Enantiomerization barriers (Table 1) for novel 4,5-disubstituted phenanthrenes of types A and B have been determined by coalescence of 1H NMR signals or by thermal racemization of chromatographically enriched enantiomers. The barriers depend upon the size of the groups R = CMe3, Br, Me, Cl, OBz in A and B, the behaviour of annelated benzo rings instead of R being particularly considered.


This study was conducted to investigate the effects of concrete flexural strength and surface smoothness, which were pay factors of concrete pavements, on pavement performance, and to develop the methodologies to determine the proper allowable ranges according to the magnitudes of those pay factors. The concrete flexural strength was analyzed using the AASHTO, power, and linear fatigue failure models, and the surface smoothness was analyzed for the roughness indices of PSI, IRI, and PrI using the AASHTO model. The analysis results showed that the allowable range of the flexural strength should be determined using the rate between the deficiency and strength, and the penalty should be linearly proportional to the strength deficiency rate because the linear relationship between the strength deficiency rate and the reduction in pavement life was observed. As the initial surface smoothness became better, the smoothness deficiency rate should be larger. The penalty due to the surface smoothness deficiency should also be linearly proportional to the smoothness deficiency rate.


We investigated the spatial and temporal changes of benthic macroinvertebrate communities in response to floods and droughts in three different stream types: perennial, intermittent, and ephemeral. Benthic macroinvertebrates were collected monthly (or biweekly) at six different sampling sites from July 2006 to January 2008. Species richness and abundance were extremely low at all sampling sites during the flooding period, but the communities subsequently recovered rapidly within 1 month. The effects of floods and droughts on benthic macroinvertebrates manifested differently among the three different stream types. Species richness and abundance had a negative relationship with the amount of precipitation in the perennial stream type, whereas no significant relationship was observed in the ephemeral stream type. A Self‐Organizing Map, an unsupervised artificial neural network, classified the samples into four clusters based on the similarities of community composition, reflecting the different effects of floods and droughts on the different stream types. Our results suggest that floods and droughts are the defining characteristics of streams, spatial heterogeneity (i.e. the perennial stream type) can decrease the effect of temporal heterogeneity, and both spatial and temporal heterogeneities are important for structuring the environmental condition and benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The genre of kōshiki 講式 (ceremonial lectures) has, over the last decade, gained significant traction in the fields of Buddhist studies and Japanese religions, but its commentarial sub-genre remains largely unexplored. While kōshiki offer fertile ground for understanding devotional practices across nearly all Buddhist schools in Japan, commentaries reveal how Buddhists understood their liturgical content and, more narrowly, how this content was consumed and re-purposed through intellectual endeavor. This article contributes to this understudied area in two ways. First, it demonstrates how the medieval Shingon cleric Gahō 我寶 (1239–1317) wielded the Shari kuyō shiki 舎利供養式, a ceremonial lecture written by Kakuban 覺鑁 (1095–1143), as a textual and performative embodiment of faith and devotion. Second, it suggests that his commentary gave shape to expressions of these very themes in various intellectual, performative, and editorial forums in later periods at the Kyoto temple Chishakuin 智積院.


SUMMARY: The original strain of Vibrio 01 (Happold&Key, 1932) appears to have been lost. The Bacterium NCIB 8250, which is frequently referred to as 'Vibrio 01', has different properties from those of the original isolate and is a Gramnegative non-motile oxidase-negative coccobacillus.


The paper aims at introducing an in-depth analysis of Banks Corporate Governance in the after-crisis regulatory environment, going through theoretical and methodological specifications for starting an economic analysis of the post-crisis stream of reforms in the financial system, especially in the Eurozone.
In a nutshell, this research has two main purposes: on the one hand, assess whether departures from standard corporate governance paradigms in banks are desirable; on the other hand, shed light on the impact of the rules on the resolution of distressed institutions on governance mechanisms.
To achieve those goals, the paper carries out a survey the literature about Bank Governance and Bail-in Regulation in a functional manner to introduce the unexplored link between the new resolution regime and Corporate Governance, focusing the governance role of bail-inable creditors, as "potential residual claimers". The literature review is supplemented and enriched by the necessary theoretical tools to properly set a Law & Economic analysis, both for what concerns specific agency relationships between corporate constituencies and the nature of financial regulation and bank insolvency.
The paper concludes that the after-crisis reforms, and the bail-in regulation, in particular, represent the cornerstone for a new understanding of the relationship between corporate constituencies of banks. Moreover, the links between governance-related issues and the effectiveness of resolution mechanisms constitute a solid argument in favor of a positive role of Corporate Governance in addressing individual as well as systemic stability issues.


La-doping effects of strontium titanate (SrTiO3) thin films were studied by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The results indicated that the oxygen adsorption properties of SrTiO3 thin film surface could be significantly affected by La substitution. Besides, a shoulder was observed on the high binding energy side of the main O1s peak in La-doped thin films.


Objective: To estimate the relationship between maternal serum a- fetoprotein (MSAFP) levels and uterine artery Doppler findings at 20th week of pregnancy for prediction of preeclampsia and intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). Methods: Eighty pregnant women were followed as a study group prospectively. MSAFP levels at the 15-18th week of gestation and bilateral uterine artery Doppler findings at the 20th week of gestation were obtained. Results: Bilateral early diastolic notch of the uterine artery was detected in 17 cases (21,75%) at the 20th week of gestation. In 9 of them early diastolic notch was persistent at the 24th week while in 8 cases, it had disappeared. Uterine artery diastolic notch was found to be a significant predictive factor for preeclampsia, as well as for IUGR (p< 0.001, OR: 69.74; p<0.02, OR: 10.11, respectively). MSAFP levels of 17 cases that showed early diastolic notch in uterine artery Doppler were significantly higher than in the notch negative cases (p<0.05). The levels of MSAFP in 9 cases which demonstrated the persistence of diastolic notch, were significantly higher than the 8 cases where the notch had disappeared, at the 24th week of gestation (p<0.05). Conclusion: Our findings suggest that abnormal uterine artery Doppler findings at 20th week of gestation correlate with elevated MSAFP levels, and bilateral diastolic notch in uterine artery at 20 weeks' gestation together with elevated MSAFP, is associated with poor obstetric outcome. Key Words: IUGR, Preeclampsia, MSAFP, Diastolic notch


Based on this sample, an estimated 3% of all entrants were sufficiently incapacitated by a training injury to prevent them from running, and an estimated 59% of all runners suffered some ill effects. These were severe enough to warrant medical care in only a trivial proportion of cases, however, and had little effect on working or social life. The race organisers advised entrants on how to prepare for the race. The small numbers of casualties occurring during the race (see our accompanying paper) and the relative unimportance of the after effects suggest that they took heed of the advice. Older and more experienced runners were least affected. The increased opportunities that exist to compete in open-entry marathons means that the numbers with previous experience is growing. Even fewer problems before, during, and after the race should result.


Abstract Hospital-acquired pneumonia and ventilator-associated pneumonia continue to cause significant morbidity and mortality. With increasing rates of antimicrobial resistance, the importance of optimizing antibiotic treatment is key to maximize treatment outcomes. This is especially important in critically ill patients in intensive care units, in whom the infection is usually caused by less susceptible organisms. In addition, the marked physiological changes that can occur in these patients can cause serious changes in antibiotic pharmacokinetics which in turn alter the attainment of therapeutic drug exposures. This article reviews the various aspects of the pharmacokinetic changes that can occur in the critically ill patients, the barriers to achieving therapeutic drug exposures in pneumonia for systemically delivered antibiotics, the optimization for commonly used antibiotics in hospital- and ventilator-associated pneumonia, the agents that should be avoided in the treatment regimen, as well as the use of adjunctive therapy in the form of nebulized antibiotics.


This report presents details of the Cu-catalyzed enantioselective allyl–allyl coupling reaction between allylboronates and (Z)-allylic phosphates using a new chiral N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligand containing a phenolic hydroxyl group. The copper catalysis delivered enantioenriched chiral 1,5dienes with a tertiary stereogenic center. Various functional group compatibility and the use of earth-abundant and relatively low-toxicity Cu as a metal were attractive features of this protocol. The utility of the chiral phenol-NHC ligand for enantioselective copper catalysis with organoboron compounds was demonstrated. Enantio-discrimination models were discussed.


Abstract. Layout optimisation is essential for improving the overall performance of offshore wind farms. During the past 15 years, the use of yield optimisation algorithms has resulted in a transition from regular to more irregular farm layouts. However, since the layout affects many factors, yield optimisation alone may not maximise the overall performance. In this paper, a comparative case study is presented to quantify the effect of the wind farm layout on the overall performance of offshore wind farms. The case study was performed to investigate two performance indicators: power performance, using yield calculations with windPRO, and wake-induced tower fatigue, using the Frandsen model. It is observed that irregular wind farm layouts have a higher annual energy production compared to regular layouts. Their power production is also more persistent and less sensitive to wind direction, improving predictability and thus the market value of power output. However, one turbine location in the irregular layout has a 24 % higher effective turbulence level, leading to additional tower fatigue. As a result, fatigue-driven tower designs would require increased wall thicknesses, which would result in higher capital costs for all turbine locations. It is demonstrated in this study that layout optimisation using minimum inter-turbine spacing effectively resolves the induced wake issue while maintaining high-yield performance.


The 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act established environmental dust standards for underground coal mines. The Act requires that the average concentration of respirable dust in the active workings of a mine be maintained at or below 3.0 mg/m3; and, that effective December 30, 1972, the 3.0 mg/m3 standard be reduced to 2.0 mg/m3. This paper discusses the current status of dust levels in our underground coal mines, the effect of the 2.0 mg/m3 standard on underground dust levels, and associates the current levels with specific operations and occupations. The comparison is made between current levels and those existing prior to December 30, 1972.


Behcet9s disease is a multisystem vasculitis that affects the young. Chest affection is rare and primarily venous. The arterial affection is exceptional. We report a retrospective study of 15 cases of Behcet9s disease with chest, involvement gathered at the Respiratory Diseases department, UHC Ibn Rochd of Casablanca from 1994 to 2010. It was about 3 women and 12 men. The average age was 34 years old (range: 19-58 years). The bipolar aphtosis was found in all patients, pseudofolliculitis in 9 cases, and hemoptysis in 7 cases. Superior vena cava syndrome was noted in 8 cases, 6 cases of pleurisy. The telethorax showed bilateral pleurisy in 1 case, unilateral in 5 cases, bilateral hilar opacities projection in one case, an alveolar opacity in 3 cases, aspect of releasing balloons in one case, and it is normal in 4 cases. The chest angio-CT showed the superior vena cava9s thrombosis in 9 cases, bilateral pulmonary arterial aneurysms in 2 patients, pulmonary artery aneurysm associated to an embolism in one patient and pulmonary infarction site in 3 cases. Echocardiography showed an intracardiac thrombus in one case. All patients were administered steroids, colchicine and anti-coagulants. Immunosuppressive drugs were administered for 3 patients. The evolution was good in 11 cases, the onset of neuro-Behcet in 1 case and we deplore 4 deaths due to a lightning hemoptysis. We emphasize throughout these series the scarcity of thoracic manifestations of Behcet9s disease, namely the arterial disease that makes its prognosis dull.


Abstract The present study evaluates histological characteristics of the soft tissue response to long-term implantation of Apaceram™ discs composed of dense hydroxyapatite in rats. Discs were implanted into the subcutaneous tissue of 76 rats for six to 20 months. Decalcified histological sections stained with haematoxylin and eosin (H & E) and Mallory's azan were examined. Different cell types surrounding implants were counted. The greatest proportion of macrophages was found at six months (13.5 per cent). This proportion gradually decreased to four per cent at 20 months. Small numbers of lymphocytes and foreign body giant cells were observed in every group, but neither neutrophils nor osteogenesis were observed in any specimens. Results of the present study and previous related studies indicate that despite reappearance of a small number of macrophages six months after implantation, Apaceram™ is useful for reconstructive surgery.


The nutrient adequacy of a diet is typically assessed by comparing estimated nutrient intakes with established average nutrient requirements; this approach does not consider total energy consumed. In this multinational survey investigation in Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa, we explore the applications of the "critical nutrient-density approach"—which brings energy requirements into the equation—in the context of public health epidemiology. We conducted 24 h dietary recalls in convenience samples of normal-weight (BMI 18.5–25 kg/m2) or obese (BMI > 30 kg/m2), low-income women in three settings (n = 290). Dietary adequacy was assessed both in absolute terms and using the nutrient density approach. No significant differences in energy and nutrient intakes were observed between normal-weight and obese women within any of the three samples (p > 0.05). Both the cut-point method (% of EAR) and critical nutrient density approach revealed a high probability of inadequate intakes for several micronutrients but with poor concordance between the two methods. We conclude that it may often require some approximate estimate of the habitual energy intake from an empirical source to apply a true critical nutrient density reference for a population or subgroup. This will logically signify that there would be more "problem nutrients" in the diets examined with this nutrient density approach, and efforts toward improved food selection or food- or biofortification will frequently be indicated.


This paper presents the development of a Visible Light Communications (VLC) system for a local area network (LAN). The link is analyzed for all development stages and compared with a typical Ethernet system. The VLC system uses a Philips Luxeon Rebel as the transmitter and a Centronic OSD15-5T as the receiver coupled with a blue filter to achieve the required 10 Mb/s bit rates. The distance in which the optical link was measured was up to 1 m, and the link was successful (BER 10-6) for distances up to 0.7 m. To achieve higher distances and therefore to make the system practical in the home or office environment, the number of LEDs used can be scaled.


Family carers of veterans have a tendency not to seek support for their own wellbeing concerns. Understanding the barriers and enablers that family carers face in attending to their own wellbeing and in their caring role generally, is key to supporting family carers of veterans. This qualitative study sought to explore family carers' experiences and perceptions of their caring role, using semi-structured interviews. Questions were designed to capture concepts related to the barriers and enablers family carers face in attending to their own wellbeing. Twenty-two family carers participated in interviews. Thematic analysis facilitated the identification of key themes including the impact of the caring role; a perceived lack of recognition or appreciation of the caring role; expressed preferences for support; and consideration of the family unit. Findings suggest a need for accessible and multi-faceted support services for family carers of veterans, that target the drivers of physical and psychological wellbeing.


In this paper, we investigated a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique based on a hybrid particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to harvest maximum energy from a solar photovoltaic (PV) module. The hybrid PSO algorithm was designed to search and locate the maximum power point (MPP) on the power-voltage curve for abrupt changes in solar irradiance, and automatically switch to perturb and observe (P&O) mode to keep track of the MPP under steady state operation. The designed hardware consisted of a buck-boost converter operating at 100 kHz. 16-bit analog-to-digital (ADC) converters were used to accurately measure the voltages and currents at the load side, which was then read by an Arduino microcontroller to implement the hybrid PSO algorithm. The MPPT algorithm was executed on the microcontroller, which controls the MOSFET switches of the power converter by varying the duty cycle to achieve MPP tracking. MATLAB simulations were performed to find the maximum power and the corresponding optimum duty cycle under various irradiance conditions. Simulated results were verified by experiments using a 40 watt solar module and the experimental results closely agree with the values obtained by simulation. We are currently investigating the effects of several key operating parameters of the PSO technique, such as the particle count, PSO search space, and processor clock speed to further optimize the algorithm and achieve highest possible efficiency.  The detailed description of the developed algorithm, the MATLAB simulation, and design of the experimental hardware platform with the results are presented here.


Accurate estimation of ground elevation on a large scale is essential and worthwhile in topography, geomorphology, and ecology. The Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission, launched in September 2018, offers an opportunity to obtain global elevation data over the earth's surface. This paper aimed to evaluate the performance of ICESat-2 data for ground elevation retrieval. To fulfill this objective, our study first tested the availability of existing noise removal and ground photon identification algorithms on ICESat-2 data. Second, the accuracy of ground elevation data retrieved from ICESat-2 data was validated using airborne LiDAR data. Finally, we explored the influence of various factors (e.g., the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), slope, vegetation height and vegetation cover) on the estimation accuracy of ground elevation over forest, tundra and bare land areas in interior Alaska. The results indicate that the existing noise removal and ground photon identification algorithms for simulated ICESat-2 data also work well for ICESat-2 data. The overall mean difference and RMSE values between the ground elevations retrieved from the ICESat-2 data and the airborne LiDAR-derived ground elevations are -0.61 m and 1.96 m, respectively. In forest, tundra and bare land scenarios, the mean differences are -0.64 m, -0.61 m and -0.59 m, with RMSE values of 1.89 m, 2.05 m, and 1.76 m, respectively. By analyzing the influence of four error factors on the elevation accuracy, we found that the slope is the most important factor affecting the accuracy of ICESat-2 elevation data. The elevation errors increase rapidly with increasing slope, especially when the slope is greater than 20°. The elevation errors decrease with increasing SNR, but this decrease varies little once the SNR is greater than 10. In forest and tundra areas, the errors in the ground elevation also increase with increasing vegetation height and the amount of vegetation cover.


Abstract The poem portrays the wait and expectations of the family member about the outcome of hospitalizations of a patient in palliative care.


Extended main-sequence turnoffs (eMSTOs) are a common feature in color–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of young and intermediate-age star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The nature of eMSTOs is still debated. The most popular scenarios are extended star formation and ranges of stellar rotation rates. Here, we study implications of a kink feature in the main sequence (MS) of young star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This kink shows up very clearly in new Hubble Space Telescope observations of the 700 Myr old cluster NGC 1831 and is located below the region in the CMD where multiple or wide MSs, which are known to occur in young clusters and thought to be due to varying rotation rates, merge together into a single MS. The kink occurs at an initial stellar mass of 1.45 ± 0.02 M⊙; we posit that it represents a lower limit to the mass below which the effects of rotation on the energy output of stars are rendered negligible at the metallicity of these clusters. Evaluating the positions of stars with this initial mass in CMDs of massive LMC star clusters with ages of ∼1.7 Gyr that feature wide eMSTOs, we find that such stars are located in a region where the eMSTO is already significantly wider than the MS below it. This strongly suggests that stellar rotation cannot fully explain the wide extent of eMSTOs in massive intermediate-age clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. A distribution of stellar ages still seems necessary to explain the eMSTO phenomenon.


The increasing popularity of modeling has attracted the attention to create, handle and transform customizable, but precise visual languages. This book addresses issues of customizable visual language definition and transformation. The novel results - presented in the book - can be divided into three main parts. The first contribution deals with the definition of visual languages. A new, formal attribute structure is introduced and a new method is provided, which can model the appearance by using a special visual language and map appearance definitions to topological definitions by model transformation. The second contribution deals with constraints of visual languages, it extends one of the most popular constraint languages, OCL to support the n-layer attribute structure. Moreover, optimization methods are provided for OCL-based constraint handling. The third contribution focuses on the transformation of visual languages. A new model transformation approach is presented that supports executing transformations in parallel. Practical validation of the theoretical results are presented as well.


Integrable Killing tensors are used to classify orthogonal coordinates in which the classical Hamilton-Jacobi equation can be solved by a separation of variables. We completely solve the Nijenhuis integrability conditions for Killing tensors on the sphere $S^3$ and give a set of isometry invariants for the integrability of a Killing tensor. We describe explicitly the space of solutions as well as its quotient under isometries as projective varieties and interpret their algebro-geometric properties in terms of Killing tensors. Furthermore, we identify all St\"ackel systems in these varieties. This allows us to recover the known list of separation coordinates on $S^3$ in a simple and purely algebraic way. In particular, we prove that their moduli space is homeomorphic to the associahedron $K_4$.


Prevention of postoperative adhesion is an issue that continues to elude the abdominal and reproductive surgeon. Adhesions seem to be a result of an inflammatory process and it is well known that prostaglandins play an important role in such an event. In an attempt to improve the results of microsurgery, we have tried in this study to examine the effect of local intraperitoneal application of prostaglandins (PGE2 and PGF2 alpha) on adhesion formation in the rat after traumatizing to the uterine horn. Prostaglandins applied locally were found to increase intraperitoneal adhesion formation at the injured sites, in comparison with controls. Also, we have reported on histological examination an increased accumulation of inflammatory cells in traumatized areas. However, we didn't observe a reduced fertility in rats treated with prostaglandins because these substances induce follicular rupture by activation of proteolytic enzyme located in the follicular wall. We conclude that prostaglandins play an important role in the process of adhesion formation. Using antiprostaglandins agents could improve the outcomes of reproductive surgery.


We study the worst case tractability of multivariate linear problems defined on separable Hilbert spaces. Information about a problem instance consists of noisy evaluations of arbitrary bounded linear functionals, where the noise is either deterministic or random. The cost of a single evaluation depends on its precision and is controlled by a cost function. We establish mutual interactions between tractability of a problem with noisy information, the cost function, and tractability of the same problem, but with exact information.


Background and study aim: Torticollis is the postural deformity of head and neck. Congenital Muscular Torticollis (CMT) is a postural deformity of head and neck detected at birth or shortly after birth, primarily resulting from unilateral shortening of Sternocleidomastoid muscle (SCM), In neonates and infants, patient may cure conservatively by physiotherapy but surgery is the treatment of choice for children and adolescents. Here we show our experience regarding management of congenital muscular torticollis with physiotherapy. Patients and Methods: This is an observational descriptive study. Verbal consent from parents was taken. Patients of congenital muscular torticollis with other disease or other congenital anomaly were excluded from study. Twenty patients of congenital muscular torticollis were treated. The cases were enrolled between Nov' 2005 to Oct' 2008 in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Gonosasthaya Somaj Vittik Medical College Hospital, ZH Sikder Women's Medical College Hospital, Shaheed Shurawardy Medical College Hospital. Neonates and infants were treated conservatively with physiotherapy and non responsive cases were referred for surgery. Results: Patients age range from 5 days to 1 year of which eleven were females and nine were males. Sternocleidomastoid muscle (SCM) was shortened in all cases (12 on right side and 8 on left side). Of 20 patients 6 neonates, rest 14 infants within 1 year age. Out of 20 neonates and infants 17 were cured conservatively with physiotherapy and rest 3 were referred for surgery. Conclusion: Most of the patient of congenital muscular torticollis can be treated conservatively during infancy. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jssmc.v1i2.12157 Journal of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Vol.1, No.2, December 2009 p.2-5


Wheat–chickpea intercrops are not well studied, despite the importance of these two species in increasing agricultural profitability and ensuring nutritional and food security. The present study aims to assess the intercropping arable system's services under contrasting field management and climate conditions. Simultaneously, this assessment focuses on the most agronomic and ecological indices widely used in the literature. Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum durum L.cv. VITRON) and chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.cv. FLIP 90/13 C) were cultivated, both in sole crop and intercrop during the 2018/2019 growing season. A field experiment was carried out under controlled conditions at three contrasting pedoclimatic sites and under three levels of N fertilization. Both grain and N yield of mixture crop were significantly higher (+11%) when chickpea and durum wheat were grown together under either low or moderate N application. Soil N availability as compared to the critical level increased by more than 19% from flowering to harvest stage for intercropped wheat under low N application (N-30 and N-60), while it decreased significantly for intercropped chickpea. In rich N soils and under low rainfall conditions (site 1 and 3), intercropping was generally more advantageous for yield (+14%), N yield (+23%), and land use (103 and 119.5% for grain and N yield, respectively) only with reduced N fertilization as assessed using both land equivalent ratio (LER) and land-use efficiency (LUE). Competition dominance was directly affected by changes in climatic conditions over sites; intercropped wheat was more competitive than their respective chickpea under low rainfall conditions. These findings illustrate the crucial role of competitive index assessment in intercropping to promise a robust method for crop N and yield diagnosis during fertilization decision-making.


Abstract In today's modern age, information systems are of vital importance for successful performance of any organization. The most important role of any information system is its information support. This paper develops an information support model and presents the results of the survey examining the effects of such model. The survey was performed among the employees of Brcko Distric Government and comprised three phases. The first phase assesses the influence of the quality of information support and information on information support when making decisions. The second phase examines the impact of information support when making decisions on the perceived availability and user satisfaction with information support. The third phase examines the effects of perceived usefulness as well as information support satisfaction on user loyalty. The model is presented using six hypotheses, which were tested by means of a multivariate regression analysis. The demonstrated model shows that the quality of information support and information is of vital importance in the decision-making process. The perceived usefulness and customer satisfaction are of vital importance for continuous usage of information support. The model is universal, and if slightly modified, it can be used in any sphere of life where satisfaction is measured for clients and users of some service.


The current study examines the utility of self-trauma theory for explaining the long-term impact of childhood psychological abuse on aggression. Specifically, the self-capacities of interpersonal relatedness, identity, and affect regulation are tested as mediators of the impact of psychological abuse on various types of aggression in adulthood. Hierarchical regression analyses are used to examine data collected from 268 university students who completed the Personality Assessment Inventory, Comprehensive Child Maltreatment Scale, and the Inventory of Altered Self-Capacities. Results show that self-capacities were predicted by maltreatment, particularly psychological abuse. Altered self-capacities fully mediate the impact of child maltreatment on various forms of aggression. Problems with interpersonal relationships play the most significant role in mediating the relationship between child maltreatment and aggression. Results suggest more frequent maltreating experiences predict more dysfunctional self-capacities, which increases the probability of displaying various forms of aggression.


To the Editor. —The SUPPORT project 1 seems to place the blame for the demonstrated breakdown in communication between physicians and patients squarely on the caregiver. Is this fair? I have spent much of the last 20 years working to empower people to take control of how they are cared for at the end of life. In so doing, I have met many caring nurses and physicians and seen the situations with which they are faced. If I were a physician in a hospital setting, I would hesitate to initiate the subject of end-of-life care if I had never communicated on such a difficult issue with the patient at an earlier time in a less-threatening setting. We must devise the means to make end-of-life care easier to broach. I suggest that when a patient arrives for an appointment with his or her physician, the patient can be asked to fill


The structure-property relations of ternary copper chalcogenides, TlCu3-xS2 and α-BaCu2-xS2 are examined. The density of states, band dispersions, and Fermi surfaces of these compounds are investigated to verify the reason of the metal-insulator transitions by extended Huckel tight-binding band calculations. The origin of the metalinsulator transitions of non-stoichiometric TlCu3-xS2 and α-BaCu2-xS2 is thought to be the electronic instability induced by their Fermi surface nesting.


The food that we eat is uniform neither in shape or appearance nor in internal composition or content. Since technology became increasingly important, the presence of biological variance in our food became more and more of a nuisance. Techniques and procedures (statistical, technical) were developed. The most widely used are sorting or grading on large-scale operations. Statistical rules were developed on the sampling size to obtain a reliable mean value. Experimental design strategies were developed for efficient research. All the techniques used are rather empirical and only loosely connected to the theoretical and fundamental knowledge we do have. An effort is made to approach biological variance from a new perspective. The nature of biological variance is traced back to its origin in the processes of production and conversion, primarily driven by the "random" differences in climate and soil. By modelling the dynamics on the level of the individual units that constitutes a batch, rather then modelling the mean value for the batch itself, more fundamental models can be developed. These more fundamental models are generic in nature and describe changes in product properties for all kinds of circumstances like growing area, seasonal effects, harvest maturity and storage temperature.


This paper studies an oxide/silicon core/shell nanowire MOSFET (OS-CSNM). Through three-dimensional device simulations, we have demonstrated that the OS-CSNM has a lower leakage current and higher Ion/Ioff ratio after introducing the oxide core into a traditional nanowire MOSFET (TNM). The oxide/silicon OS-CSNM structure suppresses threshold voltage roll-off, drain induced barrier lowering and subthreshold swing degradation. Smaller intrinsic device delay is also observed in OS-CSNM in comparison with that of TNM.


Following Keynes and Shackle, money can be defined by its temporal nature, as a tool for managing and using the uncertainty of the future - as a problem and as an opportunity. Finance, which relies on money, can be described as a large apparatus that relates to the future while operating in the present, or the present intervention in the construction and structuring of the future. The financial crisis, in this context, can be brought into connection with an inadequate management of the future in terms of risks and its actual conceptualization. The reference to time also allows one to interpret the approach and the effectiveness of public policies on finance This paper examines the measures of Quantitative Easing, describing it as "injection" of time into markets, in the hope of encouraging the use and construction of the future.


A numerical model is presented and discussed for down-hill progressive landslides in soft clays. A simple-to-use spread sheet is given and used in order to illustrate the influence of the sensitivity of the clay and the geometry of the ground. The model is also used to discuss the agents and the mechanisms that formed the large landslide in Surte at the Gota River in 1950.


Abstract In the present study, a modified vacuum-assisted compression resin transfer molding (VACRTM) process has been developed to reduce the cycling period. The process uses an elastic bag placed between the upper mold and the preform to replace the mobile rigid mold in compression resin transfer molding. During resin injection, the bag is pulled upward by the vacuum applied in between the upper mold and the bag, and a loose fiber stack is then present. Resin is easily injected into the mold. Once enough volume of resin is injected, the compression pressure is applied on the bag, which compacts the preform and drives the resin through the remaining dry preform. Numerical results show that the bag compression phase is much longer than the resin injection one. A multistage compression strategy can be used to control the compression time. Due to inherent process defects, a higher volume of the injected liquid is essential and thus leads to a longer injection and compression phase in order to inject and squeeze the excess resin. The late compression is very slow in draining the residual resin. As compared with resin transfer molding, VACRTM can reduce the mold-filling time/injection pressure.


Microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) was functionalized with quaternary amine groups for use as an adsorbent to remove Congo Red dye (CR) from aqueous solution. The ultrasonic pretreatment of MCC was investigated during its functionalization. Characterization was conducted using infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The batch adsorption of the functionalized MCC was studied to evaluate the effects of dye concentration, pH of solution, temperature, and NaCl concentration on the adsorption CR. The adsorbent (FM-1) obtained using ultrasonic pretreatment of MCC under 10.8 kJ•g–1 exhibited an adsorption capacity of 304 mg•g–1 at initial pH under a dose of 0.1 g•L–1 and initial concentration of 80 mg•L–1. After functionalization, the FT-IR and XPS results indicated that the quaternary amine group was successfully grafted onto the cellulose, the surface was transformed to be coarse and porous, and the crystalline structure of the original cellulose was disrupted. FM-1 has been shown to be a promising and efficient adsorbent for the removal of CR from an aqueous solution.


At the 2009 DASP Workshop we introduced the question of sensitivity to mismatch in compressive sensing [1]. Our motivation was to study the effect of mismatch between themathematical basis (or frame) in which a signal was assumed to be sparse and the physical basis in which the signal was actually sparse. We were motivated by the problem of inverting a complex space-time radar image for the field of complex scatterers that produced the image. In this case there is no apriori known basis in which the image is actually sparse, as radar scatterers do not usually agree to place their ranges and Dopplers on any apriori agreed sampling grid. The consequence is that sparsity in the physical basis is not maintained in the mathematical basis, and a sparse inversion in the mathematical basis or frame does not match up with an inversion for the field in the physical basis. In the 2009 DASP paper and its sequels [2], [3], this effect was quantified with theorem statements about sensitivity to basis mismatch and with numerical examples for inverting time series records for their sparse set of damped complex exponential modes. These inversions were compared unfavorably to inversions using fancy linear prediction. In this paper, we continue these investigations by comparing the performance of sparse inversions of sparse images, using apriori selected frames that are mismatched to the physical basis, and by computing the Fisher information matrix for compressions of images that are sparse in a physical basis. We offer qualitative remarks on the trade-offs to be made in the compression and sub-sampling of analog signals with broad-band, but structured, spectra.


This study is the first to investigate the interactions of hemin with a G-triplex DNA of T1 using different DNA binding assays. The low intrinsic peroxidatic activity of hemin could be significantly enhanced using T1. Furthermore, much decreased oxidation enhancement by T2 or T3 with one key guanine mutation was observed, and the observed peroxidatic activity of T1 should be directly due to the G-triplex complexed with hemin.


Since the discovery of a neutrino flux in excess of the atmospheric background by the IceCube Collaboration, searches for the astrophysical sources have been ongoing. Due to the steeply falling background towards higher energies, the PeV events detected in three years of IceCube data are the most likely ones to be of extraterrestrial origin. Even excluding the PeV events detected so far, the neutrino flux is well above the atmospheric background, so it is likely that a number of sub-PeV events originate from the same astrophysical sources that produce the PeV events. We study the high-energy properties of AGN that are positionally coincident with the neutrino events from three years of IceCube data and show the results for event number 4. IC 4 is a event with a low angular error (7.1$^\circ$) and a large deposited energy of 165 TeV. We use multiwavelength data, including Fermi/LAT and X-ray data, to construct broadband spectra and present parametrizations of the broadband spectral energy distributions with logarithmic parabolas. Assuming the X-ray to {\gamma}-ray emission in blazars originates in the photoproduction of pions by accelerated protons, their predicted neutrino luminosity can be estimated. The measurements of the diffuse extragalactic background by Fermi/LAT gives us an estimate of the flux contributions from faint unresolved blazars. Their contribution increases the number of expected events by a factor of $\sim$2. We conclude that the detection of the IceCube neutrinos IC4, IC14, and IC20 can be explained by the integral emission of blazars, even though no individual source yields a sufficient energy output.


We present a differential study of 500 Magellanic Cepheids with 3 million measurements obtained as a by-product of the EROS microlensing survey. The data-set is unbiased and provides an excellent basis for a differential analysis between LMC and SMC. We investigate the pulsational properties of the Cepheids as a function of metallicity and the constraints they give to stellar pulsation, stellar evolution theory and opacities. Moreover, our empirical analysis shows a small metallicity effect on the period-luminosity relation which has a significant implication to recent distance estimates based on HST observations of Cepheids in galaxies as far as the Virgo cluster. When the color shift of Cepheids due to metallicity is interpreted as reddening in the determination of the true distance modulus of a target galaxy a systematic error is made. Accounting for that error makes the low-H0 values (Sandage et al.) higher and the high-H0 (Freedman et al.) value lower, bringing those discrepant estimates into agrement around H0 ≈ 70 kms−1Mpc−1.


Background: Patients with aggressive B cell Non-Hodgkin-Lymphoma failing from immune-chemotherapy show disappointing results with standard salvage therapies and consolidation of high-dose chemotherapy with autologous stem cell transplantation. Especially in cases never in remission or with early relapse outcome is poor. Several groups started trials combining high-dose chemotherapy of carmustin, etoposide, cytarabine and melphalan (BEAM) with 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan to enhance the efficacy of the preparative regimen. In this trial we tested safety, feasibility and studied efficacy of reduced intervals of 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan to autologous stem cell transplantation after BEAM.

Methods: Patients without disease progression during salvage therapy of relapsed or refractory CD20+ aggressive B-NHL were included in this prospective, multicenter, phase I/II trial. Primary endpoint was the minimum tolerable interval of 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan given as close as possible to ASCT defined as <2 patients with dose limiting toxicity in a 6+6 patient cohort. We reduced the time interval of standard dose 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan (0.4 mCi/kg body weight) to ASCT after BEAM from 14 to 12 and finally 10 days to foster the disease control by more concomitant radioimmunotherapy and high-dose chemotherapy.

Results: From 2006 to 2009 42 patients were screened for inclusion. Reasons for screening failure were progressive disease during salvage therapy (n=8), death (n=2), not aggressive B-NHL (n=2), impaired organ function (n=2), and other (n=2). Median age of the 26 patients enrolled was 58 years (34-66). 12 patients were allocated to cohort 1 (interval 14 days), 6 patients to cohort 2 (interval 12 days) and 8 patients to cohort 3 (interval 10 days). Histology included 14 DLBCL, 6 FL III°, 5 transformed FL and 1 aggressive B-NHL without further subtyping. 11 from 26 patients had primary refractory disease or early relapse within 12 months after diagnosis. Secondary IPI was >1 in 14 patients. Response to salvage therapy was CR in 6/26 patients and PR in 12/26 patients. 20/26 patients achieved CR after study treatment. Two early deaths (d +7, +18) occurred due to infections. All patients receiving stem cells engrafted with median recovery of leukocytes and platelets at d+10 and +13, respectively. We observed no correlation of toxicities and the study cohorts with the different intervals. At median follow-up of the survivors of 3.5 years the overall survival is 76%, the progression free survival is 67% and time to progression 26%. Lymphoma was the main cause of death. Stratified to time intervals of 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan and autologous stem cell transplantation revealed time to progression of 50% with 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan at d-14, 16% at d-12 and 0% at d-10.

Conclusions: 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan and BEAM followed by autologous stem cell transplantation was safe and feasible. The minimum tolerable interval of 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan and autologous stem cell transplantation is 10 days. With shorter intervals of radioimmunotherapy and high-dose chemotherapy and therefore more concomitant therapy, we did not observed excessive toxicity, but enhanced disease control of refractory or relapsed aggressive B-NHL. Our results compare favorable to standard BEAM or allogeneic stem cell transplantation. A formal comparison in a phase III trial is warranted.

Disclosures Off Label Use: 90Yttrium ibritumomab tiuxetan (Zevalin(R)), radioimmunotherapy of CD20+ lymphoma.


Modern integrated circuits require careful attention to the soft errors resulting into bit upsets, which are normally caused by alpha particle or neutron hits. These events, also referred to as single-event upsets (SEUs), will become more severe for future technologies. In this paper we propose a novel 10T SEU tolerant SRAM cell design. Our SRAM cell is area efficient in comparison with the earlier proposals. Simulation results show that the proposed cell is robust as it does not flip even for a transient pulse with four times the Qcrit of a standard 6T SRAM cell.


BA-HAN-1C is a clonal rat rhabdomyosarcoma cell line consisting of proliferating mononuclear tumor cells, some of which spontaneously fuse to form terminally differentiated postmitotic myotubelike giant cells. Exposure to retinoic acid resulted in an inhibition of proliferation and a marked increase in cellular differentiation. The number of myotubelike giant cells significantly increased, and about 30% of the mononuclear tumor cells exhibited morphological features of rhabdomyogenic differentiation which were not observed in the mononuclear cells of untreated cultures. Morphological differentiation was paralleled by an increase in total creatine kinase activity as a biochemical marker of differentiation. These effects of retinoic acid were preceded by an increased expression of proto-oncogene raf and transient expression of proto-oncogene fos. The maximum level of fos expression was observed at 15 min and of raf at 12 hr after exposure to retinoic acid. No expression of the proto-oncogenes src, myb, myc, ros, mos, erbA, and erbB was detected. ImagesFIGURE 2.FIGURE 3.


Two methods of calculating hysteresis losses in hard superconductors are described. The London model is assumed in which the critical current density is taken independent of magnetic field. Losses in isolated wires of different cross section are considered but it is found that losses for solid wires vary by at most a factor of 3 for different shaped wires of the same current-carrying capacity. The loss at saturation current is usually 0·4-0·6 Ic2μ0/π. Losses at the edges of thin sheets are also calculated and a fourth-power dependence on current (for low current) is found. Three systems are examined: a slit parallel to the current in a wide sheet (Lc similar, equals μ0j2g2π3 F4/24), one pair of the edges of two wide strips set back-to-back and carrying antiparallel currents (Lc similar, equals μ0πj2s2 F4/6) and a long thin wall parallel to the current flow on a wide sheet (Lc similar, equals μ0π3j2a2 F4/3). Lc is the loss per cycle per unit length, F is the current peak as a fraction of saturation current, g the width of the slit, s the spacing of strips, a the height of the asperity and j the critical current density per unit width. All in MKS units.


In this paper, we tackle the problem of category-level 9D pose estimation in the wild, given a single RGB-D frame. Using supervised data of real-world 9D poses is tedious and erroneous, and also fails to generalize to unseen scenarios. Besides, category-level pose estimation requires a method to be able to generalize to unseen objects at test time, which is also challenging. Drawing inspirations from traditional point pair features (PPFs), in this paper, we design a novel Category-level PPF (CPPF) voting method to achieve accurate, robust and generalizable 9D pose estimation in the wild. To obtain robust pose estimation, we sample numerous point pairs on an object, and for each pair our model predicts necessary SE(3)-invariant voting statistics on object centers, orientations and scales. A novel coarse-to-fine voting algorithm is proposed to eliminate noisy point pair samples and generate final predictions from the population. To get rid of false positives in the orientation voting process, an auxiliary binary disambiguating classification task is introduced for each sampled point pair. In order to detect objects in the wild, we carefully design our sim-to-real pipeline by training on synthetic point clouds only, unless objects have ambiguous poses in geometry. Under this cir-cumstance, color information is leveraged to disambiguate these poses. Results on standard benchmarks show that our method is on par with current state of the arts with real-world training data. Extensive experiments further show that our method is robust to noise and gives promising results under extremely challenging scenarios. Our code is available on https://github.com/qq456cvb/CPPF.


As the CMS officially unveiled the Recovery audit Contractor program, which is set to be in place in all 50 states by the beginning of 2010, hospital executives were voicing their unease. Some call it "bounty hunting, ,and doubt it will save money. "In the short term (the program) will give money to CMS, but in the long term it will cost the program more than they are saving, ,said Bruce Hallowell, left. Page 6


This paper describes the development of innovative low-cost educational platform to study and control a biped robot in real-time using MATLAB and Arduino board. MATLAB was used as a control and visualization environment, while the Arduino board was utilized as a final controller for the servo motors as well as a Data Acquisition Card (DAC). However, it is important to recognize that there is much more knowledge to learn to control a robot, such as hardware (sensors, actuators) knowledge, software knowledge and control theory. But, it is important to emphasize that this paper is merely focused on the hardware and software development which can be utilized to accomplish many tasks like controlling the walking motion. Here the platform set up and the algorithm adopted in controlling the servos as well as reading from the sensors are described such that any student can reconstruct and start using it to understand his/her subject.


Abstract Few studies of agrarian transition examine what farmers themselves feel about farming. Are they cultivating out of choice or a lack of options? What distinguishes farmers who like farming from those who do not: their personal/household characteristics and endowments? The local ecology and regional economy? Or a mix of these and other factors? Understanding farmer satisfaction is important not only for assessing citizen wellbeing but also for agricultural productivity, since occupational satisfaction can affect a farmer's incentive to invest and reveal production constraints. Using a unique all-India data-set which asked farmers, 'Do you like farming?' this paper provides answers and policy pointers, contributing a little-studied dimension to debates on the smallholder's future and subjective wellbeing.


Background: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a molecularly heterogeneous disease with a high propensity for drug resistance and metastasis. AXL, a member of the Tyro3-AXL-Mer family of receptor tyrosine kinases, is a central regulator of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and enables tumor cells to invade and acquire drug resistance. AXL is overexpressed in lung tumors, correlates positively with tumor invasion, drug resistance, and negatively predicts overall survival. We mechanistically interrogate the effects of AXL inhibitor TP-0903 on EMT in lung adenocarcinoma cells using transcriptomic and proteomic profiling. Methods: Atomic force microscopy, Western blot analysis, RNA sequencing and mass cytometry (CyTOF) were all used to scrutinize the biomechanical properties, phenotypic, transcriptomic and proteomic profiles of A549 cells treated with 40nM TP0903 or shAXL knockdown. Results: TP-0903 attenuates total AXL/AXL phosphorylation and blunts transcriptional responses to TGFβ-Hippo signaling by disrupting the transcriptional complexes formed by SMAD2/3, SMAD4, YAP1 and TAZ. AXL knockdown or TP-0903 reverses EMT phenotype and reduces migration potential in A549 and H2009 adenocarcinoma cell lines. CyTOF data also identified resistant clones that overexpress TGFβ receptor II, TAZ protein and display hybrid EMT phenotypes. Conclusions: We are the first to report the interplay between AXL and TGFβ-Hippo signaling axis. TP-0903 study agent has excellent therapeutic promise in NSCLC and we speculate that TP-0903 drug can target epithelial to mesenchymal transitional states in lung cancer cells possibly through the inhibition of the AXL-TGFβ-Hippo signaling axis. Citation Format: Josephine Amalia Taverna, Chia-Nung Hung, Chun-Lin Lin, Pawel Osmulski, Meizhen Chen, Chiou-Miin Wang, Nicholas L. L. Lucio, Nameer Kirma, Chih-Wei Chou, Maria E. Gaczynska, Alia Nazarullah, Mark Wade, Lars Mouritsen, Tim Huang. AXL inhibitor TP-0903 attenuates AXL-TGFbeta Hippo signaling axis in lung adenocarcinoma cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2193.


This thesis examines the relationship between multilingualism and defamiliarisation in Joyce, Beckett, Nabokov and Rushdie. Focusing on Joyce's Ulysses, Beckett's Trilogy, Nabokov's Bend Sinister, Pale Fire and Ada, and Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the study considers the reasons for these authors' uses a foreign languages and examines their specialised compositional processes. It evaluates the textual effects produced by these processes, and compares overtly multilingual effects (such as multilingual puns and the hybridisation of language) to more general characteristics of the authors' prose-styles, including monolingual forms of defamiliarisation.

The prose of all four authors is characterised by extreme forms of defamiliarisation, and the thesis develops the concept of 'linguistic estrangement' to elucidate a perceived relationship between each author's perspective of ideological or literal estrangement from language and his subsequent estrangement of that language. In particular, these writers tend to turn the distinctive features of the foreigner's perspective on language - semantic ambiguity and linguistic materiality - to positive effect: semantic ambiguity is used to produce puns, plays on words and linguistic overdetermination, while in focus on the material characteristics of language is fundamental to the construction of phonetic and rhythmic linguistic patterns. As a result, the work under scrutiny is often characterised by high levels of musicality, iconicity and textual performativity. Apparently 'negative' aspects of language - interlingual confusion, distortion, mistranslation, misunderstanding and misuse - thus form the basis of some of the most productive stylistic aspects, and indeed the radically innovative nature, of each author's work.

The thesis explores a wide array of evident intentions associated with such processes including, among others, mimetic, aesthetic, literary historical and socio-political concerns. Translational processes, interlingual contact and linguistic estrangement are thus demonstrated to be fundamental to the particular thematic and stylistic features of the work of each individual author. This study can also, more generally, be seen to address a central dynamic within modernist (and subsequent late-modernist and postmodernist) literary production.


Introduction: Given the importance of spirituality and health as well as activities done by hospital personnel, the aim of present study is to evaluate the relationship between spirituality and general health and to assess some possible affecting factors such as demographic and work factors on these variables in hospital staff. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was done on hospital employees of Yazd Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences. First, 101 hospital staff were selected randomly by using multistage sampling. General Health, spiritual experience and demographic questionnaires as reported by the subjects themselves, were completed. Cut-off point of 23 was considered for general health, So that those, whose score were 23 or less, were considered as healthy individuals. Collected data were entered software SPSS (Ver.19) and then analyzed using Pearson correlation, t-test and ANOVA tests. Results: Mean and standard deviation of spirituality was 251.50 and 42.30 and for general health was 46.79 and 10.82, respectively. Spirituality and general health had a significant negative correlation (p-value=0.03). Spirituality was significantly higher in subjects who were single (p-value=0.04). Men (P-Value=0.01) and those older than 33 years (P-Value=0.001), had significantly better general health. General health significantly associated with service location (P-Value ≤ 0.0001). Conclusion: The study finding shows, increase in spirituality is associated with higher levels of general health. Given that the general health score in this study were higher than the cut-off 23, and physical and mental health of hospital staff is associated with their quality of service at work, so promotion of general health and


This study investigates approaches, strategies and models used by prospective primary school teachers in responding to real-world problems. The research was carried out with 82 participants. Data were collected through written-exam and semi-structured interviews; and they were analysed using content and discourse analysis methods. Most of the prospective teachers did not pay attention to the realities of the contexts in which the problems are situated. Most of them displayed non-realistic approaches excluding their real world knowledge and experiences from their solutions. Many participants tended to use rules and procedures in a straightforward way leading to failures at interpreting salient aspects of the problem situations. Majority of the participants lacked the ability to use appropriate strategies that could scaffold their realistic considerations. Some constructed models of the situations; nevertheless, many of them lacked the ability to use these instruments as a conceptual tool to identify key aspects of the problem contexts.


This study was designed to identify the site of formation of 1-thiocarbamoyl-2-imidazolidinone (TCI), a potent immunoactive metabolite of the antihelminthic drug, niridazole. When niridazole was administered intragastrically to C57Bl/6J mice, a 4-hr delay was observed before TCI was detected in the serum. By contrast, 4-hydroxyniridazole, a marker of hepatic niridazole metabolism, appeared in the serum within 30 min. Changing the route of niridazole administration from intragastric to intracaecal abolished the lag period in the rise of serum TCI concentrations relative to the 4-hydroxyniridazole marker. Pretreatment of mice with neomycin sulfate reduced the amount of TCI excreted in the urine by about 90% over a 24-hr period, but did not affect the amount of 4-hydroxyniridazole excreted. Injection of niridazole into isolated segments of mouse intestine resulted in TCI production, with the greatest conversion noted in the caecum. Subsequent incubation of niridazole with suspensions of mouse caecum contents in vitro also resulted in the formation of TCI, but not 4-hydroxyniridazole. Attempts to demonstrate TCI formation in vitro with various fractions of mouse liver were unsuccessful. These results indicate a dissociation of TCI formation from the major hepatic pathway of niridazole metabolism and support the view that TCI is formed from niridazole in the gastrointestinal tract as a result of the action of intestinal microflora.


Abstract Purpose We report a rare case of CRB1gene mutation in two siblings (sisters) affected with the exact same genetic mutation on both CRB1genes resulting in varying phenotypes. Case Report CRB1gene mutation in this case has resulted in causing varying degrees of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) in both sisters with a more severe phenotype in the older sibling causing LCA-8 with retinitis pigmentosa spectrum in both eyes and a milder phenotype causing LCA-8 with less severe rod cone dystrophy in the younger sister. Conclusion In summary, the mechanisms of varying phenotypes resulting from CRB1 genetic mutation are still not well understood. We concluded that the presence of different phenotypes associated with identical genotypic mutation of a single gene in siblings or in a family is important especially when dealing with retinal dystrophies.


Adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can be readily isolated from bone marrow, expanded in culture and subsequently subjected to differentiation into various connective tissue lineages. In general, for animal studies separation of MSCs from other bone marrow-derived cells is achieved by sole adherence to plastic surface of tissue culture flasks; however, this procedure produces a heterogeneous cell population containing CD45-positive haematopoietic cells (HCs) and haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). It is known, that mixed cell cultures consisting of cocultures of differentiated somatic cells with adult stem cells promote differentiation towards specific cell lineages. For determining the effect of the CD45-positive cell population on the differentiation potential of MSCs, we sorted out the bone marrow-derived adherent cells by immunomagnetic technique (MACS) to attain a subpopulation of CD45-depleted cells. Herein, we show that the presence of adherent CD45-positive HCs not only promote expression of the chondrogenic marker genes Col2a1, COMP and Sox9, but also of Col1a1, Col10a1 and to a certain degree Cbfa1 in MSCs when cultured in an appropriate three-dimensional environment. These observations constitute a step towards unravelling the influence of haematopoietic cells on chondrogenic differentiation of MSCs.


BACKGROUND
Limonin shows promise in alleviating non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. We investigated the mechanisms of limonin against non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) using network pharmacology and molecular docking.

METHODS
Public databases provided NASH- and limonin-associated targets. VennDiagram identified potential limonin targets for NASH. Enrichment analysis explored the limonin-NASH relationship. PPI network analysis, CytoHubba models, and bioinformatics identified hub genes for NASH treatment. Molecular docking assessed limonin's binding ability to hub targets.

RESULTS
We found 37 potential limonin targets in NASH, involved in oxidative stress, inflammation, and signaling pathways. PPI network analysis revealed seven hub genes (STAT3, NFKBIA, MTOR, TLR4, CASP8, PTGS2, NFKB1) as NASH treatment targets. Molecular docking confirmed limonin's binding to STAT3, CASP8, and PTGS2. Animal experiments on high-fat diet mice showed limonin reduced hepatic steatosis, lipid accumulation, and expression of p-STAT3/STAT3, CASP8, and PTGS2.

CONCLUSION
Limonin's therapeutic effects in NASH may stem from its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. STAT3, CASP8, and PTGS2 are potential key targets for NASH treatment, warranting further investigation.


IMPLICATIONS
Pulse oximetry is now considered essential for anesthetic management. We treated a patient with hemoglobin M(Iwate), a rare inheritable hemoglobinopathy rendering pulse oximetry completely useless because of its anomalous absorption spectrum.


Doctors are the main users of x-rays and other medical images in hospitals and as such picture archive and communication systems (PACS) have been designed to improve their work processes and clinical care by providing them with faster access to images. Nurses working in intensive care units (ICUs) also access images as an integral part of their work, yet no studies have examined the impact of PACS on the work of intensive care nurses. Our study aimed to examine whether and how ICU nurses view and use images and whether access to PACS promotes innovation in work practices. We interviewed (n=49) and observed (n=23) nurses in three Australian metropolitan teaching hospital ICUs with varying degrees of PACS implementation. Our study found that nurses with access to PACS were able to independently and easily access images, did so more frequently when required, and perceived that this had the potential to positively impact upon patient safety. Those without PACS usually viewed images more traditionally as part of a ward round. The introduction of PACS to ICU settings promotes changes in nursing work practices by providing nurses with the ability to act more autonomously, with the potential to enhance patient care.


Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the paranasal sinuses which represents a significant health burden due to its widespread prevalence and impact on patients' quality of life. As the molecular pathways driving and sustaining inflammation in CRS become better elucidated, the diversity of treatment options is likely to widen significantly. Nanotechnology offers several tools to enhance the effectiveness of topical therapies, which has been limited by factors such as poor drug retention, mucosal permeation and adhesion, removal by epithelial efflux pumps and the inability to effectively penetrate biofilms. In this review, we highlight the successful application of nanomedicine in the field of CRS therapeutics, discuss current limitations and propose opportunities for future work.


Abstract Emission spectra of Pb2+ centres in barium chloride single crystals have been studied between 4 and 300 K by excitation with different wave lengths. Excitation spectra at 300 K have also been obtained by measuring the emission in the maxima of the shoitwave and longwave bands. The results allow to conclude that the high energy emission band is due to the transition | 3T1u > → | 1A1g > in the activator ion. The more effective excitation of the low energy emission band observed in the shortwave region of the absorption spectrum and the complex nature of both bands are discussed.


Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis affects approximately 60,000 to 250,000 children in the United States and is the most common connective tissue disease occurring during childhood. This article discusses the signs, symptoms, and general management of the disease, including surgical techniques.


The global economy, and agriculture, in particular, faces significant challenges and transformation pressures. A major challenge, and opportunity, is the transformation towards digital agriculture or agriculture 4.0, where knowledge transfer (KT) has an important role to play not only in ensuring that digital innovations reach end-users, but also that these innovations contribute to development in rural landscapes. This paper analyses the role of KT in the framework of digital transformation (DT) in the Andalusian olive landscape. Thus, from the perspective of knowledge-generating agents, the main knowledge emitting and receiving actors in the DT are identified by using Social Network Analysis techniques (SNA). Subsequently, the performance of the Technological Innovation System (TIS) in KT is evaluated by using the multi-criteria Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The results suggest that the knowledge-generating agents, the knowledge transfer actors, and the scientific and dissemination media actors are the main knowledge emitters and highlight their role as cohesive actors of the social network. The main knowledge receivers are olive growers, cooperatives and non-cooperative groups. The results also indicate that the global performance of the TIS in the KT function is medium/low. Furthermore, in the KT sub-functions where the TIS in DT performs best is the quality of the transfer processes of DT, and where it performs worst is the sufficiency of spaces for KT.


This work presents an analysis of some terms related to Big Data, Hadoop, and their architecture; in addition, it presents the results of the analysis of undergraduate enrollment information of the distance system of Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja (UTPL), this information is extracted from academic system by using Hadoop framework as a big data processing platform; for that, a big data infrastructure has been designing and tested which is based on Hortonworks and Power View tools in order to present reports that helps managers to have metrics in order to improve their decision making. For this, a thorough search of information by using Hadoop framework, in which a synthesis of the different important terms was made, it reaches to determine different areas of application; in addition it presents a big data case study by of undergraduate enrollment information from academic system of UTPL by using the Hadoop framework. Consequently, it is concluded that Hadoop Framework helps us to process of big data sets, because it has Hadoop Distributed File System which provides an increased performance for data, and MapReduce process the data in parallel with the integration of Hortonworks and Power View tools which allow to analyze big data and to present reports in maps in order to analyze UTPL students enrollment.


Imaging evaluation of cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVM) requires selective visualization of the different compartments of the malformation in order to select the therapeutic management. Conventional angiography remains the reference to analyze intracranial vessel conspicuity but non-invasive methods constitute an excellent alternative. Among these techniques, CT angiography is rarely used because of the need to inject iodinated contrast material and because of irradiation. MR angiography provides useful information and can be performed using several techniques: time of flight with or without contrast material injection, phase contrast, three-dimensional (3D) gradient echo acquisition after contrast material injection and, more recently, MR digital subtraction angiography. The purpose of this review article is to summarize the different non-invasive techniques for vascular imaging and to analyze the usefulness of these techniques for the assessment of brain AVMs.


This paper aimed to analyze the effects of climate change on the agricultural sector of Minas Gerais. Methodologically, we used the Ricardian model, which allowed us to estimate how changes in climate, in different counties, may affect the farmers' land values. The climate change projections were based on forecasts of temperature and precipitation (A1B and A2 scenarios) of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In all simulation periods, on average, the results indicated that the land values may have a small increase. However, this result should not give the false impression that agriculture in Minas Gerais would not be adversely affected by climate change. When we consider the regional results, approximately 60% of the counties may suffer high losses, and these may reach R$24 million in 2020. Therefore, policymakers should closely observe the impact assessments in order to identify the most effective adaptation options. It will be necessary to program local and decentralized actions, allowing more flexibility and more beneficial results locally.


OBJECTIVE
To compare rectal (C(R) degrees ), coronary band (P(CB) degrees ) and ear base (P(E) degrees ) temperatures with pulmonary arterial temperature (C(PA) degrees ), and to investigate the relationship between core-peripheral temperature difference ([C - P]t degrees ) and cardiac output (Qt) in an acute ovine trauma model (PIL 60/9064).

STUDY DESIGN
Observational study.

ANIMALS
Thirteen mixed-breed male sheep, body mass (mean +/- SD) 45.50 +/- 4.21 kg, aged approximately 1 year.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Anaesthesia was induced with intravenous etomidate 0.5 mg kg(-1) and midazolam 0.5 mg kg(-1) and following endotracheal intubation maintained with halothane in a 2:1 N(2)O:O(2) mixture. The lungs were mechanically ventilated to maintain normocapnia. Core temperature was measured using a pulmonary arterial thermistor. Rectal temperature and peripheral temperatures at the thoracic limb coronary band and ear base were recorded using thermistor probes with a multi-channel recorder. Cardiac output was measured by continuous thermodilution. Recordings were taken hourly over a 24-hour period. After baseline data collection, hypovolaemia was induced by haemorrhage from bilateral femoral fractures. The development of hypovolaemic shock was confirmed by falling Qt, central venous pressure, mean arterial pressure and urine output. Resuscitation was attempted using intravenous fluids, inotropes and vasoconstrictors. Nine sheep received lumbosacral extradural bupivacaine.

RESULTS
The rectal temperature correlated closely with pulmonary arterial temperature in all sheep (r(c) = 0.924). There was no consistent statistically significant relationship between Qt and [C - P]t degrees .

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Rectal temperature accurately reflected core temperature in anaesthetized sheep but [C - P]t degrees was unrelated to Qt, under the conditions described in this study.


The present work comprises the first revision of all species of Xanthophyllum; 93 species (22 new) have been distinguished with 5 subspecies (1 new) and 2 varieties (both new). Seven subgenera are proposed (4 new) of which one has been divided into 2 sections and 2 subsections. Keys to all taxa have been included. In the General Part the (sub)generic and (sub)sectional characters are discussed separately in order to find arguments regarding the direction of the evolution of those characters in the 'Hennigian' way of reasoning. From this it has been concluded that the Polygalaceae are derived from the Malpighiaceae- Vochysiaceae-Trigoniaceae-complex and secondly that Xanthophyllum belongs to a derived tribe of the Polygalaceae (and not to a separate family Xanthophyllaceae). The lack of information on the genomes of the species appeared to be a serious problem in the reconstruction of the evolution within Xanthophyllum: one subgenus with 'gigas'-characters may represent an old allopolyploid hybrid; it is suggested that hybridization may have been important in the evolution of the genus. Although only two species, endemic to N. Queensland, do not occur in Malesia-Southeast Asia, it is shown that Australia must have been the centre of origin of the genus. The fact that Wallace's Line is still respected by all species is regarded as an indication that West Malesia is a secondary centre of speciation.


We study here a complete quantization of a Callan-Giddings-Harvey-Strominger vacuum model following loop quantum gravity techniques. Concretely, we adopt a formulation of the model in terms of a set of new variables that resemble the ones commonly employed in spherically symmetric loop quantum gravity. The classical theory consists of two pairs of canonical variables plus a scalar and diffeomorphism (first class) constraints. We consider a suitable redefinition of the Hamiltonian constraint such that the new constraint algebra (with structure constants) is well adapted to the Dirac quantization approach. For it, we adopt a polymeric representation for both the geometry and the dilaton field. On the one hand, we find a suitable invariant domain of the scalar constraint operator, and we construct explicitly its solution space. There, the eigenvalues of the dilaton and the metric operators cannot vanish locally, allowing us to conclude that singular geometries are ruled out in the quantum theory. On the other hand, the physical Hilbert space is constructed out of them, after group averaging the previous states with the diffeomorphism constraint. In turn, we identify the standard observable corresponding to the mass of the black hole at the boundary, in agreement with the classical theory. We also construct an additional observable on the bulk associated with the square of the dilaton field, with no direct classical analog.


We propose a new method to calculate analytically higher-order perturbative corrections and we apply it to the calculation of the two-loop virtual corrections to Higgs pair production through gluon fusion. The method is based on the expansion of the amplitudes in terms of a small Higgs transverse momentum. This approach gives a very good approximation (better than per mille) of the partonic cross section in the center-of-mass energy region sqrt[s[over ^]]≲750  GeV, where ∼95% of the total hadronic cross section is concentrated. The presented method is general and can be applied in a straightforward way to the computation of virtual higher-order corrections to other 2→2 processes, representing an improvement with respect to calculations based on heavy mass expansions.


The management of hybrid corporate networks comprising a wide variety of equipment and services offered by different vendors and service providers is addressed. The public carrier environment in which such networks must operate is described. Five categories of system management functional areas set forth in the ISO/IEC Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) standards are defined. They are fault management, accounting management, configuration management, performance management, and security management. The interoperability architecture provided by the standards is examined, and two example applications are given: a corporate banking voice network, and OSI-based configuration management applied to automatic call distribution.<<ETX>>


Levinas writes that Rosenzweig is too present in his work to be cited. This cryptic suggestion is unfolded into an in-depth confrontation. Both philosophers implement the same speculative gesture. Rosenzweig writes in post-Hegelian times; Levinas's thinking is enriched by phenomenology and marked by the Holocaust. Their critical exploration of the relationship to the infinite offers radically new perspectives on the language, the time and the other. The confrontation raises serious questions. How is a concept of alterity possible without accepting an identity? What are the concealed presuppositions? The questions lead to a critical analysis that cautiously explores the boundaries of dialogical thinking. But it is also the expression of the esteem held for the strong power of inspiration. As such, this book is both a critique and a tribute to Rosenzweig and Levinas. The book contains an exhaustive bibliography of the comparative studies. The manuscript was gold awarded by the Teylers Fellowship of Haarlem (the Netherlands).


This paper deals with borehole data from 1.587,80-1.660,75 m interval of the well 1-AM-1-AM, which represents the most complete section of the Silurian in Amazon basin. Pitinga and Lower Manacupuru formations occurring in Petrobras cores T-40 to T-47 and in Eletronorte shallow boreholes SM 1015, SM 1016, SM-1018, SM-1047 and SM 10-48 were analysed. Besides Acritarch, Chitinozoa, Criptospores, Escolecodontia and amorphous organic matter were also recorded. The Silurian section is rich in well-preserved Acritarchs and prasinophytes, exhibiting a great diversity, mainly in the Pitinga Formation. Forty and eight species were classified. For each well, the Acritarch vertical distribution was done, the asociations age was discussed and the Chitinozoa-based dating, as established by (Grahn and Melo 1990), was compared. The informal division of the Pitinga Formation in lower and upper members was kept. The lower member (Telychian to Sheinwoodian) is represented mainly by Domasia limaciforme, D. Canadensis, D. trispinosa, D. amphora, D. rochesterensis, Dateriocradus monterrosae e Salopidium granuliferum, Cymbosphaeridium pilar, Dactylofusa tenuistriata, D. cucurbita, Deunffia furcata, Baltisphaeridium capillatum, Vibysphaera erratica, Micrhystridium intonsurans. The upper member (Gorstian) is separated from the lower by a hiatus, and is well defined by the following species: Deunffia furcata, D. brevispinosa, D. ramusculosa, Tyrannus giganteus, Eisenackidium ramiformis, Gorgonisphaeridium bringewoodense, Domasia bispinosa, D. trispinosa, Helios aranaides, Micrhystridium stellatum, Neoveryhachium carminae, Multiplicisphaeridium caperoradiola, Leiofusa kryanovii, Leiofusa filifera, Oppilatala insolita, Pterospermopsis marysae, Veryhachium rhomboidium, Cymbosphaeridium pilar, Cymbosphaeridium cf. ravum, Multiplicisphaeridium fisheri, Dactylofusa striatifera, Polysphaeritae, Visbysphaera microspinosa, Visbysphaera dilatispinosa, Salopidium wenlockensis and Veryhachium europaeum. According to Molyneux et al., 1996, most of the referred species such as Tyrannus giganteus and Perforela perforata are indigenous forms that were described in Upper Silurian from Spain and North Africa. Although these species could be excellent biostratigraphic markers, some of them still need a graptolitic correlation. For the basal Manacupuru formation, separated from Pitinga formation by a hiatus, the following species could be noted: Balthisphaeridium pilar, B. cariniosum, Multipliscisphaeridum saharicum, M. scaber, Domasia rochesterensis, Dateriocradus monterrosae, Neoveryhachium carminae and Perforela perorata. This association is considered to be Pridoli in age, which agrees with the Chitinozoa-based dating of Grahn & Melo (1990). Deunffia and Domasia are important taxa defining the Llandovery-Wenlock interval, of incontestable chronostratigraphic value, since they are restricted globally to the Silurian. According to (Cramer, 1970a; Le Herisse, 1989; Molyneux et al., 1996) these taxa increase in number near the boundary between Llandovery-Wenlock, what is also confirmed in the present paper.


Abstract. Enyiukwu DN, Amadioha AC, Ononuju CC. 2021. Histological aberrations and mode of damage of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) by Colletotrichum destructivum. Nusantara Bioscience 13: 16-23. Leaf and stem of healthy 2-week old cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.) seedlings were inoculated with spore suspension of the Colletotrichum destructivum O'Gara. Sections of the infection courts were prepared and examined under digital microscope. The results showed that the infection process began 12 hours after inoculation (hai) with the germination of spores of the fungus. Large multi-lobed primary hypha (somewhat spherical in shape) developed from the infection peg and remained inside a single epithelial cell for about 3 days. Towards the end of this time, the primary hyphae developed thin filamentous tentacles that punctured and branched into adjoining cells, initiating necrotrophic phase of the disease. During this period, typical anthracnose symptoms began to develop on the infected organs of the crop. The entire infection process lasted a maximum of 96 h, at the end of which acervulus that bore a single seta emerged on infected crop lesions. The mechanism of damage of the pathogen involved intra-cellular and inter-cellular colonization of the host tissues early and late in the disease cycle. The integrity of the affected tissues' cells was compromised by passage and colonization of Colletotrichum destructivum O'Gara evidenced by lack of clear-cut middle lamella and cell boundaries. Anthracnose affected cells dispossessed of vital nutrients became turbid, devoid of turgidity and vigor. Thus, these results have strong implications for plant health management in that effective environment-compliant control of the fungus should be initiated on or before the third day following arrival of the conidia of the pathogen on the crop. Seeds are major agents of introduction of Colletotrichum spp. to disease-free locations. Findings from this study also support that strong trans-border control of seeds of the crop should be maintained since the pathogen is known to be seed-borne and demonstrates sufficient cross-infection of crop plants.
Key words: Hemibiotrophy,  Colletotrichum destructivum, Anthracnose, Cowpea,  Hyphal colonization


CD4+CD25(bright) T cells and NKT cells are potent immunoregulatory cells and are therefore attractive targets for immunotherapy. The possibility of modulating CD4+CD25(bright) T cell function using NKT cells, and vice versa, reveals a new route for harnessing suppressor T cells with therapeutic properties. However, the questions of where, when and how NKT cells interact with CD4+CD25(bright) T cells are still unknown. Disease studies have investigated the regulatory properties of these T-cell subsets independently of each other. Recent reports have provided evidence for cross-talk between CD4+CD25(bright) T cells and NKT cells and consequently, the immunoregulatory networks are seen in a new perspective. Activated NKT cells seem to modulate quantitatively and qualitatively CD4+CD25(bright) T cell function through IL-2-dependent mechanisms, whereas CD4+CD25(bright) T cells can suppress the proliferation, cytokine release and cytotoxic activity of NKT cells by cell-contact-dependent mechanisms. Importantly, CD4+CD25(bright) T cells and NKT cells share crucial signalling pathways that could be responsible for immune dysregulations in Behçet's disease (BD). The advances in our understanding of the interactions between distinct subsets of regulatory T cells might unveil new waves for modulating these cells with the inflammatory process in BD.


Protein corona formation and nanoparticles' aggregation have been heavily discussed over the past years since the lack of fine-mapping of these two combined effects has hindered the targeted delivery evolution and the personalized nanomedicine development. We present a multitechnique approach that combines dynamic light and small-angle X-ray scattering techniques with cryotransmission electron microscopy in a given fashion that efficiently distinguishes protein corona from aggregates formation. This methodology was tested using ∼25 nm model silica nanoparticles incubated with either model proteins or biologically relevant proteomes (such as fetal bovine serum and human plasma) in low and high ionic strength buffers to precisely tune particle-to-protein interactions. In this work, we were able to differentiate protein corona, small aggregates formation, and massive aggregation, as well as obtain fractal information on the aggregates reliably and straightforwardly. The strategy presented here can be expanded to other particle-to-protein mixtures and might be employed as a quality control platform for samples that undergo biological tests.


Berens and Stein have devised an ingenious method of testing the colour vision of a large nuimber of persons at one session and thereby effecting a considerable saving of time. It is a method that would be of some service in examining groups of applicants for appointments in those branches of the public services (civil servants, mariners, aviators and railway employees) in which certain standards of colour vision are necessary and it might well be extended to some industrial occupations, to drivers of motor vehicles and to schools. The standard colour vision charts of Ishihara and Stilling are photographed with a 35 mm. Kodaclhrome film and then copied by a miniature camera, used in conjunction with the cop-ing accessories, and made into 2 x 2 inch lantern slides. These wshen thrown on to a glass bead screen by a miniature lantern slide projector gave results identical with the control tests on the original test plates. The examination is carried out in a semi-darkened roomii and each candidate has a printed slip with key numb)ers corresponding to the order in which the slides are projected and opposite each number he notes the figure he identifies on pseudo-isochromatic charts projected on the screen. Ishihara and Stilling slides may be interchanged or the order varied in making repeated or annual examinations. The malingering tests, threshold tests after the Young method, the Edridge Green and other lantern tests, Worth's four dot test and its modifications and the kindergarten chart may be projected. Visual acuity need not be normal for these tests for the images are easily magnified. Berens and Stein suggest that by this method it may be possible to educate colour blind persons to differentiate various colours in coJoured slides of scenes. Such mass testing of colour vision from time to time would also have the advantage of revealing disturbances of colour vision due to toxic amblyopia and optic neuritis.


In many agricultural applications one wants to characterize physical properties of plants and use the measurements to predict, for example biomass and environmental influence. This process is known as phenotyping. Traditional collection of phenotypic information is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Use of imagery is becoming popular for phenotyping. In this paper, we present methods to estimate traits of sorghum plants from RBG cameras on board of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The position and orientation of the imagery together with the coordinates of sparse points along the area of interest are derived through a new triangulation method. A rectified orthophoto mosaic is then generated from the imagery. The number of leaves is estimated and a model-based method to analyze the leaf morphology for leaf segmentation is proposed. We present a statistical model to find the location of each individual sorghum plant.


Piezoelectric materials are well-utilized for transforming mechanical vibrations into electrical energy that can be stored and used to power a diversity of devices. In this work, these materials have been studied to improve the efficiency of a piezoelectric system, whereby the shape and vibration mode of a piezoelectric module was changed. The basic shape of the piezoelectric module used in this work comprises a width of 10 mm, a length of 30 mm, and a thickness of 0.2 mm. The structural design of the piezoelectric module is optimized using a Taguchi method to increase the corresponding electrical-energy generation. The maximum terminal voltage was defined as a characteristic value to evaluate the optimal design parameters. Through this work, we propose an optimal structure with an eccentric and centric mass; furthermore, the voltage increase of approximately 26% was obtained by comparing a general plate-vibrating piezosystem with an optimal plate-vibrating piezosystem.


We present sentence aligned parallel corpora across 10 Indian Languages - Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Urdu, Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, and English - many of which are categorized as low resource. The corpora are compiled from online sources which have content shared across languages. The corpora presented significantly extends present resources that are either not large enough or are restricted to a specific domain (such as health). We also provide a separate test corpus compiled from an independent online source that can be independently used for validating the performance in 10 Indian languages. Alongside, we report on the methods of constructing such corpora using tools enabled by recent advances in machine translation and cross-lingual retrieval using deep neural network based methods.


Computing (cloud) is emerging as a promising paradigm that offers computing as a utility. In this paper, we look at some scheduling policies for workloads in clouds. Suitability of a cloud simulation for developing and evaluating policies is discussed. We simulate a cloud scenario and report results observed from executing the scenario. Then, we share our experiences with a cloud simulation toolkit and suggest fundamental building blocks of a cloud simulation.


Simple motor reaction time to, visual stimuli in dependence of stimulus intensity was measured and the histograms representing the distribution of reaction time were constructed. It was found that the reaction time distributions are positively skewed for all stimulus intensities used. The mean value, the standard deviation as well as the coefficient of skewness increases as the stimulus intensity decreases.


Magnesium-chrome refractory have been used with success at high temperatures in different metallurgist processes, such as iron and steel, cement industry and non ferrous pyrometallurgist processes. In particular in the smelting, in the processes of reforming of raffinate of copper. Those materials have good characteristics in relation with the use and the requirements of heat shock resistance. However, they represent an important problem for the environment. The aim of this research was to investigate the interactions between the slag generated in the converter Peirce-Smith in copper and Magnesium-chrome refractory bricks. The infiltration events and chemical attacks in the refractory material caused by the slag formed during the copper conversion process have been studied by means of the development of the different laboratory tests at temperatures of until 1300 ° C.


Facial injuries are common and must be radiologically evaluated to detect fractures, to determine their morphology and topography, and to assess adjacent soft-tissue damage. Spiral multislice computed tomography is progressively replacing conventional films for mandible traumatic lesions because it reveals the multiplicity of fragments, the degree of dislocation and rotation, and the extent of skull base involvement. Computed tomography is also very useful in the evaluation of condylar fractures, to determine the best choice for surgical treatment, open or close. 3-dimensional (3D) computed tomography images can display condylar fractures, but also all mandibular fractures, accurately and directly, and are very useful for surgeons to select treating methods of condylar fractures. The demonstration by imaging of the involvement of key anatomic structures is essential to classify correctly the trauma and to select the best management.


Studying attention behavior has its social significance because such behavior is considered to lead the evolution of the friendship network. However, this type of behavior in social networks has attracted relatively little attention before, which is mainly because, in reality, such behaviors are always transitory and rarely recorded. In this paper, we collected the attention behaviors as well as the friendship network from Douban database and then carefully studied the attention behaviors in the friendship network as a latent metric space. The revealed similar patterns of attention behavior and friendship suggest that attention behavior may be the pre-stage of friendship to a certain extent, which can be further validated by the fact that pairwise nodes in Douban network connected by attention links beforehand are indeed far more likely to be connected by friendship links in the near future. This phenomenon can also be used to explain the high clustering of many social networks. More interestingly, it seems that attention behaviors are more likely to take place between individuals who have more mutual friends as well as more different friends, which seems a little different from the principles of many link prediction algorithms. Moreover, it is also found that forward attention is preferred to inverse attention, which is quite natural because, usually, an individual must be more interested in others that he is paying attention to than those paying attention to him. All of these findings can be used to guide the design of more appropriate social network models in the future.