The opinions of 207 respondents on the visual effects of seven different cutting types were asked using a nine-point verbal scale ranging from ''worsens very much'' to ''improves very much''. Other estimates were obtained by letting the same respondents evaluate photographs of stands which had been treated with different cuttings. The direct questions gave results quite similar to the evaluations of photographs for all but young respondents, indicating that most respondents were able to imagine the effect of the treatment correctly. The results based on the evaluation of photographs indicated that the effect of regenerative cuttings is negative while the impact of thinnings is positive. After a few years of cutting the stand is already regarded as clearly more pleasant than immediately after the cutting. Natural regeneration with seed trees seems to be a way to avoid the very negative immediate impact of clear-felling, especially in the case of Scots pine. Women, young, urban people and those who do not own forest or have work related to forests tended to experience thinnings less positively and saw regenerative cuttings as more harmful than the other test groups did.


A review of fundamental works by Shubin and Vonsovsky on the formulation of the polar and s–d(f) exchange models is given. Their ideas are compared with subsequent developments in the theory of magnetism in d- and f-metals and their compounds. Modern approaches including various slave-boson and slave-fermion representations, formation of exotic quasiparticles etc. are discussed. Internal connections between different many-electron models (the Heisenberg, Hubbard, t–J, Anderson Hamiltonians) are presented. Description of anomalous rare-earth and actinide compounds (Kondo lattices, systems with heavy fermions and non-Fermi-liquid behavior) within the framework of the s–d(f) exchange model and related models is considered.


Oral delivery, while a highly desirable form of nanoparticle-drug administration, is limited by challenges associated with overcoming several biological barriers. Here we study how fluorescent and poly(ethylene glycol)-coated (PEGylated) core-shell silica nanoparticles with sizes from 5 to 50 nm interact with major barriers including intestinal mucus, intestinal epithelium, and stomach acid. From imaging fluorescence correlation spectroscopy studies on a quasi-total internal reflection fluorescence microscope setup, diffusion of nanoparticles through highly scattering mucus is progressively hindered above a critical hydrodynamic size around 20 nm. By studying Caco-2 cell monolayers mimicking the intestinal epithelia, we observe that ultrasmall nanoparticles below 10 nm diameter (C' dots) show permeabilities correlated with high absorption in humans from primarily enhanced passive passage associated with tight junctions. Particles above 20 nm diameter exclusively show active transport through cells. After establishing C' dot stability in artificial gastric juice, in vivo oral gavage experiments in mice demonstrate successful passage through the body followed by renal clearance without protein corona formation. Results suggest C' dots as viable candidates for oral administration to patients with a proven pathway towards clinical translation and may generate renewed interest in examining silica as a food additive and its effects on nutrition and health. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


The authors analyze and compare the net migration patterns of Puerto Rico and the Bahamas during the 1960s with special reference to areas with high in- and out-migration rates (ANNOTATION)


We study a translational invariant free fermions model in imaginary time, with nearest neighbor and next-nearest neighbor hopping terms, for a class of inhomogeneous boundary conditions. This model is known to give rise to limit shapes and arctic curves, in the absence of the next-nearest neighbor perturbation. The perturbation considered turns out to not be always positive, that is, the corresponding statistical mechanical model does not always have positive Boltzmann weights. We investigate how the density profile is affected by this nonpositive perturbation. We find that in some regions, the effects of the negative signs are suppressed, and renormalize to zero. However, depending on boundary conditions, new 'crazy regions' emerge, in which minus signs proliferate, and the density of fermions is not in [0, 1] anymore. We provide a simple intuition for such behavior, and compute exactly the density profile both on the lattice and in the scaling limit.


Relation Extraction suffers from dramatical performance decrease when training a model on one genre and directly applying it to a new genre, due to the distinct feature distributions. Previous studies address this problem by discovering a shared space across genres using manually crafted features, which requires great human effort. To effectively automate this process, we design a genre-separation network, which applies two encoders, one genre-independent and one genre-shared, to explicitly extract genre-specific and genre-agnostic features. Then we train a relation classifier using the genre-agnostic features on the source genre and directly apply to the target genre. Experiment results on three distinct genres of the ACE dataset show that our approach achieves up to 6.1% absolute F1-score gain compared to previous methods. By incorporating a set of external linguistic features, our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art by 1.7% absolute F1 gain. We make all programs of our model publicly available for research purpose


A simple, rapid and selective method was developed. The method was validated and found to be linear in the range of 100-4000 ng/ml. Chromatographic peaks were separated by means of a 5 μm, C18 silica column using acetonitrile and phosphate buffer (0.05 M) in proportion of 40:60 (pH 4.0) as a mobile phase. The retention time of torsemide was 5.00±0.20 min. The chromatograms showed good resolution and no interference from plasma. The mean recovery from human plasma was found to be above 82%. Both inter-day and intra-day accuracy and precision data showed good reproducibility. This method was applied to a single dose bioequivalence study. Log transformed values were compared by ANOVA followed by classical 90% confidence interval. Confidence limits for Cmax, AUC0-t and AUC0-inf ranged from 98.6 to 102.8, 101.8 to 105.3 and 102.4 to 105.5 respectively. These results suggested that the analytical method was linear, precise and accurate. Test and reference product were found to be bioequivalent.


Epilepsy accounts for a significant proportion of the world's disease burden. Indeed, many research efforts are produced both to investigate the basic mechanism ruling its genesis and to find more effective therapies. In this framework, the use of zebrafish larvae, owing to their peculiar features, offers a great opportunity. Here, we employ transgenic zebrafish larvae expressing GCaMP6s in all neurons to characterize functional alterations occurring during seizures induced by pentylenetetrazole. Using a custom two-photon light-sheet microscope, we perform fast volumetric functional imaging of the entire larval brain, investigating how different brain regions contribute to seizure onset and propagation. Moreover, employing a custom behavioral tracking system, we outline the progressive alteration of larval swim kinematics, resulting from different grades of seizures. Collectively, our results show that the epileptic larval brain undergoes transitions between diverse neuronal activity regimes. Moreover, we observe that different brain regions are progressively recruited into the generation of seizures of diverse severity. We demonstrate that midbrain regions exhibit highest susceptibility to the convulsant effects and that, during periods preceding abrupt hypersynchronous paroxysmal activity, they show a consistent increase in functional connectivity. These aspects, coupled with the hub-like role that these regions exert, represent important cues in their identification as epileptogenic hubs.


Aims: Health care should be allocated fairly, irrespective of patients' social standing. Previous research suggests that highly educated patients are prioritized in Norwegian hospitals. This study examines this contentious issue by a design which addresses two methodological challenges. Control for differences in medical needs is approximated by analysing patients who died from same causes of death. Area fixed effects are used for avoiding that observed educational inequalities are contaminated by geographical differences. Methods: Men and women who died 2009–2011 at age 55–94 were examined (N=103,000) with register data from Statistics Norway and the Norwegian Patient Registry. Educational differences in quantity of hospital-based medical care during the 12–24 months before death were analysed, separate for main causes of death. Multivariate negative binomial regression models were estimated, with fixed effects for residential areas. Results: High-educated patients who died from cancers had significantly more outpatient consultations at somatic hospitals than low-educated patients during an average observation period of 18 months prior to death. Similar, but weaker, educational inequalities appeared for outpatient visits for patients whose deaths were due to other causes. Also, educational inequalities in number of hospital admissions were marked for those who died from cancers, but insignificant for patients who died from other causes. Conclusions: Even when medical needs are similar for mortally ill patients, those with high education tend to receive more medical services in Norwegian somatic hospitals than patients with low education. The roles played by physicians and patients in generating these patterns should be explored further.


This study aimed to determine the difference between two alternatives for pre-stressed normal-strength concrete beams according to life-cycle assessments (LCAs): strengthening the PNSC (pre-stressed normal-strength concrete) beam on one side with a 70 mm width, steel-fibered, high-strength concrete layer (Case 1) and strengthening the PNSC beams by jacketing on three sides with 30 mm width, ultra-high-performance, fiber-reinforced concrete layers (Case 2). We conducted LCAs of these cases using the ReCiPe2016 midpoint and endpoint-single-score methods. The differences among the beams' endpoint-single-score results were evaluated using a two-stage nested analysis of variance. The ReCiPe2016 midpoint results showed that compared to Case 2, Case 1 reduced the global warming potential, terrestrial ecotoxicity, water consumption, and fossil-resource-scarcity impacts by 73–80%. The ReCiPe2016 endpoint-single-score results showed that the environmental damage from Case 1 was significantly lower (p = 0.0003) than that from Case 2. These findings could be promising and useful for studying sustainability in construction.


In this work, we present a unique set of 3D MRI brain data that is appropriate for testing the intra and inter-site variability of image analysis methods. A single subject was scanned two times within a 24 hour time window each at ve dierent MR sites over a period of six weeks using GE and Phillips 1.5 T scanners. The imaging protocol included T1 weighted, Proton Density and T2 weighted images. We applied three quantitative image analysis methods and analyzed their results via the coecients of variability (COV) and the intra correlation coecient. The tested methods include two multi-channel tissue segmentation techniques based on an anatomically guided manual seeding and an atlas-based seeding. The third tested method was a single-channel semi-automatic segmentation of the hippocampus. The results show that the outcome of image analysis methods varies signicantly for images from dierent sites and scanners. With the exception of total brain volume, which shows consistent low variability across all images, the COV's were clearly larger between sites than within sites. Also, the COV's between sites with dierent scanner types are slightly larger than between sites with the same scanner type. The presented existence of a signicant inter-site variability requires adaptations in image methods to produce repeatable measurements. This is especially of importance in multi-site clinical research.


Objective: To know about the various pathogens causing infection in Orthopaedic implant surgeries and their antibiotic sensitivities.
Methods: This prospective study was conducted in Department of Orthopaedics, Khyber teaching Hospital, Peshawar, from January 2015 to December 2015. All patients having close fractures of long bones including humerus, radius/ulna, femur and tibia requiring open reduction and internal fixation ORIF were included. Patients data was noted on a preformed proforma. Patients were followed up to 6 months.
Results: 30 patients out of 650 developed Surgical site infection were selected. 23 were male and 7 were female patients. Age range was from 5-75 years. Staph Aureus including Methicillin resistant Staph Aureus MRSA was most common cultured organism, followed by E Coli and pseudomonas. 23 cases yielded single organism, 5 cases yielded 2 organisms, 1 case yielded 3 organisms. There was no organism growth in one case.
Conclusion: Staph aureus including MRSA is the main cause of surgical site infection in orthopedics implant surgery. Other bacteria like E. Coli may cause surgical site infection. Antibiotics should be prescribed according to culture and sensitivity reports.


This article considers the stated motivations for travel in the case of three examples of travel writing about Afghanistan. Jason Elliot's An Unexpected Light documents his travel in 1984 during the war between the Afghan Mujaheddin and the Soviets; Jonny Bealby's For a Pagan Song, first published in 1998, takes place during the civil war between Mujaheddin and the Taleban; Rory Stewart's The Places In Between was written about travel between 2000 and 2002, during which time Operation Enduring Freedom was launched against the Taleban. The article deploys Genette's concept of paratexts in order to show how the acknowledgments, blurbs, and other paratextual material, when read against the grain, undermine the relationship between the writer and their stated motivations and, thus, destabilize the self-representation of each writer in the course of the narrative. The outcome of these readings is a critique of the three texts, arguing that each one works to justify their travel through a combination of self-narration and paratextual material but that none of them address the implications of their travel for the Afghan people or that the purpose of the travel is to write the text.


BACKGROUND
Several studies suggest that changes in estrogens and androgens during menopause play a role in the regulation of leptin production. Some authors present hypothesis that sex hormone replacement therapy can modulate leptin levels but up to date evidence shows that the influence of endogenous estrogens, androgens levels and sex hormone therapy on leptin concentration remains uncertain.

AIM
To evaluate the influence of surgically induced menopause on serum leptin levels and the influence of different types of hormonal therapy on serum leptin concentrations.

METHODS
58 women with surgically induced menopause were divided into three groups. Women who did not receive any hormonal substitution (group 1), women who received Estradiol l mg per day (group 2) and women who received Tibolone 2,5 mg per day (group 3). The levels of leptin, estradiol, testosterone, testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, FSH, LH and progesterone were measured in all subjects on the 5th day and after 3 months following the surgical procedure.

RESULTS
Mean serum leptin concentrations did not differ statistically in any of the studied groups in the beginning and in the end of the study. There was no correlations between serum leptin and estradiol, LH, FSH, progesterone, testosterone, free testosterone and DHEAS concentrations in any of groups before and after treatment.

CONCLUSION
Changes in sex hormone concentrations caused by ovariectomy do not influence serum leptin concentrations. Also the short term administration of low dose estrogen therapy or tibolone in postmenopausal subjects does not change serum leptin levels.


VLA-5 recognizes the GRGDSP sequence of fibronectin (FN) in the extracellular matrix (ECM). We examined the role of beta1 integrin in the spreading of the human plasma cell line, FR4ds, induced by FN and laminin (LN). We first examined the role of VLA-5 in the spreading induced by FN. Anti-alpha4 antibody induced 46.4% inhibition, whereas anti-alpha5 had no effect. A combination of anti-alpha4 and anti-alpha5 enhanced the inhibition of spreading significantly. Complementary inhibition was also demonstrated using the GRGDSP peptide plus anti-alpha4 and the GRGDNP peptide of LN plus anti-alpha4. The results suggested that VLA-5 is a regulator of VLA-4 and that it is involved in the recognition of GRGDNP. We then examined the role of VLA-5 in the spreading induced by LN. Anti-alpha6 induced 53.1% inhibition. Anti-alpha5 alone had no effect. A combination of alpha5 and anti-alpha6, however, significantly enhanced the inhibition of spreading. The combination of GRGDSP plus anti-alpha6 and GRGDNP plus anti-alpha6 resulted in complete inhibition. These results suggested that VLA-5 participates in the recognition of LN cooperatively with VLA-6 and that VLA-5 is a common regulator of VLA-4 and the LN receptor, VLA-6.


In surveillance videos, the task of tracking multiple people is of primary importance and is often a preliminary step before applying higher-level algorithms, e.g. to analyze interactions or to recognize behaviors. In this paper, we take a tracking-by-detection approach and formulate multi-person tracking as a statistical data association problem which seeks for the optimal label field in which detections belonging to the same person have the same label. Specifically, unlike most previous works that rely on generative approaches, we use a Conditional Random Field (CRF) model, whose pairwise detection factors, defined for both distance and color features, are modeled using a two-hypothesis framework: a pair of detections corresponds either to the same person or not. Parameters of these two-hypothesis model factors are learned in a fully unsupervised way from data. Optimization is conducted using a deterministic sliding window method. Qualitative and quantitative results on several different surveillance datasets show that our method can generate robust and accurate tracks in spite of the noisy output of the human detector and of occlusions.


This makes some sort of sense, but a more likely reading is quern meridiana harena dimisit. Ascyltus is returning with interest the abuse of his friend Encolpius. He is suggesting that Encolpius was one of the condemned criminals scheduled to be executed at the midday show. Seneca, Ep. 7. 3 supports this reading: 'casu in meridianum spectaculum incidi. . . quicquid ante pugnatum est, misericordia fuit; nunc omissis nugis mera homicidia sunt.' Seneca goes on to explain that murderers were disposed of at this session by the confrontation of an armed with an unarmed man (the armed man was himself disarmed after he had butchered his opponent, and faced another armed gladiator). Summers well compares Suet. Claud. 34, the description of how Claudius loved to stay on to watch the meridiani provide this obscene display. It will be recalled that later in the Satyricon Encolpius mentions that he is a murderer, and connects this with his appearance in the arena: 81. 3: 'effugi iudicium, harenae imposui, hospitem occidi. . . .' This passage suggests that Encolpius' appearance was at the midday show, and makes meridiana an attractive conjecture.


The spread of rumors along with breaking events seriously hinders the truth in the era of social media. Previous studies reveal that due to the lack of annotated resources, rumors presented in minority languages are hard to be detected. Furthermore, the unforeseen breaking events not involved in yesterday's news exacerbate the scarcity of data resources. In this work, we propose a novel zero-shot framework based on prompt learning to detect rumors falling in different domains or presented in different languages. More specifically, we firstly represent rumor circulated on social media as diverse propagation threads, then design a hierarchical prompt encoding mechanism to learn language-agnostic contextual representations for both prompts and rumor data. To further enhance domain adaptation, we model the domain-invariant structural features from the propagation threads, to incorporate structural position representations of influential community response. In addition, a new virtual response augmentation method is used to improve model training. Extensive experiments conducted on three real-world datasets demonstrate that our proposed model achieves much better performance than state-of-the-art methods and exhibits a superior capacity for detecting rumors at early stages.


We present high-resolution and multiline observations of a C2-class solar flare (SOL2019-05-06T08:47), which occurred in NOAA AR 12740 on May 6, 2019. The rise, peak, and decay phases of the flare were recorded continuously and quasi-simultaneously in the Ca II K line with the CHROMIS instrument and in the Ca II 8542 Å and Fe I 6173 Å lines with the CRISP instrument at the Swedish 1 m Solar Telescope. The observations in the chromospheric Ca II lines exhibit intense brightening near the flare footpoints. At these locations, a nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium inversion code was employed to infer the temperature, magnetic field, line-of-sight (LOS) velocity, and microturbulent velocity stratification in the flaring atmosphere. The temporal analysis of the inferred temperature at the flare footpoints shows that the flaring atmosphere from log τ500 ∼ −2.5 to −3.5 is heated up to 7 kK, whereas from log τ500 ∼ −3.5 to −5 the inferred temperature ranges between ∼7.5 kK and ∼11 kK. During the flare peak time, the LOS velocity shows both upflows and downflows around the flare footpoints in the upper chromosphere and lower chromosphere, respectively. Moreover, the temporal analysis of the LOS magnetic field at the flare points exhibits a maximum change of ∼600 G. After the flare, the LOS magnetic field decreases to the non-flaring value, exhibiting no permanent or step-wise change. The analysis of response functions to the temperature, LOS magnetic field, and velocity shows that the Ca II lines exhibit enhanced sensitivity to the deeper layers (i.e., log τ500 ∼ −3) of the flaring atmosphere, whereas for the non-flaring atmosphere they are mainly sensitive around log τ500 ∼ −4. We suggest that a fraction of the apparent increase in the LOS magnetic field at the flare footpoints may be due to the increase in the sensitivity of the Ca II 8542 Å line in the deeper layers, where the field strength is relatively strong. The rest may be due to magnetic field reconfiguration during the flare. In the photosphere, we do not notice significant changes in the physical parameters during the flare or non-flare times. Our observations illustrate that even a less intense C-class flare can heat the deeper layers of the solar chromosphere, mainly at the flare footpoints, without affecting the photosphere.


Liquid phase oxidation of a simple naphthenic-aromatic hydrocarbon was studied in a microreactor over low temperatures. The goal was to investigate how local oxygen availability could be controlled during oxidation and how it affected both oxidation rate and product selectivity. A microfluidic reactor provides a unique opportunity to exactly manipulate local oxygen availability by changing the hydrodynamics of the reactor in a Taylor flow region. Ketone-to-alcohol selectivity in the microreactor was increased by an order of magnitude from less than 1 : 1 to 14 : 1 by increasing oxygen availability in the liquid phase at a near constant conversion, oxygen partial pressure, and temperature. Similar oxidation experiments were conducted in semi-batch and batch reactors and the results were compared to the microreactor experiment. The higher ketone selectivity in the microreactor could be explained in terms of the oxidation of the alcohol and/or alkoxy radicals formed. It was observed that the selectivity to alcohols and addition products increased at lower oxygen availabilities. In addition to selectivity, the oxygen mass transfer coefficient to the liquid phase was also calculated based on the microreactor geometry and hydrodynamics.


In this paper, to find effective way of the production of the distilled water with solar radiation, 4 different boxes of condensation systems were compared. The bottom size of boxes are identical but the angles of top collecting plates are different. During the solar radiation, condensation did not occur and the condensation start when solar radiation was decreased. The maximum condensation reached when the temperatures of the top and bottom parts are equal. The condensation was continued until sunrise with gradually reduced amount. When top plate angle was , condensation was highest compared with the other angles.


Under certain conditions, ultrafast pulsed laser interaction with matter leads to the formation of self-organized conical as well as periodic surface structures (commonly reffered to as, laser induced periodic surface structures, LIPSS). The purpose of the present investigations is to explore the effect of fsec laser fluence and ambient environments (Vacuum & O2) on the formation of LIPSS and conical structures on the Ti surface. The surface morphology was investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The ablation threshold with single and multiple (N = 100) shots and the existence of an incubation effect was demonstrated by SEM investigations for both the vacuum and the O2 environment. The phase analysis and chemical composition of the exposed targets were performed by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), respectively. SEM investigations reveal the formation of LIPSS (nano & micro). FFT d-spacing calculations illustrate the dependence of periodicity on the fluence and ambient environment. The periodicity of nano-scale LIPSS is higher in the case of irradiation under vacuum conditions as compared to O2. Furthermore, the O2 environment reduces the ablation threshold. XRD data reveal that for the O2 environment, new phases (oxides of Ti) are formed. EDS analysis exhibits that after irradiation under vacuum conditions, the percentage of impurity element (Al) is reduced. The irradiation in the O2 environment results in 15% atomic diffusion of oxygen.


2857 The androgen receptor (AR) is a steroid hormone receptor that plays a critical role in both androgen-dependent and -independent prostate cancer. In addition to its accepted role as a target in androgen-deprivation therapy, we've shown that the AR is also an immunological target antigen, identifying some prostate cancer patients that have concurrent antibody and cellular immune responses specific for the AR ligand-binding domain (LBD). Using in vitro primary human cell culture, we also found that some patients with prostate cancer have cytotoxic CD8+ T-cells specific for HLA-A2-restricted peptides derived from the AR LBD. In this report, we sought to determine whether these peptide-specific T-cell responses could be elicited or amplified in vivo through the use of vaccines. To conduct these studies, we utilized the HHDII transgenic mouse, a model that expresses the human HLA-A2 and HLA-DR1 molecules but not the endogenous murine MHC class I and II molecules, and a model in which the AR LBD is a self-antigen, identical in amino acid sequence to the human antigen. These mice were immunized with one of ten AR LBD HLA-A2 peptides, and were analyzed for the presence of peptide-specific immune responses. Immunization with at least 3/10 peptides was found to induce cytotoxic, peptide-specific T-cell responses. We then sought to determine whether a DNA vaccine, targeting the entire AR LBD, could be used to elicit these peptide-specific responses. This vaccine (pTVG-AR) was used to immunize HHDII mice, and was found to elicit or amplify peptide-specific immune responses against at least 5/10 identified AR LBD HLA-A2-restricted peptides without any demonstrable toxicity. These results show that not only can the AR LBD be safely targeted in vivo, but more significantly that vaccines targeting the AR LBD can be used to elicit or enhance HLA-A2 peptide-specific immune responses in vivo. This suggests that the AR LBD is a potentially attractive immunological target antigen, and that vaccines targeting the AR LBD in vivo may be a useful approach in developing immunotherapies to treat prostate cancer.


A debate between Kahneman and Tversky and their associates, on the one hand, and Gigerenzer and his associates and Cosmides and her associates, on the other hand, has been fought in the area of reasoning about conditional probabilities. Kahneman and Tversky proposed that people typically represent information in terms of individual exemplars, and thus people make judgments using reasoning processes that are based on such individual exemplars. Cosmides and Gigerenzer and their associates, however, proposed that people typically represent information about population frequencies. A series of confounds in the comparisons between frequentist and probabilist problems by Gigerenzer and Hoffrage, and by Cosmides and Tooby are discussed.. Finally, we discuss a possible strategy, labeled by O'Brien, Roazzi and Dias as "the dumb-luck theory". This proposal holds that frequentist-formatted problems made available a successful guessing strategy that was not available on the probabilist-formatted problems, and the proposal opens the possibility that the entire research literature in this area has falsely assumed that correct answers stem from appropriate lines of reasoning, whereas incorrect answers do not, indicating in such a way that neither the correct nor the incorrect answers have stemmed from Bayesian lines of reasoning at all.


In April  a new Hunting Law (Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland, March , No. ) entered into effect in Poland. Poland is one of the last four countries in the EU (in addition to Croatia, Malta and Cyprus) that do not regulate the use of toxic lead ammunition. Each year –  t of lead are introduced into the Polish environment (Niech Żyją,  January , http://niechzyja.pl/dokumenty/uwagi-do-zmiany-prawa-lowieckiego-.pdf; Kitowski et al., , Ambio, , –). Consequently, high concentrations of lead are found in Polish raptors that consume wounded game species or carrion (Komosa & Kitowski, , Ecological Chemistry and Engineering S, , –; Kitowski et al., , op. cit.). The new Hunting Law has not enacted a ban on lead ammunition in any habitat, even in wetlands. There is still no obligation to register animals embedded with lead ammunition that are not recovered. Attempts to ban lead ammunition in Poland so far have been unsuccessful, even though in  Parliament declared that lead ammunition would be banned from hunting shoots on wetlands by  (Polish Parliament ,  October ; http://sejm.gov.pl/sejm. nsf/InterpelacjaTresc.xsp?key=). The new Hunting Law ignores current population trends and the status of game birds because cultivation of hunting traditions was considered an important factor in placing individual bird species on the list of game animals that can be legally hunted. This opens up the possibility of unlimited exploitation of species whose numbers are decreasing at an alarming rate in Poland. This applies in particular to the hazel grouse Bonasa bonasia (population ,–, pairs in Poland) and Eurasian teal Anas crecca (population ,–, pairs; Chodkiewicz et al., , Ornis Polonica, , –). Hunters have already greatly reduced the western capercaillie Tetrao urogallus (population – adults) and black grouse Lyrurus tetrix (population –  pairs), which, despite being protected since , are Critically Endangered species in Poland (Mitrus & Zbyryt, , Ornis Polonica, , –). Although the new Hunting Law prohibits group hunting in national parks, the Act of March  (amended in July ; Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland,  August , No. ) on the protection of animal health and the control of infectious diseases in animals legalized this practice within national parks and nature reserves under the pretense of combating African Swine Fever (Pejsak & Woźniakowski, , Życie Weterynaryjne, , –). However, group hunting can contribute to the spread of this disease (Pejsak & Woźniakowski, , op. cit.). The Polish Hunter Association (Polski Związek Łowiecki) oversees hunting activities de facto and de jure in Poland. The Association is connected with political and financial elites, and many powerful representatives of the media and business are members. The lobbying centre for the Association within the Polish Parliament (the Parliamentary Team on Culture and Tradition of Hunting) includes  deputies and three senators. The strong position of the Association in Parliament makes it difficult to change regulations in favour of wildlife conservation.


The diesel generator of HANARO provides Class III (standby) power during the loss of Class IV (off site) power events, for the important reactor system equipment such as the emergency water supply system, emergency ventilation system, etc. The HANARO has been stabilizing its operation since 1995, so the diesel generator failure data from 1995 to the end of 2002 has been collected. This study shows the failure-to-start probabilities and the failure-to-run probabilities of diesel generator within the 90% confidence bounds. A comparison with the NUREG and AECL studies is shown in this paper.Copyright © 2004 by ASME


The article concerns the life and work of Victor Schoelcher (1804-1893), architect of the abolition of slavery in the French Antilles (1848), beginning with his Alsatian origins which sharpened his sensitivity to the often dramatic problems of ethnically mixed territories, and going on to analyze both the «cult of Schoelcher», liberator and revolutionary, and the radical accusations of his being no more than a moderate reformer and an instrument of assimilation. His fight against slavery - in the context of the European abolitionary movement at large - is examined from his initial concept of gradual abolition to his later championing of immediate abolition, in contrast to the precisely opposite development of another prominent abolitionist, Cyrille Bissette. The article concentrates on such basic aspects of the Antillean reality as the frequent conflict between blacks and mulattos, and the difference in attitude between the receptiveness of the plantation owners and the strong opposition of «small-time» whites fearful of black competition. Finally, the article describes Schoelcher's last years - his opposition to the coup d'etat of December 21, 1851, his exile in London, and his engagement in many progressive struggles for, among other causes, women's rights, social assistance, and the abolition of usury and of the death penalty. It concludes by pointing out that though "Schoelcherism" was on the wane until briefly revived at the time of Mitterand, it nevertheless remained very much alive in the Antilles.


Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and atmospheric concentrations have risen 2.5 times since the beginning of the Industrial age. While much of this increase is attributed to anthropogenic sources, natural sources, which contribute between 35% and 50% of global methane emissions, are thought to have a role in the atmospheric methane increase, in part due to human influences. Methane emissions from many natural sources are sensitive to climate, and positive feedbacks from climate change and cultural eutrophication may promote increased emissions to the atmosphere. These natural sources include aquatic environments such as wetlands, freshwater lakes, streams and rivers, and estuarine, coastal, and marine systems. Furthermore, there are significant marine sediment stores of methane in the form of clathrates that are vulnerable to mobilization and release to the atmosphere from climate feedbacks, and subsurface thermogenic gas which in exceptional cases may be released following accidents and disasters (North Sea blowout and Deepwater Horizon Spill respectively). Understanding of natural sources, key processes, and controls on emission is continually evolving as new measurement and modeling capabilities develop, and different sources and processes are revealed. This special issue of Limnology and Oceanography gathers together diverse studies on methane production, consumption, and emissions from freshwater, estuarine, and marine systems, and provides a broad view of the current science on methane dynamics of aquatic ecosystems. Here, we provide a general overview of aquatic methane sources, their contribution to the global methane budget, and key uncertainties. We then briefly summarize the contributions to and highlights of this special issue.


The human lung cancer database (HLungDB) is a database with the integration of the lung cancer-related genes, proteins and miRNAs together with the corresponding clinical information. The main purpose of this platform is to establish a network of lung cancer-related molecules and to facilitate the mechanistic study of lung carcinogenesis. The entries describing the relationships between molecules and human lung cancer in the current release were extracted manually from literatures. Currently, we have collected 2585 genes and 212 miRNA with the experimental evidences involved in the different stages of lung carcinogenesis through text mining. Furthermore, we have incorporated the results from analysis of transcription factor-binding motifs, the promoters and the SNP sites for each gene. Since epigenetic alterations also play an important role in lung carcinogenesis, genes with epigenetic regulation were also included. We hope HLungDB will enrich our knowledge about lung cancer biology and eventually lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies. HLungDB can be freely accessed at http://www.megabionet.org/bio/hlung.


BACKGROUND
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of taxane chemotherapy during pregnancy and compare maternal and neonatal outcomes with those in women who did not receive taxanes during pregnancy, and review current existing data.

STUDY DESIGN
This is a retrospective cohort study in which women were identified from the Cancer and Pregnancy Registry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center. A retrospective chart analysis and an independent t-test were carried out comparing patient outcomes. A literature search in Ovid, Medline and PubMed was then carried out using the terms 'breast or ovarian cancer', 'pregnancy', 'paclitaxel', 'docetaxel', 'taxanes' and 'chemotherapy'.

RESULTS
Twelve of 129 women with breast cancer were exposed to taxanes during pregnancy. Three of nine women with ovarian cancer received taxane-based treatment during pregnancy. Birth weight, gestational age at delivery, rate of growth restriction, congenital anomalies and incidence of maternal and neonatal neutropenia were not statistically different between the two groups.

CONCLUSIONS
Taxane-based chemotherapy does not appear to increase the risk of fetal or maternal complications when compared with conventional chemotherapy in the small cohort of women in our Registry.


Activation of peripheral blood neutrophils (PMN) was investigated in order to determine whether they might contribute to the inflammatory process during active advanced tuberculosis. Receptors for the Fc portion of IgG (FcgammaR) (FcgammaRI, FcgammaRII, and FcgammaRIIIB), CD66 (degranulation marker), and receptors for tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-R55 and TNF-R75) were analyzed on PMN obtained from normal controls and tuberculosis patients (TB-PMN). Functional parameters such as cytotoxicity, superoxide anion generation triggered by N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenyl-alanine (FMLP), and TNF-alpha and IL-1beta production were evaluated. A high expression of TNF-R55, CD66, and FcgammaRIIIB and the appearance of FcgammaRI were detected in TB-PMN. In addition, cytotoxicity, superoxide anion release, and TNF-alpha and IL-1beta production were enhanced in TB-PMN. Thus, in tuberculosis, the activation of PMN outside the focus of infection strongly suggests the possibility of a systemic inflammation that could modulate the inflammatory response.


Initializing optical flow field by either sparse descriptor matching or dense patch matches has been proved to be particularly useful for capturing large displacements. In this paper, we present a pyramidal gradient matching approach that can provide dense matches for highly accurate and efficient optical flow estimation. A novel contribution of our method is that image gradient is used to describe image patches and proved to be able to produce robust matching. Therefore, our method is more efficient than methods that adopt special features (like SIFT) or patch distance metric. Moreover, we find that image gradient is scalable for optical flow estimation, which means we can use different levels of gradient feature (for example, full gradients or only direction information of gradients) to obtain different complexity without dramatic changes in accuracy. Another contribution is that we uncover the secrets of limited PatchMatch through a thorough analysis and design a pyramidal matching framework based these secrets. Our pyramidal matching framework is aimed at robust gradient matching and effective to grow inliers and reject outliers. In this framework, we present some special enhancements for outlier filtering in gradient matching. By initializing EpicFlow with our matches, experimental results show that our method is efficient and robust (ranking 1st on both clean pass and final pass of MPI Sintel dataset among published methods).


Abstract
Corporate elites are increasingly held responsible for issues of sustainability including working conditions and workers' rights in global production networks. We still know relatively little about how they respond to concrete stakeholder initiatives aiming to restrict corporate voluntarism through transnational regulation. In this paper we report comparative findings on corporate legitimation strategies in response to requests by labor representatives to sign Global Framework Agreements (GFAs). These agreements are intended to hold multinational corporations (MNCs) accountable for the implementation of core labor standards across their supply chains. We propose to broaden management-focused analyses of corporate legitimation strategies by applying a field-oriented perspective that considers the embeddedness of management in a broader web of strategic activity and variable opportunity structures. Our findings suggest that legitimation strategies are developed dynamically along with the rules, positions, and understandings developing around specific regulatory issues in sequences of interactions between elites and challenging groups.


Dairy calves born in winter need extra special care, as the warmth and natural care of the cow is replaced by a calf pen, bottle and a stockman. Providing a safe, clean and warm shelter for calves is crucial for the survival and healthy growth of followers.


Sugar factories can meet its own energy consumption, without using other fuels except bagasse, if consumption Steam on Cane (SOC) can reach 40-50% by weight of cane. Sugar factory can do cogeneration and generate electricity which can be sold to the grid if the consumption steam on cane reached a maximum of 40% by weight of sugar cane. This study aims to reduce the consumption of SOC in the process house using innovation of process configuration. EUD (Energy Utilization Diagram) is a thermodynamic analysis based on the concept exergy. EUD is used to evaluate the configuration process in order to obtain a better configuration of the existing configuration. The study obtained a configuration process with SOC <40%. Evaporation system used a quintuple effect. Vapor # 4 is used for energy donor heater # 1, Vapor # 3 used donor of energy to the heater # 2 and vacuum pan. Vapor # 1 is used for energy donor heater # 3. Exhaust steam pressure of 0.8-1 kg / cm2 is only used in the evaporator # 1.


Recently, many superflares on solar-type stars have been discovered as white-light flares (WLFs). The statistical study found a correlation between their energies (E) and durations (τ): , similar to those of solar hard/soft X-ray flares, . This indicates a universal mechanism of energy release on solar and stellar flares, i.e., magnetic reconnection. We here carried out statistical research on 50 solar WLFs observed with Solar Dynamics Observatory/HMI and examined the correlation between the energies and durations. As a result, the E–τ relation on solar WLFs ( ) is quite similar to that on stellar superflares ( ). However, the durations of stellar superflares are one order of magnitude shorter than those expected from solar WLFs. We present the following two interpretations for the discrepancy: (1) in solar flares, the cooling timescale of WLFs may be longer than the reconnection one, and the decay time of solar WLFs can be elongated by the cooling effect; (2) the distribution can be understood by applying a scaling law ( ) derived from the magnetic reconnection theory. In the latter case, the observed superflares are expected to have 2–4 times stronger magnetic field strength than solar flares.


Protection of victims of crime is part of the protection of human rights as a whole. The protection that provided was the responsibility of the state that has been manifested in a criminal law policy. The ultimate goal of the criminal law policy is the social defence to achieve the overriding goal of social welfare. Criminal law policy is basically also an integral part of social policy. Criminal Law Policy in Indonesia contained in implementation of the criminal policies through the establishment of statue such as the Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, and other organic laws which governing the criminal provisions in it. Criminal Law Policy was emerged from political law which integrated into the criminal policies that embodied in laws governing the criminal provisions. This essay is trying to discuss how criminal law policy in Indonesia that has been implemented, and how the criminal law policy in providing the protection of victims of crime through the criminal justice system in Indonesia. Currently, the criminal law policy regarding the protection of victims of crime has been regulated. But the provisions have not fully provides protection to victims of crime. It can be seen in Act No. 8 of 1981 on the Code of Criminal Procedure Act which gave more protection to the suspect than to the protection of victims. Furthermore, Law No. 13 of 2006 on the Protection of Witnesses and Victims provide better protect witnesses than victims. This is due to the Act appears to provide protection to witnesses in corruption cases. Keywords: the criminal law policy, the criminal justice system, protection of victims of crime.


INTRODUCTION Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of the consequences of human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) infection. The disease increases the risk of progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and death and complicates antiretroviral therapy. The prevalence of CKD in HIV-1-infected patients is difficult to estimate and depends on the diagnostic criteria for CKD. OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to evaluate the usefulness of a single measurement of serum asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) levels in the diagnosis of kidney damage in patients infected with HIV-1.  PATIENTS AND METHODS The study included 119 HIV-1-infected individuals (88 males [74%]), both on antiretroviral treatment and treatment-naive, with a negative history of kidney disease, and 31 healthy volunteers. We analyzed demographic characteristics as well as data on concomitant diseases, antiretroviral regimen, serum ADMA concentrations, parameters of renal function, CD4+ cell count, and HIV-1 viral load. RESULTS No significant impairment of renal function was observed. Mean serum ADMA levels in all HIV-1-infected patients, as well as in treatment-naive patients and treated patients, were significantly higher (P <0.0001; P = 0.0001; P <0.0001; respectively) compared with those in the control group. The difference between treatment-naive and treated HIV-1-infected patients was nonsignificant. ADMA levels were not correlated with the mean duration of antiretroviral therapy, antiretroviral drugs used, or other risk factors for CKD. CONCLUSIONS A single measurement of ADMA levels is not useful for the diagnosis of CKD in patients without significant renal pathology or as an indicator of kidney damage related to antiretroviral therapy. The significance of repeated measurements of ADMA levels in renal function assessment requires further research.


BACKGROUND
Estimation of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is limited by differences in creatinine generation among ethnicities. Our previously reported GFR-estimating equations for Japanese had limitations because all participants had a GFR less than 90 mL/min/1.73 m2 and serum creatinine was assayed in different laboratories.

STUDY DESIGN
Diagnostic test study using a prospective cross-sectional design. New equations were developed in 413 participants and validated in 350 participants. All samples were assayed in a central laboratory.

SETTING & PARTICIPANTS
Hospitalized Japanese patients in 80 medical centers. Patients had not participated in the previous study.

REFERENCE TEST
Measured GFR (mGFR) computed from inulin clearance.

INDEX TEST
Estimated GFR (eGFR) by using the modified isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS)-traceable 4-variable Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) Study equation using the previous Japanese Society of Nephrology Chronic Kidney Disease Initiative (JSN-CKDI) coefficient of 0.741 (equation 1), the previous JSN-CKDI equation (equation 2), and new equations derived in the development data set: modified MDRD Study using a new Japanese coefficient (equation 3), and a 3-variable Japanese equation (equation 4).

MEASUREMENTS
Performance of equations was assessed by means of bias (eGFR - mGFR), accuracy (percentage of estimates within 15% or 30% of mGFR), root mean squared error, and correlation coefficient.

RESULTS
In the development data set, the new Japanese coefficient was 0.808 (95% confidence interval, 0.728 to 0.829) for the IDMS-MDRD Study equation (equation 3), and the 3-variable Japanese equation (equation 4) was eGFR (mL/min/1.73 m2) = 194 x Serum creatinine(-1.094) x Age(-0.287) x 0.739 (if female). In the validation data set, bias was -1.3 +/- 19.4 versus -5.9 +/- 19.0 mL/min/1.73 m2 (P = 0.002), and accuracy within 30% of mGFR was 73% versus 72% (P = 0.6) for equation 3 versus equation 1 and -2.1 +/- 19.0 versus -7.9 +/- 18.7 mL/min/1.73 m(2) (P < 0.001) and 75% versus 73% (P = 0.06) for equation 4 versus equation 2 (P = 0.06), respectively.

LIMITATION
Most study participants had chronic kidney disease, and some may have had changing GFRs.

CONCLUSION
The new Japanese coefficient for the modified IDMS-MDRD Study equation and the new Japanese equation are more accurate for the Japanese population than the previously reported equations.


Abstract In this study, shear stiffness properties of 10 different hardwood species and their relation to the corresponding species-specific microstructure are investigated. For this purpose, shear stiffness of 10 different hardwood species is experimentally measured by means of ultrasonic testing. In addition, a micromechanical model for hardwood is applied in order to illustrate the influence of certain microstructural characteristics such as mass density and volume fractions of vessels and ray cells on the shear stiffness. Comprehensive microstructural and mechanical data from previous investigations of the same hardwood material support the interpretation of the microstructure–shear stiffness relationships. Mass density was confirmed to be the dominant microstructural characteristic for shear stiffness. Also, ultrasound shear wave propagation velocity increases with density, particularly in the radial-tangential (RT) plane. In addition to density, comparably higher shear stiffness GLR can be explained by comparably higher ray content and lower vessel content. As for GLT, a ring porous structure seems to lead to higher shear stiffness as compared to a diffuse porous structure. For this shear stiffness, vessel and ray content were found to have a less impact. Also, the rolling shear stiffness GRT was found to be higher for a diffuse porous structure than for a ring porous one. Moreover, the data supports that ray cells act as reinforcements in the RT plane and lead to higher GRT.


Part I Introduction and foundations: 1 Bridging and blending disciplines of inquiry: doing science and changing practice and policy: Lina Markauskaite, Peter Freebody and Jude Irwin, 2: Knowledge and epistemology in scholarship, practice and policy: research-as-science and research-as-project: Peter Freebody, Lina Markauskaite and Jude Irwin, Part II Research approaches for innovation and change: 3: Design-based research: Peter Reimann, 4 Design-based research: reflections on some epistemological issues and practices: Richard Walker, 5: Action research in education and social work: Susan Groundwater-Smith and Jude Irwin, 6 Action research and professional learning: some reflections on inquiries that advance professional knowledge and practice: Robyn Ewing, 7: Ethnomethodological research in education and the social sciences: studying 'the business, identities and cultures' of classrooms: Peter Freebody and Jill Freiberg, 8 Drama education, ethnomethodology and 'industrious chatter': Michael Anderson, 9: Negotiated ethnography: the possibilities for practice: Debra Hayes, 10: Provoking change - the role of research in institutional learning and organisational change: Ken Johnston, 11 Drawing on the arts, transforming research: possibilities of arts-informed perspectives: Ardra L. Cole and J. Gary Knowles, 12 Investigating the liminal in professional education through arts-informed research: Robyn Ewing, Part III Classical research approaches in new social and political contexts, 13 Historical analysis: new approaches to postcolonial scholarship and the subcontinent: Tim Allender, 14 Postcolonial scholarship in social justice research: Ruth Phillips, 15 Analysing policy as discourse: methodological advances in policy analysis: Susan Goodwin, 16 Policy analysis and social transformation: making connections between policy fields and contemporary social life: Amanda Elliot, 17 The challenge of comparative research: a critical introduction: Anthony Welch, 18 Know thyself: culture and identity in comparative research: Nigel Bagnall, 19 Quantitative modelling of correlational and multi-level data in educational research: a construct validity approach to exploring and testing theory: Andrew J. Martin, Jasmine Green, Susan Colmar, Gregory A. D. Liem and Herbert W. Marsh, 20 Quantitative modelling of experimental data in educational research: current practice and future possibilities Paul Ginns, Part IV Methodological frontiers, challenges and future directions, 21 Digital knowledge and digital research: what does eResearch offer education and social policy?: Lina Markauskaite, 22 Emerging methodological challenges for educational research: Peter Goodyear, 23: Challenges and futures for social work and social policy research methods< Barbara Fawcett, Susan Goodwin and Ruth Phillips, 24: Research frontiers and border-crossings: methodology and the knowledge industry: Patrick Brownlee and Jude Irwin, Subject index, Author index


We successfully fabricated a very compact hybrid integrated multiwavelength laser module with a 40-Gbit/s throughput, which consists of four directly modulated distributed feedback laser diodes and an arrayed-waveguide grating multiplexer by using a silica-based planar lightwave circuit with a super-high refractive index difference of 1.5%


Design of stable Si-cage and Si-tube structures is of great importance to the fields of Si nanotechnology and microelectronics. In order to explore the possibility of constructing a Si nanotube by using the metal-stabilized and tube-shaped Si cluster W@Si12 as the basic unit, detailed first-principles calculations are performed to analyse the interactions of the dimers. It is found that the interactions are orientation dependent, and no interactions exist if stacking is along the sixfold axis. However, the W atom can be used as the spacer to link two units, resulting in a metastable structure. Due to the large surface stress in such a small one-dimensional system, sixfold stacking cannot be extended, and thus the trimer is not dynamically stable. Further, the most stable geometry for the dimer is seriously distorted. Consequently, it is difficult to construct a Si nanotube using this W@Si12 tube-shaped unit.


A cycloisomerization/dipolar cycloaddition tandem reaction of nitrone alkynes and electron-deficient olefins was described by employing a simple palladium catalyst. N-Arylnitrone alkynes, which were not well tolerated in previously reported methodologies, were successfully incorporated in the tandem reaction with generally good yields and moderate diastereoselectivities.


The problem of probabilistic forecasting and online simulation of real-time electricity market with stochastic generation and demand is considered. By exploiting the parametric structure of the direct current optimal power flow, a new technique based on online dictionary learning (ODL) is proposed. The ODL approach incorporates real-time measurements and historical traces to produce forecasts of joint and marginal probability distributions of future locational marginal prices, power flows, and dispatch levels, conditional on the system state at the time of forecasting. Compared with standard Monte Carlo simulation techniques, the ODL approach offers several orders of magnitude improvement in computation time, making it feasible for online forecasting of market operations. Numerical simulations on large and moderate size power systems illustrate its performance and complexity features and its potential as a tool for system operators.


Deploying deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) is impacted by their memory footprint and speed requirements, which mainly come from convolution. Widely-used convolution algorithms, im2col and MEC, produce a lowered matrix from an activation map by redundantly storing the map's elements included at horizontal and/or vertical kernel overlappings without considering the sparsity of the map. Using the sparsity of the map, this paper proposes two new convolution algorithms dubbed Compressed Pattern Overlap (CPO) and Compressed Pattern Sets (CPS) that simultaneously decrease the memory footprint and increase the inference speed while preserving the accuracy. CPO recognizes non-zero elements (NZEs) at horizontal and vertical overlappings in the activation maps. CPS further improves the memory savings of CPO by compressing the index positions of neighboring NZEs. In both algorithms, channels/regions of the activation maps with all zeros are skipped. Then, CPO/CPS performs convolution via Sparse Matrix-Vector Multiplication (SpMv) done on their sparse representations. Experimental results conducted on CPUs show that average per-layer time savings reach up to 63% and Compression Ratio (CR) up to 26x with respect to im2col. In some layers, our average per layer CPO/CPS time savings are better by 28% and CR is better by 9.2x than the parallel implementation of MEC. For a given CNN's inference, we offline select for each convolution layer the best convolutional algorithm in terms of time between either CPO or CPS and im2col. Our algorithms were selected up to 56% of the non-pointwise convolutional layers. Our offline selections yield CNN inference time savings up to 9% and CR up to 10x.


The stabilization of the neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) by an electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) has been numerically studied for the parameters of ITER in order to evaluate the necessary EC power for the stabilization of NTMs in ITER. The time evolution of an island width of NTM is calculated by the modified Rutherford equation. The modification of the background current density profile by the EC current located on the rational surface is calculated by the current diffusion equation and the variation of the tearing stability index Δ' is taken into account. When the EC power is higher than a threshold value, NTMs with any island width can be fully stabilized. The dependence of the threshold power on the parameters in the modified Rutherford equation is examined. The threshold power depends significantly on the parameters of the bootstrap current term in the modified Rutherford equation. The injected EC current decreases the value of Δ' through the background current modification, which results in the reduction of the threshold power. The effects of the peaked nature of the EC current density profile and the EC power modulation on the threshold power are investigated. When the width of the EC current density profile becomes half, the threshold power is reduced to half or less. The EC power modulation is found to be inessential for the threshold power reduction if the EC current density profile can be peaked. As regards the maximum value of the threshold power in the range of parameters, an EC power of about 25 MW is found to be sufficient for the simultaneous stabilization of both the m/n = 3/2 and 2/1 NTMs in ITER.


Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) flavones have been used as candidate functional food ingredients because of their bioactivities, such as treating cardiovascular disorders, lowering plasma cholesterol level, and regulating immune function. However, the protective effects of sea buckthorn flavones against retinal degeneration remain unclear to date. This study investigated the protective effects of total flavones from H. rhamnoides (TFH) against visible light-induced retinal damage and explored the related mechanisms in pigmented rabbits. Rabbits were treated with TFH (250 and 500 mg/kg) for 2 weeks pre-illumination and 1 week post-illumination until sacrifice. Retinal function was quantified by performing electroretinography 1 day before and 1, 3, and 7 days after light exposure (18000 lx for 2 h). Retinal degeneration was evaluated by measuring the thickness of the outer nuclear layer (ONL) and performing the TUNEL assay 7 days after light exposure. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, Western blot analysis, and immunohistochemistry were used to explore the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-apoptotic mechanisms of TFH during visible light-induced retinal degeneration. Light exposure produced a degenerative effect primarily on the ONL, inner nuclear layer (INL), and ganglion cell layer (GCL). TFH significantly attenuated the destruction of electroretinograms caused by light damage, maintained ONL thickness, and decreased the number of TUNEL-positive cells in the INL and GCL. TFH ameliorated the retinal oxidative stress (GSH-Px, CAT, T-AOC, and MDA), inflammation (IL-1β and IL-6), angiogenesis (VEGF), and apoptosis (Bax, Bcl2, and caspase-3) induced by light exposure. Therefore, TFH exhibited protective effects against light-induced retinal degeneration by increasing the antioxidant defense mechanisms, suppressing pro-inflammatory and angiogenic cytokines, and inhibiting retinal cell apoptosis.


A static frequency divider with a maximum operating frequency of up to 50 GHz and a multiplexer (MUX) and a demultiplexer (DEMUX) that both operate at 40 Gb/s were developed for future optical-fiber-link systems. These digital circuits were fabricated using ultra-high-speed self-aligned selective-epitaxial-growth SiGe-base hetero-junction bipolar transistors (HBTs) with self-aligned stacked metal/in-situ doped poly-Si electrodes. These HBTs provide a 95-GHz cutoff frequency, a 108-GHz maximum oscillation frequency, and a minimum emitter-coupled-logic (ECL) gate delay of 8 ps. The excellent results from this digital chipset show that SiGe HBT technology, with its high reliability and cost-effectiveness, will play an important role in future multi-gigabit per second optical-fiber-link systems.


ABSTRACT In his text 'Wissenschaft als Beruf', Max Weber associates the understanding of science as a vocation with the scientist's ability to present the audience with 'inconvenient facts'. He argues that this presentation provides a 'full understanding of the facts' and overcomes any personal value judgment. This overcoming refers to Weber's understanding of scientific objectivity. I propose to interpret this understanding in the context of contemporary studies of public science communication. I pose the question, 'Should scientists objectively present inconvenient facts to the public or should they neglect objectivity in science-society communication?' I will start by legitimizing this question in the context of contemporary discussions on public science communication. To answer this question I will then use Heather Douglas's observations addressing irreducible complexity of objectivity as a conceptual framework. I will briefly describe, with some modifications, this idea in relation to Weber's representation of 'inconvenient facts'. I then will continue by referencing discussions concerning scientist's norms in public science communication and relate them to the formulations of objectivity above. In conclusion, I will offer an explanation of why the objectivity in Weber's interpretation remains relevant to regulate contemporary public science communication.


The population of the United Kingdom, estimated to be 58.2 million in 1993, has been predicted to peak at 62.2 million by 2031,1 although recent projections have reduced that figure by at least a million.2 The recent reorganisation of The Health Service has emphasised the desirability of managing patients in the community and on an outpatient basis rather than in hospital. In England, for all specialties, the daily average number of available beds in 1983 was 343 000 compared with 220 000 in 1993-4.3 Over the same period, new outpatient attendance rose from 8 311 000 to 9 685 000. The falling number of beds has been offset by a substantial increase in throughput. In 1991-2 finished consultant episodes (defined as ordinary admissions combined with day cases) for diseases of the nervous system and sense organs (International Classification of Diseases-9th revision (ICD-9) codes 32-389) was 496 000, rising to 530 000 in 1993-4. This substantial increase in workload has been matched by increasing medical staffing levels. In England, all hospital neurological staff rose from 352 in 1983 to 446 in 1993, the consultant number rising, in the same period, from 146 to 186. The reverse process however, has occurred with nursing staff. Over the same period (1983 to 1993) their numbers fell from 374 851 to 344 503.3 By mid-1995, there were 250 consultant neurologists in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, amounting to one neurologist per 233 600 of the population.4

The diseases encountered in neurological outpatient practice have been analysed both in surveys undertaken by individual neurologists,5 6 and in those conducted among a cohort of neurologists.7 8 In the survey undertaken by the association of British Neurologists,8 16 conditions were found to constitute 74% of the outpatient's workload (table). …


The purpose of this study was to use confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to revise the factor structure of the CSAI-2 using one data set, and then to use CFA to validate the revised structure using a second data set. The first data set (calibration sample) consisted of 503 college-age intramural athletes, and the second (validation sample) consisted of 331 intercollegiate (Division I) and interscholastic athletes. The results of the initial CFA on the calibration sample resulted in a poor fit to the data. Using the Lagrange Multiplier Test (Gamma) as a guide, CSAI-2 items that loaded on more than one factor were sequentially deleted. The resulting 17-item revised CSAI-2 was then subjected to a CFA using the validation data sample. The results of this CFA revealed a good fit of the data to the model (CFI = .95, NNFI = .94, RMSEA = .054). It is suggested that the CSAI-2R instead of the CSAI-2 be used by researchers and practitioners for measuring competitive state anxiety in athletes.


Backing-out and heading-out maneuvers in perpendicular or angle parking lots are one of the most dangerous maneuvers, especially in cases where side parked cars block the driver view of the potential traffic flow. In this paper, a new vision-based Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) is proposed to automatically warn the driver in such scenarios. A monocular grayscale camera was installed at the back-right side of a vehicle. A Finite State Machine (FSM) defined according to three CAN Bus variables and a manual signal provided by the user is used to handle the activation/deactivation of the detection module. The proposed oncoming traffic detection module computes spatio-temporal images from a set of predefined scan-lines which are related to the position of the road. A novel spatio-temporal motion descriptor is proposed (STHOL) accounting for the number of lines, their orientation and length of the spatio-temporal images. Some parameters of the proposed descriptor are adapted for nighttime conditions. A Bayesian framework is then used to trigger the warning signal using multivariate normal density functions. Experiments are conducted on image data captured from a vehicle parked at different location of an urban environment, including both daytime and nighttime lighting conditions. We demonstrate that the proposed approach provides robust results maintaining processing rates close to real time.


The second generation (2 G) biofuels were introduced to solve the issues associated with first-generation biofuel (dependency on food materials) and fossil fuels such as reservoirs diminution, high demand, price fluctuation, and lethal greenhouse gases emission. Butanol and ethanol are the main 2 G biofuels. They are used as a disinfectant, antiseptic, and chemical solvent in pharmaceutical, plastic, textiles, cosmetics, and fuel industries. Currently, their bacterial biological production from lignocellulosic material at the industrial level with primitive microorganisms is under development and not economical and qualitative compatible as compared to that of fossil origin, due to slow growth rate, low titer, recalcitrant nature of lignocellulose, strain intolerance to a higher amount of butanol and ethanol, and strain inability to tolerate inhibitors accumulated during pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials. Therefore, metabolic engineering strategies such as redirection of carbon flux, knocking out competing pathways, enhancing strain robustness and wide range of substrate utilization ability, and overexpression of enzymes involved in their biological synthesis have been applied to bacteria for enhancing their ability for 2 G ethanol and butanol production in a highly cost-effective amount from lignocellulosic materials. Herein, we summarized and reviewed the progress in metabolic engineering of bacterial species such as clostridium spp, E. coli, and Z. moibilis for the synthesis of 2 G butanol and ethanol, especially from lignocellulosic materials.


The CO-to-H2 conversion factor (α CO) is central to measuring the amount and properties of molecular gas. It is known to vary with environmental conditions, and previous studies have revealed lower α CO in the centers of some barred galaxies on kiloparsec scales. To unveil the physical drivers of such variations, we obtained Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array bands (3), (6), and (7) observations toward the inner ∼2 kpc of NGC 3627 and NGC 4321 tracing 12CO, 13CO, and C18O lines on ∼100 pc scales. Our multiline modeling and Bayesian likelihood analysis of these data sets reveal variations of molecular gas density, temperature, optical depth, and velocity dispersion, which are among the key drivers of α CO. The central 300 pc nuclei in both galaxies show strong enhancement of temperature T k ≳ 100 K and density nH2>103 cm−3. Assuming a CO-to-H2 abundance of 3 × 10−4, we derive 4–15 times lower α CO than the Galactic value across our maps, which agrees well with previous kiloparsec-scale measurements. Combining the results with our previous work on NGC 3351, we find a strong correlation of α CO with low-J 12CO optical depths (τ CO), as well as an anticorrelation with T k. The τ CO correlation explains most of the α CO variation in the three galaxy centers, whereas changes in T k influence α CO to second order. Overall, the observed line width and 12CO/13CO 2–1 line ratio correlate with τ CO variation in these centers, and thus they are useful observational indicators for α CO variation. We also test current simulation-based α CO prescriptions and find a systematic overprediction, which likely originates from the mismatch of gas conditions between our data and the simulations.


This study adopts a "precipitation object" approach by using 14 years of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Feature (PF) and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis data to study rainfall structure and environmental factors associated with extreme heavy rain events. Characteristics of instantaneous extreme volumetric PFs are examined and compared to those of intermediate and small systems. It is found that instantaneous PFs exhibit a much wider scale range compared to the daily gridded precipitation accumulation range. The top 1% of the rainiest PFs contribute over 55% of total rainfall and have 2 orders of rain volume magnitude greater than those of the median PFs. We find a threshold near the top 10% beyond which the PFs grow exponentially into larger, deeper, and colder rain systems. NCEP reanalyses show that midlevel relative humidity and total precipitable water increase steadily with increasingly larger PFs, along with a rapid increase of 500 hPa upward vertical velocity beyond the top 10%. This provides the necessary moisture convergence to amplify and sustain the extreme events. The rapid increase in vertical motion is associated with the release of convective available potential energy (CAPE) in mature systems, as is evident in the increase in CAPE of PFs up to 10% and the subsequent dropoff. The study illustrates distinct stages in the development of an extreme rainfall event including (1) a systematic buildup in large‐scale temperature and moisture, (2) a rapid change in rain structure, (3) explosive growth of the PF size, and (4) a release of CAPE before the demise of the event.


Summary

Regions of diversity in the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences of Sirococcus species were exploited to design primer pairs used in a PCR-based method for the identification of the conifer shoot blight pathogen Sirococcus conigenus and the closely related fungus Sirococcus tsugae. The specificity of each primer pair for the respective fungus, detection limits and utility for detection from host material were confirmed. The S. conigenus primers were then used to detect this pathogen in tissues of symptomatic or apparently healthy red pine shoots collected at six locations in Wisconsin and Michigan and results compared with those obtained using a cultural assay. For needles, bark and wood of symptomatic shoots, the mean frequencies of detection of S. conigenus using the PCR-based methods were consistent (≥7.5 out of 10) and always greater than for the cultural assay. Detection from symptomatic shoots using the cultural assay was more frequent from needles than from bark or wood. Both the PCR-based method and the cultural assay detected S. conigenus in similar frequencies from asymptomatic shoots, although less frequently than from symptomatic shoots. The efficiency of the PCR-based method and its utility for direct testing of host material should make it particularly useful in areas where multiple shoot blight pathogens are found.


Race walking is an Olympic event dictated by a rule that states that no visible loss of contact with the ground should occur and that the leg must be straightened from first contact with the ground until the 'vertical upright position' (IAAF Rule 230.2). The measurement of flight times during race walking is therefore of great interest to coaches, athletes and judges. The aim of the study was to compare different methodologies used to measure contact and flight time in race walking. Ten male race walkers (stature: 1.78 m (± 0.05), mass: 64.4 kg (± 4.9)) and seven female race walkers (stature: 1.68 m (± 0.10), mass: 56.7 kg (± 11.0)) participated. Fourteen of the athletes had competed at the 2016 Olympic Games or 2017 World Championships. The men race walked down an indoor track at 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 km/h (measured using timing gates and in a randomised order), whereas the women's trials were at 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 km/h. Contact and flight times were measured for the midsection of each trial using three adjacent 900 x 600 mm Kistler force plates (1000 Hz), 5 x 1 m strips of an OptoJump Next system (1000 Hz) and a Fastec high-speed camera (500 Hz). Results from the OptoJump Next system were extracted using five settings based on the number of LEDs that needed activating (contact begins after_contact ends when), and were annotated as 0_0, 1_1, 2_2, 3_3 and 4_4. The force plate values were considered the criterion values and measurements were assessed for reliability using Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) and 95% limits of agreement (LOA: bias ± random error). For flight time, the ICCs between the force plate and OptoJump Next were 0.846 for the 0_0 condition (LOA: .011 ± .014 s), 0.901 (1_1) (LOA: .008 ± .014 s), 0.983 (2_2) (LOA: .000 ± .008 s), 0.844 (3_3) (LOA: –.011 ± .014 s), and 0.563 (4_4) (LOA: –.023 ± .018 s). The ICC between the force plate and the high-speed video for flight time was 0.975 (LOA: –.003 ± .008 s). For contact time, the ICCs between the force plate and OptoJump Next were 0.967 for the 0_0 condition (LOA: –.011 ± .011 s), 0.982 (1_1) (LOA: –.008 ± .010 s), 0.995 (2_2) (LOA: .000 ± .010 s), 0.960 (3_3) (LOA: .011 ± .016 s), and 0.874 (4_4) (LOA: .024 ± .015 s). The ICC between the force plate and the high-speed video condition for contact time was 0.991 (LOA: .004 ± .010 s). The OptoJump Next system provided results similar to those of the gold standard force plates, with the 2_2 setting the most reliable. Users of the OptoJump Next system should therefore note that adjusting the settings of the device (from 0_0, the most likely default setting) might be necessary to achieve the most accurate results. The high-speed video recordings also provided very good reliability although the time-consuming nature of video analysis means the OptoJump Next system is better suited to providing immediate results.


BACKGROUND
Hematology analyzers have been able to make automated counts of cells present in CSF samples in recent years. Most of them cannot provide reliable counts of the low cell levels usually present in CSF.

METHODS
Functional sensitivity, precision, analytical measurement range, and method comparisons were deter- mined according to Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines.

RESULTS
The functional sensitivity for white blood cells (WBC) and red blood cells (RBC) was 18/μL and 725/μL (minimum reported concentration), respectively. The total precision ranged from 6.1% to 16.3% for WBC counts within the concentration of 33-183/μL and from 4.1% to 19.4% for RBC counts within the concentration of 745-11,350/μL. The within-run precision for WBC was 3.1% at 7,592/μL. The analytical measurement range was 18-10,078/μL for WBC and 725-5,222,550/μL for RBC. There was good correlation between WBC and RBC counts determined by the XE5000 and microscopic examination, according to slopes and R2 method comparisons. The correlation of the two methods for mononuclear cell (MN) counts was 0.907 with the WBC count of 50-5,000/μL. The reliability of WBC counts produced by the XE-5000 was 0.7.

CONCLUSIONS
The XE-5000 performed satisfactorily in the CSF assay, but it is still necessary to manually confirm the WBC count when it is less than 18/μL.


Similarity exists between moving large masses of people and the process industry. Both have fixed inputs, fixed outputs, predictable patterns, variables that can be measured, and corrections that can be made. Both entities respond to the principle of closed-loop regulation. From the experience gained in the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BARTD), a planned approach to coordinated and automated mass transportation systems is entirely feasible. Electronic controls are a major factor in providing an economic solution to the problem.


The amino acid substitution of aspartic acid to glycine in hemagglutinin (HA) in position 222 (HA-D222G) as well as HA-222D/G polymorphism of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza viruses (A(H1N1)pdm09) were frequently reported in severe influenza in humans and mice. Their impact on viral pathogenicity and the course of influenza has been discussed controversially and the underlying mechanism remained unclarified. In the present study, BALB/c mice, infected with the once mouse lung- and cell-passaged A(H1N1)pdm09 isolate A/Jena/5258/09 (mpJena/5258), developed severe pneumonia. From day 2 to 3 or 4 post infection (p.i.) symptoms (body weight loss and clinical score) continuously worsened. After a short disease stagnation or even recovery phase in most mice, severity of disease further increased on days 6 and 7 p.i. Thereafter, surviving mice recovered. A 45 times higher virus titer maximum in the lung than in the trachea on day 2 p.i. and significantly higher tracheal virus titers compared to lung on day 6 p.i. indicated changes in the organ tropism during infection. Sequence analysis revealed an HA-222D/G polymorphism. HA-D222 and HA-G222 variants co-circulated in lung and trachea. Whereas, HA-D222 variant predominated in the lung, HA-G222 became the major variant in the trachea after day 4 p.i. This was accompanied by lower neutralizing antibody titers and broader receptor recognition including terminal sialic acid α-2,3-linked galactose, which is abundant on mouse trachea epithelial cells. Plaque-purified HA-G222-mpJena/5258 virus induced severe influenza with maximum symptom on day 6 p.i. These results demonstrated for the first time that HA-222D/G quasispecies of A(H1N1)pdm09 caused severe biphasic influenza because of fast viral intra-host evolution, which enabled partial antibody escape and minor changes in receptor binding.


Public sector institutions that consult citizens to inform decision-making face the challenge of evaluating the contributions made by citizens. This evaluation has important democratic implications but at the same time, consumes substantial human resources. However, until now the use of artificial intelligence such as computer-supported text analysis has remained an under-studied solution to this problem. We identify three generic tasks in the evaluation process that could benefit from natural language processing (NLP). Based on a systematic literature search in two databases on computational linguistics and digital government, we provide a detailed review of existing methods and their performance. While some promising approaches exist, for instance to group data thematically and to detect arguments and opinions, we show that there remain important challenges before these could offer any reliable support in practice. These include the quality of results, the applicability to non-English language corpuses and making algorithmic models available to practitioners through software. We discuss a number of avenues that future research should pursue that can ultimately lead to solutions for practice. The most promising of these bring in the expertise of human evaluators, for example through active learning approaches or interactive topic modelling.


Abstract A newly developed experimental model system was used to determine in vitro transformation-specific parameters which correlate with tumorigenicity. The data suggested that clonal herpes simplex virus type 2-transformed syngeneic rat embryo cells with intermediate, transformed rat embryo fibroblasts (t-REF-G-1) or high, rat fibrosarcoma tumorigenic potential in syngeneic rats could be differentiated from clonal transformed nontumorigenic (t-REF-G-2) and nontransformed rat embryo fibrobiast cells by their growth to increased saturation density and cloning efficiency in soft-agar medium. All clonal herpes simplex virus type 2-transformed cells, regardless of tumorigenic potential, possessed an increased rate of hexose transport and plasminogen activator activity and were less fibroblastoid in morphology compared to nontransformed rat embryo fibroblast cells. There was no significant difference in cell-doubling time or total phospholipid composition between clonal transformed tumorigenic, nontumorigenic, and nontransformed cells. However, all clonal herpes simplex virus type 2-transformed cell lines possessed a decreased percentage of arachidonic acid and an increased percentage of monounsaturates compared to percentages in nontransformed rat embryo fibroblast cells. Saturation density, cloning efficiency, and tumorigenicity in newborn and adult rats of one nontumorigenic clonal cell line (t-REF-G-2) increased with cell passage in tissue culture. Other transformation-specific biochemical parameters (hexose transport, plasminogen activator activity, and fatty acid composition) remained stable with in vitro passage of the clonal cell lines. Five subclonal cell lines established from 12- O -tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate-treated clonal t-REF-G-2 (low passage) cells showed increased cloning efficiencies compared to 2 subclonal cell lines from mock-treated cells; also, all 5 subclonal cell lines from 12- O -tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate-treated clonal cells were tumorigenic in newborn rats. Subclonal cell lines from mock-treated clonal cells were non-tumorigenic. It was clear from the results that the absolute cloning efficiency did not correlate with tumorigenicity. This is an important conclusion, since it suggests that quantitation of transformation-specific characteristics at a given point in time will not necessarily be indicative of the tumorigenic potential of the cells.


It was found previously that methyl jasmonate (JA-Me) induced leaf abscission in Kalanchoe blossfeldiana . In present studies it was shown that JA-Me markedly increased the total activities of cellulase, polygalacturonase, pectinase and xylanase in petioles, but did not affect activities of these enzymes in the blades and apical part of shoots of K. blossfeldiana . These results suggest that methyl jasmonate promotes the degradation of cell wall polysaccharides in the abscission zone and in this way induces leaf abscission in Kalanchoe blossfeldiana .


Background Self-rated health (SRH) is a common measure of overall health. However, little is known about multilevel correlates of physical and mental SRH. Methods Patients attending primary care clinics completed a survey before their appointment, which we linked to community data from American Community Survey and other sources (n = 455). We conducted multilevel logistic regression to assess correlates of excellent/very good versus good/fair/poor physical and mental SRH. Results 43.9% of participants had excellent/very good physical SRH, and 55.2% had excellent/very good mental SRH. Physical SRH was associated with age (odds ratio[OR] = 0.82 per 10 years; 95% confidence interval[CI] = 0.72-0.93) and community correlates, including retail establishment density (OR = 0.94, 95% CI = 0.90-0.99) and percent of students eligible for free/reduced lunch (OR = 1.60, 95% CI = 1.08-2.38) (all P < .05). Mental SRH was not associated with any characteristics. Conclusions Practitioners in public health, social work, and medicine could use zip codes to intervene in patients and communities to improve physical SRH.


Abstract Evidence from nationally representative surveys conducted in sub-Saharan Africa shows that significant proportions of men in the wealthiest quintile report never having tested for HIV. Despite high prevalence rates in this quintile, no research has been conducted on the HIV testing attitudes and practices of wealthier men. This article reports findings from qualitative research conducted with 23 wealthy men in Tanzania. Whilst wealthy men reported barriers to and enablers of HIV testing previously reported by the general population, concerns around loss of social status and community standing were amplified for members of this demographic. Furthermore, HIV stigma among members of this group remains high. However, enhanced access to HIV testing through private clinics, regular healthcare appointments, health insurance schemes and the means to travel to other countries enables wealthy men to avoid stigma. In settings such as the workplace, wealthy men were able to test in public in their roles as 'leaders' to encourage others to test. Future interventions to increase testing amongst men should target settings in which these leadership roles can be taken advantage of. HIV services also need integrating into the health system to remove the need for testing and treatment to be accessed at separate clinics.


Objectives Since Korea is geographically close to China (the origin site for Asian sand dust [ASD]) the health influence of ASD event will be still greater in Korea. We aimed to evaluate the effect of PM10 (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter <10 μm, below 150 μg/m3) on the clinical course of allergic rhinitis (AR). Methods We enrolled 47 healthy volunteers (group A) and 108 AR patients sensitized to house dust mites (group B). For 120 consecutive days (from February 1st to May 30th, 2012), all subjects reported their daily nasal symptoms and performed 2 peak flowmeter readings to measure peak nasal inspiratory flow (PNIF). We evaluated the correlation between the daily concentration of PM10, symptoms, and PNIF of patients. We also investigated changes in symptoms and PNIF 2 days before and after 'dusty' days (daily concentration of PM10 >100 μg/m3) Results There was no significant difference between group A and B in nasal symptoms and PNIF during the 120-day period. Changes in nasal symptoms and PNIF were not statistically significant before or after a PM10 concentration rise above 100 μg/m3. Conclusion Low concentration PM10 does not have significant effect on nasal symptoms and PNIF in AR patients.


As sequential neural architectures become deeper and more complex, uncertainty estimation is more and more challenging. Efforts in quantifying uncertainty often rely on specific training procedures, and bear additional computational costs due to the dimensionality of such models. In this paper, we propose to decompose a classification or regression task in two steps: a representation learning stage to learn low-dimensional states, and a state space model for uncertainty estimation. This approach allows to separate representation learning and design of generative models. We demonstrate how predictive distributions can be estimated on top of an existing and trained neural network, by adding a state space-based last layer whose parameters are estimated with Sequential Monte Carlo methods. We apply our proposed methodology to the hourly estimation of Electricity Transformer Oil temperature, a publicly benchmarked dataset. Our model accounts for the noisy data structure, due to unknown or unavailable variables, and is able to provide confidence intervals on predictions.


A photodetector (1) is provided with an n-type InAs substrate (12); an n-type InAs buffer layer (14) formed on the n-type InAs substrate (12); an n-type InAs light absorbing layer (16) formed on the n-type InAs buffer layer (14); an InAsXPYSb1-X-Y cap layer (18) (X>=0, Y>0) formed on the n-type InAs light absorbing layer (16); a first inorganic insulating film (20) which is formed on the cap layer (18) and has an opening section (20h) in a deposition direction; a p-type impurity semiconductor layer (24) which is formed by diffusing a p-type impurity from the opening section (20h) of the first inorganic insulating film (20) and reaches an upper layer of the n-type InAs light absorbing layer (16) from the cap layer (18); and a second inorganic insulating film (22) formed on the first inorganic insulating film (20) and the p-type impurity semiconductor layer (24).


Backgrounds:
A straight-forward way to identify whether a drug or environmental chemical can be harmful to unborn baby is to evaluate its effect on laboratory animals. All invivo methods need large number of animal and are therefore time consuming and expensive. However, the thousands of chemicals in need of testing, to reduce the spending of live animals, an assortment of in vitro assays has been proposed. In recent years, embryonic stem cell test (ESC) has been used to investigate the mutagenic, cytotoxic and embryotoxic effects of compounds in vitro.
Methods:
The EST uses two cell lines and three endpoints to predict embryotoxic chemicals:  mouse embryonic stem cells (D3 cells) and murine fibroblasts (3T3 cells). The validated prediction model was developed based on the inhibition of differentiation of D3 cells into cardiomyocytes, and the inhibition of D3 cells and 3T3 cell viability. In addition, differences in sensitivity between differentiated (adult) and embryonic cells are also taken into consideration.
Results:
The three experimental endpoints: ID50 ( 50% inhibition of differentiation of ES cells into cardiac myoblasts and IC50 D3 and IC50 3T3 ( 50% inhibition of cell growth in ES and 3T3 cells in the MTT assay, respectively). According to these results chemicals are classified into three classes of the in vivo ( notembryotoxic, weak and strong embryotoxic).
Conclusion:
 The in vitro EST described is rapid, simple, and sensitive and can be usefully applied as a component of the risk/hazard assessment process.
Keywords: Cytotoxic, Embryionic stem cell, Mutagenic.


Midwives as the primary providers of maternity care for women during pregnancy, labour, birth and postpartum period provide significant support for women and their families/whanau. An understanding of the dynamics which influence the sustainability of LMC practice is important to providers, as well as women and their families/whanau, for the long term provision of LMC care in New Zealand. A strong sustainable midwifery workforce is central to the long term wellbeing of mothers and their babies and their families/whanau.

In 2008 I completed a research dissertation 'The experience of midwives leaving Lead Maternity Carer (LMC) practice' to fulfill the requirements of a Masters of Health Science at Auckland University of Technology. The findings were informed by the narratives of three midwives and their experiences of leaving their Lead Maternity Carer (LMC) practices.

The themes developed from the LMCs' experiences recognise the degree to which the autonomy of LMC practice, of taking responsibility and being accountable, sustained the LMCs. Over time the lack of responsibility and accountability shown towards them and their clients in their professional relationships undermined the sustainability of their practices.

The implications of findings identify the lack of professional support available to LMCs. The Midwife First Year in Practice programme provides invaluable support for new graduates. Professional supervision, where it is available, provides excellent support however cost could be a factor for midwives. An on-line support for LMCs, similar to the NZCOM Resolutions Committee for consumers, and education in undergraduate programmes are two recommendations.


Abstract Increasing evidence is emerging for sexual dimorphism in the trajectory of white matter development in children assessed using volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and more recently diffusion MRI. Recent studies using diffusion MRI have examined cohorts with a wide age range (typically between 5 and 30 years) showing focal regions of differential diffusivity and fractional anisotropy (FA) and have implicated puberty as a possible contributory factor. To further investigate possible dimorphic trajectories in a young cohort, presumably closer to the expected onset of puberty, we used tract-based spatial statistics to investigate diffusion metrics. The cohort consisted of 23 males and 30 females between the ages of 8 and 16 years. Differences in diffusion metrics were corrected for age, total brain volume, and full scale IQ. In contrast to previous studies showing focal differences between males and females, widespread sexually dimorphic trajectories in structural white matter development were observed. These differences were characterized by more advanced development in females compared to males indicated by lower mean diffusivity, radial and axial diffusivity, and higher FA in females. This difference appeared to be larger at lower ages (8–9 years) with diffusion measures from males and females tending to converge between 10 and 14 years of age. Males showed a steeper slope for age-diffusion metric correlations compared to females, who either did not correlate with age or correlated in fewer regions. Further studies are now warranted to determine the role of hormones on the observed differences, particularly in 8–9-year-old children.