Clinical data indicate different medium and long-term outcomes of endosseous implants for different implant configurations and in particular implant surfaces. The present study compares 2 very similar implant systems but with different surface characteristics in a split-mouth-randomized design. The Astra-Tech (A) system (Astra-Tech AB, Mölndal, Sweden) consisted of selftapping TiO2-blasted screw-shaped implants made of commercially pure titanium, and the Brånemark (B) System (Nobel Biocare, Gothenburg, Sweden) comprised selftapping Mark II implants with machined surface irregularities. Throughout the 2-years' observation period, no significant differences could be found concerning probing depths, presence of plaque or change in marginal bone level. A statistically significant difference in location of the marginal bone level in relation to the shoulder of the implant was found in favor of the A system both at baseline and after 2 years. Cumulative success rates of 100% (A) and 97.7% (B) were not statistically different. From a prosthetic point of view, more soldering points were needed for A compared to B to reach clinical acceptable fit. More years of observation are needed to compare the fate of the soft and hard tissues surrounding two different implant surfaces.


In eleven patients with aortic dissection or perforated endocarditic aortic wall abscess cavity, the diagnostic usefulness of Color Doppler Echocardiography (CDE) for the identification of true and false lumen as well as the perforation jet was assessed by comparison with the findings of angiography, digital subtraction angiography, computed tomography and surgery. The information gained in addition to that of these procedures, as well as to that of the four conventional echocardiographic techniques was evaluated. Six patients had aortic dissections of DeBakey type I or III; in all of them the diagnosis had been established with conventional ultrasonic techniques. Similarly, in all patients with aortic dissection of DeBakey type I, a clear differentiation between true and false lumen in the aortic root and ascending aorta could already be made by grey-scaled echocardiography. In these patients, however, CDE made the additional demonstration of the perforation jet into the false lumen possible. In those three patients with aortic dissection of DeBakey type III as well as in the abdominal aortic region of DeBakey type I, color Doppler echocardiography was the only method to define true and false lumen and to clearly localize the perforation sites. Two further patients were found to have a small, local dissection, which could only be assumed by conventional echocardiography; the color Doppler M-mode image led to a clear diagnosis. In three patients an endocarditic abscess cavity of the aortic wall could be detected by conventional echocardiography. Two-dimensional color Doppler echocardiography additionally enabled us to visualize the presence and the course of perforation flows. In two patients color-coded Doppler echocardiography made it possible to detect perforations in regions which could not be localized either with conventional echocardiographic techniques or the above-mentioned control procedures.


We demonstrate quantum entanglement of two trapped atomic ion qubits using a sequence of ultrafast laser pulses. Unlike previous demonstrations of entanglement mediated by the Coulomb interaction, this scheme does not require confinement to the Lamb-Dicke regime and can be less sensitive to ambient noise due to its speed. To elucidate the physics of an ultrafast phase gate, we generate a high entanglement rate using just ten pulses, each of ∼20  ps duration, and demonstrate an entangled Bell state with (76±1)% fidelity. These results pave the way for entanglement operations within a large collection of qubits by exciting only local modes of motion.


A 45-year-old male patient with an irregularly irregular rhythm and fast ventricular rate was posted for an emergency laparotomy for hollow viscus perforation. His history was not suggestive of any systemic disorders. An echocardiography revealed left ventricular dysfunction with an ejection fraction of 47% without any valvular or chamber abnormality. Thyromegaly noticed during placement of central venous catheter was suspected to be the etiology for his cardiovascular status and was successfully managed. Thyroid crisis in an undiagnosed case of hyperthyroidism poses a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. Timely and aggressive management is essential to correct the homeostatic decompensation characteristic of thyroid storm.


Nowadays, rapid freezing is sought to favor the formation of small ice crystals. Several studies have shown that the application of ultrasounds (US) accelerates the processes of energy and mass transfer when they are applied through immersion systems. However, there are hardly any studies on its application in direct systems without the use of a liquid medium for its transmission. Therefore, the objective of this work was to evaluate the potential of the application of US for improving the freezing process of chicken breast samples. First, the application of intermittent US treatments at different net sonication times of 7, 17, 37, 50 and 67% during the freezing of distilled water samples in a conventional freezer was evaluated. It was observed that net sonication times of 37, 50 and 67% reduced the phase change period by 30.0, 21.4, 27.0%, respectively. The effective freezing time was also reduced by 12.4 and 12.8% by applying net sonication times of 37 and 50%. Considering these results, an intermittent US treatment with a net sonication time of 37% was chosen for chicken breast freezing in an airforced cooling tunnel at ambient temperatures from −13 to −22 °C. The length of all the freezing phases was reduced upon application of US, leading to an overall process time reduction of approx. 11%. On the other hand, no significant differences were found either in the Water Holding Capacity (WHC) or Cooking Loss (CL) values between control and US assisted frozen chicken breast samples. Furthermore, in vitro experiments showed that US-assisted freezing did not influence protein digestibility of chicken meat samples. This study demonstrates the potential of the application of US by direct contact to favor energy transfer processes during freezing of water and chicken breasts samples. However, its effect on the quality of the frozen products should be further studied.


With reference to scientific literature and European Union reports, the article deals with the role of universities, business incubators, science park and Government the system of innovation and technology transfer in Lithuania. The best-fitting model of the system of technology transfer for Lithuania is determined. Also, the problems hindering the development of the technological system are analyzed. The possible solution is the experience of other countries like Scotland. The problem of technology transfer in Lithuania is reflected by the European Union statistics in the technology and innovation sectors. Besides, the analysis of study programs of electronic engineering shows that Bachelor students do not have disciplines prepared for learning about the process of innovation and technology transfer. Ill. 2, bibl. 19 (in English; summaries in English, Russian and Lithuanian).


Shorter time to emergency department aortic occlusion did not improve survival in noncompressible torso hemorrhage. "Scoop and control" with hemostatic resuscitation closer to the point of injury needs special consideration. ABSTRACT Introduction: Time is an essential element in outcomes of trauma patients. The relationship of time to treatment in management of noncompressible torso hemorrhage (NCTH) with resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) or resuscitative thoracotomy (RT) has not been previously described. We hypothesized that shorter times to intervention would reduce mortality. Methods: A review of the Aortic Occlusion for Resuscitation in Trauma and Acute Care Surgery registry from 2013 to 2022 was performed to identify patients who underwent emergency department aortic occlusion (AO). Multivariate logistic regression was used to examine the impact of time to treatment on mortality. Results: A total of 1,853 patients (1,245 [67%] RT, 608 [33%] REBOA) were included. Most patients were male (82%) with a median age of 34 years (interquartile range, 30). Median time from injury to admission and admission to successful AO were 31 versus 11 minutes, respectively. Patients who died had shorter median times from injury to successful AO (44 vs. 72 minutes, P < 0.001) and admission to successful AO (10 vs. 22 minutes, P < 0.001). Multivariate logistic regression demonstrated that receiving RT was the strongest predictor of mortality (odds ratio [OR], 6.6; 95% confidence interval [CI], 4.4–9.9; P < 0.001). Time from injury to admission and admission to successful AO were not significant. This finding was consistent in subgroup analysis of RT-only and REBOA-only populations. Conclusions: Despite expedited interventions, time to aortic occlusion did not significantly impact mortality. This may suggest that rapid in-hospital intervention was often insufficient to compensate for severe exsanguination and hypovolemia that had already occurred before emergency department presentation. Selective prehospital advanced resuscitative care closer to the point of injury with "scoop and control" efforts including hemostatic resuscitation warrants special consideration.


The invention relates to an antistatic and antibacterial coated yarn used for health underwear, which is prepared by that nylon 66 chips and additives are used as raw materials; firstly, a fine denier nylon 66 POY (Pre-oriented Yarn) is prepared; then a naked spandex filament yarn is used as a core yarn, and the fine denier nylon 66 POY is used as a sheath yarn; and the ATY (Air-textured Yarn) process is utilized to prepare the coated yarn. When the coated yarn prepared according to the invention is used for producing woven fabrics or knitted fabrics, the coated yarn has excellent hand feeling and appearance, and a good mixed color effect can be shown during dyeing.


A dual-band slot-loaded shorted rectangular microstrip antenna is proposed and investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The dual-band characteristic of antenna is achieved by incorporating a shorting-pin on the left edge of the patch and thin slot. Numerical results for the input impedance, Return loss, and radiation patterns are presented and compared with the measured results. Good agreement is obtained between computed and measured results. Frequency tunability ranges from 1.39 to 1.44 GHz (about 50.0 MHz) for lower resonance and from 4.37 to 4.44 GHz (70.0 MHz) for upper resonance are observed. The frequency ratios of about 3.0 for the two operating frequencies are obtained. By loading the slot and shorting pin on the patch the antenna size is reduced up to 37%. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 1010–1017, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23300


Chapters cover foods and food ingredients from both animal and plant marine sources, focusing on those which demonstrate biological properties and whose constituent compounds have been isolated and identified as potentially active. This book further addresses the biological activities of PUFAs (Polyunsaturated fatty acids), oils, phospholipids, proteins and peptides, fibres, carbohydrates, chitosans, vitamins and minerals, fucoxantin, polyphenols, phytosterols, taurine, amongst others. These components, found in a variety of marine-derived foods, have been demonstrated to have preventative properties with regard to hypertension, oxidative stress, inflammation, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and other human diseases.


Liquid crystalline materials possessing negative dielectric anisotropy (Δε) have attracted considerable attention because they can be used to formulate eutectic mixture for several display applications. The negative Δε can be achieved by introducing a lateral polar substituent onto the mesogen core of a liquid crystalline material, and fluorine atoms are usually used because of the small size and high electronegativity. 2,3-ortho-Difluoro substituent liquid crystals exhibit stable and profound physical properties such as the low viscosity, strong negative Δε, and high solubility. To avoid the decrease of the mesophase range, 2,3-ortho-difluorophenyl is often placed next to the terminal chain. In this paper, we have synthesised a new series of 2,3-ortho-difluoroterphenyl liquid crystals with a negative dielectric anisotropy. Ether oxygen is introduced to the structure because it can further increase the lateral dipole moment. 3-Alkylcyclopentane end group decreases both the melting point and the viscosity, which makes it an appropriate substituent for negative Δε 2,3-ortho-difluoroterphenyl liquid crystals. The mesomorphic properties as well as the optical anisotropies of the synthesised liquid crystals are discussed in this paper. All compounds in the series are found to possess highly negative dielectric anisotropy, wide mesophase ranges; therefore, they have a great potential to formulate eutectic mixture for liquid crystal displays.


In this paper, we present a novel thermodynamic framework for graphs that can be used to analyze time evolving networks, relating the thermodynamics variables to macroscopic changes in network topology, and linking major structural transition to phase changes in the thermodynamic picture. We start from a recent quantum-mechanical characterization of the structure of a network relating the graph Laplacian to a density operator and resulting in a characterization of the network's entropy. Then we adopt a Schrödinger picture of the dynamics of the network, resulting in an estimation of a hidden time-varying Hamiltonian from the data, from which we derive a measure of Energy exchange. From these variables, using the thermodynamic identity, we obtain temperature under the assumption of constant volume of the system. Evaluation of real-world data shows that the thermodynamic variables thus extracted are effective in detecting critical events occurring during network evolution.


The study examines the extent of agricultural extension services deleivery to agro-pastoralists in Niger State. Nigeria. Primary data were collected through field survey from agropastorialist from three purposely selected Local Government Areas in Niger State. Katcha, Paiko and Wushishi LGA's were purposely selected by making sure they were in different agricultural zones of the Niger State namely Zone I, II and III respectively. Twenty percent of the agropastoralists house-hold population was sampled from each of three LGA randomly. A total of 210 household heads were sampled and interviewed using a semi structured survey instrument administered by trained enumerators who understood the local language. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse the data. Results revealed that all (100%) of the household heads were all males and 67.7% acquired adult education while agro-pastoralism was the major occupation (98.1%). Majority (98.1%) of the agro-pastoralists claimed they were of Fulani ethnic group. Information on out break of diseases (mean=3.9); provision of grazing reserves (mean=3.7) were reported high. Majority (99.5%) of the respondents opined that lack of easy access to vaccines and non- proximity of veterinary clinic were major constraints. In the testing of hypotheses, Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) showed a significant positive relationship between extent of extension service provision and the following variables namely Age (r =0.172; p<0.05), number of wives (r =0.163; p<0.05), number of children (r =0.222 and; p<0.05), and number of cows owned (r =0.221; p<0.05).  The result of Chi-square analysis shows that there was a significant relationship between Extent of extension provision and the settlement type (X 2 =10.21; p<0.05), Extent of extension provision and educational level (X 2 =12.20;p<0.05) . It was recommended that government should make adequate arrangement for provision of neccessary infra-structure in the already gazzeted grazing reserve most especially vetinery clinics and make vaccine available and affordable for them. There is need to produce more radio programmes and also encourage formation of radio listening group since is one of the major source of information to their production system. Keywords: Agriculture, Extension service delivery, agropastoralists


Abstract: We investigated the effects of sickle erythrocytes on the production of vasotone mediators in endothelial cells (ECs) using an in vitro recirculating flow system. Sickle erythrocytes increased the EC production of two important vasoactivators, prostacyclin and endothelin‐1, under venous wall shear stress conditions of 1 dyn cm−2. The presence of interleukin‐1β in the perfusion system, as a model for inflammatory cytokine effects, enhanced the overall amounts of released prostacyclin but did not affect the production of endothelin‐1. This study demonstrates the effects of sickle erythrocytes on the function and metabolism of ECs under vascular flow environments. The altered production of vasoactivators may contribute to the vasotone instability and vasoocclusive crises in sickle cell anemia.


A novel Mach—Zehnder (M-Z) interferometer used to measure the dispersion and phase shift of a light beam is reported. The interferometer consists of two identical beam displacing polarizers, which makes two beams of interference light pass through the same optical device and greatly improves the stability of the M-Z interferometer. The basic method of dispersion and phase measuring through the present interferometer is introduced in detail, and the actual application is demonstrated by a specific example. Because the measuring of dispersion and phase shift is the heating point in the field of optics, it is obvious that the M-Z interferometer will have important applications in aspects of optics, especially quantum optics and optical information processing.


The southern hemisphere is dominated by oceanic influences with 80% of its surface area consisting of ocean space. It hosts abundant marine biodiversity, which is under increasing pressure from activities such as fisheries and shipping as well as multiple sources of marine pollution and climate change impacts. The process initiated by the UN General Assembly Resolution 69/292 to develop the elements of an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) for conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction has the potential to contribute to a more integrated and cross-sectoral system of oceans governance at a global and regional scale. This article examines key features of the existing global and regional ocean governance framework in the southern hemisphere and how the anticipated ILBI might relate to existing ocean governance frameworks.


The output power fluctuations from the wave energy converters (WECs) with a high peak-to-average ratio need to be smoothed out before supplying power to electric loads or power grids. Usually, short-term energy storage is used to smooth out the output power fluctuations of WECs. In this article, a novel multi-filter-based dynamic power-sharing control is devised for a hybrid energy storage system (HESS) integrated with a grid-connected WEC. An advanced model of HESS-integrated WEC consisting of a direct-drive permanent magnet linear generator, a supercapacitor, and a battery system is developed to test the proposed multi-filter-based dynamic control strategy under realistic conditions. The distinguishing features of this study are as follows; 1) the power-sharing strategy is based on a dynamic filter that is designed to change its corner frequency depending upon the incoming ocean wave, 2) the low and the high-frequency power components are allocated based on ocean wave conditions, 3) the proposed strategy is suitable for the real-time control of the proposed HESS integrated with the WEC, and 4) a detailed model of the WEC is used instead of using a pre-saved power profile. The results suggest that with the implementation of the proposed multi-filter-based dynamic power-sharing scheme in the HESS integrated WECs, the output power can be effectively smoothed out before supplying the power to the grid.


Experience over the past decade has shown that wearable computers can be especially valuable in situations where a mobile user is engaged in tasks such as vehicle maintenance, bridge inspection, or aircraft inspection. Thus, wearable computers have established their first foothold in such industrial applications, where hands-free computer operation provides a compelling advantage. User comfort is a critical design consideration for success in these applications. The key to user comfort is creating small, lightweight, body-conforming designs with long battery life. Unfortunately, this typically means substantially sacrificing computing power. Consequently, a wearable computer typically has less memory, CPU speed, and disk capacity than a desktop or laptop of the same vintage. This limitation in computing power makes augmented reality (AR) one of the most challenging yet intriguing uses of wearable computers.


Throughout the world, large numbers of older persons face challenges such as discrimination, poverty and abuse that severely restrict their human rights and their contribution to society. The world has not been quick to respond: a lack of political will and the prioritisation of the special rights of other disadvantaged groups have often been at the expense of the case for older people. Although concerns involving the ageing population are not new, they have traditionally been seen as problems requiring solutions that are functional, piecemeal and reactive. In a climate where the human rights field has become increasingly specialised, disadvantaged groups such as children, migrant workers, persons with disabilities and women have had their particular needs recognised by the United Nations. More and more people argue it is time that older persons were also identified as a distinct category, deserving special care and attention under human rights law. While older persons historically have been neglected by human rights law, their rights are becoming a part of the public agenda. International and domestic non-government organisations (NGOs) as well as some nation-states have been pushing for a stronger human rights instrument to protect the rights of older persons. The topic has also been given increasing attention in academic and professional media. Demographic change is a key factor in explaining the renewed interest in older persons' human rights. Declining fertility rates and longer life expectancy are causing unprecedented proportional growth in the world's older adult population. This will transform many aspects of society and pose new economic and social challenges. Greater numbers of older people are likely to make their rights as a group more prominent and make the abuse of those rights more common. This paper is part of a series examining debates around the rights, responsibilities and contributions of older people. It explores the extent to which existing international human rights instruments of varying forms offer protection for older persons. It then identifies the key arguments in the debate for and against the drafting of a new Convention on the Rights of Older Persons. In a second paper, the protection and gaps that exists in Australia at the federal level and in one state (Victoria) will be evaluated. In order to contextualise the discussion, an introductory note is first made on contemporary attitudes to later life and how old age has been constructed as a category with social meaning.


Flocculation is one of the most important characteristics of brewing yeast as it allows for the easy and cheap removal of cells after fermentation. The genes responsible for both the Flo1 and NewFlo flocculation phenotypes are well characterized. However, the relationship between Flo protein abundance and flocculation efficiency is poorly understood. In this present study, we used mass spectrometry proteomics to compare the cell wall and whole cell proteomes of commercial yeast strains with diverse flocculation behaviors. We found that the relative abundance of Flo1/5 or Flo10 in the cell wall was correlated with the ability of these yeast strains to flocculate. Analysis of whole cell proteomes identified differences in the proteomes of yeast strains and identified the potential for high metabolic diversity. Characterization of the cell wall and whole cell proteomes during fermentation showed high levels of Flo10 in cells that settled early during fermentation. Our data reveal the diversity of the cell wall and global proteomes of brewing yeast, highlighting the potential biochemical diversity present in yeast that can be utilized in the production of fermented beverages.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the curative effects of slow releasing felodipine on mild to moderate primary hypertension and its influence on the pulse wave velocity of slow of the patients.

METHODS
260 patients with mild to moderate primary hypertension, aged 35-79, received slow releasing felodipine with the initial dosage of 5 mg once daily for 2 weeks. By the end of the second week, 222 of the 260 patients with their blood pressure (BP) levels<140/90 mm Hg were treated by the same regimen for 12 weeks. Pulse wave velocity (PWV) was measured before the treatment, and by the ends of the second and fourteenth weeks. Intention to treat analysis (ITT analysis) was adopted.

RESULTS
After 2-week treatment the systolic BP decreased by 21.4 mm Hg and diastolic BP by 14.2 mm Hg (both P<0.01). After 14-week treatment, the BP decreased by 24.8/17.5 mm Hg (P<0.01), the systolic BP decreased by 16.5% and the diastolic BP decreased by 18.4%. The BP of the patients with their BP levels up to standard decreased by 22.8/15.1 mm Hg (P<0.01) by the end of the second week and decreased by 25.0/17.9 mm Hg by the end of the 14th weeks. The PWV of all patients decreased by 0.58 m/s after 2-week treatment (P<0.05) and by 0.86 m/s after 14-week treatment (P<0.05). The PWV of those up to standard decreased by 0.55 m/s after 2-week treatment (P<0.05) and by 0.86 m/s after 14-week treatment (P<0.05). Adverse events were observed in 56 patients (21.5%), including headache, flush, and dizziness, however, no severe adverse event was found. No significant changes in laboratory examinations and ECG were found after treatment.

CONCLUSION
Slow releasing felodipine is effective in treating mild to moderate primary hypertension, with sustained efficacy of lowering blood pressure and PWV.


Horiuchi and Ishikawa (2007) examine the relationship between tariffs on the final good and international technology transfer through trade in an intermediate good. They show that a decrease in the tariff as well as an increase may lead the North monopolist to transfer technology to a South potential entrant. This paper shows that tariff-reductions may induce technology transfer even if technologytransfer competition among multiple North firms is taken into account.


Background Physical function is one of the major outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) which can predict work disability, quality of life and mortality. It has been shown that multiple factors are associated with functional disability in patients (pts) with RA, including diseases activity and radiographic damage. It is currently still unclear whether ultrasound (US) - detected inflammation and/or erosion status has an impact on physical function during tocilizumab (TCZ) treatment. Objectives To identify factors associated with functional disability in RA and to evaluate the link between the US finding of synovitis and/or joint damage at baseline with improvement in physical function after 6 months of treatment with TCZ. Methods 36 adult pts with RA (median age 51 (range 43-57) years; disease duration 54 (24-96) months) according to the ACR 1987 criteria who had been scheduled to receive TCZ were registered and prospectively examined for 24 weeks. Data on clinical outcomes and physical function were collected using DAS28-CRP, SDAI and HAQ. One-year radiographic progression of the hands and feet was defined when the change of the van der Heijde-modified total Sharp score (vdHSS) more than 0.5 units per year. US assessment ("Voluson-i" (GE, USA), with 13-4 MHz linear array transducer) included bilateral the most affected joints: the wrist, II-III MCP and II-III PIP joints. Each joint was scored according to the OMERACT definitions of pathology [1]. Functional disability at baseline and the course of physical function after treatment were estimated using the Wilcoxon test. Results Thirty-five of 36 pts (97.2%) at baseline had functional disability. All pts were divided into two groups according to the HAQ values at baseline: 1t group (n=16) – HAQ≥2 (severe disability), 2nd (n=20) – HAQ<2. Pts with severe disability had higher baseline DAS28-CRP [6.9 (6.4-7) vs. 6.2 (5.8-6.8), p<0.03] and SDAI [52.5 (49-59) vs. 46.4 (39-54), p<0.04], than those who did not and the same tendency to US erosions score (US-Er-10) [6 (4-8) vs. 4 (3-5), p=0.09] and total vdHSS [78 (53-123) vs. 49 (20-104) units, p<0.102]. But baseline GS- and PDUS scores of synovitis or disease duration did not differ between the groups. Achievement of normal physical function (HAQ <0.5) was observed in 41.6% of pts (15/36) at 24 weeks. Only in subgroup RA pts with disease duration less two years (n=9) have been established statistically significant relations HAQ at 6 month with baseline US-Er-10 (r=0.634, p=0.04) as well as baseline DAS28-CRP (r=0.705, p=0.02) and SDAI (r=0.678, p=0.03). Meanwhile, significant inverse correlation was observed between HAQ at 6 month and baseline PDUS score (r= - 0.821, p=0.003). The total vdHSS score was not associated with HAQ at any of the time points examined. Conclusions High US erosions score and disease activity scores at baseline were associated with severe functional disability in RA and less improvement in physical function. In contrast, high PDUS score was not correlated with loss of physical function. PD signal may be used to detect patients who require aggressive, expensive therapy especially in early RA. References Wakefield RJ, Balint PV, Szkudlarek M et al. J Rheumatol 2005; 32:2485-7. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


A case series was conducted on three rape victims who were hospitalized with a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) was employed to reduce their risk of suicide or suicidal ideations. EMDR can be an effective treatment to reduce the level of suicidal ideation in rape victims.


When patients take more than one medication, they may be at risk of drug interactions, which means that a given drug can cause unexpected effects when taken in combination with other drugs. Similar effects may occur when drugs are taken together with some food or beverages. For instance, grapefruit has interactions with several drugs, because its active ingredients inhibit enzymes involved in the drugs metabolism and can then cause an excessive dosage of these drugs. Yet, information on food/drug interactions is poorly researched. The current research is mainly provided by the medical domain and a very tentative work is provided by computer sciences and NLP domains. One factor that motivates the research is related to the availability of the annotated corpora and the reference data. The purpose of our work is to describe the rationale and approach for creation and annotation of scientific corpus with information on food/drug interactions. This corpus contains 639 MEDLINE citations (titles and abstracts), corresponding to 5,752 sentences. It is manually annotated by two experts. The corpus is named POMELO. This annotated corpus will be made available for the research purposes.


A review of the literature supports a hands-on curricular approach as a means to improve learning of engineering concepts and increase student retention. Many institutions incorporate hands-on design courses in their curricula, but few institutions offer an integrated hands-on design course sequence for all four undergraduate years. This paper is a case study of the development of a four-year integrated hands-on design curriculum to motivate, retain, and prepare mechanical engineering students for success in their capstone (senior) design course and future careers. Over a period of ten years, a team of faculty members have incorporated hands-on design components into a sequence of five mechanical design courses, as well as an introductory fluid mechanics laboratory course. Courses in all four years of instruction (Freshman: Computer-Aided Design; Sophomore: Design for Manufacturability; Junior: Mechanical Design I and Mechanical Design II, Fundamentals of Fluid Dynamics Laboratory; Senior: Capstone Design Project) have been revised to utilize a common design process, reporting guidelines, drawing standards, ideation methods, and Innovation Studio. This paper outlines the hands-on integrated design sequence development over time, and highlights changes made to each of the courses. Assessment of student work in the senior capstone course over the years of interest suggests that students are becoming more proficient in aspects of real-world hands-on design projects and that their ability to work effectively as a team is improving. Retention is also found to increase over the period of interest. Challenges to implementation such as financial resources to support the facilities and fabrication materials, qualified teaching assistant availability, and faculty buy-in are


Abstract The framework of the linearized theory of water waves in the time domain is used to examine the horizontal motion of an unrestrained floating structure. One of the principal assumptions of the theory is that an infinitesimal disturbance of the rest state will lead to an infinitesimal motion of the fluid and structure. It has been known for some time that for some initial conditions the theory predicts an unbounded horizontal motion of the structure that violates this assumption, but the possibility does not appear to have been examined in detail. Here some circumstances that lead to predictions of large motions are identified and, in addition, it is shown that not all non-trivial initial conditions lead to violations of the assumptions. In particular, it is shown that the horizontal motion of a floating structure remains bounded when it is initiated by the start up of a separate wave maker. The general discussion is supported by specific calculations for a vertical circular cylinder.


CiteSeer (also known as ResearchIndex) is a digital library of scientific literature that aims to improve communication and progress in science. CiteSeer features include automatic metadata extraction, autonomous citation indexing, graph analysis, citation context extraction, and related document computation. This talk covers the design, implementation, and operation of CiteSeer.Steve Lawrence is a Senior Research Scientist at NEC Research Institute, Princeton, NJ. His research interests include information retrieval and machine learning. Dr. Lawrence has published over 50 papers in these areas, including articles in Science, Nature, CACM, and IEEE Computer. He has been interviewed by over 100 news organizations including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reuters, Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and NPR. Hundreds of articles about his research have appeared worldwide in over 10 different languages.


Maximum vertical tumor thickness is a highly significant prognostic criterion in cutaneous melanoma. To date, little is known about the problem, why thick lesions are more capable of metastatic spread than thin ones. To evaluate theoretical possibilities of the biological impact of thick lesions, computer simulation of tumor growth was performed. In a set of 35,000 simulated tumors, the thickness of the resulting tumor was measured and the functional simulation settings contributing to tumor thickness were identified by statistical methods. It turned out that in this theoretical model of tumor growth, besides time, which is the most important factor, other factors contribute to tumor thickness. These are tumor cell motility, particularly when stimulated by stromal elements, a decreased rate of tumor cell loss, and pronounced proliferation associated with high numbers of cell cycle generations in the tumor cells. These findings are in agreement with experimental data indicating that metastatic capacity may depend on increased motility, stroma-induced motility stimulation, evasion from the host immune system, and genetic instability manifesting during cell cycling. Thus the observations may help to clarify the relationship of vertical tumor thickness and poor clinical outcome in cutaneous melanomas.


A study to develop fundamental failure prediction methods for high strain composites (HSCs). As their name implies, HSCs are designed to operate at strains significantly larger than traditional composites, particularly under bending. Several different phenomena at the micro-scale level contribute to this remarkable flexibility, which are not addressed by standard protocols such as those defined in CHM-17. This investigation presents a first step towards the development of new set of standard tests and failure criteria able to characterize the specific mechanics of HSCs. In particular, we present testing on the large curvature bending of HSC laminates performed using the column bend test (CBT) method. The samples are made from unidirectional intermediate modulus carbon fibers set in a toughened aerospace epoxy matrix, with the thickness varied systematically, in order to explore its effect. Samples were tested until failure and then imaged using SEM and micro-CT x-ray methods in an attempt to understand the failure mode. These results were then compared to linear multiscale material model, where the modeling methods are focused on relative fiber stress/strain relationship. Further investigation will build upon these results by incorporating fiber and matrix material nonlinearity as well as composite layup shear stabilization methods.


Saudi Arabia's Global Goals stated in Vision 2030 are faltering under its current socialistic system. The military, the civil servants, and 35,000 royals with income assured, they have little incentive to want to work or to obtain education. However, in order to employ their citizens, the Saudi government is forcing businesses to hire 70% Saudi citizens to replace the expats who are being expelled under a mandated quota system. Their education system, which has prepared citizens to be loyal to the monarchy and Islam, has neglected secular, market place skills. Citizens continue to want to be paid in the socialistic manner of the past. Now technology skilled citizens and problems solvers are needed, as the monarchy builds two technology-based cities: NOME and Economic City to meet some of its 2030 Vision goals. Another Vision 2030 global goal is to advance Saudi Arabia as the Islamic and Arab Cultural leader of the world. To accomplish this ambition, Saudi Arabia must educate a workforce that wants to work and can help solve its problems and achieve its goals. As the number of citizens increases in order to obtain greater family stipends, the monarchy is moving its religious and mostly socialistic economy toward techno-economy. The prognosis for religious, socialistic country against a techno-economic future will be problematic.


Background Approximately half of all children admitted to PICU in the United Kingdom are infants (under 1 year of age). We perceive that the length of PICU stay for infants is increasing over time. Aims To describe the following trends in infants, in our institution: Crude numbers of proportions of PICU admission Length of PICU stay (LOS) Mortality rate, up to two years of age Methods Single centre multi-disciplinary PICU, retrospective analysis of prospectively collected anonymised data of all PICU admissions from PICU database, between 1 September 1995 and 31 August 2015 (20 years). Infant admission was defined as age ≤365 days at PICU admission. Long-stay was defined as cumulative PICU stay of ≥28 days. Results Of 19,140 patients (23,306 admissions; 139,434 bed-days), 8647 patients (11,954 admissions) were infants at the time of admission. The proportion of infant admissions (mean 51%, range: 47–56%) and bed-days (60%, range: 52–66%) remained sTable. However, the mean length of stay per infant increased on average by 0.3 days/year (5.4 ± 6.8 to 11.5 ± 11.9 days; r2= 0.8; p < 0.001), compared to a smaller increase for the whole population (4.7 ± 5.6 to 9.6 ± 12 days; 0.2 days/year; r2=0.7; p < 0.001). We observed a smaller but significant increase in the median LOS (3 to 5 days; 0.06 days/year; r2=0.6; p < 0.001]. 540 infants (6.2%; 1,642 admissions) were long-stays. 238 of them died before their second birthday (44%). This was significantly higher than the mortality rate of short-stays [1,170 deaths in 8,107 patients (10,322 admissions); 14%; p < 0.001]. The proportion of infant long-stays and PICU infant bed-days have both increased over the study period (5% to 13%, p < 0.001; and 14% to 38%, p < 0.001, respectively). Although the annual mortality rate for long-stays has decreased (33% to 15%, p = 0.02), the overall in-PICU rate during this study period for long-stays was significantly higher than short-stays (47% vs. 15%, p < 0.001). Conclusions There is a steady trend towards increasing LOS for all infants over the last two decades in PICU. Long-stays are also increasing and they have a significantly higher mortality compared to overall infant and PICU population.


A study was performed to identify, characterize and compare the level and function of peripheral Tregs in uninfected and SIV-infected rhesus macaques (RM) and sooty mangabeys (SM) to determine if Tregs contribute to the muted immune response that is evident in SIV-infected disease-resistant SM but readily detectable in SIV-infected disease-susceptible RM. Results show that SIV-infected SM maintain the level and function of Tregs but a substantial decline was noted in RM. A strong correlation between plasma VL and the level of Tregs was observed in SIV-infected RM but not SM. RM VL controllers exhibited lower levels of immune activation and recovered pre-infection levels of Tregs that were fully functional when tested for suppressive activity in vitro. ICC assays showed that Treg-depleted PBMC fractions from RM but not SM exhibit increased CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses to select SIV peptide pools suggesting that Tregs play a role in the SIV-specific immune response at least in RM. The decline in Tregs in SIV-infected RM as a general consequence of viral pathogenesis may further contribute to the increased immune activation and viral replication exhibited by disease progressors. Although the role of Tregs in SM remains unclear, the data imply that therapeutic manipulationof the frequency and function of Treg-cell in RM and perhaps HIV-infected hosts could improve immune controlof viral infection.
 NIH RO1 27057, AIDS & Health Sciences Research Grants, Ministry of Health Labor & Welfare in Japan.


To get information on the stresses acting on the shoulder joint, the distribution of subchondral mineralisation was examined by means of CT-Osteo-absorptiometry in the glenoid cavity in healthy people, athletes and patients. In young persons two density maxima are found ventrally and dorsally older persons, however, show a centrally located maximum which suggests a different joint mechanics in different ages depending on the decreasing physiological incongruence. In gymnasts the overall mineralisation is significantly higher, maxima are found centrally or shifted dorsally. In patients with recurrent dislocation of the shoulder or instability the zone of highest density is shifted to the edges of the glenoid cavity indicating that the prevailing position of the resultant force is excentric. By means of CT-Osteo-absorptiometry these individual patterns of mineralisation can be displayed in the living and can give information on the individual mechanical situation ("loading history") of a joint.


Locality sensitive hashing (LSH) is a computationally efficient alternative to the distance based anomaly detection. The main advantages of LSH lie in constant detection time, low memory requirement, and simple implementation. However, since the metric of distance in LSHs does not consider the property of normal training data, a naive use of existing LSHs would not perform well. In this paper, we propose a new hashing scheme so that hash functions are selected dependently on the properties of the normal training data for reliable anomaly detection. The distance metric of the proposed method, called NSH (Normality Sensitive Hashing) is theoretically interpreted in terms of the region of normal training data and its effectiveness is demonstrated through experiments on real-world data. Our results are favorably comparable to state-of-the arts with the low-level features.


The authors report of a case with a pituitary macroadenoma which was associated with a persistent trigeminal artery. The tumour was removed by transsphenoidal microsurgical approach to the sella turcica. To recognise the developmental anomaly is very important to avoid complications during operation.


Bilingual dictionaries are essential resources in many areas of natural language processing tasks, but resource-scarce and less popular language pairs rarely have such. Efficient automatic methods for inducting bilingual dictionaries are needed as manual resources and efforts are scarce for low-resourced languages. In this paper, we induce word translations using bilingual embedding. We use the Apache Spark framework for parallel computation. Further, to validate the quality of the generated bilingual dictionary, we use it in a phrase-table aided Neural Machine Translation (NMT) system. The system can perform moderately well with a manual bilingual dictionary; we change this into our inducted dictionary. The corresponding translated outputs are compared using the Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) and Rank-based Intuitive Bilingual Evaluation Score (RIBES) metrics.


We describe how to construct the dynamics of relativistic particles, following either timelike or null curves, by means of an auxiliary variables method instead of the standard theory of deformations for curves. There are interesting physical particle models governed by actions that involve higher order derivatives of the embedding functions of the worldline. We point out that the mechanical content of such models can be extracted wisely from a lower order action, which can be performed by implementing in the action a finite number of constraints that involve the geometrical relationship structures inherent to a curve and by using a covariant formalism. We emphasize our approach for null curves. For such systems, the natural time parameter is a pseudo-arclength whose properties resemble those of the standard proper time. We illustrate the formalism by applying it to some models for relativistic particles.


This research is aimed at producing experimental data in relation to the out-of-plane behavior of two-way spanning unreinforced clay brick cavity walls, which is currently a significant area of shortcoming in seismic assessment of masonry buildings. Destructive out-of-plane airbag tests were conducted on a total of 10 two-way spanning walls (6 cavity, 4 solid) and 1 vertically spanning cavity wall in 3 low-rise properties located in Darlington, South Australia. The load was applied on the face of one leaf and the lateral displacements of both wall leaves were measured. Companion material testing was done both in-situ and in laboratory to aid in the calculation of theoretical wall strength. It was observed that the as-built cavity wall ties possessed significant compressive strength that maintained the cavity by promoting two-way out-of-plane mechanism in the unloaded wall leaf, i.e. the wall ties strength often exceeded single-leaf two-way spanning wall strength. Calculations showed that the strength of cavity walls as a whole exceeded the theoretical calculations made based on an idealized method available in seismic codes. The underestimation of the wall strength by codes and analytical studies were attributed to factors that included ignoring wall rendering and potentially conservatisms associated with the formulation of the methods.


Amikacin was evaluated in patients with malignant diseases during 134 episodes of identified infection, most of which were cases of pneumonia and septicemia. The overall rate of response of the identified infections was 63%. The majority of infections were caused by Escherichia coli, the Klebsiella-Enterobacter-Serratia group, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The response rate for infections caused by these organisms was 80%. Five of eight infections caused by organisms resistant to gentamicin responded to therapy with amikacin. Nephrotoxicity was observed in 13% of patients who had normal renal function initially.


Anglo-Saxon studies on professional socialization of police officers have proven that the socialization process can be broken down into many steps, the major one being schooling. The results of all these studies have also demonstrated that the existence of specific cultural characteristics in the police profession influence and model new recruits. Recent French studies, with more quantitative methods, confirmed some of these results, but show many nuances and insist on the diversity in attitudes and expectations on the part of police students. It is namely the case with the year of training for constables.


Background: Recent studies have suggested that Shenling Baizhu San (SLBZS), an complementary and alternative medical therapy for ulcerative colitis (UC), alleviate clinic symptoms by the improvement of biochemical criteria and restoration of the intestinal barrier function. SLBZS as a famous Chinese herbal formula has been reportedly used to treat UC, of which mechanism is unknown. This study investigated the therapeutic effects of SLBZS on restoring the gut microbiota in a UC rat model. Methods: We proposed a 2,4,6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced UC rat model to monitor the structural modulation of the gut microbiota. The test period was 10 days (observation for two days after modeling, treatment for 8 days by SLBZS). In this study, the level of inflammatory cytokines and activity of antioxidant enzymes in serum were ascertained by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and histological changes of colon were observed. Feces were collected for high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene. Results: SLBZS partly reduced the diversity of the gut microbiota, while the abundance of that is increased. Furthermore, at the genus level, the relative abundance of short chain fatty acids (SCFA) producing bacteria including Prevotella and Oscillospira increased, while the relative abundance of harmful bacteria including Desulfovibrio, and Bilophila decreased. Additionally, SLBZS could improve the lesions of colon and significantly reduce the expression of Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and Myeloperoxidase (MPO) and increase the activities of Superoxide dismutase (SOD) and Catalase (CAT) in rats serum. Conclusions: These results demonstrate that SLBZS may treat UC effectively by inhibiting inflammation, enhancing antioxidant capacity and regulating gut microbiota.


Higher institutions are compelled to remain competitive in the rapidly changing world of the current century. This entails promotion of lifelong learning. Using universities in Nigeria for example, we take a crucial look at how mandatory continuing professional development model could promote lifelong job interest among academic faculty members. To effectuate the main objective of the study, three research questions were raised and the correspondence hypotheses were formulated to direct the study. Survey research design was employed. The study population comprised all university academic faculty members purposively selected from faculties in university of Calabar, Nigeria. These faculties were stratified along departments and study levels. A total of 110 respondents were selected via simple random sampling technique. Participants were 42 female university teachers and 68 male. Mandatory Continuing Professional Development Questionnaire (r=0.76) and Lifelong Job Interest Rating (r=0.76) scale were used as instruments for data collection. Data collected were analysed utilizing descriptive statistics and multiple regressions at 0.05 level of significance. Results of the study showed a significant relationship between mandatory continuing professional development model and academic faculty members' lifelong job interest. In this regard, the study concluded that mandatory continuing professional development model is a key factor in promoting lifelong job interest in higher education and regular updating, re-skilling and re-tooling of teachers is desirable.


Solutions to constrained linear model predictive control problems can be precomputed off-line in an explicit form as a piecewise linear state feedback on a polyhedral partition of the state-space, avoiding real-time optimization. We suggest an algorithm that can determine an approximate explicit piecewise linear state feedback by imposing an orthogonal search tree structure on the partition. This leads to a real-time computational complexity that is logarithmic in the number of regions in the partition, and the algorithm yields guarantees on the suboptimality, asymptotic stability and constraint fulfillment.


Progressively transformed germinal centers (PTGCs) are histologic structures mainly composed of small resting B cells and intermingled proliferating centroblast-like cells. The B-cell differentiation processes within PTGCs and their relation to classical germinal centers (GC) and to lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin disease (LPHD), with which PTGCs are often associated, are largely unknown. To address these issues, single small resting (Ki67-) and proliferating (Ki67+) centroblast-like cells were isolated from 7 PTGCs of 5 lymph nodes, and rearranged immunoglobulin genes were amplified and sequenced. Most small resting B cells were clonally unrelated, and most carried unmutated immunoglobulin gene rearrangements resembling mantle zone B cells. Small resting B cells with mutated immunoglobulin gene rearrangements may represent centrocytes, memory B cells, or both. Among the centroblast-like Ki67+ cells, expanded B-cell clones were observed in 6 of 7 PTGCs analyzed. Clonally related V region genes showed extensive intraclonal diversity, and the mutation pattern indicated stringent selection of the cells for the expression of functional antigen receptors. Thus, somatic hypermutation, clonal expansion, and selection occur also in the disorganized PTGC microenvironment, as in classical GCs. In lymph nodes affected by PTGCs, no clonal expansion across the borders of individual PTGCs was observed, distinguishing PTGCs from LPHD.


Fused deposition modelling, or 3D printing, is an additive manufacturing technique that is quickly gaining popularity because of its ability to produce usable parts with several geometries. It provides multiple advantages in everyday life. However, the emerging risks of using 3D printers at home is an issue that needs to be addressed. It is estimated that a person spends, on average, 80-90% of their time inside a building, up to 60% of that time is at home. Therefore it is essential to control the pollutants in the indoor environment. This paper evaluated the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and nanoparticle emissions during 3D printing with the most common Poly-Lactic Acid (PLA) and Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) materials. Real-time aerosol monitors were used to characterise particulate emission, and laboratory analysis was used to check the VOCs levels.  During printing, an increase of VOCs and nanoparticles was observed. This  increase was more significant during printing with ABS filaments than during printing with PLA filaments. The nanoparticles size emitted for the ABS filament was smaller than the particles emitted for the PLA filament. A carcinogen substance like benzene was found during printing. The pollutants levels observed may cause health problems, and it is recommended that  printing be avoided without engineering controls in place, e.g. a good ventilation and extraction system.


This report argues that a greater number of future online attackers - anyone from disgruntled employees to organised cybercriminals and nation-states - could cause widespread disruption and financial losses by hacking into Australia's digital services and infrastructure, including public services like patient health records and taxation data. Executive summary Australia's digital future is set to transform the nation. Our transition towards a more digital economy will drive economic progress, improve social wellbeing, and open up new opportunities for innovation and increased competitiveness on the global stage. Continued technological advancement and rapid adoption are central to our progress, as new developments spur more innovative business models, products and services, which are crucial in responding to key national and sectoral challenges - such as rising healthcare costs, increasing household electricity prices and Government pressures to do more with less. As technology and digital solutions continue to play a key role in driving the economy and society forward, they become increasingly embedded into business operations, across key service offerings and into our personal lives. Australia's future is digital, hyperconnected and critically dependent on technology, making strong cyber security capability crucial to navigating the associated risks and opportunities ahead. Our increased dependence on technology, combined with the evolving complexity and sophistication of cyber security threats, together increase our level of vulnerability – at a national, organisational and individual level. Advancements in technology may be contributing to these evolving security challenges, but they are also a key part of the solution. Developments in data analytics and machine learning are allowing us to better understand network anomalies and harness big data. Progress in cryptography techniques are helping to better secure information. And sophisticated risk management modelling tools are allowing leaders to make more informed cyber decisions. Whilst progress has been made towards improving and advancing cyber security solutions, we are at risk of becoming complacent. Amidst an environment of continuous, rapid change, with increasing levels of complexity and uncertainty, we cannot afford to rely solely on past and present solutions. Ensuring Australia's digital success into the future will require bold cyber security leadership and further investment now. It will require ongoing science and technology research that can identify emerging cyber security challenges and develop practical solutions. And it will require a cultural shift, extending cyber security responsibility out to every organisation, every government, and every individual. Taking this direction requires a change in perspective, recognising that cyber security is not solely a technology challenge. It is also a cultural challenge, and one that extends beyond traditional information security practices. Alongside investment in new cyber security tools and technologies that can keep pace with evolving threat challenges, our nation's future strategies require a commitment to improving cyber security skills, awareness and education, as well as an imperative to evolve cyber security perceptions to understand the central role this capability has in enabling our digital future. Successfully navigating the road ahead will require a whole-of-nation effort, harnessing the full range of resources available across our economy. Alongside existing national and defence-related strategies, the research community in partnership with industry and Government have a vital role to play, through applying innovation and cutting-edge technology to the people, process and technology solutions needed going forward. Through the integration of knowledge, ideas and resources, we can ensure strong cyber security capability is at the core of a digitally-enabled Australia.


Europe's traditional cultural landscapes have undergone significant land-use and land-cover changes in the past 50 yr. Land-cover inventories facilitate the quantification of the conversion from one land-cover unit to another. However, they often fail to detect fine-grained modifications that occur within one land-cover category. This study aims to detect such land-cover modification at two farms within dehesas, a traditional agroforestry system in Spain. The focus is on the dynamics of holm oak ( Quercus ilex) stands as the key landscape element of dehesas. Aerial photography and satellite imagery were used to measure tree expansion and regression between 1956 and 1984, and between 1984 and 2003. With < 0.01-0.03% of the tree cover recruited per year, current recruitment seems too low by a factor of 10 to 50 to maintain existing stand densities. Recruitment rates between 1956 and 2003 were slightly higher, but loss rates were dramatically higher on privately owned land compared to common property. Although higher grazing pressure on common property may have inhibited recruitment, the complexity of land tenure can act as a barrier to forest clearing. The synopsis of high loss rates from 1956 to 1984, low loss rates from 1984 to 2003, and low recruitment rates over both periods indicates that deliberate oak cutting has stopped, but that the problem of regeneration failure still remains unresolved. The analysis of oak expansion and regression as a precursor of land conversion can provide a powerful tool for subtle structural changes and can be used as an early warning system before conversion becomes visible.


The phosphorus content of steels is determined by means of a Littrow quartz spectrograph equipped with Geiger-Muller photoelectron counter tubes. Emphasis is placed on operation and maintenance procedures for open hearth and foundry furnace control. Arc excitation, which is essential for sensitivity and resolution of the phosphorus line from a nearby copper line, introduces variables requiring close regulation. Temperature of the spectrograph must be maintained at nearly a constant value to prevent the shifting of spectral lines at the focal plane of the instrument. Each determination requires about one minute after the sample has been prepared and loaded, and accuracies are comparable to routine chemical results.


When processing data streams with highly skewed and nonstationary key distributions, we often observe overloaded partitions when the hash partitioning fails to balance data correctly. To avoid slow tasks that delay the completion of the whole stage of computation, it is necessary to apply adaptive, on-the-fly partitioning that continuously recomputes an optimal partitioner, given the observed key distribution. While such solutions exist for batch processing of static data sets and stateless stream processing, the task is difficult for long-running stateful streaming jobs where key distribution changes over time. Careful checkpointing and operator state migration is necessary to change the partitioning while the operation is running. Our key result is a lightweight on-the-fly Dynamic Repartitioning (DR) module for distributed data processing systems (DDPS), including Apache Spark and Flink, which improves the performance with negligible overhead. DR can adaptively repartition data during execution using our Key Isolator Partitioner (KIP). In our experiments with real workloads and power-law distributions, we reach a speedup of 1.5-6 for a variety of Spark and Flink jobs.


Dimethoate (DM) is an organophosphate insecticide, has been used worldwide in agriculture and domestic for several years which has led to variety of negative effects in non target species including humans. Therefore, the present study investigated the acute oral sub lethal dose of Dimethoate on Cytoarchitecture of cortex region of brain viz., Cerebral cortex. The LD 50of dimethoate (330 mg/kg BW) was evaluate by probit analysis method (Finney, 1971). Albino rats were divided in to 4 groups with group I serving as control, whereas II, III and IV groups were given ( 1/10 th LD 50i.e., 330 mg/ kg bw) orally single, double and multiple doses of Dimethoate respectively. After stipulated time period the rats were sacrificied by cervical dislocation and the brain tissues was isolated at cold conditions. The neuro histopathological changes were observed through light microscope. The changes in different brain regions were in time and days dependent manner.


Background

The morbidity and mortality of skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM), the most deadly type of skin cancer, are on the rise worldwide. Through in-depth study of the tumor microenvironment (TME) of SKCM, this study further identified biomarkers with therapeutic and prognostic value.
Methods

The gene expression profiles and clinical data of SKCM patients were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. Then we calculated the immune score and stromal score of patients with skin melanoma by using the estimate algorithm, and divided all patients into the high/low immune/stromal score groups and discussed the correlation between them and clinical characteristics.Then, limma R package was used to screen out the differential genes in the high/low immune/ stromal score groups, and the heat map of the differential genes was drawn. At the same time, the functional enrichment analysis of the differential genes was carried out. The protein‒protein interaction (PPI) network of different genes was constructed by using STRING and Cytoscape, and the key genes related to the prognosis of cutaneous melanoma were further selected. Finally, kinase target, co expression genes and immune infiltrating cells of key genes were discussed.
Results

Patients in the low-immune/stromal score group had poorer survival outcome. The immune and stromal scores are associated with specific clinicopathologic variables (age, tumor grade, tumor stage) in SKCM. In total, 914 DEGs (909 upregulated and 5 downregulated genes) were screened from the gene expression profiles of patients with high immune and stromal scores. Functional enrichment analysis demonstrated a correlation between DEGs and the tumor microenvironment, tumor immune response and RCC tumorigenesis.Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that 15 out of the 914 identified tumor microenvironment related genes are involved in the prognosis of SKCM. Finally CXCR8 and CCR5 were selected as the hub genes. A positive correlation was obtained between the expression of CXCR8/CCR5 and the abundance of six immune cells.
Conclusions

We studied the tumor microenvironment of SKCM, and finally screened out the biomarkers with therapeutic and prognostic effects.


Nearly 6,000 science questions collected from five different web-based, TV-based and school-based sources were rigorously analyzed in order to identify profiles of K-12 students' interest in science, and how these profiles change with age. The questions were analyzed according to their topic, thinking level, motivation for and level of autonomy in raising the question, the object of interest and its magnitude, and psychological distance of the object in question from the asker. Characteristics of the asker, such as gender, grade level, and country of origin were also considered, alongside characteristics of the data source, such as language, setting (Internet, school, TV), and the potential science-attentiveness of the users. Six meta-clusters of children's and adolescents' interest in science were identified using cluster analysis of their self-generated science questions. A developmental shift in interest from non-classical to classical school science subjects was noted. Other age-related developments, such as an increase in thinking level as reflected by the questions, a decrease in organization level and the psychological distance of the object in question with age were also explored. Advantages and shortcomings of web-based data collection for educational research are discussed, as are the implications of the results obtained using this methodology for formal science education. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 999–1022, 2009


One approach to continuously achieve a certain data quality level is to use an integration pipeline that continuously checks and monitors the quality of a data set according to defined metrics. This approach is inspired by Continuous Integration pipelines, that have been introduced in the area of software development and DevOps to perform continuous source code checks. By investigating in possible tools to use and discussing the specific requirements for RDF data sets, an integration pipeline is derived that joins current approaches of the areas of software-development and semantic-web as well as reuses existing tools. As these tools have not been built explicitly for CI usage, we evaluate their usability and propose possible workarounds and improvements. Furthermore, a real-world usage scenario is discussed, outlining the benefit of the usage of such a pipeline.


Introduction. Negative-strand RNA viruses are a large and diverse group of enveloped viruses of both medical and economic significance. They are found in hosts from the plant and animal kingdoms, and have a wide range of morphologies, biological properties and genome organizations. A major distinction is made between viruses whose genome consists of a single RNA molecule (order Mononegavirales), including the families Rhabdoviridae, Paramyxoviridae and Filoviridae, and those possessing multipartite (segmented) genomes, comprising the families Orthomyxoviridae (six to nine segments), Bunyaviridae (three segments) and Arenaviridae (two segments) (Pringle, 1991). Particular elements essential for their replication and gene expression have been retained throughout the negative-strand RNA viruses and illustrate that they have originated from a common ancestor (for review see Tordo et al., 1992). Genetic manipulation and analysis of negative-strand RNA virus biology has lagged far behind that of other RNA viruses.


A polymeric precursor method was used to synthesize BaTiO3 amorphous thin film processed at low temperature. The luminescence spectra of BaTiO3 amorphous thin films at room temperature revealed an intense single-emission band in the visible region. The visible emission band was found to be dependent of the thermal treatment history. Photoluminescence (PL) properties for different annealing temperatures were investigated. It was concluded that the intensityof PL is stronglydependent on both the heat treatment of the films and the presence of an inorganic disordered phase. Experimental optical absorption measurements showed the presence of a tail. These results are interpreted bythe nature of these exponential optical edges and tails, associated with defects promoted bythe disordered structure of the amorphous material. We discuss the nature of visible PL at room temperature in amorphous barium titanate in the light of the results of recent experimental and quantum mechanical theoretical studies. Our investigation of the electronic structure involved the use of first-principle molecular calculations to simulate the variation of the electronic structure in the barium titanate crystalline phase, which is known to have a direct band gap, and we also made an in-depth examination of amorphous barium titanate. r 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


In this paper, the behavior of spliced continuous reinforced concrete girders was experimentally investigated. The main objective was to examine the contribution of the carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates in strengthening the spliced continuous reinforced concrete girders. Eight models of continuous reinforced concrete girder were constructed and tested. The test variables were strengthening the splice joints by different schemes of CFRP laminates, presence of horizontal stirrups through the interfaces of the joints and using binder material at the interfaces of the joints. The results showed that strengthening the continuous spliced girders with 45 inclined CFRP laminates led to an increase in the ultimate load in a range of (47 to 74%). Besides, strengthening the continuous spliced girder with horizontal CFRP laminates bonded at its lateral faces could increase the ultimate load by 70%. Additionally, the ultimate load of the continuous spliced girder was increased by (30%) due to presence of the horizontal steel stirrups through the interfaces of the joints.


Background: The estimate of mortality associated with illicit opiate use provides useful information to those directing and monitoring local, national and international policies and programs. This study investigated the epidemiology of mortality due to the illegal consumption of narcotics and psychotropic substances in the Iran to provide evidence-based public health data for useful programs and actions aimed at preventing drug-related mortality. Study Design: A cross-sectional study. Methods: The information regarding all cases of psychotropic positive was collected from Legal Medicine Organization, occurred on Mar 2015 to Feb 2016. Demographic and epidemiological data were extracted from recorded documents. Data were then analyzed in Stata software. Results: Overall, 2306 died cases from opioid or psychotropic abuse were evaluated. The mean age of the subjects was 36.07±12.61 yr, they were mostly single male, and 88.64% of them had Iranian nationality. The mortality rate from opiate and psychotropic abuse in the whole country was 38.22 per 1,000,000 population. The most common location of death was at home or in another private residence. History of overdose, suicide, hospitalization in psychiatric hospital, staying in prison and substance abuse in the family observed in some people who died from drug abuse. Conclusions: Mortality rate from substance abuse is more among unmarried young men aged 30-39 yr with low education level also in self-employed. We suggest policies to prevent this person accessing and using drug.


This paper describes a method of probabilistic obstacle map building based on Bayesian estimation. Most active or passive obstacle sensors observe only the most frontal objects and any objects behind them are occluded. Since the observation of distant places includes large depth errors, conventional methods which does not consider the sensor occlusion often generate erroneous maps. We introduce a probabilistic observation model which determines the visible objects. We first estimate probabilistic visibility from the current viewpoint by a Markov chain model based on the knowledge of the average sizes of obstacles and free areas. Then the likelihood of the observations based on the probabilistic visibility are estimated and then the posterior probability of each map grid are updated by Bayesian update rule. Experimental results show that more precise map building can be bult by this method.


This paper proposes a model based framework for the design of dependable embedded systems. First we define a meta-model to encompass the different concepts to capture fault tolerance. This will be used to derive a UML profile for the specification and the management of the redundancy. Based on this profile, we propose a model library as reusable and composable UML components to construct a fault tolerant infrastructure. As proof of concept, a GPS use case with fault tolerance requirements is evaluated using the proposed framework.


Automatic methods to predict listener opinions of synthesized speech remain elusive since listeners, systems being evaluated, characteristics of the speech, and even the instructions given and the rating scale all vary from test to test. While automatic predictors for metrics such as mean opinion score (MOS) can achieve high prediction accuracy on samples from the same test, they typically fail to generalize well to new listening test contexts. In this paper, using a variety of networks for MOS prediction including MOSNet and self-supervised speech models such as wav2vec2, we investigate their performance on data from different listening tests in both zero-shot and fine-tuned settings. We find that wav2vec2 models fine-tuned for MOS prediction have good generalization capability to out-of-domain data even for the most challenging case of utterance-level predictions in the zero-shot setting, and that fine-tuning to in-domain data can improve predictions. We also observe that unseen systems are especially challenging for MOS prediction models.


The study examined phonemic awareness and pseudoword decoding in kindergarten and first grade Arabic native children. Because native speakers of Arabic first learn to read in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), a language structurally distinct from the local form of the language they grow up speaking, it was hypothesized that the linguistic differences between the two varieties, the so-called diglossic variables, would interfere with the acquisition of basic reading processes in MSA. Two diglossic variables were examined: phoneme and word syllabic structure. The children's phoneme isolation and pseudoword decoding skills were tested. The results showed that both diglossic variables interfered with the children's performance of both tasks in both grades. The findings support the role of linguistic distance in the acquisition of basic reading processes in a diglossic context.


A Gram-stain-negative, aerobic and rod-shaped bacterium, designated as strain B61T, was isolated from rhizosphere soil of banana collected from Dongguan, Guangdong Province, PR China. Growth occurred at 15-40 °C, within a pH range of pH 6.0-9.0. Results of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity and phylogenetic analyses showed that strain B61T was most closely related to 'Chitinophaga agri' KACC 21303 (98.9 %) and Chitinophaga pinensis DSM 2588T (98.8 %). The genome size was 7.6 Mb with a G+C content of 45.2 mol%. The genome-inferred average nucleotide identity values between strain B61T and two closely related strains were 79.2 and 79.3 %, respectively, with corresponding digital DNA-DNA hybridization values of 22.3 and 22.6 %. The major fatty acids of the novel strain were iso-C15:0, C16:1 ω5c and iso-C17:0 3-OH and the sole respiratory quinone was menaquinone 7 (MK-7). The polar lipids consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine, five unidentified aminolipids, four unidentified glycolipids and six unidentified lipids. The phenotypic and phylogenetic results clearly supported that strain B61T represents a novel species of the genus Chitinophaga, for which the name Chitinophaga rhizophila, sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain B61T (=GDMCC 1.2608T=KCTC 82856T).


Like feedback strategy, coding scheme is an important part of networked control system designing as well. In this paper, we design the feedback law to minimize the channel rate required to stabilize the system when the coding scheme is restricted to be memoryless. The main point is to write the feedback gain matrix as an explicit expression of the closed-loop eigenstructure data. Then the constraint imposed by the memoryless coding scheme on the channel rate is written into an analytical form, and the problem is reformulated into a standard optimization problem, which can be solved using numerical method.


Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of microturbulence simultaneously driven by electron temperature gradient modes, trapped electron modes, and ion temperature gradient modes are presented, covering both electron and ion spatiotemporal scales self-consistently. It is found that, for realistic ion heat (and particle) flux levels and in the presence of unstable electron temperature gradient modes, there tends to be a scale separation between electron and ion thermal transport. In contrast to the latter, the former may exhibit substantial or even dominant high-wave-number contributions.


The catalytic reaction has been studied on a granular surface of the metal coated with cuprous oxide. The nature of the adsorbed species in the stationary state of the reaction has been investigated by measurements of heats of adsorption and by B. E. T. measurements. The adsorption characteristics of cuprous oxide have been compared with those of cupric oxide, and some measurements have been made of the heats of adsorption of hydrogen, ethylene and sulphur dioxide on cuprous oxide. The differential heat of adsorption of oxygen during the formation of the first few layers of cuprous oxide on copper metal has been determined. A constant value of 55 kcal is obtained after the first few layers have been built up. The adsorbed oxygen reacts with carbon monoxide and dioxide, giving a CO3 complex as an intermediate stage in the reactions. The properties of this complex have been studied by calorimetric methods and it has been shown to be unstable in the presence of carbon monoxide. The reactivity of the adsorbed oxygen decreases with time, and it is concluded that this is due to the diffusion of Cu+ ions to the surface, which partially builds the oxygen ions into the lattice. The steps in the reaction mechanism of the catalytic reaction have been formulated, and it is shown that in the stationary state carbon monoxide, oxygen ions and a C03 complex are present on the surface, the last two species being present in small amount. An explanation is given of the dependence of the reaction on the oxygen pressure.


Due to the potential risk of accidental exposure to gamma radiation, it's critical to identify the biomarkers of radiation exposed creatures. In the present study, NMR based metabolomics combined with multivariate data analysis to evaluate the metabolites changed in the C57BL/6 mouse spleen after 4 days whole body exposure to 3.0 Gy and 7.8 Gy gamma radiations. Principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal projection to latent structures analysis (OPLS) are employed for classification and identification potential biomarkers associated with gamma irradiation. Two different strategies for NMR spectral data reduction (i.e., spectral binning and spectral deconvolution) are combined with normalize to constant sum and unit weight before multivariate data analysis, respectively. The combination of spectral deconvolution and normalization to unit weight is the best way for identifying discriminatory metabolites between the irradiation and control groups. Normalized to the constant sum may achieve some pseudo biomarkers. PCA and OPLS results shown that the exposed groups can be well separated from the control group. Leucine, 2-aminobutyrate, valine, lactate, arginine, glutathione, 2-oxoglutarate, creatine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, π-methylhistidine, taurine, myoinositol, glycerol and uracil are significantly elevated while ADP is decreased significantly. These significantly changed metabolites are associated with multiple metabolic pathways and may be potential biomarkers in the spleen exposed to gamma irradiation.


To study the role of the S20G mutation of amylin gene in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes, 99 unrelated normal controls, 24 subjects with impaired glucose tolerance, 182 subjects with MIDDM, and 122 subjects with IDDM were recruited in Taiwan. The S20G mutation of amylin gene was detected by polymerase-chain-reaction/restriction-fragment-length-polymorphism and confirmed by DNA sequence analyses. Pedigree members of the families with this mutation were studied by oral glucose tolerance test, glucagon stimulation test, and insulin suppression test. The S20G mutation of the amylin gene was found in 4 (4.4%) in normal control subjects, 1 (4.2%) in 24 subjects with IGT, 2 (1.6%) in subjects with type 1 diabetes, and 3 (1.6%) in the subjects with type 2 diabetes. Among the non-diabetic pedigree members, subjects with mutation had a reduced response of insulin secretion at 30 min and an increase in plasma glucose concentration at 60 min after oral glucose loading as compared to those without mutation. The maximal insulin secretion was delayed in the subjects with mutations. However, these differences were not found after adjustment with age factor. No difference in the steady-state plasma glucose levels was found between the non-diabetic subjects with or without mutation. In conclusion, S20G mutation of amylin gene does not seem to play a major role in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes in Taiwanese.


UNFADING HALO: THE UNTOLD PROGRESSIVISM OF ELIHU ROOT by Rob Little, Ph.D., 2015 Department of History Texas Christian University Dissertation Advisor: Todd M. Kerstetter, Associate Professor of History In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, reformers across the nation looked to study, understand, and resolve the major political, social, economic, and moral issues gripping the nation. This study uncovers the rather unlikely progressive credentials of a highly influential lawyer, diplomat, and statesman, Elihu Root. Contemporary critics and political opponents unfairly categorized him as a conservative, and callous corporate lawyer who opposed the Progressive movement at every turn. This inaccurate characterization unduly influenced historical conceptions of the Root and his legacy. On the contrary, Root modernized, reformed, and advanced progressive institutions at home and abroad. Root recognized the growing need for reform, accountability, and efficiency of public institutions, while also promoting an individual responsibility need for education, morality, and self-restraint. Elite lawyers such as Root formed a significant majority of progressive reformers who sought restore public trust in civil government, depoliticize civil service appointments, destroy political machines, ensure the sanctity of the ballot, increase legal access for the poor, promote campaign finance reform, enact corporate and inheritance taxes, and bust trusts. Root devoted his public career to carrying out the public good and uplifting society. Though Root's domestic reform agenda mirrored the efforts of his progressive counterparts, what set him apart was the fact he transplanted these progressive ideals into reforms into America foreign policy. Since progressives empowered the government to resolve domestic concerns, it only makes sense they used the full force of Washington to solve problems that confronted the globe. He represented a minority of internationally progressive lawyer-diplomats who sought to bring order to the interactions of states, reduce global conflicts, and introduce worldwide institutions comprised of more nations than ever before. He promoted American involvement in international institutions well before the creation of the League of Nations and developed many of the concepts that later comprised part of the United Nations created nearly a decade after his death. Presidents of both parties and numerous secretaries of state worked with Root to secure progressive international policies, ranging from the creation of the World Court to international policies of disarmament.


Many optimization problems require the investigation of multiple local extremities and the original genetic algorithms with sharing cannot do this with objective functions with non-uniformly distributed extremities. In this paper, a new sharing method is developed. We use the estimation of the directions of spatial emitters as an example to test the power of our new method. The objective functions are the spectra estimated by the MUSIC method. It is shown by simulation that the new algorithm can find all the local extremities of the objective functions and its computation consumption is at most one-tenth of the conventional MUSIC method.


EU parliamentary debates are a complex form of dialogue in which representatives of European citizens delivering monologues during parliamentary sessions are simultaneously engaged in a dialogue with their colleagues and with the broader public of European citizens. EU citizens can watch online videos of the parliamentary sessions and read online verbatim reports, i.e. the official written transcripts of the sessions. Linguistically, however, the videos and verbatim reports differ significantly. The present paper draws on EUROPARL, a corpus I compiled which comprises the speeches delivered in non-native English during thirteen parliamentary sittings (about 75,000 tokens) held in 2006, transcribed from EP Live-Video, and the corresponding verbatim reports (about 69,000 tokens). Previous studies of the differences between actual speeches and the verbatim reports regarded national parliamentary debates, for example in the U.K. (Slembrouck 1992; Hughes 1996; Mollin 2007) and in Italy (Cortelazzo 1985), thus focusing on speech in native languages. With the exception of Mollin (2007), they were qualitative in nature. The present paper illustrates the results of a quantitative, as well as qualitative, analysis of EU parliamentary speeches delivered by non-native speakers of English and the corresponding verbatim reports. It is found that involvement devices (Chafe 1982), i.e. expressions such as 'I think', discourse markers like 'well', 'you know', 'I mean', emphasizers such as 'of course', 'indeed', 'really', 'actually', 'definitely', vague language like 'thing', 'stuff' and hedges like 'a little bit' are reduced. An analysis of 'I think' and 'of course' indicates that non-native speakers of English in the European Parliament make skilful use of involvement devices, in an attempt to engage in a dialogue with the addressees despite the fact that they are delivering monologues. Many of these dialogic features are lost in verbatim reports, where ideational, rather than interpersonal, meanings are emphasised.


The optical spectrum and light curve of EC13471-1258 show that it is an eclipsing binary with an orbital period of 3 h 37 m comprising a DA white dwarf and a dMe dwarf. Total eclipses of the white dwarf are observed lasting 14 min, with the partial phases lasting 54 s. On one occasion, two pre-eclipse dips were seen. Timings of the eclipses over 10 yr show jitter of up to 12 s. Flares from the M dwarf are regularly observed. The M dwarf also shows a large-amplitude ellipsoidal modulation in the V-band light curve. The component stars emit almost equal amounts of light at 5500 A. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) STIS spectra show strong Lyman-a absorption with weak metal lines of C I,II and Si II superimposed. Model atmosphere analysis yielded an effective temperature of 14 220 ′ 300 K and log g of 8.34 ′ 0.20 for the white dwarf with these errors being strongly correlated. Its metal abundance is 1/30th solar with an uncertainty of 0.5 dex, and it is rapidly rotating with V 1 sin i = 400 ′ 100 km s - 1 . The white dwarf also shows radial velocity variations with a semi-amplitude of 138 ′ 10 km s - 1 . The gravitational redshift of the white dwarf was measured as 62 km s - 1 . From optical spectroscopy the spectral type of the M dwarf was found to be M3.5-M4, its temperature 3100 ′ 75 K, its rotational velocity 140 ′ 10 km s - 1 , its radial velocity semi-amplitude 266 ′ 5 km s - 1 , its mean V - I colour 2.86 and its absolute V magnitude 11.82. Intriguingly, its metal abundance is normal solar. The Ha emission line shows at least two distinct components, one of which is uniformly distributed around the centre of mass of the M dwarf and provided the estimate of the rotational velocity of the M dwarf. The other arises from the other side of the binary centre of mass, well within the white dwarf Roche lobe. This behaviour is confirmed by Doppler tomography, which shows the presence of two distinct velocity components within the primary Roche lobe. The interpretation of these features is uncertain. Variations in strength of the components with binary phase can be attributed to optical thickness in the Balmer lines. Similar behaviour is seen in the observations of the other Balmer emission lines, although with a poorer signal-to-noise ratio. Flares in Ha were observed and are consistent with arising from the vicinity of the M dwarf. Dynamical solutions for the binary are discussed and yield an inclination of 75.5° ′ 2.0°, a white dwarf mass and radius of 0.78 ′ 0.04 M O . and 0.011 ′ 0.01 R O ., and an M dwarf mass and radius of 0.43 ′ 0.04 M O . and 0.42 ′ 0.02 R O .. These parameters are consistent with the Wood mass-radius relation for white dwarfs and the Clemens et al. mass-radius relation for M dwarfs; we argue that the M dwarf just fills its Roche lobe. The radius of the white dwarf and the model fit imply a distance of 48 ′ 5 pc and an absolute V magnitude of 11.74. The rapid rotation of the white dwarf strongly suggests that the system has undergone mass transfer in the past, and implies that it is a hibernating cataclysmic variable. The M dwarf shows the properties expected of secondaries in cataclysmic variables: chromospheric activity and angular momentum loss.


Since 1963, regional intra-arterial infusion of anti-cancer agents combined with surgery has been used in the treatment of 56 patients with osteosarcomas. The histologic examination of amputated limbs after prolonged intra-arterial infusion therapy showed remarkable degeneration and necrosis throughout wide areas of tumor tissue. The overall estimated 5-year survival rate improved from 4 to 31.4 per cent. In cases where the infusion period was of more than 3 weeks duration, the estimated 5-year survival rate was 43.8 per cent. The period from operation to pulmonary metastasis was prolonged and the incidence of pulmonary metastasis within the first year was markedly decreased. The use of intra-arterial infusion prior to surgery coupled with postoperative bronchial arterial infusion and systemic chemotherapy improved the prognosis in osteosarcomas.


Reducing energy consumption within buildings has been an active area of research. Energy usage both in commercial and residential buildings represents a significant portion of overall energy consumption. The viability of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies can be integrated with Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) in order to reduce energy consumption within buildings. This paper targets the description of a generic architecture and classification of WSN-based BEMS.


This paper proposes a double input dc-dc converter based on Z-source converters. In the proposed converter, the input dc voltage can be boosted and also input dc sources can deliver power to the load individually or simultaneously, so combination of a battery with one of the new energy sources such as solar array, wind turbine or fuel cell can be used as input sources. Different states of double input Z-source dc-dc converter are analyzed and then steady state operation of converter is explained in detail. Finally, the simulation results are presented to confirm the theoretical analysis.


The pandemic spread of COVID-19 grew inexorably to be the main topic of global news after it was first identified in 2019 in China. This article analyzes how heads of state and heads of government in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden framed the problems and solutions to the spread of the virus during the pandemic's initial phase. A Foucauldian-inspired method of problematization guides the narrative analysis, complemented by governmentality, risk communication, and taskscape theories. The results of the analysis show how the individual is conceptualized as a central actor and whose practices are framed as crucial to overcoming the crisis. Through invoking a sense of responsibility, sacrifice, and current life during the pandemic as a difficult time, the speeches allude to how people through changed behavior can/sould, contribute to the greater good. The individual is positioned as a key cause of, and solution to the problem; however, construing the individual as an indispensable actor to overcoming the crisis also means that the individual is laid open for reprehension. To facilitate the spread of the containment message and to support individual understanding of overt risk, the four countries' leadership also augment their conceptualization of the crisis with ideas of national identity to inspire the individual to contribute to the "battle" and "defeat" of the virus. The leadership does also embrace the important role of the national government in controlling the outbreak and the role of science, and trust in science, are also emphasized. The speeches analyzed in this paper can be understood as governance technologies; the spatial disciplining and self-governance demanded by the regimes create subject positions for individuals or groups. A debate on the rights and responsibilities of the citizen is another aspect that comes to the fore, considering how the containment strategies in all four countries proclaim the individual as a core agent in circumscribing the virus, and hence the individual's activities as potentially damaging to the fight against the pandemic. This throws into question the connection between individual autonomy as a democratic right and disciplinary mechanisms, sometimes phrased encouragingly and at other times in an enforcing way.


The recent observation of gravitational waves confirms one of the most interesting predictions in general relativity: the black holes. Because the gravitational waves detected by LIGO fit very well within general relativity as a phenomenon produced by two colliding black holes. Then the reality of black holes seems almost undoubted today. However, a stronger proof on the reality of black holes would be indicated by the observation of the event horizon, which is what defines it. In this article, it is indicated that only the event horizon defines a black hole. There is no mention to the singularity in its definition. Thus, it will be shown that black holes without a singularity are possible. Such black holes are called regular black holes.