BACKGROUND AND AIMS
Cytomegalovirus [CMV] infection often reactivates in the course of inflammatory bowel disease, but the significance of this remains disputable. Our aim was to evaluate whether severity of CMV colitis is associated with colectomy risk in ulcerative colitis [UC] patients. The secondary aim was to evaluate agreement between immunohistochemistry [IHC] and blood CMV polymerase chain reaction [PCR].

METHODS
UC patients with CMV assessment of the colon, hospitalised in a referral unit between 2005 and 2012 were retrospectively identified. The course and severity of the disease were analysed, with inflammation graded histologically across the range 0-3. The numbers of CMV IHC-positive cells per biopsy section were counted, and results for blood CMV PCR were also retrieved. Data on colectomies were also collected.

RESULTS
Of 141 patients, 95 were analysed, with 33 found to be CMV IHC-positive and 62 negative. The colectomy risk was significantly higher in patients with ≥ 5 IHC-positive cells, as opposed to those with none or less than 5 [p = 0.014] with median follow-up of 1.9 and 3.2 years, respectively. The CMV IHC-positive patients had lower haemoglobin [median 11.0g/dl vs 12.0; p = 0.028] and albumin [median 29.5g/l vs 33.1; p = 0.038] levels and more intense histological inflammation [p = 0.020] compared with CMV IHC-negative patients. There was substantial agreement between IHC and blood PCR [Cohen's kappa coefficient 0.72].

CONCLUSIONS
Five or more CMV IHC-positive cells per biopsy section were indicative of a greater colectomy risk. CMV infection was related to more severe inflammation. Blood CMV PCR is a useful tool in UC.


In this paper, we present a volume roaming system dedicated to oil and gas exploration. Our system combines probe-based volume rendering with data processing and computing. The daily oil production and the estimation of the world proven-reserves directly affect the barrel price and have a strong impact on the economy. Among others, production and correct estimation are linked to the accuracy of the sub-surface model used for predicting oil reservoirs shape and size. Geoscientists build this model from the interpretation of seismic data, i.e. 3D images of the subsurface obtained from geophysical surveys. Our system couples visualization and data processing for the interpretation of seismic data. It is based on volume roaming along with efficient volume paging to manipulate the multi-gigabyte data sets commonly acquired during seismic surveys. Our volume rendering lenses implement high quality pre-integrated volume rendering with accurate lighting. They use a generic multi-modal volume rendering system that blends several volumes in the spirit of the "stencil" paradigm used in 2D painting programs. In addition, our system can interactively display non-polygonal isosurfaces painted with an attribute. Beside the visualization algorithms, automatic extraction of local features of the subsurface model also take full advantage of the volume paging.


Since the early days of computing, organizations have aspired to integrated, enterprise-wide information systems architectures. Through the years, these aspirations have been reflected in the quest for integrated MIS, enterprise-wide data models, and integrated databases. In recent years, with the increasing demand for process integration both within and across organizational and industry boundaries, this quest has gained further momentum. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, such as SAP, BaaN, Peoplesoft, and Oracle, are a recent business response to this quest. By providing integrated packaged solutions, not only do they provide an integrated system architecture for the organizations' information processing needs, they also claim to provide ready-made "best-of-the-breed" solutions for particular lines of businesses. Furthermore, given their enterprise-wide scope and extensive impact on organizational and interorganizational business practices, the acquisition and implementation of these systems substantially affects both the organization and the nature of corporate IS practices and the responsibilities of corpor ate IS departments. While a number of high profile organizations such as Boeing, Mercedes-Benz, ABB, and Levi have recently adopted ERP as an integrated replacement for their enterprise-wide information infrastructure, recent press reports outline a number of issues with the adoption and implementation of ERP systems. Moreover, the adoption of so-called "best-of-breed" applications raises a number of questions about the appropriateness and value of cookie-cutter solutions to diverse organizatio nal requirements.


Disaster events can result in mass casualties and missing persons, giving rise to a need to provide information about victims to the public. This can be achieved by digitally documenting information available at emergency medical care centers in the form of pictures. The images and other identifying information, such as fingerprints, cannot be broadcast due to privacy concerns, leading to a need to extract appearance-related non-unique features from this data to facilitate locating missing persons. Using humans and machines to compare images is not feasible due to the scale of the situation and the nature (presence of blood and debris) of the images. Extracting a soft biometric text descriptor (text labels describing different soft biometric features) makes it possible to organize information about individuals from these images in a searchable format without revealing the person's identity. The main aim of this thesis is to extract soft biometric features from person images to label appearance-related information and make it available as a text descriptor.
We begin by presenting soft biometric feature detectors for patient images that include an ensemble-based face detection algorithm, template-based eye detection, and eyeglasses, hair color, and skin color detection. We also present a facial hair detector that uses a combination of face and hair information. The feature detection results indicate a need to combine and exploit feature relationships for better performance. We propose a novel probabilistic graphical model that consists of different feature detectors and exploits relationships between these features using a message-passing inference algorithm to build a coherent text descriptor. Further, to understand the utility and the nature of the text descriptors, we present a study based on human descriptions that aims at extracting order and structure information about the features.
We evaluate the performance of individual feature detectors for standard and triage images and establish the challenges posed by the dataset. Further, our text analysis shows extreme variability in human descriptions. However, we succeed in extracting some insights about the order of a natural text description. Through our evaluations of the graphical model, we show that for different feature detectors, datasets, and graph sizes the graphical model helps improve the accuracy of the text output. We also show that the performance of the graphical model depends on the individual nodes (feature detectors) and that the model can be used to improve the performance of the feature detector. This thesis illustrates the whole process from images to text descriptors while evaluating components as we proceed. This work presents an approach to extract text labels from images using computer vision, a probabilistic graphical model, and natural language processing techniques.


Objective:To evaluate the role of colonic interposition for reconstruction of the esophagus. Meth-ods: From April 1979 to October 1998, Thirty-one patients with benign esophageal stenosis and 15 patients with esophagus carcinoma received the colonic interposition for esophageal reconstruction. There were 5 pa-tients with the esophagus carcinoma after subtotal gastrectomy. Four of 5 cases received colonic interposition graft from the esophageal bed after the esophagus was pulled out without thoracotomy. Results: There was no perioperative death. All 31 cases of the benign esophageal stenosis got long term survival and normal life. The 3- and 5-year survival rates of patients with the carcinoma of the esophagus were 63. 6% and 40. 6% re-spectively. Conclusion: The colonic interposition graft is a choice for the patients with the cervical stenosis of the esophagus, especially for those already had subtotal gastrectomy. Using the left colonic artery as the sup-porting vessel and using the colon segment in an isoperistaltic position is the optimal choice. Improving the operative techniques and decreasing the complications are important for the extension use of this method.


Context. The Virgo direction has been observed at many wavelengths in
 recent years, in particular in the ultraviolet with GALEX. The far ultraviolet (FUV)
 diffuse light detected by GALEX offers interesting information on the large scale
 distribution of Galactic dust, owing to the GALEX FUV band sensitivity and resolution.Aims. We aim to characterise the ultraviolet large scale distribution of
 diffuse emission in the Virgo direction. A map of this emission may become useful for
 various studies by identifying regions where dust affects observations by either
 scattering light or absorbing radiation.Methods. We constructed mosaics of the FUV and near ultraviolet (NUV)
 diffuse emission over a large sky region (RA 12 to 13 h, Dec 0 to 20 deg) surrounding the
 Virgo cluster, using all the GALEX available data in the area. We tested for the first
 time the utilisation of the FUV diffuse light as a Galactic extinction E(B −
 V) tracer.Results. The FUV diffuse light scattered on cirrus reveals details about
 their geometry. Despite large dispersion, the FUV diffuse light correlates roughly with
 other Galactic dust tracers (coming from IRAS, Herschel,
 Planck), offering an opportunity to use the FUV emission to locate them
 in future studies with a better resolution (about 5 arcsec native resolution, 20 arcsec
 pixels maps presented in this paper) than for several usual tracers. Estimating the
 Galactic dust extinction on the basis of this emission allows us to find a smaller
 dispersion in the NUV −
 i colour of background galaxies at a given
 E(B −
 V) than with other tracers. The diffuse light
 mosaics obtained in this work are made publicly available.


IMPACT STATEMENT
The various roles played by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in a multitude of tissues and at different scenarios have rendered BDNF a favorable candidate for improving tissue regeneration. Although the tested formulations of BDNF quantitatively regenerate tissue to a level similar to control groups, it resulted in significantly more instances of full regeneration.


Mitteldorf (2001) raises several points about the evolutionary basis of the life-extending effects of caloric restriction (CR), as examined in our theoretical model (Shanley and Kirkwood, 2000). We welcome further discussion of this intriguing question. There are two aspects of Mitteldorf's paper to which we respond. First, he claims to have found shortcomings in our model that limit its validity. We disagree and suggest that Mitteldorf has confused the issues. Secondly, he raises a number of broader questions about these kinds of theoretical studies. These overlap points already made in our previous discussion but we take the opportunity here to expand upon them a little. In terms of his critique of our model, we first address the issue of restricting our model to females. Our reason for doing this was a mixture of practical and theoretical considerations. Practically, we pegged the model as closely as possible to the experimental data, which are more abundant for females than males with respect to bioenergetics of reproduction. Although the data for males are sparse there is little reason to expect that the overall energetic demands of reproduction are necessarily lower than for females. Theoretically, we believe that it is sufficient for the argument to hold in females for the explanation to have general relevance. If a period of famine induces a suspension of fertility and up-regulation of maintenance in females, it is hard to see what selection pressure might act to produce different behavior in males. Any mechanism for implementing life-history plasticity in females would, unless sex-linked, be expected to produce a similar response in males. And if females suspend fertility in times of famine, males within the same territorial domain gain no reproductive benefit by doing otherwise. Concerning Mitteldorf's specific point about the model assuming 50% of total metabolic energy being allocated to reproduction in animals fed ad libitum, we do not know to what he refers; the model makes no such assumption. We are puzzled by Mitteldorf's use of the terms ''base'' and ''variant'' models. We did not use this terminology, nor did we regard what he terms our base model as the default. The idea of a ''reproductive overhead'' as discussed in our paper seems to make sound physiological sense. It also seems reasonable to assume that juvenile mice will suffer more severely than adults in times of famine. The model in which both these factors are included and in which the CR effect is explained most easily seems also to be the most plausible. Interestingly, we showed that if these assumptions are removed the model does not predict an increase in somatic maintenance and suspension of fertility during periods of famine. Mitteldorf is mistaken when he suggests that the effects of CR on juveniles are double counted in our model; the effects he confounds in his erroneous argument about ''quadratic dependence'' are in fact independent. The source of Mitteldorf's error is suggested by his reference to the probability of ''survival through the nursing period.'' As explicitly stated in our paper, we count offspring only when they are successfully weaned, and we defined juvenile survival as survival from this point up to adulthood. Questions about size and thermodynamics of temperature maintenance were discussed in our paper, where we pointed out that future models should attempt to include these, a view we continue to hold. We welcome a valuable review by Ramsey et al. (2000) on the energetics of the CR, published after our paper. We find particularly attractive the hypothesis that calorie-restricted animals are capable of modulating mitochondrial proton leakage, which has some empirical support (Lal et al. 2001) and which we believe might have important effects on thermogenesis.


Focusing on a Hong Kong online discussion involving 'Jenny', who was later described as the 'Kong Girl' prototype, we demonstrate a method to study gender stereotype as both semiotically and discursively constructed. We trace the perceivable signs in online posts as demeanor indexicals (Goffman 1956, Agha 2007), and discuss how forum participants collectively develop Jenny's public persona as a woman who is materialistic and has an entitlement attitude, qualities that later become emblematic of the Kong Girl stereotype. Our analysis proposes a framework for how interpretive discourses mediate between the situated social media context and gender ideologies, and contributes to an understanding of the role of demeanor indexicals in the construction of a stereotype that is not associated with a linguistic register. We provide insights into local gender dynamics and illustrate how a private dispute becomes entangled in a public consensus building process that is necessarily selective, emergent, and positioned.


Titanium and its alloys have excellent properties and are promising biomaterial in medical engineering field. A bioactive surface on a Ti substrate is a prerequisite for great performance and long service life of implants. Based on the mechanism for inducing cell/tissue responses, three kinds of methods, namely morphological, physicochemical and biochemical methods, are reviewed in this paper. Hybrid methods that integrate individual methods or have additional functions are also discussed.


River management has frequently been associated with water supply and resource management, whereas coastal zone management has been more concerned with marine resource management and physical planning. Recognizing the close connection between the river and its catchment area has led to a more integrated approach to river basin management, taking into account water quality along with quantity. Similarly, recognition of the importance of integrated management of the coastal zone as a move towards achieving sustainable development, has led to integrated coastal zone management, with expansion of the domain in both landward and seaward directions. Considering the intrinsic link through physical and ecological structure as well as related physical and biological processes, any modification in a river basin will ultimately affect the coastal zone. Land-based activities, rivers, estuaries, coastal zones and marine environments are all inherently interlinked. As such, an integrated approach to the concomitant management of coastal zones and river basins is crucial. This paper provides an overview of various concepts, approaches and strategies to integrated coastal zone and river basin management. It points out lessons that could be learned from previous and ongoing projects. The paper provides a starting point for investigating how changes in land use and management of river basins might have an impact on the quality of river water and the corresponding coastal zone through scrutinization of management tools and implementation instruments. The paper identifies a requirement further to develop tools which will assist in evaluating current and future environmental conditions at a river/estuary/sea interface within a rigorous framework.


The efficiency and adsorption mechanism of zinc removal was assessed in aqueous solution using four biochars from multiple biomass residues (poultry litter and three tree species). The effect of pH, kinetic effects, and isotherm fittings were investigated, as well as zinc-laden biochar using x-ray diffraction and absorption near edge structure. Sorbent load results showed softwood biochar exhibited the greatest zinc removal from both deionized (15 mgZn/L) and mining influenced river water (10 mgZn/L). The Langmuir isotherm was the best fit for the majority of the biochars. Exchangeable cations contributed most for the adsorption mechanism from the softwood biochars, while precipitation was greatest contribution for the poultry litter biochar. Overall, our results suggest that biochars from Douglas Fir trees are more efficient at removing zinc from aqueous solutions (up to 19.80 mgZn/g) compared to previously studied biochars (0.61 to 11.0 mgZn/g) and should be used for future remediation efforts.


In 10 adult patients with hepatic portal venous gas (HPVG), the clinical significance of HPVG and the efficacy of X-ray computed tomography (CT) were evaluated. HPVG was associated with ischemic bowel disease (n = 3), trauma (n = 4), liver abscess (n = 1), sepsis (n = 1), and unknown etiology (n = 1). The diagnostic ability of CT for the detection of HPVG was far superior to that of plain abdominal radiograph. Of 9 patients who underwent CT, HPVG located in the left hepatic lobe in all patients, and also in right hepatic lobe in 7 patients. Gas could be recognized in the left lobe and the anterior segment of the right lobe more clearly than in the posterior segment of the right lobe because of its larger amount of intravenous collection. The mortality rate of our cases was 100%. Gas was demonstrated simultaneously in the portal vein radicles and hepatic veins on CT in 4 patients with no clinical evidence of sepsis, which suggested the possibility of intraparenchymal shift of gas from the portal vein into the hepatic vein. In a single case with sepsis, gas was noted in various vessels, including arteries, in addition to the portal venous system. The authors conclude that HPVG is still a grave sign in Japan and prompt appropriate treatment is required. CT may be of great value in the early detection of HPVG and may indicate its etiology.


METIS, the Multi Element Telescope for Imaging and Spectroscopy, is an instrument proposed to the European Space Agency to be part of the payload of the Solar Orbiter mission. The instrument design has been conceived for performing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectroscopy both on the solar disk and off-limb, and near-Sun coronagraphy and spectroscopy. The proposed instrument suite consists of three different interconnected elements, COR, EUS and SOCS, sharing the same optical bench, electronics, and S/C heat shield aperture. COR is a visible-EUV multiband coronagraph based on a classical externally occulted design. EUS is the component of the METIS EUV disk spectrometer which includes the telescope and all the related mechanisms. Finally, SOCS is the METIS spectroscopic component including the dispersive system and the detectors. The capability of inserting a small telescope collecting coronal light has been added to perform also EUV coronal spectroscopy. METIS can simultaneously image the visible and ultraviolet emission of the solar corona and diagnose, with unprecedented temporal coverage and space resolution the structure and dynamics of the full corona in the range from 1.2 to 3.0 (1.6 to 4.1) solar radii (R⊙, measured from Sun centre) at minimum (maximum) perihelion during the nominal mission. It can also perform spectroscopic observations of the solar disk and out to 1.4 R⊙ within the 50-150 nm spectral region, and of the geo-effective coronal region 1.7-2.7 R⊙ within the 30-125 nm spectral band.


An overview is presented of the object-oriented programming (OOP) methodology in general and the ways it may be applied to integrate digital signal processing (DSP) software. Examples are given to show how the approach is used to solve signal-processing problems in the QuickSig system. The most important existing OOP languages and programming environments are discussed and compared form the point of view of DSP research and development. It is shown that OOP is a proper methodology for DSP programming and that much further work is needed to find the best tools and ways to build highly advanced programming environments.<<ETX>>


We construct phase diagrams for charged rodlike colloids within the second-virial approximation as a function of rod concentration, salt concentration, and colloidal charge. Besides the expected isotropic-nematic transition, we also find parameter regimes with a coexistence between a nematic and a second, more highly aligned nematic phase including an isotropic-nematic-nematic triple point and a nematic-nematic critical point, which can all be explained in terms of the twisting effect. We compute the Frank elastic constants to see if the twist elastic constant can become negative, which would indicate the possibility of a cholesteric phase spontaneously forming. Although the twisting effect reduces the twist elastic constant, we find that it always remains positive. In addition, we find that for finite aspect-ratio rods the twist elastic constant is also always positive, such that there is no evidence of chiral symmetry breaking due to a uniaxial charge distribution.


Retirement annuities for civilian federal employees are provided mainly through two programs: the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). These annuities are financed through a combination of employee contributions and payments made by the federal government to the civil service retirement trust fund. This report discusses the two programs, how they work, and how they are financed.


When I speak of prostitution I do not limit the term simplyto the avowed prostitute, but I include equally the clandestine prostitute. If we want to go back to the actual cause—the prime cause, as I understand it-of prostitution we need not go into the details, as these have already been touched on both directly and indirectly in the other papers, but can say, broadly, it is civilization. Prostitution is just as old as civilization, and will continue to exist as long as there exists what we to-day claim and boast of as civilization. I apply that fact in three ways: 1. Men, guided by the prevalent usages of civilization, either can not or will not marry when the natural sexual impulse has attained its proper force and calls for mating. While I agree entirely with the spirit of the resolution which has been passed here, that continence is not


OBJECTIVES
This research studied hospital administrators' and hospital-based health care providers' (collectively, the target group) perceived value of consumer health information resources and of librarians' roles in promoting health information literacy in their institutions.

METHODS
A web-based needs survey was developed and administered to hospital administrators and health care providers. Multiple health information literacy curricula were developed. One was pilot-tested by nine hospital libraries in the United States and Canada. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to evaluate the curriculum and its impact on the target group.

RESULTS
A majority of survey respondents believed that providing consumer health information resources was critically important to fulfilling their institutions' missions and that their hospitals could improve health information literacy by increasing awareness of its impact on patient care and by training staff to become more knowledgeable about health literacy barriers. The study showed that a librarian-taught health information literacy curriculum did raise awareness about the issue among the target group and increased both the use of National Library of Medicine consumer health resources and referrals to librarians for health information literacy support.

CONCLUSIONS
It is hoped that many hospital administrators and health care providers will take the health information literacy curricula and recognize that librarians can educate about the topic and that providers will use related consumer health services and resources.


Simulation processes of static and dynamic recrystallisation were carried out with Gleeble 3800 System. The resulting data form the basis of a statistical database, linking chemical composition - processing parameters - structure - mechanical properties, which will form the base of the mathematical models of the evolution of the microstructure of the steels subjected to the experiment.


Damage of the optic nerve (optic neuropathy) may be caused, apart from other reasons, by an adverse drug effect. The drugs most often discussed in this context are amiodarone, ethambutol, linezolid, and phosphodiesterase inhibitors. By far the most frequent cases appear with ethambutol and may be irreversible. All drugs mentioned here are highly effective in their indications, and their value shall not be questioned by the discussion on a possible damage of the optic nerve. Rather, the knowledge of this side effect shall enhance the responsible handling of drugs and permit a qucker recognition and reaction in case of an optic neuropathy.


Manycore accelerators have recently proven a promising solution for increasingly powerful and energy efficient computing systems. This raises the need for parallel programming models capable of effectively leveraging hundreds to thousands of processors. Task-based parallelism has the potential to provide such capabilities, offering flexible support to fine-grained and irregular parallelism. However, efficiently supporting this programming paradigm on resource-constrained parallel accelerators is a challenging task. In this paper, we present an optimized implementation of the OpenMP tasking model for embedded parallel accelerators, discussing the key design solution that guarantee small memory (footprint) and minimize performance overheads. We validate our design by comparing to several state-of-the-art tasking implementations, using the most representative parallelization patterns. The experimental results confirm that our solution achieves near-ideal speedups for tasks as small as 5K cycles.


Vionnet without the bias cut would be a fashion tragedy. The bias cut liberated women from the restrictions of corsetry and padding in the 1920's and 1930's and established a sinuous and elegant silhouette that defined a modernist look. This look has become a classic that was fully exploited by Vionnet and her innovations permeate throughout the work of many contemporary fashion designers.


BACKGROUND: Most posterior spinal fusion (PSF) patients do not require admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), and those who do may represent an underinvestigated, high-risk subpopulation. OBJECTIVE: To identify the microbial profile of and risk factors for surgical site infection (SSI) in PSF patients admitted to the ICU postoperatively. METHODS: We examined 3965 consecutive PSF patients treated at our institution between 2000 and 2015 and collected demographic, clinical, and procedural data. Comorbid disease burden was quantified using the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI). We performed multivariable logistic regression to identify risk factors for SSI, readmission, and reoperation. RESULTS: Anemia, more levels fused, cervical surgery, and cerebrospinal fluid leak were positively associated with ICU admission, and minimally invasive surgery was negatively associated. The median time to infection was equivalent for ICU patients and non-ICU patients, and microbial culture results were similar between groups. Higher CCI and undergoing a staged procedure were associated with readmission, reoperation, and SSI. When stratified by CCI into quintiles, SSI rates show a strong linear correlation with CCI (P = .0171, R = 0.941), with a 3-fold higher odds of SSI in the highest risk group than the lowest (odds ratio = 3.15 [1.19, 8.07], P = .032). CONCLUSION: Procedural characteristics drive the decision to admit to the ICU postoperatively. Patients admitted to the ICU have higher rates of SSI but no difference in the timing of or microorganisms that lead to those infections. Comorbid disease burden drives SSI in this population, with a 3-fold greater odds of SSI for high-risk patients than low-risk patients.


The role of atypical bacteria and the effect of antibiotic treatments in acute bronchitis are still not clear. This study was conducted at 22 hospitals (17 primary care clinics and 5 university hospitals) in Korea. Outpatients (aged ≥ 18 yr) who had an acute illness with a new cough and sputum (≤ 30 days) were enrolled in 2013. Multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to detect five atypical bacteria. A total of 435 patients were diagnosed as having acute bronchitis (vs. probable pneumonia, n = 75), and 1.8% (n = 8) were positive for atypical pathogens (Bordetella pertussis, n = 3; B. parapertussis, n = 0; Mycoplasma pneumoniae, n = 1; Chlamydophila pneumoniae, n = 3; Legionella pneumophila, n = 1). Among clinical symptoms and signs, only post-tussive vomiting was more frequent in patients with atypical pathogens than those without (P = 0.024). In all, 72.2% of the enrolled patients received antibiotic treatment at their first visits, and β-lactams (29.4%) and quinolones (20.5%) were the most commonly prescribed agents. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that the incidence of atypical pathogens is low in patients with acute bronchitis, and the rate of antibiotic prescriptions is high. Graphical Abstract


This is the stirring, epic story of the hundreds of Indian nations that have inhabited North America for more than 15,000 years and of their centuries-long struggle with the Europeans. It is a story of friendship, treachery, courage and war, beginning when Columbus disembarked at Hispaniola among the Arawaks in 1492, and comes to a climax when the last groups of Sioux were moved onto a reservation following the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. We meet men and women, heroes and villains through their own words, their lives recreated from memory, memoir, and ancient documents: Massasoit, whose greeting to the Mayflower pilgrims - 'Welcome, Englishmen' - was given in their own language; Pocahontas, whose father's intervention on behalf of John Smith ironically changed the course of her life; Deganawida, known as the Peace Maker, whose Great Law laid the foundation for the confederacy among the five nations of the Iroquois, which in turn may have influenced the colonists' fledging efforts at confederation; Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet; Tecumseh, the charismatic Shawnee leader; Satanta, who led the Kiowa resistance; Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce; Cochise and Geronimo of the Apaches; Red Cloud, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of the Sioux...Written by the celebrated historian Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., lavishly illustrated with nearly 500 paintings, woodcuts, drawings, photographs, and Indian artifacts, this thrilling and beautiful book shows us the many worlds of North America's Indians, as we have never seen them before.


Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the effect of hospital-based intensive rehabilitation program after ankle ligament operation.
Methods: A total of 35 patients were included in this randomized controlled trial. Fifty-minute sessions of hospital-based rehabilitation were performed three times weekly for 12 weeks in the intervention group. Home-based exercise was conducted in the control group. Outcomes were evaluated at baseline, 12 weeks, and 16 weeks. The primary outcome was measured using the Foot and Ankle Outcome Score (FAOS). Secondary outcomes included the American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) score, ankle strength measured using an isokinetic device, fall index measured using a Tetrax posturography device, and the Berg Balance Scale.
Results: Significant improvements in FAOS, AOFAS, ankle strength, and fall index were found in the intervention group after performing the hospital-based rehabilitation (all p<0.05) and these improvements were sustained at T2 (all p<0.05). Between-group comparisons demonstrated significantly greater improvements in FAOS, AOFAS, ankle strength, and fall index in the intervention group than those in the control group at both T1 (all p<0.05), and T2 (all p<0.05).
Conclusion: The rehabilitation program in this study improved postoperative pain, sports function, quality of life, and strength and balance of the ankle significantly better than home-based self-care. Therefore, we recommend hospital-based systematic rehabilitation programs after surgical treatment for chronic ankle instability.


Nazareno & Jump (2012) highlight potential issues with using small sample sizes in population genetic studies. By reanalysing allelic richness data from our recent publication on habitat fragmentation (Struebig et al. 2011), they assert that the observed relationship has been driven by three sites with the lowest number of individuals sampled. While sample size issues have been raised before in the genetic literature, Nazareno & Jump's (2012) comment serves as a useful reminder to us all. Nevertheless, we disagree that our findings were significantly biased by sampling limitations. Here, we demonstrate by jackknifing that, contrary to the claims of Nazareno & Jump (2012), our correlations of allelic richness and fragment area are not driven solely by sites with low sample sizes. We maintain that small sample sizes can be accounted for in fragmentation studies and that sampling limitations should not detract from undertaking conservation genetic research.


Organisms with self-helix structures are widely found in nature. Four-dimensional (4D) printing have been realized by designing structures and programming deformation of smart materials. This paper presents an innovative method of controlled self-helix structures by designing and fabricating of a bilayer structure with smart material polylactic acid. The process of applying internal stress in 4D printing was analyzed. The repeatability of helical deformation of bilayer structure was investigated. The effect of printing angle on helical deformation behavior was simulated by finite element method. And the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental results, which also verifies the reliability of the established finite element model. Then, the stress distribution in the process of screw deformation was simulated by using the finite element model. An intelligent soft gripper was used as a case study to illustrate this methodology. This method is a guide for the design and manufacture of intelligent structures and can be applied to the design of complex biological structures.


Background & aim: Managers are seeking job satisfaction in their organization since it providesa background of efficiency enhancement. Thus, the goal of the present research was to determine the role of organizational justice in job satisfaction mediating burnout among nurses. Methods: A descriptive correlationalinvestigation was conducted on nurses of Vali-asr hospital of Birjand (165 persons) who were employed in 2016. The samples were chosen by randomized sampling. Minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire (1992), Niehoff and Mormon organizational justice questionnaire (1993), and Maslach and Jackson job burnout questionnaire (1993) were used formeasuring studying variables. Data were analyzed by using the SPSS software and multiple regression coefficients and Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: Results showed that job burnout (2.34±0.41), organizational justice (2.14±0.79), and job satisfaction (2.73±0.53) of nurses were lower than average level. The organizational justice was responsible for 25% percent of job satisfaction and 32% of the of job burnout. Also, 27% of job satisfaction's nurses were related to their job burnout. Conclusion: Organizational justice causes job satisfaction improvement and job burnout reduction in nurses. So, improving the justice in therapeutic organizations can reduce job burnout and increase job efficiency in nurses.


Muyong is one of the indigenous forest management practices of the Ifugaos that play a crucial role in the watersheds of the Ifugao rice terraces and supplementary food source. This study attempts to assess the feasibility of implementing a REDD+ in the Nagacadan rice terrace cluster of the Ifugao Rice Terraces. A carbon study was conducted by measuring four different carbon pools of the local forests: the forest carbon stock, non-tree vegetation, forest floor litter layer, and soil carbon at 10 cm depth. A qualitative assessment was also carried out in order to assess the potential for REDD+ implementation in the area through focus group discussion and key informant interviews.


The monitoring of financial flows for population and AIDS activities (the main aim of the Resource Flows Project) includes the tracking of financial transactions for SRH. Households are important financing sources and a growing need exists for data on how much households spend on health, either directly or indirectly. This newsletter examines, partly based upon existing literature and partly upon field experiences, ways to collect useful data. We include useful references to the literature. The structure of the newsletter is as follows. Section 2 briefly discusses the concept of out-of-pocket expenditures (OOPE). Section 3 lists a number of sources that may contain information on OOPE for health care. When the information contained in these sources are adequate, complex and expensive OOPE surveys are not required. Section 4 discusses OOPE surveys. Section 5 concludes the paper. The Newsletter is based on the UNFPA/NIDI Resource Flows Project (2008). 2


Type 416, a resulfurized stainless steel, is normally not considered weldable; however, it can be welded using friction welding techniques. Tensile tests showed that with proper postweld heat treatment, friction-welded Type 416 samples can attain approximately 70% of the tensile strength of the base metal. Scanning electron microscope studies showed friction welding changes the orientation of the sulfide inclusions. Impact tests showed the sulfide inclusions made Type 416 very anisotropic and the reorientation of the inclusions by friction welding was responsible for changing the direction of maximum toughness. Friction welding can be used to fabricate parts from Type 416 if the design of the part accounts for the directional nature of the material and the weld.


The midfacial region is a challenging area for the reconstructive surgeon. A good outcome depends on the ability of the plastic surgeon to consider both the functional and aesthetic demands of the patient. The defects are also extremely variable in nature depending on the etiology and amount of residual normal tissue. For example, cleft palate defects can be closed with local tissue with a low incidence of complications. However, gunshot wounds to the midface may lead to defects that require a face transplant to provide a reasonable outcome due to the massive amount of tissue loss. The entire reconstructive ladder may be needed to manage the spectrum of midfacial defects. Standard flaps and grafts remain the primary reconstructive techniques. However, advanced surgical techniques including virtual surgical planning of osteocutaneous flaps have the potential to improve outcomes, although there is no substitute for an experienced microvascular surgeon. Other improvements in intraoperative and postoperative monitoring have contributed to the reduction in flap loss and better outcomes in this population of patients. The functional rehabilitation of patients with large and small defects requires an excellent health care team. Functional outcomes improve with nurses, registered dieticians, speech therapists, and audiologists all working together to help these complex patients. Access to a prosthodontist is essential to provide the full spectrum of options, as some patients may be poor candidates for extensive reconstruction due to comorbidities. And last, but not least, it is vital to have appropriate psychosocial support, as many of the afflicted patients are in the disadvantaged segment of our population. There have been an increasing number of well-trained surgeons from multiple specialties contributing to the advancement of maxillofacial care. There is considerable practice overlap between the plastic surgeons, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, and otolaryngologists. Some institutions have excellent interdisciplinary relationship, while other institutions have one specialty primarily manage the maxilla and skull base cases. Greater cooperation between specialties generally leads to improved patient care and a better working environment for providers. In the past, obturator prosthesis was the best care these patients could hope to receive. Now the future may include composite tissue allografts or tissue engineering to eliminate donor-sitemorbidity completely. The future ofmaxillary and skull base surgery will certainly be exciting.


Abstract The aim of this work was to synthesise derivatives from identified plant based pyridoindole lead scaffold, and to assess phosphodiesterase 5A inhibitory potential by in silico and in vivo. Pyridoindole derivatives were synthesised by using six-stage reactor. In silico screening was carried out by grip-based docking methodology. In step-I, tryptophan as a starting material was reacted with different aldehydes and ketones to obtain 11 molecules. In step-II, obtained molecules were reacted with ethanol and benzyl alcohols to obtain D1 to D22 derivatives. In silico investigation resulted in best three molecules D12, D4 and D8 with promising BE score. Oral acute toxicity study of selected molecules resulted in LD50 value 500 mg/kg in rats. The result of in vivo antihypertensive study shown that molecule D12 was found to be the best antihypertensive lead molecule. This study could be a best platform to tailor novel biomolecules for inhibiting phosphodiesterase 5A enzyme in hypertension management. Graphical Abstract


The article draws attention to the development of science and technology in 19th and 20th century, biology and chemistry in particular, and its relation with the green revolution of the middle of 20 th century and the gene revolution of the end of 20 th century. These two revolutions have resulted in significant changes in food production and integrated agriculture into high technology-based economy.


Air conditioning and hot water compound system in which air-cooling heat exchanger is connected with heat recovery heat exchanger in series is studied, system fundamentals and five running modes including single refrigerating mode, single heating mode, hot water mode, refrigerating and hot water mode and heating and hot water mode are introduced, and experimental research is developed. Experimental research on operation characteristics of refrigerating capacity, heating capacity and suction and discharge temperature and pressure show that the unit operates reliably long in different operation conditions and that the variation of characteristics is within a reasonable range. Coefficient of performance of the system in refrigerating and hot water mode and in heating and hot water mode is highest with the minimal value approximately 3.2 when the temperature of water tank climbs up to 55°C, as the service efficiency of the unit is improved by recovering the condenser heat to heat hot water. The system is avoided to operate in the region of maximum power, and had better operate in the variable flow region of capillary and large air volume and small temperature difference region as much as possible.


A structure A is presented for which Hoare's formal system for partial correctness is incomplete, even if the entire first-order theory of A is included among the axioms. It follows that the language of first-order logic is insufficient to express all loop invariants. The implications of this result for program-proving are discussed.


We present a high-speed visible light communication(VLC) link that uses a commercially available phosphorescent white light-emitting diode(LED). Such devices have few megahertz bandwidth due to the slow response of phosphorescent component,which severely limit the transmission data rate of VLC system. We propose a simple pre-emphasis circuit. With blue-filtering and the pre-emphasis circuit,the bandwidth of VLC system can be enhanced from 3 to 77.6 MHz,which allows non-return-to-zero on-off-keying(NRZ–OOK) data transmission up to 200 Mb/s with the bit error ratio of 5.3 × 10-7 which is below 10-6. The VLC link operates at the room illumination level of ~1000 lx at 1.1 m range using a single 1 W white LED.


Precisely assessing the progress in natural language generation (NLG) tasks is challenging, and human evaluation to establish a preference in a model's output over another is often necessary.However, human evaluation is usually costly, difficult to reproduce, and non-reusable.In this paper, we propose a new and simple automatic evaluation method for NLG called Near-Negative Distinction (NND) that repurposes prior human annotations into NND tests.In an NND test, an NLG model must place a higher likelihood on a high-quality output candidate than on a near-negative candidate with a known error.Model performance is established by the number of NND tests a model passes, as well as the distribution over task-specific errors the model fails on.Through experiments on three NLG tasks (question generation, question answering, and summarization), we show that NND achieves a higher correlation with human judgments than standard NLG evaluation metrics. We then illustrate NND evaluation in four practical scenarios, for example performing fine-grain model analysis, or studying model training dynamics. Our findings suggest that NND can give a second life to human annotations and provide low-cost NLG evaluation.


The California Gold Rush was only the first of a series of rushes that brought the first permanent settlers to much of the Far West between 1848 and 1880. Despite a flood of popular writings on separate mining regions, this book is the first to view the entire movement as an integral part of the settlement process. The author displays a thorough knowledge of all aspects of western mining: geology, technology, and economics, as well as history. His emphasis is not on bad men and vigilantes but on the ingenious contrivers of new techniques and machinery, the hardheaded capitalists who subsidized the development of the most promising mines, the builders of the transportation routes needed to link mining camps with markets. "A long-needed book, rising far above the usual superficial romantic nonsense that surrounds the subject."--Virginia Quarterly "With a fresh, penetrating approach, Paul strips away the glamor and views the mining frontiers not only in their bearing on national development, but also in terms of their interrelationship with each other."--American Historical Review


This study aimed to assess the risk management practices in Dangote Cement Factory, Ethiopia. Descriptive research design was employed in this study along with quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The total population was 353 of which 192 respondents were selected using simple random sampling technique. In addition to this, four managers were chosen for interview using purposive sampling technique. The primary information or data were gathered using structured survey which enclosed both open and close ended questions. Moreover, data were analyzed using both descriptive analysis like frequency and percentages and inferential statistics with the help of Statistical Packages of Social Scientist 20 version computer software. The findings of this study shown that there was no awareness created regarding training of the risk management process in the company. Moreover, packing plant risk and material risk were the most faced risks in Dangote Cement Factory. Finally, the study recommended that, the company is better to provide awareness creation, and continuous training, fulfilling personal protective equipment and establishing safety supervision staff committees.


Abstract The European Union today finds itself in the midst of its greatest crisis. The crisis is due not only to one of the greatest breakdowns in the history of the global economy, but also to the fascinating internal evolution of the European constitution since its beginning, shortly after World War II. Parallel to the growth of constitutional law, latent legitimation problems began to arise and grow cumulatively. However, once the big global banks, corporations and hedge-funds began a concerted attack on the European periphery, the long lasting neoliberal turn from democratic capitalism to capitalist democracy has reached whole Europe, and the legitimation crisis becomes manifest.


Following the application of angiotensin II to cultured lower brain stem neurons of rat embryos, the facilitatory response was mostly seen in small-sized oval, fusiform, and polygonal neurons, while the inhibitory response was seen in medium-sized pyramidal and multipolar neurons. Saralasin blocked both facilitatory and slow inhibitory responses, but had no effect on the fast inhibitory response.


Lamellar block copolymers, with the lamellae standing perpendicular to the substrate, are attractive candidates as templates for nanostructure array fabrication. However, no process currently exists to impose long-range in-plane alignment of such perpendicular lamellae on simple unpatterned substrates—to align the lamellar normal over macroscopic distances. Here, we have generated such aligned films of perpendicular lamellae in a polystyrene-poly(methylmethacrylate) diblock, PS-PMMA, by neutralizing the substrate with a random terpolymer brush and shearing the film with a moving polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) pad in contact with the film surface. At sufficiently high shear stresses, the lamellae align over the entire (cm2) area of the pad; the perpendicular orientation of the lamellae is preserved, although for films thicker than the lamellar spacing, a "capping layer" of PS forms in contact with the PDMS pad. However, when compared with typical shear-aligned block copolymers having a morphology of in-plane cylinders, a significantly higher stress is required to align the lamellar PS-PMMA, and the orientational order is poorer and the dislocation density higher; a limiting order parameter ψ2 ≈ 0.8 is achieved at high stresses.


IMPORTANCE
Keratocystic odontogenic tumors (KCOTs) of the jaw affect more than 65% of patients with basal cell nevus syndrome (BCNS). Surgery frequently causes facial disfigurement and is not always curative. Most BCNS-related and some sporadic KCOTs have malignant activation of the Hedgehog signaling pathway.

OBSERVATIONS
We examined the effect of vismodegib (an oral Hedgehog pathway inhibitor) on KCOT size in patients with BCNS enrolled in a clinical trial testing vismodegib for basal cell carcinoma prevention (NCT00957229), using pretreatment and posttreatment magnetic resonance imaging. Four men and 2 women had pretreatment KCOTs (mean longest diameter, 2.0 cm; range, 0.7-3.3 cm), occurring primarily in the mandible. Patients were treated with vismodegib, 150 mg/d, for a mean (SD) of 18.0 (4.8) months (range, 11-24 months). Four patients experienced a size reduction and 2 had no change. Vismodegib reduced the mean longest diameter of KCOTs in all patients by 1.0 cm (95% CI, 0.03-1.94; P = .02) or 50% from baseline. We observed no enlargement of existing KCOTs or new KCOT development.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Vismodegib shrinks some KCOTs in patients with BCNS and may offer an alternative to surgical therapy. These effects were maintained for at least 9 months after drug cessation in 1 patient. Further studies assessing long-term efficacy and optimal maintenance regimens should be performed.


Irregularities in public health data streams (like COVID-19 Cases) hamper data-driven decision-making for public health stakeholders. A real-time, computer-generated list of the most important, outlying data points from thousands of public health data streams could assist an expert reviewer in identifying these irregularities. However, existing outlier detection frameworks perform poorly on this task because they do not account for the data volume or for the statistical properties of public health streams. Accordingly, we developed FlaSH (Flagging Streams in public Health), a practical outlier detection framework for public health data users that uses simple, scalable models to capture these statistical properties explicitly. In an experiment where human experts evaluate FlaSH and existing methods (including deep learning approaches), FlaSH scales to the data volume of this task, matches or exceeds these other methods in mean accuracy, and identifies the outlier points that users empirically rate as more helpful. Based on these results, FlaSH has been deployed on data streams used by public health stakeholders.


The power of deep learning compromises when applied to biological problems with sparsely labeled data and a data distribution shift. We developed a highly data-efficient model-agnostic semi-supervised meta-learning framework DESSML to address these challenges, and applied it to investigate understudied interspecies metabolite-protein interactions (MPI). Knowledge of interspecies MPIs is crucial to understand microbiome-host interactions. However, our understanding of interspecies MPIs is extremely poor due to experimental limitations. The paucity of experimental data also hampers the application of machine learning. DESSML successfully explores unlabeled data and transfers the information of intraspecies chemical-protein interactions to the interspecies MPI predictions. It achieves three times improvement in the prediction-recall over the baseline model. Using DESSML, we reveal novel MPIs that are validated by bioactivity assays and fill in missing links in microbiome-human interactions. DESSML is a general framework to explore previously unrecognized biological domains beyond the reach of present experimental techniques.


The Miller Behavioral Style Scale is a measure of coping dispositions that has proved useful in clinical settings. However, it contains items out of the common run of everyday experience that some people find difficult to complete. This study involving student volunteers and patients with metastatic cancer indicates that elimination of these items does not seriously modify the pattern of individual differences shown with scores on the complete questionnaire.


he frequency dependence in the mid IR from 900 to 1100 cm$^{-1}$ and far IR at 84 cm$^{-1}$ and temperature dependence from 35 to 330 K of the normal state Hall transport is reported in single crystal, optimally doped Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+\delta}$. The results show a nearly Drude behavior in the Hall conductivity $\sigma_{xy}$, which stands in contrast to the more complex extended Drude behavior for the longitudinal conductivity $\sigma_{xx}$. The mid IR Hall scattering rate increases linearly with temperature and has a small, positive, projected intercept of 200 cm$^{-1}$ at T=0. In contrast, the longitudinal scattering rate is much larger and exhibits very little temperature dependence. The spectral weight of $\sigma_{xy}$ is suppressed to 0.09 times the band value, whereas the spectral weight of $\sigma_{xx}$ is 0.33 times the band value. These disparate behaviors are consistent with calculations based on the fluctuation-exchange interaction when current vertex corrections are included.


Three cases of granulomatous purulent colliquative lymphadenitis showed histologioal similarity with caseous tuberculous lymphadenitis as well as with some other granulomatous lymphadenites. It was only a positive serological test that suggested the diagnosis of tularemia.


STUDY OBJECTIVES
Serotonin, acting in the peripheral nervous system, can exacerbate sleep-related apnea, and systemically administered serotonin antagonists reduce sleep-disordered respiration in rats and bulldogs. Because cannabinoid receptor agonists are known to inhibit the excitatory effects of serotonin on nodose ganglion cells, we examined the effects of endogenous (oleamide) and exogenous (delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol; delta9THC) cannabimimetic agents on sleep-related apnea.

DESIGN
Sleep architecture, respiratory pattern, and apnea expression in rats were assessed by polysomnography. A repeated measures, within-subjects, fully nested crossover design was used in which each animal was recorded on exactly 12 occasions.

PARTICIPANTS
Eleven adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were instrumented for chronic polysomnography.

INTERVENTIONS
Animals were recorded following intraperitoneal injection of various doses of delta9THC, oleamide, and serotonin, alone and in combination.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
Our data show that delta9THC and oleamide each stabilized respiration during all sleep stages. With delta9THC, apnea index decreased by 42% (F=2.63; p=0.04) and 58% (F=2.68; p=0.04) in NREM and REM sleep, respectively. Oleamide produced equivalent apnea suppression. This observation suggests an important role for endocannabinoids in maintaining autonomic stability during sleep. Oleamide and delta9THC blocked serotonin-induced exacerbation of sleep apnea (p<0.05 for each), suggesting that inhibitory coupling between cannabinoids and serotonin receptors in the peripheral nervous system may act on apnea expression.

CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrates potent suppression of sleep-related apnea by both exogenous and endogenous cannabinoids. These findings are of relevance to the pathogenesis and pharmacological treatment of sleep-related breathing disorders.


A large proportion of demented Lewy body disease patients have Alzheimer's disease (AD)- like pathology, in particular amyloid-beta (Abeta) plaques. Cystatin C (CysC) is a carrier of soluble Abeta (42) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and reduces Abeta plaque formation. The CST3 BB genotype leads to a reduced secretion of the protein in vitro and increases the risk for AD, suggesting that variability in the CST3 gene and CysC protein concentration may be associated with dementia in Lewy body disease. We therefore determined the CST3 genotype in 51 demented and 71 nondemented Lewy body disease patients, and in 52 controls, as well as CSF CysC and Abeta (42) levels from 132 of these subjects. The CST3 BB genotype was associated with lowered CSF CysC levels and with dementia. Demented Lewy body disease patients had decreased CSF CysC levels. The correlation between CSF CysC and Abeta (42) levels was high in non-demented subjects, but poor in demented patients. We conclude that, in Lewy body disease, the CST3 BB genotype and low CSF CysC levels are associated with dementia, possibly through a disturbed elimination of soluble Abeta(42).


This study explores the reasons for the slow price reactions to analysts' recommendation revisions. We predict that analysts' recommendation revisions contain earnings-related information that is not incorporated in analysts' earnings forecasts and that the slow price reaction is attributable to a gradual incorporation of this earnings-related information into stock prices. We find that, consistent with our prediction, stocks with recommendation upgrades subsequently experience more upward earnings forecast revisions than stocks with recommendation downgrades, and that the differences in subsequent stock returns between upgraded and downgraded stocks is attributable to differences between subsequent earnings forecast (especially, FY2 earnings forecast) revisions.


Mother Tongue Textbooks and the Possibilities of Creativity Development through Their Use in Mother Tongue Lessons in Early Primary School Introduction Creativity as one of the most desired contemporary human qualities is closely related to self-expression, but self-expression to self-assessment, self-esteem, and further to self-actualisation. Therefore the early primary school stage becomes especially crucial which involves the development of creative abilities as one of the most fundamental tasks. The article focuses on the early primary text-books in the mother tongue (Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian) in order to clarify to what extent and exactly what kind of creativity promoting tasks the authors include in them. Aim of the study The aim is to analyse the mother tongue early primary school text-books of various nationalities in order to establish the number and type of the tasks promoting children's creativity. Materials and methods Analysis of theoretical literature and the tasks provided by the text-books, a survey of children. Results Mother tongue early primary school text-books, including Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian by various authors, were analysed for in accordance with their rating for tasks which foster creativity. The pupils were surveyed about the assigned tasks, and the attitudes of different authors for opportunities of fostering creativity in mother tongue lessons were assessed. Conclusions In the early primary school stage it is significant to foster children's creativity during mother tongue lessons as such tasks in opposition to boring and monotonous) are fulfilled with greater enthusiasm and pleasure, so they foster self-assessment, development of positive relationships, and faster achievement of teaching/ learning aims. Some tasks fostering children's creativity are included in mother tongue early primary school text-books of different nationalities. Nevertheless we have to conclude that some authors pay more attention to them than others. Consequently, text-books do not fulfil their function as an idea bank for the teacher, and the teachers have to make great effort to develop creative, exciting and joyful educational experiences.


AIM
The aim of the current study is to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of concentrated growth factors on wound healing after implant placement procedures.

METHODOLOGY
Twenty-four patients who underwent implant placement were included in the study and were divided into two groups (group 1 = non-CGF group; group 2 = CGF group). Conventional implant placement was done in both the groups followed by placement of CGF membrane and closure using 3-0 silk in the CGF group and only closure using 3-0 silk sutures in the control group. The patients were asked to report on the 3rd and 7th day respectively and the wound healing was assessed using an early wound healing index given by Lorenzo Marini.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Shapiro-Wilk test was used to test the normality of the test, which was found to deviate from normal distribution and hence Mann-Whitney U test was employed to evaluate the statistical significance of the two independent samples.

RESULTS
The mean ± SD was found to be 6.17 ± 2.04 for the control (group 1) and 5.67 ± 0.51 for CGF group (group 2) on the 3rd day. The mean and SD of control group and test group on the 7th day was 7 ± 1.55 and 9.33 ± 1.63, respectively. The difference between the groups on the 7th day was found to be statistically significant (P value < 0.05).

CONCLUSION
Concentrated growth factor application had positive effects on surgical wound healing after implant placement.


Malignant hematolymphoid disorders arising from NK cells have become widely recognized over the past decade. The two forms of NK-cell malignancy, aggressive NK-cell leukemia (ANKL) and extranodal NK-cell lymphoma of nasal type (ENKL) are both characterized by the proliferation of tumor cells with an NK-cell like immunophenotype. ANKL usually presents with bone marrow tumor cells accompanied by circulating leukemic cells, and hepatosplenomegalay is a common clinical feature. ENKL most frequently affects the nasal or paranasal regions, with cutaneous involvement also being common. Approximately 70 percent of ENKL present with localized tumor cells, and follow an indolent clinical course, but, in advanced cases, tumors rapidly expand and are frequently fatal. Tumor cells from both ANKL and ENKL are surface CD3 and CD56 but differ in their expression of CD16. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is found in most cases of NK-cell leukemia/lymphoma, suggesting an oncogenic role, but patients may have biclonal or polyclonal populations of malignant cells based on differential EBV genome incorporation. NK-cell neoplasms are frequently resistant to chemotherapy due to p-glycoprotein expression and associated multidrug resistance. The prognoses of both localized and advanced stages of NK-cell malignancies are worse than most other lymphoid malignancies, but studies are currently underway to assess the safety and efficacy of novel chemoradiotherapy regimens for the treatment of these neoplasms.


In high-Q, low-sampling rate switched-capacitor filters the main limitation comes from the capacitance spread. A secondary clock, that averages at an integer fraction of the main clock signal, is used to reduce the capacitance spread by a factor of N, relaxing the operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) requirements. The secondary clock is pulse position modulated to reduce the power of alias components. Experimental results obtained from a second-order bandpass switched-capacitor filter breadboard prototype are shown.


With 32 years' experience supplying packaged power for offshore operators worldwide and over 500 gas turbines in offshore operations, Rolls-Royce is in a strong position to meet the ultimate offshore challenge. Andrew Collins, UK, reports on the company's involvement in helping Brazil's oil major Petrobras produce oil and gas from ultra-deepwater fields - the industry's 'final frontier'.


Web services can be aggregated to create composite workflows that provide streamlined functionality for human users or other systems. Although industry standards and recent research have sought to define best practices and to improve end-to-end workflow composition, one area that has not fully been explored is the scheduling of a workflow's web service requests to actual service provisioning in a multi-tiered, multi-organisation environment. This issue is relevant to modern business scenarios where business processes within a workflow must complete within QoS-defined limits. Because these business processes are web service consumers, service requests must be mapped and scheduled across multiple web service providers, each with its own negotiated service level agreement. In this paper we provide heuristics for scheduling service requests from multiple business process workflows to web service providers such that a business value metric across all workflows is maximised. We show that a genetic search algorithm is appropriate to perform this scheduling, and through experimentation we show that our algorithm scales well up to a thousand workflows and produces better mappings than traditional approaches.


A meaningful characteristic of modern industrial production is given and prospects for the modernization of the Belarusian industry through new industrialization are identified in the paper. In this regard, the objectives of the study have been determined: to consider modern concepts of the transformation of economic systems under the influence of technological progress, to substantively characterize the new industrialization, including to describe the technological and organizational features of the new intentional production, to identify its distinctive features, to determine the prospects for using the concept of new industrialization for modernization of the Belarusian industry. The methodological basis was the general scientific methods and principles of сognition, namely: the method of deduction and induction, the method of comparative analysis, historical approach. The author considers the new industrialization as an economic structure that has developed as a result  of the spread of digital technologies in a modern socially-oriented, predominantly market economy. The technological basis  of the new industrial production is cyber-physical production systems that operate through the industrial Internet of things,  the Internet of services and network mechanisms of interaction between all participants in the value added chain. The development of digital production and digital services entails the digitalization of business models. The result is flexible, adaptive, individualized industrial production through the triad of digital production, digital services and digital business models. When modernizing the Belarusian industrial complex, aimed at developing high-tech and knowledge-intensive industrial production and increasing the efficiency of traditional industries through the use of a wide variety of new technologies, the priority should be the comprehensive digitalization of production, services and business models.


Present day wireless communication systems demand for high data rates. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has emerged as a promising technology to provide these high data rates. OFDM is a digital modulation technique which divides the available spectrum into different sub bands. As a result data can be transmitted simultaneously using multiple subcarriers. Conventional OFDM is based on Fast Fourier transform. It uses Inverse Fast Fourier transform block at transmitter side and FFT block at the receiver side. Recent studies show that discrete wavelet transform can be used in the place of FFT as it provides better Bit Error rate performance. The major degradation factors that reduce the performance of conventional OFDM are Carrier frequency offset and Doppler Effect. This paper discusses the performance of DWT based OFDM in the presence of CFO and Doppler Effect. The paper compares the BER performance DWT OFDM using two wavelets, the Haar Wavelet and Daubechies wavelet. CFO and Doppler Effect are assumed to occur individually in the system. Simulations are carried out using MATLAB.


Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) has ended up being a significant research issue as of late, which is a well known Intelligent Transport System. License Plate Localization is the center module of License Plate Recognition System, which decides the overall performance of the entire License Plate Recognition System. hello have utilized and an examination of every strategy as far as their merits, demerits, computational power, detection success rate and accuracy, the execution time and speed of the entire License Plate System, which will be useful for the researchers.


The evolution of the Mediterranean area since the Oligocene-Lower Miocene
has been driven by the convergence of the surrounding plates. This implies that
the observed deformation pattern in that region must be the most convenient
shortening pattern, i.e. the one
controlled by the minimum action principle. To understand why the fulfilment of
such condition has required a complex spatio-temporal distribution of major
tectonic events, such as uplift, lateral displacement and bending of orogenic
belts, consumption of large lithospheric domains and formation of back arc
basins, it may be very useful to take into account a basic tectonic concept,
which helps to identify the process that can minimize the resistance of
tectonic forces. Such concept starts from the fact that the most convenient
consumption process is the one that involves low buoyancy oceanic lithosphere (Tethyan domains). However, such
process is highly favoured where the oceanic lithosphere is stressed by
vertical forces, a situation that develops when orogenic wedges are forced to
over thrust and load the oceanic domain to be consumed. This interpretation can
provide plausible and coherent explanations for the complex pattern of the
observed deformations. In this view, the generation of back arc basins is taken
as a side effect of an extrusion process, as suggested by numerical and
mechanical experiments.


ABSTRACT A scaffolding system model at one side of the exterior surfaces of a square building was set in the wind tunnel to measure the wind forces on the system in various oncoming-flow directions. The scaffolding system with additional clad sheets at three porosity ratios was tested to examine its wind load effect. Moreover, numerical computations were performed to examine the wind flow in the region between the building surface and the impermeable clad sheet. Results show that a decrease of screen porosity generally promotes varies wind force with the oncoming-flow direction variation. As the scaffolding system is at the windward side of the building, a maximum total push-in force occurs. When the system is parallel to the oncoming-flow direction, the total pull-out force becomes maximum. The cross-sectional maximum and minimum net pressure values mostly occur near the edge or the corner of the scaffolding system. Among all oncoming-flow directions, finally, cross-sectional large wind speeds usually occur at the upstream upper corner in the scaffolding system. The most critical situation that endangers the safety of construction workers due to the occurrence of local gust wind can happen when the oncoming-flow direction angle is within the range of 60 to 90 degrees.


A novel 1:1 cocrystal between p-toluenesulfonamide and triphenylphosphine oxide has been prepared and structurally characterized. This 1:1 cocrystal was observed to form during solid state grinding experiments, with subsequent formation of a known 3:2 cocrystal in the presence of excess sulfonamide. Both cocrystals are stable in the solid state. The ternary phase diagram for the two coformers was constructed in two different solvents: acetonitrile and dichloromethane. Examination of these diagrams clarified solution crystallization of both the newly discovered 1:1 cocrystal and the previously reported 3:2 cocrystal, and identified regions of stability for each cocrystal in each solvent. The choice of solvent was found to have a significant effect on the position of the solid state regions within a cocrystal system.


Objective To investigate the influence of radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) on the platelet aggregation rate (PAG) and evaluate the prophylactic effect of Amlodipine. Methods With furbidimetry assay, sixty consecutive patients were divided randomly into control group ( 30 cases ) and treated group ( 30 cases ) treated with Amlodipine. PAG were measured before and immediately after RFCA. Results In control group, the platelet aggregation rates increased significantly immediately after RFCA. In treated group,the platelet aggregation rates were also increased slightly, but there were no statistical significance. Conclusion It suggests that increased platelet aggregation rate may be introduced by RFCA, and prophylactic therapy of Amlodipine may prevent it.


Nanotubular materials like carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and inorganic nanotubes (INNTs) were proposed as promising materials for a large variety of nanotechnological applications. Due to intrinsic experimental limitations, the theoretical modeling plays a crucial role in the understanding of the properties of these materials. The present chapter is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of some theoretical concepts for modeling of CNTs functionalization and the encapsulation of inorganic material into CNTs and INNTs. The work is divided into two main parts. In the first, a methodological background is given along with some basic structural features of the "nano-objects" taken into account. In particular the application of the Clar sextet theory to the case of CNTs is analyzed in detail. Several applications of this concept are reported in the second part. Some basic electronic properties of the CNTs are analyzed from the Clar sextet theory point of view. DFT calculations on Clar-consistent CNTs models provide a suitable route for the understanding of the chemical reactivity of semiconducting chiral CNTs. Another possible field of application of NTs concerns the development of novel materials by making use of NTs as nano-sized templates of nanostructured materials. A detailed overview of theoretical understanding of capillary properties of carbon and inorganic BN and MoS2 nanotubes is given. Therein, results from classical MD simulations on the imbibition process for a molten salt into a nanotube and on the crystallization of the melt within the nanotubular cavity are shown.


Download ammalian cells, activation of oncogenes usually triggers innate tumor-suppressing defense mechanisms, ing apoptosis and senescence, which are compromised by additional mutations before cancers are develThe miR-17-92 gene cluster, a polycistron encoding six microRNAs (miRNA), is frequently overexpressed an cancers and has been shown to promote several aspects of oncogenic transformation, including evaf apoptosis. In the current study, we show a new role of miR-17-92 in inhibiting oncogenic ras-induced ence. Further dissection of the miRNA components in this cluster reveals that the miR-17/20a seed family nts for this antisenescence activity. miR-17 and miR-20a are both necessary and sufficient for conferring nce to ras-induced senescence by directly targeting p21, a key effector of senescence. By contrast, components are not essential for the ability of miR-17-92 to evade Myc-induced apoptosis. Moreover, tion of senescence by miR-17-92 or its miR-17/20a components leads to enhanced oncogenic transforn by activated ras in primary human cells. Taken together with previous reports that miR-17-92 inhibits sis by suppressing Pten via the miR-19 components, our results indicate that this miRNA cluster proapopto motes tumorigenesis by antagonizing both tumor-suppressing mechanisms, apoptosis, and senescence, through the activities of different miRNA components encoded in this cluster. Cancer Res; 70(21); 8547–57. ©2010 AACR.


Cybercrime is the offense related to the ethical and legal violation of the computer and IT system, a threat to the security of information systems, and abuse of the Internet platform. It is committed through the Internet or computer systems. Its direct and indirect results disrupt the flow of technological infrastructure. Gaining the knowledge or skills related to the types and content of the cybercrimes is an essential prerequisite in the digital era. Thus, it is very significant to raise the awareness of the younger generation, who will shape the future of societies. In accordance with this, our study aims to identify the cybercrime awareness of undergraduate and postgraduate students in one of the higher education institutions of Kazakhstan. Totally 133 student participants attended the survey which included questions about the awareness of cybercrime concept and its scope. The findings of the study have revealed that cybercrime awareness of the participants is in moderate-level. Their knowledge and skills need to be improved further. Based upon this, it is very important to teach cybercrime in all levels of education and include it in the educational curriculum Higher cybercrime awareness level of young people will have a positive impact upon their interaction with information systems and tools. They will have better and safer use of Internet and information systems which is quite significant in today's post-modern and post-truth world. This article was prepared within the frame of AP08052656 "Readiness assessment of Kazakhstani higher educational institutions for transformation within the context of Triple Helix project, funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan.


Problems related to brown plant hopper outbreaks management in the Mekong Delta-Vietnam are complex and need aggregating information across administrative scales. Brown plant hoppers density and environmental indicators are main factors that support stakeholders have suitable decision making. Due to detail levels of information are different from field scale to region scale, upscaling information is required, this paper aims at designing an agent-based assessment model and proposes an upscaling method to aggregate and assess information from field to region scales. A case study presents conveying rice area infested by brown plant hoppers across scales amd results could help stakeholders assess damage levels caused by Brown plant hoppers in rice crop seasons. Keywords-Brown plant hopper (BPH); Upscaling; Agentbased model; OWA operator; GAMA platform


The Matsushiro swarm earthquakes commenced in August 1965 and continued for more than three years. The Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, conducted tripartite observation using very sensitive seismographs in four places in the active area in parallel with an ordinary seismographic network set up in that area. The observation was continued throughout the entire period of activity. An outline of the activity of the earthquakes will first be reported


In the design of compact, power dense electrical machines found in automotive and aerospace applications it may be preferable to accept a degree of eddy current loss within the winding to realise a low cost high integrity winding. Commonly adopted techniques for analysing AC effects in electrical machine windings tend only to be applicable where the conductor dimensions are smaller than the skin depth and for ideally transposed windings. Further the temperature variation of AC losses is often overlooked. In this paper a more general approach is proposed based on an established analytical model and is equally applicable to windings where the conductor size greatly exceeds the skin depth. The model is validated against test measurements and FE analysis on representative single layer winding arrangements. A case study is used to illustrate the application of the proposed analytical method to the coupled electromagnetic and thermal modelling of a typical slot winding.


Bangladesh is a land of diverse forest-based natural attractions throughout the evergreen, semi-evergreen, and mangrove forest ecosystems. The article attempts at exploring various dimensions of ecotourism industry and critically analyzes the relationship among the stakeholders, overall strength-weakness of ecotourism sector and impediments hindering its development. National Parks, Ecoparks, Wildlife Sanctuaries, Game Reserves, and the like have been developed in the natural forest ecosystems to attract tourists from home and abroad. Cheap transportation, lodging and associated costs, unique scenic beauty and wilderness of all sites and socio-cultural diversity of indigenous communities living in the forest together make up the strength of the industry as a whole. The study identifies a number of impediments, including conflict among the stakeholders and forest degradation hindering expansion of ecotourism industry. For sustainable development of forest-based tourism, traditional 'Top-down' management approach is suggested to avoid and voice of all stakeholders needs to be considered in decision-making.


There is substantial argument that political risk is an important and increasing influence on international portfolio allocation decisions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between political risk and stock returns within the context of emerging markets. The issue is examined using a framework that controls for global and local return influences. Consistent with the paper's predictions, the findings reveal that political risk is important in explaining return variation in individual emerging markets, particularly in the Pacific Basin, but not in developed markets. At an aggregate portfolio level, supportive evidence is found of a positive relation between political risk and ex-post returns in emerging markets that is robust to alternative risk measures, and more prevalent during the 1990s.


SummaryOne hundred and two cervical biopsy specimens containing varying degress of chronic inflammation were stained for chlamydial antigens with the immunoperoxidase technique. Seven cases (6.9%) were positive. Histologically, six (84%) of the Chlamydia-positive cases contained severe chronic inflammation, all contained reparative atypia, and two (28%), follicular cervicitis. When evaluated separately, 22% (six of 27) of the specimens with severe inflammation were positive in contrast to 0% (0 of 45) of cases with mild inflammation. Positively staining cells were located primarily in columnar epithelium and reparative atypia and occasionally in areas of immature squamous metaplasia. The cytological finding which correlated with positive staining was cytoplasmic vacuolation; however, cytoplasmic vacuoles were common in cells which did not stain positively, and it was impossible to predict on histological grounds which cells/specimens would stain positively by immunoperoxidase. Because of these findings, the presence of chlamydial infection should be strongly suspected whenever the cervical biopsy specimen contains severe inflammation and repair. Although tissue staining may not be as sensitive as culture for diagnostic purposes, it can be performed rapidly and simply and may be a useful special stain in cases where the diagnosis of chlamydial infection is not suspected clinically or cultures are not immediately available.


Through time growing attention has been paid to the «new contents» of the development gap between the South of Italy and the rest of the Country; these deal with essential services nationally and locally regulated as well as the efficiency of Public Administrations. A substantial inefficiency of rules governing businesses and differentiated levels of Public Administration digitisation, however delayed in their implementation, cannot be underestimated as well. Nevertheless, the action of Public Administration seems strongly oriented to break such trend - indeed higher levels of transparency and efficiency in administrative action have been already observable. The risk is that too long testing times and different results between Central-Northern and Southern Italy lead to a substantial ineffectiveness of the interventions planned.


We propose RMASBench, a new benchmarking tool based on the RoboCup Rescue Agent simulation system, to easily compare coordination approaches in controlled settings for dynamic rescue scenario. In particular, we offer simple interfaces to plug-in coordination algorithms without the need for implementing and tuning low-level agents' behaviors. Moreover, we add to the realism of the simulation by providing a large scale crowd simulator, which exploits GPUs parallel architecture, to simulate the behaviour of thousands of agents in real time. Hence, we present two key benchmarks for coordination algorithms. First we focus on a specific coordination problem where fire fighters must combat fires and prevent them from spreading across the city. We formalize this problem as a Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem and we compare two state-of-the art solution techniques: DSA and MaxSum and thus provide the first benchmarks for DCOPs in this domain. Second, we provide key results on the evacuation of crowds of 3000 civilians on different maps under different blockage conditions. Thus we define benchmark scenarios for the development of coordination algorithms for large scale crowd evacuation. Our results demonstrate that RMASBench offers powerful tools to compare coordination algorithms in a dynamic environment.


This article further examines the consumerist model of physician-patient interaction, documenting the role of health orientation in the realm of participatory communication in medical encounters. It articulates that physician-patient communication style mediates the positive relation between health orientation and relationship satisfaction. Based on a nationally representative sample of 2,636 respondents (48% men and 52% women) gathered in 1999, the study results support the mediating mechanism for key health-orientation variables such as health-consciousness attitude, health-information orientation, health-oriented beliefs, and healthy activities. As opposed to the development of universal communicative interventions that equip patients with communication skills, the project documents the importance of tailoring the health care provider's communicative style depending on the needs of the patient.


This article discusses in depth several English illustrated broadsides produced in the first half of the nineteenth century and depicting child homicides. It provides the most detailed analysis to date of the complex interplay of illustration, verse and prose on murder sheets from the period. The cultural representations of homicides of children found in these broadsides contributed in important ways to understandings of culpability for the killings of infants and young children. Rather than simply illustrating the texts on the broadsides, the visual images amplified the emotional resonance of this medium, arguably increasing its effectiveness. In the hands of anonymous, plebeian ballad writers, copy writers, engravers and printers, these dramatic narratives of child killing and the fates of those accused expressed many things that resonated with wider discourse: deep seams of gender hostility, with men sometimes being blamed for women's killings, and women for men's; deep anxieties about the vulnerability of child life in the face of both female and male monstrosity; anxieties about the possibility of madness instigating appalling deeds; rich moral and religious messages about crime and redemption; and strong and complex links between popular cultural understanding and experience and formal legal proceedings.


Consumer attitudes and behaviors aimed at financial security at old age are determined by many factors. They include the perception of old age and expectations towards this period of life. The research and considerations presented in this paper were inspired by the introduction of Employee Capital Plans in 2019. They are a new institution on the Polish pension market allowing employees to save to achieve financial security at an old age.
The purpose of the paper is to identify whether and how the perception of old age affects behavior related to additional saving in Employee Capital Plans (ECP). The paper presents the results of own quantitative research conducted with the use of the CAWI method in 2021. The survey was performed among 148 employees of Poznań University of Economics and Business (PUEB). The conducted research shows that the hypothesis about the influence of the perception of old age on decisions regarding saving in employee capital plans should be rejected.


Delayed union is a common complication in fractures of both bones of the leg, especially those in the lower third. The term will be here used to describe those cases in which there are movement between the fragments and tenderness at the site of fracture, and in which the roentgenograms reveal open medullary cavities and little or no callus formation. Pseudarthrosis has not developed in these cases. The treatment for delayed union has very generally been direct fixation of the broken ends by metal inserts or bone grafts. These methods may succeed; but in too many instances they have failed because a long period of immobilization has produced atrophic and poorly nourished fragments—conditions unfavorable to the production of callus or the proliferation of a bone graft. The patient has also been subjected to all the risks of a major operation, including the danger of sepsis. The clinical picture of these


Nicholas of Cusa presents a negative theology in which divine mystery penetrates the created order. As part of creation, human being is a locus for God's presence. If God is mysterious and unknown, then so is human being.In the thought of Cusanus, traditional apophaticism becomes anthropological apophaticism, but this extension of mystery to human being does not lead to skepticism. Instead, it opens up the possibility of deification. As the mind seeks to know itself, it is led to an understanding of all things enfolded in God. It discovers that it does not know itself and must turn to God, its Beginning. The drive to understand human nature is, for Cusanus, a divinely ordained task in which the mind finds its true being only as it finds itself in God.


We show that, for a certain class of systems, the problem of establishing the existence of periodic orbits can be successfully studied by a symbolic dynamics approach combined with interval methods. Symbolic dynamics is used to find approximate positions of periodic points, and the existence of periodic orbits in a neighborhood of these approximations is proved using an interval operator. As an example, the Lorenz system is studied; a theoretical argument is used to prove that each periodic orbit has a distinct symbol sequence. All periodic orbits with the period p ≤ 16 of the Poincare map associated with the Lorenz system are found. Estimates of the topological entropy of the Poincare map and the flow, based on the number and flow-times of short periodic orbits, are calculated. Finally, we establish the existence of several long periodic orbits with specific symbol sequences.


A taxonomic survey on the tintinnids (Suborder Tintinnina) collected in subtropical waters of the Southern Brazil (22°S-34°S) was carried out, based in different oceanographic cruises covering shelf and oceanic waters. Eighty nine species were recorded, and Amphorides amphora (Claparede & Lachmann, 1858) Strand, 1928, Dadayella ganimedes (Entz, 1884) Kofoid & Campbell, 1929, Eutintinnus spp., Rhabdonellopsis apophysata (Cleve, 1900) Kofoid & Campbell, 1929 , Tintinnopsis spp. (neritic waters) and Xystonellopsis spp. were abundant. For all of species descriptions, measurements and drawings, as well comments on the taxonomy and results on horizontal and vertical distributions on the water column were furnished. Some species showed preference by deep waters, like Epicancella nervosa (Cleve, 1900) Kofoid & Campbell, 1929, Xystonellopsis spp., Salpingella spp. and Brandtiella palliata (Brandt, 1906) Kofoid & Campbell, 1929. In this work the families Codonellidae, Codonellopsidae, Coxliellidae, Cytarocyllidae, Epiplocylidae, Petalotrichidae, Ptychocylidae, Tintinnididae and Undellidae were studied. The other four families were covered in another work, also containing the discussion about biogeography and vertical distribution in the water column.


Abstract The current paper examines the realities of women delivering in resource-poor settings, and recommends cost-effective, scalable strategies for making these deliveries safer. Ninety-five percent of maternal deaths occur in poor settings, and the largest proportion of these deaths are women who deliver at home, far away from health care facilities, and without financial access to skilled providers. This situation will improve only when policymakers and programme planners refocus their attention on service delivery and financing interventions, with the potential to reach the largest portion of women living in places where mortality is the highest. We suggest three feasible interventions that can potentially minimise both demand and supply side problems of safe delivery: (1) misoprostol to treat postpartum haemorrhage, an easy to use and heat stable technology to reduce the leading cause of maternal deaths; (2) alternative providers, such as clinical officers, trained to offer emergency obstetric care services; (3) financing safe delivery through vouchers or other mechanisms that can be implemented in poor settings and made attractive to the donor community through output-based assistance (OBA).