OBJECTIVE
This study ascertained the incidence of complications during pregnancy, labor, and delivery and the neonatal characteristics of infants born to women with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression in a population-based cohort.

METHOD
Based on records linkage across a psychiatric case register and prospectively recorded obstetric data, the study comprised women with schizophrenia or major affective disorders who had given birth to 3,174 children during 1980-1992 in Western Australia. A comparison sample of 3,129 births to women without a psychiatric diagnosis was randomly selected from women giving birth during 1980-1992. Complications were scored with the McNeil-Sjöström Scale. Odds ratios were calculated for specific reproductive events.

RESULTS
Both schizophrenic and affective disorder patients had increased risks of pregnancy, birth, and neonatal complications, including placental abnormalities, antepartum hemorrhages, and fetal distress. Women with schizophrenia were significantly more likely to have placental abruption, to give birth to infants in the lowest weight/growth population decile, and to have children with cardiovascular congenital anomalies. Neonatal complications were significantly more likely to occur in winter; low birth weight peaked in spring. Complications other than low birth weight and congenital anomalies were higher in pregnancies after psychiatric illness than in pregnancies preceding the diagnosis.

CONCLUSIONS
While genetic liability and gene-environment interactions may account for some outcomes, maternal risk factors and biological and behavioral concomitants of severe mental illness appear to be major determinants of increases in reproductive pathology in this cohort. Risk reduction in these vulnerable groups may be achievable through antenatal and postnatal interventions.


The Booster Ion Profile Monitor (BIPM) was recently (April 1998) used in a test to study the feasibility of collecting the electrons instead of the more traditional ions. These electrons and ions are created by the ionization of the residual gas in the beam pipe by the proton beam. As a consistency check, the proton beam current is compared to the integrated area of the measured profile through the acceleration cycle. It was found necessary to include the effect of the proton beam energy upon ionization by means of the Bethe-Bloch equation in order to have satisfactory agreement.


Bonds are traditionally more stable and less volatile than equity as instruments to safekeep one's money. But, bonds, by its conceptualization and construction, are illiquid assets. Such illiquidity provides a gap which can be exploited by manipulators and speculators in the bond market. Similar in nature to corporate bonds, government bonds are also an instrument for safe investing by retail investors trying to earn a higher interest rate compared to fixed income deposits. However, government bonds carry with them an additional level of stability and security given that they are underwritten by a country's treasury. But, is that so? Knowledge and observations from the recent Greek debt crisis that involves massive default on government issued sovereign bonds illustrate the real problem may not just be that Greece does not have control over the currency in which the government bonds are denominated in. What is perhaps more important is that a country needs to have a reserve currency that it issues in order to underwrite the issuing of government bonds with less risk of massive economic outage when the country defaults. To understand this point, consider the case where a country issues government bonds to finance operational expenditure of the government and civil service. Such issuance carries a higher risk of default because it indicates that the government lacks cash and operational means to finance the civil service. But, in the case of a government with a reserve currency such as the United States, this fact could be forgiven as the government would print more money through quantitative easing to ameliorate any anxiety in the bond market should government finance shows any signs of weakness. Basically, the operating principle for issuing government bond with support of a reserve currency is that the sheer size of international holdings of the reserve currency such as U.S. dollar provides critical ballast for supporting and ameliorating any possible negative effects should the U.S. government default on its debt. This monetary effect could be explained by the buttressing role of a reserve currency. But, it also cast a mirror on other countries' need for prudency in issuing government bonds since they do not have the stabilizing support of a reserve currency. Crucially, as the Greek debt crisis shows, a country needs to own the reserve currency to enjoy its stabilizing benefits on government bond issuance, a borrowed reserve currency like in Greece's case does not work.


"Crafting Compositions" guides students through the entire writing process, with exercises in planning, drafting, responding and revising, and polishing. In addition to completing free writing exercises, keeping a journal of informal responses, and revising sample compositions, students will draft, revise, and edit one composition per chapter. The textbook features: " Authentic readings to foster vocabulary development, show successful techniques, and serve as a jumping-off point for free writing." A "learning log" in which students write to practice the writing lessons and tips presented." A two-track system in which students simultaneously work with the writing of other students as they work on their own compositions. " Toolbox mini-lessons to review common grammar trouble spots. This mid-level writing text is appropriate for high school, community college, or university course


Virtual metrology (VM), a critical component of semiconductor manufacturing, is an efficient way of assessing the quality of wafers not actually measured. This is done based on a model between equipment sensor data (obtained for all wafers) and the quality characteristics of wafers actually measured. This paper considers principal component regression (PCR), partial least squares regression (PLSR), kernel PCR (KPCR), and kernel PLSR (KPLSR) as VM models. For each regression model, two cases are considered. One utilizes all explanatory variables in developing a model, and the other selects significant variables using the genetic algorithm (GA). The prediction performances of 8 regression models are compared for the short- and long-term etch process data. It is found among others that the GA-KPLSR model performs best for both types of data. Especially, its p rediction ability is within the requirement for the short-term data implying that it can be used to implement VM for real etch processes.


A five-year-old Labrador retriever was referred for progressively worsening inspiratory stridorand accompanying dyspnea. Oropharyngeal inspection identified a mass in the soft palate as the cause for upper airway obstruction. Fine-needle aspiration of the mass evacuated mucohemorrhagic fluid and revealed multiple sialoliths. The sialocele was surgically explored, all sialoliths were removed, the lining of the sialocele was resected, and the remaining defect in the palate was reconstructed and closed. Histology of submitted tissues confirmed it to be a sialocele and the sialoliths consisted of protein and carbonate apatite. The dog made an unremarkable recovery and was discharged on the same day. No recurrence occurred and the dog was free of any respiratory symptoms six months post treatment.


Stylometric authorship attribution is one of the important approaches in the text mining field that has received growing attention due to its delicateness. This approach concerns about analyzing texts such as novels and plays written by famous authors, trying to measure their writing style by choosing some attributes that shows uniquely belong to the author, assuming that each author has a special artistic way of writing that no other author has. There are two major problems that tie up the progress in this field, which are the predictions accuracy results and the human expert judgment. The techniques that manage such predictions are either using the statistical attributes such as frequent words or the use of more sophisticated semantic techniques such as lexicons. Nonetheless, the results are still considerably less accurate. In this research, we propose a new Stylometric method known as the Stylometric authorship balanced attribution (SABA) that is able to overcome these problems with higher accuracy prediction and independent from human judgments, which means that the method does not rely on the domain experts. The new method is implemented by merging three methods, which are called the computational approach, the Winnow algorithm and the Burrows-delta method. The proposed method also uses a set of more effective attributes as compared to the frequent words method. This results in higher Stylometric prediction thus far, having more alibis for author artistic writing style for authorship recognition and prediction. The effective attributes are represented by the word pair and the trio, while both are multiple words attributes. The proposed SABA method is compared against three other methods using the computational approach, the Winnow algorithm method, and the Burrows-delta method. The results showed that the proposed method produces superior prediction accuracy and even provides a completely correct result during the final stage of the experiment.


Aims  We have compared local (alpha) and regional (beta) species diversities of dung beetles in wet forests in the main tropical regions including Madagascar. Madagascar is exceptional in lacking native large herbivorous mammals which produce the key resource for dung beetles elsewhere.

Location  Central and South America, mainland Africa, Madagascar and Southeast Asia.

Methods  Trapping data on dung beetles and data on mammalian faunas were obtained from published and unpublished studies. We used our original data for Madagascar.

Results  Species richness of dung beetles and that of large-bodied (> 15 mm length) species in particular were highly significantly explained by the regional number of large-bodied (> 10 kg) mammals (R2 from 50 to 80%). For a given pairwise spatial distance between two communities, beta diversity was significantly higher in Madagascar than elsewhere, explaining the very high total species richness in Madagascar in spite of low local diversity.

Main conclusion  The presence and numbers of large herbivorous mammals greatly influence the species richness of dung beetles in tropical wet forests. The lack of native large herbivores rather than a limited species pool explains the low local diversity in Madagascar. Exceptionally high beta diversity in Madagascar suggests a pattern of old radiation involving extensive allopatric speciation.


Integration of the chemical extraction of recombinant inclusion-body protein from Escherichia coli, and its recovery by metal-affinity expanded-bed adsorption (IMAC-EBA) under denaturing conditions, was investigated. The viral coat protein L1 with a hexa-histidine tag was expressed in Escherichia coli HMS174(DE3) as a model protein. Interference of released host DNA with adsorbent fluidization in the EBA step was solved by selective precipitation using spermine and low-speed centrifugation. However, the capacity and selectivity of the adsorbent for L1 remained lower than anticipated. The binding of L1 to immobilized Ni(2+) was therefore studied in detail using surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The Tris buffer and ethylene-diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) used in the extraction mixture were found to interfere significantly with the L1-Ni(2+) interaction. The SPR studies suggest that L1 binding could be improved by replacing the Tris buffer with HEPES and by adding CaCl(2) to inactivate the EDTA. The modified chemical extraction conditions resulted in effective L1 extraction from cytoplasmic inclusion bodies, at high cell density (OD(600 )= 80) and without the use of reducing agent, into a medium optimized for subsequent IMAC recovery. The modified buffer conditions resulted in an improved binding capacity and a good L1 purification factor (12.7) and recovery yield (71%). This work demonstrates that it is possible to reduce the complexity and hence the cost associated with traditional processes used to prepare purified denatured protein, ready for refolding, from cytoplasmic inclusion bodies.


Dilated cardiomyopathy is a progressive irreversible disease associated with contractile dysfunction and heart failure. During dilated cardiomyopathy, elevated diastolic wall strains trigger mechanotransduction pathways that initiate the addition of sarcomeres in series and an overall increase in myocyte length. At the whole organ level, this results in a chronic dilation of the ventricles, an increase in end diastolic and end systolic volumes, and a decrease in ejection fraction. However, how exactly changes in sarcomere number translate into changes in myocyte morphology, and how these cellular changes translate into ventricular dilation remains incompletely understood. Here we combined a chronic animal study, continuum growth modeling, and machine learning to quantify correlations between sarcomere dynamics, myocyte morphology, and ventricular dilation. In an eight-week long volume overload study of n=6 pigs, we found that the average sarcomere number increased by 3.8%/week, from 47 to 62, resulting in a myocyte lengthening of 3.3%/week, from 85 to 108um, while the sarcomere length and myocyte width remained unchanged. At the same time, the average end diastolic volume increased by 6.0%/week. Using continuum growth modeling and Bayesian inference, we correlated alterations on the subcellular, cellular, and organ scales and found that the serial sarcomere number explained 88% of myocyte lengthening, which, in turn, explained 54% of cardiac dilation. Our results demonstrate that sarcomere number and myocyte length are closely correlated and constitute the major determinants of dilated heart failure. We anticipate our study to be a starting point for more sophisticated multiscale models of heart failure. Our study suggests that altering sarcomere turnover -- and with it myocyte morphology and ventricular dimensions -- could be a potential therapeutic target to attenuate or reverse the progression of heart failure.


Abstract The R3̅ - to R3̅c cation ordering phase transition in the ilmenite (FeTiO3) - hematite (Fe2O3) solid solution has been investigated using in-situ time-of-flight neutron powder diffraction. Four synthetic samples of the solid solution containing 70, 80, 90, and 100% FeTiO3 (ilm70, ilm80, ilm90, and ilm100, respectively) were heated under vacuum to a maximum of 1350 °C. Powder diffraction patterns were collected at several temperatures on heating and cooling, with a Rietveld refinement performed in each case. Samples ilm80, ilm90, and ilm100 were fully ordered after quenching from the synthesis temperature to room temperature. Sample ilm70 had a higher degree of quenched in disorder, which is the result of chemical heterogeneities produced during quenching and subsequent heating in the neutron experiments. The degree of order in all samples decreased smoothly at high temperatures, with second-order transitions to the R3̅c phase being observed at 1000, 1175, and 1325 °C in ilm70, ilm80, and ilm90, respectively. The transition temperature in ilm100 was higher than the maximum temperature reached in the neutron experiments, and is estimated as ~1400 °C. The character of the transition is typical of that predicted by three-dimensional Ising models and appears to become more first-order in character with increasing Ti-content. The temperature-dependence of the cell parameters reveals that components of the spontaneous strain tensor, e11 and e33, are negative and positive, respectively. Little volume strain is associated with long-range ordering. A small negative volume strain due to short-range ordering within the R3̅c phase is identified. The variations in cell parameters and cation-cation distances can be understood in terms of the competing effects of long- and short-range ordering as a function of temperature and composition.


Purple blotch caused by Alternaria porri is one of the most destructive diseases of onion which inflicting considerable bulb yield loss. To find the suitable biointensive management option, efficacy of different essential oils and bio-agents was evaluated. Effects of various treatments were assessed in terms of quality attribute of plant and disease magnitude. The combined application of essential oil and Trichoderma viride was found to be supportive to increase the plant height, neck thickness and foliage in two varieties e.g., Agrifound Light Red and NHRDF Red-3. The mean incidence of purple blotch (40.7 and 38.9%) was observed in both the varieties in response of combined application Neem oil and T. viride. In result of lowest disease pressure, the highest yield 343.86 and 304.08Q/ha was found in NHRDF Red-3 and Agrifound Light Red, respectively. In study of temporal dynamics of blotch severity, an exponential increase in severity was found between 60 to 90-DAT. The information generated in the present study may be helpful to develop a biointensive management module which will facilitate the onion production.
Bangladesh J. Bot. 51(3): 541-546, 2022 (September)


Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) can be used for the measurement of bone density at the level of lumbar spine, whole body scan, and also for the measurement of bone mass content (BMC), lean body mass (LBM), and fat body mass (FBM). Although this method has been originally developed for the diagnosis and monitoring of osteoporosis in adults, it is used in children with chronic diseases like chronic renal failure, chronic gastrointestinal and rheumatological diseases. However, children with chronic disease often demonstrate statural growth disturbances and decreased growth velocity. Therefore, their actual height does not correspond to the actual chronological age. Normal values of DEXA for a given age are based on data from children with normal height. Interpretation of DEXA regardless of the actual height, which is usually stunted, may lead to false conclusions and wrong therapeutic attitudes. Thus, when interpreting results obtained in such patients a few transformations and calculations should be done.


This article explores the extent to which it makes sense to see EU policies towards the developing world as distinctive. It does so through a comparative analysis of EU and US policies for the governance of Latin America, paying particular attention to Mercosur. The conceptual framework is drawn from theories of new regionalism. Despite some similarities in so far as issues of economic governance are concerned, I argue that there are important differences between the EU and the US models of new regionalism, especially in terms of the discursive importance attributed to notions of 'partnership', support for subregional integration, and political and social inclusion. I suggest that the EU is using new regionalism as a way to lay down an identity marker of what it perceives as a more humane governance model for Latin America than that of the USA.


The role of compliance assistance in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's overall enforcement strategy has been quite variable over the past decade and a half, increasing in prominence under the Bush administration and now slated for significantly reduced funding under the Obama administration. While theoretical models and anecdotal evidence suggest that compliance assistance should play some role in a comprehensive enforcement strategy, to date there has been relatively little empirical evidence on the actual effectiveness of existing compliance assistance programs. To help inform the debate over the appropriate use of compliance assistance, this paper uses data on hazardous waste generators nationwide to assess the effect of federal compliance assistance programs in improving compliance with hazardous waste regulations. The paper also conducts a direct empirical analysis of the relationship between traditional enforcement tools and compliance assistance. The results show that federal compliance assistance efforts do increase compliance, but the evidence does not suggest any consistent relationship between traditional enforcement and compliance assistance. Also, while states do not appear to substitute federal compliance assistance for traditional enforcement, state compliance assistance programs do appear to decrease the likelihood of inspections among the smallest hazardous waste generators.


Despite over 15 years of research on multidimensional perfectionism, it is still unclear how different forms of perfectionism are related to self-efficacy, aspiration level, and reactions to success and failure in performance situations. Differentiating between positive striving perfectionism and self-critical perfectionism, the present study investigated in N = 100 undergraduate students how perfectionistic striving and self-criticism were related to self-efficacy, aspiration level, and performance and how manipulated success and failure feedback affected these relationships. Results showed that perfectionistic striving was positively correlated with self-efficacy and aspiration level prior to manipulated feedback. Moreover, perfectionistic striving predicted increases in aspiration level following success feedback. In contrast, self-criticism was negatively correlated with self-efficacy prior to feedback and predicted decreases in self-efficacy following failure feedback. The findings corroborate the view that perfectionism has both adaptive and maladaptive aspects: whereas self-criticism is associated with low self-efficacy and makes perfectionists lose confidence after failure, perfectionistic striving is associated with higher aspiration levels and makes perfectionists reach for higher aims after success.


Humans in general can not be separated from the consumptive lifestyle. Problems related to ownership of goods that are no longer in use are increasing. These items are stored and never used again by the owner. Most of these items do not have high sales value because of the condition of used goods or for some people the goods are unused. The item can be valuable in the hands of those who need it. Problem occur when information on the unused item does not reach to the person in need. This research attempt to develop an exchanging unused goods system without a payment process. Each item will be worth one token, this is done to prevent system exploitation, this differentiate the proposed system with other bartering system. Furthermore, the system was developed to be a portal in providing information and facilitating people who will barter their goods that are not used. For the process of giving and taking goods will be done separately


Depth sensing is crucial for 3D reconstruction and scene understanding. Active depth sensors provide dense metric measurements, but often suffer from limitations such as restricted operating ranges, low spatial resolution, sensor interference, and high power consumption. In this paper, we propose a deep learning (DL) method to estimate per-pixel depth and its uncertainty continuously from a monocular video stream, with the goal of effectively turning an RGB camera into an RGB-D camera. Unlike prior DL-based methods, we estimate a depth probability distribution for each pixel rather than a single depth value, leading to an estimate of a 3D depth probability volume for each input frame. These depth probability volumes are accumulated over time under a Bayesian filtering framework as more incoming frames are processed sequentially, which effectively reduces depth uncertainty and improves accuracy, robustness, and temporal stability. Compared to prior work, the proposed approach achieves more accurate and stable results, and generalizes better to new datasets. Experimental results also show the output of our approach can be directly fed into classical RGB-D based 3D scanning methods for 3D scene reconstruction.


Energy availability is the primary subject that drives the research innovations in energy harvesting systems. In this paper, we first propose a novel concept of effective energy dissipation that defines a unique quantity to accurately quantify the energy dissipation of the system by including not only the energy demand by the electronic circuit, but also the energy overhead incurred by energy flows amongst system components. This work also addresses the techniques in run-time prediction of future harvested energy. These two contributions significantly improve the accuracy of energy availability computation for the proposed Model-Accurate Predictive DVFS algorithm, which aims at achieving best system performance under energy harvesting constraints. Experimental results show the improvements achieved by the MAP-DVFS algorithm in deadline miss rate. In addition, we illustrate the trend of system performance variation under different conditions and system design parameters.


Rationale The end of life (EOL) experience in the intensive care unit (ICU) can be psychologically distressing. The 3 Wishes Project (3WP) personalizes the EOL experience by carrying out wishes for dying patients and their families. While the 3WP has been integrated in academic, tertiary care ICUs, implementing this project in a community ICU has yet to be described. Objectives To examine facilitators of, and barriers to, implementing the 3WP in a community ICU from the clinician and key-stakeholder perspective. Methods This mixed-method study evaluated the implementation of the 3WP in a 20-bed community ICU in Southern Ontario, Canada. Patients were considered for the 3WP if they had a high likelihood of imminent death or planned withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy. Quantitative data include patient demographic data and wishes implemented. Following the qualitative descriptive approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with purposively sampled clinicians and key-stakeholders. Data from transcribed interviews were analyzed in triplicate through qualitative content analysis. Results During the 10-month period, 66 of 67 wishes were completed, with a median of 4.5 wishes per patient-family dyad. Interviews with 12 participants indicated that the 3WP personalized and enriched the EOL experience for patients, families and clinicians. Interviewees indicated higher intensity education strategies were needed to enable spread as the project grew. Clinicians described many physical resources for the project but required more non-clinical project support for orientation, continuing education and data collection. Instead, these roles were completed by clinicians with saturated work capacity which may have inhibited the spread of the project. Conclusions In this community hospital, ICU clinicians and key stakeholders reported the 3WP improved EOL care for patients, families, and clinicians. Project implementation in a community ICU requires investigators take into account project characteristics and adapt the intervention to the community hospital context.


An author-index to the 60 volumes of John Lehmann's magazine, which contained stories by Russian, Czech, German, French and Chinese writers. Many stories and sketches were concerned with peasant or working-class characters. Notable public events such as the Great War, Nazi violence, Italian conscription for the Abyssinian War form some of the themes. Lehmann contributed a sequence of travel notes from around the world.


Background: The ATP-binding cassette (ABC) multidrug resistance protein breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP, ABCG2) is a half-transporter that was thought to function as a homodimer, but has been shown to exist as a homotetramer in the membranes of drug resistant cells and to also form higher-order multimers. The serine/threonine kinase Pim-1, expressed in both hematologic malignancies and solid tumors, phosphorylates BCRP at T362 and promotes its multimerization and drug efflux function. Inhibiting Pim-1 sensitizes BCRP-overexpressing cells to BCRP substrate chemotherapy drugs. Pim-1 phosphorylation has been previously shown to stabilize some of its substrate proteins, but the mechanism of its effect on BCRP is unknown. We sought to delineate the mechanism of Pim-1 effect on BCRP. Methods: BCRP-overexpressing 8226/MR20 myeloma cells were treated with the protein translation inhibitor cycloheximide (10µg/ml) in the presence and absence of the Pim-1 inhibitor SGI-1776 (SuperGen, Inc., Dublin, CA) (1μM) for 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 hours, and BCRP levels were measured by densitometric analysis, normalized for GAPDH levels, following Native PAGE as well as SDS-PAGE electrophoresis and immunoblotting. 8226/MR20 cells were also treated with the proteasome inhibitor MG-132 (2 μM) or the lysosome inhibitor bafilomycin A1 (10 nM) in the presence of cycloheximide and in the presence and absence of SGI-1776. Results: Under Native PAGE electrophoresis, BCRP migrated predominantly as a tetramer, with lower levels of higher-order multimers. Half-lives were approximately 6 and 2 hours, respectively. In the presence of SGI-1776, the half-life of higher-order BCRP multimers decreased to approximately 1 hour, while BCRP tetramer levels increased, consistent with destabilization of higher-order BCRP multimers and conversion to tetramers. Proteasomal inhibition with MG-132 and to a lesser extent lysosomal inhibition with bafilomycin A1 increased the half-life of both BCRP tetramers and higher order multimers. However, on co-incubation with SGI-1776, bafilomycin A1 caused marked stabilization of higher-order BCRP multimers, with a lesser effect on tetramers, while proteasomal inhibition with MG-132 had no effect, consistent with Pim-1 protecting high-order multimers from lysosomal degradation. Finally, BCRP dimers measured by SDS-PAGE electrophoresis under non-reducing conditions increased with time during cycloheximide treatment and the increase was more rapid in the presence of SGI-1776, consistent with more rapid destabilization of BCRP multimers when Pim-1 kinase was inhibited. Conclusion: Phosphorylation of BCRP by Pim-1 stabilizes BCRP higher-order multimers, protecting them from dissociation and degradation in the lysosome. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 706. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-706


This article aims at discussing some of the problems for the construction of a shared moral point of view in dialogical context, through a revision of both Habermas' proceduralistic discourse ethics and Grice's pragmatist conversational implicatures project. I claim that a) by discounting the undue idealization of both projects, supported by their Kantian underpinnings, and b) by refreshing them with a consequentialist approach to rationality in a fallibilistic bounded reasoning approach, one could achieve a more realistic understanding of the dialogical problems between moral strangers. By following such a revision, I suggest to be then possible to operate c) a reversal of the principle of rational cooperation in Grice, in convergence with Sperber & Wilson's relevance theory, while also considering the role of other additional mechanisms in interaction, such as empathy (in Alvin Goldman's sense). These modifications result in a fallibilistic understanding of the process of the dialogical construction of a shared moral point of view among moral strangers, with the aid of a non-idealized use of procedures and implicatures.


Author(s): Murillo, Marco Antonio | Advisor(s): Valadez, Concepcion M | Abstract: While an emerging body of work has highlighted the experiences of undocumented students in higher education (Contreras, 2010; Flores, 2009; Perez, 2009, 2012), the research literature on undocumented youth in the K-12 public education system is limited. Nationwide, approximately 1 million undocumented immigrants are under 18 years of age and about 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school each year (Passel, 2003; Passel a Cohn, 2011). In recent years, numerous states have passed policies, which provide undocumented students greater access to postsecondary education as well as financial assistance such as the California Dream Act. Many of these policies, however, are rapidly changing and confusing for students and parents (Teranishi, Suarez-Orozco, a Suarez-Orozco, 2015). Framed within theories of belonging, this study examines undocumented high school students' perceived membership and inclusion within a school community. Employing ethnographic methods in an urban, high school serving a diverse student body, the study includes the following data: 1) observations in classrooms and the college center, 2) interviews with U.S-born/legally residing students (n=15), undocumented students (n=14), and teachers/administrators (n=13), and 3) school artifacts. Using a multilevel analysis framework the study addresses the impact of federal and state immigration related policies on undocumented students (macro), school-level processes and systems in placed to support undocumented students as they prepare to transition out of high school (meso), and the treatment of undocumented students in school (micro). Findings from this study are presented following the multilevel level framework. Study findings suggest that the California Dream Act and DACA have helped to make strides in supporting undocumented students college enrollment and gaining legal employment. However, increasing college costs and limited access to financial resources threaten undocumented students matriculation into college. Despite creating a supportive school context for undocumented students, teachers and administrators struggled with how to appropriately address the issue of documentation in order to target assistance and protect student privacy. In general, undocumented students felt comfortable disclosing their legal status after developing trusting relationships with adults and peers. At times, peers and adults were surprised to learn an individual was undocumented because it challenged dominant perceptions of undocumented immigrants (i.e., dress, language, or race/ethnicity). Ultimately, undocumented students felt a sense of belonging, suggesting the importance for schools to address issues of documentation in a direct, but respectful manner.


Purpose

Mentoring is widely recognised as an effective strategy for supporting the professional learning of teachers and student teachers across different educational contexts. Yet, its effectiveness in initial teacher education (ITE) may be more widely conceived to take account of mentoring as a cultural practice, contributing to a change of professional learning habits and relationships towards collegiate and collaborative reflexivity. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of mentoring experiences between teachers and student teachers, how these are embedded within the established professional learning culture of the school and the opportunities for mentoring to affect professional learning.

Design/methodology/approach

Set within the context of a teacher education reform project in Scotland, involving student teachers, mentors and university tutors, the study adopted a critical constructivist theory stance to explore mentoring relationships. A sequential mixed methods approach informed the collection and analysis of data.

Findings

Quantitative data point to a diversity of experiences of mentoring amongst teachers and student teachers. Qualitative data provide a nuanced account of participants' views of their mentoring experiences, pointing to opportunities for revisiting assumptions about learning in the classroom as well as questioning established professional learning patterns.

Practical implications

The authors conclude that mentoring relationships cannot be disentangled from a critical interrogation of the modes of relationships and values supporting professional learning in ITE. Practical implications centre upon preparation and resources to develop mentoring as a tool for learning, embedded within the professional culture of the school.

Originality/value

This study reframes the concept of mentoring as a practice that does not simply reinforce professional expectations but seeks to redefine teacher professional learning, pedagogy and social relationships in school contexts.


The shelf life of fresh, whole broilers was extended by dipping freshly chilled carcasses into a 5% (w/v) solution of potassium sorbate for 30 sec. One hundred broilers were removed from a processing line immediately following the final chill tank. Fifty carcasses were dipped in water for 30 sec, and 50 were dipped in the sorbate solution for 30 sec. The birds were allowed to drain and then individually bagged and stored at 3 C until spoilage odors were noted. The control birds were stored for 10 days when spoilage was evident, and the sorbate treated birds were stored for 19 days, at which time spoilage was evident.


Abstract The Mali agricultural sector and the country's food security are potentially vulnerable to climate change. Policies may be able to mitigate some of the climate change vulnerability. This article investigates several policy changes that may reduce vulnerability, including climate-specific and other policies. The policy set includes migration of cropping patterns, development of high-temperature-resistant cultivars, reduction in soil productivity loss, cropland expansion, adoption of improved cultivars, and changes in trade patterns. When all policies are considered together, results under climate change show an annual gain of $252 million in economic benefits as opposed to a $161 million loss without policy adjustment. Simultaneously, undernourishment is reduced to 17% of the Malian population as compared with 64% without policy adjustment. We also find tradeoffs in cases between economic benefits and undernourishment. Policies are also studied individually and collectively. Overall, the results indicate that policy can play an important role in reducing climate change vulnerability in Mali.


The shear-induced crystallization behavior of PET was investigated by measuring the time-dependent storage modulus (G′) and dynamic viscosity (η′) with a parallel-plate rheometer at different temperatures and shear rate. The morphology of shear-induced crystallized PET was measured by DSC, X-ray, and polarizing optical microscopy. When a constant shear rate was added to the molten polymer, the shear stress increased with the time as a result of the orientation of molecular chains. The induction time of crystallization is decreased with frequency. Moreover, the rate of isothermal crystallization of PET was notably decreased with increasing temperature. The shape of spherulites is changed to ellipsoid in the direction of shear. In addition, aggregation of spherulites is increased with increasing frequency. Particularly, the row nucleation morphology could be observed under polarized light for ω = 1. From the results of DSC, the melting point and enthalpy have a tendency to decrease slightly with increasing frequency. The crystallite size and perfectness decreased with frequency, which was confirmed with X-ray data. The unit length of the crystallographic unit cell of the PET increased and the (1 0 3) plane peak increased with increasing frequency. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 80: 2640–2646, 2001


BACKGROUND
Previous studies have suggested a relationship between type A personality and the occurrence of coronary artery disease, so we used intravascular optical coherence tomography (OCT) to investigate the morphological characteristics of culprit plaques in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients with different scores of type A personality.Methods and Results: A total of 221 AMI patients who underwent preintervention imaging of culprit lesions and an assessment of type A behavior pattern were included. According to the scores for the behavior questionnaire, these patients were divided into 3 groups: non-type A personality (n=91), intermediate personality (n=73), and type A personality (n=57). Patients with type A personality were younger (P=0.003) and had a higher level of total cholesterol (P=0.029) and more severe luminal stenosis (P=0.046). In addition, the prevalence of microchannels (P<0.001), macrophage accumulation (P<0.001), and plaque rupture (P=0.010) with greater number (P<0.001), cavity angle (P<0.001), and length (P<0.001) was highest in the type A personality group.

CONCLUSIONS
The culprit lesions of AMI patients with increased scores for type A personality had more severe coronary luminal stenosis, and the proportion of vulnerable features was increased.


14-mer alpha-helix and 15-mer beta-strand oligopeptides composed of leucine (L) and lysine (K) were used to investigate peptide adsorption and orientation onto well-defined methyl and carboxylic acid-terminated self-assembled monolayer (SAM) surfaces with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). XPS showed that both peptides reached monolayer thickness on both SAMs, but significantly higher solution concentrations were required to reach this coverage on the methyl SAMs. This shows that the peptides adsorb more strongly onto the carboxyl-terminated SAMs. The excess oxygen detected by XPS and the H(3)O(+) signal detected by ToF-SIMS for the SAMs with adsorbed peptides indicated that water molecules are associated with the adsorbed peptides, even under ultrahigh-vacuum conditions. Changes in the number of L and K fragments detected by ToF-SIMS indicate that the beta-strand oriented differently on the two SAMs. The L side chains were preferentially associated with the methyl-terminated SAM, and the K side chains were preferentially associated with the carboxyl SAM. In contrast, little change in the ToF-SIMS K/L ratio was observed for the alpha-helix peptide absorbed on the two SAMs, indicating that ToF-SIMS was not as sensitive to the orientation of the alpha-helix peptide.


Nowadays, the LNG market is a derivative of the traditional gas market and has certain advantages over pipeline gas supplies. Many countries, including the Russian Federation, are trying to consolidate their positions in the relatively new and growing LNG market. In the paper, Sino-Russia Energy strategy perspectives until 2030 are being analyzed in detail. The authors analyze the Arctic LNG case as the most crucial for both countries' collaboration. The Arctic is considered as the new strategic frontier of China. China is a critical Arctic stakeholder as it is written in the newly released white paper China's Arctic Policy. The authors use Python 3.4. modeling for testing the influence of economic, social and environmental factors on Sino-Russia energy collaboration. The methodology consists of foresight analysis, including principal component isolation (furtherPCA) method and SARIMA analysis. Research results show that the values of the components in Russia and China industries are drastically different. However, some components would be significantly developed due to Russia's existing trends by 2030. Indeed, it can be concluded that the dissimilarity between Russia and China' oil and gas industries would increase by 2030, as indicated by the first, second and fourth components. China's oil and gas industry has a stable trend for development.


The collaborative filtering (CF) technique has been widely used recently in recommendation systems. It needs historical data to give predictions. However, the data sparsity problem still exists. We propose a new item-based restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) approach for CF and use the deep multilayer RBM network structure, which alleviates the data sparsity problem and has excellent ability to extract features. Each item is treated as a single RBM, and different items share the same weights and biases. The parameters are learned layer by layer in the deep network. The batch gradient descent algorithm with minibatch is used to increase the convergence speed. The new feature vector discovered by the multilayer RBM network structure is very effective in predicting a rating and achieves a better result. Experimental results on the data set of MovieLens show that the item-based multilayer RBM approach achieves the best performance, with a mean absolute error of 0.6424 and a root-mean-square error of 0.7843.


According to the unstable and nonlinear performances of the servo valve-controlled hydraulic motor, classical control methods based on linear theory are gradually unable to meet the high-performance requirements of the system. Using the servo valve-controlled hydraulic motor based on the third-order active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) to improve the dynamic performance of the system is feasible. The mathematical model and the simulation model of the third-order ADRC for the servo valve-controlled hydraulic motor system are established respectively. For the phase lag caused by the third-order ADRC controller, the control performance of the ADRC controller is significantly improved using the advance forecast. The simulation experiment results show that the designed ADRC controller has good tracking performance and stronger robustness of the system than the traditional PID controller.


The experiments were conducted in 2015-2017 on the experimental fields of the Kazakh Research Institute of Potato and Vegetable Growing located on the northern slope of the Zailiysky Alatau, 40 km to the west of the city of Almaty, under irrigation conditions. The aim of the research was a comprehensive field assessment of selective onion samples with sterile cytoplasm from onion Galantum and their derivatives – varietal-linear hybrids obtained by pollination with domestic cultivars. Visual assessment, which was conducted on the background of natural disease infection, showed that 20 accessions of onions had a very weak susceptibility to peronosporosis (1-10% of leaves); 63 – weak susceptibility (11-25% of the leaves); 91 - average susceptibility (26- 50% of leaves); 118 – severe susceptibility (more than 51% of the leaves). As the results of the research showed, onion accessions differed significantly in terms of productivity: the gross yield varied from 13,3 to 83,6 t/ha, the commodity yields ranged from 10,6 to 78,3 t/ha, and the marketability ranged from 65,4 up to 98,8%. Yield level above 70 t/ha had breeding accessions with sterile cytoplasm from onion Galanthum: ON518, ON533, ON519 and ON516, amounting to 83,6; 75,3; 74,2 and 73,4 t/ha, respectively. Very high marketability of bulbs had breeding accessions ON171 – 98,8%, ON439 – 97,6% and ON158 – 96,8%. The value of storage losses varied depending on the genotype of the selected onion breeding material. The greatest physiological reduction in weight was observed in the accessions ON517 – 32,1%, ON516 – 26,5%, ON533 – 24,2% and ON336 – 17,7%, and the lowest - in the accessions ON431 – 4,6%, ON486 – 4,0% and ON327 – 3,4%. The correlation analysis showed a weak relationship between the parameters of the onion yield and its storabilioty (R = -0,10-0,24). Storability was mainly due to the physiological reduction in weight (R = -0,59), bulb soft rot (R = -0,59) and bulb sprouting (R = -0,69).


Global warming is a current topic all over the world. CO2 emissions must be lowered to stop the already started climate change. Developing regenerative energy sources, like photovoltaics and fuel cells contributes to the solution of this problem. Innovative technologies and strategies need to be competitive with conventional energy sources. During the last years, the photovoltaic solar cell industry has experienced enormous growth. However, for solar cells to be competitive on the longer term, both an increase in efficiency as well as reduction in costs is necessary. An effective method to reduce costs of silicon solar cells is reducing the wafer thickness, because silicon makes up a large part of production costs. Consequently, contact free laser processing has a large advantage, because of the decrease in waste materials due to broken wafers as caused by other manufacturing processes. Additionally, many novel high efficiency solar cell concepts are only economically feasible with laser technology, e.g. for scribing silicon thin-film solar cells. This paper describes laser hole drilling, structuring and texturing of silicon wafer based solar cells and describes thin film solar cell scribing. Furthermore, different types of lasers are discussed with respect to processing quality and time.


Despite extensive investigations of therapeutic improvements for surgical techniques, chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remains one of the most aggressive forms of cancer, and the prognosis for patients with advanced ESCC remains poor. Therefore, effective therapies are urgently required in order to improve the prognosis of patients with ESCC. TE-1 cells were treated with gambogic acid (GA), and then subjected to western blot analysis, TUNEL assay and caspase activity analysis. GA significantly induced apoptosis in ESCC TE-1 cells. In addition, the antitumor activity of GA was accompanied by the decreased expression of phosphorylated-protein kinase B (p-AKT) and nuclear factor of κ light polypeptide gene enhancer in B-cells 1 (NF-κB). The inhibition of protein kinase B (AKT) and NF-κB activation by chemical inhibitors augmented the apoptotic effect responses to GA in the TE-1 cells. The pan-caspase inhibitor z-VAD-fmk (zVAD) decreased GA-induced apoptosis. Furthermore, zVAD attenuated GA-induced growth inhibition in TE-1 cells. GA induced apoptosis in ESCC TE-1 via suppression of NF-κB pathway. The findings of the present study may provide a novel insight into ESCC treatment.


Statistics and math anxiety are pervasive problems for post-secondary students. We hypothesized that self-efficacy would be negatively related to math/statistics anxiety, and that anxiety sensitivity and perfectionism would be positively related to math/statistics anxiety, even when controlling for gender, university program, and education level. Method: Graduate and undergraduate students (N = 447, after exclusions) completed an online self-report questionnaire, including an abbreviated version of the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS), math anxiety, self-efficacy, anxiety sensitivity, perfectionism, and demographics. Results: Exploratory factor analysis supported a six-factor structure for statistics anxiety. Self-efficacy was negatively associated with math/statistics anxiety, whereas anxiety sensitivity and perfectionism were positively associated with math/statistics anxiety. Relationships ranged from small-to-moderate, and most relationships persisted after adding covariates. Discussion: Our study suggests the feasibility of a short-form version of the STARS. Moreover, it provides important information on how personality is associated with domain-specific anxiety that can impede statistics education.


The sensitivity of a Boolean function f is the maximum, over all inputs x, of the number of sensitive coordinates of x (namely the number of Hamming neighbors of x with different f-value). The well-known sensitivity conjecture of Nisan (see also Nisan and Szegedy) states that every sensitivity-s Boolean function can be computed by a polynomial over the reals of degree poly(s). The best known upper bounds on degree, however, are exponential rather than polynomial in s.

Our main result is an approximate version of the conjecture: every Boolean function with sensitivity s can be e-approximated (in e2) by a polynomial whose degree is s · polylog(1/e). This is the first improvement on the folklore bound of s/e. We prove this via a new "switching lemma for low-sensitivity functions" which establishes that a random restriction of a low-sensitivity function is very likely to have low decision tree depth. This is analogous to the well-known switching lemma for AC0 circuits.

Our proof analyzes the combinatorial structure of the graph Gf of sensitive edges of a Boolean function f. Understanding the structure of this graph is of independent interest as a means of understanding Boolean functions. We propose several new complexity measures for Boolean functions based on this graph, including tree sensitivity and component dimension, which may be viewed as relaxations of worst-case sensitivity, and we introduce some new techniques, such as proper walks and shifting, to analyze these measures. We use these notions to show that the graph of a function of full degree must be sufficiently complex, and that random restrictions of low-sensitivity functions are unlikely to lead to such complex graphs.

We postulate a robust analogue of the sensitivity conjecture: if most inputs to a Boolean function f have low sensitivity, then most of the Fourier mass of f is concentrated on small subsets. We prove a lower bound on tree sensitivity in terms of decision tree depth, and show that a polynomial strengthening of this lower bound implies the robust conjecture. We feel that studying the graph Gf is interesting in its own right, and we hope that some of the notions and techniques we introduce in this work will be of use in its further study.


BACKGROUND
End stage renal failure in infants is rare, and was until recently regarded as untreatable. Advancements in dialysis techniques and other renal replacement therapy, have now made lifesaving treatment possible.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Three infants who developed end stage renal failure shortly after birth and were subsequently treated with long-term dialysis (as a bridge to transplantation) are presented and their results are compared with those from other dialysis centres.

RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION
All three patients were successfully dialysed until transplantation, two with peritoneal dialysis and one with haemodialysis. Complications were rare and manageable. The results are in accordance with findings from previous studies. Long-term dialysis in infants with chronic renal failure should no longer be considered experimental and is now a real alternative until the child is big enough to have a transplantation. Treatment outcome is affected by co-morbidity. The treatment requires a multidisciplinary approach with specialists from many fields including paediatrics, paediatric surgery, nephrology, nutrition and dialysis. In addition it is essential to cooperate with the parents, as the treatment is demanding for the family as well as for the medical personnel.


Hybrid power systems based on new and renewable energy sources, especially photovoltaic and wind energy, are an effective option to solve the power-supply problem for remote and isolated areas far from the grids. Microsoft Excel software programming package is used to analyze data measurements for both wind and solar radiation measurements for the two locations in Palestine (Ramallah and Nablus). Results of analysis illustrate that energy density available in wind for Ramallah site is about 2008 kWh/m.year, while it is 927 kWh/m.year for Nablus site, and the daily average of solar radiation intensity on horizontal surface is about 5.4 kWh/m .day. A Matlab software package is used to develop a simulation program to simulate different scenarios of operation of the hybrid system by making energy balance calculations on an hourly basis for each of the 8760 hours in a year and then to choose the appropriate sizes of the different components for the most optimum scenario. The optimization is based on cost of generation. Results of the simulation illustrate that the most economic scenario is the scenario that uses a hybrid system mainly dependent on wind. Cost of xxii energy (COE) in this scenario is 1.28 NIS/kWh. Other scenarios dependent on wind-only hybrid system, PV-only hybrid system, wind stand-alone system, PV stand-alone system, or diesel only, give results of COE greater than this value. The amount of CO2 produced as a result of operation of the wind-PV hybrid system is very small compared with that produced as a result of operation of the diesel only. This is a very important environmental issue that shall be considered and not ignored. It was concluded that none of the hybrid system scenarios analyzed could presently be justified on COE basis, compared to the alternative of simply purchasing electricity from the grid where the COE is 0.70 NIS/kWh. Considering not electrified far from grid remote areas, changes in electricity prices, subsidy levels, costs for renewable energy equipment, or taking into account environmental considerations might alter the position in the future.


The aim of study is to evaluate the tolerability and effectiveness of photodynamic therapy as an organ‑preserving treatment in patients with vulvar leukoplakia. 50 patients with a verifed diagnosis of «vulvar leukoplakia» were included in the study. The age varied from 27 to 74 years. The method of treatment assumed the use of the photosensitizer рhotolon (RUE «Belmedpreparaty», Belarus) administered intravenously in doses of 1.8–2.5 mg/kg. Photoirradiation of pathological foci was carried out 2.5–3 hours after intravenous injection of photolon® using a semiconductor laser «UPL PDT» (LEMT, Belarus, λ=661 nm) at exposure doses from 30 to 100 J/cm2 with a power density of 100–170 mW/cm2. The treatment was performed under medical anesthesia. The results of treatment were evaluated using clinical data. Adverse reactions and complications after the introduction of the photosensitizer and photoirradiation have not been observed. Complete clinical regression of the treated pathological foci was noted in 100% of cases with a follow‑up observation 1 month after the treatment. At follow‑up after 3 months, local recurrences of the disease were detected in 4 cases, which were successfully treated with repeated photo‑dynamic therapy sessions. The percentage of complete regressions was 92%, partial – 8%. The obtained results allow judging on the possibility of using photodynamic therapy in the treatment of patients with vulvar leukoplakia, which allows to preserve the organ and obtain a satisfactory functional and cosmetic result.


High-Tc screen-printed YBCO/Ag composite thick films were prepared on YSZ substrates by a liquid-phase processing method. The films with 20 wt.% Ag fired at 1030-1060 degrees C showed relatively high Jc values of about 1800-2000 A cm-2 (77 K, O T). The presence of Ag decreased the degree of preferred orientation of the c axis, but seemed to suppress the stoichiometric deviation from (123) and improve the Jc value. The addition of Ag also improved the water resistance and mechanical strength of the films.


Fission yeast ste9/srw1 is a WD‐repeat protein highly homologous to budding yeast Hct1/Cdh1 and Drosophila Fizzy‐related that are involved in activating APC/C (anaphase‐promoting complex/cyclosome). We show that APCste9/srw1 specifically promotes the degradation of mitotic cyclins cdc13 and cig1 but not the S‐phase cyclin cig2. APCste9/srw1 is not necessary for the proteolysis of cdc13 and cig1 that occurs at the metaphase–anaphase transition but it is absolutely required for their degradation in G1. Therefore, we propose that the main role of APCste9/srw1 is to promote degradation of mitotic cyclins when cells need to delay or arrest the cell cycle in G1. We also show that ste9/srw1 is negatively regulated by cdc2‐dependent protein phosphorylation. In G1, when cdc2–cyclin kinase activity is low, unphosphorylated ste9/srw1 interacts with APC/C. In the rest of the cell cycle, phosphorylation of ste9/srw1 by cdc2–cyclin complexes both triggers proteolysis of ste9/srw1 and causes its dissociation from the APC/C. This mechanism provides a molecular switch to prevent inactivation of cdc2 in G2 and early mitosis and to allow its inactivation in G1.


Using the semiclassical approach to the energy levels of the fermions bound to the vortex core, we found the difference between the states in nonchiral and chiral superconductors, determined by the Berry phase. The bound states of fermions in the singly quantized vortex in the layered superconductor with the symmetry of superfluid 3He-A is E=n\omega_0 (as distinct from E=(n+1/2)\omega_0 in s-wave superconductor) and thus contains the state with exactly zero energy. This is in accordance with the result obtained in microscopic theory by Kopnin and Salomaa. Using this approach for calculations of the effect of impurities on the spectrum of bound state we reproduced the Larkin-Ovchinnikov result for single impurity in s-wave vortex: the spectrum has the double period \Delta E=2\omega_0 and consists of two equdistant sets of levels. The same approach however shows that the single impurity does not change the spectrum E=n\omega_0 in the p-wave vortex .


The induction of the autophagy machinery, a process for the catabolism of cytosolic proteins and organelles, constitutes a crucial mechanism in innate immunity. However, the involvement of autophagy in human neutrophils and the possible inducers of this process have not been completely elucidated. In this study, the induction of autophagy was examined in human neutrophils treated with various activators and detected by the formation of acidified autophagosomes through monodansylcadaverine staining and via LC‐3B conversion screened by immunoblotting and immunofluorescence confocal microscopy. In addition, the expression of the ATG genes was assessed by real‐time RT‐PCR. We provide evidence that autophagy is implicated in human neutrophils in both a phagocytosis‐independent (rapamycin, TLR agonists, PMA) and phagocytosis (Escherichia coli)‐dependent initiation manner. ROS activation is a positive mechanism for autophagy induction in the case of PMA, TLR activation and phagocytosis. Furthermore, LC3B gene expression was uniformly upregulated, indicating a transcriptional level of regulation for the autophagic machinery. This study provides a stepping stone toward further investigation of autophagy in neutrophil‐driven inflammatory disorders.


This article examines styles of judicial reasoning under the Human Rights Act. It uses Lord Hoffmann's short speech in the Belmarsh Detainees case as a springboard from which to explore some important developments. The first part of the article examines the way in which some judges are 'turning to the local' by using historical examples as a means of countering powerful lines of argument run by the government in defence of its anti-terrorist policies. Later in the article, I turn to investigate the use of strategic decision-making by judges when applying the HRA. I conclude by asking whether the introduction of the HRA might lead to the development of a strange counterpoint between internationalist and nationalist rhetoric in judicial decision-making.


Purpose To determine the outcome of part-time occlusion therapy in children with anisometropic amblyopia detected after they were 8 years of age. Methods We analyzed 29 eyes with anisometropic amblyopia in children 8 years of age and older. The mean age was 8.79±0.98 (range 8~12) years old. The subjects whose best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) did not improve by two lines or better within 2 weeks of wearing glasses full-time were prescribed occlusion therapy for 6 hours a day outside of school hours, along with the instruction to wear glasses full-time. Subjects who complied with occlusion for more than 3 hours a day were considered to comply well. Results The major component of the anisometropia was hyperopia in 51.7% of the subjects, and hyperopia plus astigmatism was found in 24.1%. The mean pretreatment BCVA score was 0.51±0.23 (LogMAR). Compliance was 89.66%. The mean posttreatment BCVA was 0.03±0.01 (LogMAR), and the success rate, based on a posttreatment BCVA of 0.1 (LogMAR) and better, was 96.43%. It took an average of 4.79±3.35 months to reach the desired posttreatment BCVA. The mean posttreatment stereopsis was 79.78±37.61 seconds of arc. The recurrence rate was 8%. The visual improvement was related to the degree of compliance (p=0.000). The time taken to reach the posttreatment BCVA was shorter in subjects with a better pretreatment BCVA (p=0.019), but it did not relate to the compliance (p=0.366). Conclusions The most common component of anisometropia detected after 8 years of age was hyperopia. The part-time occlusion therapy, which had been carried out after school hours, was successful in most cases.


Natural microflora fermentation causes changes in freshly tapped palm sap and therefore makes its storage, transport, and large scale use difficult. This study was aimed at developing stable and value added products, including syrup and non-alcoholic "malt-like" drink from the sap of palms. The sap of Raphia hookeri collected from "evening-to-morning"(1700 Hrs-0700 Hrs) and "morning-to-afternoon" (0700 Hrs-1600 Hrs), respectively, were used in the preparation of syrup. The respective syrups were in turn used in combination with varying proportions of water, sugar, and caramel for the formulation of six(6) palm "malt-like" drinks from which the best (from sensory evaluation) was carbonated and named Palm Malt. The prepared Palm Malt was compared to commercially popular malt drinks on the market. A nine point hedonic scale (1=like extremely – 9=dislike extremely) was used by a panel of 56 to evaluate the colour, taste, flavour and after-taste, as well as overall consumer acceptability of the product. Proximate and physicochemical analyses were also carried out on the sap, syrup and Palm Malt using standard procedures. Descriptive statistics (percentages, mean and standard deviation) were derived and data were also subjected to regression analysis to determine relations between parameters. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine variations in properties. Results of the proximate analyses showed that the moisture and protein content of the sap samples ranged from 92.96-94.21% and 0.14-0.17% respectively, with an average ash content of 1.53%. That for the syrup ranged from 13.45-15.60% and 0.14-0.17%, respectively, with ash content of 1.70%. Potassium, the principal cation in body cells, was the most abundant mineral in the saps. Physicochemical results: pH and total sugars of the saps were found to be 3.94-4.05, and 6.53-7.57%, respectively; whereas that for the syrups was found to be 3.96-4.13 and 76.70-82.03% respectively. The pH, total soluble solids, total solids and titratable acidity of the developed Palm Malt were found to be 4.94, 14.50%, 15.86%, 0.55%, respectively. The developed Palm Malt was found to be equally acceptable to consumers, in comparison to commercially popular types of malt drinks (P>0.05). This shows that there is potential for economic utilization of palm sap. If exploited, this would contribute to increased income for farmers and industrialists in the regions of Ghana/Africa where palms grow. Keywords: Raphia hookeri , sap, syrup, malt-like drink


The ability to recognize human emotion is one of the hallmarks of human-robot interaction. Hence this paper describes the realization of emotion recognition. For emotion recognition from voice, we propose a new feature called frequency range of meaningful signal. With this feature, we reached average recognition rate of 76% in speaker-dependent. From the experimental results, we confirm the usefulness of the proposed feature. We also define the noise environment and conduct the noise-environment test. In contrast to other features, the proposed feature is robust in a noise-environment.


To date testing interactions in high dimensions is a challenging task. Existing methods often have issues with sensitivity to modeling assumptions and heavily asymptotic nominal p-values. To help alleviate these issues, we propose a permutation-based method for testing marginal interactions with a binary response. Our method searches for pairwise correlations that differ between classes. In this article, we compare our method on real and simulated data to the standard approach of running many pairwise logistic models. On simulated data our method finds more significant interactions at a lower false discovery rate (especially in the presence of main effects). On real genomic data, although there is no gold standard, our method finds apparent signal and tells a believable story, while logistic regression does not. We also give asymptotic consistency results under not too restrictive assumptions. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.


A steady, two-dimensional corner flame is established when fuel and oxidizer enter the reaction zone in mutually perpendicular directions. A model problem in which the velocity fields are linear functions of spatial position is utilized to study the resulting flame. The flame structure is comprised of a diffusion flame surrounded on either side by fuel-rich and fuel-lean partially premixed laminar flames, similar to, but distinct from, triple flames. Using suitable coordinate transformations and change of variables, the governing equations in the thermodiffusive approximation are recast into a form akin to classical triple flames, with the strain rate appearing as the eigenvalue. A new exact integral representation of the solution to the mixture fraction equation is then utilized and high activation energy asymptotics are applied to solve approximately for the resulting flame shape, the imposed strain rate and, most significantly, the position of flame stabilization. This theoretically predicted flame is computed numerically, and comparisons are made between theory and computation.


Several forms of iterable belief change exist, differing in the kind of change and its strength: some operators introduce formulae, others remove them; some add formulae unconditionally, others only as additions to the previous beliefs; some only relative to the current situation, others in all possible cases. A sequence of changes may involve several of them: for example, the first step is a revision, the second a contraction and the third a refinement of the previous beliefs. The ten operators considered in this article are shown to be all reducible to three: lexicographic revision, refinement and severe withdrawal. In turn, these three can be expressed in terms of lexicographic revision at the cost of restructuring the sequence. This restructuring needs not to be done explicitly: an algorithm that works on the original sequence is shown. The complexity of mixed sequences of belief change operators is also analyzed. Most of them require only a polynomial number of calls to a satisfiability checker, some are even easier.


This article reports on a study of students' reticence in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Panxi Vocational College in Sichuan Province of Mainland China. Forty-one students answered a 28-item questionnaire. The students' reticence levels, general tendency of unwillingness-to-speak, and their learning behaviors were identified. Individual and social factors contributing to the reticence phenomenon in the vocational college's EFL classrooms were also determined. The results suggested that culture have strong influences on Chinese vocational college students' reticence. However, their habitual classroom behaviors that have been established for a long time should be taken into account in regard to their reticence.


Abstract Combined cycle power plants consist of a gas cycle, which uses gas turbines to generate electricity, and a water–steam cycle, which uses steam turbines to generate electricity. In gas turbine power plants, operation performance is the function of ambient air temperature, pressure, and humidity. Electricity consumption increases in summer seasons due to increasing cooling demand to satisfy thermal comfort conditions. Ambient air temperature affects gas turbine power output and peaking problem occurs at higher temperatures in the electricity grid. Inlet air cooling is a method to increase the power output of a gas cycle by decreasing the temperature of inlet air to the cycle. Inlet air cooling in gas turbine power plants can be obtained by the evaporative cooling method, fogging, absorption, and mechanical compression chillers mainly. Evaporative media or fogging system increases the relative humidity up to 95 per cent and as a result inlet air temperature decreases and mass flowrate to the compressor increases. In this study, a combined cycle power plant is considered with a fogging system and a parametric study is performed to analyse the effects of the ambient temperature and the humidity on the combined cycle performance. When a fogging system is applied to the cycle, the net power generation and the net fuel input of the combined cycle are increased by 8.3 per cent. Besides, plant auxiliaries and water consumption is also increased by 0.55 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively. However, energy and exergy efficiencies are decreased by 0.2 per cent in the case of applying a fogging system.


The report is dedicated to the study of acute venous thrombosis. The aim of the research was to reveal the disease outcomes depending on the localization and length of occlusion of various segments of deep veins in lower extremities for determination of possibility of surgical harvesting of the veins. 91 patients treated at Gomel vascular surgery department from 2004 to 2005 were examined. There were 54 man and 37 woman aged from 17 to 88 years. The acute venous thrombosis has been diagnosed basing on clinical manifestations and essential ultrasonic control. The research is mixed in its character: patients selection was performed on retrospective basis and further observations were prospective. The clinical pattern of the disease was studied depending on occlusion level. Demographic characteristics were analyzed. In the article thtre is a description of the outcomes of acute occlusions after a half of year. Results of standard treatment are revealed.


CATSPER2 (Cation channel sperm‐associated protein 2) protein, which is part of the calcium CATSPER channel located in the membrane of the flagellar principal piece of the sperm cell, is only expressed in the testis during spermatogenesis. Deletions or mutations in the Catsper2 gene are associated with the deafness‐infertility syndrome (DIS) and non‐syndromic male infertility. However, the mechanisms by which Catsper2 is regulated are unknown. Here, we report the characterization of the promoter region of murine Catsper2 and the role of CTCF and CREMτ in its transcription. We report that the promoter region has transcriptional activity in both directions, as determined by observing luciferase activity in mouse Sertoli and GC‐1 spg transfected cells. WGBS data analysis indicated that a CpG island identified in silico is non‐methylated; Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP)‐seq data analysis revealed that histone marks H3K4me3 and H3K36me3 are present in the promoter and body of the Catsper2 gene respectively, indicating that Catsper2 is subject to epigenetic regulation. In addition, the murine Catsper2 core promoter was delimited to a region between −54/+189 relative to the transcription start site (TSS), where three CTCF and one CRE binding site were predicted. The functionality of these sites was determined by mutation of the CTCF sites and deletion of the CRE site. Finally, ChIP assays confirmed that CREMτ and CTCF bind to the Catsper2 minimal promoter region. This study represents the first functional analysis of the murine Catsper2 promoter region and the mechanisms that regulate its expression.


Abstract The effects of various cooling modes such as natural cooling mode, linear cooling mode, and controlled cooling modes type A and B in a batch cooling crystallizer on crystal size distribution (CSD) as well as the mean crystal size have been studied for DL-malic acid. The natural cooling mode was found to yield crystals in the range of 250 to 1000 µm, whereas the linear cooling mode was found to yield larger crystals, in the range of 800 to 1600 μm. The mean crystal size was found to increase in the order of natural cooling mode, controlled cooling mode A, controlled cooling mode B, and linear cooling mode. Since linear cooling mode was found to yield larger mean crystal size, the effect of operating parameters such as the seed concentration and agitation rates on CSD was assessed using the linear cooling mode. The increase in seed concentration from 0.5 to 1% resulted in a larger mean crystal size; while an increase from 1 to 2% reduced the mean crystal size. An agitator rate of 90 rpm was found to yield larger mean crystal size than agitation rates of 60 and 120 rpm.


The construction of a binocular was shown by aid of a cross-section, and basic specifications were explained, as well as the usual problem when using a high magnification, of mounting the device in order to view stable images. A few proprietary forms were described such as a universal L-bracket, or a hinge clamp for fixing via a heavy tripod to the very useful parallelogram (giraffe-like) device, that allows the binocular to be positioned into a fixed position. The latter is an ideal situation when showing others the sky, assuming that someone does not make a grab, shifting the binocular position, hence mislocating the object which should be on view. The parallelograms require a very sturdy tripod, possibly a surveyor's, rather than a camcorder/camera type. Several other ideas have been used, for example, a garden lounger converted to rest the observer in a comfortable position, and support the binocular at the observers' eyes. Light estimates of a star made with the same hand-held binocular in comparison with a mounted one will differ slightly. Some large sized instruments are available on a customised tripod. These may use angled eyepieces for ease of viewing, and have interchangeable eyepieces to change the magnification and field size. When selecting a binocular for hand use, it


When a natural disaster occurs, government agencies, humanitarian organizations, private companies, volunteers, and others collect information about missing persons to aid the search effort. Often this processing of information about missing persons exacerbates the complexities and uncertainties of privacy rules. This report offers a roadmap to the legal and policy issues surrounding privacy and missing persons following natural disasters. The report is designed to help the Missing Persons Community of Interest ("MPCI"), an independent, informally organized group of humanitarian organizations, companies and volunteers, address privacy in their work to aid victims in coping with natural disasters and to assist privacy regulators and policy-makers in addressing the special needs of the disaster relief context.The report first identifies the privacy challenges in the disaster context and provides some recent examples that demonstrate how disaster relief information sharing raises unique privacy concerns and issues. It then outlines current missing persons information sharing activities in the context of disaster relief work and discusses how those information systems strike different balances between privacy and ease of use. The report then proceeds to identify some key legal privacy issues and examines in detail how these legal requirements apply to missing persons organizations and what interpretative challenges privacy rules present. For the analysis, this report focuses on privacy law in the European Union (EU) and the United States because these jurisdictions serve as important examples of privacy regulation around the globe. The report offers a general analysis rather than a detailed assessment of any particular activity that would depend on the application of the law of a specific jurisdiction. The report concludes with a set of options and strategies that organizations and policy-makers involved in missing persons activities and in privacy could pursue to help address some of the privacy concerns. These options include: • For the Missing Persons Community of Interest, an independent group of humanitarian organizations, companies and volunteers, options include assisting in the selection of privacy-friendly designs for missing persons databases, better coordination of privacy policies for its collaborators, and working with Data Protection Authorities to address privacy issues.• For missing persons organizations, options include assuring compliance with privacy rules, coordination of privacy policies, and sharing of relevant privacy resources. These organizations may have already addressed some of these challenges in their current activities.• For the United States Government, options include clarification of federal agency authority to share personal information for missing persons activities following disasters through executive or legislation actions.• For European Union (EU) Data Protection Authorities, options include fulfilling the agenda set out in the 2011 resolution by the international data protection commissioners on data protection and major natural disasters, issuing clearer and more flexible data protection rules in response to natural disasters, and providing interpretive guidance of the most important and uncertain existing rules to support missing persons activities.• For the EU's Article 29 Working Party, options are issuing interpretive guidance for disaster activities, and reporting on progress in implementation of the 2011 resolution.• For the Commission of the European Union, options are expressly addressing missing persons activities in the data protection regulation currently being drafted, and providing more specific direction for the existing application of current rules to missing persons activities.• For other national or sub-national governments, options are adjusting or amending laws to allow for appropriate use of personal information for missing persons purposes following natural disasters.


Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the two common forms of idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The aetiology and pathogenesis of IBD are not yet known. Genetic predisposition has been suggested as playing a role in the improper immune response to commensal microbiota. The main link of IBD pathogenesis is an intestinal immune system disability after enteric infection, resulting in an uncontrolled and chronic inflammatory state. Recently, numerous studies have been focused on the role of proinflammatory cytokines as well as hormones of adipose tissue named adipokines in the pathogenesis of IBD. Adipokines have pro- and anti-inflammatory properties and can modulate the immune response. It has been shown that obesity is associated with systemic microinflammation. On the other hand, experimental studies have revealed a link between levels of some adipokines and the severity of inflammation in IBD independent of body mass. The fat deposits called 'wrapping' or 'creeping' fat envelop the intestine, and adipokines produced by this tissue play an important role in the pathogenesis of IBD. The aim of this manuscript was to review the current literature concerning the role of adipokines in the pathogenesis of IBD.


Mycobacterium bovis bacille Calmette–Guérin (BCG) is the most widely used live bacterial vaccine. However, limited information is available correlating route and dose of vaccination and induction of specific T cell responses with protection against tuberculosis. We compared efficacy of oral and systemic vaccination and correlated vaccine-induced T cell responses with protection in experimental tuberculosis of mice. After oral and systemic vaccination, we observed profound differences in persistence and dissemination of BCG and frequencies and location of specific IFN-γ-secreting CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Yet, both vaccination routes caused comparable levels of protection against aerosol challenge with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Protection correlated best with rapid accumulation of specific CD8+ T cells in infected tissues of challenged mice. In contrast, specific IFN-γ production by CD4+ T cells reflected the load of M. tuberculosis rather than the strength of protection. Our data question the measurement of IFN-γ secretion by CD4+ T cells and emphasize the need for new biomarkers for evaluation of tuberculosis vaccine efficacies.


Aging is a progressive process that could disturb metabolic homeostasis in the liver via ectopic lipid accumulation, oxidative stress, and deterioration of inflammatory response. Although calorie restriction (CR) is recognized as beneficial for life span and health span prolongation, it is still unclear how late-onset CR, characterized by late beginning and short duration, affects age-related processes. The aim of this study was to examine how late-onset CR-induced metabolic adjustments impact lipid status and inflammation in the liver of old rats. The experiments were conducted on aging male Wistar rats fed ad libitum (AL) or exposed to late-onset CR (60% of AL daily intake) from 21st to 24th month. The results showed that late-onset CR reduces body weight, visceral adipose tissue and liver mass, and triglyceride levels when compared to old animals on AL diet. The ameliorating effects of CR on lipid metabolism include increased activity of AMP-activated protein kinase, suppressed de novo fatty acid synthesis, stimulated β-oxidation, decreased lipotoxicity, and limited triglyceride synthesis and packaging in the liver. Restricted diet regime, however, does not improve expression of antioxidant enzymes, although it leads to progression of age-related inflammation in the liver, partially through lower corticosterone concentration and decreased activation of glucocorticoid receptor. In conclusion, late-onset CR is able to restore age-related imbalance of lipid metabolism in the liver, but has a negative impact on hepatic inflammatory status, implying that the type of diet for older individuals must be balanced and chosen carefully with appropriate duration and start point.


ABSTRACT The 2014 album Blue by the group MOPDTK (Mostly Other People do the Killing) is an exact, musical one-to-one reproduction of Miles Davis's iconic and best-selling recording Kind of Blue (1959). In this project, I argue that while Blue sounds and appears as jazz, it is much rather a conceptual idea borrowed from a literary example, in the disguise of Jazz. Blue raises questions that are central to the understanding of the mens auctoris, genre, and art in general. In regard to the mens auctoris, the question mainly pertains to intent and originality. In the scope of art in general, we are faced with the question about the relationship between replication and value (monetary and artistic). Blue also evoked typical reactions associated with a work that questions assumptions about genre. Upon its initial reception, many listeners seemed unable to place it confidently and categorize the album according to genre.


This research is based on the existing phenomena where tax revenues have not been optimal, through the Restaurant Tax Online System policy as one of the efforts in optimizing Local Tax Revenues. Restaurant Tax is one of the local tax revenues that have a large contribution. This research aims to analyze the Restaurant Tax Online System Policy for optimization of Regional Tax Revenues in the Regional Revenue Agency of DKI Jakarta Province. This study uses single cash (single case study), using qualitative methods, data is collected through observations, in-depth interviews, and documentation with the aim of producing the best conclusions and can strengthen the researcher's arguments. The results showed that the policy of the online system of restaurant tax for optimization of local tax revenue has not been implemented optimally, less optimally due to human resources that do not handle Information and Technology (IT), the number of restaurants that still use manual transaction systems, there are still taxpayer concerns about the online system of restaurant taxes, and there are still taxpayers who do not want their business transactions online. The results of the study can be concluded that the Analysis of Restaurant Tax Online System Policy for optimization of Overall Local Tax Revenue is less continuous socialization and the online system method has not been done effectively so that tax revenues have not been optimal.


Coagulation spinning produces structures such as fibers, ribbons, and yarns of carbon nanotubes. Stabilization, orientation, and shaping of spun materials are achieved by post-spinning processes. Advantages include the elimination of core-sheath effects due to carbonaceous contaminants, increasing mechanical properties, and eliminating dimensional instabilities in liquid electrolytes that previously prohibited the application of these spun materials in electrochemical devices. These advances enable the application of coagulation-spun carbon nanotube fibers, ribbons, and yarns in actuators, supercapacitors, and in devices for electrical energy harvesting.


State-space models (SSMs) have recently emerged as a framework for learning long-range sequence tasks. An example is the structured state-space sequence (S4) layer, which uses the diagonal-plus-low-rank structure of the HiPPO initialization framework. However, the complicated structure of the S4 layer poses challenges; and, in an effort to address these challenges, models such as S4D and S5 have considered a purely diagonal structure. This choice simplifies the implementation, improves computational efficiency, and allows channel communication. However, diagonalizing the HiPPO framework is itself an ill-posed problem. In this paper, we propose a general solution for this and related ill-posed diagonalization problems in machine learning. We introduce a generic, backward-stable"perturb-then-diagonalize"(PTD) methodology, which is based on the pseudospectral theory of non-normal operators, and which may be interpreted as the approximate diagonalization of the non-normal matrices defining SSMs. Based on this, we introduce the S4-PTD and S5-PTD models. Through theoretical analysis of the transfer functions of different initialization schemes, we demonstrate that the S4-PTD/S5-PTD initialization strongly converges to the HiPPO framework, while the S4D/S5 initialization only achieves weak convergences. As a result, our new models show resilience to Fourier-mode noise-perturbed inputs, a crucial property not achieved by the S4D/S5 models. In addition to improved robustness, our S5-PTD model averages 87.6% accuracy on the Long-Range Arena benchmark, demonstrating that the PTD methodology helps to improve the accuracy of deep learning models.


Purpose: This study is to investigate the effect and mechanism of curcumol on ERα36 positive breast cancer cells, and the relationship between curcumol's target protein nucleolin (NCL) and ERα36. Methods: The anti-tumor effect of curcumol were quantified via MTT assay, colony formation and cycle arrest respectively. The expression of ERα36, NCL and the proteins involved in PI3K/AKT signaling were evaluated by western blotting. The interaction between two proteins were detected using co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) and immunofluorescence assay. Mouse xenograft model was established to verify the role of ERα36 in breast cancer cells and curcumol's effect on ERα36 positive cancer cells. Results: Curcumol inhibited the cell growth, caused cell cycle arrest, decreased cell cycle related-proteins and inactivated PI3K/AKT pathway in ERα36 positive breast cancer cells. There is a positive correlation between NCL and ERα36 in breast cancer cells. In addition, ERα36 bound to NCL, the two proteins were distributed in the nucleus, cytoplasm and on the plasma membrane, where their expression were obviously decreased by curcumol. Moreover, NCL silenced by NCL siRNA blocked the cell cycle progress and inhibited the activation of PI3K/AKT in MDA-MB-231 cells, while overexpressed ERα36 increased the expression of NCL, promoted cell cycle progress and enhanced the activity of PI3K/AKT in MCF-7 cells. NCL knockdown or ERα36 overexpressed all attenuated the effect of curcumol on breast cancer cells. Conclusion: Curcumol reduced the proliferation of breast cancer cells by targeting NCL/ERα36 and inactivated PI3K/AKT pathway.


Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma (BSCC) is a rare variant of squamous cell carcinoma and is known for its aggressive behaviour. It occurs predominantly in the upper aerodigestive tract and presentation in the nasal cavity and paranasal sinus is extremely rare. We present here a case of BSCC in a 36 year female arising in the paranasal sinus with orbital and intracranial extension. Clinical and pathological findings including immunohistochemistry is presented along with brief discussion of literature.


The effects on pancreatic exocrine secretion of intravenous bolus injections of decapeptide of mammalian bombesin (also called neuromedin C) and neuromedin B, recently isolated mammalian bombesin-like peptides, have been studied and compared with those of amphibian bombesin in anaesthetized rats. Decapeptide of mammalian bombesin and neuromedin B stimulated the volume output from the pancreas with the same potency as that with which they stimulated protein output, as did amphibian bombesin. The maximal peak rates of volume and protein secretion observed in the 5- to 10-min period after the injection of 3 X 10(-10) mol/kg decapeptide of mammalian bombesin were 24.5 +/- 1.2 microliters/5 min and 8.5 +/- 0.5 mg bovine serum albumin equivalents per 5 min (mean +/- SEM, n = 5). These rates were equivalent to those produced by the same dose of amphibian bombesin, but the duration of responses to decapeptide of mammalian bombesin were shorter than those of equimolar doses of amphibian bombesin. The relative potencies of decapeptide of mammalian bombesin and neuromedin B, calculated from the doses producing 50% of maximum effect on total responses, were, respectively, 100 and 0.5% of that of amphibian bombesin. The results suggest that decapeptide of mammalian bombesin, and possibly neuromedin B, could play a regulatory role in the control of exocrine pancreatic secretion.


Vapor deposition of molecules on a substrate often results in glassy materials of high kinetic stability and low enthalpy. The extraordinary properties of such glasses are attributed to high rates of surface diffusion during sample deposition, which makes it possible for constituents to find a configuration of much lower energy on a typical laboratory time scale. However, the exact nature of the resulting phase and the mechanism of its formation are not completely understood. Using fast scanning calorimetry technique, we show that out-of-equilibrium relaxation kinetics and possibly the enthalpy of vapor-deposited films of toluene and ethylbenzene, archetypical fragile glass formers, are distinct from those of ordinary supercooled phase even when the deposition takes place at temperatures above the ordinary glass softening transition temperatures. These observations along with the absolute enthalpy dependences on deposition temperatures support the conjecture that the vapor-deposition may result in formation of non-crystalline phase of unique structural, thermodynamic, and kinetic properties.


The lysosomal cysteine proteinases have been found to be involved in various inflammatory conditions. Inhibitory effects of certain commonly used anti-inflammatory drugs were observed on lysosomal thiol proteinase cathepsin L. Of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs tested, phenylbutazone was found to be most potent inhibitor of cathepsin L activity. The half maximal inhibition was achieved at 0.6 mM concentration. The inhibition by phenylbutazone was of non-competitive type, with a ki of 1.3 x 10(-3) M. Flufenamic acid and indomethacin were also inhibitory to cathepsin L activity, giving half maximal inhibitions at 3.5 mM and 4.5 mM concentrations respectively. In contrast, cathepsin L activity was not affected at all by steroidal anti-inflammatory agents. Aspirin was also found to have no effect on cathepsin L activity whereas salicylic acid, its m- and p-analogs exhibited inhibitory effects but to a lesser degree.


We report herein the case of a 54‐year‐old woman with a moderate bleeding tendency, diagnosed as an EDTA‐dependent pseudothrombocytopenia associated with a congenital platelet release defect. The patient, at the age of 12, had a misleading diagnosis of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and all the recurrent bleeding problems she had during her life were referred to that disease. The recent correct diagnosis of a false thrombocytopenia stimulated further laboratory investigation on the cause of the patient's bleeding tendency with the consequent identification of a congenital platelet deficiency of the arachidonic acid pathway. This finding is of relevant importance for the management of the patient in case of elective surgery or hemorrhagic emergency.


OBJECTIVES
Recent studies have concluded that acupuncture is safe in the hands of a qualified practitioner. This study assessed the risk of adverse effects of acupuncture administered during pregnancy.

METHODS
593 women with nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy volunteered to participate in a randomised controlled trial, conducted at the Women's and Children's Hospital, in South Australia. Patients were given either traditional acupuncture, formula acupuncture, sham acupuncture or no acupuncture.

OUTCOME MEASURES
Data were collected on perinatal outcome, congenital abnormalities, pregnancy complications and the newborn.

RESULTS
No differences were found between study groups in the incidence of perinatal outcome, congenital abnormalities, pregnancy complications and other infant outcomes.

CONCLUSION
Our findings suggest that no serious adverse effects arise from acupuncture administered in early pregnancy.