There are many legislative, stakeholder and supply chain pressures on business to be more 'sustainable'. Universities have recognised the need for graduate knowledge and understanding of sustainable development issues. Many businesses and universities have responded and introduced Sustainable Development models into their operations with much of the current effort directed at climate change. However, as the current worldwide financial crisis slowly improves, the expectations upon how businesses operate and behave are changing. It will require improved transparency and relationships with all stakeholders, which is the essence of sustainable development. The challenges and opportunities for both business and universities are to understand the requirements of sustainable development and the transformation that is required. They should ensure that knowledge is embedded within the culture of the organisation and wider society in order to achieve a sustainable future.


This article analyzed the role of Twitter in the formation of public knowledge regarding COVID-19. During the pandemic, public knowledge became essential to take concrete actions for the prevention and handling of the situation. The authors used a qualitative descriptive method to describe in general terms information related to the pandemic that they found on Twitter. The results showed that Twitter is an effective communication network to provide public information. Central accounts can be created on Twitter that can act as information centers. As such, the public not only gains more diverse knowledge but can also participate in active virtual discussions. The authors thus view Twitter as a helpful form of collaborative learning to spread awareness about COVID-19.
Keywords: public knowledge, Twitter, COVID-19, communication network


Biomass and density of Myrmeleotettix palpalis(Zub) of alpine meadow,alpine grassland and meadow grassland on the Bayinbulake,Xinjiang were studied.The results showed that the Biomass is on the contrary if contrasting with density of Myrmeleotettix palpalis(Zub) on alpine grassland Bayinbulake grassland of Xinjiang.


Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) are of special importance in the field of pneumatic drives and in robotics. Different designs have been developed, but the McKibben muscle is the most popular and is made commercially available by different companies, e.g. Fluidic Muscle manufactured by Festo Company. There are a lot of advantages of PAMs like the high strength, good power/weight ratio, good power/volume ratio, low price, little maintenance needed, great compliance, compactness, flexibility, inherent safety and usage under rough environments. The objective of this research note is to determine the error of positioning with a Fluidic Muscle at cold and at normal operating temperature of the system with sliding mode control. The results of the experiments showed that the positioning error of the Fluidic Muscle under the experimental conditions was 0.01 mm.


Mobile ad-hoc network is a constantly changing wireless network of autonomous nodes which communicate without the aid of any base station by routing the packets through intermediate nodes. As the nodes are mobile such topology changes consistently presenting great challenges in ensuring quality of service during routing and communication process. These issues are overcome by adapting multipath routing such that if one route fails then communication can continue through other routes. We propose a linear optimization based quality analysis of routes and split the load according to route quality. The optimization problem thus framed is by considering the network parameters such as PSNR of images and path cost solving by which the quality of the routes is enhanced. Simulation result shows that the proposed system performs better because of the use of primal dual Simplex optimization algorithm than the concept which does not use any optimization for load splitting. The algorithm performs better because the algorithm solves the linear model by taking its primal and dual forms and solves them simultaneously.


A young girl having a nap during the workday at a tourist shop in Bali. The normality of child workers in developing countries made us accustomed to it. Whilst child labour at industrial factories have been publicised in the media, child labour in tourism is mostly ignored. Tourist economy makes Indonesian children grow up young.


When learning to ride a bike, a child falls down a number of times before achieving the first success. As falling down usually has only mild consequences, it can be seen as a tolerable failure in exchange for a faster learning process, as it provides rich information about an undesired behavior. In the context of Bayesian optimization under unknown constraints (BOC), typical strategies for safe learning explore conservatively and avoid failures by all means. On the other side of the spectrum, non conservative BOC algorithms that allow failing may fail an unbounded number of times before reaching the optimum. In this work, we propose a novel decision maker grounded in control theory that controls the amount of risk we allow in the search as a function of a given budget of failures. Empirical validation shows that our algorithm uses the failures budget more efficiently in a variety of optimization experiments, and generally achieves lower regret, than state-of-the-art methods. In addition, we propose an original algorithm for unconstrained Bayesian optimization inspired by the notion of excursion sets in stochastic processes, upon which the failures-aware algorithm is built.


Mass industrial production makes possible significantly to increase productivity of labour and to reduce costs compared to other production systems. In spite of this there are reserves for improvement. The article analyses the production of suction tube and suction modules at the firm Robert Bosch, Ceske Budějovice and highlights reserves consisting in the speed-up of changeover times in assembly lines for a new production batch. By change of the routing it was possible to reduce the original operation time of 81,1 min down to 14,5 min. This result was achieved due to new work organization within manufacturing cells. Time saving makes in average 20,7 % of the shift time.


A calibrated Langmuir-type probe has been used to measure ionization in argon and argon-oxygen mixtures shock-heated to 2500 to 4000 K in the presence and absence of soot particles. In the absence of oxygen, ionization is due mainly to impurities scrubbed from the tube walls by the gas flow behind the incident shock, and the soot particles cannot become heavily charged. When oxygen is present the charge density is ten to a hundred times greater. This can be explained by the thermal ionization of fragments produced in the course of oxidation of the original soot particles. However, the process does not result in highly charged particles.


This paper mainly studies the existence of multiple positive solutions of a class of Riemann-Liouville fractional q-difference equations under the four-point boundary value condition with p-Laplacian operator. The existence of two positive solutions of the q-difference equation is verified by the monotonic iterative method. Finally, an example is used to prove the validity of the main results obtained.


This research examined the effects of single-dose molecular hydrogen (H2) supplements on acid-base status and local muscle deoxygenation during rest, high-intensity intermittent training (HIIT) performance, and recovery. Ten healthy, trained subjects in a randomized, double-blind, crossover design received H2-rich calcium powder (HCP) (1500 mg, containing 2.544 μg of H2) or H2-depleted placebo (1500 mg) supplements 1 h pre-exercise. They performed six bouts of 7 s all-out pedaling (HIIT) at 7.5% of body weight separated by 40 s pedaling intervals, followed by a recovery period. Blood gases' pH, PCO2, and HCO3− concentrations were measured at rest. Muscle deoxygenation (deoxy[Hb + Mb]) and tissue O2 saturation (StO2) were determined via time-resolved near-infrared spectroscopy in the vastus lateralis (VL) and rectus femoris (RF) muscles from rest to recovery. At rest, the HCP group had significantly higher PCO2 and HCO3− concentrations and a slight tendency toward acidosis. During exercise, the first HIIT bout's peak power was significantly higher in HCP (839  ±  112 W) vs. Placebo (816  ±  108 W, p = 0.001), and HCP had a notable effect on significantly increased deoxy[Hb + Mb] concentration during HIIT exercise, despite no differences in heart rate response. The HCP group showed significantly greater O2 extraction in VL and microvascular (Hb) volume in RF during HIIT exercise. The HIIT exercise provided significantly improved blood flow and muscle reoxygenation rates in both the RF and VL during passive recovery compared to rest in all groups. The HCP supplement might exert ergogenic effects on high-intensity exercise and prove advantageous for improving anaerobic HIIT exercise performance.


Heterodichogamy, that is, dimorphic sex expression of protogynous (stigmas are receptive before pollen is shed) and protandrous (pollen is shed before stigmas are receptive) mating types provides a possible evolutionary pathway to dioecy (dimorphism of males and females) in plant species. I investigated whether the gender of protogynous or protandrous morphs is specialized in male or female function in a population of a heterodichogamous maple, Acer japonicum (Aceraceae), by examining the phenology of sex expression and phenotypic gender in two morphs. Most of the trees in the study (>90%) were bisexual and from either the protogynous (PG) or the protandrous (PA) type. The remaining trees (<10%) produced only male flowers over three successive years (M) or produced only male flowers one year and both male and female flowers in other years (M/ PA). Potential mating opportunity based on the phenology of sex expression was higher between PG and PA type than within these types. Both floral sex allocation and total sex allocation, including investment to fruit development, showed a wider range of variation in PA than in the PG type. But the differences of the means of phenotypic and functional gender between PG and PA were not evident. Floral sex allocation in one year was positively correlated with that in the next year in both PG and PA types. Plant size did not account for the variation in phenotypic gender, which suggests that the size-advantage hypothesis is not applicable to this maple. There were no significant differences between PG and PA in fruit abortion or in seed and pollen germination rates. Although gender specialization was not evident between PG and PA types, large gender variation among individuals in the protandrous type provides a high probability that male plants have derived from pro- tandrous morph.


Temporal localization of driving actions plays a crucial role in advanced driver-assistance systems and naturalistic driving studies. However, this is a challenging task due to strict requirements for robustness, reliability and accurate localization. In this work, we focus on improving the overall performance by efficiently utilizing video action recognition networks and adapting these to the problem of action localization. To this end, we first develop a density-guided label smoothing technique based on label probability distributions to facilitate better learning from boundary video-segments that typically include multiple labels. Second, we design a post-processing step to efficiently fuse information from video-segments and multiple camera views into scene-level predictions, which facilitates elimination of false positives. Our methodology yields a competitive performance on the A2 test set of the naturalistic driving action recognition track of the 2022 NVIDIA AI City Challenge with an F1 score of 0.271.


The average jump rate for particles undergoing diffusion in disordered systems is calculated for arbitrary concentrations of particles. The disorder model considered is a combination of site-energy and barrier-energy disorder. Uniform and Gaussian distribution functions are used as examples. The average jump rate does not show Arrhenius behaviour in general, but can in particular cases. The tracer diffusion coefficient is deduced from the average jump rate in the low-concentration limit for the site-energy disorder model for which there are no spatial correlations in successive jumps. For models where spatial correlations do occur, expressions for the diffusion coefficient and the average jump rate can be used to obtain information about the correlations.


A review was carried out on the Fundulopanchax species biology, prospects and challenges, with the aim of eliciting interest in the production of the locally available species, as an additional aquarium fish for the development of the Ornamental fisheries industry in Nigeria. The study revealed that the genera Fundulopanchax consists of species of teleost fishes, of the family Nothobranchiidae, distributed across East, West and Central Africa, with six species in Nigeria. They are attractively bright colored, small fishes, with a maximum length of 7.5 cm to nearly 10 cm, require optimum water quality, with a temperature range of 72-75oF, pH range of 6.0 - 7.4 and total hardness from 0 to 300 ppm. They are sexually dimorphic, sexual maturity differs among species, sexually matured female eggs deposited on live aquatic plants and mosses hatch within 14-21 days depending on temperature. These species are mostly carnivores, some omnivores, consuming crustaceans, insect larvae and worms as well as algae in their natural environment. The Fundulopanchax species are economically important Aquarium fishes in developed countries, and so have great potentials in Nigeria. However, the culture of any of the Fundulopanchax species is not harnessed, especially in Nigeria. Keywords: aquarium fishes, Fundulopanchax species, ornamental fisheries industry


'"Go, Uffe, Go!'- Legitimizing male superiority", by Maria Jansson, PhD in political science, Stockholm University and Maria Wendt, PhD in political science, Stockholm University In this article we analyze the messages inherent in, and the public receptions of, four campaigns in Stockholm during the 1990:s and 2000:s concerning male violence against women. The campaigns are produced by "Operation Kvinnofrid" ("Operation Women's inviolability") - a cooperation of authorities in Stockholm headed by the Maier. Our purpose is to discuss in what ways it is possible to formulate and describe men's violence against women in the public arena. How is the problem of men's violence against women represented in the campaigns? What are the reactions to the campaigns and how are they to be understood? We argue that the sometimes very aggressive reactions are provoked when the campaigns put into question relations that are important to men as well as to the support and maintenance of the gender power order. Here we focus men's relations to other men, men's relations to politics and the political system, men's relations to children and, finally, men's relations to the "Nation". How are these relations challenged and/or legitimized, and how do they intertwine with gender power? Our findings suggest that when the position of men, as benevolent and protective actors that form a positive male genealogy, is challenged by the campaign, aggressive reactions are stirred up and the legitimacy of the authorities are questioned. These reactions are paired with an upsurge of "male cheering" - supportive stories about men and, especially, Swedish men and fathers. A tentative interpretation of this is that male cheering is an important way of maintaining the gender power order, especially when this order occasionally is questioned.


To investigate the influence of middle ear effusion (MEE) on perilymph (PL), an experimental otitis media with effusion (OME) was manufactured in chinchillas by injecting the tympanic cavity with immune complexes. The presence of MEE lasted for up to 9 days after the injection of immune complexes. Perilymph was aspirated on the fourth, tenth, and 21st days after the inoculation. The mean concentrations of albumin, immunoglobulin G, histamine, and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) were significantly greater in PL from ears with induced OME than in that from normal control ears. The 3H-PGE2 placed on the round window membrane of pathologically affected ears passed into PL in significantly greater amounts than in normal control ears. The findings indicate that the immune complexes placed in the middle ear cavity affect the biochemical milieu of PL, and that MEE is a result of immune complexes.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the effect of electro-acupuncture on Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) expressions in the liver of rats with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

METHODS
SD rat models of NAFLD induced by feeding high-fat diet for 5 weeks were subjected to early or late intervention with electro-acupuncture at the acupoints Zusanli, Fenglong and Sanyinjiao for 20 min once daily for 21 consecutive days. The changes in serum ALT, AST, TC, and TG levels were determined in the rats and hepatic expressions of TLR4 and NF-κB detected with quantitative fluorescence PCR and Western blotting after treatments.

RESULTS
Serum ALT, AST, TC, and TG levels and TLR4 and NF-κB levels increased significantly after NAFLD onset (P<0.05), and were markedly reduced by interventions with electro-acupuncture (P<0.05).

CONCLUSION
Electro-acupuncture at the acupoints Zusanli, Fenglong and Sanyinjiao can modify blood lipid and hepatic function to produce positive effect on NAFLD possibly by modifying lipid metabolism, lowering expressions of TLR4 and NF-κB in the liver, and reducing the impact of inflammation on NAFLD.


This study was designed to analyse factors that influence customers' intention to adopt e-banking service channels in Ethiopia. A conceptual framework was designed by integrating variables from theory of planned behaviour, technology acceptance model, and previous studies. Through stratified sampling technique, a sample of 211 people was drawn from six commercial banks operating with e-banking service channels in Ethiopia. The research method was a survey method with a descriptive and statistical analysis. In this study regression analysis was conducted to determine the predictive power of the variables. The findings revealed that the variables included in the models (attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived risk) were significant in affecting users' behavioural intention to use e-banking service channels. Results also revealed that the variable perceived behavioural control plays the most important role, followed by attitudes and perceived usefulness in predicting an individual's intention to accept e-banking service channels.


Abstract. Black fly larval collection sites at three rivers in central Washington state all possess taxa of the Simulium arcticum Malloch complex with the autosomal inversion, IS-1, in high enough frequency to test for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium independently at each site. Such tests determine reproductive status of the taxa present. These situations in which the IS-1 autosomal inversion is in relative high frequency are rare. Moreover, earlier molecular comparisons suggest a single taxon for the S. arcticum complex and cytogenetic studies at the local level may or may not support earlier molecular work. Such knowledge could further our understanding of the proper taxonomy of these taxa, that is, whether they are good biological species or not. I scored the three genotypes of the IS-1 inversion in 247 larvae to test the reproductive status of populations of three members of the Simulium arcticum complex (Simulium brevicercum, S. saxosum, and the newly discovered cytotype (S. arcticum IIL- 81) at the Methow, Entiat and Wenatchee rivers of Washington state. In all three cases, larvae conformed to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, suggesting these populations were panmictic when the collections were made. Thus, these results support earlier molecular work and indicate that the three taxa at these sites can freely interbreed.


A monoclonal antibody (MAb) raised against human sperm protein, designated YWK-II, was used to determine the distribution of antigens in rat spermatozoa and rat testicular germ cells. By an indirect immunofluorescent method, the antibody localized over the rat spermatozoal head, except for the postacrosomal region. In paraffin sections of adult and immature rat testis, germ cells, at every developmental stage, and Sertoli cells stained, while interstitial cells and peritubular myoid cells remained unstained. When cocultures of Sertoli and germ cells were tested, only the germ cells stained intensely. Sertoli cells and peritubular myoid cells in cultures did not stain. In the epididymal sections, strong staining occurred with spermatozoa in the lumen and epididymal epithelial cells, with moderate staining in the myoid layers of epididymis. To determine the sperm antigen interacting with the YWK-II antibody, rat spermatozoa proteins were prepared and analyzed by an immunoblot technique. The monoclonal antibody interacted with a single protein, with an estimated molecular weight of 115,000, present in the cauda epididymal spermatozoa. Among the proteins of the caput epididymal spermatozoa, however, the antibody interacted with a major and a minor band with molecular weights of 115,000 and 88,000, respectively. On the other hand, with proteins prepared from the membrane fraction of adult and immature rat testis, the antibody reacted with two bands with estimated molecular weights of 88,000 and 115,000. In the lysate prepared from germ cells dissociated from Sertoli-germ cell cocultures, the antibody recognized only the 88,000 protein. The present results show that the YWK-II MAb interacts with two proteins with different molecular weights. The amount of the interacting proteins in spermatozoa varied with their location within the epididymis.


Wild mushrooms are an important cultural patrimony, used since time immemorial as food and medicines according to traditional ecological knowledge. Chemical and biological characteristics of the wild mushrooms are of interest because they are a natural source of great importance for the production of compounds with potential biotechnological applications. Currently are potential producers of metabolites of biotechnological interest, including enzymes, many of which are of great importance in the food industry. In this study the intracellular and extracellular activity of six hydrolases and laccases produced by three wild mushrooms (Lentinula boryana, Pleurotus djamor var. roseus and Pycnoporus sp.) were determined. All strains were grown on potato-dextrose agar and wheat straw-dextrose agar.


There is a long tradition in economics of evaluating social arrangements by the extent to which individuals' preferences are satisfied. This is the tradition of welfarism, which has developed from nineteenth-century utilitarianism. Increasingly, however, the presumption that preference-satisfaction is the appropriate standard for evaluating social arrangements is being challenged by an alternative view: that we should focus on the set of opportunities open to each individual.


In the mid-1900s Americans stopped doing hired farm work. We were not alone: In all countries, as per-capita incomes rise, people leave the hired farm workforce and the share of the workforce in agriculture plummets. Figure 1 illustrates a sharp decline in the share of the workforce employed in agriculture as per capita incomes rise across countries. Each diamond in the figure represents a country in 2008. The labels for Madagascar, China, Mexico, and the U.S. indicate the relative positions of four countries in different phases of agricultural employment and economic growth. The United States averted a farm labor crisis by turning to its poor neighbor to the south. Mexico was at an early stage in the transition from farm to non-farm work. Immigration offered a solution to the U.S. farm labor problem. Our research shows that this era of farm labor abundance is coming to an end. There is a declining longterm trend in the farm labor supply from households in rural Mexico. There is also growing competition from Mexico's fruit, vegetable, and horticultural (FVH) farms to employ this dwindling supply of farm labor. This means that immigration policy will cease to be a solution to the U.S. farm labor problem in the long run and probably sooner. In fact, we already may be witnessing the start of a new era in which farmers will have to adapt to labor scarcity by switching to less labor-intensive crops, technologies, and labor management practices.


In frequencies over 10 GHz the rain is the most important factor to take in count to evaluate the attenuation level. For several kinds of applications is very useful to known this attenuation in the link every moment while the link is in operation to implement some strategy to mitigate it. According to the ITU-R, there is a procedure to calculate the rain attenuation, however this methodology gives only an average and constant attenuation value. In this work, an automatic procedure to obtain the instant attenuation level for several frequencies using the data provided by MNS (Meteorological National System) in Mexico is explained and their publication in a Web server is showed. Using these values, attenuation maps are elaborated and published in that Web server too.


Introduction: Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD) is a common, often overlooked, chronic condition affecting eyes for which various therapies are being evaluated. Considering the absence of a systematic review and meta-analysis, the present review was carried out. Methods: An appropriate search strategy eligibility criteria were framed and electronic databases were scrutinized for appropriate literature. Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) enrolling patients diagnosed with MGD were included. Outcome measures were Tear Break Up Time (TBUT), Schirmer's test, Meibomian Gland (MG) secretion score, MG plugging score, OSDI and SPEED. Cochrane's tool was used to assess the risk of bias and Forest plot were generated either with fixed or random effects model, with Standardized Mean Difference (SMD). Results: TBUTs, Schirmer's test and OSDI scores for systemic antimicrobials with placebo were 1.58 [1.33, 1.83], 2.93 [0.78, 5.09] and -3.58 [-4.28, -2.89] respectively. No quantitative synthesis was attempted for either mebiomian plugging or meibomian secretion scores and no significant changes were observed with any other outcome parameter. Conclusion: Only the systemic antimicrobials were found to improve the clinical features of meibomian gland dysfunction. Varying effects of different therapeutic agents (heat therapies, omega-3-fatty acids and castor oil) were identified for MGD but the risk of bias pertaining to randomization and allocation concealment was found to be associated with most of the current RCTs. More high quality evidence is required to confirm the findings of the present review.


Recent research focussed on student adaptation to university has shown that resilience is an important attribute for students. As such, this study aimed to identify the concurrent demographic, intrapersonal and interpersonal factors predicting resilience in first year university students. A further aim was to investigate whether there were differences in the experience of full-time versus part-time students in resilience. Participants were 420 students enrolled in a variety of courses at the University of Tasmania, who completed questionnaires measuring resilience and predictors thereof. The hypothesis that higher levels of personal growth initiative, optimism and social adjustment would predict higher levels of resilience was supported. Psychological distress negatively predicted resilience. Contrary to expectations, attachment to university and social support were not found to positively predict resilience. Part-time students reported higher levels of resilience, personal
growth initiative and optimism, as well as lower levels of psychological distress compared to full-time students. No differences were found between part-time and full-time students in social adjustment. It was concluded that resilience in first year university students encompasses intrapersonal, interpersonal and demographic factors.


Background: Sarcoidosis is a chronic, multisystemic granulomatosis of unknown origin that can affect multiple organs throughout the body with variable progression and prognosis. Although the lungs and mediastinal lymph nodes are almost always affected in sarcoidosis, involvement of the pleura remains uncommon.Case presentation: A 69-year-old female presented with dry cough, dyspnea on exertion and fatigue. She was diagnosed with pleural sarcoidosis based on the histological examination of the pleural biopsy and was treated with oral prednisone. Her complaints regressed two weeks later and the left pleural effusion almost disappeared four weeks later.Conclusions: Pleural involvements in sarcoidosis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of pleural effusion and pleural nodules.


The effect of Solcoseryl on the healing rate of corneal lesions after foreign body removal was assessed in a double-blind study. Solcoseryl is a protein-free hemodialysate which is widely used to stimulate tissue repair processes. The healing rate was determined by means of photodocumentation which was complete in 82 out of 92 cases. The Solcoseryl group showed in significantly faster healing rate and a lower tendency to development of corneal opacities than the control group. No side-effects were observed which could be attributed to either of the drugs used in the study.


To determine the best block mode among the different sizes in H.264/AVC, the rate distortion cost is used as a determining factor. This process requires relatively large amount of computation to encounter all the combinations of different sizes of MBs. In this paper, a new fast inter-mode decision algorithm is proposed in this context. The proposed method reduces the number of candidate modes using direct information from the co-located macroblock(s). A novel motion complexity analysis scheme is also discussed in this paper which is strong enough to categorize different moving objects inside a MB and to make a proper decision for the best candidate mode. Experiment results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve speed-up factor up to 78.70% on average with negligible loss of image quality and quite good bit rate performance.


Determination of the hydraulic properties of coastal aquifer systems has important implications that are related to the issues such as seawater intrusion, submarine groundwater discharge, migration of contaminants, assessment of water resources, and geotechnical engineering. Over recent decades, many analytical solutions that consider different types of coastal aquifer systems or models have been developed. These solutions can be used as a theoretical basis for the tidal method that characterizes the hydraulic properties of a coastal aquifer system using hydraulic response measurements in an observation well or wells induced by tidal waves in the ocean. The hydraulic properties of an aquifer can be estimated through fitting a series of time‐dependent changes of hydraulic head detected in an observation well to those calculated based on theoretical solutions. For simplicity, most theoretical solutions only consider one tidal component and idealized boundary conditions, although in reality multiple tidal components exist simultaneously and boundary conditions can be more complicated. For practical applications of the tidal method and to increase its reliability, multiple tidal components should be considered and models considering more complicated boundary conditions should be developed. In addition, methods that can determine both the hydraulic conductivity and storage coefficient, rather than only the hydraulic diffusivity, that is, the ratio of hydraulic conductivity to storage coefficient of coastal aquifer, should be developed. Cautions should be taken into account when using the tidal method because earth tides and changes in local atmospheric pressure may induce similar tidal fluctuations in the hydraulic head within inland observation wells.


Abstract Oxanorbornene cored 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5 generation ester terminated PAMAM dendronized monomers with 2 and 6 carbon-containing alkyl spacer in the middle of oxanorbornene core and dendronized branching were synthesized. Monomers were polymerized through the ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) technique by using 2nd and 3rd generation Grubbs catalysts to get dendronized ROMP polymers. It was found that Grubbs 3rd generation catalyst works well for 0.5 generation dendronized ROMP polymer whereas Grubbs 2nd generation catalyst works for the higher generation. We also found the linker effect during polymerization as six-carbon linker monomers polymerize with high yield along with higher generation. Finally, dendronized ROMP-based PAMAM encapsulated zero valent Cu nanoparticle was synthesized by using a reducing agent, NaBH4. The catalytic activity of this nanoparticle was further investigated from the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol. Graphical Abstract


An integrated frequency quadrupler operating at 160 GHz, producing 100 mW of output power, and achieving peak efficiency of 25.5% is described. The quadrupler design is based on prior art and consists of GaAs Schottky diodes with epitaxy transferred to a micromachined silicon carrier forming a heterogene-ously-integrated chip. A newly-developed fabrication process that eliminates high temperature annealing and utilizes SU-8 for adhesive bonding was employed to realize the circuit. The new process improves device yield and reliability compared to previous implementations.


Abstract In this article we introduce a model of sustainable competitiveness, which we created on the basis of a long term study of literature and analysis. This article is divided into several parts. In the first part, we will introduce the problem of competitiveness and sustainable competitiveness. The second part is focused on the basic aspects for the creation of the model. In the third part the model itself is introduced and also an explanation and description of the mode is given.


This article deals with the question how cultural diversity, expressed in a parliamentary debate, can influence the space given to religious minorities to substantiate their identity. The debate about the prohibition of non-stunned ritual slaughter in the Dutch Parliament in 2011/2012 serves as case study. A frame analysis reveals that tensions exist between minority rights and majority values and with regard to the regulation of religion in the public sphere. The article concludes that politicians struggle to position themselves amidst those fundamental questions and certainty is sought in the legal, political, scientific, economic and historical domain. There is no simple answer to the question what determines the space given to religious minorities to substantiate their identities. Although a political majority decision was taken at the end of a long trajectory, this was a compromise that leaves the controversy with its related uncertainties unsolved.


The focus of this report is to design a CHP system using energy demand load profile for a food distribution center. This study has investigated energy requirements in food industry. The main distinction of this report is to carry out economic and environmental analysis of a CHP system. Case studies based on food industry demonstrates that the CHP system is able to run continuously at optimal efficiency and operational costs of the CHP system can be effectively reduced in both electric and heating cost.


Objective: The objective of this study was to determine parents' knowledge and attitudes on childhood fever, use of antipyretic drugs, and related factors. Material and Methods: The study was performed with 400 parents who presented at the pediatric emergency department, had a child without a chronic disease, and accepted to participate in this study. All statistical data were analyzed by the SPSS for Windows version 13.0 program and statistical significance was defined as p<0.05. Results: The mean age of the children was 4.98±4.28 years. The majority of the parents said that they measured fever from the axilla (n: 318, 79.5%) and 137 (34.3%) parents said that they considered a value of ≥38˚C as fever. Two hundred sixty-one parents (65.3%) stated that fever may be high during infections of influenza or common cold, 179 (44.8%) stated that fever may be high after vaccination, and 160 (40.0%) stated that fever may be high during the dentition period. The majority of families (n: 386, 96.5%) thought that fever could be harmful for children. The most preferred treatment method of fever was the use of an antipyretic drug (n: 314, 78.5%) and the most preferred drug was paracetamol (n: 376, 94.0%). However, only 169 (42.2%) parents had used medication at the appropriate dosage. The parents received information about antipyretic drugs from physicians (n: 368, 92.0%), pharmacists (n: 62, 15.5%), and nurses (n: 54, 13.5%). Conclusion: The majority of families preferred antipyretic drugs in the treatment of fever, but only half of them had used the appropriate dose. Health professionals were the most common source of information about antipyretic drugs. Therefore, health professionals should educate parents about the description and causes of fever and the most appropriate approach to children with fever. This kind of education may prevent inappropriate applications for febrile children.


Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is a novel that depicts a typical biodystopia. By recollecting the clones' tragic experience of organ donation for the benefit of humankind, it discusses the bleak posthuman prospects of science, the double manipulation of life by power, and the metaphorical dimension of posthuman lifewriting. Ishiguro approaches the theme from the clones' perspective, taking the clones as a metaphor to demonstrate the actual circumstances of human life, therefore the novel could be seen as a parable about human nature. This paper proposes to analyze, from the aspects of science, power and metaphorical lifewriting, Ishiguro's unique art in creating a biodystopian narrative that reflects universal human conditions and reveals the posthuman biopredicament.


Antenatal fetal health monitoring primarily depends on the signal analysis of abdominal or transabdominal electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings. The noninvasive approach for obtaining fetal heart rate (HR) reduces risks of potential infections and is convenient for the expectant mother. However, in addition to strong maternal ECG presence, undesirable signals due to body motion activity, muscle contractions, and certain bio-electric potentials degrade the diagnostic quality of obtained fetal ECG from abdominal ECG recordings. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing an improved framework for estimating fetal HR from non-invasively acquired abdominal ECG recordings. Since the most significant contamination is due to maternal ECG, in the proposed framework, we rely on neural network autoencoder for reconstructing maternal ECG. The autoencoder endeavors to establish the nonlinear mapping between abdominal ECG and maternal ECG thus preserving inherent fetal ECG artifacts. The framework is supplemented with an existing blind-source separation (BSS) algorithm for post-treatment of residual signals obtained after subtracting reconstructed maternal ECG from abdominal ECG. Furthermore, experimental assessments on clinically-acquired subjects' recordings advocate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in comparison with conventional techniques for maternal ECG removal.


: Despite the consolidated body of public international law on children ' s rights and armed conflict, why do armed rebel groups and state forces deploy children in armed conflict, particularly in Somalia? First, due to the lack of alternative sources of income and livelihood beyond armed conflict, children join the army due to coercive recruitment by commanders of armed groups. Their participation in armed conflict generates a fleeting and false sense of material security and belongingness in a group. Second, many Somali children were born in an environment of existential violence and material insecurity that normalized and routinized violence, thereby motivating them to view enlistment in armed conflict as morally permissible and necessary for existential survival.


Task allocation is an important problem for robot swarms to solve, allowing agents to reduce task completion time by performing tasks in a distributed fashion. Existing task allocation algorithms often assume prior knowledge of task location and demand or fail to consider the effects of the geometric distribution of tasks on the completion time and communication cost of the algorithms. In this paper, we examine an environment where agents must explore and discover tasks with positive demand and successfully assign themselves to complete all such tasks. We first provide a new discrete general model for modeling swarms. Operating within this theoretical framework, we propose two new task allocation algorithms for initially unknown environments -- one based on N-site selection and the other on virtual pheromones. We analyze each algorithm separately and also evaluate the effectiveness of the two algorithms in dense vs. sparse task distributions. Compared to the Levy walk, which has been theorized to be optimal for foraging, our virtual pheromone inspired algorithm is much faster in sparse to medium task densities but is communication and agent intensive. Our site selection inspired algorithm also outperforms Levy walk in sparse task densities and is a less resource-intensive option than our virtual pheromone algorithm for this case. Because the performance of both algorithms relative to random walk is dependent on task density, our results shed light on how task density is important in choosing a task allocation algorithm in initially unknown environments.


A novel method to obtain parameterizations of complex inverse orthogonal matrices is provided. These matrices are natural generalizations of complex Hadamard matrices which depend on non zero complex parameters. The method we use is via doubling the size of inverse complex conference matrices. When the free parameters take values on the unit circle the inverse orthogonal matrices transform into complex Hadamard matrices, and in this way we find new parameterizations of Hadamard matrices for dimensions n = 8, 10, 12.


The authors of this study suggest that the harm-punishment link ('outcome bias') can be explained by the activation of different judgment processes depending on the outcome severity of an offense: (1) a rational model for mild outcomes in which punishment is necessarily linked to responsibility of the perpetrator; (2) a justification model for severe outcomes in which punishment and responsibility are linked only when assessment order allows the latter to rationalize the former. Participants (126 university students) considered an unintentional road accident with mild or severe outcomes and made judgments of responsibility, punishment, and perceived seriousness of the offense. The results support the authors' hypothesis. In the discussion, the authors suggest different motives of punishment (preventive or compensative justice) which explain why responsibility and punishment are not necessarily linked. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


BACKGROUND
In the advanced stages of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease, particularly vision-damaging retinitis due to CMV is common. We evaluated prophylactic treatment with orally administered ganciclovir as a way to prevent CMV disease.

METHODS
We conducted a prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of CMV infected persons with AIDS with either CD4+ lymphocyte counts of < or = 50 per cubic millimeter or counts of < or = 100 per cubic millimeter in those with a history of an AIDS defining opportunistic infection. Patients were randomly assigned, in a 2:1 ratio, to receive either oral ganciclovir (1000 mg three times daily) or placebo.

RESULTS
The study was stopped after a median 367 days of follow-up. In an intention-to-treat analysis, the twelve month cumulative rates of confirmed CMV disease were 26 percent in the placebo group (n = 239) and 14 percent in the ganciclovir group (n = 486), representing an overall reduction in risk of 49 percent in the ganciclovir group (P < 0.001). The incidence of CMV retinitis after 12 months was 24 percent in the placebo group and 12 percent in the ganciclovir group (P < 0.0001). The prevalence of CMV-positive urine cultures at base line was 42 percent; after two months it was 43 percent in the placebo group and 10 percent in the ganciclovir group (P < 0.0001). The one year mortality rate was 26 percent in the placebo group and 21 percent in the ganciclovir group (P = 0.14). Therapy with granulocyte colony stimulating factor was more frequent in the ganciclovir group (24 percent) than in the placebo group (9 percent).

CONCLUSIONS
In persons with advanced AIDS, phophylactic oral ganciclovir significantly reduces the risk of CMV disease.


In this article, I will discuss the ways in which strong women characters are constituted in the 2005 film The Descent (Marshall, 2005). In doing so, I will unpack representations of these fictional women with a view to articulating the implications that they have for challenging both problematic feminine positionings and heterosexism(s). While the film The Descent can be read as falling short of offering a challenge to heterosexist understandings of femininity, it will be argued that viewing horror films as monolithically problematic for women may overlook the subversive potential of this genre. I will begin by outlining the plot of the film and then explain why the film became of interest to me as a feminist psychologist.


1. Xu MJ, Feng D, Wu H, Wang H, Chan Y, Kolls J, et al. Liver is the major source of elevated serum lipocalin-2 levels after bacterial infection or partial hepatectomy: a critical role for IL-6/STAT3. HEPATOLOGY 2015;61:692-702. 2. Kopf M, Baumann H, Freer G, Freudenberg M, Lamers M, Kishimoto T, et al. Impaired immune and acute-phase responses in interleukin-6deficient mice. Nature 1994;368:339-342. 3. Dalrymple SA, Lucian LA, Slattery R, McNeil T, Aud DM, Fuchino S, et al. Interleukin-6-deficient mice are highly susceptible to Listeria monocytogenes infection: correlation with inefficient neutrophilia. Infect Immun 1995;63:2262-2268. 4. van Enckevort FH, Sweep CG, Span PN, Netea MG, Hermus AR, Kullberg BJ. Reduced adrenal response and increased mortality after systemic Klebsiella pneumoniae infection in interleukin-6-deficient mice. Eur Cytokine Netw 2001;12:581-586.


Introduction Uunintentional injuries play a key role in mortality and morbidity of Iranian 1–59 months of age children. During recent years, several studies have been carried out in different parts of the country but different studies have different results show the necessity of performing local researches to find out local patterns of aforementioned injuries for policy making or intervening in order to solve the injuries problem. Materials and methods By use of data bases of Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, data gathered during 2010 to 2015 has been used for mortality study and in case of morbidity only data gathered in 2015 has been analyzed. Results Of 1578 death events from 2010 to 2014 among target population, the most important causes of death were 'congenital malformation and deformation and chromosomal abnormalities', 'unintentional injuries' and 'diseases of nervous system'. In case of unintentional injuries, from 2010 to 2015, among target population, 382 death events have been registered in which the most important causes of death were 'Traffic accidents', 'Accidental drowning and submersion' and 'Other accidental threat to breathing' respectively. 59.2% of them were male and most of male victims (52.6%) were living in rural areas. In case of unintentional injuries related morbidity, 5528 cases have been registered during the year 2015 in which 80.4% were in urban areas. The most vulnerable age group were children between 13–24 months of age. Homes had the greatest share among places of happened injuries. 'Exposure to inanimate mechanical forces', 'falls' and 'heat and hot substances' are the most frequent mechanisms of morbidity in target population. Traffic accidents as the fourth mechanism of morbidity, mostly occurred in children who were on board of vehicles. Conclusion Effort to promote health of children ranging 1–59 months of age would not be successful without considering unintentional injuries.


In this study, the effects of panel temperature on AC-plasma display panels (AC-PDPs) were investigated. Macroscopic properties, such as the luminance, discharge delay time lag, and discharge current decreased while the breakdown voltage increased with increasing panel temperature. These data implied that changes in the materials properties with the panel temperature strongly affected the macroscopic properties, including the gas-discharge characteristics of AC-PDPs. The reason can be explained by the change in the collision kinetics due to the increase in the pressure in the AC-PDPs, the voltage drop due to the increase in the resistivity of the metal electrodes, and the decrease in the effective voltage due to the decrease in the surface resistivity of a MgO protective layer. The properties of other components such as the indium-tin-oxide (ITO) transparent electrode and the dielectric layer changed little in the considered temperature range (0 ∼ 80 °C), and, thus, are not thought to affect the macroscopic properties of AC-PDPs with changing panel temperature.


Coronary artery spasm (CAS) can cause unstable angina, and the treatment of this disease is controversial. We report an elderly male patient who was admitted to hospital due to chest tightness. CAG showed that 70% stenosis in the middle of the right coronary artery (RCA). A bioresorbable scaffold (BRS) was implanted in the lesion under the guidance of optical coherence tomography (OCT). One year later, the patient's symptoms were relieved. The repeated CAG showed that the stent was good. BRS implantation under the guidance of treadmill test and OCT is one of treatment options for CAS patients.


Background: Asphyxia is a serious problem in newborns because it can cause high levels of mortality and mortality. Deaths because of asphyxia are around 38% and are 3rd rank in neonatal deaths. Asphyxia is the most common cause of seizures in newborns with the incidence of 1-3 per 1,000 births. Seizure after asphyxia can occur impaired cognitive and developmental disorders in children. From the relationship, well and proper management of infants with asphyxia can reduce the risk of death and permanent disability due to seizures. Methods: Observational analytic research with cross sectional study design to find out the relationship between asphyxia and seizure in neonates. The sample of this study is 718 neonates from 0 to 28 days with asphyxia in perinatology and NICU of Wangaya General Hospital Denpasar city from July 2017-July 2018. Result: The prevalence of neonates with asphyxia are 214 and neonates with seizure are 8 from 214. From this study found a relationship between asphyxia and occurrence of seizure with p=0,000. Conclusion: There is a significant relationship between asphyxia and the occurrence of seizures in neonates.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to use the internal model control to deal with nonlinear stable systems affected by parametric uncertainties.

Design/methodology/approach

The dynamics of a considered system are approximated by a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model. The parameters of the fuzzy rules premises are determined manually. However, the parameters of the fuzzy rules conclusions are updated using the descent gradient method under inequality constraints in order to ensure the stability of each local model. In fact, without making these constraints the training algorithm can procure one or several unstable local models even if the desired accuracy in the training step is achieved. The considered robust control approach is the internal model. It is synthesized based on the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model. Two control strategies are considered. The first one is based on the parallel distribution compensation principle. It consists in associating an internal model control for each local model. However, for the second strategy, the control law is computed based on the global Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model.

Findings

According to the simulation results, the stability of all local models is obtained and the proposed fuzzy internal model control approaches ensure robustness against parametric uncertainties.

Originality/value

This paper introduces a method for the identification of fuzzy model parameters ensuring the stability of all local models. Using the resulting fuzzy model, two fuzzy internal model control designs are presented.


This thesis describes an investigation of the photoionization. by a Q-switched ruby laser of some negative aromatic ions in liquid solutions. From the results of the recombination reaction kinetics we tentatively onclude that the ejected electron behaves as a classical particle , even on a time scale of about 10-8 sec. ... Zie: Summary


Diabetes mellitus, has long been recognized as a cause of accelerated aging, is a heterogeneous metabolic dis - order characterized by hyperglycemia, which is often associated with complications such as cardiovascular disease, retinopathy, nephropathy and peripheral and autonomic neuropathy. In fact, aging and age-related diseases such as dia - betes are accompanied by increased Oxidative Stress (OS) and accumulation of Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs). Unmitigated OS can lead to diminished cellular longevity, accelerated aging, and accumulated toxic effects for an organ - ism. Consequences of oxidative stress are damage to DNA, lipids, proteins, accumulation of damaged molecules and dis - ruption in cellular homeostasis. These damaged molecules also impair endothelial integrity and destroy membrane calcium current, leading to endothelial dysfunction, vascular smooth muscle proliferation and abnormal cardiovascular reactivity. Diabetes-induced oxidative stress increases AGEs formation. AGE modification of proteins leads to alterations in their normal functions by binding to intracellular or extracellular cell components, or through receptor binding. These inter - actions consequently can initiate a cascade of signal transduction pathways, which activate inflammatory responses, caus - ing tissue injury. Such tissue injury contributes to the development of cardiovascular and other serious complications responsible for morbidity and mortality in diabetes. The increased amount of evidence on the harmful effects of hyper - glycemia-induced oxidative stress on organ functions, the recent interest has focused on strategies to prevent, reverse or retard firstly oxidative stress and then its triggered harmful signaling. In this regard, stobadine, a synthetic and efficient antioxidant pyridoindole, has been studied largely, and found that it inhibits glyco-oxidative damage, decreases albumin - uria, enzymuria, lipid peroxidation, matrix collagen cross-linking, plasma cholesterol, triglycerides, protein carbonyla - tion and protein AGEs formation, and lead to a normalization in protein thiol, total thiol and non-protein thiol groups in different tissues of diabetic animals. Stobadine treatment of diabetic rats is characterized by retarded calcium accumula - tion in hearth. Stobadine is able to control mean arterial blood pressure, to prevent endothelial disturbances and to restore vascular reactivity abnormalities. This antioxidant protects metabolism, function and/or structure of heart, aorta, kidney, brain, liver, peripheral nerves, vas deferens and retina in streptozotocin-diabetic rats. Accumulating experimental evi - dence suggest that stobadine is a promising agent to prevent, delay or treat late diabetic complications.


Three structure-dependent integration methods with no numerical dissipation have been successfully developed for time integration. Although these three integration methods generally have the same numerical properties, such as unconditional stability, second-order accuracy, explicit formulation, no overshoot and no numerical damping, there still exist some different numerical properties. It is found that TLM can only have unconditional stability for linear elastic and stiffness softening systems for zero viscous damping while for nonzero viscous damping it only has unconditional stability for linear elastic systems. Whereas, both CEM and CRM can have unconditional stability for linear elastic and stiffness softening systems for both zero and nonzero viscous damping. However, the most significantly different property among the three integration methods is a weak instability. In fact, both CRM and TLM have a weak instability, which will lead to an adverse overshoot or even a numerical instability in the high frequency responses to nonzero initial conditions. Whereas, CEM possesses no such an adverse weak instability. As a result, the performance of CEM is much better than for CRM and TLM. Notice that a weak instability property of CRM and TLM might severely limit its practical applications.


Accurate calculation of semiconductor losses and temperature is the foundation of any design methodology for a power electronic converter. Computation accuracy and speed play a vital role if a large set of parameters needs to be considered. Averaged loss models often neglect the temperature dependence of transistors, leading to fast, but inaccurate results. In contrast, iterative methods and simulation tools, which can include temperature dependence, take significantly longer to compute, but yield more precise results. This paper presents a best of both worlds approach, by using the harmonic balance method to obtain the steady-state solution for any inverter topology including temperature dependent conduction and switching losses. The proposed method solves for the discrete Fourier series of the device temperature, by expressing the temperature dependence and operating parameters in the frequency domain. The set of equations for each coefficient is solved by a single matrix inversion, resulting in very fast computation for steady-state temperature cycles. The steady-state operation of over one thousand possible inverter designs is calculated within less than one minute, matching iterative simulation in device temperature, conduction and switching losses, at a fraction of the computation time. In addition, the method shows good agreement with temperature measurements of a three-phase silicon-carbide inverter.


Laparoscopic surgery is increasingly applied to the treatment of gastrointestinal disease. However, the insertion of secondary trocars following pneumoperitoneum carries the risk of serious complications such as major vascular and bowel injuries. Such injury can arise when the force required for the trocar insertion is such that it causes the operator to have impaired control over the entry. There is a need for a procedure of secondary trocar insertion that is safe and easy to perform for training clinicians in laparoscopic surgery. We have developed the "cut-and-screw" insertion method for secondary trocar insertion using a specially developed laparoscopic cannula with a sharp edge and housing. Our procedure is simple, rapid, and safe. In this chapter, we describe the technique and present our initial clinical results.


We demonstrate here that hepatic triglyceride lipase (HTGL) enhances VLDL degradation in cultured cells by a LDL receptor-mediated mechanism. VLDL binding at 4 degrees C and degradation at 37 degrees C by normal fibroblasts was stimulated by HTGL in a dose-dependent manner. A maximum increase of up to 7-fold was seen at 10 microg/ml HTGL. Both VLDL binding and degradation were significantly increased (4-fold) when LDL receptors were up-regulated by treatment with lovastatin. HTGL also stimulated VLDL degradation by LDL receptor-deficient FH fibroblasts but the level of maximal degradation was 40-fold lower than in lovastatin-treated normal fibroblasts. A prominent role for LDL receptors was confirmed by demonstration of similar HTGL-promoted VLDL degradation by normal and LRP-deficient murine embryonic fibroblasts. HTGL enhanced binding and internalization of apoprotein-free triglyceride emulsions, however, this was LDL receptor-independent. HTGL-stimulated binding and internalization of apoprotein-free emulsions was totally abolished by heparinase indicating that it was mediated by HSPG. In a cell-free assay HTGL competitively inhibited the binding of VLDL to immobilized LDL receptors at 4 degrees C suggesting that it may directly bind to LDL receptors but may not bind VLDL particles at the same time. We conclude that the ability of HTGL to enhance VLDL degradation is due to its ability to concentrate lipoprotein particles on HSPG sites on the cell surface leading to LDL receptor-mediated endocytosis and degradation.


Continuing a program of examining the behavior of the vacuum expectation value of the stress tensor in a background which varies only in a single direction, we here study the electromagnetic stress tensor in a medium with permittivity depending on a single spatial coordinate, specifically, a planar dielectric half-space facing a vacuum region. There are divergences occurring that are regulated by temporal and spatial point-splitting, which have a universal character for both transverse electric and transverse magnetic modes. The nature of the divergences depends on the model of dispersion adopted. And there are singularities occurring at the edge between the dielectric and vacuum regions, which also have a universal character, depending on the structure of the discontinuities in the material properties there. Remarks are offered concerning renormalization of such models, and the significance of the stress tensor. The ambiguity in separating "bulk" and "scattering" parts of the stress tensor is discussed.


Emerging technologies are increasingly reliant on materials that deliver multiple functionality. For example, hydrogels using dynamic covalent crosslinks have proven well-suited for the preparation of functional systems with properties including self-healing, shape memory, and stimuli-induced stiffness changes. These covalent bonds are capable of exchanging, dissociating or switching in response to various stimuli. In this review stimuli responsive dynamic covalent hydrogels are discussed on the basis of their chemistry and how the gels are increasingly used in novel applications. Challenges and potential future developments of dynamic covalent hydrogels are also discussed.


A study was conducted to evaluate four different cholecalciferol levels (NRC; modified), using diets supplemented with 200 (control), 1500, 2500 or 3500 IU/kg of cholecalciferol (VIT-D3). Each treatment was assigned to 3 pens of 17 broiler chicks of a commercial strain grown in an open-sided house with sidewall curtains. At 21 and 42 days, BW and feed conversion (FCR) were determined. At 42 days, five birds per pen were slaughtered to evaluate tibia and toe ash of the right leg, and incidence and severity of tibial dyschondroplasia (TD) of the left tibia and also measured dressing percentage and breast meat yield. Serum calcium and phosphorus concentrations were also determined. Haemagglutination inhibition antibody titre against Newcastle disease virus and lymphoid organs weight/body weight ratio were also determined. At both 21 and 42 days, the BW of birds fed 1500 IU/kg to 3500 IU/kg of VIT-D3 was significantly greater than birds fed 200 IU/kg. Similarly, better FCR was observed in birds those fed diets of high level of VIT-D3. No significant difference was observed for mortality at any age. Better dressing percentage and breast meat yield were noted in birds fed diets containing 2500 or 3500 IU/kg VIT-D3. Both tibia and toe ash contents were increased (p < 0.05) progressively with increased concentrations of cholecalciferol in feed. The incidence of TD (percentage of birds having TD scores greater than zero) was significantly (p < 0.05) influenced by level of 3500 IU VIT-D3/kg at 42 days. The severity of TD in birds fed diets containing 200 IU/kg VIT-D3 was apparently higher than birds fed diets with higher levels of VIT-D3. Concentrations of calcium and phosphorus minerals in the serum increased progressively with the high level of VIT-D3 supplementation to birds at both 21 and 42 days of age. Feeding levels of 1500 or 3500 IU of vitamin D3 did positively affect the immune system within the parameters measured. It may be concluded that performance, bone mineralization, blood chemistry and immunity against disease in broilers could be maintained when supplementing high level of VIT-D3 incorporated in broiler diets.


A method to make ab initio predictions of electronic autoionization rates in atoms and molecules by use of many-body theory in the discrete basis set approximation is presented. The method is applied to the autoionizing states and in He and Ne, respectively, and to the state in the HF molecule. The many-body expansion is carried through the third order in the electronic interaction, which means that the leading correlation terms are included. Correlation effects were found to be important in all the three cases investigated, and very good agreement with experiment was obtained for He and Ne where experimental values are available.


This study examined the effect of hemifacial width on attributions of personality and emotion in normal people with pronounced facial asymmetry. Ten attributions, made by 61 raters to the larger vs smaller hemifacial composites of the same face in 14 resting faces with pronounced asymmetry, were compared. Analysis showed that the smaller hemifaces were rated as exhibiting more intense emotions and as generally having more positive features than the larger hemifaces. The main implication of these findings is that faces with prominent asymmetry do not uniformly affect observers, but response may depend on the features of the hemiface (usually the right hemiface) perceived in the dominant visual field of the observers.


A comprehensive study of tsunami simulation for the two recent events in 1974 (Mw8.0), 1966 (Mw8.1) and one historical event in 1746 (Mw8.5-9.2) was carried out in order to constrain the tsunami source and evaluate the tsunami hazard in the central coast of Peru. We propose a seismic source for each event in 1974 and 1966 and evaluate the tsunami heights and arrival time by performing a tsunami simulation using a TUNAMI-N2 code that solves non-linear long wave equation. Also, in order to reproduce the historical tsunami in 1746, we carried out a simulation for scenarios with Mw of 8.5, 8.8, 9.0 and 9.2. Through a comparison among the historical tsunami descriptions, the scenarios with Mw 8.8-9.0 were found to be more representatives, which is consistent with the maximum tsunami heights observed from Huarmey to Barranco stations. Moreover, we adopt a more realistic future tsunami scenario using a predicted slip model from an interseismic coupling using GPS data provided by Pulido et al. (2011). This scenario shows an important coupling area facing Huacho Lima and Pisco cities and according to the moment deficit a repetitive event of the 1746 earthquake could occur. Also this model shows that the events in 1940, 1966, 1974 and 2007 have not released the total energy accumulated since 1746. From this scenario, the maximum tsunami height could be 7.8 m in Huacho station with a minimum arrival time of 25 min after the earthquake. In all the cases, we found that the tsunami travels faster to the south and slower to the north of Peru. The tsunami simulation using the bathymetry data of 30 arc-second resolution showed longer travel time and higher amplitude compared with the 1 arc-minute resolution, giving the former better results in the comparison between the synthetic and observed tide gauge records for the 1974 and 1966 events.


Abstract We extend to objects of general convex form an earlier criterion given by Finn for ensuring a local energy minimum corresponding to floating of a heavy horizontal cylinder on a liquid surface. We obtain a formal analogue of Finn´s criterion, and additionally a condition on interfacial surface energies under which an object of given shape with density exceeding that of the liquid must float if it is scaled to be sufficiently small. In analogy with Finn´s earlier work, we show also in the more physical case presently considered that if a body is lowered rigidly from a position above the undisturbed liquid surface to a position below the surface, the liquid configuration must change during the motion in a discontinuous way.


In this paper, a simple dynamic model for an OTEC plant using Rankine cycle is constructed. The proposed dynamic model consists of steady state calculation of state quantity based on mass balance and energy balance, and transient calculation of the heat exchanger dynamics. The proposed dynamic model can express both the steady state and the transient state of the OTEC plant. Moreover, evaluation indexes of the OTEC plant are obtained. Accuracy of the proposed dynamic model is evaluated by comparing with experimental results of an OTEC pilot plant.


Opioid prescriptions in the perioperative setting are a known risk factor for long-term opioid use and misuse. Recent initiatives in the United States to address the issue have focused on judicious prescribing patterns and quality measurement to minimize opioid dispensing. However, policy gaps have limited the effectiveness of current interventions. Expanded policy considerations are warranted, including patient-focused opioid risk screening and preferences for nonopioid pain management, with broader plan coverage for multimodal opioid-sparing pain management (OSPM). Additionally, formalized clinician education regarding specific nonopioid pain management alternatives may increase utilization, as will incorporation into perioperative OSPM clinical pathways. It is also important for patients to have access to the option for multimodal OSPM in the perioperative setting without financial disincentives, which may arise in surgery-specific bundled payment models. Finally, expansion of research activities regarding clinical and cost-efficacy outcomes may help to advance use of these options, laying the groundwork for development of a broader set of quality measures reflecting utilization and outcomes of multimodal OSPM in the perioperative setting.


The food industry is increasingly demanding advanced and eco-friendly sustainable packaging materials with improved physical, mechanical and barrier properties. The currently used materials are synthetic and non-degradable, therefore raising environmental concerns. Consequently, research efforts have been made in recent years towards the development of bio-based sustainable packaging materials. In this review, the potential of nanocelluloses as nanofillers or as coatings for the development of bio-based nanocomposites is discussed, namely: (i) the physico-chemical interaction of nanocellulose with the adjacent polymeric phase, (ii) the effect of nanocellulose modification/functionalization on the final properties of the composites, (iii) the production methods for such composites, and (iv) the effect of nanocellulose on the overall migration, toxicity, and the potential risk to human health. Lastly, the technology readiness level of nanocellulose and nanocellulose based composites for the market of food packaging is discussed.


Research has established a relationship between the organisational commitment of teachers and some key teaching-career related variables. However, there has not been any exploration of organisational commitment in Eastern Caribbean schools. Using a cross-sectional research design, we surveyed a sample of 158 teachers to investigate relationships between organisational commitment and selected variables (i.e., career advancement opportunities, principal leadership style, teaching experience, and training). Findings revealed that primary school teachers reported higher levels of organisational commitment than secondary school teachers. However, no significant differences were found in the organisational commitment of trained and untrained teachers, nor were any found between organisational commitment and the other teaching career-related variables included in the study. We discuss the nuanced nature of organisational commitment in schools in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean that lend to critical policy initiatives.


[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian]
This project focuses on the learning experiences of master of social work students in an advanced community practice course. The primary pedagogical method for the class was participatory action research, specifically the photovoice method. The MSW students completed a photovoice project focused on campus sexual violence in which they recruited students, outside the class, as participants. As coursework, students generated reflection papers, responses to readings, and focus group notes. These artifacts constituted the data for this project. The data analysis included grounded theory methods and a focus on post-truth politics, from which three categories emerged: (a) supporting cultural competence, (b) facilitating self-awareness (c) and viewing truth as multifaceted.


The aim of the present study was to analyse the long-term survival rate of endosteal implants used for restoration of oral function in patients having undergone oncologic surgery. Eighty-three consecutive patients, who had received a total of 409 endosteal implants ad modum Br~nemark, subsequent to resections of soft tissue and bone during ablation of oral malignancies, were enrolled into the study. A life-table analysis was used to determine the survival rate of the implants placed during a period of 13 years. Log rank tests and Cox regression analysis were employed to identify relevant effects of surgical parameters on implant survival. A total of 38 implant failures were encountered. Most of the losses (n= 19) occurred during the first year of functional loading. Subsequent failures were evenly distributed across the remaining follow-up period. The cumulative overall survival rate of implants was 56.5%. Previous radiation therapy, insertion into grafted bone or original jaw bone and the technique of grafting did not significantly affect the survival rates. In the Cox regression analysis, the timing of implant placement in the group of patients with bone grafts (primary vs secondary placement) was significantly related to the survival rate (P=0.0197), with a lower survival rate of 36.2% for primary insertion of implants and 67.l% for secondary placement.


Paradigm change of watershed management towards participative management brings consequences in the involvement of stakeholders in the decision-making process. While on one hand it can increase the social legitimacy of various watershed management policies and activities, the involvement of many stakeholders on the other hand may delay the achievement of consensus and reconciliation of interests. This study aims to examine the influence of social networks built among members of the Central Java Watershed Management Coordination Forum (Forum DAS) on the achievement of consensus with regards to a watershed planning. The research method used agent-based modeling simulation combined with in-depth interview data of forum members. The simulation model was developed using Netlogo 6.02 software. The simulation results show that the structure of the established communications network at this time has not been able to facilitate in the achievement of consensus, but tends to create formation of opinion polarization.


OBJECTIVE Insulin resistance and obesity are independently associated with type 1 diabetes (T1D) and are known risk factors for cardiovascular and kidney diseases, the leading causes of death in T1D. We evaluated the effect of BMI on cardiovascular and kidney outcomes in youth with T1D versus control youth with normal weight or obesity and youth with type 2 diabetes (T2D). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Pubertal youth (n = 284) aged 12–21 years underwent assessments of resting heart rate (RHR), systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP), leptin, hs-CRP, adiponectin, ratio of urine albumin to creatinine, and estimated glomerular filtration rate. Participants with T1D underwent bicycle ergometry for VO2peak, monitoring for peripheral brachial artery distensibility (BAD), endothelial function testing for reactive hyperemic index, and aortic MRI for central arterial stiffness or shear. RESULTS In adolescents with T1D, RHR, SBP, DBP, mean arterial pressure, leptin, hs-CRP, and hypertension prevalence were significantly higher, and BAD, descending aorta pulse wave velocity, and VO2peak lower with an obese versus normal BMI. Although hypertension prevalence and RHR were highest in obese adolescents with T1D and adiponectin lowest in youth with T2D, other measures were similar between obese adolescents with T1D and those with T2D. CONCLUSIONS Obesity, now increasingly prevalent in people with T1D, correlates with a less favorable cardiovascular and kidney risk profile, nearly approximating the phenotype of youth with T2D. Focused lifestyle management in youth-onset T1D is critically needed to reduce cardiovascular risk.


Some fluctuations in the output power of a copper vapor laser with a 16 mm bore were recorded by varying the excitation frequency from 13 to 33 kHz. The effect arises from the laser tube, which performs both as an optical and an acoustic resonator at the acoustic resonant frequencies. It is shown that a similar effect occurs in other metal vapor and copper halide lasers as well.


Nowadays human activities are incoming at a digitalization stage. The introduction of information technology along with new forms of communication, influence a variety of forms of human action and focus mainly on the integration and the convergence of the digital and physical worlds. The use of more intelligent – electronic solutions, improves the lives of people around the world, according to studies carried out on the ingress of new smart technologies. Artificial and Ambient intelligence nowadays getting more and more attention about the development of smart, digital environments. The Smart Cities designed for All must aim to arrange the disparity in cities through smart technology, making cities both smart and accessible to a range of users regardless of their abilities or disabilities. The birth of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) has facilitated the complex computations for reality simulation the new communication era of wireless 5G, all combined have given the hope for a new and better future, to reverse disability to empower the humans with more capabilities, to be faster than they can ever be, stronger than they can ever dream. This paper provides an overview of Ambient Intelligence and smart environments, as well as how technological advancements will benefit everyday usage by devices in common spaces such as homes or offices, and how they will interact and serve as a part of an intelligent ecosystem by bringing together resources such as networks, sensors, human-computer interfaces, pervasive computing, and so on.


The performance and combustion emissions of diesel engine can be modified using various chemical fuel additives. Fuel additives consist of a variety of chemical compounds. It contains chemical elements such as: hydrocarbons, C11-C14, C10-C13, n-alkanes, isoalkanes, cyclics aromatics, cycloalkane, 2-ethylhexyl nitrates. Analysis has been conducted on diesel fuel and diesel fuel and additives blends. Fuel additives No.1, No.2 and No.3 consisting of these chemical elements have been analysed. The obtained results show, that the amounts of carbon monoxide emissions at low engine loads (IMEP = 0.32 MPa) increases up to 35% compared to pure diesel fuel. While using additives, the hydrocarbons emissions at low engine loads almost doubles compared to pure diesel fuel. The break specific fuel consumption with the engine powered by pure diesel fuel was lowest in all modes. The highest increase on in cylinder pressure 11% was only determined with the fuel additive No.3 at the maximum load of 1.12 MPa at the speed of 1800 rpm.


Detection of fractures in bedrock, which is essential for hazardous waste site evaluation and for modeling of local ground-water flow in fractured terranes, is difficult where exposure is poor, but may be accomplished using a newly developed method based on soil gas analysis. This method is based upon the accumulation of thermogenic gas in soil above open bedrock fractures. Fractures may provide high permeability pathways through bedrock; if the underlying units contain natural gas, gas will migrate upward through open fractures, producing anomalously high methane concentrations in the soil above. Over ten thousand soil gas analyses from western New York demonstrated that fractures of the Clarendon-Linden Fault System could be traced with soil gas analyses through an area largely covered with unconsolidated glacial deposits. Interpretation of soil gas anomalies as indicators of underlying fractures was confirmed by correlation with outcrop, well log, seismic, and remote sensing data. Samples were collected at a spacing of 10 m, from a depth of approximately 60 cm, using a stainless steel probe driven with a sledgehammer. Analysis of the 60 cc samples was done on-site with a portable gas chromatograph. Ethane/methane ratios were used to distinguish thermogenic gas from biogenic methane. The excellent correlation of linear soil gas anomalies with mapped fractures suggests that where gas-bearing units underlie an area, soil gas analysis may provide a method of mapping faults and fractures where exposure is too poor for conventional mapping.


Background noise is a significant factor influencing hearing-aid satisfaction and is a major reason for rejection of hearing aids. Attempts have been made by previous researchers to relate the use of hearing aids to speech perception in noise (SPIN), with an expectation of improved speech perception followed by an increased acceptance of hearing aids. Unfortunately, SPIN was not related to hearing-aid use or satisfaction. A new measure of listener reaction to background noise has been proposed. The acceptable noise level (ANL), expressed in decibels, is defined as a difference between the most comfortable listening level for speech and the highest background noise level that is acceptable when listening to and following a story. The ANL measure assumes that speech understanding in noise may not be as important as is the willingness to listen in the presence of noise. It has been established that people who accept background noise have smaller ANLs and tend to be "good" users of hearing aids. Conversely, people who cannot accept background noise have larger ANLs and may only use hearing aids occasionally or reject them altogether. Because this is a new measure, it was important to determine the reliability of the ANL over time with and without hearing aids, to determine the effect of acclimatization to hearing aids, and to compare the ANL to well-established measures such as speech perception scores collected with the SPIN test. Results from 50 listeners indicate that for both good and occasional hearing aid users, the ANL is comparable in reliability to the SPIN test and that both measures do not change with acclimatization. The ANLs and SPIN scores are unrelated. Although the SPIN scores improve with amplification, the ANLs are unaffected by amplification, suggesting that the ANL is inherent to an individual and can be established prior to hearing aid fitting as a possible predictor of hearing-aid use.


Soft-tissue tumours and soft-tissue sarcomas are different in children and in adults, and therapy varies significantly according to histology, age and stage of disease. The most common soft-tissue sarcoma in children, rhabdomyosarcoma, can be cured in about 60% of cases by a combined therapy involving surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. All children with soft-tissue sarcomas should be treated according to multi-center treatment protocols and should be referred to specialized oncology units. Modern diagnostic techniques and new treatment modalities will increase our knowledge and further raise the cure rate.


This paper examines whether variations in national culture at the business-unit level of multi-business firms that operate internationally trigger adjustments in the corporate management control and incentive systems (MCISs) to fit local business-unit circumstances. Although the results show that selected MCIS characteristics are attuned to business-unit national culture, further analysis of multi-level data reveal small business-unit effects relative to corporate effects. The presence of dominant corporate effects suggests that MCISs tend to be uniformly implemented within firms, rather than to reflect local business-unit conditions.


This paper examines a probable effect of integrated reporting on improving the audit quality of organizations. I correlate the hypothesis of this paper in relation to the current trends of protecting the economies, the financial markets and the societies. I predict an improvement of the audit quality, as a result to an estimated percentage of organizations' reliance on the integrated reporting in their accountability perspective. I used a decision tree and a Bayes' theorem approach, to predict the probabilities of the significant effect on improving the auditing quality. I find the overall result of this paper, indicates that the probability of organizations to rely on the integrated reporting by a significant percentage, predicts also a significant improvement in audit quality.


Results of a day treatment program tailored to psychiatrically disturbed truant adolescents were compared to those of traditional outpatient treatment for effects on truancy, psychiatric symptoms, global improvement, and global functioning. Significantly greater reductions of truancy were found in the day treatment program, along with significantly greater improvement in the other factors measured.


Frequency and intensity of floods and droughts are increased across the world due to global climate change. However, the responses of water quality in urban and non-urban areas to extreme weather events are not well understood. The heavy and extensive precipitation during the summer of 2011 and 2012 caused two severe floods in Beijing of China. This work evaluated the impacts of these two floods on the water quality of 10 urban lakes, 3 non-urban reservoirs, and 8 non-urban rivers through comparing the pre-flood and post-flood water quality as well as those in reference period (2006 ~ 2010). Results indicated that the lagging response of water quality to flood is more significant in non-urban areas than the urban areas. In addition, comprehensive pollutant index (CPI) during the first flood period in most sites were much higher than the reference values with the average increasing rate of 46%. The values of chemical and biological oxygen demand were elevated in most sites; total nitrogen in the non-urban areas and total phosphorous in the urban areas were higher than those in the reference period. The different responses of nitrogen and phosphorus to the flood events of the two areas were mainly due to the high nitrogen contents in non-urban soils and high phosphorus contents in the urban soils. Whereas, most pollutant concentrations during the second flood period were lower than the first flood period, or even lower than the reference period. This can be explained by that the first flood, belonging to the post-drought flood, scoured the land surface and brought plenty of pollutants into the aquatic environments, and the non-point source pollution caused by the second flood was less effective and mainly reflected as dilution effect. This study suggests that the response of surface water quality to floods caused by climate change will differ between urban and non-urban areas, as well as among different flood events.


The sonographic 3-vessel view (3VV) of the fetal heart provides a transverse orthogonal image of the fetal upper mediastinum that allows assessment of great artery asymmetry during fetal development. A number of studies have demonstrated that the fetal ascending aorta (AA) is normally equal to or slightly smaller than the fetal main pulmonary artery (MPA) throughout gestation and that a ratio of AA/MPA greater than 1 may suggest congenital heart disease (CHD). This case study assessed the association of CHD with an AA/MPA ratio above 1 among a series of 2797 fetal echocardiographic examinations performed by the investigators using 3VV sonography. Examination of the 2797 fetal echocardiograms with the 3VV identified 31 fetuses (1.1%) with AA/MPA ratios greater than 1. All 31 had evidence of CHD. Twenty-five (81%) had either tetralogy of Fallot (ToF) or a variant, and 6 (19%) had an aortic valve abnormality or isolated dilatation of the AA. These findings in the largest series reported to date demonstrate that a 3VV AA/MPA ratio of greater than 1 is strongly associated with CHD and indicates the need for a detailed fetal echocardiogram.


Afforestation with Eucalyptus species is increasing in Brazil, but there is little information on the impacts of intensively managed short‐rotation forestry on soil aggregate dynamics and labile organic matter fractions in these tropical ecosystems. This study investigated soil aggregate dynamics in a clay and sandy soil, each with a Eucalyptus plantation and an adjacent primary forest. It is shown that silviculture alters the processes of soil aggregate formation on both soil types. Micro‐aggregates at 0–20 cm depth in the planted clay soil were 40% greater in mass than under native forest, and C and N were reduced by 87 and 75%, respectively. In plantations with a sandy soil, micro‐aggregates had equal mass compared with native forest, but increased in C and N by 20 and 67%, respectively. The results from the sandy soil indicate that C and N increased in micro‐aggregates following afforestation. Macro‐organic matter fractions separated by density had lower mass, C, and N concentrations, and higher C:N ratios only in lower soil profiles, with native forest having greater values in all comparisons with light and medium fractions. The differences in micro‐aggregate C and N and in the light and medium macro‐organic matter fractions between the upper and lower soil profiles in both soils, indicate that silvicultural management had contrasting effects on different soil textures and at different depths. Increased micro‐aggregate protection of C and N in the sandy plantation soil could negatively affect long‐term nutrient cycling although the quantity and quality of light and medium macro‐organic matter fractions did not change between plantation and native forest in the upper soil profile; this indicates that labile OM availability and quality had not been diminished in plantation soils at this depth.


The Struggle for Nature. A Critique of Radical Ecology. ? Short outline and extract of the critical ? analytical work of Jozef Keulartz that is focused at review of most influential streams in environmental philosophy. In his book, the autor is mapping philosophical roots of the so called ecological approaches and their social consequences. With regard to holistic concepts, it represents valuable historical perspective and experience of unifying strategies aiming (as a consequence) at establishment of comprehensive and unifying worldview. These turn out to be blind alleys through which the current environmental philosophy could threat communicative power


RATIONALE
The determination of triple oxygen (δ(18)O and δ(17)O) and nitrogen isotopes (δ(15)N) is important when investigating the sources and atmospheric paths of nitrate and nitrite. To fully understand the atmospheric contribution into the terrestrial nitrogen cycle, it is crucial to determine the δ(15)N values of oxidised and reduced nitrogen species in precipitation and dry deposition.

METHODS
In an attempt to further develop non-biotic methods and avoid expensive modifications of the gas-equilibration system, we have combined and modified sample preparation procedures and analytical setups used by other researchers. We first chemically converted NO(3)(-) and NH(4)(+) into NO(2)(-) and then into N(2)O. Subsequently, the resulting gas was decomposed into N(2) and O(2) and analyzed by isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) using a pre-concentration system equipped with a gold reduction furnace.

RESULTS
The δ(17)O, δ(18)O and δ(15)N values of nitrate and nitrite samples were acquired simultaneously in one run using a single analytical system. Most importantly, the entire spectrum of δ(17)O, δ(18)O and/or δ(15)N values was determined from atmospheric nitrate, nitric oxide, ammonia and ammonium. The obtained isotopic values for air and precipitation samples were in good agreement with those from previous studies.

CONCLUSIONS
We have further advanced chemical approaches to sample preparation and isotope analyses of nitrogen-bearing compounds. The proposed methods are inexpensive and easily adaptable to a wide range of laboratory conditions. This will substantially contribute to further studies on sources and pathways of nitrate, nitrite and ammonium in terrestrial nitrogen cycling.


There is great concern that one mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) predisposes individuals to an exacerbated response with a subsequent mTBI. Although no mechanism has been identified, mounting evidence suggests traumatic axonal injury (TAI) plays a role in this process. By using a cell culture system, a threshold of mild TAI was found where dynamic stretch of cortical axons at strains lower than 5% induced no overt pathological changes. However, the axons were found to display an increased expression of sodium channels (NaChs) by 24 hr. After a second, identical mild injury, pathologic increases in [Ca2+]i were observed, leading to axon degeneration. The central role of NaChs in this response was demonstrated by blocking NaChs with tetrodotoxin prior to the second injury, which completely abolished postinjury increases in [Ca2+]i. These data suggest that mild TAI induces a form of sodium channelopathy on axons that greatly exaggerates the pathophysiologic response to subsequent mild injuries. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


AbstractThe use of vascularized composite allografts allows for the reconstruction of complex scenarios that previously have required multistaged operations. Heart transplantation often follows a series of previous operations leading to chest wall deformities and significant mediastinal adhesions that can limit the use of larger hearts, making it difficult to find a suitable donor. Further, research has shown that the use of vascularized bone marrow and vascularized thymus in transplantation potentially prolongs graft survival with decreased immunosuppression requirements. The authors propose using a vascularized composite allograft of the chest wall consisting of sternum and thymus in conjunction with the heart for cardiac transplantation to allow for more flexibility from the donor pool, maintain chest wall integrity and physiology, and potentially immunoregulate the concomitant solid organ transplant.


A simple and specific high performance thin layer chromatographic method was developed and validated for the determination of nisoldipine from tablet dosage form. The method was carried out at 320 nm after extraction of drug in methanol. The method uses aluminum plates pre-coated with silica gel 60F-254 as stationary phase and cyclohexane-ethyl acetate-toluene (3:3:4, v/v/v) as mobile phase. Linearity was established over a range of 400-2400 ng per zone. Both peak area ratio and peak height ratio showed acceptable correlation coefficient i.e. more than 0.99. However we used peak area for validation purpose. Intra-day and inter-day precision was determined and found to have less than 6.0 % RSD.


Molecular modification of known explosives is considered to be an efficient route to design new energetic materials. A new family of energetic salts based on the 3,5-bis(dinitromethyl)-1,2,4-triazole monoanion and dianion were controllably synthesized by using 1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethene as a precursor. X-ray structure determination of monohydrazinium 3,5-bis(dinitromethyl)-1,2,4-triazolate (5) and monoammonium (6) and diammonium 3,5-bis(dinitromethyl)-1,2,4-triazolate hydrate (8·H2O) further confirmed the structures of these anions. In addition, as supported by X-ray data, in the monoanion system, the roving proton on the ring nitrogen rather than on the gem-dinitro carbon results in extensive hydrogen-bonding interactions and higher packing coefficients. Interestingly, 5 and 6 possess the highest calculated crystal densities, 1.965 and 1.957 g cm(-3) at 150 K, for hydrazinium and ammonium energetic salts, respectively. Energetic evaluation indicates that 5 (detonation velocity vD = 9086 m s(-1); detonation pressure P = 38.7 GPa) and 6 (vD, 9271 m s(-1); P = 41.0 GPa) exhibit great detonation properties, superior to those of current highly explosive benchmarks, such as 1,3,5-trinitroperhydro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) and octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX).