The hydraulic research has been greatly progressed as the Chinese hydropower projects have been developed in a fast speed since the 1990s. Main research activities are concentrated on the energy dissipation and high speed flow as dam heights reach 200m and discharge flow over 20,000m3/s or even to 40,000m3/s. The special parameters L/H vs. P in typical Chinese dams are compared with the world level. The paper presents main achievements are the layout and arrangements of energy dissipators in high dams with large discharge flows, especially on the dams built in very narrow valleys. Some cases show the different special experiences on high gravity dams, high arch dams and high rockfill dams.


The purpose of this study was to determine the income-consumption elasticity of household demand for sweet potatoes and yams in Puerto Rico, and to examine the nature and extent of the relationship between household consumption of these products and selected socio-economic variables. The analysis is based on data from a sample of 1,021 family records obtained by the method of personal interview from a cross-section of the population of Puerto Rico, during 1962. The method of analysis was the least-squares regression approach. Four basic models were fitted to the consumption data. The basic models initially included income as the only regressor, but were modified into multiple regression model by the subsequent addition of other variables. Analysis of all consuming households indicated an average income elasticity of demand for yams of 0.118 and coefficient of family size of 0.397. For sweet potatoes, the income elasticity and family size coefficients were 0.246 and 0.213 for all families, respectively. Low income elasticities show that even with dramatic improvements in real family income, the expected change in consumption duo to the income effect will be relatively small and largety overshadowed by anticipated decreases in average famity size in Puerto Rico. Variables other than family size and income had little or no measurable effect on household consumption of sweet potatoes and yams.


ABCC10 is an efflux pump that confers multidrug resistance to cells by extruding a variety of natural and nucleosides analogues using energy from ATP hydrolysis. The objective of this project is to understand the detailed relationship between ATP hydrolysis and drug transport for ABCC10 and how ABCC10's ATPase activity is regulated. For this study, we mutated aromatic residues to polar residues in the Nucleotide Binding Domains (NBDs) of ABCC10 to determine how these residues are involved in the transport of ABCC10 substrates. Prior, structural analyses of several bacterial ABC-transporters indicated that aromatic amino acid residues in NBDs are needed for ATP binding and ATP hydrolysis. In these studies, substitution of these aromatic residues completely abolished ATP-dependent transport. Prior work on ABCC1 has shown that substitutions such as W (tryptophan) to C (cytidine) or Y (tyrosine) to C (cytidine) decreased ABCC1's affinity for ATP, and ATP-dependent LTC4 transport activities. Analogous substitutions of W (tryptophan) residues to polar residues in the NBD2 of ABCC2 eliminated estradiol glucuronide and leukotriene C4 transport. Based on these data, we hypothesize that mutating aromatic to polar residues in the NBDs of ABCC10 will modulate the biochemical and cellular transport activities of this efflux pump. At present we have generated mutant-ABCC10 constructs by site-directed mutagenesis. Specifically, we mutated the aromatic Tyr747 (NBD1), Trp607 (NBD1) and Tyr1255 (NBD2) residues to polar cysteine residues. We then examined all ABCC10-mutant, wild-type ABCC10 and empty-vector constructs using immunofluorescence, ATPase assays, sensitivity and transport assays. We observed that the mutant ABCC10 proteins localized predominantly to the membranes. Further, ABCC10-mutant cells, except for the W607C mutant clone, showed less sensitivity than empty vector-transfected cells. Using accumulation assays we also demonstrated that substitutions of aromatic to polar residues, such as W607C and Y1255C, decreased the ability of ABCC10 to transport, docetaxel and Ara-C, however transport was not completely abolished. Using our ABCC10 mutants we found that aromatic to polar residue substitutions eliminated the stimulatory effects of docetaxel and Ara-C on ATPase activity of ABCC10. Taken together, these results demonstrate that these aromatic residues are involved in the ATP binding process and mutations of these residues cause of reduction in ABCC10 transport of docetaxel and Ara-C from cells. Citation Format: Ekaterina V. Malofeeva, Elizabeth Hopper-Borge. Mutations of aromatic amino residue to polar residue in NBDs alter the transport properties of ABCC10. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 874. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-874


The fundamental areal density limits of particulate tape media are investigated with micromagnetic simulations and a one-dimensional recording model, adapted to three-dimensional particle orientation distributions. It is shown that the viability of the particulate technology for tape systems continues well beyond the current 3 Gb/in2 and that 100 Gb/in2 could be obtained by simple optimization of the particle size, magnetic properties and distributions. We demonstrate that a particulate medium that uses 750 nm3 oriented particles having BaFe12O19 bulk magnetic properties could be optimally recorded with a ring-type writer and a reasonable deep-gap field of 16 kOe. With a 150 nm combined tracking margin and for a conservative BB-SNR requirement of 19 dB as used in current tape systems, we determine that such particulate medium would support an areal density of 78 Gb/in2. With the expected improvements in coding and signal processing, we predict that the same particulate medium would achieve areal densities above 100 Gb/in2.


Modern computing and interactions have become increasingly complex over the last decade, resulting in an online ecosystem with many more options for users, but less transparent information about their security and, in particular, their privacy. The resulting gap between security and functionality has given rise to various problems and concerns. While these problems\dash e.g., the spread of malware, data breaches on (supposedly) secure servers, mining of private user data on social networks\ dash might seem quite diverse, many of them revolve around the broader issue of what happens to systems when they get deployed. Systems that may have seemed fully secure in development often fail to fulfill these security goals in the real world, as adversaries may have capabilities that were not taken into account when the system was designed, and even honest users may interact with the system in unexpected ways. In this dissertation, I describe two areas in which this gap between the abstract protocol and the deployed system leads to security concerns that ultimately impact every user of the system. The first area considers what happens when adversaries have unexpected capabilities; in particular, we examine how to model sophisticated attacks on the security of a system, such as side channels and fault injection, and then how to design flexible cryptosystems that can tolerate such attacks. The second area considers the more benign scenario in which users, purely by virtue of their own decisions, may unknowingly cede some of their own privacy. In particular, we examine user anonymity in the Bitcoin network, which is a purely virtual currency that acts as an electronic version of cash. By combining publicly available information with minimal data gathered by hand, we find that an average Bitcoin user is experiencing a fairly low level of anonymity, making Bitcoin ultimately unattractive for criminal activity such as money laundering


INTRODUCTION
Psoriasis affects 1-3% of the population, in some people causing changes to the nails and joints in addition to skin lesions.

METHODS AND OUTCOMES
We conducted a systematic review and aimed to answer the following clinical questions: What are the effects of systemic drug treatments, topical drug treatments, and non-drug treatments (other than ultraviolet light) for chronic plaque psoriasis? What are the effects of ultraviolet light treatments for chronic plaque psoriasis? What are the effects of combined treatment with drugs plus ultraviolet light on chronic plaque psoriasis? What are the effects of combined systemic plus topical drug treatments for chronic plaque psoriasis? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to August 2007 (Clinical Evidence reviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this review). We included harms alerts from relevant organisations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

RESULTS
We found 122 systematic reviews, RCTs, or observational studies that met our inclusion criteria. We performed a GRADE evaluation of the quality of evidence for interventions.

CONCLUSIONS
In this systematic review we present information relating to the effectiveness and safety of the following interventions: acupuncture, adding calcipotriol (topical) to psoralen plus ultraviolet light A or ultraviolet light B, adding oral retinoids to psoralen plus ultraviolet A (PUVA), alefacept, balneotherapy, ciclosporin, dithranol, T cell-targeted therapies, cytokine blocking agents, emollients (alone or plus ultraviolet light B), etanercept, fish oil supplementation, fumaric acid derivatives, Goeckerman treatment, heliotherapy, infliximab, Ingram regimen, keratolytics (salicylic acid, urea), leflunomide, methotrexate, oral pimecrolimus, phototherapy plus balneotherapy, psoralen plus ultraviolet A, psychotherapy, oral retinoids (alone or with ultraviolet light B), systemic drug treatments plus topical vitamin D derivatives, tars, tazarotene, topical corticosteroids (alone or plus oral retinoids), topical Vitamin D derivatives, ultraviolet light A, and ultraviolet light B.


This paper presents the design and analysis of a novel distributed CMOS mixer for ultrawide-band (UWB) receivers. To achieve the UWB RF frequency range required for the UWB communications, the proposed mixer incorporates artificial inductance-capacitance (LC) delay lines in radio frequency (RF), local oscillator (LO), and intermediate frequency signal paths, and single-balanced mixer cells that are distributed along these LC circuits. Closed-form analytical model for the conversion gain of the mixer is presented. Furthermore, a comprehensive noise analysis of the proposed distributed mixer is carried out, which includes calculation of the mixer noise figure (NF) and derivation of the optimum number of stages, n, minimizing the NF. The designed mixer is capable of covering the RF and LO frequencies over a wide range of frequencies from 3.1-8.72 GHz. A two-stage distributed mixer has been fabricated in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process. Experiments show a conversion gain of more than 2.5 dB for the entire range of the frequencies. The dc power consumption is 10.4 mW.


In recent years, there is continued commercial interest in the cultivation of mushrooms with medical and pharmacological value. In Brazil, research and development of cultivation techniques, selection of strains to increase mushroom yield and production of bioactive molecules is needed as the industry is relatively young (1990's) and is focused on the mushroom formerly known as Agaricus blazei or A. brasiliensis. Recent studies have clarified the taxonomic status of these fungi and they are considered to be synonyms of A. subrufescens however the name A. brasiliensis is used in many publications on the Brazilian medicinal mushroom. In this paper we evaluate medicinal strains presently cultivated in Brazil, strain ATCC 76739 and wild strains of A. subrufescens from various countries for i) mycelial growth at different temperatures, ii) mycelium efficiency to colonize the substrate, and iii) mushroom yield under various cultivation conditions (spawn rate, light, cold shock). Most of the medicinal cultivars showed higher mycelial growth rates than the wild A. subrufescens. A temperature of 35°C was not lethal for the cultivars, but seemed so for two A. subrufescens strains. Cultivation experiments were performed using commercial compost used for A. bisporus. The efficiency of compost colonization was estimated by measuring H2O2 after 20 days of incubation. Cultivars produced variable concentrations of H2O2 (39-217 nmoles/g of compost) whilst low concentrations were found in the group of wild A. subrufescens (47-91 nmoles/g). There was no relationship between compost colonization and others parameters studied (yield, time to fruiting and sporophore mean weight). When taken as a whole, the group of cultivars differed from the group of wild strains for the time taken to first fruiting, yield and sporophore mean weight. Cap colour also separated the cultivars from the wild strains. ATCC 76739 grouped with the cultivars for the various traits analysed. Light and cold shock had no significant effect on the time to first fruiting and yield. Valuable wild material useful for productivity and breeding was identified.


The Internet is a huge repository of information. Web search engines are a basic tool for finding and accessing all this information. However, these tools might also be a threat for the privacy of their users. This happens because users frequently reveal private information in their queries. Web search engines gather this personal data, store it during a large period of time and use it to improve their search results and to increase their economical benefits. In order to avoid this situation, it is necessary to provide web search methods that preserve the privacy of the users. Current proposals in the literature increase significantly the query delay. This is the time that users have to wait in order to obtain the search results for their queries. In this paper, we propose a modification of the Useless User Profile (UUP) protocol. The resulting scheme has been tested in an open environment and the results show that it achieves the lowest query delay which has been reported in the literature. In addition to that, it incentivizes users to follow the protocol in order to protect their privacy.


The drug abusing structure has dramatically changed since 1989. While in 1989 the sniffing of the fluid drugs represented 98% of the global drug abuse, the most abused drugs were: heroin, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamine and its derivatives. During last 10 years situation with drug abuse has changed. Currently the most abused drugs: cannabinoides, amphetamines. The plant drugs (Datura stramonium, hallucinogenic mushrooms Psilocybe semilanceata, nutmeg--the seed of Myristica fragrans) combined with the alcohol are popular among the young abusers. According to an analysis of the phone consultations in our Toxicological Information Centre (TIC) we found out, that the number of intoxications with the plant drugs has increased five times during the last year (comparing with the year 2000), because of their easy availability, low price and quick spreading of information.


In microanalysis of mineralized tissues an x-ray spectral method possessed an absolute limit of sensitivity about 5-10 minus 15 g. A relative limit of the method sensitivity constituted hundredth parts of a per cent and locality of the analysis--several cubic microns. The x-ray spectral microanalysis permitted to carry out qualitative and quantitative estimations of content of elements in different structures of biological tissues. The data were obtained on content of calcium and phosphorus in compact part of human tubular bone.


Summary 1. Quantifying the effects of individual- and population-level processes on plant-community structure is of fundamental importance for understanding how biota contribute to the flux, storage and turnover of matter and energy in ecosystems. 2. Here we synthesize plant-allometry theory with empirical data to evaluate the roles of individual metabolism and competition in structuring populations of the creosote Larrea tridentata , a dominant shrub in deserts of southwestern North America. 3. At the individual level, creosote data support theoretical predictions with regard to the size dependence of total leaf mass, short-term growth rates of leaves and long-term growth rates of entire plants. Data also support the prediction that root‐shoot biomass allocation is independent of plant size. 4. At the population level, size‐abundance relationships within creosote stands deviate strongly from patterns observed for steady-state closed-canopy forests due to episodic recruitment events. This finding highlights that carbon storage and turnover in water-limited ecosystems can be inherently less predictable than in mesic environments due to pronounced environmental forcing on demographic variables. 5. Nevertheless, broad-scale comparative analyses across ecosystems indicate that the relationship of total abundance to average size for creosote populations adhere to the thinning rule observed and predicted by allometry theory. This finding indicates that primary production in water-limited ecosystems can be independent of standing biomass due to competition among plants for resources. 6. Our synthesis of theory with empirical data quantifies the primary roles of individual-level metabolism and competition in controlling the dynamics of matter and energy in water-limited ecosystems.


We consider an economic approach for spectrum operations in mobile networks. We present the investment function of base stations according to the number of FAs assuming the linearity of cell splitting. We show that there is an economic amount of spectrum which corresponds to the optimal number of FAs that minimizes the investment. We analyze the impact of the cost structure and the traffic distribution in base stations on the economic amount of spectrum. This paper is applicable to an economic spectrum operation for mobile operators. In addition, the national regulatory authority can use the economic amount of spectrum as the minimal amount for spectrum allocation.


We focused on the eastern Circum-Rhodope belt (CRB) low-grade sequence along the Mareshnitsa River Valley in Bulgaria. U-Pb detrital zircon geochronology revealed latest Late Jurassic maximum depositional age of a metasandstone. A major Jurassic zircon cluster in the metasandstone is consistent with a provenance from the CRB-related Evros arc, whereas the minor cluster of Triassic zircons come from the high-grade basement. The results indicate mostly latest Late Jurasic sedimentation proximal to the Evros arc (CRB) and minor detrital input from the continental margin of Eurasia (Rhodope). The results further support the presence of Mesozoic (Jurassic) oceanic lithosphere mantle remnants within the metamorphic basement of the eastern Rhodope Massif.


This paper describes the development of seismic design provisions of highway bridges will be revised in Taiwan reflecting the destructive damage in the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake. After the Chi-Chi earthquake, the revised seismic design force and other related requirements in the seismic design code for highway bridges are developed in Taiwan. In addition to the conventional force based design, a capacity checking level is considered for the near-fault sites by limiting the ultimate capacity to exceed the maximum possible seismic demand. The development of seismic design force and the capacity check method are described.© 2002 ASME


This article describes the use of comic books and graphic novels to foster text analysis, engagement and collaboration with year 7-12 students in the online, arts-based pilot project Comics Go Global. Using a well-researched framework for designing and delivering online courses as a conceptual basis, this pilot lasted from 2011 to 2014, and involved 5 educational staff and 130 students across 3 continents. Participants were connected via online tools including a 'locked-down' social network, discussion boards, blogs, and chats, as well as video conferencing, to establish a collaborative, cosmopolitan network. Their comic books were exhibited in a roped-off area of Second Life. Results suggest that the model developed for Comics Go Global had positive outcomes for students, including the acquisition of content knowledge and the development of skills such as collaboration, critical and creative thinking, and the ability to empathise with others. Comics Go Global stands an example of an inclusive, flexible model for those individuals and institutions wishing to explore the possibilities of transnationalism and education.


In northeastern Brazil, a region with extreme droughts and the smallest rainfall index in the whole country, water sources are crucial to ensure the survival of humans and nonhumans in this semi-arid region, known as sertão nordestino. Since the mid-twentieth century, classical cultural expressions focusing on this area have emphasized poverty in a desert of dry vegetation. Unlike romanticized portrayals of the backland in the 1990s, contemporary visual culture resorts to speculative and science fictional elements to reflect on possible futures amidst pressing socio-environmental challenges in the Capitalocene. This article examines how speculative and science-fictional elements in the film Bacurau (2019) by Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho and the sertãopunk comic Cangaço Overdrive (2018) by Zé Wellington and Walter Geovani configure human–nonhuman and life–death entanglements to rearticulate both the representation of these communities as backward or picturesque and their historical de-futuring due to neo-colonialism and extractivism. These Brazilian visual productions problematize the notion of sustainability as a linear progression of human-centric futurity. In a dialogue between feminist posthumanist (Donna Haraway) and decolonial (T. J. Demos) works and the visual productions, I offer the notion of 'vernacular sustainabilities' that decenters the human while fashioning new conceptualizations of entangled and diverging futures in the sertão.


Mathematics is the science that is structured and deductive object of study that includes an abstract form of facts, concepts, principles and procedures rests on an agreement, deductive thinking patterns, have an empty symbol of sense, pay attention to the universe of discourse and consistent system. Mathematics has a language and a well-defined rules, a clear and systematic reasoning, and the structure and the linkages between the concept is strong. The main elements of the mathematical work is deductive reasoning which works on the basis of assumptions and have a consistent truth. So that mathematics is known as a deductive science, which means that the mathematics starts from an undefined elements, axioms / postulates and ultimately lowering the theorem. Math formed as a result of human thinking which relate to the idea,Mathematics is the fruit of human thought that the truth of a general nature which does not rely on the scientific method that contains the inductive process. Mathematics is one of the most important auxiliary science and useful in everyday life as well as in supporting the development of human resources and the development of science and technology. Such formal mathematics taught since elementary school through college. Therefore, school mathematics learning should take place effectively and with quality.


The implementation of the convolution method for the numerical solution of backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs) presented in Hyndman and Oyono Ngou (arXiv:1304.1783, 2013) uses a uniform space grid. Locally, this approach produces a truncation error, a space discretization error and an additional extrapolation error. Even if the extrapolation error is convergent in time, the resulting absolute error may be high at the boundaries of the uniform space grid. In order to solve this problem, we propose a tree-like grid for the space discretization which suppresses the extrapolation error leading to a globally convergent numerical solution for the BSDE. On this alternative grid the conditional expectations involved in the BSDE time discretization are computed using Fourier analysis and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm as in the initial implementation. The method is then extended to reflected BSDEs and numerical results demonstrating convergence are presented.


The aim of this review was to present a condensed summary of the literature on X-ray microanalysis of dentin, including both energy-dispersive (EDS) and wavelength-dispersive (WDS) analysis. Estimations of concentrations by XMA of dentin should be regarded as semiquantitative values. The Ca level in rat odontoblasts was elevated in the secreting end of the cell body. In predentin Ca accumulated at a concentration of 2% that of mineralized dentin. In coronal dentin the peritubular areas were hypermineralized (Ca, P, Mg). Primary caries lesions showed a decrease of Ca, P, Mg and Cl, and usually an increase of S and Zn. The mineralized surface often present contained especially high concentrations of F and K. Considerable uptake of various ions in cavity walls exposed to filling materials was assessed: from silver amalgam, Zn and Sn, from silicate cement and glassionomer cement F, Al and Zn, and from zinc oxide-eugenol cement, Zn. The highest F concentrations following topical application were found with solutions of TiF4 and with the varnishes Duraphat and Fluor Protector. Dentin wall lesions adjacent to amalgam fillings exhibited considerably reduced Ca and P values, but concomitantly considerable amounts of Zn and Sn, that explained the increased radiopacity seen in some microradiographs.


Serine racemase (SR) is the only identified enzyme in mammals responsible for isomerization of L‐serine to D‐serine, a coagonist at N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) receptors in the forebrain. Our previous data showed that an apparent SR dimer resistant to sodium dodecyl sulfate and β‐mercaptoethanol was elevated in microglial cells after proinflammatory activation. Because the activation of microglia is typically associated with an oxidative burst, oxidative cross‐linking between SR subunits was speculated. In this study, an siRNA technique was employed to confirm the identity of this SR dimer band. The oxidative species potentially responsible for the cross‐linking was investigated with recombinant SR protein. The data indicate that nitric oxide, peroxynitrite, and hydroxyl radical were the likely candidates, whereas superoxide and hydrogen peroxide per se failed to contribute. Furthermore, the mechanism of formation of SR dimer by peroxynitrite oxidation was studied by mass spectrometry. A disulfide bond between Cys6 and Cys113 was identified in 3‐morpholinosydnonimine hydrochloride (SIN‐1)‐treated SR monomer and dimer. Activity assays indicated that SIN‐1 treatment decreased SR activity, confirming our previous conclusion that noncovalent dimer is the most active form of SR. These findings suggest a compensatory feedback in which the consequences of neuroinflammation might dampen D‐serine production to limit excitotoxic stimulation of NMDA receptors. © 2012 Wiley Priodicals, Inc.


Liver dysfunction secondary to severe inflammation is associated with the release of enzymes normally sequestered within hepatocytes. The purpose of these studies was to test the hypothesis that these enzymes are released, at least in part, to modulate potentially deleterious inflammatory processes in distant tissues like the gut. Human Caco-2(BBe) enterocyte-like cells were exposed to cytomix (IFN-gamma, TNF-alpha, and IL-1beta) in the absence or presence of human liver cytosol (LC). Nitric oxide (NO(*)) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) protein production were measured by the Griess assay and Western analysis, respectively. Cytomix induced the expression of iNOS and release of NO(*). LC protein (400 microg/ml) added to the basal compartment but not apical compartment completely blocked the release of NO(*) but only slightly decreased the magnitude of iNOS protein induction. Ultrafiltration and ultracentrifugation studies demonstrated that microsome-associated arginase-1 activity was the iNOS-suppressing activity in LC. Liver arginase required activation by a <10-kDa factor that was present in supernatants of cytomix-stimulated cells. The selective iNOS inhibitor l-N(6)-(1-iminoethyl)-lysine.2HCl prevented production of this factor. The biotin switch assay detected increased S-nitrosylation of arginase-1 after incubation with supernatants from immunostimulated Caco-2 cells. Serum from endotoxemic mice contained significantly greater arginase activity compared with serum from control mice. Furthermore, the ratio of mucosal monomeric to dimeric iNOS increased in endotoxemic mice compared with controls. Thus reciprocal activation of arginase-1 and modulation of mucosal iNOS activity may be protective because it would be expected to decrease NO(*)-dependent intestinal barrier dysfunction on that basis.


The oriental fruit moth, Grapholita molesta (Busck) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), is a major pest of fruit trees worldwide. Females oviposit on the young leaves of peach [Prunus persica (L.) Batsch (Rosaceae)] shoots at twilight, when light intensity changes markedly. Previous researches have shown that the oviposition response of this moth is guided particularly by visual and olfactory cues from host plants. However, the relative importance of visual and olfactory cues in their oviposition preference is largely unknown. As a crepuscular moth, how do choices change as light intensity drops rapidly from day to night? In the present study, through two‐choice behavioural experiments, the oviposition responses of G. molesta to visual and olfactory cues (alone or in combination) from peach shoots were tested at four light intensities ranging from daylight to starlight. Grapholita molesta showed similar oviposition responses to plant cues under 1 000, 100, 1 and 0.01 mW m−2 illumination. Olfactory cues from peach shoots attracted significantly more oviposition than the negative control, whereas visual cues alone did not. Furthermore, olfactory cues were more attractive than visual cues, and no significant interaction was observed between the responses to the two cues. Our findings indicate that G. molesta females mainly rely on olfactory cues to recognize oviposition sites, regardless of differences in light intensity. These results do not provide evidence for attraction to visual cues, but the possibility that the brightness of leaves might be used to guide oviposition is discussed.


A new paper by STEPHEN DINHAM, LAWRENCE INGVARSON and ELIZABETH KLEINHENZ outlines an ambitious proposal to revitalise teaching THERE have been a variety of (seemingly) simplistic, populist approaches to the challenge of improving teacher quality. These include "merit" or "performance" pay; payment by student examination results; raising entry standards to teaching; higher teacher pay generally; smaller class sizes; standardised testing; publishing "league tables" of school performance and sacking poorly performing teachers. These measures frequently lack finer detail on how they might operate, are not supported by evidence and represent an ad hoc, fragmented response. Earlier this year, the Business Council of Australia commissioned staff at the Australian Council for Educational Research to write a position paper for the BCA on quality teaching. Our paper, "Investing in Teacher Quality: Doing What Matters Most," was released this week as part of a BCA publication Teaching Talent: The Best Teachers for Australia's Schools. The report has received wide publicity and general support from the profession. Where the approach outlined in the BCA report differs from previous efforts in the area of raising teacher quality, and therefore student achievement, lies in the nature of the comprehensive, national, integrated approach that is advocated. What did the BCA report find? • The quality of teaching is the main driver of successful student learning outcomes. • Australia's teaching profession and its schools constitute an infrastructure that is critical to its survival in an increasingly global economy. • Every student deserves teachers who are suited to teaching, well trained and qualified, highly skilled, caring and committed to moving forward the learning of their students. • One of the main roles of leadership in professions is to build a framework for professional learning from registration to advanced levels of standards, and systems for providing assessments and certification for members who reach those standards. It important, therefore, to strengthen leadership in quality teaching at the wider professional level as well as at the level of the individual school. • Education in Australia is still highly bureaucratised, and it is time to question whether bureaucratic management of schools by state education departments is sufficient to deliver the kind of leadership that influences teachers' practice significantly or improves student learning outcomes. • Stakeholders are unanimous that the first step in achieving improved outcomes in education is to attract the best people into teaching. • Salary may not be a strong reason why current teachers have chosen to teach, but it is a strong reason why many abler graduates choose not to teach, and this is cause for considerable concern if we want our education system to remain among the best in the world. There is no justification for assuming from this that our society can continue to get away with not paying teachers what they are worth. Research studies also constantly confirm that salary and working conditions are the main reasons why many good teachers leave the profession. • Present arrangements in teaching do not encourage, reward or indeed require advanced professional learning. • It is clear that there is a broad consensus that action is needed to radically strengthen procedures for recognising and rewarding teachers who reach high teaching standards. • Who really believes that a top salary for classroom teachers of about $70,000 means we place sufficient value on teachers' work to attract the best university graduates? Who really believes that the typical office spaces in which teachers are expected to prepare and assess student work and carry out their business are indicators of an attractive and esteemed profession? • Attracting enough people into teacher education and attracting people of suitable quality are two major issues that tend to work against each other. Any decline in the attractiveness of teaching is cause for concern, particularly if this results in universities lowering entry standards to fill their allocated quotas for teacher education students. When decline in the attractiveness of teaching as a career coincides with projected teacher shortages, this increases the pressure for entry standards to fall. This is the situation we face at present. Entry standards to teaching must not be allowed to fall further. Rather, they should rise. • The next step is to prepare future teachers through teacher education programs that meet the highest standards. It is becoming clear that the most effective way of achieving quality and consistency will be through a system of national accreditation of teacher education courses. • There is a pressing need for a unified national approach to managing teacher demand and supply. • There are no cost-neutral ways to ensure that in the future Australia will have a teaching profession equal to the best in the world. But there will be major costs if we do not. Fortunately, there is broad public recognition of the need for better pay and conditions for teachers. This is conditional, however, on guarantees that it will be linked to sound evidence of improving teacher quality and professional performance. • Newly conceived career paths are needed for the teaching profession to ensure that teachers have strong incentives to engage in the type of professional learning that leads to high teaching standards and improves student learning outcomes. Salary structures for teachers need to be more effective as instruments for promoting widespread use of successful teaching practices. • Although there is strong agreement that teacher quality is fundamental, it is currently difficult to find evidence of coherent, concerted, coordinated policy efforts at state and federal levels focused on teacher quality. Accountability for ensuring quality teachers and school leaders is unclear and diffused. • Education policy needs to focus more clearly on what matters most to student learning - concerted, long-term policies and strategies to assure quality in the teaching profession. We know that good teachers matter, but we must start to act as if we really believed it. What does the BCA report advocate? First, a new national agency should be established with one sole function: to establish and provide a voluntary advanced certification system for teachers. (Initial registration is compulsory and remains the responsibility of state registration bodies). Second, this agency should be constituted so that it brings together all the major stakeholders with an interest in recognising and rewarding quality teaching. Third, the agency should offer certification at two levels beyond initial registration as a competent teacher: the Accomplished Teacher level and the Leading Teacher level. Salaries for Accomplished Teachers should reach a level that is twice the starting salary for graduate teachers. Leading Teacher salaries should reach a salary that is 2.5 times starting salaries. Fourth, standards at the Accomplished Teacher level should differentiate between what accomplished teachers know and do within each specialist field of teaching (early childhood specialist, primary school specialist, high school English specialist, etc). Standards at the Leading Teacher level should differentiate between what teacher leaders know and do to promote improved learning outcomes among teams of teachers. Fifth, the main purposes of the system will be twofold: to provide a basis for offering more attractive salaries and career paths to graduates and those who seek to change careers; and to strengthen incentives for professional learning and widespread use of successful practices. The report also called for national standards for teacher education courses, national accreditation of such courses and a minimum ENTER score of 75 for entry to all courses. It should be noted that the BCA report estimated that it will take ten years or more to reach a stage where 50 per cent of teachers have been certified at the Accomplished and Leading Teacher levels, based on the voluntary certification of approximately 10,000 teachers per annum. Contrary to recent press reporting and reaction, only a minority of teachers - no more than 20 per cent - would receive a salary equivalent to around $130,000 in today's value. This proposal does not call for or constitute a doubling of the teacher wage bill. Revitalising teaching What is clear is the necessary relationship between the development of teaching as a profession and the development of more effective systems for teacher evaluation and professional development based on profession-defined standards. As we contemplate strategies for revitalising the teaching profession and assuring the quality of Australia's education system in the future, the need for an independent national body with a clearly defined certification function has become imperative. • Stephen Dinham, Lawrence Ingvarson and Elizabeth Kleinhenz are researchers with the Australian Council for Educational Research Photo: iStockphoto.com


This paper illustrates our submission method to the fourth Affective Behavior Analysis in-the-Wild (ABAW) Competition. The method is used for the Multi-Task Learning Challenge. Instead of using only face information, we employ full information from a provided dataset containing face and the context around the face. We utilized the InceptionNet V3 model to extract deep features then we applied the attention mechanism to refine the features. After that, we put those features into the transformer block and multi-layer perceptron networks to get the final multiple kinds of emotion. Our model predicts arousal and valence, classifies the emotional expression and estimates the action units simultaneously. The proposed system achieves the performance of 0.917 on the MTL Challenge validation dataset.


Grid computing is a new paradigm for distributed computing, and service has become building block of grid applications. However, current approaches can not free developers from low-level laborious work when building grid applications. We propose a service-oriented virtual machine called Abacus Virtual Machine to simplify the task of grid application development. As a language level virtual machine, it provides a service-oriented instruction set to abstract the operations on the services of a grid application. It also virtualizes services and creates a virtual global system image for grid applications, thus services can be transparently distributed and shared. In this way, Abacus Virtual Machine hides the cumbersome underlying details from programmers and reduces the complexity greatly in grid application development


Remote sensing information has been used in studies of the seasonal dynamics (phenology) of the land surface for the past 15 years. While our understanding of remote sensing phenology is still in development, it is regarded as a key to understanding land surface processes over large areas. Repeat observations from satellite-borne multispectral sensors provide a mechanism to move from plant-specific to regional scale studies of phenology. In addition, we now have sufficient time-series (since 1982 at 8-km resolution covering the globe and since 1989 at 1-km resolution over the conterminous US) to study seasonal and interannual trends from satellite data. Phenology metrics including start of season, end of season, duration of season, and seasonally integrated greenness were derived from 8 km AVHRR data over North America spanning the years 1982-2003. Trend analysis was performed on the annual summaries of the metrics to determine areas with increasing or decreasing trends for the time period under study. Results show only small areas of changing start of season, but the end of season is coming later over well defined areas of New England and SE Canada, principally as a result of land use changes. The total greenness metric is most striking at the shrub/tundra boundary of North America, indicating increasing vegetation vigor or possible vegetation conversion as a result of warming.


Plant homeodomain (PHD) fingers have emerged as one of the largest families of epigenetic effectors capable of recognizing or 'reading' post-translational histone modifications and unmodified histone tails. These interactions are highly specific and can be modulated by the neighboring epigenetic marks and adjacent effectors. A few PHD fingers have recently been found to also associate with non-histone proteins. In this review, we detail the molecular mechanisms and biological outcomes of the histone and non-histone targeting by PHD fingers. We discuss the significance of crosstalk between the histone modifications and consequences of combinatorial readout for selective recruitment of the PHD finger-containing components of chromatin remodeling and transcriptional complexes.


Ligand-stabilized gold and silver nanoparticles are of tremendous current interest in sensing, catalysis, and energy applications. Experimental and theoretical studies have closely interacted to elucidate properties such as the geometric and electronic structures of these fascinating systems. In this review, the interplay between theory and experiment is described; areas such as optical absorption and doping, where the theory-experiment connections are well established, are discussed in detail; and the current status of these connections in newer fields of study, such as luminescence, transient absorption, and the effects of solvent and the surrounding environment, are highlighted. Close communication between theory and experiment has been extremely valuable for developing an understanding of these nanocluster systems in the past decade and will undoubtedly continue to play a major role in future years.


In a recent paper, Nicolas Bouleau provides a new tool, based on the language of Dirichlet forms, to study the propagation of errors and reinforce the historical approach of Gauss. In the same way that the practical use of the normal distribution in statistics may be explained by the central limit theorem, the aim of this paper is to underline the importance of a family of error structures by asymptotic arguments.


Stable charged heavy leptons and quarks can exist and hide in elusive atoms, bound by Coulomb attraction and playing the role of dark matter. However, in the expanding Universe it is not possible to recombine all the charged particles into such atoms, and the positively charged particles, which escape this recombination, bind with electrons in atoms of anomalous isotopes with pregalactic abundance, exceeding substantially the terrestrial upper limits. This abundance can not be reduced in the dense matter bodies, if negatively charged particles have charge -1. Therefore composite dark matter can involve only negatively charged particles with charge -2, while stable heavy particles with charge -1 should be excluded. Realistic scenarios of composite dark matter, avoiding this problem of anomalous isotope over-production, inevitably predict the existence of primordial "atoms", in which primordial helium traps all the free negatively charged heavy constituents with charge -2. Study of the possibility for such primordial heavy $\alpha$ particle with compensated charge to exist as well as the search for the stable charged constituents in cosmic rays and accelerators provide crucial test for composite dark matter scenarios.


An approach to improve the lifetime of air plasma sprayed (APS) thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) by modifying the interfacial microstructure has been reported. The laser powder deposition technique was employed to fabricate the mesh structure (with the same composition as the bond coat) at the ceramic–substrate interface. After thermal cycling test, the APS TBCs with the mesh exhibited a much less spallation degree (5%–10%) compared with the reference samples without mesh (>50%), implying that the mesh is effective in impeding the crack propagation along the interface. In addition, the effect of the mesh geometry parameters, e.g., height and spacing of mesh, on the spallation degree of TBCs was also investigated. Based on the results of experiment and calculation, the optimal mesh parameters were proposed.


Recent evidence shows that target low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol should be less than 100 mg/dl in patients with diabetes, and that even those with initially low levels benefit from pharmacologic therapy. Recent studies document that blood pressures lower than the previous target of 140/90 mmHg are beneficial, in addition to providing observational evidence against a lower threshold of benefit. Evidence that addresses the effect of blood glucose on macrovascular disease risk in patients with diabetes is reviewed. Finally, recommendations are made regarding systematic changes in healthcare delivery that will facilitate risk reduction strategies in diabetes.


This paper gives the technical characteristics of the Italian Committee for Research and Development of Nuclear Energy and Alternative Energy (ENEA) radon chamber and the operational procedures developed for testing radon and daughters measuring equipment. Runs were carried out under different experimental conditions defined in terms of radon and daughter concentrations, equilibrium ratio (F-factor), and aerosol concentration and size distribution. Stable radon reference atmospheres with known equilibrium factors were obtained using standard aerosols.


Despite the Asian financial crisis, there was still growing international interests by sponsors in China's infrastructure projects financed on build-operate-transfer (BOT) concession contracts. With the closure of the Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corporation (GITIC), foreign banks have become cautious towards new loan applications by Chinese companies and they were confused about government support and guarantees. Therefore it is important to analyse and manage the unique or critical risks associated with China's BOT projects. This is especially so after new policies were introduced in late 1996 when the first state-approved BOT project, the US$650 million 2 X 350 megawatt coal-fired Laibin B Power Plant (Laibin B), was awarded. The findings are reported from an international survey on risk management of BOT projects, with emphasis on power projects in China, with a discussion of the adequacy of the key contract clauses used in the Laibin B's concession agreement (CA) in addressing the foreign exchange and revenue risks, which include exchange rate and convertibility risk, financial closing risk, dispatch constraint risk and tariff adjustment risk. Areas for improvements to these contract clauses are suggested.


Diabetic gastroparesis is a long term complication of diabetes mellitus which could basically be defined as dysregulated gastric emptying leading to various pathological, biochemical and clinical changes in absence of any structural changes. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, bloating, epigastric pain, anorexia, weight loss and so on. For symptomatic gastroparesis prokinetic drugs like metoclopramide, domperidone, cisapride, erythromycin and itcopride are used. Itopride is currently emerging as a prokinetic drug of choice. There is also scope of surgery.


ABSTRACT In Sub-Saharan Africa, increasing numbers of children with perinatally acquired HIV (PAHIV) are living into adolescence. These adolescents face numerous unique challenges such as parent illness/death and years of medication use. Optimizing care for these youth requires an understanding of the factors that contribute to physical health, psychological well-being, social relationships, and quality of life (QOL). This mixed methods study collected quantitative questionnaire data from 40 Ghanaian adolescents with PAHIV (50% female, 12–19 years old) who received care through an adolescent HIV clinic in Kumasi, Ghana. The study also presents results from qualitative interviews conducted with 20 adolescents. Results from quantitative analyses suggested that a significant number of participants were not virally suppressed (67%) and participants reported barriers to treatment adherence, limited social support, concerns about disclosure and HIV-related stigma, limited resources, and lower than expected QOL. Salient themes from the qualitative analyses included limited understanding of how HIV is transmitted, the interplay between food insecurity and treatment adherence and the need for developing safe relationships through which adolescents can discuss their illness without fear of accidental disclosure of their HIV status.


The role of forensic pathologist is imperative for investigation of pathophysiological outcome of disease by conducting autopsy or post-mortem examination. Autopsy examination becomes highly significant when the cause of death is unknown or physicochemical parameters of death is of unknown nature due to novel emerging conditions as in case of novel coronavirus pandemic. In the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, there is undeniable amount of pressure on the forensic examiner fraternity due to the highly contagious nature of new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Autopsy involves thorough external examination of the deceased body followed by gross internal, histopathological examination of organs and molecular analysis of body fluids for various tissue specific and blood biomarkers (enzymes, electrolytes, hormones) to ascertain disease progression and cause of death.


This paper deals with dielectric/electrical properties of composite films based on onion-like carbon (OLC) as filler in an epoxy resin matrix. The measurements were carried out in a very broad range of frequencies (20 Hz–34 GHz), and the results show that the percolation threshold in these composites is related to the size of the OLC aggregates, the biggest aggregates leading to the lowest threshold (0.7 vol. %). The observed critical exponent reasonably agrees with the theoretical value. Composites comprising 10.89 vol. % of 250 nm-big OLC aggregates exhibit dielectric permittivity as high as 60 000 and electrical conductivity as high as 0.05 S/m at 20 Hz.


All continuous teeth were unilaterally extracted on the right side of the upper and lower jaws of 57 male and female Vietnamese belly pig. The animals were slaughtered 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 after the extraction. Our investigations into quantitative changes in the masticatory musculature after unilateral extraction showed the dry weight of the musculature on the extraction side was reduced. This reduction was greatest in the case of the M. temporalis. The findings relating to the muscles are consistent with the results of the skull evaluations reported in the first 2 publications, with indicated that tooth extraction leads to only local changes in the jaw during postnatal development. The findings published in the 3 publications of this series relating to the bones and muscles are discussed.


Doxorubicin is one of the most effective molecules used in the treatment of various tumors. Contradictory reports often open windows to understand the role of p53 tumor suppressor in doxorubicin-mediated cell death. In this report, we provide evidences that doxorubicin induced more cell death in p53-negative tumor cells. Several cells, having p53 basal expression, showed increase in p53 DNA binding upon doxorubicin treatment. Doxorubicin induced cell death in p53-positive cells through expression of p53-dependent genes and activation of caspases and caspase-mediated cleavage of cellular proteins. Surprisingly, in p53-negative cells, doxorubicin-mediated cell death was more aggressive (faster and intense). Doxorubicin increased the amount of Fas ligand (FasL) by enhancing activator protein (AP) 1 DNA binding in both p53-positive and p53-negative cells, but the basal expression of Fas was higher in p53-negative cells. Anti-FasL antibody considerably protected doxorubicin-mediated cell death in both types of cells. Activation of caspases was faster in p53-negative cells upon doxorubicin treatment. In contrast, the basal expression of Ras oncoprotein was higher in p53-positive cells, which might increase the basal expression of Fas in these cells. Overexpression of Ras decreased the amount of Fas in p53-negative cells, thereby decreasing doxorubicin-mediated aggressive cell death. Overall, this study will help to understand the much studied chemotherapeutic drug, doxorubicin-mediated cell signaling cascade, that leads to cell death in p53-positive and -negative cells. High basal expression of Fas might be an important determinant in doxorubicin-mediated cell death in p53-negative cells.


The structure of the oceanic crust at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at 5° South is investigated using wide-angle seismic data. Here, two morphologically contrasting spreading segments are separated by a 70 km offset transform fault. Applying a first-arrival tomography and a joint refraction and reflection tomography the obtained models show strong lateral heterogeneity in both velocities and Moho depths. In the segment north of the 5°S fracture zone (FZ) the along-axis crustal thickness thins from 9 km at the segment center to 5-6 km at the segment ends. In contrast to the magmatically robust northern segment, spreading south of the 5°S FZ rather seems to be tectonically controlled. Here, an inside corner high has been split by a change in location of active seafloor spreading. Most parts of this segment are underlain by anomalously thin crust with the thinnest portions associated with the flanks of the inside corner high and a fossil second order ridge-axis discontinuity. The crust formed at the inside corner reveals throughoutly higher velocities than corresponding outside corner crust, which is consistent with models of asymmetric crustal accretion along a detachment fault.


Background: Previous work showed that Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) can be used for training ensembles of learning machines for Software Effort Estimation (SEE) by optimising different performance measures concurrently. Optimisation based on three measures (LSD, MMRE and PRED(25)) was analysed and led to promising results in terms of performance on these and other measures. Aims: (a) It is not known how well ensembles trained on other measures would behave for SEE, and whether training on certain measures would improve performance particularly on these measures. (b) It is also not known whether it is best to include all SEE models created by the MOEA into the ensemble, or solely the models with the best training performance in terms of each measure being optimised. Investigating (a) and (b) is the aim of this work. Method: MOEAs were used to train ensembles by optimising four different sets of performance measures, involving a total of nine different measures. The performance of all ensembles was then compared based on all these nine performance measures. Ensembles composed of different sets of models generated by the MOEAs were also compared. Results: (a) Ensembles trained on LSD, MMRE and PRED (25) obtained the best results in terms of most performance measures, being considered more successful than the others. Optimising certain performance measures did not necessarily lead to the best test performance on these particular measures probably due to overfitting. (b) There was no inherent advantage in using ensembles composed of all the SEE models generated by the MOEA in comparison to using solely the best SEE model according to each measure separately. Conclusions: Care must be taken to prevent overfitting on the performance measures being optimised. Our results suggest that concurrently optimising LSD, MMRE and PRED (25) promoted more ensemble diversity than other combinations of measures, and hence performed best. Low diversity is more likely to lead to overfitting.


Summary

Thirty gravid, female shovelnose sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus platorynchus) were captured in the Lower Missouri River in March 2004 to evaluate the effectiveness of physiology, telemetry and remote sensor technology coupled with change point analysis in identifying when and where Scaphirhynchus sturgeon spawn. Captured sturgeons were instrumented with ultrasonic transmitters and with archival data storage tags (DST) that recorded temperature and pressure. Female sturgeon were tracked through the suspected spawning period. Thereafter, attempts were made to recapture fish to evaluate spawning success. At the time of transmitter implantation, blood and an ovarian biopsy were taken. Reproductive hormones and cortisol were measured in blood. Polarization indices and germinal vesicle breakdown were assessed on the biopsied oocytes to determine readiness to spawn. Behavioral data collected using telemetry and DST sensors were used to determine the direction and magnitude of possible spawning-related movements and to identify the timing of potential spawning events. Upon recapture observations of the ovaries and blood chemistry provided measures of spawning success and comparative indicators to explain differences in observed behavior. Behavioral and physiological indicators of spawning interpreted along with environmental measures may assist in the determination of variables that may cue sturgeon reproduction and the conditions under which sturgeon successfully spawn.


The overexpression and hyperactivity of p21-activated serine/threonine kinases (PAKs) is known to facilitate tumorigenesis; however, the contribution of cancer-associated PAK mutations to tumor initiation and progression remains unclear. Here, we identify p21-activated serine/threonine kinase 5 (PAK5) as the most frequently altered PAK family member in human melanoma. More than 60% of melanoma-associated PAK5 gene alterations are missense mutations, and distribution of these variants throughout the protein coding sequence make it difficult to distinguish oncogenic drivers from passengers. To address this issue, we stably introduced the five most common melanoma-associated PAK5 missense mutations into human immortalized primary melanocytes (hMELTs). While expression of these mutants did not promote single-cell migration or induce temozolomide resistance, a subset of variants drove aberrant melanocyte proliferation. These mitogenic mutants, PAK5 S364L and D421N, clustered within an unstructured, serine-rich domain of the protein and inappropriately activated ERK and PKA through kinase-independent and -dependent mechanisms, respectively. Together, our findings establish the ability of mutant PAK5 to enhance PKA and MAPK signaling in melanocytes and localize the engagement of mitogenic pathways to a serine-rich region of PAK5.


Posterior subcapsular cataracts (PSC) were noted in 41 of 69 (60%) recipients of renal allografts. The PSC were noted during the first posttransplant year (Group 1) in 21 (30%) recipients and after the first posttransplant (Group 2) year in 20 (30%) recipients. The dosage of prednisone during the first posttransplant year corrected for patient weight showed a significant correlation with the development of PSC during the first posttransplant year. The severity of the PSC were correlated with time of onset and prednisone dosage. Four recipients in Group 1 required cataract extraction to obtain sufficient vision to facilitate school work.


Development of infrastructure located in cryolithozone requires the use of modern geotechnical technologies for frozen soil investigation. Accurate soil temperature measurement is the necessary condition for engineering-geocryological survey and geotechnical monitoring. In the article a new method is considered on how to measure soil temperature by cone penetration testing (CPT). The cone temperature stabilization is described in detail, including the existing criteria of thermal stabilization of a cone. The results of temperature measurements are presented for both frozen and non-frozen soils and obtained by CPT (cone with a temperature sensor) and using borehole thermometry (thermistor string), which measured in both holes drilled by a rig and left after the cone penetration testing completion. Detailed analysis of accuracy of soil temperature measurement is also provided. The comparison of the obtained results is performed and the discrepancy of the measured soil temperature in absolute values is estimated. As a result of the analysis, it was shown that all the soil temperature values measured by different methods are sufficiently close to each other and the true value of the natural soil temperature are all located in the zone of intersection of the confidence intervals of each temperature measurement, performed at corresponding depths by different methods. All obtained temperature values do not cross the accuracy limits of temperature sensors, used both in cone penetration testing and borehole thermometry. High accuracy of temperature measurement by CPT is proved and feasibility of CPT application for soil temperature measurement is justified as an express-monitoring method.


Over the course of evolutionary time, insect parasitoids have developed diverse strategies for using chemical compounds to communicate with various protagonists within their environment (i.e. conspecifi cs, their hosts, and the plants on which their hosts are living). Unravelling the evolutionary meaning of such chemical communication networks not only provides new insights into the ecology of these insects but also contributes to improving the use of parasitoids for the control of insect pests in biological control programmes. A book covering our current knowledge of the chemical ecology of insect parasitoids is therefore particularly timely and will appeal to a large number of potential readers worldwide, from university students to senior scientists. Internationally recognized specialists were invited to contribute chapters to this book, examining the main topics and exploring the most interesting issues in the fi eld of chemical ecology of insect parasitoids. The chapters are organized so as to present the most signifi cant knowledge and discoveries made over recent decades, and their potential uses in pest control.


Learning through play has always proved its effectiveness in elementary education and has yielded prolific results. Although there are trained instructors, special schools, specific toys and facilities for Visually Impaired (VI), yet the communication between tutors and special children holds a significant gap. Also, tools in market are either too expensive or available in limited quantity in underdeveloped countries. This paper presents a cost effective solution for visually impaired children to play and learn via Braille blocks. These blocks are designed by embossed motives representing numbers, alphabets, shapes and mathematical operators with Infra-Red (IR) tags. The blocks transmit Infrared codes when come in contact with the system. The Braille Blocks System consists of a battery, optical detectors and controller which performs detection and processing of selected IR pattern. This system comprises of three different learning modules namely Words Game, Shapes Game and Math Game. These modules are further divided into several sub-game sections so that the children can learn and improve their communication and academic skills. The presence of audio feedback elevates a child's capabilities to memorize and concentrate on self-learning and spatial coordination in a fascinating way. The designed system was tested on 20 blind children in "National Special Education Complex" Karachi, Pakistan and an assessment was conducted on basis of different types of errors encountered by children. The suitability of the system was also evaluated by taking feedback from blind students through a questionnaire, proving its effectiveness with 79% of blind children giving either good or very good feedback.


This retrospective study was carried out on 24 patients admitted to the Surgical Thoracic Department of the United Hospitals in Foggia between 1984 and 1992. In most cases are patients with multiple traumas, victims of road accidents. Different types of surgical treatment have been used, from the ligation or suture of the perforating artery to the resection with anastomosis T-T or interposition of graft. When there were bony injuries too, the vascular repairing venous-arterial, was carried out after the orthopedic one. The nerves have been repaired after the vessels. The nervous injuries are the chief cause of permanent functional damage, because today the success of the surgical operation used in the vascular injuries of the limbs is increased to values about 90%. For the vascular sutures we have used material that is not absorbed, the monofilament. The present average rate of amputation of 10% can be more lowered if we put attention to complementary expedients and if there is a more active and quicker collaboration among the different specialized departments.


Objective: To compare the outcome between trifurcated graft vs island technique for the treatment of type A aortic dissection in a single centre.Method: From september 2017 to september 2020, we studied 87 patients retrospectively, who underwent total arch replacement for type A aortic dissection. Out of which 51 patients, age(47.45 ± 10.47) years, 39(76.47%) males and 12(23.52%) females were surgically corrected by trifurcated branch graft technique and 36 patients age(52.75 ± 10.32) years, 27(75%) males and 9(25%) females with island technique. In both the groups, peri- operative outcomes were compared. Patients were followed up for 3 months and 6 months in both the groups.Result: Elective Surgery was done in 16(31.37%) and 6(16.66%) in trifurcated branch graft and island group respectively. Selective antegrade cerebral perfusion (SACP) was given by the Axillary artery in {48(94.11%) in trifurcated group and 3(8.33%) in island group, p=<.00001}.SACP was given by Innominate artery {5(9.83%) in trifurcated group and 33(91.66%) in island group, p=<.00001}. Trifurcated branch group and Island group had Cardiopulmonary Bypass time, cross clamp time, total circulatory arrest time of (245 ± 33.30),(117.62 ± 29.38),(54.33 ± 13.19) min and (195.88 ± 32.83),(70.11 ± 20.62),(33.52 ± 8.683)(p=<.00001); respectively. 30 day mortality was 5(9.83%) in trifurcated group and 3(8.33%) in island group (p=0.815).Conclusion: Trifurcated branched graft and island technique, have comparable results, only prerequisite being surgeons comfortability and experience. Trifurcated branch graft being associated with longer CPB, cross clamp and circulatory arrest time, but with no difference in overall adverse outcomes or mortality.


Import of tRNA into the mitochondrial matrix of Trypanosoma brucei was reconstituted in vitro. Efficient import required the hydrolysis of externally added ATP and was shown to be a carrier-mediated process depending on proteinaceous receptors on the surface of mitochondria. A partly synthetic tRNA(Tyr) as well as a physiological tRNA(Lys) were imported along the same pathway. Contrary to import of all matrix-localized proteins, tRNA import does not require a membrane potential. Furthermore, addition of an excess of import-competent tRNA had no effect on import of a mitochondrial matrix protein. In summary, these results show that tRNAs and proteins in T. brucei are imported by fundamentally different mechanisms.


I. The Experimental Findings The recent impetus and enthusiasm for dream research began in 1953 when Aserinsky and Kleitman made an important observation while investigating electroencephalographic changes during sleep.1They noted the presence of eye movements which could be observed directly as well as recorded on the EEG. Some of the eye movements were slow, asynchronous, and random, while others were rapid, synchronous, and conjugate. A single rapid movement was generally accomplished in 0.1 or 0.2 seconds, and a completed movement lasted as long as a second and was followed by a pause of varying duration. Although Kleitman, in studying the physiology of sleep,14had not shown any marked previous interest in subjective psychological phenomena, he postulated that the rapid eye movements were related to the visual components of dreaming. He predicted accurately that if experimental subjects were awakened during these


The induction of mitochondrial biogenesis could potentially alleviate mitochondrial and muscle disease. We show here that dimethyl fumarate (DMF) dose-dependently induces mitochondrial biogenesis and function dosed to cells in vitro, and also dosed in vivo to mice and humans. The induction of mitochondrial gene expression is more dependent on DMF's target Nrf2 than hydroxycarboxylic acid receptor 2 (HCAR2). Thus, DMF induces mitochondrial biogenesis primarily through its action on Nrf2, and is the first drug demonstrated to increase mitochondrial biogenesis with in vivo human dosing. This is the first demonstration that mitochondrial biogenesis is deficient in Multiple Sclerosis patients, which could have implications for MS pathophysiology and therapy. The observation that DMF stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis, gene expression and function suggests that it could be considered for mitochondrial disease therapy and/or therapy in muscle disease in which mitochondrial function is important.


In several arid and semi-arid Mediterranean basins, water deficits in irrigated agriculture during drought events are relieved by illegal abstractions from aquifers. Illegal abstractions are largely tolerated by the authorities and are regarded by farmers as a reliable and inexpensive form of insurance against drought. This framework of illegal abstractions is responsible for the structural water deficit that is characteristic of many Southern European regions. The situation is changing with the implementation of River Basin Management Plans and Drought Management Plans, which demand improvement in the quantitative and qualitative status of water bodies, improved surveillance of groundwater resources and more rigorous sanctions for illegal groundwater abstractions. However, these plans raise distribution and equity issues and may not be sufficient to stop illegal abstractions in certain areas. Provided that the new framework is properly enforced, private drought insurance has the potential to stabilise income levels and reduce the incentives for overexploitation during drought events. This paper develops a methodology to estimate the basic risk premium and the potential water savings of private drought insurance. This methodology is based on concatenated stochastic models (rainfall-stock), a decision model and agronomic production functions, and is illustrated through the application of the model in the La CampiA±a agricultural district in the Guadalquivir River Basin, Spain.


Membranous nephropathy, a disease syndrome characterized by severe proteinuria and often accompanied by the nephrotic syndrome, was identified in 29% of a population of 46 proteinuric dogs. Renal lesions were characterized by the presence of subepithelial immunoglobulin deposits distributed diffusely along the glomerular capillary wall. Advanced stages were associated with progressive thickening of capillary basement membranes and incorporation of the immune deposits. These changes were followed by either glomerulosclerosis or recovery. Characteristic morphologic stages were correlated with clinical pathologic findings which showed that the level of proteinuria, hypoalbuminemia, and consequent nephrotic syndrome was most severe in the initial stages of membranous nephropathy while the level of azotemia increased in the more advanced stages of the syndrome.


Abstract Researching mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging due to methodological inconsistencies and the limited availability of vital statistics data. At the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization recommended daily data publication to inform policy response, but these data were often poor. Final data on COVID-19 deaths in many countries are not yet available, especially for 2021. This report shows that many countries have significant inconsistencies between the preliminary number of deaths and what vital statistics and excess mortality indicate. The inconsistencies in the mortality data raise concerns about the reliability of analyses and public health recommendations.


Over the past several decades, and particularly during the last 10 to 15 years, there has been a rapid increase in the accessibility of legalized gambling in the United States and other parts of the world. Few studies have systematically explored the relationships between patterns of gambling and health status. Existing data support the notion that some gambling behaviors, particularly problem and pathological gambling, are associated with nongambling health problems. The purpose of this article is to provide a perspective on the relationship between gambling behaviors and substance use disorders, review the data regarding health associations and screening and treatment options for problem and pathological gambling, and suggest a role for generalist physicians in assessing problem and pathological gambling. A rationale for conceptualization of pathological gambling as an addictive disorder and a model proposing stress as a possible mediating factor in the relationship between gambling and health status are presented. More research is needed to investigate directly the biological and health correlates associated with specific types of gambling behaviors and to define the role for generalist physicians in the prevention and treatment of problem and pathological gambling.


In the present work the authors introduced a new symmetric key cryptographic method for encryption as well as decryption of any file such as binary file, text file or any other file. Nath et. al. (1) developed an algorithm called MSA for encryption and decryption of any file using a random key square matrix containing 256 elements. The weak point of MSA algorithm is that if someone applies the brute force method then he has to give a trial for factorial 256 to find the actual key matrix. Now in the modern world this number of trial runs may not be impossible for the hacker. To get rid of this problem here the authors suggest a better algorithm than MSA. In the present method the authors considered the size of the key matrix to be 65536 and in each cell we store 2 characters pattern instead of 1 character unlike MSA method. If someone wants to give a brute force method to find our actual key then one has to give a trial for factorial 65536 runs! Theoretically this is an intractable problem. Moreover the authors have also introduced multiple encryptions here to make the system more secured. This method will be suitable in any business house, government sectors, communication network, defense network system, sensor networks etc. In the present work the authors have introduced a square key matrix of size 256 by 256 where in each cell there are all possible 2-lettered words (ASCII code 0-255). The total number of words possible is 65536. The key matrix is then randomized using the method proposed by Nath et. al(1). The user has to enter some secret text-key. The maximum length of the text key should be 16 characters long. To calculate the randomization number and the number of encryption to be done is calculated from the text-key using a method proposed by Nath et.al(1). The present method will be most suitable for encryption of a file whose size is less than or equal to 2MB. If the file size is very big then we suggest choosing small encryption number to speed up the system.


A total of 99 cases of viridans streptococcal endocarditis encountered during the period of 1973 and 1990 at the Veterans General Hospital-Taipei were reviewed to evaluate its prognostic factors. Applying strict clinical and laboratory criteria, 24 cases were categorized as definite, 44 probable, 23 possible and 8 likely. The symptoms were frequently subtle and atypical but initial laboratory tests gave useful indications: 69.1% with leukocytosis, 78% with anemia, 58.5% with elevation of LDH level, 88.9% with elevation of ESR value and 100% with elevation of CRP level. Furthermore, 32.4% of the cases demonstrated proteinuria and 67.4% microscopic hematuria. Seventy-three of the subjects had a history of underlying heart disease, predominantly rheumatic heart disease. Histological examination and echocardiography revealed that 51 patients suffered from vegetative endocarditis, 7 (13.7%) of whom were found to have anatomically confirmed vegetations without initial echocardiographic evidence, Vascular events were seen in 61 cases (61.6%): peripheral stigmata (32 cases), cerebral vascular accidents (17 cases), pulmonary embolism (10 cases) and others (2 cases). The overall mortality rate was 18.2%. Congestive heart failure with embolization was the most common cause of death in this group. The presence of vegetation was not well correlated with embolic events. There was no statistically significant association between the mortality and the following characteristics: age, sex, underlying heart disease, evidence of echocardiographically detected vegetations, major surgical intervention and recurrent cases except for embolic events (p less than 0.01). In conclusion, viridans streptococcal endocarditis complicated embolic events usually presented with a fulminant course and a grave outcome.


Two experiments examined the innate taste preferences and aversions of rats with electrolytic lesions of the gustatory thalamus (GT). Contrary to previous research, GT lesions had only a minor influence on intake of the 4 basic tastes as assessed with the 24-hr, 2-bottle preference test in Experiment 1. The same lesioned rats, when tested with the same stimuli in the 15-min, single-bottle procedure in Experiment 2, showed normal consumption patterns except for sucrose intake, which was attenuated. The conflicting findings of previous and present research are considered to result from differences in lesion size. The current data suggest that the GT has a relatively minor functional role in the unconditioned acceptance or rejection of sapid stimuli.


The main objective of this paper is to perform exterior car washing automatically using Programmable Logic Controller integrated with GSM modem. GSM-PLC sends information like entry, exit of car, emergency conditions to the customer or operator through SMS. After acquiring the information from PLC, the operator can able to act upon it. Car washing includes Spraying of soap solution, cleansing with water, wiped by brushes and finished with forced air drying.


Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a connective tissue autoimmune disease that results in significant reduction in physical function and quality of life. Exercise may offer health benefits in people with autoimmune disease, yet approximately 50% of people with SSc are physically inactive and experience a wide array of barriers that may impede their exercise engagement. Currently, there are no exercise recommendations or guidelines for this population. In this qualitative study, we explore and describe barriers and facilitators to exercise in adults with SSc, aiming to provide person-centerd exercise recommendations for people with SSc.

 Adults with SSc were purposefully recruited to represent diversity in disease type, duration, and manifestations. Three online focus groups were conducted to explore barriers and facilitators to exercise in people with SSc, transcribed, and thematically analyzed.

 Twenty-three adults with SSc (mean age 59 ± 11 years, 91% female) participated. Four themes emerged: (a) disease-related and general barriers to exercise, (b) perceived change in personal exercise capacity postdiagnosis, (c) beneficial effects of exercise, and (d) preference for modified supervised exercise.

 SSc imposes disease-related barriers that, combined with general barriers, impede exercise engagement. People with SSc understand that exercise is potentially beneficial. Key recommendations and advice to counter these barriers include (a) ensuring a comfortable temperature to exercise, (b) using modified equipment (e.g., adjustable weighted straps), (c) individually supervising and modifying exercise as required, and (d) keeping people with SSc accountable and motivated to exercise.


The use of computational intelligence for leveraging social creativity is a relatively new approach that allows organizations to find creative solutions to complex problems in which the interaction between stakeholders is crucial. The creative solutions that come from joint thinking-from the combined knowledge and abilities of people with diverse perspectives-contrast with traditional views of creativity that focus primarily on the individual as the main contributor of creativity. In an effort to support social creativity in organizations, in this paper we present computational intelligence software tools for that aim and an architecture for creating software mashups based on the concept of affinity space. The affinity space defines a digital setting to facilitate specific scenarios in collaborative business environments. The solution presented includes a set of free and open source software tools ranging from newly developed brainstorming applications to an expertise recommender for enhancing social creativity in the enterprise. The current paper addresses software design issues and presents reflections on the research work undertaken in the COLLAGE project between 2012 and 2015.


Phosphorus is an essential plant macronutrient which profoundly affects the yield and quality of wheat starch. In this study, scanning electron microscopy showed that P fertilizer amount (0, 46, and 92 kg P ha−1) had no significant effect on the shape of starch granules in wheat (cv. Xindong 20) grain. However, confocal laser scanning microscopy with 3-(4-carboxybenzoyl) quinoline-2-carboxaldehyde and methanolic merbromin stains indicated that P amount influenced the microstructure of the starch granules. Starch granules from the 46 kg P ha−1 treatment released significantly more reducing sugars than those from the 0 and 92 kg P ha−1 treatments during digestion with alpha-amylase and amyloglucosidase digestion. Phosphorus application (especially the 46 kg P ha−1 treatments) significantly increased the relative expression of genes related to starch synthesis (especially during early to mid-grain filling) and starch degradation (especially during mid- and late grain filling). Phosphorus application also increased the transcript abundance of amylase genes at the periphery of the endosperm. We propose that P application, especially the 46 kg P ha−1 treatment, enhanced channels in wheat starch granules. These channels facilitated the transport of substances required for starch biosynthesis, thus increasing starch accumulation in wheat endosperm. These results provide insight into the potential mechanisms through which P influences the microstructure and biosynthesis of wheat starch.


By the end of 1994, at least 4588 adult inmates of U.S. prisons and jails had died as a result of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and during 1994, at least 5279 adult inmates with AIDS were incarcerated in prisons and jails (1). Periodically conducted national surveys instituted in 1985 (2) and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and CDC have documented the prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS and the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among adult inmates and confined juveniles*. In addition, these surveys have enabled an assessment of HIV/AIDS education and prevention programs in prisons and jails for adults and confinement facilities for juveniles. This report presents findings from the eighth survey, conducted in 1994, which indicate the need to increase HIV/AIDS education and prevention services among adult inmates and confined juveniles.


Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate) (PHBHHx) is a member of the polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) family. It is the designation of molecules consisting of random co-polymers of 3-hydroxybutyrate and 3- hydroxyhexanoate. PHBHHx plays a significant role in the field of biomedical materials. It has good physical, chemical and mechanical properties, making it potentially useful for a wide range of biomaterials applications. In addition, it has also shown better biocompatibility with different cell types. This paper will introduce the physical, chemical and biological properties of PHBHHx, including biodegradation, hydrophilicity, surface properties and cytocompatibility. The development of PHBHHx in tissue-engineering applications will be discussed. PHBHHx used to repair bone, cartilage, tendons, nerves and vessels will be the focus of discussion.


Background:
Brucellosis can be chronic or associated with relapse and complications like other chronic diseases, and quality registry system is required.
Aim:
This study was designed and carried out with the aim of recording the quality of relapse and complications of brucellosis in Hamadan, west of Iran.
Methods:
In a quality registry study, in the first phase, all patients referred to Sina Hospital and Imam Khomeini Clinic in Hamadan were entered the study from September 2015 to January 2017. All information of the patients including demographic characteristics, clinical signs and symptoms, complications and laboratory findings have been entered in the questionnaire and designed software of quality regiatry of relapse and complications of brucellosis.
Results:
A total of 248 patients with brucellosis with a mean age of 43.38± 17.67 (range: 13 to 92) years old were enrolled the study, of which 155 patients (62.5%) were male and 80.65% of patients lived in rural areas.The most common complications were sacroilitis 33.06% ( 95% CI: 27.24%, 39.29%), arthritis 29.44% (95% CI: 23.83%, 35.53%) (the most common involvement were left and right knee joints 38.36% and 35. 62%, respectively), spondylitis 22.98% (95% CI: 17.89%, 28.72%) (in lumbar vertebrae L4 and L5 were 70.18% and 68.24%, respectively), epididymorchitis (14.84%, 95% CI: 9.64%, 21.42%) in men, neurobrucellosis (3.63%, 95% CI: 1.67%, 6.77%), hepatitis (1.21%, 95% CI: 0.25%, 3.53%), and abortion in 3 of 4 pregnant women and one case of eye involvement.
Conclusion:
The results of this study can be used for evidence-based decision-making to diagnose and better management of relapse and complications in patients with brucellosis.


Transcription factor gene ZFHX3 is one of the candidate genes involved in stroke development. The ZFHX3 protein contains oligopeptides encoded by trinucleotide repeats (TNRs). TNR variability is considered to be one of the causes of the disease, but their biological function has not yet been established. We assume that TNRs are the binding sites of miRNA to mRNA and are involved in regulation of ZFHX3 gene expression. The characteristics of miRNA–mRNA interaction were determined using MirTarget software. It has been shown that the first TNR in mRNA of the human ZFHX3 gene consists of the seven consecutive miR-12-32603-3p binding encoding polyGlu. The ZFHX3 protein of human polyGlu contains 30 Glu. In the orthologous proteins of 36 animal species the length of polyGlu varied from 27 Glu to 33 Glu. Negatively charged polyGlu of the ZFHX3 transcription factor probably interacted with positive DNA-binding proteins. The following mRNA region of the ZFHX3 gene contained the binding sites for miR-17-39416-3p, miR-5-15733-3p, miR-9-20317-3 encoding polyAla by 15 Ala lengths. In the 33 ZFHX3 orthologous proteins polyAla had the same length. The mRNA region of the human ZFHX3 gene with binding polysite of miR-1322-3p encoded polyGln consisting of 19 Gln. In the 41 orthologs of the ZFHX3 protein the length of polyGln varied from seven Gln to 23 Gln. The binding sites of miR-2-6184-3p, miR-5-14114-5p and miR-19-43437-5p were located with overlapping nucleotides sequences, and encode polyPro. In ZFHX3 human polyPro consisted of 12 Pro. In the orthologs, polyPro contained from 10 Pro to 14 Pro. The binding sites of miR-17-39416-3p, miR-9-20317-3p, miR-1-1819-3p, miR-5-15733-3p, miR-6-17815-3p, miR-18-39953-5p, miR-26862-5p, miR-1260b and miR-X-48174-3p in human ZFHX3 encoded polyGly by 22 Gly length. In the 28 orthologs of ZFHX3 the length of polyGly decreased to 11 Gly. The TNR regions could simultaneously bind several miRNAs, which increased the dependence of gene expression on miRNA. The oligopeptides encoded by the binding polysites of miRNA in mRNA in the orthologous ZFHX3 proteins were flanked by conserved oligopeptides.


In China, one or several ultrathin soft coal sublayers are widely developed in the coal seam. Therefore, a method of using hydraulic flushing in soft sublayer to enhance the gas extraction in these particular coal seams is developed in this work. We first established a new fully coupled gas extraction model by combing gas diffusion, gas flow, and a permeability model that considers the effect of stress change and plastic failure. By adopting this model, the gas extraction enhancement mechanism and its main influence factors were studied using the numerical simulation method based on the engineering and geological background in the Yangquan No.5 coalmine. Thereafter, a hydraulic flushing equipment, which could move freely in the underground coalmine, was developed to apply the hydraulic flushing method in soft coal sublayers used in the 8402 working face. Its gas extraction effect was systematically investigated. Our simulation results match well with the field results, suggesting that our model is feasible. Meanwhile, after adopting this method, the gas extraction condition in this coalmine improves significantly. The borehole number decreases by 66.7%, while the gas extraction rate and gas extraction concentration increase by 1.33 times and 3 times, respectively. Moreover, during the coal mining process, the gas adsorption index of drilling cuttings, the quantity of drilling cuttings, and the CH4 concentration also decrease dramatically.


Environmental pollution is one of the factors that contribute to exacerbate respiratory diseases (ERA) and can affect pregnancy. The records of outpatient and emergency entrances of the Hospital of Suba, were studied and tabulated, correlating the five leading causes of ERA with the monthly averages of particulated materials PM10s, fume concentration NO, N02, NOx, SO2, radiant flux (W), wind direction (DV), environmental temperature (TPM). In the evaluation, statistical measures of central tendency and the Pearson index were used. 6310 cases entering the Hospital were tabulated, corresponding 1,307 (27.9%) to pregnant women. The five leading causes of ERA presented a frequency of non specified asthma (26.1%), tonsillitis (24.4%) flu (21.8%), pharyngitis (16%) and asthma (11.5%). Variation average of the variables showed differences between the first and the second term: W (X = X 1.77vs = 1.55), DV (225.7 vs. 199.5), T°C (16.8 vs. 15.6) and PM10 (94.23 vs. 84.86); for the fumes NO (10.5 vs. 15.2), NO2 (15.9vs16.4), NOx (28.5 vs. 31.8) and SO2 (2.0 vs 3.2). The correlation showed a strong association between PM10, SO2 and non specific asthma (p < 0.007 and 0.0048) and DV and flu state (0.048) It was concluded that the environmental pollution is present in a cyclical manner during the year affecting the ERA in pregnant women, existing a significant correlation between PM10, SO2 and non specific asthma and, DV and statements flu.


In this paper, we demonstrate the qualitative influence of a -doping sheet and setback layer on the performance of an InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT). The results of a theoretical simulation show that the potential spike is reduced by the simultaneous employment of an appropriate setback layer and -doping sheet. Due to the reduction in the potential spike, a high current gain, even at a small collector current regime, and small offset voltage can be attained. Experimentally, an offset voltage as small as 55 mV and current gain of 11 at collector current of A are obtained without a passivation structure.


Tea contains polyphenols and is one of the most popular beverages consumed worldwide. Because most tyrosinase inhibitors that regulate melanogenesis are phenol/catechol derivatives, this study investigated the inhibitory effects of Camellia sinensis water extracts (CSWEs), including black tea, green tea, and white tea extracts, on melanogenesis using immortalized melanocytes. CSWEs inhibited melanin accumulation and melanin synthesis along with tyrosinase activity in a concentration-dependent manner. These inhibitory effects were superior to those of arbutin, a well-known depigmenting agent. The anti-melanogenic activity of black (fermented) tea was higher than that of a predominant tea catecholamine, epigallocatechin gallate. CSWEs, especially black tea extract, decreased tyrosinase protein levels in a concentration-dependent manner. These results suggest that the anti-melanogenic effect of CSWEs is mediated by a decrease in both tyrosinase activity and protein expression, and may be augmented by fermentation. Thus, CSWEs could be useful skin-whitening agents in the cosmetic industry.


Understanding the process and influencing factors of the oxidation of pyrite is beneficial for the management of environmental problems in mining areas. In this study, we investigated the morphology and geochemistry of the pyrite and related goethite from the weathering crust of the Shangmanggang (SMG) gold deposit, southwest China, via petrographic work, electron microprobe analysis, X-ray diffraction analysis, and PHREEQC geochemical modelling. The weathering profile of the SMG is composed of the unweathered Carlin-type zone, the semi-weathered zone, and the highly weathered red-clay zone, and different types of pyrite, framboidal pyrite (Py1), cube pyrite (Py2), and zoned pyrite (Py3), were differentially oxidized and transferred into corresponding pyrite-pseudomorphic goethite commonly comprised of the early and late phase. Furthermore, the stronger oxidation is related to more late goethite with more Al and Si content. The ubiquitous dolomite buffer kept the pH of the pore fluid neutral, resulting in the precipitation and accumulation of a goethite coating around pyrite, which further reduced the oxidation rate and formed pyrite-pseudomorphic goethite ultimately via coupled dissolution-reprecipitation reactions. In addition, the different mineralogical properties resulted in the differential oxidation of pyrite such that the smaller grains oxidized faster, and As within the pyrite accelerated the oxidation. Moreover, the rate-limited oxidation of pyrite under carbonate buffer prevents acid mine drainage (AMD) from forming and limits As release from arsenian pyrite into the external environment.

 Supplementary material:
 https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.6267700