®) was established in 1975 to identify and analyze alternative national and international strategies and policies for meeting food needs of the developing world on a sustainable basis, with particular emphasis on low-income countries and on the poorer groups in those countries. While the research effort is geared to the precise objective of contributing to the reduction of hunger and malnutrition, the factors involved are many and wide-ranging, requiring analysis of underlying processes and extending beyond a narrowly defined food sector. The Insti-tute's research program reflects worldwide collaboration with governments and private and public institutions interested in increasing food production and improving the equity of its distribution. Research results are disseminated to policymakers, opinion formers, administrators, policy analysts, researchers, and others concerned with national and international food and agricultural policy. IFPRI Research Monographs are well-focused, policy-relevant monographs based on original and innovative research conducted at IFPRI. All manuscripts submitted for publication as IFPRI Research Monographs undergo extensive external and internal reviews. Prior to submission to the Publications Review Committee, each manuscript is circulated informally among the author's colleagues. Upon submission to the Committee, the manuscript is reviewed by an IFPRI reviewer and presented in a formal seminar. Three additional reviewers—at least two external to IFPRI and one from the Committee—are selected to review the manuscript. Reviewers are chosen for their familiarity with the country setting. The Committee provides the author its reaction to the reviewers' comments. After revising as necessary, the author resubmits the manuscript to the Committee with a written response to the reviewers' and Committee's comments. The Committee then makes its recommendations on publication of the manuscript to the Director General of IFPRI. With the Director General's approval, the manuscript becomes part of the IFPRI Research Monograph series. The publication series, under the original name of IFPRI Research Reports, began in 1977. Sections of this material may be reproduced for personal and not-for-profit use without the express written permission of but with acknowledgment to IFPRI. To reproduce material contained herein for profit or commercial use requires express written permission. To obtain permission, contact the Communications Division at email@example.com. Estimating the impact of access to infrastructure and extension services in rural Nepal /


In the fickle world of fashion, little is certain except the sure knowledge that fashions come and go, and today's unfashionable styles are likely to be back in vogue tomorrow. Bikinis, Bell-bottoms and Little Black Dresses chronicles the most influential, exciting and shocking items of clothing of the last 100 years. The trench coat, the trainer and the miniskirt, to name only three, have all changed the way we think about our dress. Fashion journalist Kate Mulvey charts the evolution of 70 key garments, investigating how their individual stories have helped shape the course of fashion history. Each entry traces the origins of an unforgettable item of clothing, and explores the moment it first made an impact on the world fashion stage, as well as the garments that developed out of it, the personalities who wore it, and its continuing popularity today. With illustrations sourced from fashion features, catwalk shots, advertisements and film stills, Bikinis, Bell-bottoms and Little Black Dresses is an entertaining, stylish overview of modern dress that will thrill fashionistas everywhere.


The female rock lizard, Psammophilus dorsalis (Agamidae), lays multiple clutches of eggs over a period of 6 months (June–December). The later clutches of eggs are presumably fertilized by sperm stored from earlier matings, since testes and epididymides are regressed after August. Sperm storage is seen in pockets of the anterior vaginal region of the oviduct. Sperm recovered from the uterovaginal region are intact and motile. Discrete granules resembling the secretory granules present in the vas deferens also occur along with sperm in the vaginal sperm storage structures. The PAS‐positive granules and acid phosphatase form important components of the secretions present along with sperm in the vaginal sperm storage pockets. The epithelium of the vaginal sperm storage pockets is PAS‐positive and contains lipid. Several enzymes, including hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases and hydrolases, are localized histochemically in the epithelium of the vaginal sperm storage pockets. A possible role is suggested for the secretions from the male reproductive tract during sperm storage in the oviduct, in which physiological "dormancy" of the sperm during their storage may be maintained by the metabolic "milieu" in the vaginal sperm storage pockets by a mechanism similar to that effecting dormancy of the epididymal sperm in the male. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


In this study, non-stoichiometric NiO films were obtained by using radio frequency sputtering technique to fabricate a heterojunction p–n Schottky diode. The crystal structure and topographical features of nickel oxide (NiOx) films were evaluated by means of X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The X-ray diffraction analysis has shown that all films have cubic polycrystalline nature, and some microstructural properties such as lattice constant, average crystallite size, micro-strain, dislocation density were changed depending on film thickness. In addition, topography of the nickel oxide films deposited with different film thickness consisted of fine nanoscale grains, showing a consistency between scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy measurements. To evaluate electrical performance of NiOx films, high-quality vacuum evaporated silver (Ag) (ohmic) layer and nickel (Ni) (measurement electrode) dots were used. The current–voltage (I–V) measurements of Ni/p–NiOx/n-Si device indicated that all devices exhibit rectifying properties and these improve with the increasing film thickness. All electrical properties were correlated with the structural properties of the films to better understand transport mechanism of Ni/p–NiOx/n-Si device.


Lack of research in our multi-racial society, where different cultures have disparate beliefs with regards to death and dying, prompted us to conduct a pre-implementation feasibility study for the role of ACP on 9 patient-caregiver dyads from a memory clinic in Singapore. Subjects were recruited if they had mild dementia (global Clinical Dementia Rating of 0.5-1), no significant mood disorders or behavioural problems, and had an identified caregiver. Patients and their caregivers were surveyed individually for their understanding of ACP, and experience of communicating their end-of-life treatment preferences to their loved ones, before and after ACP counselling conducted by a trained ACP facilitator. Prior to ACP counselling, only 22% patients and 55% caregivers had heard of ACP. While 77% of patients rated their health status as good and 77% had thought of their healthcare proxy, only 22% made future care plans. After ACP counselling, 75% patients are keen for further ACP discussions and none admitted to barriers to communication compared to 62.5% caregivers who acknowledge barriers to communication. The percentage of patients who wished to receive therapy decreased as the likelihood of an adverse outcome (especially cognitive) increased. There is a disparity in the attitudes of patients and caregivers towards ACP where patients are more willing to discuss it compared to caregivers. Our study highlights the need for further education and dissemination of information on ACP among subjects with early dementia and their caregivers. We are intending to incorporate ACP and disseminate information on ACP in future dementia workshops.


The application of blockchains techniques in the Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining much attention with new solutions proposed in diverse areas of the IoT. Conventionally IoT systems are designed to follow the centralised paradigm where security and privacy control is vested on a "trusted" third-party. This design leaves the user at the mercy of a sovereign broker and in addition, susceptible to several attacks. The implicit trust and the inferred reliability of centralised systems have been challenged recently following several privacy violations and personal data breaches. Consequently, there is a call for more secure decentralised systems that allows for finer control of user privacy while providing secure communication. Propitiously, the blockchain holds much promise and may provide the necessary framework for the design of a secure IoT system that guarantees fine-grained user privacy in a trustless manner. In this paper, we propose a holistic blockchain-based decentralised model for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environment. The nodes in our proposed model utilize smart contracts to define interaction rules while working collaboratively to contribute storage and computing resources. Based on the blockchain technique, our proposed model promotes trustless interaction and enhanced user's privacy through the blockchain - Interplanetary File System (IPFS) alliance. The proposed model also addresses the shortfall of storage constraints exhibited in many IoT systems.


Objectives: Few in vitro studies have examined the participation of resistin, a recently discovered adipokine, in oxidative processes. We investigated whether in vivo treatment with the antioxidant vitamin C might affect resistin serum levels. Design: Randomized prospective open trial. Setting: San Giovanni Battista Hospital, Turin, Italy. Participants: Eighty healthy individuals. Intervention: Administration of 2 g of ascorbic acid orally for 2 wk (n = 40; experimental group) or no supplementation (n = 40; control group). Outcome measures: The primary end point was the between-group difference in the before–after change in resistin serum level after vitamin C supplementation. Secondary endpoints were the within- and between-group changes in glucose, insulin, lipid parameters, C-reactive protein fasting values, and markers of oxidative stress. Results: In the experimental group, vitamin C supplementation was significantly associated with both resistin concentration reduction (from 4.3 ± 1.5 to 2.9 ± 0.8 ng/ml; 95% confidence interval [CI] −1.87, −1.03) and ascorbic acid level increase (from 9.4 ± 2.9 to 19.0 ± 5.2 mg/l; 95% CI 7.9, 11.2). In the control group, resistin levels did not change significantly (from 4.2 ± 1.0 to 4.3 ± 0.9 ng/ml; 95% CI −0.07, 0.37). The between-group differences were highly significant (p < 0.001). Vitamin C supplementation was also associated with a statistically significant reduction in nitrotyrosine level and incremental increase in reduced glutathione. In a linear regression model, within-individual changes in vitamin C concentrations were inversely correlated with changes in resistin levels in both groups (each unit increase of vitamin C corresponded to a decrease of about 0.10 units of resistin levels (95% CI 0.13, 0.08; p < 0.001). Conclusion: This is to our knowledge the first randomized trial in humans that has demonstrated that short-term vitamin C supplementation could significantly reduce resistin levels, independent of changes in inflammatory or metabolic variables. Future investigations of resistin participation in oxidative processes are warranted.


Among the cases of functional and organic entropion and ectropion seen by the ophthalmic surgeon, there are quite a few of such a mild type that they do not seem to justify a radical operation. Notwithstanding the irritation and annoyance they cause, these patients are often allowed to drift along with negative rather than positive treatment. For example, there is the type of entropion frequently seen in elderly people with flabby lids who develop a spasmodic contraction of the lower lid after the eye has been bandaged for a few days. The treatment that naturally suggests itself to the surgeon is to draw out the lid and fix it in position by means of flexible collodion or a strip of adhesive plaster. When these methods fail to give permanent relief, as they often do, then there are a variety of more radical operations to choose from; among these are Snellen's


Mobility and accessibility provided by the transport system have been playing a major role in shaping countries, influencing the location of social and economic activity, the form and size of cities, and the style and pace of life by facilitating trade, permitting access to people and resources, and enabling greater economies of scale, worldwide and throughout history. This study examined the challenges, prospect and opportunities of air transport operation in Nigeria. Data was obtained from the administration of questionnaires to 170 aviation workers at Muritala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, who were randomly selected. Simple descriptive statistics, Chi-Square and Analysis of variance were employed. The findings show that private investment is critical to sustainable air transport infrastructure in Nigeria. Based on available facts and figure, it can be concluded that government should create an enabling environment for the airlines and come up with maintenance, repair and overhaul policy, as well as address the foreign exchange challenge facing airlines in Nigeria.Keywords: Infrastructure, Operation, Enabling Environment, Transport, Aviation


Traumatic dental injury is considered a public dental health problem because of a high childhood incidence, high treatment costs, and prolonged treatment time. Although management guidelines for traumatized teeth have been outlined, tooth loss following trauma is occasionally unavoidable. Here, we describe the successful interdisciplinary management of a traumatized central incisor in an 11-year old boy that was extracted because of a poor prognosis and restored by the autotransplantation of an immature donor tooth into the site. The patient underwent orthodontic treatment in order to close the donor site space and bring the autotransplanted tooth to an ideal position. Postorthodontic treatment radiographs and photographs revealed an esthetic and functional natural tooth replacing the lost tooth. The findings from this case suggest that autotransplantation offers unique advantages as a treatment modality for the restoration of missing teeth, particularly in growing children.


The year 2005 marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the World Trade Organization – the multilateral body responsible for regulating the global trading regime. Whether because or in spite of the organization's existence, trade has brought unprecedented levels of economic prosperity to various parts of the world within this period. Even those parts of what used to be called 'the Third World' are beginning to challenge the appropriateness of that unfortunate categorization. However, much of sub-Saharan Africa has not only failed to become part of this trend, but has in fact become poorer than it was 25 years ago. Various excuses have been proffered, amongst which is that the GATT/WTO regime represents an impediment to its economic emancipation. This interdisciplinary critique aims to challenge this orthodoxy by offering a different analysis of the region's inability to trade, and by extension, of its failure to realize the rights proclaimed under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966.


The production of palm oil requires a large amount of water, which subsequently turns into wastewater known as palm oil mill effluent (POME). Because of its high organic content, there has been debate over how to utilize POME for oil recovery. POME is usually mainly comprised of water (95 to 96%), total solids (4 to 5%), suspended solids (2 to 4%), and oil (0.6 to 0.7%). The lignocellulosic particles in POME are highly oleophilic and capable of absorbing oil. Therefore, the objective of this study was to understand the presence of residual oil and try to relate with the oil loss in POME and to identify the solid particles in POME and their correlations. Microscopic observations showed that most of the oil droplets available in POME were less than 100 µm in size. If given the opportunity to settle, the highest quantity of oil droplets and solid particles was in the bottom layer, followed by the middle layer, and lastly the upper layer. In cases where the contact angle of water was less than 45° on POME solids, the absorption rate was 0.11 ± 0.03 µL/s and 0.09 ± 0.01 µL/s, respectively. This study concluded that the oil losses in POME were partly due to the absorption of oil by the fibers.


We investigate the upper mantle shear-wave speed structure beneath the south Indian shield by measuring and modeling fundamental mode Rayleigh wave phase-velocity dispersion. Observed phase velocities for the south Indian shield closely match those observed for the Canadian shield. We constrain the south Indian crust using published receiver function results and invert the dispersion data for upper mantle shear-wave structure. The ~155-km-thick seismic lithosphere of the south Indian shield is composed of a 35 km-thick, two-layer crust and a ~120-km-thick, high-velocity upper mantle lid. Beneath the Moho the average Sn wave speed is ~4.7 km sec–1. Both Sn travel times data and the dispersion data suggest a positive sub-Moho shear-wave speed gradient. Beneath the seismic lithosphere there is a low- velocity layer where the shear-wave speed drops to ~4.4 km sec–1.


The economics of microSMES for a potential customer are adversely affected by the costs associated with cooling both the magnet cryostat and the power electronics in the system. One way to reduce these loads, and hence the cost, is to operate the magnet in persistent mode while waiting for a power interruption to occur. The reason this has not been implemented to date is because conventional persistent switches cannot be opened fast enough to respond to transients on an incoming power line. The Technology Development Laboratory of the Houston Advanced Research Center has successfully developed a persistent switch with opening times from fifty microseconds to two milliseconds, depending on the triggering mechanism. This switch provides enough resistance to be appropriate for microSMES applications. The paper describes a design and test results for a persistent switch appropriate for a one megawatt, fifteen ampere microSMES application. With this switch, a microSMES cryostat can be equipped with power leads rated for transient operation, with a greatly reduced heat leak. Cooling requirements for the power electronics are similarly reduced.


Because consumers may not make brand decisions during ad exposure, consumer memory for advertising is important. Yet, the cues typically available for brand decisions, such as the brand name, may not effectively retrieve the information, thoughts, or feelings stored in memory from prior ad exposure. A laboratory experiment showed that advertising retrieval cues (i.e., other verbal or visual information from the ad) facilitated access of elements from the ad memory trace and affected brand evaluations. Two other factors, competitive ad interference (i.e., the number of competing brands advertising within a product category) and consumers' processing goals during ad exposure, also affected consumer ad memory and brand evaluations.


Nowadays, with the rise of environmental awareness and energy crisis, sustainable energy has been widely studied. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is one of the most environment friendly ways in which the process of converting solar energy into fuels only produces hydrogen and oxygen. Semiconductor metal oxides such as ZnO and TiO2 have been generally explored for PEC water splitting because they possess high chemical stability, low cost, and proper band gap. In addition, the gold nanoparticles exhibiting distinctive localized surface plasmon resonance (ESPR) cause optical scattering and near-field enhancement to trap the incident light in the semiconductor and to improve the light absorption and effective optical path length [1].


Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or Coronavirus was initially detected in Wuhan China in December 2019 and has subsequently resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic. The disease presents asymptomatically in some of individuals yet also causes symptoms ranging from those associated with influenza and pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and even death. The world is currently relying on physical (social) distancing, hygiene and repurposed medicines; however, it was predicted that an effective vaccine will be necessary to ensure comprehensive protection against COVID-19. There was a global effort to develop an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 with approximately 300 vaccines in clinical trials, and over 200 more in different stages of development and anticipated that their success will change research clinical trials processes. Although every one of these vaccines comes with its own particular set of characteristics and difficulties, they were all developed as a direct result of research and development efforts that were carried out on a scale that had never been seen before. It is the first time in the history of vaccination that a worldwide immunization campaign has begun during a time of severe pandemic activity that is defined by high virus transmission. This achievement marks an important milestone in the history of vaccination. More than anything else, the most important aspect of the new game change in drug design is that the traditional drug discovery rules have been rewritten. This is especially significant for the development of vaccines, as it is possible for all clinical trials to be accelerated, which would bring a vaccine or drug molecule to market within a year rather than the traditional fifteen years for each phase of drug clinical trials. This review provides insight in respect to first generation COVID-19 vaccines, which were in clinical use as of December 2020 and focused on the Pfizer/ BioNTech/Fosun, Moderna mRNA-1273, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca/Oxford AZD1222 vaccines.


Purpose: This study was conducted to identify the influence of nurse manager and peer group caring behaviors as perceived by nurses on intention to retention. Methods: The participants for this study were 229 nurses who had worked for over 6 months in general hospitals located in J province. Survey data were analyzed descriptive statistics and t-tests, ANOVAs with Scheffe"s post-hoc testing, Pearson"s correlation coefficients, and hierarchical regression analysis. Results: The scores for "manager and peer group caring behaviors" and intention to retention were all at a moderate level, although the subjects perceived "peer group caring behaviors" as higher compared to "manager caring behaviors". There were significant differences in "manager caring behaviors" scores by suitability for present working department and employment status and in "peer group caring behaviors" scores by suitability for present working department. The factors influencing nurses" intention to retention were religion, suitability for present department, clinical experience of over ten years, "manager caring behaviors", and "peer group caring behaviors" Conclusion: To improve nurses" intention to retention, it may be necessary to alter the transfer and arrangement strategies of their working environments to better consider nurses' aptitude and competence, and thereby increase both manager and peer group caring behaviors.


Size-dependent variations in the critical buckling height Hcrit and actual height H of plants were determined for a total of 1 1 1 species with self-supporting stems ranging in diameter between 0.03 cm c D c 3.0 m. For each species, experimentally determined values for the physical properties of stems (Young's elastic modulus and bulk tissue density) were used to compute Hcrit. For small species (D < 3 cm), empirically determined critical buckling loads were used to compute Hcrit by means of the Elastica equation and the more traditionally employed Greenhill formula; for larger species (D 2 3 cm), Greenhill's formula was used exclusively to estimate Hcrit. Within most of the size-range examined, the predicted values of Hcrit from the Elastica equation and Greenhill's formula were statistically indistinguishable. Regression analyses showed that the interspecific allometry of Hcrit parallels that of H such that the safety factor against the elastic mechanical failure of stems (i.e., Hcrit/H) under their own biomass was roughly constant. Since the safety factor against elastic buckling is independent of plant size, a general allometric "rule," Hcrit/H ; 4, appears to govern the evolution of plant size.


Digital Mammograms are currently the most effective imaging modality for early detection of breast cancer but the number of false negatives and false positives is high. Mass is one type of breast lesion and the detection of masses is highly challenged problem. Almost all methods that have been proposed so far suffer from high number of false positives and false negatives. In this paper, a method for detecting true masses is presented, especially, for the reduction of false positives and false negatives. The key idea of the proposal is the use of Gabor filter banks for extracting the most representative and discriminative local spatial textural properties of masses that are present in mammograms at different orientations and scales. The system is evaluated on 512 (256 normal+256 true mass) regions of interests (ROIs) extracted from digital mammograms of DDSM database. We performed experiments with Gabor filter banks having different numbers of orientations and scales to find the best parameter setting. Using a powerful feature selection technique and support vector machines (SVM) with 10-fold cross validation, we report to achieve Az = 0.995±0.011, the area under ROC. Comparison with state-of-the-art techniques suggests that the proposed system outperforms similar methods, which are based on texture description, and the difference is statistically significant.


The purpose of this research is to understand the influence of promotion mix and lifestyle towards purchase intention of Kedai Kopi Serasi product. This research is a quantitative research with 130 respondent of sample which are consumers of Kedai Kopi Serasi in Cilincing who coincidentally met with the researcher if deemed concerned was appropriate to be used as a source of data by using non-probability sampling method and incedential sampling techniques. The result of this research show that promotion mix influence significantly to purchase intention and lifestyle influence significantly to purchase intention. The implications of this research can be a reference for the management team in formulating Kedai Kopi Serasi increase purchase intention strategy through promotion mix and lifestyle.


We empirically investigate agent software repositories using commonly used software metrics, which are used in software engineering literature to quantify meaningful characteristics of software based on its source code. We contrast the measurements with those of software in other categories. Analyzing hundreds of software projects, we find that agent software is clearly and significantly different from other types of software of comparable size.


Studies on the efficacy of different sequential application of microbials viz., nucleopolyhedrovirus of Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner) (HaNPV @ 1.5x1012 OB/ha), Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki Berliner (Delfin® 25 WG @1kg/ha), spinosad 45 SC (@ 75 g a.i./ha) and neem (neemazol 1.2 EC @ 1000ml/ha) against H. armigera in comparison with sequential application of synthetic insecticides and untreated control on tomato F1 hybrid Ruchi. Results of the field experiments showed that different sequential application of microbials and neemazol were equally effective as that of sequential application of synthetic chemical insecticides viz., endosulfan 35 EC (@ 350 g a.i./ha), quinolphos 25 EC (@ 250 g a.i./ha) and indoxacarb 14.5 SC (@ 75 g a.i./ha) in reducing H. armigera larval population and fruit damage. Relatively higher number of predatory mirids (Macrolophus spp.) and spiders (Argiope spp and Thomisus spp.) were recorded in microbials and neem applied plots compared to the chemical insecticides treated plot. Thus the microbials and neem could be the best alternatives for the sustainable management of H. armigera on tomato with less impact on the naturally occurring predatory arthropods.


This document describes Split Multi-link Trunking (SMLT) for bridged
and routed networks. SMLT enables topologies with upstream node
redundancy for increased reliability of Layer 2 link aggregation
subnetworks based on [IEEE 802.3ad] and router redundancy based on
VRRP [RFC3768]. SMLT is an improvement over Multi-Link Trunking
(MLT), a method of link aggregation that allows multiple Ethernet
links to be aggregated together, and handled as a single logical
trunk. MLT can be realized via many different link aggregation
mechanisms. Several methods of MLT are in use today; one example is
[IEEE 802.3ad]. SMLT is MLT with links of a link-aggregation group
connected to ports on two different devices (e.g. SMLT client and
aggregation device). Unlike MLT, at least one end of a link-aggregated
group is dual-homed to two different SMLT aggregation devices. In many
cases those devices act as bridges (switches) as well as L3 routers
(Routing Switches). These two redundant SMLT aggregation devices can
share one or more VRRP routing instances; for that SMLT-VRRP extends
the VRRP functionality to an active-active router concept, where both
SMLT aggregation device route traffic for a common VRRP-ID, thus load
balancing traffic not only for L2 but also for L3.


We show that extraordinary light transmission of periodic subwavelength hole arrays, generally attributed to surface-plasmon resonances, is strongly influenced by the hole shape. Both experiments and calculations, based on a Fourier modal method, demonstrate that a shape change from circular to rectangular increases the normalized transmission by an order of magnitude while the hole area decreases. Moreover, the spectra exhibit large redshifts (approximately 2500 cm(-1)). A comparison with the transmission of isolated holes shows that shape resonances of the rectangular holes play a dominant role.


Measurement results on the correlated tuning loop (CTL), a novel tuning loop for continuous-time filters integrated in a 2 mu m CMOS process are presented. Measured performance indicates that a second-order bandpass filter at 2.5 MHz and Q-factor of 10 can be tuned with an error in resonance frequency of only 0.2% and a gain error of only 1.1 dB. The prototype circuit, which measures 4.8 mm/sup 2/, has been designed and optimized specifically to tune a second order bandpass filter at 10 MHz. The CTL approach, however, may be applied to any filter structure in which the attenuation specifications can be translated to specifications of real and imaginary parts of transfer functions.<<ETX>>


Abstract This article examines, through a two-level game model, the case of the first investment dispute under NAFTA between a private U.S. firm and the Mexican government. It argues that the clue to understanding why the Mexican president could not cooperate with the U.S. president lies in Mexico's domestic "ratification" process. The analysis yields two theoretical propositions. First, federalism represents an important variable in explaining foreign economic policy. Second, two-level game logic should not be applied only to formal international negotiation situations; instead, by specifying the dependent variable as cooperation or noncooperation, these models connecting domestic and international politics can be productively applied to study foreign economic policy.


Hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) technology provides an effective solution for achieving higher fuel economy, better performance, and lower emissions, compared with conventional vehicles. Plug-in HEVs (PHEVs) are HEVs with plug-in capabilities and provide a more all-electric range; hence, PHEVs improve fuel economy and reduce emissions even more. PHEVs have a battery pack of high energy density and can run solely on electric power for a given range. The battery pack can be recharged by a neighborhood outlet. In this paper, a novel integrated bidirectional AC/DC charger and DC/DC converter (henceforth, the integrated converter) for PHEVs and hybrid/plug-in-hybrid conversions is proposed. The integrated converter is able to function as an AC/DC battery charger and to transfer electrical energy between the battery pack and the high-voltage bus of the electric traction system. It is shown that the integrated converter has a reduced number of high-current inductors and current transducers and has provided fault-current tolerance in PHEV conversion.


DNA double-strand break repair by homologous recombination employs long-range resection of the 5' DNA ends at the break points. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, this process can be performed by the RecQ helicase Sgs1 and the helicase-nuclease Dna2. Though functional interplay has been shown, it remains unclear whether and how the proteins cooperate on the molecular level. Here, we resolved the dynamics of DNA unwinding by Sgs1 at the single molecule level and investigated its regulation by Dna2, the single-stranded DNA binding protein RPA and the Top3-Rmi1 complex. We found that Dna2 modulates the velocity of Sgs1, indicating that during end resection the proteins form a physical complex and couple their activities. Sgs1 unwinds DNA and feeds single-stranded DNA to Dna2 for degradation. RPA is found to regulate the processivity and the affinity of Sgs1 to the DNA fork, while Top3-Rmi1 modulated the velocity of Sgs1. We think that the differential regulation of the Sgs1 activity by its protein partners is important to allow diverse cellular functions of Sgs1 during the maintenance of genome stability.


Objective: to identify some «internal» and «external» risks that are signifi cant for the Rostov region and calculate their quantitative characteristics.Materials and methods: materials for «internal» risks in the administrative territories of the Rostov region served materials FBUZ «Center of hygiene and epidemiology in the Rostov region» on the incidence of Crimean hemorrhagic fever (KGL) and West Nile (LSN) during the period 2004 – 2017 as a whole across the Rostov region and the slit regions, the data of the regional law «About administrative-territorial structure of Rostov region», the Results of the national census. To determine the «internal» risks, we used the guidelines developed by us «Methodology for assessing the territory of the subject of the Russian Federation on the integral indicator of population morbidity with arbovirus infections», approved by Th e decision of the Academic Council of the Rostov-on-Don anti-plague Institute of Rospotrebnadzor and approved by the Director.Results: based on the results of the ranking of the territory of the Rostov region on the incidence of KGL and LDL, the degree of epidemiological risk was assessed and «risk territories» were identifi ed for these nosologies, which can serve as a basis for risk management — making scientifi cally based management decisions. To calculate the magnitude of the «external» risk and further spread of the disease, you can use various methods to assess the probability of adverse development of the epidemiological situation under the infl uence of various risk factors. Epidemiological risk can also be characterized by multiplying the individual risk by the population exposed to risk factors.Conclusions: identifi cation and calculation of risk levels depending on risk factors will help determine the scope of management decisions, and the specifi cation of risk factors will allow you to develop specifi c measures to reduce risk.


Objective The first aim of this study was to assess 25-hydroxy vitamin D (25OHD) concentrations in women with type 1 diabetes (T1DM) during pregnancy, post-delivery and also foetal (cord blood) 25OHD concentrations and to examine relationships between these. The second aim of the study was to investigate potential interactions between maternal body mass index (BMI) and foetal vitamin D status. A further study aim was to examine potential relationships between maternal 25OHD and glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) throughout pregnancy. Research Design and Methods This was an observational study of 52 pregnant controls without diabetes and 65 pregnant women with T1DM in a university teaching hospital. Maternal serum 25OHD was measured serially throughout the pregnancy and post-delivery. Cord blood 25OHD was measured at delivery. 25OHD was measured by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Results Vitamin D deficiency (25OHD <25 nmol/L) was apparent in both the T1DM subjects and controls at all 3 pregnancy trimesters. Vitamin D levels in all cord blood were <50 nmol/L. Maternal 25OHD correlated positively with cord 25OHD at all 3 trimesters in the T1DM group (p = 0.02; p<0.001; p<0.001). 25OHD levels within cord blood were significantly lower for women with diabetes classified as obese vs. normal weight at booking [normal weight BMI <25 kg/m2 vs. obese BMI >30 kg/m2 (nmol/L±SD); 19.93±11.15 vs. 13.73±4.74, p = 0.026]. In the T1DM group, HbA1c at booking was significantly negatively correlated with maternal 25OHD at all 3 trimesters (p = 0.004; p = 0.001; p = 0.05). Conclusion In T1DM pregnancy, low vitamin D levels persist throughout gestation and post-delivery. Cord blood vitamin D levels correlate with those of the mother, and are significantly lower in obese women than in their normal weight counterparts. Maternal vitamin D levels exhibit a significant negative relationship with HbA1c levels, supporting a potential role for this vitamin in maintaining glycaemic control.


The major barriers to the use of enzymes in practical applications are their insufficient stability and easy inactivation under processing conditions. In this work, we developed a promising platform that allows for the simple and effective immobilization of enzymes on hydrophilic polydopamine (PDA) modified magnetic nanoparticles through DNA directed immobilization. Taking α-chymotrypsin (ChT) as an example, the well-designed immobilized enzyme in this study exhibited excellent kinetic performance, and the apparent Vmax and catalytic efficiency (kcat/Km) values of the DNA immobilized enzyme were 15.77 mM min−1 mg protein−1 and 4.05 s−1 mM−1, which were more than 6.0- and 5.9-fold enhanced compared to that of the free enzyme, respectively. The DNA immobilized enzyme exhibited promising thermal stability, which could preserve promising enzymatic activities of about 83% after 60 min incubation at 60 °C. The DNA immobilized enzyme also exhibited excellent long-term storage and incubation stability, which could preserve more than 89% of the initial activity at 4 °C for 35 days and more than 77% after 47 h of incubation, respectively. In addition, the DNA immobilized ChT exhibited excellent reusability, which showed a high degree of activity (more than 84%) after 10 cycles. Notably, the enzyme immobilization procedure exhibited high reversibility and reproducibility, and the magnetic nanoparticle surfaces were successfully regenerated and cycled through DNA strand displacement reactions for subsequent enzyme immobilization, which could retrieve more than 98% of the enzymatic activity. A significantly improved protein digestion efficiency was achieved with this immobilized ChT within 10 min, and the obtained sequence coverages were more than 1.3-fold higher when compared to that obtained by conventional in-solution digestion for 12 h. Therefore, this work exhibits a promising alternative platform for the efficient immobilization of industrially important enzymes and their broad applications.


Laboratory studies on a range of animals have identified a bias that seems to violate basic principles of rational behavior: a preference is shown for feeding options that previously provided food when reserves were low, even though another option had been found to give the same reward with less delay. The bias presents a challenge to normative models of decision making (which only take account of expected rewards and the state of the animal at the decision time). To understand the behavior, we take a broad ecological perspective and consider how valuation mechanisms evolve when the best action depends upon the environment being faced. We show that in a changing and uncertain environment, state-dependent valuation can be favored by natural selection: Individuals should allow their hunger to affect learning for future decisions. The valuation mechanism that typically evolves produces the kind of behavior seen in standard laboratory tests. By providing an insight into why learning should be affected by the state of an individual, we provide a basis for understanding psychological principles in terms of an animal's ecology.


It is maintained that in contradistinction to the natural sciences, in psychology (and other human sciences) `history is not past tense'. This is borne out by the contemporary relevance of a specific part of the history of psychology, which focuses on the internal-theoretical significance of history for the conceptual `household' of the discipline. From this perspective, several issues in the Danziger-Van Rappard-Dehue debate are addressed.


A study of late schizophrenia manifested in the syndrome of involutional paranoid has allowed the identification of the clinical variant of such psychoses (44 observations) differing from the classical forms in that the clinical picture was predominated by elementary acoustic hallucinations (acoasms). The phenomenological analysis has established that the formation of the clinical picture is determined by acoasms and also the resulting delirium of imagination and delirious interpretations. Two major variants of such psychoses have been specified and described ("the syndrome of acoasmatic hallucinosis" and "the hallucinational-delirious syndrome with the predominance of acoasms"). It has been established that each of these syndromal variants may determine the picture of the disease throughout its course or be one of the sequential stages of its development.


Methods of field and network theory are jointly applied to the problem of deriving wide-band models for interacting inductive irises and steps in standard and oversize lossless rectangular guides. The resulting equivalent network is a cascade of lumped multiports, described by means of their reactance matrix, given in the canonical Foster's form, and of several parallel transmission lines, connecting the interacting discontinuities. The required frequency band and the accuracy of the model can be prescribed at will. The features of the approach are: the solution of the field problem yields a reactance matrix with monotonic convergence properties; small matrices only need be manipulated; the frequency dependence is explicit, so that the field analysis need not be repeated at each frequency point; a true network model (and not a "spot frequency" equivalent circuit) is produced, which is prerequisite for exact synthesis.


In this study, the authors investigated the expression and significance of WTl in xenotransplanted ovarian carcinoma cell SKOV3 of nude mice treated with paclitaxel. Xenotransplanted ovarian carcinoma was established in nude mice using the SKOV3 cell line. The mice were randomized into the treatment group with paclitaxel and control group with normal sodium. The sizes of the xenotransplanted tumors were measured and the tumor specimens were confirmed by routine hemotoxylin-eosin (H&E) staining. The apoptosis index was then assayed using flow cytometry. WTl and bcl-2 expression were detected with immunohistochemistry, and WT1 mRNA expression was determined by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The authors found that the growth of the xenotransplanted tumor was inhibited by paclitaxel therapy. Compared to the control group, the apoptosis rate was significantly increased in the treatment group (p < 0.05). At the same time, the expression of WTl, bcl-2 and WTI, mRNA were significantly decreased in the paclitaxel therapy group (p < 0.05). The authors conclude that the WTl gene may play an important role during apoptosis of ovarian carcinoma and the mechanism may be closely related to bcl-2.


PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
Imobilisation of wounded extremity decreases pain and shock, diminishes the possibilities of soft tissue, vessels and nerves injury with bone fragments, that influences the volume and success of surgical debridement of the wound. Optimal external fixator for war purposes must be rigid in construction, have to be simple to master, allow simple approach to wound during the whole period of fixation, have to be in sterile package with all its necessary part and should not be too expensive.

DESIGN OF THE STUDY
Prof. Korzinek in correspondence with "Instrumentarija" from Zagreb developed a new type of external fixateur applicable in war situation and natural disasters. It was named CMC (Croatian Medical Corps) external fixateur, and it ensures imobilisation of extremity during transport to area of final treatment and it could also ensure conditions for definitive fixation. CMC is compound of bar, clamps and Schanz screws. Standard packing are CMC-30 and CMC-40.

CONCLUSION
CMC external fixator is the applicable device in war and natural disaster situations. It is simple to master even for less experienced surgeons, it's low volume allows appropriate wound treatment, it could be resterilised and reused and it has acceptable price.


The complexity of the bacterial recombination system is a barrier for the construction of bacterial mutants for the further functional investigation of specific genes. Several protocols have been developed to inactivate genes from the genus Pseudomonas. Those protocols are complicated and time-consuming and mostly do not enable easy construction of multiple knock-ins/outs. The current study describes a single and double crossover-recombination system using an optimized vector-free allele-exchange protocol for gene disruption and gene replacement in a single species of the family Pseudomonadaceae. The protocol is based on self-ligation (circularization) for the DNA cassette which has been obtained by overlapping polymerase chain reaction (Fusion-PCR), and carries an antibiotic resistance cassette flanked by homologous internal regions of the target locus. To establish the reproducibility of the approach, three different chromosomal genes (ncRNA31, rpoN, rpoS) were knocked-out from the root-associative bacterium Pseudomonas stutzeri A1501. The results showed that the P. stutzeri A1501 mutants, which are free of any plasmid backbone, could be obtained via a single or double crossover recombination. In order to optimize this protocol, three key factors that were found to have great effect on the efficiency of the homologous recombination were further investigated. Moreover, the modified protocol does not require further cloning steps, and it enables the construction of multiple gene knock-in/out mutants sequentially. This work provides a simple and rapid mutagenesis strategy for genome editing in P. stutzeri, which may also be applicable for other gram-negative bacteria.


This paper presents a novel approach to speech data normalization by introducing interpolation for histogram equalization. We study different ways of histogram interpolation that inhence this normalization technique. We found that using a special weighting factor to combine current and past test sentence statistics improved speech recognition performance.


Contemporary cities face many challenges: energy, ecological, demographic or economic. To answer this, technological means are implemented in cities through the use of sensors and actuators. These cities are said to be smart. Currently, smart cities are operated by actors who share neither their sensor data nor access to their actuators. This situation is called vertical: each operator deploys its own sensors and actuators and has its own IT infrastructure hosting its applications. This leads to infrastructure redundancy and ad-hoc applications to oversee and control an area of the city. A trend is to move towards a so-called horizontal situation via the use of an open and shared mediation platform. Sensor data and access to the actuators are shared within this type of platform, allowing their sharing between the different actors. The costs of infrastructure and development are then reduced. This work is part of such a context of horizontalization, within an open and shared platform, in which we propose: 1) a layer of abstraction for control and supervision of the city, 2) a competition control mechanism handling conflict cases based on the RDF (Resource Description Framework) semantic Web standard, 3) a coordination mechanism promoting the reuse of actuators using ontology, 4) an implementation of our work by a proof of concept. The abstraction we propose is based on models from reactive systems. They aim to be generic and represent the invariant of the smart city: the physical elements. They allow applications to control and supervise the city. To facilitate the development of applications we standardize the interface of our models. Since these applications may have real-time constraints, especially those that have control objectives, we propose to take advantage of the distributed architecture of this type of platform. Given the sharing of the actuators, we have identified that conflicts can arise between applications. We propose a mechanism of competition control to deal with these cases of conflicts. We have also identified that a coordination mechanism must be offered to applications wishing to perform atomic control operations. Such a mechanism promotes the reuse of the actuators present in the city. Finally, we implemented our proposals around a proof of concept, including several use cases, to demonstrate our work.


Abstract Patients who require neurological rehabilitation often do not comply with conventional programs because they find the therapy uninteresting. As a result, specialized interactive video games have been designed to be more enjoyable than conventional therapy (CT) tasks. This study aimed to assess the trunk control and gait ability of patients with chronic stroke after participation in driving-based interactive video games (DBIVG). Participants included 24 chronic stroke patients allocated to an experimental group (n = 13, CT + DBIVG) or a control group (n = 11, CT + treadmill walking training). Both groups received CT five days/week; the experimental and control groups participated in DBIVG and treadmill walking training, respectively, three days/week for four weeks. The primary outcome of trunk control was measured by the trunk impairment scale (TISall) and TIS subscales, including static sitting balance (TISssb), dynamic sitting balance (TISdsb), and trunk co-ordination (TISco). Gait ability was measured by the dynamic gait index (DGI), timed walking test (TWT), and time up and go test (TUGT). Both groups demonstrated significant improvements in TISall, TISdsb, and TUGT results. The experimental group showed significantly greater improvement in TISssb, TISco, and DGI than the control group. Our findings indicate that DBIVG can improve trunk control and gait ability in patients with chronic stroke.


This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 14221 "Geometric Modeling". This is the 9th Dagstuhl seminar on "Geometric Modeling", and the seminar was attended by 44 leading researchers coming from 3 continents and 20 countries. A total of 45 presentations were grouped together into 12 lecture sessions and 3 perspective working group sessions. There was also ample time for stimulating and fruitful person to person and group discussions in the harmonic Dagstuhl atmosphere.


The present work evaluated the capability of Arthrospira platensis complete biomass (ACDW) and the lipid-free biomass (LFB) to remove ammonium ions (NH4+) from aquaculture wastewater discharge. Under controlled conditions in flasks filled with 100 mL of distilled water (synthetic aqueous solution), a batch process ion-exchange was conducted by changing the main parameters including contact times (15, 30, 45, 60, 120, and 180 min), initial ammonium ion concentrations (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 100 mg·L−1), and initial pH levels (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10) at various dosages of ACDW and LFB as adsorbents (0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08, and 0.1 g). After lab optimization, ammonia removal from real aquaculture wastewater was also examined. The removal of ammonium using ACDW and LFB in the synthetic aqueous solution (64.24% and 89.68%, respectively) was higher than that of the real aquaculture effluents (25.70% and 37.80%, respectively). The data of IR and Raman spectroscopy confirmed the existence of various functional groups in the biomass of ACDW and LFB. The adsorption equilibrium isotherms were estimated using Freundlich, Langmuir, and Halsey models, providing an initial description of the ammonia elimination capacity of A. platensis. The experimental kinetic study was suitably fit by a pseudo-second-order equation. On the other hand, as a result of the treatment of real aquaculture wastewater (RAW) using LFB and ACDW, the bacterial counts of the LFB, ACDW, ACDW-RAW, and RAW groups were high (higher than 300 CFU), while the LFB-RAW group showed lower than 100 CFU. The current study is the first work reporting the potential of ammonia-loaded microalgae biomass as a feed source for the rotifer (Brachionus plicatilis). In general, our findings concluded that B. plicatilis was sensitive to A. platensis biomass loaded with ammonia concentrations. Overall, the results in this work showed that the biomass of A. platensis is a promising candidate for removing ammonia from aquaculture wastewater.


s of papers presented at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 2001 *denotes person presenting the paper 1997 estimates for each stratum were adjusted by these differences, and a new adjusted 1997 estimate was produced using the 1997 population distribution for each stratum. Results. The first method resulted in an 18.6% difference between asthma prevalence estimates from the 1988 core NHIS and CHS (5.1% vs. 4.3%). Simply inflating the 1997 asthma prevalence estimate of 5.5% by 18.6% yielded an adjusted estimate of 6.5%. The second stratification method produced an adjusted 1997 asthma prevalence estimate of 7.3%. Conclusion. The redesigned NHIS likely produces lower asthma prevalence estimates than the previous NHIS. Adjusting the 1997 estimate to compensate for the redesign suggests that childhood asthma prevalence has plateaued since 1995, not declined. Secular trends in singleton small-for-gestationalage births in blacks and whites in the US CV Ananth*, K Demissie, MS Kramer, AM Vintzileos (Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA) Objective. To evaluate secular trends in singleton preterm (28–36 weeks) and term (37–41 weeks) small-for-gestational-age (SGA) births, and to estimate the relative contributions of potential determinants of SGA births, separately among blacks and whites. Design. The authors performed a population-based, cohort study comprising blacks (n = 1084 935) and whites (n = 5403 858) that delivered singleton live births in the US in 1989 and 1998. Changes in rates of SGA births (defined as sex-specific birthweight below the 10th centile for gestational age, based on 1989 US births) before and after adjustment for demographic, behavioral determinants and medical and obstetrical complications of current pregnancy. Results. Preterm SGA birth rates among whites increased from 8.5% in 1989 to 9.3% in 1998, a relative increase of 9.4%. Comparable rates among blacks for 1989 and 1998 were 10.5% and 12.4%, respectively, a relative increase of 18.5%. Among term births, the SGA rates declined by 8.1% in whites (9.8% in 1989 and 9.0% in 1998) and by 11.0% among blacks (19.5% in 1989 and 17.3% in 1998). When sequentially adjusted for potential determinants by multivariable logistic regression, the increase in preterm SGA rates were partly explained by pregnancy-induced hypertension and, to a lesser extent, by unmarried status. None of the potential determinants, however, significantly accounted for the decline in term SGA rates. Conclusions. A secular increase in the rate of preterm SGA births in the US and a decline among term SGA births was apparent. These results underscore how little is known about the causes of the observed trends. The importance of these trends on the risks of fetal and neonatal mortality also remains largely unexplored. The effect of overweight and race on age of menarche in a representative survey of US girls SE Anderson*, GE Dallal, A Must (Tufts University, Boston, MA, USA) Despite widespread belief in a trend toward earlier ages at menarche in the US, it is unclear if the evidence justifies speculation about possible environmental causes of early puberty. Previous studies were not representative of the US population and did not account for body weight, a known factor in maturational timing. The authors examined the relationship between weight, race, and menarcheal status in girls ages 11–14 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (1988–94) and compared the results to the National Health Examination Survey (1963–70) where the median age at menarche was 12.8 years. A logit model was used to calculate median age at menarche, overall and by race, based on the weighted proportions of girls who were menarcheal at each age. The median age at menarche in NHANES III was 12.6 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 12.0, 13.1), 12.1 (95%CI: 11.9, 12.3) for Blacks, and 12.7 (95%CI: 11.7, 13.5) for Whites. The prevalence of overweight, defined as a body mass index (BMI) above the 85th percentile based on the CDC growth charts, was 29.9% overall, 29.3% for Whites, and 35.6% for Blacks. High BMI was associated with earlier age at menarche. The median age at menarche for girls with a BMI above the 85th percentile was 12.2 years (95%CI: 11.0, 13.0), and was 12.7 years (95%CI: 12.2, 13.2) for girls with a BMI below the 85th percentile. In a multiple logistic regression model using SUDAAN, overweight and Black race were independently associated with increased likelihood of reaching menarche at a given age: OR = 2.3 (95%CI: 1.3, 4.0) overweight; OR = 2.3 (95%CI: 1.2, 4.4) Black. There was no evidence for a race by overweight interaction (P = 0.41). These findings suggest that any decrease in age at menarche in the US is likely due to the increased prevalence of childhood obesity. Adverse outcomes in pregnancies complicated by early vaginal bleeding M Arafa*, MA Fataah, H Abou Zeid, A El-Kouly (Department of Epidemiology, High Institute of Public Health, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt) Objectives. To assess the perinatal risk of deliveries complicated by light and heavy bleeding, trying to predict the high-risk pregnancies. To evaluate the association between bleeding and perinatal complications in the presence of other confounders. Methods. A case-control, hospital-based study was conducted in the two major obstetric hospitals in Alexandria where women were interviewed during their postpartum stay through 1998. A total of 1503 singleton deliveries, of whom 159 (10.6%) reported bleeding, 101 (63.5%) during the first trimester and 58 (36.5%) during the second. The remaining 1344 women served as controls. Initially, contingency c tests were used to explore the association between bleeding and outcomes, then logistic regression models were used to control for other confounders. Results. Bleeding was more frequent in women of more advanced age (>33 years), with a history of LBW, previous miscarriage and low social class. Suboptimal outcomes (LBW, preterm deliveries, perinatal death and SGA) occurred more often in women reporting bleeding than in those who never bled, and the risk was significantly increased with second trimester bleeding after control for confounders. Logistic regression revealed an interaction among bleeding, interpregnancy interval, and outcomes in that the risk of LBW, preterm, and neonatal death were significantly decreased when the interval was taken into consideration. ConA2 Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research © Blackwell Science Ltd. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 2001, 15, A1–A38 Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research A3 clusion. Early bleeding indicates a poor pregnancy outcome, especially during the second trimester, and the risk of LBW, preterm, and neonatal death decreased with increasing pregnancy interval. Unexamined deaths: perinatal mortality in the United States, 1995–97 WD Barfield*, LM Flowers, JA Martin, S Iyasu,


Trans-resveratrol (t-Res) is a natural compound of a family of hydroxystilbenes found in a variety of spermatophyte plants. Because of its effects on lipids and arachidonic acid metabolisms, and its antioxidant activity, t-Res is considered as the major cardioprotective component of red wine, leading to the "French Paradox" health concept. In the past decade, research on the effects of resveratrol on human health has developed considerably in diverse fields such as cancer, neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic disorders. In the field of rheumatic disorders, in vitro evidence suggest anti-inflammatory, anti-catabolic, anti-apoptotic and anti-oxidative properties of t-Res in various articular cell types, including chondrocytes and synoviocytes, along with immunomodulation properties on T and B lymphocytes. In preclinical models of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, resveratrol has shown joint protective effects, mainly mediated by decreased production of pro-inflammatory and pro-degradative soluble factors, and modulation of cellular and humoral responses. Herein, we comprehensively reviewed evidence supporting a potential therapeutic interest of t-Res in treating symptoms related to rheumatic disorders.


Forward contracts are superior to options as executive compensation. Forward contracts require the executive to purchase the stock, have no value when issued, and are easily valued during their lives. They provide the same incentives as stock but without the right to vote, which limits the executive's influence over the board.


Rhynchosporium secalis is the causal agent of leaf scald on barley, rye and severa l other grasses. The fungus belongs to the class of Deuteromycetes , also referred to as Fungi imperfecti , indicating that a sexual stage has not been observed in nature. Germinating fungal spores are capable of penetrating the cuticle. Then the fungal hypha ramifies as mycelium beneath the cuticle causing the collapse of epidermal cells. In a later stage of the infection, mesophyll cells start to collapse and disease symptoms become visible. Only at this stage, a few fungal hyphae can be detected between dead mesophyll cells. In resistant barley cultivars the infection is halted after the collapse of a few epidermal cells. This is caused by the onset of a defense mechanism by the plant, which involves the massive production of pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins. The response of the plant is triggered upon recognition of the fungus. It was established that R. secalis strains carrying the avirulence gene AvrRrs1 , which codes for the NIP1 protein, are unable to infect barley plants carrying the resistance gene Rrs1 . In this thesis, we describe the biochemical and biological properties of the NIP1 protein, its interaction with factors present on the plant plasma membrane and its tertiary structure. NIP1 consists of 60 amino acid (a.a.) residues, including 10 cysteines, all of which are involved in intramolecular disulfide bonds. The a.a. sequence of NIP1 shows no similarity to sequences in the databases. By sequencing a limited set of NIP1 alleles from field isolates, four NIP1 isoforms were deduced displaying only a limited number of a.a. alterations. Two of these, types I and II, although differing in three amino acid positions, are able to induce PR protein biosynthesis in Rrs1 barley as well as leaf necrosis independent of the resistance genotype. Types III and IV both differ from type II in the single a.a. alterations G45R and S23P, respectively. We engineered type I NIP1 protein into type III and IV-like proteins (types III* and IV*) by exchanging the activity-blocking type III and IV amino acids. Application of NIP1 to Rrs1 -plants is sufficient to elicit the production of PR proteins in a manner comparable to amounts induced after infection by the fungus. In addition to a function as elicitor, NIP1 is able to cause necrosis on barley plants independent of their resistance genotypes, and a role for NIP1 in virulence was therefore proposed. For several virulence factors involved in other plant-pathogen interactions an additional role as elicitor of defense responses has been shown. In viruses, all proteins encoded by the few genes in the genome are expected to be important for viral replication and multiplication. Several plants have developed defense responses that are initiated upon recognition of specific viral gene products. Bacteria, fungi, oomycetes and nematodes have specialized genes for pathogenicity and virulence, some of which can induce resistance in plants as they recognize inflicted activities of the intruding pathogen. The number of pathogen factors for which dual functions in virulence and avirulence is described is accumulating rapidly. The emerging picture is that plant recognition systems targeted against important pathogen virulence factors may possess common characteristics. This opens up multiple possibilities to utilize natural mechanisms in engineering more durable resistance against a larger number of pathogens. A heterologous expression system was set up in E. coli , allowing the production of milligram quantities of NIP1. In this expression system, NIP1 is expressed as a fusion protein, where a histidine tag is fused to the N-terminus of NIP1. In order to obtain NIP1 containing the correct disulfide bond pattern, an unfolding / refolding procedure, involving the use of a cysteine / cystine redox couple was applied. The protease Xa cleavage site between the histidine tag and NIP1 allowed removal of the His-tag. The NIP1 protein produced by this heterologous expression procedure has elicitor activity similar to the native NIP1 protein purified from R. secalis . In addition, the expression system allowed the expression and purification of mutated NIP1 proteins. To identify putative NIP1 binding sites, NIP1 was labeled with radioactive iodine. Binding studies using 125I-NIP1 and barley membrane fractions revealed the presence of a single class of high-affinity NIP1 binding sites on barley plasma membranes. Binding of NIP1 to membrane fractions was specific, reversible, and saturable. The equilibrium dissociation constant, Kd , was determined at 5.6 nM and the concentration of binding sites was calculated to be 255 fmol per mg of microsomal membrane protein. The binding site was detected in both resistant ( Rrs1 ) and susceptible ( rrs1 ) barley plants, suggesting that the Rrs1 gene does not encode the NIP1 binding site. In addition, a binding site with very similar affinity for NIP1 was detected in microsomes from the related plant species wheat, rye, oats and maize, but not from Arabidopsis thaliana . These results correlate with the toxic effect of NIP1 on leaves of the cereal plant species , while no toxic effect was observed in leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana . Two NIP1 isoforms type III* and type IV* both competed successfully for the binding site, although they are not active as elicitors of PR5 biosynthesis. We conclude from these data that these mutant proteins bind efficiently to the binding site, but are unable to activate downstream signaling. In contrast, NIP1 type II is characterized by a drastically increased Kd value. An only slight decrease in elicitor activity and H +-ATPase-stimulating activity of this isoform indicates that binding of NIP1 is not the limiting step in the signal transduction pathway. The three-dimensional structure of NIP1 was determined by NMR spectroscopy. The disulfide bond pattern of NIP1 was determined with biochemical techniques, based on partial reduction of individual disulfide bridges and subsequent analysis of the released fragments after cleavage by mass spectroscopy. The structure of NIP1 can be regarded as a protein consisting of two motifs. The orientation of these motifs with respect to each other is well defined due to the stabilizing effect of the disulfide bond connecting the two motifs. The N-terminal motif contains an anti-parallel b -sheet comprised of 2 b -strands, whereas the C-terminal domain consists of three antiparallel b strands and a relatively large flexible region. NIP1 has a novel fold; no proteins with homologous structures were described so far. The activity-blocking mutations S23P and G45R both have a high impact on the structure. The perception of NIP1 by barley plants may comply with the guard hypothesis, which proposes a third component to be required for perception of an elicitor, and that this additional component is the virulence target of the AVR protein. In the presence of the R protein, binding of the corresponding elicitor to the virulence target, will result in the onset of defense responses, whereas in susceptible plants binding will result in transmission of its virulence function


: The Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) renamed as NavIC is used in both the military and civilian communities for navigation, surveying, remote sensing, asset management and precise timing. A number of environmental factors are known to affect the performance of NavIC including electromagnetic interference, multipath, foliage attenuation, atmospheric delays and ionospheric effects. In this paper, the effects of the ionosphere on NavIC will be examined. Ionospheric effects are the most significant disturbance that can affect NavIC users during high sunspot activity. In the presence of glittering, ionospheric modeling can be rendered impractical and receiver performance can be severely degraded. The influence of the ionosphere and a strategy to isolate its effect are a major concern for NavIC positioning and navigation applications. It is also stronger from local sunset until just after midnight, and during periods of high solar activity. If sufficiently intense, these fluctuations can dramatically impact the performance of space-based communication and navigation systems. Therefore, it is desirable to obtain further understanding of ionosphere and its effects on NavIC.


The identification and molecular characterization of self-antigens expressed by human malignancies that are capable of elicitation of anti-tumor immune responses in patients have been an active field in tumor immunology. More than 2,000 tumor antigens have been identified, and most of these antigens are self-antigens. These significant progresses have led to the renaissance of tumor immunology and studies on anti-tumor immunotherapy. However, despite of the progress in the identification of self-tumor antigens, current antigen-specific immunotherapies for tumors are far less satisfied than expected, which reflects the urgent need to improve our understanding on self-tumor antigens. In order to develop more effective antigen specific anti-tumor immunotherapies and to monitor the responses to these immunotherapies in patients with tumors, many important fundamental questions need to be addressed. We propose for the first time that the studies in addressing the characteristics of self-tumor antigens and autoantigens are grouped as a new subject termed "antigenology". In this brief review, we would outline the progress in the identification of tumor antigens in solid tumors and hematologic malignancies, and overview the new concepts and principles of antigenology and their significance for future immunotherapies to these malignancies.


Presented is an autopsy case of a 79 year-old male who died of miliary tuberculosis. The patient was admitted to the University Hospital with an unknown fever and suspicion of leukemia. He expired on the 13th day of hospitalization. Postmortem examination revealed generalized miliary tuberculosis. The diagnosis of tuberculosis was established only after autopsy. Difficulty in diagnosis of miliary tuberculosis is discussed. Also discussed is a probable association of acute interstitial nephritis with chemotherapy or miliary tuberculosis. Leukemoid reaction is thought to be associated with miliary tuberculosis. The present case reminds us that miliary tuberculosis should never be forgotten when treating a patient having a fever of unknown origin. Cases with tuberculosis were compiled from the Annual of Pathological Autopsy Cases in Japan during 1974 through 1981. There were 3,242 cases of tuberculosis (1.4%) out of 235,095 autopsies recorded in the Annual of Pathological Autopsy Cases in Japan during the above 8 years. Of 3,242 cases 618 were miliary tuberculosis. The latter figure indicates 19.0% of all tuberculosis and 0.26% of all autopsies. Although all age groups were not spared, the 7th and 8th decades were more affected than the others. Tuberculosis has markedly declined since the advent of antituberculous antibiotics. But, autopsy cases with tuberculosis have not recently decreased in number. Clearly, increased awareness of the continuing presence of tuberculosis is needed.


ABSTRACT Introduction Systemic AL amyloidosis (ALA) is a clonal plasma cell (PC) disease characterized by deposition of amyloid fibrils in different organs and tissues. Traditionally, the prognosis of ALA is poor and is primarily defined by cardiac involvement. The modern prognostic models are based on cardiac markers and free light chain difference (dFLC). Cardiac biomarkers have low specificity and are dependent on renal function, volume status, and cardiac diseases other than ALA. New therapies significantly improved the prognosis of the disease. The advancements in technologies – cardiac echocardiography (ECHO) and cardiac MRI (CMR), as well as new biological markers, relying on cardiac injury, inflammation, endothelial damage, and clonal and non-clonal PC markers are promising. Areas covered An update on the prognostic significance of cardiac ALA, number of involved organs, response to treatment, including minimal residual disease (MRD), ECHO, MRI, and new biological markers will be discussed. The literature search was done in PubMed and Google Scholar, and the most recent and relevant data are included. Expert opinion Prospective multicenter trials, evaluating multiple clinical and laboratory parameters, should be done to improve the risk assessment models in ALA in the modern era of therapy.


We studied both theoretically and experimentally the intensity distribution of a Gaussian laser beam when it was focused by an objective lens with its numerical aperture up to 0.95. Approximate formulas for full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the intensity distribution at focus were derived for very large and very small initial beam waists with respect to the entrance pupil radius of the objective lens. In experiments, the energy flux through a 0.5 microm pinhole was measured for various pinhole positions. It was found in theoretical analysis and confirmed in experiments that the FWHMs at focus in the transverse and longitudinal directions do not increase much from the ultimate FWHMs until the input beam waist is reduced below half of the entrance pupil radius.


We introduce a new paradigm for analysing and finding bugs in quantum circuits. In our approach, the problem is given by a triple {P} C {Q} and the question is whether, given a set P of quantum states on the input of a circuit C, the set of quantum states on the output is equal to (or included in) a set Q. While this is not suitable to specify, e.g., functional correctness of a quantum circuit, it is sufficient to detect many bugs in quantum circuits. We propose a technique based on tree automata to compactly represent sets of quantum states and develop transformers to implement the semantics of quantum gates over this representation. Our technique computes with an algebraic representation of quantum states, avoiding the inaccuracy of working with floating-point numbers. We implemented the proposed approach in a prototype tool and evaluated its performance against various benchmarks from the literature. The evaluation shows that our approach is quite scalable, e.g., we managed to verify a large circuit with 40 qubits and 141,527 gates, or catch bugs injected into a circuit with 320 qubits and 1,758 gates, where all tools we compared with failed. In addition, our work establishes a connection between quantum program verification and automata, opening new possibilities to exploit the richness of automata theory and automata-based verification in the world of quantum computing.


The planar microtoroid with unique whispering gallery mode (WGM) has ultra-high Q value (UHQ) and better optical property. In order to get the UHQ cavity, it is very important to deal with the surface of microtoroid using CO2 laser reflow during the fabrication process. Because of the TEM00 laser output, there will be thermal stress which affects the Q value badly. In this paper, we design physical model and analyze the temperature distribution theoretically. Furthermore, thermal stress of different microtoroids has been tested with Raman Spectral Analyzer. At last we found that when the optical path is stabile and the lens is fixed the output power in the 7/1000 duty cycle of 30 minutes long pulse will have a good result.


The mainstay of treatment for patients with hemophilia A is replacement with either plasma-derived or recombinant (r) coagulation factor (F)VIII. As compared with whole plasma, plasma-derived FVIII concentrates clearly improved the clinical outcome for patients with hemophilia A; however, their use was associated with the transmission of blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis B and C virus and HIV, and prompted the introduction into clinical use of biotechnologically engineered recombinant clotting factor concentrates, with a much lower theoretical risk of transfusion-associated infections. Continued efforts to further improve safety have led to the introduction of newer generations of rFVIII, with each subsequent generation representing an incremental step with regard to pathogen safety. Between 1980 and 1985, research demonstrated that removing the middle portion (the B-domain) of wild-type FVIII protein had no detrimental effect on its procoagulant activity as assessed in vitro. This finding was the bas...


Problem determination in today's computing environments consumes between 30 and 70% of an organization's IT resources and represents from one third to one half of their total cost of ownership. The first step to cutting down costs and to enable autonomic computing systems is to have all parts of the system report status in a common log data format and semantics. The generic log adapter (GLA) is a generic parsing engine shipped with the IBM's Autonomic Computing Toolkit that has been conceived to convert proprietary log data into a standard log data event-based format in real time. However, in order to provide generic support for parsing the majority of today's unstructured log data formats the GLA makes heavy use of regular expressions that incur in performance limitations. Current approaches proposed to increase GLA's performance have revolved around fine-tuning the set of regular expressions used to configure the GLA for a particular log data format or writing specific parsing code. In this work we propose a very new approach consisting in transparently parallelizing the GLA by taking advantage of its internal architecture and the fact that structuring log data is a task that lends itself very well to parallelization. We present a master-worker strategy that "gridifies" the GLA efficiently in a completely transparent way for the user


Introduction: On Mars, long lava flows have been described as the first volcanic stage at the formation of a plains-style volcanic region (e.g. [1]). They have been identified and described on the eastern flanks of the Tharsis Montes (e.g.[2 4]), as well as on Tempe Terra [5] and Syria Planum [6]. This type of volcanism have been described as a consequence of magmatism near larger magmatic provinces near-plume or postplume (e.g. [1], [7]). On the Earth, the plains-style volcanic provinces are characterized by three main phases (e.g. [7 8]); 1 st : vent-elongated fissures, where flows follow the topography; 2 nd : low shield volcanoes form on slightly higher slopes; 3 rd : final volcanic resurfacing forming steeper slopes with a lower extrusive rate. The fact that plains-style volcanism on Syria Planum is peripheral to the large Tharsis Montes (located at the topographic summit after an extended eruptive phase) supports the idea of small batch magmatism under lithospheric conditions [8]. Volcano A Description: The Syria Planum region reveals an original pattern of volcanic features distinct from the other areas over the Tharsis bulge; a large volcano (Figure 1) (described as volcano A in [6]) was identified west of a swarm of small shield volcanoes [6]. An extensive field of lava flows, identified between approximately 15o-19oS and 105o102oW, covers an area of approximately 100,000 km 2 . Through the study of HRSC and THEMIS IR-day and IR-night images, we can identify elongated and lobate shapes for these flows with preferential NW to SE orientation, following the regional slope. Using THEMIS and MOLA data, we observe that these lava flows erupted from an isolated volcano – Volcano A on the northeast of Syria Planum [6]. The summit cone of volcano A is about 40 km in diameter, and it lies at an elevation of approximately 6.7 km (Figure 1). This volcano is located outside of a HRSC mosaic, although THEMIS and a HIRISE image enables its study. On Figure 1 is shown a MOLA profile from "a" to "b". From the center of volcano A to the side "a", the slope is about 1.4o while from the center to the side "b" the slope decreases to 0.7o, to the side where the lava flows extend downslope. Post-flow tectonic deformation is detected on the volcano's western flank. In Figure 1 it is of note that the flanks facing east are considerably smoother than the western flanks. Regional Geology: Syria Planum formation was described by [6] as the result of successive magmatic and tectonic events. From the Early to the Late Hesperian period we have: I) extensional field stress that produced grabens; II) eruption of volcano A resulting in lavas that spread all over Syria Planum. Volcano A has similar characteristics to the Tharsis Montes, such as the same effusion rate (see [6]), except that it did not grow as high as the Tharsis Montes. Previous work [6] concluded that these lava flows are likely to be basaltic to andesitic in composition, similar to Martian Montes lava flows; III) tectonic deformation of the emplaced lava flows by the formation of several fractured patterns such as NE-SW en-echelon faults, troughs and adjacent grabens; IV) new episodes of volcanic activity, forming a coalesced swarm of small shields that bury preexisting faults.


The use of an assertive specification language for real-time software development and maintenance is considered. The language is used for asserting the acts or relations inherent in the problem to be solved; this is in contrast to conventional programming languages, which are used to express the computer solution. Expressing a problem in Model consists of declaring array variables and defining their relationships through equations. This is different from conventional programming, which relates the problem in terms of computer operations. The language is supported by an automatic system which interacts with the user in soliciting missing definitions or correcting inconsistencies, and which translates the specification into a near-optimal computer solution. The main advantages of this approach are indicated. The use of Model in real-time software development and maintenance is reviewed. Differences from conventional programming are stressed through an example, which also illustrates the use of the three automatic components of the Model system.


Malnutrition in children is associated with an increased risk of infection and death. Multiple abnormalities in the inflammatory-immune response, including cytokine production, have been described in protein energy malnourished (PEM) children and could account for increased severity and frequency of infection. The aim of the present study was to determine whether there are abnormal basal tumor necrosis factor (TNF) serum concentrations in PEM children, to relate it with serum cortisol and plasma corticotrophin levels and to explore simultaneously the in vitro production of TNF by peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL). No differences were found in basal plasma corticotrophin and serum cortisol concentrations in malnourished as compared with normal, well-nourished control children. Basal TNF serum concentrations were significantly higher in malnourished children than in controls. Conversely, mitogen induced TNF production by PBL in vitro was significantly reduced in PEM children compared with controls. Abnormalities in circulating and mitogen-induced TNF production are present in malnourished children even in absence of elevated serum cortisol concentrations. These abnormalities potentially could modify inflammatory-immune responses to infectious stimuli in malnourished children.


Abstract. This paper has the goal of evaluating monotonic trends in the Xingu and Tapajos river basins in the Austral Amazon region, Brazil. Non-parametric statistical tests such as Mann–Kendall, Bootstrap Mann–Kendall, Sen and Bootstrap Sen are applied on streamflow gauging stations data, to determine the significance and magnitude of possible trends. Data in these river basins is relatively scarce, with time series ranging from twenty to forty years, having many gaps. Former studies indicate a decreasing trend for both annual average and minimum streamflow values in the Tapajos river basin, with 99% confidence level, and a decrease in maximum values in the Xingu river basin, with 90% confidence level. However, past analyses have only used one station near the basin outlet. This study uses data from 7 gauging stations in the Xingu basin and 14 stations in the Tapajos basin. Results indicate opposite trends at the 95% confidence level for different regions in the basins, and for different flow regimes. For the Xingu river basin, trends in the minimum flow for different sub-basins even out at the Altamira station, near its outlet. For the Tapajos river, the southeastern part of the basin has increasing trends, while the southwestern part decreases. At the Itaituba station, they also balance out.


Abstract Historical geographies of environmental resources need reliable biophysical baselines. In this essay, I construct a vegetation baseline for early-twentieth-century southeastern Brazil using new empirical evidence. Analysis of land subdivision court proceedings and postmortem property inventories suggests a mosaic of semideciduous mesophytic forest, subtropical savanna ( Cerrado ) and dense arboreal savanna ( Cerradao ) in western Sao Paulo state, Brazil. The findings support the claims of botanists and biogeographers regarding the relationship between vegetation communities and chemical–physical soil characteristics. The idea of a mosaic of early-twentieth-century vegetation also provides the basis for questioning the 'Atlantic Forest' supported by Warren Dean's With Broadax and Firebrand . The conclusions raise the epistemological issue of how to reconstruct biophysical baselines.


Spoken language is one of the most natural, efficient, flexible, and economical means of communication among humans. As computers play an ever increasing role in our lives, it is important that we address the issue of providing a graceful human-machine interface through spoken language. In this paper, we will describe our recent efforts in moving beyond the scope of speech recognition into the realm of spoken-language understanding. Specifically, we report on the development of an urban navigation and exploration system called VOYAGER, an application which we have used as a basis for performing research in spoken-language understanding.


Ronald Dorn, a prominent geoscientist at Arizona State University in Tempe, has filed suit against the authors of an article, published last year in
 Science, who raised doubts about some of his work. Dorn is charging that statements made in the article, along with other comments by some of the authors, implied that he had doctored rock samples used to date ancient stone carvings. Earlier this month, two investigations concluded that Dorn did not commit scientific misconduct. Both sides are staying mum about the suit, but some observers worry that the litigation could deter potential whistleblowers and chill public discussion of scientific controversies.


This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 770747 LIFT Low-Input Farming and Territories – Integrating knowledge for improving ecosystem based farming Research and Innovation action: H2020 – 770747 Call: H2020-SFS-2016-2017 Type of action: Research and Innovation Action (RIA) Work programme topic: SFS-29-2017 Duration of the project: 01 May 2018 – 30 April 2022


A 22-year old female had an episode of acute heart and respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation ducing a trip overseas. Echocardiography demonstrated akinesis of the apical area (left ventricle ejectionfraction(LVEF) =15%). Since computed tomography (CT) with coronary angiography to rule out acute coronary syndrome showed no abnormalities, she was diagnosed with morphological stress cardiomyopathy due to akinesis of the apical area. After returning to Japan, she was admitted to our hospital for further examination. She had an increased level of catecholamines in 24-hour urine. ¹³¹Imetaiodobenzyguanidine scintigraphy, CT scan and fluorodexyglucose positron emission tomography revealed a retroperitoneal mass. From these results, a diagnosis of extra-adrenal pheochromocytoma with catecholamine-induced cardiomyopathy was made. Histological diagnosis of the laparoscopically resected tumor was pheochromocytoma. After the operation, the level of catecholamines in 24-hour urine was normalized.


Neural networks can make higher classification accuracy in the problem of rule extraction, for it has the capability of non-linear mapping and exact approaching mechanism. This paper proposes the procedures of a kind of splitting rule extraction algorithm based on feed forward network. After advancing the input nodes within this complex architecture, build up a RBF (Radial Basis Function) neural network classifier using JOONE (Java Object Oriented Neural Network) to optimize the inputs. Then the complexity of rule extracting procedures will be reduced and simplified. And the experiments result shows the validation and effectiveness of this improving method.


This paper is intended to propose appropriate planning
guidelines for the wards in team nursing method under
Patient-Centered Care concept.
For this purpose, the theory of team nursing system has
been studied and the analysis to get the basic data was
made on the results of investigation in relation with the
characteristics of wards in general hospital.


With excellent insulation and resistance to electromagnetic interference, the optical current instrument has been considered as a viable solution for high voltage current. In this paper, a new hybrid optical fiber current transformer (HOCT) is designed. Its construction and principle are described in detail. An ultra-low-power microcontroller is used in this system to combine the low-power consumption and increased function. The error compensation algorithm, to enhance the measurement accuracy, is performed by means of digital signal processor (DSP). The sensor head mounted on line is powered optically from the ground potential. A conventional accurate current transformer and a Rogowski coil are used as detecting elements at the meantime, so that the new system can be applied for both metering and relaying.


A procedure is presented for the stereochemically restrained least-squares refinement of macromolecular structures with neutron and X-ray diffraction data from single crystals. This procedure has been tested by refining a model of ribonuclease A using neutron data to minimal spacings of 2.8 A and X-ray data from within 2.0 A spacings. Joint X-ray and neutron refinement is well conditioned and tends to avoid false minima that may occur when a medium-resolution structure is refined solely with the neutron structure factors.


OBJECTIVES
Analysis of outcomes of a cohort of patients with esthesioneuroblastoma.

DESIGN
Retrospective cohort analysis.

SETTING
PATIENTS presenting with esthesioneuroblastoma from 1994 to 2006 in a tertiary care academic medical center.

PATIENTS
Fifteen consecutive patients diagnosed as having esthesioneuroblastoma were treated during this time period using a subcranial resection. The mean follow-up is 75 months (range, 2 to 240 mos).

RESULTS
The overall survival was 100% and the overall disease-free survival was 49% and 24% at 5 and 15 years, respectively. PATIENTS treated with radiation therapy following surgical resection had a 5- and 15-year disease-free survival of 83.3% compared with a 5- and 15-year disease-free survival of 26.7% and 0%, respectively, for patients whose initial treatment was surgery alone. The mean time to recurrence was 82.1 months. None of the patients had a decrease in Karnofsky Performance Score following subcranial resection.

CONCLUSIONS
PATIENTS with esthesioneuroblastoma whose initial treatment consists of surgical resection followed by radiation therapy have a longer disease-free survival than patients treated with surgery alone. However, initial treatment modality did not have an effect on survival. Long-term, close follow-up is necessary to identify recurrences, which can be treated with a high degree of success.


We present a novel computational model employing hierarchical active inference to simulate reading and eye movements. The model characterizes linguistic processing as inference over a hierarchical generative model, facilitating predictions and inferences at various levels of granularity, from syllables to sentences. Our approach combines the strengths of large language models for realistic textual predictions and active inference for guiding eye movements to informative textual information, enabling the testing of predictions. The model exhibits proficiency in reading both known and unknown words and sentences, adhering to the distinction between lexical and nonlexical routes in dual-route theories of reading. Notably, our model permits the exploration of maladaptive inference effects on eye movements during reading, such as in dyslexia. To simulate this condition, we attenuate the contribution of priors during the reading process, leading to incorrect inferences and a more fragmented reading style, characterized by a greater number of shorter saccades. This alignment with empirical findings regarding eye movements in dyslexic individuals highlights the model's potential to aid in understanding the cognitive processes underlying reading and eye movements, as well as how reading deficits associated with dyslexia may emerge from maladaptive predictive processing. In summary, our model represents a significant advancement in comprehending the intricate cognitive processes involved in reading and eye movements, with potential implications for understanding and addressing dyslexia through the simulation of maladaptive inference. It may offer valuable insights into this condition and contribute to the development of more effective interventions for treatment.


The study of the growth and survival of blue swimming crabs is important to optimize its production and explore the development of net-cage crab culture as the culture scheme for production of blue swimming crabs. This paper investigates the growth and survival rate of Portunus pelagicus at 15 and 30 days of culture using two rearing substrates (net and sand) and three stocking densities (15, 30 and 45 crabs/m2). Physicochemical parameters such as the dissolved oxygen, salinity, water temperature, and water transparency were also gathered across the days of culture to explain other factors that may influence survival rate of crabs during culture.  Results showed no significant differences for both growth rate in terms of carapace width and body weight and survival rate. Significant interaction between the stocking rate and rearing substrates on the growth rate in terms of carapace width during the 15 days of culture were observed. Poor growth and survival rates of the crabs may have been the result of cannibalism and poor quality of bottom substrates like silt and abrupt change of water quality namely salinity and transparency. It is recommended to validate the results in a more favorable rearing environment. Management strategies to control predation may be tested and implemented when culturing blue swimming crabs in cages and pens.