The investigation was designed to explore the use of tests tapping reversible aspects of behavior and performance and to find out whether these data can be correlated with concurrent metabolic changes in different dietary phases. The four subjects had classic phenylketonuria, diagnosed on the basis of a high level of serum phenylalanine on a regular diet, and severe mental retardation. Three types of diet were used: the general institutional diet, a low phenylalanine diet, and a low phenylalanine diet with added L-phenylalanine. A position discrimination and reversal task was used. Blood samples were taken every week on the day before psychological testing, and one 24-hr urine sample was collected during each dietary phase. In subjects I and II performance deteriorated upon elevation of the serum phenylalanine level, but these changes were transient only, thus showing an adaptation to the effects of the high serum phenylalanine level. Subject III showed increased response latencies (slower test responses) during high phenylalanine diet phases and faster responses while on a low phenylalanine diet. The correlation between response time and phenylalanine level is highly significant (r = 0.86, P less than 0.001). On the low phenylalanine diet subject IV's responses were fast and her performance was very stable, which contrasted with erratic performance during the high phenylalanine phases. Calculations show a significant association with phenylalanine level, both for response time (r = 0.47, P less than 0.05) and for variability in response time within each session (r = 0.46, P less than 0.05). Biochemical variability was observed in metabolic responses to phenylalanine loading, especially in the excretion of tryptophan metabolites.


Clustering is an important data analysis technique and it widely used in many field such as data mining, machine learning and pattern recognition. Ant colony optimization clustering is one of the popular partition algorithm. However, in mutidimensional search space, its results is usually ordinary as the disturbing of redundant information. To address the problem, this paper presents MD-ACO clustering algorithm which improves the ant structure to implement attribute reduction. Four real data sets from UCI machine learning repository are used to evaluate MD-ACO with ACO. The results show that MD-ACO is more competitive.


1 The distribution of α‐ and β‐adrenoceptors in isolated preparations of human bladder neck and detrusor muscle has been studied. 2 Adrenaline caused contraction of the bladder neck which was blocked by phenoxybenzamine but unaltered by propranolol. 3 Isoprenaline caused relaxation of the bladder neck which was blocked by propranolol. High concentrations caused contraction which was enhanced by propranolol but blocked by phenoxybenzamine. 4 Detrusor muscle was relaxed by isoprenaline and this effect was blocked by propranolol. Phenylephrine caused relaxation of detrusor which was unaffected by phenoxybenzamine; in some cases contraction was produced in the presence of propranolol. 5 It is concluded that the bladder neck contains mainly α‐receptors and the detrusor mainly β‐receptors but both regions possess both types of adrenoceptor.


Requirements engineering (RE) for complex industrial systems can defy traditional processes and tooling. Some topics, such as managing requirements for contract based and regulated systems are rarely mentioned in the literature. Market forces such as increased staff turnover and reduced development times are changing the way products and services are defined. Other issues, such as eliciting, analyzing, and managing tens or hundreds of thousands of requirements effectively and efficiently, remain, to a large extent, intractable. Some RE activities, such as the tracing of cross-cutting requirements are a conundrum looking for a solution. In some cases, the techniques that do work have evolved over time through trial and error. In general, however, RE processes and tooling on large industrial projects, such as major infrastructure works, have a ways to go before they can be considered standard practices. Described below are some of the more intractable problems in the engineering of industrial systems.


Package inserts are very important in the medical field. They are full of useful and fundamental information. We have edited two books, named 'Drugs in Japan - Ethical Drugs' and 'Drugs in Japan - Over-the-Counter Drugs' based on the review of package inserts provided for pharmaceutical medicine for more 30 years. We tried to analyze the change in package insert contents; in particular, information quality and quantity.The quality of the information provided in package inserts has improved year by year, with drastic improvements being seen three times. The information quantity has also increased in proportion to the improvement in quality. We created a graph based on package inserts, Warfarin; Eisai, chronologically. It shows that improvement in information quality is supported by the amount of text in the package insert.


An observer measure of social phobic symptoms, referred to as the Brief Social Phobia Scale, consists of 11 items, 7 evaluating commonly feared or avoided situations and 4 additional items measuring autonomic distress. Symptoms represented by the scale items are found frequently in social phobia, and the instrument demonstrates acceptable interrater and test-retest reliability, internal consistency, concurrent validity against other measures of social phobia, and the ability of patients to change as a result of treatment. It can also detect differences between active treatment and placebo treatment. A comparison of the sensitivity of this scale with other scales in detection of size of effect also is presented.


Oklahoma floriculture producers, ornamental-horticulture retailers, mass-market retailers, and cut-flower wholesalers were surveyed to compare and contrast the industry in terms of attitudes towards their products and problems. Overall, attitudes of all four segments of the industry were neutral to negative on potted flowering plants, but were positive to neutral on bedding and foliage plants. However, producers were slightly negative concerning the postharvest life of bedding plants. While cut-flower wholesalers had a positive attitude concerning cut flowers, ornamental-horticulture retailers and mass-marketers tended to be neutral to negative. In particular, retailers and mass-marketers believed that cut flowers were too expensive and too short-lived. Floral preservatives were


This present paper deals with air traffic management problem for the continuous flights with stopover and returning at initial airport. The initial scheduling is disrupted by poor weather conditions, which may change over time. For this problem, we consider the air traffic as a discrete event system where the rescheduled flights are modelled by time Petri net tool. As a resolution approach for this problem, a genetic algorithm is introduced where a new encoding of flight plans is proposed. The feasibility of generated solutions, by genetic algorithm, is checked by means of our recently approach so-called Time Reduced Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (TROBDDs). A numerical example is provided to show that the proposed genetic algorithm exhibits a much better quality of routing solution and a much higher rate of convergence than other algorithms.


This report and the instruments it proposes aim at assisting public administrators in ensuring that their service delivery mechanisms respond to the needs and expectations of citizens. This document summarizes research undertaken under the set of activities dealing with citizen-centric governance indicators, that is, indicators that measure the capacity of public agencies to put the needs of citizens at the center of their service delivery mechanisms. The report is structured into five parts. Part I presents the conceptual framework that forms the backdrop for developing citizen-centric service delivery indicators and summarizes what citizen-centric service delivery entails. Part II introduces two complementary tools designed to assess the performance of public institutions and the quality of public services from the perspective of European Union citizens: a demand-side citizen survey and a supply-side self-assessment checklist for public administrators. These complementary instruments, assist public agencies identify gaps and areas for improvement in their service delivery mechanisms by gathering direct feedback regarding the experiences and perceptions of their users and by critically examining public sector efforts to fulfill the needs and expectations of citizens. The instruments are flexible, inspirational tools that provide an initial grid for administrations willing to move one step closer to their citizens. Part III describes options for customizing the instruments, which can be adapted to a variety of circumstances and service delivery types. Parts IV and V present the citizen survey and administrator checklist.


In this paper, based on an asymptotic analysis of the Softmax layer, we show that when training neural networks for classification tasks, the weight vectors corre sponding to each class of the Softmax layer tend to converge to the class-wise means computed at the representation layer (for specific choices of the representation activation). We further show some consequences of our findings to the context of transfer learning, essentially by proposing a simple yet effective initialization procedure that significantly accelerates the learning of the Softmax layer weights as the target domain gets closer to the source one. Experiments are notably performed on the datasets: MNIST, Fashion MNIST, Cifar10, and Cifar100 and using a standard CNN architecture.


Introduction: Little is known regarding the joint associations of famine exposure and obesity patterns with the incidence of hypertension. Methods: We defined famine exposure cohorts as follows: nonexposure (born between 1962 and 1965), fetal life exposure (born between 1959 and 1961), early childhood exposure (born between 1956 and 1958), midchildhood exposure (born between 1953 and 1955), and late childhood exposure (born between 1949 and 1952). Obesity patterns were defined as follows: G−/A−: subjects without neither general obesity nor abdominal obesity; G+/A− or G−/A+: subjects with either general obesity or abdominal obesity; G+/A+: subjects with both general obesity and abdominal obesity. Hypertension was defined as systolic blood pressure ≥140 mm Hg and/or diastolic blood pressure ≥90 mm Hg or current treatment with antihypertensive medications. Results: There were 5,235 individuals participating in this study. In the subjects with general or abdominal obesity, famine exposure was associated with a lower risk of hypertension. In males with G−/A−, famine exposures in the midchildhood (p = 0.048; HR: 0.700; HR 95% CI: 0.491–0.998) and late childhood (p = 0.002; HR: 0.560; HR 95% CI: 0.374–0.840) were associated with a lower incidence of hypertension. Conclusion: The coexistence of famine exposure and obesity patterns was associated with the incidence of hypertension.


Embedding entities and relations of a knowledge graph in a low-dimensional space has shown impressive performance in predicting missing links between entities. Although progresses have been achieved, existing methods are heuristically motivated and theoretical understanding of such embeddings is comparatively underdeveloped. This paper extends the random walk model of word embeddings to Knowledge Graph Embeddings (KGEs) to derive a scoring function that evaluates the strength of a relation R between two entities h (head) and t (tail). Moreover, we show that marginal loss minimisation, a popular objective used in much prior work in KGE, follows naturally from the log-likelihood ratio maximisation under the probabilities estimated from the KGEs according to our theoretical relationship. We propose a learning objective motivated by the theoretical analysis to learn KGEs from a given knowledge graph.Using the derived objective, accurate KGEs are learnt from FB15K237 and WN18RR benchmark datasets, providing empirical evidence in support of the theory.


Cardiothoracic operations are associated with increased exposure and risk of blood and blood borne diseases. This is true in the West African Subregion where HIV/AIDS is endemic. We aimed to survey the attitude and perception of cardiothoracic surgeons in Nigeria and Ghana to patients with HIV/AIDS who presented with common cardiothoracic and vascular pathologies that would otherwise normally have low mortality rate. Data collection was by a structured questionnaire which was sent to all consultants/specialists and senior registrars practising cardiothoracic surgery in Nigeria and Ghana. Survey response rate was 64 and 70% for consultants and senior registrars respectively. The majority of surgeons were more willing to operate on emergency cases than elective cases. Patients with HIV infection and those on antiretroviral drugs were also more likely to be operated upon than AIDS patients. Eighty-seven percent (87%) of surgeons supported preoperative screening for HIV antibodies. The majority of surgeons (92.9%) also supported preoperative screening in high risk patients. Some 21.4% of surgeons wrongly believed that cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) has an adverse effect on HIVpositive patients and 42.9% of surgeons believe there is a difference in the cardiothoracic surgical outcome between HIV-positive patients and HIV-negative patients. Some 82.1% of surgeons reported having modified their surgical practice to reduce the risk of blood-borne infection, adopting the universal precautions. The surgeons that have refused to operate on HIV/AIDS patients did so mainly for the fear of contracting the infection and the absence of an insurance policy covering the surgeon in the event of acquiring the infection from HIV-positive patients. Despite the low risk of transmission of blood-borne infection when adequate measures are taken during surgery, denial of surgical intervention in HIV-positive patients has continued. It is also disturbing to know that some surgeons still believe that there is a difference in outcome after surgical intervention in HIV-positive patients compared with HIV-negative patients and that CPB has an adverse effect on HIV-positive patients. There is need to educate these surgeons and provide adequate insurance cover for them, to enable them take the risk of operating on HIV/AIDS patients.


Abstract Motivation Interpretability has become a necessary feature for machine learning models deployed in critical scenarios, e.g. legal system, healthcare. In these situations, algorithmic decisions may have (potentially negative) long-lasting effects on the end-user affected by the decision. While deep learning models achieve impressive results, they often function as a black-box. Inspired by linear models, we propose a novel class of structurally constrained deep neural networks, which we call FLAN (Feature-wise Latent Additive Networks). Crucially, FLANs process each input feature separately, computing for each of them a representation in a common latent space. These feature-wise latent representations are then simply summed, and the aggregated representation is used for the prediction. These feature-wise representations allow a user to estimate the effect of each individual feature independently from the others, similarly to the way linear models are interpreted. Results We demonstrate FLAN on a series of benchmark datasets in different biological domains. Our experiments show that FLAN achieves good performances even in complex datasets (e.g. TCR-epitope binding prediction), despite the structural constraint we imposed. On the other hand, this constraint enables us to interpret FLAN by deciphering its decision process, as well as obtaining biological insights (e.g. by identifying the marker genes of different cell populations). In supplementary experiments, we show similar performances also on non-biological datasets. Code and data availability Code and example data are available at https://github.com/phineasng/flan_bio.


This model uses agents, which lay and respond to alternative pheromone trails to define circulation routes between specific locations. There is no a priori knowledge embedded in the model. The communication network generated between the colonies represents a routing structure, which is emergent and dynamic. The intended application is for building types that are specifically defined by complex circulation parameters, such as airports, hospitals and schools. Proposed here, is a generative process in which the circulation patterns between specific destinations and the spatial arrangement emerges in a process of mutual compatibility.


The presence of women in various fields of employment and aspects of public life in Saudi Arabia has been increasing continuously, with the last 10 years witnessing considerable growth in the participation of women in senior management positions and in the decision-making process in public and private sectors. In response to this trend, this paper attempts to explore women leadership opportunity in the Saudi environment. The paper highlights the fact that although there are many obstacles for Saudi women who are seeking to lead, there is still considerable scope for them to be appointed as leaders in the social, political and economic spheres. Women first joined the consultative assembly in 2013; in the same year women were appointed as deputy chairpersons of related committees. In 2015, women voted and ran for office in the municipal elections. Such developments indicate considerable progress in terms of the willingness of organisations to grant Saudi women the chance to occupy managerial positions.


Background The increased incidence of inflammatory diseases has necessitated the need to search for new topical dosage form of dexamethasone. Objectives The purpose of the present study was the preparation and evaluation of novel microemulsion as a topical delivery system for dexamethasone by mixing appropriate amount of surfactant including Tween 80 and Labrasol, cosurfactant such as capryol 90 and oil phase including labrafac lipophile wl-transcutol P (10:1 ratio). Materials and Methods The prepared microemulsions were evaluated regarding their particle size, zeta potential, X-Ray scattering, conductivity, stability, viscosity, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), refractory index (RI), pH, and x-ray diffraction (XRD). Results The results showed that the maximum oil was incorporated in microemulsion system that contained surfactant to cosurfactant ratio of 4:1. The mean droplet size range of microemulsion formulation was in the range of 5.09 to 159 nm, and its refractory index (RI) and pH were 1.44 and 7, respectively. Viscosity range was 57-226 cps. Drug release profile showed that 48.18% of the drug released in the 24 hours of experiment. Also, Hexagonal, cubic and lamellar structures were seen in the SEM photograph and XRD peak of microemulsions. Conclusions This study demonstrated that physicochemical properties and in vitro release were dependent upon the contents of S/C, water, and oil percentage in formulations. SAXS technique and SEM obtained important information about microstructure of microemulsions. W/O and bicontinuous microemulsion with different microstructures were found in formulations.


This software was based on the time-delay dependent state feedback predictive control (DDSFPC) and considered all factors encountered in the field. These factors included the model uncertainty, the state variable time-delay uncertainty, the manipulated variable time-delay uncertainty, the measurable and the unmeasurable disturbance, the restriction of the controller, the restriction of the controller's adjusting rate and the restriction of the controlled variable. Simulation results of the open-loop system and the close-loop system were shown. Those satisfying results could be saved as files. The software has the friendly interface and it is a powerful tool for the design of the predictive controller.


In the present study, diachronic changes in fresh and stained placental scars of postpartum house shrews (Suncus murinus) were studied and compared with the actual number of offspring. In non- stained fresh uteri, the placental scars were barely visible externally, except in some exceptional cases. In stained uteri, placental scars were observed in all specimens, even in the oldest animals evaluated (12 months postpartum). The study estimated the number of offspring and time of parturition using the degree of staining in the scars and the change in their forms.  As the time postpartum increased, the stained placental scars became discoloured and shrank, making it difficult to distinguish between the scars from normal parturition and those that formed following halted development after implantation. Placental scars provided an invaluable method for estimating the female reproductive state in wild mammals. In captive house shrews, however, placental scars were barely detected in non- stained fresh uteri. Moreover, placental scars were observed in older animals at 12 months postpartum. It can be concluded that, it is not feasible to estimate the number of offspring or time of parturition based on placental scars in wild shrews, which are believed to undergo multiple parturitions a year.


PURPOSE
To individually benchmark the incident electron parameters in a Monte Carlo model of an Elekta linear accelerator operating at 6 and 15 MV. The main objective is to establish a simplified but still precise benchmarking procedure that allows accurate dose calculations of advanced treatment techniques.

METHODS
The EGSnrc Monte Carlo user codes BEAMnrc and DOSXYZnrc are used for photon beam simulations and dose calculations, respectively. A 5 × 5 cm(2) field is used to determine both the incident electron energy and the electron radial intensity. First, the electron energy is adjusted to match the calculated depth dose to the measured one. Second, the electron radial intensity is adjusted to make the calculated dose profile in the penumbrae region match the penumbrae measured by GafChromic EBT film. Finally, the mean angular spread of the incident electron beam is determined by matching calculated and measured cross-field profiles of large fields. The beam parameters are verified for various field sizes and shapes.

RESULTS
The penumbrae measurements revealed a non-circular electron radial intensity distribution for the 6 MV beam, while a circular electron radial intensity distribution could best describe the 15 MV beam. These electron radial intensity distributions, given as the standard deviation of a Gaussian distribution, were found to be 0.25 mm (in-plane) and 1.0 mm (cross-plane) for the 6 MV beam and 0.5 mm (both in-plane and cross-plane) for the 15 MV beam. Introducing a small mean angular spread of the incident electron beam has a considerable impact on the lateral dose profiles of large fields. The mean angular spread was found to be 0.7° and 0.5° for the 6 and 15 MV beams, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
The incident electron beam parameters in a Monte Carlo model of a linear accelerator could be precisely and independently determined by the benchmarking procedure proposed. As the dose distribution in the penumbra region is insensitive to moderate changes in electron energy and angular spread, accurate penumbra measurements is feasible for benchmarking the electron radial intensity distribution. This parameter is particularly important for accurate dosimetry of mlc-shaped fields and small fields.


Load ratings for underground electric power transmission cables for 2 typical metropolitan load cycles are computed in this paper by the method of harmonic analysis of load cycles. Test data are given which agree reasonably well with theoretical calculations. A logical basis for emergency rating of cables also is demonstrated. A comparison of costs of transmission for various duct conditions indicates that large conduit systems are not economical because of the lower ratings necessitated by the greater heat dissipated.


Abstract Oceanic red beds (ORBs) are present in Upper Cretaceous and Danian deep-marine deposits in the Basque–Cantabrian Basin of northern Spain. The presence and regularity of the succession of marl–limestone couplets is exceptional based on the macroscopic, microscopic and geochemical evidence collected. Five types of marl–limestone couplets are identified based on the colour, and a high maximum sedimentation rate (3.6 cm ka–1 ) is noted. The oxidizing activity of deep, cold-water masses is indicated by the oxygen isotope signal in the lower–upper Maastrichtian and Danian sections and the presence of the boreal inoceramid Spyridoceramus tegulatus. In theory, the variation in colour from grey to greenish-yellow, purple and pink up to red tones correlates with the Fe2+/(Fe2++Fe3+) ratio. It is interpreted as the possible palaeoenvironmental transit of particles that sediment out slowly in oxic environments when they circulate through cooler, oxidizing water masses. The colour is considered to be a depositional feature, and hematite, detected by X-ray diffraction, is the main staining agent, without discarding the possible redistribution of previous oxyhydroxides passing to hematite as a final product. The cell filling of the foraminifer shells does not incorporate appreciable amounts of Fe and Mg during diagenesis. Bacterial activity is detected using scanning electron microscopy images, both in the coccolith debris and in the detrital micas, although there is uncertainty as to its importance in the staining process.


We report on ongoing work in which we are designing a visual interface to a large database of species observation data. Our design allows the data to be explored and visually summarised by space, time and species, helping assess the data's suitability for helping answer questions about biodiversity. Key issues we are addressing include working with large datasets, dealing with varying spatial and temporal precisions and dealing with different qualities of data collection and sampling strategies. Our visual interface design is being informed by a set of research questions and a planned user-centred workshop.


BACKGROUND
Studies investigating the genetic association of the C677T methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) genotype and dietary methyl donors with asthma and atopy are limited, and have variable results.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the effect of dietary methyl donor intake on the risk of childhood asthma and atopy, based on the C677T polymorphism in the MTHFR gene.

METHODS
This cross-sectional study included 2,333 elementary school children aged 6-8 years across Korea during 2005 and 2006, as part of the first Children's Health and Environmental Research survey. Genotyping for the MTHFR (rs1801133) polymorphism was performed using the TaqMan assay. Multivariable-adjusted logistic regression analysis was performed to determine a descriptive association between the dietary methyl donor intake, MTHFR polymorphism, and childhood asthma and atopy.

RESULTS
Intake of dietary methyl donors like folates was significantly associated with a decreased risk of the wheezing symptom, in the past 12 months, and "ever asthma" diagnosis, respectively. Vitamin B6 intake was also associated with a decreased atopy risk. The T allele of the MTHFR (rs1801133) gene was significantly associated with a decreased risk of atopy. Increased intakes of folate, vitamin B2, and vitamin B6 were protective factors against atopy, especially in children with the T allele on the MTHFR gene, compared to those with lower intakes and the CC genotype.

CONCLUSIONS
High intakes of dietary methyl donors were associated with reduced risk of atopy and asthma symptoms. These may have additive effects related to the susceptibility alleles of the MTHFR gene. The clinical implications require evaluation.


This paper is concerned with the development of a theoretical perspective on air quality management and the establishment of a series of theoretical principles of air quality management. In common with a number of other advanced nations the UK is embarked upon a programme to improve air quality. This paper reviews and assesses the theoretical underpinnings of air quality management and within this context considers the effectiveness of the UK programme. It considers the management principles introduced by the Environment Act, 1995, and examines some of the anticipated difficulties of implementing and practising air quality management in the U.K.


The efficacy of glutathione (GSH) in protecting ischaemia-reperfusion (I-R) induced cardiac dysfunction and myocardial oxidative stress was studied in open-chest, stunned rat heart model. Female Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into three experimental groups: (1) GSH-depletion, by injection of buthionine sulphoxamine (BSO, 4 mmol kg(-1), i.p.) 24 h prior to I-R, (2) BSO injection (4 mmol kg(-1), i.p.) in conjunction with acivicin (AT125, 0.05 mmol kg(-1), i.v.) infusion 1 h prior to I-R, and (3) control (C), receiving saline treatment. Each group was further divided into I-R, with surgical occlusion of the main left coronary artery (LCA) for 30 min followed by 20 min reperfusion, and sham. Myocardial GSH content and GSH : glutathione disulphide (GSSG) ratio were decreased by approximately 50% (P < 0.01) in both BSO and BSO + AT125 vs. C. Ischaemia-reperfusion suppressed GSH in both left and right ventricles of C (P < 0.01) and left ventricles of BSO and BSO + AT125 (P < 0.05). Contractility (+dP/dt and -dP/dt) in C heart decreased 55% (P < 0.01) after I and recovered 90% after I-R, whereas +/-dP/dt in BSO decreased 57% (P < 0.01) with ischaemia and recovered 76 and 84% (P < 0.05), respectively, after I-R. For BSO + AT125, +/-dP/dt were 64 and 76% (P < 0.01) lower after ischaemia, and recovered only 67 and 61% (P < 0.01) after I-R. Left ventricular systolic pressure in C, BSO and BSO + AT125 reached 95 (P > 0.05) 87 and 82% (P < 0.05) of their respective sham values after I-R. Rate-pressure double product was 11% (P > 0.05) and 25% (P < 0.05) lower in BSO and BSO + AT125, compared with Saline, respectively. BSO and BSO + AT125 rats demonstrated significantly lower liver GSH and heart Mn superoxide dismutase activity than C rats after I-R. These data indicate that GSH depletion by inhibition of its synthesis and transport can exacerbate cardiac dysfunction inflicted by in vivo I-R. Part of the aetiology may involve impaired myocardial antioxidant defenses and whole-body GSH homeostasis.


We present new optical switch devices based on a bi-stable microelectromechanical structure driven by two sets of one-directional movable electrothermal V-beam actuators. In conjunction with the movement translation link structure, or T-shaped end of the switch body, and buckle springs, the first V-beam actuator set can drive the in-plane moving reflective shutter from one rest position to the second stable position, while the second V-beam actuator set is able to drive the reflective shutter back to the original rest position. The transmission state of the optical switch device could be one of these bi-stable positions, and the switching state will be the counter position. Thus, the bi-directional motion capability is realized by using a pair of V-beam actuator sets with opposite directions of motion. We have optimized the design of V-beam actuators according to the application requirements. The preliminary results prove the application feasibility.


The fault-generated high frequency signals contain much information which can be used to accurately locate the fault point in power systems. For capturing the high frequency signals, two specially designed traveling-wave sensors are developed in the paper. One is the current sensor installed on the earth line of capacitive equipment (such as: CVT, capacitive CT, transformer bushing, wall bushing) to capture the current traveling-waves flowing from the equipment to earth. The other is the voltage sensor installed at the zero sequence winding of a voltage transformer to capture the voltage traveling waves in three-phase generated by faults. The fault location system with the traveling wave sensors is also developed simply. The sensors and the fault location system have been tested on an 110 kV power system. Results show that the sensors have good performance to capture traveling-waves and the error of fault location is no more than 120 m.


The thermodynamics of computation is well understood for computing engines (rdquoBrownian computersrdquo) that are ideal in the sense that they can make forward and backward steps along the intended computation path, but not transitions to unrelated states. The thermodynamics of error-prone computations and error-correcting mechanisms is less well understood. We explore the speed-error-dissipation tradeoff for a family of hypothetical coupled chemical reaction schemes loosely patterned on RNA and DNA polymerases, which suffer errors at some intrinsic hardware rate and, in the case of DNA polymerases, use proofreading - cyclic dissipative reaction path - to correct most of the errors initially introduced. Even simple non-proofreading systems exhibit nontrivial features, for example a regime where the copying process is pulled slowly forward, against a backward external driving force, by the entropy of incorporated errors.


I will analyse the correspondences between two critical ambitions cultivated a century apart, those of the liberal ideological critic Lovinescu and of a young literary critic who reads Romanian literature through a minimally progressive grid, sensible to liberal nuances and with leftist interpretative undertones (considering the evolution of class representation and of the "social") in discussing recent literature, a point of view having a devastating effect on many writers (in light of the fact that the regime change has occasioned an upsurge in racism, sexism, and all other imaginable phobias, which have nonetheless been cultivated in the last stage of nationalist propaganda of the 70s-80s as well). I will pursue the evolution of several writers against the backdrop of the ideological mainstream, as well as the manner in which Iovănel interprets them: Mircea Cărtărescu, Adrian Schiop, and Lavinia Braniște. I will also attempt to establish the limitations of Iovănel's approach, residing in the conflict between established literary criticism and a literary production which has been completely underprivileged within the free market, enjoying weak institutional support, and whose sales and popularity are rapidly diminishing. The literary critic, still part of a somewhat stable institutional network, seems to be confined in a depressingly marginal literary underbrush, whose growth was sparked by the cataclysm of anti-communist "cultural revolution" and savage capitalism. One of the greatest constructs of communist modernity, mass culture, which was to transform into one of the greatest post-communist utopias, commercial culture, was of great importance for the present debate.


SUMMARY: Under conditions of limited-adenine supplementation, 8-azaguanine is a potent inhibitor of purine auxotrophic strains of Neurospora crassa. It is relatively ineffective in prototrophic strains. Spontaneous and u.v.-light-induced mutants, resistant to 8-azaguanine, were obtained in a strain carrying the ad-2, ad-3A, and ad-3B markers. The resistant mutants grew in the presence of 200 μg 8-azaguanine and 2.0 μg adenine sulphate/ml medium. Inhibition of the sensitive strain is virtually complete under these conditions. Higher adenine sulphate concentrations prevent inhibition of the sensitive strain by 8-azaguanine. Resistance of the new mutants to 8-azaguanine was demonstrated by growth-tube experiments and by plating efficiencies in the presence and in the absence of the inhibitor. Growth-tube experiments were also used to study the reversal of 8-azaguanine induced inhibition by adenine sulphate. The resistance markers in the five strains studied were assigned to linkage group III. The locus designation aza-3 was given to the resistance marker in a selected mutant of spontaneous origin. Resistance to 8-azaguanine is stable in the presence and in the absence of the inhibitor. In heterokaryons, 8-azaguanine resistance is recessive.


The reaction mechanisms of the decomposition of glycerol carbonate have been investigated at the density functional theory level within the bond evolution theory. The four reaction pathways yield to 3-hydroxypropanal (TS1), glycidol (TS2a and TS2b), and 4-methylene-1,3-dioxolan-2-one (TS3). The study reveals non-concerted processes with the same number (four) of structural stability domains for each reaction pathway. For the two decarboxylation mechanisms, the two first steps are similar. They correspond to the cleavage of two single CO bonds to the detriment of the increased population of the lone pairs of two O atoms. These are followed, along TS1, by the transformation of a CO single bond into a double bond together with a proton transfer to create a CH bond. For TS2a and TS2b, the last step is a cyclization by CO bond formation. For the TS3 pathway, the first stage consists in the cleavage of a CH bond and the transfer of its electron population to both a proton and a C atom, the second step corresponds to the formation of an OH bond, and the last one describes the formation of a CC double bond. Moreover, the analysis of the energies, enthalpies, and free enthalpies of reaction and of activation leads to the conclusion that 3-hydroxypropanal is both the thermodynamic and kinetic product, independent of the method of calculation.


Initially drawn to anthologies as a methodology to tell a social history of Isfahan, Babayan encountered in maj-mu`ah s and muraqq`as a discursive world that allowed for a new reading of social interaction and intimacy in the early modern Persianate urban environment. The City as Anthology , although slightly unwieldy at times as it shifts from detailed case study to detailed case study, is none-theless extremely effective in its careful approach to a unique and complicated genre of archival material; the implications of these innovative readings are, in turn, powerfully conveyed by Babayan in an intricate prose and style of argumentation. In addition to introducing and reha-bilitating this genre of anthologies, this study provides a " fresh take " and effectively re-aligns how we understand and interpret the constructs of gender and sexuality in Safavid Iran.


Falsely identifying different authors as one is called merging error in the name disambiguation of coauthorship networks. Research on the measurement and distribution of merging errors helps to collect high quality coauthorship networks. In the aspect of measurement, we provide a Bayesian model to measure the errors through author similarity. We illustratively use the model and coauthor similarity to measure the errors caused by initial-based name disambiguation methods. The empirical result on large-scale coauthorship networks shows that using coauthor similarity cannot increase the accuracy of disambiguation through surname and the initial of the first given name. In the aspect of distribution, expressing coauthorship data as hypergraphs and supposing the merging error rate is proper to hyperdegree with an exponent, we find that hypergraphs with a range of network properties highly similar to those of low merging error hypergraphs can be constructed from high merging error hypergraphs. It implies that focusing on the error correction of high hyperdegree nodes is a labor- and time-saving approach of improving the data quality for coauthorship network analysis.


Background: Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L) is one of the most popular cool-season turfgrass worldwide, but the mechanisms of this species in response to low nitrogen (N) still remain unclear. In this study, we characterized two cultivars 'Bluemoon' and 'Balin' distinctly in morphological, chromosomal, physiological and molecular attributes to N supply.Results: Bluemoon was more tolerant to low N than Balin by exhibiting higher turf quality (TQ), photosynthetic ability, activities of N reductases and synthetases and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). Gene expression profiling showed that there were 968 and 336 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) after eliminating genetic background differences in Bluemoon and Balin respectively during low N stress, and these DEGs highly enriched in 'Nitrogen metabolism', 'Pyruvate metabolism' and 'Carbon fixation in photosynthetic' pathways. The identified genes related to carbon (C) metabolism highly expressed in Bluemoon, which could generate more NADPH then result in more N reduction comparing with Balin. Moreover, R2R3-MYB transcription factors were predicted to bind the promoter of GS to enhance the efficiency of GS/GOGAT cycle.Conclusion: These results could be crucial molecular regulations for improving the tolerance to low N and NUE in Bluemoon. The climate and geography in origins may shape the N assimilation patterns in Kentucky bluegrass via long-term domestication. Taken together, the findings help elucidate the low N tolerance mechanisms in Kentucky bluegrass and would be valuable for the genetic improvement of NUE aiming to promote low-input turfgrass management.


Conceptual analysis about political action and the relation between political action and information. Discussion of relation betweem sender and receiver abo...


It is well known that mean personal energy consumptions and the level of human life have close relation. And also it has been discussed that the rate of population growth changes in accordance with the level of human life. So mean personal energy consumption should have a certain relation with the rate of population growth. It means that the world energy demand should be calculated from the long-range prospect of population growth.In this article the method to calculate the world energy demand from the long-range prospect of population is described. Fortunately, world population have been prospected till 2150 by the international organization and the prospect of world energy demand derived from population will be calculated till the same period. And the results of calculation will be included automatically a consideration of changes of the level of human life.By this method the world total energy demand at 2125 is calculated 450-500×108 TCE.


The Larva of Chiromyza vittata Wiedemann (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) ABSTRACT -The larva of Chiromyza vittata is described for the first time, based on 12 larvae and two puparia. Chiromyza larvae were collected in a coffee farm at Manhuacu, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Some biological notes are also presented. C. vittata is also compared with the australian chiromyzine soldier-fly Inopus rubriceps.


Environmental radiation levels are modified in regions where the oil industrial activity is more aggressive, such as in the Zulia State and the Orinoco's Oil Belt. In these regions Venezuela is producing 1750 thousand barrels of oil from the near-to-the-surface or deep oil drilling, being its 2003 total OPEC market share 2932 thousand barrels of oil per day [1]. Petroleum constitutes an important source of energy and as the majority of natural sources it contains radionuclides and their disintegration products. The combustion of oil concentrates in the ashes those radioelements, which later enters the environment by different pathways producing adverse effects on the quality of man life. The concentration of radioelements varies greatly between oil fields, and then still requiring local survey studies in this area. Moreover due to the recent national interest in recycling processes, it becomes important to take care in the selection of materials that may contain by-products of industrial origin. In fact the oil ashes and other mining by-products are employable in the building industry. The concentration of radioactivity and heavy metals in crude oil, fuel oil N 6 and the ashes from power plants were determined. The analysis includes the two major thermoelectric power plants in Venezuela, Ricardo Zuluaga on the northern seaside of Caracas and Planta Centro on the littoral of Carabobo State. The study covers different samples: fuel oil N° 6, heavy and medium petroleum as well as fuel Oil N°6 ashes. Gamma spectrometry was used for measuring 226 Ra, 214 Pb, 214 Bi, 228 Ac, 212 Pb, 212 Bi, 208 Tl and 40 K, and heavy metallic cations were determined by ICP-MS, which also allows the direct determination of 232 Th and 238 U. In this material (oil ashes) the total activity concentration is above 300 Bq.kg -1 . Some criteria from the literature have been compared and used to investigate the applicability of oil ashes as an additive for building materials. The combustion concentrate also heavy metal cations, as is the case of Pb, Ni, Mn, V, Zn among others. The found high metal concentrations can represent an important environmental risk since the high amount of sulfates in the Venezuelan oil and ashes contributes to their dissolution and bioavailability.


Abstract : Why GAO Did This Study. Since 1989 the National Guard has received hundreds of millions of dollars to help enhance the effectiveness of state-level efforts by providing military support to assist interagency partners with their counterdrug activities. The program funds the drug interdiction priorities of each state Governor; counterdrug-related training to interagency partners at five counterdrug schools; and statelevel counterthreat finance investigations, all of which are part of DOD s broader counterdrug efforts. Senate Report 113-176 included a provision for GAO to conduct an assessment of the state operations of the National Guard s counterdrug program. This report: (1) identifies the changes in funding for the program since fiscal year 2004, and (2) assesses the extent to which performance information is used to evaluate the program s activities. GAO analyzed the program s budgets and obligations data, performance measures, and program guidance, and interviewed knowledgeable officials. What GAO Recommends. GAO recommends that DOD (1) identify additional information needed to evaluate the performance of state programs and oversee counterdrug schools training; and (2) subsequently collect and use performance information to help inform funding distribution decisions to state programs and to conduct oversight of the training offered by the counterdrug schools. DOD concurred with GAO s recommendations.


This study proposes a template-based method of automatic summarization of multiple news articles using the semantic categories of sentences. First, the semantic categories for core information to be included in a summary are identified from training set of documents and their summaries. Then, cue words for each slot of the template are selected for later classification of news sentences into relevant slots. When a news article is input, its event/accident category is identified, and key sentences are extracted from the news article and filled in the relevant slots. The template filled with simple sentences rather than original long sentences is used to generate a summary for an event/accident. In the user evaluation of the generated summaries, the results showed the 54.l% recall ratio and the 58.l% precision ratio in essential information extraction and 11.6% redundancy ratio.


The growth of Internet of Things (IoT) has led to the convergence of heterogeneous networking systems powered by various protocols, and consequently the emergence of protocol-independent packet processing based on programmable data plane (PDP) for IoT. In this work, we study how to leverage the hardware acceleration enabled by offloading flow tables to SmartNIC to improve the performance of software PDP switches based on protocol-oblivious forwarding (POF). We design our SmartNIC offloading system (namely, OVS-POF-TC) based on the Linux kernel traffic classification (TC) system and open vSwitch (OVS), extend OVS to enable the installation of POF-based flow tables (POF-FTs) in a SmartNIC, and design a selective offloading mechanism for purposely offloading heavy-load POF-FTs. Our experimental results indicate that OVS-POF-TC offloads and updates POF-FTs timely, supports runtime programmability, and has improved packet processing throughput by $1.52\times $ and $3.82\times $ , when applying POF-FTs with SetField and AddField to packets, respectively. Moreover, to ensure that OVS-POF-TC can offload and replace POF-FTs adaptively, we formulate two mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) models to, respectively, solve the problems of flow placement and flow replacement, and also design time-efficient heuristics for them.


Student's relationship with teachers is important because students spend about 7 to 9 hours a day and almost 11 months with the teacher. This paper focuses on ascertaining the impact of communication between teachers and students. Communication is a motivational tool for students to accomplish their studies. In this era, education is spreading very quickly all around the world. Universities are trying to improve their standard by increasing the quality of education as well as the quality of their students. This study examines the challenges which create barriers and huddles due to communication between the teachers and students to ensure that the students succeed. For this purpose, the faculty of management science, University of Karachi, Pakistan, was used as a case study. Its impact on students through the teacher's communication was examined. Three (3) departments are working under the faculty of management science. The random sampling method was used to gather the data from the departments. Descriptive analysis of mean and percentage were applied to find the impact of teacher's communication on the student's education and their success. The results show a positive relation between them. It is very difficult to create a positive relation between teachers and students when they get to a certain stage. This is because they are both mature, although it is necessary for both students and teachers. The qualities for a positive relationship can vary to make learning experience approachable and inviting for the students. If the teacher and the students have good communication skills and understand the importance of the impact of their communication, establishing a good relationship will be much easier. This research paper, however, shows that there is a positive relation between teachers and students which creates goodwill for the teachers and makes the students to be result-oriented.


Background Behçet's disease (BD) is a multisystemic inflammatory disease mainly characterized by recurrent oral aphthae, genital ulcers, ocular and skin lesions. Although genetic factors, infectious agents and immunological mechanisms have all been implicated, pathogenesis of BD still remains to be elucidated. Correlation of clinical findings with acute phase response is usually considered poor, and there is no established biomarker for monitoring disease activity in BD patients. Objectives This study aimed to analyze the correlation of serum levels of different acute phase reactants with the clinical activity of BD, by measuring ESR, CRP, SAA, IL-8, S100A12, and also S100A13, which plays a key role in the non-classical release of IL-1α. Methods A group of 95 patients with BD (58 male, 37 female), 18 patients with familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), 22 healthy subjects were enrolled to the study. Among BD patients, 31 had an active disease with overt manifestations during the first sampling, and a second serum sample was collected from 24 after their clinical activity was controlled. A group of 32 BD patients had no manifestations for at least 6 months, and named as patients in remission, and 8 had only recurrent oral aphthous ulcers. All FMF samples were collected during an acute attack. Serum levels of CRP and SAA were measured by nephelometry and of S100A13, S100A12 (Cusabio Biotech, China) and IL-8 (BD Bioscienses, USA) by ELISA. The study protocol was approved by the local ethics committee, and all participants gave written informed consent. Results The mean values ESR, CRP, SAA and IL-8 were significantly higher in active BD patients with manifestations compared to the values of patients with no manifestations (n=46, including inactive and remission patients) (43.7 vs 14.6, 36.2 vs 1.8, 133 vs 6.9, 28.5 vs 29.4, respectively) and to the values of the healthy controls (16.5, 1.65, 4.4 and 16.3, respectively). Analysis of paired samples of 24 patients during active and inactive periods also showed significant decrease of ESR, CRP, SAA, and IL-8 with the controlled activity (38 vs 14.2, 26.6 vs 2.1, 44.5 vs 6.8, 58.5 vs 7.8, respectively, P<0.001). Addition of patients with only oral ulcers to the active patients did not change the significant results, except IL-8. Patients with additional manifestations had significantly higher CRP values than patients with only oral ulcers. High (greater than mean + 2SD of healthy controls) S100A12 values were observed in 34% of active patients, and this proportion reduced to 5% with the decreased disease activity. Serum S100A13 values were below the detection level in all groups. In FMF patients, all acute phase reactants but IL-8 were higher than active patients with BD. Conclusions This study reveals dynamic changes of acute phase reactants in parallel with disease activity in BD patients. The level of those elevations may reflect the total area of inflammatory lesions. Considering the magnitude of changes along with manifestations, serum CRP and SAA levels can be used for the monitoring of clinical manifestations and treatment responses of patients with BD. Acknowledgements Supported by: Istanbul University, Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit, IUBAP No: 2012/23482. Disclosure of Interest None declared DOI 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-eular.5998


In this paper, we propose a unique problem in the assignment of overlapping tasks to processors on a parallel machine, with the twin objectives of minimizing workloads while maintaining good load balance. This problem arises in some applications in VLSI CAD, e.g. parallel compiled VHDL simulation. We assume that the parallel application can be decomposed into a set of tasks, each in turn comprising a finite number of subtasks. Overlapped computations arise as a result of replication of subtasks across tasks in order to reduce the amount of communication performed in fine grained parallel applications. The uniqueness of the problem stems from the fact that overlapping computation on tasks assigned to the same processor is only performed once. Theoretical results on NP-hardness and bounds on the utilization of overlap are provided. A heuristic solution is also proposed. An important application area in VLSI-CAD, parallel compiled event driven VHDL simulation is introduced. Results of the application of our heuristics to this problem are reported on a SUN Sparcserver 1000 multiprocessor.


Rationale: Multiple cerebral gliomas (MCGs), usually classified into multifocal and multicentric subtypes, represent major diagnostic challenges as their clinical, radiologic, and pathohistological features are not uniform, often mimicking brain metastatic tumors or central nervous system inflammatory demyelinating diseases (IDD). Patient concerns: Here, we report a rare case of MCGs with isolated seizures and 4 lesions in the brain, that was initially misdiagnosed as IDD during treatment. Diagnosis: The pathological diagnosis was astrocytoma, which was classified as a World Health Organization grade II glioma. Interventions: The patient was treated with dexamethasone and sodium valproate when he was misdiagnosed as having IDD. After the pathological diagnosis was obtained, he was treated with temozolomide and radiotherapy. Outcomes: Three months after the above treatment, the health of the patient had improved; he was asymptomatic, and presented with better radiological manifestations. Lessons: Diagnostic imaging is valuable in differential diagnosis. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy is a promising technique for the assessment and characterization of lesions, though its role in definitive diagnosis is not yet defined. Brain tissue biopsy remains the golden standard for definitive diagnosis. In China, for various reasons, craniotomy biopsy is not performed routinely in patients with multiple intracranial lesions, and stereotactic cranial biopsy may be a more viable option because of its safety and cost-effectiveness. In summary, this case demonstrates that MCGs need to be included in the differential diagnosis of unknown intracranial multiple lesions.


This paper describes the numerical investigation of two thermal related problems in heat assisted magnetic recording: 1) the dependence of the recorded mark width on the laser power and 2) the temperature distribution of the lubricant layer and its variation with time and the change with and without the heat sink layer. It is found that the mark width increases with the increase of laser power, but the increase is not linear due to the Gaussian distribution of the laser intensity. It is also found that in certain power range, a smaller laser spot will generate a wider mark width at the same laser power. For lubricant cooling process, the temperature in lubricant layer decreases quickly after the laser is removed. Within 0.5 ns, the maximum temperature in lubricant layer drops 35.6degC when there is no heat sink layer applied under the recording media layer. With heat sink layer applied under the media layer, the temperature drop is even faster and decreases by 57.0degC in 0.5 ns. Hence, the heat sink layer is useful to quickly cool the lubricant layer to a thermally stable range.


Literature review of works by Russian and foreign scientists has been performed aiming at reveling essential properties of professional competence of teachers as the competence of the highest level. Course training program has been described, which is comprised of three modules covering urgent issues and technologies of media education, monitoring of quality assessment and efficiency of mastering program, various examples of electronic education products, publications, electronic resources and thesaurus of key notions. The results of the performed studies have been the disclosing of the notion essence of professional metacompetence of teacher, which is expressed in readiness to solve professional tasks under the conditions of mediatization of education system. On the basis of the experimental results, the efficiency of software and methodological support of development of professional metacompetence of teachers has been proved and reflected in diagrams. Therefore, it has been concluded that the development of professional metacompetence of teachers allows to apply interactive forms of education in various online learning environments and provides professional training of teachers of higher quality aiming at independent solution to education problems in the changing educational environment. Recommendations have been given for application of cloud technologies for activation of teacher's activity in monitoring and estimation at various levels of education.


Integrated Chicken-fish farming (ICFF) is a type of animal-fish farming and is a low cost system of fish production that involves the combination of chicken farming with fish culture. However, its practice entails the risk of transfer of pathogens to humans through the consumption of fish grown with chicken manure. In addition, heavy metal deposition into the fish receptacle through manure and spilled chicken feed may lead to metal concentrations in excess of permissible limits. This work assesses the effect of chicken wastes (manure and spilled feed) on the physico-chemical parameters and heavy metal concentrations in a chicken-fish system with the goal of determining the best combination ratio for laying chicken and fish under direct fertilization. The study recommends a combination ratio of 3,000 laying chickens and 80,000 fingerlings per 1 hectare fish pond for a vertically integrated chicken-fish system. Metal concentrations in the muscles of the two fish species used for the study (Oreochromis niloticus and Clarias gariepinus) were below FAO limits and the consumption of fish muscle from such systems operating within the combination ratio and culture period used for the study


We introduce a recently built package for computing persistent homology within the computer algebra system gap. A native gap implementation of the persistent homology algorithm allows for easier access to the group-theoretic primitives in gap while simultaneously working on computational topology questions – enabling for instance the use of symmetry groups to study symmetric point clouds. The strongest innovation here is in the combination of persistent homology and point cloud algorithms with the group theoretic tools in gap. This package is different from the several existing homological algebra and simplicial topology packages already in gap: simpcomp, homalg, Hap, et c., in that the focus here is on point cloud topology, and not combinatorial complexes or homological algebra.


Introduction fMRI signal changes have been found to increase at high diffusion weightings (b ≥ 600 s/mm) in both human and cat visual stimulation [1,2]. Because the high diffusion sensitizing gradients presumably crush the signal from the blood, this finding suggest a change of water diffusion characteristics in the extravascular tissue and has been hypothetically attributed to the activation-induced neuronal cell swelling [1]. In contrast, a recent human hypercapnia study suggested that vascular contribution might dominate the observed change in the diffusion weighted fMRI [3]. We have recently studied the response of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) for a cat visual stimulation model using a gradient echo sequence [4]. When the blood signal was eliminated by the injection of an intravascular contrast agent, stimulation-induced ADC changes could not be observed with b <1050 s/mm in the brain parenchyma, whereas ADC decreased at the surface of the visual cortex suggesting an activation-induced change of the partial volume of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). In this work, we investigated the diffusion weighted fMRI response for higher b-values using a double spin-echo sequence [1,3]. Experiments were performed with and without the suppression of intravascular signals by a contrast agent, monocrystalline iron oxide nanoparticles (MION).


Multiuser detection has been proposed to improve the performance of direct-sequence spread-spectrum code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems. Use of multiple sensors (antenna elements or base stations) can be used to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and counter the effects of fading in any communication system. In this paper, multisensor multiuser detection is analyzed. It is shown by analysis and numerical examples that the use of multiple sensors averages the multiple-access interference (MAI) out towards zero even without multiuser detection. The performance of linear multisensor receivers with and without multiuser detection is analyzed and compared. The examples show that relatively good performance can be obtained without multiuser detection with moderate number of users and under a reasonable near-far problem.


Witches' broom" Disease caused by the "Candidatus phytoplasma aurantifolia "is one of the important citrus disease that causes significant economic losses in Iran, western Asia and North Africa. In this study the effect of disease stress on leaf proteome was investigated. Leaf samples were collected from plants and were analyzed using 2-DE coupled with MS. The power of 2DE for proteins separation makes it possible to study various qualitative and quantitative changes in protein expression under normal and stress condition. out of 801 leaf proteins from eight biological replicates of healthy and infected plants that were analyzed by melani6 software, 63 proteins showed a significant response to the disease. MS results indicated that 19 proteins were involved in oxidative stress defense photosynthesis, metabolism and the stress response. Identifying these proteins can reveal newer response pathways and the genes that control them. The results of this study can be used in mexican lime breeding programs.


This study is about monitoring the vibration signatures of a Compressed Ignition (CI) engine tested with fish oil biodiesel as a fuel. For analyzing the signatures, data mining plays a vital role. Machine learning has been extensively applied to the engine for the fault diagnosis. Vibration signals are captured using shear accelerometer by varying the load at a constant speed of 1800rpm. Statistical features were extracted from the captured rough vibration signals and feature selection was carried out. The selected features were then classified using Tree classifiers like J48 and Hoeffiding tree. The classification accuracy has been discussed. Comparatively, Hoeffiding tree maximum classification accuracy with 97%


An industrial company has embarked on an expansion project to create more capacity to meet the growing demand for one of its high-end product ranges. The final step in the production process constitutes of solidification, packaging, local storage and distribution. A stochastic simulation model in Arena Simulation Software was developed to represent the packaging activities, transportation between intermediate storage facilities and the product outbound supply chain. The aim of this study is to analyse the impact of the additional production volumes on the high-end product range packaging facility and the outbound supply chain capabilities and constraints. The study determined the required fleet and staging capacity at the production facility. A compelling business case is justified to expand the staging capacity as it holds significant opportunity cost.


Purpose: To perform accurate segmentation on left ventricles from Cine MR images Methods: We have developed a novel variational segmentation method that incorporates prior knowledge on both geometrical relations and shapes of the endocardium and epicardium. In contrast to conventional approaches that preserve a constant distance between the endo- and epicardial contours, we propose to maintain a smoothly varying distance between the endo- and epicardium represented by two separate level set functions, which is more robust to shape variations across slices and phases among different patients. The coupled level set representation further allows us to incorporate a sparse composite shape prior to boost the performance. A robust data fidelity of Gaussian mixture is utilized to represent overlapped intensity distributions of each cardiac region under the condition of insufficient gradient information. We evaluated the proposed method on datasets from MICCAI left ventricle segmentation challenge, and compared our method against other state-of-the-art approaches based on Dice similarity coefficient (DSC). Results: Our method successfully segmented all left ventricles in 15 validation datasets from patients of different pathologies. It achieved competitive if not better DSC accuracy compared to other state-of-the-art methods, with mean DSC of 0.89 and standard deviation of 0.04 on endocardium segmentation, and mean DSC of 0.94 and standard deviation of 0.01 on epicardium segmentation. Conclusion: Introducing anatomy-specific geometric coupling and sparse composite shape priors on endo- and epicardium, in addition to length regularization, into the variational method has demonstrated its advantage in the challenging problem of left ventricle segmentation. A joint left and right ventricle segmentation method is under development.


The English Romantic artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was hailed as the "painter of light" for his brilliantly colored landscapes and seascapes. He drew much influence from the French painter Claude Lorrain (c. 1604/5?-1682), who was a vital force in Turner's artistic practice from his formative years until the end of his working life. So great was Claude's influence that Turner stipulated in his will that his works hang alongside Claude's in the National Gallery, London. This book examines the ways in which Turner consistently strove to confront Claude's achievement and legacy. He had encountered Claude's works in salerooms and in the collections of his aristocratic patrons, and applied what he had learned to the British countryside, producing views of the Thames valley that transform it into an idyllic pastoral scene reminiscent of the Roman Campagna. For the balance of his career, Turner continued to pit himself against Claude, paying homage even as he continually sought to go beyond the accomplishments of his master.


Glaucoma is the second-leading cause of blindness worldwide and is often associated with elevated intraocular pressure (IOP). Partial thickness intrascleral channels can be created with a femtosecond laser operating at a wavelength of 1700 nm. Such channels have the potential to increase outflow facility and reduce elevated IOP. Analysis of the dimensions and location of these channels is important in understanding their effects. We describe the application of two-photon microscopy and confocal microscopy for noninvasive imaging of the femtosecond laser created partial-thickness scleral channels in human cadaver eyes. High-resolution images, hundreds of microns deep in the sclera, were obtained to allow determination of the shape and dimension of such channels. This demonstrates that concept of integrating femtosecond laser surgery, and two-photon and confocal imaging has the future potential for image-guided high-precision surgery in transparent and translucent tissue.


OBJECTIVE
To study the changes of expression of type I inositol 1,4,5 triphosphate receptors (IP3RI) in the kidneys of mice with fulminant hepatic failure (FHF) in order to understand the role renal vasoconstriction plays in the development of hepatorenal syndrome (HRS).

METHODS
One hundred twenty male Balb/c mice were divided into 4 groups. In the fourth group (60 mice) lipopolysaccharide with D-galactosamine was injected intraperitoneally to induce acute liver necrosis. The first-third groups (20 mice in each group) served as controls and those mice were given NS, LPS or GalN intraperitoneally. At the end of 2 h, 6 h, and 9 h, mice were sacrificed and their livers and kidneys were removed and examined histologically. Immunohistochemistry, Western blot and reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) were used to detect the distribution and expression of IP3RI in the kidneys.

RESULTS
IP3RI protein was localized in the cytoplasma of glomerular mesangial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells in the kidneys. In the kidney tissues from mice with FHF at 6 h and 9 h, IP3RI-positive staining cells increased significantly (6 h: chi(2)=7.11, P less than 0.01; 9 h: (chi)2=9.15, P less than 0.01). Western blot demonstrated a consistent and significant increase of IP3RI expression in mice with FHF at 6 h and 9 h (6 h: t=3.16, P less than 0.05; 9 h: t=5.43, P less than 0.01). Using RT-PCR we observed that IP3RI mRNA in FHF samples at 2 h, 6 h and 9 h was markedly up-regulated in comparison to that of the controls (2 h: t=2.47, P less than 0.05; 6 h: t=4.42, P less than 0.01; 9 h: t=2.16, P less than 0.05).

CONCLUSION
The expression of IP3RI protein increased in glomerular mesangial cells and renal vascular smooth muscle cells of FHF mice. Perhaps this was caused by IP3RI mRNA up-regulation.


The single injection clearance of inulin was compared to the standard clearance in neonates aged 1--20 days. In the first 3 days of life, the single injection method overestimated glomerular filtration rate by approximately 30%. From the 2nd week of life, values obtained by the two techniques were not significantly different. We conclude that caution should be paid when interpreting results obtained by the single injection technique during the very first days of life.


We investigate photon statistical properties of the multiple-photon-added two-mode squeezed coherent states (PA-TMSCS). We find that the photon statistical properties are sensitive to the compound phase involved in the TMSCS. Our numerical analyses show that the photon addition can enhance the cross-correlation and anti-bunching effects of the PA-TMSCS. Compared with that of the TMSCS, the photon number distribution of the PA-TMSCS is modulated by a factor that is a monotonically increasing function of the numbers of adding photons to each mode; further, that the photon addition essentially shifts the photon number distribution.


We present a technique to improve out-of-domain statistical parsing by reducing lexical data sparseness in a PCFG-LA architecture. We replace ter- minal symbols with unsupervised word clusters acquired from a large news- paper corpus augmented with target-domain data. We also investigate the impact of guiding out-of-domain parsing with predicted part-of-speech tags. We provide an evaluation for French, and obtain improvements in perfor- mance for both non-technical and technical target domains. Though the im- provements over a strong baseline are slight, an interesting result is that the proposed techniques also improve parsing performance on the source do- main, contrary to techniques such as self-training, thus leading to a more ro- bust parser overall. We also describe new target domain evaluation treebanks, freely available, that comprise a total of about 3,000 annotated sentences from the medical domain, regional newspaper articles, French Europarl and French Wikipedia.


We study the growth of the ordered phase in a spin system of finite size suddenly brought below the transition temperature. Such a growth is driven by the instability of the mode corresponding to the largest eigenvalue of the interaction matrix. The relaxation occurs through different regimes according to whether the unstable mode has a negligible or macroscopic amplitude. One regime is characterised by dynamical scaling properties whereas in the other we can distinguish the growth to a macroscopic amplitude followed by rare transitions from one equilibrium amplitude to another. The analysis is carried out in the framework of a dynamical generalisation of the spherical model assuming non-random and random interactions among the spins. Differences between spin glass and ferromagnetic behaviour are pointed out.


Introduction: The purpose of this study was to find, the prevalence of self-medication with antibiotics, and antibiotics used for self-treated disease.Methods: this cross-sectional study was carried out among 385 participants in 12 community pharmacies located in 4 different regions of Kabul from May to November 2017. Standard questionnaire based on similar studies was designed and distributed among participants. Data was collected and analyzed in SPSS 16.0.Results: out of 385 participants (61.29% male and 38.70% female) 282 persons (73.25%) had practiced antibiotic self-medication during last year. The common reasons for antibiotic self-medication was economic problems (26.95%), lack of time (22.69%), comfortability (21.63%), lack of confidence on health care system (17.37%), and poor access to health care facilities (11.34%). Conditions like cough (28.01%), common cold (14.89%), respiratory infections (13.47%), sore throat (12.41%) and diarrhea (7.44%) were commonly self-medicated with antibiotics. penicillins (25.17%), metronidazole (15.60%), ceftriaxone (14.18%), tetracycline (10.28%), Azithromycin (9.21%), cefixime (7.09%), ciprofloxacin (6.73%) were mostly used for self-medication. 93 (32.97%) respondents had experienced side effects during antibiotic self-medication. Conclusions: The prevalence of antibiotic self-medication is very high (75.53%) in Kabul and this widespread antibiotic use has increased the risk of antibiotic resistance. Awareness and Strict rules for selling antibiotics without prescription should be developed and implemented to improve the rational use of antibiotics. Only pharmacists or professional peoples should be permitted to work in pharmacies. The quality, accessibility and cost of health care services should be enhanced in order to improve patient' satisfaction in health care system.


We report on a novel quantum well intermixing (QWI) technique that induces a large degree of bandgap blueshift in the InGaP/InAlGaP laser structure. In this technique, high external compressive strain induced by a thick layer of SiO2 cap with a thickness ≥1 μm was used to enhance QWI in the tensile-strained InGaP/InAlGaP quantum well layer. A bandgap blueshift as large as 200 meV was observed in samples capped with 1-μm SiO2 and annealed at 1000 °C for 120 s. To further enhance the degree of QWI, cycles of annealing steps were applied to the SiO2 cap. Using this method, wavelength tunability over the range of 640 nm to 565 nm (∼250 meV) was demonstrated. Light-emitting diodes emitting at red (628 nm), orange (602 nm), and yellow (585 nm) wavelengths were successfully fabricated on the intermixed samples. Our results show that this new QWI method technique may pave the way for the realization of high-efficiency orange and yellow light-emitting devices based on the InGaP/InAlGaP material system.


Vertical scaling of FLOTOX EEPROM cellii for producing high density, low voltage programmable, relliable memories is achieved by thinning the tunnel insulator in the EEPROM cell. Factors which limit scaling of tunnel oxides, such as program-erase cycling induced leakage curreni, are examined in detail for insulators in the practical thickness range of 60-9OA. We have also developed a new RTP oxynitridation process using gas mixtures of 02 and N20, providing us robust ultra-thin tunnel insulators. The performance of memory cells fabricated with tiinnel dielectrics using conventional, furnace grown, dry thermal oxides and the new RTP oxynitridation process are comyd The latter group of devices are found to have superior retention, endurance and programming characteristics. We demonstrate that the scalability of the cell is improved by using the oxynitride tunnel films.


The ultraviolet photochemistry of 2-bromothiophene (C4H3SBr) has been studied across the wavelength range 265-245 nm using a velocity-map imaging (VMI) apparatus recently modified for multi-mass imaging and vacuum ultraviolet (VUV, 118.2 nm) universal ionization. At all wavelengths, molecular products arising from the loss of atomic bromine were found to exhibit recoil velocities and anisotropies consistent with those reported elsewhere for the Br fragment [J. Chem. Phys. 142, 224303 (2015)]. Comparison between the momentum distributions of the Br and C4H3S fragments suggests that bromine is formed primarily in its ground (2P3/2) spin-orbit state. These distributions match well at high momentum, but relatively fewer slow moving molecular fragments were detected. This is explained by the observation of a second substantial ionic product, C3H3+. Analysis of ion images recorded simultaneously for several ion masses and the results of high-level ab initio calculations suggest that this fragment ion arises from dissociative ionization (by the VUV probe laser) of the most internally excited C4H3S fragments. This study provides an excellent benchmark for the recently modified VMI instrumentation and offers a powerful demonstration of the emerging field of multi-mass VMI using event-triggered, high frame-rate sensors, and universal ionization.


PURPOSE
admission to nursing homes is often associated with major changes in the way the elderly live, possibly leading to sleep disorders. The aim of our study was to assess sleep quality in the elderly without dementia living in nursing homes, to determine the prevalence of sleep disorders, and to examine the links between sleep quality and sociodemographic features, comorbidities, and degree of dependency.

METHODS
we carried out a cross-sectional survey, involving old people living in Manouba nursing home. Assessment of sleep was performed using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. We excluded subjects with severe motor or sensory impairments as well as individuals with cognitive impairment.

RESULTS
thirty-two patients were included in the study. The majority (68.8%) were male, institutionalized for an average period of 6.3 years. Mean age was 71.6 years. More than half of the subjects (56.3%) had depression, and 93.8% had one or more chronic conditions. About one third (37.5%) of residents were dependent in one or more activities of daily living and 25% were confined to bed or to a wheelchair. The majority of residents (73%) were identified as "poor sleepers" based on a global Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score >5. Sleep disorders were attributed to nocturia, nocturnal or premature awakenings and pain. We noted a fairly large percentage (18.8%) of hypnotic drugs intake among participants. Our results also showed a strong association between poor sleep quality and depression (p<0.001).

CONCLUSION
early detection of sleep disorders in nursing home residents can help them to get an optimized and efficacious treatment.


This article is written as a follow-up to my article "The original African mbira?" (1972). I can report that an instrument which I predicted to have existed in that article actually did/does exist! In the original article I compared the tuning layouts of two related present-day members of the mbira family, hera, also called matepe, (found in northern Zimbabwe and northeast Zimbabwe into Mozambique) and nyonganyonga (found in central Mozambique, from Mutare, Zimbabwe to Beira, Mozambique and also into southern Malawi).


This book offers the first full-scale technical treatment of an important class of engineered porous materials: metal foams. Written by a team of metal foam experts from around the world, the volume offers new, as well as fundamental, information on all aspects of metal foams, including their theory, manufacture, structure-property relationships and applications. The book explains microscopy and modeling tools that enhance the prediction and determination of metal foam properties related to fluid flow, heat transfer, sound absorption and failure analysis. Attention is given to the many techniques for manufacturing and testing metal foams and to how their microstructure can be controlled to create custom properties for applications in acoustics, bone implants, heat sinks, lightweighting and crash protection. The text is sufficiently detailed to offer guidance to design and development engineers, and yet is basic enough to be used as a textbook or reference by students of materials science, mechanical, structural or chemical engineering requiring an introduction to the subject.


The possibility that the tsunami, generated as a consequence of the large Mw 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake of March 11th 2011, could be recorded by the tide gauge stations located in the Mediterranean Sea has been investigated. We find two kinds of transient signatures which should be attributed to the far-field destabilizing effect of the tsunami on the usual tidal components: 1) the excitation of a broad spectrum of frequency fluctuations, superimposed to the diurnal and semidiurnal tidal components, 2) the change of amplitude of the low-frequency tidal components in the Mediterranean, related to the sea surface fluctuation perhaps caused by the direct transmission of the tsunami across Gibraltar.


Viruses are the major cause of disease and mortality worldwide. Nowadays there are treatments based on antivirals or prophylaxis with vaccines. However, the rising number of reports of viral resistance to current antivirals and the emergence of new types of virus has concerned the scientific community. In this scenario, the search for alternative treatments has led scientists to the discovery of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) derived from many different sources. Since some of them have shown antiviral activities, here we challenged 10 synthetic peptides from different animal and plant sources against, herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV‐1), and Aichi virus. Among them, the highlight was Pa‐MAP from the polar fish Pleuronectes americanus, which caused around 90% of inhibition of the HSV with a selectivity index of 5 and a virucidal mechanism of action. Moreover, LL‐37 from human neutrophils showed 96% of inhibition against the Aichi virus, showing a selectivity index of 3.4. The other evaluated peptides did not show significant antiviral activity. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that Pa‐MAP seems to be a reliable candidate for a possible alternative drug to treat HSV‐1 infections. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers (Pept Sci) 108: 1–6, 2017.


Natural language understanding programs get bogged down by the multiplicity of possible syntactic structures while processing real world texts that human understanders do not have much difficulty with. In this work, I analyze the relationships between parsing strategies, the degree of local ambiguity encountered by them, and semantic feedback to syntax, and propose a parsing algorithm called {\em Head-Signaled Left Corner Parsing} (HSLC) that minimizes local ambiguities while supporting interactive syntactic and semantic analysis. Such a parser has been implemented in a sentence understanding program called COMPERE.


Evidence for osseous technologies has featured in excavation reports from Southeast Asia for almost a century and from archaeological deposits as old as 43,000 years BP. However, in contrast to the significance that is placed on this technology in other parts of the world, until recently, Southeast Asian assemblages have drawn only very limited attention. Concentrating on evidence from Malaysia, the current paper examines one element of this inventory of tools: the deliberate modification of pig canines and the means by which such alteration can be distinguished from patterns of natural tooth wear. Particular attention is paid to the bearded pig (Sus barbatus), as it is one of the two species of wild boar in Malaysia whose tusks are most likely to have been used by prehistoric toolmakers. Reference is also made to wider, regional ethnographic examples of known tusk implements and their accredited uses to further assist in the identification process. Distinguishing criteria for worked tusk are formulated according to the type and extent of modification. These criteria are then applied to archaeological specimens recovered from two prehistoric cave sites in Malaysia, Gua Bintong and Niah Cave.


We develop importance sampling based efficient simulation techniques for three commonly encountered rare event probabilities associated with random walks having i.i.d. regularly varying increments; namely, 1) the large deviation probabilities, 2) the level crossing probabilities, and 3) the level crossing probabilities within a regenerative cycle. Exponential twisting based state-independent methods, which are effective in efficiently estimating these probabilities for light-tailed increments are not applicable when the increments are heavy-tailed. To address the latter case, more complex and elegant state-dependent efficient simulation algorithms have been developed in the literature over the last few years. We propose that by suitably decomposing these rare event probabilities into a dominant and further residual components, simpler state-independent importance sampling algorithms can be devised for each component resulting in composite unbiased estimators with desirable efficiency properties. When the increments have infinite variance, there is an added complexity in estimating the level crossing probabilities as even the well known zero-variance measures have an infinite expected termination time. We adapt our algorithms so that this expectation is finite while the estimators remain strongly efficient. Numerically, the proposed estimators perform at least as well, and sometimes substantially better than the existing state-dependent estimators in the literature.


Northern leaf blight, caused by the fungus Exserohilum turcicum (Pass.), is a major disease of maize (Zea mays L.). MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been recently reported as gene expression regulators related to several stress responses; however, evidence of the role of miRNAs in plant response to biotic stresses is limited. In this study, the miRNA expression patterns in maize in response to E. turcicum stress were investigated using a plant miRNA microarray platform. A total of 118 miRNAs were detected in mock- and E. turcicum-inoculated leaves. Among these miRNAs, miR530, miR811, miR829, and miR845 were identified as new miRNAs in maize through a homology-based approach. The secondary structures and putative targets of these miRNAs were also predicted. In addition, four miRNAs were differentially regulated in response to E. turcicum: miR811, miR829, miR845, and miR408. The functional annotation of the predicted targets indicated that these stress-responsive miRNAs regulate metabolic, morphologic, and physiologic adaptations in maize seedlings at the post-transcriptional level. Four targets were negatively correlated with their corresponding miRNAs (miR811, miR829, and miR408). Furthermore, we have demonstrated for the first time that miR811 and miR829 confers a high degree of resistance to E. turcicum, which can be used in maize breeding programs.


Kakamega Forest is located in Western Province of Kenya about 40 km northwest of Lake Victoria. It is an island of disturbed forest in a densely populated area at an altitude of about 1600-1700 m. Kakamega Forest is famous because of its interesting biogeographical transitional position between the Guineo-Congolian lowland forests and the Afromontane forests (White, 1983; Beentje, 1990). It harbours 986 vascular plant species, including 81 pteridophytes (Fischer et al., 2010). While visiting Kakamega Forest in July 2007 Christella parasitica, a fern not yet recorded for Kakamega (Fischer et al., 2010) and Kenya (Faden, 1994; Verdcourt, 2006) was found. In this communication its habitat and ecological demands are described and biogeographical implications discussed. The taxonomy follows Verdcourt (2006).


Objective: A) To evaluate the acceptability of a unique, Cost-effective, reusable, and environmentally safe device for menstrual blood collection among culturally diverse women. B) To enhance the quality of life for women during menstruation. Methods: The first author developed a unique, reusable menstrual collection device as an alternative to sanitary pads and tampons. After successful research and development, the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), as well as the European Union and Health Canada, granted their approval for the device. The first author and five co-investigators recruited 146 women of diverse cultural and national backgrounds to evaluate the FemmyCycle. Women were instructed to use the FemmyCycle for three cycles, report any side effects and compare their experiences using the FemmyCycle with other sanitary products. Results: Among all participants who used this new device for three cycles, 84% preferred the FemmyCycle over prior methods used for menstrual hygiene. These women rated the device superior to previously-used methods and safer for the environment than pads and tampons. Conclusions: The majority of women preferred the FemmyCycle over their previous feminine sanitary protection methods. The device can protect the environment and enhance the quality of women's lives during menstruation, particularly working and Original Research Article British Journal of Medicine & Medical Research, 4(19): 3581-3590, 2014 3582 athletic women. This is due to the longer duration of protection, prevention of leakage, activity compatibility, as well as elimination of the risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome. This device may fill a major void in menstrual hygiene products and women's reproductive health worldwide.


Focal lesions of articular cartilage give rise to pain and reduced joint function and may, if left untreated, lead to osteoarthritis. Implantation of in vitro generated, scaffold-free autologous cartilage discs may represent the best treatment option. Here we compare articular chondrocytes (ACs) and bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) for their ability to make scaffold-free cartilage discs. Articular chondrocytes produced more extracellular matrix per seeded cell than mesenchymal stromal cells. Quantitative proteomics analysis showed that articular chondrocyte discs contained more articular cartilage proteins, while mesenchymal stromal cell discs had more proteins associated with cartilage hypertrophy and bone formation. Sequencing analysis revealed more microRNAs associated with normal cartilage in articular chondrocyte discs, and large-scale target predictions, performed for the first time for in vitro chondrogenesis, suggested that differential expression of microRNAs in the two disc types were important mechanisms behind differential synthesis of proteins. We conclude that articular chondrocytes should be preferred over mesenchymal stromal cells for tissue engineering of articular cartilage.


Currently, a particular focus of human centered technology is in expanding traditional contextual sensing and smart processing capabilities of ubiquitous systems exploiting user's affective and emotional states to develop more natural communication between computing artefacts and users. This paper presents a smart environment of Web services that has been developed to integrate and manage different existing and new emotion sensing applications, which working together provide tracking and recognition of human affective state in real time. In addition, two emotion interpreters based on the proposed 6-FACS and Distance models have been developed. Both models operate with encoded facial deformations described either in terms of Ekman's Action Units or Facial Animation Parameters of MPEG-4 standards. Fuzzy inference system based on reasoning model implemented in a knowledge base has been used for quantitative measurement and recognition of three-level intensity of basic and non-prototypical facial expressions. Designed frameworks integrated to smart environment have been tested in order to evaluate capability of the proposed models to extract and classify facial expressions providing precision of interpretation of basic emotions in range of 65--96% and non-prototypical emotions in range of 55--65%. The conducted tests confirm that such basic as non-prototypical expressions may be composed by other basic emotions establishing in this way the concordance between existing psychological models of emotions and Ekman's model traditionally used by affective computing applications.


Thromboembolic phenomena may represent a serious complication of the use of corticotropin and cortisone. These complications were observed in five patients with hypercholesteremia, idiopathic or secondary to other disease, leading to the impression of a causal relationship between the preexisting elevated level of serum cholesterol and the thromboembolic phenomena. REPORT OF CASES Case1.—A 52-year-old female was hospitalized on Feb. 21, 1952, because of diarrhea and abdominal pain. For two years prior to admission, she had been subject to intermittent attacks of severe abdominal cramps and diarrhea. The stools were foul smelling and foamy. She complained frequently of bloating and postprandial discomfort. Study in 1950 revealed a normal gastrointestinal x-ray series and barium enema. Repeated stool analyses showed many fat globules, no ova or parasites, and a negative guaiac reaction. The hemoglobin level was 11.4 gm. per 100 cc. The white and differential blood cell counts were normal. On therapy


ABSTRACT Using density functional theory calculations, we investigate the gas sensing performance of B-, N-doped and BN-codoped C60 fullerenes towards NO and NO2 molecules. The calculated adsorption energies and net charge-transfer values indicate that NO and NO2 molecules have a stronger interaction with the BN-codoped fullerenes compared to the B- or N-doped ones. It is also found that the electronic properties of the BN-codoped C60 exhibit a larger sensitivity towards NO and NO2 molecules. An increase in the concentration of doped/co-doped B and N atoms tends to weaken the gas sensing ability of these systems. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT


Beginning with an analytic discussion of the various ways in which perfectibility has been interpreted, Professor Passmore traces its long history from the Greeks to the present day, by way of Christianity, orthodox and heterodox, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, anarchism, utopias, communism, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary theories of man and society. Both in its broad sweep and in countless supporting reflections, it is a journey through spiritual scenery of the most majestic and exhilarating kind. Thoroughly and elegantly, Passmore explores the history of the idea of perfectibility -- manifest in the ideology of perfectibilism -- and its consequences, which have invariably been catastrophic for individual liberty and responsibility in private, social, economic, and political life.


While research and efforts to promote health equity abound, the persistence of disparities by race and ethnicity underscores the limitations of fragmented interventions and the need for systematic, multipronged approaches to health equity. The foundational step towards reducing health disparities is the establishment of the basic information needed to identify and measure those differences, i.e., the accurate capture of race and ethnicity information of all patients. To that end, we present a case study outlining a multifaceted approach for improving the capture of race and ethnicity data in an outpatient setting culminating in a 76% improvement in the completeness of this information. The effectiveness of this plan and its scalability within a large urban health system may benefit similar institutions seeking to improve the collection of race and ethnicity information and the reliability of their data. To this aim, we present an approach relying on the assessment and evaluation of system needs, modification of data infrastructure to align with goals, training, and education of relevant stakeholders, implementation and responsive action to results, and acknowledging limitations and lessons learned. We emphasize that cross-departmental collaboration, stakeholder engagement, institutional support, and culture of anti-racism were essential to the success of this initiative.