The aim of this work was to investigate the yearly temporal pattern of fire activity and its relationship to weather in Lebanon during the past decade. The specific objectives were (1) to determine the start, peak and end dates of the fire season and their temporal changes throughout the years, and (2) to evaluate corresponding weather variability and its relationship to changes in fire occurrence and seasonality. First, fire seasonality was determined using fire occurrence data from 2001 to 2011. Second, the de-trended mean monthly weather variables were studied for correlation with fire occurrence between the earliest starting month and the latest ending month of the determined fire seasons. The results showed that the average length of the fire season was 146.6 days, the average start date was 14 June, and the average end date was 12 November. Fire occurrence was positively correlated with mean monthly temperatures and negatively correlated with mean monthly precipitation and mean monthly wind speed. The length of the fire season was negatively correlated with mean annual precipitation. In addition, an increasing fire occurrence risk was observed in association with high maximum temperatures and long dry seasons.


RESEARCH DEVOTED to developing rubber insulations resistant to micro-organisms has given two major results: 1. Compounds showing normal insulation resistance with no failures after 4 years in accelerated soil tests in which ordinary compounds fail in about 6 months; 2. Proof that the destructive organisms are fungi, and that these cause loss of insulation resistance and dielectric strength by growing through the insulation.


The article presents the biography and scientific achievements of Professor Maria Lisiewska. She earned master's degree and Ph.D. in natural sciences from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. After earning her doctoral degree, she stayed at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and conducted her thrilling research on mycology and taught until now. Prof. Maria Lisiewska is an author of many books, articles, and other scholarly reports.


Purpose: In idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH) right ventricular insufficiency develops due to pressure overload. Furthermore left ventricular function is reduced by chronic underfilling. Hemodynamics are monitored by echocardiography and cardiac catheterisation. This may describe cardiac function only insufficient, as hemodynamics may change during exercise and balance between right and left ventricular function might change due to development of a septal shift. Methods: Spiroergometry testing was performed in 20 healthy volunteers and 21 patients with IPAH. Cardiac performance was determined using a cardiac bioimpedance instrument. Results: Patients with IPAH tolerated less workload (54.3±37 vs. 177.4±90W). Ejection fraction (EF) at baseline was comparable to control. During exercise the increase of EF was diminished in IPAH (62.1±8 vs. 67.4±5%) and maximal cardiac index (CI) was significantly lower (5.2±2 vs. 9.0±3,7l/min/qm). Enddiastolic volume (EDI) showed a trend to decreased values (102.9±41 vs. 128.8±53ml/qm), while stroke index was markedly reduced (53.5±17 vs. 72.0±21ml/qm). Peakflow during ejection was decreased (387.7±126 vs. 559.0±180ml/min/qm) as well as flow acceleration (ACI, 153.5±61 vs. 217.1±71/sec2). Conclusions: In patients with IPAH, stroke volume and CI were reduced. The diminished filling is represented by reduced EDI, resulting in less increase of contractility as shown by reduced peak flow and ACI. Patients with IPAH were not able to compensate the lack of contractility by heart rate, resulting in lower CI. Left ventricular underfilling affects cardiac performance during exercise, and inotropic response is reduced in patients with IPAH.


Triatoma costalimai and Triatoma jatai are related species, which occur in sympatry in Paranã,Tocantins, Brazil, in rocky outcrops and in peridomicile and intradomicile environments. This study compared morphologic and morphometric aspects of the eggs of these species using optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Operculum cells (OP) and egg body (EB) were drawn and photographed, their surfaces were measured, and spots were quantified. Statistical analyses were performed using ANOVA and t-tests. OM showed an egg exochorium with spots in T. costalimai and a predominance of short lines in T. jatai. We found significant differences in egg length and width, which were larger in T. costalimai. SEM analysis showed that the operculum of both species had cells with straight and/or rounded rims, with a smooth aspect, random spots, and predominantly pentagonal shape. In the EB, hexagonal cells were predominant, with indices exceeding 60% in both species. Triatoma costalimai cells were flat, with a discrete definition of the rims, whereas T. jatai cells were smooth with well-defined rims. Statistical tests showed significant differences for EB, where T. costalimai cells were larger and have more spots than T. jatai. The eggs can thus be differentiated, thereby contributing to integrative taxonomy.


In this review the roles of endogenous and exogenous steroid hormones, steroid receptors, spontaneously occurring and experimentally induced genital tract infection, and endometrial trauma in the cause and pathogenesis of cystic endometrial hyperplasia/pyometra in bitches are considered. It is postulated that intrauterine bacteria, which ascend from the vagina during pro-oestrus and oestrus, induce the disease during metoestrus by acting on the progesterone-primed endometrium directly via toxin production, or indirectly by the release of inflammatory mediators. The lesion can be produced by endometrial trauma in a sterile uterus without the systemic effects associated with the disease. There is no association with premature or increased progesterone concentrations at the time that the disease is normally diagnosed in mid- to late metoestrus; however, such aberrant endocrine changes cannot be excluded from involvement in the pathogenesis of this disease, as there are no data from bitches preceding the onset of clinical signs. Expression of oestrogen and progesterone receptors are modified by endogenous steroid hormones but there is no clear evidence that changes in these receptors are involved in the pathogenesis of the disease; receptor expression can be modified by exogenous hormones.


This article identifies the main characteristics of today's popular culture in the world, and particularly in Ukraine and variety shows as the most popular type among population mass leisure culture. In this article proved that all the phenomena of popular culture today are somehow related to one characteristic property – all of their cultural elements, appearing in various spheres of public life, are prevalent in a given society and is a part or the source of world popular culture, becoming the new way of communication between people, not only within a country but also worldwide. Indicated that partially it becomes possible because of rapidly progressive and integrating into society mass-media, so that made possible much easier to take part into creation of cultural products and, as a result, to become a part of the global cultural process. It is proved that in Ukraine as a result of the destruction of the old Soviet values system there is a need to establish new models of styles and ideals of life that would meet the needs of the time and the mentality of the Ukrainian people, and that exactly mass and popular cultures are called to do this, as the most effective and influential driving forces. Based on the exposed ideas of known culture-experts in this article is determined that is common and different between mass and popular culture, and therefore defined which phenomena of contemporary culture, we can attribute to the popular and which are to the mass culture and which to both at once, although until today are disputable among researchers using the terms "mass culture" and "popular culture", because the role of "masses" changed, constantly changes role of the mass culture in the world, becomes differentiated within this phenomenon, takes place the audience stratification and borrowing cultural elements from elite culture. In this article investigated that for today variety show in the industrial society is one of the most popular among people the mass culture phenomenon because of its dynamism, brightness, festivity, easiness and at the same time, social relevance and activity. In this article the end of XX – beginning of XXI century characterized as the beginning of the globalization world influences at all levels of public life, including culture, defined the character of such influence, its negative and positive signs. Because the nature of the relationship of Ukraine with globalized world is perhaps the most important and the most difficult question of its current development, in the article paid much attention to the study of globalization impacts on the development of the mass culture in Ukraine which are shown mostly in imitation "Western" culture, that are considered by many, more progressive system of values, that is a result of widening market standardization of cultural goods and services and the commercialization of cultural products, which reduces its positive impact on the individual, and, consequently, society as a whole. Noted also that economic difficulties on the beginning of the process of Ukrainian state-creations caused a significant negative impact on the development of mass culture in Ukraine, as a result Ukraine has lost control over the production of its own mass cultural product and its distribution, leaving it in the complete control of Western, American and Russian producers. Modern society requires a professional scientifically proven non-traditional approach to solving today's problems in the field of the mass culture that are related with the processes of globalization. Under these conditions, an interesting subject for studying of the problems of reviving the spirituality and the general culture of the people becomes particularly the variety show, as the most common form of mass art spectacular, which expands its borders performing arts and became a phenomenon of everyday life, getting into fashion, media, television, sports, the communication between people, and even in education and science. Based on the analysis demonstrated the importance of preserving national traditions in the arts, including and entertainment spectacular forms the mass culture and the ways of their distribution and promotion. One of these methods proposed development of creative artistic performances at different levels and for different age and social groups, radically redirecting cultural and recreational activities in Ukraine, by reorganization of the now "active" since the Soviet times houses of culture or the creation of new modern answering mentality and growing spiritual value-orientation and recreational needs of the population of each area recreation centers for leisure time. Just art creation most effectively promotes the spiritual revival of the individual through the mastery of the cultural values of the past and present. In this article proved that the development of mass spectacle, including variety has the future, because modern person is tired to be lonely and useless in society, and exactly by participating in mass creative action or through the process of audience perception traces the connection of worship and games as components of spirituality, occurs the understanding and experiencing of the values of goo, truth and beauty. The variety show, that has cultural and historical character as a special form of communication, directs person and his values in the context of life perspective "past-present-future." Another way to preserve and promote cultural heritage is supporting of state-level variety figure in a particular genre as national "producers" – putting various benefits and privileges on radio, television and other media, supporting for various festivals, competitions, creative evenings, shows and other public spectacles, that have cultural and national character, at the local level through the involvement of patrons and sponsors who would be interested by the state through preferences to invest their sponsorship money in realization the above-mentioned mass creative activities. According to the author in the sphere of activities of art critics should get such aspect as the nationality of variety shows, as the most popular for today kind of mass culture. Results of the research explicitly designed for use in practice by lecturers and other workers of mass culture and leisure sector.


Cardiac fibrosis is evident even in the situation without a significant cardiomyocyte loss in diabetic cardiomyopathy and a high glucose (HG) level independently activates the cardiac fibroblasts (CFs) and promotes cell proliferation. Mitochondrial respiration and glycolysis, which are key for cell proliferation and the mitochondria-associated membranes (MAMs), are critically involved in this process. However, the roles and the underlying mechanism of MAMs in the proliferation of HG-induced CFs are largely unknown. The proliferation and apoptosis of CFs responding to HG treatment were evaluated. The MAMs were quantified, and the mitochondrial respiration and cellular glycolytic levels were determined using the Seahorse XF analyzer. The changes of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and mitofusin-2 (MFN2) in responding to HG were also determined, the effects of which on cell proliferation, MAMs, and mitochondrial respiration were assessed. The effects of STAT3 on MFN2 transcription was determined by the dual-luciferase reporter assay (DLRA) and chromatin immunoprecipitation (CHIP). HG-induced CFs proliferation increased the glycolytic levels and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production, while mitochondrial respiration was inhibited. The MAMs and MFN2 expressions were significantly reduced on the HG treatment, and the restoration of MFN2 expression counteracted the effects of HG on cell proliferation, mitochondrial respiration of the MAMs, glycolytic levels, and ATP production. The mitochondrial STAT3 contents were not changed by HG, but the levels of phosphorylated STAT3 and nuclear STAT3 were increased. The inhibition of STAT3 reversed the reduction of MFN2 levels induced by HG. The DLRA and CHIP directly demonstrated the negative regulation of MFN2 by STAT3 at the transcription levels via interacting with the sequences in the MFN2 promoter region locating at about −400 bp counting from the start site of transcription. The present study demonstrated that the HG independently induced CFs proliferation via promoting STAT3 translocation to the nucleus, which switched the mitochondrial respiration to glycolysis to produce ATP by inhibiting MAMs in an MFN2-depression manner.


The depository of the Regional Museum of Messina preserves a small, frail canvas bearing two inscriptions. The first, particularly fragmented, is in Italian in four lines, while the second is in Chinese characters in fourteen columns. The museum documentation provides no information regarding the manuscript's significance, author, origin, and period. This article shows that the manuscript is a Chinese version of the legendary Letter of the Madonna, the letter of protection that Mary is said to have delivered to a delegation from Messina that accompanied Paul the Apostle to Jerusalem. Furthermore, the article identifies the manuscript's author and the date of composition: the Sicilian Jesuit Metello Saccano (1612–62), a missionary in China and Cochin China from 1644 until his death. Intent on spreading the cult of the Madonna of the Letter, in the early 1660s, he sent this elegant Chinese version of the letter to Placido Giunta (1593–1674), his spiritual director and the rector of the Jesuit novitiate of Messina.


Cardiac syndrome X (CSX) is a clinical condition, characterized by angina, positive stress test and negative coronary angiography. Myocardial ischemia is suggested to influence the ischemic changes in the electrocardiogram (ECG), observed during stress test. The aim of this study, is to obtain CSX patterns of the high-resolution vectorcardiographic (VCG) loops in the horizontal (H), frontal (F) and right sagittal (RS) planes of the Frank corrected orthogonal leads (X,Y, Z), and to assess their similarity with the reference VCG loops of normal subjects. The results suggest that CSX VCG profile in resting state could be considered as a variant of the normal profile; however, it contains some VCG changes seen in the ischemic heart disease.


One way to approach the widely acknowledged failure to act on climate change would be to turn to the philosophical tradition, going back to Kant at least, that diagnoses all the internal impediments to thinking. It is with Heidegger, however, that thinking is curiously divided between a disclosure of the world, and the world's occlusion. Rather than pursue Heidegger's project of destroying throught's accretions and returning to the world I will argue that it is the very concept of 'thinking' in the grand sense that needs to be destroyed if we are to be open to the future.


Sleep-related breathing disorders, especially sleep apnea syndrome are complicated by neuropsychiatric dysfunction such as excessive daytime sleepiness, cognitive dysfunction, and depression. As the determinants of daytime sleepiness, sleep fragmentation is more influential than nocturnal hypoxia. Daytime sleepiness can be improved by continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) or surgery in up to 95% of the treated subjects. Both sleepiness and nocturnal hypoxia would cause cognitive dysfunction. While impairments in attention and verbal memory are more related with sleepiness and prominent in mild to moderate sleep apnea syndrome (SAS), impairments in general intellectual function and executive function are more related with nocturnal hypoxia and prominent in severe SAS. Several cognitive deficits related with nocturnal hypoxia may be irreversible despite CPAP or surgical treatments. So, early detection and early appropriate treatment of SAS would prevent sleepiness and cognitive deterioration.


Social Learning Analytics (SLA) are designed to support students learning through social networks, and reflective practitioners engage in informal learning through a community of practice. This short paper reports work in progress to develop SLA motivated specifically by Networked Learning Theory, drawing on the related concepts and tools of Social Network Analytics and Social Capital Theory, which provide complementary perspectives onto the structure and content of such networks. We propose that SLA based on these perspectives needs to devise models and visualizations capable of showing not only the usual SNA metrics, but the types of social tie forged between actors, and topic-specific subnetworks. We describe a technical implementation demonstrating this approach, which extends the Network Awareness Tool by automatically populating it with data from a social learning platform SocialLearn. The result is the ability to visualize relationships between people who interact around the same topics.


On-farm value addition to farm products is recognized and highly promoted through value chain approaches for its benefit in terms of improving farm income. Growing demand and high price for value added milk products, together with the availability of ample livestock resources, would provide opportunities for smallholder farmers in Ethiopia to diversify their livelihoods. Nevertheless, their participation in milk value addition is perceived to be generally low. Apart from farm household characteristics, organizational and institutional issues influence farmers' participation decisions and level of participation in-farm level milk value addition. By analyzing survey data using Heckman two-stage selection model, this article identified determinants of participation decisions and level of participation in-farm level milk value addition by smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. The first-stage probit model estimation results indicate that milk yield, distance from urban centers, household demography (age and child), livestock extension services, the need to extend shelf life, consideration of milk products for social factors such as holidays and fasting, and availability of labor for milk value addition determined household's decision to add values to milk. The results also show that most of the factors determining decision of participation in milk value addition also determined the level of participation.


The prevalence of overweight and obesity has reached epidemic levels in the United States. This poses a significant public health problem given that obesity is a risk factor for many chronic conditions and certain cancers. With these high levels of overweight/obesity in the United States, researchers have begun to search for neighborhood factors, including the social and built environment, which may influence overweight/obesity. The built environment comprises the physical attributes of a person's surroundings, including the existence and condition of sidewalks and trails for walking and other types of recreation, the spatial configuration of street networks, availability of health-promoting resources, and the number of walkable destinations. The social environment, which is often considered together with the built environment, includes the social and economic aspects of a neighborhood.

The built and social environment could affect body size by shaping opportunities or barriers to physical activity or adherence to dietary recommendations. However, studies assessing the association between the built environment and obesity have produced mixed results among adult samples. Recent reviews have identified two measures of the built environment that have been consistently associated with overweight/obesity outcomes across studies. Obesity/overweight has been found to be more prevalent among residents of counties where increasing sprawl makes it more difficult to walk to destinations, while obesity/overweight has been found to be less prevalent in communities with more mixed land use. However, other measures, including population density, density of fast and other food stores, walkability indices, and the number of recreational facilities have not consistently shown associations with overweight/obesity outcomes. The heterogeneity of findings may be due to different measures and operationalizations of the built environment, the geographic buffers and scales used, or the cross-sectional, observational design of most studies.

Focusing on publicly available databases (e.g., Census) obtained at minimal cost (with the exception of business listing data), we compiled the California Neighborhoods Data System (CNDS), an extensive set of geospatial data to characterize the social and built environment in California. We compiled data available at the census tract or finer level for estimating neighborhood effects. Analyses of the CNDS data have found that built environment characteristics of Census-defined neighborhoods vary by neighborhood socioeconomic status. Utilizing CNDS data linked to study data with individual-level sociodemographic and health-related information, we have not found any specific measures of the built environment to be associated with overweight/obesity after adjusting for a composite measure of neighborhood socioeconomic status, but found associations with this measure of neighborhood socioeconomic status. In our recursive partitioning analyses linking CNDS data with a large cohort study in California, we found that the relationship between neighborhood socioeconomic status and overweight/obesity was not uniform across racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, the probability of being overweight/obese was highest for African-American women, regardless of neighborhood socioeconomic status, while for women of other race/ethnicities, living in lower socioeconomic status neighborhoods was associated with a higher probability of being overweight/obese. Similarly, in women diagnosed with breast cancer in two population-based studies in the San Francisco Bay Area, we found the odds of being overweight/obese to be associated with both African American and Hispanic race/ethnicity and living in a lower socioeconomic status neighborhood. The relationship between neighborhood socioeconomic status and overweight/obesity highlights the importance of socioeconomic status and underscores the need for improving our understanding of the social and built environment factors associated with neighborhood socioeconomic status.

Citation Format: Theresa H.M. Keegan, Salma Shariff-Marco, Juan Yang, Scarlett Lin Gomez. Impact of the built environment on obesity. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Fifth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2012 Oct 27-30; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21(10 Suppl):Abstract nr PL01-04.


Three-dimensional (3D) registration (i.e. alignment) between two microscopic images is substantially helpful to study tissues not adhere to substrates such as mouse embryos and organoids which are often three-dimensionally rotated during imaging. However, there is no 3D registration tool easily accessible for experimental biologists. Here we developed an ImageJ-based tool which achieves 3D registration accompanying both quantitative evaluation of the accuracy and reconstruction of 3D rotated images. In this tool, several landmarks are manually provided in two images to be aligned, and 3D rotation is computed so that the distances between the paired landmarks from the two images are minimized. By simultaneously providing multiple points (e.g. all nuclei in the regions of interest) other than the landmarks in the two images, the correspondence of each point between the two images is quantitatively explored: a certain nucleus in one image corresponds to which nucleus in another image. Furthermore, the 3D rotation is applied to one of the two images, resulting in reconstruction of 3D rotated images. We demonstrated that this tool successfully achieved 3D registration and reconstruction of images in mouse pre-implantation embryos, where one image was obtained during live imaging and another image from fixed embryos after live imaging. This approach provides a versatile tool applicable for various tissues and species.


This paper examines the impact of information technology on retail property business performance in Malaysia. Despite the tremendous development of information technology especially in e-commerce in Malaysia, the question arises as to how far the significance within the retailers in the country and examining the impact to retail property in Malaysia. This survey encompasses each of e-commerce applications: hardware, software and IT applications. In addition personal experiences and opinions were also assessed to get personal overview of IT usage. It is envisaged that this survey would yield beneficial results for the betterment of retail property in Malaysia in the new economy.


Background and Aim: Definitive chemoradiation (dCRT) is the standard treatment for locally advanced inoperable esophageal cancer. The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of dCRT combined with paclitaxel and carboplatin (TC) against cisplatin (CDDP) with radiation. Methods: The study population included patients with locally advanced inoperable esophageal cancer seeking treatment at our center from March 2013 to December 2017. Case records from 66 patients were extracted. The toxicity profile of patients who received TC or CDDP was reported and analyzed. A Chi-square test and students t-test were used to analyze the categorical, and the continuous variables, respectively. The KaplanMeier method was used to estimate the survival probability. A log-rank test was applied to compare the survival differences between the two groups. Results: The overall survival (OS) did not differ at 3 years between the TC and CDDP (p = 0.286). The median survival duration was 13 months for CDDP and 18 months for TC. The toxicity profile like emesis (93% CDDP vs. 25% TC), neutropenia (79% CDDP vs. 13% TC), thrombocytopenia (10% CDDP vs. 17% TC) and dyselectrolytemia (71% CDDP vs. 8% TC) were compared between the two treatment groups and found to be more in CDDP group. Conclusion: The treatment of patients with locally advanced esophageal carcinoma with dCRT and TC showed an improved toxicity profile, but similar OS compared to CDDP. Applying dCRT with TC could be an alternate regimen for locally advanced inoperable esophageal cancer patients. Relevance for Patients: Concurrent chemoradiation with TC regimen can be considered as an alternative for cisplatin as it shows equivalent survival and reduced toxicity profile


Weather and atmospheric patterns are often persistent. The simplest weather forecasting method is the so-called persistence model, which assumes that the future state of a system will be similar (or equal) to the present state. Machine learning (ML) models are widely used in different weather forecasting applications, but they need to be compared to the persistence model to analyse whether they provide a competitive solution to the problem at hand. In this paper, we devise a new model for predicting low-visibility in airports using the concepts of mixture of experts. Visibility level is coded as two different ordered categorical variables: cloud height and runway visual height. The underlying system in this application is stagnant approximately in 90% of the cases, and standard ML models fail to improve on the performance of the persistence model. Because of this, instead of trying to simply beat the persistence model using ML, we use this persistence as a baseline and learn an ordinal neural network model that refines its results by focusing on learning weather fluctuations. The results show that the proposal outperforms persistence and other ordinal autoregressive models, especially for longer time horizon predictions and for the runway visual height variable.


Introduction: In process of getting old, different systems of the body get weak and this increases the dependence of adults on other people. The purpose of this study was to investigate the epidemiology of musculoskeletal pain and its correlation with functional disability. Methods: In this cross-sectional study 1614 old persons participated. The study was done in Amir cola in 1390-91. The information was gathered by three questionnaires of demographic features, pain and functional disability (Katz Scale). The data was analyzed by the chi- square statistical test. Results: 54.7% of the participants were male and 45.35 were female. Pain was reported for 1330 people (82.4%) that 47.5% was in upper body, 73.2% in lower body and 24.5% in head and neck. Pain in upper body was mostly reported in shoulders for 606 people (37.5%) and for lower body mostly in knees for 1018 people (63.1%). Pain was reported in females more than males and females had pain in lower body (knee) more than other parts of the body. In this study 3.7% of people had functional disability. There was no significant correlation between pain and functional disability (P=0.24). Conclusions: The results of this research showed high prevalence of musculoskeletal pain in old people of Amir cola. Prevalence of pain in women was higher than in man. The most prevalent of pain area was knee joint. This indicates the necessity of medical interventions in form of prevention training.


We combined a full-waveform ground-penetrating radar (GPR) model with a roughness model to retrieve surface soil moisture through signal inversion. The proposed approach was validated under laboratory conditions with measurements performed above a sand layer subjected to seven different water contents and four different surface roughness conditions. The radar measurements were performed in the frequency domain in the range of 1–3 GHz and the roughness amplitude standard deviation was varied from 0 to 1 cm. Two inversion strategies were investigated: (1) Full-waveform inversion using the correct model configuration, and (2) inversion focused on the surface reflection only. The roughness model provided a good description of the frequency-dependent roughness effect. For the fullwaveform analysis, accounting for roughness permitted us to simultaneously retrieve water content and roughness amplitude. However, in this approach, information on soil layering was assumed to be known. For the surface reflection analysis, which is applicable under field conditions, accounting for roughness only enabled water content to be reconstructed, but with a root mean square error (RMS) in terms of water content of 0.034 m3 m−3 compared to an RMS of 0.068 m3 m−3 for an analysis where roughness is neglected. However, this inversion strategy required a priori information on soil surface roughness, estimated, e.g., from laser profiler measurements.


A method to do node localization in an indoor environment is presented in this paper. The propagation constant between nodes placed at different locations in an indoor office environment varies. Estimating an appropriate propagation constant is necessary in order to convert received signal strength information between two nodes into useful Euclidean distance. Using Euclidean distance as inputs to the multidimensional scaling algorithm, a location map can be plotted. A method to estimate the propagation constant has been developed using information from anchor nodes.


For the localization and quantification of arterio-venous shunts of the heart and great vessels, accurate definition of the degree of oxygen saturation of venous blood in the venae cavae, right heart and pulmonary artery is essential. Hitherto only a few investigations in a small number of healthy subjects were published. Extensive investigations to define normal mixed venous blood in infants and children are unknown. This presentation is an analysis of the data on oxygen saturation of venous blood in 305 healthy children or patients with insignificant cardiac defects. Shunt lesions were excluded. A comparison of several formulae used to estimate the oxygen saturation of mixed venous blood from caval samples has been made. The sources of error in the estimation of mixed venous blood and the implications for the calculation of the shunt-volume are investigated in 122 patients without cardiac defects. The mean oxygen saturation from the right ventricle most nearly approached the mean oxygen saturation of the pulmonary artery whereas high inferior vena cava saturations correlated poorly with mixed venous blood. Superior vena cava, the mean oxygen saturation of the right atrium and the formula 3 x SVC + HIVC divided by 4 = MVB (where SVC is superior vena cava, HIVC is high inferior vena cava MVB is and mixed venous blood) gave a satisfactory regression and have nearly the same value for prediction of mixed venous blood.


Objective. Automatic detection of arrhythmia based on electrocardiogram (ECG) plays a critical role in early prevention and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. With the increase in widely available digital ECG data and the development of deep learning, multi-class arrhythmia classification based on automatic feature extraction of ECG has become increasingly attractive. However, the majority of studies cannot accept varied-length ECG signals and have limited performance in detecting multi-class arrhythmias. Approach. In this study, we propose a multi-branch signal fusion network (MBSF-Net) for multi-label classification of arrhythmia in 12-lead varied-length ECG. Our model utilizes the complementary power between different structures, which include Inception with depthwise separable convolution (DWS-Inception), spatial pyramid pooling (SPP) Layer, and multi-scale fusion Resnet (MSF-Resnet). The proposed method can extract features from each lead of 12-lead ECG recordings separately and then effectively fuse the features of each lead by integrating multiple convolution kernels with different receptive fields, which can achieve the information of complementation between different angles of the ECG signal. In particular, our model can accept 12-lead ECG signals of arbitrary length. Main results. The experimental results show that our model achieved an overall classification F1 score of 83.8% in the 12-lead ECG data of CPSC-2018. In addition, the F1 score of the MBSF-Net performed best among the MBF-Nets which are removed the SPP layer from MBSF-Net. In comparison with the latest ECG classification algorithms, the proposed model can be applied in varied-length signals and has an excellent performance, which not only can fully retain the integrity of the original signals, but also eliminates the cropping/padding signal beforehand when dealing with varied-length signal database. Significance. MBSF-Net provides an end-to-end multi-label classification model with outperfom performance, which allows detection of disease in varied-length signals without any additional cropping/padding. Moreover, our research is beneficial to the development of computer-aided diagnosis.


Reaction kinetics on nanometer-scale particles are different from those on extended surfaces of bulk materials. This fact has been utilized for a long time to empirically maximize the performance of heterogeneous catalysts, but the understanding of the underlying effects is poor at the microscopic level. Modern molecular beam-based methods, however, allow us to derive very detailed kinetic information on catalytically active surfaces. In combination with structurally highly controlled model catalysts, microscopic insights into the activity and selectivity of specific reaction centers on catalyst nanoparticles can be obtained. This combined approach is illustrated through simple model reactions.


The hoist cage is used to lift miners in a coal mine's auxiliary shaft. Monitoring miners' unsafe behaviors and their status in the hoist cage is crucial to production safety in coal mines. In this study, a visual detection model is proposed to estimate the number and categories of miners, and to identify whether the miners are wearing helmets and whether they have fallen in the hoist cage. A dataset with eight categories of miners' statuses in hoist cages was developed for training and validating the model. Using the dataset, the classical models were trained for comparison, from which the YOLOv5s model was selected to be the basic model. Due to small-sized targets, poor lighting conditions, and coal dust and shelter, the detection accuracy of the Yolov5s model was only 89.2%. To obtain better detection accuracy, k-means++ clustering algorithm, a BiFPN-based feature fusion network, the convolutional block attention module (CBAM), and a CIoU loss function were proposed to improve the YOLOv5s model, and an attentional multi-scale cascaded feature fusion-based YOLOv5s model (AMCFF-YOLOv5s) was subsequently developed. The training results on the self-built dataset indicate that its detection accuracy increased to 97.6%. Moreover, the AMCFF-YOLOv5s model was proven to be robust to noise and light.


This paper investigates the optimum transmit antenna weight generation method for adaptive antenna array transmit diversity (AAA-TD) with 6 antennas in the W-CDMA forward link: AAA-TD with beam and null steering (BNST), AAA-TD with beam steering (BST), or multi-beam transmit diversity with fixed weights (MBTD-FW). The BER performance after carrier frequency calibration in the transmit beam pattern is compared among the three methods in frequency division duplex (FDD) system 2 GHz band with carrier separation of 184.5 MHz based on computer simulation. The simulation results show that the achievable BER performance in the forward link using AAA-TD with BNST is almost identical to that using AAA-TD with BST when the number of interfering users is much larger than that of the array antennas, except for the special case when a small number of higher rate users exits in the reverse link. This is because by performing carrier frequency calibration, the directions of the beam nulls are shifted from the real directions of arrival (DOA) of the interfering users. However, we also show that the required transmit E/sub b//N/sub 0/ at the average BER of 10/sup -3/ using AAA-TD with BST is decreased by approximately 1.0-1.2 dB compared to that using MBTD-FW with 12 beams.


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

We previously report the development of a color-coded imaging model that can visualize the anastomosis between blood vessels of red fluorescent protein (RFP)-expressing vessels in Gelfoam® previously vascularized in RFP transgenic mice and blood vessels of nestin-driven green fluorescent protein (ND-GFP) mice that express GFP in nascent vessels (Anticancer Res. 33: 3041-3046, 2013). In the present study, fourteen days after transplantation into RFP transgenic nude mice, the Gelfoam® was removed and re-transplanted into the subcutis on the flank of cyan fluorescent protein (CFP) transgenic mice. Skin flaps were made and anastomosis between the CFP-expressing vessels and RFP blood vessels in the Gelfoam® was imaged 14 and 21 days after re-transplantation. The results presented in this and our previous report suggest a new paradigm of visualizing blood vessel anastomosis and its implications for tumor angiogenesis.

Citation Format: Fuminari Uehara, Yasunori Tome, Hiroki Maehara, Kazuhiro Tanaka, Fuminori Kanaya, Shinji Miwa, Yukihiko Hiroshima, Shuya Yano, Mako Yamamoto, Yasunori Matsumoto, Robert M. Hoffman. Color-coded imaging of vessel anastomosis in vivo using RFP and CFP transgenic mice. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 13. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-13


MicroRNA (miRNA) plays a key role in development and specific biological processes, such as cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. Extensive studies of mammary miRNAs have been performed in different species and tissues. However, little is known about porcine mammary gland miRNAs. In this study, we report the identification and characterization of miRNAs in the lactating mammary gland in two distinct pig breeds, Jinhua and Yorkshire. Many miRNAs were detected as significantly differentially expressed between the two libraries. Among the differentially expressed miRNAs, many are known to be related to mammary gland development and lactation by interacting with putative target genes in previous studies. These findings suggest that miRNA expression patterns may contribute significantly to target mRNA regulation and influence mammary gland development and peak lactation performance. The data we obtained provide useful information about the roles of miRNAs in the biological processes of lactation and the mechanisms of target gene expression and regulation.


Aims Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are natural effectors of the innate immune response. Much work has been done to study their response and effects on bacterial and viral infection. Little if any information is available in relation to protozoal infections. The aim of the study was to comprehensively study the gene expression of the ocular AMPs in human corneal limbal epithelial cells stimulated with Acanthamoeba castellanii (AC). Methods Human corneal limbal epithelial cells were exposed to AC at different time points, up to 9 h, the genomic profile of the AMPs were analysed at these time point using real time PCR. corneal limbal epithelial cells not infected with AC were used as controls. Results Seven of the eight studied AMPs showed statistically significant upregulation in gene expression. Human beta Defensin 3 (hBD3) showed a very significant 10-fold upregulation in the exposed cells and Ribonuclease-7 (RNase-7) showed a very early and consistent increase. Human beta Defensin 1 (hBD1) was the only downregulated AMP. Conclusions The study data suggests a possible role of the AMPs in combating the amoebic infection at the ocular surface. Using AMPs singly or in combination is a promising avenue for further exploration in the treatment of the sight threatening Acanthamoeba keratitis.


The editors have gathered together some of the top researchers in teacher education to explore both the theoretical parameters and practical dimensions of transforming teacher education programmes to educate teachers for diversity. The programmes outlined in these chapters address the necessity of providing preservice teachers with learning experiences that will help them facilitate learning in culturally and linguistically diverse school settings. The contributors identify the competence, skills, knowledge and attitude needed to teach diverse populations effectively and equitably, including methods and experiences to expand understanding of diversity, racism, social justice, and culturally responsive instruction. The book is organized to focus attention on paradigmatic models for transforming teacher education in three general areas: delineating the historical dimensions, contemporary perspectives, and guiding rationales for the transformation of teacher preparation; explicating the theoretical underpinnings of programme processes for preparing teachers; and presenting model programmes that incorporate curriculum and pedagogy, field-based professional development, and assessment strategies to prepare teachers to be effective in culturally diverse settings. Contributors include Mary E. Diez, A. Lin Goodwin, Susan L. Melnick, Peter Murrell, Jr., Valerie Ooka Pang, Priscilla H. Walton, and Kenneth M. Zeichner.


Little attention has been paid to the heat conductivity of internal walls and floors as it does not significantly affect heat losses of a building. However, it is important to study heat transfer between apartments. In the framework of the current study, on site heat conductivity measurements were transmitted to support the results received by energy simulations. Increasing energy efficiency of buildings has become one of the severe problems that has to be solved in the near future. The goal of reducing carbon dioxide (CO 2) emission by 20% by the year 2020 has been set to all EU members states. As residential sector is responsible for a large part of energy consumption, it is clear that refurbishing dwellings is an effective means of reducing CO 2 emissions. In case of old apartment buildings, space heating is the single most common contributor to greenhouse gas emissions [1]. Space heating consumption of apartment buildings can mainly be reduced by insulating the envelope and installing windows with low heat conductivity. As heat losses of buildings are reduced, thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) must be installed. Studies show that TRVs can contribute greatly to reducing heating consumption, however it is also noted that they must be used correctly [2, 3]. The use of thermostats has been studied by Karjalainen and it was concluded that due to different reasons, large part of people do not know how to use TRVs [4, 5]. One means of drawing more dwelling residents' attention to TRVs is implementing energy allocation systems that record the energy consumption and divide it between flats [6]. The system motivates inhabitants to learn how to use TRVs, as the residents have some control over their energy bills. However, besides benefits, the system can cause problems as well. In our case study we look what is going to happen when we change one room set point temperature and how much heatflow coming or going through wall between neighbouring apartment. There we can see that when unheated room have set point temperature 16 °C and


in this paper, a cascaded current–voltage control strategy is proposed for inverters to simultaneously improve the power quality of the inverter local load voltage and the current exchanged with the grid. It also enables seamless transfer of the operation mode from stand-alone to gridconnected or vice versa. The control scheme includes an inner voltage loop and an outer current loop, with both controllers designed using the h∞ repetitive control strategy. This leads to a very low total harmonic distortion in both the inverter local load voltage and the current exchanged with the grid at the same time. The proposed control strategy can be used to single-phase inverters and three-phase four-wire inverters. It enables grid-connected inverters to inject balanced clean currents to the grid even when the local loads (if any) are unbalanced and/or nonlinear. Experiments under different scenarios, with comparisons made to the current repetitive controller replaced with a current proportional– resonant controller, are presented to demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed strategy.


With the average age of the population rising, people aged 55–64 make up an increasing share of workers in Europe. This demographic shift, as well as ongoing threats to the sustainability of national welfare and pension systems, has increased pressure for reforms to encourage longer careers. This report maps initiatives at national or sectoral level taken by governments and social partners to keep older workers in the labour market. Some measures involve financial incentives to work longer while others look at ways to enhance working conditions.


Fragrant pears are important economic plants in Xinjiang region, a major agricultural production area in China. In March 2017, a strange shoot blight disease on fragrant pear was initially observed in Kolar, Xinjiang. The incidence of the disease was up to 50% in certain orchards, and the total incidence area was approximately 26,000 ha of commercial fields. The disease developed from blossoms to shoots and larger branches. More disease was observed on old and wounded trees. Symptoms included wilted shoot and leaves. When infections spread to larger tree limbs, the bark of branches became darkened and water-soaked. After bark shaving, dark xylem tissue was visible. Shoot samples were collected from diseased plants (Pyrus sinkiangensis Yu) with characteristic symptoms. The shoot samples were surface sterilized with 75% ethanol and 1% sodium hypochlorite, rinsed three times in sterilized water, cut into small pieces, and then soaked in 10 ml of sterile phosphate buffered saline (PBS) for 30 min. The suspension was streaked onto a nutrient agar plate and incubated at 30°C. After 48 h, dominating light yellow, round flat colonies with smooth surfaces were picked and restreaked for purification. The bacteria were identified by polymerase chain reaction amplified 16S rRNA gene and further by multilocus sequence analysis of partial nucleotide sequences of the genes rpoB and infB using rpoB CM7-F/CM31b-R (1,000 bp) and infB 01-F/02-R (1,030 bp) primer pairs, respectively (Brady et al. 2008). BLAST analysis showed that the 16S rRNA (NCBI accession no. MK128507), rpoB (MK135821), and infB (MK135822) gene sequences shared 100, 100, and 99% similarity to that of Pantoea ananatis strains BSP9 (KF360069.1), 15320 (MH015163.1), and BRT98 (MH015108.1), respectively. In April 2018, 3-year-old fragrant pear trees were inoculated with the P. ananatis in a separated garden. The branches of trees were injured with cuts of 2 to 3 cm in the bark. Autoclaved cotton balls were soaked with bacterial suspensions of 10⁸ CFU/ml and attached to the wounds with Parafilm. The bacterial suspensions were inoculated on three trees, and an additional two trees were treated with PBS instead as a negative control. Three shoots were inoculated per tree. The trees were then grown under natural conditions. After 12 weeks, symptoms resembling bacterial shoot blight symptoms had developed on all inoculated shoots. Control trees did not develop symptoms. Reisolations were performed from symptomatic tissues, and isolates were identified as P. ananatis using the techniques for molecular identification as mentioned above. P. ananatis was initially discovered on pineapple causing fruitlet rot in the Philippines in 1928 (Serrano 1928), and it is regarded as an emerging pathogen based on the increasing number of reports of diseases occurring on previously unrecorded hosts in different parts of the world. Coutinho et al. (2002) reported similar symptoms including shoot wilt and die-back after the infection of Eucalyptus trees with P. ananatis. In 2017, isolation and identification of brown rot bacteria P. ananatis was reported on imported succulent plants in China (Li et al. 2017). To our knowledge, this is the first report of P. ananatis causing shoot blight on fragrant pear in China. This study expanded the host range and geographic location of P. ananatis as a plant pathogen and suggests that commercial fragrant pear producers should take early control actions to prevent spread of and reduce losses caused by the disease.


In wireless sensor networks(WSNs) individual sensor nodes are subject to security compromises. An adversary can physically capture sensor nodes and obtain the security information. And the adversary injects false reports into the network using compromised nodes. If undetected, these false reports are forwarded to the base station. False reports injection attacks can not only result in false alarms but also depletion of the limited amount of energy in battery powered sensor nodes. To combat these false reports injection attacks, several filtering schemes have been proposed. The statistical en-routing filtering(SEF) scheme can detect and drop false reports during the forwarding process. In SEF, The number of the message authentication codes(threshold) is important for detecting false reports and saving energy. In this paper, we propose a dynamic threshold determination method for energy efficient SEF using fuzzy-logic in wireless sensor networks. The proposed method consider false reports rate and the number of compromised partitions. If low rate of false reports in the networks, the threshold should low. If high rate of false reports in networks, the threshold should high. We evaluated the proposed method's performance via simulation.


PHACE (posterior fossa brain malformation, hemangiomas, arterial anomalies, coarctation of the aorta and cardiac defects, and eye abnormalities) syndrome is a neurocutaneous disorder often involving the cerebral vasculature. PHACE patients appear to have early-onset and severe headaches more commonly than children without PHACE. The objective of this study was to characterize the clinical features and prevalence of headache by conducting a cross-sectional survey of families in 2 large PHACE registries. Sixty-six percent of eligible families completed the survey in which 62.7% of respondents reported headaches. Average age of headache onset was 48.8 months. Females were more likely to have headaches (68.6% vs 30.8%, P = .014). Families reported associated migrainous features including nausea (62.5%), vomiting (37.5%), photophobia (75%), and phonophobia (75%). Headaches occurred at least weekly in 29.4%, lasted ≥1 hour in 85.4%, and led to ≥1 hospital admission in 15.7%. Three respondents with headaches had at least 1 ischemic stroke. We demonstrated that headaches are common among PHACE patients, develop at an early age, and have migrainous features.


Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE) and Korsakoff's syndrome are considered to be different stages of the same disorder due to thiamine deficiency, which is called Wernicke−Korsakoff syndrome (WKS). The earliest biochemical change is the decrease of α‐ketoglutarate‐dehydrogenase activity in astrocytes. According to autopsy‐based series, mental status changes are present in 82% of WE cases. The objective of the present review is to identify possible underlying mechanisms relating the occurrence of delirium to WKS.


There is currently an intense debate about the nature of recognition memory and about the roles of medial temporal lobe subregions in recognition memory processes. At a larger level, this debate has been about whether it is appropriate to propose unified theories to explain memory at neural, functional, and phenomenological levels of analysis. Here, I review findings from physiology, functional imaging, and lesion studies in humans, monkeys, and rodents relevant to the roles of medial temporal lobe subregions in recognition memory, as well as in short‐term memory and perception. The results from these studies are consistent with the idea that there is functional heterogeneity in the medial temporal lobes, although the differences among medial temporal lobe subregions do not precisely correspond to different types of memory tasks, cognitive processes, or states of awareness. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the idea that medial temporal lobe subregions differ in terms of the kind of information they process and represent, and that these regions collectively support episodic memory by binding item and context information. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


There has been an extensive exploration on the association of organizational climate
with the job performance in a large organizational context, predominantly in western
countries. There is a considerable lacuna in understanding how the relationship of
organizational climate dimensions and job performance determinants in developing
countries especially Iraq. Meanwhile, recently three annual reports issued by the
Ministry of Agriculture in Iraq (2013, 2014, 2015) mentioned that workers of
extension are weak in their job performance. Actual study explores the dynamic
relationship between organizational climate and job performance of the agricultural
extension workers in Iraq with the view of providing situated understanding of how
the dimensions of organizational climate have an influence on the determinants of job
performance. For the organizational climate dimensions, the dimensions measurement
is being used as conceptual Campbell et al. Theory (1970)from the literature review.
While, the job performance determinants measurement by Porter et al. Theory (1968)
is obtained also from literature. Organizational climate was measured using a
validated instrument which included 76 questions. In contrast, the job performance
was measured by 20 questions. Respondents were selected through the random
sampling method to gather the data. Questionnaire were administered to 180
agricultural extension workers in Iraq whereby 53.76% are from the general
headquarters, 22.57% are from training centers and 23.67% are from the typical
extension farm. The quantitative data were analyzed through SPSS. The results show
the majority of respondents' perception is at medium level for organizational climate
dimensions, job performance determinants and job satisfaction. The linear relationship
between organizational climate and job performance is at 1% significance level. The
coefficient value of 0.426 means were calculated based on Guilford's Rule of Thumb:
the strength of linear relation is moderate in a positive direction. As the conclusion,
agricultural extension workers' role in development and changing is substantial and
certainly their attitude toward organizational climate and motivations towards work will correlate with the quality and caliber of their job performance with respect to their
tasks. The literature in the field has established that job performance can be correlated
by organizational climate among other factors. Therefore, it is recommended that the
importance of a good incentive system in the agricultural extension organization are
highlighted because of its impact on the job performance of extension workers where
this study showed that there is insignificant in this dimension.


Astrocytes, the most abundant cell type in the central nervous system, are intimately associated with synapses. They play a pivotal role in neuronal survival and the brain inflammatory response. Some astrocytic functions are mediated by the secretion of polypeptides. Using a proteomic approach, we have identified more than 30 proteins released by cultured astrocytes. These include proteases and protease inhibitors, carrier proteins, and antioxidant proteins. Exposing astrocytes to brefeldin A, which selectively blocks secretory vesicle assembly, suppressed the release of some of these proteins. This indicates that astrocytes secrete these proteins by a classic vesicular mechanism and others by an alternative pathway. Astrocytes isolated from different brain regions secreted a similar pattern of proteins. However, the secretion of some of them, including metalloproteinase inhibitors and apolipoprotein E, was region-specific. In addition, pro-inflammatory treatments modified the profile of astrocytic protein secretion. Finally, more than two thirds of the proteins identified in the astrocyte-conditioned medium were detectable in the mouse cerebrospinal fluid, suggesting that astrocytes contribute to the cerebrospinal fluid protein content. In conclusion, this study provides the first unbiased characterization of the major proteins released by astrocytes, which may play a crucial role in the modulation of neuronal survival and function.


We set out to characterize stemness properties and osteogenic potential of sheep AEC (amniotic epithelial cells). AEC were isolated from 3‐month‐old fetuses and expanded in vitro for 12 passages. The morphology, surface markers, stemness markers and osteogenic differentiation were inspected after 1, 6 and 12 passages of expansion, with an average doubling time of 24 h. AEC clearly expressed the stemness markers Oct‐3/4 (octamer‐binding protein‐3/4), Nanog, Sox2 and TERT (telomerase reverse transcriptase) and displayed low levels of global DNA methylation. Culture had moderate effects on cell conditions; some adhesion molecules progressively disappeared from the cell surface, and the expression of Sox2 and TERT was slightly reduced while Nanog increased. No changes occurred in the levels of DNA methylation. Cells organized in 3D spheroids were used for IVD (in vitro differentiation). Within these structures the cells developed a complex intercellular organization that involved extensive intercellular coupling despite continuous cell migration. Marked deposition of calcein in the ECM (extracellular matrix), increased ALP (alkaline phosphatase) activity, expression of bone‐related genes (osteocalcin) and the matrix mineralization shown by Alizarin Red staining demonstrate that AEC can undergo rapid and extensive osteogenic differentiation. AEC introduced in experimental bone lesions survived in the site of implantation for 45 days and supported consistent bone neoformation, thus showing promising potential applications in osteogenic regenerative medicine.


The clinical significance of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in colorectal cancer (CRC) remains largely unknown. We analyzed a large panel of cancer-associated lncRNAs in 483 TCGA CRC cases, and identified that H19 correlates most significantly with overall survival and disease-free survival, independent of stage and other clinical parameters. We validated the TCGA findings with two additional CRC cohorts. As one of the "oldest" lncRNAs, diverse activities of H19 including interaction with epigenetic regulators, regulation of microRNAs as competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA), and production of miR-675 as a primary transcript have been reported. However, an unbiased study to clarify the essential mechanisms of H19 is lacking. To decipher the functional involvement of H19 in CRC, we used an integrative approach combining unbiased microarray analysis, experimental validation, and bioinformatic analysis of clinical data. With such approach, we revealed not only previously reported mechanisms such as let-7 and MYC regulation by H19, but also several novel mechanisms that have not been appreciated before. We discovered a mechanism of H19 on regulating RB-E2F signaling and accordingly controlling cell cycle progression. We also identified for the first time that H19 regulates CDK8, an oncogenic driver in CRC pathogenesis, and consequently affects β-catenin activity (Firestein et al., Nature, 2008). We further identified an interaction of H19 with macroH2A, a histone variant reported to repress CDK8 transcription (Kapoor et al., Nature, 2010). Importantly, expression correlation analysis with clinical samples strongly supported the above-identified mechanisms. Combined analysis of H19 with its targets showed strong independent prediction power for CRC survival. These data indicate the clinical relevance of Rb-E2F and CDK8/β-catenin signaling in mediating H19's oncogenic activity in CRC. Citation Format: Hui Ling, Masahisa Ohtsuka, Cristina Ivan, Martin Pichler, Meng Chen, Ondrej Slaby, Ajay Goel, Milan Radovich, George Calin. Oncogenic function and molecular mechanism of H19 noncoding RNA in colorectal cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2548. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-2548


The self-focusing of two-dimensional Gaussian beams in cubic photorefractive optically active crystals of the (0) cut in the external electric field arbitrarily oriented in the cut plane is theoretically studied. The ranges of orientation of the external electric field are found in which the divergence of the light beam is smaller than the diffraction divergence. The dependences illustrating the existence of two-dimensional spatial solitons in a 15-mm-thick Bi12SiO20 crystal are constructed taking into account the optical activity or neglecting it. The shape of a light beam propagating in the crystal is determined.


Characterization of the folding transition in polypeptides and assessing the thermodynamic stability of their structured folds are of primary importance for approaching the problem of protein folding. We use molecular dynamics simulations for a coarse grained polypeptide model in order to (1) obtain the equilibrium conformation diagram of homopolypeptides in a broad range of the chain lengths, N = 10, ..., 100, and temperatures, T (in a multicanonical ensemble), and (2) determine free energy profiles (FEPs) projected onto an optimal, so-called "natural", reaction coordinate that preserves the height of barriers and the diffusion coefficients on the underlying free energy hyper-surface. We then address the following fundamental questions. (i) How well does a kinetically determined free energy landscape of a single chain represent the polypeptide equilibrium (ensemble) behavior? In particular, under which conditions might the correspondence be lost, and what are the possible implications for the folding processes? (ii) How does the free energy landscape depend on the chain length (homopolypeptides) and the monomer interaction sequence (heteropolypeptides)? Our data reveal that at low T values equilibrium structures adopted by relatively short homopolypeptides (N < 60) are dominated by α-helical folds which correspond to the primary and secondary minima of the FEP. In contrast, longer homopolypeptides (N > 70), upon quasi-equilibrium cooling, fold preferentially in β-bundles with small helical portions, while the FEPs exhibit no distinct global minima. Moreover, subject to the choice of the initial configuration, at sufficiently low T, essentially metastable structures can be found and prevail far from the true thermodynamic equilibrium. We also show that, by sequence-enabling the polypeptide model, it is possible to restrict the chain to a very specific part of the configuration space, which results in substantial simplification and smoothing of the free energy landscape as compared to the case of the corresponding homopolypeptide.


Gastric volvulus is a rare entity that was first described by Berti in 1866 while performing a necropsy. In 1896, Berg first established the diagnosis during the operation. In 1904, Borchardt described the classic triad of epigastric distension with pain, difficulty for the nasogastric tube to pass and nausea without vomiting. A case of a female patient aged 73 and 56 kg in weight, with a history of ischemic heart disease and gastric ulcer, who visited the emergency department because of vomiting, diffuse abdominal pain and bloating is presented. She had a surgery on an urgent basis to confirm the diagnosis of mixed gastric volvulus without vascular compromise. Gastropexy was performed with the diaphragm. This patient progressed satisfactorily, allowing hospital discharge 72 hours after surgery. Due to the weirdness of this case it was decided to have it published.


It is a challenge to drill a highly deviated or horizontal hole in high permeable formations. High differential pressures may lead to several problems like tight holes, wellbore instability, differential sticking and mud loss while drilling across these permeable or fractured formations. It was always preferred to drill these wells with Oil base muds which showed some success. While operators always prefer the standard solution, which is casing isolation for problematic sections, challenges have increased due to continuously drilling in depleted reservoirs which leads to considerable nonproductive time.
 The other solution to overcome such problematic sections was to re-design a fluid system that would target drilling through serious of highly permeable sand and shale formations. The fluid system would primarily address shale inhibition along with effective bridging, minimizing pore pressure transmission and wellbore strengthen with increased hoop stress in the wellbore. Software modelling and permeability plugging tests were performed to evaluate the fluid behavior under downhole conditions and to predict the characteristics of induced micro fractures based on rock mechanics. Porosity, permeability and induced micro fractures were considered to optimize the bridging mechanism. It was identified that normal bridging solutions involving calcium carbonates and graphite material were not enough to address the pore pressure transmission problem. It was essential to include a micronized sealing deformable polymer along with normal bridging material was effective in plugging pore throats and minimizing fluid invasion. The deformable polymer component is able to re-shape itself to fit a broad range of pore throat sizes which was previously unattainable with conventional bridging technology which was confirmed by particle plugging tests.
 A one well was identified to be drilled in highly depleted reservoir at an inclination of almost 45 degrees. The section involving the highly depleted and permeable sand involved drilling highly stressed shale formations which requires high mud weight for their stability. This was the first attempt on a high-angle well with development drilling operations in Kuwait and was performed to facilitate the successful drilling of the reservoir. Drilling and logging were successfully performed along with logging and LWD runs with no recordable differential sticking or losses incidents.
 This paper also presents 2 successful applications in the same field with the application of proper bridging and utilization of deformable sealing polymer to address drilling problems through highly depleted and permeable formations while managing over balance of 3500 psi across them.


The classical gravitational bremsstrahlung in the case of arbitrary central scattering potentials is calculated within the quadrupole approximation of Einstein's linearised theory. As an example the Coulomb scattering and its application to a hydrogen plasma is treated exactly.


This is a paper of new trial of treatment of malignant brain tumor by local injection of bleomycin (BLM). The new method of intraneoplastic BLM injection is as follows: in the cases ended up with subtotal or partial removal of the tumor, Ommaya's device was detained in the tumor bed, and its reservoir was fixed subcutaneous on the skull. 0.1 mg/kg to 0.2 mg/kg of BLM was injected by subcutaneous puncture into the reservoir every other day. Usual total dose of BLM was 30-80 mg. The patients were usually treated with 60Co-irradiation and immunotherapy after local injection of BLM. Twelve patients with malignant brain tumor were treated by the above mentioned new method and a follow-up study was done. One-year survival rate was 50% and three-year survival rate was 25%. Each case of primary sarcoma, medulloblastoma and malignant oligodendroglioma survived for a very long time. However, most of the patients especially those with glioblastoma died of recurrence in about one year or so inspite of temporary improvement of their clinical symptoms and clinical findings. In the autopsy cases of malignant gliomas, similar pathological findings were obtained around the tumor bed. In macroscopical view, the extensive necrotic foci and small haemorrhages were observed around the tumor bed not deeper than 2 to 3 cm from the surface of the cavity, and in the deeper part the tumor tissues were actively proliferating. Microscopically there was a severe coagulation necrosis of tumor cells with haemorrhage, collagenous tissue proliferation, fibrin deposit, increasing capillary vessels and infiltrating lymphocytes and granulocytes. Consequently, the scintillation scanning of BLM labelled 57Co was utilized to make clearance curves of the drugs in the patients with malignant brain tumor. The results were as follows: 57Co-BLM activity in the tumor tissue decreased about 70% 2-4 days after local injection of the drugs, whereas, it decreased about 70% 2-4 hours after intravenous injection of the drugs. From these results it could be presumed that locally injected BLM remained in the tumor tissues for a longer time and killed malignant tumor cells completely. However, an unfavorable fact was that locally injected BLM was retained only within the tumor tissue less than 2-3 cm apart from the cavity, showing no efficacy enough to prevent tumor proliferation in more remote area. In conclusion, the local injection of BLM seems to be very effective for the treatment of malignant brain tumors if it is used together with intravenous or intraarterial injection of other chemotherapeutic drugs.


Abstract Soy polysaccharides represent a multipurpose class of chemicals that include both therapeutical and technological properties. Since they have been first time introduced in the pharmaceutical field, Soy polysaccharides were used in two different pharmaceutical formulations; sublingual tablets and in colon drug delivery. For the sublingual tablets, Soy polysaccharides under the brand name of Emcosoy© - were used as a superdisintegrant in concentrations between 4-8% showing comparable results with the artificial superdisintegrants (sodium starch glycolate, sodium croscarmellose, and polyvinylpyrrolidone). The second technological field where Soy polysaccharides were used is represented by colon drug delivery where it was used in combination with ethylcellulose showing a prolonged lag time compared to the results found in the literature. The medicinal effect of these polysaccharides consists of treating diarrhea. As it will be presented in the article, these chemical compounds tend to decrease the aqueous stool time in patients with diarrhea and to conduct to a softer stool in healthy patients. In conclusion, these polysaccharides present multiple purposes possessing a medicinal effect and also the possibility of being used as a double-faceted pharmaceutical excipient.


The availability of large-scale and real-time data on social media has motivated research into adverse drug reactions (ADRs). ADR classification helps to identify negative effects of drugs, which can guide health professionals and pharmaceutical companies in making medications safer and advocating patients' safety. Based on the observation that in social media, negative sentiment is frequently expressed towards ADRs, this study presents a neural model that combines sentiment analysis with transfer learning techniques to improve ADR detection in social media postings. Our system is firstly trained to classify sentiment in tweets concerning current affairs, using the SemEval17-task4A corpus. We then apply transfer learning to adapt the model to the task of detecting ADRs in social media postings. We show that, in combination with rich representations of words and their contexts, transfer learning is beneficial, especially given the large degree of vocabulary overlap between the current affairs posts in the SemEval17-task4A corpus and posts about ADRs. We compare our results with previous approaches, and show that our model can outperform them by up to 3% F-score.


Network slicing is an important technology that influences the way in which new networking solutions will be designed and operated. Currently, there are several approaches to network slicing, but so far there is no a systematic approach that includes all aspects of the technology. In this paper, we present a generic network slicing framework that includes embedded in each slice some management and operations related mechanisms in order to cope with slice management scalability and to address the multi-tenancy issue. The presented solution uses NFV MANO for slice orchestration and supports multi-domain slicing.


This study uses geologic and synthetic sonic sections to evaluate the hydrocarbon potential of the Lower and middle Cretaceous Thamama Group carbonates of the Mishrif, Nahr Umr, Shuaiba, and Kharaib Formations in the North field, Qatar. The North field area, a regional high throughout Lower and middle Cretaceous time, is documented by depositional thinning and by End_Page 415------------------------------ higher energy carbonate facies development. Oil and gas accumulations are found on the crestal portions of this paleohigh in structural/stratigraphic traps. The synthetic sonic program produces a series of synthetic sonic logs from real seismic traces. It is a powerful addition to the conventional seismic section because it monitors additional parameters of seismic continuity and rock properties in what otherwise is a relatively structureless subsurface carbonate terrain. Detailed studies of seven regional synthetic sonic lines across the North field area indicate that significant decreases in interval velocities occur in all of the studied carbonate reservoir formations. Three factors affect the interval velocities on both a regional and local basis. These are (1) variation of carbonate facies-higher energy wackestone/packstone and possibly grainstones flanked by predominantly mudstones, (2) secondary porosity developed near the top of unconformity surfaces, and (3) the existence of hydrocarbons in the reservoir. Many local lateral and vertical variations in interval velocities were noted on the synthetic sonic sections that would have otherwise been undetected, such as areas of tight or porous reservoir development, permeability barriers, and subtle faulting. In these studied formations, there are many examples of low interval velocity zones that are known to contain hydrocarbons whereas equivalent higher interval velocity zones on the seismic sections at other well site locations do not contain hydrocarbons. In many places, these variations are of sufficient magnitude to be mapped as intraformational permeability barriers. These variations were useful in explaining the occurrence of different oil-water and gas-water contacts within the same formation that could not be explained solely on str ctural criteria. It can be concluded from this field study of the North field, Qatar, that the synthetic sonic technique is a particularly useful exploration tool in carbonate reservoir environments because it is able to delineate areas of higher exploration potential. The geologist can use these data in areas of known well control to project carbonate reservoir variation in areas where log or petrographic information is not available. End_of_Article - Last_Page 416------------


This study was conducted in Indonesia Stock Exchange. The phenomenon that occurs is that Net Income tends to decline during the period 2012-2016, which is coupled with the decrease in Revenue and increase in Operational Cost. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of Revenue and Operational Cost on Net Income in Industry and Chemical Companies periode 2012-2016.This study uses descriptive analysis and verification with quantitative approach that is 11 industry and chemical company listed on the Stock Exchange data obtained are secondary data from the annual publication of financial statements consists of income over 5 years, ie the year 2012 to 2016. Technical analysis of data used is the technique of multiple linear regression analysis.               Based on the result of this study showed that thitung with ttabel is equal to 16,082 > 2,005, thitung is bigger than ttabel that mean as partially there are effect revenue to net income, and result of partial research of operational cost to net income show thitung with ttabel is equal to -10,999 < 2,052, thitung is lowwer than ttabel that also means as partially there are negative effect operational cost to net income.
               The study result of the simultaneously shows the value of Fhitung with Ftabel is equal to 133,398 > 3,175, Fhitung is bigger than Ftabel that mean there are simultant influence of revenue and operational cost to net income.
Keywords: Operational Cost, Revenue, Net Income.


Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved state-of-the-art performance on face recognition (FR) tasks in the last decade. In real scenarios, the deployment of DNNs requires taking various face accessories into consideration, like glasses, hats, and masks. In the COVID-19 pandemic era, wearing face masks is one of the most effective ways to defend against the novel coronavirus. However, DNNs are known to be vulnerable to adversarial examples with a small but elaborated perturbation. Thus, a facial mask with adversarial perturbations may pose a great threat to the widely used deep learning-based FR models. In this paper, we consider a challenging adversarial setting: targeted attack against FR models. We propose a new stealthy physical masked FR attack via adversarial style optimization. Specifically, we train an adversarial style mask generator that hides adversarial perturbations inside style masks. Moreover, to ameliorate the phenomenon of sub-optimization with one fixed style, we propose to discover the optimal style given a target through style optimization in a continuous relaxation manner. We simultaneously optimize the generator and the style selection for generating strong and stealthy adversarial style masks. We evaluated the effectiveness and transferability of our proposed method via extensive white-box and black-box digital experiments. Furthermore, we also conducted physical attack experiments against local FR models and online platforms.


Skinner defining verbal behavior in 1957 excludes the behavior of listener from this category, however, some authors such as Horne and Lowe and also Stemmer suggest that the behavior of listener can be a prerequisite for the acquisition of verbal behavior. Stemmer suggests that the behavior of listener is given by ostensive learning, a pavlovian learning that occurs by pairing of stimuli, and once acquired can be transferred to the behavior of speaker and differentially reinforced. This paper will suggest some simila-rities between the Stemmer's approach to what Pavlov called Second Signal System, discussing empirical evidence on the function transference of stimuli in nonhumans and humans in the experimental literature. It will point out to the viability of the Pavlov and Stemmer's theoretical approach to clarify the behavioral processes underlying the stimulus equivalence studies.


[reaction: see text] The conversion of the iodine ate-complex 5 to the Grignard reagent 6 follows a rate law first order in 5 and in magnesium ions. In addition to this normal pathway of the halogen-metal exchange process, the conversion of 5 to 6 is catalyzed by a number of diverse "electrophiles". This points to a SET-initiated radical chain process as a second pathway for the conversion of the iodine ate-complex 5 to the Grignard reagent 6.


The aim of this study was to reconstruct three pedestrian collisions with multi-body simulations using the computer program MADYMO and the Polar-II dummy. In this paper, we compare the head kinematics of the computer simulation and the Polar-II test with reference to the vehicle-pedestrian contacts in the actual cases. We also discuss aspects of the reconstructions made using these different tools, especially findings on the velocity trajectory of the head. The cases selected for reconstruction were ones in which the pedestrian's height and weight were close to the 50th percentile adult human male, and where the accident investigation provided good estimates of impact speed and complete injury data. The cases were investigated to estimate the speed of the vehicle at impact and the position of the pedestrian relative to the vehicle. Contact points between the vehicle and pedestrian were recorded. From this information MADYMO simulations were made to estimate the kinematics of the pedestrian during the collision. We then reconstructed each case using the Polar-II full-scale pedestrian dummy. Results showed that some aspects of the head kinematics were in good agreement but, generally, Polar-II head impact angles were steeper and the head impact location was more forward than the location suggested by the simulations and the cases themselves. Leg kinematics were noticeably different, with the Polar-II legs remaining engaged with the front of the vehicle for a longer period of the collision. In contrast to the simulations, the Polar-II legs were in some instances still engaged as the head stuck the vehicle.


Achieving competitiveness on the market ensures business continuity within terms of globalization. Consequently, competitiveness is determined by various factors which grading and evaluation require corresponding approach. The final result is a set of information used as basis for making the concrete decisions. Traffic of goods and services has a special importance in ensuring the concrete business, not just in logistic sense. Traffic planning and making decisions relevant to that area directly influence the business. Today there are different methodologies and techniques of planning in field of traffic. The choice of technology usually depends upon business management. Application of AHP method is one of the possibilities that can be used within mentioned circumstances. This paper analyses possibilities of applying AHP method in making decisions regarding planning and implementation of plans in traffic and ensuring the qualitative business logistics.


Architecture as a man made built environment is a product of culture and human civilization. Through architecture, we can learn about the civilization that involved in creating the architectural artifacts. Therefore architecture is a civilization product can be considered as signs with meanings behind it.
One of architectural object that is meaningful is the architecture of churches. Church architecture is meaningful because contained not only functional meanings but also religious meanings which had been produced for thousands years by human civilization.
W.C.P Schoemaker is a Dutch architect who designed 2 great churches in Bandung – that is Catholic Church : St Peter's Cathedral and Lutheran Church : Bethel Church – at the same decade. It is interesting that Schoemaker created these 2 churches at about the same period as a synthesis of each denomination's needs, values and religious concepts but with so many similarities in each design elements.
In this paper, the similarities of design elements that is found in both buildings will be collected. This paper also tries to find out whether the elements are the synthesis of basic Christianity or they are a personal characteristic of the architect.


Electrically stimulated guinea-pig ileum myenteric plexus-longitudinal muscle was used to determine if changes in temperature alter the inhibitory effects of DAGO ([D-Ala2,N-MePhe4,Gly5-ol]enkephalin, mu-agonist), DPDPE ([D-Pen2,-Pen5] enkephalin, delta-agonist) and U-50,488H (trans-3,4-dichloro)-N-methyl-N-[2-(1- pyrrolidynyl)cyclohexyl]benzeneacetamide methane sulfonate, kappa-agonist). The potency (expressed as the concentration which produces 50% inhibition, IC50) of DAGO and DPDPE was significantly (P < 0.05) decreased at 30 degrees C (8.8 +/- 2.7 x 10(-9) and 8325.2 +/- 1070 x 10(-9) M), when compared to the potency at 37 degrees C (3.8 +/- 0.3 x 10(-9) and 6298.6 +/- 320 x 10(-9) M). Higher temperature (40 degrees C) did not modify the potency of DAGO or DPDPE compared to that at 37 degrees C. However, the potency of U-50,488H was significantly (P < 0.01) increased at 40 degrees C (0.7 +/- 0.0 x 10(-9) M) versus 37 degrees C (2.4 +/- 0.9 x 10(-9) M) or 30 degrees C (2.5 +/- 0.3 x 10(-9) M). The kappa-agonist was more potent than DAGO or DPDPE at 30 or 40 degrees C. These data demonstrate that changes in temperature can alter the potency of opioid agonists.


Numerical and experimental results for the penetration of electromagnetic (EM) fields through a small, square aperture loaded with a conductive material are presented. A variety of composite materials and wire meshes and grids of varying spacings have been used to load the aperture. These results are compared with numerical results calculated using the method of moments.<<ETX>>


Few Cold War topics have received more generous scholarly attention than the Sino-Soviet relationship. There has been sustained interest in the subject since the early 1960s, when the split between Moscow and Beijing first became public knowledge. Among the early treatments were the classic studies by Zagoria, Donald, The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956–1961 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962) and by Gittings, John, Survey of the Sino-Soviet Dispute (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). The former sought the middle ground between the proponents of the "they are just faking it" school and the sober-minded camp that deemed the split as final and irreversible. The latter dissected the Sino-Soviet polemic under as good a microscope as Western Kremlinology could muster. The 1970s and the 1980s witnessed the rise of theoretical approaches to the troubled relationship. Partly because the deep hostility between two ostensibly communist powers offered such a useful case study for billiard-ball conceptions of international politics, realists of all stripes embraced the subject with gusto. Examples include Pollack, Jonathan D., The Sino-Soviet Rivalry and Chinese Security Debate (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1982), and Ellison, Herbert J., The Sino-Soviet Conflict: A Global Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982). Improvements in Sino-Russian relations in the 1990s prompted scholars to reassess previous approaches, with some – e.g. Wishnick, Elizabeth, Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow's China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001) – striking a cautiously positive note, while others, such as Lo, Bobo in his Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing, and the New Geopolitics (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), maintained a degree of skepticism about the relationship, which, in just half a century, went from unbreakable friendship, to primordial enmity, to friendship once again.In the meantime, the study of Sino-Soviet relations – formerly the subject of diplomatic gossip and conferences of political scientists – was handed over to historians. Armed with newly released archival documentation, they scrutinized the story of the rise and fall of the alliance and came up with answers to please theorists of all persuasions. One of the earliest was the still relevant Westad, Odd Arne (ed.), Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963 (Washington, DC, and Stanford: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 1998), which, being an edited volume, offered a usefully multicausal explanation but specifically emphasized ideology as an important factor. Coming in the wake of many a realist study that perceived ideology as a cover-up for "real" national interests, Brothers in Arms represented an important new departure for Cold War historiography. By contrast, Heinzig, Dieter's The Soviet Union and Communist China 1945–1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004) erred on the side of geopolitics. Some of the same themes were picked up in Luthi, Lorenz's seminal Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), which put great stress on ideological factors in the alliance and in Radchenko, Sergey's Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Washington, DC, and Stanford: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2009), which rehabilitated realist ideas about Sino-Soviet relations, diluting them in anecdotes about pride, arrogance and cultural prejudice. A similar approach was adopted also in Shen, Zhihua and Xia, Yafeng, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959: A New History (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), a panoramic overview of the early years of the relationship, which highlights the struggle for leadership between Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev.Matters of culture and ideology were broached in Jersild, Austin, The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014) – which looks at, among other things, the low politics of cultural, scientific and economic exchange between China and the USSR – and in Li, Mingjiang, Mao's China and the Sino-Soviet Split: Ideological Dilemma (London: Routledge, 2012), which highlights the centrality of Chinese domestic politics in the Sino-Soviet relationship. Meanwhile, Friedman, Jeremy opens new vistas to scholars of Sino-Soviet relations by exploring why and how Moscow and Beijing competed for influence in the Third World. His Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015) highlights the divergence between Chinese and Soviet revolutionary experiences. Still, for all the new evidence that has come to light since the 1990s, scholars remain as deeply divided as they have ever been. Every new study tilts the pendulum of opinion this way or that; yet it seems to be destined to swing perpetually between fuzzy conceptions such as "national interests," "ideology," "culture," "equality" and "leadership," dismaying and delighting generations of historians who today know so much and yet so little about the inner dynamics of the love/hate relationship between Beijing and Moscow, which never fails to surprise.


International relations (IR) defines itself as a discipline by adhering to a Westphalian narrative centered on 1648. The following paper argues that IR should broaden its engagement with history to consider the international prior to 1648 and to examine global and transnational historical accounts that challenge the states in anarchy framework. This paper examines how pre-modern history is often used within IR as a foil for which western modernity and its superiority is defined. It concludes by arguing for the need to re-read the processes of modernity and imperialism that are commonly seen as the prelude to the familiar Eurocentric stories told in IR.


The realisation that the methods employed and decisions made by property investors can have negative social and environmental consequences has led some to call for the principles of eSocially Responsible Investmenti (SRI) developed in equities investment, to be applied to property. However, the extent to which property investment managers have responded to this call remains unclear, as are the methods which will need to be employed to make property investment more socially responsible. This paper addresses the current lack of theory in this area by reviewing progress towards socially responsible epropertyi investment (SRPI) in the commercial property investment practices of the ten largest UK property investment managers. The paper uses publicly available company literature (e.g. company financial reports, CSR reports, web pages) to understand the SRI policies, practices and products of each companyis equities investments, in order to understand current methods used and identify possible ebest practicei examples. It then uses the findings to carry out a similar appraisal of their property investments, while also looking for any property-specific activities which might reduce the negative impacts associated with the property investment process. The paper uses original methodology to group SRI/SRPI activities into emilestonesi against which inter and intra-company comparisons could be made and best practice models identified. Findings show differing levels of progress towards SRI and SRPI and a lack of intra-company association between progress in the two areas. Though specific SRPI products are found to be scarce in comparison to those available in equities SRI, other activities are identified which may help address the impacts associated with property investment, and it is argued, should be considered as progress towards SRPI.