Introduction Trans-catheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is now an established treatment option for patients with severe symptomatic aortic stenosis who are at high or inoperable risk for surgical aortic valve replacement. Most of the established data are from studies of patients meeting strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. We present the complete experience from our centre including 1, 3 and 5 year outcomes and identify adverse prognostic factors. Method A retrospective analysis of consecutive TAVI procedures within our centre was performed from 2008 to 2014 utilising the National Institute of Cardiovascular Outcomes (NICOR) database. Patient and procedural data were obtained with corroboration of outcome using the Northern Ireland Electronic Care Record (NIECR) system. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 21. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were drawn to assess survival at 30 days, 1, 3 and 5 years. For predictors of outcome Cox regression was performed with a univariate analysis to determine significance (p < 0.05) and subsequent multivariate modelling. Results From February 2008 to December 2014, 414 TAVI procedures were performed. Outcome data was available for 408 patients. The Medtronic Corevalve prosthesis was predominantly implanted (63.2%) with the majority of procedures performed under local anaesthesia (91.0%) via the femoral approach (90.7%). Significant (moderate or greater) aortic regurgitation (AR) assessed by trans-thoracic echocardiography occurred in 4.4%, with 13.2% of patients requiring permanent pacemaker implantation. Survival was 96.1% at 30 days, 85.5% at 1 year, 72.7% at 3 years and 49.2% at 5 years with no significant difference according to year of implantation (Figure 1). Univariate predictors of 1 year mortality were Logistic Euroscore (LES) >24 (HR 2.1; 95% CI 1.1–3.8, p = 0.02), moderate or greater AR (HR 4.5; 95% CI 2.0–10.1, p < 0.001) and creatinine > 150 ummol/L (HR 4.0; 95% CI 2.3–6.9, p < 0.001). Multivariate analysis confirmed AR and creatinine as independent predictors of 1 year mortality. Univariate predictors of 3 year mortality were LES >24, creatinine >150, atrial fibrillation, left ventricular dysfunction and AR. Multivariate analysis confirmed creatinine as the only independent predictor of 3 year mortality (HR 2.9; 95% CI 1.7–5.0, p < 0.001. Conclusion This all-comers TAVI experience demonstrates encouraging results that are consistent with published data. Baseline renal function was the most powerful predictor of 1 and 3 year mortality with paravalvular regurgitation proving the most significant procedural marker of adverse outcome.Abstract 59 Figure 1 3 Year Kaplan Meier Survival Curve according to implantation year


Regions on chromosomes 7 and 19 were recently reported to contain susceptibility loci that regulate tumor aggressiveness of prostate cancer. To confirm these findings, we analyzed genome scan data from 161 pedigrees affected with prostate cancer. Using the Gleason score as a quantitative measure of tumor aggressiveness, we regressed the squared trait difference, as well as the mean-corrected cross product, on the estimated proportion of alleles shared identical-by-descent at each marker position. Our results confirm the previous linkage results for chromosome 19q (D19S902, P<.00001). In addition, we report suggestive evidence for linkage on chromosome 4 (D4S403, P=.00012). The results of previous findings, together with our results, provide strong evidence that chromosome 19 harbors a gene for tumor aggressiveness.


Two types of duplex stainless steels were deformed by torsion at a temperature range of 900 to 1200 °C and strain rate of 1.0 s-1 and their final microstructures were observed. The austenite volume fraction of steel A (26.5Cr - 4.9Ni - 1.6Mo) is approximately 25% at room temperature, after conventional annealing, while that of steel B (24Cr - 7.5Ni - 2.3Mo) is around 55%. Experimental data show that steel A is ductile at high temperatures and displays low ductility at low temperatures, while steel B has low ductility in the entire range of temperatures studied. At high temperatures, steel A is essentially ferritic and shows dynamic recrystallized grains after deformation. When steel A is strained at low temperatures and displays low austenite volume fraction, microstructural observations indicate that failure is triggered by grain boundary sliding due to the formation of an austenite net structure at the ferrite grain boundaries. At intermediate volume fraction, when austenite forms a dispersed second-phase in steels A and B, failure begins at the ferrite/ferrite boundaries since some of the new ferrite grains may become immobilized by the austenite particles. When steel B is strained at volume fraction of around 50% of austenite and both phases percolate the microstructure, failure occurs after low straining as a consequence of the different plastic behaviors of each of the phases. The failure characteristics of both steels are correlated not only with the volume fraction of austenite but also with its distribution within the ferrite matrix, which limits attainable strain without failure.


This article presents the results of research on the effect of micronizing techniques on chicken rations isa brown leghorn on the quality of egg contents. Isa Brown eggs are one type of egg that can meet the nutritional needs of people in Indonesia. This study used a completely randomized design (CRD) using 3 treatments. and 6 replications. The analysis used one factor ANOVA test (One Way ANOVA) with SPSS 16.0. Followed by Duncan Multiple Range Test (DMRT) with a level of 5%. Based on the results of the study showed that the yellow corn micronizing technique had a significant effect on egg quality in (1) ration consumption of; (2) Hen day production (HDP); (3) Index albumen; (4) Yolk index; (5) Haugh index, with sig. (P<0.05). While the yellow corn micronizing technique had a significant effect on egg yolk color and eggshell color (P>0.05). The effect of the yellow corn micronizing technique on brown leghorn isa chicken rations on the quality of egg contents showed an increase in quality in the treatment of fine grain yellow corn rations.


The present study reviews organizational, legal, and case study examples to examine organizational decision making in cases of child maltreatment. Three questions are posed. What were the stated and unintended results of the Child Protective Services Reform Act of 1996 on the functioning of the Child Protection System in New York? Second, are there outside pockets of influence such as political, organizational, social, community, or religious pressures that affect the functioning of the Child Protection System (CPS) in New York? Third, what will be the consequences, both short term and long range, for the citizens, children, and families who come in contact with the system of Child Protection? Given an increase in severe child maltreatment cases an understanding of the organizational and legal decision-making process is critical.


In this article, the rheokinetics of polyurethane formation and the influence of shear rate on its kinetics have been studied. Two different linear polyurethane systems with 0% and 100% hard segments are examined in a cone and plate rheometer. The isothermal increase of viscosity during polyurethane formation has been measured at different shear rates and different temperatures and is modeled with an exponential function. The molecular weight vs. time curves and the reaction kinetic constants have been obtained for various shear rates and temperatures using gel permeation chromatography (GPC). It was concluded that kinetics of polyurethane formation is enhanced as the shear rate is increased. Phase separation is found to be responsible for irregularities in the viscosity build up due to formation of polyurethane with hard segments at high conversions. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 45:279 –287, 2005. © 2005 Society of Plastics Engineers


Logic simulation techniques that reduce both preprocessing time and execution time of unit delay logic simulation are described. Compiled code implementation techniques using a threaded code organization are applied to the event-driven logic simulation algorithm. Simulation speed is increased by a factor of tip to 10 by this technique compared to conventional event-driven simulation. The technique is then extended to hierarchical simulation, in which a fan-out procedure and simulation procedure are generated for each unique module. Hierarchical simulation reduces preprocessing time and allows the recompilation of only those modules that are modified. The simulator uses a portable machine model in which an architecture file describes the target machine. The simulator can be quickly ported to new machines by defining the architecture, while still obtaining high performance. >


Low impact development (LID) has been characterised as a radical approach to housing, livelihoods and everyday living which began in Britain in the 1990s as a grassroots response to the overlapping crises of sustainability (Halfacree, 2006; Maxey, 2009). It employs approaches that dramatically reduce humans' impact upon the environment, demonstrating that human settlements and livelihoods, when done appropriately, can enhance, rather than diminish ecological diversity. However, LID is not solely concerned with the environment. It is also a direct response to social needs for housing, an anti-capitalist strategy forging alternative economic possibilities, and a holistic approach to living that pays attention to the personal as well as the political needs (Douthwaite, 1996). Thus, LIDs are a good vehicle through which to explore radical and innovative forms of sustainability and to critically assess their potential as a response to environmentally damaging ways of living. Rather than seeing LIDs as a rural back-to-the-land phenomena (Halfacree, 2007b; Jacob, 2006), this chapter argues that the movement is 'engaged in social transformation through everyday-lived practice' (Woods, 2008, p. 132).


This paper explores how a balanced scorecard (BSC) has been successfully implemented and institutionalised in a leading telecommunications company in Sri Lanka (Telinotec) through improvements over two phases (pre 2012 and post 2012). It adopts a qualitative methodology and case study approach and is founded upon the theoretical underpinnings of institutional theory, more specifically the institutionalisation model of Tolbert and Zucker (1996). The findings suggest that while the BSC was implemented in 2000, improvements via linking it to individual performance and the corporate strategy were done after 2012. This paper contributes to literature by illuminating how the BSC was initiated (habitualisation), translated into practice (objectification) and institutionalised (sedimentation) in a firm and offers insights to practitioners on making management accounting tools successful by continuously modifying to match managers' expectations and the context of the firm.


Due to current investments in healthcare in Ontario, there are many reasons to measure change in primary care. Historic change measurement methods, as well as present change measurement methods, require a large investment in human resources and time. Change measurement can be defined as components of independent and dependent change. A three table data schema demonstrates a simple data collection technique that could be incorporated into Electronic Medical Record systems. By following a sample execution of the new data collection technique, we can practically analyze change in primary care. Future research in improved data collection techniques and analysis, as well as improved standards from the government that addresses the need for a business intelligence paradigm, will help further refine and explore the concept of change measurement.


Various electrolyte imbalances have been documented in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients who progress to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 infection. Patients with co-morbidities like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, ischemic heart disease, chronic kidney disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are more vulnerable to developing complications in the form of electrolyte disturbance. We report a case of acute severe hyponatremia in a middle-aged man who was admitted to the hospital with viral pneumonia due to a coronavirus-2 infection. A dramatic drop of plasma sodium was preceded by gastrointestinal symptoms and followed by encephalopathy. On clinical assessment his plasma sodium was found to be critically low, i.e. 105 mmol/L. His chest x-ray showed minimal pleural effusion. The patient was managed in the ICU and his serum sodium was normalized gradually with partial but rapid correction of this severe hyponatremia with hypertonic sodium chloride and followed by fluid restriction.


Background: The purpose of this study was to assess learning outcomes and student satisfaction after participating in a large-scale interprofessional (IPL) blended learning course.Methods and findings: In this cross-sectional study, students from health, social care, and teacher education programs completed two questionnaires. The majority were satisfied with the blended learning approach. The IPL group discussions resulted in learning outcomes that were two times higher than those from traditional instruction, including lectures and assignments. Health and social care students reported lower learning outcomes and satisfaction than teacher education and child welfare students (p < 0.05).Conclusions: The study demonstrated the feasibility of the blended learningapproach. However, IPL activities that are explicitly inclusive for all studentsshould be created for future courses.


The traditional method to extract target contour from aerial target image is changing the aerial image into a gray level image with multiple thresholds or binary image with single threshold. From the edge of target, contour can be extracted according to the changed value. The traditional method is useful only when contrast between target and background is in the proper degree. Snakes are curves defined within an image domain that can move under the influence of internal force coming from within the curve itself and external forces are defined so that the snake will conform to an object boundary or other desired features within an image. Snakes have been proved an effective method and widely used in image processing and computer vision. Snakes synthesize parametric curves within an image domain and allow them to move toward desired edges. Particular advantages of the GVF(Gradient Vector Flow) snakes over a traditional snakes are its insensitivity to initialization and its ability to move into boundary concavities. Its initializations can be inside, outside, or across the object's boundary. The GVF snake does not need prior knowledge about whether to shrink or expand toward the boundary. This increased capture range is achieved through a diffusion process that does not blur the edges of themselves. Affected by the light from different incident angle, the brightness of aerial target surface changed greatly in a complicate mode. So the GVF snakes is not fast, accurate and effective all the time for this kind of images. A new contour extracting method, GVF Snakes Combined with wavelet multi-resolution Analysis is proposed in this paper. In this algorithm, bubble wavelet is used iteratively to do the multi resolution analysis in the order of degressive scale before GVF Snakes is used every time to extract accurate contour of target. After accurate contour is extracted, polygon approximation is used to extract characteristics to realize the recognition of aerial target. The process is in the following: Step 1: use bubble wavelet filter to cut big part of the noises, weakening false edges. Step 2: initialize active contour and control the contour's move according to GVF to get a new contour. Step 3: decrease the scale of filter, and use the new contour as the initial contour and control the contour's move to get new contour again. Step 4: repeat step 3 till the set scale is reached. The last new contour is the final contour. Step 5: find the center determine an axis by calculate distance between every point on the final contour to the center. Step 6: adjust the distance threshold and combine the points until the contour is changed into a polygon with fixed angle number which is best fit the target recognition demand. Step 7: use the polygon to match the target plate to recognize target. Applied the new algorithm to aerial target images of a helicopter and a F22 battleplan, the contour extraction and polygon approximation results show that targets can be matched and recognized successfully. This paper mainly focuses on contour extraction and polygon approximation in the recognition area.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
In autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, cysts derived from tubules are detected at birth by ultrasound (threshold for detection >7.0 mm); thus, fetal cyst growth rates must exceed 2300%/yr. In adults, the combined renal cyst component enlarges at approximately 12%/yr by growth of individual cysts. To explore this discrepancy, the growth rates of individual cysts were determined in adult polycystic kidneys.

DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS
Diameter, volume, and growth rates of individual cysts were measured by magnetic resonance in 30 individual cysts in three adult patients over a span of 3 years. Results were confirmed in 22 cysts measured in five patients by computed tomography over a span of 11 years.

RESULTS
Mean cyst diameters were 20.4 +/- 9.9 mm (range 7.1 to 40.5 mm) at baseline and 25.8 +/- 15.6 mm (range 7.8 to 49.6 mm) after 3 years. Mean cyst volumes, determined by manual segmentation and summation of magnetic resonance cross sections, were 8.7 +/- 12.9 cm(3) (0.3 to 43.3 cm(3)) and 24.2 +/- 66.3 cm(3) (0.3 to 364.8 cm(3)) after 3 years. Mean cyst growth rates ranged from 6.9 to 23.9%/yr; the maximum growth rate was 71.1%/yr, far less than required to develop a 7-mm diameter cyst in utero. Results were similar in 22 cysts examined by computed tomography.

CONCLUSIONS
It was concluded that renal cysts detected by ultrasound in newborns must have grown at exuberant rates in utero; thereafter, expansion appears to proceed at much slower rates.


Visual tracking is a complex problem due to unconstrained appearance variations and a dynamic environment. The extraction of complementary information from the object environment via multiple features and adaption to the target's appearance variations are the key problems of this paper. To this end, we propose a robust object tracking framework based on the unified graph fusion (UGF) of multicue to adapt to the object's appearance. The proposed cross-diffusion of sparse and dense features not only suppresses the individual feature deficiencies but also extracts the complementary information from multicue. This iterative process builds robust unified features which are invariant to object deformations, fast motion, and occlusion. Robustness of the unified feature also enables the random forest classifier to precisely distinguish the foreground from the background, adding resilience to background clutter. In addition, we present a novel kernel-based adaptation strategy using outlier detection and a transductive reliability metric. The adaptation strategy updates the appearance model to accommodate variations in scale, illumination, and rotation. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses on benchmark video sequences from OTB-50, OTB-100, VOT2017/18, and UAV123 show that the proposed UGF tracker performs favorably against 18 other state-of-the-art trackers under various object tracking challenges.


Direct reaction between [Cr(CO)6] and arenes with ionic substituents affords the corresponding arene-chromium tricarbonyl complexes, [Cr(CO)3(arene)], in only modest yield. In contrast, these complexes can be prepared in pure form in excellent yield from the reaction of [Cr(CO)3(η6-C6H5CH2Br)] with, for example, N-methylimidazole. The structures of [Cr(CO)3(η6-C6H5CH2MIM)]Br (MIM = 3-methylimidazolium), [Cr(CO)3(η6-C6H5CH2MMIM)]Br (MMIM = 2,3-dimethylimidazolium), and [Cr(CO)3(η6-C6H5CH2NMe2(CH3)2OH)]Br have been established by X-ray diffraction analysis. Subsequent exchange of the bromide anion for Tf2N- affords new organometallic salts with melting points below 70 degrees C. Reaction of the bromide salts include tosylation of [Cr(CO)3(η6-C6H5CH2NMe2(CH3)2OH)]Br to afford [Cr(CO)3(η6-C6H5CH2NMe2(CH2)2OTs)]Br and the formation of the heterometallic carbene complex [Ru(η6-p-cymene)Cl2{C4H5N2CH2Ph-η6-Cr(CO)3}]. Both compounds were characterized in the solid state by X-ray diffraction.


Jennifer Kent's horror film The Babadook shines a spotlight on maternal ambivalence, which is easily read as horrifying in a culture that demands mothers feel or express nothing but love for their children. However, Kent asks her audience to look beyond maternal ambivalence as a representation of bad, mad, or monstrous mothering and instead as an act of resistance to one of the most intimate forms of female oppression—motherhood. Read this way, The Babadook challenges what Adrienne Rich named the "institution of motherhood." I argue that The Babadook moves beyond the institution of motherhood and into the realm of the emotional and psychological ramifications the institution engenders. I engage Barbara Almond's The Monster Within: The Hidden Side of Motherhood to help convey the experiences of what she refers to as "the dark side of motherhood." It is in this dark space that Amelia, the film's protagonist, finds herself. Like so many mothers, Amelia has no outlet to honestly express what and how she feels about motherhood and about her child. As a result, she denies and represses her feelings. But monsters are not often born from the expression of feelings but from their repression, and the more her feelings are denied the stronger the monster—the Babadook—grows. Ultimately, The Babadook challenges the many cultural and emotional restrictions placed upon mothers. More so, it asks those of us who are mothers to consider loving and maybe even nurturing the monster within.


Leisure items (e.g., games, toys) are commonly made available as controls during attention conditions of functional analyses (Ringdahl, Winborn, Andelman, & Kitsukawa, 2002). However, Ringdahl et al. raised questions about this practice. This paper reviews research that supports and conflicts with the inclusion of leisure items as controls, including a quantitative analysis of relevant articles published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis over a 10-year period. Data reviewed suggest that practitioners may consider omitting leisure items as controls or including such items strategically based on the accumulation of assessment information.


The new design incorporates the negative ion source and the mass analyzer, both constructed from cylindrical electrodes. The ion source is formed by three gridded cylindrical electrodes: a pulsed grid, the intermediate grid and the final accelerating grid. During a first time lapse, the electrons penetrate through the pulsed grid into the retarding field between this grid and the intermediate grid. The electrons are turning at some depth inside this intergrid space, where the attachment to neutral molecules most probably occurs. Next, the pulsed grid becoming strongly negative and ions are extracted towards the final acceleration grid. The ions from the cylindrical surface where they were created concentrate on the common axis of the electrodes (lateral focusing). The source lateral and time focus are coincident. A cylindrical electrostatic mirror is fitted to the source. The design, with a single stage, ensures also lateral focusing of the ions diverging from the common axis of the electrodes. The mirror electric and geometric parameters were selected to ensure both lateral and time focusing on the final detector with subsequent high luminosity. The basic parameters of the specific negative ion source time-of-flight mass analyzer design proposed here, are ion source final acceleration, intermediate, pulsed cylindrical grid radii 10, 20 and 30 mm, respectively, electrostatic mirror earthed grid and ion turning points surface radii 0.6 and 0.8 m, respectively. Ion packet smearing by the ion energy spread (resulting from the initial electron energy spread as electrons are turning at different depths inside the ionization region, from the moment when ions were created, being accelerated towards the pulsed grid during ionization) and by the turnaround time inside the cylindrical field was accounted for. Maintaining very high sensitivity, a resolution of the order of 100 is expected.


The lipid specificity for the enzymatic and proton-translocating functions of a reconstituted thermophilic ATPase complex has been investigated. The proteoliposomes were prepared from the ATPase complex of the thermophilic cyanobacterium Synechococcus 6716 and various lipids and lipid mixtures extracted from this organism and from a related mesophilic strain. Some commercial lipids were used as well. An improved method of lipid extraction from chlorophyll-containing membranes is presented. This method is based on acetone extraction and additional chlorophyll separation and results in higher yields, less chlorophyll contamination and a simpler procedure than the conventional methods based on chloroform/methanol extraction. The lipids of Synechococcus 6716 thus extracted were fractionated by thin-layer chromatography. The fatty acyl chain composition of the separated lipids was analyzed by gas chromatography. The coupling quality of the reconstituted ATPase proteoliposomes made of different lipids was tested by a membrane-bound fluorescent probe and uncoupler stimulation of ATP hydrolysis. None of the separated lipids alone was able to produce a well-coupled system. The best results were obtained with the native lipid mixture. The minimum requirement was the combination of a typical bilayer-forming lipid and the non-bilayer (hexagonal II structure)-forming monogalactosyldiacylglycerol. Lipids from the mesophilic Synechococcus 6301 and commercial lipids (also mesophilic) produced poorly coupled vesicles but significant improvement was obtained when thermophilic monogalactosyldiacylglycerol was included. Both the reconstituted and solubilized ATPase complex have a sharp temperature optimum at 50 degrees C. The effect of reconstitution and measurement temperatures on the yield of well-coupled vesicles from different lipid sources was also studied.


Ballistocardiography was recorded in 3-D on a free floating astronaut in space as well as on healthy volunteers participating to the ESA 55th and DLR 19th parabolic flights campaigns. In this paper we demonstrate further the usefulness of recording and analyzing ballistocardiograms (BCG) in three dimensions. The spatial curves of the displacement, velocity and acceleration vectors are analyzed instead of their individual 2-D components. The maximum magnitude of the force vector is shown to be poorly correlated to the HI and IJ wave amplitude traditionally computed on the longitudinal (feet-to-head) component of acceleration (uni-dimensional BCG). We also suggest that kinetic energy and work are useful parameters to consider for a physiological interpretation of the 3D-BCG. The technique presented is invariant from the axis of representation and provides important novel physiological information. We stress further the need of 3D recordings and analysis techniques for Ballisto- and Seismo-cardiography.


Estimates of the incidence of mental retardation vary from 1 to 3 per cent of the population. Prevention of this disability requires different methods, depending on the cause. Retarded persons are of four broad categories: Those who are the low end of the normal distribution curve of intelligence in the general population, without any specific illness or defect; those in whom retardation is culturally and socially determined; those who are functionally retarded due to emotional disorder; and those with damage of the brain structure. More flexibility is required within our relatively complex society so that dull people can adapt themselves, achieve acceptance, and find a vocation within their range of ability. There is need for improved services for the early diagnosis and treatment of emotional disturbances in children, and for counselling with parents of slow learning children to make the family climate as favorable as possible. Certain diseases which cause organic defects in the brain are now sufficiently well understood to make possible the prevention of mental retardation in persons with these diseases-cretinism and congenital syphilis among them. More recently, an increasing emphasis on the preventive approach to mental retardation has been made possible through our understanding of the effects of German measles in early pregnancy, knowledge of such metabolic errors as phenylketonuria and galactosemia, of kernicterus caused by Rh incompatibility between mother and child, as well as by our increased knowledge of human genetics.


In a normal dynamic equilibrium, at least half of the peripheral T-cell pool is constituted by lymphocytes which have divided 24-48 h previously, and are therefore rapidly renewed. The renewal of peripheral T cells occurs partly by influx of cells from the thymus and, more importantly, by cell division at the periphery. The cyclic pattern of decay observed for T cells after HU treatment suggests the presence of progenitor-descendent relationships within the peripheral T-cell pool. Peripheral progenitors must contain both cycling and non-cycling cells to account for cell recovery after HU administration in ATx mice. T-cell production at the periphery involves both organized (spleen or lymph nodes) as well as non-organized lymphoid tissue (GALT). The latter may in fact provide the major contribution. Expansion of mature T lymphocytes contributes to clonal persistence at the periphery and to the choice of T-cell repertoires. The importance of post-thymic selection of T-cell repertoires is suggested by the considerable expansion potential revealed by peripheral T cells.


Europeanization refers to the process of integrating EU public policy into the domestic discourse and national policy. Two main mechanisms of Europeanization of national policy planning can be identified: a soft mechanism characterized by policy transfer and learning, and a hard mechanism determined by the obligation to comply to EU regulations. The aim of the article is to explore these mechanisms of Europeanization within the regional cohesion policy context in Italy. The first will be illustrated by results of PRIN survey on stakeholder awareness of key concepts of European territorial
development mainstream; the second mechanism will be showed by the analysis of ROPs elaborated by Italian Regions under ERDF policy process.


OBJECTIVE
Intensive care resources are both scarce and costly in South Africa. We set out to ascertain whether human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status affects the spectrum of disease and the prognosis in children treated in pediatric intensive care units (ICUs).

DESIGN
A prospective, case-controlled study.

SETTING
The pediatric ICU at Kind Edward VIII Hospital, Durban, South Africa.

PATIENTS
HIV-positive cases were classified as "acquired immunodeficiency syndrome," "symptomatic HIV," and "HIV-unrelated diseases." Controls were matched for age, race, gender, severity of disease, and admitting diagnosis.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
THe clinician was blinded to the serostatus of patients. Informed consent and Ethics Committee approval were obtained for HIV testing and the study. Outcome measures were the duration of intermittent positive-pressure ventilation and ICU stay, maximum ventilatory requirements, infectious complications, and mortality. There were 11 cases of acquired immune deficiency (AIDS), 24 cases of symptomatic HIV, and 13 cases of HIV-unrelated diseases. Mortality rates for the three groups were as follows: 100% in patients with AIDS compared with 55% in their controls (p<.01); 38% in patients with symptomatic HIV and 46% in controls. Cytomegalovirus and Pneumocystis carinii infections were significantly increased (p<.01, p<.002, respectively) in patients with AIDS as compared with controls. Outcome measures were similar in those patients with symptomatic HIV and those patients with HIV-unrelated diseases, as compared with their respective controls.

CONCLUSIONS
Outcome in children with AIDS admitted to the pediatric ICU was significantly worse than the outcome in HIV-uninfected children. However, the number of AIDS patients studied was small. HIV antibody-positive children without AIDS do as well as uninfected controls. Ethics committees in resource-constrained countries may be assisted by such data when making difficult decisions on the admissions of HIV-infected patients to pediatric ICU facilities.


This paper addresses the classical approach of acquiring signals by following the well celebrated Shannon sampling theorem that underlies the majority devices of current technology, viz. analog-to-digital conversion, medical imaging, or audio and video electronics. In medical imaging, there are problems related to acquisition time and compression. Compressive sensing (CS) paradigm addresses the shortcomings of traditional data acquisition by sampling signals much more efficiently. CS is a novel kind of sampling theory, which suggests that the sparse signals can be reconstructed from what was formerly thought as insufficient information. CS has come into limelight in the near past years due to the fact that it utilizes the sparsity of signals; an inherent property of many natural signals. Sparsity enables us to store the signals in lesser samples and accurately recover it. This paper comprehensively discusses the mathematical and theoretical key concepts pertinent to the CS theory. At last the paper discusses the two distinct major algorithmic approaches for recovery in CS theory viz. the basis pursuit (BP) and the greedy algorithmic approach, each presenting different benefits and shortcomings. Keywords: Compressive sensing (CS), sparsity, incoherence, restricted isometry property (RIP), â"" 1 -minimization, basis pursuit (BP), greedy algorithms Cite this Article Mit Patel, Hardik Modi, Himanshu Patel. A Review on Fundamental Premises and Algorithmic Approaches in Compressive Sensing. Current Trends in Signal Processing. 2016; 6(1): 18–24p.


Building occupants can enjoy a healthy and comfortable indoor environment and use less cooling energy if sufficient natural ventilation is available in their dwellings. Assessing the natural ventilation performance of building designs requires modelling of the external wind environment, the natural ventilation rate and the thermal environment in individual rooms, and reduction in the use of air-conditioning equipment. These are complicated processes. A practical approach for assessing the natural ventilation performance of residential building designs is presented in this paper. The method includes prediction of wind pressures upon window openings in the building façade by computational fluid dynamics simulation, natural ventilation rate prediction using a flow network simulation model, and indoor free-float temperature and air-conditioning energy-use predictions using a building heat transfer and an air-conditioner performance simulation programme. Additionally, the method includes a simplified statistical approach to deal with the random variations in the speed and direction of the wind. This method has been applied to assess the natural ventilation performance of a standard public housing block design widely used in Hong Kong, taking into account when the wind wing walls were incorporated into the building façade and when the separation distances among the building blocks were widened by 25% and 50%.


ABSTRACT: The study aimed to evaluate the equipment Ekomilk Scan® as an alternative to somatic cell count (SCC) in milk. For this individual cow milk samples of various ages and different stages of lactation in northeastern state of São Paulo region were collected. The analyzes performed were divided into variables related to the equipment: repeatability and reproducibility, and variables that could influencing the results as: use of preservatives, temperature, time between collection and analysis, breed and milk composition, besides analysis to relate the Ekomilk Scan® with the standard method-direct microscopy and reference-flow cytometry. As the result, for samples analysis, it shouldn't be added preservative and these should be conducted on the same day of collection; however, temperature sample did not significantly influence results. Furthermore, Ekomilk Scan® did not show good correlation of results with the method of direct microscopy; however, it was necessary to generate equations for a positive correlation between flow cytometry and Ekomilk Scan®. Therefore, it is concluded that the equipment tested is not accurate but it can be an alternative for SCC monitoring in productive units since it uses calibration equations of results.


Understanding the temperature structure of protoplanetary disks is key to interpreting observations, predicting the physical and chemical evolution of the disk, and modeling planet formation processes. In this study, we constrain the two-dimensional thermal structure of the disk around the Herbig Ae star HD 163296. Using the thermochemical code RAC2D, we derive a thermal structure that reproduces spatially resolved Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations (∼0.″12 (13 au)–0.″25 (26 au)) of 12CO J = 2 − 1, 13CO J = 1 − 0, 2 − 1, C18O J = 1 − 0, 2 − 1, and C17O J = 1 − 0, the HD J = 1 − 0 flux upper limit, the spectral energy distribution (SED), and continuum morphology. The final model incorporates both a radial depletion of CO motivated by a timescale shorter than typical CO gas-phase chemistry (0.01 Myr) and an enhanced temperature near the surface layer of the the inner disk (z/r ≥ 0.21). This model agrees with the majority of the empirically derived temperatures and observed emitting surfaces derived from the J = 2 − 1 CO observations. We find an upper limit for the disk mass of 0.35 M ⊙, using the upper limit of the HD J = 1 − 0 and J = 2 − 1 flux. With our final thermal structure, we explore the impact that gaps have on the temperature structure constrained by observations of the resolved gaps. Adding a large gap in the gas and small dust additionally increases gas temperature in the gap by only 5%–10%. This paper is part of the MAPS special issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement.


Introduction: Tuberculosis remains a public health problem in Zimbabwe. Understanding the treatment outcomes is an important proxy indicator on the performance of the tuberculosis program. This study analyzed treatment outcomes of new sputum smear positive tuberculosis patients in Kwekwe district. Materials and Methods: A retrospective records review of new sputum smear positive tuberculosis patients registered in the district tuberculosis register in Kwekwe was conducted. Treatment outcomes were categorized according to the national tuberculosis control program and multivariate logistic regression model was used. P values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: From a total of 1115 new sputum smear positive tuberculosis patients, cure rate ranged from 40.8% to 62.8% and death rate of patients decreased from 11 (8.0%) in 2007 to 17 (5.3%) in 2011 (p = 0.016). However, defaulter rate increased from 10 (7.3%) in 2007 to 30 (9.3%) in 2011. In multivariate logistic model, HIV positive tuberculosis patients were more likely to experience (adjusted RR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.10 - 3.08) unfavorable treatment outcome when compared to negative counterparts. Urban residents were also at risk 1.91 (95% CI: 1.14 - 3.20) unfavorable outcome compared to rural residents. Conclusion: The cure rate was low (ranged from 40.8% to 62.8%) and the defaulter rate needed urgent attention. The district should conduct defaulter tracing and follow up.


We provide a time-domain analysis of the robustness and stability performance of Gauss- Newton recursive methods that are often used in identification and control. Several free parameters are included in the filter description while combining the covariance update with the weight-vector update; the exponentially weighted recursive least squares algorithm being an important special case. One of the contributions of this work is to show that by properly selecting the free parameters, the resulting filter can be shown to impose certain bounds on the error quantities, thus resulting in desireable robustness and stability properties. We also show that an intrinsic feedback structure, mapping the noise sequence and the initial weight guess to the a priori estimation errors and the final weight estimate, can be associated with such schemes. The feedback configuration is motivated via energy arguments and is shown to consist of two major blocks: a time-variant lossless (i.e., energy preserving) feedforward path and a time-variant feedback path.


We designed glutamide-derived amphiphilic Schiff bases containing three different aldehyde moieties for the fabrication of circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) emitting materials. Upon self-assembly in acetonitrile, Schiff bases featuring 4-(dimethylamino)-2-hydroxylbenzaldehyde and 1-hydroxy-2-naphthaldehyde groups form supramolecular gels with twist and fiber structures, respectively, whereas Schiff bases featuring 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde groups form precipitation with flake structures. Although emission and circular dichroism signals can be detected from the supramolecular gels formed by amphiphilic Schiff bases, none of them exhibits a circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). Although Mg2+, Zn2+, and Al3+ can significantly enhance the fluorescence of the Schiff bases, interestingly, only Al3+ ion is able to turn on the CPL emission. This study on the one hand provides a simple method for the fabrication of CPL-emitting supramolecular materials and on the other hand offers a novel way for the sensing of aluminum ion with supramolecular materials.


This article argues the case for evaluation of some of the additional features of CALL materials designed to enhance second-language reading comprehension. The experiment carefully analysed the effects of highlights indicating a link towards dictionary definitions on the second language reading process. The findings demonstrate that randomly highlighting words in a text on screen influences the amount of vocabulary incidentally learned by the reader. Moreover, the results strongly indicate that reading in a highlighted or marked setting is fundamentally different from reading a text in an unmarked condition. This calls for reflection on how to present the learner with the enhancements of CALL.


Burn injuries are a serious public health problem globally and Malaysia in not exceptional to it where we lose one child every fourteen days from a burn injury which is preventable. The aim of this exercise was to understand the magnitude of the Fire and Burn Injury problem and followed by developing and implementing an intervention program as a solution. The study was a cross-sectional survey among 640 parents of children attending primary schools (children age 7–12) in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur. A total of 9 primary schools out of 558 were chosen for this study. Questionnaires for the parents were given and collected through the identified children. Prevalence of fire in the past two years were 6.4% and burn injury among children were alarmingly standing at 54%. The top five frequent occurring cause of burn injuries reported by the parents for their children were: touching hot utensils (24.4%), hot iron (21.7%), hot water heater (17.2%), motorcycle hot exhaust pipe (16.7%) and playing with fire crackers (14.4%). In conclusion, an educational intervention program on preventing fire and burn was developed based on the top five causes of burn and also focusing on what need to be done in an event of fire as well as injury. The four module education program was intervened to the 6000 primary school children for a duration of 180 min combining both classroom teaching session and field demonstration on how to escape and fight fire with the assistance from Fire and Rescue Department as our program partner. This initiative has a potential policy implication where this pilot intervention program if succeeds, it is recommended the program to be scaled up for the betterment and benefit for more children.


Adhesive capsulitis (AC) is a painful shoulder disorder resulting in restrictions of daily activities. Given the recent increase in risk factors for AC, such as diabetes mellitus, research is needed to examine if the incidence of AC has also increased. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to describe the secular trend of AC.


Recent reports have highlighted that adult stem cells are granted with yet poorly understood properties other than multipotentiality. In particular, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) represent a subset of adult stromal cells that can down-regulate several functions of the immune cells. In addition, MSCs may promote survival of damaged cells and tissues through paracrine mechanisms, possibly under the guidance of environmental cues. Thus, MSCs clinical application in autoimmune diseases seems an appealing opportunity and preclinical results in different experimental models of autoimmunity further support this strategy. Despite the absolute need for caution related to several clinical and technical issues, MSCs are now on the edge of a new era of clinical applications.


Finite element analysis has been used widely in the automotive industry to evaluate design alternatives. Especially when there is no prototype part for rig or vehicle testing, CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) is the only tool to evaluate whether the design meets its target or not. Truck chassis, 5th wheel table and its reinforcement has been modeled for stress calculations under 5th wheel forces. Various FE modeling techniques have been evaluated, including assembly loads and contact modeling, and their effect on the stress distribution has been demonstrated. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the important parameters that effect stress distribution on the critical areas under the 5th wheel.© 2012 ASME


. Widespread application of uninterpretable machine learning systems for sensitive purposes has spurred research into elucidating the decision making pro- cess of these systems. These efforts have their background in many different disci-plines, one of which is the feld of AI & law. In particular, recent works have ob- served that machine learning training data can be interpreted as legal cases. Under this interpretation the formalism developed to study case law, called the theory of precedential constraint, can be used to analyze the way in which machine learning systems draw on training data – or should draw on them – to make decisions. These works predominantly stay on the theoretical level, hence in the present work the formalism is evaluated on a real world dataset. Through this analysis we identify a signifcant new concept which we call landmark cases, and use it to characterize the types of datasets that are more or less suitable to be described by the theory.


Functional neuroimaging probes the regional distribution of neuronal activity, opening a window on brain dysfunction. This opportunity is particularly suited to the evaluation of disorders of consciousness (DOC), which are not reliably assessed by clinical observation and behavioral testing. The article by Monti et al.1 in this issue of Neurology® illustrates this potential; it reports the application of fMRI to uncover signs of high-level cognitive processes in a sample of 28 patients. The authors employ a simple target detection task that requires both selective and sustained attention to be completed accurately in healthy participants (from whom subjective conscious reports can validate performance). Patients were instructed to count the number of times a target word was presented. The target words chosen were neutral (by standardized criteria for English language words), and individualized and randomized for each patient, eliminating any systematic influence of the word itself outside of a contingent relationship to the spoken instruction, "count." The counting condition was compared to a passive listening condition.


I Scott, PH, Enzyme immunoassay of lactoferrin in newborn term infants: reference values and influence of diet. Ann Chem Biochem 1989,26: 407-II 2 Scott PH, Plasma lactoferrin levels in newborn preterm infants: effect of infection. Ann Chem Biochem 1989; 26, 412-5 Tegtmeyer KF, Otte J, Rose T, Speer C, Wood WG, Boger C. 'Polymorphonuclear granulocyte (PMN) constituents elastase (EI-III-PI) and lactoferrin as early indicators of PMN activation during neonatal septicemia. Intensive Care Med 1988; 14 (Suppl I): 277 4 Speer CP, Rethwilm M, Tegtmeyer KF. Elastase-II,proteinase inhibitor in neonatal disorders. Monatsschr. Kinderheilkunde 1988; 136: 256-9 5 Dierich MP, Forster 0, Grunicke H, Guder WG, Lang H. Inflammation and phagocytosis. J Clin Chem cu« Biochem 1987; 25: 785-93 6 Maacks S, Hui-Zhen Y, Wood WG. Development and evaluation of luminescence-based sandwich assay for plasma lactoferrin as marker for sepsis and bacterial infections in pediatric medicine. J Biolum Chemilum 1989; 3: 221-6


Safety-Critical Systems (SCS) perform an important and influential role in our daily activity, but any faults during their operation could result in loss of life, human injury, environmental damage or major financial loss. SCS systems deploy in many important filed that we use daily, such as transportation, medical, space, and nuclear systems. According to several studies, more than 59% of SCS failures could be avoided by improving performance during the development processes. Therefore, this paper discusses how to reduce the failure cause of SCS systems by enhancing the reliability assessment of development processes using PM-ISD Traceability Metrics. PM-ISD is a measurement framework that contains several metrics used to track or forecast development processes. The PM-ISD Traceability Metrics tracked the actual results of the oil and gas development processes shown a failure tolerance rate of 99.27% and a reliability rate of 98.3% for tasks that met the standards. For tracking with time-weighted terminate, the fault tolerance rate can be increased to 99.88% and the reliability rate can be increased to 99.5% at the completion stage. PM-ISD is a suitable measurement framework for developing SCS as it helps to track the achievement of standards, which is reflected in minimizing errors during the development stages.


H.264/AVC is a standard developed for various low-complexity video applications and high-definition television. To improve coding performance, H.264/AVC may optionally adopt the rate-distortion optimization (RDO) method to find the best encoding mode among various inter and intra modes. However, the exhaustive RDO search among different modes increases the H.264/AVC encoder complexity and limits its application. In this paper, we propose an inter mode prediction algorithm for P slices based on spatial and temporal consistency analysis to reduce the complexity of the RDO computation. We apply the stochastic method to analyze the spatial consistency and use rate information for temporal consistency. The experimental results show a 0.03 peak signal-to-noise ratio loss, a 0.87% bit rate increase, and a 58.39% encoding time reduction on average.


In order to fully take advantage of structural information of an inflection point line (IPL), we heuristically present a new Two-dimensional anisotropic Gaussian-Laplace filter (AGLF) to detect the inflection point line. Based on the AGLF, a novel and real-time algorithm for calculating visibility distance under foggy weather is proposed. The performance of the proposed method is experimentally validated by using ten test video sequences which are captured in real world. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm provides accurate visibility distance estimation through quantitative evaluations.


A performance improvement initiative was undertaken at a state psychiatric hospital to reduce antipsychotic polypharmacy. Data from physicians' order forms were used to document the prescribing practices of 14 psychiatrists in November 2001 and in August 2002. After baseline data were collected, the chief of psychiatry met with each psychiatrist to compare his or her prescribing data with data of anonymous peers. The chief also asked all psychiatrists to decrease antipsychotic polypharmacy by at least 10 percent. Antipsychotic polypharmacy fell significantly--from 42 percent of patients treated with antipsychotics in November 2001 to 31 percent in August 2002. Higher utilizers of polypharmacy at baseline continued to be high utilizers at follow-up. Less antipsychotic polypharmacy was not associated with more use of other psychotropic medications. The findings suggest that initiatives that involve the focused attention of leadership and only a modest investment of effort can result in significant change in prescribing practices in a state hospital.


Faraday rotation measurements have been performed at room temperature on antimony-doped n-type single crystals of germanium, cut in the (110) plane, with a magnetic field up to 0·9 T applied in the [110] direction, and with the direction of polarization parallel to the [11bar above 1] direction using 9·0 GHz radiation. Rotation is measured on samples with resistivities from 10 Ω cm to 0·5 Ω cm, and is found to increase linearly with the magnetic field up to about 0·7 T. These rotation measurements are compared with the theory developed by Donovan and Webster in the early 1960's for anisotropic semiconductors. The agreement between the measured and calculated values of the Faraday rotation is quite good for the sample with resistivity of about 9 Ω cm, but in the case of other higher conductivity samples, the measured Faraday rotation is found to be much smaller than the calculated values. The probable causes for this discrepancy are mentioned briefly.


In this paper, we present the molecular density distribution measurement in turbulent nitrogen jet ( Re ≈ 3 × 10 3 ), using acetone as molecular tracer. The tracer was seeded in the nitrogen jet by purging through the liquid acetone at ambient temperature. Planar laser sheet of 266 nm wavelength from frequency quadrupled, Q-switched, Nd:YAG laser was used as an excitation source. Emitted fluorescence images of jet flow field were recorded on CMOS camera. The dependence of planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) intensity on acetone vapor density was used to convert PLIF image of nitrogen jet into the density image on pixel-by-pixel basis. Instantaneous quantitative density image of nitrogen jet, seeded with acetone, was obtained. The arrowhead-shaped coherent turbulent structures were observed in the present work. It was found that coherent structures were non-overlapping with separate boundaries. Breaking of coherent structures into turbulence was clearly observed above four times jet width.


Phytoplankton composition from 16 Virginia lakes and reservoirs are discussed with emphasis on the dominant taxa, algal bloom producers, and potentially harmful species at these locations. This is a companion study to the more comprehensive publication regarding Virginia freshwater phytoplankton by Marshall (2013).


This study investigates the relationship between the development of the air transport and the economic development of the Bulgarian regions and the improvement of its competitiveness over the period of 2000–2016. The timeliness of the problem is related to the contradictory impact of the air transport on the economic effects of aviation development and related socio-economic effects at local and global level. The purpose of the report was to identify the impact of the air transport on the economic development of the region. In this connection, the following tasks have been set: to monitor trends in the development of the air passenger transport sector; to determine the impact of the average annual income per capita on the passenger flow; to establish the impact of passenger flows on the average annual income of the population as an indicator of the sustainable development of the region. The aim of the article was to establish the link between the passenger flow and the gross domestic product of the region. Economic data processing methods for the 10-year period were used through the Gretl program. The data obtained is evidence of the positive impact of air transport development on the competitiveness of the region and its steady social-economic growth.


Abstract. The transmission main-intake isoneof the most important units to supply the electricity in some place. Each transmission main-intake has its own utilities and assets according to each function and type. During this time, each transmission main-intake structure and the assets inside only canbe monitored by 2-dimensional (2D) model other than on-site visits. This study is conducted to produce a 3-dimensional (3D) model of the building's internal structure and assets that will facilitate and further improves the monitoring process, maintenance and documentation of assets for certain parties for further uses in form of 3D Building Information Modelling (BIM). This study was conducted in Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) control and relay room at PE61 132/22KV Transmission main-intake building of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) using Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) Topcon GLS-2000 model. At the data processing stage, several series of software was used to complete the 3D model. Scanning process will generate an indoor point cloud of the building. The result from the data processing stage is more focused on the 3D internal model of the building that has been digitized from the point cloud data. The 3D model will be able to show the internal structure of buildings and the assets more clearly. In order to complete the 3D BIM, information regarding the assets was added. In this study, the efficiency of TLS Topcon GLS-2000 for 3D BIM was determined in term of its accuracy by comparing with the distometer. The accuracy for scanned data from TLS were compared with the distometer by using root mean square error (RMSE) formula, and the accuracy is only ±0.004 m.


Influenza is a common illness which affects many people every year. In the past few years, we have seen the great impact influenza can have on the population and the health care system. For most, influenza will result in a minor inconvenience, but influenza can lead to serious health problems including death especially among the young, the elderly and expecting women. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has created the U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet), a network of outpatient healthcare providers throughout the United States of America and its territories who have agreed to report the weekly number of patients they see in their office showing influenza-like illness (ILI) and the total number of patients seen for any reason. Though ILINet is viewed as the gold standard for estimating influenza activity, it is often reported at a one or two week lag. Internet searches can provide a better real time view of influenza activity though they can be biased. In this thesis, we develop multiple models using only ILINet data then develop a method for these models to incorporate a second data source through data fusion. The first model employs a Bayesian hierarchical structure with the mean modeled by an asymmetrical Gaussian functional form. Multiple hierarchical structures are compared to see which fits the data best. When forecasting, all hierarchical structures preform better than the independent model. The second model takes a functional data approach and uses functional principal component analysis to model and forecast the influenza season. Shrinkage distributions are used to choose the number of principal components. A hierarchical structure is created for the shrinkage distributions. Again, we find the hierarchical structures help in providing better forecasts. The forecasts are able to predict the peak week and peak percentage with little data from the forecasted season. Lastly, we preform a simulation study to see how


Designed to complement "The Oxford Compact English Dictionary", this comprehensive thesaurus provides thousands of alternative words to choose from to aid letter, essay and report writing, and crossword puzzles and creative writing. As well as full coverage of general English, the synonym lists also include more unusual words and phrases, including dialectal expressions and many idioms. Synonyms are clearly labelled to show whether an expression is, for example, British, American, or Australian, literary or technical, colloquial, old-fashioned, or slang. If a headword has more than one sense, its synonyms are broken into groups, and each sense group is illustrated by an example sentence so that users can be sure that they are making selections from the right list of alternatives. In addition, each synonym listed which also appears as a headword elsewhere in the thesaurus is marked by a cross-reference symbol so users can look at a further range of synonyms and related words.


With the advance in semiconductor memory and the availability of very large speech corpora (of hundreds to thousands of hours of speech), we would like to revisit the use of discrete hidden Markov model (DHMM) in automatic speech recognition. To estimate the discrete density in a DHMM state, the acoustic space is divided into bins and one simply count the relative amount of observations falling into each bin. With a very large speech corpus, we believe that the number of bins may be greatly increased to get a much higher density than before, and we will call the new models, the high-density discrete hidden Markov model (HDDHMM). Our HDDHMM is different from traditional DHMM in two aspects: firstly, the codebook will have a size in thousands or even tens of thousands; secondly, we propose a method based on scalar quantization indexing so that for a d-dimensional acoustic vector, the discrete codeword can be determined in O(d) time. During recognition, the state probability is reduced to an O(1) table look-up. The new HDDHMM was tested on WSJ0 with 5K vocabulary. Compared with a baseline 4-stream continuous density HMM system which has a WER of 9.71%, a 4-stream HDDHMM system converted from the former achieves a WER of 11.60%, with no distance or Gaussian computation.


This paper deals with automatic face recognition in the context of a real application for person identification developed for the Czech News Agency (y CTK) . We focus on popular Local Binary Patterns (LPBs) that are frequently used in this field with high recognition accuracy. One drawback of current LBP based methods is that the positions and number of the fiducial points are fixed. These points thus do not reflect the properties of a particular image whereas we believe it is beneficial to identify the most representative ones. The main contribution consists in proposing and comparing several LBP-based approaches that detect such points fully automatically. We use a set of Gabor filters for this task. Local extrema in the filter responses are detected and then used as the feature points. The number of points is further reduced by a clustering algorithm. Our approaches also differ from the other ones in the matching procedure. The proposed methods are evaluated on three standard corpora: ORL, FERET, AR face database and our y CTK dataset containing uncontrolled face images. Recognition results clearly show high quality of the proposed approaches that outperform significantly the baseline LBP approach on all corpora. The benefits of our methods are particularly evident in the case of real non-controlled images (y CTK corpus) where the accuracy is increased by more than 20% in absolute value.


Barry Dawson is just right for th e first Norman L. Bowen Award in Volcanology, Geochemistry, and Petrology. Like Norman L. Bowen, he has the inspiration to combine ideas from different disciplines to obtain a higher synthesis. Consider his brilliant talk of yesterday morning (Eos 69, p. 502, abstract V11C-06, Veined and metasomatised upper mantle beneath the Eastern African Rift: Evidence from N. Tanzania xenoliths). Barry rapidly reviewed the tectonic setting of east Africa, showed some nice photographs of the volcanic cones of Pello and Oldoinyo Lengai, focused on the upper-mantle xenoliths in scoria at Pello, moved in on the microscopy and mineral chemistry of the metasomatic veins in the peridotites, snowed how the lower density of a metasomatized peridotite would fit the middle of a geophysical profile from seismic surveys, and brought off a grand finale in which the Kenya dome was interpreted to result from inflation related to metasomatization of underlying peridotite. Undoubtedly, this will lead to many further studies of doming adjacent to rift systems around the world.


A minority of subjects exposed to prolonged elevations in systemic blood pressure or serum glucose concentrations will develop progressive albuminuria or reduced glomerular filtration rates. Individuals from families that have multiple members with chronic kidney disease and individuals of color are more likely to develop renal microvascular involvement from these systemic diseases. In contrast, individuals of color are significantly less likely to develop macrovascular coronary and carotid artery disease, compared with European Americans. Coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis also aggregate in families. Familial aggregation and ethnic-specific risk strongly implicates genetic susceptibility in the common etiologies of kidney disease and atherosclerosis. While acknowledging the importance of environmental and sociocultural effects, this manuscript explores genomic regions and genes of interest involved in susceptibility to common, complex kidney diseases. In contrast to the genes that have been determined to cause monogenic kidney diseases, as are highlighted throughout this issue of Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease, the identification of genes that underlie complex diseases has proven to be more challenging, expensive, and time consuming. Nonetheless, developments have been made in this important area.


In this paper, the extremal properties of the ergodic sojourn times in G/G/1queues under various service disciplines are studied in terms of the convex ordering. It is shown that among work-conserving non-preemptive service disciplines that are service time independent, the FIFO and the LIFO service disciplines provide the minima and the maxima, respectively, of the ergodic sojourn times for any G/G/1 queue. For G/M/1 queues, this class of work-conserving service disciplines is extended to include preemptive/resume disciplines. In this case the FIFO and LIFO-P (preemptive/resume LIFO) service disciplines attain the minima and maxima, respectively. These extend results of Durr (1971), Kingman (1962) and a recent result of Ramaswami (1984). Further results are obtained for G/Em/1 and G/D/1 queues.


Abstract The solubilities of amino acids, diglycine, and triglycine have been measured in water and aqueous ethanol as well as dioxane solutions. Free energies of transfer of amino acid side chains and backbone peptide units from water to ethanol and dioxane solutions have been calculated from these data. The results show the similarity between the effects of ethanol and dioxane on the stability of those side chains and peptide units. In particular, the free energies of transfer of hydrophobic side chains to 100% ethanol and dioxane are essentially identical, and have been used to establish a hydrophobicity scale for hydrophobic side chains.


Tanacetum parthenium has gained attention for drug development due to its production of bioactive secondary metabolites, such as phenolic compounds (PHEC) and parthenolide (PTN). This work investigated the dierences in the production of those compounds among in vitro cultures (organs from plantlets and roots cultures) of T. parthenium. Results showed that the in vitro cultures produced PHEC and PTN, which depended on the type of culture and the incubation time. The content of secondary metabolites was higher in shoots of plantlets (S-ivPL), followed by root cultures (R-ivC) and roots of plantlets (R-ivPL). The PHEC and PTN production was enhanced in plantlets by applying a combination of plant growth regulators (PGRs: -naphtalenacetic acid [NAA] at 0.27 M with kinetin [KIN] at 2.32 M). The highest content of secondary metabolites (62.54 mg gallic acid equivalents g1; 4.261 and 4.973 mg chlorogenic acid g1; 0.858 and 1.015 mg caeic acid g1; 1.931 mg salicylic acid g1; 0.071 mg PTN g1) was found in the PGRs-treated S-ivPL samples. Also, morphogenesis and growth of plantlets was enhanced by these PGRs.


Improved plant water status through improved soil and water management practices can result in efficient crop production and water utilization in the compact layered soils that restrict rooting in the Southeast. The effect of chiseling and irrigation on plant water status was evaluated through leaf water potential, stem diameter, and stomatal resistance measurements. Corn (L.) was grown on a Varina sandy loam (Typic Paleudult) chiseled to 38 cm and compared with that grown on conventionally tilled plots. In 1972 chiseling had no measurable effect on the daily minimum leaf water potential under the same radiant energy level. At tasseling in 1973, with a water table 80 cm from the surface, chiseling resulted in deeper-rooted corn that enabled utilization of water in the capillary fringe above the water table, and resulted in slightly higher (less negative) daily minimum leaf water potential, lower stomatal resistance, and smaller stem diameter fluctuations. In 1973, plant-water status on chiseled plots was comparable with that on furrow-irrigated plots. The cumulative effects of the small improvement in midday plant water status from chiseling resulted in a 8-metric ton/ha increase in corn ear yields. These findings suggest chiseling of soils with root restricting layers can result in increased corn production, particularly when the water table is approximately 80 cm from the soil surface at tasseling.


One of the most influential recent results in network analysis is that many natural networks exhibit a power-law or log-normal degree distribution. This has inspired numerous generative models that match this property. However, more recent work has shown that while these generative models do have the right degree distribution, they are not good models for real life networks due to their differences on other important metrics like conductance. We believe this is, in part, because many of these real-world networks have very different joint degree distributions, i.e. the probability that a randomly selected edge will be between nodes of degree k and l. Assortativity is a sufficient statistic of the joint degree distribution, and it has been previously noted that social networks tend to be assortative, while biological and technological networks tend to be disassortative. We suggest understanding the relationship between network structure and the joint degree distribution of graphs is an interesting avenue of further research. An important tool for such studies are algorithms that can generate random instances of graphs with the same joint degree distribution. This is the main topic of this paper and we study the problem from both a theoretical and practical perspective. We providemore » an algorithm for constructing simple graphs from a given joint degree distribution, and a Monte Carlo Markov Chain method for sampling them. We also show that the state space of simple graphs with a fixed degree distribution is connected via end point switches. We empirically evaluate the mixing time of this Markov Chain by using experiments based on the autocorrelation of each edge. These experiments show that our Markov Chain mixes quickly on real graphs, allowing for utilization of our techniques in practice.« less


We study stress relaxation in hand folded aluminum foils subjected to the uniaxial compression force F(λ). We found that once the compression ratio is fixed (λ=const) the compression force decreases in time as F∝F_{0}P(t), where P(t) is the survival probability time distribution belonging to the domain of attraction of max-stable distribution of the Fréchet type. This finding provides a general physical picture of energy dissipation in the crumpling network of a crushed elastoplastic foil. The difference between energy dissipation statistics in crushed viscoelastic papers and elastoplastic foils is outlined. Specifically, we argue that the dissipation of elastic energy in crushed aluminum foils is ruled by a multiplicative Poisson process governed by the maximum waiting time distribution. The mapping of this process into the problem of transient random walk on a fractal crumpling network is suggested.


Parentodinium africanum was observed in rumen contents of four Brazilian cattle and constituted 4.4, 0.9, less than 0.1, and 10.0% of the total ciliates. This appears to be the first observation of the family Cycloposthiidae in the rumen habitat. Blepharoconus krugerensis, previously observed in the intestines of the elephant, and an unknown species of ciliate with many characteristics similar to the family Paraisotrichidae were each observed in a single animal. A new subspecies, Diplodinium flabellum laterospinatum n. subsp., is also described. Total number of ciliates per ml of rumen contents ranged from 9.0 to 51.2 X 10(4) and included an overall total of 55 species and 4 subspecies.


An interval type-2 fuzzy logic controller (IT2FLC) is proposed in this paper for the design of power system stabilizer (PSS) of a single machine infinite bus (SMIB) and multi machine infinite bus (MMIB) system incorporated with an AC1A exciter. For controller design, memberships of system variables are represented using interval value fuzzy sets. Fuzzy logic based on interval value sets is capable of modeling the uncertainty and imprecision in a better way. The proposed controller performance is compared with the optimal lead lag and optimal type-1 fuzzy logic controller respectively reference to damp the oscillations of both SMIB and MMIB system. Simulation results reveal the superior performance of the proposed controller and also it is robust with respect to system parameter variation and at different disturbances.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between the body cathexis, appearance management behaviors and satisfaction with apparel fit according to physical figure of college women who had deep interests in their body and appearance. Data for this study was obtained from 413 college women in Taegu and Kyungpook Province. Means, t-test, ANOVA and Scheffe's post hoc comparison were used in data analysis. The result of this study were; 1. It was found that both body Cathexis and fit satisfaction of college women were generally low. College women were less satisfied with their body and fit of apparel. The unsatisfied body parts were thighs, abdomen and hip. 2. Significant differences in Satisfaction with apparel fit were found in skirt length, slacks length, thigh according to height and significant difference in satisfaction with apparel fit were found in armhole, abdomen, calf according to weight. 3. Significant differences in appearance management behaviors were not found according to height, but significant differences in diet, exercise and clothing use were found according to weight. Also significant differences in diet and clothing use were found according to Rhrer index.


The response of an electron system to a DC measurement electric field has been investigated in the case when the system is driven out of the equilibrium by the magnetic ultra-high frequency field that leads to combined transitions. The discussed model includes contributions from Landau quantization and from microwave irradiation. Impurity centers are considered as sources of scattering. It has been shown that the perturbation of the electron system by the ultra-high frequency magnetic field leads to oscillations of the diagonal components of the conductivity tensor.


Large data transfers are getting more critical with the increasing volume of data in scientific computing. While scientific facilities manage dedicated infrastructures to support large data transfers, predicting network performance based on the historical measurement would be essential for workflow scheduling and resource allocation in the facility. In this study, we empirically evaluate deep learning (DL) models with respect to the prediction accuracy of network performance for scientific facilities, using a two-month network communication log. This paper compares a set of DL models based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), to predict average throughput as a means to estimate network performance, and shares the observations made from the extensive experiments with the results of prediction accuracy and timing complexity.


A wide interest has been observed to find a low power and area efficient hardware design of discrete cosine transform (DCT) algorithm. This research work proposed a novel Common Subexpression Elimination (CSE) based pipelined architecture for DCT, aimed at reproducing the cost metrics of power and area while maintaining high speed and accuracy in DCT applications. The proposed design combines the techniques of Canonical Signed Digit (CSD) representation and CSE to implement the multiplier-less method for fixed constant multiplication of DCT coefficients. Furthermore, symmetry in the DCT coefficient matrix is used with CSE to further decrease the number of arithmetic operations. This architecture needs a single-port memory to feed the inputs instead of multiport memory, which leads to reduction of the hardware cost and area. From the analysis of experimental results and performance comparisons, it is observed that the proposed scheme uses minimum logic utilizing mere 340 slices and 22 adders. Moreover, this design meets the real time constraints of different video/image coders and peak-signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR) requirements. Furthermore, the proposed technique has significant advantages over recent well-known methods along with accuracy in terms of power reduction, silicon area usage, and maximum operating frequency by 41%, 15%, and 15%, respectively.


Oleanane-type triterpenes and their glycosides are a structurally and biologically diverse class of metabolites that are widely distributed in terrestrial plants and some marine organisms. Many of these compounds bear functional groups and modifications on the D and/or E rings of the triterpenes. These triterpenes compounds are of growing interest for drug re- search as they are active constituents of folk medicines and provide valuable pharmacological profiles. For their limited availability and accessibility, chemical synthesis provides a realistic way to determine the availability of homogenous natural products and their derivatives. Here, we report the selective dehydrogenation on the D or E rings of oleanoic acid by palla- dium promoted C—H activation with 8-aminoquinoline amide (substrate 12) and 2-aminomethylpyridine amide (substrate 16) as the directing groups. Thus, upon treatment with thionyl chloride, the 28-COOH of oleanoic acid was converted into 28-COCl, which coupled with the corresponding amines to provide the substrates readily for dehydrogenation. Notably, treatment of 12 with optimized conditions (1.0 equiv. Pd(OAc)2, 1.5 equiv. Oxone ® , 1,2-dichloroethane, 80 ℃, 24 h) led to the dehydrogenated products 13 (double bond at C(15)—C(16)) and 14 (double bond at C(20)—C(21)) in 55% and 2% yields respectively. Treatment of 16 with optimized conditions (1.0 equiv. Pd(OAc)2, 2.0 equiv. Oxone ® , 1,2-dichloroethane, mi- crowave 85 ℃, 50 min) provided 17 (double bond at C(20)—C(21)) and 18 (double bond at C(15)—C(16)) in 42% and 20% yields respectively. Moreover, the distribution of the products varied in different solvents. It is worth mentioning that the N,N-bidentate ligands (two nitrogen atoms as the coordination sites in 12 and 16) are crucial for the palladium promoted ole- fination.


Objective: To study and compare the impact of didactic lecturing with small group discussion among undergraduate medical students.
Study Design: Sequential mixed method.
Place and Duration of Study: Quaid-e-Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur, from January 2012 to October 2012.
Material and Methods: Results of 2 final year classes comprising 566 students (of sessions 2011 and 2012) were analyzed and 30 students from the existing final year were selected for focus group discussion by non-probability convenience sampling technique. In the first phase, quasi experimental design was employed. Small group discussion(SGD)learning format was used as an intervention on the interventional group(277 students)and results were compared with the scores of previous final year student(historical control group: 289 students) who learnt through didactic lecturing. In the second phase, focus group discussions of current final year was arranged to dig out their views about SGD intervention. The quantitative data was analyzed by using SPSS version 17. Content analysis method was applied for qualitative analysis of focus group discussions.
Results: The mean scores were 1006±60 in interventional group as compared to 1026 ± 57 in non-interventional group (p


ABSTRACT Metformin, a common clinical drug used to treat diabetes mellitus, is found with potential antiobese actions as reported in increasing evidences. However, the detailed mechanisms of metformin-antiobesity-related hypertension remain unrevealed. We have utilized the bioinformatics strategy, including network pharmacology and molecular docking analyses, to uncover pharmacological targets and molecular pathways of bioactive compounds against clinical disorders, such as cancers, coronavirus disease 2019. In this report, the in-silico approaches using network pharmacology and molecular docking was utilized to identify the core targets, pharmacological functions and mechanisms of metformin against obesity-related hypertension. The networking analysis identified 154 differentially expressed genes of obesity and hypertension, and 21 interaction genes, 6 core genes of metformin treating obesity-related hypertension. As results, molecular docking findings indicated the binding capability of metformin with key proteins, including interleukin 6 (IL-6) and chemokine (C-C motif) Ligand 2 (CCL2) expressed in obesity- and hypertension-dependent tissues. Metformin-exerted antihypertension/obesity actions involved in metabolic regulation, inflammatory suppression. And antihypertension/obesity mechanisms of metformin were revealed, including regulation of inflammatory and immunological signaling pathways for ameliorating microenvironmental homeostasis in targeting tissues. In conclusion, our current bioinformatics findings have uncovered all pharmacological targets, biological functions and signaling pathways of metformin treating obesity-related hypertension, thus promoting its clinical application in future. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT


In this week's BMJ, Chong and colleagues present a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of dietary antioxidants, including supplements, in the primary prevention of age related macular degeneration.1 Age related macular degeneration is one of the most important causes of visual loss in older people. The number of people affected will increase as populations age.2 Two types of age related macular degeneration exist. Geographic atrophy is a sharply demarcated area of depigmentation caused by atrophy of the retinal pigment epithelium; neovascular degeneration occurs when new blood vessels grow under the retinal pigment epithelium leading to haemorrhage and scarring. Age related macular degeneration is diagnosed in people aged 50 or more when no other obvious cause for degeneration exists. New treatments are being developed rapidly. In the past two years, intraocular injections of agents that interfere with angiogenesis have been licensed for use in this condition.3 These bind to vascular endothelial growth factors to prevent endothelial cell proliferation and neovascularisation. Although improved treatments are always encouraging for people with age related macular degeneration, visual loss arising from the growth of new vessels is usually permanent, and no effective treatments exist for geographic atrophy. Research into why age related macular degeneration develops, with a view to preventing it, continues. The incidence of many diseases increases exponentially with age. One common theory for the aetiology of many age related diseases, including age related macular degeneration, is that they arise as a result of the cumulative effects of oxidative stress.4 The systematic review by Chong and colleagues summarises the results of seven prospective studies and three randomised controlled trials evaluating the association between dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins and minerals (such as vitamin C, vitamin E, various types of carotenoids, and zinc) or dietary supplements (vitamin E and β carotene) and age related macular degeneration.1 This is the first such review of usual dietary intake—previous reviews have considered randomised controlled trials of supplements.5 The prospective studies show that people with relatively high dietary intakes of antioxidant nutrients are no more or less likely to develop the condition than those with relatively low intakes. The possible exception to this is high dietary intake of vitamin E, which was associated with a 20% reduced odds of age related macular degeneration. The significance of this finding depended on which studies were included in the meta-analysis. Further studies are needed to confirm its relevance. Dietary intake is difficult to measure accurately. In observational studies it is difficult to be sure that a fair comparison is being made, because people with different diets also differ in many other ways. In spite of these caveats, evidence of a strong protective effect of the dietary antioxidants studied was lacking. Obviously, a well balanced diet containing fruit and vegetables has many other health benefits and should still be recommended. In addition, included studies were carried out on relatively well nourished populations in the United States, Australia, and Europe, and the results may not apply to populations with different dietary intakes. Three randomised controlled trials provide good evidence that vitamin E or β carotene supplements do not prevent age related macular degeneration (one of these trials is included in abstract form in the review but has since been published6). Although generally regarded as safe, vitamin supplements may have harmful effects. People who smoke may be at increased risk of lung cancer if they take β carotene,7 8 and vitamin E supplements may increase risk of heart failure in people with diabetes or vascular disease.9 While antioxidant vitamin supplements cannot be recommended as a public health measure to reduce the incidence of age related macular degeneration, people with early stage disease may benefit from supplements containing vitamin C, vitamin E, β carotene, and zinc.10 The recommended combination and doses of antioxidant vitamins and minerals is found in only a few commercial supplements and should be taken on specialist advice,11 with appropriate consideration of the possible benefits and harms for the individual. Do other options exist for primary prevention of age related macular degeneration? The strongest risk factors for this condition—age and genetic factors—are not preventable, although genetic research will provide new insights into the causes of the disease and therefore its prevention. High concentrations of polyunsaturated fats are found in the retina, but evidence for a protective effect of dietary fatty acids in this condition is inconsistent.12 Smoking is the only preventable risk factor that has been associated with the condition in most observational studies.13 Currently, reducing the prevalence of smoking is probably the most effective method of reducing the population burden of this common cause of visual loss in older people.


The thermogenic effect of a high energy supplement was examined in ten healthy and physically active female subjects that underwent two testing sessions administered in a randomized and double-blind fashion. The subjects reported to the Human Performance Laboratory after at least a 3-hour post-absorptive state and were provided either 120 ml of the supplement (SUP), or 120 ml of a placebo (PL). Following ingestion the subjects rested in a semi-recumbent position for 3 hours. The area under the curve analysis revealed no difference in oxygen consumption between SUP and PL for the 3 hours study period. No difference in energy expenditure was seen between SUP (.92±.16 kcal·min -1 ) and PL (.89±.17 kcal·min -1 ). A signifi cant difference in the utilization of stored fat as an energy source was seen between the groups during the 3 hours study (.42±.18 kcal·min -1 and .24±.10 kcal·min -1 in SUP and PL, respectively). These differences were seen in the fi rst (.35 ±.19 kcal·min -1 and .20±.13 kcal·min -1 in SUP and PL, respectively) and second hour (.46±.21 kcal·min -1 and .24±.11 kcal·min -1 in SUP and PL, respectively), but not in the third hour (.47±.25 kcal·min -1 and .33±.20 kcal·min -1 in SUP and PL, respectively). No differences in heart rate, blood pressure or mood were seen between the groups. The results indicate that although acute ingestion of this supplement does not increase energy expenditure, it does appear to stimulate a signifi cant increase in fat utilization.


This study examines the major factors that predict states' repressive policies, focusing on the relationship between oppositional terror attacks and state repression of core human rights. We rely on a theoretical framework that brings together actor-oriented explanations and socio-cultural approaches. While the former emphasize purposive rational action, international pressures, and domestic threats, the latter focus on the power of ideas and on processes of policy diffusion and cultural norms. Relying on a longitudinal cross-national analysis of panel data for the years 1981–2005, we find substantial evidence for the effects of both actor-oriented measurements and socio-cultural ones. These findings join a growing body of research that emphasizes the importance of the institutional and cultural determinants of states' counterterrorist policies.


Lymph stasis detectable by means of breast lymphography and which developed as a consequence of axillary lymph node metastases has proved to be a valuable factor in the prognosis of breast cancer. As with secondary lymphedema, lymph vessels were found to be dilated, which was regarded as a consequence of tumoral obstruction, and the elevated pressure in these lymph vessels may cause hematogenous spread of the tumors through venous shunts. Significant correlation between preoperative lymphographic findings and the incidence of distant forming 5 years postoperatively was also found, which leads to the conclusion that the distant metastases exist prior to the operation can account for the late tumor recurrence.


Genes for specific resistance to European and American isolates of Mycosphaerella graminicola, the causal agent of septoria tritici blotch (STB) of wheat, have been identified and mapped in various cultivars and breeding lines and are distributed throughout the genome. The location of a gene for resistance to an Ethiopian isolate, IPO88004, which is currently the most widespread resistance present in European wheat cultivars, is reported. The resistance was mapped in the Swiss cultivar Arina which, besides high partial resistance to STB, also has specific resistance to IPO323, controlled by Stb6 and to IPO88004. An F5 recombinant inbred population from a cross between Arina and the susceptible cultivar Forno was tested in whole seedling trials. Using multiple QTL mapping (MQM), a gene for resistance to M. graminicola isolate IPO88004 in cv. Arina was located to chromosome 6AS. The gene is named Stb15. Seedling tests on a double haploid population of cvs Arina × Riband indicated that the UK wheat cv. Riband also has Stb15 or another gene for specific resistance to IPO88004 allelic or closely linked to Stb15.


Abstract Neodymium niobate NdNbO4 (NNO) and tantalate NdTaO4 (NTO) thin films (~100 nm) were prepared by sol-gel/spin-coating process on Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3/Al2O3 substrates with annealing at 1000°C. The precursors of films were synthesized using Nb or Ta tartrate complexes. The XRD results of NNO and NTO films confirmed tetragonal T-NdNbO4 and T-NdTaO4 phases, respectively, with traces of monoclinic MNdNbO4 and M´-NdTaO4. The surface morphology and topography were investigated by SEM and AFM analysis. NTO was smoother with roughness 5.24 nm in comparison with NNO (6.95 nm). In the microstructure of NNO, small spherical (~ 20-50 nm) T-NdNbO4 and larger needle-like particles (~100 nm) of M-NdNbO4 phase were observed. The compact clusters composed of fine spherical T-NdTaO4 particles (~ 50 nm) and cuboidal M´-NdTaO4 particles (~ 100 nm) were found in NTO. The results of this work can contribute to formation of different polymorphs of films for the application in environmental electrolytic thin film devices.


A novel fuzzy decision tree is proposed in this paper (the FDT-support vector machine (SVM) classifier), where the node discriminations are implemented via binary SVMs. The tree structure is determined via a class grouping algorithm, which forms the groups of classes to be separated at each internal node, based on the degree of fuzzy confusion between the classes. In addition, effective feature selection is incorporated within the tree building process, selecting suitable feature subsets required for the node discriminations individually. FDT-SVM exhibits a number of attractive merits such as enhanced classification accuracy, interpretable hierarchy, and low model complexity. Furthermore, it provides hierarchical image segmentation and has reasonably low computational and data storage demands. Our approach is tested on two different tasks: natural forest classification using a QuickBird multispectral image and urban classification using hyperspectral data. Exhaustive experimental investigation demonstrates that FDT-SVM is favorably compared with six existing methods, including traditional multiclass SVMs and SVM-based binary hierarchical trees. Comparative analysis is carried out in terms of testing rates, architecture complexity, and computational times required for the operative phase.


A simple definition of the cost of poor quality (COPQ) is all the costs that would disappear if your manufacturing process was perfect. This includes all appraisal, prevention, and failure costs. Anyone running a company knows these costs exist, but what they may not realize is how much of their expenses are tied directly to COPQ. The industry average is around 20% of sales with a range of 1% of sales in a six sigma organization up to 40% of sales at a three sigma organization [1], meaning for the average company there is large potential for improvement. By using the basic six sigma tools of Statistical Process Control (SPC) and Capability Processes, the average factory can reduce the cost of poor quality and increase their bottom line profits.


People use the Internet for a wide range of online sexual activities (OSA): behaviours that involve sexual content, topics, and stimuli. Yet, current OSA summary statistics provide little perspective on patterns of OSA experience because researchers have not compared multiple indicators of experience within the same sample. We explored the prevalence, variety, and frequency of young men and women's experience with three OSA subtypes: non-arousal (e.g., accessing sexual health information), solitary-arousal (e.g., viewing pornography), and partnered-arousal (e.g., sending sexually explicit messages). We examined patterns in experience with specific OSAs, subtypes of OSAs, OSAs overall, and differences related to gender across the lifetime and recently. Young adults (N = 239) at a Canadian University completed a survey that included a new measure of 48 specific OSAs, representing the three subtypes. All participants reported at least one OSA experience in their lifetime (ranging 1–38). Although the prevalence and variety of experience was greater across the lifetime than recently, this difference was small and the pattern of results remained the same. Frequency of experience appeared greater for specific OSAs compared to OSA subtypes or overall. Frequency of specific OSAs were greater for the subgroup of participants who had engaged in the activity recently compared to the full sample. Significantly more men than women reported solitary-arousal OSA, and men reported greater variety and frequency of this subtype. This gender difference in prevalence and frequency only held for viewing sexually explicit pictures and videos online. We discuss implications for sexual scripts, researchers, clinicians, and educators.


Objective: Community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is the leading cause of death in the world, especially for small children. There are wide range of etiological agents varying according to age. As conventional culture methods require longer test times for viral and atypical pathogens, nucleic acid tests with higher sensitivity and specificity are advantageous for rapid detection and due to detection of several different agents in the same sample, multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test offers rapid diagnosis.
Case: In this paper, we report a 4 year-old boy with two different viral co-infection (H1N1 and human metapneumovirus infections) causing pneumonia.
Conclusion: This case higlights the importance of detection of viral etiologies especially with PCR to avoid unnecessary antibiotic use.