The model of gaseous fuel and air mixing, developed by the authors, is applied here to calculate maximum mixing times of propane and air. The degree of mixing is determined using the mass fraction of fuel while the rate of mixing is determined from the rate of this mass fraction. The values of both these parameters are local, i.e., measured within an infinitesimal element of fluid. A Eulerian representation is used. The model is based on the assumption that both fuel and air behave as a single chemical species. It is further assumed that pressure is low and only fuel and air are present within the fluid element. Under nonreacting conditions, the model is valid anywhere in the combustor. Under reacting conditions, the model is valid within those combustor regions where the fuel-air mixture is not flammable. The results of this analysis show that mixing times of propane and air are most reduced by high gradients of temperature and velocity, as long as these gradients provide in phase contribution. To a lesser degree, high gradients of pressure also help reduce mixing times, High initial pressure and temperature increase mixing time. Mixing with air penetration into the fuel flow is slower than with propane dispersion into the surrounding air. In general, the exact mixing time has to be determined numerically. Nevertheless, the analytical solutions included here provide maximum mixing times of propane and air under most conditions. These results provide important guidelines for the development of high intensity, high efficiency, and low emission combustors.


In this article, a multi-dimensional gradient-enhanced constitutive model of shape memory alloys is developed. The model is developed to capture unstable behaviors of shape memory alloys during both the forward and reverse phase transformations. Also, influence of loading history on the start of the phase transformation during both forward and reverse transformations is considered in the model by introducing new transformation limits and phase fraction formulations. The model is implemented in a finite element code, and using a numerical framework, effects of loading, boundary condition, inhomogeneous deformations, imperfection, and geometry on the unstable behaviors of different shape memory alloy samples during nucleation and phase transformation are investigated. The obtained results are compared with the available experimental and numerical results in the literature. The obtained results show that the gradient enhancement removes pathological localization effects which would typically result from the softening influence. In addition, the numerical study proves that the mode can capture the basic features of phase transformation front patterns and their evolution during transformations.


Precursors to S and SKS were observed in long-period SRO and WWSSN seismograms of the Romanian earthquake of March 4, 1977, recorded in the United States at distances from 68° to 93°. According to the fault-plane solution, the stations were close to a nodal plane and SV radiation was optimum in their direction. Particle-motion diagrams, constructed from the digital data of the SRO station ANMO (distance 89.1°), show the P -wave character of the precursors. Several interpretations are discussed; the most plausible is that the precursors are Sp phases generated by conversion from S to P below the station. The travel-time differences between S or SKS and Sp are about 60 sec and indicate conversion in the transition zone between the upper and lower mantle. Sp conversions were also observed at long-period WWSSN stations in the western United States for 2 Tonga-Fiji deep-focus earthquakes (distances from 82° to 96°).

Special emphasis is given in this paper to the calculation of theoretical seismograms, both for Sp precursors and the P -wave coda, including high-order multiples such as sP4 which may arrive simultaneously with Sp . The Sp calculations show: (1) the conversions produced by S , ScS , and SKS at interfaces or transition zones between the upper and lower mantle form a complicated interference pattern, and (2) conversion at transition zones is less effective than at first-order discontinuities only if their thickness is greater than about half a wavelength of S waves. As a consequence, details of the velocity structure between the upper and lower mantle can only be determined within these limits from long-period Sp observations. Our observations are compatible with velocity models having pronounced transition zones at depths of 400 and 670 km as have been proposed for the western United States, and they exclude much smoother structures. Our study suggests that long-period Sp precursors from pure thrust or normal-fault earthquakes, observed at distances from 70° to 95° close to a nodal plane and at azimuths roughly perpendicular to its strike, offer a simple means for qualitative mapping of the sharpness of the transition zones between the upper and lower mantle.


miotic and nonmiotic antiglaucoma drugs, mydriatics, preservatives, antiviral compounds, sulfonamides, penicillin, hydrocortisone, epidermal growth factor, prostaglandins, practolol, and thyroid hormone, none of which have been used by the 2 patients reported herein. In most instances, the prolonged use of a topical medication seems to induce conjunctival epidermidalization, which may resolve over the course of a few months, after the drug is discontinued. Persistent or recurrent inflammation of the conjunctivae, as was observed in case 1, can itself lead to epidermidalization. It has been proposed that the mechanism probably involves a region-specific cellular immune response to the topical application, rather than a drug mechanism– specific reaction, because the compounds that are responsible vary widely in chemical structure and therapeutic effect. Conjunctival epidermidalization has been associated with ocular drying related to exposure, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, and avitaminosis A with xerophthalmia. Because ocular drying was present in case 2, it is a possible mechanism. Based on the clinical and histopathologic findings in these 2 unrelated patients, we propose that the administration of risedronate sodium is the primary cause of their conjunctival epidermidalization. Although the mechanisms for the development of Actonel-induced epidermidalization are not fully understood, potential mechanisms include conjunctival inflammation and dry eye. Conjunctival epidermidalization constitutes a serious, visionthreatening condition that is likely to resolve after discontinuation of the drug, but it could lead to vision loss if the drug is continued. Therefore, clinicians should be aware that conjunctival epidermidalization is a potentially dangerous adverse effect of risedronate sodium. Author Affiliations: Departments of Ophthalmology (Ms Geneva and Drs Barker-Griffith and Weisenthal), Pathology (Dr Barker-Griffith), and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Ms Geneva), State University of New York, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse; and Wills Eye Institute, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Drs Eagle and Stefanyszyn). Correspondence: Dr BarkerGriffith, Departments of Ophthalmology and Pathology, 766 Irving Ave, Weiskotten Hall, Room 2137A, State University of New York, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY 13210 (barkerga@upstate .edu). Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported. Funding/Support: This study was supported by unrestricted grants from Research to Prevent Blindness and by the Lions District 20-Y1.


The merger of the recorded music divisions of Sony and BMG, finalized on August 5, 2004, created the world's largest music company while reducing the "Big Five" labels to the "Big Four." The new goliath Sony BMG Music Entertainment will now control over 30% of the global music market. As power and resources were being consolidated in the music industry, regular amendments to the length of copyright terms were extending private ownership of creative works, delaying their passage into the public domain. This study analyzes how the world's media giants use their power and property to influence national and international laws in order to lock down culture and control creativity.


Considering the importance of the TGF-β signaling pathway for normal lung function and especially its roles in inflammation and tissue remodeling, key features of asthma pathology, it can be assumed that these molecules may harbor mutations in asthmatics. The aim of this study was to analyze the SMAD4 gene in patients with asthma. Analysis has encompassed exons 10, 11, 12 and 13 encoding the carboxy-terminal (MH2) domain of the SMAD4 protein, where mutations most frequently occur. The study included 50 patients (20 men and 30 women) with asthma aged between 17 and 73 years (average age 45.2±15.6 years). Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to amplify exons 10, 11, 12 and 13 of the SMAD4 gene and the obtained PCR products were subjected to direct DNA sequencing. No nucleotide changes were found in any of the analyzed exons in either of the subjects. Based on the results of this study, it seems that mutations in the carboxy-terminal (MH2) domain of the SMAD4 are not present in asthmatic patients. Future research should be directed at the analysis of the complete gene, including regulatory elements, in order to resolve the exact role of SMAD4 in asthma. © Versita Sp. z o.o


Background Substance abuse is a growing societal problem with adolescents being at increased risk. The few studies in Nigerian adolescents have not factored in their knowledge base with regard to the concept of substance abuse. Objectives This study determined the indulgence in and knowledge of substance abuse and associated factors among adolescents. Methods This was a questionnaire based study involving 10 to 19year olds recruited from an adolescent summer camp in Anambra state, South-East Nigeria. Results The data of 276adolescents was analyzed, male–91, 33%, M: F = 1: 2. Mean age was 16.4 ± 1.4years. 13.8% (38) accepted they had abused substances in the past; 74.3% (205) had the correct knowledge of the meaning of substance abuse; 10.1% (28) admitted taking substances for pleasure. The substances taken included Alcohol (67.9%), Cigarette (25.0%), Tramadol (10.7%), Cocaine (7.1%), among others. Multiple substances were taken 28.6% of the time. Age category had no significant association with the abuse of substances (X2–2.656, p = 0.282). Stratified by age category, gender had a significant association with substance abuse in Late adolescence (n = 11; M–9, 81.8%; F–2, 18.2%; X2 = 6.893, p = 0.016) but not Mid-adolescence (n = 27; M – 10, 37.0%; F – 17, 63.0%; X2 = 0.749, p = 0.500). Conclusion An unacceptable proportion of the adolescents were already exposed to substances/drugs in spite of having suboptimal knowledge. Adolescents need to be educated on substance abuse and its dangers in order to curb this in the society.


China is found both to be neoliberal and to provide an alternative to neoliberal development. To illuminate the origins of this contradiction, this paper analyzes China's relationship with neoliberalism from a historical and economic theory perspective. Neoliberal economic thinking became relevant to China with the beginning of reform and opening up in 1978, when the Communist Party moved from Maoism to an economic determinist outlook on socialism. This ideological shift opened the door for exchanges with the World Bank and foreign economists, including neoliberals. Yet an analysis of Milton Friedman's speeches in China reveals a critical divide: the Chinese reformers embrace the market but deny that the market requires universal private property. Thus, China is integrated into the global market while the Chinese state reserves its rights to control the economy.


The use of Microwave Assisted Extraction (MAE) to extract ketamine and its metabolites from decomposed bone tissue is described. Wistar rats received 75 mg kg−1 (i.p.) ketamine (n = 12) or remained drug-free (controls, n = 4). Following euthanasia, rats were allowed to decompose to skeleton outdoors. Bones (vertebrae, rib, pelvi, femora, tibiae, humeri and scapulae) were collected and pooled. Analyte stability to MAE in methanol or acetone–hexane mixture (1 : 1, v/v) in a closed vessel microwave system was assessed, and acetone–hexane was chosen as the MAE solvent. Bone samples underwent MAE, and extracts were assayed using microplate solid phase extraction (MPSPE) in a mixed-mode configuration and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Drug levels, expressed as mass normalized response ratios, were used to characterize extraction time and the effect of MAE solvent volume on the extraction time and relative recovery for each analyte. Extraction time varied slightly with solvent volume, while relative analyte recovery did not differ significantly. Recovery was at least 90% of maximal value within the first 5 min for all samples examined and maximum recovery occurred within 20 minutes. MAE in combination with MPSPE offers a substantial improvement in analytical throughput for toxicological analysis of skeletal remains.


The Internet has continued to span great geographical space and generality interests. It has provided enough space for social interaction and information exchange. It is hard to imagine a world without the internet. Like other fields of human endeavours, the internet is no doubt revolutionising the act of researching, especially in the sciences. Regardless of any viewpoint, research outlines formal, methodical and rigorous processes, specifically the application of scientific methods of problem recognition, definition, solution development, data collection, analysis and conclusions. Expectedly, the introduction of the Internet heralded the upswing of the new soft form of learning; with the aim of achieving speedy and cost effective diffusion of knowledge. Secondly, the internet has also helped in aggregating with ease such knowledge which can be shared amongst geographically-detached partners. So, whether it involves fundamental/pure or basic distributed research, action, applied research or research and development, the internet could be effectively employed to improve and meet the limitations of information synchronization, speedy information verification, and reduce the time and the cost of conducting research. In this paper, we propose a structured step-by-step internet-assisted research model that explores known methods like web surveys, nonreactive Internet-based methods, web-based psychological testing and web-based experimenting. They include research features such as Research and Grants Acquisitions, Information Aggregation, Communication and Collaboration, Data Selection and Analysis, Publishing. Also, it involves exploring popular internet services like electronic-mail, web directories, World Wide Web (WWW), VoIP Conferencing, News/Mailing Lists, Chat Applications, File Transfer Protocols etc. The internet is surely one remarkable point for engaging various tools for research that cannot be ignored by modern day researchers.


The Falkland Islands – 52° south, 60° west – are typical of remote territories in that their early geological exploration was piecemeal and opportunistic. The resulting collections are now widely dispersed but remain the basis for modern interpretations. A re-examination of historical fossil collections from the Falklands (dominantly Devonian brachiopods of the Malvinokaffric realm) has show that the much-cited descriptions of some, published in the 19th and earliest 20th century, do not accurately reflect the full range of available material. One hundred and fifty years of curation has allowed this re-assessment of the historical collections as a part of current geological investigations. Some of the surprising outcomes are summarised below.

Charles Darwin first discovered fossils in the Falkland Islands during his 1833 visit aboard the Beagle. Most of his renowned collection is now held by The Natural History Museum, London (NHM), descriptions having been published in 1846. We have established that specimens collected by Darwin are also present (hitherto unrecognised) in other late 19th century bequests to the NHM, whilst there is an undescribed Falklands collection made in 1842 during Ross's Erebus & Terror expedition and preserved in obscurity ever since.

A description of fossils acquired in 1876 by the Challenger expedition was published in 1885, but this collection is ambiguous. The collecting locations cited are implausible and we have been unable to locate the material in the NHM or elsewhere. There is also some uncertainty over the collection presented in 1903 (with descriptions published in 1906) to the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition. These fossils now reside in the Royal Museum, Edinburgh, but their ultimate provenance is questionable since they appeared just as specimens went missing from another collection gathered en passant in 1902 by a Swedish Antarctic Expedition. A shipwreck prolonged the Swedes' absence during which their fossil collection, left stored in the Falklands, mysteriously diminished. The surviving Swedish material is now held by the Natural History Museum in Stockholm; perhaps the rest is in Edinburgh.

To illustrate the amateur contribution we have Constance Allardyce, wife of the Governor of the Falkland Islands appointed in 1904. She sent to New York an exceptionally fine assemblage of fossils, including many trilobites from a newly discovered locality. A published description of this material appeared in 1913 and it has stimulated important recent research at the American Museum of Natural History, which has included modern collecting.


We have demonstrated high speed operation at ultra low voltage using Bulk Dynamic Threshold MOSFET (B-DTMOS) which has shallow well with high impurity concentration layer between low impurity concentration layers for reducing signal transmission delay due to body resistance. Advantages of operation speed over conventional MOSFET in ultra low voltage operation are discussed. Even over the region of ultra low power supply voltage and low threshold voltage where forward bias effect is weak, we confirmed the advantage of the B-DTMOS over the conventional MOS. We achieved an extreme fast ring oscillator operation (182psedstage in 0.3V operation) using BDTMOS with low body resistance.


Part I of this paper explains how wealth managers have modified the trust to create the possibility for stateless dynastic wealth. By this I mean wealth that is held by a family through a trust that is established in a haven state to eliminate the power of other states to regulate and oversee transmission and management of wealth and to make it very difficult for courts in another state to levy against wealth on behalf of private creditors. These structures also permit legal tax avoidance if income and wealth is not attributed to family members. And they facilitate tax evasion by not reporting foreign income and wealth. I use the relatively novel structure of a perpetual purpose trust to illustrate.

Part II is a case study of China. It draws on multiple sources of information to estimate the potential demand for wealth preservation services in China and the current extent of the use of such services. I selected China as a case study in part because it was in the remit of the conference for which this paper was written, which was sponsored by the Chinese Journal of Comparative Law. This was a happy coincidence. Several factors make China an interesting case study. Private wealth has grown exponentially in China in the last fifty years, creating large potential demand for wealth preservation services. But China has been slow in developing internal legal structures like family trusts that would enable wealth holders in China to preserve wealth using Chinese law and Chinese entities. This creates an incentive to move wealth outside of China in addition to the usual incentives canvassed in Part I. Political risk adds to the incentive to move wealth outside of China. But it seems that relatively little wealth has moved outside of China compared to other wealthy states.

Some of this lack of uptake of wealth management services may be attributed to unfamiliarity with such services. I speculate that a significant part can be attributed to restrictions imposed by China on the movement of capital. These restrictions increase the cost of moving capital out of China. This would imply is that there is not strong intrinsic demand for the more exotic services wealth managers can provide, such as the structure described in Part I. This is consistent with the experience in the U.S. where a change in tax law in 1986 is thought to explain an increase in demand for perpetual trusts. If this speculation is correct, then China would expect there to be a significant increase in capital export if it liberalized capital accounts and increased taxes on wealth. And, if the U.S. adopted significant wealth taxes such as have been proposed by some progressive Democrats, then we should expect wealthy individuals to respond by increasing use of structures such as the structure described in Part I.


There is still no agreement on the most suitable time and modality for application of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to improve motor recovery in subacute stroke patients. The underlying mechanism of motor recovery following low-frequency rTMS is considered to be modulation of the interhemispheric asymmetry. On the other hand, the cortical balance of brain activity during the acute to chronic phase of stroke is reported to be unstable. Therefore, we conducted this study to clarify the time course of the interhemispheric asymmetry and the effect of application of low-frequency rTMS combined with occupational therapy on motor recovery and cortical imbalance of brain activity in a subacute stroke patient. The interhemispheric asymmetry in this patient with new-onset subcortical cerebral infarction and upper limb hemiparesis was evaluated longitudinally using functional near-infrared spectroscopy with finger tasks. A nonlesional hemisphere-dominant activation pattern was observed on day 28 after onset. On day 56 after onset, a bilaterally eminent activation pattern was observed. Low-frequency rTMS was applied on day 109 after stroke onset when the cortical activity shifted to the nonlesional hemisphere. The treatment resulted in improvement in motor function of the affected upper limb and a shift in brain activation to the lesional hemisphere. Our report is the first to describe the therapeutic benefits of low-frequency rTMS as assessed by longitudinal neuroimaging for functional recovery and interhemispheric asymmetry in a subacute stroke patient.


OBJECTIVE
Dental materials are often made at room temperature, whereas clinically they are made in the mouth. This study evaluated the effects of temperature on the degree of conversion (DC) and Knoop microhardness (KHN).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Two types of resin-based composites (RBCs) were light-cured using a light-emitting diode (LED) light-curing unit. The resin specimens were centered on an Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) plate heated to 23°C or 33°C. The DC of the resin was calculated after 120 seconds, the specimens were removed, and the KHN was tested at the bottom of the specimens both immediately, after 24 hours, and after 7 days storage in distilled water in complete darkness at 37°C. The effects of different temperatures on the DC and KHN with their storage time were compared by analysis of variance and Fisher's protected least significant difference post hoc multiple comparison tests (p < 0.05).

RESULTS
Increasing the temperature had a significant and positive effect on the DC and KHN for immediate values of the RBCs. Greater conversion and hardness occurred when the curing temperature was increased from 23°C to 33°C. The KHN increased significantly after 24 hours of storage. There was a linear relationship between DC and KHN (R(2) = 0.86) within the range of DC and KHN studied.

CONCLUSION
The physical properties of dental materials can be expected to be better when made in the mouth than when they are made in a laboratory at room temperature.


The late-gestation surge in fetal plasma cortisol is critical for maturation of fetal organ systems. As a result, synthetic glucocorticoids (sGCs) are administered to pregnant women at risk of delivering preterm. However, animal studies have shown that fetal exposure to sGC results in increased risk of behavioral, endocrine, and metabolic abnormalities in offspring. Here, we test the hypothesis that prenatal GC exposure resulting from the fetal cortisol surge or after sGC exposure results in promoter-specific epigenetic changes in the hippocampus. Fetal guinea pig hippocampi were collected before (gestational day [GD52]) and after (GD65) the fetal plasma cortisol surge (Term∼GD67) and 24 hours after (GD52) and 14 days after (GD65) two repeat courses of maternal sGC (betamethasone) treatment (n = 3-4/gp). We identified extensive genome-wide alterations in promoter methylation in late fetal development (coincident with the fetal cortisol surge), whereby the majority of the affected promoters exhibited hypomethylation. Fetuses exposed to sGC in late gestation exhibited substantial differences in DNA methylation and histone h3 lysine 9 (H3K9) acetylation in specific gene promoters; 24 hours after the sGC treatment, the majority of genes affected were hypomethylated or hyperacetylated. However, 14 days after sGC exposure these differences did not persist, whereas other promoters became hypermethylated or hyperacetylated. These data support the hypothesis that the fetal GC surge is responsible, in part, for significant variations in genome-wide promoter methylation and that prenatal sGC treatment profoundly changes the epigenetic landscape, affecting both DNA methylation and H3K9 acetylation. This is important given the widespread use of sGC in the management of women in preterm labor.


Background: Many studies have shown that smoking cessation is cost-effective; however, there have been no pharmacoeconomic trials directly comparing nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) with bupropion SR, the current mainstays of pharmacologic therapy for nicotine dependence. Objective: To evaluate and compare clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness of either NRT or once-daily bupropion SR using patient-reported continuous six-month quit rates and pharmacoeconomic evaluation. Methods: Retrospective data on six-month abstinence rates were obtained on 287 Veterans Affairs people who enrolled in our smoking cessation programs from August 1997 to May 1998. These subjects received either NRT patches or once-daily bupropion SR along with counseling on behavioral modification. Quit rates were calculated to compare the efficacy of NRT versus once-daily bupropion SR. Pharmacoeconomic cost analysis data were calculated to determine actual and guideline cost of each medication group. The costs of success and failure of both NRT patches and bupropion SR were also determined. Results: Six-month quit rates were not significantly different in NRT patches versus bupropion SR groups (27.7% vs. 31%; p > 0.702). Pharmacoeconomic analysis revealed that overall cost of therapy was $158 for medication/patient receiving NRT versus $67/patient taking bupropion SR. Actual cost of success for NRT was $140/patient compared with $199/patient if doses matched guideline recommendations. Actual cost of failure for NRT was $166/patient compared with $138/patient if guideline doses were used. Patients who successfully quit smoking with NRT used pharmacologic treatment for approximately three weeks less than the guideline time period; patients who failed with NRT used therapy about 10 days longer than the guideline time. Actual cost of success for bupropion SR was $74/patient compared with $42/patient if guideline doses were used. Cost of failure with bupropion SR was $63/patient compared with $32/patient if guidelines were followed. Patients successful with bupropion SR used the treatment six weeks longer than our guideline, while patients who failed on bupropion SR used the therapy eight weeks beyond the guideline. Conclusions: NRT and bupropion SR were equally efficacious; however, bupropion SR was more cost-effective than NRT. Increasing the duration of therapy with NRT beyond our guideline period increased the cost of failure.


This work presents a new technique that couples tensor based image flow with robust statistical estimation models to produce dense accurate velocity fields. The 3D orientation structure tensor of the spatiotemporal varying light intensity field is used to estimate local non-rigid image motions. Previous work has shown that in highly uniform regions that lack salient corner and edge information or with noisy measurements the structure tensor approach can lead to spurious velocity estimates. The proposed algorithm improves estimates of the deformable image flow in these regions by minimizing a robust tensor functional that includes regularization and penalty terms. The robust tensor functional explicitly incorporates a temporal photometric consistency term. The combined robust tensor method is formulated as a global constrained optimization over the 3D spatiotemporal light intensity volume and recovers scientifically accurate velocity fields. An attractive aspect of the robust tensor method is simultaneous segmentation and velocity estimation. Experimental results using image sequences of biological motion captured using a calibrated video microscope reveals new biophysical insights at subcellular micron scale resolutions.


Patients with spinal cord stabwounds accounted for over one-quarter of the more than 1 600 patients with spinal cord injury admitted to this unit during 13 years. Over half the lesions were of the Brown-Séquard type. Functional recovery was good in nearly two-thirds of patients. The principles of treatment are discussed.


We present the EpiReader, a novel model for machine comprehension of text. Machine comprehension of unstructured, real-world text is a major research goal for natural language processing. Current tests of machine comprehension pose questions whose answers can be inferred from some supporting text, and evaluate a model's response to the questions. The EpiReader is an end-to-end neural model comprising two components: the first component proposes a small set of candidate answers after comparing a question to its supporting text, and the second component formulates hypotheses using the proposed candidates and the question, then reranks the hypotheses based on their estimated concordance with the supporting text. We present experiments demonstrating that the EpiReader sets a new state-of-the-art on the CNN and Children's Book Test machine comprehension benchmarks, outperforming previous neural models by a significant margin.


Methods of assessing compliance with Emission Standards must be set up carefully because the results may decide priorities for river quality control. The Performance Value Method allows the use of sampling to estimate compliance with standards defined as percentiles. The method also provides estimates of the proportion of time a discharge spent in excess of a particular limit and the probability that the discharge has failed to achieve the standard. The method helps decide how often to sample.


One of the main findings concerning rule-based monetary policy design in Chapter II has been that the assessment of different rule specifications in terms of the criteria presented in Section 2 (determinacy of rational-expectations equilibrium and response to shocks), as well as the evaluation of the relevance of the Taylor principle for fulfilling these criteria are to a great extent dependent on the model used and the inclusion of a supply-side transmission channel in particular. Therefore, in this chapter I focus on deriving a New Keynesian model with endogenous capital and adjustment costs and proceed with examining the system's determinacy properties under different rule specifications. In terms of the general applicability of the Taylor principle, the findings are non-trivial. In the model with endogenous capital an inflation response coefficient greater than unity is not sufficient per se for ensuring a unique rational-expectations equilibrium. Apart from a small value interval of the inflation response coefficient above unity, implying a moderately strong policy reaction, determinacy under an "active" rule requires some degree of output gap response. Moreover, even within the inflation coefficient interval yielding determinacy under a sole inflation target in the rule, adding an output gap term is still associated with a unique equilibrium. In terms of "passive" rules (with an inflation response coefficient below one), the Taylor principle is only partially valid as well. Indeed, if inflation is the only target variable entering the rule, a smaller than one-on-one nominal interest rate response to inflation deviations yields indeterminacy of rational-expectations equilibrium. However, introducing a sufficiently large output gap response can lead to a unique equilibrium even under a passive rule. Thus, modelling endogenous capital provides important new insights and an extension to the baseline formulation of the Taylor principle, namely by adding the requirement of introducing an output gap response in order to guarantee uniqueness of the system's rational-expectations equilibrium. The chapter is organised as follows. In Sections 1 and 2, I give an overview to the baseline New Keynesian framework and possible approaches to modelling capital and investment. The model with endogenous capital and adjustment costs, which is the basis for the determinacy and impulse response analysis to follow in the next chapters, is presented in Section 3. In this section, I first examine the households' optimisation problem. The resulting first-order conditions describe the aggregate demand side of the model. Then I present the producers' optimisation and derive the aggregate supply curve and the real-wage equation and add an interest rate rule to the system. Dynamics of the whole economy are


In this paper, we describe a multichannel method of noisy speech recognition that can adapt to various in-car noise situations during driving. The method allows as to estimate the log spectrum of speech at a close-talking microphone based on the multiple regression of the log spectra (MRLS) of noisy signals captured by multiple distributed microphones. Through clustering of the spatial noise distributions under various driving conditions, the regression weights for MRLS are effectively adapted to the driving conditions. The experimental evaluation shows average error rate reductions of 43% in isolated word recognition under 15 different driving conditions.


In a 2008-2009 regional survey, one in six respondents indicated that s(he) received water resource information from Extension. Respondents were most interested in learning about protecting drinking water and fish and wildlife water needs. The interest in other topics depended on respondents' residence inside or outside city limits and involvement in agricultural activities. Respondents preferred learning about water resources from television coverage, newspaper articles, printed materials, or websites (for younger respondents).


Total laryngectomy (TL) affects critical functions such as swallowing, coughing and speaking. An artificial, bioengineered larynx (ABL), operated via myoelectric signals, may improve quality of life for TL patients. To evaluate the efficacy of using surface electromyography (sEMG) as a control signal to predict instances of swallowing, coughing and speaking, sEMG was recorded from submental, intercostal and diaphragm muscles. The cohort included TL and control participants. Swallowing, coughing, speaking and movement actions were recorded, and a range of classifiers were investigated for prediction of these actions. Our algorithm achieved F1-scores of 76.0 ± 4.4% (swallows), 93.8 ± 2.8% (coughs) and 70.5 ± 5.4% (speech) for controls, and 67.7 ± 4.4% (swallows), 71.0 ± 9.1% (coughs) and 78.0 ± 3.8% (speech) for TLs, using a random forest (RF) classifier. 75.1 ± 6.9% of swallows were detected within 500 ms of onset in the controls, and 63.1 ± 6.1% in TLs. sEMG can be used to predict critical larynx movements, although a viable ABL requires improvements. Results are particularly encouraging as they encompass a TL cohort. An ABL could alleviate many challenges faced by laryngectomees. This study represents a promising step toward realising such a device.


Abstract—This study examines code-switching and code mixing realized in the interactional activities undertaken by govermental leaders in the Denpasar City of Bali Province, Indonesia. Typically I reveal the language types used by bilingual and multingual governments during code swithing and code mixing events as well as investigating their leading factors. The study was designed using qualitative research method. The results of this study indicate that code mixing dan code-switching undertaken by the leaders in the governmental area of Denpasar city involves 3 types of language, namely Balinese, Indonesian, and English. An element of code mixing filler occurring during interactional process of the leaders is tangible words and phrases. Leading factors to such phenomena of code mixing and code-switching are: language ability, speech topics, speech participants, speech situations, prestige; and creating regional or religious nuances.
Keywords: Code mixing; code switching; governmental leader


As the number of services and users in Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) keeps increasing, network virtualization seems to be a good alternative for Mobile Virtual Network Operators(MVNOs) in order to provide better services to customers and save cost and time. As a matter of fact, it offers better performances in terms of resource management and automatic allocation. Furthermore, when an overload occurs in one of the Virtual Machine (VM), live migration is needed. This latter has to take into account the resource availability in the host VM and tend to load balance the nodes and connections. In this paper, we will present the challenges and techniques of live migration in VNE.


For automatic registration of medical images, we must search for geometric features that are invariant both with respect to rigid transformations and to smooth changes of resolution. Beginning with Witkin's seminal paper, scale space theory provides an elegant framework for studying the multiscale behavior of these characteristics. However, a natural scale-space representation of features, useful for practical applications, is still missing. We address here the problem of multiscale extraction and representation of characteristic points based on iso-surface techniques. Our main concern is with $2D$ images: we analyze corner points at increasing scales using the Marching Lines algorithm. Since we can exploit the intrinsic nature of intensity of medical images, segmentation of components or parameterization of curves is not needed, in contrast with other methods. Due to the direct use of the coordinates of points, we get a representation of orbits, which is very convenient both for detection at coarse scale and for localization at fine scale. We find that the significance of \corner\ depends not only on their scale-space lifetime but also on their relationship with curvature inflexion points.


Microsaccades are small, involuntary eye movements that occur during fixation and play a crucial role in maintaining visual stability and attentional focus. Microsaccade inhibition (MSI) refers to the abrupt suppression of microsaccades, typically evoked within 0.1 second after new stimulus onset. The functional significance and neural underpinnings of MSI are subjects of ongoing research. It has been hypothesised that MSI is a component of the brain's attentional re-orienting network which facilitates the allocation of attention to new environmental occurrences by reducing disruptions or shifts in gaze that could interfere with processing. The extent to which MSI is reflexive or influenced by top-down mechanisms remains debated. We developed a task that specifically examines the impact of auditory top-down attention on MSI, allowing us to disentangle ocular dynamics from visual sensory processing. Participants (N=24 and 27; both sexes) listened to two simultaneous streams of tones and were instructed to attend to one stream while detecting specific task "targets." We quantified MSI in response to occasional task-irrelevant events presented in both the attended and unattended streams (frequency steps in Experiment 1, omissions in Experiment 2). The results show that initial stages of MSI are not affected by auditory attention. However, later stages (∼0.25s post-event onset), affecting the extent and duration of the inhibition, are enhanced for sounds in the attended stream compared to the unattended stream. These findings provide converging evidence for the reflexive nature of early MSI stages and robustly demonstrate the involvement of auditory attention in modulating the later stages. Significance Statement Microsaccades are rapid eye movements occurring during fixation. Their precise role is not known but a major hypothesis is that they reflect automatic sampling of the environment. A feature of microsaccades is that they exhibit abrupt suppression (MSI) after the presentation of new stimuli. This is thought to be part of attentional re-orienting. To understand the neural circuit that controls MSI, and by extension, the brain's response to novel events in the environment, it is essential to determine which factors affect MSI. We show, for the first time, that auditory attention affects the latter (but not initial) stages of MSI. Thus, the early stages of MSI are automatic, but subsequent phases are affected by the perceptual state of the individual.


ABSTRACT Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are widely used antidepressants for the treatment of depression. However, SSRIs cause sexual side effects such as anorgasmia, erectile dysfunction, and diminished libido that are thought to be mediated through the serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) system. In vertebrates, gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons play an important role in the control of reproduction. To elucidate the neuroendocrine mechanisms of SSRI-induced reproductive failure, we examined the neuronal association between 5-HT and GnRH (GnRH2 and GnRH3) systems in the male zebrafish. Double-label immunofluorescence and confocal laser microscopy followed by three-dimensional construction analysis showed close associations between 5-HT fibers with GnRH3 fibers and preoptic-GnRH3 cell bodies, but there was no association with GnRH2 cell bodies and fibers. Quantitative real-time PCR showed that short-term treatment (2 wk) with low to medium doses (4 and 40 μg/L, respectively) of citalopram significantly decreased mRNA levels of gnrh3, gonadotropins (lhb and fshb) and 5-HT-related genes (tph2 and sert) in the male zebrafish. In addition, short-term citalopram treatment significantly decreased the fluorescence density of 5-HT and GnRH3 fibers compared with controls. Short-term treatment with low, medium, and high (100 μg/L) citalopram doses had no effects on the profiles of different stages of spermatogenesis, while long-term (1 mo) citalopram treatment with medium and high doses significantly inhibited the different stages of spermatogenesis. These results show morphological and functional associations between the 5-HT and the hypophysiotropic GnHR3 system, which involve SSRI-induced reproductive failures.


Aim: To determine what characterises good quality end-of-life care for home-dwelling patients. Design and setting: An observational study using 5-year data from the National Survey of Bereaved People (VOICES). Methods: Analysis was based on 63,598 decedents who were cared for at home in the last three months of life, drawn from 110,311 completed mortality follow-back surveys of a stratified sample of 246,763 deaths registered in England between 2011 and 2015. Logistic regression analyses were used to identify independent variables associated with overall quality of end-of-life care and other indicators of quality of end-of-life care. Results: Patients who received good continuity of primary care (adjusted OR = 2.03; 95% CI, 2.01 to2.06) and palliative care support (adjusted OR = 1.86; 95% CI, 1.84 to 1.86) experienced better overall quality of end-of-life care as perceived by relatives. Decedents who died from cancer or died outside hospital were more likely to receive good end-of-life care as perceived by relatives. Being older and female, from the least socio-economic deprived areas and being white were associated with better overall end-of-life care as perceived by relatives. Conclusion: Good continuity of primary care was associated with better quality of end-of-life care. Improved end-of-life care was also associated with specialist palliative care support and death outside of hospital. Disparities still exist for those from minority ethnic groups and living in areas of socio-economic deprivation. Future commissioning and initiatives must consider these variables to provide a more equitable service.


ABSTRACT Previously, we have shown that macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) was highly elevated in the placental intervillous blood (IVB) of Plasmodium falciparum-infected women. Here, we compared the expression of MIF in placental tissues obtained from P. falciparum-infected and -uninfected women. Immunoperoxidase staining showed a consistent pattern of MIF expression in syncytiotrophoblasts, extravillous trophoblasts, IVB mononuclear cells, and amniotic epithelial cells, irrespective of their malaria infection status. Cytotrophoblast, villous stroma, and Hofbauer cells showed focal staining. Only amniotic epithelial and IVB mononuclear cells from P. falciparum-infected placentas exhibited significantly higher level of MIF expression than uninfected placentas. Stimulation of syncytilized human trophoblast BeWo cells with P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes that were selected to bind these cells resulted in significant increases in MIF secretion, whereas control erythrocytes, lipopolysaccharides, and synthetic β-hematin had minimal effect. These findings suggest that placental malaria modulates MIF expression in different placental compartments.


Botswana is lagging behind in active participation in stem cell research. The research is yet to take off in the country. In order for stem cell research to be established in Botswana, the people of the country have to accept the research as affording a viable therapy alternative to conventional medicine. This study aimed to evaluate and analyse attitudes of the people of Botswana towards the establishment of stem cell research in Botswana. A survey study was conducted to examine public opinion towards stem cell research in Botswana. The study was conducted in Gaborone through the distribution of survey questionnaires. A total of 107 responses were received from these surveys. It was found out that most of the respondents favoured stem cell research. Thirty-nine percent (39%) (n = 42) approved the indiscriminate use of embryonic stem cells while 42% (n = 45) approved the use of these cells under specific circumstances. Only 19% (n = 20) were against the use of embryo-derived stem cells regardless of any prevailing circumstances. The benefits of the research far outweighed moral ethics which was the reason for the support of the research. Moreover, some people with strong religious convictions showed support for the research as it offers great benefits. This study is important because regulatory policies and legislation governing the research cannot be established without considering public opinion.


Two dust episodes (D1: February 13 and D2: March 28-29, 2004) of long-range transport from desert and loess sources, and one dust episode (D3: March 30) mainly from local area, were investigated in spring 2004 in Beijing, China. Dust samples were collected in different dust episodes and scanning electron microscopy with X-ray energy dispersive detector (SEM/EDS) was applied to study the morphology, elemental composition, and chemical modification on the surfaces of dust particles with radius from 0.1 to 6.4 μm. The morphological features of the particles reveal that the three dust plumes carried both dust particles (90-98% by number) and anthropogenic pollutants (e.g., fly ash and soot, 2-10%). Particle compositions show that the amount of S-containing dust particles was higher in D1 and D2 than in D3. Sulfates were introduced into the dust particles through heterogeneous uptake of SO2 during their transport. In all three dust episodes, fine dust particles (radius < 1 μm) showed a higher degree of chemical modification by SO2 compared to the coarse particles (radius ≥ 1 μm). Furthermore, long-range transport dust particles were more deeply modified by SO2 than particles from local areas. The composition of the dust particles indicates that alkaline mineral components determined the level of chemical modification of individual particles. Heterogeneous uptake of SO2 on a large number of dust particles would increase mass of the internally mixed sulfates on their surfaces. The results suggest that the optical properties of dust particles during dust storm episodes are gradually altered based on how far they are transported.


Abstract This paper reads Carlos Soto Román's "Chile Project: [Re-classified]," a documentary poem that remediates declassified state documents as an ambivalent form of witnessing bureaucracy and state violence. Soto Román "re-classified" – that is, redacted – a forty-five-page selection of documents from the CIA dossier on Chile that was nominally declassified by the US Government in the wake of Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship. Soto Román's intervention renders the documents almost entirely unreadable, a gesture which refuses to grant the archival records the status of official history. This gesture denies the witnessing contained in the documents while also witnessing the documents on behalf of a reader who cannot. In this unusual configuration of poem-as-witness, the paper argues, Soto Román instructs a reader elsewhere, to counter-histories of survival and resistance which are incommensurable with the version of history claimed by the US state. The paper further claims that the redaction can be read as an invitation to consider the "document" as a particular cultural object and media format in which history is written and unwritten, forged and contested, filled with noise and silence. To conclude, the paper posits that poetry, defined as a specific readerly approach to the conditions in which a text is made, provides a critical framework for considering the document as a dynamic interface and therefore history as an ongoing site for both domination and resistance.


The controversy over whether the brightest star, Sirius (α CMa; HR 2491), was red in visual appearance some 2000 years ago, as suggested by Ptolemy amongst others, is re-examined from a physical perspective. Objections to hypotheses based on evolutionary events within the Sirius binary system itself are briefly reviewed. Scenarios that invoke reddening caused by foreground extinction in the interstellar medium or in the Earth's atmosphere are examined in detail to determine whether they offer viable alternatives. It is deduced that only atmospheric extinction is capable of producing appropriate changes in the colour and brightness of Sirius. This result concurs with the findings of Ceragioli, who deduced, from a re-evaluation of the historical evidence and the cultural role of Sirius in Greek and Roman society, that 'red Sirius' refers to observations made at the heliacal risings and settings of the star. Both physical and historical evidence are thus consistent with an interpretation of the 'red Sirius' anomaly based on reddening in the terrestrial atmosphere.


The purpose of this research was to analyze participants' perceptions of the impact of premarital and relationship education workshops offered across the state of Texas. Regional marriage coalition leaders conducted online and telephone interview surveys of 1,109 participants between 6 and 24 months after participating in the workshops. Research questions included whether participants perceived the workshops as helping to improve their relationship skills and quality, whether these evaluations differed by demographics, and how participant relationship status changed after the workshop. A large majority of participants reported their relationship skills had improved as a result of the workshop. Workshop impact scores generally did not differ by gender, age, cohabitation status, and socioeconomic status. However, Hispanic participants reported somewhat higher workshop impact scores.


The new generation of handheld devices is equipped with multi-radio interfaces that enable radio link connections to a variety of wireless networks (i.e. Wi-Fi, WiMAX).This allows for seamless connectivity; however, this also raises a serious issue concerning the short longevity of the handheld usability due to the high power consumption of the wireless interfaces. In this paper, we present a framework that increases considerably the battery longevity of the handheld devices; it enables efficient power management from a global point of view (and not a single radio interface view) of multi-radio devices. The basic idea behind our proposal is to power off the idle interface but at the same time to keep it in virtual idle mode in the network by extending IEEE 802.21 on both sides (the mobile node side and the network side). On the network side, the 802.21 entity acts as a proxy of the powered-off interface to insure the assigned resources for the interface are always maintained during the proxying period. In the context of the proposed framework, we present (details of) the mechanisms to proxy an idle interface (after powering it off) and to wake up a proxied interface respectively. The proposed solution is analytically evaluated to quantify the power savings compared with single-radio power management.


Deoxyribonuclease (DNase) activity was examined in the whole and two split fractions of human seminal fluid from normospermic, oligozoospermic, and azoospermic origins as well as in sonicates of isolated sperm after freezing and thawing of samples and at various pH values of substrates. The method consisted in the measurement of digested areas in plates containing herring sperm deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). No correlation was found between DNase activity (875 +/- 22 (SE) ng/ml) and seminal fluid quality. The enzyme activity was significantly lower in the second split portion (764 +/- 43 ng/ml) as compared to the first (971 +/- 41 ng/ml). Sonicates of washed sperm were inactive. It is suggested that DNase activity derives from the epididymis and possibly from the vas deferens where it participates in the decomposition of DNA from dead cells.


Kidney pericytes are progenitors of scar-forming interstitial myofibroblasts that appear after injury. The function of kidney pericytes as microvascular cells and how these cells detach from peritubular capillaries and migrate to the interstitial space, however, are poorly understood. Here, we used an unbiased approach to identify genes in kidney pericytes relevant to detachment and differentiation in response to injury in vivo, with a particular focus on genes regulating proteolytic activity and angiogenesis. Kidney pericytes rapidly activated expression of a disintegrin and metalloprotease with thrombospondin motifs-1 (ADAMTS1) and downregulated its inhibitor, tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 3 (TIMP3) in response to injury. Similarly to brain pericytes, kidney pericytes bound to and stabilized capillary tube networks in three-dimensional gels and inhibited metalloproteolytic activity and angiogenic signaling in endothelial cells. In contrast, myofibroblasts did not have these vascular stabilizing functions despite their derivation from kidney pericytes. Pericyte-derived TIMP3 stabilized and ADAMTS1 destabilized the capillary tubular networks. Furthermore, mice deficient in Timp3 had a spontaneous microvascular phenotype in the kidney resulting from overactivated pericytes and were more susceptible to injury-stimulated microvascular rarefaction with an exuberant fibrotic response. Taken together, these data support functions for kidney pericytes in microvascular stability, highlight central roles for regulators of extracellular proteolytic activity in capillary homoeostasis, and identify ADAMTS1 as a marker of activation of kidney pericytes.


In this article, we present a forgotten letter that Antonio Ranz Romanillos wrote to the young writer Angel Saavedra. In the letter he answers Ranz's request to give his opinion, both as a critic and a scholar, about Ranz's neoclassical tragedy, Dona Blanca of Castille, which had been performed without much success.


Abusive language is a massive problem in online social platforms. Existing abusive language detection techniques are particularly ill-suited to comments containing heterogeneous abusive language patterns, i.e., both abusive and non-abusive parts. This is due in part to the lack of datasets that explicitly annotate heterogeneity in abusive language. We tackle this challenge by providing an annotated dataset of abusive language in over 11,000 comments from YouTube. We account for heterogeneity in this dataset by separately annotating both the comment as a whole and the individual sentences that comprise each comment. We then propose an algorithm that uses a supervised attention mechanism to detect and categorize abusive content using multi-task learning. We empirically demonstrate the challenges of using traditional techniques on heterogeneous content and the comparative gains in performance of the proposed approach over state-of-the-art methods.


Background with rationaleThe burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD) has increased rapidly in Australia over recent years. The financial cost of treating people with end-stage kidney failure by conventional models of dialysis or transplantation represents a substantial healthcare cost and is likely to continue to increase in coming years. Tasmania, the smallest state of Australia and its only island state, has the highest burden of chronic disease nationally, including kidney disease. The aim of this study was to use data-linkage to develop a state-wide dataset to quantify the burden and distribution of CKD, including identifying barriers to dialysis treatment services.
Methods/ApproachThe Tasmanian Data Linkage Unit (TDLU) used a complex data linkage design comprising seven disparate datasets representing public and private pathology, public hospital admitted patient and emergency department data, cancer records, dialysis and transplant records and death notifications. A cohort was selected from public and private providers of pathology services in the state to support the establishment of a comprehensive researchable dataset. The datasets spanned the period 2004-2017 and included linkage of both state and national data.
ResultsThe study cohort comprised just under 490,000 individuals in the Tasmanian population from the two pathology datasets, with a combined total of 1,347,00 total links made across all datasets. Individual unit records were geocoded according to the Australian Statistical Geographic Standard (2011) with over 92% of the 374,000 unique addresses identified in the public pathology dataset geocoded to address level.
ConclusionThe final researchable dataset compiled by the research team following linkage is providing an enormously powerful asset to help answer questions specific to CKD in Tasmania, and that in turn is anticipated to result in greater access to services, improved care and better patient outcomes.


This
study investigated the effects of expressive writing on body image of women
varying in eating disorder symptomatology. Ninety-two female undergraduates
were randomly assigned to the writing topic conditions: traumatic events, body
image, and room description. At three times (before, immediately after, and one
month after the two-week intervention), participants selected from among nine
figures (a) the figure deemed closest to their current figure, (b) the figure
deemed closest to the ideal figure, and (c) the figure deemed closest to the
figure that men prefer. The current figure ratings decreased after the writing
intervention for the high-symptom group but not the low-symptom group. The
ideal and male-preferred figure ratings were not affected by the intervention
and did not differ between the symptom level groups. Based on the first
finding, writing may improve body image perceptions in women with an already
distorted body image.


The first asymmetric total synthesis of (+)-propolisbenzofuran B is accomplished in 11 steps with an overall yield of 11.9%. The key steps are tandem deacetylative Sonogashira coupling-annulation reaction to synthesize the 2-substituted benzofuran core, stereoselective syn-aldol reaction and Friedel-Crafts cyclization to install the desired stereocenters & third-ring, and Stille coupling for C-acetylation.


In writing the integral equations for the median mass diameter and particle concentration, or comparable parameters of the raindrop size distribution, it is apparent that when attenuation effects are included, the forms of the equations for polarimetric and dual wavelength radars are identical. In both sets of equations, differences in the backscattering and extinction cross sections appear: in the polarimetric equations, the differences are taken with respect polarization at a fixed frequency while for the dual wavelength equations, the differences are taken with respect to wavelength at a fixed polarization. Because the forms of the equations are the same, the ways in which they can be solved are similar as well. To avoid instabilities in the forward recursion procedure, the equations can be expressed in the form of a final-value. Solving the equations in this way traditionally has required estimates of the path attenuations to the final gate: either the attenuations at horizontal and vertical polarizations at the same frequency or attenuations at two frequencies with the same polarization. This has been done for dual-frequency (air/spaceborne case) and polarimetric radars by the respective use of the surface reference technique and the differential phase shift. An alternative to solving the constrained version of the equations is an iterative procedure recently proposed in which independent estimates of path attenuation are not required. Although the procedure has limitations, it appears to be quite useful. Simulations of the retrievals help clarify the relationship between the constrained and unconstrained approaches and their application to the polarimetric and dual-wavelength equations.


A new global positioning system (GPS)-based routing protocol for ad hoc networks, called zone-based hierarchical link state (ZHLS) routing protocol, is proposed. In this protocol, the network is divided into nonoverlapping zones. Each node only knows the node connectivity within its zone and the zone connectivity of the whole network. The link state routing is performed on two levels: focal node and global zone levels. Unlike other hierarchical protocols, there is no cluster head in this protocol. The zone level topological information is distributed to all nodes. This "peer-to-peer" manner mitigates traffic bottleneck, avoids single point of failure, and simplifies mobility management. Since only zone ID and node ID of a destination are needed for routing, the route from a source to a destination is adaptable to changing topology. The zone ID of the destination is found by sending one location request to every zone. Simulation results show that our location search scheme generates less overhead than the schemes based on flooding. The results also confirm that the communication overhead for creating and maintaining the topology in the proposed protocol is smaller than that in the flat LSR protocol. This new routing protocol provides a flexible, efficient, and effective approach to accommodate the changing topology in a wireless network environment.


In DiffServ-aware traffic engineering, a key issue is how to properly allocate bandwidth for different DiffServ class types. Recently, a cumulative allocation strategy, called the Russian doll model (RDM), has gained intensive interests in IETF. The basic RDM, however, only describes the necessary condition of a stable queuing system: the utilization factor must be less than unit. When applied to the real world, the RDM must take the measures of QoS into account. In this paper, we establish a QoS-aware RDM on the fractional Brownian motion process model.


This paper presents Vassal, a system that enables applications to dynamically load and unload CPU scheduling policies into the operating system kernel, allowing multiple policies to be in effect simultaneously. With Vassal, applications can utilize scheduling algorithms tailored to their specific needs and general-purpose operating systems can support a wide variety of special-purpose scheduling policies without implementing each of them as a permanent feature of the operating system. We implemented Vassal in the Windows NT 4.0 kernel.

Loaded schedulers coexist with the standard Windows NT scheduler, allowing most applications to continue being scheduled as before, even while specialized scheduling is employed for applications that request it. A loaded scheduler can dynamically choose to schedule threads in its class, or can delegate their scheduling to the native scheduler, exercising as much or as little control as needed. Thus, loaded schedulers can provide scheduling facilities and behaviors not otherwise available. Our initial prototype implementation of Vassal supports two concurrent scheduling policies: a single loaded scheduler and the native scheduler. The changes we made to Windows NT were minimal and they have essentially no impact on system behavior when loadable schedulers are not in use. Furthermore, loaded schedulers operate with essentially the same efficiency as the default scheduler. An added benefit of loadable schedulers is that they enable rapid prototyping of new scheduling algorithms by often removing the time-consuming reboot step from the traditional edit/compile/reboot/debug cycle.

In addition to the Vassal infrastructure, we also describe a "proof of concept" loadable real-time scheduler and performance results.


Objective: To study the incubation period of the infection with 2019-nCoV Omicron variant BA.5.1.3. Methods: Based on the epidemiological survey data of 315 COVID-19 cases and the characteristics of interval censored data structure, log-normal distribution and Gamma distribution were used to estimate the incubation. Bayes estimation was performed for the parameters of each distribution function using discrete time Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Results: The mean age of the 315 COVID-19 cases was (42.01±16.54) years, and men accounted for 30.16%. A total of 156 cases with mean age of (41.65±16.32) years reported the times when symptoms occurred. The log-normal distribution and Gamma distribution indicated that the M (Q1, Q3) of the incubation period from exposure to symptom onset was 2.53 (1.86, 3.44) days and 2.64 (1.91, 3.52) days, respectively, and the M (Q1, Q3) of the incubation period from exposure to the first positive nucleic acid detection was 2.45 (1.76, 3.40) days and 2.57 (1.81, 3.52) days, respectively. Conclusions: The incubation period by Bayes estimation based on log-normal distribution and Gamma distribution, respectively, was similar to each other, and the best distribution of incubation period was Gamma distribution, the difference between the incubation period from exposure to the first positive nucleic acid detection and the incubation period from exposure to symptom onset was small. The median of incubation period of infection caused by Omicron variant BA.5.1.3 was shorter than those of previous Omicron variants.


Proxy cache which is an important device to guarantee the quality of Web service works with a poor efficiency when hot-spot appears. To solve this problem, load balancing method should be applied. In this paper, a load balancing model based on ant colony behavior is put forward. In the model, agent monitors the status of proxy server it has been installed on. Based on that status, if it judges that the server is busy by hot-spot, the agent asks for help to agents on other servers. Then other servers will form cooperation according to status of themselves to share the requests caused by hot-spot, which can balance the load of system. The main idea of the model is described and the algorithm for load balancing of the model is introduced. The results of related experiments show that the model has a good ability of load balancing and storage space saving.


Transmastoid sigmoid sinus wall reconstruction (SSWR) is a surgical technique used for the treatment of pulsatile tinnitus arising from sigmoid sinus wall anomalies. In 13 patients, CT and MR imaging examinations were assessed for the characteristics of the materials used for reconstruction, the impact of these on the adjacent sigmoid sinus, and complications. The various materials used for reconstruction (NeuroAlloderm, HydroSet, bone pate) showed characteristic imaging appearances and could be consistently identified. In 5/13 patients, there was extrinsic compression of the sigmoid sinus by graft material. Dural sinus thrombosis occurred in 2 patients. Symptoms requiring postoperative imaging after SSWR include headaches, visual disturbances, and persistent or recurrent tinnitus. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Transmastoid sigmoid sinus wall reconstruction is a surgical technique increasingly used for the treatment of pulsatile tinnitus arising from sigmoid sinus wall anomalies. The imaging appearance of the temporal bone following this procedure has not been well-characterized. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the postoperative imaging appearance in a group of patients who underwent this procedure. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The medical records of 40 consecutive patients who underwent transmastoid sigmoid sinus wall reconstruction were reviewed. Thirteen of 40 patients underwent postoperative imaging. Nineteen CT and 7 MR imaging examinations were assessed for the characteristics of the materials used for reconstruction, the impact of these on the adjacent sigmoid sinus, and complications. RESULTS: Tinnitus resolved in 38 of 40 patients. Nine patients were imaged postoperatively for suspected complications, including dural sinus thrombosis, facial swelling, and wound drainage. Two patients underwent imaging for persistent tinnitus, and 2, for development of tinnitus on the side contralateral to the side of surgery. The materials used for reconstruction (NeuroAlloderm, HydroSet, bone pate) demonstrated characteristic imaging appearances and could be consistently identified. In 5 of 13 patients, there was extrinsic compression of the sigmoid sinus by graft material. Dural sinus thrombosis occurred in 2 patients. CONCLUSIONS: The imaging findings following sigmoid sinus wall repair are characteristic. Graft materials may result in extrinsic compression of the sigmoid sinus, and this finding may be confused with dural venous thrombosis. Awareness of the imaging characteristics of the graft materials used enables this differentiation.


Geometrical and kinetic factors in polymorphic transformations of single crystals of thallous nitrate have been investigated by optical and X-ray methods. The transformations orthorhombic ⇌ rhombohedral can proceed by two distinct mechanisms with different kinetics. The slower kinetics are associated with a mechanism which maintains a definite orientation relation and causes formation of plates of the new phase: it is closely similar to martensitic transformation in alloys. Dislocation etch pits can be produced at the interface. Nucleation rates for the other, 'reconstructive', mechanism were predominantly time-dependent in superheating, and temperature-dependent in supercooling. Nucleation appears to occur at defects. A transformation from orthorhombic to cubic can occur in good crystals at 126·5°C and proceeds by a third, continuous mechanism, despite the similarity of the stable rhombohedral structure to the cubic. It appears that the choice of a transformation mechanism can depend on amount of imperfection and can be quite sensitive to small changes in the difference between the structures.


HISTORY AND CLINICAL FINDINGS
A 43-year-old woman of Ghanaian origin presented with severe upper abdominal pain starting on a long distance flight. Physical examination revealed tenderness on palpation in the left upper abdomen and flank. There was no report of pre-existing conditions or permanent medication in the medical history.

INVESTIGATIONS AND DIAGNOSIS
Laboratory tests showed signs of haemolytic anemia and elevated inflammatory parameters. The "thick blood smear" was normal. Ultrasonography revealed an enlarged spleen (14×5 cm) with inhomogeneous parenchyma and vast, diffusely spread hypoechoic lesions in perihilar location, interpreted as extended splenic infarction. Symptom onset on a long distance flight, haemolytic anemia and extended splenic infarction led to the assumption of a vasoocclusive crisis with haemolysis. Moleculargenetic tests proved the presence of HbSC-sickle cell disease and heterozygous alpha-thalassemia.

TREATMENT AND COURSE
After infusion of crystalloid solution the patient was asymptomatic further on. Due to splenic infarction she received prophylactic treatment with Cefuroxim. A vaccination against pneumococci, meningococci and Haemophilus influenza B was recommended.

CONCLUSIONS
Mild hypoxia and dehydration on a long distance flight can trigger a sickle cell crisis and may contribute to late clinical manifestation and diagnosis of sickle cell disease in some cases. Patients suffering from HbSC-sickle cell disease are at risk for the same life-threatening complications as patients with HbSS-sickle cell disease. HbSC-sickle cell disease should not be considered as a mild form of HbSS-sickle cell disease but as a separate disease with specific clinical manifestations. In contrast-enhanced ultrasonography, splenic infarction due to sickle cell crisis may markedly differ from "typical" arterial thromboembolic infarction.


During the Annual Conference of the Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions (ASAHP) in October 2019, it was announced at the Business Meeting that as of that day the new name would be the Association of Schools Advancing Health Professions, representing the third occasion such a change has occurred since the organization came into existence in 1967. The term allied health has a rich history. Confronted with workforce shortages during the 1960s in professions such as physical therapy, officials at the U.S. Public Health Service decided that a new organization should be created in the private sector to deal effectively with such matters. That decision led to the birth of ASAHP. Initially struggling with what to call this entity, a group of deans and government officials identified the words allied health as a way of distinguishing this new creation from other professions, such as medicine, dentistry, and nursing.


mother, as wonl as of the child, if labour had not been quickly brought on. The I expect, ceased as soon as the expulsive action of the uterus was set up. The child did not appear to have been dead long; anJ had the labour been a rapid one, I have no doubt but it would have been born alive. The mother recovered very well. The milk, ass is usual in such cases, gave her some little trouble. As there are but few cases of intra uterine hbmorrhage published, this,perhaps, may be interesting to the readers ofthe ASSOCIATION JOURNAL. What I wish particularly to direct their attention to is, the simple cause that produced it, and the slight hemorrhage that gave rise to such great and alarming constitutional derangement in the mother, and to the death of the child. Here was only one clot, and


The location and organization of the nisin locus in Lactococcus lactis ATCC 11454 were studied. Primer extension of in vivo mRNA transcripts of the gene that encodes the nisin prepropeptide sequence indicated the presence of a promoter at least 4 kb upstream from the nisin gene and that the mRNA has several processing sites. Restriction fragment patterns using rare-cutting enzymes, orthogonal pulsed-field clamped homogeneous electric field (CHEF) agarose gel electrophoresis, and hybridization with nisin gene probes showed that the nisin prepropeptide gene was located on a megabase-size restriction fragment, which was taken as proof of a chromosomal location. This is contrary to earlier reports, which had indicated that genes for nisin production were located on plasmids. There was no evidence of more than one chromosomal location or more than one copy of the nisin gene. The restriction patterns indicated that the size of the L. lactis genome is about 2,500 kb. The previously observed (G. W. Buchman, S. Banerjee, and J. N. Hansen, J. Biol. Chem. 263: 16260-16266, 1988) downstream open reading frame (ORF) was fully sequenced to reveal an 851-amino-acid coding region, an upstream putative mRNA processing site, and a putative rho-independent terminator. The ORF was analyzed for secondary structural features, and the sequence data bases were searched for homologies. The ORF contained many amphipathic helices, a C-terminal transmembrane helix, and homologies to some membrane-associated proteins. It lacked an N-terminal membrane insertion sequence and accordingly appears to be associated with, and anchored to, the cytoplasmic side of the membrane. An additional ORF that possessed a ribosome-binding sequence and tandem promoters, indicating the beginning of a new operon, was identified still farther downstream. The results were consistent with the nisin gene being part of a polycistronic operon with a size greater than 8.5 kb.


Developing countries benefit from the registration of geographical indications (GIs) in the agricultural and artisan sectors. The extension of GIs to the artisan sector serves as a best practice to Nigeria. Nigeria has many indigenous forms of cultural artworks that are influenced by the environment. Artworks from places like Benin and other regions in Nigeria are location specific. This paper explores generally the utilization of GIs to protect cultural artworks and the monetary and nonmonetary benefits of such works. The trend of registering GIs to protect culture, arts, and traditional knowledge is crucial to the economic growth of Nigeria otherwise it deprives those dependent on the creation of cultural artworks of a means to benefit from their hard work by a process known to them for decades.


Morphological changes of the complex 3-D architecture of podocytes as well as the loss of these post-mitotic cells often result in severe kidney disease. Since currently, there are no curative drugs, we focused on the identification of non-invasive biomarkers, allowing an early detection of the onset of such diseases. Therefore, we analyzed the cellular- and the cell-free fractions of urine samples from patients suffering from chronic kidney disease (CKD), especially for injury markers as well as for exosome-derived miRNAs.
We identified the mRNA of the neuronal protein brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the cellular fraction of 120 CKD patients and found that the expression was highly correlated with the mRNA expression of the kidney injury marker molecule 1 (KIM-1). Furthermore, we found that both were correlated with the mRNA expression of the podocyte-specific gene Nephrin (NPHS1), suggesting that podocytes are very likely the cellular source.
Beside this, we observed that BDNF is upregulated in biopsies of diabetic patients and seems to be involved in the differentiation of podocytes. Immunofluorescence staining clearly showed that BDNF is localized in the cell body and major processes of podocytes within the glomerulus. Knockdown experiments in zebrafish larvae, a well-established animal model to study kidney function, showed the importance of BDNF on kidney function, morphology and filtration in vivo.
Additionally, we analyzed circulating exosomal microRNAs (miRs) isolated from the cell-free urine fraction. After the optimization of a column-based isolation protocol for exosomes, we identified miR-16 from a pre-selected set of candidates as a suitable endogenous reference gene for data normalization. Subsequently, we analyzed the exosomal levels of miR-21, miR-30a-5p and miR-92a in urine samples of 41 CKD patients and 5 healthy controls. We found significantly enhanced levels of miR-21 in CKD patients that were also negatively correlated with the eGFR, suggesting a negative influence on kidney function. MiR-21 was also highly upregulated in de-differentiated glomeruli and in kidneys of nephrotoxic serum- (NTS-) treated mice as an in vivo kidney injury model.
To summarize, we identified two promising new and non-invasive biomarkers for CKD in the urine of patients which may also have a functional relevance on kidney function.


2-Aminopurine is a fluorescent probe widely used to study local dynamics as well as charge and energy transfer reactions in DNA/RNA. Despite its broad utilization, the nonradiative relaxation pathways responsible for the variation in its fluorescence quantum yield and fluorescence lifetime in different solvents are still under scrutiny. In this work we use steady-state absorption and emission spectroscopy and broad-band transient absorption covering the time scale from femtoseconds to microseconds to investigate the excited-state dynamics of 2-aminopurine 2'-deoxyriboside (2APdr) in acetonitrile, ethanol, and aqueous buffer solution at pH 7. It is shown that up to ~40% of the initial excited-state population decays by intersystem crossing to the triplet state depending on the solvent used, thus competing effectively with fluorescence emission. Furthermore, the rate of formation and yield of the triplet state depend sensitively on the hydrogen-donor ability and polarity of the solvent.


The changes induced in the relative concentrations of the different species of RNA (messenger, ribosomal, transfer and heterogenous) which regulate the metabolic behavior of tissues were studied in the endometrium of normal women and in women wearing a progesterone T IUD for 6-12 months. It was observed that the intrauterine release of progesterone is accompanied by a significant decrease in the content of total RNA (from 78 +or- 8.4 to 64 +or- 6.7 mcg/mg of protein) and in the RNA/DNA ratio (from 0.85 +or- 0.10 to 0.73 +or- 0.08). Although the protein decreased significantly (from 102 +or- 11 to 82 +or- 14 mg/g wet wt.), the DNA content and the Prot/DNA ratio were not altered. Using the affinity chromatography technique in poly(u)Sepharose it was found that the relative concentrations of RNA types were in general drastically modified: mRNA and rRNA decreased (from 2.6 +or- 0.31 to 1.28 +or- 0.15 and from 65.5 +or- 8.0 to 54.8 +or- 6.7 mcg/mg of protein respectively). tRNA content was increased (from 6.2 +or- 0.9 to 11.0 +or- 1.3) while hRNA was unchanged. The probable inhibitory effects of these changes in relation to the normal hormonal stimulation of the human endometrium, as a possible explanation of the mechanism of action of this device, are discussed.


In an investigation comparing two strains of mice (BALB/c, susceptible to estrogen-induced Leydig cell tumors and C3H, resistant to such tumors), we found that the Leydig cell-luteinizing hormone (LH) receptors increase in BALB/c mice and decrease in C3H mice during estrogen treatment. In the BALB/c strain, LH receptor content in the tested of mice treated 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 weeks with diethylstilbestrol (DES) was 2.4- to 5.4-fold greater than that in the testes of untreated littermates. By 24 weeks of treatment, the receptor number had increased 10-fold. Likewise, two weeks of estradiol benzoate treatment in BALB/c mice resulted in a dose-dependent increase in LH receptor content. In contrast, in C3H mice, DES treatment resulted in a transient initial increase (60%), followed by a time-dependent decrease in testicular LH receptor number: 38 and 17% that of normal by six and eight weeks of treatment, respectively. In both strains of mice, DES-induced changes in 125I-labeled human chorionic gonadotropin binding reflected changes in LH receptor number rather than in receptor affinity (approximately 3 x 10(-11) M). The testis weights of BALB/c mice remained normal during DES treatment, whereas those of the C3H decreased with time. Sprague-Dawley rats, resistant to estrogen-induced Leydig cell tumors, like C3H mice, also underwent testicular atrophy and lost LH receptors during DES treatment. The present study demonstrates that estrogen treatment indices diametrically oppossed change in testicular LH receptor number in the two strains of mice with different susceptibilities to Leydig cell tumorigenesis.


Regional integration is under discussion nowadays. In 1991, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay created the MERCOSUR regional bloc, which was fully consolidated in 1995. The stabilization problems suffered by the region since 1999, asymmetry problems inside the bloc, the growth of commodities' international prices and the country access to new markets, led Uruguay to re-discuss its international insertion, strengthening the idea of open regionalism. Uruguayan exports are little diversified, historically based on agricultural and basic products. This implied a poor export performance, concentrated in few products (commodities) with low technology and low-skilled labor. It also implied low dynamism and high volatility of exports income. Nevertheless, Uruguayan exports to the region (mainly Argentina and Brazil) have different characteristics from the ones destined to the rest of the world, especially, the high participation of manufactured exports without agricultural inputs. This paper analyses the determinants of Uruguayan manufactured exports without agricultural inputs to Argentina and Brazil (where they are principally destined). This was studied through a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) including these exports to both countries, external demand and bilateral real exchange rates. The empirical analysis suggests that the external demand is the only determinant of this type of exports to the region, according to this model. This result implies that these exports depend only on Argentina and Brazil growth. Competitiveness seems not to be an important determinant for the performance of these exports to our neighbors.


Abstract. Rees LH (Royal College of Physicians, London, UK). Medical education in the new millennium (Internal Medicine in the 21st Century). J Intern Med 2000; 248: 95–101.


Introduction: Head hair forms a central component of the sociocultural male appearance ideal (e.g.,mesomorphic, tall, young and not bald) and carries masculine connotations and stigma. Immense pressures to conform to this male appearance ideal gives rise to body dissatisfaction. Previous assessments of body dissatisfaction are too narrow, ignoring dissatisfaction beyond mesomorphy such as baldness dissatisfaction. Our study involved two research questions: (i) Do the facial expressions assigned to images of bald and non-bald men differ? and (ii) What forms of body dissatisfaction, including baldness dissatisfaction, do men have and are these related to men's wellbeing and muscularity behaviours?
Method: Eighty-six male participants aged 18–58 years (mean = 23.62; standard deviation = 7.80) were randomly exposed to 10 images of smiling men (half balding and half not) and were asked to rate the facial expression displayed. Participants also rated their body dissatisfaction and wellbeing. Ethics statement: Institutional ethics approval was granted.
Results: We found that participants interpreted the facial expressions of images of bald men slightly more negatively than non-bald men. Most participants reported some form of body dissatisfaction correlated with wellbeing and muscularity enhancing behaviours, albeit weakly. Participants also disclosed a range of body dissatisfaction aspects (including surrounding muscularity, body fat, teeth alignment, skin tone and facial hair amount) though generally were not impacted heavily nor highly dissatisfied.
Conclusion: These findings underscore the complex challenge in producing a complete assessment of men's body dissatisfaction and the general resilience men experience with extant appearance pressures around their bodies and head hair.


The following ammonoid and nautiloid taxa are described for the first time from the Upper Triassic succession (Ekrasar Formation, Shemshak Group) of northern Alborz, Iran: Arcestes sp., Arcestes ( Pararcestes ?) sp., Thisbites cf. agricolae Mojsisovics, Stikinoceras cf. kerri Mc Learn, Giesbachites sp., Griesbachites cf. pseudomedleyanus Diener, Griesbachites cf. himalayanus Wang & He, and Proclydonautilus ? sp. Palaeobiogeographically, the studied ammonoids are Tethyan in character, and stratigraphically attributed to the lower Lower Norian ( Guembelites jandianus Zone, possibly also Malayites paulckei Zone). The biostratigraphic data of this study demonstrate the diachronous base of the Shemshak Group: it is older in the northern Alborz (lower Lower Norian), but younger in Central Iran and probably also in the southern Alborz (Middle Norian).


This paper presents a novel and practical convolutional neural network architecture to implement semantic segmentation for side scan sonar (SSS) image. As a widely used sensor for marine survey, SSS provides higher-resolution images of the seafloor and underwater target. However, for a large number of background pixels in SSS image, the imbalance classification remains an issue. What is more, the SSS images contain undesirable speckle noise and intensity inhomogeneity. We define and detail a network and training strategy that tackle these three important issues for SSS images segmentation. Our proposed method performs image-to-image prediction by leveraging fully convolutional neural networks and deeply-supervised nets. The architecture consists of an encoder network to capture context, a corresponding decoder network to restore full input-size resolution feature maps from low-resolution ones for pixel-wise classification and a single stream deep neural network with multiple side-outputs to optimize edge segmentation. We performed prediction time of our network on our dataset, implemented on a NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier, and compared it to other similar semantic segmentation networks. The experimental results show that the presented method for SSS image segmentation brings obvious advantages, and is applicable for real-time processing tasks.


Introduction: Microplastics have become a pollution problem that has received worldwide attention. Microplastics in the water impact the environment and health, especially in Indonesia, which is the second-largest plastic waste contributor in the world. This literature study aims to determine the distribution of microplastics pollution in waters and its impact on health and the environment in Indonesia.Methods: The literature search on papers from 2010-2021 through Google Scholar, Pubmed, ScienceDirect, and ProQuest, with the keywords of 'Microplastics', 'Indonesia', 'aquatic', 'environment'   found 477 articles.  Then, after the exclusion of duplicate articles, and other inclusion criteria, the final review was done on 42 articles. PRISMA guidelines were used for reviewing the procedure.Results: Most microplastic research was conducted in Java Island, which is dominated by rivers and beaches. Based on the source, microplastics came from domestic waste, tourism, and fishing activities. The most common forms found were black and blue fibers from fishing lines, nets, and clothing fibers of various sizes. The type of polymer identified is polyethylene plastic. Microplastics impacted tourist destinations, marine ecosystems through the food chain, and also humans who consume seafood.Conclusion: Microplastics are found in the Indonesian marine environment. Humans can consume seafood contaminated with microplastics, which will have an impact on health. Therefore, a health risk assessment should be done to provide information for taking environmental management efforts.


We study the dephasing effect on the transport properties in an Aharonov–Bohm ring with an embedded quantum dot, due to the electron–phonon interaction. The differential conductance is calculated under finite bias using Keldysh Green function. The electron–phonon interaction is treated (i) by the canonical transformation, or (ii) by the second‐order perturbation. By the latter method, we find that the Fano resonance is suppressed by the electron–phonon interaction and that the suppression increases with increasing bias voltage. The calculations by the former method do not yield the bias‐voltage dependence of the dephasing effect. (© 2005 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)


The stable operating-power limits of a small scale HVDC system composed of voltage source converters (VSC-HVDC system) are analyzed with a simple model. The VSC-HVDC system could operate where the AC system must be somewhat larger in capacity than the VSC-HVDC system capacity. The stable operating power limits were between one and two times the SCR (short circuit ratio). When the inverter of the VSC-HVDC system was operated with lead reactive (capacitive) power control conditions, the stable operating limits were increased through AC voltage stabilization. If there were loads near the inverter, the VSC-HVDC system could transmit a little bit larger power than those without loads.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Estimates of the effect of estimated GFR (eGFR) decline on mortality have focused on populations with normal kidney function, or have included limited information on factors previously shown to influence the risk of death among patients with CKD.

DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS
We retrospectively assessed the effect of rate of eGFR decline on survival of patients with CKD receiving primary care through a large integrated health care system in central Pennsylvania between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2009.

RESULTS
A total of 15,465 patients were followed for a median of 3.4 years. Median rates of eGFR change by those in the lower, middle, and upper tertiles of eGFR slope were -4.8, -0.6, and 3.5 ml/min per 1.73 m(2)/yr, respectively. In Cox proportional hazard modeling for time to death, adjusted for baseline proteinuria, changes in nutritional parameters, and episodes of acute kidney injury during follow-up (among other covariates), the hazard ratio for those in the lower (declining) and upper (increasing) eGFR tertiles (relative to the middle, or stable, tertile) was 1.84 and 1.42, respectively. Longitudinal changes in nutritional status as well as episodes of acute kidney injury attenuated the risk only modestly. These findings were consistent across subgroups.

CONCLUSIONS
eGFR change over time adds prognostic information to traditional mortality risk predictors among patients with CKD. The utility of incorporating eGFR trends into patient-risk assessment should be further investigated.


Abstract Background Declines in cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and muscle mass are both associated with advancing age and each of these declines is associated with worse health outcomes. Resistance exercise training (RET) has previously been shown to improve muscle mass and function in the older population. If RET is also able to improve CRF, as it has been shown to do in younger populations, it has the potential to improve multiple health outcomes in the expanding older population. Methods This systematic review aimed to identify the role of RET for improving CRF in healthy older adults. A search across CINAHL, MEDLINE, EMBASE and EMCARE databases was conducted with meta-analysis performed on eligible papers to identify improvements in established CRF parameters (VO2 peak, aerobic threshold (AT), 6-minute walking distance test (6MWT) following RET intervention. Main eligibility criteria included older adults (aged over 60), healthy cohorts (disease-specific cohorts were excluded) and RET intervention. Results Thirty-seven eligible studies were identified. Meta-analysis revealed a significant improvement in VO2 peak (MD 1.89 ml/kg/min; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.21–2.57 ml/kg/min), AT (MD 1.27 ml/kg/min; 95% CI 0.44–2.09 ml/kg/min) and 6MWT (MD 30.89; 95% CI 26.7–35.08) in RET interventions less than 24 weeks. There was no difference in VO2 peak or 6MWT in interventions longer than 24 weeks. Discussion This systematic review adds to a growing body of evidence supporting the implementation of RET in the older population for improving whole-body health, particularly in time-limited timeframes.


Beam-space data preprocessing is a powerful tool commonly used in array processing to reduce the computational burden and improve the performance of high-resolution direction-finding algorithms. However, currently used beam-space techniques appear to lack robustness in the presence of sources that are located outside the beam-space angular sectors-of-interest. In this paper, a new approach to beam-space preprocessing with an improved robustness against such out-of-sector interfering sources is developed. Our techniques design the beam-space matrix filter based on proper tradeoffs between the in-sector (passband) source distortion and out-of-sector (stopband) source attenuation. Computationally efficient convex formulations for these beam-space matrix filter design problems are derived using second-order cone (SOC) programming.