Neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia (NAIT) is one of the etiological factors of severe neonatal thrombocytopenia; it is caused by feto-maternal incompatibility of "thrombocyte specific alloantigens". Intracranial hemorrhage is the most severe complication of NAIT and it can be seen in the prenatal period. It is diagnosed by medical history, clinical findings, laboratory studies and ruling out the other reasons of neonatal thrombocytopenia. Paraurethral cysts are rarely seen yellow-orange color cystic mass and found at the bilateral urethral meatus. They are usually not recognized. In the present paper, a newborn baby with indirect hyperbilirubinemia who was diagnosed incidentally as NAIT and paraurethral cyst at the routine clinical and laboratory examination is reported. We would like to remind them to the neonatal health personell again; and present the co-existence of NAIT and paraurethral cyst.


The invention relates to a process for producing alkylene glycol diethers of formula (I), by reacting compounds of formula (II), wherein R


Orthodox thinking proceeds in patterns established by past experience and is principally useful in solving the problem of why "other" people discover all the oil. Unorthodox thinking (as here used) is a deliberate pattern of denying (or doubting) the validity of each accepted basic concept and seeking new alternatives. In this sense unorthodox thinking is a method of generating new ideas in a regular and continuing stream. The unorthodox approach challenges accepted ideas of oil generation and migration, suggesting new and untested trends for major oil accumulation. Similar trends, discovered largely by accident, already have produced vast quantities of hydrocarbons. Such accumulations, although a mystery to orthodox thinkers, are a challenge and an education to the unorthodox. Unorthodox thinking (a method of finding oil) is also a method of organizing and perpetuating creative energy. End_of_Article - Last_Page 602------------


The current findings have provided compelling evidence that a specific opulation of cells derived from bone marrow, stem cells, might hold the key to producing functional cardiac cells in damaged hearts. This cellular therapeutics intervention reduced the infracted area and improved cardiac haemodynamics. Our rhesus monkey studies have also confirmed that stem ce11s transplantation therapy can improve the infarcted cardiac functions. Recent interest has focused on not only the development of stem cells as a therapeutic option in treatment of the disease, but also the mobilization of bone marrow cells repairing the infarcted heart, and try to get no immune-rejection cardiomyocyte engrafts. The objective of this review is to describe the derivation and unique properties of human ES cells. Particular emphasis will be given to summarizing recent studies that focus on the potentia1 of human ES cells for differentiation into cardiomyocyte in vitro and in vivo, especially the advancement of stem cells transplantation for treating AMI. We will also outline key scientific questions that will need to be answered before the full therapeutic potentia1 of human ES cel1s can be used.


The licensed retail market in the UK operates in a dynamic environment, yet one aspect that appears to get little consideration is how spatial location may determine the success of particular business or, influence the appropriate use of an existing licensed premises. This paper suggests that it is possible to develop a model of location that can help to explain the location of licensed premises. Additionally, it explores the type of criteria that should be explicitly considered when establishing a new development or the repackaging of an existing licensed unit. At the outset it should be emphasised that the authors are not trying to explain the location of all licensed premises but a model of intra‐urban location, rooted in economic theory, to try and explain the location of different types of licensed businesses within urban areas. The aim is to develop a model that will explain the observable spatial pattern of licensed premises within the major cities of the UK.


BACKGROUND: Percutaneous Knowles' pinning is a well accepted treatment of undisplaced femoral neck fracture, but there are some complications that have seldom been discussed. METHODS: One hundred and eighty two patients with undisplaced femoral neck fractures, at a mean age of 67 years, were treated by percutaneous Knowles' pinning between 1983 to 1989, and followed for an average of 102 months. The clinical results and complications were evaluated. The data were collected on the basis of age and bone density. Student's t-test was used to evaluate the significance of the results. RESULTS: The mean union time was 20 weeks. In all the patients, 85.8% had good results, 3.8% patients had acceptable results and 10.4% patients had poor results. Old age (> or = 65 years) and osteoporosis (Singh index < or = 3) were two factors of the poor result. Thirty-two cases (17.6%) developed complications. The incidence of nonunion or implant problems was apparently higher in the older or osteoporosis group, but avascular necrosis of femoral head correlated little with old age or osteoporosis. CONCLUSIONS: Although percutaneous Knowles' pinning is simple, safe, economic and reasonably effective for the treatment of undisplaced femoral neck fractures, we should pay more attention to the uncooperative, old, and osteoporotic patients.


In a technique called depth image based rendering, new images are generated using information from an original source image and its corresponding depth map, such that the new images appear to have been taken from different camera viewpoints. This technique is bandwidth-efficient and is ideal for multiview display systems, such as autostereoscopic 3D-TV. In a previous study, we demonstrated that uniform smoothing of depth maps through Gaussian filtering helps improve the image quality of the rendered images. In the present study we investigated the potential benefits of two non-uniform smoothing methods: asymmetric smoothing, where the horizontal extent of smoothing was smaller than that in the vertical direction, and adaptive smoothing, where the level and extent of smoothing was based on the local depth magnitude. In this vein, ten viewers assessed image quality and depth quality of four stereoscopic images in which the view to one eye was a rendered image based on one of the three smoothing methods: uniform, asymmetric, or adaptive. The experimental results showed an improvement in ratings of image quality for all three methods as the level of smoothing was increased. The results also indicated a slight advantage in image quality for asymmetric smoothing over the other two methods. Ratings of overall depth quality were significantly higher than corresponding non-stereoscopic references for all three methods, although the ratings decreased at the highest level of smoothing that was used in the present study. In general, ratings of depth quality tended to be marginally lower for the asymmetric method.


People generally do not like to think about intricate financial decisions and even less about long-term decisions like pensions. It comes naturally to postpone those decisions and enjoy the now instead of bracing yourself for a winter that might seem far away. Excessive information provision causing information overload does not help consumers either in dealing with pension planning. With her PhD thesis Milena Dinkova contributes to the quest to offer a way out of the information overload and to activate people to become more involved pension planners. It consists of four studies that experimentally and empirically test the effectiveness of tailored pension communication and financial literacy on pension planning and consumption decisions. Those studies made use of two tailoring approaches: • in the e-mail invitations to participants to check their pension situation; where men and women and participants of different age categories received different messages • in the website participants were redirected to, different versions have been designed (by age category) regarding the structure resulting in a different navigation per group. This way, the most prominent information for each age group was at the top of the webpage. In general, young and middle-aged participants were less sensitive to tailoring and were also less active in looking up their pension situation than older participants. A more general conclusion is that financial literacy was positively associated with a higher consumption level for elderly women and men who were part of a couples' household. This also holds for different income levels and different education levels. Financial behaviour could also be influenced by how much you like to think about complicated issues such as the provision of information on pensions. Insights from behavioural psychology can therefore help to complement economic analyses.


The present book forms part of a series of volumes brought out by Pine Forge Press under the title 'Sociology for a new century'. Comprising six chapters, the main objective of the book is to understand democracy as it has evolved over a span of two centuries since the French Revolution. The author is, however, more concerned with the most recent (post-1989) multicontinental wave of democratisation in the erstwhile communist countries of East Europe. The first chapter provides a sketchy history of democracy by reviewing political conflicts and struggles over the past two centuries. In the second chapter the author introduces


Managing talent in a global organization is more complex and demanding than it is in a national business—and few major worldwide corporations have risen to the challenge. The current business and economic environment is exposing a host of weaknesses in the talent management practices of many organizations, as well as the lack of a comprehensive understanding of skills, capabilities, key workforces and top talent. Talent strategy is, in fact, as important as any other part of an organization's overall strategy, regardless of the business conditions. Unfortunately, the harsh glare of the downturn has exposed the fact that the talent planning and management capabilities of many organizations are not equal to the challenges that lie ahead. Smart companies will also keep an eye out for skilled workers who in good times may have been too difficult or expensive to attract but who are now available thanks to workforce reductions in other companies. It is easy enough to say that companies that can rally their people will have a better chance to thrive during and after the economic downturn. But effective talent management is not simply a matter of exhortation or charisma. Close, comprehensive and scientific analysis of the capabilities needed to achieve high performance is vital. Talent management is a process that emerged in the 1990s and continues to be adopted, as more companies come to realize that their employees' talents and skills drive their business success. These companies develop plans and processes to track and manage their employee talent, including, attracting and recruiting qualified candidates with competitive backgrounds, managing and defining competitive salaries, training and development opportunities, performance management processes retention programs, promotion and transitioning. The objective of this paper is to retain the employees by managing their talent in organization.


We carried out the review of the main educational strategies which present the basis of university education in antiquity, in the medieval period and at present. The educational model created during the antique period was based on ideals of beauty and harmony, that assumed an equivalence of spiritual and corporal in personality formation as it is demanded by the nature. In philosophy of education in the medieval period there was an idea of person's transformation through education and belief by means of classical literature which was considered as a timeless knowledge source. The university was thought of as educational institution where it is possible to approach to universal knowledge. We consider that in modern society its development has transitive nature. The foundation of the educational process is not the universal knowledge, but the skill to find bearings in fast-changing knowledge stream, to adapt and find opportunities for self-fulfillment under the conditions of continuous change. In the single information and educational space it became possible to make educational process continuous as a condition of person's improvement. We conceive the idea of continuous or lifelong learning as the necessary and natural process acting as a precondition of forming integral personality and social wellbeing.


In this paper we set out to explore the speculative function and nature of narrative in autoethnographic research. We consider how place--as locus, milieu, setting in which we narrate the distance between ourselves and events we can remember, places where we can remember being (or, in this case, becoming: becoming authors)--enriches our understanding of autoethnographic research in Education. Determining autoethnography as new frontier and as site for the construction of a way of life, we offer and invite beginnings in literary enjoyment of life through autobiographical writings for the Social Science of Education. We find ourselves digressing, and suggest that this may be a turn our memory takes on its homeward journey. We celebrate life.


Power Electronic Transformers (PETs) are considered as an emerging solution for power conversion due to their benefits over the low frequency power transformers (LFPTs) such as lower size, multi-port structure and different control functionalities. However, unbalanced load conditions may limit the reduction of size due to using bulky capacitors to absorb the resulting 2 $^{\mathrm{ nd}}$ harmonic voltage oscillations. This paper aims to provide a solution to this problem in the Dual Active Bridge (DAB)-based Modular Multilevel Converter Power Electronic Transformers (MMC-PET). In this study, a modified phase shift control strategy for the DAB isolation stage is presented. In this strategy, the duty cycle is allowed to change sinusoidally around the operating point. This consequently transfers the power oscillations to the HV side where their effect is less significant. The system is simulated using Matlab-Simulink under different unbalanced load conditions. Besides, the theoretical analysis and the simulation results are experimentally validated using a laboratory prototype. According to the obtained results, the proposed controller succeeded to reduce the voltage ripples from 7.5% to 0.2% and this helps in replacing large Aluminum electrolytic capacitors with low size film capacitors and consequently reducing the system overall size and volume which is a great benefit.


This empirical study aims to analyze the impact of economic growth and employment in the agricultural sector on poverty in Aceh Province. The study is conducted on annual time series data for the period of 1995-2017 while to explain the research objectives used Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and Granger Causality. The results found, in the short term, only employment in the agricultural sector has a significant effect on poverty. Meanwhile, in the long term, economic growth has a profound and negative impact on poverty. On the contrary, the absorption of labor in the agricultural sector tends to increase poverty. In addition, the results obtained that economic growth has a unidirectional relationship with employment in the agricultural sector. It was, therefore, suggested that the government should prioritize economic development in regions that have relatively high poverty rate and build an agro-industry in Aceh to increase agricultural value added and also absorb more labor so it can enable to reduce the poverty rate.


The 2017-2018 Text-in-Community campus read selection for North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University Shiza Shahid and other Malala Events!!


Conditional promises and threats are speech acts that aim at changing another person's behavior according to one's own goals. They combine several components on different levels: goals and incentives/penalties on the motivational level, formulations on the linguistic level, obligations on the deontic level, action sequences on the behavioral level, and affective responses on the emotional level. In a cross-cultural study – comparing Germany, China, and the Kingdom of Tonga – we examined the extent to which the cognitive understanding of conditional promises and threats on the various levels is shared across cultures. The results support conceptual universality, but also show that the different components are specifically affected by cultural conventions and values that shape communication styles, moral rules, and attribution tendencies.


The aim of this study was to investigate a serodiagnostic model as a substitute for liver stiffness measurement (LSM) for diagnosing compensated liver cirrhosis (LC). This retrospective study included 150 patients with compensated hepatitis B-related LC and 153 with chronic Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. It was conducted from May 2017 to June 2022 at Qinghai University Affiliated Hospital, China. The values of LSM, aspartate transaminase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI), gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase-to-platelet ratio (GPR), and fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) were evaluated in all admitted patients. The diagnostic value of APRI, GPR, FIB-4, and LSM was assessed using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. FIB-4 score (AUC=0.842; specificity=77.8%; sensitivity=80.7%; cut-off=2.824) was the best substitute for LSM from the three serum scoring models. The Cox regression model indicated that a FIB-4 score ≥2.824 was an independent predictor of prognosis for compensated hepatitis B-related LC (HR=1.15, 95%CI: 1.07-1.23, p<0.001). This study's findings suggested that FIB-4 could be the best substitute for LSM and may help to assess LC prognosis. Key Words: APRI, GPR, FIB-4, LSM, Diagnosis, Liver cirrhosis.


A bacterium uses a viral strategy to manipulate the host cell immune response and optimize conditions for infection. Interferons (IFNs) are released by mammalian cells upon attack by microbial pathogens, alerting neighboring cells to prepare a defense that includes the activation of so-called IFN-stimulated genes. Although this response nearly always limits viral replication, its role during bacterial infection has not been clear. In some cases, the IFN response accelerates bacteria clearance, but in other cases, it results in a more severe disease (1, 2). The latter is true for Listeria monocytogenes, the bacterium that causes a range of human illnesses, from gastroenteritis to fatal meningitis. On page 1319 of this issue, Lebreton et al. (3) identify a new virulence factor, LntA, secreted by L. monocytogenes, that controls the expression of IFN-stimulated genes. The mechanism allows the bacterium to govern both the induction and repression of the host cell immune response, perhaps to optimize conditions for specific stages of infection or colonization of specific tissues.


Objective: To observe the protective effect of zingiber officinale against radio frequency (RF) radiation-induced oxidative stress on rat brain due to 3G mobile phone. Study Design: Prospective Experimental study. Setting: Department of Anatomy, BMSI, JPMC, Karachi. Period: January to March 2018. Material & Methods: Twenty four healthy, adult, Albino rats, 3-4 months of age, weighing 150-300 gm were acquired. They were sorted into four groups. Group A was marked as control, Group B was exposed to 3G mobile phone 2100MHz radiation 24 hours daily, Group C was exposed to same dose of radiation as group B along with zingiber officinale 250mg/kg/day orally, and Group D was given same dose of zingiber officinale as in group C. The rats were euthanized at end of study period after recording their final weight. Brain of rats was removed and weighed. It was processed for haematoxylin and eosin stain to observe general morphology of cerebellum. Results: The data displayed an insignificant increase in final body weight and absolute brain weight in group B animals as compared to control, whereas an insignificant increase and insignificant decrease was observed in body weight and absolute weight of brain when group C was compared with group B respectively. Microscopic examination of cerebellum in H & E stained sections revealed distortion of cellular architecture in group B as compared to control. Tissue sections from group C demonstrated significant restoration of cerebellar architecture. Results of group D were similar to control. Conclusion: Cell phones emit radiation causing damage to brain, especially cerebellum, however, concurrent use of ginger significantly ameliorates this damaging effect.


We improve a bounds relating to Euler's formula for the case of a function with higher-order convexity properties. These are used to improve estimates of the error involved in the use of the trapezoidal formula for integrating such a function.


Although observations indicate that localization of deep convection results from oceanic preconditioning and only to a lesser extent from the gradients in the atmospheric forcing, most laboratory and numerical simulations of oceanic deep convection localize convection via the buoyancy forcing. It is as yet unclear to what extent the localized forcing simplification is representative of realistic preconditioned convection and whether conclusions drawn from analyzing the former scenario can be applied to the latter. Comparison between these two localized convection scenarios is the focus of this study. The analysis is conducted using a high-resolution, nonhydrostatic numerical model that assumes no variations in the latitudinal direction. Although this model cannot represent baroclinic instability, it represents well the violent mixing phase of chimney formation that precedes baroclinic instability. Because of the inherently different initial and boundary conditions, there is no single comparison to be made between the two scenarios; all of the comparisons, however, show that a localized forcing tends to enhance the frontal structures at the edge of the convected water mass. The authors explain these results by means of some simple analytical calculations that indicate that convection as a result of a localized forcing induces a continuous increase in the horizontal density gradient, while convection in a surface-intensified, cyclonic gyre results in a decrease in the horizontal gradient. The authors conclude that the two scenarios are not equivalent and discuss how some of the conclusions, valid for localized forcing, do not necessarily apply to the preconditioned scenario. In particular, the equilibrium state observed in localized forcing simulations, in which the lateral fluxes due to the baroclinic eddies balance the surface buoyancy loss, may not have an analog for the case of preconditioned convection.


PURPOSE
This article argues for the use of modality specificity as a unifying framework by which to conceptualize and diagnose central auditory processing disorder (CAPD). The intent is to generate dialogue and critical discussion in this area of study.

METHOD
Research in the cognitive, behavioral, and neural sciences that relates to the concept of modality specificity was reviewed and synthesized.

RESULTS
Modality specificity has a long history as an organizing construct within a diverse collection of mainstream scientific disciplines. The principle of modality specificity was contrasted with the unimodal inclusive framework, which holds that auditory tests alone are sufficient to make the CAPD diagnosis. Evidence from a large body of data demonstrated that the unimodal framework was unable to delineate modality-specific processes from more generalized dysfunction; it lacked discriminant validity and resulted in an incomplete assessment. Consequently, any hypothetical model resulting from incomplete assessments or potential therapies that are based on indeterminate diagnoses are themselves questionable, and caution should be used in their application.

CONCLUSIONS
Improving specificity of diagnosis is an imperative core issue to the area of CAPD. Without specificity, the concept has little explanatory power. Because of serious flaws in concept and design, the unimodal inclusive framework should be abandoned in favor of a more valid approach that uses modality specificity.


Array surface active devices such as self-electrooptic effect devices (SEEDs) and surface emitting lasers (SELs) are being considered increasingly for parallel interconnection technology. Because these are optical devices, it is necessary to provide alignment in the micron to submicron range between optical elements, such as microlenses and the SEEDs. Here we describe a packaging scheme that uses solder self-alignment to provide both electrical interconnection and passive optical alignment during a single assembly operation. Also, we have designed a unique heat sink to help maintain uniform temperature across all active devices, which is necessary for proper device functional operation.


The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) meteorological flight instruments for use on board the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) spacecraft and the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), is a multi-channel microwave radiometer. The ATMS is a total power radiometer system that passively monitors the radiation from the earth's surface and atmosphere in the microwave portion of the spectrum. It is a cross-track, line-scanned instrument designed to measure scene radiance's in twenty two discrete frequency channels. The paper presents instruments predicted performance for first flight unit.


We describe a boundary-element method used to model the hydrodynamics of a bacterium propelled by a single helical flagellum. Using this model, we optimize the power efficiency of swimming with respect to cell body and flagellum geometrical parameters, and find that optima for swimming in unbounded fluid and near a no-slip plane boundary are nearly indistinguishable. We also consider the novel optimization objective of torque efficiency and find a very different optimal shape. Excluding effects such as Brownian motion and electrostatic interactions, it is demonstrated that hydrodynamic forces may trap the bacterium in a stable, circular orbit near the boundary, leading to the empirically observable surface accumulation of bacteria. Furthermore, the details and even the existence of this stable orbit depend on geometrical parameters of the bacterium, as described in this article. These results shed some light on the phenomenon of surface accumulation of micro-organisms and offer hydrodynamic explanations as to why some bacteria may accumulate more readily than others based on morphology.


Metalloproteins containing multi-copper centers as catalytically active site are usually involved in several major biological oxidation-reduction reactions. Thus multinuclear copper complexes have motivated many inorganic chemists to attempt to develop the synthesis as well as investigate coordination chemistry of such species.
In this work, new multinuclear network of CuII ions with octadentate N4O4-ligands, specifically containing the combination of amino-phenoxide and diamine-dialkoxide components (L-6/7-PhRX) have been successfully synthesized and structurally characterized. The ligands are mainly characterized by NMR techniques. Furthermore, the inorganic species are examined by conductivity measurements, ESI-Mass, UV-Vis, IR, EPR, and CV. A few examples were confirmed by X-ray diffractions. Single crystals of the tricopper complexes and the unusual dimeric compounds were obtained by modulating the number of copper equivalent. The latter heptacopper complexes were dimerized from two tricopper(II) species which were interacted with an extra CuII ions by our phenolate and two bridged hydroxylate oxygens.


This paper proposes an average concatenative cost function as the objective measure for naturalness of synthesized speech. All its seven component-costs can be derived directly from the input text and the scripts of speech database. A formal Mean Opinion Score (MOS) experiment shows that the average concatenative cost and its seven components are all highly correlated with MOS obtained subjectively. The correlation coefficient between the objective measure and subjective measure is –0.872. The mean of errors in MOS estimation for individual waveforms is 0.32 with 0.40 RMSE. When estimating the overall MOS for TTS systems, the mean error is smaller than 0.05. With the proposed objective measure, it becomes possible and easy for us to track the performance in naturalness regularly. The proposed cost function could also serve as criteria for optimizing the algorithms for unit selecting and speech database pruning.


The aim of this study was to identify deficiencies in the timeliness of emergency care received by patients with open fracture of the lower limb treated in the Accident and Emergency department at the City Hospital Truro, to help decide whether further investments in emergency ambulance services are warranted and, if so, where specific investments should be made. The ambulance service 'response time', 'on-scene times' and 'mission times', and the 'time to operation after attendance in casualty' were considered. The major deficiency in care identified was the long in-hospital delay before operation, probably resulting from unavailability of operating theatre staff. A lesser deficiency was that ambulance crew seemed to be spending too long on-scene. Suggestions are made on how to identify weaknesses in emergency service, and thus prevent costly and inappropriate investments.


Concrete is always expected to be stronger and more durable than in the past while being cost and energy efficient. Moreover the major advantages that concrete possesses over the construction materials have to be conserved. The possibility of being fabricated practically anywhere, the ability to make the form imposed by the shape of a mould and a low cost of components and manufacture. These factors have driven advances in improving the performance of concrete over years and continue to do so the need for improving the performance of concrete and concern for the environmental impact arising from the continually increasing demand for concrete has lead the growing use of alternative material components.


We publish summary report on the joint seminar of the Russian Council for International Affairs (RCIA), Primakov Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences and Journal "World Economy and International relations". The discussion raised such issues as the definition of the world order and methods of its study, the characteristics of the modern world order and its main parameters, the evolutionary scenarios of the world order and contours of its future. The organizers of the semiar also raised the question about the possibility of understanding and interpreting the world order outside the limits of the concept of "pole of power". Participants: Voitolovsky F. G., Director of IMEMO, corresponding member of RAS; Kortunov A. V., Director General of RCIA, Cand. of Sci. (History); Kosolapov N. A., leading researcher at IMEMO, Cand of Sci. (History); Rogov S. M., academician of RAS, Supervisor of Institute for the US and Canadian Studies of RAS; Kharkevich M. V., lecturer at MGIMO, Cand. of Sci. (Political).


The purpose of this study was to analyze the usage of amphotericin B desoxycholate in a small community hospital, with special emphasis on its side effects and need for premedication. We performed a retrospective chart review for patients who received intravenous amphotericin B from January 1993 to May 1996. Temperature elevation, clinical symptoms during infusion, need for premedication, and fluctuations in serum potassium and creatinine values were especially noted. Statistical analysis showed that toxicity indicated by laboratory values (laboratory toxicity) increased with increasing amphotericin B dose, but clinical side-effects decreased with advancing age. Clinical side effects were not associated with total amphotericin B dosage; laboratory toxicity in our study was not more prevalent in elderly patients. The main finding of this study was that most patients tolerate amphotericin B well and only 23% of patients needed premedication. Our fungal cure rate was 83%. New, expensive preparations of amphotericin B should be reserved for the small subset of patients who either are intolerant of amphotericin B desoxycholate or need high doses for systemic fungal infections.


Sporadic sudden deaths in adult white-tailed deer occurred from November 1997 through August 1998 on an Iowa game farm. Three of the 4 deer necropsied had severe pulmonary edema, widespread mild lymphocytic vasculitis, and amphophilic intranuclear inclusion bodies in scattered endothelial cells in blood vessels in the lung and abdominal viscera. Immunohistochemistry with bovine adenovirus 5 antisera and transmission electron microscopy demonstrated adenoviral antigen and nucleocapsids, respectively, within endothelial cells. Adenovirus was isolated in cell culture from 1 of the affected deer. The isolate was neutralized by California black-tailed deer adenovirus antiserum. These findings indicate that adenovirus should be considered in the differential diagnosis of both black-tailed and white-tailed deer with pulmonary edema and/or hemorrhagic enteropathy.


Due to globalization, the actors in the agricultural product markets are changing. In fact, the market share and influence of multinational holdings on price formation is increasing. The strategic struggle involved in sharing the pie can be a source of exploitation of both small and insufficiently organized producers, marketers and the consumer. Efforts to obtain continuity and increase in the market share and unfair competition, as well as speculation and the increase in the concentration rate of some agricultural products on the markets can be considered as sources of exploitation on the market. In order to prevent the aforementioned, trade exchanges and wholesale market that act as exchanges, as well as producer's organizations need to be powerful. This study aims to contribute to the elimination of exploitation factors that negatively affect the producer and consumer in the agricultural products markets by considering the current structure of wholesale markets, trade exchanges and producer organizations. Although in Turkey, the trade volume of agricultural products in trade exchanges and wholesale markets is not very large, they have an important role in price formation and must become more attractive trade centers by improving their substructure. Producer organizations also need to increase their activity in wholesale markets and trade exchanges.


Dynamic field gradient focusing (DFGF) utilizes an electric field gradient established by a computer-controlled electrode array to separate and concentrate charged analytes at unique axial positions. Traditionally, DFGF has been restricted to the analysis of negatively charged species due to limitations in the software of our voltage controller. This paper introduces a new voltage controller capable of operating under normal polarity (positive potentials applied to the electrode array) and reversed polarity (negative potentials applied to the electrode array) for the separation of negatively and positively charged analytes, respectively. The experiments conducted under normal polarity and reversed polarity illustrate the utility of the new controller to perform reproducible DFGF separations (elution times showing less than 1% run-to-run variation) over a wide pH range (3.08 to 8.5) regardless of the protein charge. A dual polarity experiment is then shown in which the separation channel has been divided into normal polarity and reversed polarity regions. This simultaneous separation of negatively charged R-phycoerythrin (R-PE) and positively charged cytochrome c (CYTC) within the same DFGF apparatus is shown.


This report outlines research that investigated the barriers faced by young disabled and D/deaf people in accessing youth arts provision in Scotland. Funded by the Time to Shine National Youth Arts Strategy for Scotland, the research was conducted by Dr. Matson Lawrence in conjunction with Birds of Paradise Theatre Company. The research relates to young people aged 0 – 25, with specific empirical focus on young people aged 16 – 25. Through in-depth interviews and online surveys, the research engaged with 20 disabled and D/deaf young people across Scotland, alongside a number of individuals working within the Scottish youth arts sector and in disability and D/deaf arts. The research found that young disabled and D/deaf people face multiple and intersecting barriers to accessing arts provision. Five main barriers were identified: 1. Finding suitable arts provision; 2. Availability of access information; 3. Lack of provision for access and support; 4. Travel, transport and location; and 5. Attitudes and awareness of arts providers. The research identified five key strategies to address these barriers: 1. Provision specifically for young disabled and D/deaf people; 2. Centralised information about arts opportunities; 3. Front Door to Stage Door Access provision; 4. Connections built with disabled and D/deaf communities across Scotland; and 5. Education and awareness for arts providers. These strategies offer arts providers concrete recommendations for improving disabled and D/deaf access. It is anticipated that, in light of this report, organisations and agencies providing arts opportunities to young people will be better informed of the barriers faced by young disabled and D/deaf people, and better equipped to address these barriers and improve access to their provision.


Halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) were investigated concerning their suitability for rubber reinforcement. As they have geometrical similarity with carbon nanotubes, they were expected to impart a significant reinforcement effect on the rubber compounds but the dispersion of the nanofillers is difficult. In this work, HNTs were surface-modified by plasma polymerization to change their surface polarity and chemistry and used in a natural rubber/butadiene rubber blend in the presence of carbon black. The aim of the treatment was to improve the rubber–filler interaction and the dispersion of the fillers. A thiophene modification of HNTs improved stress–strain properties more than a pyrrole treatment. The surface modification resulted in a higher bound rubber content and lower Payne effect indicating better filler–polymer interaction. Scanning electron microscopy measurements showed an increased compatibility of elastomers and fillers. As visualized by transmission electron microscopy, the thiophene-modified HNTs formed a special type of clusters with carbon black particles, which was ultimately reflected in the final mechanical properties of the nanocomposites. The addition of HNTs increased loss angle


1. Eleven patients with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, most of them young adults at a terminal stage, were found to have structural scoliosis with curves measuring between 20 and 80 degrees. 2. The common feature was severe and protracted rheumatoid disease. 3. The characteristics of the spinal curves are analysed; the longer curves may have been caused by muscle imbalance and the shorter curves possibly by asymmetrical involvement of the inter-apophyseal joints. 4. It is suggested that juvenile rheumatoid arthritis is an unusual etiological factor of scoliosis.


Caspofungin (CSP) susceptibilities of Candida albicans, as determined by broth microdilution methods, have not been found to be related to azole susceptibilities or resistance. In contrast, it has been observed that azole-resistant clinical isolates that overexpress the efflux pump gene CDR2 are less susceptible to CSP when tested using an agar dilution method commonly employed with Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The goal of this study was to further understand the effects of azole resistance mechanisms on CSP susceptibility testing. A collection of 69 isolates exhibiting known mechanisms of azole resistance and resistance-associated phenotypes were analyzed by broth microdilution methods to determine standard minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) for CSP. The same isolates were then analyzed as to their MIC to CSP by Etest strips, an agar-based method that has been shown generally to be comparable to broth methods. The MICs found with both methods were not significantly different. However, a collection of strains overexpressing the efflux pump CDR2 did exhibit a spectrum of CSP susceptibilities when examined by agar dilution susceptibility tests, ranging from standard to reduced susceptibilities. This work demonstrated that a change in CSP susceptibility with CDR2 overexpressing cells in agar dilution studies is a variable phenotype and it is not the result of growth conditions (i.e., broth versus agar).


Self-aligning soldering is the critical technology for precision optoelectronic assembly. The pre-assembly solder joint design can improve the final alignment accuracy. In this paper, a public domain software Surface Evolver is modified as a modeling tool for the design of solder joints for self-aligned assemblies. Furthermore, for convenient and efficient design, the results from the numerical model are nondimensionalized and regressed as a polynomial regression model, which describes the relationships between the surface tension forces and the solder joint design parameters explicitly. The regression model is established based on 1100 data points calculated for solder joints with circular pads. We apply this model tool to several design case studies, including the joint array design for self-alignment and the solder assembly of a FLC/VLSI spatial light modulator. It is demonstrated that the model developed here is a very powerful and convenient tool to aid in the design of solder joints for various applications. >


The hydraulic fracture containment and the impact of layering on pumping energy are critical factors in a successful stimulation treatment. Height confinement is needed to ensure effective stimulation of target zones and to maintain the fractures in the target zones. Also, the existence of beds with different ductility can impact the net pressure and pumping requirements. Layered rock properties, in-situ stress, and formations interfaces influence the lateral and height growth of hydraulic fractures. Conventionally, it is considered that the in-situ stress is the dominant factor controlling the fracture height. The influence of mechanical properties on fracture height growth is often ignored or is limited to consideration of different Young's modulus. Also, it is commonly assumed that the interfaces between different layers are perfectly bounded without slippage, and interface permeability is not considered. In-situ experiments have demonstrated that variation of modulus and in-situ stress alone cannot explain the containment of hydraulic fractures observed in field (SPE39950). Enhanced toughness, in-situ stress, interface slip and energy dissipation in the layered rocks should be combined to contribute to the fracture containment. In this study, we consider these factors in a fully coupled 3D hydraulic fracture simulator developed based on finite element method. We use laboratory and numerical simulations to investigate the above factors and how they impact hydraulic fracture propagation, height growth, and injection pressure.
 In this work a 3D fully coupled hydro-mechanical model is developed and utilized. The model uses a special zero-thickness interface element and the cohesive zone model (CZM) to model fracture propagation, interface slippage, and fluid flow in fractures. The nonlinear mechanical behavior of frictional sliding along interface surfaces is considered. The hydro-mechanical model has been successfully verified through benchmarked analytical solutions. The influence of layered Young's modulus on fracture height growth in layered formations is analyzed. The formation interfaces between different layers are explicitly simulated through the usage of the hydro-mechanical interface element. The impacts of mechanical and hydraulic properties of the formation interfaces on preventing hydraulic fracture growth are studied.
 Hydraulic fractures tend to propagate in the layer with lower Young's modulus so that soft layers could potentially act as barriers to limit the height growth of hydraulic fractures. Depending on the mechanical properties and the conductivity of the interfaces, the shear-slippage and/or opening along the formation interfaces could result in flow along the interface surfaces and terminate the fracture growth. The frictional slippage along the interfaces could be an effective mechanism that contributes to the containment of hydraulic fractures in layered formations. It is suggested that whether a hydraulic fracture would cross a discontinuity depends not only on the mechanical properties but also on the hydraulic properties of the discontinuity; both the frictional slippage and fluid pressure along horizontal formation interfaces contribute to the reinitiation of a hydraulic fracture from a pre-existing flaw along the interfaces, producing an offset from the interception point to the reinitiation point.


Active surveillance is often advised as an initial management strategy for men with low‐risk localised prostate cancer. In this review the authors examine popular strategies for patient selection, and question whether a more holistic approach could further enhance quality of life and life expectancy. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons


The Computer Networks Laboratory at the University of Virginia has used the Xpress Transfer Protocol (XTP) to construct the Xpress File System (XFS), a local area network peer-to-peer file sharing system for MS-DOS-based IBM personal computers. XFS is usable for a variety of purposes, most notably the real time delivery of multimedia data streams. Using specialized hardware and software it is shown that XFS is capable of maintaining sufficient file system to file system throughput to support the real time delivery of the 30 frames per second audio/video data stream generated by the Fluent system. A general discussion of the architecture and operation of XFS is provided, and an overview of the Fluent system to generate and process motion video data streams is given. The authors describe plans to extend the video mail system into a video conferencing system using XTP.


Object orientation has become a "must know" subject for managers, researchers and software practitioners interested in the design, evolution, reuse and management of efficient software components. The book contains technical papers reflecting both theoretical and practical contributions from researchers in the field of object-oriented (OO) databases and software engineering systems. The book identifies actual and potential areas of integration of OO and database technologies, and discusses current and future research directions in software methodologies. Reflections about the OO paradigm are included. In providing current research and relevant information about this promising and rapidly growing field of object-oriented databases and software engineering systems, this book is aimed at research scientists, practitioners and graduate students working in the areas of databases and software engineering.


1. This paper examines the impact of a dredging event on the benthic community of a polluted estuary in north-eastern England and follows recovery of the community from January until June, 1997.

2. Adopting a BACI (Before, After, Control, Impacted) approach, the benthos were sampled at two sites using a Haps corer (0.0143 m2). Five cores were taken at each site, and the sites were each visited once in January 1997, prior to the 33 day dredging period, and a further five times during the 100 day post-dredging monitoring period ending in June 1997.

3. Fifteen taxa were recorded, of which five contributed 95% of all of the individuals present; Capitella capitata (Fabricius), Tubificoides spp., nematodes, Eteone longa (Fabricius), and the mollusc Angulus tenuis (da Costa).

4. Univariate and multivariate analyses of benthic macrofaunal data showed that dredging had not only impacted the dredged site, but had also affected the control area located 500 m away on the opposite side of the estuary. At the end of the study period the macrobenthic community at the impacted site showed no significant signs of recovery to pre-dredging community parameters. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Whilst an African origin for Anatomically Modern Humans is well established 1, the timings of their expansions into Eurasia are the subject to heated debate, due to the scarcity of fossils and the lack of suitably old ancient DNA 2. Here, we estimate potential timings and routes out of Africa by deriving anthropologically and ecologically plausible precipitation requirements for human existence, and applying them to high-resolution palaeoclimate reconstructions for the past 300k years. We find that exit routes and timings previously suggested based on archaeological and genetic evidence coincide precisely with the presence of sufficiently wet corridors into Eurasia, while the gaps between the proposed exit timings co-occur with periods of insufficient rainfall. This demonstrates the key role that palaeoclimatic conditions played for out-of-Africa expansions. The challenging environmental conditions outside of Africa that occurred between windows of potential contact, coupled with the lack of a demographic rescue effect from migration and possible competition with other hominins, likely explain the demise of early colonists prior to the large-scale colonisation of the world beginning from ∼65kya.


Evapotranspiration is an important parameter to know in the management of agricultural water resources. There are several methods for estimating evapotranspiration (ETo). The FAO Penman-Monteith method is considered the universal standard for estimating ETo, however, the climate parameter data needed to calculate the ETo of the FAO Penman-Monteith method are not always available, so it is necessary to evaluate performance using several ETo equations as a comparison in estimating evapotranspiration. This study aims to find the performance of the ETo 38 empirical method against the FAO Penman Monteith method and the climatological data parameters that most influence the accuracy of the calculations. The data used is in the form of climatological data for Bora Station which represents land and settlement areas, Boladangko Station representing mountainous areas and Singkoyo Station representing coastal areas with an observation period of 32 years (1986-2017). The performance of the 38 empirical methods was evaluated using the PE, RMSE, MAE, MR and slope methods. The results of this study indicate that: the Makkink method, Abtew1, Irmak et al., Tabari & Talaee1, Valiantzas1 and Abtew3 showed excellent performance, while the WMO and Mahringer methods performed poorly in the three research locations; the number of climatological parameters used had no significant effect on the ETo results obtained. The use of climatological parameters in the form of temperature and solar radiation in the ETo calculation has the greatest effect on the accuracy of the ETo value.


Over the past decade, the complexity of the Internet's routing infrastructure has increased dramatically. This complexity and the problems it causes stem not just from various new demands made of the routing infrastructure, but also from fundamental limitations in the ability of today's distributed infrastructure to scalably cope with new requirements.The limitations in today's routing system arise in large part from the fully distributed path-selection computation that the IP routers in an autonomous system (AS) must perform. To overcome this weakness, interdomain routing should be separated from today's IP routers, which should simply forward packets (for the most part). Instead, a separate Routing Control Platform (RCP) should select routes on behalf of the IP routers in each AS and exchange reachability information with other domains.Our position is that an approach like RCP is a good way of coping with complexity while being responsive to new demands and can lead to a routing system that is substantially easier to manage than today. We present a design overview of RCP based on three architectural principles path computation based on a consistent view of network state, controlled interactions between routing protocol layers, and expressive specification of routing policies and discuss the architectural strengths and weaknesses of our proposal.


Hepatitis is a disease characterized by inflammation of the liver, usually producing swelling and damage to liver tissues. The hepatitis C virus causes hepatitis C. A marked reduction in the quality of life of hepatitis C patients has been revealed in a number of studies conducted worldwide. A retrospective study was carried out among hundred patients of hepatitis C and three of them were followed for a period of 3months. The major aims of this study were to evaluate the quality of life of the patients suffering from hepatitis C, estimation of the patient compliance with the management methods, evaluation of the end results of the therapeutic treatment, assessment of the patient satisfaction with the medicines, comparison of the quality of life of the suffering patients with their optimum health state and the comparison of the quality of life of the patients during and after the management/treatment of the disease. In order to follow the study, a medication history/patient interview form was developed on the basis of which patients suffering from hepatitis C were interviewed. This survey was followed by the comparison of national treatment guidelines with international treatment guidelines. The study revealed that the patients were not satisfied with their quality of life during their ailment whereas many expressed that their quality of life improved after receiving a rational and well managed medical treatment.


Three weeks of velocity and temperature measurements from the bottom 45 m above the continental slope in the Bay of Biscay are used to evaluate the role of the internal wave band in boundary mixing near a sloping bottom. Utilizing acoustic Doppler current profilers and thermistor strings, internal wave band eddy fluxes of momentum and heat are estimated. The instrumentation is specifically designed to resolve internal wave band processes. Due to unresolved Doppler shifting, this wave band may include turbulence as well as internal waves. A very energetic and highly variable near-bottom environment is found. Periods of mixing and restratification alternate at the M 2 tidal frequency. Interpreting the observations in an Ekman sense, the three-week mean current is downwelling-favorable, which is consistent with existing boundary layer theories. However, a bi-directional flow associated with sloping boundary mixing is not found in the near-bottom layer, possibly due to observed strong stratification all the way to the bottom. We evaluated boundary layer dynamics and the effect of internal wave-band fluxes from two frequency ranges (σ ≥ 15 cpd and σ ≥ 1.9 cpd, including tides) on the three-week mean flow. The high-frequency range (σ ≥ 15 cpd) of the internal wave band supports significant momentum and buoyancy fluxes while the low-frequency range (σ ≥ 1.9 cpd) only supports significant momentum fluxes. Mean bottom-normal eddy diffusivities associated with anisotropic, nonlinear internal waves, are negative and O(-10 -2 m 2 s -1 ). Interpreting these negative eddy diffusivities as indication of a restratification process, high mixing efficiencies are expected throughout the mixing layer, which extends typically 20 m above the bottom. Mean eddy viscosities are positive in cross-slope direction and negative in alongslope direction, implying a strong anisotropy in the interaction between internal wave band eddies and the mean flow. Alongslope momentum is transferred from the internal tide to the mean flow. Buoyancy and pressure gradient forces, which we could not determine directly, may generate a buoyancy-driven secondary flow. The buoyancy equation is dominated by advection, possibly balanced by divergence of cross-slope and alongslope internal wave band fluxes.


Calf thymus poly ADPR polymerase has been purified to electrophoretic homogenity. The enzyme has a molecular weight of 120,000 +/- 10,000 dalton. The substrate affinity is very high (apparent Km 82.5 micrometer). The presence of exogenous DNA does not appear to be a requisite for enzymatic activity of the purified enzyme.


2149-360X/ © 2020 The Authors. Published by Young Wise Pub. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license The aim of research was to find out the use of Facebook and classroom collaborative activities on students' writing skill of Indonesian Senior High School Students. The researchers used quantitative method by applying quasi-experimental design. The study consisted of 40 students as respondents that were divided into control and experimental group. This is to see which group is effective to be used in helping the students' writing ability. The first group was taught by using Facebook and the second group was given treatment by classroom collaborative activities. Both Facebook and collaborative activities help the students to have better writing performance. To collect data, the researchers manipulated English Writing Test (EWST), interview form, and observation check list. The data were analyzed through SPSS 18.0. The researchers found that the use of Facebook and classroom collaborative activities were significantly enhancing the EFL students' writing skill. There were some responses on the students' collective perception on classroom collaborative learning showing their interests to the use of classroom collaborative activities. The interaction occurred in Facebook among the EFL learners indicate that the media is effective to students' writing skills on English language. This study also recommends teachers in order to motivate EFL learners to learn foreign languages so that they can start writing not from complicated matters but rather on students' participation in sharing knowledge, developing peer networks in combining between theoretical knowledge and practice.


The golden‐cheeked warbler (Dendroica chrysoparia) is an endangered Neotropical migrant that breeds in oak (Quercus)/juniper (Juniperus) habitat of the Edwards Plateau in central Texas. Recently work has been done on the factors affecting breeding populations of this species, but little is known about winter habitat use or distribution. We used extensive field surveys in Honduras and Guatemala to obtain locational information, which was used with topographical and remote sensing data, to identify and calculate the amount of suitable habitat available, and to map the species' distribution in the region. Most individuals were found in pine–oak from 1100–2400 m ( = 1651 (± 246) m) in elevation, a habitat type that occupied 29.8% of the total land area above 914 m in the region investigated. Based on this information and existing locational data from the literature, we present a map of the winter range for the golden‐cheeked warbler. Threats to the species during this period of the life cycle include logging, burning and clearing for pasture and agriculture.


A broth microdilution method was used to examine the sensitivity of 75 Haemophilus paragallinarum isolates to six antimicrobial drugs (ampicillin, erythromycin, neomycin, penicillin, streptomycin, and tetracycline). A total of 55 of the isolates (73%) were sensitive to all six drugs. The remaining 20 isolates were resistant to streptomycin, with one of these isolates also being resistant to tetracycline and another also resistant to neomycin. No isolate showing antimicrobial drug resistance belonged to agglutinin serovar C, despite this being the single largest serovar (27 out of 75) in the study. No plasmids were detected among the 75 isolates, despite the use of five different plasmid-screening techniques.


This team explored the likelihood and scope of damage claims against shipping companies, shippers, ports, locks, and units of government; assessed the underwriting criteria that should be used to price insurance policies against such damages; and investigated a variety of pooling methods that could be employed to fund claims. The team effectively developed new liability theories for the spread of aquatic invasive species. The project team also explored behavioral reactions to these new theories by conducting and evaluating outreach to insurance and shipping communities as well as port authorities.


Multitemperature X-ray diffraction and vibrational spectroscopic studies of tetracene–tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) charge transfer cocrystals have revealed the existence of a reversible phase transition in the temperature interval 150–200 K. It was shown that a new monoclinic polymorph of the cocrystal exists above that temperature range, with a structure that is very similar to the one previously described in the literature as being triclinic. The crystal structures of the two polymorphs were also calculated with periodic density functional theory quantum chemical calculations, and their geometries were compared to the experimental ones. The degree of charge transfer in both polymorphs was characterized using alteration in the bond lengths of the TCNQ molecule and frequency shifts obtained from vibrational spectroscopy data.


A theoretical study is made of the response characteristics of two "box-models" and two continous models of the sea which could describe an air-sea exchange of matter. It is demonstrated quantitatively that the box-model can depict a transient exchange process correctly only when the time of internal mixing of the sea is small compared to a certain "transfer time". Comparing the two continous models studied, one of which assumes a purely diffusive sea and the other a purely advective sea, one finds some interesting differences in the responce characteristics. DOI: 10.1111/j.2153-3490.1959.tb00040.x


Variation of lattice parameters depends on the surface energy and the size of nanoparticles. In the present work the model developed by W.H. Qi, and M.P. Wang to predict the size and shape dependence of lattice parameters of metallic nano-particles, has been reviewed in context to the different expressions of surface energy for the nanoparticles of Cu, Au and Pt. I have derived the expression of surface energy for the nanoparticles considering of surface effect with analogy of cohesive energy of nanoparticles. I have used the expression of surface energy with the consideration of broken bonds and surface relaxation, temperature coefficient of surface free energy and the expression of size dependent surface energy derived by me to predict the variation of lattice parameters of nanoparticles. Computed results are compared with the available experimental data from which it is clear that the results obtained for the expression of surface energy derived by me are in good agreement with the experimental results. Main beauty of the suggested expression for the surface energy is that, it is very simple and based on fundamental concept of surface effect. The use of this expression in the model for the prediction of size dependence of lattice parameters reduces the requirement of input parameters therefore; the present expression of surface energy to predict the variation of lattice parameters for different metallic nanoparticles is the most suitable and consistent.


Intricately designed π-conjugated molecules containing interactive groups can be used to generate supramolecular polymers with outstanding structural and functional properties. To construct such supramolecular polymers, the non-covalent synthesis of supermacrocyclic monomers from relatively simple molecules represents an attractive strategy, although this has been rarely exploited. Here, we report the supramolecular polymerization of two barbiturate-naphthalene derivatives that circularly hexamerize by hydrogen bonding. The two molecules contain an aliphatic "wedge" unit with either an ether or ester linkage. This subtle difference is amplified into distinct features both in terms of the morphology of the supramolecular polymers and the polymerization process. The degrees of conformational freedom of the wedge unit determine the stacking of the supermacrocycles, as is evident from 2D X-ray diffraction analyses on the aligned fibers. The differences in stacking impart the supramolecular polymer fibers with different morphological features (cylindrical or helical), which are reflected in the properties of concentrated solutions (suspension or gel). The degrees of conformational freedom of the wedge unit also affect the polymerization kinetics, in which the more flexible ether linkage induces pathway complexity by the formation of off-pathway aggregates.


Hydroxyl-terminated fourth-generation poly(amidoamine) (G4-OH PAMAM) dendrimers were employed as templates to encapsulate Pt nanoparticles with small size and uniform dispersion, and then Pt nanoparticles were deposited on mesoporous alumina via self-assembly between the dendrimers and the support. The decomposition of dendrimer templates was investigated in nitrogen at different temperatures. The obtained catalysts were characterized through several techniques, such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), nitrogen adsorption–desorption isotherms, energy dispersion X-ray analysis (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and UV-vis spectra. Compared with the catalyst calcined in air, Pt nanoparticles exhibited uniform dispersion and small size when roasted in flowing nitrogen at 550 °C. The catalytic performances of fabricated Pt/MA catalysts were evaluated through the reduction of p-nitrophenol with NaBH4. It was found that the catalyst calcined at 550 °C in nitrogen exhibited the best catalytic activity. Besides, the catalyst was easily recycled without a marked decrease of the catalytic performance.


A «green» method of obtaining gas separation composite membranes from cellulose solutions and its mixtures with chitosan in orthophosphoric acid is proposed for industrial use, and differs from the viscose method of producing cellophane and other known methods for producing cellulose gas separation membranes without gaseous emissions and wastewater. It is shown that new composite cellulose membranes on a viscose fabric substrate are characterized by high productivity and selectivity for O2/ N2 pairs, comparable to the values obtained for known membranes made of synthetic polymers, as well as increased mechanical strength. The developed composite membranes demonstrate an inverse selectivity for the CH4/CO2 pair, which is not typical for gas separation membranes described in the literature with cellulose-based selective layers.


G13 belongs to the G12-subfamily of heterotrimeric regulatory G-proteins. Employing specific antibodies, we isolated G alpha 13 from bovine brain by a four-step purification protocol combining conventional and affinity chromatography. The use of ethylene glycol as a protective agent influenced the elution properties of G alpha 13 markedly. Only in the presence of ethylene glycol (30% v/v) a clear separation of G alpha 13 from other G-proteins was achieved during the initial anion exchange chromatography. This allowed isolation of G alpha 13 by subunit exchange chromatography on beta gamma-agarose. G alpha 13 was only released from immobilized beta gamma-dimers via activation by AMF but not by GTP gamma S, pointing to a poor basal nucleotide exchange of this protein. In contrast, N-terminally truncated G alpha 13 did not bind to immobilized beta gamma-dimers.


Diarylimidazolecarboxamides and diaryltriazolecarboxamides related to SR141716 were synthesized and tested for binding to the human CB(1) receptor. Suitably substituted imidazoles are comparably potent to the clinical candidate, whereas the analogous triazoles are less so due to the absence of an additional substituent on the azole ring.


Abstract Scleroderma is a rare, potentially fatal, clinically heterogeneous, systemic autoimmune connective tissue disorder that is characterized by progressive fibrosis of the skin and visceral organs, vasculopathy and immune dysregulation. The more severe form of the disease, diffuse cutaneous scleroderma (dcSSc), has no cure and limited treatment options. Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation has emerged as a potentially disease-modifying treatment but faces challenges such as toxicity associated with fully myeloablative conditioning and recurrence of autoimmunity. Novel cell therapies—such as mesenchymal stem cells, chimeric antigen receptor-based therapy, tolerogenic dendritic cells and facilitating cells—that may restore self-tolerance with more favourable safety and tolerability profiles are being explored for the treatment of dcSSc and other autoimmune diseases. This narrative review examines these evolving cell therapies.


Structural transformation of Indian agriculture manifested in the increasing number of marginal and small operational holdings call for responsive agricultural extension services. Weak social base, poor economic conditions and fragile holdings make the small and marginal farmers vulnerable to the vagaries of modern agriculture. With the growing role of market in agriculture need for augmenting extension services is perceptible. In this direction, there have been efforts to make use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the agricultural information communication process. It is believed that ICTs enable prompt, appropriate, authentic delivery of agricultural information in both directions i.e. from experts to farmers and vice-versa. The present paper based on the case study of an ICT based initiative named eSagu attempts to bring out the social organization of ICTs in agricultural information communication process and analyses the interplay of social and technical processes influencing the functioning of e-Sagu. The paper argues that while ICTs enable the delivery of up-to-date, relevant and appropriate information to the farmers they also limit the role of human factors influencing the performance of successful extension services.


Dyslipidemia is a multifaceted condition with various genetic and environmental factors contributing to its pathogenesis. Further, this condition represents an important risk factor for its related sequalae including cardiovascular diseases (CVD) such as coronary artery disease (CAD) and stroke. Emerging evidence has shown that gut microbiota and their metabolites can worsen or protect against the development of dyslipidemia. Although there are currently numerous treatment modalities available including lifestyle modification and pharmacologic interventions, there has been promising research on dyslipidemia that involves the benefits of modulating gut microbiota in treating alterations in lipid metabolism. In this review, we examine the relationship between gut microbiota and dyslipidemia, the impact of gut microbiota metabolites on the development of dyslipidemia, and the current research on dietary interventions, prebiotics, probiotics, synbiotics and microbiota transplant as therapeutic modalities in prevention of cardiovascular disease. Overall, understanding the mechanisms by which gut microbiota and their metabolites affect dyslipidemia progression will help develop more precise therapeutic targets to optimize lipid metabolism.


It is shown that under certain conditions it is possible to model a complex system in a way that leads to results that do not depend on system size. As an example of complex system an innovation diffusion model is considered. In that model a set of individuals (the agents), which are interconnected, must decide if adopt or not an innovation. The agents are connected in a member of the networks family known as small worlds networks (SWN). It is found that for a subfamily of the SWN the saturation time and the form of the adoption curve are invariants respect to the change in the size of the system.


For most of the thirty years or so of machine vision research, activity has been concentrated mainly in the domain of metric-based approaches: there has been negligible attention to the psychological factors in human vision. With the recent resurgence of interest in neural systems, that is now changing. This thesis discusses relevant aspects of basic visual neuroanatomy, and psychological phenomena, in an attempt to relate the concepts to a model of human vision and the prospective goals of future machine vision systems. It is suggested that, while biological vision is complex, the underlying mechanisms of human vision are more tractable than is often believed. We also argue here that the controversial subject of direct vision plays a crucial role in natural vision, and we attempt to relate this to the model. The recognition of massive parallelism in natural vision has led to proposals for emulating aspects of neural networks in technology. The systems model developed in this work demonstrates software-simulated cellular automata (CAs) in the role of mainly low-level image processing. It is shown that CAs are able to efficiently provide both conventional and neurally-inspired vision functions. The thesis also discusses the use of Prolog as the means of realising higher level image understanding. The symbolic processing developed is basic, but is nevertheless sufficient for the purposes of the present. demonstrations. Extensions to the concepts can be easily achieved. The modular systems approach adopted blends together several ideas and processes, and results in a more robust model of human vision that is able to translate a noisy real image into an accessible symbolic form for expert-domain interpretation.


Background— Baseline carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and plaques are considered predictors of cardiovascular events, but whether they maintain predictive value in treated hypertensive patients and whether time-related (or treatment-induced) IMT changes are additional predictors are unknown. Methods and Results— Analyses were performed of the data from the European Lacidipine Study on Atherosclerosis (ELSA), a large, randomized, intervention trial in which 2334 hypertensive patients from 7 European countries were followed up under effective antihypertensive treatment for 3.75 years. Kaplan-Meier curves indicated progressively lower survival free of any type of outcome except stroke, with increasing baseline IMT quartiles or increasing IMT values, even after adjustment for major baseline risk factors. Incidence of any outcome except stroke also was related to baseline number of carotid plaques. However, when both baseline and on-treatment IMT values were entered in Cox proportional-hazards models, differences in IMT compared with baseline did not predict cardiovascular outcomes. Although on-treatment rather than baseline IMT values significantly entered some of the proportional-hazards models, baseline and on-treatment IMTs were highly correlated, and therefore these results are inconclusive. Conclusions— ELSA shows that carotid intima-media thickening and plaques are important added risks of cardiovascular outcomes in a treated hypertensive population independently of blood pressure and traditional risk factors. However, the analysis failed to show a predictive role of treatment-dependent IMT changes. These negative conclusions should be tempered by the limitations inherent in the smallness of these changes compared with the large individual differences in baseline IMTs.


OBJECTIVES
This study assessed the need to develop a public health informatics (PHI) introductory course and determine contents of such a course.

METHODS
Community assessments employing focus group interviews and an online survey were utilized to determine course need and content.

RESULTS
Results revealed a need to provide PHI training to graduate public health students and suggested broad course content requirements. Results indicated lack of awareness of libraries and librarians as sources of public health information.

CONCLUSIONS
A graduate PHI course was developed and delivered. Additionally, implementation of a subject guide increased the library's profile.


Background. The term "DNA barcode" is used extensively in molecular taxonomy. Basically, this technique is based on the use of a DNA sequence (about 400–800 bp) as a standard to identify and determine the species relation of organisms quickly and accurately. Therefore, DNA barcodes not only help taxonomists in classifying and identifying species, but also improve their ability to control, understand and utilize biodiversity. In this study, the authors conducted identification of samples of Anoectochilus setaceus Blume collected in Thanh Hoa through the isolated sequence of ITS gene regions.Materials and methods. Total DNA was extracted from young leaves of A. setaceus samples using CTAB method. The ITS gene segment was amplified by PCR and sequenced. This genetic sequence was analyzed, compared and used to establish a phylogenetic tree using BioEdit, BLAST and DNASTAR programs.Results and conclusion. We isolated 4 sequences of the ITS gene region in 4 A. setaceus samples collected at Xuan Lien and Pu Luong of Thanh Hoa province; the ITS gene region was 667 nucleotide long. The findings identified the samples as the same species and showed 99% similarity to the ITS gene sequence of A. roxburghii (Wall.) Lindl. published in GenBank, GQ328774. This study also demonstrates that the method employing internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences is an effective tool to identify A. setaceus taxa.


Inference in imaging-based biophysical modelling provides a principled way of estimating model parameters, but also assessing confidence/uncertainty on results, quantifying noise effects and aiding experimental design. Traditional approaches in neuroimaging can either be very computationally expensive (e.g., Bayesian) or suitable to only certain assumptions (e.g., bootstrapping). We present a simulation-based inference approach to estimate diffusion MRI model parameters and their uncertainty. This novel framework trains a neural network to learn a Bayesian model inversion, allowing inference given unseen data. Results show a high level of agreement with conventional Markov-Chain-Monte-Carlo estimates, while offering 2-3 orders of magnitude speed-ups and inference amortisation.


Dr. Godakumbura's book is very welcome, for Sinhalese literature is an ill-charted domain. Apart from the references given in the bibliography—mainly to catalogues of manuscripts and to editions of texts with introductions—and from Geiger's all too brief synopsis in Singhalesische Literatur und Sprache, the only work on the subject worth mention is Martin Wickremasinghe's history of the literature written from the standpoint of a popular novelist, which is available also in an abridged English version. E. R. Sarathchandra's careful study of the Sinhalese novel deals only with the new writing inspired by contact with the West. Not only did nothing comparable with the present work exist previously for Sinhalese but it compares, I think, very favourably with any study of a modern Indian literature, whether written in an Indian or a European language. If we take, for example, the Dravidian languages which are closest geographically to Ceylon we find that Malayalam has, of course, Ullur's admirable Malayala sahitya caritram but nothing in English, and Tamil nothing at all, to put beside it. The author has divided his book into four main sections : prose, poetry, popular literature, and scientific literature, each treated chronologically from the origins to the end of the traditional literature in the early nineteenth century, with an introductory chapter giving a general survey. Though he devotes a brief final section to the new era, he does no more than touch on modern works. One point of special interest is the question of the Tamil sources of certain Sinhalese works. Several of these, such as the Mahapadarangajatakaya, a version of the Mahabharata story, carry in their colophons a mention of having been translated from the Tamil. Dr. Godakumbura wrote on this subject in BSOAS, xi, 4, 1946, and to the information he gave then he has not been able to add much in the present work. It is to be hoped that he will be able to carry his investigations further in another publication. The sandesa-leavya, that rather artificially created genre that owes its origin to the popularity of the Meghadiita, was cultivated particularly in Bengal and in the TamilMalayalam area both in Sanskrit and in the vernacular and is of especial importance in Sinhalese from the fourteenth century onwards. Dr. Godakumbura shows that there is evidence of a wide Sanskrit culture in medieval Ceylon but it is not clear if the Sinhalese poems of this type derive directly from Sanskrit models. Many of the texts discussed in this survey still exist only in manuscript, and the author is to be congratulated on the vast amount of original research which he has devoted to them. The book is attractively produced and misprints are few and insignificant, a fact all the more remarkable when it is considered that the printing was carried out in Ceylon whilst the author was in England.


Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background Falls and frailty are main causes of morbidity and frequenty associated with functional performance, balance and physical activity. The restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic force the elderly to spend most of their time at home which may cause further functional problems. Therefore, identifying the risk factors during the pandemic can help to prevent the elderly from frailty and falls. Aim: Our aims are to investigate the clinical frailty profile and falls in relation to functional performance, balance, fear of falling and physical activity and to compare these parameters of the elderly with and without falling history during the COVID-19 pandemics. Method: Thirty-three participants aged 65-85 (mean = 71.33 ± 5.35/years, 20 women, 13 men) who have never had COVID-19 were included in the study. The participants were invited to an online video-conference based assessment. The number of falls during the last year were asked. Clinical frailty severity was assessed with Clinical Frailty Scale. The fear of falling were assessed using Falls Efficacy Scale (FES). The functional performance of the participants were tested with 30 seconds Sit-to-Stand test. The balance and mobility was evaluated with Timed-Up and Go test in a 3 meter corridor. The physical activity level of the participants were questioned using International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF) and vigorous level of physical activity (VPA), moderate level of physical activity (MPA) and walking were also calculated. Results: The mean scores of the outcomes among participants were shown in Table 1. Clinical frailty was significantly higher in women compared to men (p = 0.08). Clinical frailty score, fear of falling and sit to stand performance were significantly worse in fallers. There were negative weak to moderate correlations between frailty and sit to stand performance (p = 0.001) and MPA (p = 0,016). The clinical frailty was also positively correlated with FES (p < 0.001). FES showed positive correlation with Time-Up and Go performance (p = 0.001) and negative correlation with sit to stand performance (p < 0.001) and MPA (p = 0,036). Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that; clinical frailty, fear of falling and sit to stand performance were associated with the fall history in elderly. In addition, clinical frailty score were higher in women. Our results indicate that, people who have fall history may tend to be frailer and may have lower functional performance, balance and physical activity. The encouragement of the elderly to increased physical activity and exercise program may decrease the frailty score and falling risk especially in elderly women during COVID-19 pandemics. Abstract Table.1


Slow-paced biofeedback-guided breathing training has been shown to improve cardiac functioning and psychological well-being. Current training options, however, attract only a fraction of individuals and are limited in their scalability as they require dedicated biofeedback hardware. In this work, we present Breeze, a mobile application that uses a smartphone's microphone to continuously detect breathing phases, which then trigger a gamified biofeedback-guided breathing training. Circa 2.76 million breathing sounds from 43 subjects and control sounds were collected and labeled to train and test our breathing detection algorithm. We model breathing as inhalation-pause-exhalation-pause sequences and implement a phase-detection system with an attention-based LSTM model in conjunction with a CNN-based breath extraction module. A biofeedback-guided breathing training with Breeze takes place in real-time and achieves 75.5% accuracy in breathing phases detection. Breeze was also evaluated in a pilot study with 16 new subjects, which demonstrated that the majority of subjects prefer Breeze over a validated active control condition in its usefulness, enjoyment, control, and usage intentions. Breeze is also effective for strengthening users' cardiac functioning by increasing high-frequency heart rate variability. The results of our study suggest that Breeze could potentially be utilized in clinical and self-care activities.


Radial head fractures constitute 3% of all fractures, making them the most common fracture of the elbow in adults1,2. A retrospective epidemiological study from the Netherlands noted that the incidence of radial head fractures was 2.8 per 10,000 inhabitants per year3. The male-to-female ratio was 2:3. The mean age was forty-three years.

The elbow has three separate articulations—the ulnohumeral, radiocapitellar, and proximal radioulnar articulations (see Appendix). The medial collateral ligament (MCL) resists valgus, while the lateral collateral ligament (LCL) resists varus and posterolateral instability4,5. The radial head is an important stabilizer for valgus, axial, and posterolateral rotational forces.

An increasing size of the radial head fracture fragment alters radiocapitellar stability and kinematics because of the loss of concavity-compression, which may cause painful clicking. Stability is restored with open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) or radial head replacement6-8.

Radial head excision alters elbow stability, even with intact ligaments, and radial head arthroplasty restores normal kinematics9,10. With an MCL injury, radial head excision further exacerbates valgus instability, while radial head arthroplasty restores stability similar to the native radial head9,11,12. Bipolar radial head implants are less stable than monopolar implants in cadaveric studies, suggesting that monopolar implants may be preferred in treating complex elbow instability13,14.

Anthropometric studies have revealed that the radial head has a variably elliptical shape11,15. The radial head is variably offset from the radial neck, which is important since most current radial head arthroplasty and plate designs do not replicate anatomic characteristics16.

The radial head articulates with the lesser sigmoid notch of the proximal part of the ulna and has articular and nonarticular surfaces. The nonarticular …


Nanoscale droplets on a substrate are of great interest because of their relevance for droplet-based technologies for light manipulation, lab-on-chip devices, miniaturized reactors, encapsulation, and many others. In this work, we establish a basic principle for symmetrical arrangements of surface nanodroplets during their growth out of oversaturated solution established through solvent exchange, which takes place under simple and controlled flow conditions. In our model system, nanodroplets nucleate at the rim of spherical cap microstructures on a substrate, due to a pulse of oversaturation supplied by a solvent exchange process. We find that, while growing at the rim of the microcap, the nanodroplets self-organize into highly symmetric arrangements, with respect to position, size, and mutual distance. The angle between the neighboring droplets is 4 times the ratio between the base radii of the droplets and the spherical caps. We show and explain how the nanodroplets acquire the symmetrical spatial arrangement during their competitive growth and why and how the competition enhances the overall growth rate of the nucleated nanodroplets. This mechanism behind the nanodroplet self-organization promises a simple approach to control the location of droplets with a volume down to attoliters.


Retinoic acid (RA) is required for the successful differentiation and meiotic entry of germ cells in the murine testis. The availability of RA to undifferentiated germ cells begins in a variable, uneven pattern during the first few days after birth and establishes the asynchronous pattern of germ cell differentiation in adulthood. It has been shown that synchronous spermatogenesis can be induced in 2 d postpartum mice, but not in adult mice, by treating vitamin A sufficient males with RA. In this study, neonatal males were treated at different ages with a single dose of RA and spermatogenesis was examined after recovery to adulthood. The failure of exogenous RA to alter asynchrony correlates with the appearance of meiotic preleptotene spermatocytes within the seminiferous epithelium.


In this paper, a game between two football (soccer) teams is analysed. The focus is on how the choice of point score system may affect Nash equilibria in a given simultaneous game and a corresponding sequential version. The reason for this choice, is (to some extent) experience related to the growing secrecy on pre-game strategic choices among football coaches. It is demonstrated by the relatively simple game theory, that the point score system plays a vital role in how teams (coaches) will "play" such games, given that they are rational and recognize Nash equilibrium as a reasonable game prediction. In fact, some evidence on an increased tendency for more pre-game strategic secrecy is logically established in a move from a 2-1-0 point score system to a 3-1-0 point score system.


An exploration of the self in dramaturgical societies: This is the double, duplicitous, witty self, the one who communicates indirectly through characters and masks, the self who is a personality, who knowingly plays a role on the public stage, and who inhabits a wry, not to say awry, paradoxical world created by a mischievous comic God. A motley bunch of characters wander across the stage of this article. These include recusant Catholics, American sociologists, theologians of paradox, philosophers of comedy, Oscar Schindler, Mick Jagger, William Shakespeare, G.K. Chesterton, as well as various assorted epicurean puritans, inventive liars, elusive playwrights, pompous intellectuals, sleuthing heroes from detective fiction, ambitious pretenders, satirists of newspaper folly, media nitwits, boys playing girls playing boys, and, if you are really good, girls playing boys playing girls. All of them bearing testament to Viola's immortal line: I am not what I am.


The understanding of genetic diversity within local crop varieties constitutes an important step in the preservation of their genetic potential. The objective of this study was to assess the genetic diversity of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) cultivated in the Northwest of Benin and to reveal certain fundamental evolutionary mechanisms. A total of 61 accessions of sorghum landraces belonging to the four identified races in Benin were estimated using 20 microsatellite markers. For all the loci analyzed, 140 polymorphic alleles were detected with a mean value of 7.00 per locus and polymorphic information content (PIC) average value was 0.33 for all the 20 simple sequence repeats (SSRs), suggesting an important genetic diversity within the cultivated sorghum germplasm used. An unweighted pair group method arithmetic average (UPGMA) clustering and principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) based on DICE coefficient revealed three major genetic groups supported by two main components: the botanical race and the morpho-physiological characteristics of the grains (colour and degree of bitterness). It was thus recommended that further research on genetic diversity of sorghum should integrate these genetic parameters for a better preservation of the genetic resources of this important crop in Benin.

 Key words: Genetic diversity, simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers, Sorghum bicolor, Benin.


Constant flow of innovation and human resources is necessary for competitive production. Supporting development and Regional cooperation is investing in future.


Analytical results, design considerations, and experimental results at 1.5 MHz are presented, for a novel resonant high-frequency dc/dc converter. The circuit works virtually without dynamic losses at several-MHz switching frequency. The analysis gives the permissible area of the equivalent load impedance for lossless operation, presents a model for regulation by narrow-band frequency control, and characterizes the output full-wave rectifier. Experimental data from a 1.5-MHz 40-W converter verify the results of the theoretical analysis. The measured efficiency was 85 percent.


Only 7 nonrare haplotypes concerning Y-chromosome-specific TaqI fragments recognized by DNA probes p49f and p49a were encountered in 433 individuals belonging to 7 populations living in central Africa. Most of the haplotypes (77.7%) are characterized by the allelic combination A1,C0,D0,F1,I1 (haplotype IV). The degree of variability displayed by these sequences is low in the African population studied, compared with Europeans, probably because of the recent common origin of the Bantu-speaking populations studied and the common practice of male polygamy in Africa.


Neuroinflammation and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress are associated with many neurological diseases. ER stress is brought on by misfolded proteins. In turn, cells respond with activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR). The UPR is a highly conserved pathway that transmits both adaptive and apoptotic signals to restore homeostasis or eliminate the irreparably damaged cell. Recent evidence indicates that ER stress and inflammation are linked. In this study, we have examined the interaction between ER stress and JAK/STAT-dependent inflammation in astrocytes. The JAK/STAT pathway mediates the biological actions of many cytokines and growth factors. We have found that ER stress leads to the activation of STAT3 in a JAK1-dependent fashion. ER stress-induced activation of the JAK1/STAT3 axis leads to expression of IL-6 and several chemokines. The activation of STAT3 signaling is dependent on the protein kinase PERK, a central component of the UPR. Knockdown of PERK abrogates ER stress-induced activation of STAT3 and overexpression of PERK is sufficient to activate STAT3. Additionally, ER stressed astrocytes, via paracrine signaling, can stimulate activation of microglia leading to production of oncostatin M (OSM). OSM can then synergize with ER stress in astrocytes to drive inflammation. Together, this work describes a new PERK-JAK1-STAT3 signaling pathway that may elicit a feed-forward inflammatory loop involving astrocytes and microglia to drive neuroinflammation.


We adopt a spatial econometric approach to estimate intra- and inter-industry productivity spillovers in total factor productivity transmitted through input-output relations in a sample of 13 OECD countries and 15 manufacturing industries. Both R&D spillovers as well as remainder, input-output-related linkage effects are accounted for, the latter of which we model by a spatial regressive error process. We find that knowledge spillovers occur both horizontally and vertically, whereas remainder spillovers are primarily of intra-industry type. Notably, these intra-industry remainder spillovers turn out economically more significant than R&D spillovers.


The purpose of this study is a textual analysis of a Russian translation of a Polish pamphlet, a parody of the prayer "Our Father", which was found among documents from 1671–1673 in the archive of the Ambassadorial Chancery (Posol'skii prikaz). The actual source of the translation was not found, but since any study of a translated text must include an analysis of its connection with the original, it was first of all necessary to pay attention to the known copies of the Polish pamphlet "Ojcze nasz krolu polski Janie Kazimierzu" ("Pacierz dworski"), since one of its now most probably lost copies was translated into Russian. "Ojcze nasz krolu polski Janie Kazimierzu" is a Polish political parody from the middle of the 17th century (probably 1665), directed against King John II Casimir Vasa. The article investigates the history of its creation, describes its form, content, and genre, discusses its literary value, the Polish tradition of parodying religious texts, and analyzes the versions of the pamphlet. As a result, it was possible to reveal some new details about the anonymous author and the time when the work was written, the number and character of the preserved copies, the correlation between manuscript variants and their later editions. A comparative analysis of seven different textual variants of the Polish pamphlet made it possible to find a version which is textually — and perhaps even genetically — close to the Russian translation (a copy of the family saga "Sylva rerum Szyrmow"). Particular attention is paid to the interpretation of Polish translation parody in mid-17th century Russian culture, the possible reasons why this Polish political pamphlet caught the attention of the Russian translator (reader), and the functional transformation of the occasional political pamphlet into a parody with a political theme and a more explicit humoristic component. The appendix provides a parallel publication of the Polish pamphlet from the family saga "Sylva rerum Szyrmow" and the Russian translation from the archive of the Ambassadorial Chancery. DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2018.7.2.4