In this study we used the recently validated H2 clearance method to perform endoscopic measurements of gastric mucosal blood flow (MBF) in anesthetized dogs before and after parietal cell vagotomy (PCV). Under resting conditions, MBF in the gastric corpus before PCV was 72 +/- 5 ml/min/100 gm. This was not altered significantly at 4, 8, or 16 weeks after PCV, and there were not significant long-term changes in MBF on the greater or lesser curvatures of the corpus individually. Before PCV infusion of pentagastrin (8 micrograms/kg/hr) elicited increases in corpus MBF to 104 +/- 4 ml/min/100 gm, accompanied by increases in gastric acid output from resting levels of 2.1 +/- 0.9 to 38.6 +/- 2.4 mEq/hr (p less than 0.001). PCV significantly reduced pentagastrin-stimulated acid secretion by 50%, and secretory inhibition was accompanied by significant reductions in pentagastrin-stimulated MBF in the corpus. Pentagastrin did not alter antral MBFs before or after PCV. In summary PCV does not elicit significant long-term changes in resting MBF in different regions of the gastric corpus, and PCV significantly diminishes increases in acid output and corpus MBF that are normally stimulated by pentagastrin. These observations suggest that alterations in gastric MBF after PCV may be attributable to alterations in acid secretion.


ABSTRACT This article examines the benefits and pitfalls of international policing in Haiti over the past quarter century. It shows the importance of the political foundations for joint policing arrangements. Haiti's experience illustrates that international personnel can provide useful stopgap policing services when the interests of national and international partners converge around public order crises. However, the Haitian case also shows how weak political commitment on one or both sides can lead to vague mandates, poor cooperation in the field, weak police accountability, and stalled domestic reforms. These problems have undermined the performance of international personnel and the Haitian National Police, eroding public trust in both. Ultimately, international intervention has failed to yield a capable, trusted, and apolitical Haitian police force or a notably stronger rule of law. Haiti thus offers a cautionary tale for international policing.


OBJECTIVE
To test whether race moderates the relationship between negative emotions and neurocognition by applying the reserve capacity model within a large sample that spans adulthood.

METHOD
The study sample (N = 1,020) consisted of community-dwelling adults between 18 and 84 years of age who were drawn from the Virginia Cognitive Aging Project. Demographic variables were used to match a sample of Black participants to a sample of White participants. Race was examined as a moderator of the relationship between negative emotions (i.e., depressive symptoms, trait anxiety, and the negative affect subscale from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) and neurocognitive variables (episodic memory, reasoning, spatial visualization, and processing speed) with multiple-group structural equation modeling.

RESULTS
After accounting for sociodemographic variables, depressive symptoms were negatively associated with processing speed in both groups, and with worse reasoning in the White subsample. Negative affect was associated with lower reasoning performance in both groups and with lower spatial visualization in the White subsample. Trait anxiety was not significantly associated with the neurocognitive constructs in either group. Multigroup structural equation models showed that the magnitudes of the associations were not different between the Black and White subsamples. Thus, race did not moderate the relationships between depressive symptoms, trait anxiety, and negative affect with neurocognition.

CONCLUSIONS
Negative emotions are associated with lower performance on different neurocognitive tasks, but race does not moderate these relationships. Future research should examine perceived discrimination or other psychosocial variables when examining the relationships among negative emotions and neurocognition.


How mass is accumulated from cloud-scale down to individual stars is a key open question in understanding high-mass star formation. Here, we present the mass accumulation process in a hub-filament cloud G22 which is composed of four supercritical filaments. Velocity gradients detected along three filaments indicate that they are collapsing with a total mass infall rate of about 440 M Myr−1, suggesting the hub mass would be doubled in six free-fall times, adding up to ∼ 2 Myr. A fraction of the masses in the central clumps C1 and C2 can be accounted for through large-scale filamentary collapse. Ubiquitous blue profiles in HCO (3 − 2) and 13CO (3 − 2) spectra suggest a clump-scale collapse scenario in the most massive and densest clump C1. The estimated infall velocity and mass infall rate are 0.31 km s−1 and 7.2×10−4 M yr−1, respectively. In clump C1, a hot molecular core (SMA1) is revealed by the SMA observations and an outflow-driving high-mass protostar is located at the center of SMA1. The mass of the protostar is estimated to be 11− 15 M and it is still growing with an accretion rate of 7×10−5 M yr−1. The coexistent infall in filaments, clump C1, and the central hot core in G22 suggests that pre-assembled mass reservoirs (i.e., high-mass starless cores) may not be required to form high-mass stars. In the course of high-mass star formation, the central protostar, the core, and the clump can simultaneously grow in mass via core-fed/disk accretion, clump-fed accretion, and filamentary/cloud collapse.


Extensive experimental investigations show that internal defects play a key role in the very-high-cycle fatigue (VHCF) response of metallic materials and that crack growth from internal defects can take place even if the stress intensity factor associated to the initial defect is below the threshold for crack growth. By introducing a reduction term in the typical formulation of the threshold for crack growth, the authors recently proposed a general phenomenological model, which can effectively describe crack growth from internal defects in VHCF. The model is able to consider the different crack growth scenarios that may arise in VHCF and is enough general to embrace the various weakening mechanisms proposed in the literature for explaining why crack can grow below the threshold.

In the present paper, the model is generalized in a statistical framework. The statistical distributions of the crack growth threshold and of the initial defect size are put into the model. The procedure for the estimation of the Probabilistic-S-N curves and of the fatigue limit distribution is illustrated and numerically applied to an experimental dataset.


The paper presents the monitoring results of the genetic and mental status of workers from 2 plants of Yaroslavl. The groups of the examinees were formed in terms of unhealthy working conditions and residence in clean or polluted areas of the city. The individuals working under harmful and living under unfavourable environmental conditions were found to be more commonly acute or chronically stressed or fatigable than the control workers. Those under stress were shown to be more responsive to environmental genetic toxic agents. Whether psychological training may be used to form groups at high genetic risk is discussed.


18S rDNA sequences were obtained for the prasinophytes Pseudoscourfieldia marina (Throndsen) Manton and Pycnococcus provasolii Guillard. These sequences, along with those of additional prasinophytes and other green algae and land plants, were used for phylogenetic analyses by the neighbor‐joining, maximum parsimony, and quartet puzzling methods. Results indicate that Ps. marina and Py. provasolii are closely allied and that both should be included in the Pycnococcaceae. In addition, results of these sequence analyses and additional pigment analysis indicate that the organism previously identified as Ps. marina, isolate CCMP 717, is, in fact, a Nephroselmis sp. or is closely related to that genus.


Tetanus and botulinum neurotoxins are the most poisonous substances known, so much so as to be considered for a possible terrorist use. At the same time, botulinum neurotoxin type A1 is successfully used to treat a variety of human syndromes characterized by hyperactive cholinergic nerve terminals. The extreme toxicity of these neurotoxins is due to their neurospecificity and to their metalloprotease activity, which results in the deadly paralysis of tetanus and botulism. Recently, many novel botulinum neurotoxins and some botulinum-like toxins have been discovered. This large number of toxins differs in terms of toxicity and biological activity, providing a potential goldmine for novel therapeutics and for new molecular tools to dissect vesicular trafficking, fusion, and exocytosis. The scattered data on toxicity present in the literature require a systematic organization to be usable by scientists and clinicians. We have assembled here the data available in the literature on the toxicity of these toxins in different animal species. The internal comparison of these data provides insights on the biological activity of these toxins.


Abstract The nature of the census figures produced by Demetrius of Phaleron, crucial evidence for the size of the Athenian population, has been misunderstood. The census categories were not 'native Athenians, foreign residents and slaves', but 'citizens above the property qualification, residents without political rights and members of households'. The property qualification of 1,000 drachmas associated with Demetrius' regime was the requirement for holding the highest offices; the property requirement for citizenship rights was lower, as it was in the spurious constitution of Draco described in Athenaion Politeia 4, which was probably invented and inserted during Demetrius' reign. In the light of this reinterpretation of the evidence for the structure of the Athenian population under Demetrius, a reconsideration of the evidence for the size of the Athenian population in 322 BC suggests that there were ca. 30,000 adult male citizens and far fewer metics than generally assumed, probably ca. 5,000. The distribution of property among the citizen population was very uneven, with the richest 30% of the population owning about 80% of the wealth. According to Demetrius' census as reinterpreted here, slaves outnumbered free residents by 'only' about 3:1, which still seems an implausibly high figure, but needs to be taken seriously as a government estimate rather than a rhetorical exaggeration.


An ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (Q-TOF/MS) method has been optimized and established for the rapid analysis of the alkaloids in 22 samples originating from five Uncaria (U.) species. The accurate mass measurement of all the protonated molecules and subsequent fragment ions offers higher quality structural information for the interpretation of fragmentation pathways of the various groups of alkaloids. A total of 19 oxindole alkaloids, 16 indole alkaloids and 1 flavone were identified by co-chromatography of the sample extract with authentic standards, comparison of the retention time, characteristic molecular ions and fragment ions, or were tentatively identified by MS/MS determination. Moreover, the method was validated for the simultaneous quantification of the 24 components within 10.5 min. The potential chemical markers were identified for classification of the U. species samples by principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squared discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA). The results demonstrate the similarity and differences in alkaloids among the five U. species, which is helpful for the standardization and quality control of the medical materials of the U. Ramulus Cum Unics (URCU). Furthermore, with multivariate statistical analysis, the determined markers are more definite and useful for chemotaxonomy of the U. genus.


AIM
To assess ex vivo the use of two different cone-beam computerized tomography (CBCT) units at different voxel resolutions for the detection of simulated small internal resorption cavities.

METHODOLOGY
A total of 60 single-rooted mandibular incisors and canines were split mesiodistally along the coronal plane into labial and lingual sections. Artificial internal root resorption was simulated by drilling with a 0.5-mm-diameter round bur to its full depth at either the cervical or apical portion of the labial wall. In total, 60 cavities were created (30 cervical and 30 apical), and 60 locations (30 cervical and 30 apical) were left without cavities. The sections were rejoined and placed in dry human mandibles in groups of 6 and imaged using two different CBCT units at different resolutions to obtain five image sets as follows: Iluma, ultra-resolution (0.1 mm(3)); Iluma, high-resolution (0.2 mm(3)); Iluma, low-resolution (0.3 mm(3)); 3D Accuitomo 170, 6 x 6 cm FOV (0.125 mm(3)); 3D Accuitomo 170, 8 x 8 cm FOV (0.160 mm(3)). Each image set was viewed by two observers and evaluated using a 5-point scale for detection of internal resorption cavities. Kappa coefficients were calculated to assess intra- and inter-observer agreement. Az values were calculated and compared, with a significance level of alpha = 0.05.

RESULTS
Kappa values were fair-to-moderate for the low-resolution Iluma images and good to excellent for all other image sets. Both intra- and inter-observer agreement values were higher for the Accuitomo images than for the Iluma images. The highest Az values were obtained with the Accuitomo 0.125 mm(3) images and the lowest with the Iluma 0.3 mm(3) images. The Az values for the Accuitomo and Iluma ultra- and high-resolution images were higher than those of the low-resolution Iluma images. No differences (P > 0.05) for internal resorption detection were found between the Az values of the Accuitomo 0.125 mm(3), Accuitomo 0.160 mm(3), ultra-resolution Iluma and high-resolution Iluma images.

CONCLUSION
Ultra-and high-resolution Iluma and Accuitomo 0.125 and 0.160 mm(3) CBCT images performed similarly and better than low-resolution Iluma images in the detection of simulated internal resorption ex vivo.


Introduction Statutory, autopsy-based compensation for occupational lung diseases for South African miners began 100 years ago. Cardio-respiratory organs are removed locally where miners die, regardless of the clinical cause of death and with written consent from a near relative. The organs are examined at the National Institute for Occupational Health in Johannesburg. Previous studies in many countries have shown that the process of obtaining consent is a major determinant of autopsy uptake. Mines provide organ removal services for mineworkers who die while employed. We determined uptake and explored experiences and perceptions of personnel involved in obtaining autopsy consent. Methods A sequential mixed-methods study was conducted. The proportion of miners who died and had an autopsy was determined for three mines (2009 to 2012). Fourteen in-depth interviews were conducted among personnel involved in obtaining autopsy consent in the three mines. Thematic content analysis was applied. Results Average autopsy uptake was 34% in the platinum mine, and 12% and 86% in the two gold mines. Procedures for obtaining consent were similar. The categories of personnel involved in the process included human resource officers, nurses, prosectors and union officials. Barriers to the offering of autopsies were the location of death (consent was less likely to be offered if deaths occurred far from the mines), lack of awareness and poor knowledge and interpretation of the law governing compensation, work load and distrust of the inefficient compensation system. Enablers included sensitivity in communication (empathy, confidentiality, language and culture) and involvement of union officials. Discussion Autopsy uptake was variable across the mining population and was influenced by several individual, sociocultural and institutional factors. Training is required to ensure that personnel who request consent are knowledgeable about the processes and benefits of autopsy compensation, and that they use appropriate communication strategies when talking to families.


We report on the excitonic luminescence of polycrystalline films composed of two-dimensional (2D) tin iodide perovskites. By combining steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopies between room temperature and 5 K, we identify an optically inactive, dark excitonic state within the spectral fine structure at the exciton energy, ubiquitous in the optical spectra of 2D perovskites. Lying at about 10 meV below the bright exciton that is responsible for luminescence, the dark state mediates non-radiative decay of the photo-excited population at temperatures below 100 K. However, at about 100–120 K, we observe a thermally activated transfer of population from the dark state back to the bright state which results in an increase in luminescence efficiency. Based on quantitative analysis of the observed exciton dynamics, we argue that the dark state acts as a reservoir of photo-excitations at ambient temperature. By feeding the bright state at a rate that is slower than the radiative rate, the dark state mitigates the loss of photo-excited population to other non-radiative pathways. Our work provides insights into the dynamics of the inevitable dark states in 2D perovskites and their relevance in enhancing the emissivity of the technologically relevant lead-free material architectures.


Research has been growing on object detection using semi-supervised methods in past few years. We examine the intersection of these two areas for floor-plan objects to promote the research objective of detecting more accurate objects with less labeled data. The floor-plan objects include different furniture items with multiple types of the same class, and this high inter-class similarity impacts the performance of prior methods. In this paper, we present Mask R-CNN-based semi-supervised approach that provides pixel-to-pixel alignment to generate individual annotation masks for each class to mine the inter-class similarity. The semi-supervised approach has a student–teacher network that pulls information from the teacher network and feeds it to the student network. The teacher network uses unlabeled data to form pseudo-boxes, and the student network uses both label data with the pseudo boxes and labeled data as the ground truth for training. It learns representations of furniture items by combining labeled and label data. On the Mask R-CNN detector with ResNet-101 backbone network, the proposed approach achieves a mAP of 98.8%, 99.7%, and 99.8% with only 1%, 5% and 10% labeled data, respectively. Our experiment affirms the efficiency of the proposed approach, as it outperforms the previous semi-supervised approaches using only 1% of the labels.


Background There are limited data on the prevalence of Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) coinfection with rectal chlamydia and rectal gonorrhoea infections in men who have sex with men (MSM). There are also few studies examining the prevalence of pharyngeal MG in MSM. Using a highly sensitive transcription mediated amplification assay, this study aimed to determine the proportion of rectal chlamydial and gonococcal infections in MSM that are co-infected with rectal MG, and the proportion of MSM with MG detected in the pharynx. Methods This study was conducted at Melbourne Sexual Health Centre in Victoria, Australia. Consecutive routinely collected rectal swabs from MSM, that previously tested positive for chlamydia (N=212) or gonorrhoea (N=212) using Aptima Combo 2 (Hologic, San Diego), were tested for MG co-infection using the Aptima Mycoplasma genitalium Assay (Hologic, San Diego). Consecutive pharyngeal samples (N=500) from MSM were also tested for MG using Aptima Mycoplasma genitalium Assay. Samples were linked to demographic and epidemiological data, as well as symptoms and clinical diagnosis, and irreversibly de-identified prior to MG testing. Results Rectal-MG was co-detected in 27/212 chlamydial (13%, 95%CI 9–18) and in 29/212 gonorrhoea (14%, 95%CI 9–19) samples, with no difference in the proportion positive for MG between the two groups (p=0.774). MSM with rectal-gonorrhoea and MG co-infection were more likely to be HIV positive than those infected with gonorrhoea alone (OR 2.96, 95%CI 1.21–7.26, p=0.023). Pharyngeal-MG was detected in 8/464 consecutive samples (2%, 95%CI 1–3%). Conclusion We found high and identical rates of MG coinfection (13–14%) in MSM with chlamydial or gonorrhoeal rectal infection. Macrolide resistance in MG exceeds 80% in MSM at our service. Rectal gonorrhoea and chlamydia treatment involves use of azithromycin. These data highlight the prevalence of unidentified MG which is inadvertently exposed azithromycin. Using highly sensitive diagnostic methods, pharyngeal-MG was only detected in 2% of MSM in this study. Disclosure No significant relationships.


The subject invention relates to diffusion enhancing compounds and their use alone or with thrombolytic agents for the treatment of disorders resulting from the formation of a thrombus such as a myocardial infarction or stroke.


A novel silicon photodetector suitable for high-speed, low-voltage operation at 780- to 850-nm wavelengths is reported. It consists of an interdigitated p-i-n detector fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate by using a standard bipolar process. Biased at 3.5 V, this device attains a -3-dB bandwidth in excess of 1 GHz at /spl lambda/=840 nm. The dc responsivity measured at /spl lambda/=840 nm on nonoptimized structures ranges from 0.05 to 0.09 A/W, depending on the finger shadowing factor. A new approach for improving the responsivity is proposed and quantitatively analyzed. The fabricated devices exhibit extremely low dark currents, small capacitance, large dynamic range, and no evidence of low-frequency gain. The overall performance and process compatibility of these photodetectors make them viable candidates for the fabrication of silicon monolithic receivers for fiber-optic data links.


Abstract Hemidiaptomus diaptomid copepods are known to be excellent biological indicators for the highly biodiverse crustacean communities inhabiting Mediterranean temporary ponds (MTPs), an endangered inland water habitat whose conservation is considered a priority according to the "Habitat Directive" of the European Union. This study reports on the characterization of five polymorphic microsatellite loci in Hemidiaptomus gurneyi, to be used as markers for fine-scale studies on the population genetic structure and metapopulation dynamics of a typical and obligate MTP dweller. The five selected loci proved to be polymorphic in the species, with three to five polymorphic loci per studied population. Overall, mean heterozygosity scored for all loci and populations was lower than that reported for the few other diaptomid species for which microsatellite loci have been to date described; this is possibly due to the intrinsically fragmented and isolated peculiar habitat inhabited by the species. Furthermore, the presence of indels within the flanking regions of selected loci was scored. This study, albeit confirming the technical difficulties in finding proper microsatellite markers in copepods, provides for the first time a set of useful polymorphic microsatellite loci for a Hemidiaptomus species, thus allowing the realization of fine-scale phylogeographic and population genetics studies of this flagship crustacean taxon for MTPs.


The main objective of the current study was the extraction, purification, and enzymatic characterization of a potent proteinaceous amylase inhibitor from Moringa oleifera. The antimicrobial potential and insecticide effects against C. maculates insect larvae were also studied. The α-amylase inhibitor was extracted in methanol (with an inhibitory activity of 65.6% ± 4.93). Afterwards, the inhibitor αAI.Mol was purified after a heat treatment at 70 °C for 15 min followed by one chromatographic step of Sephadex G-50. An apparent molecular weight of 25 kDa was analyzed, and the N-terminal sequence showed the highest identity level (89%) with the monomeric α-amylase inhibitor from Triticum dicoccoides. αAI.Mol was found to tolerate pH values ranging from 5.0 to 11.0 and showed maximal activity at pH 9.0. Thermal stability was remarkably important, since the inhibitory activity was maintained at 55% after 1 h of incubation at 70 °C and at 53% after an incubation of 45 min at 80 °C. The potency of the current purified inhibitor against amylases from different origins indicates that αAI.Mol seems to possess the highest affinity toward human salivary α-amylase (90% inhibitory activity), followed by the α-amylase of insects Callosobruchus maculatus and Tribolium confusum (71% and 61%, respectively). The kinetic parameters were also calculated, and the Kmax and Vmax of the digestive amylase were estimated at 185 (mmol/min/mg) and 0.13 mM, respectively. The inhibitor possesses a strong bactericidal effect against Gram+ and Gram- strains, and the MIC values were >1 against B. cereus but >6 against E. coli. Interestingly, the rates of survival and pupation of C. maculates insect larvae were remarkably affected by the purified αAI.Mol from Moringa oleifera.


available online at http://meteoritics.org A9 © Meteoritical Society, 2004. Printed in USA. Award 2004 Leonard Medal for Michael J. Drake Two hundred years ago, British chemist William Henry argued that the behavior of an element at high dilution varies in proportion to its concentration. Henry's Law, as it came to be known, offers a fair approximation for the partitioning of trace elements but, in many geochemical systems, element behavior depends on other factors such as temperature, pressure, bonding, and so forth. Experimentally determined partitioning of trace elements provides the means of understanding these factors, but carrying out such difficult experiments would strain the technical ability and wither the resolve of most of us. Mike Drake has spent his career measuring how trace elements behave in crystallizing magmas, in minerals located deep within planetary interiors, and in solids and liquids under various cosmochemical conditions. Like Henry, Mike Drake grew up in England. As a graduate student with Dan Weill at the University of Oregon, Mike began his studies of trace element partitioning by developing an electron probe technique for rare earth element (REE) analysis. At the time, there were no ion probes, so this constituted a major advance over the REE analyses of bulk rocks or mineral separates that were then possible. Mike focused especially on REE partitioning in plagioclase, which has proved so important in understanding the formation of the feldspathic lunar crust. After a postdoc year with John Wood studying lunar petrology, Mike migrated to the University of Arizona, where he has remained. REE analyses were central to Mike and Guy Consolmagno's classic paper on the composition and identity of the HED meteorite parent body. He also determined REE partitioning among the minerals of refractory inclusions, as well as quantifying the preferences of other lithophile trace elements (Sr, Ba, Y, Rb, Cs, Ni) among minerals crystallizing from magmas under various conditions. Mike and his students have also measured the solubilities of noble gases (Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe) in magmas, to understand how their abundances constrain outgassing and the various planetary reservoirs for volatile elements. But Mike's best known studies focus on the partitioning of elements with affinities for metal or sulfide phases (Ga, Ge, P, V, Cr, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Mo, Sn, Co, W). Some of his experiments are carried out at very high pressures to simulate fractionation during core formation. These very difficult experiments provide critical data for assessing the accretion and differentiation histories of the Earth, the Moon, the terrestrial planets, and their meteorite building blocks. Mike's careful experiments have had a profound effect because he has used the results with great insight to understand the geochemical processes that happen as planets evolve. He is a master at synthesizing diverse constraints and constructing a coherent picture of events of huge scale. Some examples are his models for lunar basalt petrogenesis, magma ocean crystallization on the Earth, Mars, and Vesta, and the impact origin of the Moon. Without this body of published work, our understanding of the formation, differentiation, solidification, and outgassing of planetesimals and planets would be limited, indeed. In recognition of his significant contributions to planetary geochemistry, Michael J. Drake has been selected as the recipient of this year's Leonard Medal. Harry Y. McSween, Jr. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996–1410, USA


The sources and components of hospital sewage are complex, including pathogenic microorganisms, drugs, metabolites, antibiotic resistant genes, heavy metals, contrast agents, etc It will become an important way of epidemic spread and a serious source of environmental pollution without effective treatment Moreover, the emerging contaminants, such as drugs, have become a hotspot in water environment and water pollution control, and the hospital sewage is one of important sources of these contaminants Based on the impact of COVID-19 on the prevention and control system of the medical system during the current epidemic period, this review illustrated the distribution of drugs and pathogenic microorganisms in hospital sewage, summarized the progress and problems of domestic and foreign hospital sewage treatment technology, and also proposed the future development direction of hospital sewage treatment technology More importantly, under the special circumstances of COVID-19 epidemic, higher requirements and standards are needed for the construction of hospital sewage control system Specifically, the simultaneous degradation of drugs and disinfection of pathogenic microorganisms may be the "hotspot" for the development of hospital sewage treatment technology and equipment in the future © 2020, Editorial Department of JCEE All right reserved


To choose the method of forage mass estimation (FM), consider the plant species, required accuracy and available technology. In this sense, the objective was to evaluate the methods of determination of direct FM and comparative visual performance with five and 10 patterns, in the trees Gliricidia ( Gliricidia sepium Jacq.) and Sabia ( Mimosa caesalpiniifolia Benth.) At heights up to 1,5 m above the soil and whole plant (1.65 to 1.90 m for Gliricidia and from 3.63 to 5.03 m for Sabia, with averages of 1.80 and 4.24 m, respectively), using the plant as a unit sample. The evaluations were performed every 28 days for one year, 2012 to 2013. The trees were cultivated in silvopastoral system with brachiaria, under continuous stocking of cattle with initial weight of ± 175 kg. The methods analyzed by regression in the collection cycles and annually and compared by the 5% F test. At the evaluated times it is possible to estimate the FM production by the indirect method, with no differences in the number of standards. The average annual FM of 118.547 kg in 2,250 plants of Gliricidia ha-1, slightly varying between heights. At Sabia the annual average FM was 398.241 and 702.281 kg in 2,250 ha-1 plants, at heights of up to 1.5 m above the ground and whole plant, respectively. The use of the plant as a sample unit, allowed high determination coefficients above 0.800 in the annual analyzes, for the indirect method.


The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital has incorporated a fully filmless Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) as part of a new hospital provision using PFI funding. The PACS project has been very successful and has met with unanimous acclaim from radiologists and clinicians. A project of this size cannot be achieved without learning some lessons from mistakes and recognising areas where attention to detail resulted in a successful implementation. This paper considers the successes and problems encountered in a large PACS installation.


The work deals with the results of studying 2,025 patients who were operated on for hydatid disease of various localization which was diagnosed on their visit to a physician and 181 patients in whom the disease was discovered by the active method. A high percentage of complications (16.1%) and mortality (4.1%) were registered after surgery in the first group. In the second group of patients postoperative complications amounted to 8.1% and mortality was 0.5%. It was concluded that recognition of patients before the development of complications influences significantly the outcome of operation for hydatid disease. To improve the results of surgical treatment of hydatid disease, the patients must be recognized actively and those who underwent operation must be kept under regular medical survey.


It takes lots of time and effort to achieve success with your animals in the showring. It requires a long preparation process and success more than often doesn't come with your first show. "Nothing can replace careful selection, but proper preparation and the correct feeding programme can contribute a great deal to ensure that high-quality animals achieve the best possible ranking in the showring."


Islamic boarding school as traditional Islamic education institution is an invaluable part of Indonesian national education system. This education institute has been able to show itself freely according to society needs and epoch demand without loosing its essential identity as tafaqquh fiddin institution. The important factor that sustains this condition can be seen from the curriculum aspect. Therefore, this article is intended to investigate Islamic boarding school curriculum in Indonesia, especially at Islamic boarding school case in South Kalimantan. This Islamic boarding school curriculum is focused on written curriculum both scientific study and the specific books. This study also shows how Islamic boarding school curriculum model as responding to national education curriculum development in Indonesia.


Abstract. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model has been designed to be an efficient and flexible simulation system for use across a broad range of weather-forecast and idealized-research applications. Of particular interest is the use of WRF in nonhydrostatic applications in which moist-convective processes are treated explicitly, thereby avoiding the ambiguities of cumulus parameterization. To evaluate the capabilities of WRF for convection-resolving applications, real-time forecasting experiments have been conducted with 4 km horizontal mesh spacing for both convective systems in the central U.S. and for hurricanes approaching landfall in the southeastern U.S. These forecasts demonstrate a good potential for improving the forecast accuracy of the timing and location of these systems, as well as providing more detailed information on their structure and evolution that is not available in current coarser resolution operational forecast models.


Abstract Effective research, education, and outreach efforts by the Arabidopsis thaliana community, as well as other scientific communities that depend on Arabidopsis resources, depend vitally on easily available and publicly‐shared resources. These resources include reference genome sequence data and an ever‐increasing number of diverse data sets and data types. TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource) and Araport (originally named the Arabidopsis Information Portal) are community informatics resources that provide tools, data, and applications to the more than 30,000 researchers worldwide that use in their work either Arabidopsis as a primary system of study or data derived from Arabidopsis. Four years after Araport's establishment, the IAIC held another workshop to evaluate the current status of Arabidopsis Informatics and chart a course for future research and development. The workshop focused on several challenges, including the need for reliable and current annotation, community‐defined common standards for data and metadata, and accessible and user‐friendly repositories/tools/methods for data integration and visualization. Solutions envisioned included (a) a centralized annotation authority to coalesce annotation from new groups, establish a consistent naming scheme, distribute this format regularly and frequently, and encourage and enforce its adoption. (b) Standards for data and metadata formats, which are essential, but challenging when comparing across diverse genotypes and in areas with less‐established standards (e.g., phenomics, metabolomics). Community‐established guidelines need to be developed. (c) A searchable, central repository for analysis and visualization tools. Improved versioning and user access would make tools more accessible. Workshop participants proposed a "one‐stop shop" website, an Arabidopsis "Super‐Portal" to link tools, data resources, programmatic standards, and best practice descriptions for each data type. This must have community buy‐in and participation in its establishment and development to encourage adoption.


BACKGROUND
Treadmills have been employed as both a form of exercise and a countermeasure to prevent changes in the musculoskeletal system on almost all NASA missions and many Russian missions since the early Space Shuttle flights. It is possible that treadmills may also be part of exercise programs on future Mars missions and that they may be a component of exercise facilities in lunar or Martian habitats.

METHODS
In order to determine if the ambient gravity on these destinations will provide osteogenic effects while performing exercise on a treadmill, ground reactions forces (GRFs) were measured on eight subjects (six women and two men) running at 6 mph during parabolic flight in Martian and lunar gravity conditions.

RESULTS
On average, stride length increased as gravity decreased. The first and second peaks of the GRFs decreased by 0.156 and 0.196 bodyweights, respectively, per 1/10 g change in ambient gravity.

DISCUSSION
Based on comparisons with previously measured GRF during loaded treadmill running on the International Space Station, we conclude that unloaded treadmill running under lunar and Martian conditions during exploration missions is not likely to be an osteo-protective exercise.Cavanagh P, Rice A, Glauberman M, Sudduth A, Cherones A, Davis S, Lewis M, Hanson A, Wilt G. Ground reaction forces during reduced gravity running in parabolic flight. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2017; 88(8):730-736.


Bernstein test has been applied for over 30 years in the diagnosis of the causes of pyrosis. Its drawback is a considerable percentage of false positive results in healthy persons, caused by a too large amount of 0.1 M HCl given. Presented in the paper are studied results in 34 patients with symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and in 23 healthy persons in which into the body of the esophagus and into the cardia was given alternately 0.1 M HCl and 0.15 M NaCl at a speed of 0.8 cm3.min-1. During the testing the complaints reported by the patients were recorded, and by means of polyphysiograph the spasms of the body of the esophagus were recorded and morphologically assessed. In addition, in 12 volunteers of 23 healthy persons Bernstein classic test was carried out by giving them alternately 0.1 M HCl and 0.15 M NaCl at a speed of 0.8 cm3 x min-1. The testing carried out shows that a reduction in the amount of acid given in Bernstein test causes a decrease in the percentage of false positive results in healthy persons. HCl infusion into the body of the esophagus and into the cardia in patients with symptoms of GERD caused pathological motility in the body of the esophagus. The most frequent anomaly were multipeaked spasms, which can be an additional diagnostic criterion of this disease.


The study investigated emotional intelligence, religiosity and self-efficacy as predictors of psychological well-being among secondary school adolescents. The study made use of stratified random sampling in selecting 292 adolescents from ten (10) secondary schools in Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria. The sample age ranged between 13 -20 years. Four instruments were used, namely: General Self-Efficacy Scale, Well-being Manifestation Measurement Scale; The Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS); and Religiosity Scale. Data analysis involved the use of multiple regression and Pearson Product Moment correlation. The results indicated that the three independent variables as a block were effective in predicting psychological well-being of adolescents. On the basis of the finding, it was suggested that teachers should endeavour to teach rudiments of emotional intelligence to the students while school counselors and psychologists should develop programmes to foster emotional intelligence and self-efficacy.


Variability in population numbers is a central issue in evolutionary ecology and also in biodiversity conservation. However, for most seabirds this information is lacking and tropical populations are virtually unstudied. Long-term studies are warranted because world's seabird populations exhibit an overall declining trend since 1950. Using data spanning 23 yr, we investigated how adult survival, local recruitment, and their relative contributions to population growth (λ) vary over time in the blue-footed booby Sula nebouxii, a long-lived locally foraging seabird that breeds in tropical waters. In addition, we investigated whether booby demographic rates exhibit the same declining trend observed in other seabirds, whether these rates are impacted by hurricanes, and whether these potential impacts differ between sexes. Our analysis of 4608 capture–recapture histories revealed that survival and recruitment were nearly equal between males and females, exhibited a declining trend over the last 23 yr, and in both sexes, these vital rates improved after a hurricane. The declining trend in recruitment was slightly more attenuated in males. These results add to the current evidence for an overall declining trend in world's seabird populations and extend its confirmation to the warm eastern tropical Pacific. Moreover, they provide the first evidence that hurricanes may favor natural populations. As a result of the declining trend and variation in survival and recruitment, λ exhibited a slight decline and substantial variation over the 23 yr. However, most λ values were equal to or higher than 1, and the long-term average indicates population increase. The ability of blue-footed boobies to maintain a positive population balance despite of negative trends in their vital rates might result from canalization of adult survival (the vital rate that contributes most to λ and shows lower variation compared to recruitment) against environmental variability.


The Rao-Nam cryptosystem is a symmetric version of the McEliece code-based cryptosystem proposed to get rid of the shortcomings inherent in the first symmetric code-based encryption schemes. Almost immediately after the publication of this cryptosystem, attacks on it based on selected plaintexts appeared, which led to the emergence of various improvements and modifications of the original cryptosystem.
The secret key in the traditional Rao-Nam scheme is a certain Boolean matrix and a set of binary vectors used to generate distortions during encryption. Such vectors must have different syndromes, that is, be different modulo of the code generated by the rows of the specified matrix. The original work of Rao and Nam considered two methods of forming the set of these vectors, the first of which consists in using predetermined vectors of sufficiently large weight, and the second is random selection of these vectors according to the equiprobable scheme. It is known that the first option does not provide the proper security of the Rao – Nam cryptosystem (due to the small number and simple structure of these vectors), but the second option is more meaningful and requires additional research. The purpose of this paper is to obtain estimates of the effectiveness (time complexity for a given upper bound of the error probability) of attacks on a cryptosystem, which generalizes the traditional Rao – Nam scheme to the case of a finite Abelian group (note that the need to study such versions of the Rao – Nam cryptosystem is due to their consideration in recent publications). Two attacks, based on selected plaintext, are presented. The first of them is not mentioned in the works known to the authors of this article and, under certain well-defined conditions, it allows recovering the secret key of the cryptosystem with quadratic complexity.
The second attack is a generalized and simplified version of the well-known Struik-van Tilburg attack. It is shown that the complexity of this attack depends on the power of the stabilizer of the set of vectors, which forms the second part of the key, in the translation group of the Abelian group, over which the Rao – Nam cryptosystem is considered. In this paper, a bound is obtained for the probability of triviality of the stabilizer under the condition of random choice of this set. From the obtained bound, it follows that Struik-van Tilburg attack is, on average, noticeably more efficient than the worst case considered earlier.


A method is described for the direct determination of manganese in biological samples utilizing electrothermal atomization atomic absorption spectrometry with a molybdenum tube atomizer and a matrix modifier. The atomization characteristics of manganese were evaluated in a mixture purge gas of argon and hydrogen. A direct calibration method with manganese standard solutions and an ultrasonic agitation method of a solution containing sample powder were used. The interference caused by large amounts of interferents was investigated, and eliminated by the addition of thiourea. Biological samples were directly analyzed with satisfactory results.


A novel approach to implement cloud computing for smart phone devices has been presented based on Eucalyptus, an open source cloud-computing framework that provides infrastructure as a service (IaaS). It has full support of Virtualization and is Amazon Web Services interface compatible. A private cloud has been designed using Eucalyptus to develop a smart phone application store. The architecture, physical and network implementation of Eucalyptus Private Cloud on Intel based platform has been discussed in details. We have developed two sample thin applications for mobile based on mobile learning that can be downloaded from our private cloud using Amazon Web Services Platform (PaaS). These thin apps use the private cloud as computing platform, and perform better even on low processing smart phones.


This paper tests generalizations across four countries of an industrial marketing model applied to foreign exchange services which banks sell to large corporations. The process by which customers elicit bids from the marketplace, evaluate suppliers, and award business is used in a two-step framework typical for industrial markets: (1) factors important to winning and/or retaining any business (supplier selection) in a context of multiple suppliers; and (2) factors important to growing business volume of a particular supplier (supplier usage).


While it would seem that digital video libraries should benefit from access mechanisms directed to their visual contents, years of TREC video retrieval evaluation (TRECVID) research have shown that text search against transcript narrative text provides almost all the retrieval capability, even with visually oriented generic topics. A within-subjects study involving 24 novice participants on TRECVID 2004 tasks again confirms this result. The study shows that satisfaction is greater and performance is significantly better on specific and generic information retrieval tasks from news broadcasts when transcripts are available for search. Additional runs with 7 expert users reveal different novice and expert interaction patterns with the video library interface, helping explain the novices' lack of success with image search and visual feature browsing for visual information needs. Analysis of TRECVID visual features well suited for particular tasks provides additional insights into the role of automated feature classification for digital image and video libraries


Background: Severe trauma and hemorrhage leads to an acute coagulopathy as exemplified by a decrease in clotting firmness and platelet aggregation. Because platelets contribute 70-80% of clot strength, evaluating the intracellular mechanisms that regulate aggregation in platelets may lead to strategies to mitigate the development of coagulopathy. It is known that platelet aggregation can be inhibited by a rise in intracellular cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) or cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP). Changes in cAMP/cGMP would necessitate a change in activity of those enzymes that either synthesize (adenylate cyclase/ guanylate cyclase) or breakdown (phosphodiesterases) these 2nd messengers.
 Objective: Determine if the intracellular levels of cAMP and cGMP in platelets rise in rats subjected to polytrauma and hemorrhage. And if so, if there is a change in cyclase or phosphodiesterase activity.
 Methods: Polytrauma was induced in isoflurane anesthetized Sprague-Dawley rats (n=10 per group) by damage to the small intestines, right and medial lobes of the liver, the right leg skeletal muscle, and by fracturing the right femur. 40% hemorrhage was then performed immediately after trauma. Rats were euthanized at 4hrs. Platelet intracellular intermediates were measured in whole blood before, and 0.5, 1, 2 and 4hrs after trauma. Blood samples were taken before, and 0.5, 2 and 4 hours after trauma. Platelet rich plasma (PRP) was generated by centrifugation of whole blood at 200g for 10min, no brakes. Cyclic AMP, cGMP, AMP and GMP were extracted from 100ul of PRP after adding 1ml of EtOH, 10mM ammonium formate, with 10ug/ml cGMP-Br as an internal control. IP3 and IP1 (metabolic breakdown product of IP3) were extracted from another 100ul PRP by addition of 50% EtOH, 500mM Formic Acid with 10ug/ml ATP-C13 as an internal control. Samples were centrifuged at 20K g for 10min, and supernatant dried. All Samples were brought up in 200ul of 0.1% formic acid for analysis by LC-MS/MS. Cyclase and phosphodiesterases were isolated from 100ul of rat PRP after sonication to lyse cells, centrifugation to release intracellular constituents, and Spin Column (Zeba, ThermoFisher) removal of small molecular weight constituents. Cyclase activity was measured for 15min after addition of either ATP or GTP and measuring cAMP or cGMP with inhibition of PDE activity (IBMX 1uM). Phosphodiesterase was measured by addition of cAMP or cGMP and measuring AMP or GMP. Data was generated by subtracting measurement from control.
 Results: Trauma and hemorrhage led to a significant rise in the intracellular cAMP and a fall in cGMP. Adenylate cyclase activity in platelets also significantly increase after trauma. However, trauma had no effect on guanylate cyclase activity. Phosphodiesterase activity was elevated after trauma for both conversion of cAMP and cGMP to AMP and GMP, but neither was significant.
 Conclusion: Trauma and hemorrhage leads to coagulopathy and platelet dysfunction. The platelet dysfunction is likely due to a rise in the intracellular cAMP, but not to cGMP as it fell precipitously after trauma. The rise in cAMP is likely due to an increase in adenylate cyclase activity induced by trauma. Although there was a rise in PDE activity, it was not significant, but may play a role in blunting the rise and cAMP, and contribute to the fall in cGMP. This study was funded by the US Army MRMC and conducted in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act, the implementing of Animal Welfare Regulations, and the principles of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
 Table Table.

 No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


In this thesis it will be described, starting from the design phase and carrying on
with the progress in the building site, one of the most important underground
work in Europe: the Brenner tunnel. The personal work is based on an 3 months
internship sponsored by S.W.S. Engineering S.p.a. at the Mules construction site
B.T.C. (Brenner Tunnel Construction), where there will be acquired the
information about the construction site organization and the geological activities
necessary for the progress of the work. After a general description we will go
deeper in detail, examining the different excavation and monitoring types of
data acquired during the excavation progress.
It will be also given a general illustration of the fault systems and the fault
propagation forms in the work area with its damage zones.
The expected data are going to be outlined with the data collected on site, to
verify their congruity, in terms of both geomechanical values, like RMR (Rock
Mass Rating) and GSI (Geological Strenght Index), and identifying the extension
of the large fault zone that the work crosses (Sprechenstein Mules Fault Zone,
SMFZ). This one, in the sector taken into consideration, extends for over 700
meters from the progressive 47+440 to the progressive 46+735, referring to the
Est Gallery.
The progress data have been provided by the company that is carrying out the
works (BTC) and, at some progressive, have been compared with the
geomechanical data collected directly on the excavation front. Finally it will be
proposed a new geological profile of the fault zone (SMFZ), based on the
interpretation of the boreholes carried out during both the project time and the
excavation and also the available geological maps of the area and this profile will
be compared with two different geological sections (forecast project section and
the section carried out by Bistacchi et al., 2010), that show important differences
of interpretation of the zone taken into account, will be compared. At the end it
will be drawn conclusions regarding the preliminary geological survey methods.


This paper deals with the main methods of traffic classification and describes the functional scheme of a test bench and the test procedure. It provides the results of verifying the hypothesis about the stability of distributions of WhatsApp traffic characteristics. The delivered test results in this paper emphasize the influence of certain traffic characteristics on the final traffic distribution form. In addition, the comparison of the results obtained for the entire set of tests and the results received for individual test sets reveals the absence of other critical traffic characteristics significantly influencing the distribution form concluding in the need for further research. The paper concludes that the stability pattern of distributions of WhatsApp traffic characteristics can be obtained and visualized after more critical traffic characteristics are revealed and processed in similar tests. This paper stands as a pioneer research in assessing the traffic analysis and implementing the results in applied science.


Background: Since the dawn of surgical history, hernias have been a subject of interest, and their treatment has evolved through distinct stages.
Objectives: To know the incidence of hernia, 2) to know the symptoms and duration of hernia and 3) to know different types of hernia and complication associated with surgeries.
Methodology: The present study was conducted in a tertiary hospital, Vijaypur for a period of one year from July 2014 to June 2015.
Result: The incidence of hernia was common in the age group 51-60 and men were affected more. The occurrence of hernia is common in labourers accounting for 60%
About 50% of patient presented with swelling and pain. Left indirect hernia was seen in 27 % of cases being most common while pantaloons right was the least common accounting for only 3%. Complications associated with surgeries, 10.0% had post operative pain, and 25% had wound infection.
Conclusion: The results of this study confirmed that the incidence of cases is more in men, and in the older age group.


Existing methods for Table Structure Recognition (TSR) from camera-captured or scanned documents perform poorly on complex tables consisting of nested rows / columns, multi-line texts and missing cell data. This is because current data-driven methods work by simply training deep models on large volumes of data and fail to generalize when an unseen table structure is encountered. In this paper, we propose to train a deep network to capture the spatial associations between different word pairs present in the table image for unravelling the table structure. We present an end-to-end pipeline, named TSR-DSAW: TSR via Deep Spatial Association of Words, which outputs a digital representation of a table image in a structured format such as HTML. Given a table image as input, the proposed method begins with the detection of all the words present in the image using a text-detection network like CRAFT which is followed by the generation of word-pairs using dynamic programming. These word-pairs are highlighted in individual images and subsequently, fed into a DenseNet-121 classifier trained to capture spatial associations such as same-row, same-column, same-cell or none. Finally, we perform post-processing on the classifier output to generate the table structure in HTML format. We evaluate our TSR-DSAW pipeline on two public table-image datasets -- PubTabNet and ICDAR 2013, and demonstrate improvement over previous methods such as TableNet and DeepDeSRT.


The use of doubly fed induction generators (DFIGs) in large wind energy conversion systems (WECS) has significantly increased during the last few years. The DFIG is interfaced to the AC network through a grid side voltage source converter (GSC) and a rotor side voltage source converter (RSC) to enable the variable speed operation of the wind turbine. Moreover, it provides reactive power support to the AC grid during disturbances. The sensitivity of DFIGs to external faults has motivated researchers to investigate the impact of various grid disturbances, such as voltage sag and short circuit faults, on the low voltage ride through (LVRT) capability of DFIGs. However, no attempts have been made to investigate the impact of converter internal faults on the LVRT of the DFIG-based WECS. In this paper, the impact of a fire-through fault when it occurs in the RSC on the DC-capacitor voltage, rotor current, and the LVRT capability of the DFIG is investigated. A STATCOM controller to mitigate the effects of this fault is proposed. The DFIG compliance with various recently released LVRT grid codes under the fire-through fault with and without the STATCOM is examined and compared. Simulation results indicate that fire-through fault has a severe impact on the DFIG voltage profile and the proposed controller is capable of bringing the voltage profile at the point of common coupling (PCC) to the nominal steady state level.


Physico-chemical methods for the chromatographic materials heterogeneity evaluation The characterization methods used in the analysis of the chemical structure, microstructure and morphology, as well as the physical properties, of the chromatographic support are varied. This paper will focus on some techniques often used for the investigation of polymer/silica stationary phases. Many of these techniques are specific for characterization of particular properties of phases, and the properties of phases are also discussed correspondingly. To fully understand structure-property relationships, several characterization techniques are presented.


In this article, novel, phonon-based silicon carbide nanopillar antenna arrays are described. Using fabricated SiC structures, sub-diffractional, localized resonances are observed with exceptionally high quality factors (40-305) and corresponding high modal confinements in the mid-infrared (IR) spectral region. These results exceed the theoretical limit of plasmonic systems and establish a basis for nanophotonics in the mid-IR and beyond, opening the door to a wide range of applications in sensing, lithography, optical circuitry and more.


Epidemiological studies have revealed that children exposed to traditional farms are protected from asthma, hay fever and allergic sensitization. It has been speculated that allergic diseases may replace infectious diseases in developing countries and should be prioritized and treated as a major public health problem. Exposure to farming materials at early life such as livestock, contact with animal feed and the consumption of unprocessed cow milk have are considered as protective measures. This review discusses the evidences supporting the claim that children from rural areas have direct contact with farms are at a significantly lower risk of developing these conditions than children not exposed to these farms.


Features of the formation of signals in wavefront sensors with the single-frequency light wave phase modulation and spatial separation of control channels are considered. Analysis is performed for sensors in which phase modulation is governed by a controlled element located in the pupil of the optical system of a sensor or in the focal plane of the objective of this system. Peculiarities of the signal formation for a tilted wavefront are considered separately for internal points of the exit pupil in the case of light wave phase modulation in the pupil. It is shown that a signal at the modulation frequency in these wavefront sensors for points located far from the pupil boundaries is determined by the wavefront curvature.


In this study, we examine the effects of channel and time-slot allocation algorithms on data loss events in multi-hop wireless networks. We investigate networks where all nodes have a single-radio antenna, the MAC layer protocol is synchronized OFDM, and each channel uses TDMA. In such networks, data collisions can be avoided by reserving data time-slots. Data loss can also occur when a receiving node changes its assigned channel, hence it does not completely receive the data which is on the link. We call this type of loss data corruption. Our simulations show that if there are several available time slots to reserve, a proper channel and time-slot selection algorithm is required to prevent data corruption. Consequently, it is better that a node changes channels as infrequently as possible and any necessary change should take place at an appropriate time. The same is true about switching between receiving and sending modes, i.e. switching modes also leads to data loss, so it should be avoided whenever possible. In this study we propose a new algorithm to allocate channels and time-slots so as to decrease data loss.


Medication-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (MRONJ) is a major complication of bisphosphonate treatment in cancer patients, and its etiology is not completely clarified. The study's goal is to find connections between the clinical and histopathological characteristics of osteonecrosis and bisphosphonates in a cohort of cancer patients who had osteonecrosis treated surgically. The retrospective study includes 51 patients of both sexes, aged 46 to 85 years, who underwent surgical treatment for MRONJ in two oral and maxillofacial surgery clinics (Craiova and Constanța). Demographic, clinical, and imaging data from the records of patients with osteonecrosis were analyzed. The surgical treatment removed the necrotic bone, and the harvested fragments were analyzed from a histopathological perspective. The histopathological examination data were evaluated and statistically processed to look for viable bone, granulation tissue, bacterial colonies, and inflammatory infiltrate. In the study groups, MRONJ was found particularly in the posterior regions of the mandible. Tooth extraction, but also periapical or periodontal infections, represented the trigger factors in most of the cases. The surgical therapy consisted of sequestrectomy or bone resection, and the histopathological examination of the fragments revealed osteonecrosis-specific features, such as the lack of bone cells, the development of an inflammatory infiltrate, and the existence of bacterial colonies. MRONJ in cancer patients receiving zoledronic acid is a severe complication that significantly lowers quality of life. Since these patients are not usually monitored by the dentist, they are identified in advanced stages of MRONJ. For these patients, thorough dental monitoring could reduce the incidence of osteonecrosis and its related complications.


In toroidally confined plasmas, background E × B flows, microturbulence and zonal flows constitute a tightly coupled dynamic system and the description of confinement transitions needs a self-consistent treatment of these players. The background radial electric field, linked to neoclassical ambipolar transport, has an impact on the interaction between zonal flows and turbulence by tilting and anisotropization of turbulent eddies. Zonal-flow drive is shown to be non-local in wavenumber space and is described as a straining-out process instead as a local inverse cascade. The straining-out process is also discussed as an option to explain turbulence suppression in sheared flows and could be the cause of predator–prey oscillations in the turbulence zonal-flow system.


SPDs are increasingly being used against lightning and switching surge according to the applicable revised standard and equipotential grounding system. SPDs are equipped usually with a MOV voltage regulating element. The MOV, however, always is exposed to the danger of thermal runaway resulting from inrushing temporary overvoltage and deterioration. In this paper, the authors made two prototype SPDs built-in Instantaneous trip device and analyzed their limiting voltage through test of the MOV breakdown. As the result of the analysis, the SPDs built-in Instantaneous trip device was proven to be effective for protecting MOV against thermal runaway and Instantaneous trip device react for limiting voltage is considered that is applicable to SPD.


the current thermal power plants have an efficiency of about 35%. Presently, in thermal power plants, the steam used to run the turbine to generate power is condensed in the condenser, where water is used as the condensing fluid. The heat transferred to the cooling water in the condenser is hence then wasted to ambient. This paper proposes a modified cycle for the operation of thermal power plants. It incorporates a secondary cycle based on a conventional OTEC plant which utilizes this rejected heat by using R717 in the secondary cycle. The efficiency for varying temperatures was computed and the results obtained are presented. Thus, the technology proposed has the capacity to increase the current efficiency of power plants and optimize the use of fossil fuels.


TTIP aims at conducting a trade policy which reduces regulatory barriers. This would enable certain goods and services to move freely or more easily from the EU to the US and the other way around, resulting in gains from cost savings and efficiencies. However, this can potentially have implications in the way risk regulation is implemented in the EU, and it has therefore raised an important debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, the United States and the European Union do not seem to share the same values in terms of risk assessment and risk management. The EU can be described as more risk averse and has developed stricter standards to address consumer health and safety or environmental issues.This paper examines whether an EU-US trade partnership is capable of reducing regulatory barriers while safeguarding the approach towards risk regulation developed in the EU for the last two decades. To address this topic, the paper focuses on the cosmetics sector which is of great importance in Europe since it employs large numbers of people and contributes heavily to the economy. Besides, the large regulation of the market and the high rates of trade between the EU and the US in the sector will most probably enhance the applicability of TTIP. Therefore, it is interesting to study how the negotiations on the trade agreement might impact the regulation of cosmetic products in Europe.As an international standard hegemon in the cosmetics sector, the EU has incentivised voluntary rules in the US similar to the European ones. This will support the idea that the TTIP negotiations are not likely to modify substantially the regulatory standards set by the EU on cosmetic products because these standards are already met by an increasing number of manufacturers.


Abstract Objective: Puerto Rican children suffer disproportionately from asthma. Project CURA tested the efficacy of a community health worker (CHW) intervention to improve use of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) and reduce home asthma triggers in Puerto Rican youth in Chicago. Methods: This study employed a behavioral randomized controlled trial design with a community-based participatory research approach. Medications and technique were visually assessed; adherence was determined using dose counters. Home triggers were assessed via self-report, visual inspection and salivary cotinine. All participants received education on core asthma topics and self-management skills. Participants in the CHW arm were offered home education by the CHW in four visits over four months. The attention control arm received four newsletters covering the same topics. Results: While most of the participants had uncontrolled persistent asthma, < 50% had ICS at baseline. In the CHW arms, 67% of participants received the full four-visit intervention. In the Elementary school cohort (n = 51), the CHW arm had lower odds of having an ICS (OR = 0.2; p = 0.02) at 12-months; no differences were seen in other outcomes between arms at any time point. The only significant treatment arm difference in the high school cohort (n = 50) was in inhaler technique where the CHW arm performed 18.0% more steps correct at five months (p < 0.01) and 14.2% more steps correct at 12 months (p < 0.01). Conclusions: While this CHW intervention did not increase the number of participants with ICS or reduce home asthma triggers, important lessons were learned including challenges to CHW intervention fidelity and the need for CHWs to partner with clinical providers.


Propionitrile complexes fac-[M(CO)(3)(P-P)(NCEt)] (M = Mo (3), W (4); P-P = Ph(2)PCH(2)PPh(2) (a), Ph(2)PC(2)H(4)PPh(2) (b), Ph(2)PC(3)H(6)PPh(2) (c), (S,S)-Ph(2)PCHMeCHMePPh(2) (d), Fe(C(5)H(4)PPh(2))(2) (e)) were synthesized from [M(CO)(3)(NCEt)(3)] and the corresponding diphosphine. Reactions of 3 and 4 with sulfur dioxide initially gave complexes fac-[M(CO)(3)(P-P)(eta(2)-SO(2))] (M = Mo (5), W (6)), which slowly isomerized to mer-[M(CO)(3)(P-P)(eta(1)-SO(2))] (M = Mo (7), W (8)). The structures of 7b and 8b were determined by X-ray crystallography. Both compounds are isostructural (monoclinic, space group P2(1)/n (No. 14)) with almost identical unit cell dimensions (7b, a = 14.511(5) A, b = 12.797(2) A, c = 16.476(6) A, beta = 115.92(2); 8b, a = 14.478(8) A, b = 12.794(3) A, c = 16.442(9) A, beta = 116.01(2)) and molecular geometries. Treatment of either fac-[M(CO)(3)(P-P)(eta(2)-SO(2))] or mer-[M(CO)(3)(P-P)(eta(1)-SO(2))] with diazomethane yielded the sulfene complexes mer-[M(CO)(3)(P-P)(eta(2)-CH(2)SO(2))] (M = Mo (9), W (10)). The structure of 10a was determined crystallographically: monoclinic, space group P2(1)/n (No. 14), a = 11.719(2) A, b = 17.392(4) A, c = 13.441(3) A, beta = 95.58(2). The tungsten atom resides in the center of a distorted pentagonal bipyramid. The sulfene ligand occupies two adjacent equatorial sites with the bond distances W-C, 2.322(13) A, W-S, 2.353(3) A, and S-C, 1.721(12) A. The latter equals the S-C single bond distance in thiirane S,S-dioxide, indicating a high degree of charge density transfer into the LUMO of the sulfene ligand.


Present day societies are characterized by the globalization of their economies and, the fostering of a "knowledge-based society". Higher education plays a part in these phenomena, and, in Europe, is undergoing an important reform seeking to homogenize the system of university degrees. These attempts come togetherin the European Space of Higher Education which will mean a new paradigm centred on "learning" and upheld by a system of common credits, teaching staffplanning, innovations in methodology, the professional competences and the handling of information in the constantly changing knowledge in today's world.In this framework staff planning, and the production of Teaching Guides is of the utmost importance. The aim of which being an awareness on the part of the student of the benefits to be had when taking each course, what activities should be carried out, guidance on chronology, on assessment. Regarding the subject under discussion, we have evolved some reflections on the lines of each of these topics, putting forward a model illustrated with examples on how to make planning and teaching guides useful instruments for the student. We conclude stressing the importance of  a teaching plan for convergence and noting that despite the difficulties, changes are possible.


Since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, scholars and practitioners have put much effort into testing effective advertising strategies for COVID-19 vaccinations. Guided by humor theories, this study aimed to examine (1) the effect of humor on persuading COVID-19 vaccination and (2) the moderating role of trust in government for the unvaccinated population. Across two studies (college students and general adult populations), for lower trust in government individuals, through greater public service advertisement (PSA) processing depth and believability, there was a higher vaccination intention after the humor (non-humor) advertisement. For higher trust in government individuals, there was evidence that the vaccination intention was lowered after the humor (vs. non-humor) message through lowered PSA processing depth and believability. This study expands humor theory into testing COVID-19 vaccination messages while considering an individual psychological factor, trust in the government, that has emerged as an essential determinant to COVID-19 messaging. The contributions to COVID-19 vaccination advertising strategy and advertising to the unvaccinated population, in general, are discussed.


Case study in the development of expertise is presented. The development of antiskid braking systems (ABS) for automobiles between the 1950s and 1970s is used to create a model of expertise formation in a new engineering community. Both the technical and social dynamics of expertise formation are considered. The case study centers on the emergence of three engineers, Leiber, Jonner, Gerstenmeier, as the ABS experts for Teldix GmbH. Their importance is gauged through awards received, engineering publications, conference proceedings, and the introduction of new methods of testing. Sections are devoted to a brief history of antiskid systems before 1950, the historiographical problems of discipline and expertise formation, and an analysis of the ABS industry's success in creating expertise in a competitive endeavor.


Obtaining compact and discriminative features is one of the major challenges in many of the real-world image classification tasks such as face verification and object recognition. One possible approach is to represent input image on the basis of high-level features that carry semantic meaning which humans can understand. In this paper, a model coined deep attribute network (DAN) is proposed to address this issue. For an input image, the model outputs the attributes of the input image without performing any classification. The efficacy of the proposed model is evaluated on unconstrained face verification and real-world object recognition tasks using the LFW and the a-PASCAL datasets. We demonstrate the potential of deep learning for attribute-based classification by showing comparable results with existing state-of-the-art results. Once properly trained, the DAN is fast and does away with calculating low-level features which are maybe unreliable and computationally expensive.


This book was an outstanding surprise. Emergency department libraries abound with how-to manuals and handbooks on clinical procedures for emergencies. Roberts and Hedges, however, assistant professors of emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati, have produced the first textbook of such procedures. This is an impressive, 1,100-page hardback, with more than 80 contributors. The textbook format allows them to expand beyond the simple indications / equipment / procedure / complications format used in typical procedure handbooks. The contributors present not only fascinating historical background and superb photographs and illustrations but also the rationale and physiologic theory behind the procedures. This is, in short, an academic book that carries the reader far beyond the standard "see one, do one, teach one" approach with which so much misinformation and personal opinion is passed down from house officer to house officer. The editors have organized the work by specialty area: respiratory care, cardiology, general surgery, orthopedics,


A Rational Approach to Constipation Hershl Berman, MD, FRCPC, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medicine, University Health Network,Toronto, ON. Laura Brooks, RegN, MscN, APN, Advanced Practice Nurse in Palliative Care, Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care, University Health Network, Toronto, ON. Shawna Silver, MD, PEng, Hospital for Sick Children; University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. GASTROINTESTINAL DISEASE


The performance of frequency-hopping systems with multiple frequency-shift keying and hard decisions is determined for operation against optimal partial-band jamming. A receiver that eliminates the potential advantage of optimally placed jamming tones is proposed. The effects of Reed-Solomon, binary block, and convolutional codes are analyzed. Concatenated codes with hard and soft decisions available to the outer decoder are examined. Continuous-phase frequency-shift keying with limiter-discriminator demodulation is shown to offer potentially improved performance in frequency-hopping systems.


The present work describes the isolation of α- and β-carotene from crude palm oil and their antioxidant potential in an in vitro model. Pure product was isolated by the method adopted. Antioxidant activities of the isolated α- and β-carotene were analyzed in five different concentrations of 0.001, 0.005, 0.01, 0.05, and 0.1% (w/v). From the several assays conducted, an observation was made that the antioxidant activity of the product shifted between antioxidant and prooxidant effects depending on the concentration and the system analyzed. The metal chelation, DPPH radical scavenging, and superoxide scavenging activities showed almost similar results in terms of high activity at lowest concentrations. ABTS-scavenging activity was displayed only by a particular antioxidant concentration of 0.1%. Lipid peroxidation assay pronounced the activity of 0.1% antioxidant in inhibiting oxidation of sensitive bioactive lipids. In vitro antidenaturation test again specified the efficacy of low concentrations in preventing protein denaturation. Through this study a definite dosage formulation for consumption of carotenoids is being proposed which will enhance health promotion and prevent chronic diseases when taken as fortified foods or dietary supplements.


Physical resources are highly virtualized in today's datacenter-based cloud-computing networks. Servers, for example, are virtualized as Virtual Machines (VMs). Through abstraction of physical resources, server virtualization enables migration of VMs over the interconnecting network. VM migration can be used for load balancing, energy conservation, disaster protection, etc. Migration of a VM involves iterative memory copy and network re-configuration. Memory states are transferred in multiple phases to keep the VM alive during the migration process, with a small downtime for switchover. Significant network resources are consumed during this process. Migration also results in undesirable performance impacts. Suboptimal network bandwidth assignment, inaccurate pre-copy iterations, and high end-to-end network delay in wide-area networks (WAN) can exacerbate the performance degradation. In this study, we devise strategies to find suitable bandwidth and pre-copy iteration count to optimize different performance metrics of VM migration over a WAN. First, we formulate models to measure network resource consumption, migration duration, and migration downtime. Then, we propose a strategy to determine appropriate migration bandwidth and number of pre-copy iterations, and perform numerical experiments in multiple cloud environments with large number of migration requests. Results show that our approach consumes less network resources when compared with maximum and minimum-bandwidth provisioning strategies while using an order of magnitude less bandwidth than maximum-bandwidth strategy. It also achieves significantly lower migration duration than minimum-bandwidth scheme.


High resolution measurements of mechanical properties of the constituent phases of multi-phase materials are of immerse importance in design of new composites. In this study, the nanoindentation, X-ray analysis and microstructural SEM investigations have been used to reveal the properties and structural features of ceramic – metal composites involving chromium carbide based cermets with different additives (Mo and Cu) in nickel binder. The additives influence microstructural parameters such as grain size and residual stresses; however, nanohardness and Young's moduli of constituent phases remain less affected. Phase – specific mechanical properties are measured and correlated with bulk behaviour. Furthermore, hardness of the binder metal is found to be higher in cermet as compared to the bulk hardness of metal.


BACKGROUND: Mycelium of the medicinal mushroom shiitake, Lentinus edodes, is a potential source for production of the blood cholesterol reducing compound eritadenine. To increase the mycelial biomass and in turn the production of eritadenine, a potential growth promoting substance in the form of a water extract of distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) was added to the culture media.

RESULTS: The hot water extract of DDGS was shown to considerably increase the growth of shiitake mycelia in bioreactor cultivations; the mycelial yield was 2–3 times higher than in the control, and the highest final biomass concentration obtained was 3.4 g L−1. Further, by using shake flask cultures as inoculums the bioreactor cultivation time could be reduced by 1 week for some of the experiments. The highest final titer of eritadenine in the present study was 25.1 mg L−1, which was about 2 times higher than in the control, and was also obtained when a water extract of DDGS was added to the culture medium.

CONCLUSION: It was demonstrated that a water extract of DDGS promoted the growth of shiitake mycelia in bioreactor cultivations, along with enhanced eritadenine production. Copyright © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry


This paper describes the "ASCOP" line of photomultipliers derived from the design for Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation which was presented at the last Scintillation Counter Symposium. High-temperature photomultipliers of various sizes are now in production and are used extensively in oil well radioactivity logging. Resolution measurements up to 165°C have been made with NaI(Tl) crystals and a CRT light pulser. A complete line of photomultipliers for the far ultraviolet is described, including tubes with LiF windows up to 2" in diameter. Cs-Sb cathodes or spectrally selective" solar-blind" Cs-Te cathodes are used. Photomultipliers for scintillation counting range from 3" to 11/4" in diameter. They combine good cathode sensitivity and uniformity, good electron collection and low dark current. Resolution data are presented. Tubes of this type have been successfully used for scintillation counting in various earth satellites.


Abstract. We present version 3 (V3) of the Cloud_cci Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) and Advanced ATSR (AATSR) data set. The data set was created for the European Space Agency (ESA) Cloud_cci (Climate Change Initiative) programme. The cloud properties were retrieved from the second ATSR (ATSR-2) on board the second European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-2) spanning 1995–2003 and the AATSR on board Envisat, which spanned 2002–2012. The data are comprised of a comprehensive set of cloud properties: cloud top height, temperature, pressure, spectral albedo, cloud effective emissivity, effective radius, and optical thickness, alongside derived liquid and ice water path. Each retrieval is provided with its associated uncertainty. The cloud property retrievals are accompanied by high-resolution top- and bottom-of-atmosphere shortwave and longwave fluxes that have been derived from the retrieved cloud properties using a radiative transfer model. The fluxes were generated for all-sky and clear-sky conditions.
V3 differs from the previous version 2 (V2) through development of the retrieval algorithm and attention to the consistency between the ATSR-2 and AATSR instruments. The cloud properties show improved accuracy in validation and better consistency between the two instruments, as demonstrated by a comparison of cloud mask and cloud height with co-located CALIPSO data. The cloud masking has improved significantly, particularly in its ability to detect clear pixels. The Kuiper Skill score has increased from 0.49 to 0.66. The cloud top height accuracy is relatively unchanged. The AATSR liquid water path was compared with the Multisensor Advanced Climatology of Liquid Water Path (MAC-LWP) in regions of stratocumulus cloud and shown to have very good agreement and improved consistency between ATSR-2 and AATSR instruments. The correlation with MAC-LWP increased from 0.4 to over 0.8 for these cloud regions. The flux products are compared with NASA Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) data, showing good agreement within the uncertainty. The new data set is well suited to a wide range of climate applications, such as comparison with climate models, investigation of trends in cloud properties, understanding aerosol–cloud interactions, and providing contextual information for co-located ATSR-2/AATSR surface temperature and aerosol products. The following new digital identifier has been issued for the Cloud_cci ATSR-2/AATSRv3 data set: https://doi.org/10.5676/DWD/ESA_Cloud_cci/ATSR2-AATSR/V003 (Poulsen et al., 2019).


Abstract 2633 Background: Today, most patients with Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) can be cured at first diagnosis. For HL patients suffering from relapse or progression after first line therapy, high dose chemotherapy followed by autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) is the treatment of choice and cures about 50% of these patients. Those who relapse or progress after ASCT have a very poor prognosis and clearly represent an area of unmet medical need. However, data on this small group of patients is rather limited and no established risk factors are available. Here, we present a recent retrospective analysis from the GHSG database to better characterize HL patients with relapse or progression after ASCT in order to define possible risk factors for the prediction of overall survival. Methods: All trials in the GHSG database were searched for HL patients who relapsed or progressed after ASCT. The information for this retrospective analysis was updated in May 2012. Overall survival after progression of HL following ASCT (OSrr) was the end point of this study. Descriptive statistics and Kaplan Meier estimates of OSrr were used and risk factors for OSrr analyzed. The significance level was set to 0.05. Results: 152 patients who relapsed or progressed with HL after ASCT were identified. 149 patients fulfilled the predefined inclusion criteria. With a median observation time of 65 months after progression, 112 patients (75%) had died. OSrr was 63% (95% confidence interval [CI]; 54% to 70%), 51% (95% CI 42% to 58%), and 20% (95% CI 13% to 28%) at 1, 2 and 5 years, respectively. From several risk factors tested, stage (p=0.044) and presence of B-symptoms (p=0.005), both at relapse before ASCT, significantly predicted OSrr. Combination of these two risk factors allowed the identification of three distinct risk categories for the 4 significantly different groups (p=0.013; Figure 1). Accordingly, patients in clinical stage I or II without B-symptoms had a somewhat better prognosis (OSrr 84% [95% CI 67% to 92%], 72% [95% CI 54% to 84%] and 33% [95% CI 18% to 49%] at 1, 2 and 5 years, respectively). Other potential risk factors such as stage at first diagnosis (p=0.80), early, late or multiple relapses before ASCT (p=0.95), and time from ASCT to further progression of HL (p=0.81) were not significant. Conclusions: Current treatment approaches for patients with relapsed or progressive HL after ASCT show disappointing results with 80% of this very high-risk group dying within 5 years. Emerging new drugs such as brentuximab vedotin might improve the outcome of these patients in the future. Disclosures: von Tresckow:Takeda Pharma GmbH: Honoraria, Travel Grants Other. Borchmann:Millenium The Takeda Oncology Company: Research Funding; Takeda Pharma GmbH: Travel Grants, Travel Grants Other. Engert:Millenium The Takeda Oncology Company: Honoraria.


Objective The association between serum uric acid (sUA) and incident abdominal aortic calcification (AAC), and severe abdominal aortic calcification (SAAC) in the general population of the United States (US) is unclear. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the association between sUA and the risk of AAC and SAAC. Methods Individuals from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database were analyzed cross-sectionally between 2013 and 2014. The restricted cubic spline (RCS), multivariable logistic regression model and subgroup analysis were utilized to evaluate the correlation between sUA and incident AAC, and SAAC. In addition, generalized additive models with smooth functions were employed to survey the relationship between sUA and the degree of AAC. Results This study included 3016 individuals from the NHANES database. According to the RCS plot, sUA levels were associated with the risk of AAC/SAAC in a U-shaped pattern in the US population. The degree of calcification decreased at first and then increased with the increase in the sUA level. Conclusion Close monitoring and adequate control of sUA levels in the US general population may reduce the risk of AAC and SAAC.


A series of Ce3+-Yb3+ co-doped CaF2 nanoparticles were prepared by a hydrothermal synthesis method. The structure, morphology, photoluminescence properties, and fluorescence dynamics were studied systemically. Under the excitation of the 5d level of Ce3+, an efficient energy transfer from Ce3+ to Yb3+ occurred, and the efficient near-infrared emission at 900-1050 nm matching to the energy of Si band gap of Si-based solar cells was observed. The lifetime of Ce3+ decreased, and the inner quantum efficiency increased with increasing Yb3+ concentration. The quantum efficiency dependent on Yb3+ concentration was calculated, and the maximum efficiency approached 186%. As a down-conversion luminescent convertor, this kind of material can be used in front of Si-based solar cells to reduce thermalization loss and enhance conversion efficiency of solar cells.


Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterized by hypertrophic synovial tissues comprising excessively proliferating synovial fibroblasts and infiltrating inflammatory cells. Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) is a multifunctional cytokine that regulates cell growth, inflammation and angiogenesis by acting on various cell types. In RA synovial tissues, TGF-beta is expressed at high levels. However, the precise role of TGF-beta in RA remains unclear. We herein demonstrated a causal link between the TGF-beta-induced RA synovial cell proliferation and induction of platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-AA. In addition, TGF-beta induced IL-6 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) production by RA synovial fibroblasts associated with nuclear factor-kappa B activation. These effects of TGF-beta on RA synovial fibroblasts were suppressed by TGF-beta type I receptor kinase inhibitor HTS466284. Furthermore, HTS466284 significantly prevented anti-collagen type II antibody-induced arthritis in mice according to the clinical manifestations, histology, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, PDGF and VEGF expression and 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine incorporation. These in vitro and in vivo results suggest that TGF-beta plays a role in the development of synovial hyperplasia consisting of synovial cell proliferation, inflammation and angiogenesis. The blockade of TGF-beta signaling may thus become an additional strategy for the treatment of RA.


The article presents the results of a survey of 800 teachers 399 from kindergartens and 461 from schools. The level of occupational stress and bullying experienced and job satisfaction are examined, and differences between teachers at different educational stages, depending on age and length of service, are outlined. Overall, teachers have a moderate risk of burnout - in the main they perceive low levels of bullying from colleagues and managers, students and parents, professional stress and boredom, and maintain rather high levels of job satisfaction and administrative support. This does not preclude the need to maintain an environment that provides prevention and maintenance of satisfaction and motivation, which is supported by the relationships outlined in the results. Effective self-regulation is directly dependent on the perceived characteristics of the workplace environment.


It is noted in the article that the problem of nursing staff shortage is relevant to all healthcare organizations. According to the study performed in the basic institutions (the municipal hospital and polyclinic) the staffing level is about 70 % without large changes in dynamics. In addition, a significant portion of nurses (especially in the polyclinic) are the persons of pre-retirement and retirement age. Only 28.9 % of nurses did not think about the possibility of changing the location and nature of their work. The factors that can affect the ability to attract and retain personnel were analyzed using the nurses' survey. It was found that 82.2 % of respondents believe that their workload is high; 58.3 % of them told that their work does not fully correspond to the functional responsibilities. There are the problems in the relationshipin the team (including doctors and managers). Respondents consider that it is necessary to improve the organization of the labor process in the institution, the system of wage and motivation as a whole, to work for increasing the prestige of the profession. A number of measures aimed to improve the personnel management in health care organization are proposed.


The magnetic hyperfine field Bh f of the closed-shell probe nucleus 111 Cd on the cubic R site of the C15 Laves phase RCo2 (R = Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Sm, Nd and Pr) and RNi2 (R = Gd, Sm) has been investigated at 9 K by perturbed angular correlation (PAC) spectroscopy. In RCo2 the hyperfine field increases with increasing R spin, both for the heavy and the light R. The experimental trend suggests that the total hyperfine field has two contributions of opposite sign: Bh f = B 3d - B 4 f , where B 3d is induced by the 3d Co moment and B 4 f is due to indirect 4f - 4f exchange. The 4f contribution can be estimated from the measurement of Bh f in RNi2 where the 3d moment vanishes. The 111 Cd hyperfine fields in GdNi2 and SmNi2 at 9 K are Bh f = 7.5(5) and 2.0(2) T, respectively. Assuming a linear dependence of B 4 f on the projection ( g - 1)J of the R spin on the total angular momentum J , as expected from the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) theory of indirect 4f - 4f exchange, the variation of B 3d across the R series can be determined from the experimental values of Bhf . In heavy RCo2 (R = Gd, ... ,Er) B 3d follows very closely the variation of the Co moment ?Co across the R series with B 3d /?Co = 28.7(2) T ?-1 B . With the same ratio for the light RCo2 (R = Pr, Nd, Sm) the experimental Bh f values indicate an increase of the 3d moment from ?Co = 0.45 to 0.7 ?B between PrCo2 and SmCo2 .


The different finger morphologies that arise at the interface separating two immiscible fluids in a rotating Hele-Shaw cell are studied numerically. The whole range of viscosity contrast is analyzed and a variety of fingering patterns systematically introduced, including the case in which the inner fluid is less viscous than the outer one. Our numerical results demonstrate that both the magnitude and the sign of the viscosity contrast strongly affect the shape of the emerging fingers, and also their length distribution. We have also found that the occurrence and location of pinch-off singularities are remarkably modified when the inner fluid is less viscous: instead of generating an isolated detaching drop, a full finger is disconnected from the interface. Finally, we have verified that the finger competition phenomena revealed by our simulations are correctly predicted by a weakly nonlinear analysis of the pattern development, showing that such important finger competition dynamics is already set at relatively early stages of interfacial evolution.


We present near-IR (J and Ks) number counts and colors of galaxies detected in deep VLT-ISAAC images centered on the Chandra Deep Field and Hubble Deep Field-South for a total area of 13.6 arcmin. The limiting surface brightness obtained is Ks≃22.8 mag/arcsec and J≃24.5 (1σ) on both fields. A dlogN/dm relation with a slope of ∼ 0.34 in J and ∼ 0.28 in Ks is found in both fields with no evidence of decline near the magnitude limit. The median J-Ks color of galaxies becomes bluer at magnitudes fainter than Ks∼ 18, in agreement with the different number counts slope observed in the two bands. We find a fraction (≤ 5% of the total sample) of sources with color redder than J-Ks=2.3 at magnitudes Ks> 20. Most of them appear as isolated sources, possibly elliptical or dusty starburst galaxies at redshift z > 2. The comparison of the observed number counts with models shows that our J-band and Ks-band counts are consistent with the prediction of a model based on a small amount of merging in a Ω = 1 cosmology. On the other hand, we fail to reproduce the observed counts if we do not consider merging independently of the parameters defining the universe.