BACKGROUND
Patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) do not respond with increased urinary HCO3 - excretion after stimulation with secretin and often present with metabolic alkalosis.

METHODS
By combining RT-PCR, immunohistochemistry, isolated tubule perfusion, in vitro cell studies, and in vivo studies in different mouse models, we elucidated the mechanism of secretin-induced urinary HCO3 - excretion. For CF patients and CF mice, we developed a HCO3 - drinking test to assess the role of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) in urinary HCO3 -excretion and applied it in the patients before and after treatment with the novel CFTR modulator drug, lumacaftor-ivacaftor.

RESULTS
β-Intercalated cells express basolateral secretin receptors and apical CFTR and pendrin. In vivo application of secretin induced a marked urinary alkalization, an effect absent in mice lacking pendrin or CFTR. In perfused cortical collecting ducts, secretin stimulated pendrin-dependent Cl-/HCO3 - exchange. In collecting ducts in CFTR knockout mice, baseline pendrin activity was significantly lower and not responsive to secretin. Notably, patients with CF (F508del/F508del) and CF mice showed a greatly attenuated or absent urinary HCO3 --excreting ability. In patients, treatment with the CFTR modulator drug lumacaftor-ivacaftor increased the renal ability to excrete HCO3 -.

CONCLUSIONS
These results define the mechanism of secretin-induced urinary HCO3 - excretion, explain metabolic alkalosis in patients with CF, and suggest feasibility of an in vivo human CF urine test to validate drug efficacy.


Sonic hedgehog (Shh) is a crucial morphogen in the development of numerous tissues and organs, including the nervous system, gastrointestinal tract and lung. Recent findings suggest that Shh plays an important role in thymocyte development and peripheral T cell function. Here we report that the Shh receptors, patched and smoothened, are expressed in resting and activated T cells and their expression is regulated upon T cell activation. Shh protein is also detected on the surface of freshly isolated T cells. Although exogenous Shh alone does not activate resting T cells, it exhibits co-stimulatory activity which is reflected in its ability to potentiate CD3-mediated proliferation and cytokine production by CD4(+) T cells. The co-stimulatory effect is most prominent at sub-optimal TCR stimulation level. Gene expression analysis reveals that Shh signaling in CD4(+) T cells modulates a different set of transcriptional targets from that in neuronal cells. Furthermore, Shh co-stimulation modulates the expression of a subset of CD28-responsive genes, including cyclin A and B cell translocation gene 2.


In a prospective study, 153 consecutive new referrals to a psychogeriatrician in Oxfordshire in 1973 were followed up for 15 years. The percentage of the over-65 population at risk was 0.27 and, of those aged over 80, 0.6. Alzheimer's dementia and depressive illness comprised over two-thirds of referrals. A quarter became permanent admissions, half of them with Alzheimer's dementia, 19% of whom were alive five years later. Depressive illness, at ten years, had a mortality 1.2–1.6 times that of the population at risk. The distinction between Alzheimer's dementia and depressive illness, based on their natural history and causes of death, was reinforced.


The ultrastructural localization of succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity in "dark" and "light" neurons of the intact rat's frontal brain cortex has been studied. The enzymes' activity was detected with using potassium ferricyanide as artificial acceptor of electrons. In the "light" cells SDH activity is localized in the mitochondria and plasma membranes. LDH activity is localized in the mitochondria, plasma membranes and hyaloplasm. SDH and LDH activity was not found in the "dark" cells.


Objective: To investigate our results of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) in advanced stage lung cancer patients. Methods: Twentyone patients underwent stereotactic body radiotherapy who admitted Dr. Lutfi Kirdar Kartal Training and Research Hospital between 2010-2013. All the patients were man and median age was 63 years.Thirteen patients were ECOG 1 and the eight of them were ECOG 2. Eighteen of the patients were nonsmall cell ca, two of them were small cell and one was mesenchymal tumor. Thirteen patients have been treated with radiotherapy before. Three of these patients were treated with boost treatment after the external radiotherapy, the other three of them were treated with raditherapy for the second primary field and seven of them were treated as a second line because of the progression after the external radiotherapy. The eight of the patients who were not treated with radiotherapy before underwent SBRT for palliative tretment. Tumors were central in 13 patients and peripheral in 8 patients. We used CK robotic radiosurgery system (Accuray,Sunnyvale,CA,USA). The patients were treated with SBRT to median of 32 Gy(12-45) in 2- 5 fractions. Results: The mean follow-up after SBRT was 15 months. The local recurrence-free survival was 17 months. No adverse effect has been reported. Conclusion: Stereotactic radiotherapy is useful for local control and palliation in advanced stage lung cancer.


A bipolar electrode was stereotaxically implanted in or near the medial forebrain bundle at the level of the posterior lateral hypothalamus of male albino Wistar-Imamichi rats. 1) Two electrode sites implanted in a rat both in the lateral hypothalamus and in the dorsal noradrenaline bundle supported self-stimulation (SS) behavior. 2) Methamphetamine facilitated the SS dose-dependently in the "threshold"-intensity reinforcement. The pretreatment of imipramine enhanced the effects of methamphetamine, but that of chlorpromazine inhibited those effects. Methamphetamine facilitated the SS also in the moderate-intensity reinforcement. Imipramine had no significant effects. On the other hand, chlorpromazine inhibited markedly the SS behavior. 3) FLA63 and U-14,624, dopamine beta-hydroxylase inhibitors, suppressed the SS behavior. Both drugs significantly reduced brain norepinephrine levels. FLA63 significantly increased the levels of dopamine, but the increase with U-14,624 was not significant. 4) Apomorphine, stimulant of dopamine receptor, did not facilitate, but rather suppressed the SS in the "threshold"-intensity reinforcement. 5) l-Norepinephrine injected into the lateral ventricle facilitated the rate of SS, dose-dependently. On the other hand, dopamine had no detectable effects. 7) These results suggest that the noradrenergic system in the brain plays a more important role in the positive reinforcement of the lateral hypothalamic SS behavior than does the dopaminergic system.


Recent studies have demonstrated great therapeutic potential of educating and unleashing our own immune system for cancer treatment. However, there are still major challenges in cancer immunotherapy, including poor immunogenicity of cancer vaccines, off-target side effects of immunotherapeutics, as well as suboptimal outcomes of adoptive T cell transfer-based therapies. Nanomaterials with defined physico-biochemical properties are versatile drug delivery platforms that may address these key technical challenges facing cancer vaccines and immunotherapy. Nanoparticle systems have been shown to improve targeted delivery of tumor antigens and therapeutics against immune checkpoint molecules, amplify immune activation via the use of new stimuli-responsive or immunostimulatory materials, and augment the efficacy of adoptive cell therapies. Here, we review the current state-of-the-art in nanoparticle-based strategies designed to potentiate cancer immunotherapies, including cancer vaccines with subunit antigens (e.g., oncoproteins, mutated neo-antigens, DNA and mRNA antigens) and whole-cell tumor antigens, dendritic cell-based vaccines, artificial antigen-presenting cells, and immunotherapeutics based on immunogenic cell death, immune checkpoint blockade, and adoptive T-cell therapy.


Venture capital is an important alternative for companies that have difficulties accessing more traditional financing sources and it is a strong financial injection for early-stage companies that do not have evidence for persistent profitability yet. Firstly, deep prescreening process should be performed before investing in small, start-up business because of the information asymmetries, which in turn are the main cause for adverse selection and moral hazard problems. Well performed initial scan ensures good investment. Seed capital provided than enables the firm's set off. But what is more important is the conclusion that there is much more than just capital that flows from the investors to the organizations in which they invest. Indeed, fresh capital inflow is accompanied with the process of value-adding which provides the company with monitoring, skills, expertise, help and, basically, reputation for attracting further finance. Consequently, the role of the venture capital in financing small business is tremendous. The paper sheds light on these issues.


In the present paper, a modified self-flux technique has been successfully employed for the growth of pure and praseodymium substituted tpartially) large single crystals of high temperature supcrconducting Yt xPr~ Ba2Cu307 ~ (x = 0.0,0.2,0-4). Typical sizes of the platy and bulk,,' crystals of pure YBCO(1231 material are ~ 2 × 2 × 0 " l m m 3 and 4 × 1 × 1 mm 3. respectively. In case of Pr-substitution, the typical sizes of platy and bulky crystals of Y ~ P r , :Ba2('u~O~ ~ and Y~Pro . .~Ba ,Cu30, ,~ materials are ~ 2 × 3 x 0.1 mm 3 and 5 × 1 x 1 mm ~ and ~ 1 × 1.5 × 0-1 mm 3 and 7 × 0.2 x 0.1 mm 3, respectively. The morphology and growth habit of the a~-grown single crystals and the critical transition temperature (T~) of the oxygenated crystals werc found to depend on the Pr-content.


In science fiction, prosthetic limbs appear as seamless extensions of the human body that function as if the limbs were made of flesh and bone. With recent technological and scientific advancements, the prosthetic limbs of today are beginning to resemble those we once only imagined. Patients are now able to perform simple, everyday tasks like drinking from a glass of water. However, there are many limitations to this technology, including lack of fine motor movement, absence of reflexes, and missing sensory feedback from the prosthetic limb. These restrictions prohibit prosthetics patients from having the same experience as someone with a biological limb. This paper touches upon the limitations of prosthetics today and applies the findings of current neuroscience research to address these shortcomings to identify potential solutions and areas for further research.


Building a shared understanding of non-functional requirements (NFRs) is a known but understudied challenge in requirements engineering, especially in organizations that adopt continuous software engineering (CSE) practices. During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many CSE organizations complied with working remotely due to the imposed health restrictions; some continued to work remotely while implementing business processes to facilitate team communication and productivity. In remote CSE organizations, managing NFRs becomes more challenging due to the limitations to team communication. While previous research has identified the factors that lead to a lack of shared understanding of NFRs in CSE, we still have a significant gap in understanding how CSE organizations, particularly in remote work, build a shared understanding of NFRs. We conduct a three-month ethnography-informed case study of a remote CSE organization. Through thematic analysis of our qualitative data from interviews and observations, we identify a number of practices for building a shared understanding of NFRs, such as validating NFRs through feedback. The collaborative workspace the organization uses for remote interaction is Gather, which simulates physical workspaces, and which our findings suggest allows for informal communications instrumental for building shared understanding. In addition, we describe the limitations to building a shared understanding of NFRs in the organization, such as gaps in communication and the limited understanding of customer context. As actionable insights, we discuss our findings in light of proactive practices that represent opportunities for software organizations to invest in building a shared understanding of NFRs in their development.


Objective: Reactivation of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) refers to an increase in HBV replication in a patient with inactive or resolved HBV. In this retrospective study, our aim is to present and compare HBV reactivation in multiple myeloma (MM) patients who received lenalidomide and/or bortezomib at any time during treatment, evaluate the factors associated with reactivation, and demonstrate the outcome of patients. Materials and Methods: We evaluated 178 MM patients who received lenalidomide (n=102) and/or bortezomib (n=174) during their treatment schedules. The HBsAg, anti-HBc, anti-HBs, HBeAg, and anti-HBe were detected by chemiluminescence by ARCHITECT lab analyzers using commercially available kits (Abbott, USA). HBV-DNA titers were determined by quantitative PCR. The results were evaluated by IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 20.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). Results: HBV reactivation was diagnosed in 6 patients (3%) after bortezomib and in 8 patients (8%) after bortezomib and lenalidomide. Three of the patients in each group had HBsAg+, HBeAg+, AntiHBeAg-, AntiHBc-, and AntiHBS+ status, whereas 5 patients in the bortezomib- and lenalidomide-treated group and 3 patients in the bortezomib-treated group had HBsAg-, HBeAg-, AntiHBeAg-, AntiHBc-, and AntiHBS+ status prior to treatment. There were no statistical differences observed between HBV reactivation in the bortezomib-treated or bortezomib- and lenalidomide-treated groups in terms of age at diagnosis, sex, International Staging System subtype, frequency of extramedullary disease, dialysis requirement, or receiving of autologous stem cell transplantation. In patients who received antiviral prophylaxis, a higher incidence of HBV reactivation was detected in HBsAg-positive patients compared to HBsAg-negative patients (4/4, 100% vs. 2/7, 29%; p=0.045). The 3-year and 5-year overall survival rates were similar in patients with or without HBV reactivation (83% vs. 84%, 73% vs. 74%, p=0.84). Conclusion: Close follow-up is recommended for not only HBsAg-positive but also HBsAg-negative patients.


It may finally be asked whether the needs of medical education present any special problems in Australia. Duringmy recent tour of the various medical schools, the impression g-ained was that active criticism and replanningof the curriculum was most in evidence in the young-er or entirely new schools. The older schools, fashioned as they were on former British methods, hardly seem to have become aware of the wind of chang-e now blowing strongly at home. Though special circumstances exist concerningentry or selection in some States, there are sufficient similarities to make It possible to plan a curriculum for Australian medicine as a whole. Good students need the best education that can be devised, and the Australian student is made of as good material as any In the world. Academic medicine has now made a promising start In Australia, but education demands effort and thought from those engaged in the hurty-burlv of practice as well as from academicians. It seems that a big cooperative effort is now called for, and the keynote of this mtght well be: "Wake up! for you have much to do." • (ltomments ann absttacts


This paper presents a nonlinear input-state feedback linearization controller for tracking trajectory on horizontal plane with the rudder of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV). UUV system is strongly nonlinear, but the model is often simplified into linearization under some strict assumptions in some traditional linear control methods for the need of the control laws, and the linearization may induce large modeling errors and cause severe problems in the practical applications. In this paper, an input-state feedback linearization controller is designed to transform the nonlinear UUV model into an equivalent linear model. The trajectory tracking system is confirmed to be stable and UUV tracks trajectory approximately by pole placement through properly choosing the virtual input. Simulation results illustrate the system is stable and has robust with proposed control scheme.


Drama allows students to have an embodied experience with learning. Through simple drama techniques abstract concepts can be made concrete, allowing students to see, touch, discuss, move, and understand through the three thinking styles: Verbal, Object-Visual, and Spatial-Visual. This levels the playing field in terms of inclusion and in terms of Universal Design for Learning. Exploring concepts through theatre easily leads to other educational explorations both traditional and arts-based. In addition, theatre offers students the ability to make choices and develop their critical thinking skills in ways that no other educational tools currently provide.


Introduction The impact of the clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR-P) construct is dependent on accurately predicting outcomes. Individuals with brief limited intermittent psychotic symptoms (BLIPS) have higher risk of developing a first episode of psychosis (FEP) compared to individuals with attenuated psychotic symptoms (APS). Supplementing subgroup stratification with information from candidate biomarkers based on neurobiological parameters, such as resting-state, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF), may help refine risk estimates. Based on previous evidence, we hypothesized that individuals with BLIPS would exhibit increased rCBF compared to APS in key regions linked to dopaminergic pathways. Methods Data from four studies were combined using ComBat (to account for between-study differences) to analyse rCBF in 150 age- and sex-matched subjects (n = 30 healthy controls [HCs], n = 80 APS, n = 20 BLIPS and n = 20 FEP). Global gray matter (GM) rCBF was examined in addition to region-of-interest (ROI) analyses in bilateral/left/right frontal cortex, hippocampus and striatum. Group differences were assessed using general linear models: (i) alone; (ii) with global GM rCBF as a covariate; (iii) with global GM rCBF and smoking status as covariates. Significance was set at p < 0.05. Results Whole-brain voxel-wise analyses and Bayesian ROI analyses were also conducted. No significant group differences were found in global [F(3,143) = 1,41, p = 0.24], bilateral frontal cortex [F(3,143) = 1.01, p = 0.39], hippocampus [F(3,143) = 0.63, p = 0.60] or striatum [F(3,143) = 0.52, p = 0.57] rCBF. Similar null findings were observed in lateralized ROIs (p > 0.05). All results were robust to addition of covariates (p > 0.05). No significant clusters were identified in whole-brain voxel-wise analyses (p > 0.05FWE). Weak-to-moderate evidence was found for an absence of rCBF differences between APS and BLIPS in Bayesian ROI analyses. Conclusion On this evidence, APS and BLIPS are unlikely to be neurobiologically distinct. Due to this and the weak-to-moderate evidence for the null hypothesis, future research should investigate larger samples of APS and BLIPS through collaboration across large-scale international consortia.


ABSTRACT:In recent years, Israel's Security Agency (Shabak) launched a new psychological warfare arena with an Arabic language Facebook page addressed to Palestinians, alongside more precisely targeted pages monitored by regional field officers (the so-called "Captains"). The messaging is nearly identical to the kind of propaganda the Zionist media has aimed at Palestinians for over a century: Israel is here to stay, Israel desires co-existence, but those who defy its authority suffer the consequences. The difference is that this time the messages are targeted, personal, illustrated with documentary footage of youths detained, homes demolished, calls for collaborators and informers, and preachy holiday greetings. These Facebook pages have acquired a huge following, but their comments show that the Palestinians are not buying the message. Some signal an interest in the dangled benefits, some respond with a slew of curses, while others use the platform to send political counter-messages. Social media has so far not succeeded in winning over the hearts and minds of Palestinians, though it may discourage them from joining the struggle against the occupation


This article advances a reconceptualization of the Davis-Moore thesis, which adresses the weaknesses of Davis and Moore's original formulation and can function not as a causal explanation of inequality but as a normative yardstick, against which the efficiency of capitalist society's use of human talents can be measured. I argue that the nonmeritocratic nature of capitalist society prevents it from using human talents efficiently and that this fact is obscured by a "meritocratic illusion" that is systematically generated by the structural logic of capitalist society. After briefly exploring one way in which capitalism's ecological contradictions impinge on the Davis-Moore thesis, I conclude by arguing that it is the mediation of capitalism's contradictions through social struggles that will determine whether a more meritocratic society consistent with the reconceptualized version of the Davis-Moore thesis will ever emerge.


This research aimed to explore contents of Indonesian e-Government in order to obtain expected value effectively by considering obstacles in implementing e-Government. It was achieved by reviewing basic and applied theory of e-Government development. The study entails compilation of emerged benefits by triangulation of extensive literature review, case study (by best practices city/municipality in Indonesia) and FGD. Some problems in implementing e-Government explored in this research can be solved through simple and creative ways. It found that contents exploration of all relationships between 4 elements which are government, users, system, and environment, can be effective solution, which have been implemented by all successful cities/municipalities. The finding would help government policy and decision makers design and implement policies and strategies to improve e-Government services. The research is undertaken at Indonesian local government level as the first researches in Indonesian e-Government implementation by exploring best practice contents which emerged in each city/municipality.


This study triangulates offline and online research methods to examine how and why young activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa use Facebook for political purposes. It demonstrates that like traditional participant observation, which was popularized by classical anthropologists, algorithmically 'occurring' data gathered through social media ethnography provides some of the richest information to burrow into the everyday political lives of young activists (who are generally presented in mainstream literature as having disengaged from traditional forms of political participation). Building on Postill and Pink's (2012) typology of social media ethnography, this study proposes a seven stage criteria for conducting online participant observation on Facebook in the era of data 'deluge'. These stages include: background listening, friending/liking, interacting, observing, catching up, exploring, and archiving. Based on the author's multi-sited fieldwork experiences in Zimbabwe and South Africa, this study argues that online like offline participant observation has context specific methodological dilemmas which require innovative flexibility and ethical sensitivity on the part of the qualitative researcher. It also discusses various ethical dilemmas which the author encountered during the multi-sited fieldwork as well practical strategies other researchers can use for delurking, archiving and safeguarding participants' privacy and confidentiality.


PURPOSE
The interphotoreceptor matrix mediates interactions between the retinal pigment epithelium, photoreceptors, and Muller cells. Each of these cells contributes to specific proteoglycans, proteins, and growth factors in the interphotoreceptor matrix. Some components, such as interphotoreceptor retinoid binding protein (IRBP), are virtually unique to the interphotoreceptor matrix. It has been proposed that serum albumin, thought to be present in the interphotoreceptor matrix, could act as a surrogate retinoid binding protein within the subretinal space of transgenic mice lacking interphotoreceptor retinoid binding protein. To address this question, we sought to determine whether albumin is present in the interphotoreceptor matrix of IRBP+/+ mice or IRBP-/- mice.

METHODS
We examined the distribution of albumin in IRBP-/- mice and IRBP+/+ mice using immunofluorescence and immunoperoxidase histochemistry.

RESULTS
The distribution of albumin within the corneal stroma, sclera, and capillaries is consistent with previous work. Serum albumin could not be detected in the interphotoreceptor matrix. The distribution of albumin in IRBP-/- mice was similar to that of their wildtype counterparts.

CONCLUSIONS
Serum albumin is not a component of the interphotoreceptor matrix of IRBP+/+ mice or IRBP-/- mice.


IZA DP No. 15936 FEBRUARY 2023 Advanced Digital Technologies and Investment in Employee Training: Complements or Substitutes?* Using firm-level data covering the 27 EU countries, the UK and the US, we show that employers tend to reduce investment in training per employee after adopting advanced digital technologies (ADT). We estimate with a control function approach firm-level production functions augmented with two factors, the training stock per employee and digital technology use. We show that ADT use and employee training are substitutes in production, implying that an increase in the former negatively affects the marginal productivity of the latter, and that a decline in the cost of introducing ADT reduces employers' investment in training per employee. These findings point to challenges in realizing high levels of firm-sponsored training for employees in increasingly digital economies. JEL Classification: D24, J24


Nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kappaB) is well known for its role in inflammation, immune response, control of cell division and apoptosis. The function of NF-kappaB is primarily regulated by IkappaB family members, which ensure cytoplasmic localisation of the transcription factor in the resting state. Upon stimulus-induced IkappaB degradation, the NF-kappaB complexes move to the nucleus and activate NF-kappaB-dependent transcription. Over the years, a second regulatory mechanism, independent of IkappaB, has become generally accepted. Changes in NF-kappaB transcriptional activity have been assigned to phosphorylation of the p65 subunit by a large variety of kinases in response to different stimuli. Here, we give an overview of the kinases and signalling pathways mediating this process and comment on the players involved in tumour necrosis factor-induced regulation of NF-kappaB transcriptional activity. Additionally, we describe how other posttranslational modifications, such as acetylation and methylation of transcription factors or of the chromatin environment, may also affect NF-kappaB transcriptional activity.


In the last decade, rural development emerged as one of the prominent challenges facing the United States. Strong support for rural development is now found in both major political parties and at federal, state, and local levels. There is little doubt that the development of rural America will become even more important in the future.Despite unprecedented growth, both urban and rural areas in the United States are greatly deficient in many aspects of quality living conditions. The nation's cities are slowly strangling themselves, jamming together people and industry while spawning pollution, transportation paralysis, housing blight, lack of privacy, and a crime-infested society. Rural areas simultaneously suffer from the other extreme: lack of sufficient employment opportunities, outmigration and depopulation, and too few people to support services and institutions. The migration from rural areas contributes to the problems of both the city and countryside depopulating rural places at the expense of overcrowded cities.This book focuses on rural development processes, problems, and solutions. Seven prominent specialists in the field, including agricultural and regional economists, demographers, and administrators, discuss the development of the open country, small towns, and smaller cities (up to fifty thousand population). They present an integrated approach to rural development problems, not a mere collection of readings. Valuable guidelines for policies to benefit both rural and urban areas are provided.Since rural development involves interdisciplinary scholarship, this book will be of interest to a wide range of social scientists working in rural areas both here and abroad. Economists, sociologists, and political scientists, as well as community leaders and planners, legislators, government officials and interested laymen, will find this volume useful in understanding the rural development effort.


This study introduces a new thermodynamic framework for aqueous reaction equilibria that treats water as a coreactant in the development of a general binding equation. The approach features an explicit consideration for the change in hydration that occurs when two solvated surfaces come into contact. As an outcome of this framework, the standard-state free energy of binding is defined by the summation of two terms: the traditional term (-RT ln Ki) plus a desolvation free-energy term that is weighted by the number of complexes formed at equilibrium. The new formalism suggests that the equilibrium ratio, Ki, is not a constant and that the observed concentration dependence of Ki may be used to obtain the molar desolvation energy and the standard-state free energy at infinite dilution. The governing equation is supported by results from isothermal titration calorimetry using the chelation of calcium(II) by EDTA as a model binding reaction. This work may have far-reaching implications for solution thermodynamics, including an explanation for the oft-noted discrepancy between the enthalpy values obtained by calorimetry and those from the van't Hoff approach.


With a simple tropical coupled ocean-atmosphere model, this paper presents an analysis aiming to understand the relative role of the meridional and zonal wind stresses in the tropical unstable air-sea interaction. The roles of thezonal wind stress, the meridional wind stress and the both are considered respectively into the coupled system. It is demonstrated that the meridional component of the wind stress does not lead to any instability under the local thermal balance assumption, but it does lead to a weak instability under the sea surface temperature advection assumption. Unstable air-sea interaction is dominated by the zonal component of the wind stress, suggesting that ignoring the meridional wind stress is approximately feasible in studying the tropical unstable air-sea interaction.


ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: The Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) developed a clinical decision rule to identify children at low risk for intra-abdominal injury requiring acute intervention (IAI-I) for reducing unnecessary radiation exposure of abdominal computed tomography (CT) after blunt torso trauma. This study aimed to compare the PECARN decision rule with clinician suspicion in identifying children at low risk of intra-abdominal injuries that an abdominal CT scan can be safely avoided. METHODS: This study is a retrospective review of children with blunt torso trauma in an academic emergency department (ED) between 2011 and 2019. Patients were considered positive for the PECARN rule if they exhibited any of the variables. Clinician suspicion was defined as actual CT ordering of the treating physician. The primary outcome was IAI-I detected by imaging or surgery within 1 month after the trauma, and the secondary outcome was any intra-abdominal injury (IAI) presence. RESULTS: Among the 768 children included, 48 (6.25%) had intra-abdominal injuries and 21 (2.73%) of whom underwent acute intervention. Four hundred and fifty-three (59%) children underwent abdominal CT scanning. If the PECARN rule had been applied, 232 patients would have undergone abdominal CT. The rule revealed 90.48% (95% CI=68.17–98.33%) sensitivity for IAI-I and 81.25% (95% CI=66.9–90.56%) for IAI. Clinician suspicion revealed sensitivities of 100% (95% CI=80.76–00%) and 93.75% (95% CI=81.79–98.37%) for IAI-I and IAI, respectively. Sensitivities of the rule and clinician suspicion were statistically similar for both IAI-I (p=0.5) and IAI (p=0.146). CONCLUSION: In this study, the PECARN abdominal rule and clinician suspicion performed similarly in identifying intra-abdominal injuries in children with blunt torso trauma. However, our study supports the use of PECARN abdominal rule in addition to clinical judgment to limit unnecessary abdominal CT use in pediatric patients with blunt torso trauma in the ED.


Most breast cancer deaths are caused by metastasis and treatment options beyond radiation and cytotoxic drugs are urgently needed. This study reanalyzed existing data from three genome-wide association studies (GWAS) using a novel computational biostatistics approach (muGWAS), which had been validated in studies of 600-2000 subjects in epilepsy and autism. MuGWAS jointly analyzes several neighboring single nucleotide polymorphisms while incorporating knowledge about genetics of heritable diseases into the statistical method and about GWAS into the rules for determining adaptive genome-wide significance. Results from three independent GWAS of 1000-2000 subjects each, which were made available under the National Institute of Health's "Up For A Challenge" (U4C) project, not only confirmed cell-cycle control and receptor/AKT signaling, but, for the first time in breast cancer GWAS, also consistently identified many endo-/exocytosis (EEC) genes, most of which had already been observed in functional and expression studies of breast cancer. In particular, the findings include genes that translocate (ATP8A1, ATP8B1, ANO4, ABCA1) and metabolize (AGPAT3, AGPAT4, DGKQ, LPPR1) phospholipids entering the phosphatidylinositol cycle, which controls EEC. These novel findings suggest scavenging phospholipids via alpha-cyclo-dextrin (αCD) as a novel intervention to control packaging of exosomes (which prepare distant microenvironment for organ-specific metastases) and endocytosis of β1 integrins (which are required for spread of metastatic phenotype and mesenchymal migration of tumor cells). Beta-cyclodextrin (βCD) had already been shown to be effective in in vitro and animal studies of breast cancer, but exhibits cholesterol-related ototoxicity. The smaller αCD also scavenges phospholipids, but cannot fit cholesterol. An in-vitro study presented here confirms hydroxypropyl (HP)-αCD to be twice as effective as HPβCD against migration of human cells of both receptor negative and estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer. If the previous successful animal studies with βCDs are replicated with the safer and more effective αCDs, clinical trials of αCDs are warranted in women with triple-negative breast cancer, who have few treatment options and poor prognosis.


Opportunistic viral infections make an important threat to renal transplant recipients (RTRs), and with the use of more intense newly-developed immunosuppressive drugs; the risk of renal allograft loss due to reactivation of these viruses considerably increased. At the top priority of these viruses, human cytomegalovirus and other herpes viruses in addition to polyomavirus, reactivation of these viruses in these chronically immunosuppressed RTRs can lead to renal impairment and subsequently loss, unless early detected and properly treated. Keywords: kidney transplantation, viral infections Citation: Al-Obaidi AB, Jasim MB, Hussein MR, Kadhim HS, Habib MA. Opportunistic viral infections after kidney transplantation: A review. Iraqi JMS. 2020; 18(2): 79-93. doi: 10.22578/IJMS.18.2.1


BACKGROUND
A retrospective review was carried out to determine the incidence of various causes and outcome of management in patients with acute scrotum.

METHODS
Fifty children had a diagnosis of acute scrotum between 1st January 2007 and 15th May 2012. Age, mode of presentation, associated anomalies, and results of treatment were studied. Diagnosis of acute scrotum was confirmed by physical examination, Doppler ultrasound and biochemical investigations.

RESULTS
Clinical presentation consisted of sudden swelling and pain in the inguinoscrotal region. The average age was 7.5 years (2 months-14 years). Causes of acute scrotum were orchitis/epididymo-orchitis (O /EO) in 22, strangulated inguinal hernia (SIH) in 16, testicular torsion (TT) in 11, and torsion of testicular appendage (TTA) in 1. Associated urological anomalies were found in 5 patients with O /EO. Medical treatment was applied to patients with O /EO, and surgical treatment was performed in patients with SIH, TT and TTA.

CONCLUSION
In this series, O /EO was found to rank first as the cause of acute scrotum. Immediate surgical treatment in acute scrotum patients, except those with O /EO, is necessary. Associated urological anomalies should be investigated in patients with O /EO.


In the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, as well as in the tunnelling domain, inter‐company processes between partners in different roles in large‐scale construction projects still exhibit great potential towards digitalisation. Thereby, information should be seamlessly shared between partners according to the Building Information Modelling (BIM) paradigm. Today, different types of artefacts (e.g., models, plans, documents, etc.) are shared at different points in time, which differ in terms of requirements, information content, as well as data formats. In this article, we extend and prototypically implement the concept of Data Drops to provide those artefacts in a digitalised form via a shared Data Drop management platform. For this purpose, we have developed a formal, well‐defined indexed data structure on a metadata level. This not only facilitates traceability, but also enables searching for specific meta‐information and provides a common view on Data Drops. In addition, a networked view between different drops can be provided. The approach is being evaluated on the use case of a real tunnel construction project.


This article presents the first version of a talking head, called MOTHER (MOrphable Talking Head for Enhanced Reality), based on an articulatory model describing the degrees-offreedom of visible (lips, cheeks...) but also partially or indirectly visible (jaw, tongue...) speech articulators. Skin details are rendered using texture mapping/blending techniques. We illustrate here the flexibility of such an articulatory control of video-realistic speaking faces by first demonstrating its ability in tracking facial movements by an optical-to-articulatory inversion using an analysis-by-synthesis technique. The stability and reliability of the results allow the automatic inversion of large video sequences. Inversion results are here used to build automatically a coarticulation model for the generation of facial movements from text. It improves the previous Text-To- AudioVisual-Speech (TTAVS) synthesizer developed at the ICP both in terms of the accuracy and realism.


A stress protocol‐‐6 h of daily immobilization‐‐was applied throughout male rat sexual development. Immobilization caused a small reduction in food intake and body weight gain whereas pair‐fed animals had a marginal decrease only in body weight gain. Stress, confirmed by increased plasma adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) and corticosterone, caused a decrease in plasma luteinizing hormone (LH) after 15 and 60 days of immobilization and in plasma testosterone after 60 days, but produced an opposite androgenic response in pubertal animals (15 days of immobilization). A persumed sympathetic over‐stimulation is suggested to account for increased testosterone levels in pubertal stressed rats.


Almost one year after the polychrome sculpture of Cristo divino preso (Christ, Divine Prisoner) got stolen, it was returned to its place of origin, La Capilla de San Juan Bautista (Saint John the Baptist Chapel), in Bracho, Zacatecas, Mexico. Its return operation was successful mainly because of the existence of a registration form as part of the catalogue of movable cultural heritage of religious buildings of the state. After a follow-up on the legal formalities, a conservation-restoration project was set up and carried out for the sculpture. This concluded with actions of preventive conservation and awareness-raising directed towards the members of the Bracho community. This gallery  reports the incidents of the case, reaffirming the importance of registration and cataloguing of cultural property as key requirements for its preservation.


Analyzing plant roots is crucial to understand plant performance in different soil environments. While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to obtain 3D images of plant roots, extracting the root structural model is challenging due to highly noisy soil environments and low-resolution of MRI images. To improve both contrast and resolution, we adapt the state-of-the-art method RefineNet for 3D segmentation of the plant root MRI images in super-resolution. The networks are trained from few manual segmentations that are augmented by geometric transformations, realistic noise, and other variabilities. The resulting segmentations contain most root structures, including branches not extracted by the human annotator.


Iron ores located in the Alswaween area (Saudi Arabia) are of finely disseminated nature. They require ultrafine grinding for considerable degree of liberation. In this paper, different upgrading tech- niques were tried for their processing. The applied upgrading techniques included selective flocculation and column flotation as recent efficient technologies in fines upgrading. Each technique was investigated and optimized separately. Results showed that neither selective flocculation nor column flotation can be successfully used alone to produce high quality iron concentrate especially when using iron ore of size fraction 100% -0.075 mm. The best quality concentrate was found to have 55% Fe and 57% Fe when applying selective flocculation and column flotation, respectively at their optimum operating conditions. Meanwhile, the previously obtained results can be significantly improved when grinding the ore below 45 µm and applying selective flocculation as cleaning step for the concentrate obtained from the column flotation. Thus, it is possible to obtain concentrate having iron content of 63.55% Fe with 52.3% yield, which means an iron recovery in concentrate of ~80%.


Six studies (N=2,340) identify one source of people's differential support for resettling refugees in their country—their beliefs about whether the kind of person someone is fixed (i.e., a fixed mindset) or can be changed (i.e., a growth mindset). US and UK citizens who believed that the kind of person someone is can be changed were more likely to support resettling refugees in their country (Studies 1-2). Study 3 identified a causal relationship between fixed-growth mindsets and people's support for resettling refugees. Importantly, people with a growth mindset were more likely to believe that refugees can assimilate in the host society, but not that they should assimilate; and the belief that refugees can assimilate mediated the relationship between people's mindsets and their support for resettling refugees (Studies 4-6). The findings identify an important antecedent of people's support for resettling refugees, and provide novel insights into the science of mindsets.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study numerically thermosolutal natural convection within an inclined rectangular cavity in the presence of Soret effect and heat generation. The enclosure is heated and salted from its long sides with constant but different temperatures and concentrations. The study focuses on the effects of three main parameters which are, the Soret parameter (Sr = 0 and –0.5), the internal to external Rayleigh numbers ratio 0 ≤ R ≤ 80 and the cavity inclination γ, varied from 0° (vertical position) to 60°. The combined effects of these parameters on fluid flow and heat and mass transfer characteristics are examined for the external Rayleigh number RaE = 105, the Prandtl number Pr = 0.71, the buoyancy ratio N = 1, the Lewis number Le = 2 and the aspect ratio of the cavity A = 2.

Design/methodology/approach
A hybrid lattice Boltzmann-finite difference method (LBM-FD) was used to tackle the problem under consideration. The LBM with the simple relaxation time was used for the fluid flow in the presence of the gravity force, while the temperature and concentration equations were solved separately using an explicit finite-difference technique at the Boltzmann scale.

Findings
The monocellular nature of the flow, obtained for R = 0 is not destroyed by varying the cavity inclination and the Soret parameter but rather by the increase of the parameter R. The Soret parameter and the cavity inclination become perceptible at high values of R. The inclination γ = 60° leads to high mean temperatures compared to the other inclinations. The effect of R on mean concentration is amplified in the presence of Soret effect but limited in the absence of the latter. The negative Soret parameter combined with high internal heat generation and a relatively high inclination is important when the objective is to maintain the fluid at a high concentration of species. The presence of bicellular flow combined with the important elevation undergone by the fluid temperature, makes both the cold and hot walls playing a cooling role with the most important exchanges taking place at the upper part of these walls. The analysis of the mean mass transfer shows that the increase of the inclination may lead to an increase or a decrease of the mass transfer depending on the range of R, in the case of Sr = 0. However, for Sr = −0.5, it is observed that the increase of γ is generally accompanied by a reduction of the mass transfer.

Originality/value
To the best of the authors' knowledge, the hybrid LBM-FD was not used before to study such a problem. Combined effect of R and inclination may be useful in charging the fluid with species when the objective is to maintain high concentrations in the medium.


A search for control mechanisms governing protein metabolism in neurons from Aplysia californica has uncovered two examples of altered patterns of newly synthesized proteins: (1) The pattern of newly synthesized proteins in the R2 neuron is altered when protein synthesis occurs at elevated temperatures (22-30 degrees C as compared with 13-15 degrees C). (2) The processing of newly synthesized 12,000 dalton (12k) material to 6-9,000 dalton (6-9k) size in the R15 neuron (Strumwasser, F. and Wilson, D.F. [1976], J. Gen. Physiol., in press) can be blocked by certain ion replacements. If acetate replaces chloride in the incubation medium during the synthesis of 12k material, an early step in the processing, prior to the actual breakdown of 12k material, is blocked. Experiments with RNA-synthesis inhibitors indicate that none of the mRNAs which code for abundantly synthesized protein species in the R2 or R15 neurons have short (less than 4 hr) half-lives. This result has implications for an earlier report of regulation of protein synthesis in the R15 neuron.


Currently, potassium (K)- and phosphate (P)-fertilizer recommendation in Germany is based on standardized soil-testing procedures, the results of which are interpreted in terms of nutrient availability. Although site-specific soil and plant properties (e.g., clay and carbon content, pH, crop species) influence the relation between soil nutrient content and fertilizer effectiveness, most of these factors are not accounted for quantitatively when assessing fertilizer demand. Recent re-evaluations of field observations suggest that even for soil nutrient contents well within the range considered to indicate P or K deficiency, fertilizer applications often resulted in no yield increase. In this study, results from P- and K-fertilization trials (in total about 9000 experimental harvests) conducted during the past decades in Germany and Austria were re-analyzed using a nonparametric data-mining procedure which consists of a successive segmentation of the data pool in order to elaborate a modified recommendation scheme. In addition to soil nutrient content, fertilizer-application rates, nutrient-use efficiency, and site properties such as pH, clay content, and soil organic matter, have a distinct influence on yield increase compared to an unfertilized control. For K, nutrient-use efficiency had the largest influence, followed by soil-test K content, whereas for P, the influence of soil-test P content was largest, followed by pH and clay content. The results may be used in a novel approach to predict the probability of yield increase for a specified combination of crop species, fertilizer-application rate, and site-specific data.


The conducted regression analysis allowed us to obtain the equation of multiple nonlinear regression, which reflects the dependence of the raw gluten content in wheat kernels (Y, %) on the protein content (X1 = Ntotal · 5.7, %) and 1000-kernel weight (X2, g): Y = -41.928 + 0.081Х1 2 + 2.548Х2 - 0.028Х2 2. In the presented equation, all quality indicators are given at 12% humidity. If protein content and/or 1000-kernel weight are determined for absolutely dry matter (a.d.m.), the developed equation to predict raw gluten content in wheat kernels is recalculated with the use of coefficients of 0.88 and 1.136, respectively. The purpose of the research is to identify the effectiveness of raw gluten content prediction in wheat kernels using the developed regression equation, which reflects its dependence on protein content and 1000-kernel weight. There have been developed and presented an algorithm and results of testing the predictive capabilities of the equation based on independent data. That is, using experimental data on protein and gluten content, and 1000-kernel weight obtained by other researchers in the experiments with different wheat varieties and in other soil and climatic conditions. The summarized experimental data of 124 Soviet, Russian and foreign literary references with a total number of observations n = 2485 on more than a hundred wheat varieties grown from 1959 to 2019 in various soil and climatic zones of the USSR, Russia and abroad have shown that the number of values beyond the limits regulated by GOST R 54478 - 2011 (± 2%) was 462 or 18.6% of the total number of observations. The accuracy of the raw gluten content prediction in wheat kernels was 81.4%. The developed equation can be used to predict raw gluten content in kernels of various winter and spring soft and durum wheat varieties.


As members of this audience, you are interested in the h expansion of medical knowledge. Many of you are or will be in a position of responsibility for the education and direction of young investigators. The rapid expansion of medical knowledge makes it increasingly important to have physician-scientists with in-depth knowledge in a variety of highly specialized fields. To predict which will be the most important discipline in the next decade is to ignore the interlocking of new knowledge in other fields that takes on additional significance as new findings will show associations not yet recognized. This is well illustrated within this Society with the importance of common findings in immunology, transplantation, cancer research, and genetics as we move into the challenges of submolecular biology. Historical perspective witnesses many methods of keeping abreast of the expanding knowledge in medicine. Early physicians in this country sought education in England, Scotland, and


This study examines the reaction of local currency oil prices to the COVID-19 pandemic using Turkish daily data (July 25, 2019 to October 30, 2020). A multivariate adaptive regression splines model is employed that considers foreign exchange (USD-TRY), credit default swap spread, global uncertainty, and global volatility as control variables. The findings show that: (i) the volatility index influences oil prices most regardless of the sample size; and (ii) the COVID-19 pandemic affects the importance of effective variables on the local currency oil prices in Turkey.


Transportation performance measures based on travel time quantities satisfy a range of mobility purposes. The measures can show the effect of many transportation and land use solutions, and they are relatively easy to communicate to a range of audiences. The concept of total travel time has been discussed since the early 1950s, but because of data inaccessibility, the planning community has rarely used total travel time as a measure. For the initial implementation of the total peak period travel time measure in the Urban Mobility Report, data from the report's primary data sets were combined in a new way to estimate road users' total travel time during the peak period. Data shortcomings were addressed with simplifying assumptions to create a calculation method that would offer a more refined value than would the use of raw or incomplete data. Total peak period travel time can provide additional explanatory power to a set of mobility performance measures and bridge the gap between traditional delay-based measurement and accessibility.


Iopromide (IOP), an iodinated X-ray contrast medium (ICM), is identified as a precursor to iodide disinfection byproducts that have high genotoxicity and cytotoxicity to mammals. ICM remains persistent through typical wastewater treatment processes and even through some hydroxyl radical-based advanced oxidation processes. The development of new technologies to remove ICMs is needed. In this work, mackinawite (FeS)-activated sulfite autoxidation was employed for the degradation of IOP-containing water. The experiment was performed in a 500 mL self-made temperature-controlled reactor with online monitoring pH and dissolved oxygen in the laboratory. The effects of various parameters, such as initial pH values, sulfite dosages, FeS dosages, dissolved oxygen, and inorganic anions on the performance of the treatment process have been investigated. Eighty percent of IOP could be degraded in 15 min with 1 g L−1 FeS, 400 μmol L−1 sulfite at pH 8, and high efficiency on the removal of total organic carbon (TOC) was achieved, which is 71.8% via a reaction for 1 h. The generated hydroxyl and oxysulfur radicals, which contributed to the oxidation process, were identified through radical quenching experiments. The dissolved oxygen was essential for the degradation of IOP. The presence of Cl− could facilitate IOP degradation, while NO3− and CO32− could inhibit the degradation process. The reaction pathway involving H-abstraction and oxidative decarboxylation was proposed, based on product identification. The current system shows good applicability for the degradation of IOP and may help in developing a new approach for the treatment of ICM-containing water.


Background— Preoperative brain injury is common in neonates with transposition of the great arteries (TGA). The objective of this study is to determine risk factors for preoperative brain injury in neonates with TGA. Methods and Results— Twenty-nine term neonates with TGA were studied with MRI before cardiac surgery in a prospective cohort study. Twelve patients (41%) had brain injury on preoperative MRI, and all injuries were focal or multifocal. None of the patients had birth asphyxia. Nineteen patients (66%) required preoperative balloon atrial septostomy (BAS). All patients with brain injury had BAS (12 of 19; risk difference, 63%; 95% confidence interval, 41 to 85; P=0.001). As expected on the basis of the need for BAS, these neonates had lower systemic arterial hemoglobin saturation (Sao2) (P=0.05). The risk of injury was not modified by the cannulation site for septostomy (umbilical versus femoral, P=0.8) or by the presence of a central venous catheter (P=0.4). Conclusions— BAS is a major identifiable risk factor for preoperative focal brain injury in neonates with TGA. Imaging characteristics of identified brain injuries were consistent with embolism; however, the mechanism is more complex than site of vascular access for BAS or exposure to central venous catheters. These findings have implications for the indications for BAS, timing of surgical repair, and use of anticoagulation in TGA.


This research paper examines the influence of International Public Opinion on Pakistan-Afghanistan border management. Though Durand Line is a recognized border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but its management has been a source of contention between the two neighboring countries. The long porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan remained threat to Pakistan's security. In 2016, Pakistan started fencing work on its border with Afghanistan which was indeed a significant step towards border management. During the last two decades, relationships between Pakistan and Afghanistan reached their lowest level due to a number of clashes along Pak-Afghan border. The traditional media along with new media technologies has increased the scope of International Public Opinion or World Opinion as well as its influence on international events. The paper explores the leverage and impacts of International Public Opinion on border management between Pakistan and Afghanistan and highlight the significance of positive International Opinion on this border management. This paper highlights reports of global organizations, international media, role of social media, and state policies and their efforts in resolving Pak-Afghan border management issues.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is the presentation of an electrical equivalent circuit for inductive components as well as the methodology for electrical parameter extraction by using a 3 D finite element analysis (FEA) tool.

Design/methodology/approach
A parameter extraction based on energies has been modified for three dimensions. Some simplifications are needed in a real model to make the 3 D finite element method (FEM) analysis operative for design engineers. Material properties for the components are modified at the pre-modeling step and a corrector factor is used at the post-modeling step to achieve the desired accuracy.

Findings
The current hardware computational limitations do not allow the 3 D FEA for every magnetic component, and due to the component asymmetries, the 2 D analysis are not precise enough. The application of the new methodology for three dimensions to several actual components has shown its usefulness and accuracy. Details concerning model parameters extration are presented with simulation and measurement results at different operation frequencies from 1 kHz to 1 GHz being the range of switching frequencies used by power electronic converters based on Si, SiC or GaN semiconductors.

Practical implications
This new model includes the high-frequency effects (skin effect, proximity effect, interleaving and core gap) and other effects can be only analyzed in 3 D analysis for non-symmetric components. The electrical parameters like resistance and inductance (self and mutual ones) are frequency-dependent; thus, the model represents the frequency behavior of windings in detail. These parameters determine the efficiency for the inductive component and operation capabilities for the power converters (as in the voltage boost factor), which define their success on the market.

Originality/value
The user can develop 3 D finite element method (FEM)-based analyses with geometrical simplifications, reducing the CPU time and extracting electrical parameters. The corrector factor presented in this paper allows obtaining the electrical parameters when 3D FE simulation would have developed without any geometry simplications. The contribution permits that the simulations do not need a high computational resource, and the simulation times are reduced drastically. Also, the reduced CPU time needed per simulation gives a potential tool to optimize the non-symmetric components with 3 D FEM analysis.


Polycationic polymers like poly(ethylene imine)s (PEIs) are extensively explored for the nonviral transfer of DNA or small RNAs (siRNAs). To enhance biocompatibility and alter pharmacokinetic properties, hyperbranched PEI was recently grafted with the nonligand oligosaccharides maltose or maltotriose at various degrees in a systematic study to yield (oligo-)maltose PEIs (OM-PEIs). In this paper, we investigate the in vivo biocompatibility and efficacy of a whole set of (OM-)PEIs and the corresponding (OM-)PEI-based DNA or siRNA complexes upon systemic (intravenous, i.v.) administration in mice. We determine the overall survival and animal welfare, hepatotoxicity, immune stimulation, erythrocyte aggregation, and the efficacy of DNA delivery in vivo. Higher-degree oligomaltose-grafting of PEI substantially decreases weight loss, abolishes lethality upon repeated treatment with the free polymers or with complexes, and abrogates hepatotoxicity, as determined by serum levels of liver enzymes. Immunostimulatory effects (TNF-α, IFN-γ) and erythrocyte aggregation are mainly observed upon treatment with partially maltotriose-grafted PEI or PEI-based complexes and are largely abolished upon higher-degree grafting. In vivo transfection experiments in mice bearing subcutaneous (s.c.) tumor xenografts reveal a strong dependence of reporter gene expression in a given organ on the mode of complex administration (i.v. vs intraperitoneal injection) and the OM-PEI architecture, with high-level maltose-grafted PEI (PEI-(2-Mal)) being most efficient for DNA delivery. We conclude that distinct differences between different patterns of maltose- or maltotriose-grafting are observed with regard to both biocompatibility and in vivo efficacy and identify optimal oligomaltose-PEIs for therapeutic applications.


This paper describes a newly de-fined nonmetric trait in the human dentition, i.e., Hypotrophic Roots of the Upper Central Incisors (HRUCI). Teeth presenting HRUCI are character-ized by abnormally short roots whose crowns exhibit no apparent morphological alterations. The trait was observed in six samples from collec-tive funerary sites in the Iberian Peninsula dated from the Late Neolithic to the Chalcolithic period.


Background: Many traditional survival analyses and restricted mean survival time (RMST) based analyses have been proposed for dealing with right censored time-to-event data. It is necessary to sort out the conditions and relationship among these methods for instruction. Comparison between hazard ratio (HR) and RMST in a study may promote appropriate understanding and application of the two effect measures.Method : Traditional survival analyses and RMST-based analyses were integrated into a flowchart and applied for univariable and multivariable analyses, RMST-based analyses included group comparison for difference in RMST, pseudo-value (PV) regressions, inverse probability of censoring probability (IPCW) regressions with group-specific weights and individual weights with homogeneity of censoring mechanism assumption. 4405 osteosarcomas were captured from Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program Database. HR and difference in RMST (survival time lost or gain, STL or STG) were considered as effect measures and the effect of all included covariates on overall survival were reported for comparison. The relationship between difference in RMST and HR were explored when proportional hazard (PH) assumption was and was not met, respectively. Results: In group comparison and univariable regressions, using difference in RMST calculated by Kaplan-Meier methods as reference, PV regressions (R2=0.99) and IPCW regressions with group-specific weights (R2=1.00) provided more consistent estimation on difference in RMST than IPCW with individual weights (R2=0.09). In multivariable analysis, age (HR:1.03, STL: 3.86 months), diagnosis in 1970~1980s (HR:1.39 STL:27.49 months), metastasis (HR:4.47, STL: 202 months), surgery (HR:0.58, SLG:35.55 months) and radiation (HR:1.46, SLT:44.65 months) met PH assumption and were main independent factors for overall survival. In both univariable and multivariable variables, a robust negative logarithmic linear relationship between HRs estimated by Cox regression and differences in RMST by pseudo-value regressions was only observed when PH assumption was hold. Conclusion: The flowchart may be intuitive and helpful to instruct appropriate use of RMST based and traditional methods. PH assumption and homogeneity of censoring mechanism assumption will determine the appropriate selection of these method. HR and difference in RMST can be reported comprehensively.


We prospectively examined the risk of divorce in 190 parents of children with developmental disabilities compared to 7,251 parents of children without disabilities based on a random sample drawn from the community and followed longitudinally for over 50 years. A significant interaction between the parental group status and number of children was found: In the comparison group, having a larger number of children was related to an increased risk of divorce, whereas the number of children did not increase divorce risk among parents of children with developmental disabilities.


Gearing is one of the most critical components in a mechanical power transmission system, and in most industrial rotating machinery. Traditionally, gears are designed using AGMA (American Gear Manufacturers Association) or ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards and followed by manufacturing. FEA has beena useful tool in recent days not only to validate design; it can also use to optimize design. The present work is aimedat analytical designof girth gear byusing AGMA standard. Bending & contact stresses on the gear teeth are calculated.The validation of thestresses is done by usingANSYSsoftware. The values of the bending stress and contact stress determined using AGMA found to be in agreement with ANSYS results and corresponding error observed is less than 5%.


Twenty-eight females with recurrent urinary tract infection were treated to eradicate their existing infections and then observed for recurrences while receiving one of the three following prophylactic regimens for 6 to 12 months: nitrofurantoin, 50 mg daily; one half tablet of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) twice weekly; or one tablet of TMP-SMX once weekly. Preadolescent girls received half the adult doses. After completion of the course of prophylactic agent the patients were followed up at bimonthly intervals until infection recurred. After eradication of this new infection they were started on another prophylactic regimen. Six infections (1.0/patient-year) recurred in patients on nitrofurantoin, four infections (0.4/patients-year) reucrred in those receiving twice weekly TMP-SMX, and 12 infections (1.3/patient-year) in those receiving once weekly TMP-SMX. The mean interval between discontinuation of prophylaxis and recurrence of infection was 2.6 months. TMP-SMX in the doses used eliminated aerobic gram-negative rods from swabs from the anal canal in many patients. Gram-negative organisms resistant to trimethoprim did not cause infection either during or after therapy.


Clinical efficacy of differentiation therapy with mitogen‐activated protein kinase inhibitors (MAPKi) for lethal radioiodine‐refractory papillary thyroid cancer (RR‐PTC) urgently needs to be improved and the aberrant trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 27 (H3K27) plays a vital role in BRAFV600E‐MAPK‐induced cancer dedifferentiation and drug resistance. Therefore, dual inhibition of MAPK and histone methyltransferase (EZH2) may produce more favourable treatment effects. In this study, BRAFV600E‐mutant (BCPAP and K1) and BRAF‐wild‐type (TPC‐1) PTC cells were treated with MAPKi (dabrafenib or selumetinib) or EZH2 inhibitor (tazemetostat), or in combination, and the expression of iodine‐metabolizing genes, radioiodine uptake, and toxicity were tested. We found that tazemetostat alone slightly increased iodine‐metabolizing gene expression and promoted radioiodine uptake and toxicity, irrespective of the BRAF status. However, MAPKi induced these effects preferentially in BRAFV600E mutant cells, which was robustly strengthened by tazemetostat incorporation. Mechanically, MAPKi‐induced decrease of trimethylation of H3K27 was evidently intensified by tazemetostat in BRAFV600E‐mutant cells. In conclusion, tazemetostat combined with MAPKi enhances differentiation of PTC cells harbouring BRAFV600E through synergistically decreasing global trimethylation of H3K27, representing a novel differentiation strategy.


Axial thrust in centrifugal pumps attracts extensive attention in order to improve the operating reliability of pumps. High axial thrust can cause rapid thrust bearing wear and subsequent pump failure or frequent overhauls. A centrifugal pump (XA65/20) was selected in this study, based on L16 (43) orthogonal array and CFD methods. The time-averaged Navier-Stokes equation was calculated for a 3D steady flow in the model pump in ANSYS CFX with the standard k-ω turbulence model and standard wall function applied. The structured meshes with different numbers were used for comparison in order to confirm that the computational results were not influenced by the mesh. Meanwhile, the effects of impeller back pump-out vane geometrical parameters, including its thickness Sk, its outlet diameter De and axial clearance δ, on the axial thrust and performances of the model centrifugal pump were analyzed. The different orthogonal schemes were obtained on the different values of Sk, De, and δ.Finally, when the parameters of the impeller Sk, De, and δ are 5mm, 100mm, 1.5mm, respectively. The Best Efficiency Point (BEF) of 69.9% was achieved with 60.12m for the designed head and −952.133N for the minimum total axial force. The corresponding impeller with minimum total axial force was considered as the optimal scheme and manufactured for experimental test. The external characteristics by CFD have a good agreement with their experimental data, which also better verified the accuracy of the numerical method of axial thrust applied in this research.© 2013 ASME


1 Cholinergic neurones in the basal forebrain are linked to cortical activation and arousal. 2 The present study was designed to examine the hypothesis that clinically relevant doses of halothane (0.1 to 5%) would significantly reduce depolarization‐evoked acetylcholine (ACh) release from rat cortical slices. 3 ACh release was measured from rat cortical slices by a chemiluminescent technique. 4 Depolarization‐evoked ACh release was inhibited significantly by halothane with an IC50 of 0.38%. This value equates to 0.3 MAC (the minimum alveolar concentration at which no movement occurs to a standard surgical stimulus in 50% of subjects) for the rat. 5 The potent effect of halothane on ACh release suggests that this mechanism may be a target for the action of volatile anaesthetic agents. This in vitro effect on ACh release is consistent with effects of halothane reported in vivo.


Tumor microenvironment turn-on nanoprobes that could specifically detect the occurrence of diseases possess great potential in early diagnosis. Here, a GSH activated nanoprobe was designed for fluorescence and 19F magnetic resonance (MR) dual-modal turn-on imaging of tumors. Specifically, fluorescence AgInS2 quantum dots (QDs for fluorescence imaging) were co-encapsulated with perfluoro-15-crown-5-ether (P19FCE for19F MRI) by amphiphilic polymers and further coated with in situ formed manganese dioxide (MnO2) nanoshells, which served as efficient fluorescence and 19F MR quenchers due to energy transfer and paramagnetic relaxation effects, respectively. The over-expressed GSH in tumors would decompose the MnO2 nanoshells, resulting in remarkable enhancement of both fluorescence and 19F MRI signals of the nanoprobes, accordingly lighting up the tumor site.


Some research groups have pointed out that the pressure-transport effect in the turbulenceenergy transport equation becomes important for some kind of complex turbulent flows. Recent direct numerical simulation by Yao et al. (Theore. Comput. Fluid Dynamics, 14 (2001), 337-358) showed that the effect of the pressure-diffusion process was significant in a recirculating flow. In this study, three eddy-viscosity models (EVMs) were tested for a separated flow behind a rectangular trailing edge with or without the pressure-diffusion model proposed by Suga (J. Fluids Engng., 126 (2004), 634-641) thereby its effect was investigated in detail. The computational results elucidated that the pressure-diffusion model gave a definite influence on the predictive performance of EVMs, in particular in the recovery region downstream of the separation bubble. Furthermore, detailed discussion of each term of the pressure-diffusion model strongly recommended the usage of a non-linear eddy-viscosity model.


ABSTRACT Previously we reported a novel strategy of "targeted killing" through the design of narrow-spectrum molecules known as specifically targeted antimicrobial peptides (STAMPs) (R. Eckert et al., Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 50:3651-3657, 2006; R. Eckert et al., Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 50:1480-1488, 2006). Construction of these molecules requires the identification and the subsequent utilization of two conjoined yet functionally independent peptide components: the targeting and killing regions. In this study, we sought to design and synthesize a large number of STAMPs targeting Streptococcus mutans, the primary etiologic agent of human dental caries, in order to identify candidate peptides with increased killing speed and selectivity compared with their unmodified precursor antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). We hypothesized that a combinatorial approach, utilizing a set number of AMP, targeting, and linker regions, would be an effective method for the identification of STAMPs with the desired level of activity. STAMPs composed of the Sm6 S. mutans binding peptide and the PL-135 AMP displayed selectivity at MICs after incubation for 18 to 24 h. A STAMP where PL-135 was replaced by the B-33 killing domain exhibited both selectivity and rapid killing within 1 min of exposure and displayed activity against multispecies biofilms grown in the presence of saliva. These results suggest that potent and selective STAMP molecules can be designed and improved via a tunable "building-block" approach.


MIDCAB is a rapidly evolving technique to revascularize the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) with the left internal thoracic artery (LITA). Our case is a 60-year-old female with unstable angina due to restenosis of the proximal LAD following PTCA and proximal stenosis of the large first diagonal branch (D1). She underwent double vessel MIDCAB (LITA-LAD and LITA-RIEA-D1) using Y composite arterial conduit with LITA and right epigastric artery (RIEA), because of chronic renal failure on maintenance hemodialysis. Postoperative course was uneventful and postoperative angiography revealed a patent Y graft. Y graft using IEA appears to be an interesting operative method in double vessel MIDCAB.


The photophysical properties of the phenazine-based dye neutral red were investigated in aqueous solution in the presence of the macrocyclic host molecule cucurbit[7]uril (CB7) using ground-state absorption as well as steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence measurements. The results are contrasted to those previously obtained for beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD; Singh et al. J. Phys. Chem. A 2004, 108, 1465). Both the neutral (NR) and cationic (NRH+) forms of the dye formed inclusion complexes with CB7, with the larger binding constant for the latter (K = 6.5 x 10(3) M(-1) versus 6.0 x 10(5) M(-1)). This result differed from that for beta-CD, where only the neutral form of the dye was reported to undergo sizable inclusion complex formation. From the difference in binding constants and the pK(a) value of protonated neutral red in the absence of CB7 (6.8), an increased pK(a) value of the dye when complexed by CB7 was projected (approximately 8.8). This shift differed again from the behavior of the dye with beta-CD, where a decreased pK(a) value (ca. 6.1) was reported. The photophysical properties of both NR and NRH+ forms showed significant changes in the presence of CB7. Fluorescence anisotropy studies indicated that the inclusion complexes of both forms of the dye rotate as a whole, giving rotational relaxation times much larger than that expected for the free dye in aqueous solution. The thermodynamic parameters for the NRH+.CB7 complex were investigated in temperature-dependent binding studies, suggesting an entropic driving force for complexation related to desolvation of the cation and the removal of high-energy water molecules from the CB7 cavity.


A spherical hyperbola program initially used for the determination of T-phase origins has been modified to allow the determination of earthquake epicenters by use of time differences in P-wave travel. Theoretical P-wave travel-time differences for pairs of seismic stations have been calculated and plotted on charts by a digital computer utilizing data from the Jeffreys-Bullen tables. The epicenter determination is accomplished in the following manner: If three stations observe an event, then the three different P-wave arrival times give two independent travel-time difference values (Δt). Each Δt value determines a time difference curve. The intersection of the two time-difference curves determines the epicenter location.


The objective of the present study was to ascertain the effect of in ovo feeding of vitamin E (VE) on the incubation results, quality, and oxidative state of newborn chicks and on the initial performance results. The design consisted of randomized blocks with treatments at different levels of VE (0.0, 27.5, 38.5, 49.5, and 60.4 IU). On 17.5 d of embryonic development, 780 eggs underwent in ovo injection using a manual needle. VE supplementation of 60.4 IU provided the highest hatching rate (P < 0.05) and shortest hatch window (P < 0.05). Better results regarding chick physical quality were observed in groups supplemented with VE (body weight, length, newborn chick quality score) and higher chick weight/egg weight ratios (P < 0.05). VE inoculation did not have any effect on the chicks' immunological system (P > 0.05). Greater development of the small intestine (intestine weight/yolk free chick weight and higher villi in duodenum) and better feed conversion over all periods studied (1 to 7, 1 to 14, and 1 to 21 d) were observed among chicks that received in ovo VE supplementation (P < 0.05). The total protein concentrations in the liver and striated breast skeletal muscle tissue were highest in chicks that received 60.4 IU of VE (P < 0.05). The highest catalase activity was observed in the livers of newborn chicks supplemented with 60.4 IU of VE (P < 0.05). It was concluded that in ovo VE supplementation improved the chicks' oxidative state, which led to improvements in incubation results, chick quality and performance results.


Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park (USA) has attracted numerous scientific investigations for over two centuries to better understand its geological structure, the physics of its eruptions, and the controls of its intermittency. Using data acquired with a seismic array in 1992, we track the sources of hydrothermal tremor produced by boiling and cavitation inside the geyser. The location of seismic sources identifies a previously unknown lateral cavity at 15 m below the surface, on the SW side of the vent, and connected to the conduit. This reservoir is activated at the beginning of each geyser eruption cycle and plays a major role in the oscillatory behavior of the water level in the conduit before each eruption.


Kampongs in Jakarta are usually associated with slum areas because it is an informal part of the city that does not get any support in development from the government. What used to be an informal settlement area consisting a group of inhabitants with specific background, has merged with the urban tissue of the city and become part of the city. Since the status of the kampongs is informal, there are no basic facilities such as infrastructure, electricity, water and sanitation. Due to the development of the city, there are a lot of pressure coming to the kampongs, making it unsuitable for many inhabitants to live in, causing deterioration of the living condition. The purpose of this project is to study what kinds of aspects plays an important role in preventing the detrioration of a kampong. Therefore, a kampong which lies in the periphery of the city is chosen as a case study since this is considered to be in a good condition at the moment. However, looking at the development of Jakarta at the moment, these kampongs will face deterioration soon if there is no planning being assigned to them. Situ Babakan is one of the Betawi (native inhabitants of Jakarta) kampongs which lies on the southern periphery of Jakarta. This Situ (lake) is naturally a very potential water retention area. Situ Babakan is situated at 54-64 m above sea leve opographical condition. The total surface area of Situ Babakan is 165 ha with the land use for housing (46.73%), green area (26.19%), swamp (12.05%), and public facilities (5.1%). The kampong at this moment is a green area with low density inhabitants (17,726 inhabitants in an area of 298 ha) with 67.5% of the inhabitants are the Betawi people. The rest of the people are migrants who come to Jakarta, from Java or other islands in Indonesia. In order to prevent the kampong from deteriorating, a series of improvement strategies on the urban level which includes the aspects of infrastructure, water, green areas and buildings are introduced. Each of these aspects are developed using SWOT methode, resulting in a site-specific design proposals in the urban scale focusing on the elements that should me maintained, improved, alternate and minimize. There are also specific solutions that promotes autarkic living environment being introduced in the neighbourhood level. The design made for Situ Babakan is a Neighbourhood Centre, which provides failities for the kampong inhabitants to improve their living condition. The program of the Neighbourhood Centre resulted in different kinds of areas in which one can learn, exchange knowledge, earn money and work in the same area. It also forms the link to the existing market relating to the surrounding. The main goal of this project is to provide facilities so that the inhabitants become independant of improving their own living condition instead of waiting for help from outside, such as the common case of slum areas nowadays. The Neighbourhood Centre is designed using local materials, while taking into account the climate condition, traditional Betawi architectural values and building methods and environmental awareness. This could be seen in the open plan which promotes natural ventilation, and design decissions that allows passive cooling when the building is being used by the inhabitants (this in relation to the custom and culture of the Betawi people). At the same time, the design also integrates new methods on gaining energy through the use of solar panels, rain water purification system and light construction system.


Altogether 29 patients (14 with a characteristic clinical picture of CHD, 6 with probable angina and 9 with nonischemic cardialgia) were investigated by methods of two-dimensional echocardiography (echoCG) at rest and in combination with isometric exercise and left atrial transesophageal pacing test (LATPT) as well as by electrocardiographic exercise tests (bicycle ergometry testing and LATPT). EchCG exercise tests were conducted in most of the examinees (96.6%) whereas bicycle ergometry results were obtained in 75.9% of the patients (p less than 0.05). A significantly higher frequency of positive results of echoCG exercise tests in patients with typical CHD as compared to electrocardiographic exercise tests, and significantly high correlation of the results of the combination of echoCG with isometric exercise and echoCG with a degree of the pain syndrome in the heart area were revealed. The results obtained made it possible to recommend echoCG exercise tests for the diagnosis of coronary insufficiency.


Background: Personal identification means determination of individuality of a person. Anthropometry is the study of the measurement of the human body. The present study was used to assess head length, hand length, foot length, arm span to predict stature of individual based on gender. Subjects and Methods: In this prospective observational study 600 patients attending in the Outpatient department of medical, dental and other college's students of age group 21-25 years in various colleges at Jaipur, India were selected for the study. The measurement of stature, head length, head breadth, hand length, foot length, arm span. The data collected was compiled, tabulated, analyzed and subjected to statistical tests. Analysis was done using SPSS. Results: In the present study total participants were 600 in which 300 were males and 300 were females. Mean age of females was found to be 22.82 and mean age of males was found to be 22.96. 160 persons were aged 21 years i.e. 26.6%, 175 persons were aged 22 years i.e. 29.16%, 91 were aged 23 years i.e. 15.1%, 85 were aged 24 years i.e. 14.1% whereas 89 were aged 25 years i.e. 14.83%. In present study most common age group was found to be 22 years and 24 years was the least common age group. Body height (cm) in male and female was observed to be statistically significant, for head length, significant statistical difference was observed, for head breath significant difference was observed. For hand length, significant statistical difference was observed, for foot length, significant statistical difference was observed, for arm span, significant statistical difference was observed. Conclusion: Our study conclude that a significant difference was observed in height, head length, head breadth, hand length, arm span & foot length in between males and females. breadth, arm span, stature, head length.


Auto-scaling mechanisms allow applications running on Cloud environments to maintain a guaranteed Quality of Service while efficiently utilizing resources and keeping operational costs low for the service providers. However, creating such an auto-scaling framework may be challenging due to the need to precisely estimate resource usage while the workload patterns vary significantly.
The research presented in this thesis focuses on automatic provisioning of compute resources in the Cloud performed by an intermediary enterprise for a single client enterprise. The enterprise hosting a broker uses techniques for dynamically controlling the number of resources used by the client enterprise. The research introduces three auto-scaling techniques: a reactive, a proactive and a hybrid technique. These techniques allow resources to be scaled based on user demand.
The primary goal of these auto-scaling techniques is to achieve a profit for the intermediary enterprise while maintaining the desired grade of service for the client enterprise. A secondary goal is to generate a lower cost for the client enterprise in comparison to the situation in which the client acquires resources directly from the cloud provider. The techniques support both on-demand requests as well as requests with service level agreements (SLAs). The effectiveness of the proposed auto-scaling techniques is demonstrated through experiments performed on proof of concept prototypes and simulations. The experimental results show that for a number of different combinations of system and workload parameters experimented with, the proposed algorithms lead to a significant broker profit and a lower user cost in comparison to a conventional non-auto-scaling system.


Palladium chloride was supported on the chitosan grafting benzo-18-crown-6 to obtain the heterogeneous supported palladium catalyst (abbreviated as CCTS-B-18-C-6-Pd). The constitution of catalyst was characterized with X-ray photoelectron spectrometry(XPS). The catalyst was used to catalyze the p-nitroaniline. The experiment results indicate the catalyst showed a good activity, and the yield of p-phenylenediamine was high during the course of hydrogenation. The catalyst was easily separated from the product. The influence of experimental parameters on reaction such as the reaction time, the amount of palladium in catalyst, temperature, the concentration of substrate was discussed and the catalyst stability was examined. The yield of p-phenylenediamine reached (99.9%) when the temperature was 20 ℃,the (amount) of palladium was 0.004 g and the concentration of substrate was 0.025 g·mL~(-1) in the solvent of methanol.


Abstract Background Right-sided tricuspid valve (TV) endocarditis can be difficult to identify and may be under-recognized in the absence of traditional risk factors. While generally identified with aortic valve pathology, infective endocarditis that extends beyond the leaflets of the TV have been reported to cause conduction disease. Case summary We present the case of a 63-year-old patient who presented with haemodynamically unstable complete heart block requiring temporary venous pacemaker support. Despite the absence of traditional risk factors or significant valvular disease on transthoracic echocardiogram, she was found to be persistently bacteraemic and subsequent transoesophageal echocardiogram identified large vegetation on the septal leaflet of the TV. Conduction disease was noted to reverse with antibiotic therapy and resolution of bacteraemia. Discussion Although rare, right-sided endocarditis involving the triangle of Koch may present with conduction disease due to local inflammation and mechanical compression. Conduction disease associated with right-sided disease appears to be readily reversible with medical therapy and temporary device support may be appropriate in the acute setting.


This study is concerned with an empirical investigation that explores the barriers to export that emerging market entrepreneurs face when engaging in international business. The data was gathered from a survey of 214 manufacturing firms, headquartered in Malaysia, and considered to be an emerging market. Statistical analysis was carried out using one‐way analysis of variance and the Tukey‐Kramer Multiple Comparison Procedure. The study's key findings indicate that exporters and non‐exporters perceive the importance of the need to adapt products to meet foreign customer preferences and a lack of capacity dedicated to a continuing supply of exports differently as barriers to export. However, other than those barriers to export the study findings indicate no significant differences in the perceptions of exporters and non‐exporters from an emerging market towards the different barriers to export.


Osady interglacjalu mazowieckiego w Boczowie wystepują pod dwoma poziomami glin zwalowych zlodowacen: polnocnopolskiego i środkowopolskiego. Z osadow z gleb. 81,5-89;7 m wykonano analize pylkową oraz oznaczono owoce, nasiona i megaspory, z czego uzyskano obraz sukcesji roślinnej odpowiadający interglacjalowi. Do interglacjalu mazowieckiego zaliczono te osady na podstawie fauny i sytuacji geologicznej oraz korelacji ze stanowiskami interglacjalu holsztynskiego z NRD. INTERGLACIAL DEPOSITS FROM BOCZOW NEAR RZEPIN (WESTERN POLAND) In the profile of the Quaternary from the vicinities of Boczow (Fig. 1) the deposits of the North and Middle Polish Glaciations are best developed. The thickness of the Quaternary changes from 40 to over 100 m depending on morphology of both the terrain surface and the top surface of the Tertiary. The latter is characterized by large denivellations as Tertiary deposits are glacitectonically piled up to about 140 m a.s.l. on one hand and incised by valleys to 120 m below s.l. on the other hand. At Boczow the deposits of the Masovian Interglacial were penetrated by drilling at depths ranging from 66.5 to 94.0 m below terrain surface (from 21.0 m a.s.l. to 6.5 m below s.l.) so they are 27.5 m thick. The Interglacial series comprises silts, silty sands and gyttja, that is deposits of stagnant and very slowly flowing waters. The list of molluscans identified (Tab. 1) mainly comprises species inhabiting stagnant waters. The profile of Interglacial deposits may be divided into 2 parts: lower, highly variable in lithology and yielding fauna of molluscans, and upper, more monotonous in lithology and usually without faunal remains. They are separated by a cocquina layer about 7 cm thick and mainly consisting of shells of gastropod Paludina diluviana K u n t h (depth interval from 87.53 to 87.60 m). The subdivision into lower and upper parts is further supported by results of palynological studies as the boundary between the phytophases II and III was delineated at the depth of 87.6 m. The pollen analysis covered Interglacial deposits derived from depth interval 81.5-89.7 m (Fig. 2). The results of the analysis as well as identifications of fruits, seeds and megaspores (Tab: 2) made it possible to reconstruct vegetational succession corresponding to Interglacial period. During the first part of this Interglacial (period I) the climate was cold, boreal. Vegetation predominating in these times was forming pine-birch forests. The share of herbaceous plants ,(NAP) was initially fairly high, equal 25010 (Tab. 3). Grasses ( Gramineae ) and sedges ( Cyperaceae ) were most common here. There were also :present Chenopodiaceae , Caryophyllaceae , Compositae , Ranunculaceae , Artemisia and other plants. Herbaceous plants were presumably forming wide meadows among pine-birch forests at the beginning of the first period of development of vegetation from Boczow. Pines and birches were accompanied by spruce ( Picea ) and, sometimes alder ( Alnus ) whilst stenothermal deciduous trees ( Quercus , Ulmus , Tilia ) appeared in negligible amounts. The second period was characterized by retreat of birch and a drop in share of pine. Spruce ( Picea ) and alder ( Alnus ) were predominating at these times as their share increased up to 34.5% and 32% at the most, respectively. The share of other trees was almost negligible and that of herbaceous plants was also low. This period displayed a marked warming up of climate in relation to the former. A further amelioration of climate took place in the third period which corresponds to the climatic optimum. The resulting climate was of the temperate type. Forests from this period were characterized by predominance of fir ( Abies ), the share of which was equal 52.5% at the most. The share of alder ( Alnus ) was equal about 20%. From these times there are also recorded the highest shares of trees such as oak ( Quercus - 10.5%), lime-tree ( Tilia - 5.0%), hazel ( Corylus - 8.0%) and hornbeam (Carpinus - 10.0%). The shares of these stenothermal deciduous trees are not very high as for the climatic optimum but, nevertheless, it may be stated that the whole floral assemblage from this period and shares of its particular components make it possible to allocate the pollen spectrum from Bocz6w in interglacial period. The climate deteriorated during the fourth period, following the climatic optimum. Fir ( Abies ) as well as hazel ( Corylus ) and hornbeam ( Carpinus ) gradually disappeared and the share of oak ( Quercus ) and alder ( Alnus ) decreased at the advantage of pine ( Pinus ) and birch ( Betula ). The share of herbaceous plants (NAP) also increased, up to 26.5%. The climate predominating at the end of the fourth period was rather cool, boreal. The results of palynological, paleozoological and lithological analyses evidence that this is interglacial deposit. Its age is indicated by the presence of gastropod Paludina diluviana K u n t h. Some conclusions concerning its stratigraphic position may be also grawn from geological setting and correlations with profiles of the Holstein Interglacial in eastern parts of the German Democratic Republic (M. Hannemann, 1964; A. G. Cepek, 1968).


Neurons in the Middle Temporal area (MT) of the primate cerebral cortex respond to moving stimuli. Their sensitivity to noisy motion signals is often characterized by using random-dot stimuli, where the coherence of the motion signal is manipulated. In macaques, this has allowed the calculation of "neurometric" thresholds, which can be compared to the animal's behavioral performance. There has been growing interest in the marmoset monkey, a species in which area MT is fully exposed on the surface of the brain, but responses of MT neurons to random-dot stimuli with noise have not been characterized. In sufentanil/nitrous oxide anesthetized marmosets, we found that MT neurons show a wide range of neurometric thresholds, similar to observations in macaques, and that the thresholds of the most sensitive neurons can account for the behavioral performance of macaques and humans. We also investigated factors that contributed to the wide range of observed thresholds. The difference in firing rate between responses to motion in the preferred and null directions was the most effective predictor of neurometric threshold, whereas the direction tuning bandwidth had no correlation with the threshold. We also showed that it is possible to obtain good neurometric thresholds using stimuli that were not highly optimized for each neuron, as is often necessary when recording from large populations of neurons. These results demonstrate that marmoset MT shows an essential similarity to macaque MT, and suggests that it is capable of representing motion signals that would allow for comparable motion-in-noise judgments.