Minor additions of scandium and zirconium alloy can not only improve strength and fracture toughness of the Al–6 Mg alloys, but also transform the age hardening characteristics for structural applications. If this impact were substantial, the enriched Al–6 Mg castings could be a potent material for futuristic transport sector, looking to higher specific strength and abundant availability in Indian/ global scenario.This work reports the effect of scandium and zirconium minor addition on the texture and fracture toughness behavior of aluminium -6magnesium alloy, containing various amount of trace addition. Texture measurement and transmission electron microscopy have revealed that the evolution of texture in cast alloys after annealing is decided by the morphology and character of the precipitates. It is further demonstrated that the improvement in fracture toughness as achieved by the minor addition in Al-6Mg-0.4Sc alloy is due to reduction of the in-plane anisotropy which is secured by a favorable precipitate morphology.


Nearly all facilities that store hazardous (radioactive or non-radioactive) materials must comply with prevailing federal, state, and local laws. These laws usually have components that require periodic physical inspections to insure that all materials remain safely and securely stored. The inspections are generally labor intensive, slow, put personnel at risk, and only find anomalies after they have occurred. The system described in this paper was developed for monitoring stored nuclear materials resulting from weapons dismantlement, but its applications extend to any storage facility that meets the above criteria. The traditional special nuclear material (SNM) accountability programs, that are currently used within most of the Department of Energy (DOE) complex, require the physical entry of highly trained personnel into SNM storage vaults. This imposes the need for additional security measures, which typically mandate that extra security personnel be present while SNM inventories are performed. These requirements increase labor costs and put additional personnel at risk to radiation exposure. In some cases, individuals have received radiation exposure equivalent to the annual maximum during just one inventory verification. With increasing overhead costs, the current system is rapidly becoming too expensive to operate, the need for an automated method of inventory verification is evident. The Continuous Automated Vault Inventory System (CAVIS) described in this paper was designed and prototyped as a low cost, highly reliable, and user friendly system that is capable of providing, real-time weight, gamma. and neutron energy confirmation from each item stored in a SNM vault. This paper describes the sensor technologies, the CAVIS prototype system (built at Y- 12 for highly enriched uranium storage), the technical requirements that must be achieved to assure successful implementation, and descriptions of sensor technologies needed for a plutonium facility.


Context: Metformin therapy for treatment of GDM (Gestational Diabetes Mellitus) is not yet approved by FDA. Objectives: To assess the glycaemic control in women with GDM who received metformin therapy and to know the maternal side-effects and effects on the fetus-neonate. Material and Methods: A preliminary retrospective cohort analysis of 38 women with GDM who received metformin along with dietary advice for control of GDM. The maternal analysis included the time of initiation of metformin therapy, the glycaemic control, the need to add insulin and the side-effects. Fetal outcome analysis included Apgar score at birth, birth weight, neonatal hypoglycaemia, still birth rate and congenital malformations. The goals of glycaemic control were achieved by a pre-prandial Blood sugar of 60-70 mg%; post prandial blood sugar of 120-140mg%. Results: The mean age was 27.5 years and gestational age at diagnosis and initiation of metformin therapy was 24 weeks and 3 days. Twenty-four percent were diagnosed during first trimester. Ninety percent achieved glycaemic control with a dose of 1500 mg of metformin. Ten percent required an increment in dose up to 2250 mg and an addition of small dose of insulin only after 35 weeks of gestation. The mean birth weight was 3.12 kg and 13% were LGA. There were no cases of maternal or neonatal hypoglycaemia and no stillbirths, congenital anomalies or neonatal deaths. Conclusion: Metformin therapy resulted in optimum control of blood sugar in most of the women with GDM without any significant side-effects in the mother or in the fetus-neonate.


In this article, we bring together two distinct ethnographic cases of capitalist production—food producers in northern Italy and Asian American advertising executives in New York City—to illustrate how these producers use language and materiality to produce value in global capitalism. Taken together, the cases illustrate how contemporary capitalist producers utilize particular notions of ethnolinguistic heritage in ways that reflect group-specific values and enable economic profitability in globalizing economies. We consider the work that producers do to construct authenticity by identifying the links they create among and across linguistic and material elements. Whether the product in question is a locally crafted salami or a car commercial aimed at Chinese Americans, constructing authenticity is a complex process that is not assured of success but that is driven by various possibilities of reward. Noting the ways in which authenticity construction seldom goes unchallenged, we consider producers' linguistic and material work to create authentic goods against those who question and contest their efforts. In so doing, we examine broader implications of this capitalist production and contribute to literature on global capitalism, commodity creation, brand, and relationships between language and materiality.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the clinical curative effect of the endonasal transsphenoidal approach for removing pituitary adenoma (PA) under neuroendoscope-assisted.

METHODS
There were 215 patients who had undergone neuroendoscopic transsphenoidal surgery. Each patient received CT or MRI examination which showed the size and surrounding structural of tumor.

RESULTS
Among the 215 patients, 190 cases (88.4%) had total removal, 17 cases (7.9%) achieved subtotal removal and the remaining 8 cases (3.7%) with fibrous tumor was carried out partial removal. Two patients (0.9%) died after operation. Postoperative follow-up period was 1 to 10 months (the average was 3.5 months). In 182 patients, 150 cases (90.9%) got vision recovered rapidly compared with their preoperative symptoms, such as diminished acuities and visual field defects, and 15 cases (9.1%) had gotten improvements to some extend among 165 who diagnosed as pituitary macroadenoma (PMaA); There were 17 patients who diagnosed as microadenoma (PMiA) showed that the pituitary dyshormonism recovered gradually.

CONCLUSIONS
The endonasal transsphenoidal surgery under the neuroendoscope-assisted appears to be a safe, effective and micro-invasive method for PA.


The authors develop distributed algorithms for joint end-to-end rate control and resource (e.g., subcarrier, power) allocation in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based wireless mesh networks. These algorithms allow spatial reuse where the same subcarrier can be used for simultaneous transmissions on different links as long as they weakly interfere with each other. The subcarrier allocation algorithm is based on routing information and a novel definition of interference sets and it aims at providing fair transmission rate among traffic flows in an end-to-end basis. The joint rate and power control is treated as a network utility maximization problem considering interference of simultaneous transmissions on the same subcarrier with node power constraint. The numerical results confirm the convergence of the joint rate and power control algorithm and show that fair end-to-end transmission is achieved. With the distributed radio resource management framework developed in this paper, a proper spatial reuse can be done to achieve good system throughput performance.


The arid regions of China include Mongolian-Xinjiang warm-temperate arid region and Qinghai-Xizang frigid arid region, located in western China, host 120 species of small mammals including Largomorpha and Rodentia. We collected all of the available distributional data for these species in these regions. Based on GIS models of species range which were predicted by a wildlife-habitat model, we researched the distribution patterns of rodent diversity there. A total of 766 equal-area quadrangle grids that each had an area of 6,470 square kilometers were used as geographic units to collect distributional data of the species, supported by MapInfo Professional Version 4.0. Based on these grid data we obtained the number of genera and families, and calculated the small mammal species diversity of genera and families by Shannon-Winner index and G-F index. In order to explain the species differentiation tendency of small mammals, we introduced number ratios of species to genera and of genera to families as differentiation indices. The results indicate that more genera occurred in mountains around the Junggar Basin, Qilian Mountains, Helan Mountains and the west slopes of Da Hinggan Mountains, where species richness was higher, as might be explained by an edge effect. In contrast, richness was least on the Ordos Plateau and Zhangbei Plateau. There were more families on the south slopes of the Altay Mountains, Tianshan Mountains of Ili and East Qilian Mountains, but fewer on the Ordos Plateau and Zhangbei Plateau. High species diversity often occurred in ecotones such as those among or between frigid desert and warm-temperate desert, desert and mountains, plateaus and basins, desert and steppes, and mountains and steppes. In the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, number ratios of genera to families were much lower than in the Mongolian-Xinjiang region. In contrast,, there were higher ratios of species to genera in the former region. The G-F index was higher in Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, where a great species differentiation was implied. Since small mammals can be used as indicators of biodiversity, the distributional patterns of their species diversity could be helpful for assessment of biodiversity in arid regions of West China.


In this work an intracavity adaptive system for controlling the radiation of a CW YAG:Nd3+ laser is proposed. Two types of correctors were worked out: a tilt corrector and a bimorph flexible mirror (BFM) .The system permits to reduce by three times laser beam divergence, to decrease by ten times the power instability and to form various output intensity distributions.
Parameters of a laser beam depend on different intracavity distortions. In the majority of cases these distortions act as pure phase ones: fluctuations of refractive index of active medium, thermal mirror deformations etc. This distorts the spatial distribution of the radiation intensity and increase the beam divergence. Placing an electronically controlled mirror into cavity one can reduce such undesirebale effects, influence the geometry of the generated modes and suppress the output power fluctuations.
In this work we used two types of adaptive mirrors: a tilt corrector and a BFM. Our first task was to stabilize output power of the CWYAG.'Nd3+laser both 1,064? and second harmonic (0,53?) radiation. For this purpose COAT feedback with simple tilt corrector was used. The main results were -10 times reduction instability of 1,064? radiation and 15 times - 0,53? radiation. The YAG:Nd3+ laser was employed as an example to show the possible correction of the lower aberrations of a thermal lens by the 17 electrode BFM1. Under the laser pump current variation from 10 to 34 A the fivefold compensation for the thermal lens astigmatism and other aberrations was obtained. For enlarging the laser beam on BFM we proposed a resonator shown on Fig. 1. As expanding lens we used the end of the active
element (AE) with meniscus. Our BFM differed from the one used in Ref. 1 because it had the form of a concave mirror even without any applied voltage to the electrodes. On the Fig. 2 we show the possibility to reduce the laser beam divergence choosing the voltage on BFM electrodes. Output laser beam profile in the multymode regime of generation is shown by curve 1. Curve 2 on Fig. 2 demonstrates the possibility of threefold reduction of laser beam divergence by the intracavity BFM. Also the experimental results of intracavity formation of radiation spatial structure were obtained. Intracavity phase correction made it possible to influence the output near-field and far-field radiation intensity distribution.


Power semiconductor devices for electric power conversion must be able to operate at high temperatures and with high levels of reliability. Therefore, heat resistance and long fatigue lifetime are necessary for the solder joints of these devices. In this paper, we discuss the mechanical properties and the thermal cycling lifetime evaluation of a Sn-Sb binary alloy whose melting temperature can be controlled relatively, and which has excellent high temperature properties. Tensile tests are conducted to determine how the reliability of solder joints using the Sn-Sb alloy is affected by the amount of Sb. We used a Sn-13 wt.% Sb binary alloy as the joint material of a power semiconductor device and investigated the thermal cycling lifetime of the solder joint. It was clarified that the tensile strength of the Sn-Sb binary alloy is proportional to the Sb content and the thermal cycling lifetime increases with increasing tensile strength of the solder. The precipitation strengthening of a SbSn compound leads to improvement of the tensile strength and thermal cycling lifetime.


Although the state of Santa Catarina has little variation in latitude, it presents significant spatial variations in its climate. Wind is considered an important meteorological variable, but it is not intensively studied and there is a shortage of information on this subject in the region of Santa Catarina. Thus, the objective of this article was to analyze the behavior of the winds in five regions of the state, with different aspects. For that, daily data from National Institute of Meteorology of direction and speed of the winds were used from 1974 to 2016. The conventional meteorological stations used were: Chapecó, Campos Novos, Lages, Indaial and Florianópolis. Regarding wind speed, Florianópolis and Campos Novos registered the highest speeds during the whole year. In the analysis of wind direction, the prevalence of South Atlantic subtropical anticyclone was observed in most of the year in Forianópolis (circulation going north), Lages and Campos Novos (turning northeast) and Chapecó (predominant wind direction in the este). For Indaial, the prevalence was the effect of the valley-mountain breeze.


The title compound, poly[[diaqua-1κ(2)O-tetrakis(μ3-pyridine-2,3-dicarboxylato)-2:1:2'κ(10)N,O(2):O(2'),O(3):O(3');2:1:2'κ(8)O(3):O(3'):N,O(2)-diiron(III)strontium(II)] dihydrate], {[Fe2Sr(C7H3O4)4(H2O)2]·2H2O}n, which has triclinic (P-1) symmetry, was prepared by the reaction of pyridine-2,3-dicarboxylic acid, SrCl2·6H2O and Fe(OAc)2(OH) (OAc is acetate) in the presence of imidazole in water at 363 K. In the crystal structure, the pyridine-2,3-dicarboxylate (pydc(2-)) ligand exhibits μ3-η(1),η(1):η(1):η(1) and μ3-η(1),η(1):η(1),η(1):η(1) coordination modes, bridging two Fe(III) cations and one Sr(II) cation. The Sr(II) cation, which is located on an inversion centre, is eight-coordinated by six O atoms of four pydc(2-) ligands and two water molecules. The coordination geometry of the Sr(II) cation can be best described as distorted dodecahedral. The Fe(III) cation is six-coordinated by O and N atoms of four pydc(2-) ligands in a slightly distorted octahedral geometry. Each Fe(III) cation bridges two neighbouring Fe(III) cations to form a one-dimensional [Fe2(pydc)4]n chain. The chains are connected by Sr(II) cations to form a three-dimensional framework. The topology type of this framework is tfj. The structure displays O-H...O and C-H...O hydrogen bonding.


Abstract DiGeorge syndrome is a rare spectrum of disorder affecting structures derived from third and fourth pharyngeal pouches characterised by aplasia or hypoplasia of thymus and parathyroid glands, and conotruncal anomalies. Presentation includes infants with hypocalcemic seizures, CHD, or recurrent infection. This case report illustrates a unique combination of proximal interruption of right pulmonary artery and aberrant right subclavian artery in a 3-month-old infant who was subsequently diagnosed as DiGeorge syndrome. This constellation of vascular anomalies in an infant with DiGeorge syndrome has not been previously reported in the literature.


We study the dynamics of momentum entanglement generated in the lowest-order QED interaction between two massive spin-1/2 charged particles, which grows in time as the two fermions exchange virtual photons. We observe that the degree of generated entanglement between interacting particles with initial well-defined momentum can be infinite. We explain this divergence in the context of entanglement theory for continuous variables, and show how to circumvent this apparent paradox. Finally, we discuss two different possibilities of transforming momentum into spin entanglement, through dynamical operations or through Lorentz boosts.


ABSTRACT: Increased Na+/H+ exchanger activity is associated with cellular hyperplasia. Cellular hyperplasia is an adaptive response to small-intestinal resection. Therefore, we hypothesized that the small-intestinal Na+/H+ exchanger activity increases in response to small-intestinal resection. Twenty-one-d-old, male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided to receive either a 70% small intestinal resection (n = 59), or a mid-small intestinal transection (n = 49). Seven d postoperatively, the animals were killed and the Na+/H+ exchanger activity of the intestinal remnants was studied by a well validated brush border membrane vesicle technique. The initial rate of Na+ uptake in the presence of an outwardly directed pH gradient and the Vmax of the amiloride-sensitive Na+ uptake were significantly increased (p < 0.01 and p < 0.001, respectively) in the resection as compared with the transection remnants and to a greater magnitude in the distal as compared with the proximal remnants. Km values were not significantly different. The amiloride-sensitive Na+ uptake in the setting of various intravesicular pH was significantly greater (p < 0.001) in the distal resection as compared with the distal transection remnants, with points of enhanced Na+/H+ exchanger activity of intravesicular pH 6.62 and 6.87, respectively. The presence and activation of the Na+/H+ exchanger's internal modifier site was confirmed by demonstrating the effect of intravesicular pH on Na+ efflux. The present study demonstrates an up-regulation of intestinal Na+/H+ exchange activity in a small-bowel resection model in the weanling rat. This adaptive increase in Na+/H+ exchange activity is secondary to an increase in the Vmax of the intestinal Na+/H+ exchanger and is associated with a shift in the sensitivity of its internal modifier site. This adaptive response may play a role in the cellular hyperplasia in small-bowel resection


A cross section study was conducted in Morogoro Municipality to assess microbial contamination in beef production chain from abattoir to retail meat shops during February to May, 2012. Questionnaire on abattoir and meat shop hygiene was administered to 60 respondents. Meat, meat in-contact surface swab and water samples at the abattoir (n=36) and 14 meat shops (n=56) were analyzed for Total Viable Counts (TVC), Total Coliform Counts (TCC) and Total Faecal Coliform Counts (TFC). It was found that the respondents had not attended to any training on meat hygiene, had no protective gears and do not perform regular health examination. The infrastructure appeared obsolete. Carcasses and meat handling environment at abattoir and retail meat shops were in unhygienic condition. Water was scarce in the abattoir and meat shops. Water analysis showed heavy microbial contamination (mean TVC log 5.2±0.3). All the meat and meat in-contact surfaces were at different levels of microbial contamination and were beyond FAO recommendations. The mean TVC in meat was Log 7.2±1 cfu/g with the highest count (Log 7.24±1.3 cfu/g) recorded in samples from meat shops. The mean TVC on meat in-contact surfaces was Log 6±1.3 cfu/cm2 while mean TCC and TFC in meat were Log 6.1±1.6 and 5.9±1.7 cfu/g respectively. High microbiological loads in meat indicate gross contaminations along the whole meat value chain and pose potential risks for public health. Results obtained in this study provide information to the local government authorities and all stakeholders in the meat industry for proper management of the abattoir, retail meat shops and personnel; outlines key aspects for interventions and suggests future developments to prevent health risks associated with handling and consumption of contaminated meat. Keywords : Abattoir, retail meat shops, meat in-contact surfaces, microbial contamination


The transverse acetabular ligament (TAL) is an anatomical landmark that is of particular use during primary total hip replacements (THR). Visualisation is important to aid the orientation of the acetabular cup and it is a structure that can be identified in virtually every primary hip replacement surgery. We introduce a simple technique to facilitate this.

 A thoracic suction catheter is taped to the distal end of a blunt Hohmann's retractor with two steristrips wrapping around the catheter and retractor leaving approximately 1-1.5cm of retractor exposed. Our preference is for a thoracic suction catheter with side holes and a proximal end which allows direct connection with the tip of the Yankauer suction. The blunt Hohmann's retractor is used as the inferior acetabular retractor in the usual way, placed inferior to the transverse acetabular ligament, resting on the posterior ischial surface. The catheter suction tip should lie just under the TAL, in the most dependant point of the wound.

 The TAL suction catheter can be used continuously or intermittently to facilitate visualisation of the TAL during reaming, trialling, and acetabular cup placement. The TAL suction retractor provides suction in the most dependant point of the surgical wound, preventing unnecessary movement and facilitates a clutter-free surgical field leading to more streamlined and efficient surgery with potential reduced operative times.

 The transverse acetabular ligament (TAL) suction retractor is a simple improvised surgical tool that makes it easier to visualise the TAL during acetabular preparation in total hip replacements.


Introduction: The United States has made recent large investments in creating data infrastructures to support the important goals of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and comparative effectiveness research (CER), with still more investment planned. These initial investments, while critical to the creation of the infrastructures, are not expected to sustain them much beyond the initial development. To provide the maximum benefit, the infrastructures need to be sustained through innovative financing models while providing value to PCOR and CER researchers. Sustainability Factors: Based on our experience with creating flexible sustainability strategies (i.e., strategies that are adaptive to the different characteristics and opportunities of a resource or infrastructure), we define specific factors that are important considerations in developing a sustainability strategy. These factors include assets, expansion, complexity, and stakeholders. Each factor is described, with examples of how it is applied. These factors are dimensions of variation in different resources, to which a sustainability strategy should adapt. Summary Observations: We also identify specific important considerations for maintaining an infrastructure, so that the long-term intended benefits can be realized. These observations are presented as lessons learned, to be applied to other sustainability efforts. We define the lessons learned, relating them to the defined sustainability factors as interactions between factors. Conclusion and Next Steps: Using perspectives and experiences from a diverse group of experts, we define broad characteristics of sustainability strategies and important observations, which can vary for different projects. Other descriptions of adaptive, flexible, and successful models of collaboration between stakeholders and data infrastructures can expand this framework by identifying other factors for sustainability, and give more concrete directions on how sustainability can be best achieved.


Augustine's concept of the deep self provides a basis for a complex and many‐faceted account of critical thinking. He uncovers the moral sources of thinking in the inner depths of the self and shows that critical thinking presupposes radical self‐reflection ready to face the truth about oneself. Self‐knowledge assumes transparency, consciousness of the corrupt desires and prejudices that distort one's thinking. Unresolved guilt endangers transparency and thereby makes it difficult to become aware of the vices distorting one's perspective on reality. That is why human beings need divine grace that gives them the courage to face their corruption. For Augustine, the problem of critical thinking is part of a larger problem about how the human self and identity are formed, which factors influence the process, and how a person comes to know herself. Augustine writes an open account of his life in order to clarify this problem. His intention is to make sense of the nature of his self by thinking carefully who he is and how he became who he is. Augustine seeks to find an answer to this question both philosophically and autobiographically, by analysing the factors that influenced the formation of his own identity and the development of his self‐knowledge and by reflecting philosophically on the nature of these influences. Reason is one essential part of the human soul. Since God has given reason to human beings, it must have a purpose. Augustine seeks to clarify this purpose by reflecting on fundamental epistemological questions: What is knowledge and where does it come from? What is the relationship of human reason to knowledge? How can one reach ultimate knowledge? According to Augustine, human reason and perception have been formed to acquire knowledge about reality. If God had not made human reason and perception fitting for their task, knowledge would be completely unattainable. Since God has made human reason capable of acquiring reliable knowledge, reason has an important task in the spiritual development of human beings. It is especially useful when trying to make clear conceptual distinctions. Reason does not, however, function independently of the will and the emotions. For reason to acquire a reliable grasp on reality and to understand things properly, the human heart must love the truth, the good and the right sufficiently to face its own prejudices and to gain self‐knowledge. Critical thinking has, therefore, certain crucial preconditions, according to Augustine. The aim of this article is to clarify the structure of these preconditions. (1) In order to think critically, one has to distinguish between how reality appears to one and how it is in fact. (2) There is a close connection between willing and thinking, between one's deepest desires and one's view on reality. (3) One cannot distinguish reality from appearances unless one realizes how corrupt desires and prejudices distort one's perspective on reality. (4) In order to be able to face one's evil desires and become conscious of their distorting influence, one needs the courage to face one's depravity. Such a courage presupposes God's grace and his promise of forgiveness, since without divine grace human beings try to cover up the truth about themselves and remain unconscious of the distorting influence of their evil desires. (5) One needs a source of light that enlightens the deep recesses of the self and shows it in the true light but is yet external to the human being and independent of him. (6) This source of inner light has to be of a personal nature to provide the learner with the possibility of inner dialogue. Augustine assumes that God is the inner teacher of every human being. A crucial factor in the development of critical thinking is that one becomes more dialogically engaged with the inner teacher.


We study a model of endogenous means testing where households differ in their income and where the in-kind transfer received by each household declines with income. Majority voting determines the two dimensions of public policy: the size of the welfare program and the means-testing rate. We establish the existence of a sequential majority voting equilibrium and show that the means-testing rate increases with the size of the program but the fraction and the identity of the households receiving the transfers are independent of the program size. Furthermore, the set of subsidy recipients does not depend on households' preferences, but depends only on income heterogeneity.


Parameters of mathematical models are most often represented by real numbers, while in practice it is impossible or at least very difficult to get reliable information about their exact values. Hence, it is unreasonable to take point data for that may lead to incorrect results, which is not welcome especially when inaccuracy cannot be neglected. Depending on available information, one can use different ways of modelling of uncertainty. Interval computing plays an important role in this field, because very often the only available information are lower and upper bounds on a physical quantity. This paper focuses on a transient dynamic analysis of a beam with uncertain parameters. Finite difference and finite element methods are used to solve partial differential equation which represents the model for the motion of a straight elastic beam. In order to compute the time-history response of the beam under uncertainty, interval dynamic beam equations are solved using Search method, Gradient method, Taylor method, adaptive Taylor method, direct optimisation and Direct method for solving parametric interval linear systems. The applicability, i.e. effectiveness and accuracy, of those methods is illustrated through solution of beams with interval value of modulus of elasticity and mass density and subjected to interval dynamic loading.


Abstract The presence of vector-borne pathogens of veterinary and public health interest have received little attention in Chile. In Easter Island, in particular, a Chilean territory in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, no information is available. To fill this gap, 153 rural dogs were inspected for ectoparasites during a sterilization campaign carried out in 2016. Fleas were observed in 46% of the dogs, and Ctenocephalides felis (Bouché, 1835) was the only species present. Morphological identification of fleas was genetically confirmed using conventional polymerase chain reaction targeting the cox2 gene. No tick was observed in any dog. The presence of DNA of Rickettsia sp. (gltA and ompA fragment genes), Anaplasmataceae (16S rRNA), and Bartonella sp. (16S-23S ribosomal RNA intergenic spacer) was investigated in blood samples of 70 of the dogs and in 126 fleas analyzed in 68 pools that included 1–5 fleas. Rickettsial DNA was detected in 97% (n = 66) of the flea pools. Of these, 57 showed between 99 and 100% identity for both genes with published sequences of Candidatus Rickettsia asemboensis (CRa), six with Rickettsia felis, and one with Candidatus Rickettsia senegalensis. For two pools, gltA amplicons were identical to CRa but ompB amplicions showed 99–100% identity with R. felis. Anaplasmataceae DNA was detected in 16% (n = 11) pools. Sequenced amplicons showed highest identity with the endosymbiont Wolbachia pipientis. Bartonella DNA, showing 99% identity to Bartonella clarridgeiae, was detected in one pool (1.4%). No positive reaction was observed for any dog. This is the first detection of members of the 'R. felis-like' group other than R. felis in Chile.


OBJECTIVE
To explore the role of inhibitory KIR (iKIR) and its cognate HLA ligand in the occurrence and development of cervical cancer among ethnic Han Chinese and its potential mechanism.

METHODS
Peripheral blood samples from 265 Han Chinese patients with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN)/cervical cancer and 200 ethnically matched healthy controls were collected. The results of KIR PCR-SSP, HLA PCR-rSSO and KIR3DL1 PCR-SBT, together with cervical cancer data from the TCGA database, were used to assess the association of iKIR genes, receptor-ligand gene combinations, iKIR transcription level in the tumor tissue and the KIR3DL1 alleles with the occurrence and development of cervical cancer.

RESULTS
Among the four iKIR genes (KIR2DL1, 2DL2/3, 3DL1 and 3DL2), the frequencies of KIR3DL1 and KIR3DL1-HLA-Bw4 genes among controls were significantly higher than those of the cervical cancer group (96.5% vs. 87.0%, P = 0.018; 81.5% vs. 64.8%, P=0.009). The survival rate of cervical cancer patients with a high transcription level of KIR3DL1 in tumor tissues was significantly higher than those with a low/medium transcription level (P=0.028). The frequency of strong-inhibitory and high-expression KIR3DL1*01502 allele among the healthy population was significantly higher than that of the cervical cancer group (76.0% vs. 59.3%, P =0.015).

CONCLUSION
Combined KIR3DL1 and KIR3DL1-HLA-Bw4 can confer a protective effect against the development of cervical cancer, which may be attributed to the strong-inhibitory and high-expression allele of KIR3DL1*01502.


Using multisets, we develop novel techniques for mechanizing the proofs of the synthesis conjectures for list-sorting algorithms, and we demonstrate them in the Theorema system. We use the classical principle of extracting the algorithm as a set of rewrite rules based on the witnesses found in the proof of the synthesis conjecture produced from the specification of the desired function (input and output conditions). The proofs are in natural style, using standard rules, but most importantly domain specific inference rules and strategies. In particular the use of multisets allows us to develop powerful strategies for the synthesis of arbitrarily structured recursive algorithms by general Noetherian induction, as well as for the automatic generation of the specifications of all necessary auxiliary functions (insert, merge, split), whose synthesis is performed using the same method.


This study aims to contribute to a better understanding about the specificities of different crowdfunding areas in attracting the supporters' attention. Using data from the largest Portuguese platform, PPL, the study compares the determinants of success of the crowdfunding campaigns in two different areas: Music and Sports. The conceptual model is based on a multiple regression specified in a multiplicative way, which is estimated under the assumption that the project is financed. The results show that the success determinants are different according to the crowdfunding area. In the area of Music, the key factors that contribute positively to the success of financing a project are the number of views per project and the level of requested amount per project. In the area of Sports, the factors that explain the success are the number of images per project, the runtime project and being connected online by Facebook and the factors that explain its failure are the time period to launch a project: failure occurs more often for projects launched by March/April or September/October. These results show the importance of specifying properly the management of a campaign and the network management by crowdfunding area and should give rise to new studies for different industries and in different geographic contexts.


Fibrosis is a condition shared by numerous inflammatory diseases. Our incomplete understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying fibrosis has severely hampered effective drug development. CXCL4 is associated with the onset and extent of fibrosis development in multiple inflammatory and fibrotic diseases. Here, we used monocyte-derived cells as a model system to study the effects of CXCL4 exposure on dendritic cell development by integrating 65 longitudinal and paired whole genome transcriptional and methylation profiles. Using data-driven gene regulatory network analyses, we demonstrate that CXCL4 dramatically alters the trajectory of monocyte differentiation, inducing a novel pro-inflammatory and pro-fibrotic phenotype mediated via key transcriptional regulators including CIITA. Importantly, these pro-inflammatory cells directly trigger a fibrotic cascade by producing extracellular matrix molecules and inducing myofibroblast differentiation. Inhibition of CIITA mimicked CXCL4 in inducing a pro-inflammatory and pro-fibrotic phenotype, validating the relevance of the gene regulatory network. Our study unveils that CXCL4 acts as a key secreted factor driving innate immune training and forming the long-sought link between inflammation and fibrosis.


The authors are grateful to Prof. Kogan for calling to their attention the work in (Kogan, 1980), of which they were unaware. The approach he describes may have an advantage over their approach, since it appears that it requires less numerical work to formulate the set of simultaneous equations to be solved. They also thank Prof. Kogan for pointing out the need to select the proper branch in the TMoi case; in the higher order cases, we believe that the optimization should, in principle, find the minimum solution to Fano's equations.


It is known that the Entropy Power Inequality (EPI) always holds if the random variables have density. Not much work has been done to identify discrete distributions for which the inequality holds with the differential entropy replaced by the discrete entropy. Harremoës and Vignat showed that it holds for the pair (B(m, p),B(n, p)), m, n ∈ ℕ, (where B(n, p) is a Binomial distribution with n trials each with success probability p) for p = 0.5. In this paper, we considerably expand the set of Binomial distributions for which the inequality holds and, in particular, identify n0(p) such that for all m, n ≥ n0(p), the EPI holds for (B(m, p),B(n, p)). We further show that the EPI holds for the discrete random variables that can be expressed as the sum of n independent and identically distributed (IID) discrete random variables for large n.


Eleven years have passed since, in 1891, I began my observations in the Dolomites, and in proportion as my geological experience has extended, I have been able to take a fuller grasp of the difficulties of that region. Each new paper that I have published marks a stage in advance of its predecessor; and all the facts obtained by me in the Dolomites lead towards the same general result. The paper1 published in 1893 included geological maps of three typical areas in the Dolomites. The map of Dürrenstein mountain (Map C, p. 32) and the sections (Lc. pp. 34 and 35) show that overthrusts and downslips had there taken place with E.N.E.-W.S.W. strike and low inclination towards S.S.E.; and that subsequently the inclined shear-planes and the overthrust and underlaid rock masses had been dragged and displaced by faults directed N.N.E.-S.S.W., N.N.W.-S.S.E., and nearly north-south; the downthrows were on the west of these diagonal and transverse faults, the thrust having acted from E.N.E. (l.c. fig. 9). The map of Falzarego Valley and Cortina (Map B, p. 28) shows a leading fault, curving from W.S.W.-E.N.E. direction to N.E. and N.N.E., and a group of N.N.W., N.W., W.N.W., and west-east faults radial in direction to this curve and intersecting it. In the tectonic chapter I pointed out that the strike of the strata in Falzarego Valley, like the curved fault, veered from an almost east-west direction and dip north to an almost north-south direction and dip west, and that the "bending-round" of the strata


Abstract Background Colorectal endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) can be technically difficult in some situations, such as paradoxical movement of the proximal colon. The double-balloon endoscope provides stable endoscopic maneuvering, even in the small intestine. The aim of this study was to assess the outcomes of balloon-assisted endoscopic submucosal dissection (BAESD) of colonoscopically difficult superficial proximal colon tumors. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the records of patients who underwent BAESD of superficial proximal colon tumors where colonoscopic difficulties were encountered, from January 2011 to September 2016. Difficulties were defined as a previous incomplete colonoscopy using a conventional colonoscope or unstable endoscopic maneuverability around the tumor with a conventional colonoscope. A propensity score model was used as a secondary analysis to compare outcomes of the BAESD group with those of a non-BAESD group.  Results BAESD was performed on 63 tumors in 63 patients. En bloc resection was achieved for 62 tumors (98 %) and an R0 resection was achieved for 55 tumors (87 %). Propensity score matching analysis created 59 matched pairs from the BAESD and non-BAESD groups. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in en bloc resection (100 % vs. 100 %; P > 0.99), R0 resection (90 % vs. 93 %; P = 0.74), perforation (0 % vs. 2 %; P > 0.99) or postoperative bleeding (3 % vs. 0 %; P = 0.50). Conclusion Balloon-assisted endoscopy achieved safe and reliable ESD of colonoscopically difficult superficial proximal colon tumors.


Background The gut microbiota is known to play a critical role in shaping the host immunity, and metabolism and influences the onset and progression of both communicable and non-communicable diseases. This study assessed the gut microbiome of tuberculosis (TB) cases with diabetes mellitus (DM) or HIV comorbidities before anti-TB therapy and after the intensive phase anti-TB therapy. Methods Ninety cases comprising 60 TB-only, 23 TB-DM, 7 TB-HIV were recruited, among which 35 TB-only, 10 TB-DM, 5 TB-HIV were also sampled after 2 months of anti-TB treatment. Total gut microbiome was detected by 16S rRNA gene sequencing of DNA extracted from collected stool specimen. The taxonomic and functional diversity of the different groups were compared in addition to changes that could occur after 2 months antibiotics use. Results Compared to the healthy controls, the gut microbiome of all the TB cohorts was characterized by a significant decreased alpha diversity and significant compositional changes. All the three TB cohorts were enriched with inflammatory related microorganisms of the genera Escherichia-shigella, Streptococcus, Enterococcus and Erysipelatoclostridium with depletion in beneficial taxa of the genera Faecalibacterium, Bifidobacterium and Clostridium. In pairwise comparison with the healthy controls, the TB-only cohort were enriched with Streptococcus and Erysipelatoclostridium, the TB-DM enriched with Bacteroides, and TB-HIV enriched with Escherichia-shigella, Dialister and Erysipelatoclostridium. After the intensive phase anti-TB therapy, there was general enrichment of the genera Erysipelotrichaceae_UCG 003, Veillonella and Fusobacterium. Conclusion Our findings show a dysbiotic gut microbiome and associated upregulation of inflammation related microorganism in gut microbiome of TB individuals with or without comorbidity.


Permanent seismic reservoir monitoring (PSRM) solutions, if of high enough sensitivity and low enough cost, can be used to tackle the many known problems faced by seismic monitoring onshore and thereby increase the profitability of such developments. Here we focus on thermal EOR monitoring using continuous seismic, as provided by SeisMovie®, a registered trademark of CGG. We review the PSRM staircase that Shell has climbed since 2009, introduce the most areally extensive deployment at Peace River in Alberta, Canada, and discuss some of the initial findings and plans ahead. We show progress with PSRM to generate better onshore data that will lead to higher recovery, higher production, and safer and cleaner operations. Significant steps were made towards on-demand, lower footprint PSRM, and next steps are set towards cheaper, non-intrusive automated systems that are required for broad application.


The tricyclic antidepressant group of drugs are amongst the most widely used medicaments in current clinical practice. They have proved to be extremely useful in the treatment of many different types of depression. There are, however, greater than ten-fold differences between different individual subjects in the rate at which they can degrade the various members of the group into biologically inert metabolites. There is also good evidence that the therapeutic effectiveness of this class of drug is more closely related to thtr go-called 'steady state' plasma concentrations than to the dose administered . It is clearly important, therefore, to be able to measure plasma drug concentrations simply and rapidly. Methods currently available include luorimetry, thin layer chromatography (TLC), gas liquid chromatography (GLC), high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and isotope derivatization, but are generally too insensitive, non-specific or slow to be useful clinically.


This paper studies a general class of social choice problems in which agents' payoff functions (or types) are privately observable random variables, and monetary transfers are not available. We consider cardinal social choice functions which may respond to agents' preference intensities as well as preference rankings. We show that a social choice function is ex ante Pareto efficient and Bayesian incentive compatible if and only if it is dictatorial. The result holds for arbitrary numbers of agents and alternatives, and under a fairly weak assumption on the joint distribution of types, which allows for arbitrary correlations and asymmetries.


As with most subjects, consumerism can and has been addressed from a number of different perspectives-historical, sociological, economic, political, legal, managerial, psychological, and so forth. In this book Rice approaches the problems and issues underlying the consumer movement from a legal point of view. However, rather than an appellate case study orientation, the diverse mix of materials selected by the author focuses primarily on concept and policy analysis. Thus, in order to foster a better understanding of the problems and issues falling within the purview of consumer transaction law and legal institutions, a behavioral orientation has been integrated into text materials. Specifically, a number of theoretical perspectives from consumer behavior have been presented as a means of evaluating the use and limitations of law in addressing consumer problems in the marketplace. The author's primary emphasis is on exploring consumer protection law remedies, enforcement procedures, and administration across a broad spectrum of consumer problems ranging from deceptive and unfair sales practices to product liability. Of particular interest is his treatment of the evolutionary development of consumer transaction law in response to (and, in certain areas, lack of response to) the


This paper studies the behavior of cross-country growth rates with respect to resource abundance and dependence. We reject the linear model commonly used for growth regressions in favor of a multiple regime alternative. Using a proper sample splitting methodology, we show that countries exhibit different behavior with respect to natural resources depending on their initial development. In high-income economies, natural resources play a minor role in explaining the differences in national growth rates. In low-income economies, abundance seems to be a blessing, but dependence hampers growth possibilities.


One of the environmental challenges faced by the pharmaceutical and specialty chemical industries is the widespread use of organic solvents. With a solvent-based chemistry, the solvent necessarily has to be separated from the product. Chemical species in waste-solvent streams typically form multicomponent azeotropic mixtures, and this often complicates separation and, hence, recovery of solvents. A design approach is presented whereby process modifications proposed by the engineer to reduce the formation of waste-solvent streams can be evaluated systematically. This approach, called solvent recovery targeting, exploits a recently developed algorithm for elucidating the separation alternatives achievable when applying batch distillation to homogeneous multicomponent mixtures. The approach places the composition of the waste-solvent mixture correctly in the relevant residue curve map and computes the maximum amount of pure material that can be recovered via batch distillation. Solvent recovery targeting is applied to two case studies derived from real industrial processes.


Concepts of self-esteem and confidence are attributes that affect the power of self or identity of a person such as one's ability to be successful in work. Many theorists have stated that the major variables that impact the self are an individual's core sense of self (who one is) and the environment or social relationships that affect a person (external settings and social context). However, recent theorists point out that the self is also influenced by a changing environment that encourages self-evaluation since each individual must adapt to changes in order to succeed. Attributes of self-concept are interrelated and interdependent, and each individual must maintain a positive concept of self when making career decisions and choices.


Elliptic interface boundary value problems play a major role in numerous applications involving heat, fluids, materials, and proteins, to name a few. As an example, in implicit variational solvation, for the construction of biomolecular shapes, the electrostatic contributions satisfy the Poisson-Boltzmann equation with discontinuous dielectric constants across the interface. When interface motions are involved, one often needs not only accurate solution values, but accurate derivatives as well, such as the normal derivatives at the interface. We introduce here the Compact Coupling Interface Method (CCIM), a finite difference method for the elliptic interface problem with interfacial jump conditions. The CCIM can calculate solution values and their derivatives up to second-order accuracy in arbitrary ambient space dimensions. It combines elements of Chern and Shu's Coupling Interface Method and Mayo's approach for elliptic interface boundary value problems, leading to more compact finite difference stencils that are applicable to more general situations. Numerical results on a variety of geometric interfacial shapes and on complex protein molecules in three dimensions support the efficacy of our approach and reveal advantages in accuracy and robustness.


In the following paper we present a simple intensity estimation method of transaction arrivals on the intraday electricity market. Assuming the interarrival times distribution, we utilize a maximum likelihood estimation. The method's performance is briefly tested using German Intraday Continuous data. Despite the simplicity of the method, the results are encouraging. The supplementary materials containing the R-codes and the data are attached to this paper.


MindTree is a mid-sized Indian IT services company known for its knowledge management practices, its collaborative communities, and its strong culture and values. The CEO has set a goal of becoming a $1 billion company by 2014; to reach that goal, employees must create several new businesses. The head of knowledge management must decide how his function should change in order to become more supportive of innovation and new business development. Learning Objective: The aim of this case is to introduce students to a set of highly effective knowledge management practices, built around communities of practice, and to show how they have been created and implemented. The case also shows students the power of organizational culture and values, and how leadership activities and HR policies can support a culture of collaboration, openness, and employee development and learning.


Acute cold stress induces adherent cells with suppressor function, resulting in immunosuppression. Glucocorticoids (GC) are known as an inhibitor of the immune system and are increased by stress through stimulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. To elucidate the mechanisms underlying acute cold stress-induced immunosuppression, functions and surface phenotypes of murine peritoneal cells of the monocyte/macrophage lineage from acute cold-stressed mice (5 C for 3 or 24 h) in addition to the role of GC in the immunomodulation were investigated. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that the proportion of MAC-1+ cells with a high density of Fc gamma RII (Fc gamma RIIbright cells) was markedly increased in the peritoneal exudate cells from acute cold-stressed mice. These Fc gamma RIIbright cells were also stained with F4/80, a monoclonal antibody directed specifically against the mouse mature macrophages. The prominent suppressor activity for Concanavalin A (Con A) responses of control spleen cells was found in Fc gamma RIIbright cells, whereas MAC-1+ cells, with a low density of Fc gamma RII (Fc gamma RIIdull cells), from the stressed mice did not suppress the Con A responses. Fc gamma RIIbright cells from control mice also suppressed the Con A responses; the inhibitory effect was considerably less than that of cells from acute cold-stressed mice. As was anticipated, serum corticosterone levels were markedly increased in acute cold-stressed mice. In addition, expression of GC receptor messenger RNA was observed in Fc gamma RIIbright cells from these mice. The increase in Fc gamma RIIbright cells in peritoneal exudate cells caused by acute cold stress was inhibited by adrenalectomy or administration of a saturating amount of the GC antagonist RU 38486 (mifepristone). On the contrary, administration of the GC agonist, dexamethasone, markedly increased the proportion of Fc gamma RIIbright cells in peritoneal exudate cells of control mice. These results suggest that the generation of Fc gamma RIIbright suppressor cells of monocyte/macrophage lineage by acute cold stress was mediated to a greater or lesser degree by the action of GC through the GC receptor.


In recent decades the Christian claim that humanity reaches the eternal and salvific divine truth in Jesus Christ alone has increasingly come under criticism within the church and theological circles. Wherever the church expresses an exclusive or even a relative claim to absolute truth, it is reproached for being intolerant in its religious exclusivism of for being presumptuous in its theological inclusivism.(1) Anglo-American theologians especially have urged the churches to accept what John Hick calls a "Copernican revolution"(2) in theology. The church can no longer be viewed as being at the center of a universe of religions; rather, all religions, including Christianity, revolve around one and the same "Reality" or transcendent "Real."(3) In light of this claim, Hick among others proposes various "pluralistic theologies of religions" that relinquish Christianity's absolute truth-claims and acknowledge other religions as equally valid paths to salvation.(4) Among the most fervent opponents of the pluralistic theologies of religions is German Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg.(5) Although Pannenberg accepts the plurality of religions as a constitutive feature of contemporary reality, which cannot simply be subsumed "in a wholesale and exclusive fashion under the categories of unbelief and idolatry,"(6) he does not value religious pluralism as such. Pannenberg views the plurality of religions only as the necessary conditio religiosa under which the truth of Christianity needs to be promoted universally. He disputes the theological legitimacy of the general concept of religion advocated by the pluralistic theologians, who view all religions as equally true, variable expressions of the one, same divine reality.(7) In contrast, he proposes a "theology of the history of religions"(8) that integrates the plurality of religions into a Christian reading of history as the self-revelation of the triune God. This essay provides a critical reading of Pannenberg's contribution to the contemporary debate over religious pluralism. In a first section, I will discuss the role that he assigns to the religions as necessary mediations of humanity's innate, and yet unthematic, knowledge of the infinite divine mystery. Pannenberg's critique of a general concept of religion will lead us to consider the history of religions as an empirical standpoint from which to compare conflicting religious truth-claims. Pannenberg interprets the ongoing conflict between various gods and religions in history as the Christian God's self-revelation to humankind. In a second section, I will show how Pannenberg integrates his open-ended concept of revelation with the Christian conviction that God is revealed definitively in Jesus Christ. Third, I will turn to the implications of Pannenberg's theology of religions for the soteriological question, exploring both his christocentric criteria for human salvation and the role of non-christian religions in the mediation of salvation. In my fourth and concluding section, I will -- as an invitation to further discussion of Pannenberg's model of the history of religions -- raise some critical questions about his conflict-based interpretation of the history of religions in terms of its empirical validity, its biblical normativity, and its awareness of economical and political factors in the history of religions. I. A Theology of the History of the Religions The impetus for Pannenberg's development of a theology of religions is the observation that the Christian proclamation of the triune God has become an openly contested truth-claim in a religiously pluralistic world.(9) Today, the task of Christian theologians is to develop a theology of religions that can positively account for the plurality of religions, while still defending the claim that the triune God presents the "all-determining reality."(10) Pannenberg understands the historical religions to be the necessary form of mediation of our innate human knowledge of God. …


Ankara : The Department of Interior Architecture and Environment Design and the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of Ihsan Dogramaci Bilkent University, 2011.


In this paper a new road-rail terminal design called road-rail PI hub is adapted to the usual challenges of the intermodal transport which are time and cost. This research aims to find the "best" allocation of containers in a rail-road PI hub where a set of containers must be transferred from railcars to outgoing trucks using the sorters. The main goal is to minimize the used number of trucks. To achieve this, heuristic approach in static and dynamic case is proposed. Then results are compared to the upper bound and the FIFO method. The experimental results show that the proposed heuristic gives better results compared to the solution generated by FIFO;


This paper concerns the exploitation of multi-resolution time-frequency features via Wavelet Packet Transform to improve audio onset detection. In our approach, Wavelet Packet Energy Coefficients (WPEC) and Auditory Spectral Features (ASF) are processed by Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM) recurrent neural network that yields the onsets location. The combination of the two feature sets, together with the BLSTM based detector, form an advanced energy-based approach that takes advantage from the multi-resolution analysis given by the wavelet decomposition of the audio input signal. The neural network is trained with a large database of onset data covering various genres and onset types. Due to its data-driven nature, our approach does not require the onset detection method and its parameters to be tuned to a particular type of music. We show a comparison with other types and sizes of recurrent neural networks and we compare results with state-of-the-art methods on the whole onset dataset. We conclude that our approach significantly increase performance in terms of F-measure without any music genres or onset type constraints.


Background: Coronary artery disease is the most common type of heart disease. It encompasses a spectrum of clinical conditions ranging from asymptomatic atherosclerosis and stable or unstable angina to acute coronary syndrome caused by atheroma changes in the coronary arteries. It is one of the leading causes of death. Assessing risk factors for coronary artery disease and attaining the knowledge on how to deal with the symptoms' pain is the first step in its prevention. Objective: To find out the effectiveness of an interventional program on Nurses' knowledge and practices about pain management for patients with acute myocardial infraction at Coronary Care Units. Methodology: A pre-experiment design (one group pretest-posttest design) is applied has been done to obtain the study goals. A non- probability (purposive) sample was chosen to obtain representative and accurate data. From total (41) nurses working at CCU, (11) nurses were excluded from the educational program (five nurses for the pilot study, four nurses previously participated in pain management courses, and two nurse did not complete the program). The total number of nurses participating in the program of the study were (30) nurses. The sample had been taken in one group. The program is established and designed based on the preliminary assessment of nurses' knowledge and practices about pain management for patients with acute MI at CCU, and also on the information obtained from the related scientific literatures and previous studies. The program content is reviewed by a group of experts. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, version 23) was used to analyze the study data. Results of the study: The study findings presented that there was a highly significant differences of the knowledge between pre-test and post-test score at p value (.000), and a high significant difference between pre-test and post-test practices at p value (.000) related to pain management. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the interventional program was an effective educational method that enables the nurses to improve their knowledge and practices towards pain assessment and management. Keywords: Pain Management, Acute Myocardial Infraction, Interventional Study, Nursing Staff


This paper reports on the electrodeposition of aluminium on several substrates from the air- and water-stable ionic liquids 1-propyl-1-methylpiperidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide ([C(3)mpip][NTf(2)]) and 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide ([C(4)mpyr][NTf(2)]), which contain anhydrous AlCl(3). At an AlCl(3) concentration of 0.75 molal, no evidence for aluminium electrodeposition was observed in either system at room temperature. However, aluminium electrodeposition becomes feasible upon heating the samples to 80 degrees C. Aluminium electrodeposition from bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide-based ionic liquids that contain AlCl(3) has previously been shown to be very dependent upon the AlCl(3) concentration and has not been demonstrated at AlCl(3) concentrations below 1.13 molal. The dissolution of AlCl(3) in [C(3)mpip][NTf(2)] and [C(4)mpyr][NTf(2)] was studied by variable-temperature (27)Al NMR spectroscopy to gain insights on the electroactive species responsible for aluminium electrodeposition. A similar change in the aluminium speciation with temperature was observed in both ionic liquids, thereby indicating that the chemistry was similar in both. The electrodeposition of aluminium was shown to coincide with the formation of an asymmetric four-coordinate aluminium-containing species with an (27)Al chemical shift of delta=94 and 92 ppm in the [C(3)mpip][NTf(2)]-AlCl(3) and [C(4)mpyr][NTf(2)]-AlCl(3) systems, respectively. It was concluded that the aluminium-containing species that give rise to these resonances corresponds to the electroactive species and was assigned to [AlCl(3)(NTf(2))](-).


Background There is a paucity of comparative, real-world data that describe the relationship between choice of biologic therapy and patient-reported outcomes in RA. Objectives To compare the level of impairment in work and daily activities among patients prescribed different biologics for the treatment of RA, and to assess changes in these outcomes associated with switching biologic medication. Methods Patients reporting physician-diagnosed RA and biologic use completed an online survey in 2009 or 2010; all data were self-reported. Work productivity and activity impairment were assessed using the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire, which measures impairment over the previous 7 days. Patients using a biologic for the treatment of RA were grouped by the mechanism of action of the drug (anti-TNF, abatacept, rituximab). Patients taking tocilizumab were excluded due to small sample size (n=6). Those reporting previous use of an anti-TNF and current use of a different biologic (anti-TNF or other) were considered to have switched therapies and were included in subgroup analyses. All comparisons used generalised linear models to adjust for patient characteristics. Results There were 821 patients receiving a biologic in the sample; 348 were employed. There were no significant differences in percentage impairment of work and activity between users of abatacept and those using anti-TNFs. In contrast, users of rituximab showed significantly greater overall work impairment than users of abatacept (p<0.05; Table). In subgroup analyses of patients who had switched biologic medication (abatacept: n=55, 18 employed; anti-TNF: n=235, 95 employed; rituximab: n=26, 8 employed), those who had switched to abatacept reported less impairment while at work (presenteeism) than patients who had switched to anti-TNFs (25.4% vs 40.8% respectively, p<0.05), and less overall work impairment (27.9% vs 44.7% respectively, p<0.05). No differences were observed in comparisons of abatacept with rituximab. Absenteeism and impairment in non-work activities were similar across all groups (all p>0.10). Conclusions This real-world study demonstrates that abatacept users have significantly less work impairment than those on rituximab, even after controlling for covariates. Patients who had switched from an anti-TNF to abatacept were less impaired than patients who had switched to another anti-TNF. Although these findings should be confirmed using larger sample sizes, these data suggest that there may be differences in productivity and activity participation depending on class of therapeutic agent and treatment pattern. Disclosure of Interest L. Rosenblatt Shareholder of: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Employee of: Bristol-Myers Squibb, J. Vietri Grant/research support from: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Employee of: Kantar Health, J. Chapnick Grant/research support from: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Employee of: Kantar Health


Darwin argued for the biological basis of morality in his Descent of Man (1871). Beginning with the thesis of the continuity of man and animals, he tried to explain the origin of the moral sense, or conscience, as understood as an ability to discern right and wrong, and to feel guilty if one realizes to have done wrong. His argument is that, in any animal with social instincts and sufficient intellectual powers, a moral sense would be developed. Although Darwin's argument had some missing links, I try to show that his argument can be consistently reconstructed, in view of the recent development of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology. As I understand, Darwin's basic tenet is reductionism via evolutionary processes (natural selection, in particular): morality can be reduced to a combination of non-moral factors, each of which can be shared with other animals; you do not have to assume that morality is sui generis.


Based on original field data, I demonstrate that in Guebie (Kru, Niger-Congo), third person pronouns phonologically resemble their antecedents. This system, along with other phonologically determined agreement systems, pose problems for our traditional Y-model of grammar, which assumes that phonological features are not present in the syntax (cf. DM, Marantz 1995), thus morphosyntactic processes like agreement should not be able to access phonological features. Here I address the question of whether phonologically determined agreement systems can be modeled without requiring syntax to be sensitive to phonological features. To do this I argue that pronouns select for an NP complement (cf. Elbourne 2001), where the pronoun enters into an agree relation with its NP complement. When spelled out, the morphologically agreeing heads must be phonologically similar, and this overt agreement licenses ellipsis of the NP.


VLČEK VÍTĚZSLAV, POHANKA MIROSLAV. 2018. Adsorption Of Copper in Soil and its Dependence on Physical and Chemical Properties. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 66(1): 219 – 224. Soil samples (n = 11) were collected in the chernozem areas of the Czech Republic (the Central Europe) from the topsoil and used as representative samples. All sampling areas have been used for agricultural purposes (arable soil) and they were selected as typical representatives of agricultural soil. These samples represented the soil with same genesis (to reduction differencies between soil types) but with different soil properties (physical and chemical). Complete chemical and physical analyses were made for confirmation of copper adsorption on solid phase: we analysed the particle size distribution, content of oxidizable carbon (Cox), the cation exchange capacity (CEC), supply of exchange calcium, magnesium, sodium, phosphorus and potassium, soil reaction and the total supply of Fe, Al, Mn, Ca, Mg, K, P and N. The strongest simple correlation between analysed soil properties and copper concentration had content of available magnesium (r = 0.44) and available phosphorus (r = −0.51). In the case of multiple correlations (i. e. collective influence of multiple soil properties) had the strongest influence combination of clay, soil reaction, total content of phosphorus, available magnesium and available phosphorus. The main influence of phosphorus and magnesium is evident. We suppose that copper and phosphorus enter into specific complex. Influence of these five soil properties can explain 92.7 % (r = 0.927) changes in the content of copper changes in the experiment.


The morphological evolution of SiGe films was investigated during vacuum thermal annealing. We found that Ge islands preferentially form in the process of decomposition of native oxide covering the SiGe layer, while pits form as an effective means of relaxing strain in the SiGe layer passivated with hydrogen during vacuum thermal annealing. The formation of small size Ge islands weakly depends on the strain relaxation of the SiGe layer. The size of Ge islands increases with Ge content in the initial SiGe layer and the maximum density of Ge islands is obtained for the SiGe layer with a lower Ge content of 0.06 among the investigated samples. A mechanism to form Ge islands on SiGe films rather than strain driven is proposed in terms of surface potential energy profile induced by the process of decomposition of native oxide.


The effect on the gastric secretion of the phenothiazine molecule N,N-dimethyl-10-(3-quinuclidinyl)-2-phenothiazine sulfonamide (LM24056) was studied in dogs equipped with gastric fistula and denervated pouch. The gastric stimulation was obtained either by exogenous stimulants (gastrin, gastrin + bethanechol, histamine) or by endogenous ones released by feeding gastrin; LM 24056 was infused i.v. 1. I.v. administration of 1.25 to 5 mg . kg-1 . h-1 of LM 24056 had a nearly complete inhibitory action on gastric juice secretion (acid and pepsin), on gastrin- and gastrin + bethanechol-stimulated secretion. The LM, 24056 concentration which produced 50% inhibition (IC50%) of acid and pepsin secretion was about 1.25 mg . kg-1 . h-1. 2. LM 24056 appeared to be unable to reduce the histamine-stimulated secretion. 3. I.v. administration of 1 to 30 mg . h-1 of LM 24056 reduced or abolished both gastric acid secretion and gastrin release. The IC50 was 5 mg . h-1 (or about 0.5 mg . kg-1 . h-1) for both responses. The possible mechanism of action of LM 24056 is discussed in comparison with those of H2-receptor antagonists, of atropine and of pirenzepine, respectively.


The side population phenotype is associated with the Hoechst dye efflux activity of the Abcg2 transporter and identifies hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in the bone marrow. This association suggests the direct use of Abcg2 expression to identify adult stem cells in various other organs. We have generated a lineage tracing mouse model based on an allele that coexpresses both Abcg2 and a CreERT2 expression cassette. By crossing these mice with lox‐STOP‐lox reporter lines (LacZ or YFP), cells that express Abcg2 and their progeny were identified following treatment with tamoxifen (Tam). In the liver and kidney, in which mature cells express Abcg2, reporter gene expression verified the expected physiologic expression pattern of the recombinant allele. Long‐term marking of HSCs was seen in multiple peripheral blood lineages from adult mice, demonstrating that Abcg2+ bone marrow HSCs contribute to steady‐state hematopoiesis. Stem cell tracing patterns were seen in the small intestine and in seminiferous tubules in the testis 20 months after Tam treatment, proving that stem cells from these organs express Abcg2. Interstitial cells from skeletal and cardiac muscle were labeled, and some cells were costained with endothelial markers, raising the possibility that these cells may function in the repair response to muscle injury. Altogether, these studies prove that Abcg2 is a stem cell marker for blood, small intestine, testicular germ cells, and possibly for injured skeletal and/or cardiac muscle and provide a new model for studying stem cell activity that does not require transplant‐based assays. STEM CELLS 2012; 30:210–221.


Abstract We reinvestigated parts of the northern Austroalpine margin and provided structural and kinematic field data in order to interpret the kinematic relationship between the Cenoman-Randschuppe (CRS) marginal slice, Falkensteinzug (FSZ), Tannheim- and Karwendel thrust sheets occurring in a narrow strip at the northern front of the northwestern Northern Calcareous Alps (NCA). As a consequence, we propose a revised model for the tectonic evolution of the northern Austroalpine margin. As thrusting propagates from SSE to NNW (Cretaceous orogeny), the Karwendel thrust sheet (including its frontal part, the FSZ) was emplaced onto the Tannheim thrust sheet in the Albian, deduced from (i) upper-footwall deposits, the youngest sediments below the Karwendel thrust (Tannheim- and Losenstein Fms.), and (ii) thrust-sheet-top deposits unconformably overlying the deeply eroded northern Karwendel thrust sheet (Branderfleck Fm.). The future CRS marginal slice was, at that time, part of the foreland of this Early Cretaceous Alpine orogenic wedge. Pervasive overprint by sinistral shear within the CRS marginal slice and northern Tannheim thrust sheet suggests sinistral W-E striking transform faults cutting across this foreland, decoupling CRS marginal slice and FSZ from the main body of the NCA and enabling an independent evolution of the CRS marginal slice from the Early Cretaceous onwards. Subsequent Late Cretaceous and younger shortening leads to successive incorporation of Arosa zone, Rhenodanubian Flysch (RDF) and Helvetic units into the Alpine nappe stack; the Tannheim thrust representing the basal thrust of the NCA. Growth strata within thrust-sheet-top deposits (Branderfleck-Fm.) give evidence for refolding of thrust sheet boundaries. In a typical thin-skinned fold-and-thrust belt, deformation should cease towards the thrust front, whereas within the NCA it increases. An Austroalpine thrust front controlled by E-trending transform faults could cause an increase in deformation towards the most external NCA and explain the absence of the Arosa zone between Allgäu and Vienna. Such faults would most probably also cut out Lower Austroalpine units. Therefore, RDF and CRS marginal slice are juxtaposed; the latter found in the tectonic position of the Arosa zone. The presence of transform faults underlines the strong imprint of the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean on the depositional setting and tectonic evolution of the NCA.


The goal of this study is analyzed and design a methodology to reduce stem mass, through topology and lattice optimization of a Ti-6Al-4V hip implant, meeting yield stress requirements. Four optimization cases were studied: Topology optimization (1), Lattice design 100% (2), Lattice design 50% (3), Lattice design 25% (4). Five load cases from a study were applied for each optimization cases: Combined (LC1), standing-up (LC2), standing (LC3), going up stairs (LC4), jogging (LC5). The optimized cases design reduced stem mass approximately by 30% (1), 5% (2) ,8% (3) and 2% (4), compared with the total stem hip Ti-6Al-4V implant.


107 new wells are planned to be drilled primarily from two new Artificial Islands during the period of one project from 2023 to 2029. The number of existing wells in the oil field has reached 1,068 Mother bores, 2,178 wellbores @16,453,666ft total well length as of December 2019. Trajectories, especially from existing Artificial Islands, are getting more complex so as to avoid collision issues, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to drill accordingly. It is of great importance to assure that it is possible to drill the planned wells without serious collision issues before the execution of the project.
 Trajectories for planned wells were drafted one-by-one utilizing "DecisionSpace Well Planning" based on the predetermined slot allocation with the planned drilling pad design. Geological models are incorporated into DecisionSpace Well Planning. Therefore, formation tops were taken into account in order to make the trajectories more realistic. After that, trajectories were exported to "COMPASS" and anti-collision scan was performed on well-by-well basis. Anti-collision scan was performed among planned wells as well as actual wells. In case that one well has such serious collision issues that the well cannot/should not be planned based on company policy as a result of Anti-collision scan, trajectory or Landing Point (LP)/Total Depth (TD) location were adjusted. Then, Anti-collision scan was carried out again. If it was confirmed that there is no serious Anti-collision issues, trajectory was considered as final.
 It has been found that all the wells during the period from 2023 to 2029 can be drilled without serious collision issues by slightly adjusting LP/TD while satisfying several practical drilling requirements.
 Through the Anti-collision study, following recommendations for the avoidance of collision were obtained:Multi Station Analysis (MSA)+In-Field Referencing (IFR)+SAG correction should be applied in all the Jack up operations as well as Island operationsApplication of real-time MSA should be considered on a case-by-case basisMWD survey for the past wells should be corrected with IFR+MSA to reduce EOU sizeRe-Gyro jobs for low-quality survey wells should be enhanced around the project's development areaKick off point (KOP) should be deeper in the center of the drilling pad and shallower in the edge of the drilling pad


The burgeoning field of Jewish legal biography has produced a profusion of new studies of Jewish lawyers, lawyering, and legal thought in the international arena. This biographicalization of legal history promises obvious rewards. Biography can unlock deeper chains of influence and forgotten acts of invention. It possesses the moral potential to restore lives displaced or disrupted by the Holocaust to their rightful places in the history of the law and law's memory. In our own fraught moment of historical reckoning, the European Jewish experience beckons as a rich historical resource with which to rethink transnational activism and individual agency, migration and statelessness, antisemitism and fascism. Yet biography is never a neutral art. The very choice of which life to deem worthy of attention depends on an often implicit set of assumptions about relevance and uniqueness that risk historical essentialism.

In this chapter, I explore these challenges by discussing the specter of "interest" in the writing of Jewish legal biography, past and present. I take "interest" in a variety of senses: the reasons why so many Jews gravitated in disproportionate numbers to international law as a profession; the biographer's underlying motivation for choosing which specific Jewish legal lives to chronicle; and international law's own image of itself as a neutral sphere of human action transcending political interests. Reviewing assorted key moments in the past century of attempts at Jewish legal biography, I posit that two different approaches have governed these biographical efforts vis-a-vis the concept of interest: a liberal cosmopolitan meta-narrative that frames international Jewish lawyering as a form of legalist anti-politics; and a liberal nationalist meta-narrative that hails Jewish politics as the proper starting point for a necessary legal reordering of the world. As we shall see, the links and tensions between these different kinds of interest are crucial to questions of method and meaning. They come together in the challenge at the root of all contemporary legal biography: How do we relate the one to the many without flattening individual lives into essentialist fables in the process?


We report three cases of visual disturbances associated with use of over-the-counter (OTC) ibuprofen. To our knowledge, this is the first report of such problems associated with OTC ibuprofen. None of these patients included ibuprofen as part of their initial drug histories. All patients particularly younger women with headaches and visual disturbances should be questioned specifically with regard to OTC drugs.


Self-driving technology is advancing rapidly, largely due to recent developments in deep learning algorithms. To date, however, there has been no systematic comparison of how different deep learning architectures perform at such tasks, or an attempt to determine a correlation between classification performance and performance in an actual vehicle. Here, we introduce the first controlled comparison of seven contemporary deep-learning architectures in an end-to-end autonomous driving task. We use a simple and affordable platform consisting of of an off-the-shelf, remotely operated vehicle, a GPU equipped computer and an indoor foam-rubber racetrack. We compare a fully-connected network, a 2-layer CNN, AlexNet, VGG-16, Inception-V3, ResNet-26, and LSTM and report the number of laps they are able to successfully complete without crashing while traversing an indoor racetrack under identical testing conditions. Based on these tests, AlexNet completed the most laps without crashing out of all networks, and ResNet-26 is the most 'efficient' architecture examined, with respect to the number of laps completed relative to the number of parameters. We also observe whether spatial, color, or temporal features - or some combination - are more important for such tasks. Finally, we show that validation loss/accuracy is not sufficiently indicative of the model's performance even when employed in a real vehicle with a simple task, emphasizing the need for greater accessibility to research platforms within the self-driving community.


Constructions and operations of toll roads under private and public partnerships (PPP) have been quite successful as the partnerships have added more roadways and provided faster travel time for those who are willing to pay for additional fee. So far, toll rates have been determined on the basis of marginal social cost pricing concept, recovering construction and maintenance costs within a reasonable duration, or political determination. Under the PPP, the private partners would like to achieve maximum revenue on their toll roads. This paper presents a flexible and real-time toll rate determination method that is focused on revenue maximization approach via a case study.


Introduction and Objectives: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common cancer detected in men (181,000 annual cases), and nearly 26,000 American men die each year due to PCa and related complications. Reports have shown that PCa is more aggressive when its comorbid with inflammatory diseases. However, the correlations and risks attributed to inflammatory diseases of the abdominal cavity and oncophenotypes are not known. Methods: To investigate how inflammatory pathways and PCa genes induce aggressive oncophenotypes in the setting of PCa, we have compiled a multiscale survey that includes data from surgical observations, inflammatory phenotypes, clinical registries, biomarkers and mouse models. We applied an integrative informatics approach with experimental validation to understand the associations between inflammatory diseases (e.g., Crohn9s disease, ulcerative colitis, collagenous colitis, indeterminate colitis, ischemic colitis, diverticulitis, hernia, etc.) and PCa. Results: We found distinct patterns of shared molecular features—gene sets, pathways, and networks—and comorbidities across inflammatory disease and PCa. For example, we found that diverticulitis tend to increase inflammation in the abdominal cavity and could potentially lead to aggressive prostate oncophenotypes. To test abdominal inflammation and PCa correlation, we induced inflammation in a mouse model of hiatus hernia, which resulted in an increase in the expression of the combined markers of inflammation and PCa (TGFB, TNFA, and IL6). Evaluation of pathology stage, Gleason scores and physical attributes of previous inflammation observed during robotic prostatectomy surgery also reveals trend towards aggressive tumor characteristics with an increase in inflammation. Gene-set overlap analyses showed that several inflammatory disease and prostate cancer genes share genetic modules. Conclusion: Collectively, our findings provide the first set of computational, experimental and clinical evidence to recommend clinicians to evaluate the impact of inflammatory disease induced oncophenotypes in patients with PCa. Given that 1.3 million patients undergo prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-triggered invasive trans-rectal biopsy, the present findings in combination with PSA could facilitate the identification patient subset with aggressive cancer. Stratifying patients at risk for prostate cancer who are undergoing surgical interventions of abdominal cavity for inflammation diseases could also evaluate other non-surgical or therapeutic strategies. Funding acknowledgements: AKT is supported by grants from Prostate Cancer Foundation and Deane Prostate Health. JT is supported by grants from National Cancer Institute NCI-U54-CA189201-02, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences NCATS-UL1TR000067 and Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). Note: This abstract was not presented at the meeting. Citation Format: Khader Shameer, Kamlesh Kumar Yadav, Li Li, Shalini S. Yadav, Benjamin Glicksberg, Irtaza Khan, Kipp W. Johnson, Marcus A. Badgeley, Cordelia Elaiho, Ben Readhead, Brian A. Kidd, Andrew Kasarskis, Joel T. Dudley, Ashutosh K. Tewari. A multi-scale survey to assess the impact of inflammatory diseases of the abdominal cavity and prostate cancer severity [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3772. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-3772


Bovine mastitis continues to be the most powerful disease threatening dairy industry worldwide. There are several immune genes which are responsible for susceptibility of cattle to mastitis and can be used in dairy breeding selection. The aim of this study is to find out whether a three base insertion located at the glycine stretch of forebrain embryonic zinc finger-like (FEZL) gene, a transcription factor which possibly have an immune function, influences the milk somatic cell count (SCC) and mastitis susceptibility in Egyptian dairy cattle. Furthermore, relationships were explored between FEZL gene and its level of expression and semaphorine 5A (SEMA5A) gene level of expression, an immune gene through which FEZL has its immune function. Our results proved that cows carrying mutant isoform of FEZL gene (13G) are more susceptible to mastitis than those carrying isoform of (12G). Moreover, mastitis and high somatic cell count (SCC) reveal an increase in level of expression of both FEZL and SEMA5A genes.


A "percent-done progress indicator" is a graphical technique which allows the user to monitor the progress through the processing of a task. Progress indicators can be displayed on almost all types of output devices, and can be used with many different kinds of programs. Practical experience and formal experiments show that prograss indicators are an important and useful user-interface tool, and that they enhance the attractiveness and effectiveness of programs that incorporate them. This paper discusses why progress indicators are important. It includes the results of a formal experiment with progress indicators. One part of the experiment demonstrates that people prefer to have progress indicators. Another part attempted to replicate earlier findings to show that people prefer constant to variable response time in general, and then to show that this effect is reversed with progress indicators, but the results were not statistically significant. In fact, no significant preference for constant response time was shown, contrary to previously published results.


Although it is reported in the literature that haptic feedback leads to improved performance in kinesthetic collaborative tasks, it has not been investigated so far whether this advantage is accompanied by a higher physical workload. This paper is an initial effort to examine efficiency in haptic interaction: We relate physical effort to a performance outcome in a virtual pursuit tracking task. An experimental study is conducted to compare efficiency in a collaborative mutual haptic feedback condition to three control conditions, where participants either acted alone or collaboratively without haptic feedback from the partner. Results show that reciprocal haptic feedback does not improve efficiency, although participants' performance was generally improved when doing the task with a partner, relative to executing it alone. This is due to the greater effort associated with physical connection between partners. However, the effort is more fairly distributed between partners when haptic feedback from the partner is provided. Haptic feedback may be more efficient when the amount of necessary communication between partners increases compared to the task studied here.


Bacterial peptidyl-tRNA hydrolase (Pth; EC 126.96.36.199) hydrolyzes the peptidyl-tRNAs accumulated in the cytoplasm and thereby prevents cell death by alleviating tRNA starvation. X-ray and NMR studies of Vibrio cholerae Pth (VcPth) and mutants of its key residues involved in catalysis show that the activity and selectivity of the protein depends on the stereochemistry and dynamics of residues H24, D97, N118, and N14. D97-H24 interaction is critical for activity because it increases the nucleophilicity of H24. The N118 and N14 have orthogonally competing interactions with H24, both of which reduce the nucleophilicity of H24 and are likely to be offset by positioning of a peptidyl-tRNA substrate. The region proximal to H24 and the lid region exhibit slow motions that may assist in accommodating the substrate. Helix α3 exhibits a slow wobble with intermediate time scale motions of its N-cap residue N118, which may work as a flypaper to position the scissile ester bond of the substrate. Overall, the dynamics of interactions between the side chains of N14, H24, D97, and N118, control the catalysis of substrate by this enzyme.


OBJECTIVE
To describe trends in deaths from prostate cancer between 1970 and 1990, and trends in registrations of prostate cancer between 1971 and 1986.

METHODS
Data on prostate cancer deaths and registrations were obtained from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, and age specific rates were calculated.

RESULTS
The number of deaths from prostate cancer rose by 107% between 1970 and 1990, from 3906 to 8098. The number of registrations of prostate cancer rose by 75% between 1971 and 1986, from 5819 to 10,180. Age-specific death rates and registration rates also increased but by a smaller amount than the rise in absolute numbers.

CONCLUSIONS
A component of the increase seen in both the number of prostate cancer deaths and registrations can be explained by a concomitant increase in the elderly male population, the group at highest risk, but the rises seen in rates are more difficult to explain. The rises are likely to have had considerable implications for the workload of urologists and should be taken into account when planning future health services. With further increases expected over the next decade in the elderly male population, deaths and registrations from prostate cancer will continue to rise. Research will be required to determine possible reasons for the increase seen in prostate cancer rates over the last 20 years, to determine the true incidence and prevalence of prostate cancer in the general population and to identify possible aetiological factors.


Meningitis is the main infectious central nervous system (CNS) syndrome. Viruses or bacteria can cause acute meningitis of infectious etiology. The term "Aseptic Meningitis" denotes a clinical syndrome with a predominance of lymphocytes in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), with no common bacterial agents identified in the CSF. Viral meningitis is considered the main cause of lymphocyte meningitis. There are other etiologies of an infectious nature. CSF examination is essential to establish the diagnosis and to identify the etiological agent of lymphocytic meningitis. We examined CSF characteristics and the differential diagnosis of the main types of meningitis.


We have shown that a diet containing freeze-dried black raspberries (BRB) inhibits the development of chemically induced cancer in the rat esophagus. To provide insights into possible mechanisms by which BRB inhibit esophageal carcinogenesis, we evaluated an ethanol (EtOH) extract of BRB, and two component anthocyanins (cyanidin-3-O-glucoside and cyanidin-3-O−rutinoside) in BRB, for their effects on growth, apoptosis, and gene expression in rat esophageal epithelial cell lines. The EtOH extract and both anthocyanins selectively caused significant growth inhibition and induction of apoptosis in a highly tumorigenic cell line (RE-149 DHD) but not in a weakly tumorigenic line (RE-149). The uptake of anthocyanins from the EtOH extract into RE-149 DHD cells far exceeded their uptake into RE-149 cells, which may have accounted for the selective effects of the extract on growth and apoptosis of RE-149 DHD cells. The growth inhibitory and proapoptotic effects were enhanced by the daily addition of the EtOH extract and the anthocyanins to the medium. Interestingly, the EtOH extract did not alter cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and nitric oxide synthase (i-NOS) expression in RE-149 DHD cells, whereas both anthocyanins downregulated the expressions of these genes. This differential effect may have been related to the relative amounts of anthocyanins in the extract vs. when they were added individually to the medium. We conclude that the selective effects of the EtOH extract on growth and apoptosis of highly tumorigenic rat esophageal epithelial cells in vitro may be due to preferential uptake and retention of its component anthocyanins, and this may also be responsible for the greater inhibitory effects of freeze-dried whole berries on tumor cells in vivo.


The aim of this research was to evaluate the suitability of uracil as an hygienic quality index of tomato products. Whereas uridine was naturally present throughout tomato fruits' ripening, uracil appeared only after microbial contamination. In tomato pulp inoculated with nine different microbial strains, all five lactic acid bacteria (LAB) studied released relevant quantities of uracil (150-1040 mg/kg of dm), with a correlated partial or total decrease of uridine. Uracil production by yeasts and molds was very low or nonexistent; the starting uridine concentration (approximately 960 mg/kg of dm) remained constant or increased. Uracil thermostability was also verified. Twenty-six samples of tomato paste (30 degrees Brix) were collected from bag-in-drums produced in an industrial processing plant, some with evident swelling symptoms. All of the samples with high microbial count presented uracil. Uracil was also present in samples with microbial contamination under the detection limit and Howard mold count below legislation limits, implying the reprocessing, at least partial, of altered tomato product. The results indicate that uracil presence in tomato products is an index of LAB contamination that has occurred before heat treatment.


Abstract Through this analysis I wanted to emphasize the differences but also the similarities between the two countries with different management systems, in terms of geopolitical, social, technological and economic. In this analysis we found that the two systems have common point in sports management, but also points that they should priority in the next stage in the development of sport.


 Comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of all the sample components in a single injection  High resolution quantification reduces the potential for interferences, yet maintains the sensitivity and dynamic range of leading triple quads  Requires no sample-specific method development and creates a complete spectral archive of all analytes, enabling retrospective investigations without re-acquisition