The protective effects of amino acids against H 2O 2-induced oxidative stress were investigated in an in vitro assay using human intestinal epithelial cells. Caco-2 cells were pretreated with amino acids (1, 2, and 5 mM) for 2 h and then stimulated with 1 mM H 2O 2 for 6 h. The secretion of IL-8, a proinflammatory mediator, was determined by ELISA as an indicator of tissue oxidative stress. The inhibition of H 2O 2-induced IL-8 secretion from Caco-2 cells was observed by pretreatment with Cys, Val, Ile, Leu, Trp, His, Lys, and Ala. Cys enhanced glutathione (GSH) biosynthesis enzyme activity and increased cellular GSH levels. Branched-chain amino acids such as Val, Ile, and Leu elevated activities of GSH S-transferase (GST) and catalase. Trp, His, and Lys caused increases in GST activity. Ala enhanced GSH reductase activity. These data suggest that specific amino acids exert protective effects against tissue oxidative stress in intestinal epithelial cells based on the structure.


Abstract In the last few years, the diagnostic and therapeutic utilization of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) for a variety of liver conditions has exponentially grown. We performed a thorough search for all available studies on the performance of diagnostic and therapeutic EUS in the field of hepatology. This article reviews the indication of EUS in the evaluation and treatment of portal hypertension, portal vein pressure measurement, focal liver lesions, and parenchymal liver diseases, and presents all the clinical evidences available so far in this regard. All the review data suggest that EUS is becoming an increasingly important tool in the armamentarium of the hepatologists for the management of certain liver-related conditions. Implementation in the education of the hepatologists of means to become more familiar with both diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities of EUS is warranted.


Trauma studies constitutes a huge field today, keeping whole armies of theorists-philosophers, literary scholars, and historians as well as clinicians-very busy. There are many reasons for this, starting with the enormous and still growing interest in the Holocaust and other collective historical traumas (the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder, which first entered the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual in 1980, was based largely on symptoms of Vietnam War veterans), and extending to the increased clinical awareness of sexual abuse as a phenomenon of "everyday life" for both adults and children. There exists today both a wide consensus among theorists on a certain definition of trauma, and a strong and sometimes violent debate about specific aspects of trauma, notably as regards its relation to memory. The importance of Judith Herman's work is that she is one of the pioneering clinicians in the field as well as a major player in the theoretical debate. What is the consensus about trauma? Everyone seems to agree that a traumatic event "overwhelmfs] the ordinary human adaptations to life, as Herman puts it. "Unlike commonplace misfortunes," she writes, "traumatic events generally involve threats to life or bodily integrity, or a close personal encounter with violence and death" (Herman 1992, 33). A more neurologically based definition would be that a traumatic event-or "traumatic Stressor"-produces an excess of external stimuli and a corresponding excess of excitation in the brain. When attacked in this way, the brain is not able to fully assimilate or "process" the event, and responds through various mechanisms such as psychological numbing, or shutting down of normal emotional responses. Some theorists also claim that in situations of extreme stress, a dissociation takes place: the subject "splits" off part of itself from the experience, producing "multiple personalities" in the process. The diagnosis of MPD (multiple personality disorder) was once very rare, but became quite common for a while in the 1980s and 1990s. Symptoms of MPD, according to clinicians who diagnose it, always indicate earlier trauma, even if-or especially ifthe trauma is not remembered by the patient. This is where we enter the contested territory of trauma theory. The most important subject of debate concerns the relation of trauma to memory and came about as a result of a number of legal cases in the 1980s involving recovered memory of sexual abuse. There are two very hostile camps here, as far as I can see, and both of them are linked in interesting ways to Freud. Members of the first camp, which includes clinicians such as Judith Herman as well as researchers, among them Bessel van der Kolk, believe firmly in the theory of dissociation, which is related to (though not identical with) the concept of repressed memory, or traumatic amnesia. According to this view, the more horrific and prolonged the trauma, the more the subject has a tendency to dissociate and therefore have no conscious memory of the traumatic event. Thus, a child or even an adolescent who is subjected to repeated sexual abuse by a family member may very well not remember it until he or she (the overwhelming majority being girls) enters into therapy as an adult; at that point, the patient may recover memories in a gradual process, sometimes with the help of hypnosis. Only by finally remembering the repressed trauma can the patient move on to recovery, that is, to "mastery" and healing. Judith Herman writes: The patient may not have full recall of the traumatic history and may initially deny such a history, even with careful, direct questioning. . . . If the therapist believes the patient is suffering from a traumatic syndrome, she should share this information fully with the patient. Knowledge is power. The traumatized person is often relieved simply to learn the true name of her condition. By ascertaining her diagnosis, she begins the process of mastery. …


To show the magnitude of the implications of terrorism for the future of knowledge among the present crop of schoolchildren in Nigeria, there is the need to capture the factors that predispose them as soft targets to collective violence through a scientific investigation. Towards this end, the present article theoretically explores the global trends of terrorism against schoolchildren, the trajectory of terrorism, its tensi ons and contentions, the implications of violence for the future of the schoolchildren's capacity building in Nigeria. Based on the analysis of the available secondary data on the impact of terrorism against schoolchildren, the article concludes that a discussion of the need to upgrade the protection of schoolchildren against terrorism is urgent. Therefore, to create a noticeable sense of security for Nigerian schoolchildren in their educational institutions, it recommends that the value of counter-terrorism education should be effectively taught to all the stakeholders in schoolchildren's education. Keywords : terrorism, schoolchildren, counter-terrorism education, capacity building, Nigeria


On September 11, 2001, elevator starter Arlene Charles helped her coworker and shop steward Carmen Griffith, who had been severely burned on her face and hands, down seventy-eight flights of stairs. Security worker Gabriel Torres helped evacuate frightened tenants and then led two firefighters through the building in a search for more victims; they were trapped under falling debris and dug out two hours later. Window cleaner Jan Demczur, stuck in an elevator between floors with five other men, burrowed through the wall with his squeegee, and the men made it out of the building minutes before it collapsed. The Service Employees International Union told their stories on its website (www.seiu.org).


The Cenozoic aquifer in Sao Gabriel do Oeste-MS occupies approximately 48% of the total area of the municipality. It consists of sandy clay and debris-lateritic Tertiary-Quaternary deposits, overlying the Guarani, Serra Geral and Aquidauna aquifers. The urban area and the main economic activities of the municipality, agriculture and swine, are located on this aquifer. Public and private water supply use exclusively groundwater, mainly from Cenozoic Aquifer, shallow wells, and Guarani Aquifer, deep wells. Economic activities, direct recharge and characteristics of permeability and porosity of this unit indicate the vulnerability of the aquifers in that region.


The current, accepted theories in cosmology and quantum realms encompass observations that are not explained by the theory. A method to account for these observations is to suggest new, ad hoc additions to the theory. The ad hoc additions suggest the need for a paradigm shift to produce a simpler theory with broader scope and with a cause-effect physical interaction such as the Scalar Theory of Everything (STOE). Links to papers showing calculations and observational data comparison are found in Hodge, 2020, IntellectualArchive, Vol.9, No. 4, P. 14; DOI: 10.32370/IA_2020_12_3 ; See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YlJGdTvuTU Inflation, negative energy, Dark Matter, action-at-a-distance, and Dark Energy are ad hoc additions to the Big Bang model of cosmology. Other problematic assumptions are spacetime, infinities, decreasing temperature, and increasing entropy of the universe. The strong force, weak force, and the orbits of electrons around a nucleus are ad hoc additions to the atomic models. Other problematic assumptions are the weird results from the assumption of the probabilistic nature of the universe and that the speed of light limits the speed of causality.


A facile and automated procedure for the synthesis of oligodeoxynucleotides possessing derivatives of 9-fluoreneone, 9,10-anthraquinone, and phenothiazine is described. The phosphoramidite approach is used to attach these redox and spectroscopic probes to the 5'-terminus of oligodeoxynucleotides in high yield (>95%). Thermal denaturation studies of labeled oligodeoxynucleotides show a slight enhancement in duplex stability relative to the unlabeled control, and circular dichroism spectra confirm B-form helical DNA structure in solution.


Background: Excessive sun exposure of children and adolescents can be a risk factor for skin cancer later in life. Sun protection measures can protect a person from such conditions and also sunburns that, especially if they occur repetitively in childhood, may lead to melanomas. The aim of the present study was to explore young people's knowledge level regarding sun-related risk, sun protection measures and sunburn incidence. Correlation between knowledge level and sunburn incidence was also explored. Μethod and Material: International and Greek literature was reviewed using data bases and search engines such as Medline, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Scirus and Scopus. Only studies published from 2002 until today were included in the review. Results: Knowledge level of 9 – 20 years old students was investigated by reviewing 15 relative studies from all over the world. Overall knowledge levels were found to be as high as >50%, with girls and older students scoring higher than younger students in terms of knowledge levels. In some countries (USA, Australia) scores were even higher, but this should be attributed to continuous educational programs and interventions. More specifically, higher knowledge levels were found for sunscreen use (>60%), and potential skin damage after prolonged sun exposure (>50%). On the other hand, sunburn incidence shows significant variations depending on the country. Finally, correlation between knowledge level and sunburn incidence was not found to have any statistical significance, although in several studies students with higher knowledge level do not show high sunburn incidence rates. Conclusions: Continuous, targeted and age-appropriate educational programs, both at school and in the community, could help to increase knowledge levels and more importantly change attitudes and lead younger people to adopt a wiser behavior regarding solar radiation and sun protection measures.


We compared an automated microparticle double-antigen sandwich enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for the IMx test system recently developed by Abbott with two established assays (the automated indirect Vidas IgG EIA and the double-antigen sandwich EIA from Murex/Wellcome) devised for the detection of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and HIV-2 antibodies. A total of 1,078 consecutive serum samples were tested prospectively with the three assays. In addition, we used retrospectively selected panels of serum samples with discrepant results in two different screening tests and with indeterminate or positive Western immunoblot (WB) results, as well as five commercially available HIV-1 seroconversion panels. The new assay showed excellent discriminatory characteristics for the separation of samples from HIV-1-positive and HIV-1-negative persons according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WB criteria. The sensitivities were 98.1, 92.9, and 96.1% for the new test and the two other assays, respectively, and the specificities were 99.7, 97.9, and 98.1%, respectively. With the seroconversion panels this new test was positive several days earlier than the two other assays; i.e., seroconversion was evident at the peak of p24 antigenemia and often several weeks before WB became positive by the most stringent criteria.


Erythrocyte membranes prepared by three different procedures showed (Mg2+ + Ca2+)-ATPase activities differing in specific activity and in affinity for Ca2+. The (Mg2+ + Ca2+)-ATPase activity of the three preparations was stimulated to different extents by a Ca2+-dependent protein activator isolated from hemolysates. The Ca2+ affinity of the two most active preparations was decreased as the ATP concentration in the assay medium was increased. Lowering the ATP concentration from 2 mM to 2-200 microM or lowering the Mg:ATP ratio to less than one shifted the (Mg2+ + Ca2+)-ATPase activity in stepwise hemolysis membranes from mixed "high" and "low" affinity to a single high Ca2+ affinity. Membranes from which soluble proteins were extracted by EDTA (0.1 mM) in low ionic strength, or membranes prepared by the EDTA (1-10 mM) procedure, did not undergo the shift in the Ca2+ affinity with changes in ATP and MgCl2 concentrations. The EDTA-wash membranes were only weakly activated by the protein activator. It is suggested that the differences in properties of the (Mg2+ + Ca2+)-ATPase prepared by these three procedures reflect differences determined in part by the degree of association of the membrane with a soluble protein activator and changes in the state of the enzyme to a less activatable form.


Using Tagalog as a case study, this paper provides an analysis of a cross-linguistically well attested phenomenon, namely, cases in which a bare NP's syntactic position is linked to its interpretation as definite or indefinite. Previous approaches to this phenomenon, including analyses of Tagalog, appeal to specialized interpretational rules like Diesing's Mapping Hypothesis. I argue that such empirical patterns fall out of general compositional principles so long as type-shifting operators are available to the compositional system. I begin by weighing in on some long-standing issues in the semantic analysis of Tagalog bare NPs. I show that bare NPs which are thematic patients are interpreted as presuppositional definites if marked with nominative case and as narrow scope indefinites if marked with genitive case. Bare NPs are analyzed as basically predicative. If a bare NP is local to its selecting verb, such as a genitive casemarked patient, it is existentially quantified over by the verb itself, generating an indefinite interpretation. If a bare NP moves to a derived position, it must type-shift in order to avoid a type-mismatch, generating a definite interpretation. This paper explains how a grammatical system like Tagalog's, which lacks articles but demonstrates other morphosyntactic strategies for signaling (in)definiteness, can be integrated into our understanding of compositional semantics.


Cardiotoxicity due to anthracyclines (CDA) affects cancer patients, but we cannot predict who may suffer from this complication. CDA is a complex disease whose polygenic component is mainly unidentified. We propose that levels of intermediate molecular phenotypes in the myocardium associated with histopathological damage could explain CDA susceptibility; so that variants of genes encoding these intermediate molecular phenotypes could identify patients susceptible to this complication. A genetically heterogeneous cohort of mice generated by backcrossing (N = 165) was treated with doxorubicin and docetaxel. Cardiac histopathological damage was measured by fibrosis and cardiomyocyte size by an Ariol slide scanner. We determine intramyocardial levels of intermediate molecular phenotypes of CDA associated with histopathological damage and quantitative trait loci (ipQTLs) linked to them. These ipQTLs seem to contribute to the missing heritability of CDA because they improve the heritability explained by QTL directly linked to CDA (cda-QTLs) through genetic models. Genes encoding these molecular subphenotypes were evaluated as genetic markers of CDA in three cancer patient cohorts (N = 517) whose cardiac damage was quantified by echocardiography or Cardiac Magnetic Resonance. Many SNPs associated with CDA were found using genetic models. LASSO multivariate regression identified two risk score models, one for pediatric cancer patients and the other for women with breast cancer. Molecular intermediate phenotypes associated with heart damage can identify genetic markers of CDA risk, thereby allowing a more personalized patient management. A similar strategy could be applied to identify genetic markers of other complex trait diseases.


Environmental and ship performance data were collected aboard the USCGC POLAR SEA in April 1979 as part of a two year program to make an operational assessment of the feasibility of a year-round transportation system serving northwestern Alaska. The POLAR SEA successfully operated through the North Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and South Chukchi Sea during this time period. From an analysis of the governing ice conditions and the capability of the ship, it has been concluded that the POLAR Class icebreakers have the capability to operate year-round in the North Bering Sea. Three commercial icebreaking ships (MV ARCTIC, SS MANHATTON, and a proposed Arctic tanker) were also evaluated to determine their ability to successfully operate along potential marine routes in Western Alaska. Volume II contains the appendices to the report including data summaries, calculations, thickness measurements, and a description of the methods used to classify the data.


Objective. To assess the effectiveness of selective digestive decontamination (SDD) for eradicating carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) oropharyngeal and gastrointestinal carriage. Design. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with 7 weeks of follow-up per patient. Setting. A 1,000-bed tertiary-care university hospital. Patients. Adults with CRKP-positive rectal swab cultures. Methods. Patients were blindly randomized (1:1) over a 20-month period. The SDD arm received oral gentamicin and polymyxin E gel (0.5 g 4 times per day) and oral solutions of gentamicin (80 mg 4 times per day) and polymyxin E (1 × 106 units 4 times per day for 7 days). The placebo arm received oral placebo gel 4 times per day and 2 placebo oral solutions 4 times per day for 7 days. Strict contact precautions were applied. Samples obtained from the throat, groin, and urine were also cultured. Results. Forty patients (mean age ± standard deviation, 71 ± 16 years; 65% male) were included. At screening, greater than or equal to 30% of oropharyngeal, greater than or equal to 60% of skin, and greater than or equal to 35% of urine cultures yielded CRKP isolates. All throat cultures became negative in the SDD arm after 3 days (P< .0001). The percentages of rectal cultures that were positive for CRKP were significandy reduced at 2 weeks. At that time, 16.1% of rectal cultures in the placebo arm and 61.1% in the SDD arm were negative (odds ratio, 0.13; 95% confidence interval, 0.02–0.74; P<.0016). A difference between the percentages in the 2 arms was still maintained at 6 weeks (33.3% vs 58.5%). Groin colonization prevalence did not change in either arm, and the prevalence of urine colonization increased in the placebo arm. Conclusions. This SDD regimen could be a suitable decolonization therapy for selected patients colonized with CRKP, such as transplant recipients or immunocompromised patients pending chemotherapy and patients who require major intestinal or oropharyngeal surgery. Moreover, in outbreaks caused by CRKP infections that are uncontrolled by routine infection control measures, SDD could provide additional infection containment. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2012;33(1):14-19


The 6 novel super hydrophobic bluish-green dyes, showing the maximum absorption at 600~650nm, were synthesized to dye polyolefin fibers such as polypropylene and high strength polyethylene fibers. Their absorption spectra appeared almost the same at visible range, which meant the length of alkyl substituents did not affect on color appearance of the dyes. The optimum length of alkyl group was determined as hexyl substituents from the practical point of view. From the dyeing results, the optimum dyeing condition was for 1 hour. The good fastness ratings to washing, rubbing were obtained showing 4-5 for both fibers. Light fastness was obtained also good rating 4 for both fibers.


Majority of the cancer-related deaths are related to metastasis during which cancer cells invade the surrounding tissues, enter (intravasation) and exit (extravasation) the peripheral circulation and seed distant organs. The Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) exist in peripheral blood as single cells or as oligoclonal clusters of tumor cells along with platelets and lymphocytes. Detection of CTCs allows characterizing the tumors by their genotype and in predicting the prognosis and response to therapy and explants derived from these cells can be used in drug screening. In this review, we highlight the methods used for isolation and culture of CTCs and their clinical use.


Tour & Travel Agent is an old type of business that can still maintain its potential as a business opportunity every year. This is due to the use of the internet, thus presenting the online travel market. One of the travel agency businesses that use the internet, especially social media, as a marketing medium to build a company brand image is MyPangandaran. However, the growth of followers on the @mypangandarantours Instagram account is relatively slow, and the level of follower engagement is still low. This study aims to find out how MyPangandaran grows a positive brand image for followers of their Instagram account, @mypangandarantours. In addition, to see the influence that social media has had on followers of brand images on their Instagram accounts. The method used in this research is quantitative with the type of associative survey research. The data technique uses analysis from observations, literature studies, interviews and questionnaires. The sample in this study was 96 followers of the @mypangandarantours Instagram account. The sampling technique used non-probability sampling, namely purposive sampling. The data analysis technique used simple linear regression analysis. This study indicates a significant influence of social media on the brand image of followers of the @mypangandarantours Instagram account, meaning that if the social media marketing variable is getting better, the brand image will be getting better.


Germination of common mullein (Verbascum thapsus L.) in relation to constant and alternating temperatures, and light quality and duration was studied. In the dark, optimum germination occurred with 8-h warm periods of 30 to 40 C alternating with 16-h cold periods of 15 to 35 C. In the dark, no germination occurred below 10 C. With light during the 8-h warm periods, germination occurred at temperatures from 2 to 40 C, alternating with 0 C cold periods. The range of optimum temperatures for germination was also greatly expanded with light. Exposures to 24-h periods of red light, followed by incubation in the dark, produced the same germination response as 8 h of white light daily. Common mullein seeds germinated on the surface of the soil even though the seeds did not have mucilage.


Collective communication over a group of processors is an integral and time consuming component in many HPC applications. Many modern day supercomputers are based on torus interconnects. On such systems, for an irregular communicator comprising of a subset of processors, the algorithms developed so far are not contention free in general and hence non-optimal.
 In this paper, we present a novel contention-free algorithm to perform collective operations over a subset of processors in a torus network. We also extend previous work on regular communicators to handle special cases of irregular communicators that occur frequently in parallel scientific applications. For the generic case where multiple node disjoint sub-communicators communicate simultaneously in a loosely synchronous fashion, we propose a novel cooperative approach to route the data for individual sub-communicators without contention. Empirical results demonstrate that our algorithms outperform the optimized MPI collective implementation on IBM's Blue Gene/P supercomputer for large data sizes and random node distributions.


Background Birth weight influences profiles of dried blood amino-acids and acylcarnitines in newborn screening. This study aimed to define a more appropriate cut-off value to reduce the false positive rate and the number of recalled patients in newborn screening. Methods All babies who underwent newborn screening in our center were included; they were divided into groups by birth weight: 2500–3999 g (comparator group), <1000 g (group 1), 1000–1499 g (group 2), 1500–2499 g (group 3), and >4000 g (group 4). The 0.5th and 99.5th percentiles were used as the cut-off values. Comparisons were done on amino acid and acylcarnitines concentrations between the groups. False positive rate, positive predictive value, corrected false positive rate by birth weights were determined. Results Data on a total of 578,287 newborn infants were included in the analysis. The total false positive rate was 0.75%, and positive predictive value 2.89%. The false positive rate was 0.69%, 0.54% and 5.31% in infants with normal birth weight, birth weight of >4000 (group 4) and low birth weight of < 2500 g (groups 1, 2 and 3), respectively. Low-birth weight infants had much higher phenylalanine, tyrosine, methionine, arginine, propionylcarnitine, isovalerylcarnitine and octadecanoylcarnitine concentrations. Free carnitines and palmitoylcarnitine concentrations were lower. After adjusting for birth weight, false positive rate of all indices decreased to 0.53%, and positive predictive value increased to 4.31%. Conclusions Amino acid and carnitine concentrations in low-birth weight newborn infants may differ from the normal term newborn infants. The cut-off values of individual metabolites should be adjusted based on birth weight, to reduce false positive rate and increase positive predictive value.


In this paper the implications of data skew in digital relaying are presented. Data skew refers to the fact that not all signals used by the relay are captured at the same time instant. This problem is especially important when the hardware is based on a single sample and hold circuit and the number of signals to sample is high. The differential relay for three-winding transformers is used as an illustrative example.<<ETX>>


Haemorheological investigations in 73 male patients with chronic disturbances of the arterial blood supply of the lower extremities and 54 male non-insulin-requiring (type-II-) diabetics with and without micro- and macroangiopathy resulted in significant changes of the flow properties of the blood in contrast to 20 comparable clinically healthy males. In all groups of patients a clear increase of the aggregation of erythrocytes and the viscosity of plasma as well as a decrease of the deformability of erythrocytes were to be proved. The size of the deviations of all three parameters from the normal correlated with the degree of severity of the arterial obstructive disease and in diabetics with the occurrence of vascular complications (macroangiopathy, retinopathy) as well as with the situation of metabolism. The decreased fluidity of blood may lead to the development of further enlargement of disturbances of microcirculation. Therefore, haemorheological viewpoints should be included into the total diagnostic and therapeutic concept of the arterial obstructive disease and the diabetes mellitus.


Peptides, highly diverse by their nature, are important biochemical and pharmaceutical tools: ligands for cellular receptors, transcription factors, immunosuppressants, vaccines, etc. As the majority of their targets are intracellular, peptides need to cross the plasma membrane and gain access to the cytoplasm. However, due to their physicochemical properties, most peptides need to be entrapped by a molecular vehicle to be able to reach the cytosol compartment. In this study, we present new biological tools to enhance intracellular peptides delivery. Based on electrostatic interactions, two complementary types of amphiphilic molecules have been designed as delivery vehicles. A diverse set of fluorescently labeled peptides have successfully been delivered. This opens the avenue for the use of peptides combined to delivery vehicles as therapeutic aids. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2011;108: 2477–2487. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


INTRODUCTION
The need for pacemaker is a common complication after transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). We previously described the Emory Risk Score (ERS) to predict the need for new pacemaker implant (PPM) after TAVR. Metrics included in the score are a history of syncope, pre-existing RBBB, QRS duration ≥140 ms, and prosthesis oversizing ≥16%. To prospectively validate the previously described risk score.

METHODS
We prospectively evaluated all patients without pre-existing pacemakers, ICD, or pre-existing indications for pacing undergoing TAVR with the Edwards SAPIEN 3 prosthesis at our institution from March 2019 to December 2020 (n = 661). Patients were scored prospectively; however, results were blinded from clinical decision-making. The primary endpoint was PPM at 30 days after TAVR. Performance of the ERS was evaluated using logistic regression, a calibration curve to prior performance, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis.

RESULTS
A total of 48 patients (7.3%) had PPM after TAVR. A higher ERS predicted an increased likelihood of PPM (OR 2.61, 95% CI: 2.05-3.25 per point, p < 0.001). There was good correlation between observed and expected values on the calibration curve (slope = 1.04, calibration at large = 0.001). The area under the ROC curve was 0.81 (95% CI [0.74-0.88], p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
The ERS prospectively predicted the need for PPM in a serial, real-world cohort of patients undergoing TAVR with a balloon-expandable prosthesis, confirming findings previously described in retrospective cohorts. Notably, the prospective performance of the score was comparable with that of the initial cohorts. The risk score could serve as a framework for preprocedural risk stratification for PPM after TAVR.


RCC1, the only known guanine-nucleotide exchange factor for the Ran GTPase, is an ∼45-kD nuclear protein that can bind chromatin. An important question concerns how RCC1 traverses the nuclear envelope. We now show that nuclear RCC1 is not exported readily in interphase cells and that the import of RCC1 into the nucleoplasm is extremely rapid. Import can proceed by at least two distinct mechanisms. The first is a classic import pathway mediated by basic residues within the NH2-terminal domain (NTD) of RCC1. This pathway is dependent upon both a preexisting Ran gradient and energy, and preferentially uses the importin-α3 isoform of importin-α. The second pathway is not mediated by the NTD of RCC1. This novel pathway does not require importin-α or importin-β or the addition of any other soluble factor in vitro; however, this pathway is saturable and sensitive only to a subset of inhibitors of classical import pathways. Furthermore, the nuclear import of RCC1 does not require a preexisting Ran gradient or energy. We speculate that this second import pathway evolved to ensure that RCC1 never accumulates in the cytoplasm.


The main phenolic compound in six studied lettuce cultivars (five green and one red) was identified as dicaffeoyl tartaric acid. Quantitative but not qualitative differences were found in the phenolic profiles among green cultivars. The red oak leaf cultivar contained twofold more dicaffeoyl tartaric acid and 10-fold more chlorogenic acid than the green cultivars. Total phenolics ranged from 8.4 to 12.9 mg g−1 dry weight in green varieties and reached 27.8 mg g−1 dry weight in red oak leaf. Carotenoids and vitamins E and C were also quantified. Lutein was the main carotenoid found in all cultivars, together with another xanthophyll. The period of harvesting had only a marginal influence on total phenolic levels, whereas carotenoid and vitamin E levels were higher at the second period of harvesting. Vitamin C levels ranged between 6.1 and 9.9 mg per 100 g fresh weight. We investigated the total antioxidant power in lettuce. Total phenolics accounted for more than 60% of the total antioxidant capacity. Dicaffeoyl tartaric acid accounted for 55%. Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry


The effectiveness of nutrition intervention in severely undernourished preschool children at child development centers and during subsequent follow ups was studied. ICDS survey 2008, for under nutrition among preschoolers was conducted. Admitting severely undernourished children to Child Development Centres (CDCs) with their mothers / care takers for 2-3 weeks was undertaken. Correction of morbidities by using health protocol of WHO, training for preparation of supplementary foods from locally available raw materials and recipes, feeding of children and recording observations on nutritional improvements at CDC and subsequent follow ups upto 30 months was studied. All 14 tahasils of Ahmednagar district, India, 0-6 y preschoolers were included in this study. The application of health and nutrition protocol to severely undernourished children at CDC for 2-3 weeks and subsequent follow up showed marked improvements in their weight gain, IAP grades and SD classification parameters. A continued follow up for extended period is however essential to eliminate the under nutrition in these children.


Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures allow the reconstruction of full-sibships using data from genetic marker loci only. In this study, these techniques are extended to allow the reconstruction of nested full- within half-sib families, and to present an efficient method for calculating the likelihood of the observed marker data in a nested family. Simulation is used to examine the properties of the reconstructed sibships, and of estimates of heritability and common environmental variance of quantitative traits obtained from those populations. Accuracy of reconstruction increases with increasing marker information and with increasing size of the nested full-sibships, but decreases with increasing population size. Estimates of variance component are biased, with the direction and magnitude of bias being dependent upon the underlying errors made during pedigree reconstruction.


A detailed computational study on a series of 4-quinolinecarbinolamine antimalarials was performed using the semiempirical Austin model 1 (AM1) quantum chemical method to correlate the electronic features with antimalarial activity and to illuminate more completely the fundamental molecular level forces that affect the function and utility of the compounds. Ab initio (3-21G level) calculations were performed on mefloquine, the lead compound in this series, to check the reliability of the AM1 method. Electron density in specific regions of the molecules appears to play the pivotal role toward activity. A large laterally extended negative potential in the frontal portion of the nitrogen atom of the quinoline ring and the absence of negative potential over the molecular plane are crucial for the potent antimalarials. These electrostatic features are likely to be the modulator of hydrophobicity or lipophilicity of the compounds and, hence, determine their activities. The magnitude of the positive potential located by the hydroxyl hydrogen atom also correlates with potent antimalarial activity. Two negative potential regions occur near the hydroxyl oxygen and piperidyl nitrogen atoms. The two negative potential regions and the positive potential located by the hydroxyl hydrogen atom are consistent with intermolecular hydrogen bonding with the cellular effectors. The present modeling study should aid in efficient designing of this class of antimalarial agents.


Transesophageal echocardiography is a safe, minimally invasive imaging modality that may be useful in the evaluation of transmediastinal gunshot wounds. In this report, we describe a hemodynamically stable patient who sustained a gunshot wound to the ascending aorta. Routine diagnostic evaluation, including aortography, failed to confirm the suspected diagnosis. Transesophageal echocardiography definitively detailed the injury to the aorta enabling definitive surgical repair.


Building on previous work by Andr\'e Platzer, we present a formal language for Stochastic Differential Dynamic Logic, and define its semantics, axioms and inference rules. Compared to the previous effort, our account of the Stochastic Differential Dynamic Logic follows closer to and is more compatible with the traditional account of the regular Differential Dynamic Logic. We resolve an issue with the well-definedness of the original work's semantics, while showing how to make the logic more expressive by incorporating nondeterministic choice, definite descriptions and differential terms. Definite descriptions necessitate using a three-valued truth semantics. We also give the first Uniform Substitution calculus for Stochastic Differential Dynamic Logic, making it more practical to implement in proof assistants.


During a 5 year period at Port Moresby General Hospital in Papua New Guinea. 140 patients had carotid angiograms. Three quarters of the patients were male. Average age for all patients was 29 years. 44% of the patients had detectable abnormalities, the commonest being subdural haematoma and neoplasm. Other abnormalities found included aneurysm, brain abscess, tuberculoma and thrombrosed middle cerebral artery. The findings show many similarities to a reported series in Nigeria but differs from a Uganda series in which haemotoma was much more commonly found.


A growing interest in the HCI community is the design and development of embodied agents in virtual environments. For virtual environments where social interaction is needed, an agent's facial expression may communicate emotive state to users both young and old. However, younger and older adults differ in how they label human facial expressions (Ruffman et al., 2008). Such possible age-related differences in labeling virtual agent expressions may impact the user's social experience in a virtual environment. The purpose of the current research was to investigate age-related differences in emotion recognition of several on-screen characters of varying degrees of human-likeness. Participants performed a recognition task with three characters demonstrating four basic emotions or neutral. The results indicated age-related differences for all character types. Older adults commonly mislabeled the human and synthetic human emotions of anger, fear, sadness, and neutral. For the virtual agent face, older adults commonly mislabeled the emotions of anger, fear, happiness, and neutral.


It is a challenging and important task to perceive and interact with other traffic participants in a complex driving environment. The human vision system plays one of the crucial roles to achieve this task. Particularly, visual attention mechanisms allow a human driver to cleverly attend to the salient and relevant regions of the scene to further make necessary decisions for the safe driving. Thus, it is significant to investigate human vision systems with great potential to improve assistive, and even autonomous, vehicular technologies. In this paper, we investigate driver's gaze behavior to understand visual attention. We, first, present a Bayesian framework to model visual attention of a human driver. Further, based on the framework, we develop a fully convolutional neural network to estimate the salient region in a novel driving scene. We systematically evaluate the proposed method using on-road driving data and compare it with other state-of-the-art saliency estimation approaches. Our analyses show promising results.


Abstract .   The article deals with the notions of «gender» and «concept». The historical aspects of the formation and development of these notions and their functioning in modern linguistics are analyzed. The study contains information on theoretical approaches to the study of gender in linguistics. Features of the relationship and interaction of the «language» and «gender» notions, grammatical methods and lexical means of expressing gender differences in language are considered and analyzed. The aim of the article is a comprehensive analysis of gender-marked vocabulary as a means of verbalizing the concept of «woman» in the world language picture. The theoretical significance of the work consists in displaying the lexical features of the concept of «woman» which, being one of the central concepts of cognitive linguistics contains information on what an individual knows, suggests, thinks, who displays objects of the world. The concept of «woman» combines knowledge about a woman: as a female of different ages (from an infant, girl, to an elderly woman), as a person, as a subject that performs various social roles (mother, wife, sister, daughter), etc. The subject and problems of research extend the range of linguoculturology study aspects.


Background of the study: Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the fastest growing segment of information technology enabled service industry in India. This research will focus on nightshift work and try to give a brief outline of the health problem faced by employees. Objectives of the study are to understand the health status of the women working in BPOs, to examine how the nightshift duty affects the health of the women working in BPOs and to analyze consequences of the nightshift on the social life of the women working in BPOs. Methodology: It is a qualitative study which helps the researcher for an in-depth understanding. The study was conducted in Tata Consultancy service (TCS), Chennai. Primary data were collected through interview guide and secondary data from Books, Journals, Published articles, etc. Descriptive research design was employed to study the stated objectives. Result: Social life of women employees has been affected and they are facing more mental pressure and depression; majority of the respondents faces various health problems like obesity, eye irritation, irregular menstrual cycle, etc. Conclusion: Night shift has influenced the lifestyle and health of women primarily due to its contemporary work settings.


Vulnerability of speaker verification (SV) systems under adversarial attack receives wide attention recently. Simple and effective countermeasures against such attack are yet to be de-veloped. This paper formulates the task of adversarial defense as a problem of attack detection. The detection is made possible with the verification scores from a pair of purposely se-lected SV models. The twin-model design comprises a fragile model paired up with a relatively robust one. The two models show prominent score inconsistency under adversarial attack. To detect the score inconsistency, a simple one-class classifier is adopted. The classifier is trained with normal speech samples, which not only bypasses the need of crafting adversarial samples but also prevents itself from over-fitting to the crafted samples, and hence makes the detection robust to unseen attacks. Compared to single-model systems, the proposed system shows consistent and significant performance improve-ment against different attack strategies. The false acceptance rates (FARs) are reduced from over 63.54% to 2.26% under the strongest attack. Our approach has practical benefits, e.g., no need to modify a well-deployed SV model even it is well-known and can be fully accessed by the adversary. Moreover, it can be combined with existing single-model countermeasures for even stronger defenses.


Water scarcity is likely to increase in the coming years, making improvements in irrigation efficiency increasingly important. An emerging technology that promises to increase irrigation efficiency substantially is a wireless irrigation sensor network that uploads sensor data into irrigation management software, creating an integrated system that allows real‐time monitoring and control of moisture status that has been shown in experimental settings to reduce irrigation costs, lower plant loss rates, shorten production times, decrease pesticide application, and increase yield, quality, and profit. We use an original survey to investigate likely initial acceptance, ceiling adoption rates, and profitability of this new sensor network technology in the nursery and greenhouse industry. We find that adoption rates for a base system and demand for expansion components are decreasing in price, as expected. The price elasticity of the probability of adoption suggests that sensor networks are likely to diffuse at a rate somewhat greater than that of drip irrigation. Adoption rates for a base system and demand for expansion components are increasing in specialization in ornamental production: growers earning greater shares of revenue from greenhouse and nursery operations are willing to pay more for a base system and are willing to purchase larger numbers of expansion components at any given price. We estimate that growers who are willing to purchase a sensor network expect investment in this technology to generate significant profit, consistent with findings from experimental studies.


Tourism from being regarded as a pastime activity for the leisured few in society has grown into a multi-billion industry and a multi faceted activity. Worthily on account of its phenomenal socio-economic magnitudes and prospects tourism has also become the subject of scholarly interest. Hence our present research in the area of tourism in general and Indian tourism, in particular. The objective of the present paper is to understand the prospects of tourism industry in India in the era of liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG). Indian tourism industry today is on the threshold of a big change for large economic gains. However, tourism is much more than an economic activity; it has become a way of life. Without ignoring the problems of tourism industry and its implications on the future development of tourism industry in India, we make an attempt to identify the potentials of tourism industry in the present liberal environment. The paper analyses the key changes and challenges in the path of revolutionizing the tourism industry in the new millennium. By making use of appropriate secondary data, the authors try to understand the interactivity between tourism enterprise and its stakeholders, including consumers. The quest for alternative tourism or newer forms of tourism like health tourism, rural tourism and e-tourism is also examined, albeit briefly. The essentiality of promoting sustainable tourism is underscored.


AIMS
The total atrial conduction time (TACT) is an important electrophysiological parameter. We developed a new transthoracic echocardiographic tool (PA-TDI). The PA-TDI interval is a reflection of the TACT. In the present study, we evaluated the clinical and echocardiographic correlates of intra-atrial conduction delay.

METHODS AND RESULTS
We studied 427 patients without class I anti-arrhythmic agents or amiodarone. All patients underwent an echocardiogram and the PA-TDI interval was measured. Patient characteristics were recorded. The mean PA-TDI was 157 ± 22 ms. Multivariate linear regression analysis revealed that atrial fibrillation (AF) in history (B = 9.7; 95%CI 5.7-13.8; P < 0.001), hypertension (B = 5.5; 95%CI 1.4-9.8; P = 0.01), clinically relevant valve disease (B = 5.7; 95%CI 0.5-10.8; P = 0.03), age (B = 5; 95%CI 3.3-6.6; P < 0.001), and body mass index (BMI; B = 2.6; 95%CI 0.3-4.9; P = 0.026) were independently associated with the PA-TDI interval. On the echocardiogram: the aortic diameter (B = 0.7; 95%CI 0.2-1.2; P = 0.009), left atrial dimension (B = 0.9; 95%CI 0.5-1.3; P < 0.001), mitral valve E-wave deceleration time (B = 0.1; 95%CI 0.1-0.1; P < 0.001), aortic incompetence (B = 13; 95%CI 3.3-22.6; P = 0.008), and mitral incompetence (B = 11; 95%CI 3.6-17.5; P < 0.003) were independently associated with the PA-TDI interval.

CONCLUSION
This study is the largest to investigate the relation between the atrial conduction time, underlying heart diseases, and echocardiographic parameters. We found that the PA-TDI was independently prolonged in patients with a history of AF, hypertension, valve disease, higher age, and a higher BMI. Signs of diastolic dysfunction, valve incompetence, and enlarged atrium or aortic root on the echocardiogram were associated with a prolonged PA-TDI. This suggests that early and aggressive treatment of hypertension, diastolic dysfunction, and obesity could prevent intra-atrial conduction delay.


The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to severely affect the Bangladeshi economy. Remittance inflows have already started to decline in March. Exports also declined sharply in April with cancellation of several billion USD orders for the Ready-Made Garment industry. As a result, an immediate external financing gap of about USD 2.9 billion has emerged along a fiscal financing gap of about USD 2.8 billion.


Electric utility structures occur widely in natural and human-dominated landscapes and are often used by birds for nesting. Nests can cause power outages, fires, and electrocution of birds and their young, particularly if nests occur directly above energized equipment and incorporate metal wire. Chihuahuan raven (Corvus cryptoleucus) nests often contain metal wire and occur over energized equipment. To explore a proactive risk mitigation strategy we deployed novel nest diverters on 51 structures supporting a 230 kV H-frame transmission line in Kiowa and Bent Counties, Colorado, USA, and compared nesting on these structures with nesting on 66 structures without nest diverters on the same line. Chihuahuan ravens placed nest material on 7% of treated structures and 43% of untreated structures and nested on 0% of treated structures and 34% of untreated structures. Chihuahuan ravens were less likely to attempt to nest on, or actually nest on, structures treated with nest diverters. Future research should evaluate nest diverters over larger spatial and temporal scales and compare prey populations in areas where ravens are excluded to prey populations in areas where ravens persist. © 2012 The Wildlife Society.


A control law that solves the output voltage control problem for a half-bridge DC-AC converter is presented. The proposed controller is developed by considering an average model which is obtained under the assumption that the switching policy is of the PWM type and by the application of a passivity-based control design methodology that has shown to be useful in solving control problems for several mechanical, electrical and electromechanical systems. The obtained result is specialized to the control of an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for which an adaptive scheme is developed.


Material Disposal Area B (MDA B) is the oldest radioactive waste disposal facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Operated from 1944-48, MDA B was the disposal facility for the Manhattan Project. Recognized as one of the most challenging environmental remediation projects at Los Alamos, the excavation of MDA B received $110 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to accelerate this complex remediation work. Several factors combined to create significant challenges to remediating the landfill known in the 1940's as the 'contaminated dump'. The secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project meant that no records were kept of radiological materials and chemicals disposed or of the landfill design. An extensive review of historical documents and interviews with early laboratory personnel resulted in a list of hundreds of hazardous chemicals that could have been buried in MDA B. Also, historical reports of MDA B spontaneously combusting on three occasions -with 50-foot flames and pink smoke spewing across the mesa during the last incident in 1948-indicated that hazardous materials were likely present in MDA B. To complicate matters further, though MDA B was located on an isolated mesa in the 1940's, the landfill has since been surrounded by a Los Alamosmore » commercial district. The local newspaper, hardware store and a number of other businesses are located directly across the street from MDA B. This close proximity to the public and the potential for hazardous materials in MDA B necessitated conducting remediation work within protective enclosures. Potential chemical hazards and radiological inventory were better defined using a minimally intrusive sampling method called direct push technology (DPT) prior to excavation. Even with extensive sampling and planning the project team encountered many surprises and challenges during the project. The one area where planning did not fail to meet reality was safety. There were no serious worker injuries and the minor injuries recorded were those common to construction type activities. Extensive monitoring along the site boundary demonstrated that no hazardous chemicals were released and radiological dose to the public was within administrative limits. More than three years of effort by the LANL project team went into the planning for remediation of Material Disposal Area B. Hundreds of historical documents were reviewed; retired personnel were extensively interviewed and noninvasive techniques were used to characterize the site. The information collected was incorporated into the safety requirements, cost estimate, schedule and primary execution plan for the project. Ultimately the waste volume managed by the project approached 40000 m{sup 3}, more than double the original project estimate. This increase had a major impact on both project cost and schedule. Nuclear safety requirements for the project were based on an estimated MDA B radionuclide inventory of 12 PE-Ci. When excavation was complete over 123 PE-Ci had been removed from the trenches. The radionuclide inventory at MDA B was an order of magnitude higher than estimated. Work at MDA B could not have proceeded without the safety basis exemption from DOE-HQ. The one area where planning did not fail to meet reality was safety. There were no serious worker injuries and the minor injuries recorded were those common to construction type activities. Extensive monitoring along the site boundary demonstrated that no hazardous chemicals were released and radiological dose to the public was within administrative limits. (authors)« less


Supreme audit institutions, such as the auditors‐general, are considered a crucial link in the accountability chain between parliament and the executive arm of government. The purpose of this study is to examine the enabling legislation of the supreme audit institutions of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries from a public sector accountability and independence perspective. Following on from INTOSAI (1998), English and Guthrie (2000) and De Martinis and Clark (2001), this study uses an accountability and independence framework to identify and compare the current legislation applicable to the supreme audit institutions of the ASEAN member countries with regard to independence, autonomy, mandate, funding issues, and related parliamentary powers. This study finds that while on average each jurisdiction has addressed slightly less than half the total number of issues under examination, there is considerable diversity with regard to the particular issues addressed. The study suggests policy implications to further strengthen the provisions for accountability and independence of supreme audit institutions through amendments to the enabling legislation of the various jurisdictions.


To these add 6 + 6' terms of N where 6 is number of terms of N tha t must be taken to make the sum oi a + a' of P, and 6 of N just <S. To these add the next c + d terms of P where c is the number of terms of P tha t must be taken to make the sum of the a + a' oi P, b + b' oi N, and c of P just > S, and so on. ' Since, if the q' + l terms are from N they will be all negative, at 2 t h stage the new series has a sum differing from >S' by less than | the sum of q' + l t e rms | of P (or N) where q' is the integer of series a', b\ d ... selected for 2 t h stage. But the terms of P and N are eventually infinitely small and /. sum of a finite number of them is. Thus the new series converges to S, and since a', V, d were arbitrary finite integers there is a infinite number of rearrangements. H. L. TRACHTENBURG.


Introduction: Since 2008, Italian legislators, with the aim of ensuring public safety, have made it mandatory for an occupational doctor (OD) to assess specific categories of workers to exclude those who may have consumed drugs of abuse. Due to the relevance of work activities relating to the civil aviation and airport sector, a policy based on the use of training and information tools, as well as a health surveillance protocol, has been undertaken since 2009. Materials and methods: A total of 61,008 workers at a commercial airline underwent health surveillance between 2009 and 2019. Following ≤24 h notification, their urine was screened for opiates, cocaine, cannabinoids, amphetamines, methamphetamines, and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) using an immunochemical test. Positive results were confirmed using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) or Liquid Chromatography -Mass Spectrometry (LC/MS). In confirmed cases, the workers were declared unfit and sent to a specialized laboratory for a second level analysis. Results: Positive results, initially >1%, have halved in the last four years (<0.5%). The percentage of positive results was consistently very low among pilots and, moreover, the rare positive cases detected were due to a cross-reactivity phenomena. The highest and most discontinuous percentages seen occurred in the population undergoing a pre-employment examination. Regarding the types of substance used, a prevalence of cannabis (58.52%) and cocaine (35.2%) use was observed. Conclusions: The data presented indicate that the air transport sector, in all its components (ground workers and air crews), has a very limited number of substance abusers, and this number tends to decrease over time and with work seniority. Another aspect of particular interest, and which is more specific to toxicology, concerns the detection of cross-reactivity in urinary immunochemical screening between the antibodies to drugs of abuse and certain other drugs, such as anti-inflammatories or antibiotics; as well as foods, and other commonly used substances.


Social behaviours characterize cooperative, mutualistic aggressive or parental interactions that occurs among conspecifics. Although several neuronal substrates of social behaviour have been identified, whether defined circuits are dedicated to specific aspect of conspecific interaction is still an open question. Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) contributes to the rewarding properties of conspecific interaction. However, how information related to conspecifics are conveyed to the VTA is still largely unknown. In this study, we identified a population of Superior Colliculus (SC) neurons projecting to the VTA which increase their activity before conspecific interaction and control orienting response towards unfamiliar conspecifics. Finally, we show that SC inputs target a subpopulation of Dopamine (DA) neurons within the VTA that in turn project to dorsolateral striatum (DLS). Our work supports the hypothesis that specialized sub-circuits are dedicated to process different aspect of social interaction.


Many organisms, in particular people, contain sections of the genome which could be present in various number of copies between individuals. This event is called copy number variations (CNVs) and in many cases is associated with genetic diseases. However, the accuracy of CNV detection in the human genome is still low. We propose the new algorithm for common CNVs detection based on artificial intelligence algorithms. We generalized a common CNVs detection task to classification problem. In this paper we showed some classification models and compare them in order to detect common CNVs. The algorithm contains three stages: counting depth of coverage in targets (whole exome sequencing), quality control of targets and training the models. Then, trained models are used to detetct CNVs in a new sample. The proposed approach was tested, the obtained CNVs calls showed the corecctness of our proposals. The results present, that our approach is designed to detect only common CNVs, the sensitivity and specificity of the approach are higher than for another algorithms. However, rare CNVs are not discovered, but we plan to extend presented approach in order to detect also rare CNVs (based on anomalies detection algorithms). The presented approach could improve the accuracy of detection common CNVs in the human genome. The described method could be useful in labolatories, where large volume of annotated common CNVs dataset exists. What is more, to our knowledge, this is the first paper which shows the usage of artificial intelligence methods in common CNVs detection problem.


The new effect of ultrasound-stimulated regeneration of the ground state of EL2 centres is observed and investigated. A regeneration transition, metastable (EL2*)-to-ground (EL20), is caused by ultrasound vibrations induced in a GaAs wafer at a temperature 105-120 K after bleaching of EL2 centres with 1.2 eV light. The EL2-related absorption band and the luminescence band with a maximum of 0.64 eV are examined. The kinetics of the ultrasound EL2 regeneration and the dependence of the number of regenerated EL2 centres on ultrasound strain are measured at different temperatures. Relevant mechanisms for the regeneration are discussed, and the arguments in favour of the dislocation model are presented.


Abstract: Bergmann, T. C. & Werth, S. 2017. Intrathalline distribution of two lichenicolous fungi on Lobaria hosts — an analysis based on quantitative Real-Time PCR. — Herzogia 30: 253–271. The biology of lichenicolous fungi is still poorly known, including intrathalline hyphal distribution patterns and the density of hyphae these fungi may form within lichen thalli. Since the hyphae of most lichenicolous fungi cannot be morphologically distinguished from those of the lichen mycobiont, we used quantitative Real-Time PCR (qPCR) to detect and quantify lichenicolous fungi and lichen bionts. We investigated the lichenicolous fungi Plectocarpon lichenum and Tremella lobariacearum which inhabit species of the genus Lobaria using the following sample types to determine intrathalline distribution patterns: material with obvious infections, material next to infections, as well as visually uninfected plectenchyma from central and marginal thallus parts. Furthermore, some visually uninfected thalli were sampled for T. lobariacearum. Based on the qPCR data, we show that the two lichenicolous fungi occur predominantly in the symptomatic areas and in a certain area around symptomatic areas. Samples derived from lichen thalli without symptoms of infection showed no evidence of the lichenicolous fungi. We did not observe an alteration of the proportion of lichen bionts in visually infected material. Our data suggest that the structures formed by T. lobariacearum represent galls, whereas those formed by P. lichenum represent stromata. These results raise the question of how intrathalline growth of lichenicolous mycelia might be controlled by the mycobiont.


Considering software developed in a component based fashion, one important aspect about software reconfiguration is to decide how to change the software structure. In some applications, to manually describe the reconfiguration plan to be executed can be a very complex task for developers, like those based in rules and supported by an expert system. Furthermore, this plan must be correct in relation to the programming model, the application architectural restrictions and it must leave the application in a consistent state. In order to reconfigure some application structure, considering aspects related to the application consistency, this work proposes an approach that employs Artificial Intelligence techniques to solve this issue. After a desired configuration has been chosen for some context, the task is to decide how to achieve the desired state, generating a reconfiguration plan, in a consistent manner and, after that, execute it. The plan is generated based on a model of cause and effect, which describes the set of reconfiguration actions from the underlying component model, that has reflective capacity to execute the reconfiguration plan.


Objective Although plaque erosion causes approximately 40% of all coronary thrombi and disproportionally affects women more than men, its mechanism is not well understood. The role of tissue mechanics in plaque rupture and regulation of mechanosensitive inflammatory proteins is well established, but their role in plaque erosion is unknown. Given obvious differences in morphology between plaque erosion and rupture, we hypothesized that inflammation in general as well as the association between local mechanical strain and inflammation known to exist in plaque rupture may not occur in plaque erosion. Therefore, our objective was to determine if similar mechanisms underlie plaque rupture and plaque erosion. Methods and Results We studied a total of 74 human coronary plaque specimens obtained at autopsy. Using lesion-specific computer modeling of solid mechanics, we calculated the stress and strain distribution for each plaque and determined if there were any relationships with markers of inflammation. Consistent with previous studies, inflammatory markers were positively associated with increasing strain in specimens with rupture and thin-cap fibroatheromas. Conversely, overall staining for inflammatory markers and apoptosis were significantly lower in erosion, and there was no relationship with mechanical strain. Samples with plaque erosion most closely resembled those with the stable phenotype of thick-cap fibroatheromas. Conclusions In contrast to classic plaque rupture, plaque erosion was not associated with markers of inflammation and mechanical strain. These data suggest that plaque erosion is a distinct pathophysiological process with a different etiology and therefore raises the possibility that a different therapeutic approach may be required to prevent plaque erosion.


Present study aimed at investigating and comparing anxiety and depression of the students (all boys) of tribal and non-tribal community. The present study also aimed to assess the role of counselling as an effective technique for reducing anxiety and depression. The sample comprised of 80 students (40 non-tribals and 40 tribals). Their age ranged from 15-18 years. The sample was randomly selected from the four different schools of South Tripura district. Beck depression inventory and Bengali version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) adapted by Mallik and Chattopadyay were used to collect the data. Findings showed that there was significant difference between the tribal and non-tribal students on trait and state anxiety (t=2.45, t=3.16 respectively) and depression (t=3.84). In all respect, the non-tribals possessed severe amount of depression and anxiety. Results revealed that there was positive correlation between the anxiety and depression of the students.. However, no significant relation was found between state anxiety and depression of the tribal students. Counselling proved to be a very effective technique for reducing anxiety and depression of the students.


Quercus species are major forest forming species and helps in sustaining an ecosystem. Natural regeneration of these species is very poor due to various biological and physical factors. The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of different pre-sowing treatments (scarification and coldstratification) on seed germination of two Quercus species, that is, Quercus serrata (deciduous) and Quercus semecarpifolia (evergreen). On the basis of the present study, it was observed that pretreated seeds germinated better in comparison with control, and both species responded differently to the treatments. The deciduous, lower altitude Q. serrata gave better results in comparison with the evergreen, high altitude Q. semecarpifolia in terms of percent germination and time taken for germination. Being a simple and cost effective method, the results of the present study could be used for developing nurseries for commercial purposes.


ABSTRACT A cDNA encoding the catalytic subunit of human telomerase was used to generate life-extended derivatives of primary human diploid fibroblasts. The life-extended cells supported efficient human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) replication. A subclone of the life-extended cells was generated containing the HCMV UL82 gene and used to isolate and propagate a virus that exhibited a profound growth defect after infection at a low input multiplicity.


This paper is to reconstruct the urban space of early Niigata which lay on the left bank of the Shinano River in the first half of the seventeenth century. For this purpose, the methodology of historical geography is applied to compare three maps. The first is the illustrated plan of early Niigata drawn at an unknown time, the second is the eighteenth century map of Yorii village which relocated to where early Niigata used to be and the third is the current map of the same area. The results of this study are as follows:1. Two existing pathways are identified as those of early Niigata.2. The modern canals of this area are identified as the left stream of the Shinano River in the period of early Niigata.3. The dune formed before the fourteenth century is identified as the hill on which the oldest part of early Niigata used to be.


The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) body, a large compartment specific to the Brassicales, accumulates β-glucosidase and possibly plays a role in the defense against pathogens and herbivores. Although the ER body is a subdomain of the ER, it is unclear whether any ER body-specific membrane protein exists. In this study, we identified two integral membrane proteins of the ER body in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and termed them MEMBRANE PROTEIN OF ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM BODY1 (MEB1) and MEB2. In Arabidopsis, a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor, NAI1, and an ER body component, NAI2, regulate ER body formation. The expression profiles of MEB1 and MEB2 are similar to those of NAI1, NAI2, and ER body β-glucosidase PYK10 in Arabidopsis. The expression of MEB1 and MEB2 was reduced in the nai1 mutant, indicating that NAI1 regulates the expression of MEB1 and MEB2 genes. MEB1 and MEB2 proteins localize to the ER body membrane but not to the ER network, suggesting that these proteins are specifically recruited to the ER body membrane. MEB1 and MEB2 physically interacted with ER body component NAI2, and they were diffused throughout the ER network in the nai2 mutant, which has no ER body. Heterologous expression of MEB1 and MEB2 in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) suppresses iron and manganese toxicity, suggesting that MEB1 and MEB2 are metal transporters. These results indicate that the membrane of ER bodies has specific membrane proteins and suggest that the ER body is involved in defense against metal stress as well as pathogens and herbivores.


Reading an otherwise interesting and scholarly article by Gernsbacher (PS 4(5), 1993, pp. 294-298), I was surprised to find the word patients phonemically transcribed as Ipayshunz/. Actually, it is not clear whether Gernsbacher intended this to be a transcription ofpatients or of patience, two words that are not strictly homophones for many speakers of English. In any case, the suggestion is that evidently psycholinguists are not always well trained in the phonemic transcription of English; the transcription Ipayshunz/ for patients is incorrect on four counts. layl would indicate the vowel diphthong in pie. Ishl is not a standard transcription of the initial consonant phoneme in shun; this is usually transcribed as either III or lSI. The transcription lunzl of the final sounds of patients gets the vowel phoneme wrong and fails to recognize that, for most careful speakers, an unvoiced phoneme ItI is inserted before the sibilant, which by the usual rule for the plural morpheme must be an unvoiced lsI. A more acceptable transcription, therefore, would be Ipeys~ntsl or IpeyI~nts/. For the word patience, supposed by Gernsbacher to be a homophone of patients, the transcription would be IpeyI .msl or Ipeys~ns/, to follow the lead of the pronunciation given for this word in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Morris, 1969). Unfortunately, linguists have not been completely consistent in their recommended systems of phonemic transcription of English, but there is sufficient agreement to permit rendering English sounds in a phonemic transcription that will be understandable and properly com. municative, even in the presence of dialectal variations. , Frequently it will be desirable to cite the transcription ;system being used. An early transcription system for "the pronunciation of standard English that prevails in Chicago" was presented by Bloomfield (1933, pp. 91-92). Later transcription systems developed by linguists are to be found in works by Smith (1969) and Trager (1972, pp. 38-48). In a textbook (Carroll, 1964, pp. 14-15), I pre'sented a system based on Trager an~ Smith (195111956), and Clark and Clark (1977, p. 179) displayed a brief system that will serve most purposes, although it differs slightly from the Trager-Smith system. The front matter of Morris's (1969) dictionary contains not only Smith's article but also several other articles pertinent to the interpretation of transcription systems and pronunciation keys found in dictionaries. Gernsbacher's incorrect transcription of patients probably did not invalidate any of her conclusions about suppression mechanisms in skilled and unskilled readers, but it is possible to conceive situations in which psycholinguists could design and interpret experiments in which incorrect phonemic transcriptions could make interpretations and conclusions questionable. Indeed, it is possible that there was an uncontrolled variable in Gernsbacher's results for patients and patience, in that in comparison to the less skilled readers, the more skilled readers might have had a lesser tendency to perceive these words as homophones, and therefore a tendency not to have any alternative representation to "suppress."


Intelligent completions provide exceptional control over the wellbore, maximizing production and ultimate recovery. A new method of creating an intelligent completion is proposed which allows the critical components to be replaced without pulling the completion string. This paradigm shift enables incorporating newer technology, broader features, faster development time, and building a completion that can be tailored to the needs of the formation and the conditions in the market.
 The oilfield has made use of through-tubing replaceable completion tools within completions for decades in the form of gas lift mandrels and similar devices. More recently, the types of replaceable tools have broadened to include completion tools such as replaceable inflow control devices and through-tubing pressure sensors. This paper describes building a replaceable intelligent completion that is a through-tubing retrievable part of the permanent completion.
 Reliability in traditional completions is achieved by long-duration testing all of the components which results in designs that are technically conservative and a reliance on parts that have been previously proven. An intelligent completion where the critical components are replaceable is a paradigm shift. Replaceable downhole tools allow for retrieving and upgrading these tools as components fail, as the wellbore changes, as market conditions change, or as new technology arises. A retrievable completion also reduces the risk in the business case because the functionality of new tools can be evaluated with reduced upfront testing. The simplification of the business case further relaxes the intensity of component testing, which further reduces the development cost and continues to simplify the business case. For the electronics alone, retrievability reduces the development time, even including the acceleration with higher-temperature Arrhenius-style testing.
 The new retrievable intelligent completion is a reconfigurable completion with simplified technological development and business case. The paper describes completion applications where these advantages outweigh the costs in intervention cost, replacement risk, and operational limitations.


Deep Reinforcement Learning is emerging as a promising approach for the continuous control task of robotic arm movement. However, the challenges of learning robust and versatile control capabilities are still far from being resolved for real-world applications, mainly because of two common issues of this learning paradigm: the exploration strategy and the slow learning speed, sometimes known as"the curse of dimensionality". This work aims at exploring and assessing the advantages of the application of Quantum Computing to one of the state-of-art Reinforcement Learning techniques for continuous control - namely Soft Actor-Critic. Specifically, the performance of a Variational Quantum Soft Actor-Critic on the movement of a virtual robotic arm has been investigated by means of digital simulations of quantum circuits. A quantum advantage over the classical algorithm has been found in terms of a significant decrease in the amount of required parameters for satisfactory model training, paving the way for further promising developments.


Roy Medvedev demonstrates, in engrossing and sharp detail, how the vast gulf between Marxist-Leninist principles and official Soviet attitudes and procedures turned vital theory into hollow dogma. Focusing on the rigidities of official ideology, he makes brilliantly clear the ways in which an excessively centralized and cumbersome bureaucratic structure was disastrous for the economic, intellectual, and moral development of Soviet society-keeping it dangerously insular in an era of increasing internationalism.


Thearticle entitled " Long - term outcomes of robot - assisted surgeryin patients with colorectal cancer ", published in the Annals of SurgicalOncology , is a timely analysis of oncologic outcomes comparing robotic andconventional laparoscopic techniques (1). Several other studies have demonstratedequivalent short-term outcomes between robotic and laparoscopic groups,including postoperative complications and hospital length of stay (2-5).However, long-term oncologic outcomes for the robotic approach have not yetbeen well evaluated.


ABSTRACT Against the backdrop of the conflict with Russia and growing approximation with the European Union (EU), the LGBTI movement in Ukraine seemed to have achieved some of its political goals, such as introducing changes in legislation and holding peaceful equality marches in Kyiv. At the same time, the last decade has seen a growing number of homophobic attacks by right-wing groups across the country, while sociological surveys have shown an increased level of homophobic attitudes. The article questions the factors that caused the mentioned outcomes and examines the role that the EU, Russia, and national stakeholders played in these transformations.


The present study examines pragmatic production of monolingual (L1 Castilian) and bilingual (L1 Catalan, L2 Castilian) learners of English in a foreign language learning context, that of the Valencian Community in Spain. We particularly focused on proficiency-level effects and on the role of the task type in the use of request acts peripheral modification devices. We ascertained participants' degree of bilingual competence by means of a bilingualism test, which was designed on the basis of previous research (Li Wei, 2000). Additionally, a level placement test was distributed to our participants, and their performance was assessed on the basis of the ACTFL proficiency guidelines. Data for our analysis were collected by means of an open discourse completion test and a role-play task. Results from our analysis point to differences between bilinguals' and monolinguals' use of peripheral modification devices. More specifically our study shows that (1) L3 learners of English employed request modifiers more frequently and appropriately than L2 English learners, (2) intermediate learners performed better than beginner learners both in the oral and written task, and (3) the written task allowed for a wider use of peripheral modification devices although results also show that internal modification devices were highly employed in the oral task. Findings from our study seem to call for further research on the pragmatic competence of third language learners of English thereby considering other speech acts or pragmatic aspects and also by analysing subjects from different linguistic backgrounds.


T cells expressing chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) have demonstrated remarkable clinical benefit in certain hematological malignancies albeit with side effect such as cytokine release syndrome, on Target off tumor response and limited efficacy in solid tumors. Here, we present the preclinical evaluation of a novel T cell engineering platform designed to overcome potential hurdles of CARs and other T cell receptor modalities. Specifically, we have generated novel T Cell Receptor Fusion Constructs (TRuC™s) that fuse binder domains to subunits of the T cell receptor. These constructs when introduced using lentiviral technology, integrate into endogenous TCR, reprograming T cells to target tumor antigen in a non-major histocompatibility complex (MHC) restricted fashion and harnessing the full spectrum of TCR signaling. TRuC™ variants were constructed by recombinant fusion of an scFv or sdAb to various TCR subunits via a flexible linker sequence. Likewise, CD28ζ and 41BBζ CARs were generated using the same binders for side-by-side comparison. We demonstrated that TRuC™ variants can effectively reprogram T cells to recognize tumor surface antigens in a non-MHC-restricted fashion. TRuC™s are distinct from CARs in their ability to activate T cells through the entire TCR without additional costimulatory domains. In vitro, TRuC™ T cells were equally potent as CAR T cells in eliminating tumor cells. Compared to CAR-T cells, TRuC-T cells produced lower cytokine levels and proliferated less. Despite these difference, TRuC™ T cells were more efficient in clearing tumors in subcutaneous Raji and MSTO-211H mesothelioma models. Our findings support the development of TRuC-T cells for the treatment of solid tumors. Citation Format: Ekta Patel, Jian Ding, Nikolaus Thorausch, Janani Krishnamurthy, Rashmi Choudhary, Solly Weiler, Bonnie Le, Patrick Tavares, Adam Zieba, Justin Quinn, Yan Wang, Wolfgang Schamel, Irene Scarfo, Marcela Maus, Patrick Baeuerle, Dainel Getts, Robert Hofmeister. Characterization of a novel class of engineered (TCR) fusion constructs (TRuCTMs) aimed to treat solid tumors [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3584.


The aim of this work was to evaluate the influence of five storage times of dry leaves of two patchouli genotypes on its essential oil content and chemical composition. Harvest was realized four months after planting. Storage influenced essential oil content of genotype POG-002. Patchoulol was the majority compound. Storage of dry leaves increased significatively the content of the compounds α-bulnesene and germacrene A of genotype POG-021 and longicanfenilone, pogostol and patchoulol of POG-002. However, storage reduced significatively the content of the compounds cicloseichelene, β-cariofilene, α-guaiene, acifilene and α-bulnesene of the essential oil of genotype POG-002.


A crude polysaccharide possessing antitumour, radiation-resistant and anti-ageing attributes was extracted from Tricholoma matsutake by water extraction and alcohol precipitation. From this crude polysaccharide, a homogeneous polysaccharide, TMP-5II, was successfully purified by Sephacryl S-300 column chromatography. The average molecular weight (Mw) of TMP-5II was 15.76 kDa. Monosaccharide analysis indicated that the homogeneous polysaccharide contained four different residues: d-glucose, d-galactose, d-mannose and d-fucose. Attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy revealed characteristics typical of carbohydrate polymers and a peak typical of a β-type glycosidic bond. TMP-5II was selected for structural characterisation by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analysis. According to 1H NMR, 13C NMR and two-dimensional-NMR analysis, TMP-5II contains two kinds of linkages, β and α, at a ratio of 4:1. Preliminary results indicated that the polysaccharide had (1-4)-beta-pyran glucose as the main chain, and a branched chain in the O-6 location with fucose (1-2) mannose (1-3)-alpha-pyran galactose.


A trustful therapeutic relationship is considered to be the most important suicide-preventing measure. Furthermore, it has frequently been recommended to have the severely suicidal patient promise not to commit suicide within a certain period of time. Using three clinical examples the unreliability of this suicide-preventing method is demonstrated. When the patient can give such a promise responsibly, it probably is no longer necessary. Also, the patient's giving such a promise can negatively influence the development of the therapeutic relationship. A reciprocal contract should be preferred: the patient contacts the therapist whenever he feels to loose control over his suicidal potential whereas the therapist offers his availability to the patient.


Background Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) is a highly contagious disease with high attack and case fatality rate. Since WHO's declaration of disease as pandemic in March 2020, the unprecedented global crises have been happening. To curb and reduce such crises, multi-dimensional international efforts have been made, particularly, infection prevention measures has been developed. However, there was a wide gap of implementing COVID-19 prevention measures from rural to urban, from institution to institution and from person to person. Therefore, the aim of this study was to measure the level of prevention practice towards COVID 19 and associated factors in prison, in Sidama National Regional State, Ethiopia. Methods A cross-sectional study using quantitative method of data collection was conducted in November, 2020 among 422 prisoners in two prisons. Data were collected by trained nurses using structured questionnaires. We analyzed data using SPSS version 24 software. Descriptive statistics and bivariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were employed to identify factors associated with prevention practices of COVID-19. Results More than one-fifth (22%; 95% CI: 19%, 26%) of respondents had good preventive practice. Participants who had a history of alcohol intake were 1.79 times less likely to implement good preventive practice for COVID-19 (AOR = 1.79; 95% CI; 1.09, 2.93). The respondents who had negative attitude towards COVID-19 infection were 1.69 times more likely to have poor prevention practice (AOR = 1.69; 95% CI: 1.02, 2.81). Conclusion and Recommendation In this study, COVID-19 prevention practice among prisoners was very low. Negative attitude and previous alcohol taking history were factors associated with poor prevention practice. Accordingly, the researchers recommends to the concerned body to design educational intervention to change the attitude towards COVID-19 and other infectious diseases and behaviors of the prisoners.


For ill-posed initial value problems, step by step marching computations are unconditionally unstable, and necessarily blow-up numerically as the mesh is refined. However, for the 1D nonlinear inverse heat conduction problem, the author shows how to construct consistent marching schemes that blow-up much more slowly than the counterpart analytical problem. Several new space marching finite difference schemes are formulated and compared with existing schemes relative to their error amplification properties. Using the Lax-Richtmyer theory, the author evaluates the L2 norms of the linearized discrete solution operators mapping the sensor data into the desired temperature and gradient histories at the inaccessible active surface. Various combinations of space and time differencing are examined, leading to 18 different algorithms.


AIM To describe the association between early postnatal prostacyclin concentrations in preterm infants; echocardiographic measurements of ductal diameter and ventricular output and clinical outcomes of intraventricular haemorrhage (IVH) and patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). METHODS Forty nine preterm infants born before 30 weeks of gestational age (median birthweight 980 g, median gestational age 27 weeks) underwent echocardiographic studies at 5, 12, 24 and 48 hours of postnatal age. Measurements included ventricular outputs and the ductal shunt diameter as a measure of the shunt size. Simultaneous measurements of blood pressures, mean airway pressure and inspired fraction of oxygen (FIO2) were recorded. A blood sample for the prostacyclin metabolite 6-ketoprostaglandin F1-alpha (6KPGF1α) was taken at the 5 and 24 hour echocardiogram. Results—The mean 6KPGF1α concentrations were higher than adult concentrations at 5 (515 pg/ml) and 24 (255 pg/ml) hours. There was no association with gestational age. Raised 6KPGF1α concentrations were related to increased need for mechanical ventilation and severity of respiratory disease. At 5 hours, increased 6KPGF1α concentrations were associated with larger PDA and at 24 hours with larger PDA and higher left ventricular output. Infants with higher 6KPGF1α concentrations were more likely to develop clinically significant PDA. There was no association between early measurements of 6KPGF1α and IVH. CONCLUSIONS Early postnatal prostacyclin concentrations are markedly raised in preterm infants, particularly in those with more severe lung disease. Raised 6KPGF1αconcentrations were associated with an increased ductal diameter and subsequent PDA, but not IVH.


Bullous Pemphigoid is the large fluid filled blistering rare skin disease. This occurs when our immune system attacks the thin layer of inner tissue of outer layer of skin. Exact reason for the abnormal immune response is unknown, but this can be triggered by certain drugs like Phenacetin, Captopril, Ibuprofen, Penicillamine, etc. A 42 years old male patient of known diabetic mellitus joined in inpatient department of the hospital with chief complaints of itching, fluid filled blisters since 1 week over chest and lower limbs and scalp and gradually progressed to upper limb and face. On examination of past history, two months back he admitted in hospital with same complaints. He was treated with Corticosteroids, anti-histamine, vitamin supplement and antibiotics. Metformin is widely used as first line agent for treatment of type-2 diabetes mellitus. Drug induced Bullous Pemphigoid has been associated with many drugs, but Metformin is not one among them. Here we a report a case on Metformin induced recurrent attack of Bullous Pemphigoid.


A palladium-catalyzed C-H bond activation reaction, via a redox-neutral pathway, for the preparation of dihydrophenanthridine, phenanthridine, and carbazole derivatives from biaryl 2-iminoquinones is developed. The preinstalled iminoquinone was designed to act as a directing group for ortho C-H activation and an internal oxidant or a co-oxidant. This catalysis proceeded through the following sequence: C-H bond activation, coordination and insertion of activated olefins, β-hydride elimination, H-shift, insertion, and protonation or β-hydride elimination. In addition, carbazoles can be prepared efficiently by using this method without the addition of external oxidants.