Uganda experienced significant economic growth from 1992 to 2009. Following economic restructuring, the national poverty rate fell from about 56 per cent in 1992 to 25 per cent in 2009/10. However, while the overall proportion of the people living in poverty dropped significantly, in 2007, 64 per cent of older people were still living below the poverty line (Help Age International, 2007).

Older people in Uganda make up 4.2 per cent of the total population which is 30.7 million. They are economically active: 84 per cent are involved with agriculture. However, over 90 per cent of the older persons live in rural areas where poverty rates are higher than in urban areas. Older people are vulnerable owing to HIV/AIDs: 12 per cent of Ugandan children are AIDS orphans and a quarter of these live in a household headed by an older person. In addition, out of the 16 per cent of the population with a disability, older people comprise 53 per cent. Furthermore, more than half of the older persons have never been to school. However, the majority of older persons provide for their households, this challenges the government position that 'older people are generally too weak to perform productive work and are economically dependent on others' (UNHS, 2009/10:137).

This thesis focuses on the following questions: What is poverty? What explains the exclusion of older people from poverty reduction programmes? How do older people address poverty in their households?The study used qualitative methods, employing 120 interviews, including in-depth interviews with 18 representatives of government and Community Based Organisations (CBOs) six focus group discussions and 60 semi-structured interviews, to provide insight into the strategies used to fight poverty at the Sub County level. Narrative interviews and observation of non-verbal communication were employed to analyse older people's experience of Poverty reduction programmes and identify their poverty alleviation strategies. Programme guidelines and policy documents were reviewed to gain detailed information about the backgrounds to the strategies, the modes of implementation and the theories that influenced the strategies. The study was carried out in Katabi and Mbututumula subcounties of Wakiso and Luwero respectively.

This study found that the Government and CBO's official views of what poverty is do not seem to differ much, but when it comes to identification of the poor then differences arise. The research demonstrates that both sectors support the monetary perspective on poverty and identify minimum income and expenditure in terms of a level of consumption below which poverty is identified. This understanding has its roots in an absolute perspective on poverty. Meanwhile, older people's perspectives on poverty included a wide range of deprivations in their households. For example, the inability to send their grandchildren to school was a common type of self-reported deprivation for the majority of respondents. Older people used a relative concept to define poverty. What was needed for basic survival did depend on the cultural context and involved comparison with what other people in that context could afford.

Despite the government's objective of fighting poverty at the Sub County level, it was clear that government strategies did not include old-age poverty alleviation.Anti-poverty approaches were more strongly linked to the government's own agenda than to the needs of older people. Yet in all these the older people in poverty were disadvantaged. Older people tended to be excluded by strict eligibility rules and conditions and by individual relationships within the groups formed to tackle poverty. Older people in poverty shy away from Poverty reduction programmes leaving the relatively poor, but those not in absolute poverty, to participate. The participants' definitions of poverty and living standards observed during the interviews revealed that they were living well above the official poverty line. Furthermore, findings revealed that the right of older people to participate in government Poverty reduction programmes was not supported by legislation and there was limited information available to enable them to demand accountability or even influence policy strategies to address poverty.
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In contrast, community based organisations have been remarkable in seeking to reduce poverty among the older persons. Their approach provided support for participation of older people in Poverty reduction programmes. CBOs have conducted skills and possession audits among older people and, based on the results, old-age poverty has been included in development programmes. Such strategies have led to the establishment of credit facilities through community saving schemes and village banks, and age-friendly projects such as hand craft, mat and basket making, mushroom and vegetable growing. These motivate older people to participate and take into account their physical abilities. The formation of groups seems to be a major strategy used by CBOs to enable members to support each other and facilitate both the collective participation in decision making and the barter exchange strategy for goods and services among group members.
This study concludes that despite the difficult living conditions of older people in poverty, the majority live independent lives, are self-reliant and use a variety of strategies to address poverty. These include involvement in agriculture, use of community banks, use of manual and business skills, fostering children, family visits, joining religious and collective social groups and training to gain new skills. The present study extends the literature by showing why old age poverty persists despite efforts to counter it.

Some implication of the study's findings are that strict eligibility rules should be used to ensure that poverty alleviation support reaches those who need it most, the formation of groups should not be used as a condition to qualify for government support, information on anti-poverty programmes should be readily available to older persons in poverty and best practices from CBOs and individuals should be incorporated in anti-poverty policies.
Keywords: Uganda, poverty alleviation strategies, anti-poverty, older people, community based organisations, government, older people associations.


This investigation provided an overview of the handling practices by individuals involved in the fish trade, consumer perception and quality of fresh carite offered for sale. Landing sites, wholesale and retail markets were visited and face-to-face interviews were conducted with fishermen, wholesalers, retailers and consumers. Microbiological and sensory analyses were performed on whole and gutted fish. All the facilities for handling and trading of fish were grossly under-equipped and in poor hygienic condition. Most consumers viewed whole fish as being 'fresh' and of superior quality compared to eviscerated fish. Fish was of best sensory quality when landed and of worse quality at the retail vendors' stalls. Several recommendations were provided for improvement of quality.


The gender wage gap is among the most persistent and durable characteristics of labor markets and women's lives. Despite differences in focus, almost all studies of the gender wage gap focus on the adult labor market; however, almost every teenager in the United States works before adulthood. Therefore, an overwhelming majority of the population experiences the labor market, and possibly the gender wage gap, well beforehand. This article focuses on the early labor market experiences of youth and analyzes the gender differentials in earning in the youth labor market. The findings show there are no gender differences in wages for twelve- to thirteen-year-old youths. However, we see the emergence of the gender wage gap around fourteen, which widens with age. The wage differential in the early labor market is explained mostly by occupational factors such as types of jobs in which boys and girls are employed. In this way, the "cost of being a girl" still remains.


This chapter looks at Jonathan Swift's political satire, focusing on a crucial, seldom-discussed and newly relevant theme: his deep hostility towards specialists and experts. It argues that Swift and his allies understood expertise in terms of a broader anti-technical idea of statesmanship, one that also advocated 'common sense' as a positive model for political deliberation, and 'wit' as a model for discourse. Satire was a common medium for articulating this programme, often in terms that were themselves doubled and ironized. Swift and many of his associates deplored secrecy and innuendo in political life and, at the same time, appropriated them as modes for oppositional satire. They painted modern instrumental thinking and modern technocratic politics as dull and clumsy, while adopting the discourses of those experts parodically as 'mock-arts'. It was the interrelations between this group of satirical themes and political topoi that gave them power and significance at the start of the eighteenth century.


1. NADPH-dependent nitrite reductase from the leaves of higher plants was purified at least 70-fold and separated into two enzyme fractions. The first enzyme, a diaphorase with ferredoxin-NADP-reductase activity, is required only to transfer electrons from NADPH to a suitable electron acceptor, which then donates electrons to nitrite reductase proper. 2. Purified nitrite reductase accepted electrons from ferredoxin (the natural donor) or from reduced dyes. Ferredoxin was reduced by illuminated chloroplasts or dithionite, or by NADPH when diaphorase was present. The purified enzyme did not accept electrons directly from NADPH. 3. Ferredoxins purified from maize, spinach or Clostridium were interchangeable in the nitrite-reductase system. 4. Nitrite reductase had K(m) 0.15mm for nitrite. The pH optimum varied with plant and method of assay. The preparation had low sulphite-reductase activity. Ammonia was the product of nitrite reduction. 5. For some plants, the assay of crude preparations with NADPH was limited by diaphorase and the addition of diaphorase gave a better estimate of nitrite-reductase activity. A simple method of assay is described that uses dithionite with benzyl viologen as electron donor.


Sensing devices with wearability would open the door to many advanced applications including soft robotics, artificial intelligence, and healthcare monitoring. Here, inspired by the configuration of the human epidermis, we present a flexible three-dimensional (3D) cellular sensor array (CSA) via a one-step thermally induced phase separation method. The CSA was framed by the 3D cellular electret with caged piezoelectric nanoparticles, which was ultrathin (80 μm), lightweight, and highly robust. For biomedical sensing, the 3D-CSA holds a decent pressure sensitivity up to 0.19 V kPa-1 with a response time of less than 16 ms. Owing to its rigid structural symmetry, the 3D-CSA could be identically operated from its both sides. It was demonstrated to successfully measure the human heartbeat, detect the eyeball motion for sleeping monitoring, and tactile imaging. Mimicking the functionalities of the human skin with a self-powered operation feature, the 3D-CSA was expected to represent a substantial advancement in wearable electronics for healthcare.


INTRODUCTION
Hyponatremia is the most common electrolyte disorder among
hospitalized patients and has been associated with increased mortality.
Hyponatremia is defined as a serum sodium concentration (Na+) less than 135
mEq/L.
Serum sodium levels and serum osmolality are normally maintained
under precise control by homeostatic mechanisms involving thirst, anti-diuretic
hormone and the renal handling of filtered sodium. Hyponatremia occurs in a
broad spectrum of patients who are asymptomatic or critically ill.
Patients in whom the serum sodium concentration is greater than 130
mEq/L are usually asymptomatic, whereas those in whom these values are lower
may have symptoms. Clinical symptoms vary from individual to individual.
Majority of patients with hyponatremia are asymptomatic. Most patients with
hyponatremia have non-specific symptoms or symptoms due to an underlying
disease or disorder. The clinical manifestations of hyponatremia are produced
by brain swelling and are primarily a function of the rate of fall of serum sodium
concentration and not the absolute level. Symptoms occurring early in
hyponatremia is usually anorexia, nausea, vomiting. Some patients may have
headache and irritability. As serum sodium levels falls further patients develop
neuropsychiatry symptoms.
These symptoms range from restlessness, altered consciousness, lethargy,
seizures to coma. As the symptomatology vary markedly, the diagnosis of
hyponatremia is difficult to establish. Prompt recognition and optimal
management of hyponatremia in hospitalized patients may reduce in-hospital
mortality and symptom severity, allow for less intensive hospital care, decrease
the duration of hospitalization and associated costs and improve the treatment of
underlying co morbid conditions and patients' quality of life. So the treating
clinician should have a high index of suspicion to diagnose hyponatremia.
There are serious neurological sequelae associated with hyponatremia and
its management. The possible causes of hyponatremia should always be sought
in every case. The presence of symptoms and duration of hyponatremia guide
the treatment strategy. Thorough evaluation for hyponatremia mandates
accurate history taking and clinical examination along with various
investigations.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:
1. To study the incidence of hyponatremia in hospitalized adult patients in medical wards.
2. To determine the etiology of clinically significant hyponatremia in 100 patients in medical wards.
3. To determine the clinical presentation of hyponatremia in these patients.
4. To study whether the primary disease is a cause for hyponatremia and whether other features cause hyponatremia also.
5. To study whether hyponatremia adds to morbidity and mortality.
6. To study the various diseases associated with hyponatremia.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
Study Area:
Madras Medical College and Government General Hospital is one of the largest hospitals in South India located in Chennai Metropolis, Tamil Nadu catering the needs of over one crore people.
The Laboratory:
The Biochemistry lab is a standardized laboratory. The methods used for estimation are:
Methods → 1. Serum Sodium – HILITE/Transaminase
2. Serum Potassium – I.S.ELECTRODE (Ion selective
Electrophoresis),
3. UREA – Glutaraldehyde LDH,
4. Creatinine – Jaffe Kinetic,
5. SUGAR – (GOD/POD/Glucose oxidase peroxidase),
6. LFT – Enzymes – kinetic,
7. TFT – Automated ELISA reader,
8. Urine Na – I.S.ELECTRODE,
9. Urine K – I.S.ELECTRODE,
10. Lipids – ENZYMATIC METHOD,
11. Urine osmolality – FREEZING POINT METHOD.
Study Population:
Patients admitted in Government General Hospital medical wards with serum sodium less than 130 mmol/L.
Type and Duration of study:
Cross section study, period of one and a half year (January 2008 to June 2009).
Inclusion Criteria:
All inpatients >12 years of age with atleast two serum sodium values
<130 mmol/L.
Exclusion Criteria:
Patients with age less than 12 years and patients who are treated with
Mannitol and osmotic diuretics.
Sample size and Technique:
One hundred patients of Government General Hospital, Chennai.
The lab values of serum sodium of all patients from January 2008 to June 2009 was studied from which incidence of hyponatremia was calculated.
Out of this hyponatremic patients, a sample size of 100 patients were randomly selected by Simple Random Sampling, from the Table of Random Numbers satisfying the inclusion criteria.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS:
The descriptive statistics – mean, median, standard deviation, minimum value, maximum value, range was used to describe the data.
1. Central tendency (Average):
a. Arithmetic Mean (X),
b. Median,
c. Mode,
2. Measures of dispersion:
a. Range,
b. Standard deviation.
The mean and standard deviation are calculated. The values between (a) 1 standard deviation on either side of mean will include 68% of values
(b) values of twice the standard deviation from the mean will have 95% of values.These are "Confidence limits" of mean.
The data was entered into excel work sheet and above calculated.
RESULTS:
The total number of hospital admission in medical wards was 25,326 and serum sodium estimates was done for 21,020 patients. The number of patients with hyponatremia less than 130 mmol/L was about 3980 patients (18.9%). The
number of patients with severe hyponatremia with serum sodium less than 120 mmol/L was 620 patients (2.95%).
CONCLUSIONS:
1. Symptomatic hyponatremia is common among the hospitalized patients.
2. Neurological symptoms are common in hyponatremia patients.
3. SIADH and euvolumic hyponatremia formed the largest subgroup in the study.
4. Drugs, especially diuretics, are a common cause of hyponatremia.
5. A relatively large number of patients had endocrine abnormalities (thyroid, adrenal and pituitary).
6. The mortality was about 10%. It was mainly due to underlying primary diseases.
7. Older age groups had more incidence of hyponatremia.
8. Symptoms of hyponatremia increased with severity of hyponatremia.


User profiling refers to inferring people's attributes of interest (AoIs) like gender and occupation, which enables various applications ranging from personalized services to collective analyses. Massive nonlinguistic audio data brings a novel opportunity for user profiling due to the prevalence of studying spontaneous face-to-face communication. In this poster, we are the first to build a user profiling system to infer gender and personality based on nonlinguistic audio. Instead of linguistic or acoustic features which are unable to extract, we focus on conversational features that could reflect AoIs. We firstly develop an adaptive voice activity detection algorithm that could address individual differences in voice and false-positive voice activities caused by people nearby. Secondly, we propose a gender-assisted multi-task learning method to combat dynamics in human behavior by integrating gender differences and the correlation of personality traits. The experimental evaluation of 100 people in 273 meetings indicates the superiority of the proposed method in gender identification and personality recognition respectively.


Different members of coalition governments typically have responsibility for different aspects, or dimensions, of policy. Such responsibilities are allocated as portfolios to government members. Given a distribution of such portfolios, final government policy is derived as the accumulation of individual members' decisions in regard to their respective responsibilities. We develop a portfolio allocation model of government formation and policy decision in multiparty legislatures. In particular, we focus on stable portfolio allocations, where a stable allocation is one that yields a policy that no legislative coalition is willing or able to overturn. Several notions of stability are considered and related to the usual concept of the core. Among the results are that although stable allocations are not guaranteed, such allocations can exist with minority governments; and that final policy outcomes associated with stable governments need not be "centrist."


Regeneration of abandoned industrial facilities can heighten the availability through potential values that cannot be found in newly-built buildings and through the sense of overscale space. Furthermore, backward regions can be activated by assigning their identity and establishing social-cultural infrastructures. The aim of the present study is to analyze and integrate of characteristics of design expression based on a case of creative space in Shanghai. A research on the creative space in Shanghi designedly proceeded according to government's extensive administrative support and policy. We keep appearances of industrial buildings as close as possible to their original condition, thereby revealing symbolism and forming unique characteristics that distinguish them from those of other areas. While keeping the shape characteristics of the bridge8, M50, Red Town, 2577 Greative Garden and 1933 Shanghai, we designed spaces in terms of spacial variability, oneness, accessibility and continuity and activated areas by inducing residents' participation and fostering art and cultural oriented facilities. These characteristics of design expression are factors to be considered in regenerating abandoned industrial facilities internally and hopefully they are used as a reference of design plan.


An adaptive controller is discussed and a proof of its global asymptotic stability with respect to the standard rigid body model of robot arm dynamics is presented. Experimental data from a study of this and other globally asymptotically stable adaptive controllers on two very different robot arms are used to reconcile several previous contrasting empirical studies, demonstrate and compare their superior tracking performance, and examine contexts that compromise their advantage.<<ETX>>


Highlights Daily maximum crop coefficient (Kc) values were similar for legacy hybrids and a modern drought-tolerant (DT) hybrid. Later planting dates for a DT hybrid resulted in average season lengths ~25 days shorter than those of legacy hybrids. Results illustrated the effects of environment, planting date, interannual variation in temperature, and the importance of climate-specific Kc functions. DT hybrids may be more effective at reproductive growth during periods of heat stress in semi-arid environments, although additional data are needed to support this conclusion. Abstract. Corn (Zea mays L.) is a major irrigated crop grown in the Southern High Plains including the Texas Panhandle. Irrigation from the Ogallala Aquifer is required to sustain profitable corn production in the region by supplementing inadequate and erratic rainfall. Effective irrigation scheduling works to extend limited groundwater resources by avoiding water losses associated with runoff and/or percolation below the root zone. The use of crop coefficient (Kc) and reference evapotranspiration (ETo) values to estimate daily crop water use (ETc) remains an effective scheduling tool that can complement other irrigation scheduling approaches. Both Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO-56) piecewise and curvilinear Kc values for corn are found in the literature. However, advances in corn genetics have led to questions about the applicability of Kc values developed using legacy corn hybrids to irrigation of modern drought-tolerant (DT) hybrids. Lysimeter-derived Kc values for legacy corn hybrids grown in large weighing lysimeter fields at the USDA-ARS Conservation and Production Research Laboratory at Bushland, Texas, were compared with those derived from a modern DT corn hybrid recently grown in the same fields. Results indicated that although midseason daily Kc values were similar for all hybrids, average season length was ~25 days shorter for the modern DT hybrid, characterized by a shortened initial growth period followed by more rapid increase of Kc during the development period. However, plots of Kc over thermal time illustrated that the differences in season length were likely attributable to later planting dates associated with the DT corn hybrids. Average seasonal water use was 730 and 811 mm for the legacy and modern DT hybrids, respectively (three years each), with corresponding average yields of 1.2 and 1.4 kg ha-1. Results suggest that published Kc and Kcb values developed with legacy corn hybrids remain largely applicable to modern DT corn hybrids when used with accurate estimates of effective canopy-based growth stages and climate-specific Kc functions.


The circular economy is poised to transform economic systems and contribute to sustainable development. Most of the attention has focussed on how production can become circular by developing innovative business models, processes and products that close material loops. However, although these solutions are required to inspire radical changes, the lack of demand for such offerings (both perceived and real) has been highlighted in literature as a significant barrier. Enabling such demand necessitates a deep understanding of the consumer and the processes by which consumption patterns, and the social practices they result from, are transformed. It requires an understanding of the actors that need to be involved in such processes, as well as tools and design interventions that will contribute to a circular economy. In this chapter, we provide insights regarding these aspects based on existing and ongoing research that focuses on consumption-related aspects of the circular economy. We first introduce some consumer behaviours in a circular economy, and examine factors which may influence adoption or acceptance of circular products and services. We then describe some strategies and concepts for introducing circularity to consumers, in the form of business models, design and communications strategies, and finally we discuss some of the challenges of circular consumption.


Abstract The cluster formation in three-dimensional wireless sensor networks (3D-WSN) gives rise to overlapping of signals due to spherical sensing range which leads to information redundancy in the network. To address this problem, we develop a sensing algorithm for 3D-WSN based on dodecahedron topology which we call three-dimensional distributed clustering (3D-DC) algorithm. Using 3D-DC algorithm in 3D-WSN, accurate information extraction appears to be a major challenge due to the environmental noise where a cluster head (CH) node gathers and estimates information in each dodecahedron cluster. Hence, to extract precise information in each dodecahedron cluster, we propose three-dimensional information estimation (3D-IE) algorithm. Moreover, node deployment strategy also plays an important factor to maximize information accuracy in 3D-WSN. In most cases, sensor nodes are deployed deterministically or randomly. But both the deployment scenarios are not aware of where to exactly place the sensor nodes to extract more information in terms of accuracy. Therefore, placing nodes in its appropriate positions in 3D-WSN is a challenging task. We propose a three-dimensional node placement (3D-NP) algorithm which can find the possible nodes and their deployment strategy to maximize information accuracy in the network. We perform simulations using MATLAB to validate the 3D-DC, 3D-IE and 3D-NP, algorithms, respectively.


In the present investigation, unidirectional grinding marks were attained on the steel plates. Experiments were then conducted using pins of Al-Mg alloy against the prepared steel plates using an inclined pin-on-plate sliding tester. The goal of the research is to understand the influence of grinding mark direction and inclination angle of hard material on the friction and transfer layer formation during sliding. The inclination angle of the plate was held at 0.2°, 0.6°, 1°, 1.4°, 1.8°, 2.2° and 2.6° in the tests. The pins were slid both perpendicular and parallel to the grinding marks direction. Experiments were conducted under both dry and lubricated conditions on each plate in ambient environment. Results showed that the coefficient of friction and formation of transfer layer depend on the grinding marks direction and inclination angle of the hard surfaces. For a given inclination angle, the coefficient of friction and transfer layer formation were found to be more for the pins slid perpendicular to the unidirectional grinding marks when compared to parallel to the unidirectional grinding marks under both dry and lubricated conditions. The stick-slip phenomenon was observed only under lubricated conditions at the highest tilt angle for the sliding perpendicular to the grinding marks direction. These variations could be attributed to the extent of plane strain conditions taking place at the asperity level during sliding.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


While current translation theory is beginning to reconcile cultural and linguistic approaches to translation, this is far from the case in translation pedagogy and curriculum. This paper will argue in favour of a socio-cultural turn in translation pedagogy and curriculum design with specific reference to the Canadian/Quebec context where the social, political and economic dimensions of the practice of translation, and its place within the broader area of inter-cultural communication in Canada differ depending on whether one is working into English or into French. Issues examined include redesigning curriculum to highlight the socio-cultural functions of translation, integrating culture and pedagogy, and identifying the theoretical implications of a cultural turn in translation teaching.


TO THE EDITOR: Perhaps the most important point put forward by Green et al. (3) regards the overall vascular tree effects promoted by exercise. It bears consideration that skeletal muscles and their vasculature remain "plastic" throughout most of the lifetime of humans, being able to remodel in positive, beneficial ways, in response to exercise (1). However, this ability to remodel also can progress in a negative direction, with a lack of exercise and weight-bearing activities associated with aging (5) and as a result of some disease processes (2). As such, the assertion by the authors that exercise training should be the cornerstone of prevention efforts (3) should likely be extended toward consideration of exercise as a lifetime therapeutic regimen, as well as after surgery, and in combination with other treatments. This approach is typically initiated with rehabilitation programs after coronary bypass surgery (1). However, the regimen is usually of a relatively brief time period, originally 1–2 mo, now as much as 3–6 mo, but typically dictated by insurance coverage and other nonmedical considerations. Thus the unmotivated postbypass patient can lapse backward toward a lifestyle that may have contributed to their original need for surgery, forcing "reductive muscle and vascular remodeling" (5), which can be detrimental and increase risk for a subsequent event. Furthermore, the statistical modeling suggesting that nearly half of risk reduction associated with exercise cannot be explained by established risk factors (4), would support the idea put forth by Green et al. (3), that refocus of investigation toward impact of exercise on vascular remodeling and function is warranted, particularly in conjunction with other therapeutic approaches.


Growth factors such as fibroblast growth factor‐2 (FGF‐2) and epidermal growth factor (EGF) that activate extracellular signal‐regulated kinases (ERKs) through receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) stimulate proliferation but suppress differentiation of osteoblasts. To study the mechanism of this inhibitory action of these growth factors on osteoblastic differentiation, we evaluated Smad1 transactivity in MC3T3‐E1 osteoblast‐like cells by reporters of promoter activity of mouse Smad6, an early response gene to bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs). FGF‐2 and EGF inhibited alkaline phosphatase activity and Smad6 promoter activity stimulated by BMP‐2. Overexpression of constitutively active MEK by adenovirus mimicked, but that of dominant negative Ras or treatment with a MEK1 inhibitor, PD098059, reversed, the inhibitory effects of these growth factors on both activities. These effects are mediated by BMP‐responsive elements (BMPREs) on Smad6 promoter, because an artificial reporter driven by three tandem BMPREs gave similar results, and these effects were all abolished when the BMPREs were mutated. RTK‐ERK activation inhibited the promoter activity even when BMP signal was mediated by a mutant Smad1, which lacks phosphorylation sites by ERKs, or by a Smad1 fused to Gal4 DNA binding domain, which constitutively localizes in the nucleus. These results show that the RTK‐Ras‐ERK pathway suppresses BMP signal by interfering with Smad1 transactivity. Because direct phosphorylation of Smad1 by ERKs is not required for the inhibition, other transcriptional factors that are phosphorylated by ERKs might be involved in the regulation of osteoblastic differentiation by ERKs.


BACKGROUND
Carotid webs (CaWs) are fibromuscular projections in the internal carotid artery (ICA) that cause mild luminal narrowing (<50%), but may be causative in up to one-third of seemingly cryptogenic strokes. Understanding hemodynamic alterations caused by CaWs is imperative to assessing stroke risk. Time-Average Wall Shear Stress (TAWSS) and Oscillatory Shear Index (OSI) are hemodynamic parameters linked to vascular dysfunction and thrombosis.

PURPOSE
To test the hypothesis: "CaWs are associated with lower TAWSS and higher OSI than mild atherosclerosis or healthy carotid bifurcation."

STUDY TYPE
Prospective study.

POPULATION
A total of 35 subjects (N = 14 bifurcations with CaW, 11F, age: 49 ± 10, 10 mild atherosclerosis 6F, age: 72 ± 9, 11 healthy 9F, age: 42 ± 13).

FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE
4D flow/STAR-MATCH/3D TOF/3T MRI, CTA.

ASSESSMENT
4D Flow velocity data were analyzed in two ways: 1) 3D ROI in the ICA bulbar segment (complex flow patterns are expected) was used to quantify the regions with low TAWSS and high OSI. 2) 2D planes were placed perpendicular to the centerline of the carotid bifurcation for detailed analysis of TAWSS and OSI.

STATISTICAL TESTS
Independent-samples Kruskal-Wallis-H test with 0.05 used for statistical significance.

RESULTS
The percent surface area where low TAWSS was present in the ICA bulb was 12.3 ± 8.0% (95% CI: 7.6-16.9) in CaW subjects, 1.6 ± 1.9% (95% CI: 0.2-2.9) in atherosclerosis, and 8.5 ± 7.7% (95% CI: 3.6-13.4) in healthy subjects, all differences were statistically significant (ƞ2  = 0.3 [95% CI: 0.05-0.5], P-value CaW vs. healthy = 0.2). OSI had similar values in the CCA between groups (ƞ2  = 0.07 [95% CI: 0.0-0.2], P-value = 0.5), but OSI was significantly higher downstream of the bifurcation in CaW subjects compared to atherosclerosis and normal subjects. OSI returned to similar values between groups 1.5 diameters distal to the bifurcation (ƞ2  = 0.03 [95% CI: 0.0-0.2], P-value = 0.7).

CONCLUSION
Lower TAWSS and higher OSI are present in the ICA bulb in patients with CaW when compared to patients with atherosclerotic or healthy subjects.

EVIDENCE LEVEL
2 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 2.


Research has demonstrated that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are crucial factors in carcinogenesis. LncRNA, cardiac hypertrophy-related factor (CHRF), has been demonstrated to act as an oncogene in a variety of types of tumor. However, its biological function in lung adenocarcinoma remains to be elucidated. The present study aimed to examine the level of CHRF expression in lung adenocarcinoma tissues and cell lines, and to analyze the association between CHRF and clinicopathological characteristics, as well prognosis of patients with lung adenocarcinoma. Loss-of-function assays were performed to determine the biological function of CHRF. The expression of CHRF was markedly upregulated in lung adenocarcinoma tissues and cell lines. Patients exhibiting upregulated CHRF also demonstrated advanced Tumor-Node-Metastasis stage, lymph node metastasis and larger tumor size compared with those exhibiting downregulated CHRF. Results of Cox proportional hazards regression analysis suggested that highly-expressed CHRF may be regarded as an independent prognostic factor of prognosis. In addition, loss-of-function assays indicated that downregulation of CHRF suppressed cell proliferation, migration and invasion, and induced cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Western blotting revealed that the phosphoinositide-3-kinase/Akt signaling pathway activity is reduced in lung adenocarcinoma following the knockdown of CHRF. Together, these results indicate that lncRNA, CHRF, may serve a critical role in the development and progression of lung adenocarcinoma, and may act as a novel prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in lung adenocarcinoma.


[The author explores the intersection of history and theology, focusing on a theological analysis of the American Catholic response to slavery. The article places 19th-century episcopal Catholic teaching and practice on slavery in the context of memory and repentance. Using current papal documents calling for repentance of the Church's past failings, the article reflects on American Catholic responses to slavery and draws out the religious and moral implications of American episcopal teachings on slavery, with an emphasis on the relationship between inadequate or false teaching and church practice. The topic has implications for studies on the development of moral doctrine.]


Times have changed, from pre-modern to modern, and now into postmodern times. The postmodern era is also followed by philosophical thinking from postmodernism. These philosophical thoughts have greatly influenced the lives of many people, who have also touched on aspects of the Christian faith. The principles of postmodernism are subjectivism, anti-history, perspective pluralism, and relativity. These principles have a negative influence on the principles of the Christian faith so that postmodernism is one of the challenges in the Christian faith. The challenge is that postmodernism is an objective anti-truth philosophy. So that it affects the lives of believers so that they remain faithful to reveal the final truth of the Christian faith, making Christian faith the only test tool against postmodernism and dismantling the falsity of postmodernism. Therefore this article was written to provide an understanding of postmodernism and its implications for the Christian faith so that many believers can provide anticipation in the postmodern era that is lived today.


Constipation is commonly described as a variety of symptoms including infrequent bowel movements and/or rectal evacuation disorders. Hard stools, excessive straining, bloating and abdominal pain are frequently associated. The several clinical pictures resulting by their combination are mostly due to a primary disturbance of colonic propulsion and/or obstructed rectal emptying, but the chronicity of these initially functional disturbances induce structural changes in the recto-colonic tract (such as dilatation, dolicocolon, rectal prolapse, rectocele, hemorrhoids): constipation turns so in a condition of illness where primary and secondary disorders, functional and organic alterations are not no more clearly detachable and therapeutic priorities are a real challenge for primary care physicians and specialists. The recent knowledges indicate a pivotal role for the gut microbiota in the pathophysiology of colonic dysfunction underlying constipation, contributing to make it is a real "systemic" illness, and not a disorder of an organ, given that the impressive consequences which intestinal dysbiosis has on the Enteric, Autonomic and Central Nervous Systems.


"Size matters in international relations," (Steinsson /Thorhallsson 2017: 1), but does size still matter in the digital age, and in the cyber domain? Scholars have long believed that larger states are better equipped for state competition due the size of their populations, economies, and militaries based on a respective size/power calculus. This chapter explores how digital technological innovation help small states like the Nordic countries to gain influence on the world political stage and in the cyber domain. Emphasis is put on the way how smaller states like Estonia or Finland make use of this new asymmetric toolbox of 'cyber power' to gain leverage in the international security realm.


This paper describes the overvoltage through lightning surge analysis on underground system in DC combined distribution systems. It is considered that operating micro grid including distributed generation with smart grid can make possibility of composing new distribution system different from existing one. However, there are many papers about low voltage DC distribution in grids or buildings but not many about replacement or distributing 22.9kV AC distribution system to DC system. Among many research need for DC system development, overvoltage is studied in this paper. Overvoltage is simulated on DC cable when lightning strikes to overhead grounding wire which is installed at the nearest location from power cable section. Analysis as well as modeling is performed in EMTP/ATPDraw. It is evaluated that analysis results can be used to design of DC underground distribution power cable system.


This paper investigates engineering characteristics of lightweight soils mixed with air foam and tire powder. Lightweight soils could be used as foundation materials, back-fills of reducing vibrating or abutment, and so on. Unconfined and triaxial compression tests were carried out to analyze strength and deformation characteristics of lightweight soils by changing target moist unit weight and cement contents. In comparison with strength characteristics of two different kinds of lightweight soils with same most unit weights (), unconfined compression tests showed similar compressive strength, however, triaxial compression tests showed that compressive strength of lightweight soils mixed with waste tire powder was relatively larger strength than that of lightweight soils mixed with air foam because of elasticity of waste tire powder. Also, unconfined and triaxial compressive strengths of most of lightweight soils increase with increases of moist unit weight and cement contents. However, the strength of lightweight soils mixed with air foam under , when moist unit weight exceeds a certain cement contents, decreases even though cement contents increase because of the effect in a void gap of air foam.


Environmental contamination by hexahydro‐1,3,5‐trinitro‐1,3,5‐triazine (RDX), and octahydro‐1,3,5,7‐tetranitro‐1,3,5,7‐tetrazocine (HMX), the two most widely used compounds for military operations, is a long‐standing problem at the manufacturing and decommissioning plants. Since explosives contamination has previously been shown to favour the growth of specific bacterial communities, the present study attempts to identify the specialist bacterial communities and their potential functional and metabolic roles by using amplicon targeted and whole‐metagenome sequencing approaches in samples collected from two distinct explosives manufacturing sites. We hypothesize that the community structure and functional attributes of bacterial population are substantially altered by the concentration of explosives and physicochemical conditions. The results highlight the predominance of Planctomycetes in contrast to previous reports from similar habitats. The detailed phylogenetic analysis revealed the presence of operational taxonomic units related to bacterial members known for their explosives degradation. Further, the functional and metabolic analyses highlighted the abundance of putative genes and unidentified taxa possibly associated with xenobiotic biodegradation. Our findings suggest that microbial species capable of utilizing explosives as a carbon, energy or electron source are favoured by certain selective pressures based on the prevailing physicochemical and geographical conditions.


Background: Activating mutations of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) are associated with the high sensitivity of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) like erlotinib. However, acquired resistance limits the clinical efficacy of EGFR-TKIs. Several mechanisms of the acquired resistance have been described, including gatekeeper T790M mutation and MET amplification. Overexpression of AXL, a receptor type tyrosine kinase and/or its ligand, GAS-6 have been identified in a subset of NSCLC patients with acquired resistance, and inhibition of AXL has been shown to restore sensitivity to erlotinib in nonclinical resistant models, suggesting that AXL is also involved in EGFR-TKI resistance of NSCLC. ASP8273 is a mutant-selective irreversible EGFR inhibitor currently in clinical trials (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02113813, NCT02192697, NCT02500927). We have previously reported that ASP8273 selectively inhibited kinase activities of EGFR activating and T790M mutations compared to wild type EGFR, and induced tumor regression in HCC827 and NCI-H1975 xenografted mice. In this study, we evaluated the antitumor activity of ASP8273 against AXL overexpressing PC-9 cells. Method: PC-9 vec. cells and PC-9 AXL cells were constructed by the infection of pMXs-puro vector and AXL coding vector, respectively into PC-9, a NSCLC cell line with EGFR exon 19 del activating mutation. Inhibitory effects of ASP8273 and other EGFR-TKIs, including erlotinib on EGFR and AXL signaling and cell proliferation were investigated in PC-9 vec. and PC-9 AXL cells. In vivo antitumor effect was also examined in subcutaneously implanted with PC-9 AXL. Result: ASP8273 at 1 μmol/L inhibited cell growth associated with the inhibition of EGFR, AXL, AKT, and ERK phosphorylation in PC-9 AXL. On the other hand, EGFR-TKIs at 1 μmol/L did not show cell growth inhibition in PC-9 AXL cells, whereas those showed cell growth inhibition in PC-9 vec. cells. EGFR-TKIs inhibited the phosphorylation of EGFR but not AXL, AKT, and ERK in PC-9 AXL cells. In an in vivo xenograft model using PC-9 AXL, once-daily oral administration of ASP8273 at 50 mg/kg induced statistically significant tumor growth inhibition although the other EGFR-TKIs did not. Conclusion: These results suggest that overexpression of AXL confers resistance to EGFR-TKIs in NSCLC cells and ASP8273 may show antitumor activity against EGFR-TKIs-resistant NSCLC patients with AXL expression. Citation Format: Naoki Kaneko, Hiroaki Tanaka, Satoshi Konagai, Hiroko Yamamoto, Hideki Sakagami, Tomohiro Eguchi, Takahiro Matsuya, Masamichi Mori, Hiroyuki Koshio, Tadashi Terasaka, Masaaki Hirano, Sadao Kuromitsu, Masahiro Takeuchi. Preclinical antitumor activity of ASP8273, a mutant-selective irreversible EGFR inhibitor in an AXL-overexpressing NSCLC model. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2015 Nov 5-9; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2015;14(12 Suppl 2):Abstract nr B188.


A policy capturing approach was used to examine the advising variables that contribute to student satisfaction. Students (N = 468) rated 48 scenarios in which advising approach, relationship, advisor gender, emotional nature of the relationship, and type of advisor were manipulated. Results show that being known to the advisor, having a professional advisor, and receiving warmth and support from the advisor were important factors to advisee satisfaction. Ratings differed by student gender, advising experience, and age. Relational variables can exist across multiple advising approaches, and satisfaction likely depends more on the advisor's interpersonal skills and style than advising approach.


Abstract This article deals with lexicography from the Age of Enlightenment. The idea is not only to understand what was done but also to see if anything relevant to modern lexicography could be retrieved from this historical experience. With this objective, it will have a closer look at a specific eighteenth-century dictionary, viz. Malachy Postlethwayt's Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, published in four editions between 1751 and 1774. This work is selected because it is one of the most comprehensive and complex specialised dictionaries produced in that era. The article will first place the dictionary in its historical environment. It will then make a detailed study of its very rich content with a view to systematising the various types of lexicographical data included as well as the structures applied to assist the users when navigating through its highly complex pages. The analysis will show the great variety of items which Postlethwayt put into his dictionary in order to meet the multi-facetted needs of a broad group of users. In some aspects, the dictionary displays very advanced features which may even inspire modern lexicography, especially online lexicography. It seems that relevant lexicographical knowledge from the Age of Enlightenment was more or less forgotten due to the predominance of the erroneous idea that dictionaries are books of words and not of "things" as many eighteenth- century lexicographers described their products. The article therefore makes a call to recover the holistic Enlightenment Age vision of lexicography and re-integrate "dictionaries of things" into modern lexicographical theory and practice.


Different strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) namely Lactobacillus acidophilus NCIM 2287, Lactobacillus plantarum NCIM 2085, Lactobacillus helveticus NCIM 2126 and Lactococcus lactis NCIM 2114 were procured from the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) Pune, India. These LAB cells were individually (107 cfu/ml) sprayed using a sterile syringe on the dressed fresh mackerel fish chunks and incubated at 37°C for two days. The growth pattern of each LAB and their antagonism against fish-borne spoilage bacteria namely, specific spoilage bacteria, halophilic bacteria, coliforms, lipolytic, proteolytic bacteria and total plate count were estimated for three days. Pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus was inhibited by Lb. acidophilus on the second day with 4.30 log difference as compared to control. The growth of specific spoilage bacteria was decreased by Lb. plantarum spray on the first day by 1.0 log difference. Lb. helveticus inhibited S. aureus on the third day by 3.5 log difference. Out of the four LABs tried, Lb. helveticus showed the best inhibitory effect against the fish-borne bacteria. All three LABs exhibited inhibition against the fish-borne spoilage bacteria, they may thus be potentially used as bio-preservative bacteria to preserve the whole fish meat or minced meat products etc. for a shorter duration. Key words : Lactobacillus helveticus, Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactococcus lactis, Lactobacillus acidophilus , antagonism, spoilage bacteria, mackerel fish.


"Under the present unusual conditions, when it is desirable to save staple foods and to reduce the amount of labor expended in transporting foods, special attention should be given to the possibility of using perishable food materials, particularly vegetables and fruits, near the place of their production. The purpose of this bulletin is to show how the use of these foods can be increased without lessening the food value or attractiveness of the diet or seriously altering food habits. In general, the bulletin points out that peas, beans, and similar legumes would be the most useful as protein (meat) savers; potatoes, sweet potatoes, and similar vegetables as starch savers; and fruits and sweet potatoes as possible sugar savers, while all fruits and green and succulent vegetables are valuable to supply the diet with mineral substances and with certain substances essential to health which are present in them and in many other foods in minute amounts. When vegetables are used to supply protein it is important to supplement them with some other food containing protein, and for this purpose milk, particularly skim milk (so often a by-product, and a perishable one as well), is important. By means of bills of fare and recipes practical application is made of the principles set forth in the bulletin." -- p. 2


Socio-technical systems join together humans and technique. Basic concepts and principles of socio-technical systems are outlined, as well as weighted networks as the appropriate mathematical models. Particular examples of socio-technical systems with various usages of weighted networks in domains such as airline connection networks, scientific collaboration, social networks, software engineering and urban traffic are presented. Comparative analysis
of the selected examples is outlined with the focus on the nature and functions of nodes, links and weights. The identified challenges, such as the creation of networks, evolving nature of systems, and the need for multidisciplinary teams in the system design are discussed.


In this paper I investigate the relationship between agreement morpheme order and syntactic processes that take place at LF. That a relationship should exist at all follows from the premise that the function of agreement is to license NPs marked for abstract Case. The execution of this function ultimately requires movement, i.e. of Case-marked NPs to the agreement morphemes responsible for licensing them; this in turn potentially interacts with other instances of movement and the representations they derive.


Abstract Endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR) provides an attractive alternative to traditional open techniques. Endovascular repair is frequently limited by aortic aneurysm neck angulation, the absence of an adequate infrarenal neck, and the need for internal iliac preservation. Several devices have been created to incorporate visceral artery segments as well as preserve the internal iliac artery, thus broadening the patient population suited for endovascular repair. This article will provide a review of the current literature regarding fenestrated devices, branch devices, off-the-shelf devices, and physician-modified devices. It will also highlight the iliac branch stent grafts currently on trial for internal iliac artery preservation. Data thus far have suggested that these devices will be both a safe and effective option for anatomically challenging abdominal aortic aneurysms.


Nanocrystalline cellulose (CNC) is a renewable material with high potential in many applications. Due to its unique self-assembly and optical properties, CNC tends to behave as an iridescent pigment. The aim of this research was to explore the potential of CNC as an effect pigment in wood coatings. CNC-based coatings were developed from an aqueous CNC solution, a UV-curable water-based clear coating formulation, several colorants, and specialized additives. In this paper, the morphology of the resulting CNC films was investigated through circular dichroism and optical microscopy under polarized light. The effect of the CNC surface charge changes was monitored through zeta potential measurements. Color changes, or travel, and flop index were used to assess the iridescent effect of the coatings containing CNC. The experimental wood coatings contained CNC showed that the enhancement of the iridescent effect depends on the distribution and alignment of the CNC rod-like particles in order to generate the right pitch in the helical structure and their interaction with the polymer matrix as well with the additives. In conclusion, CNC could be successfully used as effect pigment in finishing systems, which can enhance the attractiveness and bring out the special grain of various types of wood.


Objective: The objective of this paper was to investigate differential pathways in sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (SALS) based on pathway network analysis. Materials and Methods: To achieve this goal, first, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between SALS and normal controls were identified, and a target network was defined as DEGs correlated interactions from the search tool for the retrieval of interacting genes/proteins (STRING). Second, topological centrality analysis was conducted on the target network to identify hub genes and hub network. Third, pathway network was constructed by taking intersections of Reactome database and STRING protein-protein interaction network. Finally, based on extracting the common interactions between target network, hub network and pathway network, we built randomized network, performed randomization test, and denoted differential pathways and hub differential pathways with P < 0.05. Results: There were 485 DEGs and 627 interactions in the target network. The pathway network was comprised 117,370 interactions. What was more, we found that 217 pathways had intersections with the target network. By accessing randomization test and removing the intersected count <10, 21 differential pathways with P values were nearly to be 0 were obtained, of which 6 rightly were the hub differential pathways, such as gene expression, mRNA Splicing, and mRNA splicing-major pathway. Conclusion: We have investigated 217 differential pathways and 21 significant differential pathways between SALS and normal controls based on network strategy. The findings might provide potential biomarkers for detection and therapy of SALS clinically and give great insights to reveal molecular mechanism underlying this disease. However, how these pathways cooperated with each other is still not clear, and future study should focus on this aspect.


Piano Key Weirs (PKW) are non-linear weir structures with the benefit of an increased discharge capacity, compared to regular, linear weirs. While the structure's footprint is very small, PKWs can be placed on top of dams for flood release purposes. But also, in-channel approaches are possible. Compared to regular weirs with movable elements, PKWs are more complex hydraulic structures, but with less maintenance necessity. PKW research is very young and nowadays frequently discussed within the hydraulic structure community. When analyzing experimental model data, scale effects are of major interest, because small scaled models might be affected by viscosity and surfaced tension influences. For other non-linear weir types, e.g. labyrinth weirs, size-scale effects have been analyzed comprehensively during the last years. For PKWs, only a few investigations are available in the literature. The present paper pics up this research topic and presents a study on size-scale effects of an A-type PKW. Therefore, experimental models with various scale sizes were conducted in the TH Luebeck's hydraulic laboratory to identify the influence of scale effects on resulting nape behaviors and consequently, on resulting discharge coefficients. A surface tension correction function is presented.


In this paper the results of a five-year investigation of the pollution of soil, as well as of surface and groundwater by atrazine are reported. The soil samples were collected from different localities, from the tillage level, at two depths (0–15 and 15–30 cm) during the period September-November from 1995 to 1999. The surface and groundwater samples were taken from the same localities during the same period. The residues were detected by the ELISA test. The results showed that almost all the analysed soil samples contained residues of atrazine. These quantities varied from 0.02 to 0.10 mg/kg (0–15 cm), and up to 0.05 mg/kg (15–30 cm), depending on the locality, soil type and the year of investigation. Concerning the residues in the surface and groundwater, it was found that most of the analysed samples contained atrazine residues. In the case of the surface water, the quantity of the residues ranged from 1.0 to 4.13 g/L, whille the ground water contained up to 0.3 g/L depending on the locality and the year of investigation.


It is well known that biological tissue adapts to changes in mechanical loading. The stress level in the myocardium is an important factor in evaluating the cardiac tissue. For example, it may be an indicator of the metabolic rate of cardiac cells. But measuring the stress level in living tissue is very difficult. The deformations of the left ventricle (LV) can be obtained from 3D tagged MRI or image warping. To calculate the stress distribution in the LV, the mechanical properties of myocardium still must be determined. In this paper, we studied the feasibility to use a finite element (FE) model of the LV to estimate the material constants for Humphrey's model of passive cardiac tissue from cine MRI data. In our simulations, the target strain-map was generated by running the forward FE model of the LV with known material constants. The target strain-map was compared with current strain-map and objective functions were defined as the discrepancies between them. Newton-Raphson's method was used to minimize the objective functions iteratively.


In this study, excellent full water splitting achieved with a rationally structured multimetallic Ni–Mo/Cu nanowire free-standing electrode prepared via scalable electrochemistry is reported. By combining a conductive nanostructured scaffold and highly active outer layers, the as-prepared Ni–Mo/Cu nanowires deliver superior hydrogen and oxygen evolution performance. To achieve a 20 mA cm−2 catalytic current in a 1 M KOH electrolyte, the NM-CNW requires an overpotential of only 152 mV for hydrogen evolution and 280 mV for oxygen evolution. When assembled into a full electrolyzer, the Ni–Mo/Cu nanowires can drive full water splitting at nearly 100% faradaic efficiency steadily up to 12 h without any significant performance decay, and afford a catalytic current close to that of the state-of-the-art Pt–RuO2 system over long-term operation.


Abstract:This article examines Schwedenreiter (2018), the second novel by German-Austrian writer Hanna Sukare (b. 1957). It focuses on the eponymous grandson of a Wehrmacht deserter and his quest for his grandfather's story to be rehabilitated in the village from which he originated. This comes in the wake of the rehabilitation of Wehrmacht deserters in Austria at the national level in 2009, which is explicitly thematized in the narrative. The analysis draws specifically on Marianne Hirsch's concept of post-memory, on Ute Frevert's thinking on shaming and humiliation, on historical scholarship pertaining to deserters in the Austrian context, and on relevant scholarship on memorials and memorialization. Ultimately, this article argues that Sukare's Schwedenreiter presents continuing fault lines in the process of coming to terms with the legacy of Austrian Wehrmacht deserters, fault lines that are shown to persist, especially at the local level, despite the ostensible line in the sand with regard to official rehabilitation.


Element diffusion has small but significant effects on the structure of the stellar interior. It is interesting to investigate the effects of element diffusion using asteroseismology. We have constructed two grids of stellar models, one with diffusion and one without, for solar-like stars with masses between 0.9 and 1.4 solar masses, and varied initial helium abundance and metallicity. The oscillation frequencies of all stellar models have also been calculated. Piecewise Hermite cubic polynomials are adopted to interpolate stellar p-mode frequencies at an arbitrary age on a stellar evolutionary track. We have investigated 16 Kepler solar-like stars by comparing the model frequencies with observations. The suggested ranges of stellar parameters and some global variables are obtained. For all stars, the best model reproduces the observational frequencies with a χ 2 of the order of unity. It has been found that element diffusion is important in modeling solar-like stars. Without diffusion, the best value of the initial helium abundance is below the primordial helium abundance from Big Bang nucleosynthesis. When diffusion is taken into account, the required initial helium abundance increases to be higher than the primordial abundance. Diffusion also generally improves the frequency fitting results by reducing the minimum of χ 2. Investigation of the second difference of the oscillation frequencies on KIC 8694723 and KIC 10454113 indicates that the current model of element diffusion may underestimate the strength of settling.


Shortness of breath, dyspnea and breathlessness are collective terms to describe the awareness of inadequate gas exchange within the respiratory system.Varying mechanisms, behavioural and physiological changes are caused by this ventilation-perfusion mismatch. This complex sensation encompasses manydiverse concepts. The spectrum of language and words used as a consequence of this sensation varies from quality and intensity to emotions and feelings. Matching the phrases to the cause supports understanding. Current studies reviewed produced clusters of verbal descriptors which reflect the multi-dimensional input as a consequence of being out of breath. Using these clusters has produced a comprehensive list of twelve words known as 'The Dyspnea 12' which when used, quantifies the severity of this debilitating and extremely distressing symptom. Could these verbal descriptors be used to aid the assessment and treatment of their cause in service users and provide a more holistic view to a widespread problem?


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Bimodality in fasting plasma glucose (FPG) distribution has been detected in several populations. However, information regarding this phenomenon among Chinese ethnic groups is minimal. This study aimed to describe and update the distribution of FPG in the Uyghur and Han populations of Xinjiang, China, as well as to estimate the cut points of FPG on the basis of bimodal distribution.

METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN
A cross-sectional study was performed among the Uyghur and Han populations of Xinjiang, China in 2013. Questionnaire survey and FPG tests were conducted among 5,923 participants aged 20-80 years. We fitted the unimodal and bimodal distributions into the FPG data by ethnicity, age, gender, and location to test whether the FPG values were consistent with a bimodal distribution.

RESULTS
The FPG distribution could be described as bimodal, except for the age group of 50 years old and below among the Uyghur and Han populations and the age group of 70-80 years old among the Uyghur population (p<0.01). However, most of the cut points estimated using this method did not fall between the corresponding means of the first and second modes.

CONCLUSIONS
Although a bimodal distribution of FPG was observed in the Uyghur and Han populations of Xinjiang, China, the cut points estimated using this method were not biologically meaningful, and thus, a bimodal distribution of FPG was not useful for defining cut points to diagnose diabetes in Xinjiang.


Incremental change is intrinsic to both the initial development and subsequent evolution of large complex software systems. Evolve is a graphical design tool that captures this incremental change in the definition of software architecture. It supports a principled and manageable way of dealing with unplanned change and extension. In addition, Evolve supports decentralized evolution in which software is extended and evolved by multiple independent developers. Evolve supports a model-driven approach in that architecture definition is used to directly construct both initial implementations and extensions to these implementations. The tool implements Backbone - an architectural description language (ADL), which has both a textual and a UML2, based graphical representation. The demonstration focuses on the graphical representation.


We propose a nonparallel data-driven emotional speech conversion method. It enables the transfer of emotion-related characteristics of a speech signal while preserving the speaker's identity and linguistic content. Most existing approaches require parallel data and time alignment, which is not available in most real applications. We achieve nonparallel training based on an unsupervised style transfer technique, which learns a translation model between two distributions instead of a deterministic one-to-one mapping between paired examples. The conversion model consists of an encoder and a decoder for each emotion domain. We assume that the speech signal can be decomposed into an emotion-invariant content code and an emotion-related style code in latent space. Emotion conversion is performed by extracting and recombining the content code of the source speech and the style code of the target emotion. We tested our method on a nonparallel corpora with four emotions. Both subjective and objective evaluations show the effectiveness of our approach.


Various Endocrine Disrupting Compounds (EDCs) either natural or synthetics have been identified including bisphenol A (BPA), dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). These compounds which present widely in the product of solvent industry, agricultural, pharmaceuticals and household convenience may directly or indirectly interrupt the normal function of endocrine system. Recently, the EDCs threats to human health have led to the increasing demand of clean water sources which excites a challenge for the contaminants removal processes. Conventional treatment methods may not completely remove the contaminants, meanwhile advanced oxidation process (AOPs) especially photocatalysis have been proven efficient in removing the contaminants. Even though photocatalysis is efficient in suspension of either nano-or microscale, the immobilizing TiO2 in the membrane matrix for catalyst separation purposes have decreased the adsorption of organic substances on the TiO2 surface with potential loss of TiO2 during long-time usage. This lead to the emerging in the exploration and fabrication of dual layer hollow fiber (DLHF) membrane for better performance of immobilized TiO2. Therefore, we exploit this fact to investigate the incorporation of photocatalysis into dual-layer hollow fiber membrane which are believed may improve the photocatalytic degradation and separation efficiency. The FESEM results showed that both layers are compatible with each other and there are no delamination found between layers. The presence of outer layer does not influence the surface roughness; however improve the hydrophilicity and membrane strength. Altogether, photocatalytic dual layer hollow fiber (DLHF) membrane was successfully fabricated using co-extrusion technique.


SUMMARY The reverse link bandwidth efficiency of a spectrally overlapped CDMA system with fast transmit power control is evaluated to find the optimum overlapping, where the bandwidth efficiency is defined as the maximum aggregate bit rate of all subsystems per unit bandwidth (bps/Hz). Single and multiple cell environments are considered. Besides the rectangular chip pulse, the impact of a pulse-shaping filter is discussed. It is found that the raised cosine spectrum pulse shaping helps to increase the bandwidth efficiency and strict pulse shaping filter problem can be avoided if a large number of subsystems are overlapped. It is also found that the optimum carrier spacing remains unchanged irrespective of the power delay profile shape of the multipath channel, whether multipath fading exists or not, and whether a single cell or multiple cell system is considered. However, the bandwidth efficiency strongly depends on them and the impacts of the related parameters are discussed.


The solvolysis mechanisms of RNA phosphodiester model 2-(hydroxypropyl)-4-nitrophenyl phosphate (HpPNP) catalyzed by mononuclear zinc(II) complexes are investigated in the paper via a theoretical approach. The general-base-catalyzed (GBC) and specific-base-catalyzed (SBC) mechanisms are thoroughly discussed in the paper, and the calculations indicate a SBC mechanism (also named as the direct nucleophilic attack mechanism) when the cyclization of HpPNP is promoted by the Zn:[12]aneN3 complex ([12]aneN3 = 1,5,9-triazacyclododecane). The ligand effect is considered by involving two different catalysts, and the results show that the increasing size catalyst provides a lower energy barrier and a significant mechanistic preference to the SBC mechanism. The solvent medium effect is also explored, and reduced polarity/dielectric constant solvents, such as light alcohols methanol and ethanol, are more favorable. Ethanol is proven to be a good solvent medium because of its low dielectric constant. The computational results are indicative of concerted pathways. Our theoretical results are consistent with and well interpret the experimental observations and, more importantly, provide practical suggestions on the catalyst design and selection of reaction conditions.


An uptick in films about sex work and other forms of immaterial labor in contemporary Latin America points to a crisis in our understanding of bodies at work. This crisisfinds a precedent in cinema of the 1970s, a moment in which sex work finds a particular protagonism on screen. During this period, artists and activists together posited a replacement of the prostitute as a metaphor of dehistoricized alienation with the metonymy of sex work aslabor. Grounded in a formal and material analysis of the Brazilian films and film networks grouped under the rubric Boca do Lixo (Sao Paulo, 1973-1982), I show how they queried, through sex work, what we imagine when we invoke the term work. Attentive to the sexual division of labor that structures these films, I also show how this relatively neglected and maligned moment in Brazilian film history offers a salient case study of how sex work in the cinema negotiates labor's shifting fortunes, in and beyond Brazil, and into the present. As a limit case of what constitutes work in modernity, sex work in the cinema is uniquely poised to reveal its seismographic shifts


Many of the strongest game playing programs use a combination of Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) and deep neural networks (DNN), where the DNNs are used as policy or value evaluators. Given a limited budget, such as online playing or during the self-play phase of AlphaZero (AZ) training, a balance needs to be reached between accurate state estimation and more MCTS simulations, both of which are critical for a strong game playing agent. Typically, larger DNNs are better at generalization and accurate evaluation, while smaller DNNs are less costly, and therefore can lead to more MCTS simulations and bigger search trees with the same budget. This paper introduces a new method called the multiple policy value MCTS (MPV-MCTS), which combines multiple policy value neural networks (PV-NNs) of various sizes to retain advantages of each network, where two PV-NNs f_S and f_L are used in this paper. We show through experiments on the game NoGo that a combined f_S and f_L MPV-MCTS outperforms single PV-NN with policy value MCTS, called PV-MCTS. Additionally, MPV-MCTS also outperforms PV-MCTS for AZ training.


This paper reports a study concerning the assessment of cooperation effects at MAC layer in DVB-RCS systems. In particular, a modified resource allocation mechanism has been considered in order to implement a Selective Forwarding cooperation scheme within a group of sources working in a land-vehicular scenario. The achieved results are presented in terms of aggregated average throughput for different source loads. The use of cooperation can allow improving system performance depending on the number of cooperators considered and the different channel conditions which they are subject to, and increasing the number of scenarios characterized by different propagation conditions wherein the system can transmit data packets compared to the case of absence of cooperation.


Information is presented on how the concept of commonality is being implemented with respect to electric power system hardware for the Space Station Freedom and the US Polar Platform. Included is a historical account of the candidate common items which have the potential to serve the same power system functions on both Freedom and the Polar Platform. The Space Station program and objectives are described, focusing on the test and development responsibilities. The program definition and preliminary design phase and the design and development phase are discussed. The goal of this work is to reduce the program cost.<<ETX>>


Understanding the health impact of air pollution is critical for understanding the benefit of environmental regulations. While there is a rich literature from epidemiology and economics that quantify the mortality risk of air pollution, the morbidity impact of air pollution especially in developing countries is not well understood. This paper examines both the shortand long-term impacts of PM2.5 on morbidity based on daily card spending in hospitals and drugstores in nearly 300 cities. To address the potential endogeneity in air pollution, we construct an IV by leveraging the spatial spillovers of air pollution due to long-range transport. Our analysis shows that PM2.5 has significant impacts on health spending in both short term (within a week) and longer term (within three months). A reduction of 10 μg/m3 in daily PM2.5 could lead to a total annual savings of at least 75 billion yuan ($11 billion) in health spending in China.


Technology is increasingly being harnessed to improve the quality of learning in science subjects at university level. This article sets out, by incorporating notions drawn from constructivist and adult learning theory, a foundation for the design of an online environment for the acquisition of metacognitive problem solving skills. The capacity to solve problems is one of the generic skills now being promoted at tertiary level, yet for many learners problem-solving remains a difficulty. In addition, there are few instances of instructional design guidelines for developing learning environments to support the metacognitive skills for effective problem solving. In order to foster the processes of metacognitive skills explicitly in first year science students, we investigated areas where cognitive support was needed. The aim was to strengthen the metacognitive and reflective skills of students to assist them in adopting strategies and reflective processes that enabled them to define, plan and self monitor their thinking during problem solving. In tertiary science, both well-structured and ill-structured problems are encountered by students, thus a repertoire of skills must be fostered. A model for supporting metacognitive skills for problem solving is presented in the context of an online environment being developed at the University of New England.


It is argued in co-operative literature that a distinctive feature of consumer co-operatives is the strong linkage between customers and their co-operative organization.  Another distinctive feature identified is the nature of ownership.  Bridging these two is the claim that is the nature of ownership that creates the special bond between customers and their cooperatives.  In this theoretical paper, we elaborate this idea further, employing a psychological ownership perspective.  Limiting our work on the individual-level, we analyze co-operative literature through the definition of psychological ownership, development mechanisms, and underlying motives showing that the feelings of ownership can be an essential part of being a member.  Our concluding remarks are for the attention of both researchers and practitioners.


Introduction : Essential oils are more and more used and even sometimes recommended by the manufacturer to struggle against the allergens (mite, mold).

Objective : To measure airborne concentration of limonene, while using a spray of 41 essentials oils recommended to reduce mite infestation.

Materials and methods : The quantification of the major pre hapten (limonene) contained in the spray has been appreciated in two different ways. In the first case, the quantity of limonene in 4 pulverizations has been measured by weighing them, knowing that the product contains 4.5% of limonene. In the second case, 4 pulverizations of the spray of essential oils have been measured in a cabin of 9 m3, with a photoionization detector (ppbRAE3000® Katrem® France). For each quantification, tests were made 10 times. The choice of 4 pulverizations has been taken to follow the instructions recommended by the manufacturer.

Results : The mass of limonene measured by weighing had a mean value of 57.7 +/- 2.0 mg (for 4 pulverizations). In the room of 9 m3, the theoretical airborne concentration according to the mass of limonene in the spray was estimated to 6.4 mg/m3. The direct measurement of limonene in the room was 15 mg/m3.

Conclusion : It has been showed that concentration superior to 2.5 mg/m3 TVOC was able to have a significant impact on asthma symptoms. It's important that the pulmonologists ask their patients about their use of essential oils, which can potentially worsen the asthma symptoms.


The angle of repose of granular systems was investigated using hollow cylinders of different diameters and lengths and bases of different degree of roughness. The cylinders contained homogeneous samples of sand and gravel as well mixtures of sand and gravel with the sand either thoroughly mixed with the gravel or in layered systems. From the laboratory experiments, the following conclusions can be made: (a) the angle of repose of the granular systems was influenced by the degree of roughness of the base on which the grains came to rest. The rougher the base was, the higher was the angle of repose; (b) the mode of failure of the conical pile of grains was different depending if the base was rough or smooth. For a rough base, the failure took place on the face of the conical shape. For a smooth base, the failure took place at the base of the conical shape; (c) the lifting velocities of the cylinders were varied between a slow velocity (2 to 3 cm/sec) and a high velocity (7 to 8 cm/sec). The angle of repose was found to be smaller when the high velocity of cylinder lifting was used regardless of the basesi¯ roughness; (d) the angle of repose was found to decrease in value as the amount of material contained in the cylinders increased in value; (e) the experiments on mixtures of sand and gravel indicated that their angle of repose decreased in value as the percentage of sand in the mixture increased in value; (f) the experiments on layered granular systems (gravel on top of sand) indicated that, regardless of the lifting velocity of the cylinders, the angle of repose of the layered systems decreased in value as the height of the sand layer in the composite increased in value; and (g) the results of the tests helped to explain the angle of repose found in real rock slopes.


As Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Web services are becoming widely deployed, the issue of security is far from being solved. In an attempt to address this issue, the industry proposed several extensions to the SOAP protocol that currently reached different levels of standardization. However, no architectural guidelines have yet been proposed. In this paper we first outline the security challenges and the specifications that address these challenges and then present our concept the Service Oriented Security Architecture—SOSA. We argue that the different security functions (authentication, authorization, audit, etc.) should be realized as different stand-alone Web services These security services can then be chained together by means of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) techniques such as message routing on Enterprise Services Buses (ESB). Next, we will present a prototypical implementation of this framework and describe our experiences so far. We show that by distributing the security functions, a more flexible architecture can be designed that would lower the costs associated with implementation, administration and maintenance.


Endproducts of anaerobic fermentation, volatile fatty acids (VFAs), occur in the intestines of fish but no direct comparisons exist between VFA levels in fish with differing feeding ecologies during different seasons. We measured intestinal concentrations of six types of VFA in the upper and lower intestines of two freshwater omnivores (Cyprinus carpioi and Dorosoma cepedianum), and one piscivore (Micropterus salmoides) during the spring, summer and autumn. Acetate occurred in all species, and was highest in M. salmoides. In all species, concentrations were similar between upper and lower guts and higher during the summer. All three species contained anerobic bacteria and C. carpio and D. cepedianum contained cellulolytic types. Scanning electron microscopy revealed extensive colonization and suggested microbial breakdown of digesta in M. salmoides. In radio-tracer experiments, C. carpio dosed orally with [2–14C] acetate contained label in liver, muscle and blood tissues. Amounts of intestinal VFA did not appear to increase in species with refractile diets, and low VFA in D. cepedianum suggests fermentation plays a minimal role in the nutrition of this species. Low levels of intestinal VFA during cool seasons are consistent with the hypothesis that temperature limits fermentation in these Species.


Web search constitutes an important class of dataintensive online services in data centers. Optimizing search systems for energy efficiency, timely response and high search quality (i.e., how relevant the returned results are to a search query), however, is very challenging, as a search system involves a distributed architecture with hundreds of thousands of index serving nodes (ISNs) that return searching results to an aggregator through multiple interdependent retrieval stages in a partition-aggregate fashion. In this paper, we discover through experiments two important characteristics that can affect the system performance: (1) response time and energy consumption are greatly impacted by a small fraction of queries with long processing times; (2) the quality contribution of the ISN is independent of the query processing time. Based on our observation, we propose TailCut, which judiciously discards long query executions and enables ISN-aggregator coordination to minimize energy consumption subject to latency and quality constraints. Our experimental results show that TailCut can achieve up to 39% power saving, while satisfying the tail latency and quality constraint.


Artificial intelligence (AI) approaches have been used in personalised adaptive education systems to overcome the limitations of statically determined learning styles (LSs). These approaches utilise algorithms from machine learning (ML) to tackle the challenge of personalising e-learning by mapping students' behavioural attributes to a particular LS automatically and dynamically to optimise the individual learning process. Motivated by the many influential studies in this field and the current developments in ML and AI, a comprehensive systematic literature review was conducted from 2015 to 2022. Influential scientific literature was analysed to identify the emerging trends and gaps in the literature in terms of LS models and possible ML techniques employed for personalised adaptive learning platforms. The outcomes of this paper include a review and analysis of the current trends of this emerging field in terms of the applications and developments in using ML approaches to implement more intelligent and adaptive e-learning environments to detect learners' LSs automatically for enhancing learning. In addition, the following issues were also investigated: the platforms that stimulated research; identifying LS models utilised in e-learning; the evaluation methods used; and the learning supports provided. The results indicated an increasing interest in using artificial neural network approaches to identify LSs. However, limited work has been conducted on the comparison of deep learning methods in this context. The findings suggest the need to consider and stimulate further empirical investigation in documenting the adoption and comparison of deep learning algorithms in classifying LSs to provide higher adaptability.


Abstract In this article two groups of technologies based on connecting a medical device to the human brain are presented. The first group exploits the existing nerves, like the cochlear implant where ear prosthesis is connected to the auditory nerve. Another group is based on a direct connection between an electronic device and the human brain and it is called Brain-Computer Interfaces. The article contains the description of these technologies, points out their current capabilities and limitations and the main barriers to further development. The authors indicate possible directions of future expansion of the discussed technologies.


In many applications of interacting systems, we are only interested in the dynamic behavior of a subset of all possible active species. For example, this is true in combustion models (many transient chemical species are not of interest in a given reaction) and in epidemiological models (only certain subpopulations are consequential). Thus, it is common to use greatly reduced or partial models in which only the interactions among the species of interest are known. In this work, we explore the use of an embedded, sparse, and data-driven discrepancy operator to augment these partial interaction models. Preliminary results show that the model error caused by severe reductions—e.g., elimination of hundreds of terms—can be captured with sparse operators, built with only a small fraction of that number. The operator is embedded within the differential equations of the model, which allows the action of the operator to be interpretable. Moreover, it is constrained by available physical information and calibrated over many scenarios. These qualities of the discrepancy model—interpretability, physical consistency, and robustness to different scenarios—are intended to support reliable predictions under extrapolative conditions.


A quantum Hamiltonian which evolves the gravitational field according to time as measured by constant surfaces of a scalar field is defined through a regularization procedure based on the loop representation, and is shown to be finite and diffeomorphism invariant. The problem of constructing this Hamiltonian is reduced to a combinatorial and algebraic problem which involves the rearrangements of lines through the vertices of arbitrary graphs. This procedure also provides a construction of the Hamiltonian constraint as a finite operator on the space of diffeomorphism invariant states as well as a construction of the operator corresponding to the spatial volume of the Universe.


In Indonesia, there are many farmer`s groups. One of them is known as Kelompok Tani which expanded at the time of the Green Revolution in Indonesia. Most recently, the Kelompok Tani is organized under a larger group called the Gapoktan, and, in this era of democratization, manages its own activities as a self-governed organization. However, due to economical, technical, political problems and other factors, they seem like somewhat stagnated.  As one possible solution to overcome these challenges, this paper attempts to introduce Japanese community-based farming (shurakueino). World War II, especially from the middle of 1950s until the 1970s, Japan experienced high economic growth and became one of the most developed countries in the world. However, rural society started to suffer from many problems from 1970s, such as large scale exodus of the youth from rural to urban areas, aging of the population, decreases in activities of rural society and so on. One of the consequences was stagnation of agriculture production and productivity. Many agricultural lands were abandoned. In this situation, many Japanese farmers made attempts to overcome these problems. One of those actions was community-based farming (shurakueino). This is a farmer`s organization created and managed by local farmers. This organi- zation usually consolidates farmland in the village and cultivates the land with members participating in the community-based farming. These days, such organizations have incorporated, becoming companies that can manage production, processing, distribution, and sales on its own. They also work on activities unrelated to farming with other villagers. Every organization has a different strategy to improve its farming and the com- munity in their village through community-based farming. This paper shows my observation on the three cases of successful community farming organization Tagirinosan, Kitanohara, and Sunfarm Hoyoji, in Na- gano, and Shiga prefecture. This paper intends to introduce a case study of Japanese farming organizations to show a perspective for the empowerment of Indonesian farmer`s group. Keywords : farmer`s group, community-based farming, self-governed organization


Electron temperature, density, plasma potential and their fluctuation profiles at edge plasmas are measured simultaneously with a reciprocating probe system in HL-2A. The analysis results of four-tip data indicate that the temperature fluctuation has relative amplitude of 10–15%, gives more contribution to particle flux in lower (0–25 kHz) and higher frequency (50–250 kHz) ranges. The coherence between temperature fluctuations and density or potential fluctuations implies that their coupling will impact anomalous transport. The measured diffusion coefficient is about three times of the Bohm diffusion coefficient when considering the temperature fluctuation. The particle flux with temperature fluctuation is discussed in HL-2A for the first time.


In the mirror neuron system, the canonical neurons play a role in object shape and observer-object relation recognition. However, there are almost no functional models of canonical neurons towards the integration of these two functions. We attempt to represent the relative position between the object and the robot in a neural network model. Although at present some generative models based on the Restricted Boltzmann Machine can code the image transformation in continuous images, what we need to accomplish in canonical neuron modeling is different from the requirements of modeling transformation in video frames. As a result, we propose a novel model called "Restricted Boltzmann Machine with Transformation Units", which can represent the relative object positions based on laser images. The laser sensor provides binary and accurate images and can further be connected with other models to construct a unified architecture of the mirror neuron system.


Here we report, for the first time, a novel molecular design for three-dimensional honeycomb structures through a self-organization of hydrogen-bonded bulky anchoring group in a methacrylic polymer backbone. The polymerizable monomer design includes a methacrylic double bond linked to various hydrophobic anchoring units such as ethane, n-decane, tricyclodecane (TCD), and adamantane via a hydrogen-bonded cycloaliphatic urethane linkage. The structures of the polymers were confirmed by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and the molecular weights of the polymer were determined by gel permeation chromatography (GPC). The methacrylate polymers having tricyclodecane and adamantane bulky anchoring groups self-organized to produce three-dimensional honeycomb patterns in tetrahydrofuran-water solvent mixture at ambient conditions, whereas its linear analogues (ethane, n-decane) failed to produce any micropattern. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis of the above-prepared polymer films revealed that the structure of the polymer played a major role in the formation of the honeycomb patterns. The solution Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) measurements confirmed that the bulky tricyclodecane and adamantane polymers have strong hydrogen-bonding interaction compared to that of their linear analogues, which is the driving force for the micropatterns. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis of the bulky polymers revealed that the polymers exist as vesicles or micelles in the solution, which leads to the formation of the honeycomb pattern. The honeycomb pattern formation in the bulky polymer systems suggests that two cooperative factors such as hydrogen-bonding interaction and hydrophobicity of bulky anchoring units are necessary to induce three-dimensional honeycomb structures. To investigate the effect of molecular weights and its distribution on the self-organization process, both benzoyl peroxide (BPO) initiated free radical and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) techniques were employed for the polymerization. Micropores formed irrespective of differences in molecular weight and polydispersity index (PDI); however, the pore size distribution was influenced by both molecular weights and PDI. Low molecular weight samples afforded polydisperse pores with the ATRP samples with more narrow PDI producing pores with large dimensions. The approach has also been investigated for polystyrene-bulky methacrylic copolymer, and the results revealed that uniform honeycomb patterns were produced for copolymers having more than 50 mol % incorporation of bulky units.


The territory we now know as Chile began to be inhabited more than 15,000 years ago and scientific evidence shows that these first settlers unfurled a unique cuisine based on some animal and plant inputs that still exist in the diversity of this "Crazy Geography". However, food products from Late Pleistocene as such have been lost in the shadows of time and thus it has disappeared an important part of the cultural richness of the "first Chileans." Fortunately, paleontology with the support of simulation techniques and others technological advances can now illuminate a distant past and imagine the dishes that was cooked, shared and enjoyed in the human settlement located in the riverside of Chinchihuapi stream (Monte Verde, region de Los Lagos, Chile), the oldest of America. Besides, it is likely that this food has had the organoleptic, safety and nutritional qualities which are valued in the present time. So, now that Chilean cuisine tries to position itself as a tourist attractor and achieve a place of prestige in world cuisine, it emerges the initiative to offer a kind of gastronomy inspired in the people of Monte Verde. Therefore, this project aims to set up different recipes for a gastronomic offer in restaurants, supermarkets and dining room at home. These recipes will be the result of semi-heuristic combinations of inputs currently available revealed by paleontological studies, which will be tested in terms of safety, nutrition, organoleptic qualities. The combinations resulting higher performance in these biological and chemicalphysical test; will be endowed of cultural load (name, decoration, story ...) based on the same paleontological studies. We hope that this project allows as soon as possible that a foreign tourist in a restaurant can enjoy a tasty and healthy food with an attractive name, alluring story and singular cutlery similar to that which was served fifteen millennia ago by the first inhabitants of what is now Chile.