Semiconductor inks containing an indium-based oxo alkoxide precursor material were optimized regarding rheology requirements for a commercial 10 pL inkjet printhead. The rheological stability is evaluated by measuring the dynamic viscosity of the formulations for 12 h with a constant shear rate stress under ambient conditions. It is believed that the observed superior stability of the inks is the result of effectively suppressing the hydrolysis and condensation reaction between the metal oxo alkoxide precursor complex and atmospheric water. This can be attributed to a strong precursor coordination and the resulting reduction in ligand exchange dynamics of the solvent tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol which is used as the main solvent in the formulations. It is also shown that with a proper selection of cosolvents, having high polar Hansen solubility parameter values, the inks drop formation properties and wettability can be fine-tuned by maintaining the inks rheological stability. Good drop jetting performance without satellite formation and high drop velocities of 8.25 m/s were found with the support of dimensionless numbers and printability windows. By printing single 10 pL ink dots onto short channel indium-tin-oxide electrodes, In2O3 calcination at 350 °C and a solution-processed back-channel protection, high average saturation mobility of approximately 10 cm2/(V s) are demonstrated in a bottom-contact coplanar thin-film transistor device structure.


At the core of Herbert Blau's theatre theory are meditations on appearance, repetition, bodily texts, temporality, history, and the illusory and elusive workings of power. Blau's decades of theorizing are refracted through his long experience as a theatremaker, including his production of Waiting for Godotbefore an audience of San Quentin prisoners. In this essay, Diamond explores the affinities between Blau, the poststructuralists, and Beckett.


Seven members in three generations of a family have multiple hamartoma syndrome (Cowden disease). Skin changes, characterized by progressive verrucous, papular, and lichenoid lesions involving mucosal and cutaneous surfaces, serve as hallmarks of associated fibrocystic breast disease, carcinoma of the breast, thyroid tumors, gastrointestinal polyposis, nervous system abnormalities, fibromas, angiomas, and lipomas. The syndrome is inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern. It is important to recognize the widespread and diverse mucocutaneous manifestations as signs of possible anatomic, metabolic, and internal abnormalities.


In this paper we generalize to soft constraints the techniques and approximations usually used for local consistency in classical constraint satisfaction and programming. The theoretical results show that this is indeed possible without loosing the fundamental properties of such techniques, and the experimental results (on partial arc-consistency) show that this work can help develop more eecient implementations for logic-based languages working with soft constraints.


A traceless polymer-supported synthesis of 4-benzoylquinazolines was developed using the following commercially available building blocks: Fmoc-α-amino acids, 2-nitrobenzensulfonyl chlorides and α-bromoacetophenones. The acyclic intermediates underwent base-catalyzed rearrangement involving C-C and N-N bond formation followed by ring expansion and yielded resin-bound dihydroquinazoline-2-carboxylic acids. After they were released from the resin by treatment with trifluoroacetic acid, base-mediated decarboxylation produced the target quinazolines in moderate-to-high yields and purities.


MOTIVATION
Gene expression patterns obtained by in situ mRNA hybridization provide important information about different genes during Drosophila embryogenesis. So far, annotations of these images are done by manually assigning a subset of anatomy ontology terms to an image. This time-consuming process depends heavily on the consistency of experts.

RESULTS
We develop a system to automatically annotate a fruitfly's embryonic tissue in which a gene has expression. We formulate the task as an image pattern recognition problem. For a new fly embryo image, our system answers two questions: (1) Which stage range does an image belong to? (2) Which annotations should be assigned to an image? We propose to identify the wavelet embryo features by multi-resolution 2D wavelet discrete transform, followed by min-redundancy max-relevance feature selection, which yields optimal distinguishing features for an annotation. We then construct a series of parallel bi-class predictors to solve the multi-objective annotation problem since each image may correspond to multiple annotations.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
The complete annotation prediction results are available at: http://www.cs.niu.edu/~jzhou/papers/fruitfly and http://research.janelia.org/peng/proj/fly_embryo_annotation/. The datasets used in experiments will be available upon request to the correspondence author.


Objectives To describe how physicians were engaged in primary healthcare system change in a remote and rural Canadian health authority. Design A qualitative interpretive study based on a hermeneutic approach. Methods 34 transcribed in-depth interviews with physicians and administrators relevant to physician engagement were purposively sampled from a larger data set of 239 interviews gathered over a 3-year period from seven communities engaged in primary healthcare transformation. Interviews were coded and analysed interpretively to develop common themes. Setting This research is part of a larger study, Partnering for Change I, which investigated the efforts of Northern Health, a rural regional health authority in British Columbia, to transform its healthcare system to one grounded in primary care with a focus on interdisciplinary teams. It reports how physician engagement was accomplished during the first 3 years of the study. Participants Interviews with 34 individuals with direct involvement and experience in the processes of physician engagement. These included 10 physicians, three Regional Executives, 18 Primary Healthcare coordinators and three Division of Family Practice leads. Results Three major interconnected themes that depicted the process of engagement were identified: working through tensions constructively, drawing on structures for engagement and facilitating relationships. Conclusions Physician engagement was recognised as a priority by Northern Health in its efforts to create system change. This was facilitated by the creation of Divisions of Family Practice that provided a structure for dialogue and facilitated a common voice for physicians. Divisions helped to build trust between various groups through allowing constructive conversations to surface and deal with tensions. Local context mattered. Flexibility in working from local priorities was a critical part of developing relationships that facilitated the design and implementation of system reform.


The purpose of this research was to know the combination effect of Bacillus spp., Nitrosomonas sp., that added to the commercial feed to feed conversion and growth on Sangkuriang Catfish. The method used in this experiment was design with 3 treatments and 3 replications. Samples (24.49±1.21 g) were a stocking density of 1,500 fish/pond and maintenanced for 30 days. The treatment applied was P0 treatment (feed without probiotic), P1 (5.0 x 107 CFU/gram feed of probiotic was sprayed), and treatment P2 (5.0 x 109 CFU/gram feed of probiotic is sprayed). The best treatment was probiotic in treatment P1 quantitatively made a real effect in growth and made a better feed efficiency than other treatments, with FCR (0.7±0.57), SGR (4.33±0.11), EPP (109.61±9.69), SR (96.91±0.45), DWG (2.07±0.18). Water quality of culture media was in the range of reasonable level of cultivation C. gariepinus. Adding probiotic P1 could be an effective alternative to increase growth performance and feed efficiency on C. gariepinus.


OBJECTIVES
The aim of the present multi-center study was to evaluate the treatment outcome of immediately restored one-piece single-tooth implants with a diameter of 3 mm after 1 year.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
A total of 57 one-piece implants (NobelDirect 3.0) were inserted in 47 patients (26 females, 21 males) with a mean age of 31 years (range: 17-76 years) at five different centers. The implants replaced maxillary lateral incisors and mandibular incisors. The implants were placed either in conjunction with tooth extraction or in healed sites, and all implants were immediately restored with a provisional resin crown. If needed, the abutment part of the implant was prepared before crown cementation. The permanent crown was placed after 1.9-14.5 months. Radiographs were taken at implant insertion as well as after 6 and 12 months to evaluate the peri-implant marginal bone level and bone loss. Moreover, plaque, bleeding on probing and complications were assessed.

RESULTS
A total of 44 patients (23 females, 21 males) with 54 implants were available for the 1-year follow-up. One implant was lost, thus the 1-year implant survival was 98%. A statistically significant mean marginal bone loss was observed between baseline and 6 months (1.1 mm, range: -0.7 to 4.4 mm; n=49) and between baseline and 12 months (1.6 mm, range: -0.8 to 4.6 mm; n=50). A total of 18% of the implants were characterized by a bone loss of more than 3 mm. No bleeding on probing was observed around 83% of the implants. Plaque was registered at 15% of the implants. The most common complications were related to the provisional crown, i.e. fracture (n=3) and loss of retention (n=3).

CONCLUSIONS
A high 1-year implant survival was observed in the present study. However, the excessive peri-implant marginal bone loss around several implants indicates that this implant should be used with caution until further studies have been conducted.


Nutritional rickets resulting from calcium insufficiency is common in Nigeria and high dietary phytate is thought to inhibit calcium and zinc absorption. We compared the effects of a high-phytate meal and enzymatic dephytinization on calcium and zinc absorption in Nigerian children with and without rickets. Nineteen children with rickets and 15 age-matched control children, aged 2-10 y, were given calcium (600 mg/d) and ergocalciferol (1250 microg/wk). After 6 wk, calcium and zinc absorption were measured in both groups with and without maize porridge using stable isotopes. One week later, absorption measurements were repeated to assess the effects of enzymatic dephytinization and fermentation of the maize porridge. The phytate concentration of maize porridge (3.87 +/- 0.38 g/kg wet weight) was reduced by enzymatic dephytinization (2.83 +/- 0.41 g/kg; P < 0.001) but not by fermentation (3.35 +/- 0.27 g/kg; P = 0.08). Calcium and zinc absorption were unaffected by the presence of rickets or by fermentation of maize porridge. Calcium absorption was greater with a meal (61.3 +/- 25.1%) than without (27.8 +/- 14.6%; P < 0.001). Zinc absorption was lower with a meal (16.2 +/- 8.0%) than without (63.4 +/- 23.9%; P < 0.001). Enzymatic dephytinization increased relative zinc absorption from a meal by 101 +/- 81% (P < 0.001) but did not affect calcium absorption. Rickets was not associated with impaired calcium or zinc absorption. Calcium absorption was enhanced by maize porridge, but zinc absorption was reduced. Enzymatic dephytinization increased zinc absorption. Multiple strategies may be required to optimize calcium and zinc absorption in deficient populations.


ABSTRACT Nestling survival may be an important factor driving population fluctuations of arvicoline rodents, yet few data exist owing to the difficulties of monitoring survival at the nest. We examined survival of nestling prairie voles Microtus ochrogaster in alfalfa and bluegrass habitats over a 25-y period using the proportion of young estimated to have been born to pregnant females and to have survived to first capture at ≤13 g. Nestling survival did not differ between habitats, but was greater during spring-early autumn than during late autumn–winter and greater during late autumn than winter. Survival of nestlings was also greater during the increase phase than during the decline or trough phases irrespective of season. During most increase phases greater nestling survival may have resulted from hibernation of snakes. Predation from snakes did not appear to be involved in decreased survival during the decline phase, at least for declines occurring during late autumn-winter. We suggest extreme weather and maternal death from predation as potential causes of decreased survival of nestlings in winter declines.


Relative intensity noise (RIN) is one of the most significant artifacts that ultimately limits the use of broadband Raman amplifier applications in optical communications systems. Recently, as a way to alleviate some of the detrimental features of continuously pumped Raman amplifiers, pulsed pumping was introduced. In this paper, we study the RIN transfer in pulse-pumped fiber Raman amplifiers. An analytical expression describing RIN transfer from a pump with an arbitrary pulse shape has been derived for co- and counter-pumping configurations. The dependence of RIN transfer on pump modulation frequency, depth of modulation, and duty cycle in a typical 80-km fiber span has been analyzed for pumps with sinusoidal and rectangular profiles. We show that in the case of rectangular pulsing of pump, RIN transfer in counter-pumping regime is substantially enhanced compared with that of continuous wave (CW) pumping due to the presence of resonant peaks at the pump intensity harmonics. In the co-propagation regime, RIN transfer for pulsed pumping does not exhibit resonant peaks and is generally lower than that for CW pumping. These features are reflected on the Q-penalty and may have detrimental effects on the system performance.


In this paper we present a new distributed architecture aimed to teleoperate a robot over Internet. The long term objective of the system design is to give the possibility for students to have remote experimentation. The main features of the proposed work concern the adaptation of the control strategy, by real time evaluation of quality of service, and experimentation parameters.


This paper presents a novel chaos-based cryptosystem to solve the privacy and security issues of biometric templates in remote biometric authentication over the network. According to the Kerchoff's principle, security of the cryptosystem resides in secrecy of the secret keys, so in this research, the secret keys are randomly and dynamically generated without any human intervention, and each transaction session has different secret keys. Biometric templates are encrypted by the chaotic cryptographic scheme and modulated by the chaotic spread spectrum modulation technique. Chaotic encryption scrambles the biometric templates into intangible form and chaotic modulation spreads the encrypted templates across a wide band of frequencies, thus make them more difficult to decipher under attacks. Experimental results show that the security, performance, and accuracy of the presented method are encouraging for the practical implementation in real environment


In this article, I analyze Korean Dong-in culture and its relationship with Yaoi, focusing on the changes in the 1990s. While Korean Dong-in culture has developed under the influence of Japanese Dojin culture, it is not well-known that Korean Dong-in culture has its own characteristics, reflecting the unique situations surrounding the Korean society. The reason that I pay attention to the changes in the 1990s is that they have created the foundation of the current Korean dong-in culture through changes such as the import and reception of Yaoi, the creation of `virtual community` in PC telecommunication, the enforcement of Juvenile Protection Law, and the inauguration of `Comic World,` Among them, the import and reception of Yaoi, a genre characterized by homosexuality including sexual relationship and fanwork, played a decisive role in the change of dong-in culture from manwha circle by highly motivated amatuer artists to fandom. The circumstances that original manhwa dong-in by manwha circle and Yaoi by manhwa fandom coexisted by the mid-1990s, the enforcement of Juvenile Protection Law and the lift of ban on Japanese popular culture rapidly weakened original manhwa dong-in. Also, the popularity of Comic World as a new type of dong-in events reflected the spread of fanwork as a new trend of Korean dong-in. In summary, the import and reception of Yaoi should be considered as one of the important changes in the 1990s Korean Dong-in culture, because 1) Korean women considered Yaoi as a liberating subculture by its powerful contents-homosexuality with sexual relationship, and 2) Yaoi succeeded in attracting new population favoring fanwork as a major trend in Korean Dong-in, differentiated from original manhwa circle population.


In this paper we consider an Ising bilayer as a chain of simple ladders, characterized by intra-ladder and inter-ladder couplings, to study in detail the para- and ferroelectric behaviours (also considering the electrostrictive corrections in the intra-ladder direction of the plane) for different ratios of interaction constants and different values of electric field, by using a transfer matrix method for the intra-ladder interactions and the MF approximation for the inter-ladder interactions. In the particular case in which the interaction between two layers (planes) is taken to be zero, our results reproduce entirely those obtained previously for a pseudo-one-dimensional Ising model, which explains the experimental data well for the thermodynamic properties of 1D ferroelectrics such as (d-CDP).


Objective:  to analyze the characteristics of the nurse's work environment in a hospital emergency service.  Methods:  a mixed method study with a concurrent triangulation strategy using data from a descriptiveexploratory study, with 19 nurses, and a Grounded Theory study with three sample groups totaling 21 participants. The quantitative data were collected using the Brazilian Nursing Work Index - Revised and were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis. The qualitative data were obtained from interviews and were analyzed through initial and focused coding.  Results:  the nurses considered that they had autonomy, good relationships with the physicians, and organizational support. However, the control over the environment was shown to be an unfavorable characteristic. Based on the results, the category: "Seeking to organize the work environment for demand which exceeds attendance capacity" is presented.  Conclusion:  the characteristics of the emergency environment were shown to be favorable to the nurse's work, with the exception of control over the environment.


public health problem. Patients suffering from OCD have distressing obsessions and compulsions that impair their daily functioning. This severe and chronically debilitating disorder affects more than 3 million people in the United States. Estimates of the lifetime prevalence of OCD in pediatric and adult populations range from 1% to 3%. According to the World Health Organization, OCD is among the 10 most disabling medical conditions worldwide. Among anxiety disorders, the National Comorbidity Survey Replication states that OCD has the highest percentage (50.6%) of serious cases. The clinical phenomenology and nosology of pediatric OCD are well described. This makes OCD a leading candidate for innovative developmental neurobiological study. In contrast to major depression and bipolar disorder, the clinical presentation in childhood and adulthood is similar, making findings more applicable across the age span. The two reasons to focus our study and attention on pediatric OCD are:


A comparison is made between simplex and orthogonal codes which have been modified by adding their individual complements. The bisimplex code thus formed has reduced efficiency so that the power used must be increased to obtain the same error rate as with the same size of biorthogonal code. It is found that the power advantage of the biorthogonal code is significant only when the code words are shorter than six or seven bits.


BACKGROUND
The safety and health of healthcare workers employed in pathology laboratories and exposed to formaldehyde (FA) is a matter of concern worldwide, as several health effects have been observed in workers resulting from exposure to FA, both short and long-term.

OBJECTIVE
The study was aimed to describe the strategy implemented in a hospital pathology laboratory to minimize workers' exposure to FA through interventions to working environment and workforce.

METHODS
The NIOSH 2016 method for detecting gaseous FA was adopted to perform personal and area active sampling of FA. The samples were subsequently analyzed by High Performance Liquid Chromatography. The exposure to FA was measured before and after improvement interventions.

RESULTS
The pre-intervention step showed FA levels exceeding the threshold limit values (TLV) established by ACGIH, both the time-weighted average (TLV-TWA) and short term exposure limit (TLV-STEL); after the improvement interventions, the median concentrations of personal and area FA sampling were respectively of 0.025 ppm (Range = 0.023-0.027) and 0.023 ppm (Range = 0.022-0.028) and significantly lower than pre-intervention step (p <  0.05) and below the TLV-TWA and TLV-STEL established by ACGIH.

CONCLUSIONS
In our study the workers' involvement in the risk management of FA exposure together with engineering improvements revealed a strategic way to minimize the FA pollution in the studied laboratory. Healthcare companies should consider the need to ensure the workers' participation in the management of occupational hazards, including FA, to reach the goal of healthy workplaces.


Metaheuristic based artificial intelligence algorithms are commonly used in the solution of optimization problems. Another area -besides engineering systemswhere chaos theory is widely employed is optimization problems. Being applied easily and not trapping in local optima, chaos-based search algorithms have attracted great attention. For example, it has been reported that when random number sequences generated from different chaotic systems are replaced with parameter values in bioinspired and swarm intelligence algorithms, an increase in the performance of metaheuristic algorithms is observed. Many scientific studies on developing hybrid algorithms in which metaheuristic algorithms and chaos theory are used together are already in process. In this article, scientific studies that cover the most popular metaheuristic algorithms in the literature in recent years and chaos theory subtopics together are examined. Great number of studies on metaheuristic algorithms and chaos issues exist in scientific literature. This article, hitherto, had to be limited to the most common meta-heuristic algorithms. In chaos-based metaheuristic algorithms, some advantages such as easy implementation, short application time and search acceleration have been addressed. This article is believed to contribute to two groups of researchers: The first group includes researchers already using meta-heuristic algorithms and who will come to understand that they can even improve their current techniques with chaos theory subarguments. The second group includes those who currently utilize chaotic analysis and methods in areas like nonlinear prediction modeling design and who will realize that they can make their existing methods even smarter with metaheuristic methods. Some metaheuristic algorithms use chaotic maps to solve problems such as trapping in local optimal solutions and premature convergence. In this study, such algorithms are examined through the benchmark functions they use. In addition, PSO, FA, ABC, WO algorithms are compared in terms of their common features, and algorithms with the best success rate are presented.


The influence of gamma irradiation on low-density polyethylene (LDPE) has been studied through space charge measurement and dielectric spectroscopy. Commercial LDPE film with a thickness of 100¿m was irradiated with ¿-rays at a dose rate of approximately 10kGy/h to different doses up to 100kGy in an atmosphere of air, vacuum and nitrogen respectively. Space charge profiles vary depending on irradiation environments and radiation dose. The space charge profile of a sample after irradiation at 100kGy in air is more complicated than those irradiated in vacuum and nitrogen at same dose. More importantly, the space charge decay rate for the irradiated samples is slower than that of the virgin sample, indicating that the irradiation had changed the material by the generation of deep traps for space charge. Irradiation in air also produced changes in the dielectric spectrum in the frequency range between 10¿3Hz and 106Hz where the imaginary part of the permittivity was found to be about one order of magnitude higher than that of the virgin sample (~10¿4). This was attributed to oxidation as samples with the same (or lower) radiation dose in vacuum or nitrogen showed no pronounced difference to that of virgin samples.


The ideal method of surgical treatment of severe acromioclavicular joint separations remains controversial, with more than sixty techniques described in the literature. Recently, there has been increased interest in the use of free tendon grafts to reconstruct the coracoclavicular ligaments. To our knowledge, the first published case report of reconstruction with a semitendinosus tendon autograft appeared in 20011. Numerous techniques have subsequently been developed in an effort to improve clinical results. An anatomic method of reconstruction, which focuses specifically on recreating both the conoid and the trapezoid coracoclavicular ligament, has been described2. This construct is particularly appealing because the ligaments act synergistically to limit displacement of the acromioclavicular joint. Therefore, an anatomic reconstruction of both ligaments may improve the stability of the acromioclavicular joint and enhance clinical outcomes.

There have been few reports, however, focusing on complications of these newer procedures. We report on a small series of patients in whom tendon graft reconstructions placed through two distinct clavicular bone tunnels resulted in fracture of the clavicle. We have identified factors of which surgeons should be aware to avoid these complications.

The surgical technique involved a modification of the procedure originally described by Mazzocca et al.2. The patient was placed in the beach-chair position after receiving an interscalene block and general anesthesia. An incision was created in the Langer lines approximately 4 cm medial to the acromioclavicular joint and extending from the clavicle toward the coracoid. The deltotrapezial fascia was incised and elevated subperiosteally. A T-extension of the fascia incision was created to expose the coracoid process. Distal clavicular resection was not performed. The technique modification consisted of the use of a bioabsorbable suture anchor placed in the coracoid base for supplemental fixation. Two bone tunnels, typically 6 mm in diameter to accommodate the …


Decision Support System in Employee Performance Appraisal is a web-based system used to support decision making for outsourcing employee contract extensions. This study aims to provide a decision support information system in employee performance appraisal so that employee performance appraisals and employee contract extension decisions can be carried out systematically. Currently, employee performance appraisals and decision making for employee contract extensions are still done manually using spreadsheets. The method used in the design of decision support systems in the web-based employee performance appraisal is the method of calculating the assessment using the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method and the prototype system development method. The design of this system provides convenience to the personnel staff and the head of personnel in assessing and making decisions for employees who are about to expire their contract. The system can also be a means for personnel staff in accessing reports on employee data whose performance has been assessed by the division head and makes it easier for personnel staff to make decisions on employee contract extensions. With the system, employees will be more motivated to do their job better.


Two different approaches, based on artificial neural networks (ANN) and fuzzy logic, were used to predict a number of outcomes of newborns: How they would be delivered, their 5 minute Apgar score, and neonatal mortality. The goal was to assess whether the methods would be comparable or whether they would perform differently for different outcomes. The results were comparable for Correct Classification Rate (CCR) and Specificity (true negative cases). Sensitivity (true positive cases) was slightly higher for the back-propagation feed-forward ANN than using the Fuzzy-Logic Classifier (FLC). Since this is one single database and a very large one, it is possible that the FLC would perform better than the ANN for very small databases, as shown by some of the co-authors in the past. The next step will be to test a small database with both methods to assess strengths and weaknesses with the intent to use both if needed with some medical data in the future.


paper deals with the use of ontologies for Information Retrieval.Roughly, the proposed approach consists in identifying important concepts in documents using two criterions, co-occurrence and semantic relatedness and then disambiguating them via an external general purpose ontology, namely WordNet. Matching the ontology and a document results in a set of scored concept-senses (nodes) with weighted links. This representation, called semantic core of a document best reveals the semantic content of the document. We regard our approach, of which the first evaluation results are encouraging, as a short but strong step toward the long term goal of Intelligent Indexing and Semantic Retrieval.


Purpose: Many antibody therapies have been introduced into clinical practice in the past decade. Although pharmacokinetic data provide information regarding serum concentration, there are few reports that show the interaction of antibodies with the tumor in vivo. KRN330 is a novel recombinant human IgG1 monoclonal antibody (mAb) targeting the A33 surface differentiation antigen that is uniformly expressed on the surface of 95% of colorectal cancer (CRC) cells. We investigated whether KRN330 binds and stays bound to tumors established in a xenograft rodent model as well as biopsied tumors from CRC patients treated with KRN330 on a phase I trial. Methods: Time-course of KRN330 binding was analyzed using a rodent xenograft tumor model bearing human LS174 colon cancer cells. Tumors were collected at specified time points, ranging from the end of infusion on Day 1 to Day 36 after a single dose of KRN330 (1 mg/kg). KRN330 on the tumor was detected with either flow cytometry or an immunohistochemical method (IHC) for each time point. Clinical KRN330 binding data were analyzed using A33-positive tumor biopsies from 4 patients with advanced CRC who consented to be enrolled into the Phase 1 monotherapy study of KRN330. The biopsy was conducted on Day 8-9, or Day 14, after an initial 3 mg/kg dose of KRN330. KRN330 binding on human CRC tissues was assessed using IHC with the anti KRN330 idiotype antibody. Serum concentrations of KRN330 were obtained at several time points in both studies. Results: Xenograft KRN330 binding analyses indicate that KRN330 rapidly bound to the tumor after dosing and remained bound throughout the study period. Although the serum concentration decreased to 15% of that originally observed at 10 minutes post administration by Day 8, based on flow cytometry data, the KRN330 bound on tumors on Days 8 and 15 was 100% and 70%, respectively, of the maximum level bound (Day 2). Xenograft tumors in animals that were infused with a non-specific human immunoglobulin G control showed there was very minimal binding on Day 2. IHC results demonstrated that staining intensity supported the flow cytometry analysis and remained at a similar level for up to Day 15. Clinical binding data confirmed KRN330 bound and remained bound to the CRC tumor cells even at Day 14 as well as Days 8 and 9. On the other hand, serum concentrations of KRN330 decreased to 12% and 4% of the value at the end of infusion on Day 8-9 and Day 15, respectively. Conclusion: These data are the first to show that KRN330 binds rapidly and stays bound to CRC tumors for an extended period in rodent xenograft models as well as CRC patients. This suggests that KRN330 might be able to remain active on tumor even after the serum concentration drops to very low levels. Further investigation of this mAb in clinical studies is currently underway. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2431.


Background: To report three cases of nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) endophthalmitis following multiple ocular surgeries and to review previous literature in order to study the clinical profile, treatment modalities, and visual outcomes among patients with NTM endophthalmitis.Methods: Clinical manifestation and management of patients with NTM endophthalmitis in the Department of Ophthalmology, Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand were described. In addition, a review of previously reported cases and case series from MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CENTRAL was performed. The clinical information and type of NTM from the previous studies and our cases were summarized.Results: We reported three cases of NTM endophthalmitis caused by M. haemophilum, M. fortuitum and M. abscessus and a summarized review of 112 additional cases previously published. Of 115 patients, there were 101 exogenous endophthalmitis (87.8%) and 14 endogenous endophthalmitis (12.2%). The patients' age ranged from 13 to 89 years with mean of 60.5±17.7 years with no gender predominance. Exogenous endophthalmitis occurred in both healthy and immunocompromised hosts, mainly caused by cataract surgery (67.3%). In contrast, almost all endogenous endophthalmitis patients were immunocompromised. Among all patients, previous history of tuberculosis infection was identified in 4 cases (3.5%). Rapid growing NTMs were responsible for exogenous endophthalmitis, while endogenous endophthalmitis were commonly caused by slow growers. Treatment regimens consisted of macrolides, fluoroquinolones or aminoglycosides, which were continued for up to 12 months. Initial and final vision were generally worse than 6/60.Conclusions: NTM endophthalmitis is a serious intraocular infection that leads to irreversible loss of vision. The presentation can mimic a chronic recurrent or persistent intraocular inflammation. History of multiple intraocular surgeries or immune-deficiency in patient with chronic panuveitis should raise the practioner's suspicion of NTM endophthalmitis. Appropriate diagnosis and treatment are important to optimize visual outcome.


PURPOSE: When deliberating palliative cancer treatment, insight into patients' attitudes toward striving for quality of life (QL) and length of life (LL) may facilitate goal-concordant care. We investigated the (1) attitudes of patients with advanced cancer toward striving for QL and/or LL and whether these change over time, and (2) characteristics associated with these attitudes (over time). METHODS: We performed a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial on improving shared decision making (SDM), without differentiation between intervention arms. Patients (n = 173) with advanced cancer, a median life expectancy of < 12 months without anticancer treatment, and a median survival benefit of < 6 months from systemic therapy were included in seven Dutch hospitals. We used audio-recorded consultations and surveys at baseline (T0), shortly after the consultation (T2), at 3 and 6 months (T3 and T4). Primary outcomes were patients' attitudes toward striving for QL and LL (Quality Quantity Questionnaire; T2, T3, and T4). RESULTS: Overall, patients' attitudes toward striving for QL became less positive over 6 months (P < .01); attitudes toward striving for LL did not change on group level. Studying individual patients, 76% showed changes in their attitudes toward striving for QL and/or LL at some point during the study, which occurred in various directions. More helplessness/hopelessness (P < .001), less fighting spirit (P < .05), less state anxiety (P < .001), and more observed SDM (P < .05) related to more positive attitudes toward striving for QL. Lower education, less helplessness/hopelessness, more fighting spirit, and more state anxiety (P < .001) related to more positive attitudes toward striving for LL. CONCLUSION: Oncologists may explore patients' attitudes toward striving for QL and LL repeatedly and address patients' coping style and emotions during SDM to facilitate goal-concordant care throughout the last phase of life.


Facing controlling difficulty processes of enamel demineralization, new technologies are being studied as the use of CO2 laser irradiation. Thus, the purpose of this study was to present a critical literature review about the CO2 laser i n t he e namel demineralization control by addressing its mechanism of action in enamel, usage parameters for the dental structure and its association with fluoride agents. The CO2 laser seems to be a promising method for the enamel demineralization control, however, more studies are needed for the clinical usage. The synergistic effect on fluoride, even with different agents, showed positive results in the enamel demineralization control.


In the presence of dicumyl peroxide, the compatibility of thermal plasticized starch/linear low-density polyethylene (TPS/LLDPE) blends using maleic anhydride (MAH) as compatibilizer was investigated. The thermal plasticization of starch and its compatibilizing modification with LLDPE was accomplished in a single-screw extruder at the same time. We prepared three types of blends containing different percentages of TPS and MAH. The content of MAH based on LLDPE was 0, 1, and 2 wt %, respectively. The morphology of the blends was studied by SEM. It was found that, with the addition of MAH, the blends have good interfacial adhesion and finely dispersed TPS and LLDPE phases, which is reflected in the mechanical and thermal properties of the blends. The blends containing MAH showed higher tensile strength, elongation at break, and thermal stability than those of blends without MAH. The rheologic properties of the blends demonstrated the existence of processing. Finally, the dynamic thermal mechanical analysis results indicated that, with the addition of MAH, the compatibility between TPS and LLDPE in the blends was substantially improved. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 93: 686–695, 2004


A huge variety of organisms respond to the presence of predators with inducible defences, each of which is associated with costs. Many genotypes have the potential to respond with more than one defence, and it has been argued that it would be maladaptive to exhibit all possible responses at the same time. Here, we test how a well-known anti-fish defence in Daphnia, life-history changes (LHC), is controlled by light. We show that the kairomone-mediated reduction in size at first reproduction is inversely coupled to the light intensity. A similar effect was found for the kairomone-mediated expression of candidate genes in Daphnia. We argue that the light intensity an individual is exposed to determines the degree of LHC, which allows for plastic adjustment to fluctuating environments and simultaneously minimizes the associated costs of multiple alternately deployable defences. It is hypothesized that this allows for a coupling of multiple defences, i.e. LHC and diel vertical migration.


It remains unclear why the majority of parthenogenetic lineages persist for only brief periods of evolutionary time. However, by characterizing their patterns of genetic variation, it is possible to gain insights regarding their evolutionary origin and potential. We examined clonal diversity patterns in high arctic populations of freshwater ostracodes with the goal of clarifying the factors promoting genotypic diversity. Allozyme electrophoresis showed that the three dominant ostracode species in high arctic ponds reproduce via apomictic parthenogenesis that two of these species (Prionocypris glacialis, Candona rectangulata) were both highly clonally diverse, and had allozyme phenotypes suggestive of polyploidy. Scanning microdensitometry confirmed that many clones of P. glacialis at Igloolik were polyploid. In contrast to most other polyploids, clones of P. glacialis seem to be autopolyploids. Although clonal variation in P. glacialis may reflect multiple transitions to parthenogenesis in an undetected sexual population, it seems likely that genomic recombination associated with polyploidy has also played a role in generating local diversity following the transition to parthenogenesis.


Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-doped organic-inorganic composite films are prepared on flexible substrates through a combination of the sol-gel technique and the spin-coating method. Circular and hexagonal microlens arrays (MLAs) are then built into the composite films by using ultraviolet nanoimprint technology. Atomic force microscope and ultraviolet spectrophotometer characterization results of the films show that the films have low surface roughness and good optical transmittance. A scanning electron microscope is used to observe the surface morphology of the MLAs, and the results show that the prepared MLAs are regular and neat. The surface profiles of the MLAs are also measured by using a surface profiler. Optical microscopy results show that the prepared MLAs have good optical imaging properties. Finally, the MLAs are applied on the green organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and the influence of the shape and diameter of the MLAs on the luminance and current efficiency of the OLEDs is discussed. Results indicate that there is a relatively high enhancement of the current efficiency and luminance for the OLEDs with hexagonal MLAs and a single microlens height of 9 µm, where the luminance can reach 10611cd/cm2, and the current efficiency can be enhanced by about 20.1%. Furthermore, there is a higher enhancement of the luminance and current efficiency for the OLEDs with PMMA-doped MLAs than that of the OLEDs with no PMMA-doped MLAs. Based on these results, we believe that the obtained PMMA-doped composite film MLAs on flexible substrates have important applications in the flexible OLEDs displays areas.


Railguns involve both static and sliding electrical contacts, which must transmit the large transient electrical currents necessary to impart high forces onto a projectile for acceleration to hypervelocity. Static electrical contacts between metals initially take place through small asperities, or "a-spots", distributed over the contact area. The voltage developed across the interface is directly related to the contact temperature and force, the number of a-spots, the thermophysical and mechanical properties of the contacting materials, the current history, and any interfacial materials that may be present. To physically simulate some of the conditions attained within a railgun, a pulsed current static electrical contact experimental facility has been developed at the Naval Research Laboratory. This facility employs a 500-kN capacity servohydraulic load frame equipped with an electrically insulated load train to establish a contact force on interfaces between metals through which a pulsed current is transmitted. The time dependent evolutions of the voltage drops across the interfaces, as detected by probes pushed into the contacting materials, are recorded during a 40-kA peak current pulse having a 300-mus rise time with peak current densities on the order of 50 kA/cm2. The interface stack is assembled from a 12-mm outside diameter annular disk of metal with a 6.3-mm hole which is compressed between two hollow pedestals of a second metal. The evolution of the voltage drop across an interface during a pulse will be described as a function of initial contact pressures, current density, and polarity for dissimilar (Al/Cu) metal contacts. Thermal effects on the surfaces, including localized melting of the interface materials, were also investigated


A tumor with the light microscopic and histochemical characteristics of myxoid chondrosarcoma is examined ultrastructurally. Instead of the usual features of chondroblasts, the tumor cells exhibited prominent collections of long straight microtubules within the endoplasmic reticulum. This finding is compared with other previously reported tubular aggregates. The differential diagnosis and ultrastructure of myxoid chondrosarcoma are also discussed.


In studies of accreting black holes in binary systems, empirical relations have been proposed to quantify the coupling between accretion processes and ejection mechanisms. These processes are probed, respectively, by means of X-ray and radio/optical-infrared observations. The relations predict, given certain accretion conditions, the expected energy output in the form of a jet. We investigated this coupling by studying the black hole candidate Swift J1753.5−0127, via multiwavelength-coordinated observations over a period of ∼4 yr. We present the results of our campaign showing that, all along the outburst, the source features a jet that is fainter than expected from the empirical correlation between the radio and the X-ray luminosities in a hard spectral state. Because the jet is so weak in this system the near-infrared emission is, unusually for this state and luminosity, dominated by thermal emission from the accretion disc. We briefly discuss the importance and the implications of a precise determination of both the slope and the normalization of the correlations, listing some possible parameters that broad-band jet models should take into account to explain the population of sources characterized by a dim jet. We also investigate whether our data can give any hint on the nature of the compact object in the system, since its mass has not been dynamically measured.


Precision glass molding (PGM) technology has recently emerged as a promising fabrication method for mass-fabricating optical glass lenses with complex surfaces. However, lens fracture as a common problem has not been analyzed in detail. In this paper, the divergent cone cracks in the molded lens were analyzed using the finite element method, because crack propagation cannot be seen in the molding process. A three-dimensional model was established in MSC Marc software for analyzing the temperature, stress components, and principal stress of the glass in different molding stages. The crack paths were analyzed using the simulation results and the fracture basis. Based on the analysis, PGM experiments with different processing parameters were carried out. The appearance of the molded lenses demonstrated the rationality and correctness of the analysis. Thus, analyses of other types of lens fractures can use the analysis method proposed in this paper rather than relying on trial and error.


HCFU was orally administered to 14 patients with hepatocellular-carcinoma, (including 11 patients with liver cirrhosis) and evaluated of HCFU and 5 fluorouracil (5-FU) levels. Blood and tissue 6-8 hr. after oral administration. The concentration of 5-FU in tissue was almost in the effective levels. In addition, the 5-FU level in the tissue of hepatocellular carcinoma tended to be higher than in non cancerous portion of the liver. 5-FU tissue concentration was not correlated with various laboratory data for the liver function (K-ICG, T. bil, GOT, GPT, etc.) From these results, it is suggested that HCFU is a useful anticancer agent for hepatocellular carcinoma especially for the cases accompanied liver cirrhosis.


A manner in which a notion of effective scale can be introduced in a formal way is developed. For continuous signals, a scaling argument directly gives a natural unit for measuring scale-space lifetime in terms of the logarithm of the ordinary scale parameter. That approach is, however, not appropriate for discrete signals since an infinite lifetime would be assigned to structures existing in the original signal. It is shown how such an effective scale parameter can be defined to give consistent results for both discrete and continuous signals. The treatment is based on the assumption that the probability that a local extremum disappears during a short-scale interval should not vary with scale. As a tool for the analysis, estimates are given of how the density of local extrema can be expected to vary with scale in the scale-space representation of different random noise signals both in the continuous and discrete cases. >


Circle representation has recently been introduced as a medical imaging optimized representation for more effective instance object detection on ball-shaped medical objects. With its superior performance on instance detection, it is appealing to extend the circle representation to instance medical object segmentation. In this work, we propose CircleSnake, a simple end-to-end circle contour deformation-based segmentation method for ball-shaped medical objects. Compared to the prevalent DeepSnake method, our contribution is three-fold: (1) We replace the complicated bounding box to octagon contour transformation with a computation-free and consistent bounding circle to circle contour adaption for segmenting ball-shaped medical objects; (2) Circle representation has fewer degrees of freedom (DoF=2) as compared with the octagon representation (DoF=8), thus yielding a more robust segmentation performance and better rotation consistency; (3) To the best of our knowledge, the proposed CircleSnake method is the first end-to-end circle representation deep segmentation pipeline method with consistent circle detection, circle contour proposal, and circular convolution. The key innovation is to integrate the circular graph convolution with circle detection into an end-to-end instance segmentation framework, enabled by the proposed simple and consistent circle contour representation. Glomeruli are used to evaluate the performance of the benchmarks. From the results, CircleSnake increases the average precision of glomerular detection from 0.559 to 0.614. The Dice score increased from 0.804 to 0.849. The code has been released: https://github.com/hrlblab/CircleSnake


Jamilatul.Istiqomah. 2018. Mentoring Strategies for Speaking Skill Used by
Mentor in Muslim Smart Club (MSC) Organization at the State Islamic Institute
of Surakarta. Thesis. English Education Department, Islamic Education and
Teacher Training Faculty. IAIN Surakarta.
Advisor : Muntaha, M.Pd.
Keywords : Mentoring Strategies, Speaking
The objectives of the research are to know the strategies used by MSC
mentors was mentoring speaking in MSC (Muslim Smart Club) organization, to
know the mentees" responses toward the strategies which are used by the mentors
in MSC (Muslim Smart Club) organization, and to know the strengths and
weaknesses mentoring strategies in MSC (Muslim Smart Club) organization
atThe State Islamic Institute of Surakarta.
In conducting this research, the research uses descriptive qualitative
research. In collecting data, the researcher uses observation and interview. The
data were analyzed by: (1) Reducing the data, (2) Displaying the data, (3)
Drawing conclusion. The researcher uses triangulation of the data to get validity
of data.
The result of this research shows that: (1) the mentors used the strategies
by Ellis including fostering independence, utilization of the think pair share
technique, and request feedback. (2) the responses mentees" toward the strategies
used by mentors are positive (3) the strengths and the weaknesses when the
mentor applied the mentoring strategies are spoken more, think critically,
remember the material, more understand the material and be confidence to give
opinion. Thus, the weaknesses are an incompatibility between planned time and
its implementation.


OBJECTIVES
In women with type 1 diabetes, poor glycaemic control during pregnancy is associated with high risk of pre-term delivery, perinatal mortality and morbidity. This economic analysis utilises clinical effectiveness data from the Insulin Aspart Pregnancy Study Group Trial to assess costs and outcomes associated with insulin aspart (IAsp) and human insulin (HI) as part of a basal-bolus insulin regimen in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes in the UK.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Women with type 1 diabetes were enrolled if <or= 10 weeks pregnant or planning to become pregnant, and had HbA(1c) <or= 8% at confirmation of pregnancy. Subjects were randomised to treatment with IAsp or HI in a basal-bolus regimen with NPH insulin, with doses titrated according to American Diabetes Association guidelines. An effectiveness endpoint, retrospectively defined for this analysis, was the percentage of women with a live birth at term (>or=37 weeks' gestation). We considered costs of insulin, adverse events, delivery, and neonatal care for pre-term infants. Expected need for neonatal care was estimated from gestational age, using data from the literature and a large UK hospital. Costs were calculated from the perspective of the UK National Health Service.

RESULTS
A total of 322 pregnant women were enrolled in the study and the outcome of pregnancy was known for 302, 151 in each arm. More women experienced a live birth at term with IAsp (72.8%) than with HI (60.9%), difference 11.9% (95% CI 2.0%, 22.5%, p = 0.028). Mean cost per woman was 3222 pounds for IAsp and 3539 pounds for HI, difference--318 pounds (95% CI--1353 pounds, 576 pounds; p = 0.49).

CONCLUSIONS
Compared with HI, the use of IAsp in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes resulted in more live births at term, without increasing total costs of treatment. A prospectively defined study is required to confirm these conclusions.


Grape seeds are the main winemaking by-product, which has a high content of bioactive compounds. This study aims to evaluate the profile of fatty acids and phenolics of grape seeds (an organic waste), obtained from a Peruvian wine factory; the antioxidant activity and the gastroprotective effect of alcoholic extracts were also determined. The oil extraction yield was 14.8%, mainly composed of linoleic (71.6%) and oleic (17.4%) acids. Furthermore, 22 phenolic compounds in the methanolic extract were identified by UHPLC-Q/Orbitrap/MS/MS, being the flavan-3-oles and procyanidins the major components. The content of phenolics and the antioxidant activity (IC50) were 40.03 ± 0.36 mg of GAE/g of dry seed and 15.31 ± 0.03 μg/mL respectively. The methanolic extract of grape seeds exhibited a great gastroprotective effect against gastric ulcers induced by naproxen, achieving 80% inhibition at a dose of 600 mg/kg. Base on the results, the grape seeds are a potential source of bioactive compounds, and their use is an alternative for the prevention of gastric ulcers.


The effect of finite thickness of magnetic substrate or film on the inductance of planar inductors is studied using the method of current images. The results obtained reduce to previous results in the limit of infinite thickness. It is found that the thickness and permeability play complementary roles in the enhancement of inductance, with the normalized inductance determined roughly by the product of permeability and thickness in the most interesting region of parameter space. The results derived allow determination of the required minimum thickness of the substrate which will produce maximum inductance enhancement for a given permeability of the substrate material. The same results can also be used to determine the permeability of a magnetic film or substrate quickly and are directly applicable to the design of planar inductors in cofireable ceramic, hybrid, and thin-film technologies. >


A portable gamma-ray monitor composed of a compact electrically cooled germanium detector and a mini-MCA system was developed for in-situ gamma-ray monitoring with very fast starting time and easy operation. This detector may be used mainly in an accident, an emergency, a fast inspection and an easy analysis because the starting time of the Ge detector is 51 minute. The size of Ge detector is 10.2cm/spl phi/ /spl times/ 39.3cm and the weight 5.2kg. A small Stirling refrigerator can cool down a 14cm/sup 3/ planar-type high purity Ge detector with the relative detection efficiency of 1% automatically with a low consuming driving power supply. After cool down, coming gamma rays are measured and analyzed repeatedly by a mini-MCA system with a very small hand held computer. The energy resolution of the detector is 2.46 keV at gamma ray of 1.33MeV. Consequently, a user can comfortably analyze gamma-rays spectrum with decision of the nuclide and its quantitative analysis by watching the display on the hand held computer.


Detecting semantic parts of an object is a challenging task, particularly because it is hard to annotate semantic parts and construct large datasets. In this paper, we present an approach which can learn from a small annotated dataset containing a limited range of viewpoints and generalize to detect semantic parts for a much larger range of viewpoints. The approach is based on our matching algorithm, which is used for finding accurate spatial correspondence between two images and transplanting semantic parts annotated on one image to the other. Images in the training set are matched to synthetic images rendered from a 3D CAD model, following which a clustering algorithm is used to automatically annotate semantic parts of the CAD model. During the testing period, this CAD model can synthesize annotated images under every viewpoint. These synthesized images are matched to images in the testing set to detect semantic parts in novel viewpoints. Our algorithm is simple, intuitive, and contains very few parameters. Experiments show our method outperforms standard deep learning approaches and, in particular, performs much better on novel viewpoints. For facilitating the future research, code is available: https://github.com/ytongbai/SemanticPartDetection


Perioperative nutrition has during the last century been transformed from a tool to provide calorie and nitrogen support to a tool to boost the immune system and increase resistance to complications. Despite all progress in medicine and surgery has perioperative morbidity, rate of infections, thrombosis and development of serosal adhesions remained the same as long as can be judged or at least during the last eighty years. Most prone to develop complications are persons above the age of 65 and persons with depressed immunity. About eighty percent of the immune system is localised in the gastrointestinal tract, which offers great opportunities for modulation through enterar nutrition. As the stomach has a tendency to develop postoperative paralysis, tube feeding is often necessary. Andresen demonstrated already in 1918 the advantages of enteral nutrition, which starts already on the table. Mulholland et al and Rhoads and co-workers demonstrated during the 1940s certain advantages of enteral tube feeding. Also works by Alexander, Fischer, Ryan and their co-workers supported the value of early enteral feeding, and suggested enteral feeding as an effective tool to boost the immune system. It was, however, works published in the early nineties by Moore et al and by Kudsk et al, which made surgeons more aware of the advantages of early enteral nutrition. Major surgery is known to have a high rate of complications. Uninterrupted perioperative nutrition, eg nutrition during the night before, during surgery and immediately after offers a strong tool to prevent complications. It is essential that the nutrition provides food also for the colon, e.g. fibres and healthy bacteria (probiotics) to ferment the fibre and boost the immune system.


A field study was conducted in November 2013 to assess the drift reduction potential of a three headed spray-hood unit with either DG95-02 or DG95-015 low-drift nozzles used with the hoods either on or off (DG nozzles calibrated at 0.6 litres/min). A standard treatment of 110-03 nozzles calibrated at 1.25 litres/min without hoods was the control. One tank mix of 0.4 g/litre PTSA (1,3,6,8-pyrenetetrasulfonic acid tetrasodium salt) fluorescent dye was used for all treatments. Petri dishes and aluminium plate collectors were placed at 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 m downwind in three lines spaced at 10 m. Collectors were placed in plastic bags under cool, dark storage until analysis. Results showed that total drift was reduced up to 99%, compared to the control, when the spray hoods where used.


ABSTRACT Current WHO/UNICEF estimates of routine childhood immunization coverage reveal the largest sustained decline in uptake in three decades with pronounced setbacks across Africa. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has induced significant supply and delivery disruptions, the impact of the pandemic on vaccine confidence is less understood. We here examine trends in vaccine confidence across eight sub-Saharan countries between 2020 and 2022 via a total of 17,187 individual interviews, conducted via a multi-stage probability sampling approach and cross-sectional design and evaluated using Bayesian methods. Multilevel regression combined with poststratification weighting using local demographic information yields national and sub-national estimates of vaccine confidence in 2020 and 2022 as well as its socio-demographic associations. We identify declines in perceptions toward the importance of vaccines for children across all eight countries, with mixed trends in perceptions toward vaccine safety and effectiveness. We find that COVID-19 vaccines are perceived to be less important and safe in 2022 than in 2020 in six of the eight countries, with the only increases in COVID-19 vaccine confidence detected in Ivory Coast. There are substantial declines in vaccine confidence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa, notably in Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, and Northern Cape (South Africa) and Bandundu, Maniema, Kasaï-Oriental, Kongo-Central, and Sud-Kivu (DRC). While over 60-year-olds in 2022 have higher vaccine confidence in vaccines generally than younger age groups, we do not detect other individual-level socio-demographic associations with vaccine confidence at the sample sizes studied, including sex, age, education, employment status, and religious affiliation. Understanding the role of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated policies on wider vaccine confidence can inform post-COVID vaccination strategies and help rebuild immunization system resilience.


The concept of "public utility", used in contemporary language of the law and juridical language, was also used in Roman law as utilitas publica. This concept allows to separate the public sphere from the private sector. However, the boundary between sphere of public sphere and private sector have not always been blurred since ancient times. In ancient Rome, the boundary between what was public and what was private was changing and depended on a type of political system, an understanding of the public good or the boundaries of individual's autonomy. In contemporary times there is also a debate over how far should the powers of the State reach. There is even a discussion about the redefinition of the State, and even about the need for withdrawing the State from the areas of activities traditionally belonging to its empire. It is assumed that the public utility is a service as well as leading production used to meet the needs of all people in a continuous manner. It is not required, that this availability is truly enjoyed by all.


The lives of ovarian cancer patients are threatened largely due to metastasis and drug resistance. Endogenous peptides attract increasing attention in oncologic therapeutic area, a few anti-tumor peptides have been approved by the food and drug administration (FDA) for clinical use over the past decades. However, only few peptides or peptide-derived drugs with anti-ovarian cancer effects have been identified. Here we focused on the biological roles and mechanism of a peptide named PDHPS1 in ovarian cancer development. Our results indicated that PDHPS1 reduced the proliferation ability of ovarian cancer cells in vitro and inhibited the ovarian cancer growth in vivo. Peptide pull down and following mass spectrometry, western blot and qRT-PCR revealed that PDHPS1 could bind to protein phosphatase 2 phosphatase activator (PTPA), an essential activator of protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A), which resulted in increase of phosphorylated YAP, further inactivated YAP and suppressed the expression of its downstream target genes. Flow cytometry, cell membrane permeability test and immunohistochemical staining study demonstrated that there are no observable side effects of PDHPS1 on normal ovarian epithelium and hepatorenal function. Besides, modification of membrane penetration could improve the physicochemical properties and biological activity of PDHPS1. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that the endogenous peptide PDHPS1 serves as an anti-tumor peptide to inhibit YAP signaling pathway though interacting with PTPA in ovarian cancer.


Neural Tangents is a library for working with infinite-width neural networks. It provides a high-level API for specifying complex and hierarchical neural network architectures. These networks can then be trained and evaluated either at finite-width as usual, or in their infinite-width limit. For the infinite-width networks, Neural Tangents performs exact inference either via Bayes' rule or gradient descent, and generates the corresponding Neural Network Gaussian Process and Neural Tangent kernels. Additionally, Neural Tangents provides tools to study gradient descent training dynamics of wide but finite networks. The entire library runs out-of-the-box on CPU, GPU, or TPU. All computations can be automatically distributed over multiple accelerators with near-linear scaling in the number of devices. In addition to the repository below, we provide an accompanying interactive Colab notebook at https://colab.sandbox.google.com/github/neural-tangents/neural-tangents/blob/master/notebooks/neural_tangents_cookbook.ipynb


Purpose: To test the use of TLDs for out‐of‐field neutron measurements and demonstrate the calibration and calculations necessary to extract a neutron dose by using TLD 600 chips, which measure photons plus neutrons, and TLD 700 chips, which measure only photons. For treatments requiring high‐energy photons or protons, secondary neutron doses may become a factor and TLDs provide many advantages in a clinical setting over conventional neutron dosimeters. Methods: A set of lithium fluoride TLDs (thermoluminescent detectors) consisting of 100, 600 and 700 series Rexon TLDs were arranged at set distances in and out of field of 6MV and 18MV photon beams from an Elekta Precise Treatment System. All TLD chips were read out using a Rexon System 310 reader and raw glow output data was exported for data analysis. Results: Examination of the integrated TLD glow curves shows an energy dependent response and a higher reading for TLD 600 chips as the distance or angle from the beam field increases for the 18MV beam. At a low neutron dose, correct integration interval must be used extracted a signal above noise. Conclusion: This work demonstrates the feasibility of neutron measurements using only TLDs as opposed to TLDs with CR39, bubble detectors, diamond detectors or WENDI detectors. TLDs are commercially available in different sensitivities and relatively cheap. We speculate that the TLD 600 chips will continue to read neutron doses at large distances to its neutron cross section. Furthermore they allow for spatial resolution and in vivo measurements. With calibration for neutron doses and photon energy ranges, a quantitative neutron dose is possible. This integration and subtraction method will be used in future investigation to directly quantify neutron doses spatially with respect to the beam and for different beam characteristics.


Purpose Fewer than 1/2 of the sexually active young females are being screened annually for C. trachomatis (CT). To address barriers to screening, this study examined gender, ethnicity, and age disparities in adolescents who are screened for CT during regularly scheduled pediatric health checks. Methods This study was part of a larger randomized controlled trial to increase CT screening among sexually active teens (14-18 years old) during their regularly scheduled health checks in 10 pediatric clinics at a large Northern California health maintenance organization. Teens attending the 5 intervention clinics were asked to complete an anonymous survey at the end of their visit to determine site specific sexual activity rates in order to monitor CT screening rates. The survey gathered basic demographic information on the teens' age, gender, and race/ethnicity. In addition, the survey asked: "Have you ever had sexual intercourse?" and "Did you have a test for STDs today?" Results There were 4,368 (49.5% female, 46.4% male and 4.1% did not report gender). The response rate was 74%. The mean age was 15.4 years for females and 15.3 for males. The ethnicity of the overall population was: Asians 26.7%; Blacks 13.2%; Latino19.5%; Caucasian 25.5%; Multi-ethnic/other14.3%. Most teens (83%) were asked about sexual activity; 19.7% had had sex (20.4% for females and 19.0% for males); 7% had an STD test on the day of their visit, 80.1% were not tested for an STD, and 12.5% did not know whether they were tested for an STD. There was no difference in STD screening across gender, ethnicity, or age; yet, there were significant ethnic, age and gender differences in queries about sexual activity. Blacks were significantly more likely to report being asked than Asians (89% vs 81%, p≤0.001) and Latinos (89% vs 81%, p≤0.001). Older teens were more likely to be asked than younger teens (p≤0.05); and female adolescents were more likely than males to be asked about sex (85% vs 83%, p=0.01). Conclusions Data revealed that there were no differences in who is screened for CT once the sexual history is obtained: however, there are disparities in sexual history taking. While it is encouraging that so many teens were asked about their sexual history, African Americans, older teens, and females were more likely to be asked about sexual history than their counterparts. Providers should be wary of introducing their own bias into screening protocols when universal screening of all sexually active adolescent females is recommended.


Abstract Objective: To compare the effectiveness of nasal diamorphine spray with intramuscular morphine for analgesia in children and teenagers with acute pain due to a clinical fracture, and to describe the safety profile of the spray. Design: Multicentre randomised controlled trial. Setting: Emergency departments in eight UK hospitals. Participants: Patients aged between 3 and 16 years presenting with a clinical fracture of an upper or lower limb. Main outcome measures: Patients' reported pain using the Wong Baker face pain scale, ratings of reaction to treatment of the patients and acceptability of treatment by staff and parents, and adverse events. Results: 404 eligible patients completed the trial (204 patients given nasal diamorphine spray and 200 given intramuscular morphine). Onset of pain relief was faster in the spray group than in the intramuscular group, with lower pain scores in the spray group at 5, 10, and 20 minutes after treatment but no difference between the groups after 30 minutes. 80% of patients given the spray showed no obvious discomfort compared with 9% given intramuscular morphine (difference 71%, 95% confidence interval 65% to 78%). Treatment administration was judged acceptable by staff and parents, respectively, for 98% (199 of 203) and 97% (186 of 192) of patients in the spray group compared with 32% (64 of 199) and 72% (142 of 197) in the intramuscular group. No serious adverse events occurred in the spray group, and the frequencies of all adverse events were similar in both groups (spray 24.1% v intramuscular morphine 18.5%; difference 5.6%, -2.3% to 13.6%). Conclusion: Nasal diamorphine spray should be the preferred method of pain relief in children and teenagers presenting to emergency departments in acute pain with clinical fractures. The diamorphine spray should be used in place of intramuscular morphine.


This study aimed to verify the hydrolysis of starch raw cassava using a glucoamylase from Aspergillus awamori expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae . The glucoamylase activity test plate showed that S . cerevisiae recombinant is able to degrade cassava starch without the needs for either acid pretreatment or cooking. The recombinant yeast was able to form 2.7 g / L of biomass and degrades cassava starch up to 90%, releasing a large amount of glucose to the culture medium. The N-deglycosylation assay showed that the recombinant glucoamylase (75 kDa) has 10% carbohydrate in their structure compared with enzyme treated (65 kDa). Our preliminary results showed that recombinant yeast was able to produce 4.22 g/L in 96 hours fermentation. The results of starch hydrolysis shown that S. cerevisiae recombinant has a great potential for producing ethanol from cassava starch without the need for pretreatment of the substrate.


We investigate the optimal power control for multisensor estimation of correlated random Gaussian sources. A group of wireless sensors obtains local measurements and transmits them to a remote fusion center (FC), which reconstructs the measurements using the minimum mean-square error estimator. All the sensors are equipped with an energy harvesting module and a transceiver unit for wireless, directed energy sharing between neighboring sensors. The sensor batteries are of finite storage capacity and prone to energy leakage. Our aim is to find optimal power control strategies, which determine the energies used to transmit data to the FC and shared between sensors, so as to minimize the long-term average distortion over an infinite horizon. We assume centralized causal information of the harvested energies and channel gains, which are generated by independent finite-state stationary Markov chains. The optimal power control policy is derived using a stochastic predictive control formulation. We also investigate the structure of the optimal solution, a Q-learning based suboptimal power control scheme and two computationally simple and easy-to-implement heuristic policies. Extensive numerical simulations illustrate the performance of the considered policies.


We present the results of a series of collective free-electron laser (FEL) experiments. Under the conditions of a resonant pump, a wide-band emission spectrum (50-350 GHz) is observed. However, in nonresonant conditions, very little radiation is detected from the laser. Occurrence of the emission for a resonant pump is explained using a very simple model. The wide-band nature of the emitted radiation is not completely understood.


Thiurams are used as additives that are added to natural or synthetic latex in the manufacture of rubber products. Hypersensitivity to thiurams is a delayed type IV reaction, mediated by T lymphocytes. The authors present a case of a 9-year-old girl with recurrent episodes of edema and erythema of the eyelids, lips and perioral region, associated with eczema-like lesions, all with previous exposition to rubber materials. Epicutaneous patch test was positive for thiuram mix. With the eviction of these products the girl did not have any more lesions. Many patients referenced for contact dermatitis to rubber products are hypersensitive to rubber additives such as thiurams and carbamates and not to latex.


Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are deployed for a wide range of applications to sense closely and collectively the environment in which they are placed. To provide services related to sensed data from a WSN to a user through Internet as per requirements has a great technological and commercial potential. For this it is necessary that a suitable WSN is quickly discovered automatically for the user. Use of technology meant for Semantic Web enables the discovery of the desired WSN which can meet the remote users' requirements. The emerging concept of the use of WSN as Service Provider for sensing services has been explored here. The service features have to be integrated with the WSN as well as the interface connecting the WSN and the Internet. In this paper we have defined modules to extend sensor node to support sensing services. The main processes related to service discovery, delivery and new service registration have been elaborated. Related considerations and requirements have been discussed.


The green microalga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, possesses a complex metabolic and regulatory network providing for efficient maintenance of energy balance and redox homeostasis in the cell, subjected to unfavorable conditions. In this review metabolic mechanisms involved in the acclimation responses of C. reinhardtii to the deficiency of such essential elements as N, P, S, or Mg, as well as to the depletion of oxygen, are discussed in detail. Attention is focused on the functional organization of electron transport pathways in the chloroplast and mitochondria and on the multiple-level regulation of photosynthesis upon nutrient stress. Recent achievements in studies of the effects of S, N, P, and Mg deprivation on the capacity of green algae to sustain hydrogen production in the light are reviewed in a comparative manner. Emphasis is placed on elucidation of the main physiological and protective mechanisms underlying long-term photosynthetic hydrogen production.


It has been shown that named entity recognition (NER) could benefit from incorporating the long-distance structured information captured by dependency trees. We believe this is because both types of features - the contextual information captured by the linear sequences and the structured information captured by the dependency trees may complement each other. However, existing approaches largely focused on stacking the LSTM and graph neural networks such as graph convolutional networks (GCNs) for building improved NER models, where the exact interaction mechanism between the two types of features is not very clear, and the performance gain does not appear to be significant. In this work, we propose a simple and robust solution to incorporate both types of features with our Synergized-LSTM (Syn-LSTM), which clearly captures how the two types of features interact. We conduct extensive experiments on several standard datasets across four languages. The results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves better performance than previous approaches while requiring fewer parameters. Our further analysis demonstrates that our model can capture longer dependencies compared with strong baselines.


Early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions play an important role in many young children's lives. Child-oriented research about the role of the physical ECEC environment in children's play is scarce. The present study aims to develop knowledge about what children consider crucial elements in the physical ECEC environment. Seventy-one children (3–6 years old) were interviewed to gain insight into their perspectives on the physical ECEC environment. This study indicates that children desire a physical ECEC environment with various affordances supporting different play possibilities and that the social context influences how children may interact with the physical environment. The design of the physical ECEC environment is crucial to children's everyday play experiences while in care.


In this thesis, we explore innovative methods of fabricating single polymer nanowires and applying the fabricated single polymer nanowires for biosensors. The fabrication of single polymer nanowire was carried out via electrochemical deposition growth method, which deposits ionized molecules in a pre-patterned nanochannel between two Au electrodes and forms a nanowire. For biosensing application, we employ polyaniline (PANI) in this research since it has advantages of biocompatibility, easy synthesis, and broad range of electrical conductivity. The single PANI nanowires-based biosensor show high sensitivity and good sensing reliability due to the high surface to volume ratio and single nanowires.
Using the fabricated single PANI nanowires, the biosensors were developed to detect cardiac biomarkers such as myoglobin (Myo), cardiac troponin I (cTnI), creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB), and B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP). The single PANI nanowires are functionalized by surface immobilization method that was developed in our laboratory using 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) and N-Hydroxysuccinimde (NHS) to attach monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) of biomarkers without pre-chemical or physical treatments. Lastly, microfluidic devices including channels and solution infusion/withdrawal system were integrated on the biosensor in order to develop an all-in-one biosensor. Our single PANI nanowire-based biosensor is unique in terms of the functionalization on specific area; the mAbs are immobilized on the only surface of PANI nanowires because PANI has superior biocompatibility to mAbs unlike SiO2 layer or Au electrodes. This advantage reduces functionalization steps comparing to inorganic nanowire biosensors and frees the interfered signals from non-nanowire areas. In addition, the microfluidic channel helps achieving stable electrical signals, high sensitivity, safe sample handling, and minimal damage of nanowire.
The integrated single PANI nanowire biosensors with microfluidic devices detect very low concentrations of Myo (100 pg/mL), cTnI (250 fg/mL), CK-MB (150 fg/mL), and BNP (50 fg/mL) with good specificity. The remarkable specificity value in cardiac biomarker sensing is over 106 fold, that the specificity value is defined as the ratio of [the highest concentration of non-specific protein showing ignorable or non-response signal] to [the lowest concentration of specific protein showing significant signal change], in the test of bovine serum albumin (BSA) or other cardiac markers. The single PANI nanowire biosensors have shown linear sensing profiles along different concentration from hundreds fg/mL to tens ng/mL depending on the mAbs of the specific biomarkers, and exhibit fast response in a few minutes satisfying reference values of Myo, cTnI, CK-MB, and BNP to diagnose heart failure and determine the patient's stage of disease.


The article reveals the essence of speech and speech therapy as a component of the rehabilitation process in restoring the health of patients who have suffered acute impairment of cerebral circulation. The concept of cerebral vascular insufficiency was analyzed, which refers to cerebral physiological changes in old age and associated conditions of speech impairment. Vascular diseases of the brain are not only a medical problem, but also a social one: they cause enormous damage to the economy, considering the costs of treatment, medical rehabilitation, and losses in production. The effectiveness of motor recovery after an ischemic stroke in the early recovery period depends largely on timely rehabilitation. Physical exercises have a positive effect on the recovery of the body systems of people who have had an ischemic stroke.
The most frequent consequences of stroke in about 40-50% of the total number of patients are disorders of speech function, manifested in the form of aphasia and dysarthria, which are often combined with pathology of other higher mental functions (various types of agnosia and apraxia).
Today, speech therapy is practiced by specialists both as a separate method and in combination with other techniques, and is used in individual and group work, including work with patients who have had an acute impairment of cerebral circulation.


he provision of mental healthcare in rural communities has been a vexing challenge for clinicians and patients for many years. There is a chronic shortage of specialty mental health providers, particularly psychiatrists and psychologists, which has shifted much of the burden of care to primary care. Primary care clinicians have historically lacked the training and time within their busy practices to feel comfortable providing mental healthcare, particularly since the shortage of specialty mental health clinicians deprives them of consultation and referral sources. People who live in rural areas must often overcome significant travel distances, stigma, and lack of insurance and other resources to access the scarce mental health services that do exist. 1 Despite this difficult picture, rural primary care and specialty mental health clinicians have persevered to provide some level of mental healthcare to people in rural areas. Over the last decade, improvements in clinical screening tools, treatment protocols and guidelines, and information technology have significantly enhanced the potential to increase access to and improve the quality of mental health services in rural communities, particularly to underserved populations. Recent policy initiatives hold much promise to provide the structural and financial support necessary to help rural communities realize these improvements. In this commentary, we first present a general discussion of the issues related to the delivery of mental health services in the United States with particular attention to how these issues complicate the delivery of services in rural areas. Next we describe the renewed call for integrating primary care and mental health in rural areas (hence "the once and future role of primary care" in our title) and related clinical and policy support to do so. We close by briefly describing the policy interventions and resources needed to further these integration efforts and to improve access to services for rural underserved populations. Our Fragmented Mental Health Delivery System The mental health delivery system in the United States is characterized by a fragmentation of services, separation of funding streams and delivery systems, poor reimbursement, inadequate access to specialty mental health providers, and the mal-distribution of existing resources. These issues greatly complicate the delivery of services in rural areas. The United States mental health system is not a coordinated system of specialty mental health services but, rather, a fragmented collection of services and providers that has come to be known as


Abstract The non-convergent ordering of Mg and Ni over the M1 and M2 sites of synthetic olivines has been studied using "time of night" neutron powder diffraction and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (EXAFS). The compositional dependence of order/disorder at room temperature was established for solid solutions of general formula (Mg1-xNix)2SiO4. where X= 0.15, 0.2, 0.25,0.3, 0.5, and 0.8 atoms Ni (XNi; i.e.. mole fraction of Ni-olivine end-member). Ni orders into M1 with KD = (Ni/Mg in M1)/ (Ni/Mg in M2) reaching a maximum of 9.5 at a composition of Mg1.0Ni0.4SiO4. The temperature dependence of order/disorder at up to 1100 °C was determined for two samples (XNi = 0.2 and 0.5). Between about 600 and 750 °C the samples show an increase in order due to kinetic effects, while above 750 °C the samples show a progressive decrease in order and describe an equilibrium disordering path. Equilibrium data define a Ni-Mg, M1-M2 intersite exchange energy of 21.5 ± 1.9 kJ/ mol. On cooling, the blocking temperature for cation exchange is about 800 °C. The kinetics of disordering behavior were analyzed using a Ginzburg-Landau model giving activation energies for Mg-Ni exchange between M1 and M2 for samples of composition Mg1.6Ni0.4SiO4 and Mg1.0Ni1.0SiO4 of 145 ± 5 and 160 ± 5 kJ/mol. respectively. The model also shows that the characteristic time scale for re-equilibration of M1-M2 order decreases from around 2.5 s at 1000° to 0.03 s at 1300 °C. This points to the inapplicability of intracrystalline Ni-Mg partitioning for obtaining geothermometry and geospeedometry information for magmatic conditions. Ni X-edge EXAFS data show that samples with XNi = 0.15.0.2,0.25 and 0.3 all show Ni clustering on adjacent M1 sites, indicating the presence of domains of Ni-rich and Mg-rich regions on a nanolength scale of < 10 A. These "precipitates" are at least an order of magnitude too small to be detectable by neutron powder diffraction. We suggest that the elastic strain at the interfaces between the Ni-rich precipitates and the Mg-rich matrix is responsible for the plateau or possible maximum in the b unit-cell parameter as a function of composition across the solid solution, which is observed at a composition of Mg1.6Ni0.4SiO4 at room temperature. Comparison of our data with earlier studies at high P and T on Mg1.0Ni1.0SiO4 olivine suggests that the effect of P is to increase the degree of order of Ni into M1 and to slow down the kinetics of intersite exchange with a ΔVdisorder of 0.039 J/bar.


The present study applies the life-span theoretical concept of life longing (Sehnsucht) to grandparenthood as an important normative transition of middle and late adulthood that can be hoped for but not acted upon. A cross-sectional online study was conducted with N = 477 parents (73.5% women; age range: 40-81 years) whose adult children have not (yet) had offspring. Longing for grandparenthood was measured with a grandparenthood-specific adaptation of an established self-report questionnaire (Life Longing Questionnaire) and by employing a bifactor exploratory structural equation model (ESEM). As expected, strong expressions of longing for grandparenthood were associated with lower life satisfaction. Emotional support by the partner (here, perceiving the partner as understanding this Sehnsucht) offset this negative relationship (as did dispositional optimism, which an ancillary analysis revealed). By contrast, control over the longing fantasies did not help to attenuate the association between longing for grandparenthood and life satisfaction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).


OBJECTIVE
To systematically examine the evidence on system comparability between the thromboelastography and the rotational thromboelastometry viscoelastic point-of-care instruments and to identify knowledge gaps.

DESIGN
Standardized, systematic evaluation of the literature, categorization of relevant articles according to level of evidence and quality, and development of consensus on conclusions for application of the concepts to clinical practice.

SETTING
Academic and referral veterinary medical centers.

RESULTS
Medline via PubMed, CAB abstracts, and Google Scholar were searched. A total of 8 relevant articles were chosen, none were in support of the question, 1 was neutral to the question (level of evidence [LOE] 6, Poor), and 7 were in opposition to the question (LOE 3 Good; LOE 6 Good; LOE 6 Fair; LOE 6 Poor).

CONCLUSIONS
Results from the 2 analyzers are not directly comparable and extrapolation of the results from one machine to the other should be avoided. Standardization of the preanalytical variables (eg, blood collection, holding time, and temperature during holding) is strongly recommended. It is recommended that each site create their own "site specific" reference values for each machine and that test samples be compared only to the standardized reference values established at that center. Start-up and consumable costs vary between countries and local comparisons should be performed. Decisions should be made based on the expected use of the machine and if multiple operators will be using it.


Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular events (CVE), partly due to the higher burden of atherosclerosis. Circulating Osteopontin (OPN) levels have been also shown to have a potential role in the development of atherosclerosis. Indeed, CKD patients show an increase in circulating OPN levels, but their effect of CKD-related atherosclerosis is not clear. Polymorphisms in the OPN gene (SPP1) have been studied in atheromatous disease, but reported results show conflictive findings. Thus, the main aim of the present study is to analyze the influence of SPP1 polymorphisms in CVE in CKD patients, taking into account circulating OPN levels. We followed 559 healthy controls and 2445 CKD patients without previous CVE from the National Observatory of Atherosclerosis in Nephrology study (NEFRONA study). After 48 months of follow-up 206 CVE were recorded. Genotyping for rs9138, rs1126616, rs1126772, rs11730582 and rs28357094 polymorphisms of the SPP1 gene was performed along with the measurements of plasma OPN levels. The group of patients with CVE showed higher incidence of atherosclerotic plaque (90.3% vs 64.5%; p < 0.001) and higher OPN levels (p < 0.001) at baseline. Patients with the heterozygous genotype of the rs1126616 polymorphism showed a higher hazard ratio of having a CVE, even after adjustment for multiple potential confounders. After adjustment, OPN levels were no longer associated with the incidence of CVE. We found that the rs1126616 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of the SPP1 gene is independently associated with a higher incidence of CVE in a cohort of CKD patients and that it could be used to predict CVE risk.


We demonstrate that electron trapping at intrinsic precursor sites is endemic in non-glass-forming amorphous oxide films. The energy distributions of trapped electron states in ultra-pure prototype amorphous (a)-HfO2 insulator obtained from exhaustive photo-depopulation experiments demonstrate electron states in the energy range of 2–3 eV below the oxide conduction band. These energy distributions are compared to the results of density functional calculations of a-HfO2 models of realistic density. The experimental results can be explained by the presence of intrinsic charge trapping sites formed by under-coordinated Hf cations and elongated Hf–O bonds in a-HfO2. These charge trapping states can capture up to two electrons, forming polarons and bi-polarons. The corresponding trapping sites are different from the dangling-bond type defects responsible for trapping in glass-forming oxides, such as SiO2, in that the traps are formed without bonds being broken. Furthermore, introduction of hydrogen causes formation of somewhat energetically deeper electron traps when a proton is immobilized next to the trapped electron bi-polaron. The proposed novel mechanism of intrinsic charge trapping in a-HfO2 represents a new paradigm for charge trapping in a broad class of non-glass-forming amorphous insulators.


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

Organ metastasis is a major cause of mortality from breast cancer. In particular, the lung and pleura are common metastatic sites. It occurs when cancer cells escape from the primary tumor, adhere to blood vessels, and extravasate through the vascular endothelium of distant target organs, where they can establish a secondary tumor. Therefore, the vascular endothelium is the crucial gateway for disseminated cancer cells to enter the target organ, and this process is governed by the adhesion cascade. E-selectin (or CD62E, ELAM-1 or LECAM-2) is the initiator of the vascular adhesion cascade. The physical interaction of E-selectin with its ligand present on the disseminated cancer cells (CD44, sLeX, sLeA) results in a rolling adhesion of the circulating cells to firm adhesion to the vascular endothelium. Therefore, the adhesion cascade may represent an excellent therapeutic target for the blockade of metastasis. In this study, we aimed to dissect the mechanism of cancer cell adhesion to the endothelium and develop a new therapeutic strategy to block the adhesion cascade by using an antagonistic aptamer against E-selectin (ESTA) for the inhibition of lung metastasis development.

First, to understand the mechanism underlying E-selectin-mediated vascular adhesion, we examined the adhesion of four different breast cancer cell lines to E-selectin expressing endothelial cells. E-selectin expression on endothelial cells enhanced the adhesion and transendothelial migration of two basal like ER-/PR-/Her2-/CD44high breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468), whereas this effect was not observed in two luminal like ER+/PR+/Her2+/CD44-/low breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and T-47D). To further confirm the role of CD44 on the cancer cell adhesion, three independent assays were performed. We showed that 1) CD44 isolated from breast cancer cells physically binds to E-selectin, 2) E-selectin antagonists (monoclonal antibody or ESTA) reduces the adhesion of CD44high breast cancer cells to the E-selectin-expressing endothelial cells, and 3) a CD44 blocking antibody and shRNA against CD44 inhibit the adhesion of the cells to E-selectin-expressing endothelial cells. These data suggest that E-selectin preferentially permits the adhesion of CD44high breast cancer cells. Finally, we demonstrated that a single intravenous administration of ESTA reduced the formation of lung metastases in two independent mouse models derived from CD44+ breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231 and 4T-1) with no overt toxicity. The effect of ESTA, however, was minimal on lung metastasis formation of CD44 knocked-down cells.

In summary, CD44 is a key mediator for E-selectin-mediated vascular adhesion. ESTA effectively inhibited the formation of lung metastases of CD44high breast cancer cells possibly due to the blockade of the adhesion cascade. This highlights a feasibility of targeting the adhesion cascade for the prevention of breast cancer lung metastasis.

Citation Format: Shin-Ae Kang, Nafis Hasan, Stephen K. Suh, Hallgeir Rui, Takemi Tanaka. Prevention of breast cancer lung metastasis via the blockade of the adhesion cascade. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 4043. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-4043