A so-called impedance matrix synthesis (IMS) approach is used to replace the conventional four-pole transfer matrix for evaluating the transmission loss (TL) of exhaust systems. Unlike the four-pole transfer matrix, the impedance matrix is well defined for systems with multiple inlets and multiple outlets. More importantly, it is ideally suited to the boundary element method (BEM) because only one boundary element matrix needs to be solved at each frequency, regardless of the number of inlets and outlets. For a large network system with multiply connected subsystems, the resultant impedance matrix for the entire system can be easily obtained from the subsystem impedance matrices via the IMS operation. Also the transmission loss (TL) can be directly evaluated from the resultant impedance matrix. Numerical test cases with experimental verifications are given to demonstrate the IMS approach.


Numerical investigations of the vibrational eigenmodes of amorphous NixZr100-x alloys are presented. Structural models are prepared by molecular dynamics simulations of the quenching processes, based on interatomic forces derived using a tight-binding-bond approach. The vibrational properties are investigated via a direct diagonalization of the dynamical matrix for N=729-atom models, and via recursion calculations of the vibrational spectral functions, partial and total dynamical structure factors and vibrational densities of states for large N=2916-atom models. The static structure of the NixZr100-x glasses is characterized by a pronounced chemical and topological short-range order (SRO). We investigate in detail the manifestation of the SRO in the partial dynamic spectral functions and structure factors SIJ(k, omega ). We discuss the possibility of measuring partial dynamic structure factors using inelastic neutron scattering and demonstrate that our results are in good agreement with the existing experimental data on the total dynamical structure factors. We show that, although most eigenmodes are extended, localized modes can be found at the upper and lower edges of the frequency spectrum. Of particular interest is the prediction of low-energy localized modes, which have a profound influence on the low-temperature thermodynamic properties.


BACKGROUND AND AIMS
Studies have consistently found a longitudinal association between e-cigarette use (vaping) and cigarette smoking. Many have interpreted such association as causal. This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the plausibility of a causal interpretation by (1) estimating the effect of adolescent vaping on smoking initiation, adjusted for study quality characteristics, (2) evaluating the sufficiency of adjustment for confounding based on the Social Development Model (SDM) and the Social Ecological Model (SEM) and E-value analyses, and (3) investigating sample attrition and publication bias.

METHODS
Systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies that examined the association between e-cigarette use at baseline and smoking at follow-up. Participants were non-smokers aged <= 18 at baseline.

RESULTS
Meta-analysis of 11 studies showed a significant longitudinal association between vaping and smoking (adjusted OR=2.93, 95% CI [2.22,3.87]). Studies with sample sizes<1000 had a significantly higher odds ratio (OR = 6.68, 95% CI [3.63, 12.31]) than studies with sample sizes>1000 (OR = 2.49, 95% CI [1.97,3.15]). Overall, the attrition rate was very high (Median: 30%). All but one study reported results from complete sample analysis, despite those dropping out having higher risk profiles. Only two studies comprehensively adjusted for confounding. The median E-value was 2.90, indicating that the estimates were not robust against unmeasured confounding.

CONCLUSIONS
There is a longitudinal association between adolescent vaping and smoking initiation; however, the evidence is limited by publication bias, high sample attrition and inadequate adjustment for potential confounders.


Bacteria have evolved different mechanisms of communicating with their environment and with other prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. A secretion system identified recently is the Type VI Secretion System (T6SS) found in approximately 25% of gram-negative bacteria. The T6SS secretion apparatus is associated with the opportunistic gram-negative pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is known to cause Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and other life-threatening bacterial infections such as Pneumonia and Septicemia. Studies have demonstrated that T6SS in P. aeruginosa can penetrate the peptidoglycan cell wall of prokaryotic bacteria and insert two key effectors proteins Tse1 and Tse3. The evolutionary adaption of T6SS secretion system gives the bacterium a unique survival advantage over other bacteria within the same niche. Although, the function, localization and mode of action of T6SS are being investigated, we do not fully understand the mechanism by which toxic proteins are delivered to neighboring prokaryotic cells. The study will investigate T6SS apparatus in P. aeruginosa by exploring the structure and identifying the functions of the three effector proteins Tse1-3 delivered to neighboring cells. It will explore the hypothesis that T6SS secretion system can be manipulated, through adaption, to deliver antibacterial drugs advantageous to the host and potentially alter disease outcome. Our research provides a platform to divulge, elucidate and manipulate a truly remarkable mechanism that could deliver a new treatment model for treating bacterial infection.


A crossing-consistent description is presented for {ital K}{sup +} photoproduction {ital p}({gamma},{ital K}{sup +}){Lambda} and {ital K}{sup {minus}} radiative capture {ital p}({ital K}{sup {minus}},{gamma}){Lambda} using an effective-chiral-Lagrangian model. Crossing requires that these reactions should both be described by the same physical model including identical dynamic parameters such as coupling constants. It is demonstrated that previous analyses of these crossing-related reactions, which have also used this effective-chiral-Lagrangian model, have not utilized the crossing constraint and thus do not simultaneously describe both kaon photoproduction and capture. New sets of coupling constants that consistently describe both reactions are presented.


Over the last years the launching cost of a payload in space has been significantly reduced and this trend is expected to continue, as the interest for space applications is increasing. The reduced launch cost and the advancements in technology, gave the opportunity to small satellites to revolutionize access to space. The majority of the small satellites missions are targeting the Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Due to the nature of this particular orbit, communication with a satellite is possible only for a few minutes per day for a given location. This raises the need for multiple ground stations in several geographic locations. Although such an infrastructure is possible, most of the times it is both complicated and expensive for research or educational entities to obtain. Given the fact that each ground station exhibits a small per day utilization for a specific satellite, the idle time can be used for reception of other missions. SatNOGS is an open source software and open hardware project that addresses this problem by interconnecting all participating ground stations, offering their idle time to other users of the SatNOGSnetwork.


Author(s): Topalovic, Ivana | Advisor(s): Gailey, Christine W | Abstract: The war in Bosnia officially ended in 1995 following outrage over the Srebrenica massacre, in which over 8,000 civilians were slaughtered over only a few days. Twenty years later, long after the foreign aid apparatus had vanished, the only two surviving Non- Governmental Organizations are focused on trauma and resilience of Bosnian women. However ,while their work began with overcoming traumatic events, locally run NGOs find themselves as grassroots organizers and support mechanism for living with austerity and the political manipulation and constant revival of trauma. The state becomes further divorced from power because the triple presidency—a separate government for each of the major ethnicities in the region—tends to cancel each other's decision. Moreover, the support superstructure --management and funding brought in from the outside to to organizations helping with rebuilding and basic services—that was created by departing foreigners has largely been abandoned. The result is that the remaining grassroots NGOs face the continuing need with fewer or no external resources to help. The study focuses on two particular NGOs in the region, Bosfam and Medica Zenica. While both are dealing with the same issues outlined above, the communities in which they are embedded make for two very distinct approaches. Tuzla, in which Bosfam is located, has a strong tradition of worker-managed factories, based in Marxist tradition, for which Tuzla has been famous over the past 50 years through the Yugoslav exclusive worker management programs. To this day Tuzla is the least ethnically divided of Bosnia's larger towns and cities. Zenica, where Medica Zenica operates, had little exposure to warfare: the trauma here is deindustrialization--a loss of 20,000 jobs during the war which were never regained. As the region tries to recover from the never-ending transition into a democratic civil society, Bosfam uses a return to unity through interethnic traditional female labor within the neoliberal construct of Oxfam, by selling their product and pulling themselves up out of poverty. Departure from the neoliberal model is shown in the way Bosfam conceptualized the effort as communal rather than individual support. Medica Zenica, on the other hand, provides medical and psycho-social support for the more urban community of the previously industrial town of Zenica. Their focus is on domestic violence and the perception of women within the community, courts, and politics. Both of the models tend to exclude young men and non-Srebrenica victims. Their success is seen as an affront to excluded groups and is used by politicians for divisive politics. In this setting, the NGOs created different types of subjects in dialectical relationship to the circumstances of the communities and populations served. Typically, subject formation is theorized as a top-down imposition or an institutionally created process if seen as bottom-up. The project questioned these formulations and suggests a dialectical process of community-NGO subject formation, with resultant diversity in the kinds of subjectivity created.


The effect of termination of employment on pension benefits has become a matter of grave concern to engineers and scientists in the United States, particularly to those in the professions served by IEEE. In many cases during the postwar years, the decision to transfer from one employer to another has been a voluntary act of the professional worker and he could measure the cost of losing future pension benefits against the advantages of taking a new job. But within the last two years, a major change has occurred in the space and defense industries and their suppliers, which are so largely dependent upon government support of scientific and engineering work. In addition to discussing current pension practices in the United States, this report includes a review of activities by societies in this field, and the limitations imposed by legal and economic forces.


This study deals with the juries" affirmative comments for consumerism phenomenon at "Iste Benim StilimAll Star" ("That"s My Style- All Star") game show featured on TV 8 channel between the dates 30th August – 25th December 2015, via critical discourse analysis method. The main objective of the research is to find out the featured discourse for consumerism habits at fashion game shows which are the products of the entertainment culture. Besides, determining the discourse legitimizing the excesses of consumption, consumer relations in the context of fashion phenomenon and the presentation of the consumer role model can also be seen as the other objectives. The study sets an important example to demonstrate the fashion professionals" contribution and encouragement for consumerism discursively.


A recently proposed balanced-bracket encoding (Yli-Jyrä and GómezRodríguez 2017) has given us a way to embed all noncrossing dependency graphs into the string space and to formulate their exact arcfactored inference problem (Kuhlmann and Johnsson 2015) as the best string problem in a dynamically constructed and weighted unambiguous context-free grammar. The current work improves the encoding and makes it shallower by omitting redundant brackets from it. The streamlined encoding gives rise to a bounded-depth subset approximation that is represented by a small finite-state automaton. When bounded to 7 levels of balanced brackets, the automaton has 762 states and represents a strict superset of more than 99.9999% of the noncrossing trees available in Universal Dependencies 2.4 (Nivre et al. 2019). In addition, it strictly contains all 15-vertex noncrossing digraphs. When bounded to 4 levels and 90 states, the automaton still captures 99.2% of all noncrossing trees in the reference dataset. The approach is flexible and extensible towards unrestricted graphs, and it suggests tight finite-state bounds for dependency parsing, and for the main existing parsing methods.


Introduction: The os peroneum is a round or oval sesamoid bone located distally within the substance of the peroneus longus tendon near the cuboid bone. Peacock et al. suggested that the presence of the os peroneum might be associated with tendon rupture due to friction at the junction with the bone; in turn, Brigido et al. developed radiographic criteria that associate sesamoid fracture with mechanical failure of the peroneus longus tendon. Objective: To report an unusual case of peroneus longus tendon injury associated with the presence of os peroneum in a patient with hindfoot varus. Methods: A 55-year-old male patient who engaged in physical activity 3 times a week developed pain on the lateral side of the ankle resulting in decreased physical functioning and sports performance. Radiography showed the presence of os peroneum associated with a proximal injury of the peroneus longus tendon detected by magnetic resonance imaging. Results: The patient was treated conservatively with an analgesic physical therapy program followed by functional rehabilitation. The patient progressed from a score of 9 on the visual analog scale for pain in the first month to a score of 0 at 6 months, with grade 5 final eversion force and a return to sports performance at the preinjury level. Conclusion: Treatment options for this injury range from tendon debridement, fixation or excision of the os peroneum to tenodesis or tendon anchorage to the cuboid or calcaneus. Nonsurgical treatment, including immobilization and the use of anti-inflammatory medication, followed by physical therapy is the initial treatment of choice and, as in the reported case, may provide an excellent outcome.


IL-6, leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), and oncostatin M (OSM) are IL-6-type cytokines that stimulate osteoclast formation and function. In the present study, the resorptive effects of these agents and their regulation of receptor activator of NF-κB ligand (RANKL), RANK, and osteoprotegerin (OPG) were studied in neonatal mouse calvaria. When tested separately, neither human (h) IL-6 nor the human soluble IL-6R (shIL-6R) stimulated bone resorption, but when hIL-6 and the shIL-6R were combined, significant stimulation of both mineral and matrix release from bone explants was noted. Semiquantitative RT-PCR showed that hIL-6 plus shIL-6R enhanced the expression of RANKL and OPG in calvarial bones, but decreased RANK expression. Human LIF, hOSM, and mouse OSM (mOSM) also stimulated 45Ca release and enhanced the mRNA expression of RANKL and OPG in mouse calvaria, but had no effect on the expression of RANK. In agreement with the RT-PCR analyses, ELISA measurements showed that both hIL-6 plus shIL-6R and mOSM increased RANKL and OPG proteins. 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 (D3) also increased the RANKL protein level, but decreased the protein level of OPG. OPG inhibited 45Ca release stimulated by RANKL, hIL-6 plus shIL-6R, hLIF, hOSM, mOSM, and D3. An Ab neutralizing mouse gp130 inhibited 45Ca release induced by hIL-6 plus shIL-6R. These experiments demonstrated stimulation of calvarial bone resorption and regulation of mRNA and protein expression of RANKL and OPG by D3 and IL-6 family cytokines as well as regulation of RANK expression in preosteoclasts/osteoclasts of mouse calvaria by D3 and hIL-6 plus shIL-6R.


Totally geodesic embeddings of an infinite series of 7-dimensional manifolds in 13-dimensional manifolds of positive sectional curvature are constructed in this paper. The topology of these embeddings is studied and the possibility of constructing new many-dimensional examples of manifolds of positive curvature is discussed.


Carbanionic intermediates play a central role in the catalytic transformations of amino acids performed by pyridoxal-5′-phosphate (PLP)-dependent enzymes. Here, we make use of NMR crystallography—the synergistic combination of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, X-ray crystallography, and computational chemistry—to interrogate a carbanionic/quinonoid intermediate analogue in the β-subunit active site of the PLP-requiring enzyme tryptophan synthase. The solid-state NMR chemical shifts of the PLP pyridine ring nitrogen and additional sites, coupled with first-principles computational models, allow a detailed model of protonation states for ionizable groups on the cofactor, substrates, and nearby catalytic residues to be established. Most significantly, we find that a deprotonated pyridine nitrogen on PLP precludes formation of a true quinonoid species and that there is an equilibrium between the phenolic and protonated Schiff base tautomeric forms of this intermediate. Natural bond orbital analysis indicates that the latter builds up negative charge at the substrate Cα and positive charge at C4′ of the cofactor, consistent with its role as the catalytic tautomer. These findings support the hypothesis that the specificity for β-elimination/replacement versus transamination is dictated in part by the protonation states of ionizable groups on PLP and the reacting substrates and underscore the essential role that NMR crystallography can play in characterizing both chemical structure and dynamics within functioning enzyme active sites.


Environmental characteristics and macroinvertebrate assemblages of Lake Nokoué (Benin) were investigated from September 2014 to July 2016. Seasonal and hydroclimatic changes, as well as anthropogenic activities were the overriding factors affecting environmental variables investigated. Analysis of macroinvertebrate community structure with several indices revealed a community structure changing across seasons and differing between the sites. Mollusca, Crustacea and Polychaeta were most abundant in the dry seasons, especially at sites close to the ocean, whereas Oligochaeta and Insecta (Diptera, Heteroptera, Coleoptera, Odonata and Ephemeroptera) were abundant in the wet seasons, especially during flood periods (short wet season) at the sites receiving fresh water and on roots of macrophytes. A redundancy analysis placed habitat suitability (temperature and macrophytes) and trophic status variables (NO2−, NO3−, conductivity and pH) as structuring drivers for macroinvertebrate assemblages. The current study demonstrates that spatial heterogeneity of macroinvertebrates of Lake Nokoue is related to the dynamics created by input of fresh water (wet seasons) or salt water (dry seasons), as well as spatial heterogeneity of anthropogenic activities (nutrients). It offers insights into the macroinvertebrate dynamics linked to the limnology of a West African lagoon, which could contribute to a better understanding of management and conservation measures.


Small peptides compose a large share of the mitochondrial proteome. Mitoregulin (Mtln) is a mitochondrial peptide known to contribute to the respiratory complex I functioning and other processes in mitochondria. In our previous studies, we demonstrated that Mtln knockout mice develop obesity and accumulate triglycerides and other oxidation substrates in serum, concomitant with an exhaustion of tricarboxylic acids cycle intermediates. Here we examined the functional role of Mtln in skeletal muscles, one of the major energy consuming tissues. We observed reduced muscle strength for Mtln knockout mice. Decrease of the mitochondrial cardiolipin and concomitant increase in monolysocardiolipin concentration upon Mtln inactivation is likely to be a consequence of imbalance between oxidative damage and remodeling of cardiolipin. It is accompanied by the mitochondrial creatine kinase octamer dissociation and suboptimal respiratory chain performance in Mtln knockout mice.


Proactive approaches designed to prevent incidents before they occur are essential for achieving effective safety management. Emerging as an important component of proactive safety management, leading indicators are used to assess and control safety performance. With the aim of reducing the number or severity of worksite accidents, methods capable of predicting future safety performance using leading safety indicators have been developed. However, these methods have been developed for a specific set of leading indicators. This has substantially limited their application in practice, as leading indicators with the greatest impact on safety performance vary considerably between organizations and projects. An approach for predicting accident occurrence on construction sites that can be applied to any combination of leading indicators is proposed to address these limitations. Data used to develop the proposed approach were collected by a construction company from eight construction projects over a period of two years. Feature selection techniques were used to filter the original factors into the most critical subset, which were then used as inputs. Various supervised learning algorithms, namely support vector machine (SVM), logistic regression, and random forest, were then tested to determine which algorithm(s) yielded the highest prediction accuracy. The results demonstrate that the proposed procedure can be used for early recognition of potentially hazardous project characteristics and site conditions regardless of the number or type of leading indicators available within an organization. Research in this area is expected to facilitate the implementation of targeted safety management controls and to improve safety


Significant improvements have been made to the nonambipolar electron source (NES), a radio frequency (rf) plasma-based electron source that does not rely on electron emission at a cathode surface [B. Longmier, S. Baalrud, and N. Hershkowitz, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 77, 113504 (2006)]. A prototype NES has produced 30 A of continuous electron current, using 2 SCCM (SCCM denotes cubic centimeter per minute at STP) Xe, 1300 W rf power at 13.56 MHz, yielding a 180 times gas utilization factor. A helicon mode transition has also been identified during NES operation with an argon propellant, using 15 SCCM Ar, 1000 W rf, and 100 G magnetic field. This NES technology has the ability to replace hollow cathode electron sources and to enable high power electric propulsion missions, eliminating one of the lifetime restrictions that many ion thrusters have previously been faced with.


This study focuses on permission-based mobile advertising (m-advertising) and its specific features that make it different form other forms of advertising. However, as m-advertising is a novel approach, advertisers or advertising agencies do not know how to use it's full potential. Therefore, the paper explores retailers' use of mobile advertising in Finland and discusses the features of mobile advertising that retailers utilised as well as those remaining unused. The study also suggest ways to fully utilise the potential of mobile advertising.


The dispatchability of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants with thermal storage is a key for the upcoming role of this technology on balancing production and demand in electricity markets. In order to achieve an accurate delivery schedule for the following days based on electricity demand and weather forecasts, uncertainties need to be considered. The sources of uncertainty on dispatch scheduling are plural, when considering different market setups and weather forecast methods. Therefore, improvements in uncertainty treatment combined with optimization can increase CSP delivery accuracy.
In this context, a dispatch optimizer (DO) was developed that is used to derive a CSP plant schedule for the upcoming 48 hours. It considers weather and electricity pricing forecasts with a special focus on the incorporation of uncertainty associated to the forecasts. A rule-based heuristic optimization was developed which is based on problem-specific considerations.
The strategy of the DO is based on a partitioned calculation between the optimization algorithm and the uncertainty processing. The heuristic optimization runs deterministically with all the possible input scenarios, while the uncertainty is dealt as a post-processing. Therefore, the result of the optimization is a range of possible power schedules, and the uncertainty post-processing is able to categorize single schedules suggestions according to the risk of meeting the promised energy delivery.
The developed strategy brings the possibility of dealing with several types of weather forecast, such as probabilistic and deterministic, as well as enabling the evaluation of the quality of weather forecast data and its efficiency for optimizing the dispatch. Also, the inclusion of other uncertainty parameters (e.g. economic benefit and operation strategy) and the consideration of penalties are incorporated in the optimization. In conclusion, several delivery strategies can be performed according to the market setup and the decision maker's point of view.


To study the clinical profile , course of H1N1 influenza cases hospitalized in a tertiary hospital in South india and to study the outcome in these patients. A total of 26 cases were studied retrospectively during aperiod of 18 months from Jan 2016 to August 2017 . Real -time - reverse transcriptase - polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing was used to confirm infection. The demographic , clinical and laboratory data of 26 (RT-PCR) H1N1 cases were collected and analsyed usinf Fischer' exact t test between survivors and nonsurvivors to know thier significance.This study was approved by the institutional research and ethics committee.A total of 26 confirmed cases were studied with maximum cases seen in the month of July.The mean age of affected population was 46 years. Females (65.4%) were affected more than males(34.6%). Diabetes mellitus was the most common comorbid illness.Fever , cough and breathlessness are the common presenting symptoms. 57.7% required ICU.23.1% required vasopressors.Mechanical ventilation was required in 53.8% cases The presence of thrombocytopenia (p-0.025) use of vasopressors (p value-0.000)ICU admission (p- 0.017) and mechanical ventilation (p value-0.010) were poor prognostic factors. The mortality in our study was 23.1%


Assuming that the synoptic reading of partial theories is of use in the building of cumulative theories, the author seeks to establish common points between theories of the decision-making process in foreign policy and theories of power and egotiation at the international level. This paper seeks as well to complement these latter two types of theory with the findings of decision theory. After having justified his undertaking by the relations existing between observed phenomena - that is, decision, power and negotiation - and by the absence of a theory taking these three phenomena into account, the' author sets out the plan of his reflection in function of the distinctions between the approaches and factors emphasized by the various decision theories. The text considers the defining elements of the most important contributions of the specialists on the question. To conclude, the author provides a synoptic table of the main observations of his analysis. This table, which in the author's opinion is able to account for specific situations that are not explicitly described therein, demonstrates that the paradigms of theories of power and negotiation may only be established by reference to the decision paradigm.


Remote monitoring of the parameters of a building requires reading/writing the values of the variables provided by networks of smart devices (sensors, actuators and controllers), that control these parameters. A solution may be the creation and optimization of a web interface that can be accessed from the Internet via a web server providing IP connectivity and other web capabilities. Networks can also be monitored through the 220V AC network by using transceivers. Various services required in buildings can be remotely monitored, the energy management can be improved by making a more efficient use of the electricity and the heat consumption with the aim of reducing the maintenance cost. Utilities companies (water, gas, electricity, etc.) are also becoming more interested in remote monitoring of customers' consumption and are trying to integrate some of the so called "advanced metering systems" (which contain smart meters networks). Remote monitoring of utilities, as well as monitoring building parameters, requires read/write of the network variables values of smart meters that operate with customer utility values [15], [16], [26]. Our paper presents the principles of remotely monitoring the parameters of the buildings together with the most commonly used norms in the field and also an example of an application for remote monitoring several LonWork control networks.


We present numerical simulations of a new system of micro-pump based on the thermal creep effect described by the kinetic theory of gases. This device is made of a simple smooth and curved channel with a periodic temperature distribution. Using the Boltzmann-BGK model as the governing equation for the gas flow, we develop a numerical method based on a deterministic finite volume scheme, implicit in time, with an implicit treatment of the boundary conditions. This method is comparatively less sensitive to the slow flow velocity than the usual Direct Simulation Monte Carlo method in case of long devices, and turns out to be accurate enough to compute macroscopic quantities like the pressure field in the channel. Our simulations show the ability of the device to produce a one-way flow that has a pumping effect. AMS subject classifications: 76P05, 82B40, 82D05, 82C80, 65M06


The Corinth Rift, in Central Greece, is one of the most seismically active areas in Europe. In the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth, which has been the site of numerous large and destructive earthquakes in both historic and modern times, a pronounced earthquake swarm occurred in 2020–2021 at the Perachora peninsula. Herein, we present an in-depth analysis of this sequence, employing a high-resolution relocated earthquake catalog, further enhanced by the application of a multi-channel template matching technique, producing additional detections of over 7600 events between January 2020 and June 2021. Single-station template matching enriches the original catalog thirty-fold, providing origin times and magnitudes for over 24,000 events. We explore the variable levels of spatial and temporal resolution in the catalogs of different completeness magnitudes and also of variable location uncertainties. We characterize the frequency–magnitude distributions using the Gutenberg–Richter scaling relation and discuss possible b-value temporal variations that appear during the swarm and their implications for the stress levels in the area. The evolution of the swarm is further analyzed through spatiotemporal clustering methods, while the temporal properties of multiplet families indicate that short-lived seismic bursts, associated with the swarm, dominate the catalogs. Multiplet families present clustering effects at all time scales, suggesting triggering by aseismic factors, such as fluid diffusion, rather than constant stress loading, in accordance with the spatiotemporal migration patterns of seismicity.


The seachange phenomenon has recently returned to the policy and planning agenda in Australia owing to some recent data showing new movement patterns out of capital cities. This chapter presents a discussion around this via review of the literature in the areas of amenity migration, counter-urbanisation and lifestyle migration. It further proposes, through demographic research into the region of Gippsland in Victoria, that we need to begin to better understand the motivations for shifting away from the capital cities and the flow on impacts in local communities. Among these impacts are coastal populations in various stages of flux, transforming communities based on local, familiar ties and an enduring relationship to place with new residents from far and wide. As these communities and places are 'opened up' through permanent, semi-permanent and visitor populations, more work is required to understand the local place as one that is increasingly inclusive of converging mobile lives, driving communities in transition and renegotiations of identity, belonging and security.


In accordance with the present invention, there are provided compositions useful for the in vivo delivery of a biologic, wherein the biologic is associated with a polymeric shell formulated from a biocompatible material. The biologic can be associated with the polymeric shell itself, and/or the biologic, optionally suspended/dispersed in a biocompatible dispersing agent, can be encased by the polymeric shell. In another aspect, the biologic associated with polymeric shell is administered to a subject, optionally dispersed in a suit able biocompatible liquid.


States can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions through trade measures such as energy subsidies, labelling or certification requirements or tax adjustments. These measures modify production or consumption behaviour without regard to territorial borders. Yet territory is a significant concept for international efforts at climate change mitigation: the UNFCCC Paris Agreement, for example, relies on nationally determined contributions in the context of common but differentiated responsibilities. Moreover, public international law doctrine on extraterritorial jurisdiction may be said to require a 'territorial nexus' between the object of the trade measure and the state imposing the measure. Should the state concentrate on activities within its borders rather than shifting the burden of climate change mitigation to other countries through trade measures? The issue of historical responsibilities for climate change becomes even more fraught if the adverse effects of trade measures are felt disproportionately by indigenous peoples and other marginalised communities within states. This chapter reviews trade law and other jurisprudence and argues that trade measures addressing climate change are unlikely to enliven — let alone violate — public international law rules on extraterritorial jurisdiction. In the alternative, it argues that if a nexus is required, it is relatively easy to satisfy. Neither of these findings, however, dispose of the issue of the lack of parity between and within states with respect to historic contributions to the cause of climate change and vulnerabilities to its impacts. This chapter thus demonstrates the importance of an understanding of how territory — and jurisdiction — operate in the context of trade measures to address climate change, and how this understanding points to a need to be aware of the status and conditions of people within the territory of affected trading partners.


In this study, we investigated the personality variable quality of object relations (QOR) as a moderator of the relationship between the pattern of the therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome in two forms (interpretive, supportive) of short-term individual psychotherapy. In a sample of 72 psychiatric outpatients who completed interpretive therapy, QOR emerged as a moderator for the outcome factor general symptomatology and dysfunction. For high-QOR patients, an increasing level of alliance was directly related to benefit, whereas for low-QOR patients, a decreasing level of alliance was directly related to benefit. An explanation for these findings emphasized the importance of patients repeating their typical pattern of maladaptive interpersonal behavior in the therapy sessions in the context of the therapist working with the transference. In a sample of 72 psychiatric outpatients who completed supportive therapy, QOR did not emerge as a moderator. These findings in combination with evidence from previous studies suggest that QOR should be investigated as a moderator variable in future studies of short-term psychotherapy.


Reproductive drug safety has been a priority for patients and physicians even before the 1960s, when thalidomide—a drug commonly used to alleviate morning sickness—was tied to alarming cases of infants born with phocomelia.1 The Kefauver-Harris Amendment of 1962 prevented thalidomide approval in the USA.1 The legislation also led to immediate reforms in how drugs were approved, but not necessarily how they were prescribed.1 In the decades that followed, processes to regulate safe prescribing lagged.

The first reproductive drug safety initiatives were those for isotretinoin (Accutane) and thalidomide: the Accutane Pregnancy Prevention Program (1988), the System for Thalidomide Education and Prescribing Safety (1998) and the System to Manage Accutane-Related Teratogenicity (2002). In response to persistent gaps in these and other drug safety monitoring programmes, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) subsequently implemented the Risk Management and Evaluation Strategy (REMS) programme in 2007.2 REMS is a multifaceted programme intended to ensure prescribing and dispensing of specific drugs occur only in situations in which the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks.2 The best known REMS is iPLEDGE, which aims to regulate isotretinoin in pregnancy.

Each REMS has key components, including medication guides, product inserts and communication plans, informing healthcare providers and professional societies about drug harms. Additional components called elements to assure safe use (ETASU) apply to drugs with the most significant safety concerns, and include training and certification programmes for physicians and pharmacists, laboratory monitoring, creation of drug registries and restrictions on distribution (eg, hospitals and infusion clinics). The REMS programme was also intended to provide a means of evaluating the efficacy and efficiency of drug safety monitoring programmes.

Today, 57 active REMS programmes are approved by the FDA, 10 of them pertaining to drugs in pregnancy (table 1).3 It is important to note …


Budget corporate car rental industry is a highly competitive industry because not only are there many players in this segment; the players must also be able to deal with thin margins. To some extent the nature of the corporate car industry budget is opposite to the budget segment in ether industries and makes it more difficult for the players to survive. If we recall southwest's case in the airline industry budget, the industry has a stronger bargaining position than the buyers therefore they can reduce discretionary in the client's side and put more control in the players' side while in the budget corporate car rental busines the beyers have stronger bargaining positions because they have many options and rent in large numbers of cars. E-auction tender process, like Telkom did, has squeezed the providers' margin and price training power. Some players even dare to accept a contract that recovers very little cost of capital.
Our analysis shows that Aldira's Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is already in line with their business objectives of becoming the cost leader in this segment but some improvements can be made to lower the operating cost and put more control on Aldira's side. According to the cost variance analysis there are significant discrepancies between actual and budgeted expenses. The variances exist because of some possible reasons such as the unavailability of the standard for service and spare parts replacement and might also cause by mark up, especially for reimbursement cases. Therefore, to avoid the variance Aldira must put more control on their side by establishing a standard for services and replacement parts.
The control can also be increased by creating new workshop networks and hiring more people to increase the man to rented car ratio. The result of abnormal analysis shows that Aldira is still liable for client's mistakes, the expenses which should be borne by the client and insurance company. The abnormality occurs because of the ambiguity or vague definition of own risk and shared responsibilities between providers and clients'in the contract. Until today, Aldira's actual total maintenance cost is still below the limitation. which is 3-4% of car's price, because some clients don't perform routine maintenance costs in authorized workshops continuously but even so, actually the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of Aldira's car rental business is still below Bank Indonesia Certificate (SBI) ) rate which means that there are many investment alternatives that can provide a higher rate of return.
To recover the high cost of capital Aldira must perform cross subsidy between premium cars such as Toyota Camry and Altis with Multi Purpose Vehicle (MPV) cars such as Innova, Avanza and deer pick up because premium car is a profit center while MPV car is more as a cost center. The MPV status as a cost center could be leveraged to a profit center by changing the routine maintenance policy of those cars from authorized workshops to regular workshops to increase revenue to total maintenance cost ratio. If it is not possible than fleet structure it should be arranged in such a way that it enables cross subsidy by taking account of the number of cars rented, price rates, rental periods and non routine maintenance margins.


Better understanding of alveolar mechanics is very important in order to avoid lung injuries for patients undergoing mechanical ventilation for treatment of respiratory problems. The objective of this study was to investigate the alveolar mechanics for two different alveolar sac models, one based on actual geometry and the other an idealized spherical geometry using coupled fluid-solid computational analysis. Both the models were analyzed through coupled fluid-solid analysis to estimate the parameters such as pressures/velocities and displacements/stresses under mechanical ventilation conditions. The results obtained from the fluid analysis indicate that both the alveolar geometries give similar results for pressures and velocities. However, the results obtained from coupled fluid-solid analysis indicate that the actual alveolar geometry results in smaller displacements in comparison to a spherical alveolar model. This trend is also true for stress/strain between the two models. The results presented indicate that alveolar geometry greatly affects the pressure/velocities as well as displacements and stresses/strains.


The theoretical feasibility of the formation of smooth output radiation pulses in an electron-beam-controlled CO2 laser operating at atmospheric pressure was confirmed experimentally by profiling pump pulses. Smooth output pulses were also generated by rapid pumping when the pressure in the mixture was reduced to 0.5 bar.


In recent years, plasma-induced non-equilibrium electrochemistry (PiNE) has been increasingly used for the synthesis of nanomaterials. In this study, we investigated the effect of solution pH on the formation of AuNP/MWCNT nanocomposites synthesized by PiNE. It is found that resulting nanocomposite morphology can be manipulated by the solution pH with pH 2 giving the most uniformly distributed AuNP along the MWCNT surface during the nanocomposite formation. The detailed mechanisms of AuNP/MWCNT nanocomposites formation under different pH have been discussed. For selected AuNP/MWCNT, we further evaluated the photothermal conversion performance under a blue laser (wavelength 445 nm) and the material biocompatibility using HeLa cells. The promising photothermal capability and biocompatibility of the composite sample point to their potential future applications such as solar thermal conversion and healthcare technology.


This paper assesses the effectiveness of unconfoundedness-based estimators of mean effects for multiple or multivalued treatments in eliminating biases arising from nonrandom treatment assignment. We evaluate these multiple treatment estimators by simultaneously equalizing average outcomes among several control groups from a randomized experiment. We study linear regression estimators as well as partial mean and weighting estimators based on the generalized propensity score (GPS). We also study the use of the GPS in assessing the comparability of individuals among the different treatment groups, and propose a strategy to determine the overlap or common support region that is less stringent than those previously used in the literature. Our results show that in the multiple treatment setting there may be treatment groups for which it is extremely difficult to find valid comparison groups, and that the GPS plays a significant role in identifying those groups. In such situations, the estimators we consider perform poorly. However, their performance improves considerably once attention is restricted to those treatment groups with adequate overlap quality, with difference-in-difference estimators performing the best. Our results suggest that unconfoundedness-based estimators are a valuable econometric tool for evaluating multiple treatments, as long as the overlap quality is satisfactory.


Young adult rat thymus and lymph node cell subpopulations were obtained by differential flotation on discontinuous BSA density gradients and assayed for properties characteristic of mature thymus-derived lymphocytes. One such subpopulation (C) of thymocytes was enriched in its ability to respond mitotically to a hemiallogeneic MLR stimulus, to localize in the parenchyma of lymph nodes and spleen, and to initiate a GVH reaction in a suitable host. These cells did not respond well to mitotic stimulation by PHA, they were lighter in density than the majority of mature lymph node thymus-derived lymphocytes, and they possessed a thymus-specific antigen (RTA) not present on peripheral lymphoid cells. We conclude that the acquisition of peripheral properties occurs sequentially, during an intrathymic differentiation cycle or shortly after the cells leave the thymus.


The authors reviewed studies on teaching reading comprehension to students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) with a focus on text (academic reading) comprehension and sight word (functional) comprehension. Eleven of 754 studies met the inclusion criteria: participants with ASD, published in English in a peer-reviewed journal, and use of an experimental design. Participants, setting, academic or functional reading comprehension, and instructional methods across studies were summarized and examined. Instructional methods employed were compared to those identified by the National Reading Panel as effective for students without disabilities. Suggestions for future research and practice are discussed.


Until now, a comprehensif and practical guide on muamalat procedures in banking transaction is still limited. This article attempts to discuss the intrinsic construct of the bank choice determinants according to the ideal Muslim. A group of experts who are among the religious figures, practitioners, consultants and academicians were interviewed. Comments were recorded, collated and themes extracted using grounded theory. Four themes emerged, namely halal and haram deliberation, quality consumption, return of maslahah and capability-based consumption.


In this paper, we define an orthonormal basis for 2-*-inner product space and obtain some useful results. Moreover, we introduce a 2-norm on a dense subset of a 2-*-inner product space. Finally, we obtain a version of the Selberg, Buzano's and Bessel inequality and its results in an A-2-inner product space.


This paper proposes an efficient layer-correlated scheme to educe the bit cost for motion vectors in the 3D wavelet coding, previous works show that incorporating motion alignment into lifting structure enables the 3D wavelet coding to provide a competitive performance to the state-of-the-art JVT standard. In general, the temporal wavelet decomposition consists of multiple layers, while each layer adopts one set of motion vectors to achieve high coding efficiency and temporal scalability. Since the current schemes code these MVs independently, this greatly increases the bit cost for coding MV. In order to reduce the motion cost, the proposed scheme performs motion estimation considering the MV correlation among layers. Several modes are proposed to describe the different local correlations at the macroblock level. By an R-D optimized mode selection engine, the proposed scheme can save up to 33% bits of MVs at the similar texture quality.


An enantioselective catalyst, consisting of a chiral Mn(III)salen complex entrapped in the MIL-101 metal organic framework, is reported. For the first time, we assemble a robust MOF-cage around a chiral complex. The heterogeneous catalyst shows the same selectivity as the homogeneous complex and is fully recyclable. Theoretical calculations provide insight into this retention of selectivity.


The traditional radar system needs large bandwidth, and the increasing number of channels brings huge amount of data. These data can easily overflow the memory of the sensor or the bandwidth of the signal which transferred to the ground station. In order to solve this problem, a new method of acquiring Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) raw data and compressing pulse which based on the theory of Compressive Sensing (CS) theory are presented. In this method, CS SAR imaging is affected by noise, sampling rate and the sparsity of signal. Furthermore, Donoho-Tanner phase transition diagram is applied to show the performance of CS pulse compression. Engineers can intuitively find the scene and the sampling rate which is suitable for using compressed sensing synthetic aperture radar pulse compression.


Q fever (QF) is a zoonosis caused by Coxiella burnetii (Cb). French Guiana (FG) had a high incidence but no data have been published since 2006. The objective of this study was to update the incidence and epidemiological data on QF in FG. A retrospective study of all FG Q fever serodiagnosis between 2007 and 2017 was carried out. Among the 695 patients included, the M/F sex-ratio was 2.0 and the median age of 45.3 years (IQR 33.7–56.3). The annual QF incidence rate was 27.4 cases (95%CI: 7.1–47.7) per 100,000 inhabitants ranging from 5.2 in 2007 to 40.4 in 2010. Risk factors associated with Q fever compared to general population were male gender, being born in mainland France, an age between 30 to 59 years-old and a residence in Cayenne and surroundings. The incidence of QF in FG remains high and stable and the highest in the world.


Abstract Starting from an incident in the colonial port city of Paramaribo in the autumn of 1750 in which, according to the Dutch governor Mauricius, many of the proper barriers separating rich and poor, men and women, adults and children, white citizens and black slaves were crossed, this article traces some of the complexities of everyday social control in colonial Suriname. As gateways for the trade in commodities and the movement of people, meeting points for free and unfree labourers, and administrative centres for emerging colonial settlements, early modern port cities became focal points for policing interaction across racial and social boundaries. Much of the literature on the relationship between slavery and race focuses on the plantation as "race-making institution" and the planter class as the immediate progenitors of "racial capitalism". Studies of urban slavery, on the other hand, have emphasized the greater possibilities of social contact between blacks, mestizos, and whites of various social status in the bustling port cities of the Atlantic. This article attempts to understand practices of racialization and control in the port city of Paramaribo not by contrasting the city with its plantation environment, but by underlining the connections between the two social settings that together shaped colonial geography. The article focuses on everyday activities in Paramaribo (dancing, working, drinking, arguing) that reveal the extent of contact between slaves and non-slaves. The imposition of racialized forms of repression that set one group against the other, frequently understood primarily as a means to justify the apparent stasis of the plantation system with its rigid internal divisions, in practice often functioned precisely to fight the pernicious effects of mobility in mixed social contexts.


For normal arteries, it owns three distinct tissue layers called intima media and adventitia. The intima consists of monolayer endothelial cells. The media layer composed of smooth muscle cells and elastin fibers, these cells aligned circumferentially around the intima. The adventitial layer contains fibroblasts and connective tissue [18] Intimathe thinnest layer of artery which is composed of a single layer of simple squamous endothelial cells. Polysaccharide intercellular matrix joins these cells together.Mediathe thickest layer of artery composed of circularly arranged elastic fiber, connective tissue and polysaccharide substances. Media is especially rich in vascular smooth muscle compare to other tissue in artery. Another thick elastic band named the external elastic lamina separate the second and third layer of media. Adventitiathe outer layer of artery. Adventitia is entirely made up of connective tissue with nerves in it. The Tunica Adventitia is entirely made up of connective tissue.


Abstract The complete mitochondrial genome of Aleochara postica Walker, 1858 was determined in this study. It is 15,473 bps in length, containing 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and a 778 bp A + T-rich control region. Most PCGs use the conventional ATN start codon, except for cox1 and nad1. Two genes (cox1 and cox3) use single T residue as stop codon rather than the routinely used TAA or TAG. All tRNAs, except for TrnS1, exhibit the cloverleaf secondary structure. ML phylogenetic analysis using 13 PCGs of 52 beetle species indicated that A. postica was clustered with other members of the subfamily Aleocharinae as conventional taxonomy predicted.


In this paper, we introduce presynthesis optimizations on hardware description languages (HDLs). Presynthesis optimizations consist of two categories of tasks: 1) source-level transformations, which produce optimized behavioral HDL descriptions that lead to improved synthesis results and 2) source-level analysis, which produces information useful in the synthesis stage to improve the quality of the synthesized circuits. Presynthesis optimizations are carried out on an intermediate tabular representation called timed decision table (TDT). We have implemented the TDT-based presynthesis optimization algorithms in a software package called Pumpkin. Experiments running Pumpkin on named benchmarks show promising results.


Which Course to Choose?; An Analysis of the Global Perspective found in the Nova Scotia GradeTwelve Global History/Global Geography Curriculum, and an Examination of the Rationale Students' Use to Select these Courses." Selig, Wade E. 104 pages; Master of Arts in Education Thesis, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. April, 1995 The challenge for educating students in North America for a "global perspective" has become a mainstream concern during the last three decades as the general public has been made more aware of the unavoidable implications of global interdependence. Although few educators would argue against the necessity of including some aspect of a "giobal perspective" in the overall school curriculum, there tends to be a wide variety of conceptions on what "global education" should actually look like. The criteria for what constitues a "global perspective" in education has been outlined in this study through a review of the history "global education" in North America and the current literature on the topic. The Nova Scotia Department of Education has adopted two grade twelve courses as part of the initial stage of a "global education" program in their province. The curriculum guides for these courses. Global History and Global Geography, were analyzed in this study to determine to what degree the rationales, goals and major concepts they put forth constituted "global education" as defined by documented research. These courses are also presented to be somewhat in competition with one


A study was conducted in two parts to first validate a new questionnaire, the GDP-I, measuring game design preferences amongst gamers, and then secondly, to explore the relationship between game design preference and personality traits as per the HEXACO model of personality. Principal components analysis of a sample of gamers (N = 149) found three dimensions of game design preference, labeled narrative design preference, social design preference, and reward design preference. In the second part of the study a sample of gamers (N = 245) were asked to take both the GDP-I and the HEXACO-PR-I (100-item). Correlational analysis indicated that preference for narrative design was significantly related to higher levels of emotionality, openness, and conscientiousness. Preference for social design was significantly related to higher levels of extraversion and lower levels of honesty-humility and openness. Preference for reward based design was significantly related to lower levels of honesty-humility and openness. These findings suggest a strong need for future research into the relationship between personality and video game design preference. (Less)


This article aims at the principle problems noticed in the process of training postgraduates in ophthalmology for clinical skills (POCs). Alteration of the training objectives and training curricula, as well as the clinical department training plans, will allow POCs to obtain a systematic and standardized education to establish their general attitude toward medical life and career plans. This will help to improve their clinical skills and establish professional ethics that will protect the interests of patients and promote the healthy and harmonious development of the Eye Hospital. Furthermore, the Ophthalmology Center could cultivate a number of outstanding postgraduate students that match its tier, to describe the quality of the training for the master's degree in Ophthalmology.


The use of digital subtraction techniques combined with fluoroscopy has rekindled interest in arteriography using intranvenous injections of contrast media. A new method is proposed for intravenous angiography in which an x-ray source and xenon detector array from a computed tomographic (CT) scanner are used to scan a region of interest to produce projection image. In order to provide adequate visualization of small concentrations of iodine in blood vessels, a subtraction scheme is used to remove the contribution from overlapping soft tissue and bone. Initial experiments with a temporal subtraction algorithm on phantoms have demonstrated the ability to image simulated blood vessels of 1.7-mm diameter containing dilute diatrizoate with an iodine concentration of 3.7 mg/cc, at an exposure of less than 100 mR. Vascular structures 5-8 mm in diameter have been imaged in dogs with iodine concentrations of less than 37 mg/cc using temporal subtraction. Principal advantages of the method over other film or fluoroscopic subtraction techniques are: 1) wide dynamic range an low noise of the (CT) detectors, providing excellent iodine sensitivity; 2) high scatter rejection; and 3) efficient utilization of x-ray dose.


Here we present new red sequence overdensity measurements for 77 fields in the high-z Clusters Occupied by Bent Radio AGN (COBRA) survey, based on r- and i-band imaging taken with the Lowell Observatory's Discovery Channel Telescope. We observe 38 COBRA fields in the r-band and 90 COBRA fields in the i-band. By combining the r- and i-band photometry with our 3.6 and 4.5 μm Spitzer IRAC observations, we identify 39 red sequence cluster candidates that host a strong overdensity of galaxies when measuring the excess of red sequence galaxies relative to a background field. We initially treat the radio host as the cluster center and then determine a new cluster center based on the surface density of red sequence sources. Using our color selection, we identify which COBRA cluster candidates have strong red sequence populations. By removing foreground and background contaminants, we more securely determine which fields include cluster candidates with a higher significance than our single-band observations. Additionally, of the 77 fields we analyze with a redshift estimate, 26 include newly estimated photometric redshifts.


With gate counts of ten million, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are becoming suitable for floating-point computations. Addition is the most complex operation in a floating-point unit and can cause major delay while requiring a significant area. Over the years, the VLSI community has developed many floating-point adder algorithms aimed primarily at reducing the overall latency. An efficient design of the floating-point adder offers major area and performance improvements for FPGAs. Given recent advances in FPGA architecture and area density, latency has become the main focus in attempts to improve performance. This paper studies the implementation of standard; leading-one predictor (LOP); and far and close datapath (2-path) floating-point addition algorithms in FPGAs. Each algorithm has complex sub-operations which contribute significantly to the overall latency of the design. Each of the sub-operations is researched for different implementations and is then synthesized onto a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA device. Standard and LOP algorithms are also pipelined into five stages and compared with the Xilinx IP. According to the results, the standard algorithm is the best implementation with respect to area, but has a large overall latency of 27.059 ns while occupying 541 slices. The LOP algorithm reduces latency by 6.5% at the cost of a 38% increase in area compared to the standard algorithm. The 2-path implementation shows a 19% reduction in latency with an added expense of 88% in area compared to the standard algorithm. The five-stage standard pipeline implementation shows a 6.4% improvement in clock speed compared to the Xilinx IP with a 23% smaller area requirement. The five-stage pipelined LOP implementation shows a 22% improvement in clock speed compared to the Xilinx IP at a cost of 15% more area.


Nicholas J. Gotelli Dept of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. Carnivorous plants have fascinated evolutionary ecologists, botanists and horticulturists for centuries. Early investigators were reluctant to accept that plants could consume insects and other small invertebrates1; Darwin2 provided the first detailed experimental evidence for carnivory in several genera. Since then, approximately 600 species of carnivorous plants have been identified in six angiosperm subclasses, including both monocotyledons and eudicotyledons3,4. Twentiethcentury botanists focused on describing the anatomical specializations and physiological mechanisms associated with botanical carnivory1,5 and identifying commonalities among the carnivorous plants. In the mid-1980s, Givnish6 proposed a general cost–benefit model to explain the restriction of most carnivorous plants to well-lit, nutrient-poor, waterlogged habitats. Although common ecological factors have led to some evolutionary convergence, focus on ecological similarities has obscured important evolutionary differences. Recent research on carnivorous plants has highlighted these differences, which illustrate the richness of ecological and evolutionary questions that can be approached with these plants. New research on carnivorous plant phylogeny informs interpretations of cost–benefit analyses for the evolution of carnivory in plants, use of captured prey, tradeoffs between attracting pollinators versus prey, and overall ecological effects of the carnivorous syndrome1. Recent studies also have successfully modeled the demography of some carnivorous plant populations, elucidating how changes in fitness affect population dynamics. As with other groups of plants, such as mangroves7 and alpine plants8 that exhibit broad evolutionary convergence because of strong selection in stressful habitats, detailed investigations of carnivorous plants at multiple biological scales can illustrate clearly the importance of ecological processes in determining evolutionary patterns.


COLLADA is a COLLAborative Design Activity for establishing an open standard Digital Asset schema for interactive 3D applications. This book explains in detail how to use the COLLADA technology in a project utilizing 3D assets, and ultimately how to create an effective content creation pipeline for the most complex development. Errata are posted at http://collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/COLLADA_book.


Abstract The purpose of our contribution is to discuss shortcomings of purely descriptive quantitative evaluation of research policies – based either on inputs (public investment, number of researchers), or outputs (publications, number of patents). To give an example we compare selected indicators across Visegrad countries in the period between 2006 and 2015. We conclude that both quantitative and qualitative perspectives as well as societal and political context should be taken into account when the performance of any R&D system and the impact of public investments into a public R&D sector are scrutinized.


The Quality Assurance (QA) of measurand has been discussed over many years by Quality Engineering (QE). It is need to more discuss about ISO standard. It is mining to find out root fault element for improvement of measured accuracy, and it remove. The accuracy assurance needs to investigate the Reference Material (RM) for calibration and an improvement accuracy of data processing. This research follows the accuracy improvement in field of data processing by how to improve of accuracy. As for the fault element relevant to measurement accuracy, in many cases, two or more element is buried exist. The QE is to assume the generating frequency of fault state, and it is solving from higher ranks for fault factor first by "Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)". Then QE investigate the root cause over the fault element by "Root Cause Analysis (RCA)" and "Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)" and calculate order to the generating element of assume specific fault. These days comes, the accuracy assurance of measurement result became duty in the Professional Test (PT). ISO standard was legislated by ISO-GUM (Guide of express Uncertainty in Measurement) as guidance of an accuracy assurance in 1993 [1] for QA. Analysis method of ISO-GUM is changed into Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) from Analysis of Valiance (ANOVA). EDA calculate one by one until an assurance performance is obtained according to "Law of the propagation of uncertainty". If the truth value was unknown, ISO-GUM is changed into reference value. A reference value set up by the EDA and it does check with a Key Comparison (KC) method. KC is comparing between null hypothesis and frequency hypothesis. It performs operation of assurance by ISO-GUM in order of standard uncertainty, the combined uncertainty of many fault elements and an expansion uncertain for assurance. An assurance value is authorized by multiplying the final expansion uncertainty [2] by K of coverage factor. K-value is calculated from the Effective Free Degree (EFD) which thought the number of samples is important. Free degree is based on maximum likelihood method of an improved information criterion (AIC) for a Quality Control (QC). The assurance performance of ISO-GUM is come out by set up of the confidence interval [3] and is decided. The result of research of "Decided level/Minimum Detectable Concentration (DL/MDC)" was able to profit by the operation. QE has developed for the QC of industry. However, these have been processed by regression analysis by making frequency probability of a statistic value into normalized distribution. The occurrence probability of the statistics value of a fault element which is accompanied element by a natural phenomenon becomes an abnormal distribution in many cases. The abnormal distribution needs to obtain an assurance value by other method than statistical work of type B in ISO-GUM. It is tried fusion the improvement of worker by QE became important for reservation of the reliability of measurement accuracy and safety. This research was to make the result of Blood Chemical Analysis (BCA) in the field of clinical test.


Over the past decade, there has been growing interest in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) as a rescue therapy for patients with severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and cardiogenic shock. Although survival of ECMO-treated patients has improved recently, the incidence of ECMO-related complications such as bleeding and nosocomial infections remains unacceptably high. In addition, patients often experience long-term physiological and psychological sequelae. Hence, identifying patients who will most likely benefit from ECMO is crucial. Because the technique exposes patients to complications and is associated with high costs and resource utilisation, prediction models have been developed to assist clinicians in identifying patients that would most likely survive after ECMO treatment. In addition, these prediction models enable comparison of risk-adjusted outcomes, both over time and between centres. Our review explores the latest predictive survival models developed for ECMO-treated severe cardiogenic shock and ARDS patients.


This study was undertaken to clarify the role of dopamine receptor (DA2) on the effects of atrial natriuretic polypeptide(ANP) on blood pressure, plasma and urinary cyclic GMP, and urinary sodium excretion, alpha-human ANP (alpha-hANP) was intravenously administrated to 7 normal subjects and 14 patients with essential hypertension as follows: first a dose of 0.01 micrograms/kg/min for 30 minutes, and then 0.03 micrograms/kg/min with or without metoclopramide(MC) for 30 minutes. After the infusion of the 0.03 micrograms/kg/min dose of alpha-hANP, systolic blood pressure fell from 115 +/- 17 mmHg to 109 +/- 15 mmHg in normal subjects, and fell significantly from 163 +/- 33 mmHg to 145 +/- 26 mmHg in patients with essential hypertension. Diastolic blood pressure fell from 101 +/- 14 mmHg to 92 +/- 7 mmHg in patients with essential hypertension but did not change in normal subjects. A dose of 0.03 micrograms/kg/min of alpha-hANP led to a threefold rise in urine volume and twofold rise in urinary sodium excretion in normal subjects, and a fivefold rise in urine volume and fourfold rise in urinary sodium excretion in patients with essential hypertension. However, there was no relationship between the hypotensive and natriuretic effects of alpha-hANP in either normal subjects or patients with essential hypertensions. The infusion of a 0.03 micrograms/kg/min dose of alpha-hANP increased plasma cyclic GMP concentration from 4.1 +/- 2.1 pmol/ml to 34.3 +/- 25.Opmol/ml in normal subjects and from 4.5 +/- 2.6 pmol/ml to 20.3 +/- 7.4 pmol/ml in patients with essential hypertension. The rise in plasma cyclic GMP by alpha-hANP was suppressed by MC both in normal subjects and patients with essential hypertension. Urinary cyclic GMP excretion also increased during the infusion of alpha-hANP, but this effect was not suppressed by MC. Furthermore, plasma aldosterone concentration (PAC), which was depressed by alpha-hANP in normal subjects and patients with essential hypertension, was increased by MC. These results suggest that the hypotensive effect of alpha-hANP may depend not only on the natriuretic effect, but also on vasodilatation, the inhibition of aldosterone production or the suppression of the sympathoadrenomedullary system. Cyclic GMP may be produced through the DA2 receptor in vascular tissue but not in the kidney.


The flexibility and power achieved by using active networks come with their own risks - any fault in the active code or the security infrastructure now represents a fault in the network as a whole. Secure containment of active code is necessary in order to ameliorate this risk. The Active Network Fault Response project has developed and implemented innovative approaches to respond to faults in the active code as well as faults in the security infrastructure of an active network. Diverse authentication techniques, which provide fail-over, and compensatory authentication techniques, which provide substitutes, furnish effective responses when some component of the security infrastructure is unavailable. An active code revocation capability provides for secure containment of faulty active code within the active network.


Dear Editor: Many antidepressants, either alone or in combination, can induce mania. Mirtazapine is a new noradrenergic and specific serotinergic antidepressant that has been associated with mania when used to augment fluoxetine (1) and with hypomania when combined with sertraline (2). Bhanji and others have recently proposed a "norepinephrine syndrome" of dysphoric mania that is based on mirtazapine's mechanism of action and a constellation of symptoms it likely caused when prescribed at high dosages (3). We report the case of a young woman who went on a shopping spree after mirtazapine was added to paroxetine that was unsuccessful in treating her depression.


Fibroblast growth factor-4 (FGF4) is expressed in embryonic stages and in adult tissues, where it plays critical roles in modulating multiple cellular functions. However, the exact roles of FGF4 on proliferation and differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are not completely understood. Exogenous addition of FGF4 stimulated proliferation of mouse ESCs (mESCs), as proven by the increases in DNA synthesis and cell cycle regulatory protein induction. These increases were almost completely inhibited by pre-treating cells with anti-FGF4 antibody. FGF4 also activated c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and extracellular-signal regulated kinase (ERK) signaling, but not p38 kinase. Blockage of JNK signaling by SP600125 or by transfection with its specific siRNA significantly inhibited FGF4-stimulated cell proliferation through the suppression of c-Jun induction and activator protein-1 (AP-1) activity. However, ERK or p38 kinase inhibitor did not affect FGF4-stimulated proliferation in mESCs. FGF4 suppressed osteogenic differentiation of mESCs by inhibiting expression of transcription factors involved in bone formation. Further, exogenous FGF4 addition stimulated proliferation of human periodontal ligament stem cells (hPDLSCs) and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs) via activation of ERK signaling. FGF4 also augmented mineralization of hPDLSCs, but not of BMMSCs. Collectively, it is suggested that FGF4 triggers proliferation of stem cells by activating MAPK-mediated signaling, while it affects differently osteogenic differentiation according to the origins of stem cells.


This report creates the first baseline of domestic abuse prevention work in a sample of seven Scottish local authorities. The focus of the study is on primary prevention. This is work with children and young people which is aimed at preventing violence before it happens. There is some interlinking with secondary prevention, which is work that targets women and children who have experienced domestic abuse. The study locates these activities in the context of recommendations made by Jane Ellis in her review of prevention evidence (Scottish Government 2008). It also pays particular attention to the National Domestic Abuse Delivery Plan for Children and Young People (Scottish Government 2008) and the emerging Curriculum for Excellence. The study was commissioned by the National Children and Young People's Prevention Network. It is the companion to A Report on the Evaluation of the 'Why Create a Drama'? Project which evaluates the impact of a forum theatre production on the theme of domestic abuse presented in schools by Baldy Bane Theatre Company.


This study aims to study the factors that affect an individual's intention to repurchase from ecommerce system in Thailand by integrating two models — Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and an Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) into one research model. Four hundred online questionnaires were collected from Thais who have had at least two experiences of purchasing goods or services through an e-commerce system in Thailand. The results indicate that (1) perceived ease of use has a direct impact on trust and perceived usefulness, (2) confirmation has a direct impact on perceived usefulness and satisfaction, (3) trust has a direct impact on perceived usefulness and online repurchase intention, (4) perceived usefulness has a direct impact on satisfaction and online repurchase intention, (5) satisfaction has a direct impact on online repurchase intention. It is evident that satisfaction is the most influential factor affecting an online repurchase intention while confirmation is the strongest factor affecting satisfaction. The evidence from this study suggests that satisfaction (R2 = 0.761) is the main factor that generates intention to repurchase form an e-commerce system, hence entrepreneurs should take satisfaction as one of their highest considerations.


Peculiarities of regional processes of foreign direct investment impact on the gross domestic product of Western Ukraine and Chernivtsi region, taking into account a time lag, are reviewed in this article. Considering the fact that investment processes are enough complicated phenomenon to understand in the course of which different kinds of changes occur, the relevance and importance of establishing a pattern of their behavior is increasing. Economical and mathematical tools, in particular Almon distributed lag models which allow to estimate the discrete lag influence of determinants can be used to achieve this. In the course of the study, the Almon distributed lag models were constructed separately for the comparison, time lag interval boundaries were set, the main features of the discrete time lag distribution during the lag period were determined, and the economic and mathematical models of the distributed lag for the effects of foreign direct investment on the gross regional product of Chernivtsi region Western Ukraine were built. On the basis of the obtained results, conclusions about economic multiplier processes of the investment were made in the context of individual territories and the main trends of the investment flow return were defined.


Objectives Determine the safety, feasibility and initial efficacy of a multicomponent telerehabilitation programme for COVID-19 survivors. Design Pilot randomised feasibility study. Setting In-home telerehabilitation. Participants 44 participants (21 female, mean age 52 years) discharged home following hospitalisation with COVID-19 (with and without intensive care unit (ICU) stay). Interventions Participants were block randomised 2:1 to receive 12 individual biobehaviourally informed, app-facilitated, multicomponent telerehabilitation sessions with a licenced physical therapist (n=29) or to a control group (n=15) consisting of education on exercise and COVID-19 recovery trajectory, physical activity and vitals monitoring, and weekly check-ins with study staff. Interventions were 100% remote and occurred over 12 weeks. Primary and secondary outcome measures The primary outcome was feasibility, including safety and session adherence. Secondary outcomes included preliminary efficacy outcomes including tests of function and balance; patient-reported outcome measures; a cognitive assessment; and average daily step count. The 30 s chair stand test was the main secondary (efficacy) outcome. Results No adverse events (AEs) occurred during testing or in telerehabilitation sessions; 38% (11/29) of the intervention group compared with 60% (9/15) of the control group experienced an AE (p=0.21), most of which were minor, over the course of the 12-week study. 27 of 29 participants (93%; 95% CI 77% to 99%) receiving the intervention attended ≥75% of sessions. Both groups demonstrated clinically meaningful improvement in secondary outcomes with no statistically significant differences between groups. Conclusion Fully remote telerehabilitation was safe, feasible, had high adherence for COVID-19 recovery, and may apply to other medically complex patients including those with barriers to access care. This pilot study was designed to evaluate feasibility; further efficacy evaluation is needed. Trial registration number NCT04663945.


The common market may provide a unique opportunity to develop certification models between countries as some of the economic, social, and language barriers begin to soften. International fellowships must be encouraged, especially those from the third world, but with the understanding that the purpose of such international education is for the fellow to return to the country of origin and improve the health care delivery there, not to improve the personal finances of the fellow in an adopted country. The autocratic dogmatic certification by the decreed blessing of the department chair must give way to objective examination by impartial boards. There are too many differences now to establish an international certifying process, but everyone must encourage and work toward common professional, educational, political, national, and economic goals so that eventually such certifying might be possible. Dialogue between boards in the United States and analogous bodies in other countries (such as colleges of surgeons) to nurture the definition of necessary core knowledge, standardize examination design and technique, and eventually develop reciprocity for requirements to take examinations should also be encouraged.


In this paper, the thermal stability of a piggyback electrostatic microactuator integrated with head gimbal assembly (HGA) for hard disk drives (HDD) is modeled and evaluated. Firstly, the temperature stability of the microactuator in terms of dimensions is analyzed. Different microstructure materials, such as nickel, Invar, and single crystal silicon, fabricated by LIGA and LISA processes separately, are evaluated based on the finite element model. Then, the thermal deformation and thermal stress of the microactuator are simulated for two schemes of die-attach HGA integration. Lastly, the variance in operational characteristics of the microactuator caused by the thermal deformation is analyzed by electrical-mechanical couple analysis. The evaluation results demonstrate that the single crystal silicon microactuator with the four spot die-attach HGA integration has better thermal stability in operational performance.


In this paper, we study how to learn an appropriate lane changing strategy for autonomous vehicles by using deep reinforcement learning. We show that the reward of the system should consider the overall traffic efficiency instead of the travel efficiency of an individual vehicle. In summary, cooperation leads to a more harmonic and efficient traffic system rather than competition


Dementia is one of the associated diseases to aging most prevalents. An important issue about this neuropathology, as of yet unsolved, is the absence of therapeutic tools that manage or stop its progression and symptoms in a constant and supported way. In the present study, we propose a new computational intelligent tool to diagnose the Severity Level of Dementia (SLD) using gating neural network and neural ensemble approaches. We present a gating neural ensemble (GaNEn). This system is a new formulation of a neural network ensemble, where the gating neural network takes part in the combination strategy of ensemble system, and the main expert module in its construction is a HUMANN-S (Supervised HUMANN (Hybrid Unsupervised Modular Artificial Neural Network)) architecture. GaNEn is characterized by an incremental capacity concerning missing data management and their influence in the final diagnosis. It improves previous computational solutions and obtains higher accuracy diagnosis. The GaNEn system is a significant achievement in the medical diagnosis of neurological disorders because it could aid in the design of pharmaco-therapeutic strategies to contain dementia. It is also capable of supplying the best neuropsychological scales for dementia severity grades. We have explored its ability using a battery of neuropsychological tests from people with Alzheimer type dementia (AD), Vascular type dementia (VD) and other dementia type (OD) like Trauma, Subcortical, Parkinson and Infectious, from the Alzheimer's Association of Gran Canaria.


In the article by Y. S. Huh et al. in Electrophoresis 2007, 28, 4748–4757 the names of two authors are missing. The correct list of authors is as follows: Yun Suk Huh, Jong Hyun Choi, Kyoung Ae Kim Huh, Tae Jung Park, Yeon Ki Hong, Do Hyun Kim, Won Hi Hong, Sang Yup Lee . In the article by M. Groessl et al. in Electrophoresis issue no. 10'2008 the correct production no. should read 2007-80790 instead of 2007-00790.


e16176 Background: The systemic treatment option of unresectable and advanced cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is limited. The mainstay of treatment is gemcitabine and 5-FU based chemotherapy. Recently, there is the role of promising immunotherapy in MSI-HI CCA. This research aims to study molecular alterations and tumor microenvironment in Thai CCA patients in order to explore the novel treatment and the clinical correlations. Methods: Thirty-six CCA patients in Ramathibodi Hospital between year of 2018 and 2020 with adequate tissue were enrolled. NGS by ThermoFisher (comprehensive panel) for molecular profile and immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining for tumor microenvironment protein expression (CD3, CD4, CD8, CD20, CD138, CD163, FOXP3), and PD-L1 were performed. Clinical data was retrieved from electronic medical record. Survival analysis, univariate and multivariate analysis were performed by Cox-regression analysis. Stata version 16.0 was used for statistical analysis. Results: Intrahepatic CCA was the most common type of CCA in our population (81%). The top 10 common mutations were TP53 (69%), KMT2D 58%), KMT2B (52%), ARID1A (50%), FAT1 (50%), NOTCH3 (44%), FANCA (42%), SMAD4 (42%), EPHA2 (39%), and ARID1B (39%). We also found the interesting targetable genes in our CCA patients, such as, KRAS (33%), MTOR (33%), HER2 (31%), EGFR (31%), FGFR2 (28%), BRCA2 (25%), PIK3CA (22%), NTRK1 (19%), BRCA1 (17%), NTRK3 (11%), and BRAF (8%). Three patients had ALK fusion gene, 1 patient had NTRK1 fusion and the other one had NTRK3 fusion gene. Twelve out of 36 patients (33%) had MSI-HI and 56% of patients had TMB ≥ 10 mutations/megabase. The clinical factors significantly correlated with poor overall survival (OS) were unresectable disease, stage IV, bilirubin > 1.2, and CEA ≥ 22.5. The NF1, MTOR, HER2 mutations, and FOXP3-negative in stromal cells were significantly associated with longer OS, whereas EGFR, APC, FGFR2, and BRCA1 mutations might correlated with better OS. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated the unique molecular profile of Thai CCA patients. We found high prevalence of MSI-HI and high TMB in our population, together with the promising potential of targetable genes for developing targeted therapy in the future. FOXP3 expression was probably one of potential predictive biomarker for immunotherapy. Larger cohort should be explored.


We consider deterministic dynamic systems with state space representations which are dissipative in the sense of Willems [lo] with respect to several supply rates. This property is of interest in robustness analysis and in multiobjective control. We give conditions under which the convex cone of dissipated supply rates is closed. Furthermore we show convexity and continuity properties of the available storage and required supply as functions of the supply rate.


Available K-Ar dates from the Palisades sill (142 to 202 m.y.) are generally younger than the ages of post-Triassic intrusive rocks in other areas. 40Ar/39Ar release spectra of chill-zone samples record ages of 192 and 186 m.y. and furnish no evidence of postcrystallization argon loss. These ages are similar to published K-Ar biotite ages (186 to 196 m.y.) and probably refer to the time of crystallization of the sill. As recent paly-nologic studies in the Hartford basin have shown that rocks stratigraphically equivalent to those intruded by the Palisades are, in part, of Early Jurassic age, the 40Ar/39Ar ages are not inconsistent with absolute age brackets on the Triassic Period.


Floral development at the Arabidopsis shoot apical meristem occurs in response to environmental cues that are perceived in different tissues. Photoperiod is detected in the vascular tissue of the leaf (phloem) and promotes production of a systemic signal that induces flowering at the meristem. Vernalization, the response to winter temperatures, overcomes a block on photoperiodic floral induction. In Arabidopsis, this block is caused by inhibitors of flowering that comprise several related MADS-box transcription factors, the most prominent of which is FLC. We show that FLC delays flowering by repressing production in the leaf of at least two systemic signals, one of which is controlled by the RAF kinase inhibitor-like protein FT. Reducing expression of these signals indirectly represses expression of genes involved in floral induction at the meristem. In addition, FLC expression in the meristem impairs response to the FT signal by directly repressing expression of the SOC1 MADS-box transcription factor and preventing up-regulation of the bZIP transcription factor FD. Repression of genes acting at multiple levels in this hierarchy is required for the extreme delay in flowering caused by FLC. An FLC:HA fusion protein binds directly in vivo to the promoter regions of FD and SOC1 and to the first intron of FT. Thus vernalization relieves transcriptional repression of key regulatory genes in both the leaf and meristem, allowing production of systemic signals in the leaves and conferring competence on the meristem to respond to these signals.


Success of wild northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) management programs on private lands is most often measured by the rate of coveys pointed during the hunting season. Thus, managers of these properties are keenly interested in factors that influence hunting success. We examined how coveys pointed/hour, a measure of hunting success, was influenced by time of hunting season, time of day, weather parameters, and supplemental feeding on 2 intensively-managed plantations over 4 years. There were significant annual differences in the number of coveys pointed/hour among the 4 study years, but hunting success did not vary during the hunting season. Afternoon hunts had consistently higher success rates than morning hunts; however, the effect size was variable from year to year. The selected weather model indicated an interaction between 12-hr barometric pressure change and starting air pressure; hunting success increased with a rapid pressure increase that resulted in a high pressure value at the start of the hunt. A secondary weather model documented a negative relationship between starting air temperature and hunting success. The number of days since supplemental feed was spread had no significant effect on hunting success in 5 of 6 years for the 2 plantations over 3 years. Knowledge of how these variables influence hunting success should improve hunting and provide realistic expectations of hunt success for a given set of circumstances. Citation: Wellendorf, S. D., W. E. Palmer, and D. C. Sisson. 2012. Factors influencing northern bobwhite hunting success on two south Georgia plantations. Proceedings of the National Quail Symposium 7:155–161.


Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has pledged to move the United Nations from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention. Realizing that it is far better and more cost-effective to prevent violent conflicts than to cure them, the Secretary-General has undertaken a review of practical actions that have been and are being taken within the United Nations to prevent conflict. This report looks at the progress that has been achieved in developing the conflict prevention capacity of the United Nations. It also provides recommendations on how efforts of the United Nations system in this field could be further enhanced, with the cooperation and active involvement of Member States, who ultimately have primary responsibility for conflict prevention. This report stresses that conflict prevention lies at the heart of the mandate of the United Nations in the maintenance of international peace and security, and that a general consensus is emerging among Member States that comprehensive and coherent conflict prevention strategies offer the greatest potential for promoting lasting peace.


Although the acute actions of short-acting β(2)-adrenoceptor agonists on force production in isolated mammalian skeletal muscle fibers have been the subject of a number of previous studies, those of long-acting β(2)-adrenoceptor agonists have never been investigated. Also, little is known about the cellular signal transduction events mediating their actions. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to investigate the acute effects of treatment of mouse fast- and slow-twitch muscle fiber bundles with clenbuterol, formoterol, and salbutamol. Both clenbuterol and salbutamol increased the levels of cAMP in both fiber types, and this effect was reversed by ICI-118551. On the other hand, clenbuterol and formoterol decreased force production in both fiber types. They also increased the phosphorylation of phospholamban and β(2)-adrenoceptors in slow-twitch fiber bundles, and their effects were insensitive to propranolol, ICI-118551, and 14-22 amide. In contrast, salbutamol increased force production in both fiber types. It also increased the phosphorylation of β(2)-adrenoceptors in slow-twitch fibers only, but it had no effect on the phosphorylation of phospholamban in either fiber type. These effects were reversed by propranolol and ICI-118551 but not by 14-22 amide. Instead, 14-22 amide further potentiated the effects of salbutamol on force. In summary, long- and short-acting β(2)-adrenoceptor agonists have opposite effects on force production in isolated intact mouse skeletal muscle fiber bundles. From these results, we suggest that the acute actions of short-acting β(2)-adrenoceptor agonists on force production in mammalian skeletal muscles are mediated through the β(2)-adrenoceptor, whereas those of long-acting β(2)-adrenoceptor agonists are not.


Over the past several decades, enormous technological, economic and political changes have transformed the U.S. economy and the application of U.S. export controls. Technological advances have revolutionized the types of products available and the ways they can be exported. Software and technical data have become articles of commerce in their own right and can be exported electronically, not just physically. As a result, electronic activities defined as "exports" have increased exponentially, far in excess of economic growth. Yet despite these revolutionary changes, the basic structure of U.S. export controls has remained unaltered. The regime is outdated, but efforts at reform have ignored the controls' most fundamental structural aspect: that they look to individual export transactions as the events to be regulated. The regulation of individual transactions is so embedded in the system that many observers see it as an indelible feature. Form supersedes substance, and the system meets neither its expressly stated goal of facilitating trade nor its primary goal of promoting national security objectives. In order to reconcile these two seemingly incompatible goals, this article recommends that U.S. commercial export controls focus primarily on the identity of the exporter and the scope of the exporter's export activities, and only secondarily on specific export transactions. This "account-based" approach to export controls would reduce many current difficulties faced by U.S. exporters, by deemphasizing the often artificial and burdensome focus on discrete transactions. An account-based approach would more accurately reflect activities taking place in international commerce and allow them to be vetted for the end user/end use concerns that have become so important in export controls – and thus both address U.S. national security concerns and improve export efficiency.


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On the basis of fitting the directly computed dielectronic recombination rate coefficients made by M. H. Chen, using the multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock model in intermediate coupling with configuration interaction, we present a set of analytic formulas of dielectronic recombination rate coefficients for the F-like ions form Fe+17 to Eu+54 with the electron temperature in the range 0.02 ⩽ T ⩽ 9.0 keV. This set of analytic formulas may be used for interpolating the rate coefficients for other members of the F-like isoelectronic sequence in which explicit calculations are unavailable. The detailed results are tabulated and discussed.