BCL-2 is overexpressed in many types of cancer through a variety of genetic, epigenetic and posttranscriptional mechanisms. The physiologic role of BCL2 is to suppress apoptosis by sequestering BH3 domain-containing pro-apoptotic factors. We demonstrate that some tumor cells with BCL2 overexpression have constitutive localization of BCL2 within the nucleoplasm and that DNA damage induces mobilization of BCL2 to the chromatin. To identify factors that mediate this response, we irradiated lymphoid tumor cells and then performed immunoprecipitation of the chromatin protein fraction using an anti-BCL2 antibody. Mass spectrometry of a unique protein isolated only after DNA damage identified PARP1 (poly(ADP) ribose polymerase 1), an enzyme involved in various cellular processes, including base excision repair and alternative nonhomologous end-joining. In response to DNA damage, PARP1 utilizes NAD to add poly(ADP) ribose (PAR) onto acceptor proteins including itself, which provides a scaffold for additional damage response factors. We confirmed the BCL2-PARP1 interaction in additional tumor cell lines and transgenic mouse embryonic fibroblasts that overexpress BCL2 but lack the apoptosis effectors BAX and BAK. Purified BCL2 and PARP1 interacted directly in vitro independently of both DNA and NAD. Small molecule PARP inhibitors did not interfere with the BCL2-PARP1 complex, suggesting that the interaction is not dependent on PAR. In contrast, the BH3 mimetic ABT-737 blocked the BCL2-PARP1 interaction in a dose-dependent manner, indicating that PARP1 binding by BCL2 involves the BCL2 BH3-binding pocket. In fact, PARP1 contains 9 consensus BH3 motifs (LXXXXD). Interaction with PARP1 was specific to BCL2 and was not observed with the anti-apoptotic factors BCL-xL or MCL1. Using an anti-PAR enzyme immunoassay, the addition of BCL2 to PARP1 inhibited PARP1 activity in vitro. This effect was reversed by adding ABT-737. In addition, we used the alkaline comet assay to determine the effect of BCL2-PARP1 interaction on base excision repair. PARP1-mediated repair of single-strand DNA breaks induced by hydrogen peroxide was attenuated in BCL2 overexpressing cells. ABT-737 increased PARP1-mediated repair, both in tumor cells rendered resistant to apoptosis through the addition of a caspase inhibitor and in embryonic fibroblasts that overexpress BCL2 but lack BAX and BAK. In the latter cells, restoration of PARP1-dependent repair by ABT-737 promoted necrotic cell death through the exhaustion of cellular NAD. This suggests that nuclear BCL2 blocks clastogen-mediated killing by inhibiting PARP1 activity, even in cells that are resistant to BCL2 inhibitors through loss of apoptosis effectors or overexpression of antiapoptotic factors like MCL1. As such, inhibition of BCL2 interactions could synergize with DNA damaging agents independently of effects on apoptosis. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 1974.


Eric Axelson, former head of the Department of History at the University of Cape Town, is to be commended for producing a richly illustrated and comprehensive new translation of this diary. Translations or the Portuguese original have been published previously in 1898,1947 and 1954. The last of these, African Explorers (Oxford, 1954), was also edited by Axelson, but it did not address the voyage from the coast of Mozambique to India and back. That shortfall has been avoided in this valuable new edition, which also contains other useful features. The anonymous diary commences with da Gamma's ship leaving Portugal and ceases somewhere off Gabon Axelson addresses why this is so in his long and highly informative introduction, which is the true value added in this new edition of the diary. Axelson uses the introduction to contextualize the diary and explore the problems associated with trying to determine the exact nature of da Gamma's ship, voyage, and the like. The translation itself is new, and the diary recounts in brief detail this epic voyage from Portugal, around the Cape Horn, and on to India. It also includes much of the return voyage. That discussion is further enriched by a number of high quality colour and monochrome illustrations and three appendices. The first appendix addresses the question of locating in the present the landing point at Natal as described in the diary. Appendix 2 gives a brief synopsis of da Gamma's life following his 1497-1499 voyage. Appendix 3 addresses the Portuguese epic poem 05 Lvsiados de Lvis de Camâs (1572), and a number of lesser known South African poems influenced by the da Gamma epic tale. This last appendix is clearly the most novel its utility was not immediately apparent to this reader but no doubt it will appeal to others, and it is not without its own utility. That observation aside, I found this to be a very valuable little book. Experts will find it a lovely addition to their library and novices will discover it to be an enjoyable, accessible, and engaging account. It is certainly a good buy for most research or university libraries.


Rationale: Short term β-adrenergic stimulation promotes contractility in response to stress, but is ultimately detrimental in the failing heart due to accrual of cardiomyocyte death. Endogenous myocardial repair may partially offset cardiomyocyte losses, but consequences of long term β-adrenergic drive upon myocardial repair and regeneration are unknown. Objective: Modest recovery of cardiac contractility following long term β-adrenergic blockade in the clinical setting may depend, in part, upon restoration of endogenous repair therefore we sought to determine the relationship between β-adrenergic activity and regulation of cardiac progenitor cell (CPC) function and influence upon myocardial repair. Methods and results: Mouse and human CPCs express only β2 adrenergic receptor (β2-AR) in conjunction with stem cell marker c-kit. Activation of β2-AR signaling promotes proliferation associated with increased Akt phosphorylation, up-regulation of eNOS and cyclin D1, and decreased levels of GRK2. Conversely, silencing of β2-AR expression or treatment with β2-antagonist ICI 118, 551 impairs proliferation and survival. β1-AR expression in CPC is induced by differentiation stimuli, sensitizing CPC to isoproterenol-induced cell death that is abrogated by the β1-AR specific antagonist metoprolol. Efficacy of β1-AR blockade by metoprolol to increase CPC survival and proliferation was confirmed in vivo by adoptive transfer of CPC into failing mouse myocardium, concomitant with increased ejection fraction, fractional shortening and hemodynamic performance. Conclusions: β-adrenergic stimulation promotes expansion and survival of CPCs through β2-AR, but acquisition of β1-AR upon commitment to the myocyte lineage results in loss of early myocyte precursors and ineffective myocardial repair. Thus, β1-AR-specific blockade is likely to provide for enhanced CPC participation in recovery of function in the failing heart.


Memory B cells (MBCs) are rapidly activated upon Ag re-exposure in vivo, but the precise requirements for this process are still elusive. To address these requirements, T cell-independent reactivation of MBCs against virus-like particles was analyzed. As few as 25 MBCs are sufficient for a measurable Ab response after adoptive transfer. We found that MBCs were reactivated upon antigenic challenge to normal levels after depletion of macrophages, CD11c + dendritic cells, and matured follicular dendritic cells. Furthermore , MBC responses were possible in TNF/lymphotoxin a double-deficient mice after partial normalization of lymphoid architecture by means of long-term reconstitution with wild-type bone marrow. Activation did not occur when chimeric mice, which still lack all lymph nodes and Peyer's patches, were splenectomized prior to MBC transfer. Together with our finding that MBC responses are weak when Ag was administered within minutes after adoptive MBC transfer, these results strongly suggest that MBCs have to occupy specific niches within secondary lymphoid tissue to become fully Ag-responsive. We provide clear evidence that MBCs are not preferentially resident within the splenic marginal zones and show that impaired homing to lymphoid follicles resulted in significantly diminished activation, suggesting that reactivation of MBCs occurred inside lymphoid follicles. Furthermore, comparison of virus-specific MBC T cell-independent reactivation versus primary T cell-independent type II B cell activation revealed unique requirements of MBC activation. I mmunological memory, the ability to respond rapidly and effectively to Ag upon re-exposure after initial encounter, is the defining feature of adaptive immunity. Memory is an emergent property that extends in increased precursor frequencies of Ag-specific B and T cells, long-lived plasma cells (PCs), pre-existing Abs, as well as memory lymphocytes with functional properties different from those of their naive precursors (1, 2). Memory B cells (MBCs) and long-lived PCs arise from germinal center reactions and express somatically hypermutate Ig receptors of switched isotypes (3), although it was recently demonstrated that thymus-independent type II (TI-2) Ags can also generate MBCs (4). Humoral immunity is maintained by either long-lived PCs, which home to the bone marrow (BM) constitutively secreting Abs (5), or nonsecreting resting MBCs that are rapidly reactivated upon Ag re-encounter (6). It is still a matter of debate how longevity of MBCs is achieved and to what extent they sustain Ab titers. Different concepts to explain persistence of Abs with a given speci-ficity are presently discussed (7, 8). We were interested in the reactivation requirements of …


Perimenopausal women between the ages of 45-55 years, experiencing the physical, emotional, social and mental metamorphosis, are often overlooked when sexually transmitted disease issues are addressed. They are often not viewed as risk takers. Yet millions are as vulnerable as the young for sexually transmitted diseases. These women are being described as risk takers for a variety of reasons including a lack of knowledge, low condom use, society's unawareness, myths regarding their asexuality, the noninclusion approach of the media to sexually transmitted diseases risk for this group and the lack of readily available data to support societal attention and action. The need for inclusive health education strategies is suggested. Health educators need to be proactive and at the same time prepare perimenopausal women to become their own advocates.


This study examines the relationship between performance measurement systems (PMS), business unit, and profit and loss sharing (PLS) financing performance in Islamic Banks. Two elements of PMS were studied –strategic PMS and interactive use of PMS. Utilising the survey method, questionnaires were mailed to 256 business units of Islamic Banks in Indonesia, of which 99 were returned. Employing the resourced-based view, it is expected that the effect of PMS on both performances is indirect through organisational learning. Nevertheless, strategic PMS is also expected to have a direct relationship with business unit performance. Tested using Partial Least Squares regression, the results indicate that the interactive use of PMS is indirectly related to performances through organisational learning. Strategic PMS was found to be directly related to business unit performance. The findings highlight the role of PMS in enhancing organisational learning in Islamic Banks, which translates into high performance.


A micromachined electrometer, based on the concept of a variable capacitor, has been designed, modeled, fabricated and tested. The electrometer has an equivalent noise floor of , which is over two orders of magnitude better than the best line of commercial instruments currently available for room temperature and ambient pressure operation. As with all other capacitive MEMS applications comprising both mechanical and electrical domain subsystems, system-level equivalent circuit simulation cannot be implemented in most commercial circuit simulators for they do not accept in-line equations for a variable capacitor. This paper uses a voltage source representation method creating a nonlinear time-domain variable capacitor model in SPICE. We show that a circuit model can be realized for any arbitrary nonlinear capacitive MEMS element for embedded co-simulation with interface electronics. The results in the case of a variable capacitor based MEMS electrometer are in good agreement with experimental data. This simple technique is proposed as a method to provide the missing link in aiding design optimization of both electro-mechanical structures and sensor electronics within the same simulation interface.


This paper explores the wider significance that the development of telecare services has for social care in addition to supporting people to remain independent at home. It considers the impact of this particular development as a model for change management and as a model for developing a social care workforce 'fit for the future'. The paper takes a whole‐systems, integrated approach to service development and highlights important issues such as infrastructure, management, the capacity to innovate and workforce development. The paper emphasises that the development of new skills and new ways of thinking are even more important than the technology itself and that partnership is an essential ingredient for success. The context and content of this paper are informed and influenced by the experience of developing a new worker role, the assistive technology support worker, in Norfolk; and from the experience of designing and implementing a successful county‐wide technology‐based service.


The fate of [14C]glutamate and [14C]aspartate in rat cerebral cortical slices was followed quantitatively by means of the previously described automatic scanning technique of paper radio-chromatograms, in the presence and absence of non-radiocative glucose, and in the case of [14C]glutamate, also of the following non-radioactive tricarboxylic cycle acids: pyruvate, citrate, α-oxoglutarate, malate, oxalo-acetate and succinate. Both amino-acids were readily oxidized to CO2, glutamate increasing, aspartate not affecting the rate of endogenous oxygen uptake of the tissue. In addition the following metabolites accumulated: (a) From glutamate: aspartate, glutamine and γ-aminobutyrate, in order of decreasmg amounts. (b) From aspartate: glutamate, malate and citrate, in order of decreasmg amounts, with traces of glutamine, γ aminobutyrate and lactate. The presence of non-radioactive glucose as co-substrate caused the following effects. 1. On glutamate-.The total production of 14CO2aswell as the oxygen uptake increased. This indicated that glucose oxidation had not replaced glutamate oxidation, but actually caused its stimulation. The conversion into glutamine was increased by a factor of 3, an effect similar to that caused by K+ ions. The conversion into aspartate was decreased by a factor of 4. The accumulation of intracellular glutamate was much enhanced. 2. On aspartate: both 14CO2 production and oxygen uptake were stimulated, indicating that, as in the case of glutamate, glucose oxidation not only had not replaced the oxidation of amino-acid, but stimulated it. The production of glutamate, glutamine, γ-aminobutyrate and lactate was considerably increased while that of malate and citrate was unaffected. The following effects on glutamate metabolism were noted in the presence of non-radioactive tricarboxylic cycle acids: None of the acids affected 14CO2 production except α-oxoglutarate which caused a decrease of over half. This decrease was shown to be due to a dilution of [14C]glutamate through equilibration with non-radioactive α-oxoglutarate; the latter acquired about half of the radioactivity of the [14C]glutarnate added during the incubation. Pyruvate, like glucose, decreased the conversion to aspartate and increased glutamine formation, the latter, however, to a much lower degree than glucose. It also enhanced the accumulation of intracellular glutamate. Citrate, succinate, malate and oxaloacetate, particularly the latter two co-substrates, repressed the formation of [14C]glutamine, but had no other effect on the pattern of distiibution of the metabolites formed from glutamate and on the permeability of this amino-acid into the cell.


Although bovine auricular pavilion has been considered to have large surface vessels, descriptions of its vascularization are scarce. Notwithstanding this region has been used as an alternative route of administration of drugs. With help of an Anatomical specimen, arteriography and dissection have revealed a vast vascular network in the auricle. In this sense, once considered, this knowledge is capable of minimizing prospective complications from the unsuitable use of this region for therapeutic and anesthetic procedures. This study aimed to standardize and describe the arteriography of bovine auricular pavilion in order to acquire a greater knowledge about the local vasculature. Five steers, about one-yearold and weighing about 200 kg, were used, among which three Holstein x Gir crossbred and two Gir purebred. None had lesions in the ear. Of these, two animals were submitted to the standardization of procedures for arteriographies; two others underwent the examination itself. Another bovine, from necroscopy, was subjected to dissection of the ear. The arteriographic images and anatomic dissection pictures were compared to describe anatomical relationships. Arteriography enabled the visualization of lateral, lateral intermediate, intermediate, medial intermediate auricular branches, as well as the medial auricular branch. Conversely, the dissection of the superficial cervicoauricular muscle, between the auricular pavilion and the cornual process base, indicated a poor subcutaneous vascularization of this region, contrasting the rich vascularization near the auricular pavilion. The auricular pavilion arteriography identified a complex vascular network, which in terms of a practical application precludes the administration of slow-absorption drugs in this area. Nevertheless, the dissection images showed the poor subcutaneous vascularization of superficial cervicoauricular muscle surrounding area, making this site more favorable for the administration of long-acting substances.


A simulated loss-of-coolant accident was performed with a full-length test bundle of pressurized water reactor fuel rods. This second experiment of the program produced peak fuel cladding temperatures of 1148K (1607/sup 0/F) and resulted in six ruptured fuel rods. Test data and initial results from the experiment are presented here in the form of photographs and graphical summaries. These results are also compared with the preceding prototypic thermal-hydraulic test results and with computer model test predictions.


Many bacteria are acquiring more resistance to usual treatments worldwide, to the point that the possible advent of pathogens resistant to the entire current arsenal is a true concern. Therefore, there is an urgent need for finding new effective antibacterial drugs. Associated to data mining methods, in silico ligand-based drug design techniques may extract the most relevant molecular features and eventually lead to the discovery of innovative potent antibacterial molecules. In this work, we use feature selection techniques to build molecular filters with demonstrated ability to discriminate between antibacterial and non-antibacterial small molecules. A very large number of molecular properties translated into molecular descriptors, being simultaneously diverse and redundant, were processed using various feature selection techniques. It is shown that this approach was efficient in decreasing the models complexity by identifying most relevant features for antibacterial activity. For reducing the number of considered descriptors, we have trained multiple machine learning algorithms until resulting models performance in virtual screening could not be optimized further. We also discuss the interest of using log-linear analysis to improve our data-driven process and to increase the chance to predict efficiently new antibacterials.


Classicalons are self-bound classical field configurations, which include black holes in general relativity. In quantum theory, they are described by condensates of many soft quanta. In this work, their decay properties are studied in arbitrary dimensions. It is found that generically the decays of other classicalons are enhanced compared to pure graviton condensates, i.e. black holes. The evaporation of higher dimensional graviton condensates turns out to match Hawking radiation solely due to nonlinearites captured by the classicalon picture. Although less stable than black holes, all self-bound condensates are shown to be stable in the limit of large mass. Like for black holes, the effective coupling always scales as the inverse of the number of constituents, indicating that these systems are at critical points of quantum phase transitions. Consequences for cosmology, astro-and collider physics are briefly discussed.


This article sets out to reveal the lack of standardisation and rigour in the field of translation assessment and its implications on candidates for translator's certification or recruitment examinations. A brief review of translation assessment literature is followed by a practical analysis of the information provided to candidates in three different examination procedures: examinations for the certification as a Sworn Translator, organised by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs; examinations for the Chartered Institute of Linguists "Diploma in Translation;" and recruitment competitions for translators in the European Commission.
Received: 30-07-08/ Accepted: 15-01-09
How to reference this article:
Ordonez Lopez, P. (2009). La evaluación de traductores e intérpretes jurados. Revisión teórica y análisis del tratamiento informativo de los candidatos a pruebas de acreditación y selección. Íkala. 14(1), pp.59-81.


Consumer behaviour is a complex phenomenon which is evolving according to the time, situations, demographic characteristics of individuals, personality traits, cultural influences etc. The personality of individuals is a unique dynamic organisation of the characteristics of a particular person, physical and psychological, which influence behaviour and responses to the social and physical environment. It gives the impression that consumer buying is always influenced by their personality. Therefore, many marketers make use of personality traits in the advertisement of products and at the same time they enhance their marketing strategy. The marketers always designed different products and target specific market segments which commonly addressed on individual's personality traits. The individual's few personality traits influence consumer for impulsive buying behaviour. The aim of present research is to study the personality traits influence on consumer impulsive buying behaviour as it will help to create opportunities of doing business and dealing with customers. The objectives of this research are: (1) to investigate the influence of personality traits on consumer impulsive buying behaviour, and (2) to identify the role of gender and their personality traits influence on consumer impulsive buying behaviour. To fulfill the purpose of the study, the researchers randomly collected sample and divided them on the basis of gender; 60 males and 60 females. Data were collected from Delhi and NCR region. The data were analysed using statistical applications such as correlation and 't' Test. The result was revealed that the common personality traits have a significant relationship with impulsive buying behviour that is psychoticism in the case of male and female. The role of gender has significant differences in impulsive buying behaviour. The man showed more impulsive buying behaviour compare to women.


OBJECTIVE
Adrenal adenomas are frequently picked up incidentally on cross-sectional imaging and are known to have a classic imaging appearance on CT and MRI. However, not all adrenal adenomas have this typical radiologic appearance. Our aim is to present the radiological features of atypical adrenocortical adenomas with pathological correlation.

METHODS
All the imaging from the pathologically proven adrenal adenoma cases in our hospital (Tallaght University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland) database (from 2004 to 2019) was reviewed. 8 out of 48 cases (16%) had an atypical radiological appearance and were selected for presentation.

RESULTS
Eight cases demonstrated atypical radiological features including heterogeneous density, incomplete washout on post-contrast imaging, the presence of macroscopic fat and calcification. Lipomatous metaplasia was present in two of the cases pathologically.

CONCLUSION
Adrenocortical adenomas are the most common adrenal mass encountered on CT, however, may not always have classic imaging features. Radiologists should be familiar with both the typical and atypical imaging manifestations of these benign adrenal lesions.

ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE
This paper comprehensively describes the atypical features of adrenocortical adenomas with case examples and radiologic-pathologic correlation. Guidelines and an approach to the work-up of adrenal lesions with atypical appearances are also provided.


FOR a decade, American foreign policy in the field of atomic energy has energetically supported the transfer of uranium, information, equipment and complete reactors to many countries abroad. Has this Atoms for Peace Program unwittingly contributed to the development of an atomic-weapon capability throughout the world and thereby encouraged nuclear prolifera tion? This basic question has been brought into focus by the Red Chinese nuclear explosions and by the realization that several countries now have the necessary knowledge, materials and tech nicians to make nuclear weapons if they want to. Since 1946, American policy has been based on a recognition of the fact that atomic energy is capable of both peaceful and military uses and that certain of the processes used in its develop ment are essentially the same regardless of the final application. Early in the postwar period, then, it became our avowed pur pose to establish some international control of the development of atomic energy to assure its peaceful use and, in particular, to limit and perhaps ultimately eliminate any military use. In its continuing effort to make the atom benign through inter national action, American policy has gone through two distinct phases in the past 20 years. The first phase was established and governed by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which placed an embargo on the export of nuclear information and materials. In the same year the United States brought before the United Nations the proposals formulated by Bernard Baruch for inter national control of atomic energy. The principal thesis behind these early U. S. proposals was that atomic energy was so danger ous in terms of its potential military applications that interna tional "ownership" and "supervision" were required. For example, the Acheson-Lilienthal report, which served as an important basis for the Baruch proposals, included the following state ment: "We have concluded unanimously that there is no prospect of security against atomic warfare in a system of international agreements to outlaw such weapons controlled only by a system


The main objective of this paper is building and applying the scale of innovative thinking among handball players to the degree and finding standards and levels of emotional thinking among handball players. There is no doubt that there are skills that individuals share, and nevertheless there are skills in which they differ as well, and the level of variation in possessing them is an important indicator of the success of some and the failure of others. Among these skills are those that are visible to the eye, and some of them are not apparent, as they are related to the secrets of the human soul. Thinking is of great player in accordance with the requirements of the game that the player performs, especially the handball player. Of which International, skill, and psychological in addition to innovative thinking that favours his ability to do better than what makes a difference. The matter is not limited to the cognitive potential, but extends that to include the non-cognitive potential, represented by the emotional skills that have a great significance in the success of the player. Players differ in their responses to different alerts and situations depending on individual differences. The situation that includes a challenge to the player may be threatening to another player, and this is why he encourages the first to deal with this situation and tries to solve the problem that he is exposed to and sees in it an opportunity to enhance himself and his appreciation and increase his sense of self-confidence and here the role of innovative thinking is prominent in these situations. The athlete needs to think when practicing sports as the many difficult and complex situations during matches and competitions necessitate him to have an appropriate degree of intelligence, and there are differences between sports in the degree of intelligence it needs, and handball is played from complex and team games that have a special character in terms of Schematic, which requires a higher degree of intelligence, must be demonstrated by the person who practices it, handball and other games that contain a lot of planning and legal elements, And there are sports that need a degree of intelligence, however Less because it takes place in one well-known format, and also for the quality of participation with the competitor, so the more direct competition between competitors, the more innovative the athlete needs to outperform his competitor, as the short seconds and sudden movements play a role in determining the superior in the sports competition, and for this he must be adorned. The athlete has innovative thinking.


The gaseous compound carbon monoxide (CO) has been identified as an important endogenous biological messenger in brain and is a major component in regulation of cerebrovascular circulation in newborns. CO is produced endogenously by catabolism of heme to CO, free iron, and biliverdin during enzymatic degradation of heme by heme oxygenase (HO). The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that endogenously produced CO contributes to hypotension-induced vasodilation of cerebral arterioles. Experiments used anesthetized piglets with implanted, closed cranial windows. Topical application of the HO substrate heme-l-lysinate caused dilation of pial arterioles that was blocked by a metal porphyrin inhibitor of HO, chromium mesoporphyrin (CrMP). In normotensive piglets (arterial pressure 64 +/- 4 mmHg), CrMP did not cause vasoconstriction of pial arterioles but rather a transient dilation. Hypotension (50% of basal blood pressure) increased cerebral CO production and dilated pial arterioles from 66 +/- 2 to 92 +/- 7 microm. In hypotensive piglets, topical CrMP or intravenous tin protoporphyrin decreased cerebral CO production and produced pial arteriolar constriction to normotensive diameters. In additional experiments, because prostacyclin and nitric oxide (NO) are also key dilators that can contribute to cerebrovascular dilation, we held their levels constant. NO/prostacyclin clamp was accomplished with continuous, simultaneous application of indomethacin, N(omega)-nitro-l-arginine, and minimal dilatory concentrations of iloprost and sodium nitroprusside. With constant NO and prostacyclin, the transient dilator and prolonged constrictor responses to CrMP of normotensive and hypotensive piglets, respectively, were the same as when NO and prostaglandins were not held constant. These data suggest that endogenously produced CO contributes to cerebrovascular dilation in response to reduced perfusion pressure.


As a physical activity, swimming has many sociological and safety benefits (Brenner, Saluja, & Smith, 2003; Rogers, Hemmeter, & Wolery, 2010). Past research has investigated different methods for teaching swimming lessons to children with autism and other developmental disabilities (Jull, 2012; Pan, 2010; Pan, 2011; Rogers et al, 2010; Yilmaz, Birkan, Konukman, & Yanardag, 2010). However, no research to date has specifically examined the impact of a visual activity schedule (VAS) during swimming lessons. Moreover, the focus of past research has been mainly on 1:1 instruction, rather than group instruction. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a VAS in a group swimming lesson. Three participants with autism and other developmental disabilities participated in 14 30-minute group swimming lessons taught by a qualified instructor. A single-subject reversal (ABAB) design was used to examine the effect of VAS on child cooperation. Skill acquisition was assessed by comparing the videos from the beginning and the end of the study. Social validity was assessed by surveying participants' parents about the perceived effectiveness of the VAS and their overall satisfaction with the program. The results showed no significant difference in child cooperation among the three participants between baseline and VAS phases, primarily because compliance was high for all three children during baseline. However, skill acquisition was observed across all three participants. In terms of social validity, all parents reported that they were satisfied with the way the study was conducted as well as the progress they saw on their child. The results are explained with reference to instructor training, generalized compliance, and the impact of group intervention.


The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a major health problem for gay men in the United States. About three fourths of all reported cases have occurred in this population, and the number is projected to double in the next year. In Manhattan and San Francisco, AIDS is now the leading cause of premature mortality in men aged 25 to 44 years who have never married. In a sample of a cohort of gay men enrolled in a San Francisco clinic, 2.7% of the men had the syndrome and 26% had related conditions in 1984. Antibody to human T-lymphotropic virus, type III/lymphadenopathy-associated virus was found in sera from 67% of the men, including 58% of asymptomatic men. Behavioral factors associated with an increased risk of AIDS include large numbers of sexual partners, receptive anal intercourse, and "fisting." The adoption of safer lifestyles is currently the basis of attempts to control the syndrome in gay men.


Human-Object Interaction (HOI) detection aims to learn how human interacts with surrounding objects. Previous HOI detection frameworks simultaneously detect human, objects and their corresponding interactions by using a predictor. Using only one shared predictor cannot differentiate the attentive field of instance-level prediction and relation-level prediction. To solve this problem, we propose a new transformer-based method named Parallel Reasoning Network(PR-Net), which constructs two independent predictors for instance-level localization and relation-level understanding. The former predictor concentrates on instance-level localization by perceiving instances' extremity regions. The latter broadens the scope of relation region to reach a better relation-level semantic understanding. Extensive experiments and analysis on HICO-DET benchmark exhibit that our PR-Net effectively alleviated this problem. Our PR-Net has achieved competitive results on HICO-DET and V-COCO benchmarks.


In this study, we present recent developments of models trained with the RNN-T loss in ESPnet. It involves the use of various archi-tectures such as recently proposed Conformer, multi-task learning with different auxiliary criteria and multiple decoding strategies, in-cluding our own proposition. Through experiments and benchmarks, we show that our proposed systems can be competitive against other state-of-art systems on well-known datasets such as LibriSpeech and AISHELL-1. Additionally, we demonstrate that these models are promising against other already implemented systems in ESPnet in regards to both performance and decoding speed, enabling the pos-sibility to have powerful systems for a streaming task. With these additions, we hope to expand the usefulness of the ESPnet toolkit for the research community and also give tools for the ASR industry to deploy our systems in realistic and production environments.


Expenditure rules present a number of features in terms of simplicity, transparency, monitoring and accountability that make them particularly appealing relative to other types of rules and may substantially contribute to an improved fiscal policy making. They also show an appropriate balance between budgetary discipline and macroeconomic stabilization. In turn, they have represented a cornerstone in the fiscal strategy adopted by some EU Member States to sustain successful episodes of fiscal consolidation over the last decades. However, their final effectiveness to promote fiscal discipline depend on a number of design issues such as the appropriate target definition, the time horizon of the rule, the existence of well defined corrective mechanisms, and a suitable coverage both in terms of budgetary items (i.e. spending categories excluded from the coverage) and government layers. Since spending norms only focus on the expenditure side of the budget they need to be supplemented by other types of rules and arrangements (e.g. controls over tax expenditure) to ensure a proper functioning. Last but not least, the design of national spending rules should ensure that government spending developments are in line with the expenditure benchmark included in the reformed SGP and effectively sustain the achievement of the MTOs.


Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) provide a safer, cheaper and more efficient means of collecting and, with accompanying software, processing scientific data compared to conventional survey techniques. Marine Scientists are quickly discovering new applications for UAS that can not only allow them to replace survey tools such as manned aircraft and boats, but also to continue to open new avenues of research, providing the capabilities to answer previously challenging questions. Though assumed to be less intrusive than manned aircraft, there is extremely limited information on the potential for UAS acoustic and visual disruption caused by aircraft hovering or simply passing over animals and habitat. Anthropogenic sound in the marine environment can be highly disruptive and can alter animal behavior and vital life functions. In shallow coastal zones, boat noise has been shown to influence both vocalization rates and sound intensity of fish calls. No literature exists that has investigated UAS sound in any marine environment. The aim of this study was to provide preliminary data on UAS sound penetration characteristics into the water, as well as data on the effects of UAS engine sound on marine biophony. Using five separate UAS of various sizes and remote sensing capabilities, I flew at various heights over an autonomous acoustic recording system deployed in a coastal marine environment to learn how UAS sound penetrated the water and if it influenced vocalization rates of all nearby animals or call intensities of oyster toadfish. As hypothesized, lower altitudes and larger UAS had higher sound intensities, and the presence of UAS had no measurable impact on vocal production rate or intensity. I measured no acoustically-mediated disturbance from UAS missions in this developed coastal area. The observations of this study provide robust initial data and preliminary information on UAS acoustics in water and insight into their potential impacts on marine life.


There are disclosed olefin polymerization catalysts based on tetra(neophyl) zirconium and its reaction products with surface-hydroxylated oxides of metals of Groups II(a), III(a), IV(a) and IV(b) of the Periodic Table of the Elements, processes for their preparation, and processes for the polymerization of olefinic mono mers employing such catalysts. Neophyl zirconium aluminate supported on alumina is disclosed as the preferred, most active catalyst. The polyolefins pro duced are linear high polymers of high crystallinity such as polyethylene and isotactic polypropylene. Di olefins are converted into rubber by use of the process employing the catalyst. Ethylene-propylene copolymer rubbers can also be produced by use of the catalysts.


Objectives: Delirium in the ICU is associated with poor outcomes but is under-detected. Here we evaluated performance of a novel, graded test for objectively detecting inattention in delirium, implemented on a custom-built computerized device (Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU). Design: A pilot study was conducted, followed by a prospective case-control study. Setting: Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh General ICU. Patients: A pilot study was conducted in an opportunistic sample of 20 patients. This was followed by a validation study in 30 selected patients with and without delirium (median age, 63 yr; range, 23–84) who were assessed with the Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU on up to 5 separate days. Presence of delirium was assessed using the Confusion Assessment Method for the ICU. Measurements and Main Results: The Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU involves a behavioral assessment and a computerized test of attention, requiring patients to count slowly presented lights. Thirty patients were assessed a total of 79 times (n = 31, 23, 15, 8, and 2 for subsequent assessments; 38% delirious). Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU scores (range, 0–11) were lower for patients with delirium than those without at the first (median, 0 vs 9.5), second (median, 3.5 vs 9), and third (median, 0 vs 10.5) assessments (all p < 0.001). An Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU score less than or equal to 5 was 100% sensitive and 92% specific to delirium across assessments. Longitudinally, participants' Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU performance was associated with delirium status. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU has diagnostic utility in detecting ICU delirium in patients with Richmond Agitation and Sedation Scale Score greater than –3. The Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU has potential additional value in longitudinally tracking attentional deficits because it provides a range of scores and is sensitive to change.


Using the "matching extent" method,this article conducts a multi-perspective analysis on the compatibility of the investment strategies of the western region and MNCs,as well as national policies on foreign investment. Research indicates that low matching extent amongst the above three decision-makers is an important reason for the disadvantage of the western region in terms of FDI attraction,and this situation will not change in the short term. In addition,this article also sheds light on how to increase matching extent.


The formation of single charged drops in a uniform electric field is studied as a fundamental of "electrostatic liquid extraction". Theoretical equations are derived for the volume and the electric charge of the drop formed at the tip of an electrified nozzle that protrudes from one of a pair of parallel plate electrodes. The experimental measurements were performed in atmosphere by use of three nozzles (0.1, 0.15 and 0.26 cm O.D.) in an electric field range of 0-6 x 105 V-m"1. It has been clarified theoretically and experimentally that drop volume decreases remarkably with increase of electric field strength and also with increase of protrusion length (0-1.0 cm) of the nozzle. The theoretical equation gives a somewhat larger drop volume than that obtained experimentally, but it represents well the effect of protrusion length on volume. Experimental data of drop charge are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions whenthe nozzle protrusion length is relatively short. Although some deviations are found between the experimental and the theoretical values, the behavior of single charged drop formation is predicted by the theoretical equations presented.


Talent training mode is the primary problem of college education quality. The theory of school-enterprise joint innovation is an effective means to improve the quality of accounting personnel training. It is imperative to reform the training mode of accounting talents. This paper expounds the necessity of building a school-enterprise joint innovative accounting talent training mode. And then, we focus on the theoretical framework of the school-enterprise joint training model. Finally, the paper puts forward the basic strategy of building the school-enterprise joint mode.


Two series of experiments were conducted to clarify the collagen biosynthesis and isolation of type I and type III collagens of young rats that received various sex hormone treatments. Evidence has been presented that (1) estradiol-17 beta treatment induces prostatic atrophy and suppresses the incorporation of [3H]proline into collagen in prostate; (2) administration of estradiol-17 beta increases the collagen content in the prostate; (3) localization of type I and III collagens in the interstitium of the prostate is detected by indirect immunofluorescence staining; (4) the ratio of type III collagen to type I collagen in the gland decreases following estradiol-17 beta treatment; and (5) neither treatment with testosterone nor administration of testosterone plus estradiol-17 beta in precastrated rats shows discernible effects on these valuables. These findings suggest that estradiol-17 beta increases the accumulation of collagen into the prostate with different extents of influence on the synthesis of type I and III collagens.


Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the skeletal and dentoalveolar dimensional changes following surgically-assisted rapid maxillary expansion (SARME). Patients & methods: Thirteen adults who had been treated by SARME for transverse maxillary deficiency from May 2000 to December 2003 were evaluated. The SARME procedure was the subtotal Le Fort 1 osteotomy combined with pterygomaxillary separation and anterior midpalatal osteotomy. Dental study casts and posteroanterior cephalometric radiographs were taken before operation, after removal of expansion device, and follow up period. Nasal cavity width, skeletal and dentoalveolar parameters were measured pre- and post-operatively. Results: 1. Mean nasal cavity width was increased 12%(0~21 %) of total expansion after retention. 2. Mean maxillary interdental width was increased 70%(47~99%), 95%(84~115%), and 77%(57~94%) of total expansion in the canine, the first premolar, and the first molar region, respectively after retention. 3. Mean maxillary alveolar bone width was increased 66%(42~84%), 74%(42~94Ck), and 57%(31~78%) of total expansion in the canine, the first premolar, and the first molar region, respectively after retention. 4. Mean palatal vault depth was decreased 1.3 ㎜ (0.5~2.0 ㎜) after retention. 5. Mean interdental and alveolar bone width of the mandibular canine and intermolar width of mandible were slight increased as maxilla was expanded after retention. 6. There were statistical differences between preoperative and postoperative values of nasal cavity, all maxillary interdental and interalveolar widths, palatal vault depth, mandibular interdental and interalveolar width of canine(paired t-test. p 7. The maxillary interdental and alveolar bone width were decreased approximately 25% of total expansion by relapse at follow up period. Conclusion: In conclusion, most amounts of maxillary interdental expansions were acquired with the expansion of the maxilla by SARME. For preventing the relapse, approximately 25% of the overexpansion was needed.


Production data represent a source of information about the ongoing dynamic flow process in the reservoir. A proper analysis of these data might therefore give an indication of the relationships governing the fluid flow. Exploratory data analysis is one tool which can be used to extract the required information and to establish a statistical significance to the results. This paper presents a simple approach to examine the interwell communication and interference of a mature waterflood in order to identify and rank areas of potential improvement. Using this as a screening process we can identify areas with the best potential for further and more detailed studies. In addition some of the problems and limitations associated with analysis of production data are discussed.


ABSTRACT This longitudinal study evaluated the response to periodontal treatment by subjects infected with either JP2 (n = 25) or non-JP2 (n = 25) Aggregatibacter (Actinobacillus) actinomycetemcomitans. Participants were treated during the first 4 months by receiving (i) scaling and root planing, (ii) systemic antibiotic therapy, and (iii) periodontal surgery. Probing depth (PD), clinical attachment level (CAL), and gingival and plaque indices (GI and PI, respectively) were monitored at baseline and at 12 months, along with DNA-PCR-based subgingival detection of JP2 or non-JP2 A. actinomycetemcomitans. At baseline, PD, CAL, and GI scores were statistically higher in the JP2 strain-positive group than the non-JP2-strain-positive group. At 12 months, PD, CAL, and GI scores had decreased significantly for both groups, but the reduction rates of PD and CAL were higher in the non-JP2-strain-positive group. Among JP2-strain-positive patients in the baseline, patients who remained JP2 strain positive at 12 months showed significantly higher GIs than did the patients who had lost the detectable JP2 clone. Patients who remained JP2 strain positive at 12 months appeared to be more resistant to mechanical-chemical therapy than did those who were still non-JP2 strain positive, while the elimination of JP2 A. actinomycetemcomitans remarkably diminished gingival inflammation. Early identification and elimination of the JP2 clone of A. actinomycetemcomitans will enable practitioners to effectively predict the outcome of treatments applied to periodontal patients.


Standard ISO 7730, which is also known as European Standard EN-ISO 7730, provides two alternative methods for the evaluation of the predicted mean vote (PMV) index: a calculation program and a set of tables. In order to use the tables, the operative temperature must be calculated beforehand. The impres sion is given from reading the standard that for a relative humidity of 50%, the two methods are equivalent, i.e. provide the same value for PMV, from the same initial values. In this paper, examples are given showing that the two methods are not equivalent. Differences between them are analysed and a proposal made to introduce an amendment in the next revision of the stan dard.


UV and circular dichroism characteristics of duplex analogs belonging to the (A)n-(U)n and (I)n-(C)n series were determined to assign qualitatively the nature of conformational differences caused by 5-pyrimidine and c7 purine substitutions in such duplexes. Evidence is presented which shows that 5-pyrimidine substitution by bromine or methyl changes the duplex conformation of both series in a similar way, if at all. A c7 substitution in the purine ring affects the duplex conformation of the members in the same series similarly, but the conformational change appears to be different for the two series. To wit, it is proposed that in the duplexes the effect of the change (A)n leads to (c7A)n is an increase of the positive base tilt, whereas the change (I)n leads to (c7I)n causes a decrease where (c7A)n is poly (7-deazaadenylic acid) and (c7I)n is poly(7-deazainosinic acid), respectively. Poly(5-bromocytidylic acid) (br5C)n proved to be useful as a sensor strand for the intepretation of the spectroscopic data. The circular dichroism findings correlate well with observations made earlier on the interferon inducing ability for such duplexes, namely, duplexes based on the (c7A)n are inactive as interferon inducers, whereas duplexes based on (c7I)n are potent inducers. Furthermore, a 5-pyrimidine substitution does not substantially affect the interferon inducing ability, unless the thermal stability of the analog becomes critical, as in the case of (A)n-(br5U)n. Thus, this study provides the first evidence to link the interferon-inducing ability of a nucleic acid to a defined physical parameter of double helix, and reinforces the concept that interferon induction is dependent on the recognition of a particular spatial and steric organization of a double-stranded RNA.


of fetal distress (FD) in term nulliparous labour. There is currently no data on the timing and relationship of Doppler with the length of labour. Methods: Transabdominal ultrasound scans to assess fetal position and transperineal to assess head perineum distance(HPD) and caput were performed in early labour in 124 low risk women in a large London hospital 2015-16. The length of labour in those with vaginal birth was defined from 4cm in spontaneous labour and the start of syntocinon in induced/augmented labour. Labour and maternal characteristics, obstetric and immediate neonatal outcomes were obtained. Results: Of the 124 women, in 63, cerebral and umbilical Doppler was obtained allowing C/U ratio to be measured in early labour. There was no significant difference in maternal age, BMI or gestation between those where Dopplers could be measured and those where it was missing. The HPD was greater where the C/U ratio could be obtained(53.8mm; r45.4,58.2)compared to 46.9mm(r44.1,52.9) and lower cervical dilatation(2 vs. 4cm)indicating a higher fetal head station. The mean C/U ratio was no different in the NVD group (1.98,r0.98,4.22) compared to those with FD (1.65, r0.66, 3,13,p=0.426*). There was no relationship between length of labour and C/U ratio (r2=0.01, p=0.19). For FD deliveries, the relationship between C/U ratio and length of labour showed a non significant trend towards a positive relationship (r2=0.26,p=0.25). *Kruskal-wallis test #Spearmans Rank Correlation Coefficient. Conclusions: Cerebral and umbilical Doppler was more frequently measured at higher fetal head station in early labour. C/U ratio was not associated with time to delivery overall but in deliveries for fetal compromise there was a trend towards a relationship between C/U ratio and length of labour. This ongoing study is the first to explore the effect of length of labour on C/U ratio and delivery model.


Morality and religion can be seen as internally related value systems: morality is concerned with everyday, cultural and political values, religion with ultimate values. Under the impact of the work of Jean Piaget, not only cognition, but also morality and religion have been conceptualized and researched as following a developmental progressive path in a person's life time. However, the religious landscapes and value systems in Western societies have experienced changes toward a variety and complexity of developmental trajectories which pose challenges to the progressive developmental model and require new conceptual and methodological responses in the scientific study of religion and morality. It appears that our perspectives for understanding and our instruments in empirical research need an adjustment. Based upon James Fowler's faith development theory, but with reference to recent proposals in structural-developmental and life-span developmental psychology, I propose a model of religious styles which, in the first place, is the attempt to better account for the complexity of religious development, including its psychodynamic, interpersonal, life-history and life-world related dimensions. This model has consequences and includes also a perspective on moral development – which I shall explicate in regard to the attitudes toward the strange and unfamiliar religion and value system. Hundred years after William James' famous book, the question of the variety of religious experiences deserves new consideration and reflection, but the variety and complexity may have increased since then – also beyond North America and Western Europe.


This study analyzed the energy flow of eddy current testing and interpreted impedance signals in the light of energy dissipation and storage. The ac resistance, which is attributed to energy dissipation, was factorized into intrinsic ac resistance and frequency squared, whereas the reactance, as a measure of energy storage, was factorized into inductance and frequency. The intrinsic ac resistance and inductance reveal the interaction between electromagnetic field and material. It was found that when the skin depth is much larger than a specimen's thickness that the magnetic field distributes nearly uniform over the thickness, the eddy current-related quantities, i.e., intrinsic ac resistance and the reduction of inductance, barely change with magnetic property but approximately proportional to the volume of the test object, e.g., cross-sectional area of a unit length pipe, which enabled us to measure a ferromagnetic pipe and estimate wall thickness at the thick-skin regime, regardless of variation of magnetic property. The experimental study showed that, by taking difference of signals measured with two serially connected identical coils, coupled cumulatively and differentially, the coils' ohmic resistance can be eliminated. Moreover, the reduction of inductance due to the eddy current effect could be obtained by referring to signals measured at an extremely low frequency. The proposed method was numerically and experimentally validated. This study demonstrated the possibility and feasibility of measuring a ferromagnetic pipe's thickness at tens of hertz, regardless of variation of magnetic property.


Abstract Object-oriented modeling is an established approach to document information systems. In an object model, a system is captured in terms of object types and associations, state machines and collaboration diagrams, among others. Process modeling on the other hand, provides a different approach whereby behavior is captured in terms of activities, flow dependencies, resources, etc. These two approaches have their relative advantages. Also, object models and process models lend themselves to different styles of implementation. In this paper we define a transformation from a meta-model for object behavior modeling to a meta-model for process modeling. The transformation relies on the identification of causal relations in the object model. These relations are encoded in a heuristics net from which a process model is derived and then simplified. Using this transformation, it becomes possible to apply established object-oriented techniques during system analysis and design, and to transform the resulting object models into executable process models that can be deployed in a workflow engine. The proposal has been implemented in an object modeling tool.


We have recently shown that recombinant thiaminase I enzyme has cytotoxic activity against breast cancer cell lines (Liu, S., Monks, N.R., Hanes, J.W., Begley, T.P., Yu, H. and Moscow, J.A. Sensitivity of breast cancer cell lines to recombinant thiaminase I. Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology, 2009). Because thiamine is a cofactor in several key metabolic enzymes, including pyruvate dehydrogenase, 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase and transketolase, information regarding the metabolic consequences of thiaminase I treatment may increase our understanding of the cytotoxic mechanism-of-action of thiaminase I. We analyzed the metabolomes of the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line and the immortalized but non-malignant breast cell line MCF-10A with or without incubation for 4 days in medium containing thiaminase I at the predetermined cytotoxic IC50 concentrations (0.125 U/ml for MCF-7 and 0.25 U/ml for MCF-10A), with the addition of [U-13C]-labeled glucose in the final 2 days. By tracking the metabolism of [U-13C]-glucose using GCMS and NMR we were able to quantify intracellular metabolite pools and calculate both relative and absolute flux rates through several key pathways. Thiaminase I treatment decreased the amount of protein per MCF-7 cell by 30% (163 pg/cell to 115 pg/cell) while the total protein remained essentially unchanged in the MCF-10A cells (141 pg/cell vs 152 pg/cell). While both cell lines displayed increased glucose consumption and lactate production during thiaminase I treatment, these responses were greater in the MCF-7 cell line. Metabolite analysis revealed significant alterations to glycolysis and the TCA cycle in both cell lines, with glycolysis-linked metabolites being depleted in the MCF-7 cell line and changes in the equilibrium of TCA cycle intermediates in the MCF-10A cell line. The 13C- labeling patterns suggest that the MCF-10A cell line responds to thiaminase I treatment by increasing the catabolism of alternate, non-glucose carbon sources through the activation of specific metabolic pathways. In contrast, the MCF-7 cell line appears to have a less adaptable metabolic program and must down-regulate its overall metabolic throughput. Therefore, the possibility is raised that differential metabolic effects of thiaminase I could be exploited therapeutically. Supported by the Susan G. Komen For the Cure Foundation (JAM) and the California Breast Cancer Research Program (ADR). Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 35.


Image reconstruction is a key component in many medical imaging modalities. The problem of image reconstruction can be viewed as a special inverse problem where the unknown image pixel intensities are estimated from the observed measurements. Since the measurements are usually noise contaminated, statistical reconstruction methods are preferred. In this paper we review some non-negatively constrained simultaneous iterative algorithms for maximum penalized likelihood reconstructions, where all measurements are used to estimate all pixel intensities in each iteration.


Fibers are usually used in High Performance Concrete with a purpose to increase bending strength and ductility. Important properties are the peak value of bearing stress (strength) and post-cracking behavior of bended element. In the framework of an experimental part, Ultra High Performance mix compositions were prepared using intensive mixer. Short steel fibers and carbon micro fibers in amount of 1% by volume, as well as its combination were used for cement matrix reinforcing. Results of compressive and bending tests proved an increase of strength value in the case of use both steel and carbon fibers. Carbon fibers were decreased the effect of explosive collapse of the UHPC cement matrix, at the same time still brittle bending behavior was take place. Steel fibers considerably improved bending ductility thanks to a pull-out mechanism of steel fibers. The best results were achieved in the case of combined application of both carbon and steel fibers.


Deep learning based trajectory prediction methods rely on large amount of annotated future trajectories, but may not generalize well to a new scenario captured by another camera. Meanwhile, annotating trajectories for training a network for this new scenario is time-consuming and expensive, therefore it is desirable to adapt the model trained with the annotated source domain trajectories to the target domain. To tackle domain adaptation for trajectory prediction, we propose a Cross-domain Trajectory Prediction Network (CTP-Net), in which LSTMs are used to encode the observed trajectories of both domain, and their features are aligned by a cross-domain feature discriminator. Further, considering the consistency between the observed trajectories and the predicted trajectories in the target domain, a target domain offset discriminator is utilized to adversarially regularize the future trajectory predictions to be consistent with the observed trajectories. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed domain adaptation for trajectory prediction setting as well as our method on domain adaptation for trajectory prediction.


Here we present the case of a pianist suffering from unilateral focal hand dystonia for 10 yrs which affected his piano playing as well as other activities of daily life. The treatment applied was sensory motor retuning (SMR), a behavioral treatment for focal hand dystonia. Improvement was clearly achieved from the beginning of therapy. After 10 mos of treatment, performance levels were comparable to those before illness onset. The patient returned to high-level piano playing, and after 8 yrs of follow-up, performance remains normal.


We describe and use two different statistical approaches to try and detect low-frequency solar oscillations in Sun-as-a-star data: a frequentist approach and a Bayesian approach. We have used frequentist statistics to search contemporaneous Sun-as-a-star data for coincident, statistically prominent features. However, we find that this approach leads to numerous false detections. We have also used Bayesian statistics to search for evidence of low-frequency p modes and g modes in Sun-as-a-star data. We describe how Bayesian statistics can be used to search near-contemporaneous data for coincident prominent features. Near-contemporaneous data were used to circumvent the difficulties in deriving probabilities that occur when common noise is present in the data. We find that the Bayesian approach, which is reliant on the assumptions made when determining the posterior probability, leads to significantly fewer false detections and those that are observed can be discredited using a priori knowledge. Therefore, we have more confidence in the mode candidates found with Bayesian statistics.


Background Dog agility has become one of the most popular canine sport disciplines, growing annually with many owners enrolling their canines without an educated understanding of what the sport of agility entails. Various factors have been identified that can contribute to the injury of the agility dog, these include coming into contact with the agility equipment, the experience of the dog, nutrition, supplementation, handler training in warm up technique and participation in additional sporting activities such as flyball, and risk factors such as breed, sex and age of the dog have been shown to have an impact on the prevalence and type of injury that sporting dogs are at risk for, most commonly, injuries to the shoulder, wrists, hip and an extensive range of soft tissue injuries. There is a significant knowledge gap in the literature that describes injury prevalence, profiles and the potential risks facing the sporting canine participants in a South African context and that, as more and more owners are seeking out CAM therapies such as chiropractic, literature is needed in order to enable these owners and veterinary chiropractors to better understand the risk that the sport of agility entails. Chiropractic treatment can offer both treatment and prevention, from enhancing the performance of the canine athlete, allowing them to compete more effectively and for a longer period at national and international level, to improving the quality of life of the geriatric canine patient. Aim The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence and selected risk factors of musculoskeletal conditions affecting working canines registered in the herding breed category in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Study Design This study was a cross sectional, prospective survey of sporting canine owners registered with the KZNDAA. The study employed a quantitative descriptive design. Participants The study comprised of 70 dogs registered to 38 owners who are affiliated with the KZNDAA. Methodology Potential participants were identified on the KZNDAA membership list. These members were approached by the researcher at registered agility shows and invited to participate in the study. Once it has been established that the owners and the canines met the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study, participants were required to sign a letter of information and confidentiality and a consent form and were included as participants in the study. The research questionnaire was then given to participants, who then completed the questionnaire on site and returned it by hand to the researcher. Data was captured on excel and transferred to IBM SPSS version 23. A p value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and range were used to describe continuous variables which were normally distributed, while median and inter-quartile range were used for skew variables. Categorical variables were summarized using frequency tables. Associations between lifetime prevalence and risk factors were tested using Pearson's chi square tests for categorical risk factors, or Fischer's Exact tests for continuous variables. Results The period prevalence of MS conditions was found to be 8.5% and the lifetime prevalence 45.8%. Injuries were found to occur most often during play, followed by injury during agility competition, a very small percentage of the injuries incurred were due to direct contact with agility equipment. Shoulders and hips were the areas most commonly affected, with arthritis and DJD being the most prevalent type of conditions and muscular strains being the most prevalent type of injury. The breed with the highest prevalence of injury was the Border Collie(63%). Neutered males had the highest prevalence of injury (52%), followed by spayed females (30%). The 8-10 year old category had the highest prevalence of injury (30%), followed by the 2-4 year old category (22%). Large breed dogs in the 15-20kg weight category had the highest prevalence of MS injury (40%). Dogs participating in dog jumping showed a decreased risk of MS injury, while dogs participating in flyball showed an increased risk of developing MS injuries. Handlers with training in specific warm up techniques showed a decreased risk of having dogs developing MS injury. Reverse casualty associations were found between the increased risk of MS injury and dogs fed on Hills specific diets, dogs supplemented with glucosamine and chondroitin, and dogs currently receiving anti-inflammatories. Conclusion The prevalence of musculoskeletal (MS) injuries in agility dogs in KZN is low when compared to studies done outside of South Africa. Factors such as breed, age, sex, and weight of the dog influence the prevalence of MS conditions. Risk factors influencing the development of MS conditions include contact with the equipment, nutrition, participation in other sporting activities and whether warm up periods are allowed. A larger population is needed in order to further analyse the risk of injury in sporting dogs in a South African context.


Many studies conclude there is a strong relationship between moral reasoning and illegal behaviour amongst young offenders. However, there has been no research examining this relationship amongst people with intellectual disabilities. There is some empirical evidence to suggest that the relationship between moral reasoning and illegal behaviour may be curvilinear, such that lower moral reasoning and higher moral reasoning relates to lower rates of illegal behaviour and inappropriate conduct. Given this, and evidence that people with intellectual disabilities are reasoning at a lower moral stage than their same-age peers, it is proposed that some people with intellectual disabilities may actually be less likely to engage in illegal behaviour because they are reasoning at an earlier moral stage, while those with 'borderline' intelligence would be more likely to engage in illegal behaviour. This suggests that the relationship between moral reasoning and illegal behaviour is moderated by intelligence, and this has implications for the design of intervention programmes for people with intellectual disabilities, but further research is needed.


High level data parallel languages such as Vienna Fortran and High Performance Fortran (HPF) have been introduced to allow the programming of massively parallel distributed memory machines at a relatively high level of abstraction, based on the single program multiple data (SPMD) paradigm. Their main features include mechanisms for expressing the distribution of data across the processors of a machine. The paper introduces additional language functionality to allow the efficient processing of sparse matrix codes. It introduces methods for the representation and distribution of sparse matrices, which forms a powerful mechanism for storing and manipulating sparse matrices able to be efficiently implemented on massively parallel machines.<<ETX>>


BACKGROUND
Macrodontia is a rare dental anomaly, and isolated macrodontia is even more infrequent. The aim of this article is to report on a young male patient with macrodontia of the mandibular premolars.

CASE REPORT
We herein present a case report of a young male patient receiving pharmacological growth hormone therapy for 10 years, who was diagnosed with macrodontia of the mandibular premolars. The patient underwent surgical treatment at the School of Dentistry of the University of Buenos Aires and was followed-up for more than 3 years.

CONCLUSION
Macrodontia is a rare condition. Early diagnosis and treatment of this anomaly favors adequate formation of the dental arches. In the light of this case report, a review of paediatric patients who received growth hormone therapy during the tooth formation stage would seem relevant.


Traditionally, the federal government has been considered the major player in information policy concerning copyrights and patents because both come within its exclusive legislative competence. Increasingly, however, two trends are becoming clear: intellectual property policy cannot be considered in isolation from other economic and social policy issues and national governments are increasingly constrained in terms of their direct actions with respect to specific intellectual property protections by the government's wider commitments developed through the process of international trade negotiation. It is argued in this paper that the role of those who actually control the intellectual property created or used in Canada is becoming critical in developing a national information policy which actually achieves the dual aims of intellectual property protection: encouraging widespread dissemination of ideas while rewarding the creativity of authors. This theme is explored empirically in the paper by contrasting the current efforts of Canada's universities in the arena of patentable ideas and their current role in the realm of copyrighted works. The federal report 'Public Investments in University Research: Reaping the Benefits' (May 4, 1999), on the commercialization of university research, deliberately excluded copyrighted works from consideration. This paper describes the importance, complexity, and potential value to universities, and the Canadian public, of that copyrighted productivity.


Background: We aim to study whether working and non-working caregivers differ in their quality of life (QoL), and what the underlying factors of these differences are. Methods: The study population consists of informal caregivers in the LifeLines Cohort Study (aiming to include 165.000 participants in total), who participate in an additional informal care questionnaire. Within 7 months of recruitment, 582 caregivers completed the questionnaire. We aim to include 1000 caregivers. The following constructs were measured: QoL (EQ-5D VAS), caregiver burden (Caregiver Reaction Assessment), work, informal care situation, and support. (Preliminary) findings: 403 caregivers (70%) are employed (77% female, mean age 50 yrs), and 179 (30%) are unemployed (73% female, mean age 60 yrs). The mean QoL of working caregivers (78.3) is significantly higher than of non working caregivers (73.6) (mean difference 4.7; 95%CI .78-8.56). Multivariate regression analyses will examine possible underlying factors of this difference. Discussion: Working and non-working informal caregivers differ in their QoL, and should be targeted differently in interventions when aiming to improve their QoL.


Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a sustainable membrane candidate for liquid separation and purification. However, the inherent brittleness restrains its practical application, especially for a porous membrane with thin thickness and high porosity. We aim to prepare PLA membranes with controlled pore structure and dialysis performance with improved mechanical and thermal stability by incorporating polysulfone-graft-poly(lactic acid) (PSf-g-PLA) copolymer. Different from the common rubbery elastomer, the brush-like PSf-g-PLA copolymer with a rigid backbone chain and soft side chains was elaborately synthesized to toughen and modify PLA membranes via a phase inversion process. 1H NMR, FTIR and GPC were conducted to determine the structure and molecular weight of the PSf-g-PLA. The influences of chloromethylation substitution and the content of copolymer on the membrane microstructure, the mechanical and thermal stability, and the dialysis performance were investigated in detail. It was demonstrated that the modified PLA membrane exhibited a pure water flux of 54 L m−2 h−1, 95% rejection to BSA, and 65% and 18% clearance of urea and lysozyme, respectively. Besides, both mechanical and thermal stability of the modified PLA membrane were improved by incorporating brush-like PSf-g-PLA.


A series of aromatic compounds were prepared bearing two maleimide groups attached directly to the fluorescent cores. The resulting derivatives do not fluoresce until the maleimide groups undergo their typical thiol addition reaction, thus removing their ability to quench fluorescence, as shown by kinetic and spectral characterization studies. In this way, the title compounds serve as fluorogens capable of detection of small thiols or appropriately sized dithiols. Recombinant alpha-helical proteins were then designed to bear two cysteine residues capable of regioselective dithiol addition reaction with the dimaleimide fluorogens, thus acting as spatially encoded substrates that form specifically labeled covalent complexes. The efficiency of this in vitro fluorescent protein-labeling reaction demonstrates the feasibility of the development of a method for the fluorescent labeling of specific recombinant proteins.


Dysregulated production of hydrogen sulphide in the human body has been associated with various diseases including cancer, underlining the importance of accurate detection of this molecule. Here, we report the detection of hydrogen sulphide using fluorescence-emission enhancement of two 1,8-naphthalimide fluorescent probes with an azide moiety in position 4. One probe, serving as a control, featured a methoxyethyl moiety through the imide to evaluate its effectiveness for hydrogen sulphide detection, while the other probe was modified with (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) to enable direct covalent attachment to an optical fibre tip. We coated the optical fibre tip relatively homogeneously with the APTES-azide fluorophore, as confirmed via x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The absorption and fluorescence responses of the control fluorophore free in PBS were analysed using UV-Vis and fluorescence spectrophotometry, while the fluorescence emission of the APTES-azide fluorophore-coated optical fibres was examined using a simple, low-cost optical fibre-based setup. Both fluorescent probes exhibited a significant increase (more than double the initial value) in fluorescence emission upon the addition of HS− when excited with 405 nm. However, the fluorescence enhancement of the coated optical fibres demonstrated a much faster response time of 2 min (time for the fluorescence intensity to reach 90% of its maximum value) compared to the control fluorophore in solution (30 min). Additionally, the temporal evolution of fluorescence intensity of the fluorophore coated on the optical fibre was studied at two pH values (7.4 and 6.4), demonstrating a reasonable overlap and confirming the compound pH insensitivity within this range. The promising results from this study indicate the potential for developing an optical fibre-based sensing system for HS− detection using the synthesised fluorophore, which could have significant applications in health monitoring and disease detection.


The sum of powers of positive divisors of an integer, expressed in terms of the floor fonction, provides the basis for another characterization of twin primes in particular, and of prime k-tuples generally. This elementary characterization is deployed in a software test for prime k-tuples using Mathematica®.


A blind digital image watermarking scheme based on Singular Values Decomposition and FastICA algorithm is proposed in this paper. According to the favorable stability property of singular value, the watermark is inserted into the singular values of the image's Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients, which are regarded as two sources are mixed through the ICA instantaneous mixing model. Meanwhile, the FastICA algorithm is introduced in extraction procedure, through which the watermark can be derived efficiently even the original image and the mixing procedure being unknown. Experiment results reveal that our algorithm has great resistance over general signal processing, especially has the unique superiority over geometrical attack.


The increasing number of modernized GNSS signals and the availability of multi-constellation receivers are crucial for improvements of both precision and robustness of GNSS based positioning. However, the abundance of GNSS observations is not always useable as applications, using differential positioning or other techniques, may have limitations with respect to computational resources or communication bandwidth for reference data, and therefore require a qualified selection of a subset of observations for positioning. This paper is based on the work conducted in the project PREParE SHIPS funded by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) on the specific application of Maritime Navigation using Network Real Time Kinematic (NRTK) and will focus on the satellite selection algorithms of the Prepare Ships dissemination solution. This study is motivated by data rate requirements and restrictions of the VDES dissemination solution developed in Prepare Ships. The restricted data rate for dissemination of RTK observations via VDES implies the need for a qualified pre-selection of satellite subsets to match the available bandwidth and the requirements of the positioning system. For this, multiple algorithms have been developed and tested in static and dynamic scenarios. Optimization techniques for height (for vertical position), two and three dimensions were examined. Different weighting schemes were used. During the evolution of the satellite selection study, it was concluded that it is necessary to retain satellites with the highest elevation as this will empirically improve integer ambiguity resolution for position fixing. Also fixing a minimum number of satellites for each constellation was required to enable a fair weightage to the different constellations used. Such algorithms should prove to be very useful for research on various Network RTK applications which require/prefer limited bandwidth such as for cadastral surveying and mapping, for airborne geo-referencing of aerial mapping data using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and on the road and sea for positioning and navigation of automated transport. Additionally, these algorithms could also be extended to consider satellite visibility in e.g. urban areas (i.e. urban canyons) by inclusion of true surface information for more robust GNSS positioning in automated transport applications [1]. This could either be for pre-evaluation or for dynamically considering spatial information. While this work is a part of PREParE SHIPS, it is also motivated by a more general applicability of the algorithms presented for other similar applications. RTK correction dissemination with limited bandwidth requirements is very promising for RTK research and therefore this study on optimized selection of satellite subsets is of vital importance and could tap multiple opportunities of huge potential such as those involving NRTK or combination of Precise Point Positioning with RTK.


In this paper a 2-/spl mu/m CMOS, microprogrammable Signal Processor Core (SPC) is described,intended as the number crunching unit in single-chip general purpose digital signal processors. This core contains a 16 X 16 bit paralleI multiplier, a 40-bit multiprecision accumulator, a 40--32-bit extractor, an overflow detection unit, a format adjuster, and a three-port register file for local storage of 15 operands. Its 100-ns throughput rate makes it highly suitable for signal processing systems with sample rates up to 50 kHz (speech, telecom, and HiFi audio). The architecture of this unit is discussed in detail.The design approach, using full-custom cells, bit-sliced functional blocks, and a complete bottom-up logical verification of mask data, is also discribed. The Signal Processor Core contains 19 200 transistors on a 15.5-mm/sup 2/ area. This compares with a packing density of 1200 transistors/mm/sup 2/.


The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the possibility of correcting the appearance of a protruded or retruded chin through relocation of the anterior alveolar segment. Five patients with a protruded chin (group I) were treated by anterior repositioning of the alveolar segment, while five patients with a retruded chin (group II) were treated through posterior repositioning of the mandible. In the patients in group I, the convexity of the chin became less pronounced and the most anterior point of the soft tissue chin curvature (pogonion) moved superiorly. In the patients in group II, the convexity of the chin become more pronounced. The position of soft tissue pogonion was unchanged. The ratio of the segment-lip movement in both groups was close 1:1. The method is easy to perform and provides predictable results. For patients with a protruded chin, in whom reduction genioplasty often offers a poor result, the procedure described could be a method of choice.


We study a quotient Conformal Field Theory, which describes a 3+1 dimensional cosmological spacetime. Part of this spacetime is the Nappi-Witten (NW) universe, which starts at a ``big bang'' singularity, expands and then contracts to a ``big crunch'' singularity at a finite time. The gauged WZW model contains a number of copies of the NW spacetime, with each copy connected to the preceeding one and to the next one at the respective big bang/big crunch singularities. The sequence of NW spacetimes is further connected at the singularities to a series of non-compact static regions with closed timelike curves. These regions contain boundaries, on which the observables of the theory live. This suggests a holographic interpretation of the physics.


A limit-cycle controlled induction motor drive with a fuzzy controller has been designed and implemented. The torque and flux of the proposed drive system are regulated by the limit-cycle control technique. It follows that very quick torque response can be achieved. Since the dynamic model of this type of drive system is not easy to obtain, a fuzzy controller was developed and used in the speed control feedback loop to obtain good dynamic rotor speed response. The fuzzy algorithms in the proposed controller are systematically found from intuition and experience about the drive systems. The experimental results indicate that good dynamic speed performance can be achieved by the proposed controller. Moreover, since the rotor parameters are not needed in the implementation of the drive system, and due to the inherent feature of high adaptive capability possessed by the fuzzy controller, the performance of the controller drive system is rather insensitive to the parameter and operating condition changes. >


Young people today grow up with the notion that there is a drug to hasten recovery from practically every illness and that a healthy person can be even better off if he has something special in his diet or in his manner of living. The result of these beliefs and attitudes is a host of misconceptions about ways by which a healthy individual can be improved by a miracle drug, a special diet, a vitamin, a hormone, particular exercises, or some other procedure. There is no scientific basis for any such practices, although they are usually not actually hazardous. However, a number of drugs, including those allegedly capable of increasing performance, may indeed be harmful.
 Some athletes and their coaches, in their eagerness to excel, are now using a variety of ergogenic aids in an attempt to increase work output and thus improve performance. Such attempts to enhance physical ability have involved the use of nutritional, physical, and pharmacological agents.
 The subject of dietary measures to improve physical performance can be dealt with in a few words. There is no evidence to support claims that any special food, vitamin, or other nutritional supplements can improve athletic ability of an individual already receiving an adequate diet.
 There also is no scientific evidence that the use of physical ergogenic aids (breathing oxygen, use of massage, ultraviolet light, mechanical devices, and so forth) will bring about better physical performance. Oxygen cannot be stored in the tissues, and so its inhalation before exercise has no effect on performance or rate of recovery.


We have approached the scattering properties of cometary dust using size and shape distributions of non-spherical randomly oriented compact particles having non-homogeneous composition. In our model we have used inhomogeneous rectangular prisms in which the aspect ratio between the main axes and the index of the power law size distribution are varied. Two different compositions have been considered. The first one is silicate with carbon inclusions mixed with dirty ice, while the second one is silicate with carbon inclusions. We have obtained that both the width and the depth of the negative polarization branch have a clear dependence on the aspect ratio of the rectangular prisms and the composition. The best fits to the linear polarization curve of cometary grains have been obtained by a non constant distribution of rectangular prisms of the second composition where the elongate-shaped prisms prevail. Moreover, although the irregularity is not accurately represented by this type of distribution, curiously, its usage has shown that the scattering matrix element F34/F11 is very sensitive to the aspect ratio of the particles constituting the synthetic sample.


Over the past 20 years the growth of China's agricultural economy has been extraordinary. However, it seems unlikely that China will maintain self-sufficiency in grains by 2005 without substantial intervention. We develop a CGE model to assess the options available to Chinese policy makers. We compare the welfare effects of import tariffs and domestic support, and explore the potential of biotechnology as a means to achieve self-sufficiency through improvements in agricultural productivity. Our results indicate that the price interventions that would be required to maintain China's desired self-sufficiency ratios are considerable, and are unlikely to be compatible with WTO accession. The productivity improvements required are also significant, and likely beyond the current potential of biotechnology. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


We present a detailed study on the infrared structure of $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM and its connection to QCD. Calculation of collinear splitting functions helps to understand the structure and thus one can get infrared safe cross sections. We also demonstrate the factorization property that soft plus virtual part of the cross section satisfies and through factorization, we calculate soft distribution function up to third order in perturbation theory. We show that the soft distribution function is process independent that includes operators as well as external legs. In addition to this we compare our findings against the known results in QCD through principle of maximum transcendentality (PMT). We extend our analysis further for the case of three-point form factors involving stress tensor and find that it violates the PMT while comparing with the corresponding quantity in the standard model, observed for the first time at the level of form factor.


A global, systems-level model which characterizes the thermal behavior of internal combustion engines is described in this paper. Based on resistor-capacitor thermal networks, either steady-state or transient thermal simulations can be performed. A two-zone, quasi-dimensional spark-ignition engine simulation is used to determine in-cylinder gas temperature and convection coefficients. Engine heat fluxes and component temperatures can subsequently be predicted from specification of general engine dimensions, materials, and operating conditions. Emphasis has been placed on minimizing the number of model inputs and keeping them as simple as possible to make the model practical and useful as an early design tool. The success of the global model depends on properly scaling the general engine inputs to accurately model engine heat flow paths across families of engine designs. The development and validation of suitable, scalable submodels is described in detail in this paper. Simulation sub-models and overall system predictions are validated with data from two spark ignition engines. Several sensitivity studies are performed to determine the most significant heat transfer paths within the engine and exhaust system. Overall, it has been shown that the model is a powerful tool in predicting steady-state heat rejection and component temperatures, as well as transient component temperatures.


BACKGROUND Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) is a pulmonary syndrome wherein large volumes of phospholipid and protein-rich surfactants accumulate within the alveoli. PAP forms include primary (auto-immune PAP), secondary, and congenital. Nocardiosis is a form of suppurative disease induced upon infection with bacteria of the Nocardia genus. Clinically, cases of PAP complicated with Nocardia infections are rare, regardless of form. Unfortunately, as such, they are easily overlooked or misdiagnosed. We describe, here, the case of a patient suffering from simultaneous primary PAP and nocardiosis. CASE SUMMARY A 45-year-old Chinese man, without history of relevant disease, was admitted to our hospital on August 8, 2018 to address complaints of activity-related respiratory exertion and cough lasting over 6 mo. Lung computed tomography (CT) revealed diffuse bilateral lung infiltration with local consolidation in the middle right lung lobe. Subsequent transbronchial lung biopsy and CT-guided lung biopsy led to a diagnosis of primary PAP (granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor antibody-positive) complicated with nocardiosis (periodic acid-Schiff-positive). After a 6 mo course of anti-infective treatment (sul-famethoxazole), the lesion was completely absorbed, such that only fibrous foci remained, and the patient exhibited significant symptom improvement. Follow-up also showed improvement in pulmonary function and the CT imaging findings of PAP. No whole-lung lavage has been conducted to date. This case highlights that active anti-nocardia treatment may effectively improve the symptoms and alleviate PAP in patients with PAP and nocardia, possibly reducing the need for whole-lung lavage. CONCLUSION When evaluating patients presenting with PAP and pulmonary infections, the potential for nocardiosis should be considered.


The author studies the connection between semistable sheaves on that are represented as the cokernel of an injective morphism , where and are exceptional bundles, and semistable Kronecker modules . He obtains sufficient conditions on the topological invariants of the sheaves for the moduli space of semistable sheaves and the corresponding Kronecker moduli space to coincide. This gives important geometric information concerning the moduli spaces of the bundles.


Increased complexity of micro-electronic systems demands a need for efficient system level models. System level models can provide detailed architectural simulation results to make architectural tradeoffs in the early stages of the design process. For effective system-level design, there is a need for an efficient co-simulation model for precise and speedy system level simulation and design exploration. Recently, several object-oriented language based co-design frameworks have been proposed for hardware modeling at the system-level. In this paper, we focus on modeling concurrency in these frameworks and how it can be used to improve the efficiency of system-level simulation. Specifically, we examine the use of threads to implement process concurrency and compare against non-threaded implementations using function calls. This distinction is important because it determines the choice of the class (e.g., synchronous/asynchronous processes, blocks etc) to use for specification of a given system block or behavior. Although, it is a commonly held belief that usage of threads might slow down the simulation performance due to context switch overheads, our analysis and experiments show, that by judicious choice of the threading model, and by striking a balance between the usage of threads and function calls in a system model, one can improve the simulation speed. Hardware designs being inherently concurrent, it is very important to be able to express concurrency in co-simulation models without compromising simulation efficiency. Hence our methodology is based on analysing the concurrency in the model, before expressing them in a high level language. To demonstrate the simulation effectiveness, we present an architectural model of a system with adaptive memory hierarchy and demonstrate the effect of modeling choices on the overall simulation efficiency.