This review highlights the scientific advances concerning the origins of human right‐handedness and language (speech and gestures). The comparative approach we adopted provides evidence that research on human and non‐human animals' behavioural asymmetries helps understand the processes that lead to the strong human left‐hemisphere specialisation. We review four major non‐mutually exclusive environmental factors that are likely to have shaped the evolution of human and non‐human primates' manual asymmetry: socioecological lifestyle, postural characteristics, task‐level complexity and tool use. We hypothesise the following scenario for the evolutionary origins of human right‐handedness: the right‐direction of modern humans' manual laterality would have emerged from our ecological (terrestrial) and social (multilevel system) lifestyle; then, it would have been strengthened by the gradual adoption of the bipedal stance associated with bipedal locomotion, and the increasing level of complexity of our daily tasks including bimanual coordinated actions and tool use. Although hemispheric functional lateralisation has been shaped through evolution, reports indicate that many factors and their mutual intertwinement can modulate human and non‐human primates' manual laterality throughout their life cycle: genetic and environmental factors, mainly individual sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., age, sex and rank), behavioural characteristics (e.g., gesture per se and gestural sensory modality) and context‐related characteristics (e.g., emotional context and position of target). These environmental (evolutionary and life cycle) factors could also have influenced primates' manual asymmetry indirectly through epigenetic modifications. All these findings led us to propose the hypothesis of a multicausal origin of human right‐handedness.


A review of the literature reveals that much is known of the normal anatomy and physiology of the intervertebral disc and that, chiefly due to Schmorl's work, the pathological changes which may occur are fairly well elucidated. The entity of posterior prolapse into the spinal canal is of great clinical significance, as it may cause disability and even death from pressure on the cord or on the cauda equina. The lesion known as "chondroma" or "ecchondrosis" of the intervertebral disc is apparently the same as the posterior prolapses.

The cases in which the lesion is in the low lumbar spine may show symptoms and signs indistinguishable from those of sacro-iliac or lumbosacral strain and so are seen primarily by orthopaedic surgeons. Unless the specialists in this field are aware of the entity and take the proper steps to arrive at the correct diagnosis, useless orthopaedic treatment will be instituted. A careful neurological examination, in addition to the orthopaedic examination, is indicated in every case of "low-back strain". If the symptoms remain intractible after adequate conservative treatment, lumbar puncture should be performed and the total protein content of the spinal fluid should be determined. If it is over 50 milligrams per 100 cubic centimeters, the evidence is in favor of an intraspinal lesion rather than mechanical joint or ligamentous strain, and, therefore, sacro-iliac or lumbosacral fusion is contra-indicated until cord or root pressure is ruled out by careful lipiodol roentgenographic examination. Even if the total protein is within so called normal limits, there may be present a ruptured disc which is responsible for the patient's symptoms.

Forty cases of proved rupture of the intervertebral disc into the lumbar spinal canal with involvement of one or more roots of the cauda equina by direct pressure have been reported in this paper. Twelve were in the lumbosacral disc, twenty-six in the disc between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, one between the second and third lumbar, and one between the third and fourth lumbar.

There were thirty-five males and five females. The average age was thirty-seven years.

A history of trauma was present in 77.5 per cent. of the cases.

Pain was the major presenting symptom. Its character was that of the familiar "sciatica", always radiating down the posterior thigh and usually the posterolateral calf.

Orthopaedic examination revealed the classical signs of low-back strain,—muscle spasm, list, limitation of motion, limitation of straight-leg raising, tender areas, etc. Fixed lumbar kyphosis or an abnormally flat back was present in over half of the cases.

Neurological examination revealed definite peripheral sensory changes in seventeen cases. There was an absent ankle jerk in 50 per cent. of the cases. Muscle weakness, paralysis, cramps, and loss of urinary and rectal control were less frequent, but they occurred.

Lumbar puncture revealed an elevated total protein in all but five cases. The average was 60 to 100 milligrams per 100 cubic centimeters.

Roentgenograms showed local hypertrophic changes or disc narrowing in less than half the cases.

Lipiodol examination localized the lesion in thirty-six of the forty cases.

The end-result study showed one death due to the lesion (paraplegia). There was essentially complete relief from pain in all cases but one. In that one the continued pain seems to be due to other pathology.

Sufficient time has not elapsed to permit determination of the amount of permanent disability following the operative removal of a ruptured disc. Our experience indicates that the back is stronger if fusion is combined with the laminectomy.

There seems to be no doubt that a clinical entity with a proved pathological etiology is being removed from the vague classification of lumbosacral and sacro-iliac strains. It is not excessively rare and should be thought of in every case of back strain and "sciatica".


I have presented a case of widely disseminated lymphoma with prominent peripheral nerve invasion and reviewed the clinical, laboratory, and histopathologic features of this rare finding. Refractory limb pain was the only unique feature suggesting tumor invasion of nerves.


IntroductionApproximately 20-33% of all cancer patients are treated with acid reducing agents (ARAs), most commonly proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), to reduce gastro esophageal reflux disease symptoms. Palbociclib and ribociclib are weak base so their solubility depends on different pH. The solubility of palbociclib dramatically decreases to <0.5 mg/ml when pH is above 4,5 but ribociclibs' solubility decreases when pH increases above 6,5. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the effects of concurrent PPIs on palbociclib and ribociclib efficacy in terms of progression free survival in metastatic breast cancer (mBC) patients.Patients and methodsWe enrolled hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative mBC patients treated with endocrine treatment (Letrozole or fulvestrant) combined palbociclib or ribociclib alone or with PPI accompanying our observational study. During palbociclib/ribociclib therapy, patients should be treated with "concurrent PPIs" defined as all or more than half of treatment with palbociclib/ribociclib, if no PPI was applied, it was defined as 'no concurrent PPI', those who used PPI but less than half were excluded from the study. All data collected from real life retrospectively.ResultsOur study included 217 patients, 105 of whom received palbociclib and 112 received ribociclib treatment. Of 105 patients who received Palbociclib, 65 were on concomitant PPI therapy, 40 were not. Of the 112 patients who received ribociclib, 61 were on concomitant PPI therapy, 51 were not. In the palbociclib group, the PFS of the patients using PPI was shorter than the PFS of the patients not using (13.04 months vs. unreachable, p<0.0001). it was determined that taking PPI was an independent predictor of shortening PFS (p<0.001) in the multivariate analysis, In the ribociclib group, the PFS of the patients using PPI was shorter than the PFS of the patients not using (12.64 months vs. unreachable, p=0.003). It was determined that taking PPI was single statistically independent predictor of shortening PFS (p=0.003, univariate analysis).ConclusionsOur study demonstrated that concomitant usage of PPIs was associated with shorter PFS in mBC treated with both ribociclib and especially palbociclib. If it needs to be used, PPI selection should be made carefully and low-strength PPI or other ARAs (eg H2 antagonists, antacids) should be preferred.


Social media have served as lucrative platforms for misinformation and for promoting fraudulent products for the treatment, testing and prevention of COVID-19. This has resulted in the issuance of many warning letters by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While social media continue to serve as the primary platform for the promotion of such fraudulent products, they also present the opportunity to identify these products early by employing effective social media mining methods. In this study, we employ natural language processing and time series anomaly detection methods for automatically detecting fraudulent COVID-19 products early from Twitter. Our approach is based on the intuition that increases in the popularity of fraudulent products lead to corresponding anomalous increases in the volume of chatter regarding them. We utilized an anomaly detection method on streaming COVID-19-related Twitter data to detect potentially anomalous increases in mentions of fraudulent products. Our unsupervised approach detected 34/44 (77.3%) signals about fraudulent products earlier than the FDA letter issuance dates, and an additional 6/44 (13.6%) within a week following the corresponding FDA letters. Our proposed method is simple, effective and easy to deploy, and do not require high performance computing machinery unlike deep neural network-based methods.


This paper reports a new analytic technique for the design of nonlinear-phase maximally-flat lowpass FIR filters. By subjecting the response magnitude and the group delay (individually) to differing numbers of flatness constraints, a new family of filters is obtained. With these filters, the delay can be reduced while maintaining relatively constant group delay in the passband, without significantly altering the response magnitude.


The feasibility of experimental investigation of spontaneous magnetic fields in a laser plasma with the help of a fast-electron beam is discussed. A three-dimensional program was written to calculate the kinetics of these electrons in sign-variable magnetic fields and calculations were made for different plasma parameters. An electron energy of ∼100 keV is shown to be sufficient for the investigation of magnetic fields in the plasma plume; this energy for a compressed laser target ranges between 4 and 8 MeV. Electrons with this energy can be generated employing an additional picosecond laser pulse synchronised with the main heating pulse.


A number of key trends are emerging in long-term care related to financing, new models of service delivery, and shifts in consumer expectations and preferences. Taken together, changes occurring in these areas point to a rapidly transforming long-term care landscape. Financing responsibility is shifting away from the federal government to states, individuals, and their families; providers are integrating and managing acute and long-term care services and adding new services to the continuum of care; and consumers are thinking more seriously about how to plan and pay for their future care needs, as well as how to independently navigate the long-term care system.


Existing research on gender and disaster has examined how women with limited socio-economic resources organize to manage risk and to engage in disaster-related response and recovery activities. However, as Enarson, Fothergill, and Peek (2007) have argued, "in-depth class analysis is still relatively rare in gender-focused disaster research." Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a women's group that self-organized following Hurricane Katrina, the author examines how affluent, philanthropic women mobilized social, economic, and cultural resources to respond to catastrophe and to engage in community-based recovery efforts. The author applies the concept of an "elite-sustained movement" (Taylor 1994) to understand how elite women mobilize socio-economic resources to respond to disaster and how resources at elite members' reach contribute to the group's continuance across phases of the disaster cycle. The author concludes with a theoretical and methodological discussion of "studying up" on relations of power in disaster.


This study responded to a need for an updated set of film clips for the elicitation of emotion. Previous such stimuli are not only dated, but are limited in that they have been validated using participants from a narrow age range, which is problematic given conflicting reports regarding age differences in self-reported emotion elicited in a laboratory setting. The present study aimed to develop a new film stimulus set standardised on a wide age range of participants, while investigating age differences in self-reported emotion in response to film clips. An ancillary aim was to standardise film clips that were with and without dialogue. Two researchers composed a shortlist of 60 clips that were chosen to elicit six target emotions of amusement, anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness, as well as a neutral state. Each of the 109 participants (55 males, 54 females), aged between 18 and 88 years (M = 44.94) viewed all 60 clips. Self-reported emotional experience was measured using a computerised Visual Analogue Scale. Age differences were observed whereby participants aged 46–88 reported more intense positive and negative emotions in response to film clips than participants aged 18–45. Consistent with previous research, difficulties were found in eliciting the target emotion of anger. A success index was calculated for each film that took into consideration the mean rating on the target emotion and the degree to which the film elicited only the target emotion. We present a list of film clips recommended for future research.


: The article presents the analysis of the components of monitoring as one of management tools for the higher education (HE) system at macro-and micro-levels. The aim of the article is to identify problems of its organization and implementation in the system of professional education on the whole and in higher educational institutions in particular, as well as to analyze the application prospects of monitoring. The conducted research has revealed that although monitoring techniques have been used in the education system widely and for a long time, insufficient account has been taken of opportunities emerging from their direct impact on the effectiveness of education quality. In using monitoring as a tool for assessing higher education quality, various problems arise. Monitoring, in this case, is not a universal tool; but if it is adequate to the existing conditions and its results are correctly used, it can essentially improve the quality of the education process and of its outcomes.


The epidemiology of bacteremia developing during neutropenia has changed in the past decade, with the re-emergence of Gram-negative (GN) bacteria and the development of multidrug resistance (MDR) among GN bacteria. We conducted a case-control study in order to identify factors associated with bacteremia due to multidrug-resistant Gram-negative (MDRGN) isolates in hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients. Ten patients with MDRGN bacteremia were compared with 44 patients with GN bacteremia without MDR. Bacteremia due to Burkholderia or Stenotrophomonas sp was excluded from analysis (3 cases), because the possibility of intrinsical resistance. Infection due to MDRGN bacteria occurred in 2.9% of 342 hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients. Klebsiella pneumoniae was the most frequent MDRGN (4 isolates), followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (3 isolates). Among non-MDRGN, P. aeruginosa was the most frequent agent (34%), followed by Escherichia coli (30%). The development of GN bacteremia during the empirical treatment of febrile neutropenia (breakthrough bacteremia) was associated with MDR (P < 0.001, odds ratio = 32, 95% confidence interval = 5_190) by multivariate analysis. Bacteremia due to MDRGN bacteria was associated with a higher death rate by univariate analysis (40 vs 9%; P = 0.03). We were unable to identify risk factors on admission or at the time of the first fever, but the occurrence of breakthrough bacteremia was strongly associated with MDRGN bacteria. An immediate change in the antibiotic regimen in such circumstances may improve the prognosis of these patients.


Abstract Recent drives to facilitate earlier identification of dementia have led to increased memory clinic referrals and diagnoses. This study explored the perspectives of memory clinic doctors on making and delivering diagnoses. Four focus groups were conducted with 13 psychiatrists and two geriatricians in the UK. Transcripts were coded line by line using NVIVO. Thematic analysis identified 39 categories, 18 sub-themes and eight overarching themes. Inter-rater reliability on 31% of the data was 0.89. Increased public awareness of dementia was viewed positively in facilitating access to diagnosis and treatment. Doctors viewed diagnosis as a process and expressed concerns about limited pre-diagnostic counselling and post-diagnostic support. In diagnostic delivery doctors sought to develop a narrative drawing on the patient's report of symptoms and adjust explanations to patient preferences and awareness. However, tailoring the delivery to the individual patient was challenging when meeting for the first time. These consultations often involved three participants (doctor, patient and relative), who were felt to have differing needs and expectations. Doctors emphasized that delicacy was required in deciding in what could be discussed in front of both parties, however also stressed the importance of explicitly naming 'dementia'. Efforts were made to balance honesty and hope when discussing prognosis and medication. The work was sometimes emotionally distressing, with limited supervision. Existing communication training was felt to be inadequate for consultations involving triads or people with cognitive impairment. Delivering a dementia diagnosis is a nuanced and challenging task. Negotiating honest descriptions of a life-limiting condition whilst instilling hope is further complicated when cognitive impairment affects comprehension. Misunderstandings at the time of feedback may limit patient opportunities for informed future planning afforded by early diagnosis. Doctors in memory clinics would benefit from evidence based training and supervision to prepare them for these emotionally challenging and complex consultations.


A simplified and fast-built flux-linkage analytical model for the switched-reluctance motor is proposed, which utilises the Fourier series in expression of the current-dependent arc-tangent function. Presently, there are many conventional methods requiring numerous flux-linkage-current-position data; however, this is not economical for modelling. In the proposed model, the position dependency of the flux linkage is represented by a limited number of Fourier series terms, and the variation of the flux linkage with phase current is expressed by means of an arc-tangent function. The proposed model can be built with only five data points, which are simply obtained through finite-element analysis, for easy implementation and high computational efficiency. The accuracy of the model is verified via comparison with laboratory measurements of the machine steady-state voltage and current waveforms as well as several characteristic curves. The proposed model is shown to have a good degree of the accuracy.


This study focused mainly on prestressed concrete box girder bridges with steel truss web members, also known as Hybrid Truss Bridge (HTB). Previously, French engineers worked to improve the structural efficiency of prestressed concrete box girders by using concrete-steel hybrid subcomponents in an effort to reduce the weight of the superstructure. As a result of these efforts, several HTBs have recently been constructed in Japan and Korea. All of these bridges have unique connection systems between the concrete slabs and web truss members, which dictate the safety as well as the failure behavior of the hybrid girders. Thus, evaluation of both construction and structural safety of the connection systems regarded as an essential step in the design of HTB. In this study, four new connection systems using either hinge devices or T-type perfobonds have been proposed as improvements to the assemblage and to eliminate the need for welding during construction while satisfying load carrying capacity requirements. The static loading tests for six connection specimens in real scale were carried out in order to fully evaluate structural safety of the newly proposed connection systems. Also, a real scale railway bridge specimen with a 20m single span and an embedded hinge connection system was designed and constructed in a structural laboratory to perform for static and dynamic tests. Using this specimen, the possibility of using an embedded hinge connection system in a HTB, both for railway and general roadway usage, was evaluated.


The note looks at the work of a regional task force in East, and Southern Africa, established on April 2000 to coordinate activities related to the widespread use of traditional medicine, by people with HIV/AIDS in the region, and on the role of traditional healers in AIDS prevention. The high costs, and scarcity of many essential drugs, including antiretroviral drugs in Africa, means that most people affected by the epidemic, use traditional herbal treatments. At the same time, various agencies, and nongovernmental organizations were leading the development of partnerships between biomedical, and traditional health sectors. Clinical data on herbal treatments effective against herpes, and HIV-associated chronic diseases have been cited, as was preliminary data on herbal medicine that seems to increase CD4-cell counts, conducive to improvements in HIV-related illnesses. However, mutual misunderstanding between modern, and traditional practitioners, and weak organization of healers, contribute to the marginal status of traditional medicine. On reviewing efforts, the Global Initiative For Traditional Systems (GIFTS) of Health accepted the responsibility to lay the foundation for a network of researchers, to build a research program to identify, assess, and develop safe local treatments against HIV/AIDS.


In this study, we investigated the role of a minor alloying element in improving the plasticity of amorphous alloys. The plasticity of the amorphous alloys, Cu_60−_xZr_30Ti_10Be_x, was drastically improved with increasing amount of Be and reached a maximum of 23% at Cu_53Zr_30Ti_10Be_7. It was observed that an atomistic-scale phase separation existed within the alloy, which resulted from the large difference in mixing enthalpy between the binary pairs (Be–Cu, Be–Zr). This atomistic-scale phase separation resulted in an open structure in which atomic rearrangements in the form of the creation of free volume and crystallization were facilitated during deformation. Here we discuss the origin of the enhanced plasticity by clarifying the effect of an additional element, whose mixing enthalpies with the major elements are significantly different, on the structural change of the amorphous alloy.


Porcine circoviruses (PCVs) are distributed in swine herds worldwide and represent a threat to the health of domestic pigs and the profits of the swine industry. Currently, four PCV species, including PCV-1, PCV-2, PCV-3 and PCV-4, have been identified in China. Considering the ubiquitous characteristic of PCVs, the new emerged PCV-4 and the large scale of swine breeding in China, an overall analysis on codon usage bias for Chinese PCV sequences was performed by using the major proteins coding sequences (ORF1 and ORF2) to better understand the relationship of these viruses with their host. The data from genome nucleotide frequency composition and relative synonymous codon usage (RSCU) analysis revealed an overrepresentation of AT pair and the existence of a certain codon usage bias in all PCVs. However, the values of an effective number of codons (ENC) revealed that the bias was of low magnitude. Principal component analysis, ENC-plot, parity rule two analysis and correlation analysis suggested that natural selection and mutation pressure were both involved in the shaping of the codon usage patterns of PCVs. However, a neutrality plot revealed a stronger effect of natural selection than mutation pressure on codon usage patterns. Good host adaptation was also shown by the codon adaptation index analysis for all these viruses. Interestingly, obtained data suggest that PCV-4 might be more adapted to its host compared to other PCVs. The present study obtained insights into the codon usage pattern of PCVs based on ORF1 and ORF2, which further helps the understanding the molecular evolution of these swine viruses.


Relaying is one of the proposed technologies for LTE-Advanced networks. In order to enable a flexible and reliable relaying support, the currently adopted architectural structure of LTE networks has to be modified. In this paper, we extend the LTE architecture to enable dynamic relaying, while maintaining backward compatibility with LTE Release 8 user equipments, and without limiting the flexibility and reliability expected from relaying. With dynamic relaying, relays can be associated with base stations on a need basis rather than in a fixed manner which is based only on initial radio planning. Proposals are also given on how to further improve a relay enhanced LTE network by enabling multiple interfaces between the relay nodes and their controlling base stations, which can possibly be based on technologies different from LTE, so that load balancing can be realized. This load balancing can be either between different base stations or even between different networks.


238 Ann Dermatol Received January 24, 2017, Revised March 22, 2017, Accepted for publication April 3, 2017 Corresponding author: Ki-Hoon Song, Department of Dermatology, College of Medicine, Dong-A University, 32 Daesingongwon-ro, Seo-gu, Busan 49201, Korea. Tel: 82-51-240-5435, Fax: 82-51-253-0787, E-mail: email@example.com This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright © The Korean Dermatological Association and The Korean Society for Investigative Dermatology REFERENCES


Recent research on computer vision has made significant progress in 3d reconstruction and free-viewpoint video however most of these methods are not suited for real-time rendering. This paper presents a Video-Based Rendering method that provides online new viewpoints of the scene from a set of webcams. Our method follows a plane-sweep approach perfectly suited for GPU implementation. This paper mainly focuses on different implementations of this method for different purposes. Indeed, our basic plane-sweep technique uses 4 input cameras to create online new views. However this method can be modified to be used with up to 10 cameras or more by a camera selection process. This method can also be adapted to handle moving input cameras using a real-time camera calibration technique. Moreover, this method can easily render a depth map instead of a new view. Finally, we explain how the plane-sweep algorithm can be modified to create multiple new views simultaneously. This latter application is mainly designed for autostereoscopic displays application. Implementation and performance are detailed for all these plane-sweep methods.


The plateau zokor (Myospalax baileyi) and plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) are native species unique to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau with successful adaptation to the hypoxic environment. In this study, the number of red blood cells, hemoglobin concentration, mean hematocrit and mean volume of red blood cells were measured in plateau zokors and plateau pikas at different altitudes. Hemoglobin subtypes of two plateau animals were identified by mass spectrometry sequencing. The forward selection sites in two animals' hemoglobin subunits were analyzed by PAML4.8 program. Homologous modeling was used to analyze the effect of forward selection sites on the affinity of hemoglobin to oxygen. The adapting strategies of plateau zokors and plateau pikas to hypoxia at different altitudes were analyzed through comparing blood parameters between the two species. The results indicated that, with increasing altitudes, plateau zokors responded to hypoxia by increasing red blood cell count and decreasing red blood cell volume, while plateau pikas took the opposite strategies to plateau zokors. In erythrocytes of plateau pikas, both adult α2β2 and fetal α2ε2 hemoglobins were identified, while erythrocytes of plateau zokors only had adult α2β2 hemoglobin, however the affinities and the allosteric effects of the hemoglobin of plateau zokors were significantly higher than those of plateau pikas. Mechanistically, in the α and β subunits of hemoglobin of plateau zokors and pikas, the numbers and the sites of the positively selected amino acids as well as the side chain groups polarities and orientations of the amino acids differed significantly, which may result in the difference of the affinities to oxygen of hemoglobin between plateau zokors and pikas. In conclusion, the adaptive mechanisms to respond to hypoxia in blood properties of plateau zokors and plateau pikas are species-specific.


Maria Vasilievna Iakunchikova designed three works of applied art and craft in a Neo-Russian style for the Russian section of the Paris "Exposition Universelle" of 1900—a wooden dresser, a toy village in carved wood, and a large embroidered panel. Yet, so far as the official record is concerned, Iakunchikova's participation in the exhibition is occluded. Her name does not appear in the catalogue, for it was the producers, rather than the designers, who were credited for her works. Indeed, her presence might have been entirely unknown, were it not for several reports of the Russian display in the periodical press by her friend Netta Peacock, a British writer living in Paris. The invisibility of the designer in this instance was not a matter of gender, but it had consequences for women artists. In general, women were marginalized in the mainstream of the nineteenth-century Russian art world—whether at the Academy of Arts or in prominent groups such as the Peredvizhniki—and, as a result, enjoyed fewer opportunities at the Exposition. But the Neo-national movement, linked closely with the revival of applied art and the promotion of kustar industries, was one in which women's art had space to flourish. And, in the so-called village russe at the Exposition, which featured a display of kustar art, by far the larger contribution was made by women, both as promoters and as artists. In this article, I examine Iakunchikova's contribution to the Exposition within a broader context of female artistic activity, and the significance of the Russian kustar pavilion for a gendered history of nineteenth-century art.


OBJECTIVE
To study the clinical and laboratory features of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) with chromosomal structural changes.

METHODS
Among 584 MDS cases with cytogenetic data, 50 patients with chromosomal structural changes, 34 males and 16 females, aged 50.5 (9 approximately 77), were reclassified according to the WHO criteria, and their clinical and laboratory features were analyzed retrospectively.

RESULTS
The incidence of chromosomal structural changes in the MDS patients was 7.4%. i (17) (q10), t (1; 3) (p36; q21), der (1; 7) (q10; p10), and der (22) occurred frequently. The chromosomal structural changes in 13 cases were reported in the literatures for the first time. The patients with i (17) (q10) were characterized by moderate to severe anemia and a poor prognosis. Predominant dysgranulocytopoiesis and dysmegakaryocytopoiesis, including a nuclear shift to the left, pseudo-Pelger-Hüet anomaly, hypogranularity, and increased micromegakaryocytes. The patients with t (1; 3) (p36; q21) revealed macrocytic anemia, obvious dysmegakaryocytopoiesis, and dysgranulocytopoiesis, accompanied by defective differentiation and monocytosis. The bone marrow cells from the MDS patients with t (1; 3) (p36; q21) mainly or only expressed MEL1. The initial symptom of the patients with der (1; 7) (q10; p10) was infection. These patients showed macrocytic or normocytic anemia. Trilineage dysplasia was found in the bone marrow smears. The patients had short median survival. The patients with der (22) revealed anemia, and normal or elevated platelet counts. Hypogranularity and pseudo-Pelger-Hüet anomaly were present in all cases with der (22). The megakaryocytes were small and generally contained one or two nuclei. A translocation involvement of 22q11 was frequently found in the patients with der (22).

CONCLUSION
MDS patients with i (17) (q10), t (1; 3) (p36; q21), and der (1; 7) (q10; p10) may be a new unique clinical-pathologic subsets. Whether the MDS patients with der (22) can be considered as a new unique subject remains to be confirmed by future studies.


Background: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a risk factor for the development of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). Aims: (1) To describe and compare the clinical characteristics and the use of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures among subjects hospitalized with HFrEF according to the presence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and sex; (2) to assess the effect of T2DM and sex on hospital outcomes among the patients hospitalized with HFrEF using propensity score matching (PSM); and (3) to identify which clinical variables were associated to in-hospital mortality (IHM) among the patients hospitalized with HFrEF and T2DM according to their sex. Methods: A retrospective cohort study from 2016 to 2019 using the Spanish National Hospital Discharge Database was conducted. The diagnosis and procedures were codified with the International Classification of Disease 10th version (ICD10). Subjects aged ≥ 40 with a primary diagnosis of HFrEF were included. We included those patients with a diagnosis of T2DM in any diagnosis position. The descriptive statistics used were total and relative frequencies (percentages), means with standard deviations, and medians with an interquartile range. To control the effect of confounding variables when T2DM patients and non-T2DM patients were compared, we matched the cohorts using PSM. Multivariable logistic regression models were used to identify which study variables independently affected the IHM among men and women with HF and T2DM. Also, this multivariable method was applied for sensitivity analyses to confirm the results of the PSM. Results: A total of 28,894 patients were included. T2DM was present in 39.59%. Women with T2DM more frequently had atrial fibrillation, valvular heart disease, anemia, dementia, depression, and hyponatremia than men with T2DM. However, men had more coronary heart disease, chronic renal disease, COPD, and obstructive sleep apnea. All the procedures were significantly more commonly used among men than women. Blood transfusion was the only procedure more frequently identified among women with T2DM. For the sensitivity analysis in patients with T2DM hospitalized with HFrEF, we confirmed the results of the PSM, finding that women had a 14% higher risk of dying in the hospital than men (OR 1.14; 95% CI 1.01–1.35). Obesity seemed to have a protective effect (OR 0.85; 95% CI 0.73–0.98) on the in-hospital morality. Conclusions: Subjects with diabetes are admitted for HFrEF and have a greater number of comorbidities than non-diabetics. Diabetic women have a higher mortality rate than men with diabetes and all the procedures evaluated were significantly more often used among men than women.


In all ecological niches, potassium is actively consumed by diverse prokaryotes and their interacting eukaryote hosts. It is only just emerging that potassium is a key player in host-pathogen interactions, and the role of potassium in mutualistic interactions remains largely unknown. ABSTRACT The rhizobium-legume symbiosis is essential for sustainable agriculture by reducing nitrogen fertilizer input, but its efficiency varies under fluctuating soil conditions and resources. The nitrogen-related phosphotransferase system (PTSNtr) consisting of PtsP, PtsO, and PtsN is required for optimal nodulation and nitrogen fixation efficiency of the broad-host-range Sinorhizobium fredii CCBAU45436 associated with diverse legumes, though the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. This work characterizes the PtsN-KdpDE-KdpFABC pathway that contributes to low potassium adaptation and competitive nodulation of CCBAU45436. Among three PtsN, PtsN1 is the major functional homolog. The unphosphorylated PtsN1 binds the sensory kinase KdpD through a non-canonical interaction with the GAF domain of KdpD, while the region covering HisKA-HATPase domains mediates the interaction of KdpD with the response regulator KdpE. KdpE directly activates the kdpFABC operon encoding the conserved high-affinity potassium uptake system. Disruption of this signaling pathway leads to reduced nodule number, nodule occupancy, and low potassium adaptation ability, but without notable effects on rhizoplane colonization. The induction of key nodulation genes NIN and ENOD40 in host roots during early symbiotic interactions is impaired when inoculating the kdpBC mutant that shows delayed nodulation. The nodulation defect of the kdpBC mutant can be rescued by supplying replete potassium. Potassium is actively consumed by both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, and components of the PTSNtr-KdpDE-KdpFABC pathway are widely conserved in bacteria, highlighting the global importance of this pathway in bacteria-host interactions. IMPORTANCE In all ecological niches, potassium is actively consumed by diverse prokaryotes and their interacting eukaryote hosts. It is only just emerging that potassium is a key player in host-pathogen interactions, and the role of potassium in mutualistic interactions remains largely unknown. This work is focused on the mutualistic symbiosis between rhizobia and legumes. We report that the nitrogen-related phosphotransferase system PTSNtr, the two-component system KdpDE, and the high-affinity potassium uptake system KdpFABC constitute a pathway that is important for low potassium adaptation and optimal nodulation of rhizobia. Given the widely conserved PTSNtr, KdpDE, and KdpFABC in bacteria and increasing knowledge on microbiome for various niches, the PTSNtr-KdpDE-KdpFABC pathway can be globally important in the biosphere.


The homeobox (HOX) genes are a highly conserved family of transcription factors involved in embryonic patterning as well as adult hematopoiesis. Dysregulation of HOX genes, in particular upregulation of HOXA cluster genes, is a frequent event in Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML). Recently, we performed a detailed genomic analysis on pediatric non-Down Syndrome Acute Megakaryoblastic Leukemia (non-DS-AMKL) and identified novel fusions involving a HOX cluster gene in 14.9% of the cases. While most fusions were predicted to lead to an in-frame functional protein, several fusions included a non-coding HOX antisense gene (PLEK-HOXA11-AS, C8orf76-HOXA11-AS, HOXA10-AS-CD164) that were predicted to result in a loss of function of these regulatory transcripts. The functional consequence of these events, however, remain unknown. HOXA11-AS (human) and Hoxa11os (mouse) have been previously shown to have mutually exclusive expression with the Hoxa11 transcript throughout development. We therefore hypothesized that loss of function of non-coding HOX antisense genes as a result of these structural variations would cause upregulation of nearby coding HOXA genes that in turn promote leukemogenesis.
 To test this hypothesis, using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, we genome edited the human AMKL cell line CMK to carry the PLEK-HOXA11-AS translocation. qRT-PCR of HOXA11-AS and HOXA9-11 transcripts in this cell line recapitulated the pattern seen in patient specimens. Specifically, HOXA11-AS expression was significantly diminished while HOXA10 and HOXA11 transcripts were upregulated 1.8-2.5-fold when compared to parental CMK cells (p=0.0385 and p=0.006 respectively). To further investigate the loss of HOXA11-ASin vivo a CRISPR-Cas9 Hoxa11os knockout mouse model was established. qRT-PCR on bone marrow confirmed the loss of Hoxa11os transcripts in heterozygous (Hoxa11os1+/-) and homozygous (Hoxa11os-/-) mice of both genders (p=<0.0001-0.0012). Consistent with Hoxa11os knockdown, Hoxa11 transcripts were upregulated in male (1.8-fold p=0.0023 Hoxa11os+/-, and 2-fold p=0.0052 Hoxa11os-/-)and female (1.3-fold p=0.0074 Hoxa11os+/- and 2.2-fold p=0.0226 Hoxa11os-/-) bone marrow compared to wild type gender matched littermates. Interestingly, flow cytometry analysis of progenitor subsets revealed gender specific findings. We found a significant increase in the frequency of the lineage negative, Sca-1 and c-Kit positive (LSK) population in males (0.13% of total bone marrow Hoxa11os+/+, 0.19% p=0.0214 Hoxa11os+/-, and 0.25% p=0.0001 Hoxa11os-/-) compared to wild type male littermates but not in female mice at 8 weeks of age. In contrast an increase in the megakaryocyte-erythroid (MEP) population was seen only in the female setting (0.07% Hoxa11os+/+, 0.15% p=0.0055 Hoxa11os+/-, and 0.165% p<0.0001 Hoxa11os-/-). Limiting dilution colony forming assay confirmed the higher LSK frequency with a 2-fold increase in the number of colonies for male knockout marrow compared to wild type marrow in contrast to the female setting where no significant differences were seen. As hormonal signals have been shown to regulate expression of HOX genes and differences in clonogenicity of male and female stem cells has been previously demonstrated, we reasoned this phenomenon could be secondary to extrinsic stimuli in vivo. The relatively uniform Hoxa11 levels in male and female knockout mice, however, suggested that cell intrinsic factors may also play a role. We therefore overexpressed HOXA11 into male and female wild type bone marrow ex vivo for colony forming assays to determine if elevated levels of the HOXA11 protein led to functional differences. This assay demonstrated a clear enhancement of self-renewal in male but not female bone marrow in contrast to HOXA9 overexpression which serially replated in both genders.
 Combined these data demonstrate that loss of function alterations in Hoxa11os transcripts lead to upregulation of Hoxa11 and gender specific hematopoietic progenitor cell perturbations. Ongoing efforts include competitive transplant studies as well as RNA and ChIP sequencing to identify gender specific downstream targets of Hoxa11 in the hematopoietic compartment in order to understand the selective expansion of progenitor subsets and male specific self-renewal capacity of this protein. These data will contribute to our understanding on how HOXA11-AS translocations promote oncogenesis.

 Zwaan: Daiichi Sankyo: Consultancy; Sanofi: Consultancy; Roche: Consultancy; Pfizer: Research Funding; BMS: Research Funding; Incyte: Consultancy; Celgene: Consultancy, Research Funding; Servier: Consultancy; Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Other: Travel support; Janssen: Consultancy. Gruber:Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy.


When the growth of a plant cell ceases, its walls become more rigid and lose the capacity to extend. Nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation methods were used to determine the molecular mobility of cell wall polymers in growing and nongrowing live celery (Apium graveolens L.) collenchyma. To our knowledge, this is the first time this approach has been used in vivo. Decreased polymer mobility in nongrowing cell walls was detected through the 13C-nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum by decreases in the proton spin-spin relaxation time constant and in the intensity of a sub-spectrum corresponding to highly mobile pectins, which was obtained by a spectral editing technique based on cross-polarization rates. Flexible, highly methyl-esterified pectins decreased in relative quantity when growth ceased. A parallel increase in the net longitudinal orientation of cellulose microfibrils was detected in isolated cell walls by polarized Fourier-transformed infrared spectrometry.


Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a multifactorial intestinal disorder, is often associated with a disruption in intestinal permeability as well as an increased expression of pro-inflammatory markers. The aim of this study was to first test the impact of treatment with glutamine (Gln), a food supplement containing natural curcumin extracts and polyunsaturated n-3 fatty acids (Cur); bioactive peptides from a fish protein hydrolysate (Ga); and a probiotic mixture containing Bacillus coagulans, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus gasseri and Lactobacillus helveticus. These compounds were tested alone on a stress-based IBS model, the chronic-restraint stress model (CRS). The combination of Gln, Cur and Ga (GCG) was also tested. Eight-week-old C57Bl/6 male mice were exposed to restraint stress for two hours every day for four days and received different compounds every day one week before and during the CRS procedure. Plasma corticosterone levels were measured as a marker of stress, and colonic permeability was evaluated ex vivo in Ussing chambers. Changes in the gene expression of tight junction proteins (occludin, claudin-1 and ZO 1) and inflammatory cytokines (IL1β, TNFα, CXCL1 and IL10) were assessed using RT-qPCR. The CRS model led to an increase in plasma corticosterone and an increase in colonic permeability compared with unstressed animals. No change in plasma corticosterone concentrations was observed in response to CRS with the different treatments (Gln, Cur, Ga or GCG). Stressed animals treated with Gln, Cur and Ga alone and in combination showed a decrease in colonic permeability when compared to the CRS group, while the probiotic mixture resulted in an opposite response. The Ga treatment induced an increase in the expression of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10, and the GCG treatment was able to decrease the expression of CXCL1, suggesting the synergistic effect of the combined mixture. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that a combined administration of glutamine, a food supplement containing curcumin and polyunsaturated n-3 fatty acids, and bioactive peptides from a fish hydrolysate was able to reduce colonic hyperpermeability and reduce the inflammatory marker CXCL1 in a stress-based model of IBS and could be of interest to patients suffering from IBS.


the corpuscles seem to pass out indifferently at all parts of the wall of the capillary, and with no approach to anything like a regular arrangement such as one might expect to occur if they were extruded through preexisting stomata at the junctions of epithelial cells; because the increased tension in the vessels seems adequate to account for the passage outwards of fluid from them, but not of corpuscles contained in this fluid, which, by the ordinary laws of fluid-pressure, would be pressed upon equally in all directions, unless one of their surfaces were absolutely in contact with the wall of the vessel; and, lastly, because the mode in which the corpuscles are observed to become applied by their flat surfaces to the capillary walls is the very reverse of that indicated by Dr. Cohnheim as the favourable position* which the corpuscles assume for forcible extrusion through pre-existing pores-for all these reasons it seems to me that his explanation is untenable. With regard to Stricker's supposition, that the corpuscles are passed through by virtue of some "active" condition of the capillary wall itself, I have been able to observe nothing either for or against it; it seems a pure hypothesis, with not much to be said in its favour. And I think the evidence adduced points rather to the passage of the corpuscle outwards by reason of some active condition which the corpuscle itself assumes, its adhesion to the wall of the capillary being produced by the throwing out of a small amceboid projection, which tends to adhere to and commence the perforation of the elastic and yielding capillary wall. This view is favoured also by the fact that, when more than half of the corpuscle is lying outside the vessel, this portion has often the most irregular shape and sometimes appears more or less subdivided. t Having formed this opinion from observation of what takes place in these processes, I afterwards found a paper in a recent number of Virchow's Archives (Ein Beitrag zur Lebensgeschichte der rothen Blutk6rperchen, xli, pp. 396-41i), by Dr. Friedreich of Heidelberg, fully describing certain remarkable changes of form, also protrusions of processes and subdivisions which he had seen taking place in red corpuscles found in the concentrated bloody urine of a patient suffering from renal disease; and also notable alterations of shape of red corpuscles taken from a patient supposed to be suffering from leuklemia. These phenomena he believed to be vital rather than physical, and excited by certain abnormal irritative conditions acting upon the corpuscles. Max Schultze (Archivfdr Mikrosk. Anat., bd. i, i865, S. 25) also, and Dr. Beale (Trans. of Microscop. Soc., i864), have observed notable alterationsin the shape of red blood-corpuscles when subjected to a high temperature; but these, as the respective observers conjectured, were probably changes occurring after the life of the corpuscle had been destroyed. Dr. Beale hints, however, that similar changes of form may occasionally take place during life. Bearing in mind, also, two characters of the red blood-corpuscle, as described by Dr. W. Roberts (Proceed. of Roy. Soc., i862), after the action of magenta and tannin respectively, it seems well that the attention of future observers should be directed to these peculiarities, and to the particulars above mentioned, in order to determine more certainly than has yet been done how far amoeboid movements and contractions do take place in the much-examined and much-writtenabout red blood-corpuscle. Presuming that these corpuscles do pass through the walls of the capillaries in the manner I have indicated, it 5ccm3 to mc that they may be made to assume this active condition either by changes in the nature of the blood-plasma, or by some unknown action of the tissues outside the vessel upon the corpuscles within, such as has been assumed to exist in inflammation. In the scorbutic condition and in the state of mechanical congestion, I should imagine that changes in the nature of the blood-plasma would be the most potential-such changes in these two conditions being perhaps not altogether dissimilar. Certainly I have noticed in both these conditions, that most of the corpuscles which can be seen to penetrate the walls of the capillaries present an easily appreciable and similar alteration from their normal structure. This consists in the presence of from two to four small clear spots, looking like vacuoles, in each red corpuscle. What significance the existence of these may have, as pointing to an abnormally active co-existing condition of the corpuscle, must be left for future observation to determine. I have two specimens to exhibit to the Society: pne in which the femoral vessel remained tied for about four or five hours yesterday; and one in which the femoral vein is at present tied, and in which almost complete stasis of blood exists throughout the web.


Modern recommender systems usually embed users and items into a learned vector space representation. Similarity in this space is used to generate recommendations, and recommendation methods are agnostic to the structure of the embedding space. Motivated by the need for recommendation systems to be more transparent and controllable, we postulate that it is beneficial to assign meaning to some of the dimensions of user and item representations. Disentanglement is one technique commonly used for this purpose. We presenta novel supervised disentangling approach for recommendation tasks. Our model learns embeddings where attributes of interest are disentangled, while requiring only a very small number of labeled items at training time. The model can then generate interactive and critiquable recommendations for all users, without requiring any labels at recommendation time, and without sacrificing any recommendation performance. Our approach thus provides users with levers to manipulate, critique and fine-tune recommendations, and gives insight into why particular recommendations are made. Given only user-item interactions at recommendation time, we show that it identifies user tastes with respect to the attributes that have been disentangled, allowing for users to manipulate recommendations across these attributes.


Matter manipulation with optical forces has become commonplace in a wide range of research fields and is epitomized by the optical trap. Calculations of optical forces on small illuminated particles typically neglect multiple scattering on nearby structures. However, this scattering can result in large recoil forces, particularly when the scattering includes directional near-field excitations. Near-field recoil forces have been studied in the case of electric, magnetic and circularly polarized dipoles, but they exist for any type of directional near-field excitation. We use the force angular spectrum as a concise and intuitive analytical expression for the force on any dipole near planar surfaces, which allows us to clearly distinguish the effect due to the dipole, and due to the surface. We relate this directly to the coupling efficiency of surface or guided modes via Fermi's golden rule. To exemplify this, a near-field force transverse to the illumination is computationally calculated for a Huygens dipole near a metallic waveguide. We believe this formalism will prove insightful for various nanomanipulation systems within areas such as nanofluidics, sensing, biotechnology and nano-assembly of nanostructures.


The narrative specifics of Umberto Eco's novel "The Island of the Day Before is regarded through a basic idea of the narrative metaphor "The Orange Dove". The methodological basis of the study is a summary concept of the relationship between narrative and metaphor. These are O. Freidenberg's hypothesis of metaphor as a future narrative form of plots and genres; F. Ankersmit's narrative logic of metaphor's transformation into a plot through a "point of view"; P. Recoeur's "common innovative nucleus" in narrative and metaphor designed for productive imagination; G. Genette's "narrative modality" and regulation of narrative information through metalepsis; R. Barthes' dichotomy of "functions and indices" as an analogy of metonymic and metaphorical relations. In the article under discussion, we consider metaphor as a narrative principle that ensures its own presentation, generates its rhythm, creates personosphere, and involves a reader in an intellectual game. Such a way of metaphor formation marks U. Eco's literary style. In his novel "The Island of the day Before", the following distinctive range of metaphors play a very constructive role: metaphor of sleep, metaphor of love as a source of creative activities, metaphor of duality, metaphor of hatred. Above all, it is worth pointing out author's epistemological metaphor, which is closely related to the search of truth: in the latter sense, the "Orange Dove" is associated with a post-modernist analogue of the "Blue Rose", borrowed from the epoch of Romanticism. Due to the technique of metalepsis ("the figure of speech denoting author's intrusion"), offered by G. Genette, the narrator demonstrates his metaphoric intentions through the discourse of a character-narrator. In conclusion, narrative metaphor of the novel directs the narrative strategy to a variety of its numerous versions, which may be implemented owing to reader's competence.


Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) have become an important part of operational computer security. They are the last line of defense against malicious hackers and help detect ongoing attacks as well as mitigate their damage. However, intrusion detection systems are not turnkey solutions but are heavily dependent on expensive and scarce security experts for successful operation. By emphasizing self-learning algorithms, we can reduce dependence on the domain expert but instead require massive amounts of labeled training data, another scarce resource in intrusion detection. In this paper, we investigate whether an active learning algorithm can perform on a par with a traditional self-learning algorithm in terms of detection accuracy but using significantly less labeled data. Our preliminary findings indicate that the active learning algorithm generally performs better than the traditional learning algorithm given the same amount of training data. Moreover, the reduction of labeled data needed can be as much as 80 times, shown by comparing an active learner with a traditional learner with similar detection accuracy. Thus, active learning algorithms seem promising in that they can reduce the dependence on security experts in the development of new detection rules by better leveraging the knowledge and time of the expert.


Protection of confidential data from being leaked to the public is a growing concern among
organisations and individuals. This WP4 document presents the results of the search for literature
on behavioural and security aspects of data protection. It will form the source material for
teaching on this subject.
The topics covered by this review include a summary of the changes brought about by the new
GDPR, human and behavioural aspects of data protection, security and data breach or loss
(threats), IT architectures to protect data (prevention), managing data breaches (mitigation), risk
assessment and data protection audits. A distinction is made between threats and prevention
from within an organisation and from the outside.


the earlier cycadophyte stock. Accordingly he introduces before ARBER and PARIN'S "pro-anthostrobilus" an evolutionary stage characterized by the grouping of filicinean. microsporophylls and megasporophylls in monosporangiate strobili, and to this hypothetical stage he gives the name "pteridostrobilus." This stage was temporarily a common one for the general cycad and angiosperm phyla; and at this stage the cycads practically stopped, with reduction of sporophylls; while the angiosperm phylum proceeded to the establishment of the bisporangiate condition, the evolution of angiospermy, the transformation of the habit of the vegetative body, etc. According to LIGNIER, the Bennettitales represent a different phylum, which branched from the cycadophyte phylum after the angiosperms, but still at the pteridostrobilus stage.-J. M. C.


The resistance of Aeromonas salmonicida to complement-mediated killing was investigated by using different strains and their isogenic mutants that had been previously characterized for their surface components. We found that the classical complement pathway is involved in serum killing of susceptible A. salmonicida strains, while the alternative complement pathway seems not to be involved. All of the A. salmonicida strains are able to activate complement, but the smooth strains (with or without the A-layer) are resistant to complement-mediated killing. The reasons for this resistance are that C3b may be bound far from the cell membrane and that it is rapidly degraded; therefore, the lytic final complex C5b-9 (membrane attack complex) is not formed. Isogenic rough mutants are serum sensitive because they bind more C3b than the smooth strains, and if C3b is not completely degraded, then the lytic complex (C5b-9) is formed.


This book is dedicated to Anna Wierzbicka, one of the most influential and innovative linguists of her generation. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies, as well as her home base of linguistics. She is best known for the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning—a versatile tool for exploring 'big questions' concerning the diversity and universals of people's experience in the world. In this volume, Anna Wierzbicka's former students, old and current colleagues, 'kindred spirits' and 'sparring partners' engage with her ideas and diverse body of work. These authors cover topics from the grammar of action verbs to cross-cultural pragmatics, and over 30 languages from around the world are represented. The chapters in Part 1 focus on the NSM approach and cover four themes: lexico-grammatical semantics, cultural keywords, semantics of nouns, and emotion. In Part 2, the contributors connect with a meaning-based approach from their own intellectual perspectives, including syntax, anthropology, cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics. The deep humanistic perspective, wide-ranging themes and interdisciplinary nature of Wierzbicka's research are reflected in the contributions. The common thread running through all chapters is the primacy of meaning to the understanding of language and culture.


The doctrine of sanctification in Owen's works permeates his whole theology, and in many ways provides a key to his theological system. Specifically, the doctrine of the Trinity stands at the heart of Owen's teaching on the doctrine of sanctification. According to the personal distinctions of the Triune God in the undivided work ad extra, within the covenant of redemption, Owen keeps the incarnate Christ's proper work on earth within the context of the Triune God's common work. In this light the completed aspect of sanctification is interpreted. Owen understands Christ's oblation to include not only his self-offering on earth, but also his ongoing intercession in heaven. The unity of oblation and intercession provides a key to understanding the progressive aspect of sanctification in Owen's thought, in heaven, Christ's mediatorial work as prophet, king, and high priest serves as the framework for the progressive aspect of sanctification. Moreover, the Holy Spirit himself is sent as a result of Christ's mediatorial work in heaven. As a result, a saint is united to Christ by the Spirit's proper work within the covenant of grace. At the moment when the saint is united to Christ, sin no longer has dominion and can never have the ultimate victory over him. This radical change gives us insight into definitive sanctification by the Holy Spirit's proper work in the Triune God's common work. One of the most important aspects in definitive sanctification is that the saint can have communion directly with the Father's love, the Son's grace, and the Spirit's consolation. This communion is essential to the imitation of Christ. Wherever Owen states his desire for communion with God, he brings in the saint's duties. In other words, the idea of communion with the Triune God contains the idea of the saint's obligation. So, through the diligent exercise of divinely granted grace, the saint is able to mortify indwelling sin, because his communion with God in Christ brings fellowship with Him in His death and resurrection. Neither can the saint mortify sin without this communion. The Holy Spirit works in the saint, and with him, within the context of communion with God. Therefore, in Owen's thought a sovereign work of God, and human responsibility, are brought together for the increase of holiness.


We present an approximate 2D asymptotic analytic theory of light field excitation in a plane thin dielectric layer under conditions of frustrated total internal reflection, when an inclined Gaussian beam, falling from a triangular prism, excites a decaying field in air spacing between a prism and a plane dielectric. Ignoring the radiation scattering on the sharp edges of a prism, we have obtained the formulas that allow us to compute spatial structures of an electromagnetic field in every point of space and to estimate the integral efficiency of waveguide mode excitation in a plane dielectric layer and the total energy of a reflected beam. It is shown that the width of an initial Gaussian beam has an effect on waveguide mode intensity.


Selective laser melting (SLM) is an important additive manufacturing process. It applies focused laser energy to quickly melt and solidify material powders, and a controlled layered operation can result in a free form build that is often out of reach for machining processes. As such, it has attracted much attention in recent years. However, metal components produced by this process often have inferior mechanical properties, as compared with the counterparts by the traditional manufacturing processes. To strengthen the metal components by SLM, adding reinforcement particles and applying post treatment are regarded as the two effective ways. Although adding reinforcement particles to create metal matrix composites has been studied by researchers in literature, much fewer has been done to use post treatment processes to further improve the properties and performance of the metal matrix composites from SLM.In this study, a nano-TiC reinforced Inconel 718 composite is prepared using SLM technique. The material has 0.5 wt.% nano-TiC addition. Solid solution treatments at three levels of temperature (940, 980, 1020 °C) are carried out to evaluate the effect of the heat treatment methods on the microstructure and resulted mechanical properties of the composite material. The results of samples with and without heat treatment are also compared. SEM observations are carried out to analyze the microstructure of the composite and understand the reinforcing mechanism. Tensile tests are conducted to evaluate the mechanical properties of the formed composites. It is discovered that compared with the pure Inconel 718 by SLM, the Inconel 718-TiC composite exhibits improved ultimate tensile strength. Microscopy observation of as-built samples indicates that the dendritic structures of Inconel 718 is remarkably refined by the TiC particles. Suspected laves phase particles are observed in as-built Inconel-TiC composite, and they partially transform to large amount of needle-like δ phase during the solid solution treatment.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


Localization of epileptogenic area is a fundamental step in pre-surgical evaluation. Unfortunately, phase II EEG approach has high risk due to invasiveness like infection and bleeding. Therefore, alternative approach with attention to non-invasiveness, real-time measurement and mobility is urgently needed. Brain ECVT is believed to be one of the promising neuroimaging techniques to record human's brain activities. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of integrated EEG and brain ECVT system. A twoelectrode Brain ECVT sensor was designed to facilitate a simultaneous measurement with EEG by using COMSOL software, phantom experiment and measurement with real human in resting-state condition. Visual and power spectral density (PSD) analysis showed that ECVT excitation at 100 Hz frequency or higher does not interfere with EEG measurement. Arithmetic task was performed in human subject experiment which shows that the signal PSD during the task is higher than during relax condition in both Brain ECVT and EEG measurements. ECVT excitation at 100 Hz or higher does not interfere with EEG measurement. Brain ECVT and EEG simultaneous measurement can give similar results based on the signal power spectral density analysis.


A lymph node (LN) is one of the secondary lymphoid organs. An LN consists of a complicated 3 dimensional frame structure and several stromal cells. Fibroblastic reticular cells (FRC) are distributed in the T zone for interaction with T cells. FRC secrete homing chemokines such as CCL19 and CCL21. Moreover, FRC play a pivotal role in the production of extracellular matrix (ECM) into LN for ECM reorganization against pathogen infections. However, not much is known about the involvement of the immune reaction of FRC. The present report is for the characterization of FRC on immune response. For this, FRC were positioned in several infected situations such as co-culture with macrophage, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and TNFα stimulation. When a co-culture between FRC and macrophage was performed, a morphological change in FRC was observed, and empty space between FRCs was created by this change. The soluble ICAM-1 protein level was up-regulated by co-culturing with Raw264.7 and the treatment of the ROCK inhibitor Y27632. The activity of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) was up-regulated by LPS onto FRC. Furthermore, the inflammatory cytokine TNFα regulated the expression of ECM in FRC by a gene chip assay. Collectively, it suggests that FRC are involved in immune reactions.


In this paper an automated information system is presented, that classifies scripts to corresponding writers using graphology. The methodology is based on the idea of creating a representative of each alphabet symbol in each script via proper fitting of all realizations of the specific symbol in it. The decision for writer identification is based on pair-wise comparisons of statistical quantities computed for all representatives. The system was applied to ancient Greek inscriptions of classical era which were correctly attributed to 6 different hands.


Iatrogenic lingual nerve (LN) injuries are quite common in oral surgery both in maxillo-facial surgery and in oral surgery. LN runs superficially into the lateral mouth floor just beneath the mucous layer and this position enhances damage frequency. This article lists the different aetiologies of iatrogenic LN injuries and it almost focuses on lesions due to surgical treatment of ranulas. In the case report a LN lesion due to oral ranula excision is discussed; the patient experienced anaesthesia and hyperpatia in the corrisponded tongue side. It was treated with a microneurosugical anastomosis of LN, after amputation neuroma excision. The partial and definitive recovery of perception happened in six months and was deemed satisfying with 70% of functionality restored (results compared with the functionality of the contralateral side). An algorithm for diagnosis and therapy indication for iatrogenic injuries to nerves is also proposed. In case of surgical treatment, funcitonal recovery manifests after 4-6 month; a functional recovery of 70% of total nerve function is possible. The variable that most affects nerve functional recovery is surgical treatment timing; it must be performed as soon as possible.


The use of occam as a simulation language for systolic and wavefront processor arrays is described. Partitioning problems which may arise are discussed and their implications for Transputer systems assessed. General principles for parallel simulation in occam are discussed, and occam is compared with other languages in this context.


A comparison between three independent software to estimate the power production and the flow field in a wind farm is conducted, validating them against SCADA (Supervisory, Control And Data Acquisition) data. The three software were ORFEUS, WindSim and WAsP: ORFEUS and WAsP are linearised solvers, while WindSim is fully nonlinear. A wake model (namely a prescribed velocity deficit associated to the turbines) is used by WAsP, while ORFEUS and WindSim use the actuator-disc method to account for the turbines presence. The comparison indicates that ORFEUS and WAsP perform slightly better than WindSim in the assessment of the polar efficiency. The wakes simulated with ORFEUS appear more persistent than the ones of WindSim, which uses a two-equation closure model for the turbulence effects.


This study investigated Worries about Leadership (WAL) among Finnish managers. WAL refers to personal negative evaluations that one makes about the potential consequences of a leadership role. The first aim of the study was to examine the psychometric properties (reliability and construct validity) of the 16-item Worries about Leadership Scale (Aycan & Shelia, 2018) among Finnish managers. The scale includes three sub-dimensions: 1) worries about failure, 2) worries about harm, and 3) worries about work-life imbalance. Second, we investigated different antecedents of leadership-related worries, both individual (demographic background factors, personal psychological factors) and contextual (learning climate at the work place). Our third main goal was to study how worries about leadership associate with well-being (work engagement, burnout) and career plans (resigning leadership positions). In addition, we examined whether managers' experiences of WAL was associated with the evaluations provided by their followers. Altogether 895 managers participated in the survey during the spring-autumn 2017. They represented professors (50 %), university researchers and other academics (12 %), business school graduates (25 %), and technical academics) (13 %). Of the participants, 45 % were women. Their age ranged between 27 and 69 years (M = 52.7). The hierarchical leader-follower data consisted of 242 leaders and their 987 followers. The results showed that all three WAL dimensions had good reliabilities. Based on a confirmatory factor analysis, the three-factor model had a moderate fit to the data among the participated managers. After reviewing the model, a second-order factor solution fit the data even better. From the demographic background factors that were included in the study, previous leadership experience and weekly working hours were associated with worries about leadership. Managers with more previous leadership experience reported having less worries related to leadership. Those managers, who worked 45 hours (or more) per week, reported most worries related to work-life imbalance. Of the studied individual psychological factors, especially individual tendency to be strained about errors was related to WAL. From the work environmental factors, the error-avoidant climate was associated with worries related to harm and failure. Worries about leadership were also related to well-being at work: The more worries the participants reported, the less work engagement and the more burnout they experienced. Especially, worries related to failure were associated to lower work engagement and higher burnout. Worries about leadership (especially worries about harm and work-life imbalance) were associated with willingness to resign leadership roles. When the data was investigated hierarchically, latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted to group the participated managers into distinctive patterns based on their WAL experiences. Within these worry patterns, the evaluations provided by the followers differed: In "Extremely worried" -pattern, followers' ratings about satisfaction with their leader and the visibility of leader's worries were most unsatisfactory compared to other patterns. To conclude, our findings indicate that even individuals in leader positions experience worries related to the consequences of leadership. These findings should be taken into account in general discussions and decision-making concerning work life, especially in the fields of leader education and executive coaching. Paying attention to and dealing with worries about leaders have concerning leadership could ensure that most suitable and exceling managers could sustainably continue a career as a leader.


This paper analyzes 8 major financial indicators of Yue Dianli in 2000 to 2009 by using the SPSS13.0 software based on factor analysis, to evaluating the company's consolidated results. The results showed that, in addition to the year of M&A, the performance showed a steady decreasing trend. The study results can facilitate the company to thinking the path of enhancing value.


The processing of N-linked oligosaccharides by α-mannosidases in the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi is a process conserved in plants and animals. After the transfer of a GlcNAc residue to Asn-bound Man5GlcNAc2 by N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase I, an α-mannosidase (EC 188.8.131.52) removes one α1,3-linked and one α1,6-linked mannose residue. In this study, we have identified the relevant α-mannosidase II gene (aman-2; F58H1.1) from Caenorhabditis elegans and have detected its activity in both native and recombinant forms. For comparative studies, the two other cDNAs encoding class II mannosidases aman-1 (F55D10.1) and aman-3 (F48C1.1) were cloned; the corresponding enzymes are, respectively, a putative lysosomal α-mannosidase and a Co(II)-activated α-mannosidase. The analysis of the N-glycan structures of an aman-2 mutant strain demonstrates that the absence of α-mannosidase II activity results in a shift to structures not seen in wild-type worms (e.g. N-glycans with the composition Hex5-7HexNAc2-3Fuc2Me) and an accumulation of hybrid oligosaccharides. Paucimannosidic glycans are almost absent from aman-2 worms, indicative also of a general lack of α-mannosidase III activity. We hypothesize that there is a tremendous flexibility in the glycosylation pathway of C. elegans that does not impinge, under standard laboratory conditions, on the viability of worms with glycotypes very unlike the wild-type pattern.


What are my impressions of San Francisco, after a month's stay? A city wrapped in a thick mist, in a fog obstructing the panorama. Cold. A city, less frequently, with a clear blue sky, silhouetting the hills and buildings. Low houses, of two or three stories, each with their own characteristics, with their own individual style, often delicate, well cared for. With interesting architectural decorations, bay windows allowing you to glimpse objects clearly held dear by their inhabitants: pottery, flower vases. American flags. Religious images. Near where I live, in the Mission, a largely Mexican neighborhood, I often pass an image of Christ that changes physiognomy depending on my distance: now he seems to have an eye closed, now he seems to be looking out with two alert eyes. The houses generally have wooden steps; blue, pink, green in various gradations, yellowish. Also purple. They evoke European architecture, some are Victorian in style. Downtown, instead, skyscrapers characterize the business and bank district.


Imagine a learner L who tries to infer a hidden concept from a collection of observations. Building on the work [4] of Ferri et al., we assume the learner to be parameterized by priors P(c) and by c-conditional likelihoods P(z|c) where c ranges over all concepts in a given class C and z ranges over all observations in an observation set Z. L is called a MAP-learner (resp. an MLE-learner) if it thinks of a collection S of observations as a random sample and returns the concept with the maximum a-posteriori probability (resp. the concept which maximizes the c-conditional likelihood of S). Depending on whether L assumes that S is obtained from ordered or unordered sampling resp. from sampling with or without replacement, we can distinguish four different sampling modes. Given a target concept c in C, a teacher for a MAP-learner L aims at finding a smallest collection of observations that causes L to return c. This approach leads in a natural manner to various notions of a MAP- or MLE-teaching dimension of a concept class C. Our main results are: We show that this teaching model has some desirable monotonicity properties. We clarify how the four sampling modes are related to each other. As for the (important!) special case, where concepts are subsets of a domain and observations are 0,1-labeled examples, we obtain some additional results. First of all, we characterize the MAP- and MLE-teaching dimension associated with an optimally parameterized MAP-learner graph-theoretically. From this central result, some other ones are easy to derive. It is shown, for instance, that the MLE-teaching dimension is either equal to the MAP-teaching dimension or exceeds the latter by 1. It is shown furthermore that these dimensions can be bounded from above by the so-called antichain number, the VC-dimension and related combinatorial parameters. Moreover they can be computed in polynomial time.


Alzheimer's disease (AD) is found to have striking brain inflammation characterized by clusters of reactive microglia that surround senile plaques. A recent study has shown that microglia placed in contact with isolated plaque fragments release neurotoxins. To explore further this process of immunoactivation in AD, we fractionated plaque proteins and tested for the ability to stimulate microglia. Three plaque-derived fractions, each containing full-length native Aβ1-40 or Aβ1-42 peptides, elicited neurotoxin release from microglia. Screening of various synthetic peptides (Aβ1-16, Aβ1-28, Aβ12-28, Aβ25-35, Aβ17-43, Aβ1-40, and Aβ1-42) confirmed that microglia killed neurons only after exposure to nanomolar concentrations of human Aβ1-40 or human Aβ1-42, whereas the rodent Aβ1-40 (5Arg→Gly, 10Tyr→Phe, 13His→Arg) was not active. These findings suggested that specific portions of human Aβ were necessary for microglia–plaque interactions. When coupled to microspheres, N-terminal portions of human Aβ (Aβ1-16, Aβ1-28, Aβ12-28) provided anchoring sites for microglial adherence whereas C-terminal regions did not. Although itself not toxic, the 10–16 domain of human Aβ was necessary for both microglial binding and activation. Peptide blockade of microglia–plaque interactions that occur in AD might prevent the immune-driven injury to neurons.


For sensitive data of organizations there arises a need of ensuring privacy and protection measures in systems especially at various high-tech firms. Cyber attacks are a wide form of threat confronted on web by several users on daily basis. These attacks are fundamentally used to challenge system security of others yet there are likewise some moral programmers who get into other people frameworks' to aware them about their vulnerabilities and get paid in return for securing their systems. In any case, these assaults have caused a great deal of concern for businessmen. The research covers the major types of cyber attacks that can affect the business world in an immense manner along with an overview that how these threats work and how they can be possibly prevented from. The hacking procedures are showing signs of improvement step by step and so should our frameworks to remain safe from all sorts of latest attacks on our data in various forms.


This paper examines the problem of optimizing the charge trajectory of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), defined as the timing and rate with which the PHEV obtains electricity from the power grid. Two objectives are considered in this optimization. First, we minimize the total cost of fuel and electricity consumed by the PHEV over a 24-hour naturalistic drive cycle. We predict this cost using a previously-developed stochastic optimal PHEV power management strategy. Second, we also minimize total battery health degradation over the course of the 24-hour cycle. This degradation is predicted using an electrochemistry-based model of anode-side resistive film formation in Li-ion batteries. The paper shows that these two objectives are conflicting, and trades them off using a non-dominated sort genetic algorithm, NSGA-II. As a result, a Pareto front of optimal PHEV charge trajectories is obtained. The effects of electricity price and trip schedule on the Pareto front are analyzed and discussed.


BACKGROUND There is growing evidence that spatial mobility has an impact on and is driven by family dynamics and gender relations. In contexts where family diversity and complexity have increased and gender inequalities persist, it is particularly urgent that we advance our understanding of decisions regarding spatial mobility and of its patterns and outcomes, in relation to families and gender. CONTRIBUTION This special collection highlights the importance of and presents novel findings on the interplay between spatial mobility, family dynamics, and gender relations. It unites new research perspectives that expand existing horizons with rigorous and innovative empirical studies. Contributions to this special collection deal with a number of underresearched areas that include, but are not restricted to, non-coresident family ties and gender differences in willingness to move, circular mobility patterns, and the nonlabour market outcomes of family migration. The insights contained in the articles in this collection not only clarify concrete associations but also offer roadmaps for revealing the mechanisms that explain them. 1 Centre for Demographic Studies, Barcelona, Spain. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com. 2 University of Bremen, Germany. Vidal & Huinink: Introduction to the SC on spatial mobility, family dynamics, and gender relations 594 http://www.demographic-research.org


Influenced by urban entrepreneurial economic development policy, new professional sports stadia have been widely advanced as flagship developments that can generate jobs and wealth, support place branding and culture-led strategies, and host mega-events that collectively boost the economic competitiveness of their towns and cities. Public funding for stadia developments has been secured on these bases but also increasingly challenged as stadia costs are under-estimated and the benefits, particularly for lower income communities, exaggerated. Responding to these criticisms and with greater policy attention on establishing sustainable communities, the social and community benefits of new stadia developments have increasingly been promoted to secure and justify public investment. In the UK, community stadia have emerged in this context.

Community stadia are an intriguing phenomenon as, in theory, they enable professional sports stadia to deliver on community aims alongside their core sporting and commercial demands and the economic development aims stemming from their flagship development status. Public funding has followed with a number of community stadia built or planned; this despite the limited critical analysis of the stadium type and its impact. It is this gap in the literature that this research addresses, doing so through a critical realist, case study methodology of two community stadia: The Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster and The Falkirk Stadium, Falkirk. Specifically the research draws on the community-related literature and interviews with diverse stadia stakeholders to define community stadia by conceptualising the factors that characterise or influence community stadia, understand what communities they engage with and benefit, and critique whether they are a sustainable phenomenon that can genuinely deliver on sporting, commercial, community and economic development aims.

The research finds that community stadia have the potential to deliver across these four aims, with stadia's association with the world of professional sport facilitating engagement with multiple, diverse and 'hard to reach' communities. However, they are also complex phenomena that require imaginative but effective design, planning, governance and operational management. Indeed, civic leaders and stadia officials need to be attuned to the concepts of inclusive design, co-production, and space and place; as well as having a diverse skill set spanning community engagement and partnership working to entrepreneurial and marketing skills.


AbstractThis qualitative study explores how white students make meaning of positive and negative cross-racial interaction, and how these interactions contribute to growth and learning. Utilising the theoretical frameworks of Critical Race Theory and intercultural maturity, this study provides evidence that cross-racial interactions reflect both positive and negative attributes that contribute to growth and learning. How this manifests is outlined in three overarching themes, including: 'Net-positive', 'Awkward, Uncomfortable, Tense' and 'The Nature of Positive Interactions'.


: Luck egalitarianism (LE, henceforth) is a fairly prominent theory of justice. While there are many versions of LE, they all agree that, at least to some extent, it is unjust for individuals to lose the opportunity for welfare at least when that loss occurs through no fault of the individual's own. Many writers take LE to have direct political implications; they write as if the truth of LE entails that resources should be taken from some – perhaps those who enjoy lots of unearned welfare - and delivered to those who suffer through no fault of their own. I argue that luck egalitarians should refocus their thinking on what I call a "Systemic Model" of compensation. This model holds that (a) what matters most to offsetting bad brute luck is that individuals have opportunities to make up for losses of welfare and (b) political systems should be designed to prevent some individuals from capturing resources in a manner that frustrates the ability of others to offset their own losses due to unearned bad luck and (c) political systems should aim to maximize the opportunities individuals have to make up for their own bad luck.


Cool materials are characterized by having a high solar reflectance r – which is able to reduce heat gains during daytime - and a high thermal emissivity e that enables them to dissipate the heat absorbed throughout the day during night.
Despite the concept of cool roofs - i.e. the application of cool materials to roof surfaces - is well known in US since 1990s, many studies focused on their performance in both residential and commercial sectors under various climatic conditions for US countries, while only a few case studies are analyzed in EU countries.
The present work aims at analyzing the thermal benefits due to their application to existing office buildings located in EU countries. Indeed, due to their weight in the existing buildings stock, as well as the very low rate of new buildings construction, the retrofit of office buildings is a topic of great concern worldwide.
After an in-depth characterization of the existing buildings stock in the EU, the book gives an insight into roof energy balance due to different technological solutions, showing in which cases and to what extent cool roofs are preferable.
A detailed description of the physical properties of cool materials and their availability on the market provides a solid background for the parametric analysis carried out by means of detailed numerical models that aims at evaluating cool roofs performance for various climates and office buildings configurations.
With the help of dynamic simulations, the thermal behavior of representative office buildings of the existing EU buildings stock is assessed in terms of thermal comfort and energy needs for air conditioning. The results, which consider several variations of building features that may affect the resulting energy balance, show how cool roofs are an effective strategy for reducing overheating occurrences and thus improving thermal comfort in any climate. On the other hand, potential heating penalties due to a reduction in the incoming heat fluxes through the roof are taken into account, as well as the aging process of cool materials.
Finally, an economic analysis of the best performing models shows the boundaries for their economic convenience.


A history of the remarkable shift of power to the American presidency, told through incisive analyses of the eighteen men who have held the office in the last century. The modern presidency really begins on September 14, 1901, argues Stephen Graubard, with the assassination of William McKinley and the succession of Teddy Roosevelt. TR's vigorous presidency foretold the expansion of wartime authority under Wilson; the growth of federal government under FDR; and the national security issues that dominated much of the foreign policy concerns during the Cold War. In his provocative new account of the enormous shift of power to the office of the American presidency, Graubard draws upon his intimate knowledge of every president since FDR to reveal the dangerous transformation of the executive branch in the last hundred years. Graubard sees three different "presidencies" over the course of the century, marked by increasing accumulation of authority: the presidency created by TR, Wilson, and FDR, continued under Truman and Eisenhower, in which foreign policy issues played a far greater role in presidential politics; the period of America's time of troubles from Kennedy to Carter, in which the disastrous Vietnam War spurred a further tendency to secrecy; and the third presidency, defined by Reagan and marked by spin. Learning the lessons of Reagan and Clinton, George W. Bush has inherited a far more powerful office than the one originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers. With access to former members of both Republican and Democratic administrations, Graubard has written a masterful history of presidential power--one that anyone concerned with American politics will need to read.


Objective: Cardiorespiratory interactions have been widely investigated in different physiological states and conditions. Various types of coupling characteristics have been observed in the cardiorespiratory system; however, it is difficult to identify and quantify details of their interaction. In this study, we investigate directional coupling of the cardiorespiratory system in different physiological states (sleep stages) and conditions, i.e., severity of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Methods: Directionality analysis is performed using the evolution map approach with heartbeats acquired from electrocardiogram and abdominal respiratory effort measured from the polysomnographic data of 39 healthy individuals and 24 mild, 21 moderate, and 23 severe patients with OSA. The mean phase coherence is used to confirm the weak and strong coupling of cardiorespiratory system. Results:  We find that unidirectional coupling from the respiratory to the cardiac system increases during wakefulness (average value of −0.61) and rapid eye movement sleep (−0.55). Furthermore, unidirectional coupling between the two systems significantly decreases during light (−0.52) and deep sleep, which is further decreased in deep sleep (−0.46), approaching bidirectional coupling. In addition, unidirectional coupling from the respiratory to the cardiac system also significantly increases according to the severity of OSA. Conclusion:  These coupling characteristics in different states and conditions are believed to be linked with autonomic nervous modulation. Significance: Our approach could provide an opportunity to understand how integrated systems cooperate for physiological functions under internal and external environmental changes, and how abnormality in one physiological system could develop to increase the risk of other systemic dysfunctions and/or disorders.


We propose here some new types of linguistic summaries of time series by extending our previous works. First, the linguistic summaries of time series refer to the summaries of (partial) trends identified here with straight line segments of a piece-wise linear approximation of a time series that is proposed in the paper. To characterize the trends we use the slope of the line segment, the goodness of approximation and the length of the trend. A linguistic summary of a time series is then derived by a linguistic quantifier driven aggregation of trends that is performed using the Sugeno integral. We show an application to the absolute performance type analysis of time series data on daily quotations of an investment fund over an eight year period. The results are very promising.


With the rapid development of Internet technology throughout the world, the technology of DSP has progressed tremendously. The paper conducts a research on the routing algorithm based on DSP routing module in medium-voltage power line communication. It attempts to improve link state routing algorithm based on OSPF protocol so as to enable all the circuits of the communicated DSP chips to send and receive data in real-time detection.


Fas ligand (FasL)‐mediated hepatocyte apoptosis occurs in the context of acute liver injury that can be accompanied by intravascular coagulation (IC). We tested the hypothesis that analysis of selected protein fractions from livers undergoing apoptosis will shed light on mechanisms that are involved in liver injury that might be amenable to intervention. Proteomic analysis of the major insoluble liver proteins after FasL exposure for 4‐5 hours identified fibrinogen‐γ (FIB‐γ) dimers and FIB‐γ–containing high molecular mass complexes among the major insoluble proteins visible via Coomassie blue staining. Presence of the FIB‐γ–containing products was confirmed using FIB‐γ–specific antibodies. The FIB‐γ–containing products partition selectively and quantitatively into the liver parenchyma after inducing apoptosis. Similar formation of FIB‐γ products occurs after acetaminophen administration. The observed intrahepatic IC raised the possibility that heparin therapy may ameliorate FasL‐mediated liver injury. Notably, heparin administration in mice 4 hours before or up to 2 hours after FasL injection resulted in a dramatic reduction of liver injury—including liver hemorrhage, serum alanine aminotransferase, caspase activation, and liver apoptosis—compared with heparin‐untreated mice. Heparin did not directly interfere with FasL‐induced apoptosis in isolated hepatocytes, and heparin‐treated mice survived the FasL‐induced liver injury longer compared with heparin‐untreated animals. There was a sharp, near‐simultaneous rise in FasL‐induced intrahepatic apoptosis and coagulation, with IC remaining stable while apoptosis continued to increase. Conclusion: Formation of FIB‐γ dimers and their high molecular mass products are readily detectable within the liver during mouse apoptotic liver injury. Heparin provides a potential therapeutic modality, because it not only prevents extensive FasL‐related liver injury but also limits the extent of injury if given at early stages of injury exposure. (HEPATOLOGY 2011;)