B42 Outcome and survival in anthracycline- and cyclophosphamide/methotrexate/5-fluorouracil (CMF)-based chemotherapy of invasive breast cancer are unpredictable. Insights into treatment prediction are expected from studies searching for an association between genetic polymorphisms and treatment outcome effects. A common feature of treatment with chemo-reagents is therapeutically induced DNA damage. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis of a relationship between event-free survival and genotype distributions of 7 polymorphic DNA repair enzymes and 4 cell cycle regulators. Our retrospective case-case comparison included 180 female patients who had received adjuvant chemotherapy with anthracycline/cyclophosphamide or CMF upon dignosis of primary invasive breast cancer at the Robert Bosch Hospital Stuttgart between 1986 and 2000. There were 92 patients without recurrence and 88 with recurrences or reported dead. The median clinical follow-up was 61.7 months (range 7.6 to 201.8 months). Constitutional DNA was isolated from archived tissues and genotyped at 19 loci by matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Statistical analyses included adjusted risk estimates, Kaplan-Meier analyses, Cox proportional hazard model, and permutation testing. Carriers of the XRCC1_1196_AA genotype had a reduced risk for recurrence/death (OR 0.16; 95% CI: 0.05-0.49) which was observed in the survival analysis of all patients (P = 0.003) and of patients treated with chemotherapy but not radiotherapy (P = 0.006). Multivariate analysis confirmed XRCC1 as a potential treatment predictor (HR 0.62; 95% CI: 0.43-0.89). The result was stable upon permutation testing. Polymorphisms at ERCC4 and CCND3 showed effects in univariate analyses but not in multivariate analyses. We conclude that the DNA repair enzyme XRCC1 is a potential treatment predictor for the outcome and survival of anthracycline and CMF-based chemotherapy of invasive breast cancer that should be followed up in prospective clinical trials.


Abstract Background Enlargement of the left atrium is a non-invasive marker of diastolic dysfunction of the left ventricle, a determinant of prognosis in children with cardiomyopathy. Similarly, N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide is a useful marker in the management of children with cardiomyopathy and heart failure. The aim of this study is to evaluate the association of left atrial pressures with left atrial volume and N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide in children with cardiomyopathy. Methods This was a retrospective study reviewing the medical records of patients <18 years of age, who were diagnosed with cardiomyopathy or acute myocarditis with eventual development of cardiomyopathy. Left atrial volume by transthoracic echocardiogram and pulmonary capillary wedge pressure, a surrogate of left atrial pressure, obtained by means of cardiac catheterisation were analysed. In addition, N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide levels obtained at the time of the cardiac catheterisation were also reviewed. Statistical analysis was performed to evaluate the association of left atrial pressures with left atrial volume and N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide levels. Results There was a linear correlation of left atrial pressure estimated in the cardiac catheterisation with indexed left atrial volume (r=0.63; p<0.001) and left atrial volume z-scores (r=0.59; p<0.001). We found no statistically significant association between the left atrial pressure and N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide levels. Conclusions Left atrial volume measured non-invasively by echocardiography can be used as a surrogate for left atrial pressure in assessing diastolic dysfunction of the left ventricle in children with cardiomyopathy. The larger the size of the left atrium, worse is the diastolic function of the left ventricle.


The soluble fibre (1 → 3)(1 → 4)-β-D-glucan attenuates postprandial glycaemic responses when administered in solution. This attenuating effect is strengthened when solution viscosity is increased by increasing the β-glucan dose or molecular weight (MW). The effect of varying solution viscosity by changing solution volume, without changing the β-glucan dose or MW, on glycaemic responses was determined. A total of fifteen healthy subjects received six 50 g oral glucose beverages prepared with or without 4 g of high-MW (HMW, 580,000 g/mol) or low-MW (LMW, 145,000 g/mol) β-glucan, with a beverage volume of 250 or 600 ml. Postprandial plasma glucose concentration was measured over 2 h, and the peak blood glucose rise (PBGR) and the incremental area under the glycaemic response curve (AUC) were calculated. Subjects served as their own controls. The physico-chemical properties of the beverages were measured to examine their relationship with glycaemic response results. The HMW β-glucan beverage was more viscous and achieved greater reductions in PBGR than the glucose beverage with LMW β-glucan (P < 0·05). At the same MW, the 250 and 600 ml β-glucan beverages differed in viscosity (>9-fold difference) but not in PBGR (P > 0·05). No differences in AUC were detected among the beverages (P = 0·147). The effects of β-glucan on glycaemic response were altered by changes in beverage viscosity achieved through changes in MW but not in volume. Therefore, β-glucan dose and MW are the most vital characteristics for optimising the bioactivity of β-glucan solutions with respect to glycaemic response.


Infection of mice with Histoplasma capsulatum depressed their ability to form agglutinins against foreign erythrocytes. Animals previously inoculated with 108 yeast cells of H. capsulatum showed the most significant depression, occurring when erythrocytes were injected 8 days after infection. The average log2 hemagglutinin titer was 2.7 compared to 8.0 for the control (noninfected) group. In general, depression of hemagglutinin response in all infected mice was greatest 8 days after infection, but response was back to near normal after 16 days and stayed at that level for the remaining time tested (24 days).


Background: In a combat setting, uncontrolled junctional hemorrhage, which occur at the junction of the torso and appendages, constitutes a major source of potentially preventable deaths. A reliable gunshot swine model of junctional femoral artery rupture was established under ultrasonic guidance to accurately simulate field rescue conditions. Methods: Picco monitoring was instrumented for the anesthetized Landrace pigs, and the right femoral artery was located by portable ultrasound. The pistol bullet hit the right femoral artery along the direction of ultrasonic probe, resulting in the artery rupture. After 30 seconds of uncontrolled hemorrhage, ballistic was filled with Combat Gauze to stop bleeding in BT group (n=10). Combat Gauze (QuikClot) was used to stop bleeding when the mean arterial pressure (MAP) decreased by 30% in MD group (n=10). The sham-operated pigs (n=10) underwent the same anesthetic and surgical procedures, but neither shooting nor gauze filling therapy were performed. No liquid treatment was performed in the three groups throughout the experiment. Blood samples were taken 15 min before injury, then 10 min, 30 min, and 60 min after injury to determine hemodynamic, coagulation, and arterial blood gas indexes. Animals were then monitored for 180 minutes and surviving animals were killed. Results: Histologic anatomy indicated that the right femoral artery and vein were completely ruptured in all 20 swine of MD and BT groups. Eighteen pigs had associated proximal femur fractures and the other two had associated midshaft femur fractures. The entrance diameters of wound were 11.4 mm (SD=0.4), and the exits diameters were 26.4 mm (SD=5.8). The blood loss of pre-tamponade (4.97±2.47 mL/kg vs 18.26±3.47 mL/kg, P<0.001), pro-tamponade (4.58±1.49 mL/kg vs 7.20±1.99 mL/kg, P=0.004) and the total amount of bleeding (9.54±3.80 mL/kg vs 25.46±3.68 mL/kg, P<0.001) in MD group were more than those in BT group. There was statistic difference in the PT, PH, LAC of three groups (P=0.005, 0.004, and<0.001, respectively) and in the body temperature, PH, LAC of different time points (all P<0.001). There were differences in body temperature, PH, PT, LAC of MD group compared with BT and SHAM groups 60 minutes after injury (all P<0.0167). The survival time of MD group was shorter than that of BT group (P=0.029). Conclusion: We established a reliable gunshot model of junctional hemorrhage in swine, which had high accuracy for femoral arterial rupture under ultrasonic guidance and provided consistent and reproducible field-simulation conditions. In this junctional hemorrhage model, blood loss of 30 seconds free bleeding did not meet criteria for shock, and MAP decreased by 30% is a better choice to ensure the success of the shock model.Trial registration: Authorized by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee in China (grant no. SC2019-06-013).


A visible-light-induced copper-catalyzed intermolecular hydroamination of alkenes using commercially accessible primary and secondary amines has been established. This effective method exhibits good tolerance of a broad range of functional groups and provides a facile access to an array of valuable amines with Markovnikov regioselectivity. The process can be positively expected to be used in bioactive amines, and it may provide new potential in the discovery of copper-catalyzed hydrofunctionalization reactions.


Abstract This paper contributes to the debate on entrepreneurial parties with the empirical example of the Czech ANO party. The authors focus on selected aspects of the internal organisation and functioning of the party, emphasising the points where business methods and practices are transferred to the environment of party politics. The empirical part shows how the leader has built loyalty inside the party, and analyses its methods of control and coercion that are similar to the human resources recruitment techniques used in businesses. The authors investigate such matters as the vetting of candidates for public offices, the significant barriers created against those wishing to join the party and the party leadership's strict control over membership. The article also describes the development of ANO's electoral-professional services and the creation of mass media support. In conclusion, the authors discuss the broader future for the internal workings of entrepreneurial parties – including their lack of intra-party democracy – and their relationship with the changing landscape of contemporary party politics.


Sleep structure was measured in five healthy elderly men in their homes. The subjects were exposed to bright light (6000 lx) for 30 min in the morning or instructed to sit in front of a desktop lighting device without light. Relative to the control conditions, bright light exposure significantly decreased time in bed and the number of awakenings. Rapid eye movement sleep was significantly fragmented by stage 1 sleep in the control condition compared with the bright light condition. These findings indicate that a short duration of morning bright light changes sleep structure and is effective in maintaining sleep.


1Department of Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Science, Debre Tabor University, Debre Tabor, Ethiopia; 2Department of Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Science, Wollo University, Dessie, Ethiopia Background: Catastrophic health expenditure is health spending that is not covered by a health-care plan. These costs tend to escalate over time, due to chronic illnesses. Catastrophic health expenditure leads to decreased use of health services and poorer treatment outcomes. This study measured the extent of and factors associated with catastrophic health expenditure among chronically ill patients attending Dessie Referral Hospital in northeast Ethiopia. Methods: An institution-based cross-sectional study design was used to quantify catastrophic health expenditure among 302 chronically ill patients from May 25, 2018 to June 30, 2018. A stratified sampling technique was used to select the study participants. Descriptive and inferential statistics were computed using SPSS 20. Results: Catastrophic health expenditure was found in 194 (64.2%, 95% CI 58.8%–70.5%) of chronic patients. Costly service (151, 50%), transport (104, 34.4%), and pharmaceuticals (189, 62.6%) were the reasons for catastrophic health expenditure among chronic patients. Factors associated with catastrophic health expenditure were age <30 years (AOR 7.74, CI 0.94–63.62; P=0.01), patient monthly income <Br1,068 (AOR 203.47, CI 34.72–41.70; P=0), being single (, AOR 0.2, CI 0.02–1.4; P=0.04), familymonthly income <Br1,068 (AOR 0.02, CI 0–0.47; P=0), laboratory examinations (, AOR 1.54, CI 0.23–10.41; P=0.04), and transport, food, and lodging (AOR 0.05, CI 0.00–0.52; P=0.01). Conclusion: Two-thirds of chronic patients had catastrophic health expenditure. Starting and strengthening various health-insurance schemes will make chronic-care services more accessible and affordable.


The statistics of fracture precursors in the creep-damage process are studied on the basis of a proposed dry, non-linear viscoelastic fiber bundle model. This model permits the occurrence of damage avalanches consisting of simultaneous rupture of several fibers. The avalanche size distribution for the global-load sharing rule follows a power law asymptotic behavior analogous to that of static fracture (Kloster M. et al., Phys. Rev. E, 56 (1997) 2615). The statistical behavior of the same distribution, however, for the local-load sharing rule is different from that of the static fracture. Moreover, power law asymptotics apply to times between successive bursts with a universal exponent close to unity —an exponent close to that observed in fracturing processses occuring at vastly different time and space scales.


Diagnosis of primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) early stages of the pathological process remains a difficult task, even for experienced ophthalmologists. This work is devoted to the study of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) in lacrimal fluid of patients with POAG as a biomarker of this disease. Revealed a significantly higher concentration of MMP-9 in a lacrimal fluid in patients with glaucoma, at the initial stage of the pathological process. Dependence between levels of MMP-9 and stages of the pathological process has been established.


Etiology and pathogenesis of sarcopenia, the progressive decline in skeletal muscle mass and strength that occurs with aging, are still poorly understood. We recently found that overexpression of the neural serine protease neurotrypsin in motoneurons resulted in the degeneration of their neuromuscular junctions (NMJ) within days. Therefore, we wondered whether neurotrypsin‐dependent NMJ degeneration also affected the structure and function of the skeletal muscles. Using histological and functional analyses of neurotrypsin‐overexpressing and neurotrypsin‐deficient mice, we found that overexpression of neurotrypsin in motoneurons installed the full sarcopenia phenotype in young adult mice. Characteristic muscular alterations included a reduced number of muscle fibers, increased heterogeneity of fiber thickness, more centralized nuclei, fiber‐type grouping, and an increased proportion of type I fibers. As in age‐dependent sarcopenia, excessive fragmentation of the NMJ accompanied the muscular alterations. These results suggested the destabilization of the NMJ through proteolytic cleavage of agrin at the onset of a pathogenic pathway ending in sarcopenia. Studies of neurotrypsin‐deficient and agrin‐overexpressing mice revealed that old‐age sarcopenia also develops without neurotrypsin and is not prevented by elevated levels of agrin. Our results define neurotrypsin‐ and age‐dependent sarcopenia as the common final outcome of 2 etiologically distinct entities.—Bütikofer, L., Zurlinden, A., Bolliger, M. F., Kunz, B., Sonderegger, P. Destabilization of the neuromuscular junction by proteolytic cleavage of agrin results in precocious sarcopenia. FASEB J. 25, 4378–4393 (2011). www.fasebj.org


A combined contact device, consisting of a cap plates and blocks regular mesh heads, the technique of calculations of columns based on it.


The ability to predict retrieval performance has potential applications in many important IR (Information Retrieval) areas. In this thesis, we study the problem of predicting retrieval quality at the granularity of both the retrieved document set as a whole and individual retrieved documents. At the level of ranked lists of documents, we propose several novel prediction models that capture different aspects of the retrieval process that have a major impact on retrieval effectiveness. These techniques make performance prediction both effective and efficient in various retrieval settings including a Web search environment. As an application, we also provide a framework to address the problem of query expansion prediction. At the level of documents, we predict the quality of documents in the context of Web ad-hoc retrieval. We explore document features that are predictive of quality. Furthermore, we propose a document quality language model to improve retrieval effectiveness by incorporating quality information.


Research advances in the distributed computing have led to grid computing, which unlike many other areas of distributed computing focuses on large‐scale resource sharing and discovery for better performance. Traditionally, grid computing has been performed in a client/server format. However, recent advances in the area of peer‐to‐peer computing have brought a paradigm shift in the field of distributed systems and have forced researchers in the area of grid computing to discuss peer‐to‐peer grids. In this article, we will review the work done in the area of grid computing and discuss peer‐to‐peer grids with a focus on a framework that provides incentive to the participating resources in a peer‐to‐peer grid environment. The framework provides the basis for defining a utility function that is used by participating nodes to efficiently allocate the resources that are available in a system. We finish by mentioning the evolving area of cloud computing. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


IMPORTANCE
Schnabel cavernous degeneration (SCD) has been observed in eyes with uveal melanoma (UM), but, to our knowledge, a definitive study establishing the association between SCD and UM has not been conducted.

OBJECTIVE
To explore an association between SCD and UM.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
A historical cohort analysis was performed using histologic slides and related clinical records of cases from the Collaborative Ocular Melanoma Study and Eye Pathology Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, including 1985 UM eyes, 517 eye bank eyes, and 155 enucleated glaucomatous eyes.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
The prevalence of SCD was calculated and compared between each group; subgroup analysis was also conducted of eyes with and without SCD for the prevalence of glaucoma.

RESULTS
Schnabel cavernous degeneration was seen in 17 (0.9%) UM eyes, 9 (1.7%) eye bank eyes, and 2 (1.3%) enucleated glaucomatous eyes. No difference was detected between the prevalence of SCD in UM eyes and eye bank eyes (odds ratio [OR], 0.49; 95% CI, 0.22-1.10) or enucleated glaucomatous eyes (OR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.15-2.89). Subgroup analysis, performed on 421 UM eyes, provided sufficient clinical information to definitively establish the presence or absence of glaucoma. Of the 95 (22.6%) eyes with glaucoma, 11 (11.6%) revealed histopathologic evidence of SCD. Compared with enucleated end-stage glaucoma eyes, this represents a 10-fold increase in SCD in UM eyes with glaucoma (OR, 10.10; 95% CI, 2.17-46.26). The prevalence of glaucoma in UM eyes with SCD, however, was respectively 7- and 15-fold higher than the prevalence of glaucoma in SCD-negative UM eyes (OR, 6.98; 95% CI, 2.51-19.43) and SCD-positive eye bank eyes (OR, 14.67; 95% CI, 1.46-146.97).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Although an association between SCD and UM was not confirmed, subgroup analysis did reveal an increased incidence of SCD in eyes with both UM and glaucoma. This suggests that the occurrence of glaucoma may increase the risk of SCD in eyes with UM.


Cognitive radio (CR) is one of the most prominent technique to deal with the radio spectrum scarcity problem. CR systems can improve radio spectrum utilization by opportunistically accessing the underutilized spectrum resource of the licensed users. In interweave implementation, the secondary user (SU) has to wait and locate spectrum holes before its transmission. Therefore, the extended delivery time (EDT) for the secondary user consist of both wait slots and transmission slots. We study the EDT analysis of fixed size secondary packet transmission over multiple primary channel. In particular, we introduce a birth-death based approach to model the cognitive transmission of the secondary user over multiple primary channels. We use this approach to derive the exact probability density function and probability mass function of EDT of the secondary transmission for both continuous and periodic sensing cases. We also present selected numerical and simulation results to verify our analytical approach and to illustrate the mathematical formulation.


The accompanying modified mid-esophageal four-chamber transesophageal echocardiography image shows two coronary sinuses emptying into the right atrium where normally there is one. As shown in panel A, both sinuses run parallel in the AV groove inferior to the left atrium (Supplemental Digital Content, https://links.lww.com/ALN/C43). This rare anomaly, referred to as "double-barrel coronary sinus," was discovered during a coronary artery bypass graft procedure in which retrograde cardioplegia was planned. Doublebarrel coronary sinus arises when the great cardiac vein fails to combine with the left horn of the sinus venosus during the 10th week of development, and is described in full elsewhere. Despite the obvious perils of cannulating the "false" sinus, criteria for determining the "true" coronary sinus by transesophageal echocardiography have not yet been published. Panel B shows both sinuses en face from the right atrium, with the cephalad sinus (red arrow) appearing slit-like, as described previously. The caudad sinus (green arrow) appeared larger in diameter, and its color Doppler flow was greater. Because the "true" coronary sinus should drain a larger myocardial territory and thus have the larger caliber and flow, the retrograde cardioplegia catheter was guided into the caudad sinus with good result. In cases of double-barrel coronary sinus, the authors suggest larger vessel caliber (preferably assessed by three-dimensional imaging in an en face view) and greater Doppler flow to be important determinants of the "true" sinus.


Purpose
This article intends to present and discuss two promising business models for deploying international patient summary standards in mobile health (mHealth) apps, enhancing the value brought by standards, in particular by HL7 (Health Level Seven International) FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) IPS (International Patient Summary). More specifically, it will explain how these standards may be understood as the strategic and financial incentives for organisations – and nations – to adopt the IPS.
Approach
A thorough analysis of concepts will be followed by the presentation of a business canvas for mHealth applications, that aggregates basic information on a common framework for the adoption of IPS standards.
Findings
To better understand this framework, two illustrative use cases (Disaster management and MOCHA - Models of Child Health Appraised/Vaccination) are presented and the benefits of IPS standard adoption in these situations are specifically highlighted as they may translate better quality care and well-being and, at the same time, represent reduction of costs on health-related expenditure.
Originality
This article is a summary of work developed specifically as part of the Trillium II project, primarily by collaboration by the organisations represented by the authors. Logically, it uses concepts previously developed, and referenced in the text as appropriate, however the authors maintain that the business models presented represent an original synthesis of these concepts specifically appropriate to the task of encouraging widespread adoption of the HL7 FHIR IPS.


Identification of individuals at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes is a prerequisite for prevention of the disease. We therefore studied risk factors predicting type 2 diabetes in the Botnia Study in Western Finland. A total of 2,115 nondiabetic individuals were prospectively followed with repeated oral glucose tolerance tests. After a median follow-up of 6 years, 127 (6%) subjects developed diabetes. A family history of diabetes (hazard ratio [HR] 2.2, P = 0.008), BMI (HR for comparison of values below or above the median 2.1, P < 0.001), waist-to-height index (2.3, P < 0.001), insulin resistance (2.1, P = 0.0004), and beta-cell function adjusted for insulin resistance (2.7, P < 0.0001) predicted diabetes. Marked deterioration in beta-cell function with modest changes in insulin sensitivity was observed during the transition to diabetes. The combination of FPG > or =5.6 mmol/l, BMI > or =30 kg/m(2), and family history of diabetes was a strong predictor of diabetes (3.7, P < 0.0001). Of note, using FPG > or =6.1 mmol/l or 2-h glucose > or =7.8 mmol/l did not significantly improve prediction of type 2 diabetes. In conclusion, a marked deterioration in beta-cell function precedes the onset of type 2 diabetes. These individuals can be identified early by knowledge of FPG, BMI, and family history of diabetes.


The simplest way to understand decentralisation is bringing the government closer to its people. From the economic view, the implementation of decentralisation will improve  in economic efficiency, service delivery, and accountability. In Indonesia, decentralisation has developed in form of political, fiscal, and administrative decentralisation. In fiscal decentralisation, the country applies the money follows function principle as a means to give fiscal balance between central and sub-national governments. Therefore,SNG's are granted with local-own sources and intergovernmental fiscal transfers to finance the assigned functions. The main objective for fiscal decentralisation is to increase welfare at the local level. To what extent that this occur in Province East Kalimantan? The fact that the Province has a substantial revenue from natural resources which makes its GRDP increased. Theoretically, an increase in GRDP will affect on the increase number of employment and on the reduction of the poor. However, what has happened in East Kalimantan is on the reverse side. Increase in GRDP does not necessarily reveal that the people, particularly the poor, would be better-off. This paper tries to analyse the case and provides with possible solution. Keywords : Desentralisasi Fiskal, Dana Perimbangan, Dana Bagi Hasil Sumber Daya Alam


There are many assignment processes in which agents are given the opportunity to unilaterally select a match. Resulting allocations can be inefficient if agents do not internalize the consequences of their choice on others. To test this formally, we study how other-regarding behavior vary across two decision contexts: when subjects make a pure allocation decision; and when they select a partner. In both settings each subject's decision is final and it affects their payoff and that of other subjects in the same way. We find that that subjects are more likely to sacrifice their own material well-being to increase that of others when dividing a pie than when selecting a partner in a large anonymous setting — even though the consequences on the material payoffs of others are identical. These findings suggest that, in assignment processes with unilateral selection, efficiency can be improved by presenting the selection process as a choice between outcomes involving multiple individuals, instead of simply selecting a match for themselves.


Abstract The target site of action of probiotics is the intestine. They must be surviving the stomach acidic condition before reaching the target site. Three probiotic bacteria were microencapsulated in sodium alginate beads using a sophisticated microencapsulation technology provided by BÜCHI B-390. This study reports the tolerance of the different microencapsulated Lactobacillus at low pH using simulated gastric juice, comparing it with the tolerance of free bacteria. The three microencapsulated strains displayed time-dependent acid sensitivity at pH values under 3.0. At pH 2.0, a dramatic reduction in bacterial survival occurred after 5 min, with only L. casei surviving after 30 min, with 75% survival. At pH 2.5 microencapsulated L. casei survived for 90 , L. reuteri survived for 60 and L. bulgaricus survived for only 30 min, respectively. The microencapsulation technology used in this study may effectively protect Lactobacillus from gastric conditions and permit comparisons between strains.


Background. A regimen of fluid restriction, phlebotomy, vasopressors, and strict, protocol-guided product replacement has been associated with low blood product use during orthotopic liver transplantation. However, the physiologic basis of this strategy remains unclear. We hypothesized that a reduction of intravascular volume by phlebotomy would cause a decrease in portal venous pressure (PVP), which would be sustained during subsequent phenylephrine infusion, possibly explaining reduced bleeding. Because phenylephrine may increase central venous pressure (CVP), we questioned the validity of CVP as a correlate of cardiac filling in this context and compared it with other pulmonary artery catheter and transesophageal echocardiography-derived parameters. In particular, because optimal views for echocardiographic estimation of preload and stroke volume are not always applicable during liver transplantation, we evaluated the use of transmitral flow (TMF) early peak (E) velocity as a surrogate. Methods. In study 1, the changes in directly measured PVP and CVP were recorded before and after phlebotomy and phenylephrine infusion in 10 patients near the end of the dissection phase of liver transplantation. In study 2, transesophageal echocardiography-derived TMF velocity in early diastole was measured in 20 patients, and the changes were compared with changes in CVP, pulmonary artery pressure (PAP), pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP), cardiac output (CO), and calculated systemic vascular resistance (SVR) at the following times: postinduction, postphlebotomy, preclamping of the inferior vena cava, during clamping, and postunclamping. Results. Phlebotomy decreased PVP along with CO, PAP, PCWP, CVP, and TMF E velocity. Phenylephrine given after phlebotomy increased CVP, SVR, and arterial blood pressure but had no significant effect on CO, PAP, PCWP, or PVP. The change in TMF E velocity correlated well with the change in CO (Pearson correlation coefficient 95% confidence interval 0.738–0.917, P≤0.015) but less well with the change in PAP (0.554–0.762, P≤0.012) and PCWP (0.576–0.692, P≤0.008). TMF E velocity did not correlate significantly with CVP or calculated SVR. Conclusion. Phlebotomy during the dissection phase of liver transplantation decreased PVP, which was unaffected when phenylephrine infusion was used to restore systemic arterial pressure. This may contribute to a decrease in operative blood loss. CVP often increased in response to phenylephrine infusion and did not seem to reflect cardiac filling. The changes in TMF E velocity correlated well with the changes in CO, PAP, and PCWP during liver transplantation but not with the changes in CVP.


Mesoporous TiO2 of 20nm diameter is prepared in-tandem with organic dyes and based on Fluorine –
doped SnO2 (FTO), conducting base is produced by hydrothermal process. The prepared mesoporous Cola Acuminata
(C.acuminata), Lupinus Arboreus (L.arboreus) and Bougainvillea Spectabilis (B.spectabilis) films (0.16 cm2) are
applied; individually and in combination as interfacial layer in-between nanocrystalline TiO2 (NC- TiO2) and the FTO
anode in the dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). Absorbance index (A.I) of all three dyes was studied within wavelength
range 200-900 nm for a period of 11 months, equivalent to 352 sun exposure. C.acuminata had A.I value 4.00 that
decreased to 2.32 under exposure to AM1.5 global conditions. B.spectabilis A.I was 1.19 but decreased to 0.520 within
same period of study. Combination of C.acuminata and B.spectabilis gave A.I value 1.40, dye cocktails of
C.acuminata, B.spectabilis and L.arboreus gave 2.00 A.I value for same wavelength range. A UV/Vis photo
spectrometer was used to determine the prominent peaks and absorbance at such wavelengths. This exponential
relationship is subject of our explorative study


Models
for
dynamic
simulation
of
a
parabolic
trough
concentrating
solar
power
plant
were
developed
in
Modelica
for
the
simulation
software
Dymola.
The
parabolic
trough
power
plant
has
a
two-‐tank
indirect
thermal
storage
with
solar
salt
for
the
ability
to
dispatch
electric
power
later
in
the
evening
and
during
the
night
when
little
or
no
solar
irradiation
is
present.
The
complete
system
consists
of
models
for
incoming
solar
irradiation,
a
parabolic
trough
collector
field,
thermal
storage
and
a
simplified
Rankine
cycle.
A
parabolic
trough
power
plant
named
Andasol
located
in
Aldeire
y
La
Calahorra,
Spain,
is
chosen
as
a
reference
system
when
the
complete
system
model
is
designed
and
built
in
Dymola.
The
system
model
is
later
validated
against
performance
numbers
from
this
reference
system
in
order
to
make
sure
a
correct
implementation
has
been
made.
The
collector
and
solar
model
have
also
been
validated
against
different
papers
regarding
solar
collector
performance
and
show
good
results.
Finally
the
system
in
Dymola
has
been
simulated
during
a
day
for
different
parts
of
the
year
with
solar
data
from
the
same
region
as
the
Andasol
power
plant.
The
results
from
these
simulations
show
similarities
to
how
the
Andasol
power
plant
operates
and
how
well
the
system
performs
under
different
solar
irradiance
conditions.
By
modeling
the
system
dynamically
the
changes
in
insolation
over
time
can
be
studied
to
gain
information
about
how
it
affects
the
system
model
in
detail.
Plant
startup
time
and
how
long
the
system
can
be
running
on
the
thermal
storage
is
other
parameters
that
could
be
studied
with
this
dynamic
model.


Freshwater inputs strongly influence oceanographic conditions in coastal systems of northwestern Patagonia (41–45°S). Nevertheless, the influence of freshwater on these systems has weakened in recent decades due to a marked decrease in precipitation. Here we evaluate potential influences of climate and land cover trends on the Puelo River (640 m3s–1), the main source of freshwater input of the Reloncaví Fjord (41.5°S). Water quality was analyzed along the Puelo River basin (six sampling points) and at the discharge site in the Reloncaví Fjord (1, 8, and 25 m depth), through six field campaigns carried out under contrasting streamflow scenarios. We also used several indicators of hydrological alteration, and cross-wavelet transform and coherence analyses to evaluate the association between the Puelo River streamflow and precipitation (1950–2019). Lastly, using the WEAP hydrological model, land cover maps (2001–2016) and burned area reconstructions (1985–2019), we simulated future land cover impacts (2030) on the hydrological processes of the Puelo River. Total Nitrogen and total phosphorus, dissolved carbon, and dissolved iron concentrations measured in the river were 3–15 times lower than those in the fjord. Multivariate analyses showed that streamflow drives the carbon composition in the river. High streamflow conditions contribute with humic and colored materials, while low streamflow conditions corresponded to higher arrival of protein-like materials from the basin. The Puelo River streamflow showed significant trends in magnitude (lower streamflow in summer and autumn), duration (minimum annual streamflow), timing (more floods in spring), and frequency (fewer prolonged floods). The land cover change (LCC) analysis indicated that more than 90% of the basin area maintained its land cover, and that the main changes were attributed to recent large wildfires. Considering these land cover trends, the hydrological simulations project a slight increase in the Puelo River streamflow mainly due to a decrease in evapotranspiration. According to previous simulations, these projections present a direction opposite to the trends forced by climate change. The combined effect of reduction in freshwater input to fiords and potential decline in water quality highlights the need for more robust data and robust analysis of the influence of climate and LCC on this river-fjord complex of northwestern Patagonia.


Biological characteristics of dwarf peach rootstocks refer to the effect of increasing compatibility (scion, rootstock) productivity, longevity, resistance to disease and pests, uniformity individuals. Considering that fruit production is influenced by association scion rootstock and varieties should be chosen depending on the conditions rootstock of the plantation will be established prerequisites for obtaining optimal plantations. Modern research focused on obtaining rootstocks with small height allows the intensive plantations of peach. Dwarf rootstocks are one of the easiest and cheapest ways to obtain fruit trees with small and medium size. The vigour rootstock is of major importance in the implementation of rootstocks production. Influence of the rootstock scion manifests phenotypic characters influence the physiological variety grafted on rootstock remains as long as the association survives (size, precocity, and productivity, resistance to ground and climatic factors, longevity fruit trees). Goals the dwarf rootstocks in the programmed type of research include the following: vegetative propagation of rootstocks; propagation through modern methods; good compatibility between scion and the rootstocks; good production; plasticity and longevity in conditions of minimum soil tillage.


Storyline Approach is a methodological concept originally developed to enhance general education in mother tongue. It is a concept concerning holistic, integrated and topic based education. That is why the assets of this approach considerably increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning foreign languages, especially in case of integrating the process of teaching a language with other subjects. The aim of the article is to prove the efficiency and attractiveness of the Storyline Approach in the context of integrated teaching. In the first part the author presents arguments for the necessity of integrated education, including language learning and teaching. Next, she outlines the working principles of the Storyline Approach . The further step is a reflection regarding the advantages of applying the Storyline Approach in the process of foreign language learning and teaching. The last part of the article is a presentation of some elements of the storyline module, combining foreign language and general education. The module has been developed for teaching German as a foreign language within the Creative Dialogues Project of Socrates Comenius 2.1. The author of the article is a member of a partnership group working on this project. The main subject of the module is "Schlosshotel" (castle hotel).


This paper presents the use of proposed Intelligent Multi-Agent System (MAS) for Power Grid Communication. The MAS technology enhances the data communication system in the power grid by using artificial intelligence decision making platform. The entire system was developed using Java with the extension of JADE which is an IEEE FIPA compliant multi-agent system platform. This decentralised platform allows agents to interact and communicate using energy sources from different sectors and control them intelligently. Simulation studies that were carried out on the proposed system to show its potential for providing solutions for the existing power grid communication system.


Significance The importance of molecular understanding of the structure, dynamics. and properties of liquid water is recognized in many scientific disciplines. Here, we study experimentally the structure and thermodynamics of bulk liquid water as it is supercooled by evaporation down to ∼228 K. The unique aspect of this work is the use of ultrafast calorimetry that enables us to determine the specific-heat capacity of water to unprecedentedly low temperatures. The observed maximum of about 218 J/mol/K at 229 K is consistent with the liquid–liquid critical point model and supports a proposed fragile-to-strong transition at ∼220 K to explain the steep decrease in the estimated self-diffusion coefficient below 235 K. Knowledge of the temperature dependence of the isobaric specific heat (Cp) upon deep supercooling can give insights regarding the anomalous properties of water. If a maximum in Cp exists at a specific temperature, as in the isothermal compressibility, it would further validate the liquid–liquid critical point model that can explain the anomalous increase in thermodynamic response functions. The challenge is that the relevant temperature range falls in the region where ice crystallization becomes rapid, which has previously excluded experiments. Here, we have utilized a methodology of ultrafast calorimetry by determining the temperature jump from femtosecond X-ray pulses after heating with an infrared laser pulse and with a sufficiently long time delay between the pulses to allow measurements at constant pressure. Evaporative cooling of ∼15-µm diameter droplets in vacuum enabled us to reach a temperature down to ∼228 K with a small fraction of the droplets remaining unfrozen. We observed a sharp increase in Cp, from 88 J/mol/K at 244 K to about 218 J/mol/K at 229 K where a maximum is seen. The Cp maximum is at a similar temperature as the maxima of the isothermal compressibility and correlation length. From the Cp measurement, we estimated the excess entropy and self-diffusion coefficient of water and these properties decrease rapidly below 235 K.


Marine molluscs are seafood consumed worldwide and could cause food allergies, while investigation on their sensitizing components and cross-reactivity seems to be rare. Furthermore, allergy to mites may result in anaphylaxis in mollusc-allergic individuals owing to their cross-reactivity. The aim of the study was to identify cross-reactive allergens and investigate the cross-reactivity between different mollusc groups and mite-mollusc. The extracted mollusc and dust mite proteins were separated by SDS-PAGE, and IgE-binding components were recognized by immunoblotting with sera from patients sensitized to mollusc and mite. Cross-reactivity of different mollusc groups and mite-mollusc was assessed using ELISA and inhibition ELISA. The results of the immune detection, ELISA, and inhibition ELISA indicated that different mollusc groups and mite-mollusc showed varying degrees of cross-reactivity. The most frequently recognized cross-reactive protein was paramyosin from different mollusc groups and dust mite, while cross-reactive allergen paramyosin in the mite extract was identified and evaluated by MS and Allermatch, respectively. Inhibition ELISA studies also revealed that paramyosin played an important role in molluscan and mite-molluscan cross-reactivity. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the cross-reactivity involving mollusc species and mite-mollusc, which can be used to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of mite- and mollusc-allergic disorders.


A 75-year-old diabetic and hypertensive haemodialysis patient was referred to our clinic in 2006. He suffered from severe atherosclerosis, including coronary artery disease (myocardial infarction 1982, 1984 and 1998, coronary artery bypass graft 1998) and peripheral artery disease leading to several peripheral amputations. Renal replacement therapy was started in 2003. Because of his difficult vascular situation, dialysis was performed over the last 3 years via various tunnelled central vein catheters. The catheters were changed at least twice because of infections and S. aureusbacteraemia (April 2005 and February 2006). On admission, he was dialysed using a tunnelled subclavian catheter. In 2004, a femoro-popliteal bypass was performed on the left leg; subsequently an abscess developed in the left groin and amputation of the left thigh was performed 2 months later. The left groin remained chronically infected until surgical revision in 2005. One month before the current admission, the patient was admitted to a peripheral hospital because of right-sided thoracic pain. After excluding an acute myocardial infarction, a CT scan was performed and an aortic dissection of the descending aorta was suspected with a thrombus adherent to the aortic wall. In addition, a pulmonary embolus was seen in segments 1 and 2 of the left lung. Initially, the patient was admitted to cardiac surgery. Another CT scan showed an ulcer of the descending aorta. An endoluminal aortic stent (Evita 70 ST 3330 F15-00) was placed without complications and the patient was transferred to the nephrology division. The patient complained of back pain radiating to the right hemi-thorax and reported that the pain had been present for weeks. The thoracic part of the vertebral column was painful on exertion and when tapped. The lung and abdomen were normal on physical examination; there was no dyspnoe or fever. Blood tests revealed anaemia (haemoglobin 9.4 g/dl) and an elevated CRP (6.78mg/dl, normal <0.5mg/dl). Chest X-ray demonstrated pulmonary infiltration of the right middle lobe. A thoracic CT scan confirmed a pulmonary embolus of the left segments 1 and 2, a 45mm aortic aneurysm, an intact aortic stent without leakage but atypical thickening of the para-aortic tissue. An X-ray of the vertebral column showed degenerative changes and osteoporosis, no fractures.


This study assessed some heavy metals in twenty one wheat products originating from Nigeria and six other countries sold in local markets in Ijebu-Ode, Ibadan and Lagos cities in Nigeria and their possible health risks were also evaluated. Wheat-based food samples were digested and analyzed using Microwave Plasma coupled Atomic Emission Spectrometry (MP-AES) technique. The heavy metal contents in local and foreign wheat products ranged as follows: As (0.014-0.033 mg.kg-1), Cd (0.067-0.330 mg.kg-1), Ni (-0.002-0.104 mg.kg-1) and Pb (0.166-0.655 mg.kg-1). The mean contents of Cd and Pb exceeded the acceptable thresholds set by FAO/WHO while those of As and Ni were below permissible limits recommended by FAO/WHO. The health hazard indices for the four heavy metals, reported as follows: Ni (0.005), As (0.201), Pb (0.211), and Cd (0.490), fall within the low hazard range except for Ni whose hazard index could be regarded as negligible. The health hazard risk, which may be posed by each metal, occurred in a sequence of HQ (Ni) < HQ (As) < HQ (Cd) < HQ (Pb) <1, with each occurring within the safe limit set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The combined non-carcinogenic risk of the four heavy metals (ΣHQ = 0.906) occurred at the low-risk index. The carcinogenic risk index was below 1x 10-4 threshold recommended by USEPA, which indicates that the combined concentrations of the four metals possess a weak potential to modulate lifelong carcinogenic ailments for consumers of such wheat products.


OBJECTIVES
To design and test the performance of a new knee pain screening tool (KNEST), both separately and together with a combination of existing questionnaires, which will be used to assess the general health status of knee pain sufferers in primary care.

METHODS
A postal survey of knee pain and disability was sent to a random sample of 240 individuals aged over 55 yr registered with two general practices in North STAFFORDSHIRE: The survey questionnaire consisted of the KNEST; a pain manikin; the Short Form 36 (SF-36); the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS); demographic questions; and the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) for those who reported knee pain. A second, identical questionnaire was sent 2 weeks later to a random subsample of responders (n=80) to test repeatability.

RESULTS
An 85% baseline response rate was achieved for the first questionnaire. The 12-month prevalence of knee pain identified from baseline responders to the survey was 45%. A response rate of 74% was achieved for the repeatability questionnaire. Each section of the questionnaire was well completed and repeatability was good for nearly all measures (most reliability scores exceeded 0.6). A new core question about knee pain showed good internal reliability, with an agreement score of 91% between baseline and retest assessment, and good construct validity in relation to knee pain identified on the pain manikin (agreement 95%). Good agreement was found between recalled consultation for knee pain in the questionnaire and evidence of consultation for knee pain in general practice records.

CONCLUSIONS
The KNEST appears to be a reliable and valid composite tool for the study of population needs and outcomes of care for people aged over 55 yr with knee pain.


Spatial environmental processes often exhibit dependence in their large values. In order to model such processes their dependence properties must be characterized and quantified. In this paper we introduce a measure that evaluates the dependence among extreme observations located in two separated regions of locations of R^2. We compute the range of this new dependence measure, which extends the existing {\lambda}-madogram concept, and compare it with extremal coefficients, finding generalizations of the known relations in pairwise approach. Estimators for this measure are introduced and asymptotic normality and strong consistency are shown. An application to the annual maxima precipitation in Portuguese regions is presented.


The finite-element method is applicable to infinite domains if the outermost 'finite' elements are infinite and their base functions satisfy the boundary conditions at infinity. Appropriate infinite elements fitted to triangular or quadratic finite-element net and corresponding base functions satisfying Sommerfield's radiation condition of electromagnetic waves are introduced. The application of the defined infinite elements is illustrated for the problem of the radiation of a coaxial cable to a half-space. The results are in very good agreement with those found in the literature. >


Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are derived from the inner cell mass (ICM) of blastocyst and differentiate into all three embryonic germ layers: ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm. In this study, ESCs are derived from Hand Made Cloning (HMG) blastocysts and their efficiencies compared to ESCs derived from In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) embryos. Feeder layer was used for ESCs culture, and culture medium consisting of Knockout- Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium (Ko-DMEM) supplemented with Knockout Serum Replacement (KSR), Leukemia Inhibitory Factor (LIF), Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor-2 (FGF-2), L-glutamine, nonessential amino acids and gentamicin. The cell surface antigens used for characterization were the SSEA-1, SSEA-4, TRA-1-60 and TRA-1-81 and the pluripotency markers were NANOG, OCT3/4 and SOX2. Results showed that, the growth rate of ESCs colonies in ESCs from IVF embryos was significantly higher than ESCs from HMG embryos (120% compared with 65%, respectively). Not only real-time PCR results revealed the same expression level of SOX2, OCT3/4 and cMYC between them, but also ESCs from HMG embryos resulted to higher expression of NANOG. Both of ESCs groups maintain in pluripotency state for more than two years and differentiated to the different types of cells like neuron, epithelial, lipid and muscle cells.


In all operative procedures on the bladder or prostate gland, epididymitis is a frequent and often a troublesome complication. Particularly is this the case in dealing with patients suffering from prostatic obstruction, either of the benign or of the malignant type. It is, of course, a well known clinical fact that epididymitis may arise at any time throughout the course of prostatic obstruction; and, while it is rarely a dangerous complication, it plays an important part in increasing the length of hospitalization of the patient and usually has a markedly depressing effect on the morale. In some extremely sick patients with lowered resistance, the added effect of this infection may prove to be too much for the individual to withstand, and in such cases, fortunately rare, the fatal outcome may be directly attributed to the added burden of the epididymitis. Then, too, in the very rare case in which a


Purpose: To establish the characteristics of secondary retinal and retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) changes associated with the presence of choroidal melanoma and choroidal nevus as documented by optical coherence tomography (OCT) and fundus autofluorescence (FAF). Materials and Methods: PubMed review of major English publications examining the correlation between clinical characteristics of choroidal melanoma and nevus with OCT and FAF findings. Results: The intrinsic properties of choroidal melanoma, as well as overlying RPE changes, drusen, and lipofuscin are best characterized by FAF, while OCT is more sensitive for the identification of subretinal and intraretinal fluid as well as atrophy, degeneration, and photoreceptor loss in the neurosensory retina. Conclusions: Secondary retinal changes associated with choroidal melanocytic lesions can be documented by OCT and FAF. OCT-evident changes are observed more often with choroidal melanoma than choroidal nevus. OCT is better suited to identify the overlying retinal detachment and edema, even before these findings are clinically apparent. FAF is most useful in documenting the presence of lipofuscin, a finding that represents one of the important criteria in differentiating small choroidal melanoma from benign choroidal nevus.


Abstract Oxygen concentrations used during in vitro embryo culture can influence embryo development, cell numbers, and gene expression. Here we propose that the preimplantation bovine embryo possesses a molecular mechanism for the detection of, and response to, oxygen, mediated by a family of basic helix-loop-helix transcription factors, the hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs). Day 5 compacting bovine embryos were cultured under different oxygen tensions (2%, 7%, 20%) and the effect on the expression of oxygen-regulated genes, development, and cell number allocation and HIFα protein localization were examined. Bovine in vitro-produced embryos responded to variations in oxygen concentration by altering gene expression. GLUT1 expression was higher following 2% oxygen culture compared with 7% and 20% cultured blastocysts. HIF mRNA expression (HIF1α, HIF2α) was unaltered by oxygen concentration. HIF2α protein was predominantly localized to the nucleus of blastocysts. In contrast, HIF1α protein was undetectable at any oxygen concentration or in the presence of the HIF protein stabilizer desferrioxamine (DFO), despite being detectable in cumulus cells following normal maturation conditions, acute anoxic culture, or in the presence of DFO. Oxygen concentration also significantly altered inner cell mass cell proportions at the blastocyst stage. These results suggest that oxygen can influence gene expression in the bovine embryo during postcompaction development and that these effects may be mediated by HIF2α.


monument is of great interest and has recently been interpreted as the meeting place of the Achaean League situated in the sanctuary of Zeus Hommarios. Some final remarks. The introduction offers a detailed presentation of earlier research. An appendix with the roof-pitches of Sicilian and south Italian temples is useful, though not part of the main argument treated in the book. There are no analytical indexes. There are a few misprints: 44-the ref. to pi. XX:A should be to pi. XIX:A; 91 the plate ref. to the capital should be pi. LII, not LI; and surely the first, confusing, mention of Locri (120) should be omitted. Criticisms apart, this is a learned and authoritative book, an indispensable aid in future research in western Greek architectural terracottas. TOBIAS FISCHER-HANSEN Copenhagen Polis Centre


In central Utah, many complex structures in the transition zone between the Colorado Plateau Province and the Great Basin can be explained by salt diapirism. Flowage of rock salt (halite) in the Arapien Shale (Middle Jurassic) has forced up the enveloping mudstones, which in turn have bowed up younger consolidated strata to form elongate, linear diapiric folds, fan-shaped in cross section. Removal of salt, by extrusion, solution, or lateral flowage, has resulted in partial destruction of these folds, either by collapse along faults or by general subsidence. Field evidence suggests that these diapiric folds grew and failed repeatedly, presumably as a result of sporadic, rapid, upward movements of the salt and its subsequent removal. These surges were separated by longer pe iods of much slower upwelling of the salt. Continuous, nearly imperceptible upwelling of the salt after collapse and erosion of each fold is suggested by sedimentary thinning near the flanks of the diapiric folds. The salt has been moving probably since it was deposited; it is probably moving today. As a result of this episodic diapirism, younger daughter folds occupy the same structural zones as the older parental folds. At least three diapiric episodes are reflected in the country rocks. Although autonomous isostatic movement of the salt (halokinesis) may explain some aspects in the development of the diapiric folds, external tectonic stresses (halotectonism) seem a more reasonable explanation for the uniform distribution and the unusual length (as much as 125 km, 75 mi) and straightness of the folds. Movement along deep-seated fundamental normal faults in the pre-salt rocks provides a plausible mechanism for controlling the timing and location of the folds. End_of_Article - Last_Page 1362------------


Comparing with the CT imaging, there are a lot of speckles in the ultrasound images. When we use the probe to detect the organism, we get a set of slices which are consecutive in the centroid. In the new method proposed in this paper, every contour in a slice is designated a value that represents its size and density, then the overall "centroid" of the slice is found. For each contour, its corresponding contour on the adjacent slice is determined based on their designated value and their polar coordinate to the slice centroid. For the aim of slice registration, adjacent slices are first aligned roughly according to their centroid, furthermore, the optimal registration position nearby which minimize the efficacy function which reflects the registration suitability at a given position.


Seamounts are important marine habitats that commonly occur in deep waters, with global estimates ranging from tens of thousands to several million. Interactions between seamount topographies and surrounding currents increase local productivity at some features, supporting high abundances and biomasses of both pelagic and benthic fauna. For this reason, many seamounts host fish aggregations, including several commercially-important species. Early observations of seamount fish aggregations led to their initial targeting in the 1960s by bottom trawlers. Since then, this practice has expanded globally. In New Zealand, seamounts were initially targeted by fisheries in the late 1970s, and by the early 1990s a majority of the annual orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus) catch was obtained from several seamounts. Bottom trawling has significant impacts not only on the target fish population, but also on the non-target benthic fauna caught as bycatch, as they can be comprised of fragile, emergent, sessile animals (e.g., deep-sea corals and sponges) that are easily damaged or removed by trawling gear. However, the extent to which these communities can recover from trawling impacts is uncertain, and this information is necessary to design effective spatial management measures, particularly in New Zealand where many seamounts are located within the Exclusive Economic Zone and actively fished. Designing studies to address this knowledge gap and provide management recommendations first requires an assessment of current understanding regarding resilience of seamount benthic communities to fishing. In this thesis, such an assessment was done through a global literature review and meta-analysis of seamount benthos, fisheries, known trawling impacts, and a three-fold evaluation of community resilience (Chapter 1). This review indicated that recovery will likely be initially patchy, and information on community spatial patterns is a necessary starting point to determine recovery potential. In order to provide such baseline spatial context to subsequent studies of previously fished seamounts, the structure and distribution of benthic communities at two unfished seamounts was investigated to characterise fine-scale community structural patterns and identify environmental drivers of these patterns (Chapter 2). Megabenthic (seafloor fauna with body sizes >2 cm) fauna were identified and described from 1,233 total seafloor images collected with camera transects on both seamounts in 2015 to identify communities. The predicted spatial distributions of these communities were mapped and characteristics of the patches they were predicted to occupy were described. Habitat drivers were found to differ between the two features at different spatial scales, and these differences were reflected in the predicted spatial distributions and patch characteristics of communities characterising each seamount. Post-fishing responses of benthic communities were determined by examining fine-scale spatio-temporal changes in their structure and function over 20 years on a seamount that was intensively trawled from the early 1990s until its protection in 2001 (Chapter 3). As part of a long-term research programme, camera surveys were conducted on this seamount (and others) in 2001, 2006, 2009, 2015, and 2020. In total, 2,343 images were analysed across years to obtain megabenthic faunal counts of 148 taxa. Results showed there was a temporal shift in community structure driven by small relative changes in abundances of several taxa, indicative of early recovery. However, community function showed little sign of ongoing recovery. Juvenile colonies of a reef-forming stony coral, Solenosmilia variabilis, were observed, demonstrating that the fisheries closure may have facilitated the early recovery process of this species and its associates. Data obtained from these analyses was used to develop joint-species distribution models to predict changes in benthic faunal occurrence and abundance up to 200 years post-fisheries closure (Chapter 4). Spatial distributions of 36 aggregated megabenthic taxa were predicted for five post-closure time-steps in 2001, 2020, 2040, 2100, and 2200. Nine communities were described from the spatial predictions using cluster analysis and spatial patterns of the patches they occupied were characterised. Results of this study suggested that the fisheries closure may enable the recovery of most, but not all, taxa. Additionally, several communities on the seamount summit may undergo succession towards a reef climax community, but are unlikely to fully reverse fishing impacts even on this long timescale.Key findings from the preceding chapters were synthesised, and their implications for seamount management and future research discussed (Chapter 5). The latter includes the need for studies determining the physiology and life history traits of seamount benthic species to better predict their resilience to fishing impacts. Major contributions of this thesis study to the field of seamount ecology were also presented, including a conceptual model of seamount recovery, hypothesised changes in community patch characteristics after trawling disturbance, and a decision framework for seamount management prioritisation.


A novel method of determining the number of superhelical turns of a covalently-closed plasmid DNA is described. It relies on the determination of the hyperchromicity, and hence the proportion of unstacked basepairs, of a partially heat-denatured sample which co-migrates during electrophoresis with nicked circular duplex DNA. The values obtained for plasmid pBR beta G DNA at 4 degrees C (-29.8 and -33.5 in the two buffers used) agree closely with the values obtained in parallel by topoisomer band-counting. Our method is less precise than band-counting but is readily applicable to determining the superhelicity of very large DNA molecules. Our results confirm earlier findings that magnesium-containing buffers cause an increase in the duplex winding angle, and hence an increase in the number of negative superhelical turns.


Hydatid cyst is a tissue parasitic infection caused by tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus. Common location for hydatid cysts are the liver (65%) and the lungs (25%). Cardiac hydatid cyst is seen rarely, occurring in about 0.5-2% of all cases of hydatid disease. We present this case of 45 years female who presented with short duration of dry cough and atypical chest pain. Chest X ray showed cardiomegaly with round bulge at the right heart border and curvilinear calcification in left upper abdomen in the region of spleen. Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) depicted cystic lesion in Right Ventricle free wall causing compression of right atrial and ventricular cavity. Cardiac CT confirmed this cyst as hydatid cyst. Patient underwent successful excision of right ventricular hydatid cyst.


Companies operating in the industrial sector are increasingly outsourcing some of their operations to provider companies. Outsourcing involves external workforces and workplaces and forms new kinds of work communities with complex relationships between different performers. The new operating environment introduces safety problems, which are particularly difficult to manage for providers that commonly operate with several customers in varying worksites. This paper discusses the results of a literature review focusing on the safety management problems encountered by industrial service providers. The factors most commonly mentioned as problems for service providers in management of safety are ignoring tendering systems, divergences in customers and worksites, time pressures, poor resource available for implementation of safety measures, unclear responsibilities, dangerous work tasks, inadequate communication, and insufficiencies in hazard identification. Even though several problems have been identified, the practical means presented to improve safety by the provider companies are still exiguous.


When translating UI design prototypes to code in industry, automatically generating code from design prototypes can expedite the development of applications and GUI iterations. However, in design prototypes without strict design specifications, UI components may be composed of fragmented elements. Grouping these fragmented elements can greatly improve the readability and maintainability of the generated code. Current methods employ a two-stage strategy that introduces hand-crafted rules to group fragmented elements. Unfortunately, the performance of these methods is not satisfying due to visually overlapped and tiny UI elements. In this study, we propose EGFE, a novel method for automatically End-to-end Grouping Fragmented Elements via UI sequence prediction. To facilitate the UI understanding, we innovatively construct a Transformer encoder to model the relationship between the UI elements with multi-modal representation learning. The evaluation on a dataset of 4606 UI prototypes collected from professional UI designers shows that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines in the precision (by 29.75\%), recall (by 31.07\%), and F1-score (by 30.39\%) at edit distance threshold of 4. In addition, we conduct an empirical study to assess the improvement of the generated front-end code. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on a real software engineering application. Our end-to-end fragmented elements grouping method creates opportunities for improving UI-related software engineering tasks.


The natural and engineered hydraulic trap systems in sanitary-engineered solid waste landfills were investigated using three layer one dimensional laboratory models. The models consisted of a top reservoir containing a sodium chloride source solution, a compacted upper silt layer as a primary liner, a coarse sand layer as a secondary leachate collection system or a hydraulic control layer, a compacted lower silt layer as a secondary liner, and a bottom water reservoir as a groundwater aquifer. In the first test, the natural hydraulic trap system (upward flow through the lower silt layer) was modeled. In this case, the contaminant transport mechanisms through the upper silt layer were downward advection and diffusion, and through the lower silt layer, diffusion was downward and advection was upward. The results showed that the implementation of the natural hydraulic control system could effectively reduce chloride transport to the bottom reservoir. In the second test, the natural and engineering hydraulic trap systems were simulated (upward flow from the bottom reservoir to the upper reservoir). In the third test, the engineered hydraulic trap system (downward flow through the upper silt layer and upward flow through the lower silt layer) was modeled. The results showed that the natural and engineered hydraulic trap systems have an important effect in reducing chloride migration toward the underlying aquifer. In all experiments the chloride concentrations in the silt and coarse sand layers and top and bottom reservoirs were measured and the observed concentrations were compared with concentrations calculated by a theoretical model. A good agreement was obtained between the observed and theoretical data confirming the acceptable accuracy of the experimental methodologies, observations, and the theoretical model.


CHRISTIANSEN, N. WOODRUFF. The Relation of Supervision and Other Factors to Certain Phases of Musical Achievement in the Rural Schools of Utah. Teachers College Contributions to Education, No. 934. New York 27: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1948. Pp. 88. $2.10. DAvIs, ROBERT A. Educational Psychology. New York 19: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1948. Pp. x+350. $3.00. EDUCATIONAL POLICIES COMMISSION. Education for All American Children. Washington 6: Educational Policies Commission of the National Education Association and the American Association of School


The current study was designed to predict the influence of Perceived Quality of Home Environment and Social Intelligence on Mental Health amongst senior secondary school adolescents. For this purpose data was collected from a representative sample of 248 adolescents, age rangel6-18years (both male 124 and female l24)studying in class Xlth & Xllth taken from different schools of Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. All the participants completed the questionnaires namely- Home Environment Inventory developed by Misra (1983), Social Intelligence Scale by Chadha and Ganesan's (1986) and Mental Health Inventory developed by Jagdish and Srivastava(1985).After collection of data, in order to achieve the objectives ofthe study analysis was done by using Multiple Regression analysis step-wise and t-test. The results of the study revealed that home environment dimensions reward, conformity, protectiveness and nurturance emerged as significant predictors showed positive influence on positive self-evaluation, integration of personality and environmental competence dimensions of mental health. However, deprivation of privileges, punishment and social isolation (home environment dimensions) found to be the significant predictors showed negative influence on one of the dimension of mental health that is group oriented attitude. Also findings of multiple regression analysis revealed that social intelligence scale dimensions- sense of humors, patience and confidence emerged as significant predictors positively influence group oriented attitude among adolescents. Similarly sensitivity one of the dimensions of social intelligence emerged as significant predictor negatively influences some of the dimensions of mental health such as perception of reality, integration of personality and environmental competence. Further our study used t-test and the findings showed gender differenc in terms of mental health that male group of adolescents have more better mental health as compared to their female counter parts.


Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill in 2020. Many countries have imposed lockdowns, known as the movement-control order (MCO) in Malaysia, to prevent transmission of the disease. Aim: The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the MCO on the management of glaucoma patients in a suburban tertiary hospital. Methodology: We conducted a cross-sectional study of 194 glaucoma patients between June 2020 and August 2020 in the glaucoma clinic at Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia. We evaluated the patients' treatment, visual acuity, intraocular pressure (IOP) measurements, and potential signs of progression. We compared the results with those of their last clinic visits prior to the MCO. Results: We studied 94 (48.5%) male and 100 (51.5%) female glaucoma patients with a mean age of 65 ± 13.7. The mean duration between pre-MCO and post-MCO follow-up was 26.4 ± 6.7 weeks. There was a significant increase in the number of patients with deterioration of visual acuity, and one patient lost his vision after the MCO. There was also a significant elevation of the mean IOP of the right eye: pre-MCO, 16.7 ± 7.8 mmHg, compared to post-MCO, 17.7 ± 8.8 mmHg (p = 0.027). The cup-to-disc ratio (CDR) for the right eye increased significantly from pre-MCO, 0.72 ± 0.18, to 0.74 ± 0.19 post-MCO (p < 0.001). However, there were no significant changes in IOP or CDR in the left eye. Twenty-four patients (12.4%) missed medications during the MCO period, and 35 patients (18%) required additional topical medications due to the progression of the disease. Only one patient (0.5%) required admission due to uncontrolled IOP. Conclusion: Lockdown, as a preventive step in the COVID-19 pandemic, indirectly caused the progression of glaucoma and uncontrolled IOP.


South Asia possesses unique position in the arena of international state affairs. There are two nuclear states; Highly skilled manpower, abundance of natural resources; strategic importance of Indian Ocean, Central Asian States and security matters make South Asian region very important in international politics. China gives much importance to South Asia in its diplomatic and foreign policy relations. As  India  wants  to  create  its hegemony in South Asia so China tries its level best to confront Indian hegemony. This paper explains that how China and Pakistan have developed  friendly  relationship to  contain  Indian  dominance  in  the  region. It has  balanced  the  power  (military and economic) and Indian threat has also been minimized. This paper also examines the role of other major powers especially USA and Russia towards Pakistan and India briefly.


The isotopic equilibrium method was used for a 60-day period to follow iodine turnover in control and hypophysectomized rats. After the suppression of TSH by hypophysectomy, only the captured iodide is used for iodination of thyroglobulin, the iodide recycling being abolished. In unstimulated gland, two metabolically distinct iodide compartments do exist which differ either in their chemical form or in their morphological distribution, or both.


What has driven you to specialise in urologic oncology, in particular the management of advanced testicular and bladder malignancies?
My interest in urology started in medical school at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, USA. During that time, I learned so much about urology, but really found the surgical management of bladder cancer (radical cystectomy) and testicular cancer (retroperitoneal lymph node dissection) to be the most interesting. While they are two very different disease processes with very different survival rates, what I have always found most interesting is the vital role that appropriate surgical management plays within each disease. While surgery is one aspect of urologic oncology, what I appreciate most is the multidisciplinary approach, and caring for these complex patients as a team.

You were recently acknowledged with an award for your contributions as a peer-reviewer for urology articles. Could you outline the areas you would like to read more research in in the near future?
As a reviewer, I truly enjoy this as a means of keeping up with the constant amount of urologic research that is coming out. My personal interests match my clinical and research interests, mainly around translational research and clinical trials for bladder and testicular cancer. Whilst translational genomics research has long been centered around DNA and RNA sequencing, I am currently exploring more epigenetic changes and markers, and the emerging field of fragmentomics for cell-free DNA (cfDNA).

Part of your research interests lie with defining the genomic determinants and biomarkers of urothelial carcinoma and germ cell tumours. Are there any recent notable advances you would like to share in this field?
Recently there have been many clinical advances and large-scale genomic sequencing efforts in the management of urothelial carcinoma, but unlike lung cancer, the ability for personalised precision oncology in bladder cancer has not yet been achieved. Largely, the lack of adequate biomarkers continues to be a major deficit in achieving personalised treatment for these patients. From emerging data on circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA), and my own work in cfDNA, we are starting to see evidence for more plasma-based biomarkers. New urine ctDNA assays are emerging, and may be even better for localised bladder cancer decision-making. In germ cell tumors, the groups that have helped to identify and now utilise microRNA-371a-3p as a biomarker in prospective multi-institutional trials have truly moved this field forward, which has not seen much development for many years. I believe that this is just the start of a more personalised medicine approach for our patients with testicular cancer, and I look forward to the arrival of other biomarkers in development.

You recently co-authored an article, 'Genomic heterogeneity as a barrier to precision oncology in urothelial cancer'. What was the key message delivered here?
This was a project that truly took a massive effort, led by my former lab mentor David Solit, with the help of many collaborators, including co-author Jessica Chen. Utilising the large-scale sequencing effort from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, New York, USA, we sought to determine the degree of heterogeneity in bladder cancer by comparing mutational frequencies across grade and stage. This led to using whole exome sequencing to look at mutational concordance between primary and metastatic tumors within individual patients. This demonstrated, through phylogenic analysis, that bladder cancer is characterised by early branched evolution. Additionally, discordant ARID1A alterations were found only in the metastatic lesions, which suggests its role in metastatic progression. Further validation of our matched pair analysis in 119 primary/metastatic pairs demonstrated that primary and metastatic sites have 23% discordance in actionable genomic alterations. Finally, evaluation of plasma cfDNA, compared to tumour samples in 123 patients, found that 17% of targetable alterations were exclusive to cfDNA only, and 23% were exclusive to tumour samples. To summarise, in patients with progression we recommend not only metastatic biopsies, but utilisation of plasma cfDNA for identification of targetable alterations.

Having featured on a podcast recently discussing bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) refractory non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, what were the key points from this session, and can we expect to see you contribute more research and discussion in this field soon?
It was a real pleasure to talk with experts Aditya Bagrodia and Eugene Pietzak about BCG-unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. We were able to highlight the different options available for these patients, and the counselling that we incorporate with our patients in this difficult clinical scenario. My personal research in this area is looking to evaluate novel therapeutics as alternative treatment options. We know that certain alterations are associated with BCG unresponsive disease and thus, if we can target these alterations, this may be a viable alternative to cystectomy in many patients.

Robotic surgery has an increasing role in urology. How have you seen this change over the course of your career so far? Is there room for artificial intelligence (AI) in urologic oncology?
At this point, robotic minimally invasive surgery is a mainstay in the treatment of nearly every urologic cancer surgery. As a younger attending doctor, I have been trained by true experts in open and robotic surgery, and have come to appreciate the benefits and need for both approaches for the benefit of my own patients. As a surgeon most interested in bladder cancer and testicular cancer, the use of robotic surgery is emerging in both of these spaces.

I have found that in appropriately selected patients, the use of robotic cystectomy with intracorporeal diversion and robotic retroperitoneal lymph node dissection has truly been revolutionary in the recovery of such morbid operations. This truly provides a unique surgical approach for our cancer centre, and decreases pain, blood loss, and recovery. With that being said, there are plenty of patients where an open approach is still required, and additionally, robotic surgery does not negate a poor lymph node dissection or poor surgical excision. Thus, it is imperative for those of us performing such robotic surgeries to still uphold the same level of expertise as previously achieved in open surgery. The use of AI in urologic oncology will continue to grow, as we have seen already in pathology and radiology. It is only a matter of time until surgical approaches, and specifically robotic surgery, will start to include shades of AI.

What advice would you give a younger self, looking to establish themself as a clinician and researcher?
I would consider myself still a growing clinician and researcher, and at the start of my career. In general, when I counsel residents and medical students, I remind everyone that the patient remains our sole focus. There are no shortcuts in surgery, and it is imperative to understand not only the disease process and management, but the experience of seeing and learning, and ultimately mastering an operation. This learning never ends, and there are unique scenarios that will continue to challenge every clinician. As long as all of us starting our career remember thiss, I think we can all achieve success.

Since your appointment at Brigham and Women's Hospital, what has been your proudest achievement? Is there anything this hospital approaches well that you think other organisations could learn from?
Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana–Farber Cancer Institute has a unique position as a premier cancer institute; thus, our greatest approach is the ability to provide complex and comprehensive multidisciplinary care to our patients. What I find most enjoyable is engaging not only my colleagues in urology, but those in medical and radiation oncology to determine the best treatment course. My proudest achievements have been the ability to bring new techniques to the treatment of our patients with bladder and testicular cancer.


Drillstring vibration can be divided into three types: axial, lateral and torsional. All three can cause significant wear and tear in drilling equipment, which leads to increased failures, non-productive time, and poor drilling performance. It also causes wasted mechanical energy and wellbore instabilities. Access to real-time, high-frequency downhole vibration data while drilling remains prohibitively expensive; however, it may be estimated via machine learning (ML) techniques using only surface drilling parameters. The task of predicting the severity of downhole vibration using surface parameters was approached as a supervised classification ML problem. Five basic, traditional techniques were investigated: the nearest neighbour, logistic regression, naïve Bayes, discriminant analysis, and decision trees.
 Drilling data was obtained from multiple bottom hole assemblies (BHAs) from several wells in North America. The learning tasks were separated into inter-BHA runs (where the learner is trained on data from one BHA and tested with data from a different BHA) and intra-BHA runs (where the learner is trained and tested with data from the same BHA). Severity of vibration was assessed primarily through the time-weighted average of root mean square amplitude and then classed into severity levels. Performance of the classification results was assessed using the predictive accuracy and weighted macro-average of precision obtained using cross validation and presented as confusion matrices for specific iterations of the cross validation. The classification ML for the intra-BHA runs produced overall predictive accuracies that averaged between 50% and 85%. Of particular concern is the misprediction of certain vibration levels as either lower or higher levels, even when overall predictive accuracy is high.
 The results show that these simple ML techniques can achieve considerable accuracy in the prediction of vibration levels for intra-BHA runs. For inter-BHA runs, predictive performance was reduced. This demonstration of the viability of ML in predicting bottom hole vibration motivates the application of more advance ML techniques, including deep learning estimators, and it signals the potential benefits that can be reaped.


Inequalities in participation and benefits accrued from agricultural value chains are widely reported. Such inequalities are believed to affect men's and women's welfare. This paper analyzes the levels and determinants of gender participation in Sunflower Value Chain (SVC). A cross-sectional research design was adopted and 120 sunflower smallholder farmers were selected for the study. A combination of simple random sampling and systematic sampling techniques were used to select study villages and respondents respectively. A Structured questionnaire and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) guide were the main tools for data collection. Index scales were constructed to gauge the level of women empowerment. Ordinal logistic regression was used to establish the determinants of participation in the SVC. Findings show that more males than female farmers were categorized in the medium level of participation. Farmers' levels of participation, land ownership, means of land acquisition and access to markets were the detriments of participation in the SVC (P<0.05). It is recommended that, sunflower stakeholders such as government and nongovernmental organizations need to empower farmers to overcome factors which negatively affect their levels of participation and benefit in the SVC. Gender sensitive approaches and techniques should be used to improve the level of participation and decision making in the various nodes of the SVC as well as to minimize the social, cultural, and economic factors that affect women's participation and benefit in the SVC.


The paper analyses the sources of persistent interest rate differentials vis-a-vis Germany that have existed in Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands. In a target zone system like the ERM, interest rate differentials mainly reflect devaluation expectations, which are measured here by raw 1-month Euromarket interest rate differentials, drift-adjusted 1-month differentials, and differentials in long-term government bond yields. The role of a large set of fundamental macroeconomic variables that may have affected these devaluation expectations is investigated within a vector autoregressive (VAR) setting, by means of Granger-causality tests, impulse-response functions and variance decompositions. We find no evidence that fundamentals are more relevant to drift-adjusted devaluation risk than for unadjusted interest rate differentials. A significant impact of inflation, budget deficits, and unemployment becomes evident for almost all ERM-participants.


GENERAL CARDIOLOGY No TRIUMPH for Tilarginine c Cardiogenic shock carries a mortality rate in excess of 50%. Induction of nitric oxide synthase (NOS), leading to the generation of excess nitric oxide, is believed to contribute to the inappropriate vasodilatation seen in cardiogenic shock. Tilarginine acts as an NOS inhibitor and early studies have suggested a potential clinical benefit. The TRIUMPH (Tilarginine Acetate Injection in a Randomized International Study in Unstable MI Patients With Cardiogenic Shock) planned to enrol 658 patients at 130 centres, however the study was terminated early after 398 patients had been enrolled. All patients were in refractory cardiogenic shock after myocardial infarction (MI) despite revascularisation. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality among patients who received the study drug. Secondary outcomes included shock resolution and duration, NYHA class at 30 days, and 6-month mortality. Enrolment was stopped in August 2006 and the 6-month follow-up completed in February 2007. No difference in 30-day all-cause mortality was found between patients who received tilarginine (48%) and those who received placebo (42%; p = 0.24). Resolution of shock (66% for tilarginine, 61% for placebo; p = 0.31) and duration of shock (156 vs 190 hours; p = 0.16) were similar. At 30 days a similar percentage of patients had heart failure (48% tilarginine vs 51% placebo; p = 0.51), with a similar percentage of patients in NYHA class I/II (73% tilarginine vs 75% placebo; p = 0.27). After 6 months, mortality rates were similar in the two groups (58% tilarginine vs 59% placebo; p = 0.80). Tilarginine did not reduce mortality rates in patients with refractory cardiogenic shock complicating MI despite an open infarct artery. It should be borne in mind that in this trial the drug was given late once shock was established; NOS inhibition might still theoretically have an important role if given at an earlier stage.


These days, the imagined destinations of ever more people, particularly in the 'global South', are not where they were born but elsewhere. Using a case study of educated (lower) middle-class youth in Dhaka, this paper attempts to demonstrate that for many 'aspiring migrants', the yearning for leaving is a metaphor for disappointment and disengagement rather than the first step towards transnational migration. Economic growth, rapid urbanisation and the increasing investment in education infest the emerging urban (lower) middle-class youth with new 'modern' lifestyle desires that cannot be fulfilled in their home country and generate a sense of disengagement with Bangladesh. The paper focuses in particular on how the – culturally embedded – imaginations of foreign places link up to personal (re-)evaluations of local lives. Nearly all informants explained how local socio-economic, political and existential insecurities made them yearn for 'safe' places where their dreams could be fulfilled.


The anomalous behaviour of the specular reflection under the condition of noncoplanar grazing-incidence x-ray diffraction have been revealed and studied. The phenomenon is analysed theoretically in a perfect crystal and in a crystal coated with an amorphous film. The high sensitivity to the presence and thickness of an several-nanometers thick amorphous films has been shown. Both the thickness and the density of the native oxide film coating the surface of a silicon single crystal were determined experimentally.


Growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) is an endocrine hormone belonging TGFβ superfamily member. GDF15 administration or GDF15 overexpression has been reported to have anti-obesity and antidiabetic effects. Although nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)/nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is frequently associated with metabolic syndrome or diabetes, the functional role of endogenous GDF15 and therapeutic effect of exogenous GDF15 in NASH associated metabolic syndrome have not been addressed. We studied whether GDF15 has therapeutic effects on NASH and associated metabolic syndrome. To this end, Gdf15 -knockout and Gdf15 -transgenic mice were employed, and mice were fed Amylin liver NASH (AMLN) diet as a physiologically relevant dietary mouse model of NASH associated with metabolic syndrome. GDF15 expression was increased in the livers of mice fed AMLN diet and human subjects with NASH. Elevated expression of GDF15 was due to diet-induced endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in the liver. Importantly, Gdf15 -knockout mice exhibited deteriorated metabolic syndrome and aggravated NASH phenotypes such as increased steatosis, hepatic inflammation, fibrosis and liver injury. Furthermore, we found that GDF15 directly suppresses expression of fibrosis-related genes and osteopontin (OPN) in the liver in vivo . OPN expression was increased in hepatocytes and stellate cells in the liver of Gdf15 -knockout mice. Finally, we found that GDF15 -transgenic mice showed attenuated NASH phenotypes and improved glucose tolerance in mice fed AMLN diet. Our results suggest that induction of endogenous GDF15 is a compensatory mechanism to protect against NASH associated with metabolic syndrome and that GDF15 could be an attractive therapeutic candidate for treatment of these diseases. Disclosure M. Lee: Other Relationship; Self; Jeil Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.. Y. Lee: None. S. Kim: None. K. Kim: None.


Recently, the Blockchain-based cryptocurrency market witnessed enormous growth. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, reached all-time highs many times over the year leading to speculations to explain the trend in its growth. In this article, we study Bitcoin and Ethereum and explore features in their network that explain their price hikes. We gather data and analyze user and network activity that highly impact the price of these cryptocurrencies. We monitor the change in the activities over time and relate them to economic theories. We identify key network features that help us to determine the demand and supply dynamics in a cryptocurrency. Finally, we use machine learning methods to construct models that predict Bitcoin price. Based on our experimental results using two large datasets for validation, we confirm that our approach provides an accuracy of up to 99% for Bitcoin and Ethereum price prediction in both instances.


The article considers the problem of corporate conflicts in the Russian practice of corporate relations in the joint-stock companies. Today, corporate relations are changing, the role of intangible resources is growing, and a 100% share in the company capital does not always guarantee control over the company. In this regard, the range of ways to acquire corporate control is expanding. The purpose of the article is to develop a classification of the methods of joint stock companies takeovers. The proposed classification differs from existing classifications by differentiating takeover methods according to the criterion "takeover tool used by the takeover initiator". The use of this classification by companies in the development of protective mechanisms against takeovers will make it possible to choose the most appropriate and effective protective measures in a particular situation and thereby avoid some corporate conflicts.


Purpose: This study was done to investigate the effects of pilocarpine mouth care on the condition and discomfort of the oral cavity in patients with terminal cancer. Method: A quasi-experimental design with a non-equivalent control group, pre- and post-test was used. The participants were 30 patients admitted to the hospice care unit of C university hospital. Fourteen patients received pilocarpine mouth care for 5 days. The other sixteen received general mouth care. Results: Improvement in the condition of the oral cavity was significantly higher in the experimental group compared to the control group. Decrease in oral discomfort scores was significantly higher in the experimental group compared to the control group. The incidence of oral candidiasis was significantly higher in the control group compared to the experimental group. Conclusion: These findings indicate that pilocarpine mouth care could be an effective intervention for relieving oral discomfort, improving the condition of the oral cavity, and decreasing the incidence of oral candidiasis in patients with terminal cancer.


This paper presents a modeling and control design method for PWM-controlled pneumatic systems. Difficulties associated with servovalves typically used to continuously control pneumatic systems, in addition to a general lack,of analytic control design techniques available for MW controlled pneumatic systems, motivate the development, of a modeling and control design technique for PWM pneumatics. Specifically, the method presented here is to model a PWM-based pneumatic system using a state-space averaging approach. This provides the analytic machinery necessary to remove the discontinuities associated with switching and results in a model tractable to standard nonlinear control design techniques. Thereby, issues such as stability robustness and performance bandwidth may be addressed directly. The control of a single degree of freedom pneumatic positioning system illustrates this technique experimentally.