The purpose of this study is to provide information and understanding on the implementation of reporting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Sustainability Report. The study was conducted by comparing the CSR report disclosed the company with a standard Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as well as understand the things the company has done in implementing CSR. The subjects were PT Holcim Indonesia Tbk by using sustainability report in 2012 until 2014. The research method used in this research is qualitative descriptive. The conclusion of this study PT Holcim Indonesia Tbk as a whole is still not fully meet the GRI standards. For 3 years, the average implementation of the CSR report in accordance with GRI only 50%, but in practice the PT Holcim Indonesia Tbk has done practices that are beneficial to the environment and society in the long term. Implementation of CSR report to GRI standard is the highest is in the environmental category. Keywords: Sustainability Report, Global Reporting Initiative, PT Holcim Indonesia Tbk, 2012-2014


The purpose of this study was to determine the relative magnitudes of the reflex effects mediated by cardiac receptors during anterior as opposed to inferoposterior ischemia of the left ventricle of the dog. Cessation of perfusion (coronary 'occlusion') of the circumflex coronary artery (Cx) in 29 chloralose-anesthetized dogs with common carotids ligated (group I) resulted in significant bradycardia and hypotension, but in no significant change in perfusion pressure in the gracilis muscle perfused at constant flow. Occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) produced less hypotension, no change in heart rate, and vasoconstriction in the gracilis. After vagotomy and aortic nerve section, no significant change in heart rate or gracilis perfusion pressure was observed during LAD or Cx occlusion, and the blood pressure responses to LAD and Cx occlusion were not different. In nine dogs with sinoaortic denervation (group II), brief Cx occlusion resulted in bradycardia, hypotension, and vasodilation in the gracilis muscle. LAD occlusion in group II dogs caused less hypotension and no change in heart rate or gracilis perfusion pressure. After vagotomy, the bradycardia and vasodilation resulting from Cx occlusion were abolished and the blood pressure responses to LAD and Cx occlusion were not different. The weights of left ventricle perfused by each occluded vessel were not different. These data show that left ventricular receptors with vagal afferents which are activated during coronary occlusion and which mediate cardioinhibitory and vasodepressor responses are located mainly in the inferoposterior left ventricle of the dog heart.


The objective of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature on internationalization, in relation to the absence of objective and measurable performance indicators on the process of how firms sequentially enter external markets. To that end, this research develops a quantitative tool that can be used as a performance indicator of gradualness for firms entering external markets at a sectoral level. The performance indicator is based on firms' export volume, number of years of exporting, geographic areas targeted for export, and when exports were initiated for each area. Additionally, the indicator is tested empirically in the Spanish wine sector. The main contribution of this study is the creation of an international priority index which serves as a valuable and reliable tool because of its potential use in other industry sectors and geographic areas, allowing us to analyze how geographically differentiated internationalization strategies develop.


In this thesis, we will explore the subject of the little hierarchy problem which plagues solutions to the big hierarchy problem of the Standard Model of particle physics. In the first half of this thesis, we study the theoretical framework for a supersymmetric resolution of the little hierarchy problem, known as natural supersymmetry, and argue that regions of the parameter space of this model have been missed by search strategies employed at the large hadron collider, but could be searched for with new search strategies. In the second half of this thesis, we explore the possibility of embedding natural supersymmetry in models of warped extra dimensions in order to UV-complete them by utilizing a mechanism known as accidental supersymmetry. We study the mechanism of accidental supersymmetry in the Randall-Sundrum framework by focusing on a toy model, and argue that accidental supersymmetry is capable solving the little hierarchy problem in that toy model. Finally, as models in the Randall-Sundrum framework themselves require UV completions, we demonstrate that it is possible to ii


This paper presents an adaptive priority traffic control approach which uses a dynamic buffer allocation scheme, and an adaptive priority queuing technique for handling the delay-sensitive traffic in ATM networks. The former adjusts the buffer size based on the real traffic demand, while the latter adaptively change the priority. The simulation results show that diverse delay-sensitive traffic achieve satisfactory performance through our approach. It may fulfill the emerging needs of guaranteed services.


Nuclear steam generator tubes in two-phase cross-flow may vibrate due to excitations that emanate from various sources. Of these excitation mechanisms, fluidelastic instability is the most dominant cause of tube failures in the short-term. These failures, other than leading to unscheduled plant shutdowns, may result in leakage of radioactive materials that may ultimately cause accidents and economic loss.Very limited work has been dedicated to investigating purely streamwise fluidelastic instability in tube arrays. However, recent observations of tube failure caused by streamwise or in-plane instability confirm the importance of streamwise fluidelastic instability analysis.In the present study, we present detailed dynamic cross-coupling force and phase measurement results for a central cluster of tubes in a rotated triangular tube array of Pitch-to-Diameter ratio (P/D)=1.5 subjected to air-water two-phase cross-flow, for homogeneous void fractions of 0% and 60%. The measured dynamic forces together with previously measured quasi-steady forces are necessary to estimate the time delay which is an important input for the quasi-steady fluidelastic instability model.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


Abstract During the reform process of the Carinthian Constitution the coalition parties had agreed that in the new regional constitution also the Slovenian minority would be included, stating literally that: "The region of Carinthia avows itself to its grown linguistic and cultural diversity. Language and culture, traditions and cultural heritage must be respected, protected and promoted. It is the duty of the region and the municipalities to have equal regards for its German- and Slovenian-speaking citizens." Since the compromise in 2011 on the place-name signs, the climate in Carinthia has clearly changed for the better. With the draft constitution, Carinthia had the chance to realize a peaceful, equitable and future-oriented coexistence of minority and majority in the Alps-Adria-Region. From this draft agreement the Carinthian Conservatives (OVP) have now withdrawn. This has deeply shocked the members of the Slovenian minority but also legal experts, NGO representatives and media. Especially because the new compromise, making German as the only official language of the region, constitutes a denial of historical circumstances and would be a step back to the minority policy of the last decades.


The search for functional foods, which possess bioactive substances, is a new trend for the obtention of alternative and more effective treatments of many diseases with fewer side effects. Geopropolis, elaborated by stingless bees, is a mixture of plant resin sources, wax and soil. In the geopropolis from Scaptotrigona affinis postica (Latreille, 1807), (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini) was not observed the presence of soil. In a previous study, the extract of geopropolis provided by the beekeeper, from S. postica of Barra do Corda, Maranhão State, exhibited potent antiviral activity against herpes simplex virus. In this study, the propolis extract was prepared experimentally and characterized by RP-HPLC-DAD-ESI-MS/MS. The objective of this study was to evaluate the antiviral activity of an experimentally prepared geopropolis extract from S. postica against Rubella Virus infected Statens Serum Institute Rabbit Cornea (SIRC) cells. Rubella virus infection of susceptible women during the first trimester of pregnancy, often results in a combination of birth defects in newborns. There is not an effective treatment for rubella virus infection. Different protocols were carried out to evaluate, the antiviral effect of geopropolis extract on the viral replication of infectious RV. Cell viability and cell proliferation assays indicated that this geopropolis was not toxic to cultured SIRC cells. In the viral binding assay, antiviral assay, real-time PCR, and transmission electron microscopy, was observed that different concentrations of geopropolis (17, 34 and 68 µg/mL) was able to inhibit the binding of virions to the cell receptor and the production of infectious RV particles in post treated and pre treated infected SIRC cells. The antiviral activity could to be attributed to the high contents of the apigenin derivatives, vicenin-2 and schaftoside. As far as we know, this is the first report about the antiviral activity of geopropolis from Scaptotrigona postica against a Togaviridae virus.


The world's growing mobility, mass tourism, and the threat of terrorism increase the risk of the fast spread of infectious microorganisms and toxins. Today's procedures for pathogen detection involve complex stationary devices, and are often too time consuming for a rapid and effective response. Therefore a robust and mobile diagnostic system is required. We present a microstructured LabDisk which performs complex biochemical analyses together with a mobile centrifugal microfluidic device which processes the LabDisk. This portable system will allow fully automated and rapid detection of biological threats at the point-of-need.


Small grain size combined with large I(020)/I(111) ratio have been proven to be an effective strategy to improve the electrochemical properties of LiFePO4 material due to increased Li-ion diffusion. In view of this, we use Tween-80 as the surfactant in hydrothermal synthesis to modulate both crystal size and orientation of LiFePO4. It is indicated that the LiFePO4 particles synthesized via the Tween-80 modified hydrothermal method exhibited a small mean diameter of 100 nm and a large I(020)/I(111) ratio of 1.19. Whereas in the surfactant-free hydrothermal system, the obtained LiFePO4 particles exhibit a relatively large mean diameter of 200 nm and a low I(020)/I(111) ratio of 0.84. LiFePO4 particles with small grain size and a large I(020)/I(111) ratio can be easily brought into contact with electrolyte, facilitating electric and Li-ion diffusion. After being coated with conductive carbon, the synthesized LiFePO4/C nanoparticles perform a high Li-ion diffusion coefficient of 1.79 × 10−13 cm2 s−1. It presents a large reversible capacity of 166.5 mA h g−1 at 0.1 C and even a high rate capacity of 119.6 mA h g−1 at 20 C.


For a long period of time, scientists studied genomes while assuming they are linear. Recently, chromosome conformation capture (3C)-based technologies, such as Hi-C, have been developed that provide the loci contact frequencies among loci pairs in a genome-wide scale. The technology unveiled that two far-apart loci can interact in the tested genome. It indicated that the tested genome forms a three-dimensional (3D) chromosomal structure within the nucleus. With the available Hi-C data, our next challenge is to model the 3D chromosomal structure from the 3C-derived data computationally. This article presents a deterministic method called ChromSDE, which applies semi-definite programming techniques to find the best structure fitting the observed data and uses golden section search to find the correct parameter for converting the contact frequency to spatial distance. Further, we develop a measure called consensus index to indicate if the Hi-C data corresponds to a single structure or a mixture of structures. To the best of our knowledge, ChromSDE is the only method that can guarantee recovering the correct structure in the noise-free case. In addition, we prove that the parameter of conversion from contact frequency to spatial distance will change under different resolutions theoretically and empirically. Using simulation data and real Hi-C data, we showed that ChromSDE is much more accurate and robust than existing methods. Finally, we demonstrated that interesting biological findings can be uncovered from our predicted 3D structure.


This paper proposes a new approach of $\left(\acute{G}/G\right)$ -expansion method for constructing more general exact solutions of nonlinear evolution equation. By using this method numerous new and more general exact solutions have been obtained. We will apply this new method to solve the nonlinear KdV equation. Various exact traveling wave solutions of these equations are obtained that include the exponential function solutions, the hyperbolic function solutions and the trigonometric function solutions. Further, the method is efficient to solve nonlinear evolution equations in many areas such as physics and engineering.


While many studies have tried to quantify the sign and the magnitude of the warm marine cloud response to aerosol loading, both remain uncertain owing to the multitude of factors that modulate microphysical and thermodynamic processes within the cloud. Constraining aerosol-cloud interactions using the local meteorology and cloud liquid water may offer a way to account for covarying influences, potentially increasing our confidence in observational estimates of warm cloud indirect effects. Four years of collocated satellite observations from the NASA A-Train constellation, combined with reanalaysis from 5 MERRA-2, are used to partition marine warm clouds into regimes based on stability, the free atmospheric relative humidity, and liquid water path. Organizing the sizable number of satellite observations into regimes is shown to minimize the covariance between the environment or liquid water path and the indirect effect. Controlling for local meteorology and cloud state mitigates artificial signals and reveals substantial variance in both the sign and magnitude of the cloud radiative response, including regions where clouds become systematically darker with increased aerosol concentration in dry, unstable environments. A 10 darkening effect is evident even under the most stringent of constraints. These results suggest it is not meaningful to report a single global sensitivity of cloud radiative effect to aerosol. To the contrary, we find the sensitivity can range from -.46 to .11 W m−2 ln(AI) regionally.


Abstract:  During the annual Ramazzini Days, the Mayor of Carpi confers the Ramazzini Award on scientists deemed by the Collegium Ramazzini to have made outstanding contributions to furthering the aims of Bernardino Ramazzini in safeguarding public health. Dr. Lorenzo Tomatis was the Ramazzini Award recipient in 2005, and the presentation of the award was a highlight of the Symposium. The Ramazzini Lecture given by Dr. Tomatis follows.


The potential of electronic commerce and its information technology also has attracted some telecommunication corporations-for example, Chunghwa Telecom, Singtel Telecom, and AT&T. They have built their electronic commerce environment on the Internet, too. Most of these worldwide telecom corporations have many kinds of operations support systems in the backend environment. In the past, enterprises had to manually integrate services so that they could work together. However, this integration required considerable time and cost, and it worked only for the specific services that were manually linked. Adding additional services required even more effort. And then, enterprise application integration (EAI) solved these kinds of problems by working via point-to-point interfaces. In this paper, we present a research framework to describe the method. Then, we use two illustrations to explain the generality of our method, and we focus on how international telecom corporations have become concerned with the agility, the leanness, and the integration underlying electronic services integration with enterprise application interface technology.


Purpose: Purpose of the this study is to define the hemodialysis noncompliance Indicators and discriminant standards levels for low Flux Hemodialysis patients and development of Hemodialysis noncompliance measurement - brief form. Method: Data was collected from 269 hemodialysis patients. To establish the hemodialysis noncompliance Indicators and to discriminate standards, 13 hemodialysis nurses and 2 nephrology doctors are participated in professional group. To verify the indicators and discriminant standards, data was ananlyzed by the canonical discriminant analysis method using by SAS 8.3 program. Result: 4 Indicators- interdialysis weight gain(IWG); average of recent 4weeks, serum phophate level, skipping of hemodialysis and hemodialysis time shortening without permission- of hemodialysis noncompliance are established and discriminant standards are developed. Discriminant ability of these 4 noncompliance indicators is 99.7%(p=.000). Hemodialysis noncompliance measurement - brief form has 96.3% discriminant accuracy. Conclusion: Hemodialysis noncompliant patients have high risks. It means that special intervention to noncompliance is needed. Also continuous and objective assessment and standards of noncompliance are needed.


Trial advocacy education often stresses the importance of attorneys expressing arguments with emotion to signal conviction. Yet, female attorneys must approach this advice with caution given potential backlash for expressing emotions traditionally considered masculine, like anger. Two experiments (Study 1, N = 220; Study 2, N = 273) demonstrated that people most likely to endorse traditional gender roles exhibited bias against female attorneys expressing anger in court. Participants were recruited nationally and randomly assigned to view an attorney delivering a closing statement in court who either (1) was a man or a woman, and (2) used a neutral or angry tone. They reported how hirable and effective they perceived the attorneys to be and completed measures of several individual difference factors that are established predictors of endorsement of traditional gender roles: ambivalent sexism, political conservatism, and age. Participants who were more likely to hold traditional gender values (i.e., more benevolently sexist, more politically conservative, and older) were more likely to favor attorneys who conformed to gender norms (i.e., male attorneys who expressed anger relative to no anger) and less likely to favor attorneys who violated gender norms (i.e., female attorneys who expressed anger relative to no anger). Thus, female attorneys are faced with the challenge of walking the line between exhibiting traditionally masculine behaviors that are valued by the legal system—but not so much so that they suffer backlash for violating gender norms.


We have undertaken a study of the larger benthic foraminifera (LBF) of the Eocene of Jamaica that involved collecting free specimens and calibrating their occurrence against chronostratigraphy using calcareous nannofossils identified from sample splits or adjacent samples. The results have been plotted stratigraphically and allow a detailed zonation of the Eocene (14 zones) to be developed based largely on lepidocyclinids and similar forms. The zonation can be shown to be applicable to the Americas extending from northern South America, to Central America, the Caribbean and southern North America. The LBF biostratigraphy is based on the evolution of various groups. Three zones are recognized in the Ypresian, six zones in the Lutetian, three zones in the Bartonian, and two zones in the Priabonian. In order to classify the LBF we have revised the important groups used for the zonation scheme that occur in the Eocene and figure numerous examples. Our revision rearranges described genera into evolutionary, monophyletic clades to which we give the hierarchy of family and subfamily. We provide remarks on published taxa explaining how they are recognized and describe all the new taxa (two families, one subfamily, four genera and five species). The following families, genera and species are new: Butterliniana gen. nov., Helicosteginidae fam. nov., Helicostegina minor sp. nov., Helicostegina jamaicensis sp. nov., Helicostegina jeannemairae sp. nov., Pseudolepidinidae fam. nov., Orbitoininae subfam. nov., Planorbitoinella gen. nov., Polyorbitoinella gen. nov., Polyorbitoinella lilyfieldensis sp. nov., Orbitoina wrighti sp. nov., and Nephronummulites gen. nov.


Although the use of two dosimeters, one on the chest and the other on the back, successfully solved the underestimation problem for posterior incident photon beams, the two-dosimeter approach still has some problems-significant overestimations for lateral, overhead, and underfoot beam directions when isotropic-responding dosimeters are used for measurement. A solution to this problem is to intentionally construct the dosimeters to under-respond as the beam direction departs from normal incidence and approaches lateral, overhead, or underfoot beam directions. The objective of this study is to develop a dosimeter that does not significantly overestimate effective dose equivalent (H(E)) for lateral, overhead, and underfoot beam directions, while maintaining good performance for anterior and posterior beam directions. Several dosimeter geometries were investigated using Monte Carlo simulation to find the best geometry using aluminum oxide (Al2O3) as dosimeter attenuator material. Then, the developed Optimal Anisotropic Responding dosimeters were tested for 0.08, 0.30 and 1.00 MeV photon beams of various beam directions. The dosimeters did not overestimate H(E) by more than 80% considering all photon energies and beam directions, which is much less than the overestimation of isotropic-responding dosimeters (202%). The dosimeters also showed similar performance compared to isotropic-responding dosimeters for anterior and posterior beam directions. Finally, the dosimeters were applied to effective dose (E) and the results are compared with those of H(E).


Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is one of the methods for treating angina pectoris and has been used since 1985. Patients with refractory angina pectoris despite optimal medication and revascularisation procedures are suitable for the SCS. This kind of treatment is not common in Poland. This article reports the first case of a patient with ischaemic heart disease treated with spinal cord stimulation in the Clinical Department of Neurosurgery in the Military Clinical Hospital in Bydgoszcz. The procedure was based on epidural implantation of the electrode at the level of Th1-Th2 and connection with the impulse generator located subcutaneously. As a result of the applied stimulation reduction of the anginal pain was achieved.


The self-assembly of pillar-like structures in nanodiamond (ND) layers was obtained by means of the pulsed spray technique. This technique enabled to deposit ND layers directly on silicon substrate using a dispersion of as-received 250 nm nanocrystals. The chemical and structural properties of the ND layer were determined by Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopies and the morphological features were measured by confocal and atomic force microscopies. Self-assembled pillar-like structures were observed by both microscopies. The local electrical voltage and current of an isolated ND pillar were studied by scanning Kelvin probe microscopy and scanning capacitance microscopy (SCM), respectively. The electrical data obtained showed that the single pillar features an increase of voltage and a decrease of current. A theoretical model based on the finite element method confirmed the current behavior measured by SCM.


A novel approach for fabricating selective absorbing coatings based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for mid-temperature solar–thermal application is presented. The developed formulations are dispersions of CNTs in water or solvents. Being coated on stainless steel (SS) by spraying, these formulations provide good characteristics of solar absorptance. The effect of CNT concentration and the type of the binder and its ratios to the CNT were investigated. Coatings based on water dispersions give higher adsorption, but solvent-based coatings enable achieving lower emittance. Interestingly, the binder was found to be responsible for the high emittance, yet, it is essential for obtaining good adhesion to the SS substrate. The best performance of the coatings requires adjusting the concentration of the CNTs and their ratio to the binder to obtain the highest absorptance with excellent adhesion; high absorptance is obtained at high CNT concentration, while good adhesion requires a minimum ratio between the binder/CNT; however, increasing the binder concentration increases the emissivity. The best coatings have an absorptance of ca. 90% with an emittance of ca. 0.3 and excellent adhesion to stainless steel.


592 Hearing is important for achieving a good quality of life, because a partial or total inability to hear is a barrier to communication and language development. Hearing loss, especially disabling hearing loss, is associated with delayed cognitive development in children and early cognitive decline in older adults.1 Disabling hearing loss refers to hearing loss greater than 40 dB in the better hearing ear in adults and greater than 30 dB in the better hearing ear in children.2 Unless such hearing loss is addressed in a timely manner, it has a profound impact on those affected as well as on their families and communities. Unaddressed hearing loss restricts social integration and educational and employment opportunities, hampers emotional well-being and poses an economic challenge at both the individual and national levels.3 Many of the causes that lead to hearing loss are preventable. WHO estimates that 60% of hearing loss occuring in childhood can be prevented through public health strategies including immunizations, better neonatal care, reduced environmental noise, decreased use of ototoxic medications and effective screening for ear infections.4 People of all ages with hearing loss can benefit greatly from timely, appropriate and cost-effective interventions, such as speech therapy and hearing devices.5 Unaddressed hearing loss is one of the leading causes of morbidity; it is ranked fourteenth in terms of disability adjusted life years and second in years lived with disability globally.6 Moreover, unaddressed hearing loss posed an annual cost of 750 billion United States dollars in 2015.5 Approximately 466 million people live with disabling hearing loss.7 The number of people with hearing loss is expected to rise in the coming decades, due mainly to changing population demographics, increasing exposure to risk factors such as noise, as well as persistence of untreated ear conditions such as otitis media.8 Most people with hearing loss reside in lowand middleincome countries, where hearing-care services are often lacking and the existing hearing care is not well integrated into health systems or accounted for in workforce strategies and health information management systems. Hearing loss was highlighted at the World Health Assembly in 2017, when Member States unanimously adopted a resolution on the prevention of deafness and hearing loss.9 This resolution calls upon the World Health Organization (WHO) and its Member States to develop public health strategies to integrate ear and hearing care within the framework of the countries' primary health-care systems. The aim of the resolution is that ear and hearing care should be accessible for all people, in line with the principles of universal health coverage. However, the implementation of this resolution and achievement of its mandate requires global public health action that has a strong evidence base and takes a life-course approach towards hearing. Such an approach targets various bio-psychosocial risk factors of hearing loss, such as ear infections, noise and vascular diseases, and interventions aimed at mitigating its adverse impact.10 The approach views the promotion of healthy hearing as a lifelong process that must be facilitated through public health action.10 Against this background, the Bulletin of the World Health Organization will publish a theme issue on the public health approach of hearing loss. We welcome papers focusing on identifying and filling the gaps in evidence across comprehensive hearingcare services, from promotion of ear and hearing care, to screening, hearing devices and rehabilitation. In particular, the papers should report on unmet needs, outcomes of services, and effective and sustainable initiatives to reach underserved groups. Submission of papers reporting on both the magnitude of diseases and conditions, such as ear infections, meningitis and rubella, that can affect hearing, are encouraged. As well, papers addressing health system issues and promoting an intersectoral approach to ear and hearing care, such as looking beyond health. As much as possible, papers should seek to integrate examples from lowand middle-income countries across life course. The deadline for submission is 30 November 2018. Manuscripts should be submitted in accordance with the Bulletin's guidelines for contributors (available at: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/96/1/18-990118/en/), and the cover letter should mention this call for papers. ■


On the shore at Great Crosby, Lancashire, stretching, at irregular intervals, for a space of about a mile nearly due north from a stream of water called Thornbeck Pool, are the remains of a forest, which have from time to time attracted considerable attention. It has been described by various observers, the earliest mention I know of being in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for 1796, p. 549, accompanied by an engraving, giving all the salient points which still distinguish the forest-bed. A view of these submarine forestal remains also forms the frontispiece of the memoir by Mr. C. E. De Rance on the "Superficial Geology of West Lancashire," lately published by the Geological Survey. I have also described it in my paper on the Postglacial Geology of Lancashire and Cheshire*. As it has been pretty roundly asserted by some local observers that neither these trees nor those of the equivalent bed on the Cheshire shore are in situ, though I had no doubts of the fact myself, to set the question at rest I invited several gentlemen†, most of them members of the Liverpool Geological Society, to be present on the 19th of January, 1878, at the digging-out and uprooting of one of the stools of the trees, which are now rapidly diminishing in number by the denudation of the sea. A low stump was selected which had an oak trunk lying by it in a N.E. by E. direction, to all appearances in the position in which it had rotted


The notion of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) has important implications for health care. Ubicomp scenarios involving the rapid communication of information between interested parties assume that health consumers will be willing to place their trust in agents rather than physicians, but are these assumptions reasonable? This article discusses what is known about the role of trust in health care and ways in which the trust relationship has changed with the impact of new technologies. Differences between the current, predominantly web-based environment and that of ubicomp are highlighted in relation to health care. A key point to note is the move away from consumers making their own trust judgments toward a scenario in which these decisions become the domain of intelligent agents.


Transgender (trans) and gender diverse (TGD) people continue experiencing profound expressions of stigma and discrimination in their attempts at accessing care, including support from the social work profession. Incorporating the lived experience of TGD people as practice knowledge in social work may serve to enhance the profession's relationship with TGD communities and mitigate historical barriers of this population to relevant services. In this study, we draw on qualitative data based on individual interviews with 20 TGD people and 10 social workers in a Western Canadian province to explore the potential of leveraging the lived experience of TGD people as practice insight in social work. Our analysis, which is supported with the tenets of feminist standpoint theory, reveals that incorporating the lived experience of TGD people in social work as practice knowledge may inform and catalyze interventions that (1) validate TGD bodies, identities and experiences; (2) contribute to networks of advocacy and support founded on shared community knowledge and (3) promote resistance and transformation. In our discussion, we explore practical implications of our research for practice at multiple levels, including the potential of engaging TGD 'peers' with relevant lived experience in the direct delivery of certain psychosocial interventions.


In present work, we will propose the spectroscopic model for the analysis of Raman gain spectrum based on oscillator theory and its application to the design of optical fiber Raman amplifiers with the multiwavelength pumping scheme. The oscillatory lineshape functions can simply describe the wavelength dependence of Raman gain in optical fibers and are very useful for the estimation of the gain bandwidth, Raman lasing, noise performance, and amplification processes in Raman amplifiers. The concept of an actual band based on the lineshape function is useful for the design of fiber Raman amplifiers with multiple wavelengths pumping. Proposed modeling allows us to analyze fiber Raman amplifier with combined multiwavelength pumping source for the extension of amplification bandwidth to L-band, which has the broad bandwidth over 80 nm and low gain ripple less than 0.5 dB.


Amelia and anal atresia with kidney agenesis and/or heart defects is discussed together with the hypotheses that this may either be the severest manifestation of VACTERL association or a separate association.


ABSTRACT Development of lactic acidosis is essential in performance of heavy work. H+, locally produced with lactate during inadequate O2 flow to tissues, raises capillary PO2 and facilitates O2 di...


In the discourse of Islamic Nusantara, in order to obtain theoretical significance required the framework of network mapping, the transmission of ideology and culture, and genealogy of knowledge. network mapping becomes the foundation of the tracking of figures, subjects and agencies, in this case scholars, kiai and santri as the chain of the process of disseminating values that carried Islam Nusantara. While the transmission of ideology becomes the backbone of the epistemic framework in the Islamic Nusantara reason. Islam Nusantara is a process of traditional dialectic, the result of the crossing of various Islamic universal thoughts. therefore, a methodological framework is required in tracking the genealogy of knowledge, which will become the main basis for assembling the common thread, the common point and objective of Islamic transmission to the archipelago. by tracing genealogy, will emerge pattern, pattern and structure of the science contained by Islamic tradition of archipelago. in this context, this paper seeks to offer alternative methodology to compile historical trajectory which will facilitate the observers and activists of Nusantara Islam in connecting and or grafting various local history narratives as well as finding local wisdom within answer the various contexts and the surrounding diversity. The method rests on the significance of sanad theory and social networking in the course of the relationships of the perpetrators of history that surround it. with narrative continuity, diversity in context, and horizon of facts with accurate and speculative analysis that can be accounted for, it will enrich the historic treasures of the archipelago and is useful for building a friendly, moderate, tolerant and contextual Islamic facewith its times ..


Change detection is useful in many applications related to land use and land cover change (LULCC), such as shifting cultivation and landscape changes. Land degradation and desertification. Remote sensing technology has been used for the detection of the changes in land use land cover in Damaturu town Nigeria. The main objectives of this research is to derive the land use/cover change map of Damaturu town from 1986 to 2017 and to quantify land use/ land cover change in the study area. Methodology employed while carry the research includes three satellites images for the year 1986, 1998 and 2017 were downloaded from USGS websites and used for detecting the land cover changes. Ground truth points were collected using google images and used for verification of image classifications. The accuracy of images classification was checked using ground truth point which showed the overall accuracy of 84.6% and a kappa coefficient of 0.89 which indicated that the method of classification was accurate. In the process of the research work, an increased was recorded in the built-up area which rose from 7.2% to 22.0%, open space increased from 10.8 to 22.8%, vegetation from 4.0% to 9.7%, water bodies from 0.0% to 0.1% while agricultural land decreased from 78% to 45.4% due to increase in interest of building as a result of the expansion of the town. The study arrived at the conclusion that there has been a significant land use change due to increase in population and development interest in built up areas which resulted in increased of amount of agricultural land being converted to build up areas over the period of 31 years.


Abstract:Nietzsche argues in the Genealogy of Morality (GM) that key aspects of modern European morality arose as "cures" for widespread human sickness but are ultimately making us sicker ("poisoning" us). This article provides a systematic overview of how Nietzsche believes morality has functioned as a cure and poison for European humanity. Drawing on my own previous work on Nietzsche's concept of health, I sketch an overview of the (1) sickness(es), (2) treatments, and (3) pathogeneses discussed in each of the three treatises in terms of a single (and plausible) concept of health. The result is a systematic interpretive overview of the core polemical argument in GM.


In ergonomics perspective, car seat is defined as one of the main workstation when the driver is performing driving task. The car seat itself provides support and space for the driver over the head, at the upper and lower back, at the buttock and also at the thigh. There has been abundant research regarding car seat in the past decades. However, in spite of vast studies on this issue, limited studies were found on sitting effect to the pressure when adopting different driving position. Hence, this study integrates objective and subjective evaluation to predict pressure felt level. Mapping of the pressures distribution was taken to the seat pan. This study is a static field experiment where data acquired are in the quantitative form. Findings show that the pressure of the heavier subject is more scattered at the buttock area, while the lighter subject has mild stress concentrated under ischium tuberosity.


Investigation was made to confirm the stability of drought and salt stress tolerance in cauliflower (Brassica oleracea var.botrytis) mutants after regeneration and micropropagation. The N-nitroso-N-ethyleurea (NEU) and N-nitroso-N-methylurea (NMU) induced mutants of cauliflower were created and screened for drought and salt stress tolerance. The highly tolerant mutants were selected, regenerated by tissue culture techniques, screened again for drought and salt tolerance under in-vitro and in-vivo conditions, correlated the response of in-vitro and in-vivo plants within a clone. Free proline levels in clones were correlated with stress tolerance. Results confirmed the persistence of mutations in clones with enhanced resistance levels to stresses over control plants. The regenerated in-vitro and in-vivo plants within a clone showed a positive significant correlation for drought (R2 = 0.663) and salt (R2 = 0.647) resistance that confirms the stability of mutation in clones after generations. Proline showed a positive and significant correlation with drought (R2 = 0.524) and salt (R2 = 0.786) tolerance. Conclusively, drought and salt resistance can be successfully enhanced in cauliflower by chemical mutagenesis. Further molecular analysis is recommended to study these mutants.


Cytoplasmic sequestration of the p53 tumor suppresser protein has been proposed as a mechanism involved in abolishing p53 function. However, the mechanisms regulating p53 subcellular localization remain unclear. In this report, we analyzed the possible existence of cis-acting sequences involved in intracellular trafficking of the p53 protein. To study p53 trafficking, the jellyfish green fluorescent protein (GFP) was fused to the wild-type or mutated p53 proteins for fast and sensitive analysis of protein localization in human MCF-7 breast cancer, RKO colon cancer, and SAOS-2 sarcoma cells. The wild-type p53/GFP fusion protein was localized in the cytoplasm, the nucleus, or both compartments in a subset of the cells. Mutagenesis analysis demonstrated that a single amino acid mutation of Lys-305 (mt p53) caused cytoplasmic sequestration of the p53 protein in the MCF-7 and RKO cells, whereas the fusion protein was distributed in both the cytoplasm and the nucleus of SAOS-2 cells. In SAOS-2 cells, the mutant p53 was a less efficient inducer of p21/CIP1/WAF1 expression. Cytoplasmic sequestration of the mt p53 was dependent upon the C-terminal region (residues 326–355) of the protein. These results indicated the involvement of cis-acting sequences in the regulation of p53 subcellular localization. Lys-305 is needed for nuclear import of p53 protein, and amino acid residues 326–355 can sequester mt p53 in the cytoplasm.


The reliability characteristics of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs are reviewed. Basic effects such as the discrepancy between DC predicted and RF measured power are addressed together with effects such as drain current and power degradation observed following RF stress. Technologies based on sapphire, SiC and Si substrates are considered. The impact of process such as passivation, as well as design i.e. barrier layer are considered. DC and microwave properties are considered in the study. Low frequency noise is also discussed in conjunction with degradation following stress.


In this message the effect of stimulation of nearest dorsal roots in segments L5 – L7 of spinal cord on N1 and P components of the cord dorsum potential is described. The changes of these components at simultaneous stimulation of dorsal roots and at the "moved in time" stimulation are shown. We point that such spatial zones of activity of N 1 -component neurons are independent, but the same zones for the neurons of substantia gelatinosa overlap. The causes of such spatial property of neurons of spinal cord are considered.


Electroless Nickel  Boron (Ni-B) coatings has a wide range of usage area including aerocraft and automotive applications as well as 7075 aluminum alloys. Electroless Ni-W-B deposits made a shift in wear resistance when compared to Ni-B coatings. In this study, an alkaline bath including sodium borohydride is used to reduce Nickel ions on the surface of 7075 aluminum alloy. Zincate treatment is the significant step before electroless deposition of Ni-B on aluminum alloys. During the deposition, pH and temperature values are set to appropriate range on the purpose of obtaining 20 μm deposit. With the aim of high wear resistance of the coated system both Ni-B or Ni-W-B coated substrates are heat treated with different temperatures. Effect of heat treatment on the hardness values of the specimens; bare 7075, Ni-B coated and Ni-W-B were obtained. Considering hardness values appropriate time and temperatures were selected. After heat treatments SEM micrographs and EDS anaylsis of the coated systems were investigated.


While research has identified four main police supervisory styles, it is unclear whether the framework accurately represents the supervisory styles of women. We explored the benefits of promoting women in policing and examined their supervisory styles, drawing on interviews with 38 ranking women. Participants attributed three benefits to promoting women – diversity, people-orientation, and conscientiousness. All 34 who described their supervisory style fell into one of the four previously identified categories. Most common was innovative (50%), then supportive (32%), traditional (12%), and active (6%). We link findings to calls for gender diversity up the ranks of law enforcement.


OBJECTIVE
When resource competition within primate social groups is effective, high-ranking individuals generally gain fitness benefits. Contrary to expectations, female Cercopithecus mitis form linear dominance hierarchies without evidence for rank-related variation in fitness-relevant measures, raising questions about the evolution of guenon social structure. Here, we test whether social status predicts gastrointestinal helminth infections, known to influence health and morbidity in other mammalian hosts. In addition, we assess whether infections contribute to stress responses as indicated by fecal glucocorticoid (fGC) levels.

METHODS
We quantified infections and hormone levels in 382 fecal samples from 11 adult female Sykes' monkeys (C. m. albogularis) over four months in one wild study group at Gede Ruins, Kenya. Using a generalized estimating equations technique, we modeled the odds of infection, relative infection intensity, and fGC variation.

RESULTS
High-ranking females were less likely infected with Trichuris and Trichostrongylus, had lower fecal egg counts for both taxa, and overall lower helminth richness than low-ranking females. An inverse relationship between rank and Trichuris egg counts existed also in a study population of blue monkeys (C. m. stuhlmanni), where we collected comparable data over a shorter period. Regardless of rank, lactating females were more likely than non-lactating females to be infected with Trichuris, and had higher fecal egg counts for both Trichuris and Oesophagostomum. Lastly, we report evidence that Trichuris infections exacerbated energetic stress and that food supplementation by tourists increased infection levels.

CONCLUSION
Our findings suggest that high-rank may provide long-term health and energetic benefits for female C. mitis, with potential fitness implications.


Protein sequences inhabit a discrete set in macromolecular space with incredible capacity to treat human disease. Despite our ability to program and manipulate protein sequences, the vast majority of protein development efforts are still done heuristically without a unified set of guiding principles. This article highlights work in understanding biophysical stability and function of proteins, developing new biophysical measurement tools and building high-throughput screening platforms to explore functional protein sequences. We highlight two primary areas. First, molecular biomechanics is a subfield concerned with the response of proteins to mechanical forces, and how we can leverage mechanical force to control protein function. The second subfield investigates the use of polymers and hydrogels in protein engineering and directed evolution in pursuit of new molecular systems with therapeutic applications. These two subdisciplines complement each other by shedding light onto sequence and structural features that can be used to impart stability into therapeutic proteins.


Introduction D.Cannadine E.H.Carr and What is History? R.J.Evans What is Social History Now? P.Cartledge What is Intellectual History Now? A.Brett What is Imperial History Now? L.Colley What is Political History Now? S.Pedersen What is Religious History Now? O.Hufton What is Cultural History Now? M.Rubin What is Gender History Now? A.K.Harris What is History Now? F.F.Armesto


In a previous paper a natural mapping was noted from the (a, Jep) diagram of R-curve analysis into the (Lr, Kr) failure assessment diagram (FAD) of the R6-revision 3 procedure. Assuming that Jep is obtained by a deformation theory of plasticity, the analytical expression for this mapping is given and used to derive the images in the FAD of the applied Jep curves and of the R-curve. If this mapping is sufficiently smooth, it may be used to provide an alternative proof that the critical R6-revision 3 load locus touches the R-curve image (RCI) when the crack extension and the load are the same as those predicted by R-curve analysis. The natural mapping may not always be 1:1 and this is illustrated by considering the example of a family of linear R-curves. The relations between the various other functions used in the FAD and R-curve analysis are studied analytically. In particular it is shown how to derive from any single failure assessment line (FAL) on which the assessment point is assumed to move during crack growth, either the implied R-curve (IRC) or, alternatively, the implied applied Jep curve (IAJC). Further comments are made on the internal consistency or conservatism of analyses of ductile tearing instability which use a single FAL on which the assessment point is assumed to move during crack growth, such as those characteristic of level 3 of PD6493 and options 1 and 2 of R6-revision 3. The method for testing the consistency or conservatism of an FAD with a single FAL which involves the calculation of the IAJC requires that the function Jep = jep(a, L) of the structure be known for a specific restricted range of a and L only. In contrast, the deduction of the IRC requires a knowledge of the jep(a, L) over a wider domain. It is emphasized that the assessment of conservatism throughout is not absolute but only relative to the predictions of R-curve analysis. As in the previous paper, the discussion is given in terms of the J based parameters. But the conclusions hold equally well for an FAD based on any other parameters describing crack driving force and crack resistance.


The rate-distortion characteristics of a scheme for encoding continuous-time band limited stationary sources, with a prescribed band, is considered. In this coding procedure the input is sampled at Nyquist's rate or faster, the samples undergo dithered uniform or lattice quantization, using subtractive dither, and the quantizer output is entropy-coded, The rate-distortion performance, and the tradeoff between the sampling rate and the quantization accuracy is investigated, utilizing the observation that the coding scheme is equivalent to an additive noise channel. It is shown that the mean-square error of the scheme is fixed as long as the product of the sampling period and the quantizer second moment is kept constant, while for a fixed distortion the coding rate generally increases when the sampling rate exceeds the Nyquist rate. Finally, as the lattice quantizer dimension becomes large, the equivalent additive noise channel of the scheme tends to be white Gaussian, and both the rate and the distortion performance become invariant to the sampling rate. >


An electrochemical-DNA (E-DNA) sensor was constructed by using DNA metallization to produce an electrochemical signal reporter in situ and hybridization chain reaction (HCR) as signal amplification strategy. The cyclic voltammetry (CV) technique was used to characterize the electrochemical solid-state Ag/AgCl process. Moreover, the enzyme cleavage technique was introduced to reduce background signals and further improve recognition accuracy. On the basis of these techniques, the as-prepared E-DNA sensor exhibited superior sensing performance for trace ctDNA analysis with a detection range of 0.5 fM to 10 pM and a detection limit of 7 aM. The proposed E-DNA sensor also displayed excellent selectivity, satisfied repeatability and stability, and had good recovery, all of which supports its potential applications for future clinical sample analysis.


In drained Histosols used as pastures or arable fields the muck-forming process transforms organic soil formations into muck. The rush vegetation ( Caricetum acutiformis and Glycerietum maximae) covering Histosols in the organic matter accumulation stage is replaced by meadow vegetation (Molinietalia order). During sustained drainage mucks are transformed into muck-like formations that contain less than 12% organic carbon. The aim of this study was to report the changes in organic matter initiated by the muck-forming process. Soil organic matter was fractionated into humic-acid carbon, fulvic-acid carbon, and humins. The amount of carbon susceptible to oxidation with KMnO 4 was also determined and, based on these results, lability, carbon pool, and management indices were calculated. Additionally, hot-water extractable carbon, corresponding to microbial biomass, was determined. The study's results show that the muck-forming process caused a decrease in organic carbon and the concentration of total nitrogen, indicating a reduction in carbon sequestration in the soils. The humin fraction wa s predominant in untransformed soils and was positively correlated with clay, total nitrogen, and non-oxidizable carbon. Drainage of Histosols contributed to increasing the solubility of humus compounds. The humification index, and the content of humic and fulvic acids was higher in drained soils. Humic acids and fulvic acids content was 24% and 11%-12% of organic carbon, respectively. Muck formations contained more humic acids than muck-like formations. Higher ΣCHCF:humins ratios were also observed in drained soils. In muck-like formations this ratio was 0.91 (11-fold higher than in reference soils). Drainage contributed to an increase in hot-water extractable carbon. Carbon indices were higher in mucks than in muck-like formations.


FROM SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TO DESIGN FOR ENVIRONMENT Sustainable Development Industrial Ecology Design in the Context of the Environmental Question Design for Environment Concepts, Tools and Approaches to the Environmental Question: Overview Standards and Regulations Oriented Towards Environmental Quality of Products Summary References PART I - LIFE CYCLE APPROACH LIFE CYCLE APPROACH AND THE PRODUCT-SYSTEM CONCEPT AND MODELING Life Cycle Concept and Theory Life Cycle and the Product-System Concept Product-System and Environmental Impact Life Cycle Modeling Product Life Cycle: Reference Model Summary References LIFE CYCLE DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT Life Cycle Approach in Product Design Life Cycle Design Oriented toward Environmental Performance of Products Life Cycle Management Summary References LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT Environmental Analysis and Evaluation of the Life Cycle Premises, Properties and Framework of Life Cycle Assessment Fields of Application and Limitations of Life Cycle Assessment Overview of Practical Approaches and Tools for Life Cycle Assessment Summary References LIFE CYCLE COST ANALYSIS Cost Analysis and the Life Cycle Approach Product Life Cycle Cost Analysis Evolution of Models for Product Life Cycle Cost Analysis Reference Standards and Codes of Practice Summary References INTEGRATED ECONOMIC-ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS OF THE LIFE CYCLE Life Cycle Cost Analysis and Environmental Aspects Environmental Costs and Environmental Accounting Integration Between LCCA and LCA Other Approaches to Economic-Environmental Analysis: Eco-Cost Models Summary References PART II - METHODOLOGICAL STATEMENT PRODUCT DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS Product Design and Development Product Design Methodological Evolution in Product Design Summary References INTEGRATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS IN PRODUCT DESIGN Orientation toward Environmental Aspects in the Design Process Environmental Strategies for the Life Cycle Approach Tools and Techniques for Environmental Requirements of the Life Cycle Integration in Product Development: Proposed Framework Toward an International Standard: The ISO/TR 14062 Technical Report Summary References LIFE CYCLE ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR PRODUCT DESIGN Strategies for Improving Resources Exploitation and Determinant Factors Strategies for Extension of Useful Life and Design Considerations Strategies for Recovery at End-of-Life and Design Considerations Product Modularity as a Key Concept for the Application of Environmental Strategies Summary References ENGINEERING METHODS FOR PRODUCT DURATION DESIGN AND EVALUATION Durability of Products and Components Fatigue of Materials Damage Thermography and the Risitano Method Summary References PART III - METHODS, TOOLS, AND CASE STUDIES PRODUCT CONSTRUCTIONAL SYSTEM DEFINITION BASED ON OPTIMAL LIFE CYCLE STRATEGIES Aims and Approach Method and Tools for Analysis and Design Optimal Life Cycle Strategy Evaluation Tool Case Study: System Analysis and Redesign of a Household Refrigerator Final Remarks Summary References ENVIRONMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF MATERIALS AND OPTIMAL CHOICE Materials Selection and Environmental Properties Environmental Characterization of Materials and Processes Summary of Selection Method Analysis of Production Feasibility Analysis of Performance Life Cycle Indicators Analysis of Results and Optimal Choice Case Study: Selection of Material for an Automobile Brake Disk Acknowledgements Summary References DESIGN FOR DISASSEMBLY AND DISTRIBUTION OF DISASSEMBLY DEPTH Design for Disassembly and Disassembly Level Distribution of Disassembly Depth Objectives and Approach to the Problem Method Statement Evaluation of Disassembly Depth Efficiency of Ease of Disassembly Distribution Case Study: Electromechanical System Summary References OPTIMAL DISASSEMBLY PLANNING Disassembly Planning Objectives and Approach to the Problem Common Structure of the Proposed Tools Development of the First Tool: Goals of Servicing Development of the Second Tool: Goals of Recovery Simulations and Analysis of Results Summary References PRODUCT RECOVERY CYCLES PLANNING AND COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF RECOVERY Approach to the Recovery Problem Method for Recovery Cycles Planning Calculation Models for Recovery Cycles Planning Case Study: Analysis and Optimization of Heat Exchanger Constructional Systems Cost-Benefit Analysis of Recovery Cycles Acknowledgements Summary References METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK AND ANALYSIS MODELS FOR SIMULATION OF PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE Simulation and the Life Cycle Approach Approach to the Problem and Methodological Framework Product Model and Analysis Tools Definition of Objective Functions Simulation and Analysis of Results Summary References


Guava's fruits are usually infested by fruit flies. There is little information regarding the native parasitoids associated with fruit flies, which may vary according to the local conditions. A study was made from September, 2013, to August, 2014, in a family orchard, in Barbalha. The fruit flies and their parasitoids were correlated to climatic variables besides their infestation, frequency, and parasitism rates. The fruits were collected weekly and taken to a laboratory, where they were counted, weighted, and stored on trays with vermiculite, and kept under non-controlled conditions, and covered with organza until pupation. The pupae were collected between seven to ten days later and kept until their emergence as adults. The variables fruit infestation, parasitism, and frequency rates were calculated, and in April, we registered the greatest values of fruit flies/parasitoids abundance and diversity. Anastrepha sororcula and Anastrepha zenildae were the most abundant and their occurrence and parasitism was greater during April due to favorable climatic conditions. The fruit fly infestation was more common during the rainy season, from January to June, and the parasitism occurred with more intensity in April, and the parasitoid Doryctobracon areolatus was the most frequent.


Objective: To explore nurses' experiences of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and factors
that influenced CPD uptake.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was used. A convenient sample of 80 nurses from two
private hospitals in Amman was approached during February 2009. A self report questionnaire was used
to collect data after verifying the validity and suitability of the items investigated. Descriptive statistics,
content analysis and ANOVA were used to answer the research questions.
Results: Enhancing quality of nursing care was reported as the prime motivator to uptake CPD
activities. The top four motivators were: improving performance, increasing professional knowledge,
increasing self-esteem, and enhancing the status of the profession. These factors overlapped with
respondents' reasons for CPD involvement, and a general consensus of opinion was reached among
respondents on the meanings of CPD. Expressed barriers for uptaking CPD indicated four themes:
Difficult access to CPD; relevance of CPD; work-life balance, and maximizing the outcome of CPD.
Equal and need-based opportunities of CPD activities were recommended. Significant differences were
found between the mean scores of nurses' perception of their willingness to undertake CPD activities
during annual leave of off days in terms of hospital (p .001), gender (p 0.019) and years of experience (p
0.019). Considering the same characteristics, significant differences were also noted on their readiness to
pay for CPD activities (p 0.049, p 0.046, p 0.046) and in improving performance (p 0.001, p0.002,
p00.02). No significant difference was found in terms of age. Generally, most of the items that differed
significantly were related to intrinsic factors.
Conclusion: The type of CPD activity depends on individuals' goals coupled with the hospital's nursing
managers' immediate and felt needs. The driving forces to uptake CPD clearly indicated nurses'
commitment towards quality care to promote the nursing profession.


Can there be anyone in medicine who prefers sickness to health? In medical school it can sometimes seem that way. This textbook and companion teacher's guide are intended for instructors committed to teaching clinical prevention, but whose students may be equally committed to clinical pathology and its treatment. These George Washington University clinical faculty offer a perfectly reasonable solution. If, so they have reasoned, students learn best in the clinical years through case studies, why not use that technique in helping them acquire skills in disease prevention? While this is not an original idea in teaching prevention, as committed clinicians they bring it off in quite convincing style. The editors waste no time in confronting a familiar problem: how to introduce the terminology and methods of public health analyses into the curriculum. They implicitly recognize that too much of a good thing could ruin their intentions. A clever tactic is


With the introduction of the concept of alloreactive Natural Killer (NK) cells, haploidentical transplantations are gaining increasing interest in the treatment of malignant diseases. While it has been shown in patients that alloreactive NK cells can exert an effective Graft-versus-Leukemia (GvL) effect, data in murine haploidentical transplantation models suggest that alloreactive NK cells also facilitate engraftment and reduce the risk of Graft-versus-Host Disease (GvHD). From these findings, we hypothesized that haploidentcial transplantation using Reduced Intensity Conditioning (RIC) regimens should be feasible in a clinical setting if the graft contains not only stem cells, but also large numbers of NK cells. Therefore, we have established a clinical method which allows the large scale depletion of CD3+ T-lymphocytes from mobilized peripheral haploidentical stem cells (PBSC's). We have initiated a clinical protocol using this approach in a patient population known to be at high risk for transplant-related toxicity and mortality (TRM). All patients suffered from chemorefractory leukemia/lymphoma or had a relapse after a previous myeloablative allogeneic transplant. As of June 2004, 18 pediatric patients have been transplanted. Seven patients had a chemorefractory disease and 11 patients had a relapse after a previous myeloablative allogeneic transplant. For all patients, haploidentical donors were mobilized using a combination of GM-CSF/G-CSF. Depletion of CD3+ T-cells was performed using the Clinimacs device. The RIC regimen consisted of Fludarabine (200 mg/m2), Thiotepa (10 mg/kg) and Melphalan (60 mg/m2 or 120 mg/m2, depending on the patient's clinical pretransplant condition). As an additional rejection prophylaxis, anti-CD3 antibody MuronomabR was given. A short course of posttransplant CellceptR was given for GvHD prophylaxis. For in vivo B-cell depletion, patients received one dose of RituxanR at day 0. The number of transplanted CD34+ stem cells was 19.3 x 106/kg (range 2.2 – 37.5) and the number of coinfused CD56+ NK cells was 103 x 106/kg (8.4 – 288). The number of residual CD3+ T-cells in the graft was 1.38 x 105/kg (0.07 – 4.5). Engraftment was rapid in 17 patients with 10.2 days (range 7–12) to reach an ANC>500. One patient did not engraft and one patient rejected his graft at day +12. Seventeen patients were available for chimerism analysis and in all patient, a 100% donor chimerism was seen after 14.5 days (range 6 – 21). Nine out of 15 evaluable patients had GvHD grade I–II and GvHD grade III or IV was not observed. One out of 8 evaluable patients had a limited chronic GvHD. One heavily pretreated patient who already had engrafted died due to a TRM (heart failure at day +10). No lethal infection was seen. One patient developed a slowly improving encephalopathy and one patient has an improving neuropathy. Of the 18 patients, 5 patients relapsed at a median of 73 days (range 35–126) after transplant. Twelve patients are alive without evidence of disease with a short median follow-up of 125 days (range 35 – 370). In 10 of these 12 patients, a 100% donor chimerism is maintained, whereas a decrease in donor chimerism was seen in 2 patients. The feasibility, low toxicity and the fast and sustained engraftment in this study is promising and argues for a wider use of RIC in haploidentical transplantation. In order to augment the antileukemic effect, this approach could be a platform for further posttransplant immune and cell therapy.


We studied the sequential topology of the NH2 and COOH termini of apoB during translocation by expressing, in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) and HepG2 cells, an apoB42 construct with c-Myc and hemagglutinin (HA) tags at 2 and 41% (relative to apoB100) of its amino acid sequence. We conducted similar studies using monoclonal antibodies against the NH2 and COOH termini of apoB100 in HepG2 cells. After radiolabeling, microsomes were immunoisolated from transfected CHO cells using anti-c-Myc or anti-HA antibodies. Throughout a 60-min chase in the presence ofN-acetyl-leucyl-norleucinal, more than 90% of microsomes were isolated by anti-HA antibodies, whereas less than 10% were isolated by anti-c-Myc antibodies. Proteinase K digestion of total microsomes consistently generated two fragments (∼70 and ∼120 kDa) of apoB42 containing the NH2 terminus throughout the chase; no fragments containing the COOH terminus were detected. Immunofluorescent studies of transfected CHO cells were consistent with results from the labeling studies. Essentially identical results were obtained from pulse-chase studies in both native and apoB42-transfected HepG2 cells. The present studies support a model in which, in the absence of adequate core lipid synthesis, there is partial translocation of apoB leading to cytosolic exposure, ubiquitination, and proteasomal degradation directly from the original translocation channel.


Introduction: For decades, scientists have attempted to develop models for growing and studying primary tumors outside of the human body. These techniques have ranged from growth assays in immuno-compromised mice to simple monolayer cultures. Unfortunately, these techniques are either too complex and expensive (animal models), or too simple (monolayer cultures) to effectively recapitulate the growth characteristics of human tumors. The recent discovery of cancer stem cells (CSCs) has provided new insight into the reasons that ex-vivo cultures have been unable to provide an accurate model for in-vivo tumors.Hypothesis: Our hypothesis is that three-dimensional mammosphere culture represents a practical means of enriching cancer stem cells and assessing, ex-vivo, the growth characteristics of human breast cancer. We believe this technique will provide a more accurate model system for testing novel drug targets specific for cancer stem cells and tailor specific therapies for patients.Method: By combining ideas from a number of previously described methods, we have recently developed a protocol to grow and maintain breast cancer specimens in a simple three-dimensional culture system using serum-free media, MEGM supplemented with BT-20, insulin, EGF and bFGF. We have successfully cultured both normal and tumor cells from clinical samples as small as a fine needle aspiration. In each case, small subset of epithelial cells from each sample grow into mammospheres.Results: Our preliminary data in characterization of the mammospheres shows that different morphologies and histotypes can be achieved in culture. We are currently using protein expression and transcriptional profiling methods to characterize the cell types within mammospheres and the histotypes of cancer that can generate mammospheres. Using immunofluorescence of a few key protein markers we have found that mammospheres, derived both from normal breast tissue and from tumor tissue samples, express putative stem cells markers as determined by expression of CD44 in the absence of CD24. Only a subset (30-50%) of CD44 positive cells in mammospheres are also positive for ALDH1 in both normal and cancer derived cultures suggesting an undifferentiating population of cells, potentially indicative of the presence of stem cells. Cells in the mammospheres are also positive for both epithelial and myoepithelial markers (e.g. broad-range cytokeratin, CK8, CK5, CK17, vimentin, P63) suggesting variable differentiation potential of progenitor cells. Preliminary transcriptional profiling data suggests that gene sets useful in molecular subtyping of primary tumors may also be informative in mammospheres, and that segregation of profiles of stromal and tumor cells can be elucidated through studies of mammospheres vs. core biopsies.Conclusion: This model system has the potential to be an inexpensive, accurate and robust model for breast cancer. It could help in the understanding of mechanisms of drug resistance, recurrence and metastasis, as well as in predicting treatment success or failure as we move towards personalized medicine. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(24 Suppl):Abstract nr 501.


The purpose of this study is to document the significance of four practices employed by parents that contribute to such development. Those practices encompassed the availability of materials, activities at home, parent attitude and visits to their child's class. Subjects consisted of 314 male and female parents of kindergarten children in the Sultanate of Oman. The researchers developed a 25-item questionnaire intended to measure the degree of parent involvement in their children's development at acceptable levels of validity and reliability. Results indicated that the role of parents ranged from medium to high on all practice domains of the tool. There were no significant differences for parents reading and writing practices, education levels, income levels, gender of children and siblings order. It is suggested that additional investigation in rural areas and other locales districts with different socially and economical levels should be conducted. In addition, the role of technology at homes and kindergartens such as child's learning style, parent's knowledge of child development and the availability of related outside resources available to families should be considered.


PREVIEW Urticaria can be frustrating for patients and physicians alike. Its triggers may be medications, food allergies, insect stings, or physical stimuli and are often difficult to determine, especially when the urticaria has become chronic. In this article, Dr Varadarajulu gives an overview of both acute and chronic urticaria and the angioedema that accompanies it in about 40% of patients. She also outlines an approach to help evaluate and manage these common conditions.


Design tools in the 3D industry, while powerful, are still tedious and labor-intensive when it comes to bringing a creative idea for a visual effect to life. In this position paper, we discussed how an infamous generative synthetic media, deepfakes, could be of use and embedded into common sophisticated 3D workflows to reduce user workloads in areas such as 3D model editing, material design, and character animation. As a case discussion, we also prototyped a tool to address the retargeting problem in character animation. Although deepfakes themselves have received a negative public image, the results of our interviews with field experts are unexpectedly positive in regard to our tool that utilizes deepfake algorithms. Lastly, we also discussed our experience and observed design practices to put deepfakes to good use, including how we could avoid potential misuses directly by design, how this design changes user interactions, and subsequent open issues.


Low-grade systemic inflammation is a central event in obesity and mediates insulin resistance and other complications. Previously we discovered a role for neural cholinergic signaling in controlling inflammation (Nature, 2000, 405, 6785; Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2006, 5219) and demonstrated that the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor galantamine suppresses systemic lethal inflammation (Brain Behav Immun, 2009, 4; 1). Here we tested the efficacy of galantamine in alleviating obesity-associated inflammation. C57BL/6J mice with high fat-diet induced (for 8 weeks) obesity were treated with either galantamine (4 mg/kg daily, i.p.), or saline for 4 weeks while on the high-fat diet. Galantamine treatment of obese mice resulted in lower body weight and abdominal adiposity as compared to saline treatment. Galantamine significantly decreased systemic levels of characteristic pro-inflammatory cytokines/adipokines, including IL-6, MCP-1, resistin and leptin and increased adiponectin levels, accompanied by alleviated hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance and hepatosteatosis. These results demonstrate that galantamine reduces obesity-associated inflammation and alleviates obesity-related complications and provide a rationale for further mechanistic studies and novel therapeutic implications. Translational aspects of these studies will be additionally facilitated by the fact that galantamine is a FDA approved (for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease) cholinergic agent.


Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 were used to examine factors associated with carrying a handgun among adolescent males. We expected that carrying a handgun would be associated with characteristics of the individual and with aspects of the contexts that are important for adolescents, such as the family, the peer group, the school setting, and the neighborhood. Consistent with these expectations, we found that adolescent males were more likely than their peers to carry handguns if they engaged in other problematic behaviors, had witnessed someone else being shot or shot at, and were involved in gangs. Boys under the age of 15 were less likely to carry a handgun if they were closely monitored by their mothers and respected their mothers, and they were more likely to carry a handgun if they frequently heard gunshots in their neighborhood or had a relative or friend who was a gang member. Males who were 15 and older were more likely to carry a handgun if they associated with peers who engaged in problematic behaviors. Language: en


The adverse effects of systemic heparin administration has led to the development of heparin coated devices. Intra-aortic balloons are frequently used in clinical settings in which complications of systemic heparin, especially bleeding, are feared. The current study evaluated the thromboresistance of heparin coated intra-aortic balloons. Six bovine calves were chosen for the experiment. In each animal, three intra-aortic balloons were inserted, and set to the automatic mode: two in the vena cava for 15 min and 45 min, respectively, and one in the aorta for 6 hr. There were nine standard and nine heparin coated intra-aortic balloons. At the end of the procedures, three samples of each intra-aortic balloon were analyzed with scanning electron microscopy for computed analysis of the balloon surface covered with fibrin and cells. The scanning electron microscopy analysis showed no deposit at any time interval on the heparin coated sample surfaces, whereas 3.6% +/- 9.2% (mean +/- SD) of the standard sample surfaces were covered with deposits at 15 min (p = 0.06), 14.8% +/- 24.3% at 45 min (p = 0.01), and 4.4% +/- 12.4% at 6 hr (p = 0.06). Strikingly, none of the 27 heparin coated samples showed any microscopic deposits, whereas 11 of the 27 standard samples did (p < 0.002). Heparin coated intra-aortic balloons appear to be a promising strategy, especially for patients with absolute or relative contraindications to systemic heparinization.


This study describes a high impedance-matched dipole antenna, which is composed of an inductive T-loop and a small bent dipole radiator with a slit for ultra-high-frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) tag design. Simple adjustments of the T-loop and dipole radiator of the antenna allow for easy control of the antenna resistance and inductive reactance, from which a high chip reactance (or high Q-factor) requirement may be readily satisfied. For a conjugate match to the FEC-MM Gen2 microchip impedance of 46−j796 Ω at 915 MHz, a compact (36 mm×28 mm) tag antenna with a Q-factor of 17 was designed. The T-loop coupling mechanism can excite two resonance modes with reactance match to enhance the impedance bandwidth for solving the relative high Q-factor of the RFID tag. The fabricated tag sensitivity of about −3.5 dBm, read range of 2.4 m on the x–z and y–z planes and measured orientation radiation patterns were obtained in the desired frequency band.


The island of Cuba is located in the Caribbean Sea to the south of Florida (United Stated of America). Its geographic characteristic, lengthened and narrow, makes it especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, sea level rise and extreme weather. Extreme events affect the entire economical sector, include the energy sector. Depending on the event, an energy source can be more affected than another one. The projected energy supply scenarios for Cuba foresee, in spite that the energy sector will continue to be dominated by fossil fuels, the introduction of renewable energy sources up to their maximum potential and nuclear energy at the end of the study period. The study took into account two scenarios, a Business as usual or reference and GHG mitigation. It is expected in the GHG mitigation scenario that the structure of the installed capacity for energy production in 2030 will be: 62.3% fossil fuels, 20.1% wind, 7.7% biomass, 6% hydro and 3.7% nuclear. The paper carries out an analysis of the vulnerability of these energy sources to the climate change and extreme events, and how climate change and climatic predictions should be taken into account in the country energy planning. A model is elaborated starting from the existing data, and that permits to figure out the most relevant parameters and their dependence on either the different energy source alternatives or their vulnerability. Pollutant emissions question is addressed too, pointing out the influence of the possible different alternatives


Conventional simulated annealing algorithm, which works on the flattened circuit, has a very large search space and hence requires a huge computational effort. In this research, a hierarchical strategy was established. The placement problem is divided into three sub-problems: clustering, floorplanning and final placement. This research is different from a previous work, which used similar strategy, allowing clusters to occupy more than one row and have variable aspect-ratio in the stage of floorplanning. The sub-tasks of clustering and floorplanning could be finished with small amount of CPU time. The sub-task of final placement was done by modified version of the well-known TimberWolfSC program. It was found that, as a consequence of the hierarchical approach, the search-efficiency of the final placement is improved significantly over the conventional non-hierarchical approach.<<ETX>>


We have analyzed the static and dynamic behaviour of the circular single stranded DNA of the filamentous Escherichia coli phages F1 and M13mp8 in solution as a function of salt concentration using static and dynamic light scattering and sedimentation analysis in the analytical ultracentrifuge. We show by static light scattering that native and denatured single stranded DNA behave like a randomly coiled macromolecule at all salt concentrations used. The size of the native single stranded DNA is governed by the formation of secondary structures. While the radius of gyration decreases with increasing salt concentration the translational diffusion of the center-of-mass of native single stranded DNA and the sedimentation coefficient increase with increasing salt concentration in a biphasic manner. Below 100 mM monovalent cation concentration there is a strong dependence of the hydrodynamic parameters upon salt which is reduced approx. 3-fold at higher salt concentrations. We attribute the compaction of single stranded DNA by salt to electrostatic shielding and, in case of native single stranded DNA, secondary structure formation. Internal motions of the native single stranded DNA are observable at all salt concentrations and can be interpreted with a model of segmental diffusion of the elements of the polymer chain. The observed segmental diffusion coefficient of the native single stranded polynucleotide increases with increasing salt under the conditions investigated.


Broad usage of Smartphones and mobile apps enables both individual trip summary and regional travel demand analysis. In this paper, we describe a trip analysis system, as part of smarter transit service. This trip analysis system consists of mobile apps and a centralized analyzer. It identifies the travel mode and purpose of the trips sensed by mobile devices, provides trip summaries and insights to mobile subscribers, and generates meaningful patterns to support traffic operation planning and transit system design. It is developed and deployed to the Smartphones of the volunteers in Dubuque, IA, to serve both the volunteers and the transit agencies. Preliminary evaluation has demonstrated the applicability of the design.


Data objects having low value like insurance or data-entry forms are shared between a client and rural business process outsourcing (RBPO) organisations for tasks like translation, proofreading, and data entry. These data objects are first decomposed into smaller parts and then assigned to RBPO users. Each user in a RBPO has access to only a few parts of a complete data object which he can leak to unauthorised users. But since the value of these parts is low, there is not enough incentive for the user to leak them. Such scenarios need good-enough security models that can provide reasonable security to an aggregate number of parts of low value data objects. In this chapter, the authors study the secure data assignment and leakage in RBPO by modeling it in the form of an optimisation problem. They discuss different scenarios of object decomposition and sharing, penalty assignment, and data leakage in the context of RBPO. They use LINGO toolbox to run their model and present insights.


Introduction Crohn's disease is characterized of dysregulated inflammatory and immune reactions. The role of the NOD-like receptor family, pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome in Crohn's disease remains largely unknown. Methods The microarray-based transcriptomic data and corresponding clinical information of GSE100833 and GSE16879 were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Identification of in the NLRP3 inflammasome-related genes and construction of LASSO regression model. Immune landscape analysis was evaluated with ssGSEA. Classification of Crohn's-disease samples based on NLRP3 inflammasome-related genes with ConsensusClusterPlus. Functional enrichment analysis, gene set variation analysis (GSVA) and drug-gene interaction network. Results The expressions of NLRP3 inflammasome-related genes were increased in diseased tissues, and higher expressions of NLRP3 inflammasome-related genes were correlated with generally enhanced immune cell infiltration, immune-related pathways and human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-gene expressions. The gene-based signature showed well performance in the diagnosis of Crohn's disease. Moreover, consensus clustering identified two Crohn's disease clusters based on NLRP3 inflammasome-related genes, and cluster 2 was with higher expressions of the genes. Cluster 2 demonstrated upregulated activities of immune environment in Crohn's disease. Furthermore, four key hub genes were identified and potential drugs were explored for the treatment of Crohn's disease. Conclusions Our findings indicate that NLRP3 inflammasome and its related genes could regulate immune cells and responses, as well as involve in the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease from transcriptomic aspects. These findings provide in silico insights into the diagnosis and treatment of Crohn's disease and might assist in the clinical decision-making process.


U.S. Department of Defense hearing conservation and noise limits standards require the definition of safe areas around all objects that emit noise and suggest various methods for characterizing these levels. The protection documents do not describe methods for reducing discrete measurement points into level fields to map safe and hazardous noise areas. For maintainers of high-powered jet aircraft, the suggested 85 dBA level contours that delineate the border between safe and hazardous regions occur at distances that far exceed normal operation positions. Conversion of discrete measurements to modeled levels defined over the entire ground personnel operational area in the aircraft vicinity is required to ensure sufficient protection. Present research offers a method to build a coarse map of grid points with nearest neighbor approximations, and then refines this using bi-linear smoothing. This nearest neighbor bi-linear smoothing approach provides predictions that are sufficiently accurate in cross-validation comparisons to the near-field locations and is the preferred method for the creation of hearing conservation contour level maps.


Nowadays, service robots are very popular in robot family. The first object of this paper is to develop a restaurant service mobile robot. This service mobile robot can transfer dishes in the restaurant. It also can show the customers to the unoccupied table. The service efficiency of the restaurant service can be increased with this service robot. This service mobile robot is equipped with ldquoLaser positioning systemrdquo The laser positioning system is used for rapid and precise positioning and guidance of the mobile robot. The second object of this paper is to develop an ordering dishes system with wireless network. Customers can order dishes on portable wireless PDA or on the touch screen of the robot. After finishing ordering dishes, the order can be transferred to the kitchen through the wireless network. When the food is finished by the cooker, the service mobile robot can carry the dishes to the customers.


This paper presents Bidirectional Chart Generation (BCG) algorithm as an uniform control mechanism for sentence generation and text planning. It is an extension of Semantic Hea.d Driven Generation algorithm [Shieber e2 al., 19891 in that recomputation of partial structures and backtracking are avoided by using a chart ta.ble. These properties enable to handle a large scale grammar including text planning and to implement the algorithm in parallel programming languages. Other merits of the algorithm are to deal with multiple contexts and to keep every partial structure in the chart. It becomes easier for the generator to find a recovery strategy when user cannot understand the generated text.


The generation of Abs that recognize the native conformation of G protein–coupled receptors can be a challenging task because, like most multimembrane-spanning proteins, they are extremely difficult to purify as native protein. By combining genetic immunization, phage display, and biopanning, we identified two functional monovalent Abs (nanobodies) targeting ChemR23. The two nanobodies (CA4910 and CA5183) were highly specific for the human receptor and bind ChemR23 with moderate affinity. Binding studies also showed that they share a common binding site that overlaps with that of chemerin, the natural ligand of ChemR23. Consistent with these results, we found that the nanobodies were able to antagonize chemerin-induced intracellular calcium increase. The inhibition was partial when chemerin was used as agonist and complete when the chemerin(149-157) nonapeptide was used as agonist. Engineering of a bivalent CA4910 nanobody resulted in a relatively modest increase in affinity but a marked enhancement of efficacy as an antagonist of chemerin induced intracellular calcium mobilization and a much higher potency against the chemerin(149–157) nonapeptide-induced response. We also demonstrated that the fluorescently labeled nanobodies detect ChemR23 on the surface of human primary cell populations as efficiently as a reference mouse mAb and that the bivalent CA4910 nanobody behaves as an efficient antagonist of chemerin-induced chemotaxis of human primary cells. Thus, these nanobodies constitute new tools to study the role of the chemerin/ChemR23 system in physiological and pathological conditions.


Objective: To assess the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale pattern and World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF scale scores of patients with schizophrenia after seven years of the initial diagnosis. Study Design: A cross sectional observational study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Psychiatry, Military Hospital Rawalpindi from Jan 2007 to Dec 2008. Material and Methods: Thirty patients who were invalided out of military service with the diagnosis of schizophrenia in 2000 and 2001 were subjected to psychometric evaluation seven years after the initial diagnosis in 2007 and 2008. They were assessed for their current symptoms and Quality of life using Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS) and World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQoL-BREF) scale respectively. Both are established psychometric tools to assess the entire spectrum of schizophrenia and quality of life. Result: All patients were males. Forty three percent of the subjects had Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS) score i.e. below cut off value of 65. Mean PANSS score of the group was 72. A score of more than 12 on World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQoL-BREF) scale indicating better quality of life was seen in 43 % of the patients. Factors linked with PANSS score > 65 and poor Quality of life (Qol score 4-12) were being single, unemployed, living in cities, using psychoactive substances and in initial years of military service. Conclusion: More than half of the patients with diagnosis of schizophrenia continue to show high Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS) score and poor quality of life after seven years of initial diagnosis of schizophrenia.


Investigations were carried out for elemental composition of air particulates in the background air and near roadsides in Khartoum area. Investigations were also performed for the elemental composition of soils at the same locations. A cyclone and a dichotomous virtual impactor were used to measure the air particulates. The cyclone was adjusted to collect particles having an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5!m. The virtual impactor, through its fine channel, was capable of collecting airborne particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 μm. Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) analysis was used to study the elemental concentrations of the air and soil samples. The analysis of the results indicated that all elements in the proximity of roadsides have elevated concentrations compared to the background air levels. Enrichment factors were calculated relative to crust rock and Khartoum soil. The results showed that the elements K, Ca, Ti, Fe, and Sr in the aerosols have their origin from the soil, while the elements Zn, Ni and Pb have their source from automobile emissions. The results also indicated a correlation between lead and bromine. The lead to bromine ratio was found to be within the range of those derived from vehicular exhaust, and in good agreement with the ratios obtained from some other countries.


Soybean development to intercropping is one of the opportunities to increase soybean planting area. Each soybean variety has different responses to intercropping so it is required to study soybean varieties that are suitable or adaptive to intercropping environments. Therefore, a research was conducted to determine the response of soybean genotypes in intercropping with cassava. The research was conducted at the Jambegede Research Station, Malang in February to December 2018, in two environments, namely intercropping (L1) and monoculture (L2), with two planting times, namely three weeks (T1) and 4 months (T2) after cassava planting. Twelve promising lines and three varieties (Dena 1, Dena 2, and Grobogan) were used as research materials. A completely randomized block design with three replications was used to arrange the treatments in each environment. The results showed that the responses of each soybean genotype tested as intercrops on intercropping system with cassava were varied, depending on the soybean planting time. GH-5 and GH-6 soybean genotypes are suitable for the first intercrop (T1), while GH-3 are suitable as the second intercrops (T2) in intercropping system with cassava + Soybean, with higher stress tolerance index (STI) and lower weighted sensitivity index (WSI) than the other genotypes tested. Based on the land equivalent ratio (LER), intercropping of cassava with GH-5, GH-6, or GH-3 soybean genotypes was advantageous (RKL>1.0).


Background; A substantial proportion of children will experience at least one episode with bronchiolitis, and as much as 2-3% of all children was hospitalized with bronchiolitis during their first year of life. Bronchiolitis is the most common reason for hospitalization of children in many countries, challenging both economy, area and staffing in paediatric departments. Objective; To Compare outcome of hypertonic saline versus normal saline in children with acute bronchiolitis.  Material and Methods; All children fulfilling inclusion criteria were registered in this study from Emergency Department of Pediatric Medicine, Nishtar Hospital, Multan. In Group A, each child was nebulized with 4 ml of 3 % of hypertonic saline while group B was nebulized with 4 ml of 0.9% saline solution for 3 times at interval of 20 minutes. Results; Of these 302 study cases, 178 (58.9 %) were male patients while 124 (41.1 %) were female patients. Mean age of our study cases was 7.60 ± 6.19 months (ranging from 2 months to 24 months). Mean age of the male patients was noted to be 5.71 ± 3.22 months while that female patients was 10.32 ± 8.14 months (p=0.000). Mean baseline clinical severity score was 7.15 ± 1.63 while 228 (75.5%) had baseline severity score up to 8. Of these 302 study cases, need for hospitalization was noted in 122 (40.4%). Need for hospitalization in group A was 41 (27.2%) while in group B it was 81 (53.6%). (p = 0.000). Conclusion; Our study results support the use hypertonic saline solution nebulization in children with acute bronchiolitis as compared with normal saline nebulization. Hypertonic solution was found to be more effective in improving clinical severity score and reducing need of hospitalization significantly. All clinicians treating such patients should employ hypertonic solution to get desired clinical outcomes. Keywords; Hypertonic solution, acute bronchiolitis, normal saline. DOI : 10.7176/JMPB/54-16 Publication date : April 30 th 2019