were asked about the child's acceptance of the suspension after finalized treatment. For 214 patients compliance was calculated from the remaining amount of suspension in the returned medication bottles. The study indicated that children aged 6 years or older considered the test formulation to be better-tasting than the standard formulation. The judgements by the parents also indicated that the test suspension was more acceptable. In children below 6 years there was no significant difference between the two suspensions with regard to taste or acceptance. A high patient compliance (greater than or equal to 90%) was obtained in 88% of the patients.


The MErcury Radiometer and Thermal infrared Imaging Spectrometer (MERTIS) is part of the payload of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter spacecraft of the ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission. MERTIS's scientific goals are to infer rockforming minerals, to map surface composition, and to study surface temperature variations on Mercury. To achieve these science goals MERTIS combines a imaging spectrometer covering the wavelength range from 7-14 microns with a radiometer covering the wavelength range from 7-40 microns. MERTIS will map the whole surface of Mercury with a spatial resolution of 500m for the spectrometer channel and 2km for the radiometer channel. The MERTIS instrument had been proposed long before the NASA MESSENGER mission provided us with new insights into the innermost of the terrestrial planets. The discoveries of the MESSENGER fundamentally changed our view of Mercury. It revealed a surface that has been reshaped by volcanism over large parts of geological history. Volatile elements like sulfur have been detected with unexpectedly high abundances of up to 4%. MESSENGER imagined structures that are most likely formed by pyroclastic eruptions in recent geologic history. Among the most exciting discoveries of MESSENGER are hollows – bright irregularly shaped depressions that show sign of ongoing loss of material. Despite all this new results the MERTIS dataset remains unique and is now more important than ever. None of the instruments on the NASA MESSENGER mission covers the same spectral range or provides a measurement of the surface temperature. The MERTIS will complement the results of MESSENGER. MERTIS will for example be able to provide spatially resolved compositional information on the hollows and pyroclastic deposits – both among the most exciting discoveries by the MESSENGER mission for which the NASA mission can not provide compositional information.


LINCOLN AND MCCLELLAN AT WAR, Chester G. Hearn, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA, 2012, 272 pages, $45.00 THE MOST RECENT of Chester G. Hearn's six books on the American Civil War, Lincoln and McClellan at War, provides military and political leaders a stark reminder of the importance of good civil-military relations during war. A natural follow-on to the author's Lincoln, the Cabinet, and the Generals, Hearn provides valuable historical perspectives to one of the most poignant examples of a poor relationship; the relationship that existed between President Abraham Lincoln and Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan during the American Civil War. Three themes emerged that contributed to the poor relations; a dearth of strategic leaders in the Union, McClellan's distain for authority and actions of superiors, and political and ideological differences between Lincoln and McClellan. The lack of strategically thinking military and civilian leaders available to the Union early in the war provided an enduring theme throughout the book. While the author credited the president and his administration with scant understanding of the herculean tasks of rapidly recruiting, organizing, equipping, training, and fielding an expanding army, he also recognized Lincoln had few choices among his available generals. Led by the venerable Gen. Winfield Scott in early 1861, the United States was ill-prepared for the coming conflict. Moreover, the flight of operational and strategic military talent to the Southern cause gave Scott and Lincoln few choices, forcing them to look outside the existing active force for talent. Their eyes fell on the youthful George B. McClellan to train and lead the Union's premier force, the Army of the Potomac. Hearn described McClellan, "The Little Napoleon" or "Little Mac," as an 1846 West Point graduate, a veteran of the Mexican War, and a leader exposed to the art of European, particularly Napoleonic, warfare during extensive study abroad while on active duty. After inexplicably resigning his commission in 1857 at a relatively early age, McClellan applied his engineering skills to the expanding railroads, and quickly rose to the position of vice president of the Illinois Central during the late 1850s before returning to federal service. Hearn's narrative rightfully recognizes McClellan as charismatic, intelligent, a master planner, a superb trainer, and a leader highly respected by soldiers. At the youthful age of 34, he was a perfect choice to lead the infant Army of the Potomac. However, the author also highlights McClellan's lack of experience in leading and successfully deploying large formations in combat throughout the narrative. This, combined with the author's recognition of Lincoln's persistent lenience and patience with McClellan and his immediate successors, remained as a festering theme that continued until the discovery of the winning capabilities and promotion of Ulysses S. Grant. Further, Hearn adroitly credits McClellan with personality traits that severely weakened relations with Lincoln and arguably resulted in prolonging the war at an untold cost of lives and national treasure. …


The research which studied impacts of Fulani herdsmen- farmers' conflicts on crop production in Gujba and Tarmuwa Local Government Areas of Yobe state, Nigeria was conducted between the months of Januiary- February, 2019. Descriptive survey design involving mixed methods was used. Self-made Closed ended questionnaire and Structured Interview Guide were the data collection instruments used. Purposive and Systematic Random sampling techniques were used to select the 397 respondents who participated in the study. The sample size comprised of Fulani herdsmen, farmers, village and ward heads as well as some officials of the Department of Agriculture of the two L.G.A. Data collected was analysed in SPSS Version 20 using Descriptive Statistics and Chi square. Findings revealed that the majority of the respondents including both herdsmen and farmers were subsistence farmers though few also engage in commercial farming. Regarding the causes of the conflicts, lack of grazing fields, indiscriminate bush burning, crop destruction, Boko Haram insurgency etc. were responsible for the occurrence of the clashes. No significant difference was found in the perceptions of the herdsmen and farmers on causes of the conflicts. Impacts of Fulani herdsmen-farmers' conflicts as revealed by the study included loss of crops, reduced productivity, loss of lives, increase in prices of agricultural products, increased poverty etc. Based on the findings made, it was concluded that, if the causes of herdsmen-farmers' conflicts were not properly addressed; its impacts will continue to escalate with devastating consequences. Besides, the menace of food insecurity and Boko Haram insurgency which have bedeviled the areas for many years can also be worsened by the impacts of such conflicts especially that poverty, food insecurity and increased tension were also cited by many scholars as some of the factors fuelling Boko Haram insurgency in the areas studied. Thus, it was recommended that, in order to bring an end to the conflicts between herdsmen and farmers, governments at all levels should work out modalities on how to stop crop destruction by establishing cattle tracks and grazing zones where crop farming will be severely restricted and prevent indiscriminate bush burning. Sensitization programmes on how to maintain cordial relationships between farming communities and herdsmen should be organized by the government and other stakeholders while the issue of Boko Haram insurgency which led to decrease in farmers' productivity should also be well addressed by the government and bring an end to it. Besides, the current land tenure system should be relaxed such that land acquisition becomes easier so that farm owners can expand their farms and produce more food crops and herdsmen can have access to more grazing fields.


The influence of aerosol particle concentration on changes of volumetric activities of radon short-lived decay products was investigated. Volumetric activities of radon short-lived products in accommodations under various living conditions were measured. Concentrations of aerosol particles in the air, equilibrium factors, and unattached fraction were determinated under normal living conditions and by increasing the concentration of aerosol particles in the air of the accommodations. An increase of radon short-lived decay products attached to aerosol particles was obtained during a candle or frankincence burn, in smokefilled compartments, or in steamy kitchen conditions, therefore larger volumetric activity of the alpha particles was registered. Negative correlation coefficient between unattached fraction and the radioactive equilibrium factor, as well as positive correlation coefficient between the radioactive equilibrium factor and aerosol particle concentration in the air of accommodations has been determined. Seasonal changes of the radioactive equilibrium factor are presented.


The current generation of sports racing cars such as those competing under the Le Mans "LM"P and "LM"GTP regulations are particularly sensitive to the pitch of the vehicle. This is a consequence of the low ground clearances that must be adopted to maximise the benefits that can be gained from ground effect and of the very large floor plan area of these cars. To achieve optimum cornering and straight line performance the suspension characteristics are often tuned to the aerodynamic forces in order to reduce the pitch and hence the drag of the vehicle at high speeds whilst retaining relatively high downforce when cornering.

A series of accidents at the 1999 Le Mans 24-hour race have highlighted the potential instability of these vehicles which resulted in the catastrophic 'take-off' of one of the "LM"GTP cars during the race and others during qualifying and the pre-race 'warm-up'. The data presented here have been extracted from a detailed experimental study of a typical "LM"GTP car under design and off-design pitch conditions including extreme cases of nose-up pitching moment to assess the onset of instability i.e rotation leading to take-off. Additional data are presented to demonstrate the influence of possible regulation changes upon these parameters.


Antisera produced in rabbits to 37 rhinovirus (RV) types have been examined for antibody to the 36 corresponding heterologous types. Reciprocal neutralization was noted between RV types 2 and 49 and RV types 13 and 41. Five additional monotypic rhinoviral rabbit antisera neutralized one heterologous rhinovirus. Neutralizing antibody titers against heterologous RV serotypes were similar to those shown in the RV 1A, 1B and RV 9, 32 reciprocal cross-reactions, and would not be expected to result in false identification of serotypes. Comparison of neutralizing antibody titers and neutralization rate constants in serial serum specimens of immunized rabbits showed that antibody response to the immunizing RV type and the cross-reacting type followed a similar time pattern.


The 51st ERSA Conference held in Barcelona in 2011 was one of the largest ever. Here, by examining the characteristics of the conference, this paper identifies the main trends in Regional Science at a moment in which the discipline is renewing its efforts to provide responses in a complex, globalised world in which cities and regions are acquiring greater and greater importance. This paper follows in the tradition of a long list of studies that have examined the nature of the field of Regional Science and draws on a broad array of sources of information: the delegates' demographic details, the conference program itself, a satisfaction survey conducted among delegates, a quality survey addressed to those chairing the sessions and, finally, a bibliometric database including each author signing a paper presented at the conference. With this information we describe the ERSA delegates: their relative youthfulness; the areas in which women are taking on a more important role; the countries and regions of the world that have the most dominant profile in Regional Science today; the thematic areas that are being driven by professionals as opposed to academics; the relevance of regional economic growth and innovation as trending topics in the field; the growing frequency of co-authorship and, consequently, of scientific collaboration; and, finally, and perhaps most importantly, the continuous enhancement of the quality of the work being undertaken in the discipline. Indeed, following on from this description, the results of the regression analysis conducted show that for ERSA delegates what matters most is quality, and this must be the direction that future conferences should move toward. Ultimately, therefore, ERSA conferences are comprehensive, all-embracing occasions, representing an ideal opportunity for regional scientists to present their work to each other and to network.


The current oil and gas market is characterized by low prices, high uncertainties and a subsequent reduction in new investments. This leads to an ever-increasing attention towards more efficient asset management. The fouling effect is considered one of the main problems drastically affecting asset integrity/efficiency and heat exchanger performances of critical machineries in upstream production plants. This paper illustrates the application of advanced big data analytics and innovative machine learning techniques to face this challenge.
 The optimal maintenance scheduling and the early identification of workflow-blocking events strongly impact the overall production, as they heavily contribute to the reduction of down-times. While, machine learning techniques proved to introduce significant advantages to these problems, they are fundamentally data-driven. In industry scenarios, where dealing with a limited amount of data is standard practice, this means forcing the use of simpler models that are often not able to disentangle the real dynamics of the phenomenon. The lack of data is generally caused by frequent changes in operating conditions/field layout or an insufficient instrumentation system. Moreover, the intrinsic long duration of many physical phenomena and the ordinary asset maintenance lifecycle, cause a critical reduction in the number of relevant events that can be learned.
 In this work, the fouling problem has been explored leveraging only limited data. The attention is focused on two different equipment: heat exchangers and re-boilers. While the formers involve slower dynamics, the latter are characterized by a steady phase followed by an abrupt deterioration. Moreover, the first ones allow a proper scheduling of cleaning interventions in advance. On the other hand, the second forces a much quicker plant stop. Finally, heat exchangers are characterized by few episodes of comparable deterioration, while re-boilers present only a single episode. Regarding heat exchangers, a dual approach has been followed, merging a short-term, time-series-based model, and a long-term one based on linear regression. After having isolated a number of training regions related to the fouling episodes that showed a characteristic behavior, it is possible to obtain accurate results in the short-term and to capture the general trend in the long-term. In the case of re-boilers, a novelty detection approach has been adopted: first, the model learns the equipment normal behavior, then it uses the features learned to detect anomalies. This continuous training-predicting iteration also leverages the user feedback to adapt to new operating conditions.
 Results show that in an "young digital" industry, the use of limited data together with simpler machine learning techniques, can successfully become an automatic diagnostics tool supporting the operators to improve traditional maintenance activities as well as optimize the production rate, and finally the asset efficiency


Few cases of human cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) caused by Leishmania naiffi were described in the medical literature. The aim of this study was to report and analyze new cases of L. naiffi in the period between the years 1992 to 2011. The strains were characterized by isoenzyme analysis. All patients assisted had small lesions; ranging from 1.0x1.0 mm and 13.5x11.5 mm. The lesions observed were widely distributed: 55.5% on the lower limb, 5.5% in the abdominal area, 16.6% on upper limb and 22.2% in upper limb and back. Seventy-two percent of patients had ulcerated lesions. Clinical course of the disease varied from 1 to 10 months. According to gender, most infected individuals were men (83.3%). The patients came from Amazonas (10), Para (01) and Rondonia (01), north States of Brazil. Five patients were infected in experimental stations of the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA). Although the results of this study were similar to other reports in the literature, some of the patients had more of one skin lesion. It is also reported the first case of CL caused by L. naiffi in the State of Rondonia and identified an area of disease transmission in the experimental station of INPA


Semaphorins have recently been recognized as crucial modulators of immune responses. In the pathogenesis of COVID-19, the activation of immune responses is the key factor in the development of severe disease. This study aimed to determine the association of serum semaphorin concentrations with COVID-19 severity and outcomes. Serum semaphorin concentrations (SEMA3A, -3C, -3F, -4D, -7A) were measured in 80 hospitalized adult patients with COVID-19 (moderate (n = 24), severe (n = 32), critical, (n = 24)) and 40 healthy controls. While SEMA3C, SEMA3F and SEMA7A serum concentrations were significantly higher in patients with COVID-19, SEMA3A was significantly lower. Furthermore, SEMA3A and SEMA3C decreased with COVID-19 severity, while SEMA3F and SEMA7A increased. SEMA4D showed no correlation with disease severity. Serum semaphorin levels show better predictive values than CRP, IL-6 and LDH for differentiating critical from moderate/severe COVID-19. SEMA3F and SEMA7A serum concentrations were associated with the time to recovery, requirement of invasive mechanical ventilation, development of pulmonary thrombosis and nosocomial infections, as well as with in-hospital mortality. In conclusion, we provide the first evidence that SEMA3A, SEMA3C, SEMA3F and SEMA7A can be considered as new biomarkers of COVID-19 severity.


An inexpensive computer imaging system capable of accurately recovering the 3D surface of the human body is described. This system uses biologically safe structured white light. A uniform square grid pattern is projected onto the body and an image of this pattern is recorded using a single solid-state camera. By locating the intersections of the image grid stripes and matching them correctly to the projected grid pattern, the 3D positions of points on the body can be determined by triangulation. The authors summarize the processing, discuss the geometry of the imaging system and show how 3D information can be recovered. They describe the actual processing steps and algorithms used to locate the data used to reconstruct the patch. Experiments are presented. These preliminary results demonstrate the feasibility of the imaging system. Future developments are discussed. >


OF DISSERTATION LIVING ON THE EDGE: SMALLHOLDER GROWERS' RESPONSES TO A CHANGING TOBACCO ECONOMY IN MALAWI This dissertation explores how smallholder tobacco growers in Lilongwe, Malawi, experience and respond to fluctuating and declining incomes, and to a generally unstable market as a result of changes in the global tobacco industry. Policy makers and scholars have for a long-time debated on the question of how smallholder farmers are going to adapt to future institutional and structural changes in global agriculture. Studies on rural livelihood restructuring have revealed that processes of economic globalization have disrupted state marketing institutions, and undermined regulatory frameworks, causing shocks to livelihoods of smallholders across the world. These livelihood shocks affect smallholders' capacities to engage in traditional risk management practices, leaving them vulnerable to future changes in global agriculture. Some studies have called for the strengthening of state and non-state institutions to assist smallholders recover from livelihood crises that result from market shocks. However, the role of these institutions in shaping the perception risk and awareness of the changes smallholders face, which in turn shapes their responses to current and future crises, has not been adequately investigated. Tobacco farmers in Malawi have in recent years experienced unstable markets marked by fluctuating and declining incomes, at the same time that the global tobacco industry is experiencing institutional and structural changes resulting from the anti-smoking lobby, and changing consumption and production patterns. This ethnographic study examined the perception of risk to long-term viability of tobacco farming and adaptive responses among smallholder tobacco growers. Fieldwork revealed that most growers consider the on-going market instability as just one of the risks farmers must deal with and that they employ a repertoire of coping strategies rather than long term adaptive strategies. I argue that smallholders view the current market instability through the lens of exploitative and inefficient tobacco institutions which preclude them from taking a long-term view about their livelihoods.


With the long-term goal to realize carbon neutrality, lithium batteries have acquired a growingly central role in the development of human society. The accurate yet efficient prognosis of battery state of health (SOH) remains vital in ensuring a safe and reliable operation. In addition, as the demand to increase battery energy density continues to grow, the development of novel, high-energy-density battery systems such as lithium metal batteries is of paramount significance.


Abstract:This scoping review identified 36 peer-reviewed studies that used a co-creation, co-design or co-production process with children (0-17 years) to understand and/or influence the physical (built or natural) environment. We examined conceptualizations of child participation and of "co" processes. Our findings highlight the opportunity for developing and improving use of child participation models; how children and childhood are viewed by adults involved in the process matters; a need for more discriminate use of the terms co-creation, co-design and co-production with clear definitions; and confirmed the flexibility of "co" processes. Based on these findings, we developed a reporting checklist for physical environment-focused studies using "co" processes with children.


A sol–gel coating technique was applied for the preparation of metal organic frameworks (MOFs)-based solid phase microextraction (SPME) fibers by coating MIL-101 onto stainless steel wires. The prepared fiber was explored for the headspace SPME (HS-SPME) of seven volatile aromatic compounds (VACs) from water samples followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometric analysis. Several important experimental parameters, such as extraction temperature, extraction time, sample volume, salt addition and desorption conditions, were investigated. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the developed HS-SPME method with MIL-101 coated fiber had a good linearity in the range of 0.05–50.0 μg L−1 for the analytes with the correlation coefficients (r) ranging from 0.9974 to 0.9988. Based on a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 3, the limits of detection (LODs) for the seven analytes ranged from 1.0 to 5.0 ng L−1. Compared with two commercial SPME fibers, the laboratory-made MIL-101 coated fiber showed a higher extraction efficiency for the seven VACs. The established method was successfully applied for the determination of the VACs in real local tap and lake water samples. The recoveries for the method of the seven VACs at spiking levels of 0.1 and 5.0 μg L−1 were in the range from 76.4% to 116.1%.


We have seen a surge in research aims toward adversarial attacks and defenses in AI/ML systems. While it is crucial to formulate new attack methods and devise novel defense strategies for robustness, it is also imperative to recognize who is responsible for implementing, validating, and justifying the necessity of these defenses. In particular, which components of the system are vulnerable to what type of adversarial attacks, and the expertise needed to realize the severity of adversarial attacks. Also how to evaluate and address the adversarial challenges in order to recommend defense strategies for different applications. This paper opened a discussion on who should examine and implement the adversarial defenses and the reason behind such efforts.


This paper proposes a reliable project scheduling approach, considering the integration of both risk management and critical chain schedule analysis. Various risks and uncertainties exist in projects. These may not only prevent the projects to be completed within budget and time limit, but also threaten the quality, safety and operational needs. In the proposed method the potential project risks are analyzed and risk response strategies are developed by fuzzy failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) and then varying effect of each risk over each activity. The project total time can then be quantified and simulated by Monte Carlo simulation that is effective in uncertain conditions due to its capability of converting uncertainty to risk judgmentally in projects. Following this procedure Fault tree analysis and event tree analysis will be used to get risk mitigation. Eventually, for a reliable schedule we distribute a critical chain schedule which able to implement the project as planned and obtain reasonable Feeding Buffer time and Project Buffer time.


Work is the livelihood where people get their earnings. Workers place is the environment in which he/she involves in work for longer time. Workstation is a place where work is carried out any time with the major appliances and satisfies the needs of the worker to perform the work. Workstation is the space which provides motivation to the worker to perform the work effectively. It is the direct reach of the worker and also the working fixtures at the work table. They adapt to different postures while working where continuous use of the postures lead to strain and sprain of muscles which further leads to musculoskeletal disorders. Whatever work is done with different postures lifting, holding, bending and handling materials and intensive work, workers have musculoskeletal disorders. In spite of their profession, workers experience shoulder pain, neck and upper limb, spinal symptoms, back pain, eye sight problems etc. The musculoskeletal disorder of the part of body is the result of type of posture exposed for the longer time.


The relationship between land use and travel behaviour has attracted research interest in England over the last fifteen years, principally in connection with possible links between urban form and sustainability. Since the mid 1990s this work has been overtaken somewhat by Government policy initiatives. This is something of a mixed blessing. Official attention has shifted to the implementation of what is now an established line of policy. In academic circles, by contrast, there is increasing interest in mobility more generally as a phenomenon of contemporary society. In this context the pattern of land use remains an important influence, if only because of the physical legacy presented by the established pattern of development. However, the evolution in travel behaviour is, as ever, conditioned by broader social and economic trends (Gillespie et al 1998). This paper provides an overview of English experience in this field in three main sections: research, policy and implementation. To place these in context they are preceded by a section titled 'background' which highlights for an international audience some of the distinctive features of the English scene, in terms of geography, cultural attitudes to development and travel, and institutional arrangements for land use and transport planning. These require very careful consideration before any attempt is made to draw inferences for policy-making in other countries.


Numerical models of many forming processes of metals rely on description of rheological characterization of the metallic alloys, which can turn very difficult at high temperature. In this work, a direct resistance heating machine (Taboo) has been developed to perform cyclic loadings at very low strain rates (10-3 and 10-4 s-1) between 900°C and the solidus temperature. We fir st describe the experimental setup; then we present several measurement techniques. A specificity of resistance heating machines is to deal with non negligible temperature gradients around the center of the sample which induce heterogeneous strains. To measure displacements, a specific set-up has been constructed using speckle correlation. It has several advantages like full field and non destructive displacement measurement. Thanks to this method we obtain full field measurements. Electric current and resistivity measurements are also performed all along the heating/cooling and deformation stages. They can be correlated to phase transformation. Finally, we describe a numerical model for simulating and analysing the tests with a combined electrical, thermal and mechanical model. The main goal is to help designing optimal sample geometry using to identify mechanical parameters by inverse analysis.


The reliability and performance of high-voltage circuit breakers (HVCBs) will directly affect the safety and stability of the power system itself, and mechanical failures of HVCBs are one of the important factors affecting the reliability of circuit breakers. Moreover, the existing fault diagnosis methods for circuit breakers are complex and inefficient in feature extraction. To improve the efficiency of feature extraction, a novel mechanical fault feature selection and diagnosis approach for high-voltage circuit breakers, using features extracted without signal processing is proposed. Firstly, the vibration signal of the HVCBs' operating system, which collects the amplitudes of signals from normal vibration signals, is segmented by a time scale, and obviously changed. Adopting the ensemble learning method, features were extracted from each part of the divided signal, and used for constructing a vector. The Gini importance of features is obtained by random forest (RF), and the feature is ranked by the features' importance index. After that, sequential forward selection (SFS) is applied to determine the optimal subset, while the regularized Fisher's criterion (RFC) is used to analyze the classification ability. Then, the optimal subset is input to the hierarchical hybrid classifier, and based on a one-class support vector machine (OCSVM) and RF for fault diagnosis, the state is accurately recognized by OCSVM. The known fault types are identified using RF, and the identification results are calibrated with OCSVM of a particular fault type. The experimental proves that the new method has high feature extraction efficiency and recognition accuracy by the measured HVCBs vibration signal, while the unknown fault type data of the untrained samples is effectively identified.


We introduce a new approach to short-term earthquake prediction named " Reverse Tracing of Precursors " (RTP), since it considers precursors in reverse order of their appearance. First, we detect the "candidates" for the short-term precursors; in our case, these are newly introduced chains of earthquakes reflecting the rise of an earthquake correlation range. Then we consider each chain, one by one, checking whether it was preceded by an intermediate-term precursor in its vicinity. If yes, we regard this chain as a precursor; in prediction it would start a short-term alarm. The chain indicates the narrow area of possibly complex shape, where an intermediate-term precursor should be looked for. This makes possible to detect precursors undetectable by the direct analysis. RTP can best be described on an example of its application; we describe retrospective prediction of two prominent Californian earthquakes—Landers (1992), M = 7.6, and Hector Mine (1999), M = 7.3, and suggest a hypothetical prediction algorithm. This paper descripes the RTP methodology, which has potentially important applications to many other data and to prediction of other critical phenomena besides earthquakes. In particular, it might vindicate some short-term precursors, previously rejected as giving too many false alarms. Validation of the algorithm per se requires its application in different regions with a substantial number of strong earthquakes. First (and positive) retrospective results are obtained for 21 more strong earthquakes in California ( M ≥ 6.4), Japan ( M ≥ 7.0) and the Eastern Mediterranean ( M ≥ 6.5); these results are described elsewhere. The final validation requires, as always, prediction in advance for which this study sets up a base. We have the first case of a precursory chain reported in advance of a subsequent strong earthquake (Tokachi-oki, Japan, 25 September 2003, M = 8.1). Possible mechanisms underlying RTP are outlined. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


We present an efficient method based on ab-initio calculations to investigate electron-atom scatterings. Those calculations profit from methods implemented in standard quantum chemistry programs. The new approach is applied to electron-helium scattering. The results are compared with experimental and other theoretical references to demonstrate the efficiency of our method.


In rare-event detection wireless sensor network (WSN) applications maximizing lifetime and minimizing end-to-end delay (e-delay) are important factors in designing a cost-efficient network, which can be achieved using asynchronous sleep/wake (s/w) scheduling techniques and anycasting data-forwarding strategies, respectively. In this paper, we address the problem of finding an optimal cost WSN that satisfies given delay constraint and lifetime requirement, assuming random uniform deployment of nodes in a circular-shaped Field-of-Interest (FoI) and estimate the maximum of minimum expected e-delay in an anycasting forwarding technique for a given sensor density. We use this analysis to find the critical expected sensor density that satisfies given e-delay constraint, and lifetime requirement. We also validate our analysis.


This paper presents various approaches dealing with heterogeneous reaction combined with interaction between neighboring units of observation developed in the spatial econometric literature, in the framework of cross-sectional models, and applied to the study of growth and convergence processes. We present the main econometric specifications capturing discrete or continuous spatial heterogeneity: the spatial regimes model and the locally linear, geographically weighted regression (GWR). We then examine how these specifications can be extended to further allow for spatial autocorrelation.


Respiratory motion impacts peak spatial specific absorption rate (psSAR) at cardiac UHF MR imaging as shown previously for individual$$$B_1^+$$$shim vectors. Here two saftey supervision modes were compared: a local SAR control mode (SCM) and a channel-wise power control mode (PCM). Results show amplitude and location changes of the psSAR between inhale and exhale and this effect depends on the coil setup, element type and breathing pattern. Respiratory-induced psSAR variations are lower when applying PCM compared to SCM, while PCM is more conservative with respect to the total power allowed.


Maternal high-fat diet (HF) disturbs the gut microbiota-liver interactions and induces negative effects in the offspring, but its impact on metabolic, gut microbial, and hepatic circadian rhythms in the offspring (F1) are unknown. Here, we tested whether maternal HF could disrupt the metabolic rhythm in the juvenile (postnatal day [PND] 28) and adult offspring (PND112). Metagenomics, transcriptome, and metabolomics throughout the gut microbiota-liver axis were used to investigate the mechanism underpinning metabolic changes in the juvenile offspring. eJTK_Cycle was applied to characterize rhythmic patterns. Both juvenile and adult offspring of HF dams exhibited deteriorated glucose tolerance (P < 0.05) and a gain of the rhythm of serum glucose level (Control [Ctr], adjP > 0.05; HF, adjP < 0.05). Maternal HF altered the compositional and functional circadian rhythms of gut microbiota in the juvenile offspring. The rhythm of capacity for gut microbial synthesis of the short-chain fatty acid acetate was significantly gained in the juvenile offspring of HF dams (Ctr, adjP > 0.05; HF, adjP < 0.05). Consistently, maternal HF induced a rhythm gain of serum and liver acetate in the juvenile offspring (Ctr, adjP > 0.05; HF, adjP < 0.05). Meanwhile, maternal HF resulted in a gain of the rhythm of hepatic G6pc (Ctr, adjP > 0.05; HF, adjP < 0.05), a marker of gluconeogenesis metabolism. G6pc rhythmic expression was significantly correlated with serum acetate (R = 0.58, P < 0.05) and liver acetate (R = 0.64, P < 0.05) in the juvenile offspring. Taken together, we show that maternal HF disrupted the metabolic rhythm and the gut microbiota-liver rhythms, increasing susceptibility to metabolic dysfunction in the offspring.

 L.Ding: None. J.Liu: None. Q.Zhang: None. X.Xiao: None.

 National Natural Science Foundation of China (81870579)


Rabies being the most lethal zoonotic, vaccine-preventable viral disease with worldwide distribution of reservoir wild animals presents unique challenges for its diagnosis, management and control. Although vaccines available are highly effective, which had played the key role in controlling rabies in North America, western Europe and in a number of Asian and Latin American countries, the requirement of multiple doses along with boosters, associated cost to reduce the incidence in wild animals and prophylactic human vaccination has remained a major impediment towards achieving the same goals in poorer parts of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. Current efforts to contain rabies worldwide are directed towards the development of more safe, cheaper and efficacious vaccines along with anti-rabies antibodies for post-exposure prophylaxis. The work presented here provides an overview of the advances made towards controlling the human rabies, particularly in last 10 years, and future perspective.


We demonstrate a chiral metasurface that exhibits a giant chiroptical response as well as functions as an optical diode due to geometrical asymmetry for circularly polarized light (CPL). Engineering the Mie-type multipole radiation using geometrical features led to performance values in terms of near-unity transmission and circular dichroism (CD) efficiency (about 0.96) and an extinction ratio of  ∼3.8×104 for 1550 nm wavelength. A continuous stopband of 1538-1556 nm is achieved for an unchosen component of CPL while keeping the transmission efficiency of the chosen CPL component larger than 0.9. Because of the high extinction ratio and CD efficiency, the proposed metasurface has the potential for chiroptical applications including high-contrast polarization imaging, precise Stokes parameters measurement, optical diodes, and polarization detection for CPL.


In our model, cross-currency basis, which captures the deviations from covered interest rate parity (CIP), reflects the relative value of the scarcer currency (US dollar) as collateral in funding constraints. Our empirical evidence shows that measures of dollar shortage derived from ECB tenders, and actions to move to fixed-rate tenders with full allotment and to expand the eligible collateral by the ECB have significant power in explaining the cross currency basis. We show that the relaxation of Euro funding constraints through 3-year Long Term Re-financing Operations (LTROs) does not contribute to the narrowing of the cross-currency basis, consistent with the theory developed in the paper.


Virus machines are computational devices inspired by the movement of viruses between hosts and their capacity to replicate using the resources of the hosts. This behavior is controlled by an external graph of instructions that opens different channels of the system to make viruses capable of moving. This model of computation has been demonstrated to be as powerful as turing machines by different methods: by generating Diophantine sets, by computing partial recursive functions and by simulating register machines. It is interesting to investigate the practical use cases of this model in terms of possibilities and efficiency. In this work, we give the basic modules to create an arithmetic calculator. As a practical application, two pairing functions are calculated by means of two different virus machines. Pairing functions are important resources in the field of cryptography. The functions calculated are the Cantor pairing function and the Gödel pairing function.


In this study the presence of heavy metals in mammals with special regard of the zinc have been investigated. The methods of the detection of zinc were described too. The current methods for investigating heavy metals ( dithizon -, sulfid -silver- and fluorescence-method) are compared. The use of these methods is discussed. The occurrence of the heavy metals in tissues of various species is demonstrated. Metabolic functions of heavy metals are explained. The important role of zinc-ions in the storage of hormones and other substances as well as the importance of cobaltous-ions for the degranulation of mast cells are referred too.


Climate change is likely to have important consequences for spawning patterns and productivity cycles in the ocean, according to this report. Most international studies centred on change in the ocean take temperature increases into account. But other important variables that require consideration include changes to ocean chemistry (ie. acidification) impeding the ability of organisms to build shells; ocean circulation influencing population dynamics; and change in cloud cover and sea ice affecting light supply to the ocean surface. Although Australia has an extensive coastline and one of the largest fishing zones in the world, its coastal and mid-depth waters are considered to be low in productivity and fisheries are reliant on processes such as upwelling to provide nutrients. Using computer simulations of possible change up to 2030, the authors considered changes in temperature, ocean currents, winds, nutrient supply, rainfall and ocean chemistry. Changes to ocean circulation in the western Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea and an upward trend in water temperatures have led to environmental modification in south east Australia as the East Australian Current pushes further south carrying sub-tropical species into temperate waters. This is a region where climate models indicate rapid warming and a 50-year observation program has shown a water temperature increase of two degrees Celsius; as a result, sub-tropical introductions to the Tasmanian east coast are already altering the habitat of a whole range of species, and introducing new species such as the sea urchin. The report generated three core findings: • While ocean temperature has a significant influence on observed changes in Australia's marine flora and fauna, it is the combined effects of multiple climate and oceanographic factors that will shape Australia's marine life in the future. • The ecological effects of non-climate related stress factors such as fisheries, coastal run-off and pollution which may reduce ecosystem resilience to climate change. • Programs to measure change and modelling of climate change impacts will be crucial components of a strategic national assessment of climate change impacts so that management strategies can be developed. The report identifies six key questions that required addressing by future modelling and ocean and coastal monitoring programs.


We describe a mutant Escherichia coli RNA polymerase (RNAP) that forms stable open promoter complexes even at -20 degrees C but with a shortened melted region that extends downstream to only position -7. In the presence of initiating transcription substrates, the mutant RNAP undergoes a temperature-dependent isomerization, resulting in a promoter complex that is indistinguishable from the wild-type RNAP-promoter complex, with the melted region extended downstream to position +4. We propose that the open complex formed by the mutant RNAP represents an intermediate on the normal promoter-opening pathway and that our results support earlier findings that initial promoter opening occurs in the upstream region of the -10 promoter consensus element and subsequently extends downstream to encompass the transcription start site.


The productivity and efficiency of port operations strongly depend on how fast a ship can be unloaded and loaded again. With this in mind, ship-to-shore cranes perform the critical task of transporting containers into and onto a ship and must do so as fast as possible. Though the problem of minimizing the time spent in moving the payload has been addressed in previous studies, the different heights of the container stacks have not been the focus. In this paper, we perform a change of variable and reformulate the optimization problem to deal with the constraints on the stack heights. As consequence, these constraints become trivial and easy to represent since they turn into bound constraints when the problem is discretized for the numerical solver. To validate the idea, we simulate a small-scale scenario where different stack heights are used. The results confirm our idea and the representation of the stack constraints become indeed trivial. This approach is promising to be applied in real crane operations and has the potential to enhance their automation.


The RegCM model system was originally developed in the late 1980s, and it was the first limited area model applied to climate studies. Over the last 25 yr, the system has been im - proved through successive model versions (RegCM1 to RegCM4), incorporating increasingly comprehensive physics packages and interactively coupled components of the climate system (chemistry/aerosol, ocean, lake, biosphere). The present Climate Special includes studies using RegCM3 and the latest version RegCM4. The papers illustrate that RegCM is a flexible and ver- satile system which can be used for different regions of the World and for a wide range of applica- tions. Plans for the development of the next non-hydrostatic version RegCM5 are also described.


This paper considers a state dependent broadcast channel with one transmitter, Alice, and two receivers, Bob and Eve. The problem is to effectively convey ("amplify") the channel state sequence to Bob while "masking" it from Eve. The extent to which the state sequence cannot be masked from Eve is referred to as leakage. This can be viewed as a secrecy problem, where we desire that the channel state itself be minimally leaked to Eve while being communicated to Bob. This paper is aimed at characterizing the tradeoff region between amplification and leakage rates for such a system. An achievable coding scheme is presented, wherein the transmitter transmits a partial state information over the channel to facilitate the amplification process. For the case when Bob observes a stronger signal than Eve, the achievable coding scheme is enhanced with secure refinement. Outer bounds on the tradeoff region are also derived, and used in characterizing some special case results. In particular, the optimal amplification-leakage rate difference, called as differential amplification capacity, is characterized for the reversely degraded discrete memoryless channel, the degraded binary, and the degraded Gaussian channels. In addition, for the degraded Gaussian model, the extremal corner points of the tradeoff region are characterized, and the gap between the outer bound and achievable rate-regions is shown to be less than half a bit for a wide set of channel parameters.


The interactions between vortices in a thin superconducting film and one magnetic dipole in the presence of a magnetic field applied parallel to the film surfaces are studied theoretically in the London limit. The dipole magnetic moment is assumed to have constant magnitude and freedom to rotate. The pinning potential for an arbitrary vortex configuration is calculated exactly. It is found that, due to the dipole freedom to rotate, the pinning potential differs significantly from that for a permanent dipole. In particular, its dependence on the applied field is nontrivial and allows for tuning of the pinning potential by the applied field. The critical current for one vortex pinned by the dipole is obtained numerically as a function of the applied field and found to depend strongly on the field. Order of magnitude changes in the critical current resulting from changes in the direction and magnitude of the applied field are reported, with discontinuous changes taking place in some cases. The effect of vortex pinning by random material defects on the critical current is investigated using a simple model. It is found that if random pinning is weak the critical current remains strongly dependent on the applied field. Possible applications to vortices pinned by arrays of magnetic dots are briefly considered.


This study aims (1) develop a learning program of the earthquake disaster mitigation for junior high students, which includes: syllabus, teaching materials, teaching models, (2) develop a multimedia computer aided learning earthquakes. This research method is a research and development. Our research includes the study of literature, planning, developing initial product form, validation by specialists in natural disasters of earthquake and education experts. Validation results obtained are then revised and initial draft. Initial draft and then tested on junior high science teachers of the school location prone to natural disasters, and then made repeated revisions and re-testing so as to produce a prototype that whether as a result of development. Data analysis included qualitative and quantitative analysis. The result of learning programs earthquake mitigation of natural disasters that include: syllabus, teaching materials, teaching models, and computer-based multimedia learning. Learning programs are being developed include the causes and mechanisms of disaster, disaster prevention and reduction of losses, self rescue and evacuation efforts from the earthquake disaster.


Interactive data exploration (IDE) is an effective way of comprehending big data, whose volume and complexity are beyond human abilities. The main goal of IDE is to discover user interest regions from a database through multi-rounds of user labelling. Existing IDEs adopt active-learning framework, where users iteratively discriminate or label the interestingness of selected tuples. The process of data exploration can be viewed as the process of training of a classifier, which determines whether a database tuple is interesting to a user. An efficient exploration thus takes very few iterations of user labelling to reach the data region of interest. In this work, we consider the data exploration as the process of few-shot learning, where the classifier is learned with only a few training examples, or exploration iterations. To this end, we propose a learning-to-explore framework, based on meta-learning, which learns how to learn a classifier with automatically generated meta-tasks, so that the exploration process can be much shortened. Extensive experiments on real datasets show that our proposal outperforms existing explore-by-example solutions in terms of accuracy and efficiency.


In this work, we propose a method for designing an adjustable amplitude-phase hybrid grating in which by relative lateral shearing of its amplitude and phase parts, the intensity share between different diffraction orders can be controlled. The method is based on superimposing two pure-amplitude and pure-phase gratings with sinusoidal or binary profiles having the same periods and lines' orientations. It is shown that, in the diffraction of a Gaussian beam from such hybrid gratings, the intensity share of each of the diffraction orders is related to the shear value and the amplitude of the transmission functions of the superimposed pure-amplitude and pure-phase gratings. For instance, when both of the amplitude and phase profiles are sinusoidal and the shear value between them is a quarter of the period, for given values of the transmissions amplitudes of the profiles, all positive (or negative) diffraction orders are removed. We also show that, by changing the values of the transmission's amplitudes, the intensity share for the higher orders can be increased. This kind of grating might find application in optical switching and in devices requiring power sharing between different channels such as in beam-steering devices, in optical interconnects, and in optical fiber communication.


We deposited (K0.5Na0.5)(Mn0.005Nb0.995)O3 (KNMN) thin films on Pt(111)/TiO2/SiO2/Si(100) substrates with a top electrode of indium tin oxide and investigated photocurrent properties in the wavelength range of 300−400 nm. Before the photocurrent measurement, the KNMN film was poled by applying a DC voltage. The photocurrents strongly depend on the wavelength of the incident photon energy. The photocurrents of the first measurement with poling in the up (−5 V) and down (+5 V) states were 21 and 3.2 nA/cm2, respectively, at 344 nm. The difference in the photocurrents in both poling directions was explained by a space charge due to an asymmetric Schottky barrier height, which was caused by an internal electric field and polarization in the KNMN thin film.


Zimbabwe's relations with Britain at the turn into the 21st century has been characterised by antagonism. The severing of relations has emerged from contradictions over the handling of the land problem in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe government had envisaged that Britain as the former colonial power was supposed to fund the land reform process as had been agreed at the negotiations for the country's independence. The refusal by the British government to the request by Zimbabwean government to fund its land reform programme led to disagreements which ensued into a conflict that was to assume into a more or less global one. The analysis traces the origins of the deterioration of the relations between the two countries, espousing the major dimensions the conflict as well as analysing the impact of the conflict on both countries.


A lateral extension of the free TRAM flap design is described for use in unusually thin patients who desire bilateral autologous tissue breast reconstruction. Because of the exceptionally good blood supply to the free TRAM flap, the lateral extensions are viable even when the flap is folded double to increase its thickness and projection. To increase the volume of the reconstructed breast, the flaps can be extended as far laterally as the surface of the operating table will permit. With this approach, bilateral TRAM flap breast reconstruction is possible even for extremely thin patients.


We study noncommutative field theories at finite temperature to learn more about the degrees of freedom in the non-planar sector of these systems. We find evidence for winding states. At temperatures for which the thermal wavelength is smaller than the noncommutativity scale, there is a drastic reduction of the degrees of freedom in the non-planar sector. In this regime, the non-planar sector has thermodynamics resembling that of a 1+1 dimensional field theory.


The Chinese government attaches great importance to the development of new energy automotive industry driven by the pure electric vehicle. The subsidies, in recent years, has become an effective tool to promote the development of new energy automotive industry, and has played a positive role in promoting. This paper expounds the current situation of China's new energy automobile industry from two aspects: the current situation of new energy production in China and the new energy automobile technology route in China. And then, one suggestion that China should adopt the combination of tax and subsidy and adopts more diversified subsidy mode policies is put forward, by comparing the subsidy policy of new energy vehicles in China and abroad. Finally, this paper analyzes the declaration of 7 batch of new energy promotion catalogue by 2017, comparing the number and trend of each batch, the proportion of different types of new energy automobile products and the trend of quantity change, which reflects the development trend of new energy vehicles in China.


In this article the authors describe Reading Express, a collaborative program which brings together the expertise of first-grade teachers and Reading Recovery teachers to support all firstgrade children in literacy development. In the Reading Express program, the Reading Recovery teachers spend one hour per day in each of the first grade classrooms. This time is spent in both whole class as well as small group instruction. The results of Reading Express have been positive for both first-grade children as well as teachers. End-of-year text-level scores and other data indicate that the program is having a positive impact on students' literacy development. In addition, the first-grade teachers have found they are more strategic in their reading instruction and have more knowledge of their students' literacy progress as a result of the collaborative planning and instruction.


Substrate transport through the membrane protein maltoporin is facilitated by an affinity site in the channel. The analysis of the ion current fluctuations induced by penetration of the sugar into the channel yields the kinetic constants. Modification of the affinity site by replacing the aromatic residues suggests that nature has optimized the channel protein for maximum affinity at the extracellular side, as well as for an increased off-rate to eject a sugar trapped in the pore towards the periplasmic side.


N-ion-implantation to a fluence of 1 × 1015 ions/cm2 was performed on ZnS thin films deposited on glass substrates by using the vacuum evaporation method. The films were annealed in flowing nitrogen at 400 °C–500 °C after N-ion-implantation to repair the ion-beam-induced structural destruction and electrically activate the dopants. Effects of ion-implantation and post-thermal annealing on ZnS films were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL), optical transmittance, and electrical measurements. Results showed that the diffraction peaks and PL intensities were decreased by N-ion-implantation, but fully recovered by further annealing at 500 °C. In this experiment, all films exhibited high resistivity due to the partial dopant activation under 500 °C.


Transient ischemic attack has been redefined as a tissue‐based diagnosis and MRI recommended as the preferred imaging modality. We aimed to investigate whether an increased use of MRI leads to a decrease in the proportion of TIA as compared to cerebral infarction. We also sought to see whether DWI‐positive patients with transient ischemic symptoms <24 h differ from DWI‐negative TIA patients in terms of performed diagnostic investigations and clinical characteristics.


The large and complex Getz Ice Shelf extends along nearly half of the West Antarctic coastline in the Amundsen Sea and is exposed to a more variable ocean environment than most other Pacific sector ice shelves. Ocean temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen profiles acquired near its sub-ice cavity openings are used here to estimate seawater transports and meltwater fractions. More complete coverage during 2000 and 2007 brackets most of the variability observed from 1994 to 2011, and yearlong records near one ice front support the use of summer profiles to determine annual basal melt rates. We find area average rates of 1.1 and 4.1 m/yr, higher in 2007 when a larger volume of warmer deep water occupied the adjacent continental shelf, and the ocean circulation was stronger. Results are consistent with changes in thermocline depths relative to ice shelf draft and mass transports onto the adjacent continental shelf. We also calculate steady state and actual melting of 2.5 and 4.6 m/yr in 2007-2008 from satellite measurements of ice flux, modeled accumulation, and thinning from 2003 to 2008. This implies a positive mass balance in 2000, but negative in 2007, when the Getz was producing more meltwater than any of the larger, slower melting or smaller, faster-melting ice shelves. © 2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.


This study investigated the rate of cartilage regeneration after an open-wedge high tibial osteotomy (HTO) without cartilage regeneration by second-look arthroscopy. This study included patients who underwent an open-wedge HTO between July 2014 and March 2019. A total of 65 patients were enrolled. Pre- and postoperative (second-look arthroscopy) hip–knee–ankle (HKA) angle and tibial slope were measured. All patients underwent arthroscopic examination prior to osteotomy. Medial femoral condyle (MFC) and medial tibial plateau (MTP) articular cartilage were evaluated according to the International Cartilage Repair Society (ICRS) grading system. After 26.5 months, second-look arthroscopy was performed with plate removal to identify the cartilage status of the MFC and MTP. The preoperative HKA angle (6.4° ± 2.7°) was well corrected postoperatively (−2.7° ± 2.7°, p < 0.001). In terms of MFC on second-look arthroscopy, 29 patients (44.6%) showed an improved ICRS grade, 31 patients (47.7%) were maintained, and 5 patients (7.7%) showed a worse ICRS grade since the prior operation. In the MTP group, 19 patients (29.2%) improved, 44 patients (67.7%) were maintained, and 2 patients (3.1%) worsened. Approximately 44.6% and 29.2% of patients showed improved cartilage statuses on the MFC and MTP after open-wedge HTO without any cartilage regeneration procedures. Cartilage regenerations in both the MFC and MTP did not influence clinical outcomes.


The purpose of this paper is to apply cultivation theory to social network sites by investigating how Facebook uses cultivates users' ethnic diversity perceptions and attitudes.,The authors' investigations include an online and offline survey study with 476 Facebook users and a follow-up experiment with 75 individuals.,The authors provide empirical support that Facebook use cultivates ethnic diversity perceptions and ethnic diversity-related attitudes. They show that Facebook use relates to perceptions of ethnic minorities that resemble the world on Facebook that is characterized by high ethnic diversity. The authors further demonstrate that the cultivation of ethnic diversity-related attitudes is mediated by diversity perceptions related to users' close social environment.,Future research should consider culturally and educationally diverse samples as well as longitudinal research designs to address external validity and causality issues.,Algorithms determining the content users are exposed should be thoughtfully curated to avoid attitudinal and ideological polarization.,Facebook can play an important role in positively shaping intergroup relations, thereby countering negative outgroup attitudes, social anxieties and radical right-wing parties.,The authors' studies extend the scope of cultivation research by identifying a new media vehicle as a source of cultivation influences and shed light on the cultivation-based process of attitude change on social network sites.


Nanocrystalline zinc-oxide (ZnO) powders were prepared from the ultrasonic atomization method. An aqueous solution was atomized by using the ultrasonic atomizer operating at 2.1 to 2.3 MHz. The generated droplets were fed to the reaction furnace for pyrolysis. Nanocrystalline ZnO crystallites were collected by using a simple but novel trapping system, and prepared powder was characterized using X-ray diffractogram, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and absorption spectroscopy. Nanostructured thick-film sensors of this powder were prepared by using the screen printing technique. The gas sensing performance of this film was tested. The sensor was found to be most sensitive to NH3. The results were discussed and interpreted.


We propose a model of dark matter: galaxy-sized 't Hooft-Polyakov magnetic monopoles in a new, extraordinarily weakly coupled SU(2) gauge sector with an adjoint Higgs field and two flavors of fundamental fermions. We fit the parameters by asserting that the dark matter halos of the lightest dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies consist of a single charge Q = 1 monopole. Lensing and wide binary bounds are then easily satisfied and the monopoles form in time to help with CMB fluctuations. In this model dSph and low surface brightness (LSB) halos automatically have (1) A minimummass Dirac quantization solves the missing satellite problem, (2) A constant density core (r < r1), (3) An intermediate regime (r1 < r < r2) with density ρ ∼ 1/r2. The model predicts that (A) r1 is proportional to the stellar rotational/dispersion velocities at r1 < r < r2, (B) r2 is reasonably Q independent and so dSph halos extend at least ten times farther than their half-light and tidal radii, (C) The minimal stellar dispersion is 1/ √ 2 times the next-smallest allowed value. A serious potential problem with our proposal is that non-BPS monopoles are repulsive. The Jackiw-Rebbi mechanism yields four species of monopoles, and we assume that, for some choice of Yukawa couplings, one species is light and serves only to screen the repulsive interactions of another. jarah(at)ihep.ac.cn gudnason(at)phys.huji.ac.il


The present paper seeks to explain the pattern of income redistribution in a globalised world of increased market income inequality and lower costs of factor mobility. In some countries, larger market income inequality has been met by an increased redistributive effort, thus keeping the distribution of disposable incomes relatively stable. In other countries, larger market inequality has been accompanied by a reduction in transfers, thus leading to growth in disposable income inequality. In our model, the initial level of market income inequality is crucial in explaining how an increase in this variable affects redistribution.


The reaction pathways and kinetics of the oxidation reactions of 1-phenylethyl alcohol (PEA), 1-(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)ethanol (MVA), 1-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)ethanol (HMOPE), 1-(3-aminophenyl)ethanol (APE), 1-(4-methylphenyl)ethanol (MPE) and cyclohexanol with performic acid (PFA) were investigated in formic acid solvent. An unexpected new reaction pathway, from which the secondary alcohols can be directly oxidized to corresponding esters, was found. The reaction products (esters and ketones) of oxidation of PEA, MVA, HMOPE, APE, MPE and cyclohexanol were detected at different reaction times. The reaction rate constants, k1, k2, k3 and power orders α, β, γ of PFA concentration for three oxidation reactions pathways: alcohol to ester, alcohol to ketone and ketone to ester were obtained, respectively. These findings might provide a new insight into the technology of lignin degradation.


Physics tells us that potential energy is the capacity to do work that a body possesses as a result of its position in electric, magnetic, or gravitational fields. Thinking of "potentiality" in an electric idiom and with reference to its place in human biological processes that implicate electric phenomena, such as the pulses of action potentials that animate the heart and brain, can afford novel angles into contemporary biomedical enactments of humanness. This paper explores the material and rhetorical power of electric potential in cardiac and neurological medicine, paying attention to how discourses of "waves" of energy format the way scientists apprehend bodies as emplaced in time—in a time that can be about both cyclicity and futurity. Attention to electrophysiological phenomena may enrich the way anthropologists of the biosciences think about potentiality, taking scholars beyond our established attentions to the genetic, cellular, or pharmacological to think about the body electric.


Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been recently identified as an aetiological agent in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The present study was designed to determine the pulmonary clearance rate of 99mTc-diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (99mTc-DTPA) in asymptomatic HCV antibody positive (HCV Ab+) patients and the role of 99mTc-DTPA aerosol scintigraphy in the early detection of lung involvement. Twenty-six non-smoker HCV Ab+ and HCV-RNA (+) patients (20 female, six male; aged 43±11 years), with no clinical pulmonary symptoms, and normal radiological findings, were studied. Thirty-one healthy non-smoker volunteers (24 female, seven male; aged 40±10 years) were taken as a control group. 99mTc-DTPA aerosol inhalation scintigraphy and pulmonary function tests were performed in all patients and in controls. On the basis of the scintigrams the percentage decline in activity per minute (Kep) was evaluated, which represented an accurate parameter of lung membrane permeability. The mean Kep values of healthy controls (0.78±0.13 for left lung, 0.79±0.14 for right lung) were significantly lower than HCV Ab+ patients (1.10±0.31 for left lung, 1.11±0.34 for right lung, P<0.001). But no significant change was observed in PFT (P>0.05). We conclude that subclinical alveolitis and/or interstitial lung disease may be present in patients with HCV Ab+, since it is known that an increase in the epithelial permeability of the lung is an early manifestation of interstitial disease.


Workflows are a central component for representing e-Science procedures in myGrid. For myGrid to support their design, scientists must be able to discover appropriate services to orchestrate and also discover if colleagues have already designed something similar. myGrid integrates a number of software components to address these requirements. The myGrid registry stores service and workflow descriptions. PeDRo, a structured data entry tool, enables uses to annotate these descriptions. Taverna, the workflow workbench, closely integrates with the registry and PeDRo to ensure description and reuse of services and workflows is simple.


With the high usage of electricity, environmental friendly choices became more important than ever. Hence, making Solar-electrical energy alternative is a possible solution despite being expensive but this price can be brought down when the surface area of the PV cell used is reduced which is the aim of this project. By developing Luminescent Solar Concentrator (LSC) that absorb and concentrate the light into the Photovoltaic Cell where the energy conversion takes place but in order to do that a nanomaterial should be doped into luminescent solar concentrator to bring up the best capabilities of the LSC.


The studies were carried out in a breeding turkey flock in which mycoplasma infections were detected (serologically and by isolation from semen). Trials using tylosin and enrofloxacin were carried out to limit the infection. The antibiotics were given to the birds for 5 days in therapeutic doses and to semen at concentration of 1 mg/ ml of semen. The effectiveness of such treatments was confirmed by negative results of mycoplasma isolation from semen of turkey males and from the cloaca of turkey hens. As a result, an improvement in reproductive performances was observed. Hatchability was higher by 15% and 27% after the addition of enrofloxacin and tylosin, respectively.The progeny were free of mycoplasmas. The effectiveness of the method used was confirmed during two consecutive months.


We conducted an observational study to examine the effect of student and professor gender on college classroom participation and faculty-student interactions. A main effect for professor gender emerged, with more voluntary responses in female-taught classes. As the percentage of males present increased, overall voluntary responses and professor praise decreased.


Chronic inflation and the importance of the exchange rate as a nominal anchor for the domestic price level have led some Latin American countries to consider returning to a fixed dollar exchange rate. John Welch and Darryl McLeod examine the costs and benefits of real exchange rate movements and their relevance for the credibility of inflation policies in countries now contemplating free trade agreements with the United States. ; The authors discuss the experiences of several Latin American countries and describe the problem their policy-makers face when deciding to follow either fixed or flexible exchange rate rules. Fixed exchange rates that are credible can decrease inflation rates, but only at the cost of policy flexibility in the face of adverse changes in the terms of trade or foreign interest rates. The current relative stability of international markets has led some Latin American countries to complement their stabilization and reform policies with fixed exchange rates.


Many studies have analyzed the market premium enjoyed by houses located within gated communities; nevertheless little or no attention has been paid on the impact that such a sort of development produces on the surrounding housing market. This question becomes very important in the cities in which gated communities or other common interest communities, aimed to medium and high socioeconomic groups, are traditionally confined to low incomes enclaves. Salcedo & Torres (2004) and Caceres & Sabatini (2004), from a qualitative perspective, have suggested that this social proximity produces various benefits like improvement of value expectations of land from the original settlers, among others.


This paper investigates the effect of strut thickness and number of pores on the fatigue performance of Ti-6Al-4V voronoi lattice structures designed with the same part volume. The aim of this study is to establish the variation in high cycle fatigue parameters for constant volume lattice structures designed with various lattice parameters. Voronoi geometries were designed with varying strut thicknesses and number of pores to maintain a constant specimen volume. The geometries were tested under compressive fatigue conditions at a reversal ratio, R, of 0.1. It was found that the strut thickness has a significant influence on the fatigue life of the lattice. An increase in the strut thickness by 100 μm can result in a reduction in fatigue life by up to a factor of 10. The results from this research can influence the design of lattice structures for osteointegration in loadbearing biomedical implant applications.


Guinea-pigs infected in the liver with the Biswas strain of Entamoeba histolytica showed no dermal hypersensitivity but showed positive lymphocyte transformation and macrophage-migration inhibition. The time sequence showed an activated response at 4 days after infection, a full response at 8 days when the liver abscesses were resolving and a waning response at 12 days when the abscesses had healed.


We used a person-oriented approach to describe the profiles of Mexican American emerging adults' relationships with siblings using affective/behavioral qualities (e.g., positivity) and relationship maintenance strategies (e.g., communication frequency) and to examine how profiles of sibling relationships were related to dimensions of Mexican American emerging adults' familism values. Using data from 186 Mexican American emerging adults (Mage = 21.56), we conducted latent profile analyses and identified three profiles of emerging adults' relationships with siblings: moderate (n = 106), positive/involved (n = 64), and negative/distant (n = 16). Our findings suggest that the majority of emerging adults in our study reported close relationships with siblings and dimensions of familism values were differentially associated with profiles of sibling relationship qualities.


Summary The polyenic antibiotic lucensomycin caused a severe inhibition of uridine or thymidine incorporation into RNA or DNA of ascites tumor cells. The inhibition appeared to be related to the ability of the polyene to interact with the cell membrane, the permeability of which was increased; simple leakage of precursors or of enzymes from the cells did not fully account for the kinetics of inhibition. Lucensomycin did not affect DNA or RNA synthesis, starting from triphosphonucleotides, by isolated nuclei. In the presence of the polyene, the cells became permeable to externally added nucleotides, which they could utilize for RNA or DNA synthesis. Nucleosides, even at high concentrations, could not substitute for nucleotides.


We present the design and applications of a simple and very low-cost digital events analyzer, suitable for use in a student laboratory as well as in research applications. The pulse analyzer can perform five functions: sampling measurement; pulse interval distribution measurement; simple triggered multichannel scaling; scaled triggered multichannel scaling; and auto- and cross-correlation function measurement. The memory capacity is limited to 100 channels with 11 bits or more word length. The basic cycle time of the analyzer is 500 ns as limited by the speed of MOS circuit used. We demonstrate the utility of it with counting statistics experiments of radiations from radioactive decay, neutron time of flight analysis, and also the photon correlations measurements of light scattered from particles in fluids.


Many communication networks use adaptive shortest path routing. By this we mean that each network link is periodically assigned a length that depends on its congestion level during the preceding period, and all traffic generated between length updates is routed along a shortest path corresponding to the latest link lengths. We show that in certain situations, typical of networks involving a large number of small users and utilizing virtual circuits, this routing method performs optimally in an asymptotic sense. In other cases, shortest path routing can be far from optimal.


Land use/land cover is dynamic in nature and it provides a comprehensive understanding of the interaction and relationship of anthropogenic activities with the environment. Changes in the condition and composition of land use/land cover affect climate, bio-geo-chemical cycles and energy fluxes and livelihoods of people. More recently, tropical deforestation has drawn attention to human impacts on the environment. The loss of tropical rainforests in the Amazon basin, and the associated loss of biodiversity and accelerated extinction of species have captured the global imagination. Ethiopia, situated in the horn of Africa, has a long history of intensive agriculture and human settlement particularly in the highlands due to the presence of favorable climatic and ecological conditions. However, the high population pressure and the concomitant depletion of the scarce resources have made agriculture of the country unsustainable, forcing its expansion into marginal areas such as steep slopes, swampy plains, and traditionally untapped part of the environment and putting tremendous pressure on soil, vegetation and water resources. As a consequence, considerable land use/land cover changes have occurred in Ethiopia during the second half of the 20th century which has an adverse impact on the communities' livelihood. The major impact of LULCC on rural livelihood that identified by many studies include: its impacts on environment thereby rural communities' vulnerability to climate vagaries; its impact on land resources with related to land degradation, soil erosion, and productivity decrement; its impact on biomass energy Supply; Vulnerability of rural communities towards erratic rain fall and water sources problem with related to LULCC; impact on access to quality water; its negative impact on livestock rearing which related with grazing land shrinkage for agricultural land expansion, and also its impacts on ecosystem goods and services especially related with deforestation


In this work we apply methods from cryptography to enable mutually distrusting players to implement broad classes of mediated equilibria of strategic games without trusted mediation. Our implementation uses a pre-play 'cheap talk' phase, consisting of non- binding communication between players prior to play in the original game. In the cheap talk phase, the players run a secure multi-party computation protocol to sample from an equilibrium of a "cryptographically blinded" version of the game, in which actions are encrypted. Coarse correlated equilibrium. Coarse correlated equilibria (CCE) are a generalization of correlated equilibria (CE), invoking a notion of commitment. Suppose a mediator samples an action profile a from a distribution α. We say α is a CCE if no player has incentive not to "promise" in advance -- before seeing his advice ai -- to play according to the advice, if he believes that all other players will commit to do the same. Note that players who do not commit will not see the advice at all, and hence must play an independent strategy. In this paper, we address the following question: How can the players of a strategic game implement any CCE via (cryptographic) pre-play communication without trusting each other or a mediator? In the computational setting, we give an implementation for general strategic games, in the form of an extended game comprising a cryptographic protocol in the pre-play phase, which securely samples an action profile for a "cryptographically blinded" version of the game. The blinded game's action space consists of encryptions of the original game's actions. Our implementation has the strong property that any computational CCE of the original game corresponds to a payoff-equivalent Nash equilibrium of the extended game. Furthermore, it achieves strategic equivalence, in that every computational Nash equilibrium of the extended game corresponds to a computational CCE of the original game. In the information-theoretic setting, we give an implementation for strategic games with four or more players, using a similar cryptographically blinded pre-play phase given pairwise communication channels. This also achieves strategic equivalence. Both the restriction to four or more players and the need for a stronger communication model are unavoidable in this setting, as shown by impossibility results of [Bárány 1992; Ben-Or et al. 1988; Pease et al. 1980; Aumann and Hart 2003]. Relation to prior work. The pre-play literature considers the problem of implementing equilibria without mediation. Our work generalizes that of [Bárány 1992] in the information-theoretic setting and [Dodis et al. 2000] in the computational setting. It has long been recognized that the possibility to commit to strategies in advance can increase payoffs achievable in a game, starting with [von Stackelberg 1934]; in this work, we achieve the payoffs of CCE without resorting to the usual assumption of binding contracts. Our results are achieved using a very weak (and necessary [Hubáček et al. 2013]) notion of mediation, where the mediator's actions are publicly verifiable, and moreover the mediator's output does not affect players' strategic choices.


Over the past two years at the Materials and Process Simulation Center, we have been developing simulation approaches for studying the molecular nanomachine designs pioneered by Drexler and Merkle. These nanomachine designs, such as planetary gears and neon pump, are described with atomistic details and involve up to 10 000 atoms.

With the Dreiding and universal force fields, we have optimized the structures of the two planetary gear designs and the neon pump. At the Fourth Foresight conference, we reported rotational impulse dynamics studies of the first and second generation designs of planetary gears undergoing very high-frequency rotational motions. We will explore stability of these designs in the lower frequency regimes which require long time simulations. We will report the molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics simulations performed on these model systems. We explore the following modes in these studies: (1) impulse mode; (2) constant angular velocity - perpetual rotation; (3) constant torque - acceleration from rest.


A growing number of democracies have empowered their judiciaries to enforce constitutional norms, many of the most important of which are human rights norms that, as articulated, serve principally to limit the power of government. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) provides a recent important example of such judicial empowerment. This "global expansion of judicial power" - which has been called "one of the most significant trends in late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century government" - has led, in the view of some commentators, to "the judicialization of politics". Some prominent legal scholars - most notably, Mark Tushnet and Jeremy Waldron - have recently argued that such government by judiciary, especially American-style judicial review, subverts the democratic ideal of government by the people and is therefore deeply problematic. Less prosaically, the claim is that government by a politically independent judiciary subverts the democratic ideal of government by the politically dependent, because electorally accountable, representatives of the people.The question is more broadly relevant than ever, therefore, whether it is appropriate for the citizens of a liberal democracy to cede to their courts the power to oppose, in the name of one or more entrenched human rights norms, choices made by, or actions of, electorally accountable government officials. In pursing this inquiry, two other, related questions inevitably emerge: If some power to protect entrenched human rights should be ceded to the courts, how great ought that power to be in relation to the power of the other, electorally accountable parts of government? And in exercising the power ceded to them - a power to pass judgment on the choices and actions of electorally accountable government officials - should the courts defer as much as possible to those officials, or to some of them; or, instead, should the courts abjure such deference?This article was my contribution to a symposium at Wake Forest University School of Law celebrating of the 200th anniversary of Marbury v. Madison (1803).


Greece, Romania and Bulgaria are the principal EU countries where the majority of citizens belong to the Orthodox Church. Their constitutions affirm the freedom of religion, and recognize the special role of the Orthodox Church in their respective cultural traditions. Contrary to European directives on civil rights, the Orthodox Church appears poised in the upcoming Pan-Orthodox Council to redefine relations between citizenship, nation and religion originating, through the Byzantine transmission, in the law of the Roman Empire


The use of room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) as media for electrochemical application is very attractive. In this work, the electrochemical deposition of silver was investigated at a glassy carbon electrode in hydrophobic 1-n-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate (BMIMPF6) and hydrophilic 1-n-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (BMIMBF4) RTILs and in KNO3 aqueous solution by cyclic voltammetric and potentiostatic transient techniques. The voltammograms showed the presence of reduction and oxidation peaks associated with the deposition and dissolution of silver from AgBF4 in both BMIMPF6 and BMIMBF(4), resembling the redox behavior of AgNO3 in KNO3 aqueous solution. A crossover loop was observed in all the cyclic voltammograms of these electrochemical systems, indicating a nucleation process. From the analysis of the experimental current transients, it was shown that the electrochemical deposition process of silver in these media was characteristic of 3D nucleation with diffusion-controlled hemispherical growth, and the silver nucleation closely followed the response predicted for progressive nucleation in BMIMPF6 and instantaneous nucleation in KNO3 aqueous solution, respectively. Compared with these two cases, the electrochemical deposition of silver in BMIMBF4 deviated from both the instantaneous and progressive nucleation models, which could be controlled by mixed kinetics and diffusion. On the basis of the experimental results, it was shown that parameters such as viscosity and water miscibility of RTILs would affect the electrodeposition behavior of silver. Atom force microscopy was employed to probe the surface morphology of the silver deposit, and it showed that the shining electrodeposit of silver was fairly dense and separate nanoclusters of <100 nm were in evidence, corresponding to an island growth model. The strongly enhanced Raman scattering from the monolayer film of 4-mercaptobenzoic acid demonstrated that as-prepared silver nanoparticular film was surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) active. The enhancement factor was calculated to be up to 9.0 x 10(5) and 1.0 x 10(6) for the silver film obtained in BMIMPF6 and BMIMBF4 RTILs, respectively.


A simple, colorimetric protamine titration method was developed for rapid and precise estimation of the protamine dose required for clinical heparin reversal. The method employs azure A dye as the titration indicator, and has replaced the time consuming clotting assay in the conventional protamine titration method with a rapid colorimetric assay. It offers the same accuracy in estimating the protamine dose as that of the conventional titration method, but allows the processing time to be shortened to within 5 min. In a similar manner, the colorimetric assay can also be employed with a heparin titration procedure to quickly assess the heparin dose required for protamine reversal. This would allow physicians to exercise a quick and accurate heparin back-titration to patients who are overdosed with protamine.


The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of feeding herbal galactogogue preparation (Sanjivani biokseera) on the milk yield and milk constituents in lactating Kankrej cows. Thirty-two lactating Kankrej cows in their 1st to 6th lactation were taken for the experiment from 3 days after calving up to 52 days postpartum. All the animals were fed as per the standard seasonally available roughages and concentrates to meet their nutritional requirements. The cows were randomly divided into two uniform groups of 16 cows in each according to initial milk yield and milk composition. The animals in group-I were not given any supplement and served as control. The animals in group-II were given Sanjivani biokseera (Naturewell Industries) @ 60 g per day for 1-month, commencing 3 days after calving, in addition to the usual feeds/fodders. A clear difference was observed in milk yield from day 8 onward of experiment between groups with significant (plessthan0 0.05) higher values from day 16-52 in cows fed herbal galactogogue as compared to control, but no such distinct effect on milk constituents was observed on day 52 when analyzed. The use of herbal galactogogue significantly (p lessthan 0.05) increased the overall average of 52 days milk production, which was 9.34 ± 0.21 lit/day in supplemented as compared to 7.75 ± 0.26 lit/day in control animals. It was concluded that herbal galactogogue (Sanjivani biokseera) could increase milk yield in lactating dairy cows through its galactopoetic property and improved rumen environment.


Personal computer/workstation (PC/WS) clusters have come to be studied intensively in the field of parallel and distributed computing. From the viewpoint of applications, data intensive applications including data mining and ad-hoc query processing in databases are considered very important for massively parallel processors, in addition to the conventional scientific calculation. Thus, investigating the feasibility of such applications on a PC cluster is meaningful. A PC cluster connected with a storage area network (SAN) is built and evaluated with a data mining application. In the case of a SAN-connected cluster, each node can access all shared disks directly without using a LAN; thus, SAN-connected clusters achieve much better performance than LAN-connected clusters for disk-to-disk copy operations. However, if a lot of nodes access the same shared disk simultaneously, application performance degrades due to the I/O-bottleneck. A runtime data declustering method, in which data is declustered to several other disks dynamically during the execution of the application, is proposed to resolve this problem.


'Living fossils' are testimonies of long-term sustained ecological success, but how demographic history and natural selection contributed to their survival, resilience and persistence in the face of Quaternary climate fluctuations remains unclear. To better understand the interplay between demographic history and selection in shaping genomic diversity and evolution of such organisms, we assembled the whole genome of Cercidiphyllum japonicum, a widespread East Asian Tertiary relict tree, and re-sequenced 99 individuals of C. japonicum and its sister species, C. magnificum (Central Japan). We dated this speciation event to the mid-Miocene, and the intraspecific lineage divergence of C. japonicum (China vs. Japan) to the Early Pliocene. Throughout climatic upheavals of the Late Tertiary/Quaternary, population bottlenecks greatly reduced the genetic diversity of C. japonicum. However, this polymorphism loss was likely counteracted by (1) long-term balancing selection at multiple chromosomal and heterozygous gene regions, potentially reflecting overdominance; and (2) selective sweeps at stress response and growth-related genes likely involved in local adaptation. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of how living fossils have survived climatic upheaval and maintained an extensive geographic range, i.e. both types of selection could be major factors contributing to the species' survival, resilience and persistence.


BACKGROUND
The prevalence of vitamin B(12) deficiency, defined as an elevated concentration of plasma methylmalonic acid (P-MMA), has been estimated to be 15% to 44% in the elderly. However, we do not know whether an increased P-MMA level actually indicates or predicts a clinical condition in need of treatment.

PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS
In a follow-up study, 432 individuals not treated with vitamin B(12) were examined 1.0 to 3.9 years after initial observation of an increased P-MMA concentration (>0.28 micromol/L). The examination included laboratory tests, a structured interview to disclose symptoms, a food frequency questionnaire, and a clinical examination including a Neurological Disability Score.

RESULTS
Variation in P-MMA levels over time was high (coefficient of variation, 34%). In only 16% of participants, P-MMA levels increased substantially, whereas 44% showed a decrease. Level of P-MMA was significantly but not strongly associated with levels of plasma cobalamins (r = -0.22, P<.001) and plasma total homocysteine (r = 0.37, P<.001). After adjustment for age and sex, we found no associations between P-MMA concentration and the total symptom score (P =.61), the total Neurological Disability Score (P =.64), or other clinical manifestations related to vitamin B(12) deficiency.

CONCLUSIONS
An increased level of P-MMA did not predict a further increase with time and clinical manifestations related to vitamin B(12) deficiency. We therefore challenge the use of an increased P-MMA concentration as the only marker for diagnosis of vitamin B(12) deficiency.


: Rat experiments with short-life radionuclides revealed a marked differences in the action of dry mud extract and dry brine in spite of the fact that their composition was almost similar. Galvanization and ultrasound induce effects acting differently on accumulation of chemical elements from brine and mud in the body and skin of both healthy animals and those with induced diseases. These differences in the action of the above natural compounds of the same type should be considered when planning physiobalneotherapeutic rehabilitation complexes.


High-k stacks will be used in Flash memory cells for technology beyond sub-30 nm generations. Abnormal window shift during memory operations has been observed and was attributed to trapping/detrapping of electrons or dielectric relaxation in the high-k layer. In this work, the cause of abnormal VTH/VFB shift at low operating electric fields is investigated. For the first time, extensive experimental evidences show that this shift is caused by as-grown mobile charges in Al2O3 layers. Its impacts on program/erase windows and read/pass disturbance in Flash memory cells are evaluated.