Gastric mucosal responses to intraluminal instillation of acid (10, 50, and 150 mM HCl) and acidified solutions of sodium taurocholate (10 mM) were measured in rats between 5 and 60 days after birth. Net loss of H+ and gain of Na+, K+, and protein into the gastric lumen remained low and stable up to 25 days after birth. After that there were dose-dependent increases in H+ loss and Na+ and K+ appearance in the gastric lumen. Luminal protein appearance did not change with any concentration of acid tested in any of the ages examined. Gastric instillation of sodium taurocholate resulted in an increase in the rate of H+ loss as well as Na+ and K+ appearance in neonatal rats after 12-14 days. Protein appeared in the recovered gastric instillate and increased in parallel with Na+ and K+. In response to bile salt treatment, ulcers were only evident after 35 days of age. Injection of 8-day-old rats with corticosterone acetate (250 mg/kg) did not affect the ionic fluxes or protein output in response to acid alone or acidified bile salt solutions. These studies indicate that intragastric acid loads did not increase the ionic permeability of the gastric mucosa until 25 days after birth. The permeability changes occur earlier (day 12-14) if sodium taurocholate is added to the acid instillate. Prior to that time the mucosal permeability characteristics of the neonatal rat stomach are not altered by instillation of either acid loads alone or bile salt solutions.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


This study aimed to develop and evaluate a Multifunctional Transformable Instructional Table for BTLED – Industrial Arts students of the Department of Technology Teacher Education, College of Education, MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology, A. Bonifacio Ave. Tibanga, Iligan City. This developed table was evaluated by fifty (50) respondents composed of forty (40) students and ten (10) teachers via online evaluation. Then, the designed table was assessed based on the following criteria: usability, portability, aesthetics, and safety. The results were analyzed by the use of descriptive statistics such as weighted mean and standard deviation. A five-point scale was used to indicate the respondents' evaluation. The innovation introduced in this study is the transformable characteristic of a table that can be used not only as a table but one which could be transformed into an instructional board. As a table, it can be used as a teacher's table as well as a demonstration table and as an instructional board it can be used as a whiteboard or a projector screen for multimedia presentations. Moreover, this instructional board can be used as a holder for trainer sets in electrical wiring installation and full-wave rectifier wiring. Results of the evaluation of this transformable table shows that both teachers and students gave a rating of excellent in terms of its usability, portability, aesthetics, and safety, which was described as highly acceptable. It implies that this transformable table can be utilized as an instructional tool or equipment that will aid teachers and students in the teaching and learning process in Industrial Arts. Moreover, this can be of great help to teachers in making instruction more engaging for students as it simulates real scenarios even those that are outside the classroom scenarios. Keywords– Multifunctional table, Transformable Table, Instructional board, Instructional tool, Industrial Arts.


The regions situated in the Arctic zone of Russia perform an important function in the implementation of  the  export  potential  of  the  country.  As  one  of  favourable  factors  for  the  development  of  production  in the  Arctic  Zone,  we  have  to  consider  the  richest  natural  and  resource  potential  of  dry  land  and  the  sea. Negative factors limiting the development of the Arctic zone: the harsh natural and climatic conditions and the remoteness of the region from the subjects of the Russian Federation which have a higher level of socio-economic development, low level of economic development (including infrastructure) of these territories, low demographic capacity of the population. The research is aimed at revealing the existing spatial differentiation of the kinds of economic activity in  the  latitudes  of  the  northern  districts  of  the  country. In  order  to  assess  the  differences  in  the  industry structure of the gross added value of all the constituent entities of the Russian Federation whose territories to the Arctic zone, some graphs and map-schemes have been drafted. In addition, the authors also assessed the deviation of the industry breakdown from the average values observed in the Russian Federation as a whole. The analysis of the specifics of the spatial differentiation of the types of economic activity in the economy of the Arctic regions allows to reveal certain trends in the future development of the economic structures. The article is intended for specialists and students interested in the problems of the development of the northern regions of Russia.


The objective of the study was to compare 1) the mean micro-shear bond strength and 2) failure mode of cements to metals in nonenclosed and mold-enclosed specimens. Specimens were prepared in mold-enclosed and non-enclosed formats from two RMGIC's and a self-adhesive resin-cement. 3-way ANOVA analysis and Tukey post hoc tests were used to compare mean µSBS results (α=0.05). Failure mode was analysed with Pearson's chi-square test (α=0.05). µSBS was significantly affected by the factors substrate and method (p<0.001) but not by material (p=0.077). There was an interaction between substrate, method and material F (2,144)=3.57, p=0.031, and method and material (2,144)=5.86, p=0.004. All mold-enclosed specimens for the three cements bonded to titanium and non-precious metal exhibited higher (p<0.001) mean µSBS than the non-enclosed specimens. Within this study, mold-enclosed specimens exhibited significantly higher (p<0.001) mean µSBS and adhesive failure compared to non-enclosed specimens.


DjVu is a document codec that uses a truncated embedded significance tree to achieve both resolution and image quality scalability. In this paper, the probability model for the truncated tree arithmetic coder is improved, resulting in reduced bit-rates. The trade-off in decoder complexity is also indicated.


Machine to machine (M2M) communication has raised significant interests. However, due to the massive number of machine type communication (MTC) devices that are anticipated to communicate using cellular networks, there is a major problem on efficient accommodation of the heavy Random Access (RA) loads from the MTC devices. Use of small cells has been specified to provide network densification by 3GPP. In this paper we investigate the use of small cells to support RA and the allocation of Zadoff-Chu sequences to the small cells, which are used to generate preambles for the RA procedure. Small cells can be deployed on demand to handle mainly RA loads from MTC devices, which may generate much less data traffic compared to human devices. It is demonstrated that, with small cell support, more random channel access opportunities are provided and this can effectively support a massive number of machine devices. Using both simulations and analytical model the proposed implementation is evaluated and compared to two existing random access schemes without small cell support (the basic random access scheme and the access class barring (ACB) scheme). It is observed that the capacity of the networks in terms of the number of supported machine devices with small cell support can be increased significantly. The proposed implementation shows large potential to handle random channel access for massive machine devices.


The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a distinctive difference between the prejudice of Black and White college students at a predominantly White Midwest university. Using focus groups, we explored the perceptions that Black and White undergraduate students have of each other and how they socially encounter each other on campus. We offer recommendations for practice based on the results of this study.


The 4,5-bis(diphenylphosphoranyl)-1,2,3-triazole [4,5-(P(E)Ph2)2tz] derivatives of indium {kappa3-N,N',E-[4,5-(P(E)Ph2)2(mu-tz)]InMe2}2 (E = O2, S3, Se4) were prepared in good yield. In addition, compound 5 (E = O, E' = Se) was obtained from 4 through the replacement of a selenium atom in the P-Se(In) moiety by an oxygen atom, giving the mixed-chalcogen complex. The crystal structures of 2 and 5 exhibit a central C4In2N6O2P4core with an almost planar arrangement (mean deviation = 0.019 and 0.042 A for 2 and 0.100 A for 5), while the C4In2N6S2P4 core in 3 is nonplanar (mean deviation = 0.223 A).


Procrastination is variously described as harmful, innocuous, or even beneficial Two longitudinal studies examined procrastination among students Procrastinators reported lower stress and less illness than nonprocrastinators early in the semester, but they reported higher stress and more illness late in the term, and overall they were sicker Procrastinators also received lower grades on all assignments Procrastination thus appears to be a self-defeating behavior pattern marked by short-term benefits and long-term costs


Virginia has had a scenic roads program since 1966 that provides for the designation of certain roads as Virginia Byways. This program does not require the application of any special technical requirements in the selection, designation, maintenance, or modification of these roads. The research reported herein was undertaken to determine (1) whether these Virginia Byways require special design considerations by virtue of their use, (2) what design elements would be dictated if special design considerations were found to be appropriate, and (3) the degree to which current standards provide for these considerations. The institutional memory on the subject was reviewed, and current federal and state scenic roads programs were examined. It was concluded (1) that special design considerations are appropriate, (2) that design elements could be identified, and (3) that current design standards provide for neither the design considerations nor the resulting design elements. Recommendations are made for future practice and further research.


Cholestasis, which is caused by the obstruction of bile flow, can lead to rapid organ injury, cell apoptosis and necrosis of hepatocytes, and may eventually develop into fibrosis and cirrhosis. Oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction are the key pathogenic signs of hepatic cholestasis. Catalpol has pharmacological activities, including antioxidative and anti-inflammatory effects, and may relieve mitochondrial damage and restore mitochondrial membrane potential. However, the potential roles and mechanisms of catalpol in cholestasis-induced liver injury are not clear. In the present study, liver function-related indexes were measured in the serum of mice by commercial kits. In addition, levels of serum inflammatory factors were detected by ELISA. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was performed to observe histopathological changes, and mitochondrial membrane potential was detected using JC-1 staining. Mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate (ATP), reactive oxygen species (ROS) and malondialdehyde levels were determined using a luciferase reporter kit, flow cytometry and a thiobarbituric acid reactive substance assay kit, respectively. Western blotting was performed to detect the expression levels of apoptosis-related proteins in liver tissues. The findings revealed that catalpol reduced liver damage caused by cholestasis, improved the mitochondrial membrane potential, and increased the ATP content and glutathione content of cholestasis model mice. Moreover, catalpol also reduced the ROS level, inhibited lipid peroxidation, and regulated oxidative stress and apoptotic protein expression. Thus, the present study preliminarily confirmed that catalpol can reduce liver injury in a mouse model of cholestasis through inhibiting oxidative stress and enhancing mitochondrial membrane potential.


A technique for modeling wire objects interacting across or penetrating the planar interface which separates two half-spaces is described. The moment-method treatment is employed, based on the thin wire approximation to the electric-field integral equation, with the effect of the interface included via the Sommerfeld integrals. The computation time associated with evaluating the latter is substantially shortened by using an interpolation-based technique plus asymptotic field expressions. Although developed specifically for the wire problem, the procedure is also applicable, with slight modification, to modeling surface objects as well. Special care is taken to account for the charge discontinuity that occurs at the point a wire penetrates the interface. Example calculations are shown for a monopole antenna driven against ground stakes and simple ground screens, the fields of buried objects, and a simple electromagnetic pulse (EMP) simulator.


This paper traces the economic progress made by India's Retail Sector in the planning era, and the emerging issues under globalization. It examines the socio-economic magnitudes, problems and challenges of the country as well as the pitfalls in FDI planning in India. The paper also makes some policy suggestions to address the constraints in promoting sustainable FDI in India. In view of some of short coming observed in the SWOT analysis, FDI in retailing is going to attract retail players by Indian Government, but India should welcome them with a talented pool of human resources by promoting institution imparting knowledge in retailing. protection must be given to Indian small and medium retailers as retailing is their source of live hood.


If island biogeography has a sweet spot, it's where islands generate their own species diversity rather than merely taking on mainland immigrants. In birds and other highly dispersive taxa, however, this 'zone of radiation', may be vanishingly small. Darwin's finches and Hawaiian Honeycreepers are among only a handful of examples of island radiation in birds ( Price 2008 ), suggesting that winged powers of dispersal make sufficient isolation from mainland colonists unlikely, while also hindering speciation within and among isolated islands. Nevertheless, two studies in this issue of Molecular Ecology join a string of other recent analyses suggesting that island radiation in birds remains under‐appreciated (see also Moyle et al. 2009 ; Kisel & Barraclough 2010 ; Rosindell & Phillimore 2011 ). Melo et al. (2011) use a phylogenetic analysis of white‐eyes on islands in the Gulf of Guinea to identify two previously overlooked island radiations, and reveal replicated adaptive divergence on islands where species occur in pairs. Sly et al. (2011) , meanwhile, consider possible explanations for speciation and geographic differentiation within a large island, and find the same type of oceanic barriers that are critical to bird speciation across archipelagos may also contribute to divergence that appears to have occurred within a single island.


Introduction Graft failure remains a major problem after renal transplantation. Identification of acute humoral rejection (AHR) in biopsy specimens has been problematic because no morphologic feature described to date is either pathognomonic or universal. In the present study, we investigated the role of both C4d and fibrin as diagnostic tools for the early assessment of AHR. Patients and methods This work represents a retrospective study on 53 renal allograft biopsies at the period between January 2005 and May 2008 at the Urology and Nephrology center (Mansoura Faculty of Medicine). Alternate slides were stained with hematoxylin and eosin stains, periodic acid-Schiff stain, and Masson trichrome stain as routine workup following standard procedures for staining. Cases of AHR were previously stained for C4d using the immunohistochemical technique. For the immunofluorescent staining, the pretreated sections are stained by monoclonal C4d and fibrinogen antibodies using the indirect immunofluorescent method. Results and conclusion Statistically significantly higher C4d positivity by immunofluorescence staining in cases of AHR was found in comparison with C4d immunohistochemical staining (P<0.01). The fibrin positivity in cases of AHR was higher than that in cases of acute cellular rejection (ACR), which was statistically significant (P<0.05). There was no significant relationship between consanguinity and recipient patients (P value>0.05). This study concluded that C4d plays a role in the detection and diagnosis of AHR cases and this can modify the protocol of treatment for better graft survival. Fibrin detection is important for the diagnosis of missed cases of fibrinoid necrosis that are specific for AHR cases and were not confirmed by routine light microscopic staining.


LIMBER tail syndrome (LTS), also known as acute caudal myopathy, is an unusual and poorly understood condition affecting the muscles in the tail and is most often reported in working or sporting dog breeds (De Lahunta and Glass 2008). Although there is no clear definition for the condition, the diagnosis is based on clinical signs of a limp tail, often appearing stiff at the base, and a rapid self-resolution, which excludes all other causes of the clinical signs. The tail may appear broken and held out from the body horizontally before hanging (De Lahunta and Glass 2008, Abbasm and others 2015). Many dogs suffering from the condition appear to experience pain and distress for the duration of the clinical signs. Much of what we know about LTS comes from detailed but limited case studies. In a paper summarised on p 275 of this issue of Veterinary Record , Pugh and others (2016) have used a cohort of approximately 6000 labrador retrievers to gather epidemiological evidence on the incidence of, and potential risk factors for, the syndrome in a working dog breed.

The dogs in Pugh and other's study had been registered by their owners into the Dogslife cohort (Dogslife 2010), which aims to track the impact of lifestyle and morphology on the health and wellbeing of labrador retrievers in the UK. Just 43 of the approximately 6000 dogs registered were reported to have suffered from limber tail, representing a reported cumulative incidence (also …


Book synopsis: Based on contributions to the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control's first Sites of Confinement conference, this edited collection of short essays highlights a number of significant areas of contestation including hyper-incarceration, institutional harms in detention, and gendered geographies of punishment. Written by academics and activists working in the fields of penology, incarceration and immigration detention, each chapter gives an overview of some of the most problematic issues in these areas. In looking at the neoliberal prison and wider social control agendas, contributions range from philosophical and conceptual concerns through to synopses of research findings and case studies. Importantly, the overall text considers examples of survival and resistance, offering recommendations for change based on the aims of the Working Group for Prisons, Punishment and Detention.


Background Although rural Latino migrant laborers have been identified as a group at-risk for acquiring HIV, few studies have examined transmitted diseases (STDs) in urban, Latino migrant laborers. Goal To assess the prevalence of STDs in a sample of urban, migrant day laborers in San Francisco. Study Design A convenience sample of participants in the Day Laborer Project of the San Francisco Department of Public Health was screened for STDs from September 1994 to January 2001. Screening included serologic tests for syphilis and nucleic acid amplification tests for gonorrhea and chlamydia. Results A total of 292 clients participated in the screening program. All participants were male, Latino, and recent immigrants. Of the 235 persons screened for syphilis, secondary syphilis was diagnosed in one (0.4%) participant. Of the 198 persons screened for gonorrhea and chlamydia, 1 (0.5%) had gonorrhea and 7 (3.5%) had chlamydia. Conclusion Urban Latino migrant day laborers are a population at-risk for infection with STDs. Community-based STD screening programs might be an effective way to detect STDs in this population.


The phrase syndrome indicates that certain symptoms and signs run together as a clinical entity. Collectively they characterize a particular disease or abnormal condition. Some syndromes are rare, but it is important to recognize them. Correct and early diagnosis is important for the individuals concerned, and for their families. Cornelia de Lange syndrome in its classical form is a syndrome of several congenital abnormalities and mental retardation. When not fully developed the syndrome may cause diagnostic problems. The authors discuss some biographical data about Cornelia de Lange and some matters concerning the syndrome.


BACKGROUND
The calibrated automated thrombogram (CAT), an assay that permits measurement of thrombin generation in plasma, may be useful in studying hemostatic disorders and anticoagulant therapy in animals.

OBJECTIVES
The aims of the study were to measure thrombin generation in healthy Beagle dogs and to evaluate the potential use of the CAT assay for monitoring therapy with unfractionated heparin (UFH).

METHODS
Individual platelet-poor plasma samples and a plasma pool from 20 healthy adult Beagles were prepared. Serial UFH plasma dilutions were used to establish an in vitro heparin-sensitivity curve. The pharmacodynamic effects of heparin in vivo were evaluated in Beagles using the CAT assay to measure thrombin generation with tissue factor at a concentration of 5 pM for initiation.

RESULTS
In healthy Beagles, the range of endogenous thrombin potential (ETP) was 238.7-414.0 nM/min (mean ± SD, 340.4 ± 63.1 nM/min). ETP intra-assay and interassay variations were 7.1% and 12.9%, respectively. In vitro, a UFH concentration ≥0.4 U/mL resulted in total inhibition of thrombin generation. In vivo, the maximal effect of UFH on ETP was observed at 170 ± 36 minutes (range, 120-210 minutes) and resulted in a decrease in ETP of 38.5 ± 7.8% (range, 26.5-50.3%). In 210-420 minutes, ETP returned to baseline in 5 dogs.

CONCLUSION
Our study demonstrates that thrombin generation can be measured in canine plasma and may be useful in assessing the degree of anticoagulation provided by UFH.


4-[3-(4-phenoxymethyl-phenyl)-propyl]-morpholine (fomocaine, Erbocain) is a very active topical local anaesthetic with low toxicity. A new synthesis starting from 4-phenoxy-methyl-benzonitrile, via a modified Willgerodt-Kindler reaction, is reported. The yield is of the same order as with the known technical process starting from 3-phenylpropanol. The distinct advantage of the new procedure is the avoidance of the C-chloromethylation of 3-phenylpropylchloride during which process the o-chloromethyl derivative is also formed, and this cannot be separated by fractional distillation.


OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to establish whether psychosocial risk factors for nonadherence, previously identified as negative predictors of warfarin prescribing, are predictors of adverse events for patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation receiving warfarin.DESIGN: Retrospective cohort analysis.SETTING: Ohio Medicaid administrative database.PATIENTS: We studied Ohio Medicaid recipients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation receiving warfarin to determine whether a history of substance abuse, psychiatric illness, or social factors (identified as conditions perceived to be barriers to adherence) are predictors of adverse events, including stroke, intracranial hemorrhage, and gastrointestinal bleeding. Multivariable risk ratios were calculated for each risk factor using Cox proportional hazards models.RESULTS: 9,345 patients were identified as having nonvalvular atrial fibrillation and receiving 2 or more warfarin prescriptions between 1997 and 2002. The event rates for the sample as a whole were 1.5 strokes, 0.7 intracranial hemorrhages, and 4.3 gastrointestinal bleeds per 100 person-years of follow-up. Subjects with substance abuse had the highest adjusted risk ratio, 2.4 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.4, 4.0) for an intracranial hemorrhage while receiving warfarin, followed by subjects with psychiatric illness, adjusted risk ratio of 1.5 (95% CI: 1.04, 2.1). Subjects with psychiatric illness also had an adjusted risk ratio of 1.4 (95% CI: 1.1, 1.7) for stroke. Patients in all 3 identified risk groups were at a significantly increased risk of gastrointestinal bleeding.CONCLUSION: Patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation treated with warfarin who have psychosocial risk factors for nonadherence have an increased risk of adverse events.


Gamma-ray and fast-neutron imaging was performed with a novel liquid xenon (LXe) scintillation detector read out by a Gaseous Photomultiplier (GPM). The 100 mm diameter detector prototype comprised a capillary-filled LXe converter/scintillator, coupled to a triple-THGEM imaging-GPM, with its first electrode coated by a CsI UV-photocathode, operated in Ne/5%CH4 at cryogenic temperatures. Radiation localization in 2D was derived from scintillation-induced photoelectron avalanches, measured on the GPM's segmented anode. The localization properties of 60Co gamma-rays and a mixed fast-neutron/gamma-ray field from an AmBe neutron source were derived from irradiation of a Pb edge absorber. Spatial resolutions of 12± 2 mm and 10± 2 mm (FWHM) were reached with 60Co and AmBe sources, respectively. The experimental results are in good agreement with GEANT4 simulations. The calculated ultimate expected resolutions for our application-relevant 4.4 and 15.1 MeV gamma-rays and 1–15 MeV neutrons are 2–4 mm and ∼ 2 mm (FWHM), respectively. These results indicate the potential applicability of the new detector concept to Fast-Neutron Resonance Radiography (FNRR) and Dual-Discrete-Energy Gamma Radiography (DDEGR) of large objects.


In the evaluation of the vibration mitigation effect of a nonlinear energy sink (NES), the selection of performance measures is important. Based on a square root model, this paper aims to propose new reasonable performance measures and new design criteria of the NES in harmonic excitation. To broaden the application range of the slow invariant manifold, coordinate correction is carried out for the square root model of the bistable NES. Two original performance measures (the displacement amplitude of the main system and the energy dissipation rate of the NES) and two new performance measures (the mechanical energy and the input energy of the main system) are compared. The optimal geometric configuration and response form of the NES are found in different excitation conditions. The results show that the energy dissipation rate of the NES is not competent to evaluate the performance of the NES in harmonic excitation, while the two new performance measures show competence. By adjusting the geometry parameter, the nonlinear vibration absorber with positive linear stiffness and the bistable NES show optimal vibration mitigation effect in small and large excitation amplitudes, respectively. The optimal response form is the periodic response rather than the strongly modulated response.


In male fertility an association between urogenital infections and azoospermia, oligoasthenoteratozoospermia, increased antisperm antibody levels and ejaculation disturbances is accepted by the World Health Organization. Furthermore, microorganisms invading the urogenital tract may impair fertility in males, providing only minor symptoms and signs of male genital tract inflammation which have commonly been categorized as silent male accessory sex gland infections. At present we do not know the true reproductive significance of these phenomena. Therefore, one of the major topics of the 3rd Andrological Symposium at the University of Giessen was devoted to the problems of standardization and classification of common urogenital infections. According to the consensus of the conference, standard diagnostic procedures have to include protocols to identify leukocytes and microorganisms in whole ejaculate and expressed prostatic secretions. Another aspect is the possibility that microorganisms may affect fertility in different ways, including impairment of spermatogenesis, induction of auto-immune mechanisms, dysfunction and motility disorders of spermatozoa, post-inflammatory occlusion of the epididymal duct as well as cervical and tuba1 dysfunctions in the female partner. A major problem remains the evaluation of positive bacterial cultures from genital secretions which pass the urethra and may be categorized as contamination without clinical significance. Therefore, search for increased numbers of leukocytes, elastase determination and sophisticated tests to evaluate disturbed seminal quality have to be included in common investigation schedules. Furthermore, in this context, the relevance of ejaculate infections by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has to be acknowledged. A correct diagnosis of male adnexitis has to consider the major source of inflammatory products of the ejaculate and the prostate gland. Thus, chronic prostatitis has to be ruled out in every case of male accessory gland infection. Nevertheless, reliable studies on prostatic function are lacking and during the symposium, data concerning altered secretory parameters of the prostate gland were discussed controversially with relevance to infertility. Inflammatory parameters under debate include the role of increased numbers of peroxidase-positive cells, the significance of increased titers of sperm antibodies and elevated levels of reactive oxygen species. The central problem is to prove impaired fertility in cases where one of these altered conditions is observed. Unfortunately, there are no controlled clinical studies, which could have demonstrated improved sperm quality after eradication of such factors. The same applies to the efficacy of antibiotic therapy where pertinent data are also missing to show improved male fertility after elimination of bacteria from urogenital secretions. On the other hand, the species and the number of microorganisms in the ejaculate play an important role for the outcome of insemination and in uztro fertilization. Furthermore, it should be kept in mind that infertility resulting from pelvine inflammatory disease, sexually transmitted by infected semen, remains one of the most costly and significant diseases in younger females. In summary, urogenital infections in infertile men have to be classified clearly using modern techniques for search of microorganisms, leukocytes or other inflammatory parameters in the ejaculate and prostatic secretions. In many cases, interdisciplinary evaluation of both partners is necessary to get precise information about the effect of inflammatory conditions on reproductive health.


: Rainfall interception plays a role in the hydrological cycle and is a critical component of water balances at the basin level, which is why understanding it is very important; as a result, in recent years, various authors have proposed different models to explain this process and identify which of them adapts better to each forest species. In this context, the aim of this research was to evaluate the Gash model and the sparse Gash analytical model in Pinus hartwegii Lindl. and Abies religiosa (Kunth) Schltdl. et. Cham., using measurements from 20 precipitation events recorded in May and June 2018 at the Zoquiapan Experimental Forest Station, Mexico. The evaporation rate was calculated using the Penman–Monteith method (PM) and Gash's calculation procedure. The canopy parameters were also calculated with two methods, a graphical one (A) and a method proposed in this research (B), which is based on point cloud generated with drone photogrammetry. For P. hartwegii , the most accurate model to estimate interception per rainfall event was the Gash model with the A and Gash methods, which were used to calculate the canopy parameters and evaporation rates, respectively; for accumulated interception, the sparse Gash analytical model with the B and PM methods was used. For A. religiosa , the best fit for individual events was presented by the sparse Gash analytical model with the B and PM methods, and for accumulated interception, it was the Gash model with the B and Gash methods. The results allow concluding that the B method proposed in this research is a good alternative for the calculation of rainfall interception, since it tends to improve its estimation, shortening the time for acquiring information about the parameters of the canopy structure and thus minimizing the costs involved. and J.M.M.-G.; writing—original draft preparation, C.B.-S. and J.V.P.-H.; writing— review and editing, C.B.-S., J.V.P.-H., J.L.S.-C. and A.M.-R.; visualization, supervision, and project administration, C.B.-S., J.V.P.-H., J.L.S.-C., M.A.V.-P. and J.M.M.-G.


Rawabogo Village is one of the villages in Ciwidey District which is unique with its historical site of Mount Nagra Padang and indigenous peoples. In the development of the Rawabogo Tourism Village, there were problems concerning community participation and empowerment. Community participation is built through an understanding of the desires, interests, demands, and a sense of ownership of the to develop tourism village. However, the measurement process related to desires, interests, demands, and a sense of ownership is difficult to measure accurately and dynamically using questionnaires and interviews. So it is necessary to have other measurement methods that can support the results of the questionnaires and interviews. Thus, this study aims to identify the attention of the people of Rawabogo Village to the development of tourism villages. The type of research is mixed research and data collection method used in this research comprises the primary and secondary data, while the sampling method used is purposive sampling with 10 respondents. The analysis result shows that the Rawabogo communities have high attention in developing the Rawabogo Tourism Village, which is also supported by obtaining the Saccadic movement pattern and fixation on each respondent, as well as the number of blinks which as a whole represent the average number of blinks of adults. The application of this mixed method, the eye tracking method and the classical method (questionaries and interviews), is the first step to including the scientific measurement of public awareness in the planning or development process.
Keywords: Attention, Community, Tourist Village


Abstract. Global warming has already substantially altered the Arctic cryosphere. Due to the Arctic warming amplification, the temperature is increasing more strongly, leading to pervasive changes in this area. Recent years were notably marked by melt records over the Greenland Ice Sheet, while other regions such as Svalbard seem to remain less influenced. This raises the question of the current state of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the various ice caps in the Arctic for which few studies are available. Here, we run the regional climate model (RCM) Modèle Atmosphérique Régional (MAR) at a resolution of 6 km over four different domains covering all Arctic land ice to produce a unified surface mass balance product from 1950 to the present day. We also compare our results to large-scale indices to better understand the heterogeneity of the evolutions across the Arctic and their links to recent climate change. We find a sharp decrease of surface mass balance (SMB) over the western Arctic (Canada and Greenland) in relationship with the atmospheric blocking situations that have become more frequent in summer, resulting in a 41 % increase of the melt rate since 1950. This increase is not seen over the Russian Arctic permanent ice areas, where melt rates have increased by only 3 % on average, illustrating a heterogeneity in the Arctic SMB response to global warming.


A wage "mystery" has puzzled economics commentators for several years: If unemployment is so low, why has wage growth not picked up? This article will argue that there is no puzzle when the right measures are used. The problem with how wages are measured is that the most commonly used measure is biased over the business cycle. The problem with how labor slack is measured is that the magnitude and depth of the Great Recession led many workers who could and would work again to exit the labor force entirely. As a result, many workers relevant to labor market slack were no longer being counted as unemployed, making the unemployment rate a poor gauge of labor market slack.


Objective: To determine the incidence and survival rate of having newborn with low birth weight and its associating factors among Thai women. Method : In this retrospective study, data were collected from 1,645 women with singleton pregnancy who had antennal care (ANC) and delivered in the HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Medical Center (MSMC) Hospital from January 1 to December 31, 2017. The individual socio-demographic and maternity record were reviewed. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox proportional hazard regression was conducted. Results: The incidence rate of low birth weight was 47.8 per 100 person-weeks. The results revealed that after controlling for individual socio-demographic factors, maternal factors namely gravida (HR = 2.30, P = 0.037), number of antenatal visit (HR = 0.78, P < 0.001), gestational age at delivery (HR = 0.51, P < 0.001), obstetric complication (HR = 1.77, P = 0.008), and obstetric complication related with medicine disease (HR = 3.64, P < 0.001) were found to be significantly associated with hazard rate. Conclusion: Our result suggest that the birth weight and certain maternal factors were correlated. Pregnant women should be encouraged to have antenatal visit continuously until term labor to improve survival rate of low birth weight of the newborn. Key words: survival probability, hazard rate, low birth weight, maternal determinant


Nanoscale quantum optics explores quantum phenomena in nanophotonics systems for advancing fundamental knowledge in nano and quantum optics and for harnessing the laws of quantum physics in the development of new photonics-based technologies. Here, we review recent progress in the field with emphasis on four main research areas: Generation, detection, manipulation and storage of quantum states of light at the nanoscale, Nonlinearities and ultrafast processes in nanostructured media, Nanoscale quantum coherence, Cooperative effects, correlations and many-body physics tailored by strongly confined optical fields. The focus is both on basic developments and technological implications, especially for what concerns information and communication technology, sensing and metrology, and energy efficiency.


Secretarial profession is unique in that secretarial personnel play various roles during the course of their work in supporting executives in a wide range of activities geared towards meeting the organization's goals. While exercising these duties, at some point they become vulnerable to work related stress and burnout which might impact negatively in the performance of their duties. The purpose of this study was to find out the prevalence of occupational stress and burnout among secretarial personnel in the public service. The objectives of this research were to examine the prevalence of occupational stress and burnout causes among secretarial personnel in the public service, establish the relationship between occupational stress and burnout, with regard to the duration of service and the coping strategies. The study was conducted in Nairobi County in Ministry of East African Affairs, Commerce and Tourism; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Relations; and National Police Service. The pilot study was conducted in the Ministry of Devolution and Planning. The research design was a descriptive survey. A sample of 51 secretarial personnel was taken using multistage sampling. The study was guided by Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and Arnold Lazarus' cognitive behavioural theories. The data was analyzed using descriptive and referential statistics. This study revealed that the secretarial personnel experienced burnout. Participants who had served in the public service between 6 – 10 years and between 16 – 20 years experienced burnout, while participants who had served over 20 years experienced low burnout. 43.14% were at risk of burnout, 29.41% were at severe risk of burnout, 5.88% were at very severe risk of burnout. The results were presented in form of tables. The results of this study could be used by the human resource managers, as well as supervisors in order to organize counseling seminars and workshops for psycho-education on counseling issues to minimize potential burnout. The recommendation of this study is that Public Service Guidance and Counseling Policy should be implemented and Monitoring and Evaluation to be done in all Ministries to ensure successful implementation of the policy.


Background Modification of ritonavir-boosted lopinavir (LPV/r)-based antiretroviral therapy is required for HIV-infected children co-treated for tuberculosis (TB). We aimed to determine virologic and toxicity outcomes among TB/HIV co-treated children with the following modifications to their antiretroviral therapy (ART): (1) super-boosted LPV/r, (2) double-dose LPV/r or (3) ritonavir. Methods and Findings A medical record review was conducted at two clinical sites in Johannesburg, South Africa. The records of children 6–24 months of age initiating LPV/r-based therapy were reviewed. Children co-treated for TB were categorized based on the modifications made to their ART regimen and were compared to children of the same age at each site not treated for TB. Included are 526 children, 294 (56%) co-treated for TB. All co-treated children had more severe HIV disease, including lower CD4 percents and worse growth indicators, than comparisons. Children in the super-boosted group (n = 156) were as likely to be virally suppressed (<400 copies/ml) at 6 months as comparisons (69.2% vs. 74.8%, p = 0.36). Children in the double-dose (n = 47) and ritonavir groups (n = 91) were significantly less likely to be virally suppressed at 6 months (53.1% and 49.3%) than comparisons (74.8% and 82.1%; p = 0.02 and p<0.0001, respectively). At 12 months only children in the ritonavir group still had lower rates of virological suppression relative to comparisons (63.9% vs 83.3% p<0.05). Grade 1 or greater ALT elevations were more common in the super-boosted (75%) than double-dose (54.6%) or ritonavir (33.9%) groups (p = 0.09 and p<0.0001) but grade 3/4 elevations were observed in 3 (13.6%) of the super-boosted, 7 (15.9%) of the double-dose and 5 (8.9%) of the ritonavir group (p = 0.81 and p = 0.29). Conclusion Good short-term virologic outcomes were achieved in children co-treated for TB and HIV who received super-boosted LPV/r. Treatment limiting toxicity was rare. Strategies for increased dosing of LPV/r with TB treatment warrant further investigation.


Cyanobacteria are N $\_2$ -fixing oxygenic phototrophs with potential as sources of nitrogenous biofertilizer independent of fossil fuels. Recently, attention has been paid to their role in this respect, and to strain selection to facilitate enhanced agricultural productivity. The capacities to fix N $\_2$ in the presence of combined nitrogen, to resist herbicides and to tolerate salinity changes and desiccation are of particular importance. Mutant strains of N $_2$ -fixing cyanobacteria with potential applications have been produced, including strains which photoproduce ammonia and amino acids, strains with altered transport systems and strains which are herbicide-resistant. By using bioreactors and immobilization systems in conjunction with these strains, techniques have been developed for extracellular product-liberation. Gene transfer systems are now available in both unicellular and filamentous cyanobacteria and these offer the possibility of strain selection and modification. The way in which these advances will contribute to the development of strains with desirable attributes for use in the field is discussed.


We have previously shown (Batsali A et al., Blood 2013:122, 1212) that ex vivo expanded human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) derived from the Wharton9s jelly (WJ) of the umbilical cord exhibit increased proliferative capacity and reduced potential to differentiate in vitro to adipocytes and osteocytes, compared to bone marrow (BM) derived-MSCs. Provided that the WNT-pathways are involved in proliferation and differentiation of BM-MSCs, we assumed that the aforementioned findings might be attributed, at least in part, to aberrant WNT-signaling in WJ-MSCs. In support of this hypothesis, we found that gene expression of the Wnt antagonist sFRP4, a promoter of adipogenesis in human adipose tissue-derived MSCs, was significantly down-regulated in WJ-MSCs and that mRNA levels of WNT-induced secreted protein-1, (WISP-1), a regulator of osteogenesis in BM-MSCs, were also significantly reduced in WJ-MSCs. These observations imply a connection between these WNT-associated molecules and the biological properties of WJ-MSCs, which requires, however, further investigation. The present study was undertaken so as to explore the effects of WISP-1 and sFRP4 in growth and differentiation of ex-vivo expanded WJ-MSCs. MSCs were isolated from consenting healthy donors' BM aspirates (n=5) and from the WJ of full-term neonates (n=5) after written informed consent of the family. MSCs were in vitro expanded, re-seeded for a total of 4 passages (P) and phenotypically characterized by flow cytometry at P3. WJ-MSCs were grown in the absence or presence of rhWISP-1 or rhsFRP4 and cell proliferation was assessed by a methyl-triazolyl-tetrazolium (MTT)-assay. In addition, WJ-MSCs were induced to differentiate in vitro to osteoblasts and adipocytes, in the absence or presence of rhWISP-1 or rhsFRP4 respectively. Differentiation was quantified by cytochemical stains and by the expression of adipocyte- and osteocyte-specific genes by real time RT-PCR. Relative gene expression was calculated by the ΔCt method. The expression of WISP-1 and sFRP4 by non-differentiated WJ- and BM-MSCs as well as by WJ-MSCs during osteogenesis and adipogenesis, respectively, was also evaluated by real time RT-PCR. Culture-expanded cells from both WJ and BM displayed typical morphological and immunophenotypic MSC characteristics and were able to differentiate into osteoblasts and adipocytes. In line with our previous work WISP-1 and sFRP4 mRNA were significantly decreased in WJ-MSCs, compared to BM-MSCs. To explore the role of WISP-1 in WJ-MSCs9 growth we cultured cells in the presence of 50 ng/ml or 100 ng/ml rhWISP1 and assessed cell proliferation at multiple time points, throughout a 14-day culture. WISP-1 treatment did not lead to any significant effect in cell numbers. Next, we investigated the time course of WISP1 gene expression during osteoinduction. In all samples, WISP1 mRNA levels increased during osteogenesis. As compared to day0 (exposure to osteogenic medium), the increase in gene expression reached statistical significance at days 7 and 14. Furthermore, WISP-1 gene expression was significantly higher at day 14, compared to day 7. To investigate the functional effects of WISP1 on the osteoblastic differentiation of WJ-MSCs, cells were cultured for 7 days in osteogenic medium supplemented with 50ng/ml rh-WISP1. A significant increase in the expression of RUNX2 and ALP was detected, compared to non-treated cells. To investigate the impact of sFRP4 in WJ-MSC9s proliferation we exposed cells to 20nM rhsFRP4 for 14 days. Live cell numbers, at various time points, were significantly reduced in treated cells. Regarding the time course of sFRP4 expression during adipogenic differentiation, sFRP4 mRNA levels increased during adipogenesis reaching statistical significance at days7 and 14, as compared to day0. In addition, sFRP4 gene expression was significantly higher at day 14 as compared to day 7. Finally, when cells underwent adipogenic differentiation in the presence of rhSFRP4, a significant increase in PPARG and CEBPA mRNA levels was detected at day 14, as compared to non-treated cells Collectively, our results suggest that WISP-1 and sFRP4 may be actively implicated in proliferation and differentiation of WJ-MSCs. The functional role of these WNT-related molecules in the biology of WJ-MSCs requires deeper understanding, in view of the growing interest for the use of WJ-MSCs in cell-based therapies. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


The Eurozone crisis has deepened the structural and organisational weaknesses of the Spanish trade union movement. At the same time, unions were challenged by new social movements in a cycle of protests following the indignados of 15M. In consequence, a hesitant strategic reorientation and regeneration of the trade unions took place as they struggled to include social forms applied by the new movements such as grassroots democracy and civil disobedience into their strategic repertoire.


OBJECTIVE
Examine the association between news media use frequency during the COVID-19 pandemic and the scale of psychological distress in pregnant women, considering this distress known harmful effects on the fetus development.

METHOD
Pregnant women living in Quebec province (N = 1014) have been recruited in April 2020 through social media, while a state of health emergency was declared. Participants were divided in 4 groups, according to self-reported frequency of news media consulting (little or none; one time a day; several times a day; constant). They filled measures of depressive symptoms, negative affects, post-traumatic stress symptoms and anxiety specific to COVID-19. Instrument scores were grouped under a unique factor of psychological distress.

RESULTS
An ANCOVA controlling for age, gestational age, education level, household annual revenue and a diagnosed mental disorder present at the time of participation in study shows that news media exposure frequency is significantly associated with psychological distress severity in pregnant women, during COVID-19 pandemic, F(3,998) = 27.02, p < 0.001, η2 partial = 0.08. Given the mean comparisons a posteriori, higher psychological distress rates are found as soon as news media exposure exceeds once a day (effect sizes between 0.38 and 0.81).

CONCLUSIONS
The more pregnant women report consulting the news media during the COVID-19 pandemic, the more likely they are to exhibit psychological distress. Results provide one of the first empirical supports to recommendations of World Health Organization, Canada government and psychiatric associations that encourage population to limit their news media consulting during the COVID-19 pandemic.


The early bolting has become one of the key issues affecting the Umbelliferae herbs production. The early bolting does not only reduce herbs production but also affect the active ingredients of plants. The concept of early bolting, physiological theory, induce factors of the quality of medicine and, control technology about the early bolting of Umbelliferae are integrative reviewed in the paper. Its occurrence mechanism include: genetic factors, environmental and ecological factors, endogenous hormones, sowing, fertilizer and other production management measures. For the above occurring mechanism, the proposed prevention measures are as follows: preferably germplasm, sowing, rational fertilization, exogenous hormones, shading, reed head cut off, cut fall the leaves, reasonable planting density and other agronomic measures can reduce its bolting rate. And the early bolting problem focused for future research are mentioned, including: development of authentic ingredients cultivation technical specifications, screened early bolting hormone inhibitor, in-depth study of the mechanism of early bolting, reveal its early bolting gene and key ecological factors. The research of vernalization gene, gene regulation of flowering early bolting will solve the problem of quality and production reducing fundamentally caused by the early bolting.


Background. There is still an urgent need for better therapies to improve the outcome of mCRC pts. IMMU-130 (labetuzumab govitecan) is a conjugate of a humanized antibody to CEACAM5, coupled site-specifically to the active metabolite of irinotecan, SN-38 (7.6 moles SN-38/IgG), using a proprietary linker. Methods. After initial phase I dose escalation, 4 dose schedules of IMMU-130 were examined in the phase 2 portion of the study (NCT01605318) in irinotecan-refractory/relapsed mCRC pts with an elevated CEA (>5 ng/mL). Pts were treated with IMMU-130 once- (QW) or twice-weekly (BIW) at 4 to 10 mg/kg doses on weeks 1 and 2 of 3-week cycles. The primary objective of the phase 2 portion of the study was to determine response (by RECIST 1.1) with secondary objectives of progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and tolerability. Treatment was continued until disease progression or intolerance. Results. Eighty-six mCRC pts were treated. The majority of patients were male (58%) and had an ECOG performance status of 1 (55%). Median age was 57 yrs (range 30-82) with a median of 5 prior therapies (range, 1-13). All patients had prior irinotecan-containing therapy. Most frequent treatment-related adverse events (AEs) were nausea, fatigue, vomiting, and diarrhea. Grades 3 and 4 AEs included neutropenia (N = 13, 15%), anemia (N = 5, 6%), and diarrhea (N = 2, 2%). Pts who had dose interruptions or reductions due to AEs all recovered without major sequelae. The QW regimen appeared superior based on disease control rate, PFS, and OS. Eleven pts (78%) at 10 mg/kg QW in 21-day cycles (N = 19) had stable disease compared to 7 pts (44%) at 6 mg/kg BIW (N = 19). One pt had a confirmed PR (88% shrinkage) at 6 mg/kg BIW dose, and then maintained PR at 8 mg/kg QW for 3-wk cycles over 2 yrs. Median PFS at 10 mg/kg QW was 4.6 mos compared to 3.7 mos at 6 mg/kg BIW (3-wk cycles). Median OS at 10 mg/kg QW was 9.3 mos compared to 7.4 mos at 6 mg/kg BIW. Exploratory analyses revealed no association between RAS mutation status or baseline CEA and tumor response. There was no significantly higher frequency of grade 3+ neutropenia, febrile neutropenia, or diarrhea for patients with 28*/28* or 1*/28* UGT1A1 genotype (N = 27) vs normal genotype (N = 27). PK profiles demonstrated a shorter half-life for the intact conjugate compared to the antibody. No antibody response to hMN-14-IgG or SN-38 was detected at up to 16 mos. Conclusion. IMMU-130 monotherapy has acceptable toxicity, appearing less than irinotecan. The 10 mg/kg QW x 2 over 3 wks resulted in encouraging median estimates of 4.6 mos for PFS and 9.3 mos for OS in this heavily pre-treated, refractory, mCRC population. Based on this, the 10 mg/kg weekly dosage x 2 of 3-wk cycles was selected for further evaluation. Citation Format: Efrat Dotan, Steven J. Cohen, Alexander N. Starodub, Christopher H. Lieu, Wells A. Messersmith, Michael J. Guarino, John L. Marshall, Richard M. Goldberg, J. Randolph Hecht, Pius Maliakal, William A. Wegener, Robert M. Sharkey, Francois Wilhelm, Lucy Lee, David M. Goldenberg, Jordan D. Berlin. Labetuzumab govitecan (IMMU-130), an anti-CEACAM5/SN-38 antibody-drug conjugate, is active in patients (pts) with heavily pretreated metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC): phase II results. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr CT065.


We present preliminary results from a comparative study of student understanding for students who attended recitation classes which used different teaching methods. Student volunteers from our introductory calculus‐based physics course attended a special recitation class that was taught using one of four different teaching methods. A total of 272 students were divided into approximately equal groups for each method. Students in each class were taught the same topic, "Changes in energy and momentum," from Tutorials in Introductory Physics. The different teaching methods varied in the amount of student and teacher engagement. Student understanding was evaluated through pretests and posttests given at the recitation class. Our results demonstrate the importance of the instructor's role in teaching recitation classes. The most effective teaching method was for students working in cooperative learning groups with the instructors questioning the groups using Socratic dialogue. These results provide guidance and...


In wireless data systems, Aloha channels are often used to send requests or short messages from a mobile station to the base station receiver. This paper evaluates a slotted Aloha channel with receiver antenna diversity; packets are transmitted in randomly selected time slots. The packet success-rate is studied as it relates to the carrier to noise plus interference ratio observed in each received branch. The ReFLEX Aloha channel is simulated under slow moving fading. A single cell's throughput, packet success-rate and mean number of transmission attempts per packet are presented from the simulation. The results show that as the transmission retry limit increases, the Aloha throughput decreases and the packet reliability increases. Based on these results, the number of retries can be selected to maximize the throughput for a given packet reliability. Other performance metrics such as the mean number of transmissions and mean packet delay are presented. Although the simulation results are specific to ReFLEX systems, the analysis methods and the system optimization approach can he applied to other Aloha systems.


Materials were applied to individual 4-wk-old chrysanthemum plants, cvs. Hurricane, with a 1-gal B&G sprayer at 60 psi 27 Aug. Five fifth-stage larvae were immediately placed on each plant and confined with an inverted, ventilated 1-qt plastic container. Mortality was assessed after 48 h and each surviving larva was placed individually on untreated commercial beet armyworm diet. Mortality was assessed every 48 h thereafter until all surviving larvae had pupated. To correct for differences in escaping larvae between treatments, the data were expressed as percent mortality for each ceplicate. Arcsin square root transformations were performed on the data prior to ANOVA.


In four experiments involving 565 German speakers we tested several hypotheses about possible determinants of the side-effect effect ( SEE ), which consists of judging foreseen bad, but not good, side-effects of actions as intentionally produced. Experiment 1 failed to find intentionality ascriptions for bad side-effects for the majority of the participants in two different scenarios and obtained no consistent support for two hypothesized social-cognitive determinants of the SEE , the agent's attitude and the mode of effect description. Experiment 2 replicated the SEE in the original CEO scenario, but again found no evidence that the effect was influenced by the agent's attitude towards the side-effect. The SEE was also not influenced by a manipulation of the moral quality of the agent's primary goal. Experiment 3 investigated six additional scenarios used in previous studies and again obtained clear evidence for the SEE only in the CEO scenario. In addition, Experiment 3 demonstrated that judgments of both intent and intentionality strongly increased if the original side-effect was described as a means to the agent's primary goal, or as an independently pursued goal. Taken together, the findings suggest that for German speakers, the SEE depends on the specifics of the scenario content and is difficult to obtain outside the original CEO scenario. Consistent with these conclusions, Experiment 4 documented parallel difficulties replicating the "means effect", an analogue of the SEE on the level of means, but replicated the SEE in a scenario closely modeled after the original CEO scenario.


Mechanism of terahertz (THz) pulse generation in gases irradiated by ultrashort laser pulses is investigated theoretically. Quasi-static transverse currents produced by laser field ionization of gases and the longitudinal modulation in formed plasmas are responsible for the THz emission at the electron plasma frequency, as demonstrated by particle-in-cell simulations including field ionization. The THz field amplitude scaling with the laser amplitude within a large range is also discussed.


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

Estrogen (E2) stimulation promotes proliferation in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer, which accounts for 60-75% of all breast cancer. E2 signals through the ER via three pathways: the classical genomic pathway involving transcriptional activation of the ER, crosstalk between ER and other transcription factors, and "non-genomic" signaling cascades, which do not involve the transcriptional activity of the ER. This "non-genomic" pathway likely involves Src family kinases (SFKs) and has been implicated in cell cycle progression in fibroblasts engineered to express the ER (Castoria 1999). While not typically amplified or mutationally activated in ER+ breast cancer, Src is hyperactive in most breast cancers.

To test whether SFK activity is required for G1/S cell cycle progression in breast cancer cells, we pretreated quiescent ER+ MCF7 cells with a selective SFK inhibitor (SU11333) prior to stimulation with E2. Inhibition of SFK activity blocked progression from G1 to S phase. Previous data from our laboratory has demonstrated that G1/S progression in response to peptide growth factor stimulation of quiescent fibroblasts is dependent upon SFK-mediated stabilization of myc mRNA (Bromann 2005). We therefore tested whether SFK activity also regulates myc expression in breast cancer cells. Our data suggest that SFK activity is required for accumulation of myc mRNA in quiescent MCF7s after E2 stimulation, and that E2 stimulated stabilization of myc mRNA is dependent on SFK activity.

One potential myc mRNA stabilizer is IMP1 (IGF2BP1, ZBP1, CRDBP) an RNA binding protein that is primarily expressed during development and in stem cells, and re-expressed in some cancer types, including breast cancer. IMP1 has previously been shown to stabilize myc mRNA in stem cells as well as osteosarcoma cells. While the signaling pathways that mediate this stabilization have not been well studied, previous work has identified a Src phosphorylation site on IMP1 which regulates IMP1 function (Sasaki 2010). We hypothesized that IMP1 may play a role in E2-mediated stabilization of myc mRNA. Indeed, MCF7 cells require IMP1 to accumulate myc mRNA after E2 stimulation. In summary, E2 stimulation activates SFKs, which then promote G1/S cell cycle progression in part by stabilizing myc mRNA levels, through the activity of IMP1.

Bromann et al JBC, 2005

Castoria et al. EMBO J, 1999

Sasaki et al. J Neurosci, 2010

Citation Format: Christopher Abdullah, Hasan Korkaya, Sara A. Courtneidge. Estrogen stimulates cell cycle progression dependent on Src kinase activity and IMP1 stabilization of myc mRNA in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3300. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3300


ABSTRACT The abstraction of the acid hydrogen of O-tosylhydroximates 1 by sodium ethylate, then nucleophilic attack of the excess of sodium ethylate at the more hindred carbond atom of azirine 2 and aziridine 3 intermediates to give the α-aminoorthoesters (35–45% yields). The α-aminoorthoester 4a is transformed into α-iminoorthoesters 5a (63% yield) and α-amidoorthoester 6a (65% yield).


A 32-year-old female patient with a history of surgical treatment of cutaneous basal cell carcinomas and recurrent keratocystic odontogenic tumours presented with a painless swelling in the vestibular area of the maxillary premolar region. The lesion was excised, and pathological examination established the diagnosis of ameloblastoma. A review of literature about Gorlin syndrome with ameloblastoma is presented.


We report the exchange bias (EB) effect along with tunneling magnetoresistance (MR) in polycrystalline La0.88Sr0.12CoO3. Analogous to the shift in the magnetic hysteresis loop along the field (H)-axis a shift is clearly observed in the MR-H curve when the sample is cooled in a static magnetic field. Training effect (TE) is a significant manifestation of EB effect which describes the decrease of EB effect when sample is successively field-cycled at a particular temperature. We observe TE in the shift of the MR-H curve which could be interpreted by the spin configurational relaxation model. A strong field-cooled (FC) effect in the temperature as well as time dependence of resistivity is observed below spin freezing temperature. The unusual MR results measured in FC mode are interpreted in terms of intragranular interface effect between short-range ferromagnetic clusters and spin-glass matrix giving rise to the EB effect. EB effect in MR has been observed in bilayer or multilayer films which has not yet seen in a polycrystalline compound. EB effect involved with tunneling MR and semiconducting transport property attributed to the intragranular intrinsic nanostructure is promising for the spintronic applications.


At a recent science convention, we had a display table showing some of the materials developed by the Elementary Science Study. One of the items on display was a small motor, made from one D cell, two fahnestock clips, a rubber band, 16 inches of enameled copper wire, two safety pins and one small flat magnet. The rotor for the motor is made by winding the wire around your finger, leaving the two ends protruding about an inch on opposite sides of the loop, and scraping the enamel off the ends. (See Batteries and Bulbs Teacher's Guide for more details.) There is no commutation for this loop. Why it works has yet to be clearly formulated, and some electrical engineers have told us it will not work.


ABSTRACT BRLF1 (R) is one of two Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) immediate-early proteins that mediate the switch from the latent to the lytic form of viral replication. In this report, we show that R induces expression of the cellular C-mer gene in a variety of cell lines. C-mer expression was detected in lymphoblastoid cells immortalized with wild-type EBV but not in lymphoblastoid cells immortalized with an EBV that had BRLF1 deleted. Oral hairy leukoplakia tongue tissue, which contains the lytic form of EBV replication, also has enhanced C-mer expression. C-mer is a receptor tyrosine kinase activated by the ligand Gas6. C-mer is required for phagocytosis of apoptotic debris by monocytes/macrophages and retinal pigment epithelial cells and is capable of producing an antiapoptotic signal. Modulation of the C-mer signal transduction cascade by a variety of different approaches did not alter the ability of R to induce lytic EBV gene transcription. Therefore, C-mer activation may be important for some other aspect of lytic EBV infection.


The present study is conducted with
the purpose of determining the chemical characteristics of groundwater that
supplies 16 wells in the state of Coahuila, which are used for different human
activities. Sampling was conducted in January 2011. For 56% of the fifteen
wells tested, analysis did not detect the presence of aluminum; however, wells
2, 3, 6, 8 and 13 had concentrations above the permissible limit established by
the Mexican standard NOM-127-SSA1-1994. For cadmium, only the well 3 was above
the Norm. Meanwhile, iron was above the permissible limit in eight wells (2, 4,
5, 6, 9, 12, 13 and 15). Lead exceeded the limit in wells 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12. In general, for the rest
of the parameters listed in the Norm, values were below allowable limits. By
using Piper diagrams, it was observed that in general, the waters tested showed
characteristic calcium bicarbonate. By establishing a matrix of correlations
between chemical parameters, it was observed that the highest significant
correlations occurred among carbonate hardness, calcium, lead and total
alkalinity, with r2 values greater than 0.82. Also, high
correlations were found between some metal species, suggesting a common origin.
The allowed Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis establish the
associations between all analyzed physicochemical parameters, and they also determine the wells with similar characteristics.


The purpose of research, entitled "Fairy Tales in Reading Learning for Class XII Students" is to describe the formulation of the problem, namely how to use fairy tale steps in learning to read German to high school students of class XII?This type of research is a qualitative study which will describe the stages of development that are designed to exploit instructional tales reading comprehension in learning German. The steps in the development, namely (1) the early stage of investigation, (2) Design Phase, (3) Realization Phase, and (4) Phase of Testing, Evaluation, and Revision. This study produces creative measures to support learning to read so as not boring.This design highlight how students' thinking through his imagination come together to understand a passage. The stage is called image reconstruction. And it can be concluded that the draft measures researchers have valid and can be implemented by teachers in teaching reading comprehension of fairy tale in high school Class XII. Keyword: Fairy tale, Reading Learning


A fundamental challenge in real-time labelling of activity data is user burden. The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) is widely used to obtain such labels for sensor data. However, in an in-situ deployment, it is not feasible to expect users to precisely label the start and end time of each event or activity. For this reason, time-point based experience sampling (without an actual start and end time) is prevalent. We present a framework that applies multi-instance and semi-supervised learning techniques to perform to predict user annotations from multiple mobile sensor data streams. Our proposed framework estimates users' annotations in ESM-based studies progressively, via an interactive pipeline of co-training and active learning. We evaluate our work using data collected from an in-the-wild data collection.


Background Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) is caused by enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) which possess genes encoding Shiga toxin (stx), the major virulence factor, and adhesin intimin (eae). However, the frequency of stx-negative/eae-positive E. coli in stools of HUS patients and the clinical significance of such strains are unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings Between 1996 and 2006, we sought stx-negative/eae-positive E. coli in stools of HUS patients using colony blot hybridization with the eae probe and compared the isolates to EHEC causing HUS. stx-negative/eae-positive E. coli were isolated as the only pathogens from stools of 43 (5.5%) of 787 HUS patients; additional 440 (55.9%) patients excreted EHEC. The majority (90.7%) of the stx-negative/eae-positive isolates belonged to serotypes O26:H11/NM (nonmotile), O103:H2/NM, O145:H28/NM, and O157:H7/NM, which were also the most frequent serotypes identified among EHEC. The stx-negative isolates shared non-stx virulence and fitness genes with EHEC of the corresponding serotypes and clustered with them into the same clonal complexes in multilocus sequence typing, demonstrating their close relatedness to EHEC. Conclusions/Significance At the time of microbiological analysis, ∼5% of HUS patients shed no longer the causative EHEC, but do excrete stx-negative derivatives of EHEC that lost stx during infection. In such patients, the EHEC etiology of HUS is missed using current methods detecting solely stx or Shiga toxin; this can hamper epidemiological investigations and lead to inappropriate clinical management. While maintaining the paradigm that HUS is triggered by Shiga toxin, our data demonstrate the necessity of considering genetic changes of the pathogen during infection to adapt appropriately diagnostic strategies.


Background: Using smartphone technology and text messaging for health is a growing field. This type of technology is well integrated into the lives of young adults. However, few studies have tested the effect of this type of technology to promote weight loss in young adults Objective: The purpose of this study is to test the effectiveness of a behaviorally based smartphone application for weight loss combined with text messaging from a health coach on weight, body mass index (BMI), and waist circumference in young adults as compared with a control condition. Methods: Sixty-two young adults, aged 18 to 25 years, were randomized to receive (1) a smartphone application + health coach intervention and counseling sessions or (2) control condition with a counseling session. All outcome measures were tested at baseline and 3 months. These included weight, BMI, waist circumference, dietary habits, physical activity habits, and self-efficacy for healthy eating and physical activity. Results: The sample was 71% female and 39% white, with an average age of 20 years and average BMI of 28.5 kg/m2. Participants in the smartphone + health coach group lost significantly more weight (P = .026) and had a significant reduction in both BMI (P = .024) and waist circumference (P < .01) compared with controls. Conclusions: The results of this weight loss trial support the use of smartphone technology and feedback from a health coach on improving weight in a group of diverse young adults.


Determining the spectrum of hadronic excitations from Monte Carlo simulations requires the use of interpolating operators that couple to multi-particle states. Recent algorithmic advances have made the inclusion of multi-hadron operators in spectroscopy calculations a practical reality. In this talk, a procedure for constructing a set of multi-hadron interpolators that project onto the states of interest is described. To aid in the interpretation of simulation data, operators are designed to transform irreducibly under the lattice symmetry group. The identification of a set of optimal single-hadron interpolators for states with non-zero momenta is an essential intermediate step in this analysis.


PURPOSE
Current and alternative approaches to documenting drug information (DI) questions at DI centers in the United States and features of a software program used for documenting poison information are described.

METHODS
A survey was distributed through an Internet listserver for DI specialists in institutional or academic practices. The survey requested information regarding the use of electronic databases to document DI inquiries and the type of databases used. Documented DI questions during a nine-month period using Visual Dotlab (Visual Dotlab Enterprises, Fresno, CA) at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) DI center were analyzed to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the software for documenting DI questions.

RESULTS
Thirty-three DI centers responded to the survey, and 22 (67%) used electronic databases for question documentation. Of these, 15 (68%) were created with Microsoft Office Access (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA). At the UPMC DI center, 841 DI questions were documented using Visual Dotlab. Questions from pharmacists, nurses, and physicians accounted for 654 (78%) of entries. Drug-drug interactions (12%) and dosage recommendations (12%) were the most common types of questions received. On average, DI specialists spent 46 minutes per response, which required an average of 1.7 follow-up calls per inquiry. Quality assurance was performed on 98% of questions documented.

CONCLUSION
Visual Dotlab is not well-known and is currently not used widely by DI centers. However, it includes features that may help DI centers document and retrieve DI questions efficiently and comprehensively.


The accuracy of the forecast of power system loan, which is an important part of the forecast of short-term power system loan, will directly affect the economic of the power systems and its security and stability. The use of artificial neural network could get the similar feature like nonlinear system and use it on the short-term forecast. Researches about adding momentum into the improved BP network and combinating the same type of vague and mapping results when building input networks shows that it has better performance than standard BP algorithms. Meanwhile, after classification the input data categorize and dealing with the linear activate, putting these data to the corresponding sets, the result proved that its accuracy is higher than the standard of artificial neural network.


The neuropeptide head activator (HA) is a mitogen for mammalian cell lines of neuronal or neuroendocrine origin. HA signalling is mediated by a G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR). Orphan GPCRs with homology to peptide receptors were screened for HA interaction. Electrophysiological recordings in frog oocytes and in mammalian cell lines as well as Ca2+ mobilisation assays revealed nanomolar affinities of HA to GPR37. HA signal transduction through GPR37 was mediated by an inhibitory G protein and required Ca2+ influx through a channel of the transient receptor potential (TRP) family. It also required activation of Ca2+-dependent calmodulin kinase and phosphoinositide 3-kinase. Respective inhibitors blocked HA signalling and HA-induced mitosis in GPR37-expressing cells. HA treatment resulted in internalisation of GPR37. Overexpression of GPR37 led to aggregate formation, retention of the receptor in the cytoplasm and low survival rates of transfected cells, confirming the notion that misfolded GPR37 contributes to cell death, as observed in Parkinson's disease.


Purpose - Why would a body seeking to represent its members as the prime advisers to business choose a domestic goddess for its main visual image? The paper aims to examine recent changes to the visual branding of a professional body by reference to its logo, and those of competing bodies, to illustrate the importance of visual communication in establishing professional reputation. The paper seels to trace the historical antecedents of the logo and analyse the relevance of its components to the body's current mission. Design/methodology/approach - A descriptive and historical analysis is followed by a discussion of alternative theoretical frameworks that might be used to draw conclusions about the significance of professional badges. Findings - Visual rebranding is expensive but may be unclear. Despite statements about modernisation and clarification, new badges can contain as many contradictory messages as old ones, which may be a result of inward facing viewpoints and competing internal forces within organisations, detracting from the clarity of the intended external message. Research limitations/implications - Money spent on rebranding may be wasted if the organisation does not have a clear view of its market position and how it might differentiate itself. Practical implications - Appeals to different philosophical schools may be successful in generating insights, but those insights still need to be validated. If they can be validated, in-depth knowledge of a body of writings may be unnecessary. Originality/value - Little previous work has examined the visual branding of professional bodies and discussed alternative approaches to analysis. The dialogue format makes the content more accessible.


Abstract Multi-task learning, in which several tasks are jointly learned by a single model, allows NLP models to share information from multiple annotations and may facilitate better predictions when the tasks are inter-related. This technique, however, requires annotating the same text with multiple annotation schemes, which may be costly and laborious. Active learning (AL) has been demonstrated to optimize annotation processes by iteratively selecting unlabeled examples whose annotation is most valuable for the NLP model. Yet, multi-task active learning (MT-AL) has not been applied to state-of-the-art pre-trained Transformer-based NLP models. This paper aims to close this gap. We explore various multi-task selection criteria in three realistic multi-task scenarios, reflecting different relations between the participating tasks, and demonstrate the effectiveness of multi-task compared to single-task selection. Our results suggest that MT-AL can be effectively used in order to minimize annotation efforts for multi-task NLP models.1


The parallel fringe field method with a simple pixel structure is proposed to fabricate the two-domain twist nematic (TDTN) liquid crystal display (LCD) to improve the viewing angle behavior of conventional LCDs. The three-dimensional simulation results showed that two pairs of parallel fringe fields drive liquid crystal molecules in two areas of the pixel to tilt in two opposite directions and thus two domains are formed. The experimental results on the test panels confirmed the simulation results. Furthermore, a thin film transistor (TFT) addressed TDTN panel fabricated using this method demonstrated a factor of two improvement in the vertical viewing angle over the conventional single-domain TFT/TN panel.


The paper presents tile design of a near optimal linear regulator for controlling xenon-induced spatial oscillations in a large, pressurized heavy water reactor. The nonlinear mathematical model of the reactor including xenon iodine dynamics is characterized by 56 state variables land 14 inputs. This nonlinear model is linearized over rated power of the reactor and then the singularly perturbed structure of the linear model is exploited to decompose it into a fast subsystem of 14th order and a slow subsystem of 42nd order. The slow subsystem regulator problem is formulated as a cheap control problem that entails the solving of regulator problems of a 28th-order submodel and a 14th-order submodel. The fast subsystem regulator problem is also solved, Separately designed regulators are finally combined to obtain the near-optimal composite control for the original 56th-order model.


In this paper, we study congestion control schemes in high-speed networks. We focus on bimodal congestion control scheme proposed by Attie et al., as an alternative to AIMD that is used in the current TCP. By the result of extensive simulations, we found that although bimodal could improve the throughput of AIMD by 10% in low-speed networks, the amount of improvements are limited in high-speed networks because of the high frequency of retransmissions of packets.


The butterfly fauna of a small forest fragment in the campus of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais was surveyed between March and November 2001. The adult butterflies were captured using hand nets and frugivorous traps. In addition, caterpillars were raised in the laboratory for identification after emergence. Ninety-one species of six families were recorded. Among them, 46.1% belonged in Nymphalidae; 28.5% in Hesperiidae; 15.4% in Pieridae; 4.4% in Riodinidae; 4.4% in Papilionidae; and 1.1% in Lycaenidae. At least 28.6% of the species are common in urban and other disturbed environments in Brazil and no rare or endangered species was recorded. On the other hand, the species in this fragment represent 18.7% of the species known to occur in the vicinities of the city of Belo Horizonte. Moreover, species of taxa considered as indicators of preserved environments, although in small absolute numbers, occurred in proportions similar to those found in large forest remnants across Brazil. It is concluded that the studied fragment, as well as other small urban fragments, are important refuges for conservation of butterflies within cities.
Keywords: Faunistic survey, conservation, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, Neotropics.


Electrostatic discharge (ESD) failure is one of the most important causes of reliability problems, therefore the design and optimization of ESD devices have to be done. To achieve very short time to market and reduce the development effort, one tries to make use of the benefit of simulation tools. However, due to the complex physical mechanism of ESD events and the hard mathematic calculation in the snapback region, simulation of the I-V characteristic of ESD protection devices has been proved to be difficult. This chapter aims at providing a systematic way to ESD simulation, including the process simulation, device simulation and circuit level simulation. Process/device simulation offers an effective way to evaluate the performance of ESD protection structures. However, to prevent the injury of ESD, protection circuits are used sometimes. Therefore circuit level simulation is needed. There are several process/device simulation tools in the world, the most widely used of which include Tsuprem4/Medici, Athena/Atlas and Dios/Mdraw/Dessis. Tsuprem4, Athena and Dios are process simulators, while Medici, Atlas and Dessis are device simulators. Mdraw is an independent mesh optimization tool, and the similar functions are integrated in device simulation tools, such as Medici and Atlas. The process and device simulation methods introduced in the following will be based on Dios/Mdraw/Dessis, except for the mixed-mode simulation, which is based on Tsuprem4/Medici. And the circuit level simulation will be carried out on the Candence platform.


Gastric bio-electric slow-waves are in part responsible for generating motility. Extracellular recordings of the slow-wave activation phase have yielded significant physiological insight about its spatio-temporal characteristics. With the growth of multi-electrode data and long recording periods, there is a need for automated methods to detect the activation phase in a reliable and accurate manner. In this study, the Variable Threshold Wavelet (VTW) algorithm was developed, featuring wavelet decomposition, to compute the derivative to detect the slow-wave activation phase of monophasic signals. The performance of the VTW algorithm was compared against an existing Falling-Edge, Variable Threshold (FEVT) algorithm. Varying levels of synthetic noise representing ventilator and high-frequency noise were added to in vivo slow-wave recordings. Sensitivity, positive-predictive value, area under the curve (Aroc) metric and percentage improvement metric (PIM) of activation phase identification accuracy were calculated. Compared to the existing FEVT algorithm, the VTW algorithm achieved similar performance in identifying the activation phase of slow-waves with various levels of ventilator noise. In the presence of high-frequency noise, the VTW algorithm improved the Aroc of the existing FEVT algorithm by 11.1%. The VTW algorithm can now be applied to analyze normal and abnormal slow-wave recordings.


Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can improve chronic wound healing; however, recent studies suggest that the therapeutic effect of MSCs is mediated mainly through the growth factors and cytokines secreted by these cells, referred to as the MSC secretome. To overcome difficulties related to the translation of cell therapy into clinical use such as efficacy, safety and cost, we propose a hydrogel loaded with a secretome from the recently established human adipose tissue mesenchymal stem cell line (HATMSC2) as a potential treatment for chronic wounds. Biocompatibility and biological activity of hydrogel-released HATMSC2 supernatant were investigated in vitro by assessing the proliferation and metabolic activity of human fibroblast, endothelial cells and keratinocytes. Hydrogel degradation was measured using hydroxyproline assay while protein released from the hydrogel was assessed by interleukin-8 (IL-8) and macrophage chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) ELISAs. Pro-angiogenic activity of the developed treatment was assessed by tube formation assay while the presence of pro-angiogenic miRNAs in the HATMSC2 supernatant was investigated using real-time RT-PCR. The results demonstrated that the therapeutic effect of the HATMSC2-produced factors is maintained following incorporation into collagen hydrogel as confirmed by increased proliferation of skin-origin cells and improved angiogenic properties of endothelial cells. In addition, HATMSC2 supernatant revealed antimicrobial activity, and which therefore, in combination with the hydrogel has a potential to be used as advanced wound-healing dressing.


North-West State Medical University named after I.I. Mechnikov, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation, 191015. There is supposed the method for the assessment of amounts of pollutants released into the environment during the operational wear of tyre treads, brake system of cars and the road pavement. There are presented results of chemical analysis of residues of combustion. The necessity of control of products of work wear of automobile-road complex has been substantiated.


I N RECENT years, 8 drugs have been used clinically to block autonomic ganglia. Such drugs are as follows •. (a) tetraethylammoiiium chloride (Etamon) ; (b) hexamethonium chloride or bromide (Bistrium, Esomid, Hexameton, Methium) ; (c) pentamethonium chloride or bromide; (d) azamethonium chloride (Pendiomide) ; (e) pentoliniuni tartrate (Ansolysen) ; (f) trimethaphan camphorsulfonate (Arf'ouad) ; (g) chlorisondamine chloride (Ecolid) ; and (h) mecamylamine hydrochloride (Inversine). The intravenous administration of a sufficient dose of each of these drugs causes significant reduction in systemic arterial blood pressures of the normotensive or hypertensive subject. Numerous hemodynamic measurements haA'e appeared for all these drugs except (g) and (h), which have been introduced recently. This article will review the clinical reports with the primary intention of characterizing the hemodynamic situation induced by ganglion blocking drugs. The effects of drugs will be discussed in terms of changes in cardiac output, systemic vascular resistance and vascular resistance of the coronary, cerebral, renal, splanchnic, limb and pulmonary vascular beds.


The performance of automatic fingerprint identification system relies heavily on the quality of the captured fingerprint images. A novel method for fingerprint image quality analysis has been presented, which overcomes the shortcoming most of existing methods have, considering the correlation of each quality feature as linear and paying no attention to the clarity of local texture. In this paper, ten features are extracted from the fingerprint image and then Fuzzy Relation Classifier is trained to classify the fingerprint images, which includes the unsupervised clustering and supervised classification to care more about the revelation of the data structure than other classifiers. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a good performance in evaluating the quality of the fingerprint images. Keywords-fingerprint identification; image quality; Fuzzy Relation Classifier


Italian and Italian dialects express indefiniteness in different ways, among which with a null determiner (ZERO) like all other Romance languages, but also with the definite article (ART) unlike what is found in Romance. Italian and some northern Italian dialects also display the so-called "partitive determiner" DI+ART, which is present in French. Few northwestern Italian dialects display (bare) DI, parallel to French. We adopt Cardinaletti and Giusti's (2015, 2016) unified analysis and build on Cardinaletti and Giusti's (2018, 2020) hypothesis that the variation and optionality in the distribution of the four determiners in regional Italian mirror their distribution in Italian dialects along two isoglosses: the ART isogloss spreading from the center of Italy towards north-west and south-east; and the DI isogloss spreading from Piedmont eastwards. We conduct a quantitative analysis on the results of a questionnaire in Isogloss 2022, 8(2)/18 Gianluca E. Lebani & Giuliana Giusti 2 Piacentino and Rodigino. We test the distribution of the four determiners with mass and count nouns in two dimensions: sentence type (positive vs. negative) and predicate type (telic vs. atelic). The results confirm the hypothesis that the complexity of the determiner is related to its distribution highlighting two hierarchies of contexts: NEG < POS and ATEL < TEL. It also confirms that Piacentino, located at the crossroads of the ART and DI isoglosses, has more optionality than Rodigino, located at their borders.


In this study, we aimed to explore the associations between HLA-A\B\DRB1 polymorphisms and the risks of vulvar lichen sclerosus (VLS) or squamous cell hyperplasia of the vulva (SCHV) in Han Chinese women. We enrolled 76 Han Chinese women with VLS (Group A), 74 with SCHV (Group B), and 66 healthy women (control group) in this study. Polymerase chain reaction amplification with sequence specific primers (PCR-SSP) was used to determine HLA-A\B\DRB1 polymorphisms. Compared with the control group, HLA-A*11, -B*15, and -DRB1*12 were present at a higher frequency in groups A and B, while HLA-B*13 was present at a higher frequency in group A. Fewer women in group A carried HLA-A*31, -DRB1*01, and -DRB1*03 genotypes and fewer women in group B carried HLA-B*40 and -DRB1*03 genotypes. Significant differences were found between group B and the control group for HLA-A*11, -B*15, -B*40, and -DRB1*03, and between group A and the control group for HLA-B*15 and -DRB1*12. The HLA-A*11, HLA-B*13, HLA-B*15, and HLA-DRB1*12 genotypes were associated with a higher risk of VLS, while the HLA-A*31, HLA-DRB1*01, and HLA-DRB1*03 genotypes were associated with a lower risk of VLS. In addition, carrying HLA-A*11, HLA-B*15, HLA-B*35, and HLA-DRB1*12 genotypes, and carrying HLA-B*40 and HLA-DRB1*03 genotypes were found to be risk or protective factors for SCHV, respectively.


Ab initio coupled and uncoupled Hartree–Fock polarizabilities are computed for increasingly large oligothiophenes using the 3–21G, 6–31G**, 6–311G**, and the Sadlej medium‐size polarized atomic basis sets. The comparison with experimental values highlights the large sensitivity of the measured polarizabilities with respect to working conditions. By extrapolating to the infinite chain limit the polarizability values of increasingly large oligomers, we compute the asymptotic polarizabilities per thiophene ring. The transversal, perpendicular, and longitudinal asymptotic coupled Hartree–Fock polarizabilities per thiophene ring are, using the 3–21G (6–31G**) atomic basis set, 49.7 (52.5), 15.2 (20.6), and 184.1 (190.0) a.u., respectively. Polythiophene is more polarizable than polydiacetylene, polyyne, and polysilane but less polarizable than polyacetylene which, in contrast to polythiophene, is much more difficult to process. Using a procedure which relates the polarizability and the topology of the one‐particle states, the major contribution to the polarizability is attributed to π‐symmetry crystalline orbitals located at the top of the valence bands, which look like an alternation of segments of the highest occupied crystalline orbitals of the all‐trans and trans‐cisoid polyacetylene. However, a sizeable σ contribution comes from σ‐conjugated segments formed by the sulfur atoms and their two adjacent carbon atoms.


The diversity in today's livestock breeds has been shaped largely through the domestication of wild ancestral species and subsequent refinement by human selection for desired traits. Only a small fraction of the genetic diversity from the ancestral species survives in the domestic counterparts. A 2007 report released by UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) "The state of the world's animal genetic resources" stated that nearly 70% of the world's remaining livestock breeds are found in developing countries, while the developed countries are characterized by a few highly productive breeds that thrive under intensive farming systems. The indigenous livestock breeds in developing countries are increasingly at risk as non-native breeds are imported to replace and/or cross-breed in an attempt to improve productivity. The First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources in Interlaken, Switzerland brought together more than 300 policy makers, scientists, breeders, and livestock keepers with the aim of developing a global plan of action for conserving animal genetic resources as its main outcome. In this paper, the impact of diminishing genetic diversity on livestock breeds and the development of genetic resource banks as insurance against the loss of livestock genetic diversity are considered.


Visual event-related P300 potentials, conventional visual evoked potentials, and psychometric tests were applied to patients with noncirrhotic chronic liver disease and to clinically nonencephalopathic and encephalopathic cirrhotics to compare their diagnostic efficacy in detecting early portosystemic encephalopathy (PSE). Sixty-four investigations were performed in 58 patients. The latencies of the P~OO parameters were significantly longer in both the encephalopathic and nonencephalopathic cirrhotics than in the noncirrhotics, indicating distinctly abnormal cortical processing of visual stimuli in cirrhotic patients. The visual P3OO potentials showed the highest sensitivity and specificity for grade I PSE. Abnormal P300 test results were also found in 78% of the clinically nonencephalopathic cirrhotics, while psychometric tests showed abnormalities in only 41%. The P300 latencies were similar in alcoholic and nonalcoholic cirrhotics. Significant inverse correlations were found between the P300 latencies and measures of quantitative liver function such as galactose-elimination capacity and aminopyrine breath test. It is concluded that visual event-related P~OO potentials are a sensitive index of subclinical and grade I PSE. Furthermore, the degree of cognitive dysfunction detected by this method in patients with liver cirrhosis appears to be related to the reduction in hepatic metabolic capacity.