In recent work, a generalized impedance boundary condition for two-dimensional conducting rough interfaces was derived. In this study, the impedance boundary condition is used to calculate the power loss associated with conducting rough interfaces. Results for two-dimensional conducting and superconducting roughness profiles are shown in this paper, and comparisons to other results in the literature are given. The importance of these roughness effects in microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits is also discussed. Suggestions are made to extend this study to three dimensional random rough interfaces.


Peritidal carbonates of the Lower Jurassic (Liassic) Gibraltar Limestone Formation, which form the main mass of the Rock of Gibraltar, are replaced by fine and medium crystalline dolomites. Replacement occurs as massive bedded or laminated dolomites in the lower 100 m of an ≈460‐m‐thick platform succession. The fine crystalline dolomite has δ18Ο values either similar to, or slightly higher than, those expected from Early Jurassic marine dolomite, and δ13C values together with 87Sr/86Sr ratios that overlap with sea‐water values for that time, indicating that the dolomitizing fluid was Early Jurassic sea water. Absence of massive evaporitic minerals and/or evaporite solution‐collapse breccias in these carbonate rocks indicates that the salinity of sea water during dolomitization was below that of gypsum precipitation. The occurrence of peritidal facies, a restricted microbiota and rare gypsum pseudomorphs are also consistent with penesaline conditions (salinity 72–199‰). The medium crystalline dolomite has some δ18Ο and δ13C values and 87Sr/86Sr ratios similar to those of Early Jurassic marine dolomites, which indicates that ambient sea water was again a likely dolomitizing fluid. However, the spread of δ18Ο, δ13C and 87Sr/86Sr values indicates that dolomitization occurred at slightly increased temperatures as a result of shallow (≈500 m) burial or that dolomitization was multistage. These data support the hypothesis that penesaline sea water can produce massive dolomitization in thick peritidal carbonates in the absence of evaporite precipitation. Taking earlier models into consideration, it appears that replacement dolomites can be produced by sea water or modified sea water with a wide range of salinities (normal, penesaline to hypersaline), provided that there is a driving mechanism for fluid migration. The Gibraltar dolomites confirm other reports of significant Early Jurassic dolomitization in the western Tethys carbonate platforms.


OBJECTIVES: The ideal index for leanness and obesity in epidemiological studies should correlate strongly with body weight and with a direct measure of fat while minimizing the influence of height. The preferred index is expected to show meaningful associations with subsequent mortality. Our aims were to compare weight/height, weight/height(2) (body mass index or BMI), and weight/height(3) as candidates for this index. DESIGN: We analysed cross-sectional data from surveys of 6948 adults (3334 men (mean age 43 y, mean BMI 24.8 kg/m2), and 3614 women (mean age 42 y, mean BMI 24.3 kg/m2)) in Busselton, Australia whose weight, height, triceps skinfold, and cardiovascular risk factors were measured from 1966 through to 1978. In these same subjects we studied the mortality risks of indices of obesity using Cox regression analysis for survival time from first survey to death, or to follow up at the end of December 1995, after adjustment for age. Subjects dying within 5 y of the baseline survey were excluded from the analysis to avoid the bias of concurrent illness. We also studied subgroups including never smokers, subjects with no heart disease, and subjects <60 years of age at first survey. RESULTS: In men, weight/height2 met the criteria for a satisfactory index in that there was a very strong correlation with triceps skinfold, and a negligible correlation with height. For women, weight/height was as good a measure as weight/height2, with both having strong correlations with triceps skinfold, and minimal correlations with height. Weight/height2 as a predictor of mortality in men of all ages showed the typical U-shaped associations that were similar and consistent and of variable statistical significance. The significances of the hazard ratio curves were the strongest for cardiovascular disease deaths (all men P=0.001; men without heart disease at baseline P<0.001; never smoking men P=0.007). In never smoking men there was a near linear positive relationship with all-cause mortality (P=0.018). In women weight/height2 showed no consistent associations with mortality. There was a shallow U-shaped relationship with all-cause mortality (P=0.087), also seen in never smoking women (P=0.075). In assessing 'ideal' weight for height in this population, a weight/height2 of 25 kg/m2 (range 22.5-27.5 kg/m2) is appropriate. Weight/height and mortality showed very similar patterns in men to weight/height2 with quite similar levels of statistical significance. In women much more pronounced U-shaped curves were apparent in all groups and subgroups, with a significant all-cause mortality trend for all women (P=0.029) and never smoking women (P=0.034). In assessing 'ideal' weight for height a weight/height of 42.5 kg/m (range 35-50 kg/m) appears appropriate for men and women. CONCLUSIONS: Weight/height2 is an appropriate index of leanness and obesity in males at all ages, whereas weight/height is at least as good an index for females. In mortality studies weight/height2 and weight/height predict mortality similarly in males, but weight/height is a better discriminant of mortality in females.


The incidence of diabetic foot complications in the Republic of Ireland is not known. A cross-sectional pilot study was undertaken to identify the prevalence of diabetic foot complications in a primary care setting in the west of Ireland, and to inform the design and feasibility of a larger community-based diabetic foot screening study in Ireland. Clinically important pedal neural dysfunction was detected in up to 30% of those screened, and vascular impairment was detected in some 17%.


Intra-accumbal infusion of the α1-adrenergic agonist methoxamine, which has comparable affinity for α1A-, α1B- and α1D-adrenoceptor subtypes, fails to alter noradrenaline efflux but reduces dopamine efflux in the nucleus accumbens of rats. In-vivo microdialysis experiments were carried out to analyse the putative contribution of α1A-, α1B- and α1D-adrenoceptor subtypes to the methoxamine-induced decrease in accumbal dopamine efflux in freely moving rats. The drugs used were dissolved in the infusion medium and administered locally through a dialysis membrane. Intra-accumbal infusions of the α1A-adrenoceptor antagonist 5-methylurapidil (6 pmol), the α1B-adrenoceptor antagonist cyclazosin (0.6 and 6 pmol) and the α1D-adrenoceptor antagonist BMY 7378 (0.6 pmol) did not alter accumbal efflux of noradrenaline or dopamine: pretreatment with each of these α1-adrenoceptor subtype-selective antagonists counteracted the methoxamine (24 pmol)-induced decrease in accumbal dopamine efflux. Doses indicated are the total amount of drug administered over a 60-min infusion period. These results clearly suggest that the α1A-, α1B- and α1D-adrenoceptor subtypes in the nucleus accumbens mediate the α1-adrenergic agonist methoxamine-induced decrease in accumbal dopamine efflux. The present study also provides in-vivo neurochemical evidence indicating that concomitant, but not separate, activation of the α1A-, α1B- and α1D-adrenoceptors in the nucleus accumbens is required for α1-adrenergic inhibition of accumbal dopaminergic activity.


Lithuania introduced normative of public protection from 50 Hz frequency electric field. It proposed permissible intensity of this field – 0,5 kV/m inside buildings and 1 kV/m in their territory. Separate normative is prepared for industry frequency electric and magnetic fields in work places. Permitted values of fields depend on exposure duration, but cannot exceed 25 kV/m and 5,1 kA/m. Russian, Swedish and American scientists declare that long time exposure of 50 Hz magnetic field with intensity more than 0,2-0,3 µT is dangerous for carcinogenic risk. International Agency for research on Cancer (IARC) initiated a program to evaluate the carcinogenic risk of low frequency electromagnetic fields to humans and till 2002 year collected a lot of information for different countries with quantitative analysis of epidemic data. Standardized incidents ratio (SIR) was proposed for evaluation of leukaemia in humans and especially children. Exposure of children in magneticfields > 0,4 µT showed a twofold SIR increasing. Data concerning the subject of an evaluation did not disclose inadequate evidence in humans and experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of magnetic fields of industry frequency, but they are classified as "possibly carcinogenic to humans".


The Millikan oil drop experiment, published in final form in 1913, demonstrated that charge comes in discrete chunks and was a bridge between classical electromagnetism and modern quantum physics.


There are many types of collision warning systems to increase the safety of motorcyclists. These systems use different types of collision detection techniques with each one having some limitations, restricting the performance of the system. To find the effectiveness of collision warning system notifications, it is important to study the physiological response of drivers toward these systems. Existing studies are limited to the physiological response of car drivers and use only buzzer warnings for these systems. Unfortunately, no such work in that particular domain has been reported for motorcyclists. Since motorcycles have different maneuverability as compared with cars and other vehicles, it is important to investigate the response of motorcyclists toward these collision warning systems. Also, it is believed that providing verbal information about any potential hazard will further assist the motorcyclist to avoid it. The aim of this paper is to investigate the physiological responses of motorcyclists to the rear end collision warning system when auditory verbal warnings are utilized. To study the response of the motorcyclists, the N100, N200, P300, and N400 event-related potential components have been extracted from the recorded Electroencephalography data. It has been found that the rear end collision warning system with auditory verbal warnings significantly increases the alertness of the motorcyclist and can be helpful to avoid the possible rear-end collision scenarios. This system has shown positive effects at neural levels on motorcyclists and reduces their reaction time and attentional resources required for processing the target correctly.


This paper examines the patterns of subsidiary autonomy at the organizational periphery: at multinational companies' (MNCs) manufacturing subsidiaries in Hungary. It investigates the impact of upgrading on subsidiary autonomy. Our case study-based investigation (27 in-depth interviews at 14 manufacturing subsidiaries) integrates three previously isolated lines of research: 1) subsidiary upgrading, 2) subsidiary autonomy and 3) headquarters' role in MNCs. We find no direct relation between upgrading and subsidiary autonomy, since external factors such as changes in the business environment and/or in parent companies' strategic decisions often counteract upgrading-induced effects. It is shown that the subsidiaries' moving up the value chain is paralleled by similar upward shifts in parent companies' activity specialization. The reconfiguration of parent companies' activities, together with the expansion of the size and scope of the multinational company will necessarily have an impact on the headquarters' coordination and governance practices: over time they tend to become more formal. [


Cypriot tombs of about 400 B.C. Finally, additions to the Byzantine collection are published by Orlandos, but are beyond the scope of this journal and of this reviewer. The plates are superb. Nearly every object is reproduced life-size, and, where necessary, in several views. The text-figures, which illustrate either details of objects in the collection or comparanda in other collections, are equally good. This book is indeed a credit to Professor Amandry and the University of Strasbourg.


A Lagrangian particle tracking model coupled with the Princeton Ocean Model were used to estimate the average residence time of coastal water in Masan Bay, Korea. Our interest in quantifying the transport time scales in Masan Bay was stimulated by the search for a mechanistic understanding of this spatial variability, which is consistent with the concept of spatially variable transport ti me scales. Tidal simulation was calibrated through a comparison with the results of semi-diurnal current and water elevation measured at the tidal stations of Masan, Gadeokdo. In the model simulations, particles were released in eight cases, including slack before ebb, peak ebb, slack before flood, and peak flood, during both spring and neap tides. The averaged values o btained from the particle release simulations were used for the average residence times of the coastal water in Masan Bay. The average residence times for the southeastern parts of Somodo and the Samho River, Masan Bay were estimated to be about 20~50days and 70~80days, respectively. The spatial difference for the average residence time was controlled by the tidal currents and distance from the mouth of the bay. Our results might provide useful for understanding the transport and behavior of coastal water in a bay and might be used to estimate the dissimilative capacity for environmental assessment.


Micro aerial vehicle (MAV) fleets have gained essential recognition in the decision schemes for precision agriculture, disaster management, and other coverage missions. However, they have some challenges in becoming massively deployed. One of them is resource management in restricted workspaces. This paper proposes a plan to balance resources when considering the practical use of MAVs and workspace in daily chores. The coverage mission plan is based on five stages: world abstraction, area partitioning, role allocation, task generation, and task allocation. The tasks are allocated according to agent roles, Master, Coordinator, or Operator (MCO), which describe their flight autonomy, connectivity, and decision skill. These roles are engaged with the partitioning based on the Voronoi-tessellation but extended to heterogeneous polygons. The advantages of the MCO Plan were evident compared with conventional Boustrophedon decomposition and clustering by K-means. The MCO plan achieved a balanced magnitude and trend of heterogeneity between both methods, involving MAVs with few or intermediate resources. The resulting efficiency was tested in the GAMA platform, with gained energy between 2% and 10% in the mission end. In addition, the MCO plan improved mission times while the connectivity was effectively held, even more, if the Firefly algorithm generated coverage paths.


From its invention in the 1970s, the patch clamp technique is the gold standard in electrophysiology research and drug screening because it is the only tool enabling accurate investigation of voltage-gated ion channels, which are responsible for action potentials. Because of its key role in drug screening, innovation efforts are being made to reduce its complexity toward more automated systems. While some of these new approaches are being adopted in pharmaceutical companies, conventional patch-clamp remains unmatched in fundamental research due to its versatility. Here, we merged the patch clamp and atomic force microscope (AFM) techniques, thus equipping the patch-clamp with the sensitive AFM force control. This was possible using the FluidFM, a force-controlled nanopipette based on microchanneled AFM cantilevers. First, the compatibility of the system with patch-clamp electronics and its ability to record the activity of voltage-gated ion channels in whole-cell configuration was demonstrated with sodium (NaV1.5) channels. Second, we showed the feasibility of simultaneous recording of membrane current and force development during contraction of isolated cardiomyocytes. Force feedback allowed for a gentle and stable contact between AFM tip and cell membrane enabling serial patch clamping and injection without apparent cell damage.


In the present paper, adults of the family Gripopterygidae collected in Paranapiacaba mountains are analyzed, the new species are described and a key to species of this family from this area is presented. Twenty one species in four genera of Gripopterygidae are recorded in Paranapiacaba mountains, São Paulo State, Brazil. Gripopteryx comprises six species: Gripopteryx cancellata, Gripopteryx reticulata, Gripopteryx garbei, Gripopteryx coruja, Gripopteryx pinima and Gripopteryx flinti. Paragripopteryx is represented by eight species: Paragripopteryx klapaleki, Paragripopteryx anga, Paragripopteryx blanda, Paragripopteryx egena, Paragripopteryx hamata and three new species: Paragripopteryx intervalensis, Paragripopteryx kapilei and Paragripopteryx paranapiacabae. Tupiperla is represented by six species: Tupiperla gracilis, Tupiperla tessellata, Tupiperla eleonorae, Tupiperla umbya and two new species, Tupiperla amandae and Tupiperla froehlichi. Guaranyperla is represented by only one species: Guaranyperla guapiara.


Two F 1 , two F 2 and two backcross (BC) full-sib families of Salix sachalinensis · S. viminalis were tested for resistance to two pathotypes of Melampsora larici-epitea in leaf-disc inoculation experiments. Two single-pustule isolates, VM and ST, belonging to pathotypes LET1 and LET5, respectively, were used in the tests. Disease was scored based on the number of uredinia, uredinial diameter and inoculum densities. Both F 1 families were completely resistant to both VM and ST. Resistance to VM segregated at a 9:6:1 ratio in the F 2 families and at a 1:2:1 ratio in the BC families, suggesting that two independently segregating genes controlled rust resistance, with resistance dominant over susceptibility. This also indicates incomplete dominance of the resistance alleles over the susceptibility to VM. For ST, the equivalent ratios were 3:1 and 1:1, showing that a single dominant gene was responsible for rust resistance. The broad sense heritabilities were >0 Æ 91 for uredinial diameter and 0 Æ 1–0 Æ 33 for the number of uredinia. There were significant overall correlations between data from inoculations with VM and those from inoculations with ST in the number of uredinia, uredinial diameter and disease scores (Spearman's rank correlation coefficients = 0 Æ 31–0 Æ 75).


Film flows on inclined surfaces are often assumed to be of constant thickness, which ensures that the velocity profile is half-Poiseuille. It is shown here that by shallow water theory, only flows in a portion of Reynolds number-Froude number (Re–Fr) plane can asymptotically attain constant film thickness. In another portion on the plane, the constant thickness solution appears as an unstable fixed point, while in other regions the film thickness seems to asymptote to a positive slope. Our simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations confirm the predictions of shallow water theory at higher Froude numbers, but disagree with them at lower Froude numbers. We show that different regimes of film flow show completely different stability behaviour from that predicted earlier. Supercritical decelerating flows are shown to be always unstable, whereas accelerating flows become unstable below a certain Reynolds number for a given Froude number. Subcritical flows on the other hand are shown to be unstable above a certain Reynolds number. In some range of parameters, two solutions for the base flow exist, and the attached profile is found to be more stable. All flows except those with separation become more stable as they proceed downstream.


The start-ups in the medical device industry (the so-called Med Tech) are presented to compete through the digital transformation and the new technologies available to them, the most appropriate supply from suppliers to providers and patients, in order to address threats and improve growth and development profitability. Med Tech companies with a well-trained workforce and with the development of DCN (digital networks) will offer a more cost-effective and beneficial strategy. Exploring new ways will raise their bottom lines, creating active momentum with many benefits in the future. In order to implement all this, security and guarantees of possible threats are needed. Needs need to be developed repeatedly because the goals will be constantly changing in order to build the confidence of the definitive successful initiative. Research and innovation will contribute to the introduction of new health technologies to improve the health of the population through more effective healthcare.
There are various strategies to address the challenges of empowering and enhancing health technologies in emerging economies and developing countries. Med Tech companies are moving dynamically into the healthcare field to meet any challenges, providing flexible technology products with processes and systems to carry out business activities.
In this thesis, health policies aimed at improving patient-citizen health services will be analyzed. Emphasis will be placed on innovative technologies to provide quality healthcare services, with the most modern and efficient conditions for a sustainable and efficient healthcare system.


The g-factors of the rotational states along the positive parity yrast band in even-even nuclei 84Zr were measured up to a spin I = 16+ by a transient magnetic field-ion implanted perturbed angular distribution method and calculated by a cranking shell model. A peak structure of the g-factors has been observed for the first time. The measured g-factors confirm the mixed configuration of proton and neutron alignments.


Water conservation is increasingly important for growers in the United States, but there is little information on the use of alternative irrigation systems, such as ebb and flow, for the production of bedding plants. The objective of this study was to quantify the growth of Petunia × hybrida Hort. Vilm.-Andr. Blue Frost' and Begonia × semperflorens-cultorum Hort. 'Ambassador Scarlet' grown in an ebb and flow system in three soilless media and fertilized with P at 0, 50, or 100 mg.L -1 in the fertigation solution. After 5 weeks, plants grown with 50 or 100 mg.L -1 P had greater dry weight, height, and width than plants grown with 0 mg.L -1 P. Begonias grown with 50 or 100 mg.L -1 P had 38% more flowers than did those grown without P. Petunias flowered 4 to 7 days earlier when no P included in the fertilizer. Growing media had little effect on the plants. Begonias grown in Metro-Mix 220 had more inflorescences than those grown in Metro-Mix 366 Coir. Changes in electrical conductivity (EC) and pH of all three media were similar over the course of the experiment. The EC dropped during the third and fourth week and rose again in the fifth week. The pH of the leachate from all three media dropped by an average of 1 unit during the experiment. The results indicate that petunias and begonias may be grown successfully with ebb and flow irrigation, using a variety of fertilizers and growing media. However, P must be included in the fertigation solution for optimal plant quality.


We propose a decentralized receiver for extra-large multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) arrays. Our method operates with no central processing unit (CPU) and all the signal detection tasks are done in distributed nodes. We exploit a combined message-passing framework to design an uncoordinated detection scheme that overcomes three major challenges in the XL-MIMO systems: computational complexity, scalability and non-stationarities in user energy distribution. Our numerical evaluations show a significant performance improvement compared to benchmark distributed methods while operating very close to the centralized receivers.


Background: Cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIED) are becoming more common for the management of underlying of cardiac dysrhythmias, and more patients with these devices are presenting for cardiac and noncardiac procedures. Methods: We performed a retrospective, cohort, single-center study at a tertiary teaching medical center, gathering 151 patients with CIED undergoing elective and emergent surgeries for the time period between November 2013 and December 2016. We aimed to determine whether patients with CIED had the device interrogated before surgery as recommended by the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS)/American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) consensus, whether this lack of compliance led to delay in the holding area before surgery and determine the presence of intra- or postoperative cardiac events in these patients. Results: A total of 76% of patients had interrogation of the device before surgery. Emergent cases were not interrogated as much as elective cases preoperatively (43% vs. 18%, respectively; P < 0.05). In total, 6% of cases had a CIED-related average holding area delay time of 54 minutes. Patients without preoperative device interrogation had more perioperative cardiac events than those who had the device checked (25% vs. 8%, respectively; odds ratio [OR] 0.26; 95% CI, 0.09–0.7, P < 0.013). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that preoperative interrogation of the device plays a significant role to minimize the incidence of perioperative cardiac adverse events. Institutional providers show a lack of compliance with HRS/ASA recommendations for preoperative CIED management. Further research is required to determine if improved compliance to recommendations will lead to enhanced outcomes.


In recent years the use of digital communication has increased. This also increased the chance to find privileged data in the digital evidence. Privileged data is protected by law from viewing by anyone other than the client. It is up to the digital investigator to handle this privileged data properly without being able to view the contents. Procedures on handling this information are available, but do not provide any practical information nor is it known how effective filtering is. The objective of this paper is to describe the handling of privileged data in the current digital forensic tools and the creation of a script within the digital forensic tool Nuix. The script automates the handling of privileged data to minimize the exposure of the contents to the digital investigator. The script also utilizes technology within Nuix that extends the automated search of identical privileged document to relate files based on their contents. A comparison of the 'traditional' ways of filtering within the digital forensic tools and the script written in Nuix showed that digital forensic tools are still limited when used on privileged data. The script manages to increase the effectiveness as direct result of the use of relations based on file content.


Background: Reconstruction of the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) is a common surgical procedure; however, the outcome of the reconstruction often depends on the graft fixation method. Many fixation devices are available commercially and new devices and methods are emerging on a regular basis. The Infiloop fixed loop suture button and Helysis interference screw are state-of-the-art ACL Reconstruction (ACLR) fixation devices and the present study proposed to assess the functional outcomes and complications associated with them. Methods: This is a retrospective observational study conducted after obtaining the ethical clearance from institutional ethical committee. Patients between 18-60 years who underwent ACLR surgery between April 2018 to July 2022 using the Infiloop fixed loop suture button and Helysis interference screw were included in this study. Functional outcome of the operated knee was evaluated by IKDC, Lysholm score, Tegner activity score, and SANE score. Results: Out of the 33 patients included in this study, 23 were male and 10 were female. For all patients, femoral fixation of the graft was done using Infiloop Fixed loop suture button whereas for tibial fixation, Helysis Titanium Interference screw was used in 24 patients and Helysis PLDLA-βTCP Interference screw was used in 9 patients. Out of the 24 subjects that had an associated meniscal injury, meniscus repair was done for 6 patients, using Surestich All inside meniscal repair implant. All functional outcome scores showed improvement post ACLR surgery: IKDC score 83.25, Lysholm score 96.30, SANE score 81%, and Tegner activity pre-surgery score levels 1.24 vs post-surgery 3.15. There were no reports of infection and wound related complications. Conclusion: This study shows that use of Infiloop fixed loop suture button and Helysis interference screw resulted in improved positive functional outcome and are not associated with any complications post ACLR surgery.


Key words: Liana assemblage, species composition, community, dynamics, canopy openness, Manniophyton fulvum, functional traits, population density, pervasive change. This study analyzes the diversity, composition, and dynamics of the liana assemblage of the Ituri rain forest in northeastern DR Congo. I used data from two 10-ha plots of the Ituri Forest Dynamics Plots, in which all liana stems ≥2 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) were marked, mapped, measured and identified in 1994, 2001 and 2007. In addition, the plot topography and canopy structure were measured. Chapter 2 analyzes the liana assemblage (in terms of species richness, abundance and diversity), characterizes liana functional traits and determines effects of forest structure, topography and edaphic variation on liana species composition. In 20 ha, 15008 liana individuals were found, representing 195 species, 83 genera and 34 plant families. Per hectare species number averaged 64, basal area was 0.71 m2 and Fisher alpha, Shannon and Simpson diversity indices were 17.9, 3.1 and 11.4, respectively. There was oligarchic dominance of 10 plant families that represented 69% of total species richness, 92% of liana abundance and 92% of basal area, while ten dominant species accounted for 63% of abundance and 59% of basal area. Forty-one species (21%) were represented by one individual only. Most lianas were light-demanding, climbed their hosts by twining, and had conspicuous flowers, medium-sized leaves and animal-dispersed propagules. Liana abundance increased with abundance of medium-sized and large trees but was, surprisingly, independent of small-tree abundance. Canopy openness, soil moisture, and tree size were the most important environmental factors influencing abundance and distribution of lianas. In Chapter 3 I investigate changes in structural characteristics, diversity, recruitment, mortality and growth of the liana community over the thirteen years (1994 ¬- 2007). Liana density decreased from 750 (1994) through 547 (2001) to 499 (2007) stems ha-1, with concomitant declines in basal area and above-ground biomass. Despite lower stem densities the species richness remained constant over time. Total liana recruitment rates decreased slightly from 8.6% per year in the first period to 6.6% in the second, but this decrease was not significant. Liana mortality rates decreased significantly from 7.2% to 4.4% per year over the two census intervals. Diameter growth rates and survival increased with liana stem diameter. Surprisingly, liana abundance in Ituri showed recent declines, rather than recent increases, as has been reported for tropical and temperate forests in the Americas. Interestingly, changes in overall liana community structure and composition were mostly driven by one species only: the dramatic collapse of superabundant Manniophyton fulvum between the first and the second census. In chapter 4 I investigated species-specific dynamics of the 79 most abundant liana species, representing 13,156 of the stems (97% of total) in two 10-ha plots. I evaluated their demographic performance and the relation if the vital rates (growth, mortality, recruitment) to the species abundance and four functional traits (climbing strategy, dispersal syndrome, leaf size and light requirements) to determine across species variations and major strategies characterizing species. Vital rates shared a wide interspecific variation; species-specific recruitment rates varied from 0.0-10.9%, mortality rates from 0.43-7.89% over 13-year, and growth rates from -0.03-3.51 mm y-1. Most species had low to moderate rates. Species that grew fast tended also to recruit and die fast, but recruitment and mortality rates were not directly related, suggesting that species shift in absolute abundance over the 13 year period. However, with the exception of the collapsing Manniophyton fulvum population, species maintained their rank-dominance over time. Species growth declined with abundance, but recruitment and mortality rates were not related to abundance. The demographic performance of liana species varied weakly with their climbing strategy and dispersal mode but was, surprisingly, not related to their lifetime light requirements. A principle components analysis of liana strategies in terms of functional traits and vital rates showed that light demand, and dispersal syndrome were the most determining traits. Based on the PCA three functional guilds were distinguished. I conclude that old-growth forest liana species show a large variation in abundance and vital rates, and that density-dependent mechanisms are insufficient to explain the species abundance patterns over time. Lianas are thought to globally increase in density, but we have limited knowledge about the taxonomic patterns of change in liana abundance, and the underlying vital rates that explain changes in liana density. In chapter 5 the changes in abundance of 79 relatively abundant liana species are evaluated. The Ituri forest showed a pervasive change in liana population density in the last decade. 37 species changed significantly in their abundance over time: 12 (15% of total) species increased, and 25 (32%) species decreased. 42 (53%) species did not change. Of the 48 genera, 40% decreased and 52% stayed the same. Five of the 12 increasing species belonged to the Celastraceae, which also was the only significantly increasing family. Surprisingly, none of the four functional traits (lifetime light requirements, climbing mechanism, dispersal mechanism, and leaf size) was significantly associated with species change in population density. Many decreasing species, however, are associated with disturbed habitats and are short-lived. Many increasing species are late successional and longer-lived. Increasing species have a slightly higher recruitment, decreasing species a higher mortality. This study suggests that changes in the liana community result from forest recovery from past disturbances. Rising atmospheric CO2 level was not a likely explanation for liana change: more species declined than increased, and increasing species did not have higher growth rates. In the Ituri Forest local stand dynamics override more global drivers of liana change.


Summary A quantitative determination of soluble fibrin in plasma was carried out by affinity chromatography. For this purpose, desAA-fibrin and fibrinogen immobilized on Sepharose 4B were used at the stationary side whereas batroxobin-induced 125I-desAA-fibrin or thrombin-induced 125I-desAABB-fibrin mixed with plasma containing 131I-fibrinogen represented the fluid phase. The binding characteristics of these mixtures to the immobilized proteins were compared at 20° C and 37° C. Complete binding of both types of fibrin to the immobilized desAA-fibrin was always seen at 20° C as well as at 37° C. However, binding of soluble fibrin was accompanied by substantial binding of fibrinogen that was more pronounced at 20° C. Striking differences depending on the temperature at which the affinity chromatography was carried out, were documented for the fibrinogen-fibrin interaction. At 20° C more than 90% of the applied desAA-fibrin was bound to the immobilized fibrinogen whereas at 37° C only a mean of 17% were retained at the fibrinogen-Sepharose column. An opposite finding with regard to the tested temperature was made with the desAABB-fibrin. Nearly complete binding to insolubilized fibrinogen was found at 37° C (95%) but only 58% of the desAABB-fibrin were bound at 20° C. The binding patterns did not change when the experiments were performed in the presence of calcium ions. The opposite behaviour of the two types of soluble fibrin to immobilized fibrinogen at the different temperatures, together with the substantial binding of fibrinogen in the presence of soluble fibrin to insolubilized fibrin in every setting tested, devaluates affinity chromatography as a tool in the quantitative assessment of soluble fibrin in patients' plasma.


The City of Cambridge is one of the fastest growing and strongest economic areas in Canada with a population of over 125,000 people. It is strategically located within Waterloo Region on both sides of Highway 401 in southwestern Ontario. With a view to promoting sustainable transportation, City of Cambridge Council approved a 20-year Bikeway Network Master Plan in the spring of 2008. It recommended that an additional 112 km of cycling facilities be added to the existing 48 km of on-road cycling facilities. The network focuses on integration with Waterloo Region's Cycling Network and the City's off-road trails, to provide a viable alternative to motor vehicle usage for commuters, in addition to supporting recreational cycling. The Master Plan also recommended a wide range of policy and land use planning initiatives to ensure that future growth will facilitate improved transportation demand management. Implementation of the plan began in the fall of 2008. The paper will focus on the development of the 20-year Bikeway Network Master Plan, the challenges encountered, and the strategies within the plan for the design, funding, implementation, maintenance, and promotion of cycling routes and facilities in the City of Cambridge.


This study investigated the expression and characterization of two polygalacturonases (PG1 and PG2) of Fusarium graminearum during infection of wheat spikelets; after purification, these were demonstrated to be products of two unique endo-pg genes annotated in the genome database of F. graminearum. Both genes (Fgpg1 and Fgpg2) were expressed in vitro and during spike infection. PG1 had a greater specific activity, with a maximum at pH 5–7, was largely secreted in liquid culture and clearly detectable in the infected ovary tissue. PG2 was more active at pH 7–7·8, was poorly secreted in liquid culture and faintly detectable in infected ovaries. Both PG-encoding genes were maximally expressed 24 h after wheat spikelet infection, paralleling the expression of a pectin lyase (Fgpnl1) gene; they anticipated the expression of a xylanase gene (FgxylA) that was induced only 48 h after infection with a maximum at 96 h. These data strongly indicate F. graminearum-secreted PG activity at an early stage of wheat infection.


The 1000 m high D. Joao de Castro seamount lies in the middle of the Azores Archipelago (Portugal) on the hyperslow-spreading Terceira rift in the Atlantic. Hydrothermal vents were found near the top of the seamount and occurred in two distinct colour zonations, white and yellow, 50 metres apart from each other. The two zones are characterized by different physical and chemical properties. The macro-species composition at the shallow vents on top of the seamount was similar to the coastal and seamount area of the Azorean Archipelago. Preliminary data on the influence of the shallow water hydrothermal activity on the marine biota is presented here. This study suggests presence of protists and bacteria adapted to metal rich waters of this ecosystem. Several - algae and animals are also inhabiting this shallow water vent system. The heterogeneity of the vent fluids in the two contrasted areas is reflected by the differences found in the organisms collected and in accumulated metals in their tissues. Nevertheless, as differences have been also evidenced between species and the metals, more work needs to be carried out to understand the role of the different metal fractions in the environment and particularly in the food-web.


Objective To analyze, treatment of ipsilateral Pilon and calcaneal fractures (IPCF). Methods Injury causes included fallings in seven patients, traffic injury in two and impact injury in one, with ISS score of 5-22 points. There were seven patients with open injuries and 3 with close ones. Nine pa-tients had Ⅱ-Ⅲ degree of Pilon fractures according to the AO/OTA classification and six comminuted com-pression calcaneal fractures according to the Essex-Loprest classification. The Pilon fractures were fixed by cannulated nail, screw or Kirschner wire through open reduction in six patients including four fixed with ex-ternal fixators (the calcaneal fractures were fixed with percutaneous eannulated nail or Kirschner wire by poking reduction). The calcaneal fractures were fixed with only Kirschner wire through poking reduction in two patients and double fractures treated conservatively in two. Results The reduction of Pilon and cal-caneal fractures treated by operation were markedly improved in six patients, while there occurred angular deformity and joint surface introeession in the patients treated conservatively. The wound healing of soft tis-sue was sound in seven patients but unsatisfactory in the other three. The ankle-hind foot score was 82-94 points in four patients who were followed up. Conclusions IPCF is caused by the high energy force and characterized by severe injures of the soft tissues and the bone tissues at the distal tibia and calcaneua, for which limited internal fixation plus external fixation are suitable treatment choice.

Key words:
Tibial fractures;  Calcaneus;  Fracture fixation;  Poking reduction


Packet manipulation attack is one of the challenging threats in cyber-physical systems (CPSs) and Internet of Things (IoT), where information packets are corrupted during transmission by compromised devices. These attacks consume network resources, result in delays in decision making, and could potentially lead to triggering wrong actions that disrupt an overall system's operation. Such malicious attacks as well as unintentional faults are difficult to locate/identify in a large-scale mesh-like multihop network, which is the typical topology suggested by most IoT standards. In this paper, first, we propose a novel network architecture that utilizes powerful nodes that can support two distinct communication link technologies for identification of malicious networked devices (with typical singlelink technology). Such powerful nodes equipped with dual-link technologies can reveal hidden information within meshed connections that is hard to otherwise detect. By applying machine intelligence at the dual-link nodes, malicious networked devices in an IoT network can be accurately identified. Second, we propose two techniques based on unsupervised machine learning, namely hard detection and soft detection, that enable dual-link nodes to identify malicious networked devices. Our techniques exploit network diversity as well as the statistical information computed by dual-link nodes to identify the trustworthiness of resource-constrained devices. Simulation results show that the detection accuracy of our algorithms is superior to the conventional watchdog scheme, where nodes passively listen to neighboring transmissions to detect corrupted packets. The results also show that as the density of the dual-link nodes increases, the detection accuracy improves and the false alarm rate decreases.


Temperature dependences of the dark conductivity and the photoconductivity for amorphous thin films of Ga30Se70-xInx in the temperature range 298-328 K have been reported. The dark conductivity and the photoconductivity increase at all temperatures as the concentration of In (x=0, 5, 10, 15 and 20) increases. The results are interpreted in terms of the shift of Fermi level in impurity-incorporated amorphous Ga30Se70 binary alloy.


In this article, we revisit the issue of environmental change as a potential determinant of international migration, thereby providing an extension of our earlier paper. In contrast to Beine and Parsons (2015, The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 117, 723–767) and in light of recent empirical contributions, we adopt an alternative identification strategy in which we only include fixed effects together with our measures of climatic change to quantify the net partial effect of climatic change on bilateral migration. Again drawing on panel data from 1960 to 2000, we further exploit the dyadic dimension of our data to highlight the importance of neighbouring countries and former colonial powers in determining the direction of climate-induced emigration. Our baseline results suggest that climatic shocks affect individuals' financial constraints more than their desire to move. Our key findings are that natural disasters tend to deter emigration but importantly spur emigration to neighbouring countries. For middle-income origins, natural disasters, while deterring migration, foster emigration to former colonial powers.


In despite of rapid oil and gas industry development, a major problem has been faced by the world is oil spill. During transportation of crude oil, accidents or unwanted events may happen thus causing catastrophic incident of oil spilling over ocean causing huge amount of loss and damage to environment. Currents methods of responding to oil spills are mostly to preventing the oil from damaging the ecosystem and making sure the oil is disintegrated or removed quickly as possible from the exposed environment of ocean. However, this existing practical methods does not recover the oil from ocean but merely preventing further damage to ocean and its ecosystem. In this study, Kapok fibre or scientific name Ceiba Pentandra – an agricultural product which has excellent water repellency will be investigated on its oil absorbency. This fibre naturally has hydrophobic and oleophilic character which allows it to selectively absorb oil from water without absorbing any water. This study will be focused on studying the modified Kapok fibre and their performance on oil absorbency. Modification is an act of changing the Kapok's fibre structure using chemical. Chemical that was being used in this study are Sodium Hydroxide and Sodium Chlorite. Investigation was conducted over the Kapok fibre to find out how does the modification affects the sorption of oil in water. Tests such as Absorbency test, Reusability test and Optimum Time test were conducted in order to prove that modification has effects on the Kapok fibre oil sorption. From the findings, Kapok fibre has shown promising future in being sorbent material for boomers to be used in oil spilled clean up.


Chlamydia pneumoniae is a common respiratory pathogen associated with atypical pneumonia, and it has been suggested as a trigger or promoter of several chronic inflammatory conditions, such as asthma and atherosclerosis. The β form of IL-1 (IL-1β) is a proinflammatory cytokine released by many cell types and is an important mediator of inflammation during infection. IL-1β production is a tightly controlled process that includes regulation at multiple levels and typically requires two distinct signals for activation and release. In this study, we investigated the ability of C. pneumoniae to induce IL-1β secretion. We found that C. pneumoniae was unique among the other Chlamydia species tested in its ability to potently induce secretion of mature IL-1β from unprimed bone marrow-derived macrophages during a productive infection. TLR2 was required for induction of pro–IL-1β, whereas the NLRP3/ASC was required for caspase-1 activation and pro–IL-1β cleavage to produce mature IL-1β. Caspase-1 cleavage was independent of endogenous ATP release, but required potassium flux, lysosomal acidification, and cathepsin B release. We further investigated the role of IL-1 in host defense against C. pneumoniae-induced pneumonia using mice deficient in the type I IL-1R. Although the IL-1R−/− mice developed an inflammatory infiltrate, the number of infiltrating neutrophils was lower, whereas there was evidence of increased infiltrating fibroblasts and mesenchymal cells and more lung fibrosis. We conclude that C. pneumoniae directly activates the NLRP3/ASC inflammasome, leading to the release of biologically active IL-1β, and that concurrent IL-1 signaling is required for optimal host defense against acute bacterial pneumonia.


Effects of physical stimulus and psychic stimulus on the galvanic skin response (GSR) in rats were evaluated. A significant change in the GSR was observed after exposing the rat to the noise of hand-clapping, and introducing another rat into the cage. The latter stimulus had a much greater effect than the former. Changes in GSR were measured after various animals were introduced into the test cage. A shift in the GSR in intrusion of guinea pig or rabbit was significantly greater than that in intrusion of Wistar rat, but no difference was observed in intrusion of rat and mouse. Changes in GSR were studied by introducing another animal into the test cage containing a single rat (isolated state) or a pair of rats (grouped state). The change in the GSR in the grouped state was generally smaller than that in the isolated state, but there was no difference in the score between these states when a rabbit was introduced. When the effect of drugs on changing of GSR was investigated, we found that elevation of GSR value, as induced by exogenous stimuli, was inhibited by tranquilizers such as chlorpromazine, carpipramine and diazepam. These tranquilizers in a remarkably small dose had an apparent effect on the psychic, mutual relation in GSR test in rats.


The speed and maneuvering performance of the heavy vehicles and ordinary passenger cars is analyzed in this paper, and we further study the heavy vehicles' interruption to the behavior of the drivers nearby. Lane-changing behavior will be seen near the intersection due to different driving destinations. Based on the cellular automaton simulation model, we establish an intersection traffic flow simulation model for port collecting and distributing. By simulations, the average vehicle control delay and queue evaluation length can be got, and eventually we analyze the traffic simulation results through the space-time diagram1.


Over a one year period, 807 faecal samples from children (0-12 years) were submitted for routine microbiological examination and screening for Cryptosporidium oocysts. A Phenol-auramine stain was used and putative oocysts were measured afler confirmatory staining with the modified Ziehl Neelsen method. Cryptosporidium were identified in 16 (1.9%) of the samples, and was the third most common enteropathogen after Giardio lamlia (6.0%) and Entomoeba histolytica/dispar (2.3 %). With the exception of two patients with underlying immunodeficiency disorders, all were immunocompetent. No cases of Cryprosporidium were diagnosed during the hottest months of May and June.


The development of inhibitory 'allo' antibodies to a deficient coagulation factor is arguably now the most severe and important complication of clotting factor concentrate exposure in haemophilia and other congenital coagulation disorders. Furthermore, development of an inhibitor to the factor VIII or factor IX transgene product remains a significant concern in gene therapy protocols for haemophilia. Although the development of an inhibitor does not usually change the rate, initial severity or pattern of bleeding, it does compromise the ability to manage haemorrhage in affected individuals, resulting in a greater rate of complications, cost and disability. The purpose of this review is to summarize current understanding of the epidemiology, immunobiology, laboratory evaluation and management of inhibitors arising in patients with congenital coagulation disorders. An attempt has been made to focus on recent advances in the immunology of inhibitors, and to speculate on their potential clinical application.


Round-trip Machine Translation (MT) is a popular choice for paraphrase generation, which leverages readily available parallel corpora for supervision. In this paper, we formalize the implicit similarity function induced by this approach, and show that it is susceptible to non-paraphrase pairs sharing a single ambiguous translation. Based on these insights, we design an alternative similarity metric that mitigates this issue by requiring the entire translation distribution to match, and implement a relaxation of it through the Information Bottleneck method. Our approach incorporates an adversarial term into MT training in order to learn representations that encode as much information about the reference translation as possible, while keeping as little information about the input as possible. Paraphrases can be generated by decoding back to the source from this representation, without having to generate pivot translations. In addition to being more principled and efficient than round-trip MT, our approach offers an adjustable parameter to control the fidelity-diversity trade-off, and obtains better results in our experiments.


A simplified three-dimensional (3-D) zero-thickness shell model was developed to recover the non-spherical response of thick-shelled encapsulated microbubbles subjected to ultrasound excitation. The model was validated by comparison with previously developed models and was then used to study the mechanism of bubble break-up during non-spherical deformations resulting from the presence of a nearby rigid boundary. The effects of the shell thickness and the bubble standoff distance from the solid wall on the bubble break-up were studied parametrically for a fixed insonification frequency and amplitude. A diagram of bubble shapes versus the normalized shell thickness and wall standoff was derived, and the potential bubble shapes at break-up from reentrant jets were categorized resulting in four distinct zones.


Traditional approaches to knowledge base completion have been based on symbolic representations. Low-dimensional vector embedding models proposed recently for this task are attractive since they generalize to possibly unlimited sets of relations. A significant drawback of previous embedding models for KB completion is that they merely support reasoning on individual relations (e.g., bornIn(X,Y ) ⇒ nationality(X,Y )). In this work, we develop models for KB completion that support chains of reasoning on paths of any length using compositional vector space models. We construct compositional vector representations for the paths in the KB graph from the semantic vector representations of the binary relations in that path and perform inference directly in the vector space. Unlike previous methods, our approach can generalize to paths that are unseen in training and, in a zero-shot setting, predict target relations without supervised training data for that relation.


Background
Many approaches to the lumbar spine have been developed for interbody fusion. The biomechanical profile of each interbody fusion device is determined by the anatomical approach and the type of supplemental internal fixation. Lateral lumbar interbody fusion (LLIF) was developed as a minimally invasive technique for introducing hardware with higher profiles and wider widths, compared with that for the posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) approach. However, the biomechanics of the interbody fusion construct used in the LLIF approach have not been rigorously evaluated, especially in the presence of secondary augmentation.

Methods
Spinal stability of 21 cadaveric lumbar specimens was compared using standard nondestructive flexibility studies [mean range of motion (ROM), lax zone (LZ), stiff zone (SZ) in flexion-extension, lateral bending, and axial rotation]. Non-paired comparisons were made among four conditions: (I) intact; (II) with unilateral interbody + bilateral pedicle screws (BPS) using the LLIF approach (referred to as the LLIF construct); (III) with bilateral interbody + BPS using the PLIF approach (referred to as the PLIF construct); and (IV) with no lumbar interbody fusion (LIF) + BPS (referred to as the no-LIF construct).

Results
With bilateral pedicle screw-rod fixation, stability was equivalent between PLIF and LLIF constructs in lateral bending and flexion-extension. PLIF and LLIF constructs had similar biomechanical profiles, with a trend toward less ROM in axial rotation for the LLIF construct.

Conclusions
LLIF and PLIF constructs had similar stabilizing effects.


Two emerging serial storage interfaces, Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) and Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) are studied in this paper. The advantages of these two emerging standards include (1) simple cabling system (serial instead of parallel), (2) higher bandwidth, (3) capable of connecting a large number (more than one hundred) of disks, (4) fault tolerance and (5) fair access of the channel. We intend to nd the performance limitations and characteristics of these two interfaces. We have investigated the performance of both SSA and FC-AL in terms of latency, overhead and aggregate throughput under three types of traac load: light, heavy and based on a trace log from a database application. We have also studied the fairness algorithms of SSA and FC-AL. The results presented in this paper not only enhance our knowledge of SSA and FC-AL, but can also be used to eeectively utilize the two technologies for potential applications. Division for numerous discussions on the details of SSA. We also would like to thank Cort Fergusson, Mike Miller and Jim Coomes at Seagate Technology for providing us valuable information on FC-AL. The trace data used in our study was provided by William Glantz at IBM Rochester. Without their assistance, we have no way to complete our study.


In this study, we investigated the genetic diversity and relationships in some Corchorus olitorius L. grown in South-West Nigeria. We used random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers in a total of 17 Corchorus olitorius L. cultivars. Twenty-two RAPD markers detected 96 polymorphic alleles (average, 4.36) and a high number of unique alleles (29%) in eight lines. Genetic distance based on RAPD data (Euclidean distance) ranged from 0.05 to 0.53 with a mean of 0.23, indicating low detected genetic diversity among the cultivars. Cluster analysis of RAPD data based on unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) grouped Corchorus olitorius L. cultivars into two main groups. Majority of the lines (15) were assigned into Group I which included lines collected from the same or different places. The second group consisted of two cultivars (EW05 and EW06) collected from the same place. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based on genetic distance also separated the cultivars into two groups. Genetic diversity has been narrowed in these cultivars suggesting possible effects of domestication and selection processes.


Background:Because of the fact that the mechanism of anticonvulsant action of Gabapentin is not yet clear, so the aim of our present study was to determine whether the voltage-gated sodium channels (VGSC) may be correlate with its mechanism. To achieve this goal, Cypermethrin was chosen as a (convulsion inducer) resulting from its prolongs the opening of (VGSC) in order to interfere with Gabapentin .
Method:The experiment animals were divided into four groups. The first group was treated with a single dose of Cypermethrin (1000 mg / kg, orally), while the second and third group were treated with a single dose of Gabapentin (100 mg / kg, orally)15 or 30 minutes before the Cypermethrin treatment respectively. The fourth group was treated with Gabapentin alone in a dose of (100 mg / kg, orally) .After the end of treatment of the chicks were transferred to the cages to be monitored individually and recorded percentages of appearance of nervous signs and the percentage of each mortality and protection against mortality.
Results: Chicks treated with Cypermethrin alone (1000 mg / kg, orally)showed nervous signs which included the jerking movements of the leg and wings (clonic convulsion) and whole body tremors accompanied with opisthotonos at percentages (80%, 100%,60%) respectively that end with death at (100%) , but the pretreatment of chicks with Gabapentin (100 mg / kg, orally) resulted in time-dependent protection against Cypermethrin-induced nervous signs and mortality,which representing by significantly decrease in the percentage of each clonic convulsion,whole body tremors and mortality to (0%, 20% and 20%) respectively and accompanied by significant increase the percentage of protection of chicks against mortality to (80%) in the group that pretreatment with Gabapentin 30 minute before administration of Cypermethrin compared with control group (Cypermethrin alone).
We conclude from our results that recorded for the first time the Gabapentin provided protection to chicks against Cypermethrin-induced nervous signs and mortality , this result may be related to effect of Gabapentin on (VGSC). Thus, the currently study will open the way to use Cypermethrin as a model in scientific research that detect the mechanisms of action of anticonvulsant drugs .


For 63 soil series distributed in Jeju Island, natural uncultivated soils in each soil series were collected, and their physicochemical properties and their concentrations of 19 heavy metals including 8 heavy metals which are regulated by Korean Soil Environment Conservation Law, were analyzed. Moreover, the correlations between physicochemical properties and heavy metal concentrations, and between heavy metal concentrations were analyzed. The heavy metals distributed in the higher concentrations and the lower concentrations with arithmetric mean value, were Mn(730 mg/kg) and Ba(493 mg/kg), and Hg(0.146 mg/kg) and Tl(0.096 mg/kg), respectively. The correlations between pH(H2O) and heavy metals(Hg, Ni, Co, Se), between pH(NaF) and heavy metals(Hg, Ba, Se, Tl), and between organic matter content and heavy metals(Hg, Tl) were significant at the 0.01 level. From the correlations between heavy metal concentrations, there were 22 where there were significant at the 0.01 level and they showed positive correlation. Among those, the heavy metals showing the correlation higher than r=0.5, were Sb-V(0.878), Mo-Sn(0.867), Co-V(0.654), Co-Sb(0.648), Be-Sn(0.546), and Sn-Tl(0.528).


Over the past few months, there have been a number of significant changes to the editorial peer-review system for Superconductor Science and Technology (SUST) and I would like to take this opportunity to clarify them. All regular papers submitted to the journal will now be reviewed by at least two independent anonymous referees. In the past, we have sought only one report before consulting with the Editor-in-Chief. This change is being introduced to bring SUST into line with the standard practices of IOP Publishing journals. We have now also reviewed the procedure for handling rapid communications. Rapid communications are short papers describing work that can be considered as being a major breakthrough or having major significance within the field. As such these articles are fast-tracked through our production process post-acceptance. All authors of rapid communications must now submit a letter of justification with their article explaining why their manuscript requires urgent attention. In addition, rapid communications will now be pre-reviewed by our Rapid Communications and Reviews Editor, who will make an editorial judgement as to whether it should be considered as a rapid communication or as a regular paper. We will still seek two reports from independent referees for all rapid communications. We believe that these new procedures will help us to increase the overall quality of what is already a recognized high-impact journal for the superconductivity community. We will be making further changes to the peer-review system over the coming months and I will write to you again when they are ready to be implemented. If you have any suggestions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com.


This applied study was aimed at giving an insight to practitioners and academicians as well as investors and interested parties in understanding the characteristics and processes of an interesting shari'ah-compliant equity financing vehicle. Therefore, effort in identifying the related shari'ah concept and tenets as well as principles was closely studied in depth in order to justify on the validity of the instrument for the users of such financing facility. Related available documents were scrutinised in detail. A simple model of this form of vehicle was then proposed in this study. Thus, contributions in term of an innovation can offer a new knowledge to the practitioners as well as academicians and the interested parties of this financing instrument. Qualitative method of research and descriptive approach to research were applied in this study as they were appropriate in looking into the research issue understudied. Capitalising on the explored and examined instrument shall then become the basis in innovating more sophisticated models for multiplicity of instruments to be made available in the capital market both for domestic and foreign markets. In conclusion, this study contributed in term of an innovation initiative aimed at sustaining economic growth to up-hold the on going concern of enterprises during economic recession turbulence.

 Key words: Shari'ah-compliant, equity financing vehicle, diminishing musharakah, musharakah investment model.


The corpus of figurines from Çatalhöyük has attracted the attention of diverse audiences but there has been an overwhelming focus on a selection of female figurines, many of which lack exact provenience. Excavation from 1961 to 1965 yielded more mundane examples classifiable as anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and abbreviated forms. New work attempts to balance the picture through various methods and strategies. The research presented here collates the artefacts from these early seasons with those retrieved from 1993 to 2006 to gain a fuller understanding of figurine practice. The figurines almost exclusively represent secondary deposition. We can now assess the number and type of figurines deposited in buildings, middens, burials and elsewhere. Reassessment of the entire corpus has prompted interrogation of the category of 'figurine' and reconsideration of the taxonomies along with other artefacts and image production at Çatalhöyük. Depositional practices at the site suggest processes of mobility and circulation that have rarely been considered in studies of figurines. Typical 'representational' or aesthetic approaches imply that the figurines were a special category with particular values of religiosity and gender; but attention to the archaeological context can imply meaning from the material practices within which 'figurines' were enmeshed.


There is little literature on the legal aspects of Australia-New Zealand (trans-Tasman) sport or on how the sport laws of one country influence those of the other. This appears curious given the countries' close sporting and legal ties. A possible explanation is that there has been little trans-Tasman sport aside from contests between national representative teams (mainly in amateur sports). Also, there has been little occasion for each country to draw on the legal experience of the other because the legislative regulation of sport is mainly recent. This landscape is changing especially with the emergence of a number of trans-Tasman professional sports leagues. The main purposes of this article are to make observations on some of the trans-Tasman legal features of those leagues and to draw attention to two instances where legislators on both sides of the Tasman have addressed similar sports law issues: one co-operatively and the other independently.


Vorticity development is studied in the reaction plane of peripheral relativistic heavy-ion reactions where the initial state has substantial angular momentum. The earlier predicted rotation effect and Kelvin Helmholtz instability lead to significant initial vorticity and circulation. In low-viscosity quark gluon plasma this vorticity remains still significant at the time of freeze-out of the system, even if damping due to explosive expansion and dissipation decreases the vorticity and circulation. In the reaction plane the vorticity arises from the initial angular momentum, and it is stronger than in the transverse plane, where vorticity is caused by random fluctuations only.


Basic experimental data are presented for a new class of high-temperature superconductors — iron-based layered compounds of the types REOFeAs (RE = La, Ce, Nd, Pr, Sm, ...), AFe2As2 (A = Ba, Sr, ...), AFeAs (A = Li, ...), and FeSe(Te). The structure of electronic spectra in these compounds is discussed, including the correlation effects, as is the spectrum and role of collective excitations (phonons and spin waves). Basic models for describing various types of magnetic ordering and Cooper pairing are reviewed.


We estimated the effects of an intervention which provided information about graduate wages to 5,593 students in England, using a blinded cluster randomised controlled trial in 50 schools (registration:AEARCTR-0000468). Our primary outcome was students' choice of A-level subjects at age 16. We also recorded the students' expectations of future wages and the A-level subjects they intended to take before and after the intervention, and linked their data into national administrative school examination records. We found that an hour-long lesson on information about graduate wages affected students' beliefs about and choice of subject. They were more likely to take Maths and less likely to take Biology and Computing. We found strong evidence that mediating factors such as their beliefs about average graduate salaries and their own likely salary in each subject were affected by the intervention. This suggests providing accessible and credible information on labour market consequences of school choices may influence students' decisions. In the light of concerns about the quality of careers guidance for school students and expectations that educational choices should be well-informed, the study has clear implications for policy and practice.


Based on the orthogonalities of the vector wave functions, the expressions of scattering fields are developed as the particle in the zero order field and in the first order fields of x, y, and z, respectively. A general relation between the expansion coefficients of scattering field and incident field is presented. Taking the elliptical beam for example, the scattering property of a particle in beam is investigated. After analyzing the effects of the beam waist, irradiating distance, etc. on scattering property, the validity of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated. Results show that the beam waist may improve the particle identification property and the particle has a strong scattering both in the forward direction and in the backward direction. The method proposed is simple and is a new way of researching the scattering from particles in electromagnetic beams.


OBJECTIVE
Previous studies have confirmed the poor correlation of symptoms, signs, and levels of acute-phase reactants with disease activity in approximately 50% of all patients with Takayasu arteritis (TA). Invasive angiographic studies demonstrate vessel lumen anatomy, but do not provide qualitative information about the vessel wall. Moreover, sequential invasive angiographic studies expose patients to high-dose ionizing radiation and catheter/procedure-related morbidity. The aim of the present study was to determine the utility of new developments in vascular magnetic resonance (MR) technology in patients with TA.

METHODS
Electrocardiogram-gated "edema-weighted" MR was used to evaluate the aorta and its primary branches with regard to the vascular lumen, vessel wall anatomy, and vessel wall edema in 24 TA patients (77 studies). Inclusion criteria were age <50 years and features of TA on both clinical examination and invasive angiographic studies. Patients were stratified based on clinical and laboratory indications of having either unequivocally active disease, inactive disease, or uncertain disease status.

RESULTS
MR revealed vessel wall edema in 94% (17 of 18), 81% (13 of 16), and 56% (24 of 43) of studies obtained during periods of unequivocally active disease, uncertain disease activity, and apparent clinical remission, respectively. Westergren erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein values did not correlate with either the clinical assessment of disease activity or MR evidence of vascular edema. The frequency of presumed vascular inflammation (edema), as assessed by MR, in patients who appeared to be in remission was similar to the reported frequency of new angiographic lesions and histopathologic evidence of active disease in surgical specimens from patients thought to be in remission. However, the presence of edema within vessel walls did not consistently correlate with the occurrence of new anatomic changes found on subsequent studies.

CONCLUSION
Inconsistencies in the presence or absence of vessel edema and subsequent anatomic changes have cast doubt on the utility of edema-weighted MR imaging as a sole guide to disease activity and treatment in TA. In this study, the greatest utility of MR was in providing a safe, noninvasive means of assessing changes in vascular anatomy.


Gold particle arrays have been produced through solid-state dewetting of patterned gold thin films. Patterns included rectangles and terminated lines of different widths, lengths, and film thickness. The particle spacing in long lines followed a Rayleigh-like dependence on the cross-sectional area of the line. Shorter lines had lower numbers of particles, indicating line-end effects. In some cases, ordered particle arrays were obtained. The probability of forming ordered particle arrays was shown to depend on the relative magnitudes of the length, width, and thickness of patterned structures. These trends are captured in design maps.


Sir: The efficacy and tolerability of reboxetine, a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, have been shown in patients with major depressive disorder or dysthymia. This novel antidepressant shows negligible effects on psychomotor and cognitive function and may be especially effective in improving negative self-perception and lack of motivation toward action. Depression occurs frequently in Parkinson's disease and appears to be associated with greater frontal lobe dysfunctions, including reward and motivational systems, and greater involvement of dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems than in nondepressed Parkinson's patients. We report for the first time reboxetine treatment of depression in Parkinson's disease after prior treatment with amitriptyline and fluoxetine was ineffective and accompanied by intolerable side effects.


We examined a large set of conditional inference data compiled from several previous studies and asked three questions: How is normative performance related to intelligence? Does negative conclusion bias stem from Type 1 or Type 2 processing? Does implicit negation bias stem from Type 1 or Type 2 processing? Our analysis demonstrated that rejecting denial of the antecedent and affirmation of the consequent inferences was positively correlated with intelligence, while endorsing modus tollens inferences was not; that the occurrence of negative conclusion bias was related to the extent of Type 2 processing; and that the occurrence of implicit negation bias was not related to the extent of Type 2 processing. We conclude that negative conclusion bias is, at least in part, a product of Type 2 processing, while implicit negation bias is not.


A fairly straightforward approach for music source separation is to train independent models, wherein each model is dedicated for estimating only a specific source. Training a single model to estimate multiple sources generally does not perform as well as the independent dedicated models. However, Conditioned U-Net (C-U-Net) uses a control mechanism to train a single model for multi-source separation and attempts to achieve a performance comparable to that of the dedicated models. We propose a multi-task U-Net (M-U-Net) trained using a weighted multi-task loss as an alternative to the C-U-Net. We investigate two weighting strategies for our multi-task loss: 1) Dynamic Weighted Average (DWA), and 2) Energy Based Weighting (EBW). DWA determines the weights by tracking the rate of change of loss of each task during training. EBW aims to neutralize the effect of the training bias arising from the difference in energy levels of each of the sources in a mixture. Our methods provide two-fold advantages compared to the C-U-Net: 1) Fewer effective training iterations with no conditioning, and 2) Fewer trainable network parameters (no control parameters). Our methods achieve performance comparable to that of C-U-Net and the dedicated U-Nets at a much lower training cost.


The effect of etretinate was evaluated in 26 patients with psoriasis unresponsive to conventional therapy. Twenty patients had the common variety of the disease, 3 had inverse psoriasis, 2 had arthropathy and 1 had plantar psoriasis. In addition, 17 patients had nail involvement. The drug was started at dose of 0.6 mg/kg/day; and was adjusted according to clinical response over a mean period of 6.8 months. Disappearance of the plaque occurred in 14 patients (54%) and remained stable for a mean of 7.3 months after therapy. Success rate was higher in patients with nail involvement (80%). Results were good in patients with arthralgia associated to hyperuricemia, psoriatic arthropathy and in one patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Mild effects of vitamin A toxicity were observed in 100% of cases. The drug was discontinued in 4 patients due to hypertriglyceridemia.


We validate survey measures of social capital with a new data set that examines whether citizens report a lost wallet to its owner. Using data from more than 17,000 lost wallets across 40 countries, we find that survey measures of social capital - especially questions concerning generalized trust or generalized morality - are strongly and significantly correlated with country-level differences in wallet reporting rates. A second finding is that lost wallet reporting rates predict unique variation in economic development and government effectiveness not captured by existing measures, suggesting this data set also holds promise as a useful indicator of social capital.


Fig. 1. flexed left lateral position and the catheter was forcefully pulled under fluoroscopic control. The knot was seen to tighten and the catheter was finally removed in one piece (Fig. 1). There was no unusual bleeding and recovery of sensation was normal. We speculate that the knot was produced during the catheter insertion, but remained loose through the delivery, until it stretched and closed tightly at the time of the vigorous attempts at removal. Knotting of epidural catheters with subsequent difficulties in removal are uncommon events. However, when it occurs vigorous tugging on the trapped catheter may cause it to snap, leaving the distal end in the patient.


Obtaining rigorous statistical guarantees for generalization under distribution shift remains an open and active research area. We study a setting we call combinatorial distribution shift, where (a) under the test- and training-distributions, the labels $z$ are determined by pairs of features $(x,y)$, (b) the training distribution has coverage of certain marginal distributions over $x$ and $y$ separately, but (c) the test distribution involves examples from a product distribution over $(x,y)$ that is {not} covered by the training distribution. Focusing on the special case where the labels are given by bilinear embeddings into a Hilbert space $H$: $\mathbb{E}[z \mid x,y ]=\langle f_{\star}(x),g_{\star}(y)\rangle_{{H}}$, we aim to extrapolate to a test distribution domain that is $not$ covered in training, i.e., achieving bilinear combinatorial extrapolation. Our setting generalizes a special case of matrix completion from missing-not-at-random data, for which all existing results require the ground-truth matrices to be either exactly low-rank, or to exhibit very sharp spectral cutoffs. In this work, we develop a series of theoretical results that enable bilinear combinatorial extrapolation under gradual spectral decay as observed in typical high-dimensional data, including novel algorithms, generalization guarantees, and linear-algebraic results. A key tool is a novel perturbation bound for the rank-$k$ singular value decomposition approximations between two matrices that depends on the relative spectral gap rather than the absolute spectral gap, a result that may be of broader independent interest.


ABSTRACT The William Hawk Cabin is considered one of the oldest pioneer structures in Salt Lake City, Utah. Tradition suggests that it was originally constructed in 1848 inside the "Old Fort" established by Mormon settlers in 1847, and then moved to its current location between 1850 and 1852. We examined tree rings from 23 Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) and eight white fir (Abies concolor) timbers in the cabin to (1) evaluate and refine the suggested range of construction dates of 1848–1852, (2) verify or refute the suggestion that the cabin was originally constructed within the Old Fort, (3) identify any evidence of use of deadwood, timber re-use, stockpiling, or renovation, and (4) determine the provenance of the timbers. We built a 209-year floating chronology from 36 cores crossdated visually and verified statistically with COFECHA. Statistically significant (p < 0.0001) comparisons with established regional chronologies indicated that the Hawk Cabin chronology extends from 1651–1859. Cutting dates ranged from 1832–1860, with strong clusters in 1846 and 1851–1852, and a weaker cluster in 1855. The 1851–1852 cluster accounted for over half of the cutting dates, suggesting that a version of the cabin was built by 1852, and the later timbers were incorporated as part of a major renovation in or after 1860. The 1846 cluster may reflect wood salvaged from road building efforts by the Donner-Reed Party, and suggests that a version of the cabin may have been originally built in the Old Fort, although probably not by Hawk. These results confirm the historical significance of the William Hawk Cabin, and the complexity of its construction history argues for large sample depths in dendroarchaeological studies in semi-arid regions.


Speculative execution attacks, such as Spectre, reuse code from the victim's binary to access and leak secret information during speculative execution. Every variant of the attack requires very particular code sequences, necessitating elaborate gadget-search campaigns. Often, victim programs contain few, or even zero, usable gadgets. Consequently, speculative attacks are sometimes demonstrated by injecting usable code sequences into the victim. So far, attacks search for monolithic gadgets, a single sequence of code which performs all the attack steps. We introduce SpecROP, a novel speculative execution attack technique, inspired by classic code reuse attacks like Return-Oriented Programming to tackle the rarity of code gadgets. The SpecROP attacker uses multiple, small gadgets chained by poisoning multiple control-flow instructions to perform the same computation as a monolithic gadget. A key difference to classic code reuse attacks is that control-flow transfers between gadgets use speculative targets compared to targets in memory or registers. We categorize SpecROP gadgets into generic classes and demonstrate the abundance of such gadgets in victim libraries. Further, we explore the practicality of influencing multiple control-flow instructions on modern processors, and demonstrate an attack which uses gadget chaining to increase the leakage potential of a Spectre variant, SMoTherSpectre.


Germanium/germanium oxide nanoparticles with theoretically high discharge capacities of 1624 and 2152 mAh/g have attracted significant research interest for their potential application as anode materials in Li-ion batteries. However, these materials exhibit poor long-term performance due to the large volume change of 370% during charge/discharge cycles. In the present study, to overcome this shortcoming, a Ge/GeO2/graphene composite material was synthesized. Ge/GeO2 nanoparticles were trapped between matrices of graphene nanosheets to offset the volume expansion effect. Transmission electron microscopy images revealed that the Ge/GeO2 nanoparticles were distributed on the graphene nanosheets. Discharge/charge experiments were performed to evaluate the Li storage properties of the samples. The discharge capacity of the bare Ge/GeO2 nanoparticles in the first discharge cycle was considerably large; however, the value decreased rapidly with successive cycles. Conversely, the present Ge/GeO2/graphene composite exhibited superior cycling stability.


This paper explores some of the many factors which affect the way in which the critical response to a production is made manifest. Using the reception of Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Love of the Nightingale and Our Country's Good as case studies, Susan Carlson contrasts the enthusiastic response to the first production of the latter play at the Royal Court, where its supposed celebration of the redemptive effects of theatricality were widely acclaimed, with the subjection of the former to the 'atavistic guilts of male theatre reviewers'. Examining the reception of later productions – and even the West End transfer – of Our Country's Good, she proceeds to show how different theatres, companies, and senses of cultural, sexual, and national identity shaped ever-changing attitudes towards what was presumed to be the same play. Susan Carlson, whose article 'Comic Collisions: Convention, Rage, and Order' appeared in NTQ12 (November 1987), is Professor of English at lowa State University, and the author of Women of Grace: James's Plays and the Comedy of Manners (1985) and Women and Comedy: Rewriting the British Theatrical Tradition (1991). She is now working on issues of performance and collaboration in contemporary theatre, and writing about the work of the Omaha Magic Theatre and the playwriting of Karim Alrawi.


This study aims to analyze the comparative financial performance of BUMN & BUSN banks before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. The variables used in this study are the ratio of NPL (Non Performing Loan), the ratio of ROA (Return on Assets), and the ratio of CAR (Capital Adequacy Ratio). This study uses quantitative methods using a comparative approach. This study uses data on Quarterly Published Financial Reports before the pandemic and during the pandemic, namely Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 2019 Q1 2020 and Q2, Q3, Q4 2020 Q1, Q2 2021. The study population was taken from all BUMN & BUSN banks registered in BEI with a sample based on the criteria that state-owned and state-owned banks are classified as BUKU IV banks, namely 6 banks. The statistical methods used were descriptive statistics, normality test, and wilcoxon signed rank test. Based on the results of different tests, it shows that there are differences in Non Performing Loans and Return on Assets before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. While the Wilcoxon signed rank test for the Capital Adequacy Ratio variable shows that there is no difference between before the Covid-19 pandemic and during the Covid-19 pandemic.


Humic acid was extracted and employed as a dispersant in an alumina suspension. The higher zeta potential for HA (-42 mV) was measured at pH 11 showing that an electrostatic repulsion might occur in the alumina/HA suspension. As a consequence of the long chain molecules of HA it was also expected a steric effect on deflocculation. The best dispersion conditions for the alumina suspension (28 vol%) were found with 0.016 wt% HA, close to the viscosity achieved with a commercial sodium polyacrylate. The rheological characterisation showed results beneficial for the slip casting process, such as slightly thixotropy and pseudoplastic behaviour. The excellent colloidal stability at pH 11 as evidenced through rheological and sedimentation tests was attributed to the polyelectrolyte nature of the HA. From deflocculated suspensions it was possible to obtain high density pieces by slip casting method.


Analytical investigations into performance functions for interior noise control are presented. Three different performance functions for global control and one performance function for local control are developed and investigated. These performance functions are based on the squared pressure, the panel kinetic energy, and the air particle kinetic energy. As an illustration, noise control in the interior of a three-dimensional enclosure with a flexible boundary clamped along the edges is considered. Active control is realized by using lead zirconate titanate (PZT) patches as distributed actuators and interior microphones as error sensors. For tonal external disturbances, optimization analyses are carried out in the frequency domain to determine the optimal voltage inputs to the piezoelectric actuators and the optimal values of performance functions. Issues such as the number of actuators and their locations are investigated when the disturbance frequency is close to one of the following frequencies: a) resonance frequency of a symmetric or an asymmetric panel mode; b) off-resonance frequency, and c) resonance frequency of a cavity mode. The controlled responses obtained for the different performance functions are analysed by using pressure contours, zones of quiet, and modal amplitude and modal rearrangement control mechanisms. Based on the results of the numerical studies, it is determined that use of the energy-based performance function results in better pressure contours and zones of quiet inside the enclosure. The location of the actuators is found to have a significant influence on the magnitude of noise reduction. The results of the studies are relevant to interior noise control in enclosures such as rotorcraft cabins.


ABSTRACT This paper focuses on business models and value chains to analyse sectoral innovation systems involving synthetic biology and gene editing, as potentially disruptive platform technologies in the life sciences. In the context of industrial biotechnology, we propose that the extent to which an innovation is expected to be disruptive, and the location of that disruption in existing value chains, are relevant to policy decision making on how to govern innovative technologies. Policy decisions on how to regulate or support an innovative technology will be among the most important factors determining the extent to which it is able to deliver its disruptive potential, leading to sectoral transformations through new business models and value chains. This mode of thinking about disruption and innovation could be incorporated in standard procedures for policy makers to guide decisions designed to support translation from basic scientific research to societally useful products and processes.


Seroepizootiological study of hantavirus infection among 393 urban rats (Rattus norvegicus) captured in six regions in Japan during the period from 1990 to 1994 was carried out by the indirect fluorescent antibody (IFA) test and Western blot (WB). Fifteen out of 393 (3.8%) rat sera were antibody-positive by IFA, i.e., Tokyo Port (12.8%, 6/47), Shimizu Port (5.7%, 2/35), Otaru Port (1.5%, 1/65) and Nagoya City (3.6%, 6/167). In two other regions, i.e., Kasai Seaside Park and Haneda Airport, rat sera were antibody-negative. One serum with a lower IFA titer, 1:64, from Otaru Port was confirmed to be antibody-positive by WB, while two sera from Shimizu Port (IFA titer, 1:32 and 1:64) were not. In Nagoya City, one out of four sera (IFA titer, 1:32) and one of two sera (IFA titer, 1:64) were also confirmed to be antibody-positive by WB. Continuous hantavirus infection among rats in Tokyo Port, Shimizu Port and Nagoya City and the existence of hantavirus among rats in Otaru Port were demonstrated.


Upon activation, naive T cells alter their migratory patterns, acquiring the ability to move through peripheral tissues as well as the general lymphoid circulation. Although the mechanisms responsible for these alterations are not well understood, changes in chemokine receptor expression may play a critical role. To investigate these changes, the expression patterns of two chemokine receptors, CXCR3 and CXCR4, were compared on CD4+ T cells following activation in the MLR. By day 9 of activation, expression of the inflammatory chemokine receptor CXCR3 was up-regulated, while expression of the homeostatic chemokine receptor CXCR4 was down-regulated. Alterations in receptor expression occurred almost exclusively on a subpopulation of T cells that expressed higher levels of CD4. These CD4high T cells demonstrated many characteristics of activated T cells and had undergone division in the MLR. By day 9 of culture, the majority of CXCR3+ and CXCR4− cells had divided and had acquired an activated/memory phenotype (CD45RA− CD45RO+ CD69+ CD25+). The levels of transcripts for both CXCR3 and CXCR4 were increased upon allo-activation. The discrepancy between levels of CXCR4 mRNA and surface protein was not due to sequestration of the receptor in intracellular compartments, as CXCR4 was not detectable intracellularly. However, intracellular CXCR3 was readily detectable. Finally, cells from allogeneic cultures demonstrated enhanced migration toward IFN-inducible T cell α chemoattractant and reduced migration toward stromal cell-derived factor-1 compared with syngeneic controls, thus suggesting that the observed switch in receptor expression may at least partly contribute to the differential patterns of migration displayed by naive and memory T cells.


A copper-mediated trifluoromethylthiolation of vinyl bromides has been developed. This method provides ready access to vinyl trifluoromethyl thioethers in good to high yields from simple, inexpensive starting materials. A broad substrate scope is achieved, and the reaction is compatible with various functional groups, including cyano, nitro, trifluoromethyl, alkoxy, amino, halide, and heterocyclic groups.


The bioequivalence of four conjugated estrogens tablets USP was compared by measurement of seven estrogens or estrogen metabolites in the urine during steady-state dosing in postmenopausal women. Two studies compared three generic products with the innovator's product. The urinary excretion of 17 alpha-dihydroequilin, 17 alpha-dihydroequilenin, and 17 alpha-estradiol were significantly greater in all cases with the innovator's product than with the generic products. Statistically significant differences between products were observed occasionally for other components. The generic products thus were bioinequivalent to the innovator's product, although all products essentially met current compendial specifications. A third study observed no significant differences between three batches of the innovator's product for the seven components. Total conjugated estrogens excretion of all products at the steady state was essentially equal and correlated with neither disintegration time nor dissolution half-time. Bioinequivalence between products is discussed in relation to the need for an improved USP conjugated estrogens monograph. Evidence suggesting the metabolism of a fraction of dosed estrone, equilin, and 17 alpha-dihydroequilin to 17 beta-estradiol, 17 beta-dihydorequilim, and 17 alpha-dihydroequilenin, respectively, is presented.


We put 5 kbar and 12 kbar on perfect ice Ih lattice at 77 K and 180 K. After 30000 simulation steps (in units of 10−15 s), high-density amorphous ice is formed. Four-site simple-pair potential TIP4P is used for molecular interactions and the rigid molecular model is employed. Phase transition processes are fitted by an exponential function, and different phase transition times τ are obtained from O-O radial distribution functions (366 and 359 fs for 77 K and 180 K) and O-O-O angle distribution functions (126 and 116 fs for 77 K and 180 K).


Under-performing firms persist even though existing theoretical perspectives indicate that they should be selected out of the market. Building upon threshold theory [Gimeno, J., Folta, T., Cooper, A., Woo, C., 1997. Survival of the fittest? Entrepreneurial human capital and the persistence of underperforming firms. Administrative Science Quarterly 42, 750-783.] and using Staw's [Staw, B.M., 1981. The escalation of commitment to a course of action. Academy of Management Review 6 (4), 577-587.] theoretical model of commitment to a course of action, we explore and test the factors that lead entrepreneurs to persist with under-performing firms. We found environmental munificence, personal investment, personal options, previous organizational success, and perceived collective efficacy impact the decision to persist with an under-performing firm. In addition, extrinsic motivation moderates those relationships. This research adds to the growing literature on highly persistent, under-performing firms and complements and extends threshold theory.


We have successfully determined the crystal structure of both the low temperature and solvated phases of 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TMB-TCNQ). The triclinic solvate phase was erroneously believed for years to be a polymorph of TMB-TCNQ, while using X-rays diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, and differential scanning calorimetry, we have determined the presence of crystallization of acetonitrile molecules within the structure and observed the conversion to the room temperature monoclinic phase of TMB-TCNQ upon desolvation promoted both by heating and by grinding. The nonsolvated phase undergoes inversion symmetry breaking below 160 K, giving rise to stack dimerization. A combination of the X-ray crystal structure determination, Hirschfeld surface analysis, and density functional theory calculations suggest a rather complex scenario for the first order phase transition, which implies, besides stack dimerization, molecular inclination and small increase of the degree of charge t...