Learning is a "linear process" for workers. It includes studying and understanding basic systems, normal procedures, and emergency procedures in an operational setting. Therefore, they must be developed for the frontline worker, from the frontline worker's perspective and in their words. Step by step procedures will describe the operation of equipment and the interaction of co-workers in the operational context without leaving the frontline worker any questions or assumptions - it is written with concept of operational-need-to-know. Once completed, they will capture the optimum efficient processes and improve your safety management system.
 By borrowing best practices from the airline industry several oil and gas companies have been able to implement a system that prevents and traps human error. My presentation will share with your audience that the foundation to safety and efficiency is the creation of standard work for operators and contractors. Standard work that delivers quality work based on the development of procedures and checklists that work in harmony on the rig floor. We will highlight our success measured by the increased efficiency in fracking by over 300%, a reduction in crane incidents by 50% and the reduction of fatal control of work errors. All through the development of a standardization department which became the center for excellence for the operator and the contractor.
 Standardization regarding operational procedures are still a new concept within the industry. Our team has produced tangible results which will be shared with the SPE membership in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of standardization and the increased safety and efficiency from it.


The term 'realism' has been used in many different ways. Thus, rather than assume or state a particular sense of the term to be used in this discussion of Virginia Woolf, we shall here consider her work in the light of various epistemological problems arising from a philosophy which for both intrinsic and historical reasons seems relevant to her life and work - the philosophy of G.E. Moore. Our exploration of the particular form of realism to be found in Virginia Woolf's work will therefore lead us to consider problems of philosophy, literary criticism and techniques of fiction.


ABSTRACT Fifty children between the ages of 3; 0 and 5; 6 were asked six types of wh- questions following videotaped sequences. It is argued that differential difficulty of various forms of who questions supports a parallel model of information retrieval and processing during discourse. The differential difficulty of why and when questions are, however, attributable to a necessary progression in the ability to encode the relevant concepts linguistically. Responses to how questions are difficult because they involve a number of unrelated skills.


First branchial cleft anomalies are extremely rare and account for less than 8% of all branchial anomalies. They are generally found in infancy although they arise during the embryonal period because of an incomplete closure of the first branchial cleft. In 1972 Work classified first branchial cleft anomalies into two types: Type I, ectodermal cysts, is a duplication of the external auditory duct; Type II, originate in both ectodermal and endodermal components and contain cartilage. The present case report describes a Type II branchial malformation. G.M., a 2-year-old male, presented painful tumefaction in the left parotid area with cutaneous fistulization between the sternocleidomastoid muscle and the mandibular angle. Cranial CT permitted diagnosis and made it possible to stage surgery. The difficulties encountered in recognizing and diagnosing first branchial cleft anomalies are often responsible for application of the wrong surgical approach and the resulting frequency in recurrences.


In order to find antiviral compounds with novel structures, geldanamycin and lamivudine with different antiviral mechanisms were conjunctively synthesized to acquire a new compound TC-GM, and the antiviral activity of TC-GM was measured. The antiviral activity against HIV-1 was examined by p24 antigen ELISA kit. The activity against HBV was examined by dotblot. The activity against HSV and CoxB virus was examined by CPE. TC-GM exhibited broad-spectrum antiviral activities similarly like geldanamycin. TC-GM inhibited the replication of different viruses, including HIV-1, HBV, HSV 1 and 2, CoxB6. TC-GM showed more potent inhibitory activity against HIV-1 and HBV than other detected virus.


A novel mathematical model has been developed to understand the mechanism of blister initiation and propagation. The model employs a two-part theoretical approach encompassing the debondment of a coating film from the substrate, coupled with the design components incorporating diffusion and fracture mechanics, where the latter is derived from equi-biaxial tensile loading. Integrating the two components, a comprehensive mathematical design for the propagation of blister boundaries based on specific toughness functions and mode adjustment parameters has been developed. This approach provided a reliable and efficient prediction method for blister growth rate and mechanisms. The model provided a foundation for holistic design based on diffusion and mechanic components to enable better understanding of the debondment of thin elastic films bonded to a metallic substrate.


Although Metaverse has recently been widely stud-ied, its practical application still faces many challenges. One of the severe challenges is the lack of sufficient resources for computing and communication on local devices, resulting in the inability to access the Metaverse services. To address this issue, this paper proposes a practical blockchain-based mobile edge computing (MEC) platform for resource sharing and optimal utilization to complete the requested offloading tasks, given the heterogeneity of servers' available resources and that of users' task requests. To be specific, we first elaborate the design of our proposed system and then dive into the task allocation mechanism to assign offloading tasks to proper servers. To solve the multiple task allocation (MTA) problem in polynomial time, we devise a learning-based algorithm. Since the objective function and constraints of MTA are significantly affected by the servers uploading the tasks, we reformulate it as a reinforcement learning problem and calculate the rewards for each state and action considering the influences of servers. Finally, numerous experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed system and algorithms.


There has been a recent increase in the feeding of unconventional diets, including whole-prey diets, to domestic pet cats. Our objective was to characterise faecal microbial populations of domestic cats fed whole and ground (6·35 mm grind) raw 1–3-d-old chicks (Rodent Pro). Faecal samples were collected from neutered male domestic cats (mean age = 5·7 years) fed these diet items in a crossover design. Bacterial DNA was isolated from faecal samples and amplicons of the 16S rRNA V4–V6 region were generated and analysed by 454 pyrosequencing. Faecal microbial populations of cats fed whole v. ground chicks did not differ. During the study, three cats presented with symptoms of infection (anorexia or diarrhoea) and tested clinically positive for Salmonella using a standard PCR method. The remaining cats tested negative. Data were analysed post hoc to test for differences in microbial populations due to clinical status. The predominant genera were Clostridium (9–30 %), unidentified Lachnospiraceae (10–28 %), Blautia (4–19 %), Peptococcus (2–19 %) and Fusobacterium (2–14 %). Faeces of cats testing clinically positive for Salmonella had higher (P ≤ 0·05) proportions of the genera Coprococcus (5·6 v. 0·4 %) and Escherichia (subgenera Shigella; 1·1 v. 0·3 %). Salmonella was not detected in faecal samples utilising the pyrosequencing method; however, there was a shift in microbial populations due to clinical status. The clinical symptoms reported herein may be not only due to the Salmonella itself, but also shifts in other gut microbial populations.


We give a constant factor polynomial time pseudo-approximation algorithm for min-sum clustering with or without outliers. The algorithm is allowed to exclude an arbitrarily small constant fraction of the points. For instance, we show how to compute a solution that clusters 98\% of the input data points and pays no more than a constant factor times the optimal solution that clusters 99\% of the input data points. More generally, we give the following bicriteria approximation: For any $\eps > 0$, for any instance with $n$ input points and for any positive integer $n'\le n$, we compute in polynomial time a clustering of at least $(1-\eps) n'$ points of cost at most a constant factor greater than the optimal cost of clustering $n'$ points. The approximation guarantee grows with $\frac{1}{\eps}$. Our results apply to instances of points in real space endowed with squared Euclidean distance, as well as to points in a metric space, where the number of clusters, and also the dimension if relevant, is arbitrary (part of the input, not an absolute constant).


Author(s): Schmidt, Dirk | Abstract: Corpus Linguistics and NLP have many obvious applications for researchers, academics, and other specialists; what should not be overlooked, however, is their role in improving the mundane, everyday interactions between people and language, be they a reader of a newspaper; a child with a storybook; or a student in a classroom. The language analyses that these linguistic tools provide have an important part to play in the feedback loop between authors, journalists, and pedagogists on the one hand and their audiences and students on the other.While these sorts of research-based resources have already made splashes in majority languages like English, their ripples have yet to spill over into the smaller language markets. Within this paper we outline the ways in which corpus linguistics may inform Tibetan language literacy and education in both L1 a L2 contexts, while drawing from our own research into issues of readability and the development of a modern pedagogy for instruction in the Tibetan alphabet based on frequency data.


This article provides a textual analysis of the pedagogical discourse of history textbooks used in the education of Chilean students. In particular, I focus on how the impact of Salvador Allende's socialist government (1970-1973) and the military coup that led to the Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship (1973-1990) are constructed by and displayed in these texts. As a method of analysis, I apply the Systemic Functional Grammar theory to history textbooks used in the sixth and eighth grades. Two of the metafunctions proposed by Halliday - textual and interpersonal - are particularly relevant when combined with an appraisal analysis fundamentally based on the work of Martin because they provide a useful tool for interpreting and explaining the text from an ideological standpoint. The analysis reveals that the textbooks' authors strive to sound objective, but instead offer a large number of explicit and implicit judgements throughout the text. They purport to present two antithetical political positions - that of Allende's supporters and that of the supporters of the military coup - however, the texts do not actually offer two clear positions nor do they provide clear reasons for the events. Instead, the authors obscure content through grammatical and lexical choices - such as the use of `and' as an expression of reason or cause; embedded mental and verbal projection (sixth grade only); the absence of logico-semantic relationship of elaboration; and modal adjuncts that signal judgement but not explanation. Appraisal analysis in conjunction with a more discrete grammatical analysis is useful for revealing the explicit, subjective choices made in constructing these supposedly objective texts.


Only few patients are able to exactly maintain during the irradiation a given position of the head without fixation. However, every movement of the head leads to a dose decrease up to 50% within the target volume. Today, fixation and reproducible field adjustment are the conditions of curative radiotherapy. The Würzburg model is presented.


Background: Approximately 60–70% of breast cancers (BC) express estrogen receptor (ERα) and/or progesterone receptor (PR), the most common malignancy in women in the US and Europe. Many though not all patients with ER+ BC respond to hormonal therapy (e.g. tamoxifen and aromatase-inhibitor) but a large number will eventually develop resistance to long term therapy. Purpose: Development of resistance to endocrine therapy is a clinical issue in ER+ BC. Studies with human cell lines have shown that upregulation of PI3K-AKT-mTOR and MEK-ERK pathways contributes to resistance to endocrine therapy (Miller TW et al JCO 2011; Sanchez CG et al Breast Cancer Res 2011). Using leterozole-resistant ER+ BC model, we investigated the effects of PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway inhibitor alone and in combination with MEK1/2 inhibitor. Methodology: The anti-proliferative, anti-migratory, and intracellular signaling (pAKT, pS6RP, p4EBP1 and pERK) effects of GDC-0941 (Class I PI3K inhibitor) or GDC-0980 (dual PI3K/mTOR inhibitor) alone and in combination with GDC-0973 (MEK1/2 inhibitor) were evaluated in aromatase overexpressed (MCF-7aro), letrozole-resistant (MCF-7aro/LetR) and long-term-estrogen-deprived (LTEDaro) BC cell lines by MTT assays, integrin-mediated migration assay and Western blots. Results: 1) Both GDC-0980 and GDC-0941 exhibited excellent in vitro cell killing activity in MTT assay in all cell lines with IC509s 10–30 nM & 0.2–1.5 µM respectively. PI3K pathway inhibitors were more potent when combined with GDC-0973; 2) Integrin-mediated migration was significantly higher in both MCF-7aro/LetR andLTEDaro cells than MCF-7 and MCF-7aro cells; 3) Both MCF-7aro/LetR and LTEDaro cells movement were significantly abrogated following the treatment of GDC-0980, and the combination of GDC-0980 plus GDC-0973 more effectively blocked integrin-mediated migration; 4) Inhibition of phosphorylation of AKT (S473/T308), S6RP and 4EBP1 (T37/46) was observed following PI3K pathway inhibitors; 5) pERK was upregulated following the treatment of GDC-0941 (PI3K inhibitor); 6) Basal level of pERK was significantly high in MCF7/LetR and MCF7/LTED cells, and GDC-0980 failed to change the level of pERK in those cell lines; and 7) Combination of PI3K pathway inhibitor plus MEK1/2 inhibitor significantly blocked activation of both pathways. Conclusion: Our in vitro data suggest that therapeutic targeting of the PI3K-AKT-mTOR and the MEK-ERK signaling pathways should be effective in abrogating aromatase-inhibitor-resistance in ER+ BC. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2012;72(24 Suppl):Abstract nr P6-04-11.


In the design of nuclear-optical converters (NOC) for detecting intense neutron fields (fluxes over 1015 cm–2·s–1), it is proposed to use hybrid gas ionization chambers (IC), in which electrical and optical neutron detecting methods are combined. For hybrid ICs, a technology is proposed for obtaining radiation-resistant and mechanically strong radiator materials capable of operating at temperatures of up to 1000 °C. This technology is based on solid-phase boron diffusion saturation of steel. It is shown that, at thermal neutron fluxes of 1×1010 n/(cm2·s) and higher, the integral intensity of argon luminescence as a result of ionization by α-particles and 7Li ions from layers of boride phases is sufficient for detection. The combination of optical and radiation properties of multicomponent fluoride glasses makes it possible to use them as condensed active substances of NOCs. Choosing the elemental and isotopic composition, it becomes possible to use fluoride glasses for multichannel neutron detection as well as to significantly simplify the procedure for separating gamma and neutron components of radiation under conditions of intense radiation fluxes. It has been experimentally shown that in irradiation with a neutron flux of 1×1017 n/(cm2·s), the intensity of Nd IR luminescence in glasses based on zirconium fluoride (ZBLAN) increases in the presence of Gd, which interacts with neutrons.


The complications following the surgical treatment of 328 cases of abdominal aortic aneurysm are reported. In some cases such complications are predictable and their knowledge is useful to reduce the operative mortality. Cardiac and renal complications were more frequent in emergency, while surgical complications were mostly observed in patients with large aneurysms involving the iliac arteries. Duodenal lesions were caused in patients affected by inflammatory aneurysms. The late complications observed were: ureteral stenosis, infections, pseudoaneurysms and occlusion of a branch of the bifurcated graft.


The apolipoprotein E, C1, and C2 genes are contained within a gene cluster in man. Previously, we have shown that this gene cluster has a similar structure in mouse. During the characterization of the mouse Apoc2 gene, evolutionarily conserved and transcribed sequences were found 5' of the Apoc2 gene. In this study, we have shown that these 5' sequences represent a novel gene within the gene cluster designated the apolipoprotein C2-linked gene (Acl). The Acl gene is located 2 kb 5' to the Apoc2 gene. The transcriptional orientation is identical to that of the other genes within the Apoe-c1-c2 gene cluster. We have sequenced the mouse Acl gene at the cDNA and the genomic levels. The gene is composed of three exons spanning a region of approximately 3.6 kb. The Acl gene is expressed in the liver as a transcript 473 bp in size and encodes a putative protein of 124 amino acid residues.


In this Research Note, Pierre de Longuemar, founder of the Paribas Historical Archives Department, describes the building of their oral history program. Shortly after the Historical Archives Department was begun in 1990, Paribas decided to publish a book on its European roots. Interviews were conducted that proved an effective way of identifying Paribas's main strategic thrust during its postwar modernization. Oral histories were also collected to provide source material on the context of the merger between BNP and Paribas in 2000.


Ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus) has the potential to be farmed as a niche crop in temperate climates outside of the crop's native high elevation South American range. The brightly colored and delicious tubers have considerable consumer appeal for those who become aware of them and offer an alternative to potato growers. Challenges include photoperiod restrictions, along with sensitivity to summer heat and early fall frosts. Cultivars are only available from limited sources in the United States at this time, and evaluation for specific climatic suitability would be desirable. The sharply-sweet, crispy tubers of oca (Oxalis tuberosa) and the spicy elongated tubers of mashua (Tropaelum tuberosum) have a history of being intercropped with ulluco. All may be grown in United States maritime regions either as separate crops or together if photoperiod restrictions can be selected with future breeding programs.


A wide range of methods, Bayesian and others, tackle regression when there are many variables. In the Bayesian context, the prior is constructed to reflect ideas of variable selection and to encourage appropriate shrinkage. The prior needs to be reasonably robust to different signal to noise structures. Two simple evergreen prior constructions stem from ridge regression on the one hand and g-priors on the other. We seek to embed recent ideas about sparsity of the regression coefficients and robustness into these priors. We also explore the gains that can be expected from these differing approaches


A procedure for visualization and sensitive detection of protein during sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and subsequent sample preparation for sequence analysis is described. This procedure utilizes either fluorescent or visible tags for certain amino acids in protein molecules, e.g., lysines modified with dansyl/dabsyl chloride and cystines/cysteines or phosphorylated serines modified with iodoacetamidofluorescein (I-15) after proper sample pretreatments. Modifications are performed prior to SDS-PAGE, eliminating the need for fixing, staining, and destaining as required for the conventional procedures. After electrophoresis, the fluorescent or visible bands are excised from the gel, homogenized in microcentrifuge tubes, and soaked in an appropriate buffer to release the separated proteins into solution. Enzymatic digestion can then be carried out in solution for better efficiency of digestion and recovery. The subsequent HPLC mapping and collection of protein digests are performed on PE Applied Biosystems Model 173A MicroBlotter. The separated peptides containing tagged amino acids are visible on the PVDF membrane and can be excised for direct sequence analysis. This approach has been employed for selectively isolating the lysine, cysteine, or phosphorylated serine containing peptides using model proteins. The sequencing results of the peptides generated from premodified proteins demonstrate that this approach facilitates sample preparation for microsequence analysis at low picomole level. Overall recoveries of 20-30% by sequencing initial yields have been achieved using our model proteins.


The relationships between poverty, population growth and government policy in the creation of poor sanitary environments in low income residential areas are discussed. In recent years, the implementation of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries has had the effect of shrinking the formal/modern sectors and expanding the informal sector. While small scale informal sector activities have dominated Cape Coast's economic base for a long time, the contraction of the formal sector resulting from structural adjustment conditionalities has engendered a disproportionate growth of the informal sector. This paper examines the environmental implications on an urban economy (Cape Coast) dominated by informal sector activities. It shows how the low pay associated with available employment reduces the ability of the municipal authority to promote urban development especially environmental health on the basis of taxes alone.


As the industry evolves further into digitalization, companies grow interested in new solutions made possible by the technologies of the Industry 4.0. One such paradigm is that of Augmented Reality (AR), which has seen significant growth in recent years, but still with great room for improvement, and still with many people unaware of its potential benefits. In its implementations, AR has generated value across a wide range of applications that aim at reducing the frequency of human error, decreasing the training time of professionals, and improving workflow. The purpose of this study is to understand the existing uses of AR across different fields, including its current state-of-the-art applications in the industrial sector, and find ways in which its systems in production lines could be improved, with a focus on the interaction between the user and the system, presenting a series of proposed solutions. To conclude, possible opportunities that could aid industry professionals and operators of manufacturing systems supported by AR are presented and discussed.


In the task of image object detection, a large number of candidate boxes are generated to match the small number of candidates containing images of object, which will increase the amount of data in neural networks and reduce the real-time of object detection. So, candidate boxes should be reduced in the training and evaluation of the network. In the other hand, hand-made data-set makes the object detection inefficient in the application scenarios where the recognition tasks are frequently changed. Here, we propose a new method about extraction of candidate boxes for object detection, and the automatic image annotation for data-set making. This method can be used in whose object always change, such as, Industrial assembly line, automatic recognition and counting of cells under a microscope and so on. The experimental data set shows that compared with the classical model, the new method can significantly improve the efficiency and real-time performance of object detection.


The objective of this study was to investigate whether leukocytes could be recruited by rolling leukocytes in a human whole blood model system. In all experiments, either neutrophils, whole blood, or diluted blood was perfused over immobilized E-selectin. With isolated neutrophils (2 x 10(5)/mL), the free-flowing neutrophils were captured by attached neutrophils to form secondary interactions that resulted in lines of rolling leukocytes. These secondary tethers accounted for 50% to 60% of all interactions and were eliminated by an L-selectin antibody, which also eliminated the lines of rolling leukocytes. Perfusion of whole blood or diluted blood revealed no lines of rolling leukocytes. The addition of red blood cells to isolated neutrophils either in a 1000:1 or a 10:1 ratio also inhibited lines of rolling leukocytes. Leukocytes were fluorescently labeled with rhodamine-6G so that leukocyte-leukocyte interactions could be studied in whole blood. A small number of secondary tethers (less than 20%) occurred and could be reduced by more than 80% with an L-selectin antibody. However, the overall impact on leukocyte recruitment was negligible. Similar experiments were performed using murine whole blood or isolated murine leukocytes. In the absence of red blood cells, murine leukocytes also formed lines of rolling leukocytes on E-selectin, and secondary tethers accounted for 50% of total interactions. However, when murine blood (diluted 1:5 with buffer) was perfused over E-selectin, secondary tethers accounted for only 13% of total interactions. These interactions were completely absent when blood was used from L-selectin-deficient mice. These data demonstrate for the first time that the importance of L-selectin-dependent leukocyte-leukocyte interactions is greatly reduced in whole blood and does not enhance overall recruitment of leukocytes in this physiologic milieu. (Blood. 2000;95:2954-2959)


We present experimental results of coupled opto-electronic oscillators (COEO) constructed with a semiconductor optical amplifier based ring laser, a semiconductor Fabry-Perot laser, and a semiconductor colliding pulse mode-locked laser. Each COEO can simultaneously generate short optical pulses and spectrally pure RF signals. With these devices, we obtained optical pulses as short as 6 picoseconds and RF signals as high in frequency as 18 GHz with a spectral purity comparable with a HP8561B synthesizer. These experiments demonstrate that COEOs are promising compact sources for generating low jitter optical pulses and low phase noise RF/millimeter wave signals.


English teaching method is a general term of some teaching methods. These teaching methods are supported by certain theoretical foundations and applied principles. Each English teaching method is limited by the teaching content, and each method has some deficiencies. These English teaching methods continue to develop in the course of the history of English teaching. To a certain extent, the development history of English teaching is representative of the development of English teaching methods. In view of this, this article mainly expounds the development of English teaching methods, the change of ideas and concepts of English teaching methods, and the educational innovation of English teaching for the reference of relevant personnel.


How do retaining glycosyltransferases function? To answer this question, UDP-Gal and galactose were covalently linked to form disubstrate analogues 1, of which surprisingly 1β and not 1α inhibited α(1-3)-galactosyltransferases very well. An understanding of this inhibition is a key to the pharmacological prevention of hyperacute rejection in pig to primate xenotransplantation.


Abstract The widespread use of mobile communications is leading to new practices in family life and social life, and these changes have significant implications for the study of urban travel. Because of the adoption of new modes of space-time coordination, changing time use and increasing mobility, changing use of existing urban nodes, the blurring of boundaries between home and work, the importance of social networks and social capital, and the shift to person-to-person connectivity, the spatial structure and processes of interaction among individuals have become much more complicated in this age of mobile communications. Static spatial frameworks based on fixed points (e.g., home or workplace) and distances among them are no longer adequate for understanding urban travel. The study of urban travel now needs new conceptualizations and new methodologies. *This article is based on the Fleming Lecture in Transportation Geography I delivered at the 102th Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Chicago, 7–11 March 2006. I thank Jean-Paul Rodrigue for making arrangements for the lecture, and the Department of Geography at the University of Washington for providing support to me for this lecture. I am also grateful to the audience, to Bill Black (who served as the discussant of the session), and to three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. The views expressed in this article remain my responsibility.


Despite efforts to understand how social media platforms encourage student interaction, researchers have noted that there needs to be more research that focuses on using Telegram messenger as a means to encourage student motivation and interaction in academic writing. This study aimed to understand how Telegram groups, created for first-year students at ODeL universities, increase student motivation and interaction in the Academic Writing module. This type of research is qualitative. This study uses a qualitative interpretative approach. Data collection techniques using interviews and observation. The subjects of this study were 4 lecturers and 9 students. The data analysis technique used is descriptive qualitative analysis. The study found that lecturers considered Telegram a useful pedagogical tool to increase student motivation and interaction. Further findings reveal that Telegram motivates students to interact in groups and with modules. It is suggested that stakeholders reconsider their pedagogy and encourage using Telegram to assist students' learning of academic writing.


Objection To investigate the safety and treatment response of radioimmunotherapy (RIT) in combination with radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for the treatment of VX2 tumor on rabbit. Materials and Methods A total of 36 rabbits bearing VX2 tumor on the thigh were randomly assigned into 3 groups (group I: 1–2 cm; group II: 2–3 cm; group III: 3–4 cm) and 4 subgroups (A: as control, just puncture the tumor using the RFA electrode without power output; B: RFA alone; C: 131I-chTNT intratumoral injection alone; D: RFA+131I-chTNT intratumoral injection 3 days later). The variation of blood assay, weight and survival among different groups and subgroups were used to assess the treatment safety. Ultrasound (US) was used to monitor and assess the tumor response after treatment. Results According to the results of the weight and the blood assay among different groups, subgroups, and at two time points (one day before and the 16th day after treatment), no damages to the liver, kidney function and myelosuppression resulting from the treatment were found. No significant differences in survivals among the four subgroups (p = 0.087) were found. In addition, 131I-chTNT did not show significant inhibition effect on VX2 tumor progression according to US measurements. Conclusion 131I-chTNT intratumoral injection alone or in combination with RFA is relatively safe for rabbit without significant toxicity and shows no significant effect on the survival. The treatment response is not as satisfactory as anticipated.


We show that if $X$ is a Stein space and, if $\Omega\subset X$ is exhaustable
by a sequence $\Omega_{1}\subset\Omega_{2}\subset\ldots\subset\Omega_{n}\subset\dots$
of open Stein subsets of $X$, then $\Omega$ is Stein. This generalizes a well-known result
of Behnke and Stein which is obtained for $X=\mathbb{C}^{n}$ and solves the union problem,
one of the most classical questions in Complex Analytic Geometry. When $X$ has dimension
$2$, we prove that the same result follows if we assume only that
$\Omega\subset\subset X$ is a domain of holomorphy in a Stein normal space. It is known,
however, that if $X$ is an arbitrary complex space which is exhaustable by an increasing
sequence of open Stein subsets $X_{1}\subset X_{2}\subset\dots\subset X_{n}\subset\dots$,
it does not follow in general that $X$ is holomorphically-convex
or~holomorphically-separate (even if $X$ has no singularities). One can even obtain
$2$-dimensional complex manifolds on which all holomorphic functions are constant.


The authors consider the dynamic routing problem in a network comprised of internet protocol (IP) routers interconnected via optical wavelength division multiplexing links and optical cross-connects. Traditionally, routing in this context is carried out as two separate processes: path selection at the IP (logical) layer and routing and wavelength assignment at the optical (physical) layer to establish lightpaths that constitute the logical links in the IP layer. This separate handling of the routing processes in the two layers usually leads to inefficient exploitation of the network resources. The proposed augmented integrated routing algorithm (AIRA) scheme addresses this apparent in efficiency by implementing a dual-layer routing scheme that utilises information from both the IP and optical layers. The scheme also provides preferential treatment to high-priority connections. The path selection is done using a variant of the hop-constrained adaptive shortest-path scheme in the two layers. The performance evaluation study shows that AIRA outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of reduced blocking probability, better handling of non-uniform traffic, and shorter path length at both the IP and optical layers. The scheme also exhibits good robustness in handling dynamic changes and non-uniform traffic loading in the IP layer.


We compare the Hartee-Fock (HF), Talman-Shadwick (TS), exact Slater (S), Slater Xα, and local-density (LD) schemes, and investigate how well the associated one-electron potentials describe electronic excitations. We discuss in some detail the role of self-interaction in the different schemes, and demonstrate that the Xα and LD schemes effectively represent ionic (VN-1) potentials in the core region. In fact, for excited f electrons, the LDA is very similar to a relaxed HF average VN-1 potential with a 4d core hole. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the self-interaction shifts of core levels arise because of incomplete local cancellation between the orbital-specific Hartree self-interaction and the average, orbital-independent exchange hole. The atomic dipole polarizability is introduced via the LS-dependent HF scheme and, in numerical applications to 4d ionization of atomic Ba, we compare the effective HF 1P VN-1 one-electron potential with the ionic HFavVN-1 and the neutral-atom HF VN potentials. We also compare it with the RPAE, with and without inclusion of relaxation, and demonstrate the effects of external screening by adding and removing electrons (Ba1- - Ba2+). Finally we motivate in some detail our opinion that the self-interaction in the LDA may be considered as simulating relaxation owing to a systematic partial cancellation between self-interaction and relaxation effects for outer and intermediate shells.


CHEMISTRY, BIOCHEMISTRY Correction for "Development of a histone deacetylase 6 inhibitor and its biological effects," by Ju-Hee Lee, Yuanshan Yao, Adaickapillai Mahendran, Lang Ngo, Gisela Venta-Perez, Megan L. Choy, Ronald Breslow, and Paul A. Marks, which appeared in issue 39, September 29, 2015, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (112:12005–12010; first published September 14, 2015; 10.1073/ pnas.1515882112). The authors note that the title appeared incorrectly. The title should instead appear as "Creation of a histone deacetylase 6 inhibitor and its biological effects." The online version has been corrected.


Early tendon transplantations were confined to the foot following Nicoladoni's original operation in 1881. The knee offered the next logical site for experimentation and Goldthwait in 1897 reported on successful sartorius transplants to strengthen weak quadriceps muscles. Subsequently all the thigh muscles, individually or in combination, have been so employed.

In this end-result study we have evaluated thirty-eight patients in whom thirty-nine transplantations at the knee were done between 1922 and 1946 with an average followup of nine and two-tenths years. The subjective results were similar to those in other reports and were in general good, but on objective grounds the results were disappointing.

Knee-extension power following tendon transplantation was rated fair or better in only 30 per cent. of the cases. Seven of twelve patients using braces preoperatively were enabled to discard their braces. Even in these apparently successful cases the effect of the tendon transplantation and of other operative procedures could not be evaluated separately.

Comparison of the transplantation cases with control groups with similar patterns of muscle weakness leads us to draw certain important conclusions. The function of the extremity, as well as the ability to walk without apparatus, is dependent on a number of factors. There has been a tendency to assume that the most important factor is quadriceps or extensor power. Our study suggests that other factors are of equal importance. Good hip, posterior thigh, and calf musculature will permit excellent function, even when the quadriceps is paralyzed. On the contrary, the extremity with good quadriceps power and poor posterior musculature usually requires bracing. Good power in extension of the knee is less important in brace-free walking than is a stable foot and good posterior musculature. Tendon transplantation at the knee in some instances impairs function by the production of hyperextension deformities, dislocation of the patella, or lateral instability. Although a number of cases in this series have apparently been greatly benefited by muscle transplants, others must be rated as failure .

The indications for tendon transplantation to improve extensor power of the knee are not easy to formulate. It is our belief that in the past such operations have been done too frequently.

Poliomyelitis has been described as a subtractive disease, and ill-advised tendon transplantation at the knee in some instances is a subtractive operation.


To identify research areas in geosciences, such as behavior of multiphase fluid-solid systems on a variety of scales, chemical migration processes in geologic media, characterization of geologic systems, and modeling and simulation of geologic systems, needed for improved energy systems.


Anthropogenic activities could expose Fresco lagoon to microbial pollution. The objective of this study was to determine the level of pollution in Fresco lagoon related to fecal contaminations. Two hundred and seventy (270) samples including 216 water and 54 human stools samples from local residents were collected. Escherichia coli was isolated and identified according to classical bacteriology procedure. Strains were characterized by biotyping on API 20E gallery and phylogenetic typing by PCR triplex of Clermont. A set of 392 strains of E. coli was distributed into 18 biotypic profiles. Five biotypes were common to water and human. Classification of all biotypes revealed close relationship between water and human strains because of their repartition in the same groups. Phylogenetic groups A, B1, B2, and D were identified in all strains. Strains belonging to phylogenetic group A were most frequent in water (69.82%) and human stool (44.44%) followed by group B1 in water (24%) and human stool (40.7%). Strains of group B2 were scarce in water (4.4%) and humans (7.41%). The diversity of E. coli biotypes observed in this study revealed animal and human origins of contaminations. A close relationship was found between water and human strains, and the presence of commensal and extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli in all samples could represent a potential reservoir of extraintestinal infections for resident populations.


Three methods for strengthening public key cryptosystems in such a way that they become secure against adaptively chosen ciphertext attacks are presented. In an adaptively chosen ciphertext attack, an attacker can query the deciphering algorithm with any ciphertext except for the exact object ciphertext to be cryptanalyzed. The first strengthening method is based on the use of one-way hash functions, the second on the use of universal hash functions, and the third on the use of digital signature schemes. Each method is illustrated by an example of a public key cryptosystem based on the intractability of computing discrete logarithms in finite fields. Security of the three example cryptosystems is formally proved. Two other issues, namely, applications of the methods to public key cryptosystems based on other intractable problems and enhancement of information authentication capability to the cryptosystems, are also discussed. >


Rapid identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of bacteria are key interventions to curb the spread and emergence of antimicrobial resistance. The current gold standard identification and AST methods provide comprehensive diagnostic information but often take 3 to 5 days. Here, a compound Raman microscopy (CRM), which integrates Raman spectroscopy and stimulated Raman scattering microscopy in one system, is presented and demonstrated for rapid identification and AST of pathogens in urine. We generated an extensive bacterial Raman spectral dataset and applied deep learning to identify common clinical bacterial pathogens. In addition, we employed stimulated Raman scattering microscopy to quantify bacterial metabolic activity to determine their antimicrobial susceptibility. For proof-of-concept, we demonstrated an integrated assay to diagnose urinary tract infection pathogens, S. aureus and E. coli. Notably, the CRM system has the unique ability to provide Gram-staining classification and AST results within ~3 h directly from urine samples and shows great potential for clinical applications.


Modeling propagation dynamics on networks is an amazingly fertile and active area of research. Roughly speaking, network models aim at gaining a better understanding of how actors influence the overall network behaviour through their individual actions. However, considering the extended literature surrounding the subject, one is entitled to think that moving beyond the state-of-the-art in network modeling requires the ability to compare models, or consider slight variations of a model. This requires having a common language describing all considered models, allowing to objectively compare them and unfold their inherent properties and complexity. This also assumes users can easily run models, steer them and interactively evaluate their performance and behaviour. The approach we describe aims at providing a framework turning network propagation modeling into rule-based modeling (aka graph rewriting). That is, models are described as a set of algorithmic transformation rules acting locally. Our approach has partially been validated by providing such a description of a well-known model relying on probabilistic rules, where nodes trigger actions depending on their neighbor's influences. The results so obtained confirm rule-based modeling as a promising avenue. The use of a visual analytics framework to conduct such tasks is vital and motivated us to further develop and adapt a general purpose visual analytics system for graph rewriting to the particular case of network propagation.


SUMMARY We investigated the plausibility of aerosol transmission of H5N2 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus during the 2015 spring outbreaks that occurred in the U.S. midwest. Air samples were collected inside and outside of infected turkey and layer facilities. Samples were tested to assess HPAI virus concentration (RNA copies/m3 of air), virus viability, and virus distribution by particle size. HPAI virus RNA was detected inside and up to 1000 m from infected facilities. HPAI virus was isolated from air samples collected inside, immediately outside, up to 70 m from infected facilities, and in aerosol particles larger than 2.1 μm. Direct exposure to exhausted aerosols proved to be a significant source of environmental contamination. These findings demonstrate HPAI virus aerosolization from infected flocks, and that both the transport of infectious aerosolized particles and the deposition of particles on surfaces around infected premises represent a potential risk for the spread of HPAI.


Introduction: A high intensity zone (HIZ) in intervertebral disc (IVD) of lumbar spine is a high intensity signal located in the annulus fibrosus of T2-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. There is limited information on the prevalence of HIZ in lumbar spine in Nepalese population. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to identify the prevalence of HIZ according to the age and its correlation with degenerated disc, disc herniation & bulge and modic changes.
Methods: This was a prospective MR based study in 268 patients (1380 IVD) with LBP, Leg pain or numbness. The prevalence and correlation of HIZ , degenerated disc, disc herniation and bulge and modic change was evaluated in 5 age groups (<20, 20-39, 40-59, 60-79, >80).
Results: The prevalence of HIZ in patients with LBP was 30.5%. Total 1340 IVD were examined out of which122 had HIZ, 742 had degenerated disc, 688 had disc herniation and bulge and 182 had modic changes. Degenerated disc was observed in 95% (116/122) and 51.3% (626/1218) of disc with and without HIZ respectively. Disc herniation and bulge were observed in 98.3% (120/122) and 46.6% (568/1218) of the disc with and without HIZ, respectively. Modic changes were observed in 11.4% (14/122) and 13.7% (168/1218) of disc with and without HIZ respectively.
Conclusions: There was statistically significant correlation between existence of HIZ and degenerated discand disc herniation and bulge, but there was no correlation with the existence of modic changes.


The fact that customers participate in the specification and delivery of the services they seek represents an important potential point of potential leverage for services providers as the nature and intensity of customer participation is within their ability to manage. Important questions, however, need to be raised and resolved. Does increased customer participation result in higher perceptions of quality and satisfaction or in greater repurchase? Are relationships between participation and repurchase affected by the type of service being provided or the length of the prior relationship? This paper traces the antecedents of participation in the services marking literature, outlines point of distinction between participation and the related construct of involvement, and employs empirical evidence drawn from two professional service settings to address the research questions. Results confirm that participation is strongly associated with repurchase and referrals in some service settings, and a research agenda is proposed.


This study explored democratic citizenship (DC) for students by developing a DC framework (DCF) with eight components. We employed the DCF to examine what and how much DC was included in Korean science textbooks and lab books focused on the topic of energy for Grades K–12. We found different DC components were included at different grade levels and some components were not present at all. To help address the uneven distribution of these components, we developed four DC inclusive science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) books related to the topic of energy. These books were designed with the DCF to foster rich DC learning experiences in school science. We engaged 13 teachers as consultants in a validation process when developing the DC inclusive STEAM books. This study describes the development and implementation of the DCF for preparing supplemental science curriculum materials that can improve students' appreciation for DC.


A direct electrical heating method to determine the thermal conductivity of metals at high temperatures has been developed by using a particular geometry of the specimen such that the non-linearity due to radiation losses in the differential equation of heat flow can be eliminated. The geometrical form of a specimen is deduced theoretically such that direct electrical heating produces a uniform temperature gradient along its length. This optimum form can be approximated to a sector of a circle with radial flow of current. The differential equation of heat flow then does not have to be integrated and the thermal conductivity at any temperature can be calculated irrespective of the temperature variation of the resistivity and emissivity of the material. The method has been verified by determining the thermal conductivity of nickel at high temperatures.


Massive stars are important
for the evolution of the interstellar medium. The detailed study of their
properties (such as mass loss, rotation, magnetic fields) is enormously
facilitated by samples of these objects in young massive galactic star
clusters. Using 2MASS we have searched for so far unknown candidates of red
supergiant clusters along the Galactic Plane. Utilising deep high resolution
UKIDSS GPS and VISTA VVV data to study colour-magnitude diagrams, we uncover six new massive cluster candidates
in the inner Galaxy. If spectroscopically confirmed as real clusters, two of
them could be part of the Scutum-Complex. One cluster candidate has a number of
potential red supergiant members comparable to RSGC1 and 3. Our investigation
of UKIDSS data reveals for the first time the main sequence of the massive
cluster RSGC2. The stars of the sequence show an increased projected density at
the same position as the known red supergiants in the cluster and have E(J-K) = 1.6 mag. This either indicates an unusual
extinction law along the line of sight or a much lower near infrared extinction
to the cluster than previously estimated in the literature. We suggest that
psf-photometry in UKIDSS images might be able to uncover the main sequence of
other RSGC clusters.


The aim of this study is to compare the single-dose oral bioavailability of memantine hydrochloride 10 mg tablets of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, with NAMENDA™ tablets (containing memantine hydrochloride 10 mg) of Forest Pharmaceuticals Inc. in healthy, adult, human subjects under fasting condition. The study was carried out as 2-way crossover design on 8 subjects in fasting and fed conditions. The plasma samples were obtained over a 72 h post dose in each period. Plasma memantine samples were analyzed by liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) with positive ion electro spray ionization using multiple reactions monitoring (MRM). A sensitive, reproducible, accurate and validated LC-MS/MS method with limit of quantification (LOQ) 0.200 ng/mL was used to analyze memantine. Ln transformed AUC0-72 and Cmax were assessed for bioequivalence using 90% confidence interval (CI). 90% confidence intervals for the ratio of test and reference (Ratio of least-squares mean) for ln-transformed AUC0-72 and Cmax were within the regulatory acceptance criteria of 80-125%.


1UCL Eastman Dental Institute, University College London (UCL), Eastman Dental Institute, Microbial Diseases, Royal Free Campus, London NW3 2PF, UK; 2College of Veterinary Medicine, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China Abstract: A disintegrin and metalloprotease like decysin (ADAMDEC1) is a highly conserved secreted metalloprotease that belongs to a family of A disintegrin and metalloprotease (ADAMs). It is expressed exclusively in the gastrointestinal tract of animals and is known to possess a very rare zinc-binding motif (HEXXHXXGXXD) within the metalloprotease domain. The biological function of ADAMDEC1 as well as its true biological substrates remains unknown although its characteristic features reported to date suggest it plays a fundamental role in the physiology of mammals. Historically its expression, in healthy state, was believed to be limited to the monocyte-derived macrophages (MDMs) and dendritic cells within the gastrointestinal tract; however, the recent development of singlecell sequencing has provided evidence supporting its expression in a wider range of cell types. There is an increasing body of evidence linking the alterations in ADAMDEC1 expression and various inflammatory diseases and cancers. Although a detailed mechanistic role of ADAMDEC1 in these conditions remains elusive. In this review, we aim to summarise the characteristic features of this unique metalloprotease, discuss the associations with various human diseases and define the potential mechanistic role of ADAMDEC1 in mammalian physiology.


We consider an adaptive importance sampling approach to estimating the marginal likelihood, a quantity that is fundamental in Bayesian model comparison and Bayesian model averaging. This approach is motivated by the difficulty of obtaining an accurate estimate through existing algorithms that use Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) draws, where the draws are typically costly to obtain and highly correlated in high-dimensional settings. In contrast, we use the cross-entropy (CE) method, a versatile adaptive Monte Carlo algorithm originally developed for rare-event simulation. The main advantage of the importance sampling approach is that random samples can be obtained from some convenient density with little additional costs. As we are generating independent draws instead of correlated MCMC draws, the increase in simulation effort is much smaller should one wish to reduce the numerical standard error of the estimator. Moreover, the importance density derived via the CE method is grounded in information theory, and therefore, is in a well-defined sense optimal. We demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach by two empirical applications involving women's labor market participation and U.S. macroeconomic time series. In both applications, the proposed CE method compares favorably to existing estimators.


Aims. We checked a sample of 545 F stars within 50 pc for wide companions using existing near-infrared and optical sky surveys. Methods. Applying the common proper motion (CPM) criterion, we detected wide companion candidates with 6-120 arcsec angular separations by visual inspection of multi-epoch finder charts and by searching in proper motion catalogues. Final proper motions were measured by involving positional measurements from up to eleven surveys. Spectral types of red CPM companions were estimated from their absolute J-band magnitudes based on the H distances of the primaries. Results. In addition to about 100 known CPM objects, we found 19 new CPM companions and confirmed 31 previously known candidates. A few CPM objects are still considered as candidates according to their level of proper motion agreement. Among the new objects there are nine M0-M4, eight M5-M6, one ≈L3.5 dwarf (HD 3861B), and one white dwarf (WD) (HD 2726B), whereas we confirmed two K, 19 M0-M4, six M5-M6, two early-L dwarfs, and two DA WDs as CPM companions. In a few cases, previous spectral types were available that all agree well with our estimates. Two companions (HD 22879B and HD 49933B) are associated with moderately metal-poor Gaia benchmark stars. One doubtful CPM companion, spectroscopically classified as WD but found to be very bright (J = 11.1) by others, should either be a very nearby foreground WD or a different kind of object associated with HD 165670.


Understanding cell differentiation—the process of generation of distinct cell-types—plays a pivotal role in developmental and evolutionary biology. Transcriptomic information and epigenetic marks are useful to elucidate hierarchical developmental relationships among cell-types. Standard phylogenetic approaches such as maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and neighbor joining have previously been applied to ChIP-Seq histone modification data to infer cell-type trees, showing how diverse types of cells are related. In this study, we demonstrate the applicability and suitability of quartet-based phylogenetic tree estimation techniques for constructing cell-type trees. We propose two quartet-based pipelines for constructing cell phylogeny. Our methods were assessed for their validity in inferring hierarchical differentiation processes of various cell-types in H3K4me3, H3K27me3, H3K36me3, and H3K27ac histone mark data. We also propose a robust metric for evaluating cell-type trees.


This paper presents an effective and efficient event detection system for broadcast baseball videos. It integrates midlevel cues including scoreboard information and shot transition patterns into event classification rules. First, a simple scoreboard detection and recognition scheme is developed to extract the game status from videos. Then, a shot transition classifier is designed to obtain the shot transition patterns, which contains several novel schemes including adaptive playfield segmentation, pitch shot detection, field shot detection, as well as infield/outfield classification. The extracted midlevel cues are used to develop an event classifier based on a Bayesian Belief Network. The network is with low complexity because the number of these cues used is small, which not only improves the generalization performance of the event classifier but also reduces system complexity as well as training efforts. Using the inference results of the network, we further derive a set of classification rules to identify baseball events. The set of rules is stored in a look-up table such that the classification is only a simple table look-up operation. The proposed approach is very simple and computational efficient. More importantly, the simulation results indicate that it identifies ten significant baseball events with 95% of precision rate and 92% of recall rate, which is very promising.


A new way of performing reaction optimization within carbohydrate chemistry is presented. This is done by performing closed-loop optimization of regioselective benzoylation of unprotected glycosides using Bayesian optimization. Both 6-O-monobenzoylations and 3,6-O-dibenzoylations of three different monosaccharides are optimized. A novel transfer learning approach, where data from previous optimizations of different substrates is used to speed up the optimizations, has also been developed. The optimal conditions found by the Bayesian optimization algorithm provide new insight into substrate specificity, as the conditions found are significantly different. In most cases, the optimal conditions include Et3N and benzoic anhydride, a new reagent combination for these reactions, discovered by the algorithm, demonstrating the power of this concept to widen the chemical space. Further, the developed procedures include ambient conditions and short reaction times.


Abstract Over the last years resilience has become a key concept in understanding how rule-making choices are made in the context of risk prevention and disaster. This paper probes the relationship between constitutions and resilience in light of the way constitutions responded to the shock of the global financial crisis. What makes constitutions able to anticipate and resist external shocks, or bounce back after a disaster that affects core constitutional functions such as the balance of powers and the protection of fundamental rights? The ability of a constitution not only to withstand a severe shock, but also to enable the legal order whose ground rules it sets out to seek recovery within the constrains of these ground rules, lies at the heart of constitutional resilience. Analysing constitutional functions in terms of resilience could offer a new prism through which to look at national constitutions in an increasingly complex globalized environment. The recent crisis, through the interconnectedness of the multiple pressures it put on the legal orders it struck and the multiplicity of legal responses it demanded, allows exploring how resilience thinking can affect constitutional theory.


Designing truthful, revenue maximizing auctions is a core problem of auction design. Multi-item settings have long been elusive. Recent work (arXiv:1706.03459) introduces effective deep learning techniques to find such auctions for the prior-dependent setting, in which distributions about bidder preferences are known. One remaining problem is to obtain priors in a way that excludes the possibility of manipulating the resulting auctions. Using techniques from differential privacy for the construction of approximately truthful mechanisms, we modify the RegretNet approach to be applicable to the prior-free setting. In this more general setting, no distributional information is assumed, but we trade this property for worse performance. We present preliminary empirical results and qualitative analysis for this work in progress.


Introduction: Classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) is among the most common malignancies in adolescents and young adults. High-dose chemotherapy (HDCT) and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (ASCT) are standard for most patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) disease. Current salvage therapies are associated with excessive toxicity and variable complete remission rates (Harker-Murray et al, Pediatr Blood Cancer 2014). Novel regimens that increase remission rates and reduce late effects of therapy are needed, particularly for young patients. Nivolumab (nivo) is a fully human IgG4 anti-programmed death-1 monoclonal antibody. Brentuximab vedotin (BV) is a CD30-directed antibody-drug conjugate. In a phase 1/2 study of adults with R/R cHL, the combination of nivo + BV was well tolerated, with a high response rate as first salvage regimen (Herrera et al, Blood 2018). CheckMate 744 (AHOD1721; NCT02927769) is the first risk-stratified, response-adapted, phase 2 study of nivo + BV, followed by BV + bendamustine for suboptimal response, in children, adolescents, and young adults with R/R cHL with low or standard risk of relapse. Here we report preliminary, investigator (INV)-assessed results from the standard-risk (R2) cohort.
 Methods: This open-label study enrolled patients aged 5-30 years with pathologically confirmed cHL, excluding nodular lymphocyte-predominant HL, after failure/non-response to first-line therapy and without prior ASCT. Stratification to R2 was based on refractory disease or early relapse; B symptoms, extranodal disease, or extensive disease with radiation therapy (RT) contraindicated at relapse; relapse in a prior RT field; or stage IIIB or IV at initial diagnosis. Patients in R2 received induction (IND) with 4 cycles of nivo + BV. Patients without complete metabolic response (CMR; Deauville score 1-3) received intensification (INT) with 2-4 cycles of BV + bendamustine. Patients with CMR after IND or INT discontinued study treatment, proceeded to HDCT/ASCT, and entered follow-up. Tumors were assessed by INV and blinded independent central review (BICR) per Lugano 2014 criteria (Cheson et al, J Clin Oncol 2014) every 2 treatment cycles. Treatment decisions were based on BICR assessment. The primary endpoint was CMR rate by BICR prior to HDCT/ASCT. Secondary endpoints included INV-assessed response and safety.
 Results: At database lock (DBL), 32 patients in R2 had entered IND. Median age was 16 y (range 9-30), 78% were aged <18 y, and 72% were male. Fifteen patients (47%) had relapsed disease and 17 (53%) refractory; 14 (44%) had B symptoms or extranodal disease at relapse. At DBL, 25 patients (78%) had completed IND (4 cycles of nivo + BV); 7 ongoing. At the end of IND, INV-assessed responses were 16 (64%) CMR, 4 (16%) partial metabolic response, and 1 (4%) progressive metabolic disease; 4 (16%) were pending tumor assessment. Based on BICR assessment, 6 patients entered and completed INT; all achieved CMR after 2 cycles of BV + bendamustine. Overall, all evaluable patients achieved CMR by INV after completing IND or INT. At DBL, 18 patients had proceeded to HDCT/ASCT. During IND, 29 patients (91%) had ≥1 adverse event (AE) due to any cause; 7 (22%) grade 3-4. The most common AEs were nausea (53%), diarrhea (31%), and pyrexia (28%). Six patients (19%) had infusion-related reactions (IRRs); 1 (3%) grade 3-4. Four patients (13%) had drug-related serious AEs; 2 (6%) grade 3-4 (1 IRR and 1 activated partial thromboplastin time prolonged). Two patients (6%) had immune-mediated AEs, including 1 grade 3-4 IRR noted above; none had immune-related serious AEs. During INT, 3/6 patients (50%) had AEs; none grade 3-4; most common were nausea (33%) and vomiting (33%); 1 patient (3%) had grade 1 IRR. Overall, no AEs led to discontinuation and there were no deaths.
 Conclusion: For children, adolescents, and young adults with standard-risk R/R cHL prior to ASCT, this risk-stratified, response-adapted approach using nivo, BV, and bendamustine resulted in high CMR rates and was well tolerated, making it a promising novel salvage therapy. Most evaluated patients achieved CMR with IND (nivo + BV); all 6 who went to INT (BV + bendamustine) achieved CMR. Updated results based on a planned interim analysis including more patients and BICR-assessed response data will be presented.
 Study support: Sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb in collaboration with Children's Oncology Group (COG) and EuroNet group.

 Leger: Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Brugieres:Takeda: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Other: Financial support for SIOP meeting in 2016. Galderisi:Seattle Genetics: Employment, Equity Ownership. Sacchi:Bristol-Myers Squibb: Employment, Equity Ownership. Jou:Bristol-Myers Squibb: Employment, Other: company stock ownership.


The susceptibility of the Internet to random faults, malicious attacks, and mixtures of faults and attacks are analyzed. We analyze actual Internet data, as well as simulated data created with network models. The network models generalize previous research, and allow generation of graphs ranging from uniform to preferential, and from static to dynamic. We introduce new metrics for analyzing the connectivity and performance of networks which improve upon metrics used in earlier research. Previous research has shown that preferential networks like the Internet are more robust to random failures compared to uniform networks. We find that preferential networks, including the Internet, are more robust only when more than 95% of failures are random faults, and robustness is measured with average diameter. The advantage of preferential networks disappears with alternative metrics, and when a small fraction of faults are attacks. We also identify dynamic characteristics of the Internet which can be used to create improved network models. This model should allow more accurate analysis for the future Internet, for example facilitating the design of network protocols with optimal performance in the future, or predicting future attack and fault tolerance. We find that the Internet is becoming more preferential as it evolves. The average diameter has been stable or even decreasing as the number of nodes has been increasing. The Internet is becoming more robust to random failures over time, but has also become more vulnerable to attacks.


Two-dimensional simulation and charge control principles have been applied to reveal the factors which determine the minimum delay of an integrated injection logic (I/SUP 2/L) gate, and experimental verifications are carried out. Using a numerical analysis this paper shows that important factors in improving the speed of an I/SUP 2/L gate are reducing the amount of minority charge stored in the external base of the n-p-n transistor and use of a heavily doped emitter. It is, therefore, necessary that the concentration in the external base is increased as high as possible and that the diffusion depth is controlled with good accuracy. Improvement in speed by a factor of 2 is experimentally realized as the simulation predicts. The heavily doped external base improves upward current gain and reduces base resistance, achieving a high fan-out capability.


Anti-idiotype monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) were developed for a carbohydrate antigen, Sialyl Le(a), by immunizing mice with an anti-Sialyl Le(a) MoAb, KM231 (mouse IgG1). The anti-idiotype MoAbs inhibited the binding of KM231 to Sialyl Le(a)-positive mucin protein, but did not affect the binding of another MoAb (mouse IgG1) which recognized a peptide epitope on the same mucin protein. The selected four anti-idiotype MoAbs bound to all of the five anti-Sialyl Le(a) MoAbs examined, but not to other MoAbs developed against Sialyl Le(a)-related carbohydrate antigens such as Le(a), Le(x), and Sialyl Le(x) blood type A, B, H antigens. Immunization of rats with one of the anti-idiotype MoAbs, of which the reactivity was remarkably inhibited by Sialyl Le(a) oligosaccharide, resulted in the induction of antibody (Ab3) to purified Sialyl Le(a) glycolipid. Taken together, one of the anti-idiotype MoAbs developed in this study was the first Ab2 beta-type anti-idiotype MoAb which carried the internal image of Sialyl Le(a) antigen. The positive reaction of tumor cells expressing Sialyl Le(a) antigen with the Ab3 gave rise to the possibility that the anti-idiotype MoAb would become an effective tool for active immunotherapy in patients with Sialyl Le(a)-positive tumor.


A highly idealized notion of perfectly efficient securities markets has in recent decades justified firmly binding corporate governance to the needs of the secondary market for corporate shares. With prices assumed to reflect value perfectly through the rational behavior of traders, tying corporations and their management closely to markets was understood to bring corporate actors into alignment with value maximization. Modern corporate governance theory worked to bind corporations to this wellspring of efficiency by, among other things, requiring a company's shares to be fully liquid through listing, its assets to be easily transferable through takeovers, and its management to be lined up squarely with market forces (executive managers incentivized by share price).

Longstanding work in financial economics and clear historical evidence consistently show, however, that securities markets do not produce objectively grounded stock prices. Traders seek to buy low and sell high for any reason that makes this possible. While this activity may often be correlated with the fundamental value of a company's products, services or management, it is not determined by them. Equally so for investors that buy and hold an index of securities long term, macroeconomic trends are of primary import. Neither trading strategy can be said to be is determined by an "objective" value of an individual company's products, services or management.

US corporations and the US economy have paid dearly for locking corporate activity to the assumed cult of market efficiency. Corporations with long histories of creating valuable technology are liquidated for cash payouts, while market-inflating share repurchases prop up share price and balloon executive compensation. Executive directors maneuver like hedge funds with their personal shares and options, monitored by a board of independent directors who know little about the company.

Intermediated, relationship-oriented channels of finance, like venture capital investment and bank lending, have long achieved a more informed, articulated view of companies' productive activity, albeit with the risk of institutionally constricted vision. Today, more data, better connectivity, and systems capable of processing that data make it possible for such financing to be used without sacrificing breadth of information. Its use can free corporations from the arbitrary whirl of securities trading. An ecosystem of funds using ensemble machine learning could provide sufficient capital, liquidity and as much variety of opinion as the secondary market. This could replace belief in a fantastic market with factually determined price and free management to focus on guiding a productive enterprise.


Folate is essential for fetal development, and its deficiency during gestation causes behavioural deficits in the offspring. The present study investigated its influence during weaning on brain function in the pups of rats that were put on a folate-deficient (FD) diet on postnatal day (PND) 1. Systemic folate deficiency in pups on the FD diet (n 15) was evident from the dramatically lower hepatic folate concentrations (median 23·7, range 8·1–48·4 ng/mg protein) and higher homocysteine concentrations (median 27·7, range 14·7–45·5 pmol/mg protein), respectively, compared with those of pups on the normal diet (ND; n 9) (median 114·5, range 64·5–158·5 ng/mg protein and median 15·5, range 11·6–18·9 pmol/mg protein) on PND 23. Brain folate concentrations although low were similar in pups on the FD diet (median 10·5, range 5·5–24·5 ng/mg protein) and ND (median 11·1, range 7·1–24·2 ng/mg protein). There was a high accumulation of homocysteine in the brain of FD pups, mostly in the hippocampus (median 58·1, range 40·8–99·7 pmol/mg protein) and cerebellum (median 69·1, range 50·8–126·6 pmol/mg protein), indicating metabolic folate deficiency despite normal brain folate concentrations. Developmental deficits or autistic traits were more frequent in the FD group than in the ND group and repetitive self-grooming occurred, on average, three times (range 1–8) v. once (range 0–3) during 5 min, respectively. Long-term memory or spatial learning and set-shifting deficits affected 12 to 62 % of rats in the FD group compared with none in the ND group. Post-weaning folic acid supplementation did not correct these deficits. These observations indicate that folate deficiency during weaning affects postnatal development even when gestational folate supply is normal.


Simple models for size structured cell populations undergoing growth and division produce a class of functional ordinary differential equations, called pantograph equations, that describe the long time asymptotics of the cell number density. Pantograph equations arise in a number of applications outside this model and, as a result, have been studied heavily over the last five decades. In this paper we review and survey the role of the pantograph equation in the context of cell division. In addition, for a simple case we present a method of solution based on the Mellin transform and establish uniqueness directly from the transform equation.


After the implementation of the Coal Replacing Project (CRP) in the northern parts of China in 2017, its effect on PM2.5 composition is still unclear. In the study, water-soluble ionic components (WSICs) and stable sulfur isotope ratios (δ34S) of SO42− in PM2.5 collected during the domestic heating period before and after the implementation of CRP in Tianjin were analyzed. Results showed that the average concentrations of both PM2.5 and WSICs have dropped dramatically after the CRP, especially for the SO42− (by approximately 57–60%). After the CRP, the range of δ34Ssulfate was significantly narrowed to 4.1–7.5‰ in January 2018 and 1.4–6.1‰ in January 2019, which suggested that the sulfur source was becoming simple. It was interesting that the δ34Ssulfate value in the pollution period before the CRP was higher than that in the clean period, whereas it showed the opposite tendency after the CRP, which implied that the contribution of sea salt was high during the pollution period before the CRP. The MIXSIAR model calculated that the contributions of the transition-metal ion (TMI) oxidation and NO2 oxidation pathways in the three sampling stages were higher than those of the OH radical oxidation and H2O2/O3 oxidation pathways, indicating that the formation pathway of sulfate was mainly dominated by heterogeneous oxidation. Before the CRP, the NO2 oxidation pathway was the dominant sulfate oxidation pathway during a haze episode, and the TMI oxidation pathway dominated the formation of sulfates after the CRP.


There is an ever-growing interest to identify plants that boost the immune system functions. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the immunomodulatory effects of Momordica balsamina (MB) leaves extract in BCG-immunized rats. Thirty rats were randomly divided into five groups (n = 6). MB extract was suspended in 1% carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC).  Firstly, animals were challenged subcutaneously with 0.05 ml BCG. The first group (vehicle control group) received 1% CMC (100 mg/kg body weight; p.o.), and the second group (positive control group) was provided with levamisole (18 mg/kg body weight; p.o.). The remaining groups (test groups) were dosed orally with different doses of MB extracts (50, 100 and 200 mg/kg body weight) for 14 consecutive days. Blood samples were collected on day 0, 7 and 14, and then plasma samples were analyzed for Th1 cytokines (TNF-α and IFN-γ) and Th2 cytokines (IL-10 and TGF-β), using cytokine specific enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay (ELISA). MB extracts significantly increased (p ≤ 0.01) IFN-γ production in a dose- and time-dependent manner and elicited significant increase (P ≤ 0.05) of TNF-α level at the dose 200 mg/kg after 14 days. Low doses (50 and 100 mg/kg) significantly increased (p ≤ 0.05) TGF-β levels while a high dose (200 mg/kg) significantly (p ≤ 0.05) reduced TGF-β levels in a time-dependent manner. No significant changes were observed on IL-10 level after plant extract treatment. MB shows immunostimulatory effects and significantly activates cell-mediated immunity.

 Key words: Momordica balsamina, cell-mediated immunity, Th1 cytokine, Th2 cytokine.


During a targeted shorebird survey of wetlands along Sudan's Red Sea Coast in January 2010 we took the opportunity to gather limited baseline information on large raptors within an understudied region. One 430 km transect was completed while driving from Atbara to Port Sudan on 19 January. Thirty Egyptian Vultures Neophron percnopterus were recorded at a mean of 7 birds per 100 km over 6.15 hours, and eight unidentified large vultures were seen. From subsequent ad hoc records gathered during 20 additional vehicle hours covering 450 km of coastline, we identified populations of Lappet-faced Vulture Torgos tracheliotos and Hooded Vulture Necrosyrtes monachus and migrant Steppe Eagle Aquila nipalensis .


Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder, characterised by excessive daytime sleepiness with frequent uncontrollable sleep attacks. In addition to sleeprelated problems, changes in cognition have also been observed in patients with narcolepsy and have been linked to the loss of Orexin-A in a number of studies. Results from previous functional and structural neuroimaging studies would suggest that the loss of Orexin-A has numerous downstream effects in terms of both resting state glucose metabolism and perfusion and reduction in cortical grey matter. Specifically, studies investigating narcolepsy with positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) have observed aberrant perfusion and glucose metabolism in the hypothalamus and thalamus, as well as in prefrontal cortex. A very recent PET study in a large cohort of adolescents with type 1 narcolepsy further observed that the hypoand hypermetabolism in many of these cortico-frontal and subcortical brain regions also exhibited significant correlations with performance on a number of neurocognitive tests. These findings parallel those found in structural neuroimaging studies, where a reduction of cortical grey matter in frontotemporal areas has been observed. The Aim of this thesis was to investigate mechanisms and aetiology behind the symptoms in narcolepsy through the application of different neuroimaging techniques. I present in this thesis evidence supporting that the complaints about subjective memory deficits in narcolepsy are related to a misallocation of resources. I further describe how this has its seat in defective default mode network activation, possibly involving alterations to GABA and Glutamate signaling. In addition to this, I present our findings of a structural deviation in an area of the brainstem previously not described in the aetiology of narcolepsy. This finding may have implications for further understanding the aetiology of the disease and the specific neuronal populations involved. In addition to this, I show evidence from adipose tissue measurements in specific compartments, confirming that weight gain in narcolepsy is characterised by centrally located weight gain and may be specifically related to OX changes, but maybe not brown adipose tissue volume.


Groundwater is an alternative source to supply water to consumers. The groundwater
well is available at RECESS which is situated in UTHM campus containing low quality of
groundwater. This research was conducted to identify the effectiveness of the Nature Groundwater
Eco-Treatment (N-GET) system that has been designed at RECESS for daily usage. N-GET system is
a natural treatment process without mixing any substances intended to improve the quality of
groundwater can give benefits especially to users at RECESS. N-GET system uses four tanks in the
treatment of groundwater which are aeration tanks, sedimentation tanks, suction tanks and
distribution tanks. Seven parameters was tested which is pH, turbidity, dissolve oxygen (DO),
manganese, sulphate, chloride and nitrate with 15 numbers of sample. The water quality (pH value,
turbidity, dissolve oxygen (DO), manganese, sulphate, chloride and nitrate) was improved and this
system 100% effectively to treat the contaminant of groundwater. After the treatment by using this
system, the water was pass the water quality standard which produced by Ministry of Health
Malaysia (KKM). Thus, this system was implemented that the usage of water from various sources
with simple, easy, practical treatment and low cost of construction. Therefore, this system will trigger
idea of producing groundwater treatment by applying the natural concept as well as for the best
purpose and more environmental friendly in the future. Copyright © 2015 Penerbit Akademia Baru -
All rights reserved.


The latest advances in traffic measurement, analysis, and modeling play an important role in automatically building and maintaining a distributed intelligent monitoring layer that we describe as the awareness plane. The purpose of this article is to describe the components of this awareness plane in the areas of flexible network measurement, application and relationship discovery, and traffic classification, as well as data aggregation and semantically enriched infrastructure models. We present management services and scenarios, and list the research challenges on the path to integrating the components and making them interoperate for future autonomic service and network management approaches.


An acceleration model based on the Peck equation was applied to power performance of crystalline silicon cell modules as a function of time and of temperature and humidity, the two main environmental stress factors that promote potential-induced degradation. This model was derived from module power degradation data obtained semi-continuously and statistically by in-situ dark current-voltage measurements in an environmental chamber. The modeling enables prediction of degradation rates and times as functions of temperature and humidity. Power degradation could be modeled linearly as a function of time to the second power; additionally, we found that coulombs transferred from the active cell circuit to ground during the stress test is approximately linear with time. Therefore, the power loss could be linearized as a function of coulombs squared. With this result, we observed that when the module face was completely grounded with a condensed phase conductor, leakage current exceeded the anticipated corresponding degradation rate relative to the other tests performed in damp heat.


Electron microscopy has demonstrated the unusual L-shaped structure of the respiratory complex I consisting of two arms, which are arranged perpendicular to each other. We found that theEscherichia coli complex I has an additional stable conformation, with the two arms arranged side by side, resulting in a horseshoe-shaped structure. The structure of both conformations was determined by means of electron microscopy of gold thioglucose-stained single particles. They were distinguished from each other by titration of the complex with polyethylene glycol and by means of analytical ultracentrifugation. The transition between the two conformations is induced by the ionic strength of the buffer and is reversible. Only the horseshoe-shaped complex I exhibits enzyme activity in detergent solution, which is abolished by the addition of salt. Therefore, it is proposed that this structure is the native conformation of the complex in the membrane.


Salient object detection (SOD), which is used to identify the most distinctive object in a given scene, plays an important role in computer vision tasks. Most existing RGB-D SOD methods employ a CNN-based network as the backbone to extract features from RGB and depth images; however, the inherent locality of a CNN-based network limits the performance of CNN-based methods. To tackle this issue, we propose a novel Swin Transformer-based edge guidance network (SwinEGNet) for RGB-D SOD in which the Swin Transformer is employed as a powerful feature extractor to capture the global context. An edge-guided cross-modal interaction module is proposed to effectively enhance and fuse features. In particular, we employed the Swin Transformer as the backbone to extract features from RGB images and depth maps. Then, we introduced the edge extraction module (EEM) to extract edge features and the depth enhancement module (DEM) to enhance depth features. Additionally, a cross-modal interaction module (CIM) was used to integrate cross-modal features from global and local contexts. Finally, we employed a cascaded decoder to refine the prediction map in a coarse-to-fine manner. Extensive experiments demonstrated that our SwinEGNet achieved the best performance on the LFSD, NLPR, DES, and NJU2K datasets and achieved comparable performance on the STEREO dataset compared to 14 state-of-the-art methods. Our model achieved better performance compared to SwinNet, with 88.4% parameters and 77.2% FLOPs. Our code will be publicly available.


The corrosion behavior of X60 carbon steel in CO2‐saturated oilfield flooding water inoculated with sulfate‐reducing bacteria (SRB) was investigated using polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). With the propagation of SRB in the flooding water, the pH values of flooding water increased quickly in the initial 2 days and remained relatively steady during the later stage. Polarization curves showed that the corrosion current density decreased during the first 10 days due to the protection of corrosion products and SRB‐biofilms, and then increased possibly due to the partial detachment of the corrosion products and the biofilms. EIS analysis also showed that the charge transfer resistance increased initially and then decreased with exposure time. In the beginning of corrosion, the anodic dissolution of X60 steel was dominated by CO2. After the formation of SRB‐biofilms, part of FeCO3 corrosion products was converted to incompact FeS precipitates by SRB bio‐mineralization. Thus, the dispersed iron sulfide in SRB‐biofilms and X60 steel base may constitute a galvanic couple, accelerating the localized corrosion of the steel base in the flooding water.


Online newspaper reading is gradually becoming a habit among Nigerian university students. This paper therefore sets out to discover the nature of this habit. It seeks to find out the students' favourite online newspapers, how frequently the students read the papers as well as the problems they encounter while attempting to read the online papers. The methodology used in conducting the study is survey. The paper used random sampling technique to select 3600 students from the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. The analysed result showed that the Vanguard, Daily Trust, Punch, Daily Sun and The Nation are the top five favourite newspapers the students read online. The study also found 47.00% of the research respondents read the newspapers daily, while 13.76% do that four times a week; 12.23% read them thrice a week, while those who do so twice a week are 8.90%. Those who say they read weekly are a mere 1.88%. Among the reasons the respondents gave for reading their favourite newspapers online were currency, the need for them to be informed and the ease with which they access the online newspapers. The students also mentioned network problem and power failure as the major problems they face while attempting to read online newspapers. It is hoped that newspaper organizations take note of the findings of this study to make their online offerings more attractive.


The pannexins (Panx1, -2, and -3) are a mammalian family of putative single membrane channels discovered through homology to invertebrate gap junction-forming proteins, the innexins. Because connexin gap junction proteins are known regulators of neural stem and progenitor cell proliferation, migration, and specification, we asked whether pannexins, specifically Panx2, play a similar role in the postnatal hippocampus. We show that Panx2 protein is differentially expressed by multipotential progenitor cells and mature neurons. Both in vivo and in vitro, Type I and IIa stem-like neural progenitor cells express an S-palmitoylated Panx2 species localizing to Golgi and endoplasmic reticulum membranes. Protein expression is down-regulated during neurogenesis in neuronally committed Type IIb and III progenitor cells and immature neurons. Panx2 is re-expressed by neurons following maturation. Protein expressed by mature neurons is not palmitoylated and localizes to the plasma membrane. To assess the impact of Panx2 on neuronal differentiation, we used short hairpin RNA to suppress Panx2 expression in Neuro2a cells. Knockdown significantly accelerated the rate of neuronal differentiation. Neuritic extension and the expression of antigenic markers of mature neurons occurred earlier in stable lines expressing Panx2 short hairpin RNA than in controls. Together, these findings describe an endogenous post-translational regulation of Panx2, specific to early neural progenitor cells, and demonstrate that this expression plays a role in modulating the timing of their commitment to a neuronal lineage.


The electronic structures and bonding patterns for a new class of radical cations, [HnE-H-H-EHn]+ (EHn=element hydride, E=element of Groups 15-18), have been investigated by applying quantum-chemical methods. All structures investigated give rise to symmetric potential energy minimum structures. We envisage clear periodic trends. The H--H bond length is shorter for elements toward the bottom of the periodic table of elements, and a short H--H bond corresponds to accumulation of electron density in the central H--H region. All [HnE-H-H-EHn]+ of Groups 15-17 are thermodynamically unstable towards loss of either H2 or H. The barriers for these dissociations are rather low. The Group 18 congeners, except E=Xe, appear to be global minima of the respective potential energy surfaces. The findings are discussed in terms of H2 bond activation, and a general mechanistic scheme for the standard reduction process 2H+ + 2e(-) --> H2 is given. Finally, it is proposed that some of the symmetric radical cations are likely to be observed in mass spectrometric or matrix isolation experiments.


A comparative study of egg morphology of Schistosoma mansoni carried out between 9 parasite populations from Guadeloupean foci demonstrates the existence of an intraspecific polymorphism. Three types of lateral spined eggs have been described and their relative proportions observed between populations are related to the participation of a wild host-reservoir (Rattus rattus) in the life cycle of the parasite. Eggs of schistosomes originating from urbanized foci where man plays the main role in the transmission are less polymorphic than those from sylvatic or mangrove foci where rats are involved in the parasite transmission dynamics. In some populations of murine schistosomes, the existence of eggs with an identical shape to those of experimental hybrids between S. mansoni and S. rodhaini suggests the presence of "S. rodhaini-like" parasites in certain foci of schistosomiasis from Guadeloupe.


Our input is a directed, rooted graph $G = (V \cup \{r\},E)$ where each vertex in $V$ has a partial order preference over its incoming edges. The preferences of a vertex extend naturally to preferences over arborescences rooted at $r$. We seek a popular arborescence in $G$, i.e., one for which there is no"more popular"arborescence. Popular arborescences have applications in liquid democracy or collective decision making; however, they need not exist in every input instance. The popular arborescence problem is to decide if a given input instance admits a popular arborescence or not. We show a polynomial-time algorithm for this problem, whose computational complexity was not known previously. Our algorithm is combinatorial, and can be regarded as a primal-dual algorithm. It searches for an arborescence along with its dual certificate, a chain of subsets of $E$, witnessing its popularity. In fact, our algorithm solves the more general popular common base problem in the intersection of two matroids, where one matroid is the partition matroid defined by any partition $E = \bigcup_{v\in V} \delta(v)$ and the other is an arbitrary matroid on $E$ of rank $|V|$, with each $v \in V$ having a partial order over elements in $\delta(v)$. We extend our algorithm to the case with forced or forbidden edges. We also study the related popular colorful forest (or more generally, the popular common independent set) problem where edges are partitioned into color classes, and the task is to find a colorful forest that is popular within the set of all colorful forests. For the case with weak rankings, we formulate the popular colorful forest polytope, and thus show that a minimum-cost popular colorful forest can be computed efficiently. By contrast, we prove that it is NP-hard to compute a minimum-cost popular arborescence, even when rankings are strict.


The flow in shrouded stator cavities can be quite complex with axial, radial, and circumferential variations. As the leakage flow recirculates and is re-injected into the main flow path upstream of the stator, it deteriorates the near-hub flow field and, thus, degrades the overall aerodynamic performance of the compressor. In addition, the windage heating in the cavity can raise thermal-mechanical concerns. Fully understanding the details of the shrouded-hub cavity flow in a multi-stage environment can enable better hub cavity designs. Since the majority of the open literature presents limited details about the structure of compressor cavity flows in the stator wells and how the cavity wells affect the leakage flow, there is a lack of wholistic knowledge of how these flow parameters are interdependent. To shed light on this topic, a coupled CFD model with inclusion of the stator cavity wells for the Purdue 3-Stage (P3S) Axial Compressor Research Facility using the PAX100 configuration was developed and validated against experimental data. Such a model not only quantifies the impact of cavity leakage flow on compressor performance, but it also provides the capability to investigate the flow structure details including the path of the fluid into and out of the cavity. With the model in place, in this part 1 paper, the influence of the hub leakage flow on compressor performance and its interactions with the primary flow were investigated by varying the clearance ratio of a single stator. The understanding of the primary-hub-leakage flow interactions can offer insights leading to better designs of hub cavities.


Two different approaches, with an unsaturated carbohydrate as a radical acceptor and a carbohydrate derived aldehyde as a radical precursor, led to key intermediates in the synthesis of 3-deoxy-D-oct-2-ulosonic acids (KDO). Manganese(III) acetate and cerium(IV) ammonium nitrate were the reagents of choice for the oxidative generation of radicals, whereas samarium(II) iodide was employed for reductive couplings. Both strategies were realized by using easily available starting materials, with acetic acid as C 2 and ethyl acrylate as C 3 building blocks, respectively.


To the Editor. — In a recent QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS column, a physician from California inquired about the cause for recurrent abdominal pain in a 10-month-old infant (237:2535, 1977). In his reply, the consultant, Edwin Sumpter, MD, did not mention intussusception as a possible cause for the patient's symptoms. The intermittent character of the abdominal pain is very suggestive for this diagnosis. Interestingly, the editorial comment states that the "normal" barium enema seems to have had a curative effect. Perhaps the fluoroscopist inadvertently reduced an ileocolic intussusception during the course of the barium enema examination. The barium enema treatment of intussusception is well established, 1 and the successful reduction of an ileocolic type is indicated by reflux of barium into the terminal ileum. 2 Based on the information provided by the questioner, it would be wise to repeat the barium enema examination if the infant has recurrence of his symptoms.