PTEN, a tumor suppressor gene, has been identified as an overgrowth susceptibility gene causing Cowden syndrome. Cowden syndrome is characterized by an increased risk for breast cancer and other malignancies, mucocutaneous lesions, and macrocephaly. Macrocephaly is a hallmark of Cowden syndrome, is considered a major criterion for the clinical diagnosis, and is present in an estimated 80% of individuals diagnosed with Cowden syndrome. However, it is unknown what percentage of genetic counselors routinely measure head circumference when evaluating patients for hereditary cancer assessment. This study queried National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) members about current practices and opinions regarding head circumference measurement. A questionnaire was dispersed electronically to all members of NSGC, and those who have practiced cancer genetic counseling in the last six months were eligible to respond. The data from 216 surveys was analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitative methods including thematic analysis. Eighty-four percent of genetic counselors are not measuring head circumference on every patient presenting for hereditary cancer assessment, nor those who are specifically presenting for hereditary breast cancer assessment. Thematic analysis revealed these individuals feel head circumference measurement should not be standard in a cancer assessment, but reserved for those who are suspicious of Cowden syndrome based on personal or family history. Additionally, some genetic counselors expressed they have not received appropriate training in head circumference measurement. However, the 29% of genetic counselors who believe head circumference should routinely be measured felt it is a quick and easy measurement that is helpful in assessment and is good clinical practice. Thematic analysis also revealed mixed responses about the value of head circumference measurement with the increasing use of next generation sequencing panels.
 Although macrocephaly is a major diagnostic criterion for Cowden syndrome, there have been diverse outcomes on the exact incidence, ranging from 40-100%. Identification of Cowden syndrome has significant public health implications. Because Cowden syndrome is associated with increased lifetime risks of cancer of multiple organ sites, and because increased screening and consideration of risk-reducing surgery, it is important that health care professionals identify cases of Cowden syndrome in their patient population.


Blockchain (BC), the technology behind the Bitcoin crypto-currency system, is considered to be both alluring and critical for ensuring enhanced security and (in some implementations, non-traceable) privacy for diverse applications in many other domains including in the Internet of Things (IoT) eco-system. Intensive research is currently being conducted in both academia and industry applying the Blockchain technology in multifarious applications. Proof-of-Work (PoW), a cryptographic puzzle, plays a vital role in ensuring BC security by maintaining a digital ledger of transactions, which is considered to be incorruptible. Furthermore, BC uses a changeable Public Key (PK) to record the users' identity, which provides an extra layer of privacy. Not only in cryptocurrency has the successful adoption of BC been implemented but also in multifaceted non-monetary systems such as in: distributed storage systems, proof-of-location, healthcare, decentralized voting and so forth. Recent research articles and projects/applications were surveyed to assess the implementation of BC for enhanced security, to identify associated challenges and to propose solutions for BC enabled enhanced security systems.


To describe a case of maculopathy induced by a handheld laser pointer in a 12-year-old male patient. He was exposed to handheld DPSS red laser pointer of 100 mW for some second. He was complained of central scotoma. His visual acuity decreased in both eyes. Fundus examination showed a grayish lesion in foveal region. Fluorescein angiogram showed hypofluorescence in the central macula in early phase with late ill-defined leakage. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) revealed the disruption of the retinal epithelium and edema in the foveal area. He was treated with one dose of Triamcinolone aceonide (40 mg) periocular injection in his both eyes combined with oral Chinese patent medicine for one month. Four weeks later, the patient's visual acuity increased markedly, OCT showed unhealed retinal epithelium disruption. Laser pointer would be a dangerous "toys", both parents and teachers should pay attention to it.


Clustering of data streams finds important applications in tracking evolution of various phenomena in medical, meteorological, astrophysical, seismic studies. Algorithms designed for this purpose are capable of adapting the discovered clustering model to the changes in data characteristics but are not capable of adapting to the user's requirements themselves. Based on the previous observation, we perform a comparative study of different approaches for existing stream clustering algorithms and present a parameterized architectural framework that exploits nuances of the algorithms. This framework permits the end user to tailor a method to suit his specific application needs. We give a parameterized framework that empowers the end-users of KDD technology to build a clustering model. The framework delivers results as per the user's application requirements. We also present two assembled algorithms G-kMeans and G-dbscan to instantiate the proposed framework and compare the performance with the existing stream clustering algorithms.


An intermediate-scale energy spectrum anisotropy has been found in the arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays of energies above $10^{19.2}$ eV in the northern hemisphere, using 7 years of data from the Telescope Array surface detector. A relative energy distribution test is done comparing events inside oversampled spherical caps of equal exposure, to those outside, using the Poisson likelihood ratio. The center of maximum significance is at $9^h$$16^m$, $45^{\circ}$. and has a deficit of events with energies $10^{19.2}$$\leq$$E$$<$$10^{19.75}$ eV and an excess for $E$$\geq$$10^{19.75}$ eV. The post-trial probability of this energy anisotropy, appearing by chance anywhere on an isotropic sky, is found by Monte Carlo simulation to be $9$$\times$$10^{-5}$ ($3.74$$\sigma_{global}$).


Culturing cells in three dimension (3D) provides an insight into their characteristics in vivo. We previously reported that human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (hMSCs) cultured as 3D spheroids acquire enhanced anti‐inflammatory properties. Here, we explored the effects of hMSC spheroids on macrophages that are critical cells in the regulation of inflammation. Conditioned medium (CM) from hMSC spheroids inhibited lipopolysaccharide‐stimulated macrophages from secreting proinflammatory cytokines TNFα, CXCL2, IL6, IL12p40, and IL23. CM also increased the secretion of anti‐inflammatory cytokines IL10 and IL1ra by the stimulated macrophages, and augmented expression of CD206, a marker of alternatively activated M2 macrophages. The principal anti‐inflammatory activity in CM had a small molecular weight, and microarray data suggested that it was prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). This was confirmed by the observations that PGE2 levels were markedly elevated in hMSC spheroid‐CM, and that the anti‐inflammatory activity was abolished by an inhibitor of cyclooxygenase‐2 (COX‐2), a silencing RNA for COX‐2, and an antibody to PGE2. The anti‐inflammatory effects of the PGE2 on stimulated macrophages were mediated by the EP4 receptor. Spheroids formed by human adult dermal fibroblasts produced low levels of PGE2 and displayed negligible anti‐inflammatory effects on stimulated macrophages, suggesting the features as unique to hMSCs. Moreover, production of PGE2 by hMSC spheroids was dependent on the activity of caspases and NFκB activation in the hMSCs. The results indicated that hMSCs in 3D‐spheroid cultures are self‐activated, in part by intracellular stress responses, to produce PGE2 that can change stimulated macrophages from a primarily proinflammatory M1 phenotype to a more anti‐inflammatory M2 phenotype. STEM Cells2012;30:2283–2296


The vehicle has foldable rear and front seat structure. The electrical seat latch for vehicle is a component which provides electrically release the seat from vehicle body rather than mechanical user interaction. In this study, electrical seat latch mechanisms and structures are investigated. Accarding to international standard and customer EMC (Electromagnetic Compability) requirements, the electrical seat latch component category types are searched. The electrical seat latch structures are evaluated in terms of EMC requirements and component category types. Resultly, the usage of reverse polarity protection and over voltage circuits are suggested for providing the immunity voltage to over stress requirement for electrical seat latch.


Events are occurrences that happen in systems. Events can be chemical, which are natural phenomena studied from the chemical field. Such events modify chemical composition of substances when they are combined with other substances. Chemical experts represent such events by using scientific models, which are used for describing and recognizing behavior of the real world. Such models are integrated into scientific software systems. However, software engineering models lack mathematical notation for representing chemical events. Hence, in this paper we propose a chemical event representation by using mathematical notation from preconceptual schemas. Such schemas are used for representing events in scientific software domains. The proposed representation allows for analyzing chemical events from software engineering in order to produce scientific software systems from chemical field.


Today's nurse leader is challenged to create a practice environment that fosters multidisciplinary collaboration, professional development, and a culture of safety. Fostering a sense of coherence among staff nurses about their place within the nursing department and the department's place within the broader organization id essential to the development of such environments. When nurses have a sense of coherence about their work setting, they are more likely to feel confident that their care of patients and families is fully supported by the organization in which they work. The authors describe the concept of coherence, discuss findings from a preliminary study regarding attributes that may contribute to coherence in individual nurses, and describe systems ans programs that have been implemented in a large academic medical center to foster a sense of coherence in individual nurses, the nursing department, and the institution as a whole.


Dose- and time-response studies were performed in iron-loaded and iron-deficient rats in order to define, (a) the kinetics of absorption of cobalt and iron, (b) the nature of the inhibitory effect of one metal on the absorption of the other, and (c) the effect of variations in body iron stores on these processes. The duodenum was perfused for 5-90 min with labeled solutions containing 5.0 mM iron or 5.0 mM cobalt. In iron-loaded rats, the rate of cobalt absorption was constant for 90 min whereas the rate of iron absorption fell after 30 min. In comparison to these results, the rate of absorption of both metals was increased in iron deficiency, and was more rapid in the first 30 min than in the 30-90 min period.To determine the response to varying doses of metal, we perfused duodenal loops for 30 min with 0.1-10.0 mM solutions of either iron or cobalt. In both iron-loaded and iron-deficient groups, a greater proportion of the metals was absorbed from smaller than from larger doses. When iron and cobalt were perfused together in iron-deficient animals, cobalt competitively inhibited iron absorption, and conversely, iron reduced cobalt absorption. The apparent maximum transport velocity was similar for both metals, but the affinity for cobalt was greater than iron. The results suggest that the absorption of cobalt and iron is mediated by a transport system in which two processes operate simultaneously; the first is limited largely by the concentration of available metal in the lumen of the intestine, whereas the second process depends upon the activity of a mechanism which displays saturation kinetics and competitive inhibition. The former process prevails when iron stores are replete, whereas the latter predominates when there is a need for iron, such as in iron deficiency.


A Counting Method of Coccidial Oocysts with Chrome-Sulfuric Acid Toshio Ism' and H. OHNAGA (Nippon Institute for Biological Science, Tachikawa, Tokyo 190) UMMARY Chrome-sulfuric acid was added to a fecal sample to decompose and dissolve the fecal contents, so that the counting of coccidial oocysts might be made with ease. 1. The chemical used was a mixture of equa1 volumes of 20 % sodium bichromate and concentrated sulfuric acid. 2. It was desirable to finish the oocyst counting within 30 minutes after the chemical treatment in order to prevent the oocysts from being disintegrated. 3. A fecal sample unfiltrated and containing a large amount of residual feed sometimes became foamy. This disadvantage could be prevented by increasing the amount of chrome-sulfuric acid to be added.


The present study examines the relationship between memories and positive and negative emotions using memories of the first measurement moment of a 1-year longitudinal study in the Dutch population. The sample, consisting of 2065 participants (female 53%, male 47%) with an age range between 18 and 92 years (M age = 57.6; SD age = 16.4), had an over-representation of older adults. Participants were asked to describe three memories by using the Self-Defining Memory Test (SDMT). In total, they provided 6158 memories at the first measurement moment of the study. Their memories were reliably coded for valence and content. First, the relationship between the age of a memory and the evoked intensive emotions has been examined. Second, the relationship between vividness of a memory and the evoked intensive emotions has been studied. Then, a comparison of these relationships between the positive (N=2187) and negative valence (N=2266) of a memory was made. Finally, seven content categories of a memory have been compared to the extent of positive and negative emotions. The results showed that the intensity of emotions was not influenced by time as expected. Also after a long time, people felt intensive emotions during the recollection of a past event. Vivid memories, however, had a positive relationship with intensive emotions. Especially, positive emotions have been more intensive than negative ones, when the memory was described as vivid. Moreover, participants felt more positive about experiences of free time activities and more negative about experiences of health issues, in comparison to other content categories.


MOTIVATION
Figures from biomedical articles contain valuable information difficult to reach without specialized tools. Currently, there is no search engine that can retrieve specific figure types.

RESULTS
This study describes a retrieval method that takes advantage of principles in image understanding, text mining and optical character recognition (OCR) to retrieve figure types defined conceptually. A search engine was developed to retrieve tables and figure types to aid computational and experimental research.

AVAILABILITY
http://iossifovlab.cshl.edu/figurome/.


The quantitative rescattering theory (QRS) for high-order harmonic generation (HHG) by intense laser pulses is presented. According to the QRS, HHG spectra can be expressed as a product of a returning electron wave packet and the photorecombination differential cross section of the laser-free continuum electron back to the initial bound state. We show that the shape of the returning electron wave packet is determined mostly by the laser. The returning electron wave packets can be obtained from the strong-field approximation or from the solution of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation (TDSE) for a reference atom. The validity of the QRS is carefully examined by checking against accurate results for both harmonic magnitude and phase from the solution of the TDSE for atomic targets within the single active electron approximation. Combining with accurate transition dipoles obtained from state-of-the-art molecular photoionization calculations, we further show that available experimental measurements for HHG from partially aligned molecules can be explained by the QRS. Our results show that quantitative description of the HHG from aligned molecules has become possible. Since infrared lasers of pulse durations of a few femtoseconds are easily available in the laboratory, they may be used for dynamic imaging of a transient moleculemore » with femtosecond temporal resolutions.« less


Introduction Increasing duration of pH studies improves consistency of GERD diagnosis but clinical utility of the method is not established. Aim: (1) to identify measurements from prolonged pH studies that discriminate healthy volunteers (HVs) and GERD patients (2) to compare prediction of PPI response from prolonged and standard measurement. Methods HVs and patients with reflux symptoms entered a prospective trial. Quality of life (RAND-36) and symptom severity (Eraflux) was assessed on and off PPI and after 2 weeks ×2/day PPI. Endoscopy recorded mucosal disease. Wireless pH system (Bravo®, Given Imaging) measured acid reflux and symptoms up to 4 days. Receiver Operating Curve (ROC) assessed prediction of PPI response. For each prediction 80% of patients were randomly selected as training set, remaining 20% constituted test set. This was repeated 200 times producing average ROC with SEs. Area under Curve (AUC) quantified quality of prediction. Results Complete data were available from 25/33 HVs (18F, age 20–56) and 70/108 patients (31F, age 18–77), >320 days in total. Oesophagitis was present in 9 HVs (32%: Grade A) and 26 patients (33%: Grade A=19, B=2, C-D=5). Acid exposure time was elevated (AET >5.6%) in 3 (12%) HVs and 35 (50%) patients. Eraflux off-PPI was >25 (consistent with GERD) in 60/63 patients and fell by mean 7 (95% CI 5 to 10) on PPI, 46% reported positive response (>3 fall). Diagnosis: Endoscopy, AET and reflux-symptom association analysis (Symptom Index (SI)) did not discriminate health/disease; but reflux-associated symptoms/day (nRS/Day) covered different ranges for HV and patients. Logistic regression with bootstrap validation identified that ≥3 RS/day corresponded to ∼50% probability that participant was a patient. PPI response: Clinical parameters and AET did not predict outcome. SI (9.2 vs 30.2, p=0.0023) and nRS/Day (1 vs 2.6, p=0.012) were higher in responders. RAND-36 scores for poor physical role and pain were higher in non-responders (p∼0.1). SI ROC had an AUC of 0.73 (CI 0.51 to 0.92). SI >25 was the optimal cut-off for identifying PPI responders (Abstract PTU-197 figure 1). Prediction quality from 24 h studies was lower (AUC 0.69) and CIs for all parameters were wider with lower CI.Abstract PTU-197 Figure 1 ROC for SI as predictor of PPI response. Error bars show SE. ROC with cross-validation is black line, without cross-validation is grey line (∼10% greater AUC). Conclusion Diagnostic consistency for all parameters increases with study duration. A simple count of nRS/Day best discriminates HVs from patients on pH studies. SI >25 provides single best prediction of PPI response; but quality of predictions was modest in this population with low PPI response. Competing interests None declared.


Abstract The article re-examines Karl Barth's claim that his 1931 book on Anselm of Canterbury's proof of the existence of God from Proslogion 2–4, the Fides Quaerens Intellectum, provides a 'vital key' for understanding the rationality of his later theology. The article takes up the question of what 'dialectics' denotes in Barth's theology. Re-engaging the issue of dialectics in Karl Barth's theology, particularly in light of the developments of his thought, leads to a critical revision of Bruce McCormack's influential interpretation of Barth's dialectical theology. Through a close reading of the section, 'The manner of theology', from the first of the two parts of Fides Quaerens Intellectum the article sheds light on how Barth envisions the construction of the theoretical concepts of theology in light of his concrete exegetical praxis. By focusing on the relationship between theory and praxis, an understanding of Barth's dialectical theology as a form of 'speculative reading' emerges. This notion of dialectics as developing in light of a practice of speculative reading allows us to compare certain aspects of concept-formation in the theology of Karl Barth and the dialectical philosophy of the German Idealist, G. W. F. Hegel. Drawing explicitly on Hegel's analysis of infinite judgement from the second volume of his 1812 Science of Logic, Barth's use of the tautology 'God is God' in his second commentary on Romans from 1922 is shown to provide important insight into the structure of Barth's dialectical thinking. This explicitly relates to the important issue of the relationship between faith and reason in Karl Barth's theology, which sheds a new light on how his understanding of the rational basis of the theory and praxis of theology developed from his second Romans commentary onwards. Finally, Barth's use of dialectics and his account of the rationality of theology as a form of 'speculative reading' permits some final reflections on the significance of pneumatology for constructive theology by underscoring how Barth insists on the priority of praxis over theory. To understand Barth's theology and the way it changes over the years is to understand the rationality of its concrete praxis.


Hobby is a big part of person's motivation to do something well. According to the hypothesis described and explained in this article, many people do their job well because they want to fulfill their dreams at home. Some of these dreams can be described as people's hobbies. We know that hobby is an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure, but how a company can use this activity regularly to increase either the human capital of its workers or to improve image or organization remains unclear.To find links between hobby marketing and high moral, image and positive awareness of company in the mind of public, special marketing research was conducted in the Georgian - European Marketing Association. Qualitative marketing research methods have been used in the survey that have shown many surprising things about the importance of hobby marketing in the 21st century. The purpose of the study, to open new directions of the company's internal marketing activities, was achieved.


This paper presents another outlook on image description, classification and retrieval. Some popular image description methods are Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HoG), Speed Up Robust Features (SURF) and Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT). While SURF and SIFT both use "interest points" to describe an image, HoG uses all of the points in the image. One of the goals of this paper is to improve HoG by creating a feature vector containing more information about the image. The proposed description method is called the Histogram of Second order Oriented Gradients (HSoG) and it was shown to perform better than HoG using a dataset comprising of airplanes, cars and motorbikes by supervised learning. The second goal is to tackle image clustering for aid in unsupervised learning and this paper explores a method called Localized Clustering with a comparison to K-Means. The localized clustering approach does not require the number of clusters as an input but it does return what it determines the number of clusters should be. Finally, The retrieval process presented involves training a linear SVM with known labels (supervised) to evaluate the effectiveness of HoG vs HSoG and HSoG out performs HoG.


The vibration signals propagating in different directions from rotating machines can contain a variety of characteristic information. A novel feature extraction method based on bivariate empirical mode decomposition (BEMD) for rotor is proposed to comprehensively extract the fault features. In this work, the number of signal projection directions is determined through simulation, and the energy end condition based on the energy threshold is increased using BEMD to enhance the decomposition quality. Mixed vibration signals are generated along two orthogonal directions. Then, the acquired vibration signal can be decomposed into several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) at the rotational speed using the BEMD method. Furthermore, the instantaneous frequency and instantaneous amplitude of the real signals and the imaginary part of the IMF signals are obtained using the Hilbert transform. The fault features along two and three dimensions can be investigated, providing more comprehensive information to aid in the fault diagnosis of rotor. Experimental results on oil film oscillation, the oil whirl, the bistability of the rotor, and looseness and rotor rubbing composite fault indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


The paper describes a new method for high resolution nuclear timing spectroscopy system using tracking ADCs and free running ramp to give the timing resolution of few ps over wide dynamic range of time interval extending up to few µs. The method makes use of tracking ADCs with 16 bit resolution with low conversion time of nearly 1 µs along with a free running ramp which is given as input to the two ADCs. Both the ADCs and ramp are designed to track their characteristics in order to neutralize the errors due to drift in their characteristics and hence complex system of spectrum stabilization is not required. ADC1 digitizes ramp input at the arrival of START pulse and ADC2 digitizes ramp input at the arrival of STOP pulse. The difference between digital codes of these ADCs is a measure of time interval between START and STOP pulses. New system doesn't require delay and hence biased amplifier. System has dead time of 1 µs and spectrum stabilization is easy.


This article deals with a study of the method in inducing pollen plants from cultured anthers and cytological observations on the in vitro androgenesis of Triticale. The results obtained are summarized as follows: 1. Cell divisions of the uninucleate pollen grains and development of the am- phihaploid plants of Triticale can be readily obtained from anthers cultured on a basic mediam (slightly modified MS medium) supplemented with an appropriate amount of coconut milk and auxins (2,4--D, NAA). 2. The capacity of callus production varied greatly in different Triticale strains. The pollens in the anthers of non-callus producing strains is potentially ca- pable in producing embryoids, but the embryoids produced by them degenerate in an early stage of development. 3. A higher proportion of the planted anthers producing shoots can be ob- tained, if the anthers containing embryoids had been transfered at a suitable time into the medium for differentiation before the embryoidal cells developed into callus. 4. The two nuclei formed by the first division of the uninucleate microspore are similar in appearance, they, however, generally differ in physiological functions. One of the nuclei having the nature of generative nucleus may divide and produce free nuclei which are eventually excluded in the course of embryoid development; the other having the nature of vegetative nucleus undergoes normal mitoses and therefore plays an essential role in the embryoid formation. 5. In the differentiating or meristematic cells the starch accumulation is generally rare, while in the cells surrounding them there are numerous starch grains.


A computer model is used to simulate the basic model of the kinetic theory of hot atom reactions using a variety of energy loss distribution functions. It is found that the actual distribution of energy losses has little effect on the derived kinetic parameters, although in many cases derived individual product parameters are a poor reflection of their defined values. (GE)


Introduction Acute kidney injury (AKI) after cardiac surgery is common and results in increased morbidity and mortality. One possible mechanism for AKI is ischaemia–reperfusion injury caused by the extracorporeal circulation (ECC), resulting in an opening of the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) in the kidneys, which can lead to cell injury or cell death. Ciclosporin may block the opening of mPTP if administered before the ischaemia–reperfusion injury. We hypothesised that ciclosporin given before the start of ECC in cardiac surgery can decrease the degree of AKI. Methods and analysis Ciclosporin to Protect Renal function In Cardiac Surgery (CiPRICS) study is an investigator-initiated double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled, parallel design, single-centre study performed at a tertiary university hospital. The primary objective is to assess the safety and efficacy of ciclosporin to limit the degree of AKI in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. We aim to evaluate 150 patients with a preoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate of 15–90 mL/min/1.73 m2. Study patients are randomised in a 1:1 ratio to receive study drug 2.5 mg/kg ciclosporin or placebo as an intravenous injection after anaesthesia induction but before start of surgery. The primary end point consists of relative P-cystatin C changes from the preoperative day to postoperative day 3. The primary variable will be tested using an analysis of covariance method. Secondary end points include evaluation of P-creatinine and biomarkers of kidney, heart and brain injury. Ethics and dissemination The trial is conducted in compliance with the current version of the Declaration of Helsinki and the International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) Good Clinical Practice guidelines E6 (R1) and was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board, Lund and the Swedish Medical Products Agency (MPA). Written and oral informed consent is obtained before enrolment into the study. Trial registration number NCT02397213; Pre-results.


The aim was to study the hyperammonemia level and the duration of implementation of the number connection test (NCT) for patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in the pre-cirrhosis stage, including effect of the oral administration of L-ornithine-L-aspartate (LOLA) on these indices, and NCT correlation with body chemistry values. Material and methods: the research covered 103 patients with NAFLD to study the hyperammonemia level and other relevant blood chemistry values; we performed NCT before and after the LOLA treatment. The aim was to study the hyperammonemia level and the duration of implementation of the number connection test (NCT) for patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in the pre-cirrhosis stage, including effect of the oral administration of L-ornithine-L-aspartate (LOLA) on these indices, and NCT correlation with body chemistry values. Material and methods: the research covered 103 patients with NAFLD to study the hyperammonemia level and other relevant blood chemistry values; we performed NCT before and after the LOLA treatment.


This is the proceedings from the symposium on "Computers, electronics and control engineering in agriculture" hold in Sweden 1986. There were participants from all countries in Scandinavia. There were also invited speakers from The Netherlands, United Kingdom and west Germany. Computers, electronics and control engineering have become more and more powerful tools not only for agricultural engineering research activities but also for a better efficiency in agricultural and horticultural production processes. The symposium was needed for making researchers, university teachers and research students in agricultural engineering in the Scandinavian countries aware of the research frontier within the subject. With the subject is meant not only applications within agriculture but also connected areas such as biotechnology, microbiology, meteorology, ergonomics and so on. The purpose of the symposium was: - to state the present research frontier in different parts of the research field - to identify needs for further research and development - to find a suitable way for future Scandinavian research and development within the subject. Area The symposium consisted of six sections. Sections I—III dealt with the agricultural production processes. Each of these sections was discussed by speakers from two different viewpoints, namely: - to throw light on the biological demands for, needs for and cinditions of applications of electronics, computers and control engineering - to throw light on the present possibilities to solve the existing problems of applications of computers, electronics and control engineering, state the research frontier and discuss the most probable directions of further research and product development. The fourth section discussed different ergonomical viewpoints connected to the use of electronic equipment in agriculture, while the fifth section concerned about the impact on the management on the farm firm. Both these sections also discussed the need for further research. The sixth section of the symposium was a general discussion. This report has been edited by Bruno Nilsson who also was responsible for the organisation of the symposium. The symposium was sponsored by funds from the Council of Ministers in the Nordic Countries.


City environments often lack textured areas, contain repetitive structures, strong lighting changes and therefore are very difficult for standard 3D modeling pipelines. We present a novel unified framework for creating 3D city models which overcomes these difficulties by exploiting image segmentation cues as well as presence of dominant scene orientations and piecewise planar structures. Given panoramic street view sequences, we first demonstrate how to robustly estimate camera poses without a need for bundle adjustment and propose a multi-view stereo method which operates directly on panoramas, while enforcing the piecewise planarity constraints in the sweeping stage. At last, we propose a new depth fusion method which exploits the constraints of urban environments and combines advantages of volumetric and viewpoint based fusion methods. Our technique avoids expensive voxelization of space, operates directly on 3D reconstructed points through effective kd-tree representation, and obtains a final surface by tessellation of backprojections of those points into the reference image.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the safety and efficacy of transnasal endoscopic resection and craniofacial resection through an external approach for olfactory neuroblastoma (ONB).

METHODS
Thirty two patients with ONB treated between 1987 and 2006 were retrospectively reviewed.

RESULTS
The patients were followed up for 8-135 months, the median follow-up time was 20 months. The longest follow-up time of patients treated by endoscope was 79 months, and patients treated by combined endoscope and transcranial surgery was 87 months. At Kadish stage B the 3-year survival rate of patients with transnasal endoscopic resection was 78.8% and at Kadish stage C it was 50.0%. At Kadish stage B the 3-year survival rate of patients with craniofacial resection through an external approach was 60.0% and at Kadish stage C it was 44.4%. The bleeding amounts in above two approaches were 140 ml and 450 ml. The average length of stay in hospital in transnasal endoscopic resection approach was markedly reduced (P < 0. 01).

CONCLUSIONS
Olfactory neuroblastoma can be safely and effectively excised and reconstructed endoscopically with comparable degrees of tissue removal as with external approaches. The time of stay in hospital can be reduced and the surgical trauma can be diminished.


Microchips are widely used to separate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from whole blood by virtues of sophisticated manipulation for microparticles. Here, we present a chip with an 8 μm high and 27.9 mm wide slit to capture cancer cells bound to 3 μm beads. Apart from a higher purity and recovery rate, the slit design allows for simplified fabrication, easy cell imaging, less clogging, lower chamber pressure and, therefore, higher throughput. The beads were conjugated with anti-epithelial cell adhesion molecules (anti-EpCAM) to selectively bind to breast cancer cells (MCF-7) used to spike the whole blood. The diameter of the cell-bead construct was in average 23.1 μm, making them separable from other cells in the blood. As a result, the cancer cells were separated from 5 mL of whole blood with a purity of 52.0% and a recovery rate of 91.1%, and also we confirmed that the device can be applicable to clinical samples of human breast cancer patients. The simple design with microslit, by eliminating any high-aspect ratio features, is expected to reduce possible defects on the chip and, therefore, more suitable for mass production without false separation outputs.


from very different kinds of environment and therefore often drawing inappropriate conclusions. The manuals of best international practice are imbued with excessive optimism. I believe that there is often more to be learned from the mistakes of others. And, since Latin America, and indeed most countries in the world, has managed to compile a long list of errors, there is a great deal of useful experience available. The conference began with the Minister of Housing, Beatriz Uribe, presenting the goals of the Santos government. Housing will be one of the


Viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus (VHSV) genotype IVb has been responsible for large-scale fish mortality events in the Great Lakes of North America. Anticipating the areas of potential VHSV occurrence is key to designing epidemiological surveillance and disease prevention strategies in the Great Lakes basin. We explored the environmental features that could shape the distribution of VHSV, based on remote sensing and climate data via ecological niche modelling. Variables included temperature measured during the day and night, precipitation, vegetation, bathymetry, solar radiation and topographic wetness. VHSV occurrences were obtained from available reports of virus confirmation in laboratory facilities. We fit a Maxent model using VHSV-IVb reports and environmental variables under different parameterizations to identify the best model to determine potential VHSV occurrence based on environmental suitability. VHSV reports were generated from both passive and active surveillance. VHSV occurrences were most abundant near shore sites. We were, however, able to capture the environmental signature of VHSV based on the environmental variables employed in our model, allowing us to identify patterns of VHSV potential occurrence. Our findings suggest that VHSV is not at an ecological equilibrium and more areas could be affected, including areas not in close geographic proximity to past VHSV reports.


Hematopoietic cell transplantation - essentials on indication, patient referral and long term follow up Abstract. Both, autologous and allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) are established treatment components for a large number of predominantly hemato- and lymphopoietic disorders. Diagnosis and disease status, the timing for referral to a transplant center and comorbidities are crucial factors for the patients' outcome. Survivorship care plans are an important contribution to improve intermediate and long-term outcome. Although these are mainly guided by the transplant center, family and referring physicians play an important role in prevention, early detection and treatment of late effects. This review discusses «HCT-essentials» for non-transplant physicians for referral and follow up of transplant patients.


Although sociology was born as a "narrative about modernity" (Rita Felski), the contemporary world experiences social, cultural and political changes that require further analyses and new perspectives. This paper discusses current approaches and discourses on postmodernity within sociology and the contemporary social theory, identifying some of the key issues. Among other things, many discourses present metaphors of "degeneration" or social deterioration associated with notions such as "contamination of the public by the private" or, on the contrary, "the private by the public." There is much concern about a potential loss of social ties due to the deconstruction of the standardized forms of relationship (Bauman), or a loss of the dialogical possibilities because of the spreading of social and cultural identities (Habermas). Given these perspectives, and Giddens' more "optimistic" view (through his notion of the reflexivity of "post-traditional society"), this study proposes an appreciation of the works of authors such as Andreas Huyssen and the feminist and post-colonial theorists, who point to trends of postmodernity, some of them contradictory, that contribute to the development of practical and theoretical new ways.


ABSTRACT In the context of a larger clinical study in Nouna, Burkina Faso, we evaluated a simplified dual-platform (DP) flow cytometric (FCM) method that allows the determination of major lymphocyte subsets in a single test tube. We compared the phenotyping of lymphocytes with DP FCM and simultaneous measurements with standard single-platform (SP) FCM for samples from 177 individuals. Analysis of the comparative measurements revealed that DP FCM systematically underestimates the proportion of NK cells, overestimates the percentage of CD3+ CD8+ lymphocytes, and yields proportions of B cells and CD4+ T cells comparable with the results from SP FCM. Bland-Altman analysis showed a low bias between both methods and an acceptable precision for percent values of CD4+ T cells (bias ± precision, −1% ± 6%) and CD8+ T cells (−3% ± 6%). The absolute cell numbers of all lymphocyte subpopulations, however, were systematically biased towards lower values being obtained by DP FCM. Reference values for the distribution of T-cell maturation phenotypes in 177 healthy adults were calculated using DP FCM. The mean ± standard deviation (SD) CD4+-to-CD8+ T-cell ratio was 1.61 ± 0.61, the mean percentage ± SD of CD4+ T cells was 42% ± 7%, and that of CD8+ T cells 29% ± 7%. Among CD4+ lymphocytes, 28% ± 7% were classified as central memory (CD45RAlow CCR7+), 22% ± 10% as naïve (CD45RAhigh CCR7+), 45% ± 12% as effector memory (CD45RAlow CCR7−); and 5% ± 3% as terminally differentiated effector memory expressing CD45RA (CD45RAhigh CCR7−). Among CD8bright lymphocytes, 3% ± 2% had a central memory phenotype, 27% ± 13% were naïve, 37% ± 13% had an effector memory phenotype, and 34% ± 12% were terminally differentiated effector memory cells expressing CD45RA.


Diverse domains of science and engineering require and use mechanistic mathematical models, e.g. systems of differential algebraic equations. Such models often contain uncertain parameters to be estimated from data. Consider a dynamic model discrimination setting where we wish to chose: (i) what is the best mechanistic, time-varying model and (ii) what are the best model parameter estimates. These tasks are often termed model discrimination/selection/validation/verification. Typically, several rival mechanistic models can explain data, so we incorporate available data and also run new experiments to gather more data. Design of dynamic experiments for model discrimination helps optimally collect data. For rival mechanistic models where we have access to gradient information, we extend existing methods to incorporate a wider range of problem uncertainty and show that our proposed approach is equivalent to historical approaches when limiting the types of considered uncertainty. We also consider rival mechanistic models as dynamic black boxes that we can evaluate, e.g. by running legacy code, but where gradient or other advanced information is unavailable. We replace these black-box models with Gaussian process surrogate models and thereby extend the model discrimination setting to additionally incorporate rival black-box model. We also explore the consequences of using Gaussian process surrogates to approximate gradient-based methods.


Introduction Acute gastrointestinal stress ulceration is a common and serious complication of trauma. Prophylactic proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) or histamine receptor antagonists have been used in poly-trauma, burns and head and spinal injuries, as well as on intensive care units, for the prevention of acute gastric stress ulcers. Methods We prospectively studied the use of prophylactic PPIs in with femoral neck fracture patients, gathering data on all acute gastric ulcer complications, including coffee-ground vomiting, malena and haematemesis. We then implemented a treatment protocol in which all patients were given prophylactic PPIs, again prospectively collecting all data. Results Five hundred and fifteen patients were included. Prior to prophylactic PPI, 15% of patients developed gastric stress ulcer complications, with 3% requiring acute intervention with oesophagogastroduodenoscopy (OGD), 5% requiring transfusions and 4% experiencing surgical delays. All patients had delayed discharges. Following PPI implementation, no patients developed gastric stress ulcer complications. Conclusions Femoral neck fracture patients create a substantial workload for orthopaedic units. The increasingly elderly population often have comorbidities, and concomitantly use medications with gastrointestinal side effects. This, combined with the stress of a fracture and preoperative starvation periods increases the risk of gastric ulcers. Here, the use of prophylactic PPIs statistically reduced the incidence of gastric stress ulcers in patients with femoral neck fractures, resulting in fewer surgical delays, reduced length of hospital stay and reduced stress ulcer-related mortality.


The present research was designed to investigate the relationship between perceived parenting styles and autonomy in psychiatric patients. Diagnosed patients having Psychiatric disorders (N=70) were selected using purposive sampling technique with an age range of 18-55 years, from two hospitals in Bahawalpur, Bahawal Victoria Hospital Bahawalpur (BVH) and Combined Military Hospital (CMH) Bahawalpur Cantt. Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ), developed by Buri (1991) to assess the control dimension of parenting styles was used, along with the Health Care Climate Questionnaire (HCCQ) by Williams, Grow, Freedman, Ryan, and Deci (1996), to measure autonomy in psychiatric patients, were used in the research. Data was analyzed statistically by using Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficient to measure the relationship between the variables. Linear Regression Analysis was used to find out the perceived parenting styles as predictors of autonomy. The    findings revealed that perceived parenting style has great effect on autonomy. Results also showed that perceived parenting styles has significant correlation with psychiatric patients. However, authoritative parenting style has no significant relationship with perceived autonomy. Conclusively, it is predicted that permissive parenting style has good correlation with autonomy. The findings of the present research provide a deep insight to parents, psychologists and researchers in understanding and promoting adolescents' psychosocial development and well-being.


Distinctive ruptures of the surface faulting which generated the destructive 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu Earthquake (Ms=7.2) appeared along the Nojima fault, an active fault on the northwestern coast of Awaji island, Japan. The surface fault ruptures in Awaji island extend southwestward continuously for about 9km from Easki near the epicenter to Toshima in Hokudan town, and caused prominent right-latearl off-sets of 1.9m at maximum on roads, paddy dikes with vertical displacement of 1.2m at maximum, while no large surface faulting has been reported in Kobe where major damage and casualties have appeared.Most of the surface ruptures follow along the pre-existing active fault traces of the Nojima fault. The ruptures are generally arranged in left-stepping echelon, and local extensional and compressional jog forms such as trenches, mole tracks, buldges are sometimes related to changes in fault strikes.The earthquake fault seems to have propagated bilaterally northeastward and southwestward from the hypocenter in the Straits of Akashi near the major jog of the earthquake fault system. The source process of the earthquake deduced from the slip distribution along the earthquake fault in Awaji island well explains near-field P-waveforms of broad-band seismometers for early part in about 4 seconds. The later part of much larger amplitude should attribute to the northeast fault ruptures toward Kobe.


Abstract: This is a clinical study of the results of endolymphatic sac shunt surgery for Meniere's disease in 28 patients. Postoperative audiometric results and clinical evaluation of vertigo and tinnitus were analyzed to determine the effectiveness of this form of treatment. Although this is a small study and the time interval since operation is of only moderate duration (6 to 46 months), the results are encouraging: 79% of the patients showed improvement or stabilization of hearing as well as control of vertigo.


This paper considers the problem of geocasting in mobile ad hoc networks. Geocasting, a variation on the notion of multicasting, is a mechanism to deliver messages of interest to all nodes within a certain geographical target region. Although several geocasting protocols have already been proposed for mobile ad hoc networks, with the goal of achieving an efficient message delivery, most of these algorithms consider a "single" target region only and therefore multiple transmissions should be initiated separately by the message source when more than one target regions need to receive the same geocast messages. This causes significant performance degradation, especially as the number of geocast regions increase. To solve this problem, we propose a novel scheme driven by geometry, named GGP (geometry-driven geocasting protocol). In this scheme, the geometric concept of "Fermat point" is utilized to determine the optimal junction point among multiple geocast regions from the source node, and hence to reduce the overhead of message delivery, while maintaining a high delivery ratio


Background: There is ongoing controversy over the optimal treatment and rehabilitation strategy of an acute Achilles tendon rupture (ATR). Percutaneous suturing seems to bridge the gap between open surgical and conservative treatment, but still raises scepticism due to concerns like strength of the repair, approximation of torn ends, re-rupture rate, sural nerve injuries, early functional rehabilitation and thus final outcome. The purpose of the study was to analyze the results of two ways of postoperative regimen after treatment with the modified and biomechanically significantly stronger percutaneous repair under local anesthesia.Methods: In a prospective, randomized study from the year 2001 to 2004, with a 3-year follow-up, there were 31 patients (32 ruptures) in the functional bracing group (FG) and 30 patients, who wore rigid immobilization for the period of 6 weeks (IG).Results: Both groups were comparable for gender (3 vs 2 women) and average age (41.93 years, SD ± 12.29 vs 42.20 years, SD ± 10.53). Most ATRs were sports related (62.5% in FG vs 60.0% in IG). There was 1 (3.3%) re-rupture in IG and no re-rupture in FG (1.6% altogether), 2 (6.2%) transient sural nerve disturbances in FG and 1 (3.3%) in IG (4.8% altogether), one suture extrusion problem in IG (3.3%) with no other major or minor complications (6.2% of altogether complications in FG vs 10.0% in IG)(p > 0.05)(overall 8.1%). Patients in FG were (subjectively) more satisfied with the treatment, reached sooner final range of motion (ROM) and muscular strength without limping and had higher average AOFAS score (96.87 vs 95.96)(p > 0.05). There were no statistically significant differences observed between groups according to final ROM, strength and return to pre-injury activities or sports.Conclusions: The results of the study support the choice of presented modified percutaneous suturing under local anesthesia with functional treatment and early mobilization as a reasonable treatment option for an acute ATR.Trial registration: KME, 54/03/00, 21. 03. 2000


Countless pages have been written to date on the effects that a given conduct needs to produce in order for it to be considered abusive under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union ("TFEU"). Many commentators conclude that there is an asymmetry in the European Union (EU) Courts' approach to the meaning of "effects" between different types of conduct. It is also often concluded that the Courts' approach is too formalistic with regard to certain conducts, namely exclusivity rebates and exclusive dealing, that are presumed by the case-law to have anticompetitive effects.


Research development of teaching materials photosynthesis on the subject Ecophysiology plant based research aims to: (1) for the type and ratio of organic matter to the soil mixture former bauxite mine is best to plant photosynthesis rubber clone PB 260. (2) Enriching teaching materials in the form of modules Ecophysiology plant based experimental research. Stage of research include; (1) Experiment with 3 treatment ratio (w / w): control, (1: 1), (1: 2) to design completely randomized design. Data analysis by ANOVA and Duncan's Multiple Range Test Test. (2) Development of teaching materials in the form of plant ecophysiology module using ADDIE development model (Dick and Carey). The results showed a mixture of organic matter to the soil manure former bauxite mine is better than chicken manure with a mixture ratio of 1: 2. Modules developed from the results of the experiment show valid with an average of 3.32. The module has a good practical in terms of ease of use, time used to study the module, the material is quite clear from the data presented research results in the form of drawings (graphs) and tables. Student learning outcomes everything including the excellent category with a range of values 81 - 85. The module is useful to increase knowledge of students in special ecophysiology plant and botany in general. Keywords: teaching materials, photosynthesis, soil former bauxite mine


This paper critically analyzes the effect of GDP on unemployment level i.e. the validation of Okun's Law in Pakistan. Annual data for the period 1974-2014 is taken from Economic Survey of Pakistan. The study revealed that GDP is negatively related to unemployment. The negative effect of GDP on unemployment is low, implies that other factors like lose employment policies and non availability of professional skills retard the employment generating capacity of GDP growth rate. This study uses Augmented Dickey Fuller (1981) Test to test unit root problem. The study concludes that increase in GDP significantly decreases unemployment in the long-run.


Flow resistance, velocity distribution, and turbulence intensity are significantly influenced by aquatic vegetations (AV) in riparian zones. Understanding the hydraulics of flow with planted floodplains is of great significance for determining the velocity distribution profile and supporting the fluvial processes management. However, the traditional flume experiment method is inefficient. Therefore, the multigroup simultaneous flume test method was carried out to describe the flow patterns affected by emerged rigid (reed and wooden stick) and submerged flexible vegetations (grass and chlorella). The Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) was utilized to measure the velocity at one point for different experimental conditions. The results showed that hydraulic features were influenced by different types of vegetation. Furthermore, the relative depth (z/h) was a determining factor of those variations. In addition, the time-averaged velocity distributions of planted floodplains are not logarithmic. Instead, they represented "s-shape" profiles. In detail, for the vegetated floodplains, reed and wood followed an s-shape profile, but for grass and chlorella, they followed reverse s-shape profile. For all cases, turbulence is not isotropic and the change law of turbulence intensity is different in different sections. The flow resistance, turbulence intensities, and Reynold stresses influenced by different types of vegetation were also analyzed.


The Mexican migrant population in the US increasingly reflects the ethnic diversity of Mexican society. To recognize Mexican migration as a multi-ethnic process raises broader conceptual puzzles about race, ethnicity, and national identity. This essay draws from recent empirical research and participant-observation to explore implications of the indigenous Mexican migrant experience for understanding collective identity formation, including the social construction of community membership, regional and pan-ethnic identities, territory, and transnational communities.


Abstract Background Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a chronic widespread pain syndrome characterized primarily by widespread pain, fatigue, sleep dysfunction and low exercise tolerance. The pathophysiology is complex and its understanding evolving, and clinical management is difficult, with heterogeneous interventions employed. Objectives This scoping review provides an overview of fibromyalgia syndrome, and the evidence for the principal rehabilitation approaches. CINAHL, Cochrane, Medline and PubMed databases were searched from 1996 to 2021. Rehabilitation approaches included exercise, psychologically-based approaches, multicomponent approaches, and complementary and alternative therapies. Major findings Due to factors such as methodological shortcomings of existing studies, and the lack of evidence on individual modalities, it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions as to which is the most appropriate rehabilitation approach in FMS. However, there is evidence from meta-analyses and several international guidelines for the use of approaches incorporating exercise. There is also some evidence for the use of psychologically-informed interventions such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) approaches. Evidence for other interventions is more equivocal. Conclusions It appears that a combination of interventions (e.g. exercises combined with education and psychological approaches), is the most promising means of managing patients with FMS. Issues such as high numbers of drop-outs from exercise programmes, lack of long-term follow-up in many studies, and patients' preferences warrant further investigation. An individualized approach based upon extent of psychological involvement, severity of symptoms and level of disability is also recommended.


No scientific evidence for the negative influence of angiotensin II receptor blockers onto COVID-19 clinical course has been identified so far. Prescribing angiotensin II receptor blockers as COVID-19 pathogenetic therapy could only be considered within clinical trials. Patients who have been taking angiotensin II receptor blockers for approved indications should continue to do so.


Improved yam production technologies developed by National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike have been disseminated to farmers in the south eastern agro-ecological zone of Nigeria. This study was designed to investigate the adoption of the improved yam production technologies by farmers in Abia State during the 2012/2013 cropping season. Mean age of yam farmers' was 48.5years,mean farm size was 1.9hectares, mean years of experience in yam farming was 22.4years, mean number of household available for yam production was 5.1, while the mean annual income of yam farmers' in the study area was N75,800.00. Adoption rate of the improved yam production technologies in Abia State was 37.1%. Multiple regression analysis showed farm size, family labour available and frequency of attendance to farmers meeting to be positively and significantly associated with adoption. In contrast, no clear cut relationship was found to exist between adoption and such factors as age, education, gender, farming experience, income and frequency of extension visits/contacts. The coefficient of determination was 0.786 indicating that the independent variables could explain 78.6% of the variability in adoption of improved yam production technologies. The F-ratio was 17.971 and significant at 1% which indicates goodness of fit of the regression line.


Introduction: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a common disease with significant morbidity. Non-invasive diagnostic techniques are lacking in IBD. Currently, faecal calprotectin is a sensitive marker of gut inflammation however is not specific to Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC) alone. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were shown to have potential in IBD diagnosis. Areas covered: This systematic review aimed to examine the next-generation diagnosis of IBD in adults and children using VOCs. An in-depth literature-based search of current clinical studies of VOCs in the diagnosis of IBD was undertaken. Accuracy of IBD detection varied according to the technologies applied. Breath VOCs studies were pooled giving an overall sensitivity of 85% (95%CI: 79-89%) and specificity of 79% (95%CI 73-84%) whilst pooled faecal VOCs studies revealed a sensitivity of 87% (95%CI 77-93%) and specificity of 91% (95%CI 82-96%). Studies were limited by the variance of techniques applied in VOCs detection and the absence of well-designed longitudinal studies. Expert opinion: VOCs can be consistently and effectively detected in urine, breath, and stool in IBD patients. The sensitivity of breath VOCs in detecting IBD was comparable to faeces. However, optimal VOCs detection methodology and biological sampling still need to be standardised.


The diagnnosis of prostate cancer is still being made on the basis of biopsy samples taken from the prostate. After the clinical introduction of transrectal sonography almost 30 years ago, this technique has undergone some innovations and changes in its methods of performance. Improvements in the transponder and ultrasound generator are not yet at an end. In the mean time supplementary methods to the B-mode imaging are available that enable improvements in the diagnosis. Apart from ultrasound-based procedure such as C-TRUS/ANNA, contrast medium-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) and sonoelastography, MRI-based methods are now available to further improve the diagnosis of prostate cancer. It remains to be seen which method will establish itself in the future with the highest degree of diagnostic certainty and an appropriate cost-use relationship. From the urologist's point, however, diagnosis of and therapy for prostate cancer must remain in the domaine of urology.


The so-called binary encounter electron peak corresponding to elastic scattering of 'quasifree' electrons in energetic ion-atom collisions is studied experimentally at zero degree. It was previously observed that the yield of binary encounter electrons goes up with the number of ion-core electrons for a fixed nuclear charge. In order to study this effect in more details this work is focused on collisions involving hydrogen-like and fully stripped incident ions where an unambiguous comparison with theory can be made. When normalized to the case of fully stripped incident ions it is found that the yield of binary encounter electrons for one-electron ions varies slowly with collision energy and nuclear charge. The experimental results agree well with the theory.


We study the Riemannian Langevin Algorithm for the problem of sampling from a distribution with density ν with respect to the natural measure on a manifold with metric g. We assume that the target density satisfies a log-Sobolev inequality with respect to the metric and prove that the manifold generalization of the Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm converges rapidly to ν for Hessian manifolds. This allows us to reduce the problem of sampling non-smooth (constrained) densities in Rn to sampling smooth densities over appropriate manifolds, while needing access only to the gradient of the log-density, and this, in turn, to sampling from the natural Brownian motion on the manifold. Our main analytic tools are (1) an extension of self-concordance to manifolds, and (2) a stochastic approach to bounding smoothness on manifolds. A special case of our approach is sampling isoperimetric densities restricted to polytopes by using the metric defined by the logarithmic barrier.


From January 1987 to December 1989, we performed a prospective study of transcatheter arterial chemoembolization therapy with iodized oil (Lipiodol) mixed with an anticancer agent. A new oil-soluble modification of FUdR, FUdR-C8 ester, was developed and dissolved in Lipiodol as an embolic material, which was administered to 36 patients with hepatomas. Water-soluble adriamycin emulsified in Lipiodol was used as control in 67 patients with hepatomas. Initial effects on tumors were observed as decrease of tumor size in 25.0% for the FUdR group and 17.9% for the control group. Alpha-fetoprotein decreased more than half in 41.9% of the FUdR group, and 16.1% of the ADM group. Six-month and one-year survivals were 74.2% and 46.8% for the FUdR group (median survival 317 days), whereas the control group yielded 61.0% and 28.3% survivals, respectively (median survival 191 days).


The Problems with the Cells Based Assays
An important part of the classical drug discovery paradigm is the cell based assay. Medicinal chemists, after identification of the molecular target such as enzyme or receptor are quite efficient with the design and synthesis of a potential inhibitor or receptor antagonist. If crystal structure of the target proteins is available, computer modeling accelerated the overall process substantially. Also the combinatorial libraries could supply a large number of interesting new chemical structures. In a relative short time, medicinal chemistry could create a large number of the potent inhibitors or receptor antagonists.


[1] Strengthened stratification of the upper ocean, associated with anthropogenic or climate-driven warming, is generally expected to inhibit marine primary productivity in light-replete, nutrient-limited environments, essentially, in the low and middle latitude ocean, based on the supposition that increased water column stability will inhibit vertical mixing and consequently the upward entrainment of deep nutrients into the euphotic zone. Herein, we examine the local stratification control of productivity on interannual timescales over the global subtropical and tropical ocean by directly comparing in situ measures of stratification (from hydrographic profile data) with contemporaneous values of ocean chlorophyll (from satellite data). In the subtropical ocean, we find no evidence of a strong local correlative relationship between these properties over the observational record, a result that challenges the widely held view that stratification variability is a primary driver of interannual variability in nutrient supply and productivity in these waters. A strong negative relationship is observed, however, in the tropical Pacific, suggesting that previously reported correlations between globally averaged stratification and productivity variability are driven by strong associations in this region. An examination of the long-term changes in our profile data also reveals trends of decreasing stratification scattered across the low-latitude and mid-latitude ocean, driven by faster rates of warming in the subsurface relative to the surface. This observation seemingly undercuts a fundamental assumption of the paradigm of local stratification control, namely that increases in upper ocean heat content necessarily produce strengthened stratification.


para-Nonylphenol (NP; CAS #84852-15-3), an alkylphenol with a 9-carbon olefin side chain, is widely used in the manufacture of nonionic surfactants, lubricant additives, polymer stabilizers, and antioxidants. Due to its wide commercial use and putative endocrine activity in humans and wildlife, the NTP elected to assess its effects on reproduction in multigenerational studies. To avoid known estrogenic activity of phytoestrogens in soy and alfalfa, a soy- and alfalfa-free, casein-containing diet was used in a range-finding study to determine the doses of NP to be tested further. NP was administered to Sprague-Dawley rats in the diet at 0, 5, 25, 200, 500, 1000, or 2000 ppm to F(0) dams beginning on gestation-day 7. The F(1) pups were weaned at postnatal day (PND) 21, and their exposure via diet was continued at the same dose level as their respective dams. Pup weights from birth through weaning were not significantly different from controls in any dose group, but the average weight of both sexes was significantly less compared to controls, beginning with the PND 28 weighing. The F(1) rats were sacrificed on PND 50 (n = 15, 3 pups of each sex from 5 litters for all dose groups). Terminal body weights of males and females in the 2000-ppm dose group were 74% and 85% of controls, respectively. Severe polycystic kidney disease (PKD) was present in 100% of the 2000 ppm-exposed male and female rats. At 1000 ppm, 67% of males and 53% of females had mild to moderate PKD versus none of either sex in the control and lower-dose groups. The no-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) for PKD was determined to be 500 ppm. Previous studies with comparable duration and route of exposure, but using soy-containing diets, reported either no or only mild PKD at 2000 ppm NP. We conclude that the renal toxicity of NP is highly dependent on the diet on which the animals are maintained. The potential interaction of diet and test compounds on nonreproductive as well as reproductive endpoints should be considered when contemplating the use of special diets formulated to minimize exogenous "hormone" content for the study of the effects of putative endocrine disruptive chemicals.


Introduction To evaluate the performance of first trimester nuchal translucency scan screening among pregnant women in Nigeria. Methods A prospective observational and questionnaire based study involving 510 pregnant women between 11+0 and 13+6 weeks. Routine counselling and nuchal translucency measurement was conducted using the FMF, London guidelines. Chorionic villous sampling was done at NT ≥ 2.5 mm or ≥ 95th centile. Results Five hundred and ten out of 542 (94.1%) were analysed, mainly referred by health care workers (87.2%) and from predominantly private facilities (94.3%). The number of NT scans performed increased in successive years with corresponding decrease in the mean scanning time. Scan was successfully completed at first attempt in (96.5%), with mean scanning time of 28.3 minutes. Nuchal translucency increases with gestational but not maternal age. The median and 95th centile at 11+0 week was 1.2mm and 1.7 mm and at 13+6 weeks was 1.5 mm and 2.2 mm. Using a cut-off of ≥ 2.5 mm or ≥ 95th centile, 17 (3.3%) screened positive. Three out of the 17 had invasive testing and 2 (DR = 66.7%) were confirmed trisomy 21, with a false positive rate of 5.9%. Although majority (86.4%) were willing to have invasive testing, only few (3 or 17.6%) of the high risk group had testing. Conclusion The study demonstrated that NT scan is feasible as a screening tool in pregnancy in Nigeria. Measures of improving utilization include wider dissemination of information, provision of dedicated NT clinics and manpower training.


Advanced deep learning methods have been developed to conduct prostate MR volume segmentation in either a 2D or 3D fully convolutional manner. However, 2D methods tend to have limited segmentation performance, since large amounts of spatial information of prostate volumes are discarded during the slice-by-slice segmentation process; and 3D methods also have room for improvement, since they use isotropic kernels to perform 3D convolutions whereas most prostate MR volumes have anisotropic spatial resolution. Besides, the fully convolutional structural methods achieve good performance for localization issues but neglect the per-voxel classification for segmentation tasks. In this paper, we propose a 3D Global Convolutional Adversarial Network (3D GCA-Net) to address efficient prostate MR volume segmentation. We first design a 3D ResNet encoder to extract 3D features from prostate scans, and then develop the decoder, which is composed of a multi-scale 3D global convolutional block and a 3D boundary refinement block, to address the classification and localization issues simultaneously for volumetric segmentation. Additionally, we combine the encoder-decoder segmentation network with an adversarial network in the training phrase to enforce the contiguity of long-range spatial predictions. Throughout the proposed model, we use anisotropic convolutional processing for better feature learning on prostate MR scans. We evaluated our 3D GCA-Net model on two public prostate MR datasets and achieved state-of-the-art performances.


This study focuses on employing cuprous iodide (CuI) as a hole-transporting material (HTM) in fabricating highly efficient perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The PSCs were made in air with either CuI or 2,2′,7,7′-Tetrakis[N,N-di(4-methoxyphenyl)amino]-9,9′-spirobifluorene (spiro-OMeTAD) as HTMs. A simple and novel pressing method was employed for incorporating CuI powder layer between perovskite layer and Pt top-contact to fabricate devices with CuI, while spiro-OMeTAD was spin-coated between perovskite layer and thermally evaporated Au top-contact to fabricate devices with spiro-OMeTAD. Under illuminations of 100 mW/cm2 with an air mass (AM) 1.5 filter in air, the average short-circuit current density (JSC) of the CuI devices was over 24 mA/cm2, which is marginally higher than that of spiro-OMeTAD devices. Higher JSC of the CuI devices can be attributed to high hole-mobility of CuI that minimizes the electron-hole recombination. However, the average power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the CuI devices were lower than that of spiro-OMeTAD devices due to slightly lower open-circuit voltage (VOC) and fill factor (FF). This is probably due to surface roughness of CuI powder. However, optimized devices with solvent-free powder pressed CuI as HTM show a promising efficiency of over 8.0 % under illuminations of 1 sun (100 mW/cm2) with an air mass 1.5 filter in air, which is the highest among the reported efficiency values for PSCs fabricated in an open environment with CuI as HTM.


Online bookstores have attracted millions of people and helped provide them hopeful books. Similarity search over on-line book store mainly focuses on finding the top-K most similar products for a given query. In this paper, we discuss how to find similar products for a given query product, and propose a framework for finding similar products from online bookstore. We firstly build the co-purchasing network by using the relationships between different type products, and then compute the similarity between products using SimRank. Finally, we give some experimental results by implementing this method on Amazon dataset, which demonstrate that the proposed method can find the underlying results over real dataset.


Recent changes in their financial and operating circumstances are forcing US midstream oil and gas companies to rethink how they do business. Market and basin dynamics have shifted significantly, altering the contours of competitive advantage. Simultaneously, the political and regulatory environments, especially at the local level, have become more complex, posing new hurdles to growth. Worrisomely, many players have yet to define strategies for addressing these challenges, inaction that may expose the companies' earnings and share prices to considerable volatility.


The identification of circulating proteins associated with relapse in pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) may help develop predictive biomarkers. We previously identified a set of predictive biomarkers by difference gel electrophoresis. Here we used label-free quantitative liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) on plasma collected at diagnosis from 12 children (age 12–16 years) with nodular sclerosis HL, including six in whom the disease relapsed within 5 years of treatment in the LH2004 trial. Plasma proteins were pooled in groups of three, separately for non-relapsing and relapsing HL, and differentially abundant proteins between the two disease states were identified by LC-MS/MS in an explorative and validation design. Proteins with a fold change in abundance >1.2 or ≤0.8 were considered "differentially abundant". LC-MS/MS identified 60 and 32 proteins that were more abundant in non-relapsing and relapsing HL plasma, respectively, in the explorative phase; these numbers were 39 and 34 in the validation phase. In both analyses, 11 proteins were more abundant in non-relapsing HL (e.g., angiotensinogen, serum paraoxonase/arylesterase 1, transthyretin), including two previously identified by difference gel electrophoresis (antithrombin III and α-1-antitrypsin); seven proteins were more abundant in relapsing HL (e.g., fibronectin and thrombospondin-1), including two previously identified proteins (fibrinogen β and γ chains). The differentially abundant proteins participated in numerous biological processes, which were manually grouped into 10 biological classes and 11 biological regulatory subclasses. The biological class Lipid metabolism, and its regulatory subclass, included angiotensinogen and serum paraoxonase/arylesterase 1 (more abundant in non-relapsing HL). The biological classes Immune system and Cell and extracellular matrix architecture included fibronectin and thrombospondin-1 (more abundant in relapsing HL). These findings deepen our understanding of the molecular scenario underlying responses to therapy and provide new evidence about these proteins as possible biomarkers of relapse in pediatric HL.


The circumstances of the introduction of the Planck constant, its meaning and a selection of interesting facts concerning the constant are briefly reviewed and commented upon.


This thesis is about a research conducted in the area of Speaker Recognition. The application is concerned to the automatic detection and tracking of target speakers in meetings, conferences, telephone conversations and in radio and television broadcasts. A Speaker Tracking system is developed here, in collaboration with the Center for Language and Speech Technologies and Applications (TALP) in UPC. The main objective of this Speaker Tracking system is to answer the question: When the target speaker speaks? The system uses training speech data for the target speaker in the pre-enrollment stage. Three main modules have been designed for this Speaker Tracking system. In the first module an energy based Speech Activity Detection is applied to select the speech parts of the audio. In the second module the audio is segmented according to the speaker turning points. In the last module a Speaker Verification is implemented in which the target speakers are verified and tracked. Two different approaches are applied in this last module. In the first approach for Speaker Verification, the target speakers and the segments are modeled using the state-of-the-art, Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM). In the second approach for Speaker Verification, the identity vectors (i-vectors) representation is applied for the target speakers and the segments. Finally, the performance of both these approaches is compared for the results evaluation.


CONTEXT
Although cognitive complaints are common among menopausal women, it is debatable whether there is an objective decline in cognition with menopause that exceeds what is expected with normal aging.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of the study was to determine whether reproductive senescence is associated with an age-independent decline in verbal memory.

DESIGN AND SETTING
The study was a 14-year, longitudinal, population-based cohort study of women who underwent yearly endocrine, behavioral, and cognitive assessments from pre- to postmenopause.

PARTICIPANTS
Caucasian and African American premenopausal women (n = 403), who were enrolled in the Penn Ovarian Aging Study, participated in the study.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Buschke Selective Reminding Test (immediate and delayed verbal recall), the digit symbol substitution task, and the symbol copy task were used to measure outcomes.

RESULTS
A total of 3958 assessments were conducted in this sample of 403 women. In models that were adjusted for age and important cofactors, immediate (P = .03) and delayed (P = .03) recall on the Buschke Selective Reminding Test declined from the pre- to postmenopausal stages. Further evaluation identified a significant decline (P < .002) in delayed recall early in the transition and immediate recall (P = .04) late in the transition. Race was a significant factor in performance on all tasks (all P < .0001) except the delayed verbal recall task (P = .06) in adjusted models. Endocrine measures were significantly associated with cognitive performance in unadjusted models.

CONCLUSIONS
Certain cognitive domains are sensitive to the physiological changes of reproductive senescence independent of age. The differences in cognitive performance between African American and Caucasian women were not explained by factors examined in this study but are of important public health concern that warrants further investigation.


The stable 1,1′-diazastannocene 6 is obtained by the reaction of lithiated 2,5-di-tert-butylpyrrole 5 and SnCl2; the X-ray structure of 6 is reported.


It has been suggested that perinatal asphyxia is not generally followed by neurological impairment unless there is preexisting chronic fetal distress. In cases of brain damage one can observe elevated levels of CK-BB. The purpose of our study was to evaluate CK isoenzymes in umbilical cord blood sera of newborns affected by chronic fetal distress. Fetal distress reflected by placental dysfunction was characterized by a diminished HPL level and decreased activity of CAP. We estimated CK isoenzymes with the use of DEAE-sepharose CL-6B column chromatography. Total CK activity was measured using kits supplied by Boehringer-Mannheim (Monotest CK-NAC aktiviert). The clinical state of examined newborns was estimated. Investigations were carried out in the group of 57 infants delivered after 37 weeks of gestation. Total CK activity in cord sera ranged from 40 to 400 U/l. Our results showed a significant rise of CK-BB activity in cord sera of newborns delivered from pregnancies with placental dysfunction (figure 2) as well as in cases of asphyxiated infants (figure 3). We were unable to demonstrate differences in total CK, CK-MM and CK-MB activities in all examined groups of newborns. Other authors have confirmed that severe asphyxia results in increase in CK-BB activity in cord blood. Infants with ominous fetal heart rate patterns have higher CK-BB activity. There are several possible sources for CK-BB activity in umbilical cord blood sera, i.e. fetal brain, lung, gastrointestinal tract, placenta and uterus. It appears that the brain is most likely the source of elevated CK-BB activity found in cord blood in cases of placental dysfunction.


Performances from Brass Art (Lewis, Mojsiewicz, Pettican), captured at the Freud Museum, London, using Kinect laser scanning and Processing, reveal an intimate response to spaces and technologies. 'A house within a house within a house within a house' links historical and cultural representations of the double, the unconscious and the uncanny to this artistic practice. The new moving-image and sonic works form part of a larger project to inhabit the writing rooms of influential authors, entitled 'Shadow Worlds | Writers' Rooms'.


Abstract Life satisfaction is an important component of psychological health and wellbeing. Although personality is consistently linked to life satisfaction, its 'innate' and stable nature can make it a difficult target for intervention by practitioners. More malleable and context-specific factors such as multidimensional self-concept may prove to be better targets for such intervention. However, the extent to which multidimensional self-concept predicts life satisfaction over and above personality is unclear. The present study, then, examines the extent to which these two factors predict life satisfaction with a view to ascertaining their relative salience for subsequent research and practice. Among a sample of 523 (predominantly young) adult students from two universities/colleges in Sydney, structural equation modelling using LISREL examined a process model of personality, multidimensional self-concept, and life satisfaction. Results suggest a strong direct role for the personality traits of extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness but also an important mediating role for parent, same-sex peer, physical ability, and appearance self-concepts. Implications for research and practice are discussed.


We compared the properties of plasma von Willebrand factor (vWF) from normal individuals and from two patients with type IIA (Glu875Lys) and type IIB (duplication of Met 540) von Willebrand disease (vWD) with the corresponding fully multimerized recombinant proteins. We included cryosupernatant from normal human plasma and type IIA plasma (Cys509Arg). Functions of vWF were analyzed by binding assays to platelets in the presence of ristocetin or botrocetin. Parameters of binding (number of binding sites per vWF subunit, and dissociation constant Kd) were quantitatively estimated from the binding isotherms of 125I-botrocetin or glycocalicin to vWF, independently of the size of the multimers. We found that ristocetin- or botrocetin-induced binding to platelets was correlated in all cases with the size of vWF multimers. In the absence of inducer, only type IIB rvWF Met-Met540 spontaneously bound to platelets. No significant difference of binding of purified botrocetin to vWF was found between normal and patients' plasma, or between wild-type rvWF (rvWF-WT) and rvWF-Lys875. In contrast, affinity of botrocetin for type IIB rvWF Met-Met540 was decreased. Botrocetin-induced binding of glycocalicin to vWF from all plasma and cryosupernatant was similar. Compared with rvWF-WT, binding of glycocalicin to rvWF-Lys875 was normal. In contrast, the affinity for type IIB rvWF Met-Met540 was 10-fold greater. Thus, our data suggest that, in the patients tested, the abnormal IIA phenotype results from the lack of large-sized multimers and is independent of the point mutations. In contrast, the type IIB mutation is directly involved by providing a conformation to the vWF subunits that allows the high molecular weight multimers to spontaneously interact with platelet glycoprotein Ib.


Background: Rapid and reliable diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) represents a diagnostic challenge in compartmentalized extrapulmonary TB infection because of the small number of mycobacteria (MTB) and the frequent lack of fresh samples to perform culture. Here, we estimate the performances of homemade droplet digital PCR (ddPCR)-based assays against culture in 89 biopsies, for those fresh and formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded (FFPE) subsamples were available. Methods: MTB diagnosis in fresh subsamples was performed by culture. Fresh subsamples were also analyzed for acid-fast bacilli smear-microscopy (AFB) and Xpert® MTB/RIF (Xpert). MTB examination was repeated in blind in the 89 FFPE subsamples by in-house ddPCR assays targeting the IS6110 and rpoB. Analytical sensitivity of ddPCR assays was evaluated using serial dilution of H37Rv strain. Limit of detection (LOD) was calculated by probit analysis. Results were expressed in copies/106 cells. Results: IS6110 and rpoB ddPCR assays showed a good linear correlation between expected and observed values (R2: 0.9907 and 0.9743, respectively). Probit analyses predicted a LOD of 17 and 40 copies/106 cells of MTB DNA for IS6110 and rpoB, respectively. Of the 89 biopsies, 68 were culture positive and 21 were culture negative. Considering mycobacterial culture as reference method, IS6110 assay yielded positive results in 67/68 culture-positive samples with a median interquartile range (IQR) of 1,680 (550–8,444) copies/106 cells (sensitivity: 98.5%; accuracy: 98.9). These performances were superior to those reported by the rpoB assay in FFPE subsamples (sensitivity: 66.20%; accuracy: 74.1) and even superior to those reported by Xpert and AFB in fresh subsamples (sensitivity: 79.4 and 33.8%, respectively; accuracy: 84.3 and 49.4, respectively). When Xpert and AFB results were stratified according to mycobacterial load detected by rpoB and IS6110 ddPCR, bacterial load was lower in Xpert and AFB negative with respect to Xpert and AFB-positive samples (p = 0.003 and 0.01 for rpoB and p = 0.01 and 0.11 for IS6110), confirming the poor sensitivity of these methods in paucibacillary disease. Conclusion: ddPCR provides highly sensitive, accurate, and rapid MTB diagnosis in FFPE samples, as defined by the high concordance between IS6110 assay and culture results. This approach can be safely introduced in clinical routine to accelerate MTB diagnosis mainly when culture results remain unavailable.


The first British government to support a ban on tobacco advertising will enter negotiations in Europe on 4 December with reservations that could delay the ban. This is due to the Labour government's insistence that Formula One motor racing should be exempted from a ban (15 November, p 1251).

While the government seeks approval by the European Health Council for a directive imposing a comprehensive advertising ban, it emerged last week that it wants grand prix motor racing to be given a permanent exemption and to be subject to only voluntary controls. The public health minister, Tessa Jowell, told a committee of MPs that the directive must safeguard the position of Formula One as well as meet public health concerns that smoking should be reduced. She was uncertain if a common position would be agreed next week.

In Britain the issue has gone wider, with suspicions that the government was …


The power quality is one of actual major problems in electrical engineering. Generally, power electronics equipments damage power quality parameters, disturbing radio communications or the functionality of other equipments. A rigorous design of most appropriate filters for power quality improvement is possible only through a high precision analysis that allows estimating power quality parameters and the influence of each harmonic component on the network-drive system. Actual industrial equipments intended to perform spectral analysis are not appropriate for strongly deformed signals, with frequent discontinuities, as in power electronics. Our paper presents a new and accurate method of harmonic analysis that permits to mitigate most of power quality related problems. The principle is to estimate intermediate points between the initial samples given by the available data acquisition system; therefore, the Fourier coefficients are estimated more precisely using the fast Fourier transform. As interpolation technique we chose the reconstruction of the analog signal using an ideal lowpass filter. The excellent results are validated on a pair of synthesized signals having known harmonic spectrum


We present a study of optically-induced molecular relaxation and optical writing processes in a photosensitive liquid crystalline polymer, containing the azobenzene moiety in the side chain. Linear and non linear ESR spectroscopies, thermal analysis and rheology investigations carried on azo polymethacrylate (PMA) samples subjected to different thermal treatments have allowed to single out a suitable procedure to get stable, homogeneous substrates. Optical studies on micrometer length scale, adopting the selected procedure, have confirmed the stability conditions in both unaligned and aligned samples. The temperature dependence of the bit stability has been determined. The writing threshold power and writing rate have been measured. The results are discussed within the perspective of extension to the nanometer length scale.


The value of the 'collective' nature of citizen science to wildlife monitoring, data collection and conservation is well established. However, one person's practice can also be valuable to citizen science projects and is often overlooked in the literature. This paper explores and critically evaluates one person's novel approach and contribution to Koala citizen science in Central Queensland and argues that her practice is doing much to advance knowledge on the identification of individual koalas and their condition as well as to promote Koala welfare and conservation. Employing an ethnographic method, the paper describes and evaluates Charley Geddes' practice of learning to identify individual koalas and create detailed and longitudinal records of their location, health and the threats that they and their habitats face. These records are kept on the public database BioCollect, run by the Atlas of Living Australia, and are used by Koala ecologists. Through this constructed portrait of citizen science practice, the paper also highlights the considerable threats faced by Koala populations in parts of Central Queensland, which have previously not been well documented.


The motivations for choosing dentistry as a career in the Republic of Ireland are not clearly defined. To better understand why students choose this occupation, 150 undergraduate dental students of all grades at a University Dental School were surveyed during the academic year 1998-99. Candidates were asked to score the influence of certain factors on their decision to choose dentistry as a career, and were given the opportunity to add commentary. The overall response rate was 80.6%. About 2/3 indicated dentistry was their 1st career choice, with medicine being the primary alternative. Reasons for choosing dentistry included perceived ease of employment, being self-employed, working regular hours, followed by an opportunity of good income, and the opportunity to help people. Having relatives or friends in the profession and lifelong ambition were the least important factors for this sample. Extrinsic factors relating to employment conditions had a strong positive correlation (p<0.0001) with each other, while lifelong ambition had a strong negative correlation (p=0.004) with significant financial reward. No significant differences were found in most responses when analysed by gender or year in school. It is concluded that this sample of students is attracted to dentistry primarily due to a positive perception of working conditions, followed by the altruistic motivations of helping people and improving their appearance.


At the turn of the 21st century, many universities have been established in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, many of which are branches of universities from the USA, Europe, Australia, and other regions. In 2004, Dhofar University (DU), in collaboration and partnership with the American University of Beirut (AUB), opened its doors in Oman to follow the American model of higher education in many programs including engineering. Making use of AUB's well known engineering programs in the Middle East, founders of DU have planned to satisfy the demand for a sustainable institution that can serve students as well as society as a whole. This paper presents DU's experience in developing sustainable education institution in a region that lacked for long time private universities. The paper presents the model of collaboration between DU and AUB, and DU's efforts in preparing for accreditation. The paper also presents DU practices in balancing core academics and non-technical skills of engineering students. The cases studied are mainly from the academic programs of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the College of Engineering.


We describe Fugu, a continual learning algorithm for bitrate selection in streaming video. Each day, Fugu retrains a neural network from its experience in deployment over the prior week. The neural network predicts how long it would take to transfer each available version of the upcoming video chunks, given recent history and internal TCP statistics.
We evaluate Fugu with Puffer, a public website we built that streams live TV using Fugu and existing algorithms. Over a nine-day period in January 2019, Puffer streamed 8,131 hours of video to 3,719 unique users. Compared with buffer-based control, MPC, RobustMPC, and Pensieve, Fugu performs better on several metrics: it stalls 5-13x less and has better and more stable video quality, and users who were randomly assigned to Fugu streamed for longer on average before quitting or reloading. We find that TCP statistics can aid bitrate selection, that congestion-control and bitrate-selection algorithms are best selected jointly, that probabilistic transfer-time estimates that consider chunk size outperform point estimates of throughput, and that both stalls and video quality have an influence on how long users choose to keep a video stream playing.
Fugu's results suggest that continual learning of network algorithms in situ is a promising area of research. To support further investigation, we plan to operate Puffer for several years and will open it to researchers for evaluating new congestion-control and bitrate-selection approaches.


Objective: To examine research and clinical interest in the first episode of schizophrenia. Pathobiological features have been shown to be a consequence of the disorder rather than the effects of chronicity, drug treatment or institutionalization. There is increasing evidence that ventricular enlargement is a robust finding and hypofrontality on PET and SPECT is associated more with symptomatology than with neuroleptic treatment. Results: Neuroleptic threshold studies suggest that lower daily dosages and onset of medication may be the most important response prediction parameters. Conclusion: The role of novel antipsychotics in the treatment of first-onset schizophrenia merits investigation for lower rates of extrapyramidal syndromes and tardive dyskinesia. To reduce relapse rates, psychiatrists need to introduce practice standards employing those biopsychosocial features in the management of first-episode schizophrenia.