The twilight zone is an important depth of the ocean where particulate organic matter (POM) remineralization takes place, and prokaryotes contribute to more than 70% of the estimated remineralization. However, little is known about the microbial community and metabolic activity associated with different particles in the twilight zone. The composition and distribution of particle-attached prokaryotes in the twilight zone of the South China Sea (SCS) were investigated using high-throughput sequencing and quantitative PCR, together with the Biolog Ecoplate™ microplates culture to analyze the microbial metabolic activity. We found that α- and γ-Proteobacteria dominating at the lower and upper boundary of the twilight zone, respectively; Methanosarcinales and Halobacteriales of the Euyarchaeota occupied in the larger particles at the upper boundary. Similar microbial community existed between euphotic layer and the upper boundary. Higher amount of shared Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in the larger particles along the water depths, might be due to the fast sinking and major contribution of carbon flux of the larger particles from the euphotic layer. In addition to polymers as the major carbon source, carbohydrates and amino acids were preferentially used by microbial community at the upper and lower boundary, respectively. This could potentially be attributed to the metabolic capabilities of attached microbial groups in different particles, and reflected the initial preference of the carbon source by the natural microbes in the twilight zone as well. The microbial structure and carbon metabolic profiles could be complemented with metatranscriptomic analysis in future studies to augment the understanding of the complex carbon cycling pathways in the twilight zone.


infusion suggesting that, though the oesophageal mucosa might have been stimulated, the pain produced was not epigastric. We could not confirm that the cardiac sphincter pressure of those patients with epigastric pain was different from those without such pain. Moreover, radiological evidence of the capacity to herniate stomach, or of reflux of barium, as a measure of the incompetence of the anti-reflux mechanism, did not correspond with the incidence of epigastric pain. Hence we find little support for Earlam's hypothesis that the epigastric pain of duodenal ulcer is caused by acid stimulation of the oesophageal mucosa.


As part of the 2015 Academic Emergency Medicine consensus conference "Diagnostic Imaging in the Emergency Department: A Research Agenda to Optimize Utilization," a panel of representatives from the National Institute of Health's Office of Emergency Care Research, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute was assembled to discuss future opportunities for funding research in this particular area of interest. Representatives from these agencies and organizations discussed their missions and priorities and how they distribute funding. They also addressed questions on mechanisms for new and established researchers to secure future funding.


The nature and abundance of dislocations in quartz surrounding ̄uid inclusions were studied to obtain a better understanding of processes associated with ̄uid inclusion reequilibration. Synthetic ̄uid inclusions containing 10 wt% NaCl aqueous solution were formed in three samples at 700 °C and 5 kbar. One of the samples was quenched along an isochore to serve as a reference sample. The other two samples were quenched along a P-T path that generated internal pressures in excess of the con®ning pressure. The two samples were held at the ®nal reequilibration P-T conditions of 625 °C and 2 kbar for 30 and 180 days, respectively. Following the experiments, microstructures associated with ̄uid inclusions were examined with the TEM. Quartz in healed fractures in the reference sample that was quenched isochorically shows a moderate dislocation activity. Quartz adjacent to reequilibrated ̄uid inclusions in the other two samples, however, showed a marked increase in dislocation activity compared to the un-reequilibrated sample. Deformation of the inclusion walls occurred anisotropically by expansion of mobile dislocations in their slip systems. Dislocation expansion was controlled by glide in the rhombohedral planes {1 0 1 1} that was restricted to narrow zones (£3 lm) in the immediate vicinity of the ̄uid inclusion walls outside of the healed fracture plane. These plastic zones were observed after both short term (30 days) and long term (180 days) experiments and are attributed to hydrolytic weakening of quartz around ̄uid inclusions owing to di€usion of water into the quartz matrix during the experiment. The close spatial association of submicroscopic water bubbles with dislocations, and the rarity of water bubbles in the reference sample, show clearly that in both the 30 and 180 day experiments reequilibration involves water loss from the ̄uid inclusions. Our results indicate that synthetic ̄uid inclusions in this study recover (chemically and volumetrically), even at relatively fast experimental loading rates, such that internal stresses never reach the point of brittle failure. The driving force for ̄uid inclusion deformation involves two related mechanisms: plastic deformation of hydrolytically weakened wet quartz in the healed fracture, and water leakage associated with preexisting and strain-induced dislocations.


The outpatient treatment of patients with obsessions alone is often said to be less successful compared to the outpatient treatment of patients with both obsessions and compulsive symptoms. This article presents the outcome of the treatment of 26 obsessive patients. The success rate, measured after 10 treatment sessions, was 73%. At follow-up after 12-36 months, improvement appeared to have been maintained or to have increased in 61.5% of the patients, figures comparable to the outcome of patients with both obsessions and compulsions.


Scientists face an ever-increasing challenge in investigating biological systems with high throughput experimental methods such as mass spectrometry and gene arrays because of the scale and complexity of the data and the need to integrate results broadly with heterogeneous other types of information. Many analyses require merging the experimental results with datasets returned from public databases, such as those hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology (NCBI), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and protein interaction databases such as the Biomolecular Interaction Network Database (BIND). Because data sources such as these are constantly evolving the researcher is faced with hurdles to manually gather, integrate and manage the data into cohesive datasets. To overcome these technical problems, we have been building a three-tier software system that includes a client-side graphical user interface for rich interaction with the data, an application server that hides the messy technical details of data collection, integration, and management tasks from the researcher, and a flexible database schema that efficiently manages mixed data source content. The software is being developed using Java for portability and Open Source technology so that it can one day be freely distributed. This problem-solving environment is called the Computational Cell Environment (CCE) and is designed to provide scalable and agile connectivity to diverse data stores and eventually provide data retrieval, management, and analysis through all aspects of biological study.


Immunotherapy has revolutionized oncology remarkably and gained great improvements in cancer therapy. However, tumor immunotherapy still encounters serious challenges, especially certain tumors barely respond to immunotherapy. The lack of immunogenicity and subsequent insufficient antitumor immune activation is a pivotal reason. Here, a general introduction and the strengthening strategies of immunogenicity of a tumor for enhanced immunotherapy are reviewed. Specifically, nanotechnology nowadays is playing important roles in increasing the antitumor efficacy of various treatments, including immunotherapy. This review highlights how nanomedicines integrating one or more anticancer therapeutic methods (e.g., cancer vaccines, chemotherapy, phototherapy, and radiotherapy) to increase the tumor immunogenicity for rousing T cell related immune responses and achieving inspiring antitumor efficacy. Given the sophisticated immune evasion mechanisms, rational designed nanodrugs with combinational formulations are summarized to improve therapeutic efficacy in synergistic ways. Nanoplatforms taking advantage of the distinct features of tumor tissue or tumor cell with stimuli‐responsiveness and targeting functions are introduced to accelerate tumor accumulation of drugs successfully and greatly promote therapeutic efficacy with low‐dose administration and programmed drug release. Finally, the related challenges and personal perspectives of nanomedicines for tumor immunotherapy are concluded.


OPAC visibility, implementation of the cloud system and challenges of its adoption are the variables that define the crust of the research. The study, compartmentalizing the Nigerian University libraries, adopted the quantitative methods employing the use of observation and survey. A two-month long observation of the websites and OPAC of the studied universities was undertaken. The non-probability sampling - precisely purposive sampling - was deployed while the entire one hundred and sixty (160) Nigerian universities – as at 2018 – served as the sample size for the study. A questionnaire was designed to collect primary data on the availability of OPACs and adoption of cloud hosting in Nigerian university libraries. This was administered electronically via the email-boxes of virtual/systems librarians. Significant trends noticeable in the research findings include low visibility, in-house hosting of OPAC and indifference to the adoption of cloud computing with hosting (subscription) fee, downtime in internet connectivity and fear of vulnerability to hackers' attack being the significant challenges. It is recommended that stakeholders should leverage on the existing consortium (platform) facilitated by Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN) to benefit from the economy of scale in addition to collaboration with relevant global agencies. Furthermore, a synergy between the librarians and the ICT units should be strengthened for a better understanding of the technical challenges in order to provide appropriate solutions to them.


In "Sex, Lies, and Autobiography", James O'Rourke explores the relationships between literary form and ethics, revealing how autobiographical texts are able to confront readers with the moral complexities of everyday life. Tracing the ethical legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions" in a series of English-language texts, the author shows how Rousseau's doubts about the possibility of ethical behavior shadows the first-person narratives of five canonic works: William Wordsworth's "Prelude", Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and "Villette", Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", and Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita". Offering a fascinating new way of thinking about ethics through literature, "Sex, Lies, and Autobiography" challenges the most fundamental principles of the philosophical study of ethics, revealing the innate difference between morality in life and morality in literature. O'Rourke begins with Rousseau's inability to reconcile his intuitive belief that he is a good person with the effects that his actions have on others, and he goes on to show how this same ethical impasse recurs in the five afore-mentioned texts. The ethical crises these texts describe, such as when Jane Eyre's happiness can be purchases only at the cost of Bertha Mason's suicide, or when Humbert Humbert's artistry demands the sacrifice of Dolores Haze, are not instances of authorial ethical blindness, O'Rourke says, but rather are ethical challenges that force us as readers to consider our own lives. In each of these works, a narrator attempts to justify his or her behavior and fails; in each case, the rigorous narrative of self-examination demands a similar effort from the reader, whose own sense of moral rectitude is put into question. Confronting the long-held philosophical construction that links ethical principles and life choices, thereby reassuring us of the ethical coherence of everyday life, the narrators of these literary autobiographies come to a very different conclusion; by looking back on their lives, they cannot understand how their most benevolent desires led to such damaging life stories. By leaving meaning inexplicit, O'Rourke argues, these texts are able to recover traumatic material that is ordinarily repressed and then bring that repressed knowledge to bear on self-justifying narratives. For readers interested in autobiographical studies, ethical criticism, and trauma and literary studies, "Sex, Lies, and Autobiography" provides a ground-breaking analysis of the role of ethics in literature.


Calculating the implementation of variable costs with the scattergraph methodAs the population increases, so do the needs and workforce that must be met by the local government, from companies to PT, in this case PT which is engaged in oil processing which is produced by oil palm plantations in order to meet the needs of the community that cannot be completely fulfilled The aim of this researcher is to see the process of production of crude palm oil to become oil that can be consumed by the public so that all the needs related to oil are met.Researchers draw conclusions about the raw materials that are managed by a company which raw materials they take from their place directly and treated right away. In order to take researchers also analyzed the number of vehicles used in the operation of heavy equipment vehicles to support the process of 2 units which is called wheilocler and supporting engine products 8 stations and 1 station engineroom. By using this Secttergraph method, researchers can attract company production per day or monthly, but it depends on the capacity of the factory


Although health-care features prominently in transformative service research, there is little to guide service providers on how to improve well-being and social change transformations. This paper aims to explore actor-level interactions in transformative services, proposing that actors' complementary health service literacy roles are fundamental to resource integration and joint value creation.,In-depth interviews with 46 primary health-care patients and 11 health-care service providers (HSPs) were conducted focusing on their subjective experiences of health literacy. An iterative hermeneutic approach was used to analyse the textual data linking it with existing theory.,Data analysis identified patients' and HSPs' health service literacy roles and corresponding role readiness dimensions. Four propositions are developed describing how these roles influence resource integration processes. Complementary service literacy roles enhance resource integration with outcomes of respect, trust, empowerment and loyalty. Competing service literacy roles lead to outcomes of discredit, frustration, resistance and exit through unsuccessful resource integration.,Health service literacy roles – linked to actor agency, institutional norms and service processes – provide a nuanced approach to understanding the tensions between patient empowerment trends and service professionals' desire for recognition of their expertise over patient care. Specifically, the authors extend Frow et al.'s (2016) list of co-creation practices with practices that complement actors' service literacy and role readiness. Based on a service perspective, the authors encourage transformative service researchers, service professionals and health service system designers, to recognize complementary health service literacy roles as an opportunity to support patients' resources and facilitate value co-creation.


We focus on the ability of two analytical usability evaluation methods (UEMs), namely CASSM (Concept-based Analysis for Surface and Structural Misfits) and Cognitive Walkthrough, to identify usability issues underlying the use made of two London Underground ticket vending machines. By setting both sets of issues against the observed interactions with the machines, we assess the similarities and differences between the issues depicted by the two methods. In so doing we de-emphasise the mainly quantitative approach which is typical of the comparative UEM literature. However, by accounting for the likely consequences of the issues in behavioural terms, we reduced the proportion of issues which were anticipated but not observed (the false positives), compared with that achieved by other UEM studies. We assess these results in terms of the limitations of problem count as a measure of UEM effectiveness. We also discuss the likely trade-offs between field studies and laboratory testing.


Objective: In this study, it is aimed to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Body Sensations Questionnaire (BSQ) which was originally developed by Chambless (1993).
Method: ACQ was administered to 122 patients with panic disorder. Translation, back-translation and pilot assessment of BSQ Turkish version completed. Socio-demographic data form and BSQ Turkish version were administered to participants. For reliability of BSQ test-retest correlation, split-half technique and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were used. Principal component analysis and varimax rotation used for factor analysis.
Results: 66% (n=80) of the participants were female and 34% (n=42) were male.The mean age of participants was 31.7±10.8 years and age range was 18-58 years. Statistically significant results supported BSQ Turkish version's validity and reliability
Conclusion: The results of this study show that the Turkish version of BSQ is a reliable and valid scale for measuring the fear of the bodily sensations associated with panic.


We consider the problem of adaptive cell sectorization in a CDMA system. Specifically, given the user distribution in a cell, we investigate the two problems of how to appropriately sectorize the cell such that we minimize the total received power and the total transmit power spent by all the users, in both cases, while giving each user acceptable quality of service. The optimum arrangement equalizes the number of users in each sector for the received power optimization problem. The transmit power optimization can be formulated as a graph partitioning problem which can be solved in polynomial time. In both cases, the optimum arrangement can be quite different from uniform cell sectorization (equal partitioning) under non-uniform traffic conditions. We observe that, with adaptive sectorization, received and transmit power savings are achieved and the number of users served by the system (system capacity) is increased compared to uniform sectorization of the cell.


For evaluating maize substitution by liquid silage from a mixture of sugar cane molasses B, saccharomyces cream, sweet potato tubercle and concentrated vinasse (0, 33, 66 and 100 % dry basis), 144 Yorkshire/Duroc x Landrace pigs, males and females, in equal proportion with a live weight of 30 kg were used. Animals were distributed in four treatments, according to a completely randomized design. They
were housed in collective corrals at a rate of six animals/corral and six replications/treatment. There were no significant differences between treatments for 0, 33 and 66 % substitution but the opposite occurred between these and 100 % maize substitution (P ≤ 0.05) for average daily gain (532, 565, 544 and 495, and 758, 779, 753 and 687g) in the phases of 0-56 and 0-98 d of stay, respectively. The same took place with total feed conversion (3.22, 3.16, 3.38 and 4.16 kg DM/kg increase and 3.63, 3.54, 3.76 and 4.48 kg DM /kg increase) in both stages, respectively. It was demonstrated that the silage of alternative feeds of Cuban origin (AEC) substituted efficiently the imported maize for pig fattening when used up to 66 % with economical and environmental advantages.

Key words: maize, silage, pigs


Aberration correction can be achieved using either direct electron optical correction or indirect image restoration. In the past focal series restoration has been applied to aberration corrected images in order to improve the quality of aberration correction and retrieve the complex specimen exit wavefunction. Image restoration can also be performed from a number of images with differing illumination tilts (a tilt series) instead of the more common focal series datasets where only the defocus value is varied. Here we apply tilt series image restoration to aberration corrected images and discuss the advantages of this approach. Preliminary results demonstrate the potential of this technique to provide interpretable structural information at resolutions beyond the axial information limit of the microscope.


ABSTRACT Charge-to-alanine mutagenesis of dengue virus type 4 (DEN4) NS5 gene generated a collection of attenuating mutations for potential use in a recombinant live attenuated DEN vaccine. Codons for 80 contiguous pairs of charged amino acids in NS5 were individually mutagenized to create uncharged pairs of alanine residues, and 32 recombinant mutant viruses were recovered from the 80 full-length mutant DEN4 cDNA constructs. These mutant viruses were tested for temperature-sensitive (ts) replication in both Vero cells and HuH-7 human hepatoma cells. Of the 32 mutants, 13 were temperature sensitive (ts) in both cell lines, 11 were not ts in either cell line, and 8 exhibited a host range (tshr) phenotype. One tshr mutant was ts only in Vero cells, and seven were ts only in HuH-7 cells. Nineteen of the 32 mutants were 10-fold or more restricted in replication in the brains of suckling mice compared to that of wild-type DEN4, and three mutants were approximately 10,000-fold restricted in replication. The level of temperature sensitivity of replication in vitro did not correlate with attenuation in vivo. A virus bearing two pairs of charge-to-alanine mutations was constructed and demonstrated increased temperature sensitivity and attenuation relative to either parent virus. This large set of charge-to-alanine mutations specifying a wide range of attenuation for mouse brain should prove useful in fine-tuning recombinant live attenuated DEN vaccines.


Electric Autonomous Vehicles (EAVs) promise to be an effective way to solve transportation issues such as accidents, emissions and congestion, and aim at establishing the foundation of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) economy. For this to be possible, the market should be able to offer appropriate charging services without involving humans. The state-of-the-art mechanisms of charging and billing do not meet this requirement, and often impose service fees for value transactions that may also endanger users and their location privacy. This paper aims at filling this gap and envisions a new charging architecture and a billing framework for EAV which would enable M2M transactions via the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).


Online gaming involves a complex and multidimensional set of practices. This article proposes understanding online video gaming based on an interface-centred approach that goes beyond the classic study of the "graphic user interface". In this theoretical and analytical framework, the interface is considered the place where human, institutional and technological actors relate to each other and different processes are carried out. The article draws the data from empirical research with teens carried out in eight countries. It analyses the teenagers' online playing experience as an interface, understood as a 'network of actors' that goes beyond the single video gaming device (console, PC, etc.). This work also presents a map of actors, relationships and processes of the online video gaming interface, paying particular attention to the tensions and critical issues that arise, from a perspective that, in further studies, could be expanded to other practices.


Trading port efficiency is an important determinant of the competitiveness of the goods and a key factor to improve the investment climate of the countries. Managing the efficiency and coordinating distributed entities in a supply chain is a challenging task. This paper provide proposed s decision support framework for port efficiency discovery based on intelligent data integration, and provided some intelligent approaches to measure and analysis the trading port efficiency from supply chain aspect. The solution can take adequate use of the massive operational data accumulated in the distributed information system scattered in different sectors, and give useful information to support decision-making. A Case study has been developed to give an illustration of employing the proposed decision support framework in one of the trading port in China. The results obtained indicate that the prototype system is capable of get some useful insights into port efficiency.


This paper presents a scheme for finding the critical ranking of line outage contingencies for preventing power flow congestion in various lines of electric power systems and hence to avoid the risk of voltage instability arising out of such disturbances. The uniqueness of the scheme rests with the determination of the most critical contingency in the system whose status is monitored during each simulation case to ensure voltage stability of the entire network. In order to make a comprehensive analysis of the problem the paper is based on static approaches. The static analysis is based on the conventional Newton-Raphson load flow being supplemented by Continuation Power Flow (CPF) technique. Off-line case studies on IEEE 14-bus and IEEE 30-bus test system are presented.


Utility Data Center (UDC) provides a flexible, cost-effective infrastructure to support the hosting of applications for Internet services. In order to enable the design of a "utility-aware" streaming media service which automatically requests the necessary resources from UDC infrastructure, we introduce a set of benchmarks for measuring the basic capacities of streaming media systems. The benchmarks allow one to derive the scaling rules of server capacity for delivering media files which are: i) encoded at different bit rates, ii) streamed from memory vs disk. Using an experimental testbed, we show that these scaling rules are non-trivial. In this paper, we develop a workload-aware, media server performance model which is based on a cost function derived from the set of basic benchmark measurements. We validate this performance model by comparing the predicted and measured media server capacities for a set of synthetic workloads.


Getting Started Chapter 1: THE BASICS Electricity and the Heart The Cells of the Heart Time and Voltage P Waves, QRS Complexes, T Waves, and Some Straight Lines Naming the Straight Lines Summary: The Waves and Straight Lines of the EKG Making Waves The 12 Views of the Heart A Word About Vectors The Normal 12-Lead EKG Summary: Orientation of the Waves of the Normal EKG Coming Attractions Chapter 2: HYPERTROPHY AND ENLARGEMENT OF THE HEART Definitions Axis Summary: Axis Axis Deviation, Hypertrophy, and Enlargement Atrial Enlargement Summary: Atrial Enlargement Ventricular Hypertrophy Secondary Repolarization Abnormalities of Ventricular Hypertrophy Summary: Ventricular Hypertrophy CASE 1 CASE 2 Chapter 3: ARRHYTHMIAS The Clinical Manifestations of Arrhythmias Why Arrhythmias Happen Rhythm Strips How to Determine the Heart Rate from the EKG The Five Basic Types of Arrhythmias Arrhythmias of Sinus Origin Ectopic Rhythms Reentrant Rhythms The Four Questions Supraventricular Arrhythmias Summary: Supraventricular Arrhythmias Ventricular Arrhythmias Summary: Ventricular Arrhythmias Summary: Rules of Malignancy for PVCs Supraventricular Versus Ventricular Arrhythmias Summary: Ventricular Tachycardia (VT) Versus Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia (PSVT) with Aberrancy Programmed Electrical Stimulation Implantable Defibrillators External Defibrillators CASE 3 CASE 4 CASE 5 Chapter 4: CONDUCTION BLOCKS What Is a Conduction Block? AV Blocks Summary: AV Blocks Bundle Branch Block Summary: Bundle Branch Block Hemiblocks Summary: Criteria for Hemiblock Combining Right Bundle Branch Block and Hemiblocks Summary: Criteria for Bifascicular Block Blocks That Underachieve The Ultimate in Playing With Blocks: Combining AV Blocks, Right Bundle Branch Block, and Hemiblocks Pacemakers CASE 6 Chapter 5: PREEXCITATION SYNDROMES What Is Preexcitation? Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome Lown-Ganong-Levine Syndrome Associated Arrhythmias Summary: Preexcitation CASE 7 Chapter 6: MYOCARDIAL ISCHEMIA AND INFARCTION What Is a Myocardial Infarction? How To Diagnose a Myocardial Infarction Summary: The EKG Changes of an Evolving Myocardial Infarction Localizing the Infarct Non-Q Wave Myocardial Infarctions Angina Summary: The ST Segment in Ischemic Cardiac Disease Limitations of the EKG in Diagnosing an Infarction Stress Testing CASE 8 Chapter 7: FINISHING TOUCHES Electrolyte Disturbances Hypothermia Drugs Other Cardiac Disorders Pulmonary Disorders Central Nervous System Disease The Athlete's Heart Summary: Miscellaneous Conditions CASE 9 Chapter 8: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER The 11-Step Method for Reading EKGs Review Charts Chapter 9: HOW DO YOU GET TO CARNEGIE HALL? (Practice, Practice, Practice!) Practice EKG Strips Subject Index


In this paper we propose four-dimensional (4D) operators, which can be used to deal with sequential changes of topological relationships between 4D moving objects and we call them 4D development operators. In contrast to the existing operators, we can apply the operators to real applications on 4D moving objects. We also propose a new approach to define them. The approach is based on a dimension-separated method, which considers x-y coordinates and z coordinates separately. In order to show the applicability of our operators, we show the algorithms for the proposed operators and development graph between 4D moving objects.


Purpose of this work is the design and implementation of an automated method for digital volume segmentation, based on multi-parametric densities, fuzzy topology, and adaptive growth mechanism. The processing objective is the global segmentation of the digital volume, that is its partitioning into significant connected subsets, in a fully automatic way. The main advantage consists in the very nature of the algorithm that enables the automatic segmentation by running an iterative process that adapts to the volume at hand and does not require any user intervention. The designed method can be applied to multi-parametric volumes where different characteristics are available to analyze the same target. The robustness of the method has been evaluated and verified through statistical parameters, that will be discussed below, after application on volumes of biomedical images obtained through Magnetic Resonance Imaging.


Field investigations in North Victoria Land, Antarctica during GANOVEX IX (2005/2006) allow the revision of the Triassic-Jurassic stratigraphy of ~300 m thick continental deposits in between the crystalline basement and the Kirkpatrick lava flows of the Ferrar Group. The lower stratigraphic unit (Section Peak Formation) is characterised by braided river-type quartzose sandstone deposits with intercalations of shale and coal occurring at the top. It is overlain by a homogeneous unit of reworked tuffs composed of fine-grained silicic shards, quartz and feldspar (new name: "Shafer Peak Formation"). These deposits can be correlated with parts of the Hanson Formation in the Central Transantarctic Mountains and require a distal yet unknown source of massive silicic volcanism. Clastic products of mafic volcanic eruptions, formerly described as a separate stratigraphic formation (Exposure Hill Formation), occur within local diatreme structures as well as intercalated at various stratigraphic levels within the sedimentary succession. These dominantly hydroclastic eruptions are the first subaerial expression of Ferrar magmatism. The initial Kirkpatrick lavas/pillow lavas were generated from local eruptive centres and again may be overlain by thin sediments, which are covered by the thick plateau lava succession known throughout the Transantarctic Mountain Range.


Background: Sepsis is a main cause of morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients. The epidemiology of sepsis in high-income countries is well-known, but information on sepsis in middle- or low-income countries is still deficient, especially in China. The purpose of this study was to explore the prevalence, characteristics, risk factors, treatment, and outcomes of sepsis in critically ill patients in tertiary hospitals in China. Methods: A multicenter prospective observational cohort study was performed with consecutively collected data from adults who stayed in any intensive care unit (ICU) for at least 24 h; data were collected from 1 January 2014 to 31 August 2015, and patients were followed until death or discharge from the hospital. Results: A total of 4,910 patients were enrolled in the study. Of these, 2,086 (42.5%) presented with sepsis or septic shock on admission to the ICU or within the first 48 h after admission to the ICU. ICU mortality was higher in patients with sepsis (13.1%) and septic shock (39.0%) and varied according to geographical region. Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, and Staphylococcus infections were associated with increased ICU mortality. In addition, age, Acute Physiology, and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) scores, pre-existing cardiovascular diseases, malignant tumors, renal replacement therapy (RRT), and septic shock were independent risk factors for mortality in patients with sepsis. The prompt administration of antibiotics (OR 0.65, 95% CI 0.46–0.92) and 30 mL/kg of initial fluid resuscitation during the first 3 h (OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.30–0.63) improved the outcome in patients with septic shock. Conclusions: Sepsis was common and was associated with a high mortality rate in critically ill patients in tertiary hospitals in China. The prompt administration of antibiotics and 30 mL/kg fluid resuscitation decreased the risk of mortality.


According to standards issued by the Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, age-specific competencies must be defined for all caregivers who assess, treat, or provide care to patients of different ages. Case managers must know the principles of growth and development over the life span, be able to assess clinical data relative to patient age, and interpret information needed to identify patient needs relative to age-specific needs. With written standards and policies that reflect age-specific care, the organization has a means to measure case managers' performance and criteria that serve as a foundation for competency determinations.


A chaos particle swarm algorithm has been used to search for the optimal placement and size of the piezoelectric sensors and actuators (S/As) bonded on smart beams as well as the optimal feedback control gains. The criterion based on the minimization of stored and needed control energy was adopted for the optimization of the control system. The optimal distributions of the piezoelectric patches and feedback control gains based on specific controlled vibration modes have also been put forward. The results showed that the control effect could be significantly improved with optimized distribution of piezoelectric patches and gains.


Supervisory Committee Dr. S. Martin Taylor (Department of Geography) Supervisor Dr. Denise Cloutier-Fisher (Department of Geography) Departmental Member Dr. Garry Rogers (School of Earth and Ocean Sciences) Outside Member Greater Victoria, a conurbation of about 335,000 people located in southwestern British Columbia, Canada, is subject to significant seismic hazards. The major regional seismic factor is the offshore Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, subducting beneath North America along the 1,100 km-long Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ), a megathrust fault. This environment generates three types of potentially damaging earthquakes—shallow, subduction, and deep. This research examines how the Transfusion Medicine (TM) component within transfusing facilities in Greater Victoria and the balance of Vancouver Island might function following these types of earthquakes. A shallow earthquake of magnitude (M)7 or greater that occurs near enough could heavily damage critical infrastructure in Greater Victoria. Decisions regarding the alternatives of (a) rapidly relocating a facility for storing and/or processing blood products within or near Greater Victoria or (b) transporting people injured in an earthquake to transfusing hospitals in or beyond Greater Victoria, or (c) both (a) and (b), may need to be made within the first few hours following a locally destructive earthquake. A subduction event (M8 to 9.2) in the CSZ could reduce or halt production of blood products in nearby Vancouver, diminish the supply of stored blood in southwestern coastal British Columbia, and sharply increase demand for blood products. Post-subduction-event conditions would likely result in a temporary shortage of blood products in at least two regional health authorities, and v would test the response of a few key related functions within smaller, more remote health care facilities. A subduction event also would impact ground transportation routes, airports, and wharves, making the transportation of blood products to and around Vancouver Island more difficult. The researcher interviewed several professionals whose work supports the blood contingency emergency response by the Canadian Blood Services, the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA), and the British Columbia Ministry of Health, to obtain information that could help maintain the TM function in post-quake circumstances. To prepare informants to answer questions regarding the health care implications of these earthquakes, the researcher generated--per earthquake type--order of magnitude estimates of the numbers of hospitalizations that would likely result in Greater Victoria or/and Vancouver Island. The study examines the inventorying and transportation of blood products, some communication, decision-making, and blood product distribution considerations—plus the hazard mitigation and vulnerability reduction aspects—that could be included in an earthquake-specific blood contingency plan for VIHA transfusing facilities. It also considers how VIHA could sustain the function of the TM Laboratory role within transfusing hospitals during post-earthquake circumstances in which some of their facilities for storing, monitoring, analyzing, or transfusing blood products are inoperable. The risks of damaging earthquakes, and accompanying tsunamis affecting populated areas and health system assets in coastal British Columbia, are real. Implementing the recommendations of this study may help various players involved in the regional processing, distribution and allocation of blood products to: (a) define a more efficient response to earthquake impacts upon their operations, (b) reduce injury to people and damage to crucial equipment used in the health system, and ultimately, (c) save lives.


Authors : Mohd Radzi Hilmi, Mohd Zulfaezal Che Azemin, Khairidzan Mohd Kamal, Azrin Esmady Ariffin, Mohd Izzuddin Mohd Tamrin, Norfazrina Abdul Gaffur, Tengku Mohd Tengku Sembok Abstract : Purpose: The purpose of this study is to predict optical quality changes after pterygium surgery using tissue redness grading. Methods: Sixty-eight primary pterygium participants were selected from patients who visited an ophthalmology clinic. We developed a semi-automated computer program to measure the pterygium fibrovascular redness from digital pterygium images. The outcome of this software is a continuous scale grading of 1 (minimum redness) to 3 (maximum redness). The region of interest (ROI) was selected manually using the software. Reliability was determined by repeat grading of all 68 images and its association with contrast sensitivity function (CSF) and visual acuity (VA) was examined. Results: The mean and standard deviation of redness of the pterygium fibrovascular images was 1.88 ± 0.55. Intraand inter-grader reliability estimates were high with intraclass correlation ranging from 0.97 to 0.98. The new grading was positively associated with CSF (p<0.01) and VA (p<0.01). The redness grading was able to predict 25% and 23% of the variance in the CSF and the VA respectively. Conclusions: The new grading of pterygium fibrovascular redness can be reliably measured from digital images and show a good correlation with CSF and VA. The redness grading can be used in addition to the existing pterygium grading.


In sericulture extension the importance of social network for diffusion of information particularly among rural women remain untargeted. Formation of sericulture women group would increase women's participation capacity, motivation to learn, share experiences and feelings and subsequently increasing their inner strength and group solidarity ultimately leading to their empowerment. Women also acquire good bargaining power through participation in-group activities. Organizing and conducting technology demonstrations and group discussions locally at their homesteads entrusts them with space to participate, learn new technologies and adopt the same for increased production of quality and quantity of cocoons over and above the existing levels.


Ingestion and absorption of greater quantities of IgG are required to increase serum IgG levels in newborn calves. This could be achieved by adding colostrum replacer (CR) to maternal colostrum (MC). The objective of this study was to investigate whether low and high-quality MC can be enriched with bovine dried CR to achieve adequate serum IgG levels. Male Holstein calves (n = 80; 16/treatment) with birth body weights (BW) of 40 to 52 kg were randomly enrolled to be fed 3.8 L of the following combinations: 30 g/L IgG MC (C1), 60 g/L IgG MC (C2), 90 g/L IgG MC (C3), C1 enriched with 551 g of CR (60 g/L; 30-60CR), or C2 enriched with 620 g of CR (90 g/L: 60-90CR). A subset of 40 calves (8/treatment) had a jugular catheter placed and were fed colostrum containing acetaminophen at a dose of 150 mg/kg of metabolic body weight, to estimate abomasal emptying rate per hour (kABh). Baseline blood samples were taken (0 h), followed by sequential samples at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 24, 36, and 48 h relative to initial colostrum feeding. Results for all measurements are presented in the following order, unless otherwise stated: C1, C2, C3, 30-60CR, and 60-90CR. Serum IgG levels at 24 h were different among calves fed C1, C2, C3, 30-60CR, and 60-90CR: 11.8, 24.3, 35.7, 19.9, and 26.9 mg/mL ± 1.02 (mean ± SEM), respectively. Serum IgG at 24 h increased when enriching C1 to 30-60CR, but not from C2 to 60-90CR. Similarly, apparent efficiency of absorption (AEA) values for calves fed C1, C2, C3, 30-60CR, and 60-90CR were different: 42.4, 45.1, 43.2, 36.3, and 33.4% ± 1.93, respectively. Enriching C2 to 60-90CR reduced AEA, and enriching C1 to 30-60CR tended to decrease AEA. The kABh values for C1, C2, C3, 30-60CR, and 60-90CR were also different: 0.16, 0.13, 0.11, 0.09, and 0.09 ± 0.005, respectively. Enriching C1 to 30-60CR or C2 to 60-90CR reduced kABh. However, 30-60CR and 60-90CR have similar kABh compared with a reference colostrum meal (90 g/L IgG, C3). Even though kABh was reduced for 30-60CR, results indicate that C1 has the potential to be enriched and achieve acceptable serum IgG levels at 24 h without affecting AEA.


Baseline correction is a critical step for eliminating the interference of baseline drift in spectroscopic analysis. The recently proposed sparse Bayesian learning (SBL)-based method can significantly improve the baseline correction performance. However, it has at least two disadvantages: (i) it works poorly for large-scale datasets and (ii) it completely ignores the burst-sparsity structure of the sparse representation of the pure spectrum. In this paper, we present a new fast burst-sparsity learning method for baseline correction to overcome these shortcomings. The first novelty of the proposed method is to jointly adopt a down-sampling strategy and construct a multiple measurements block-sparse recovery problem with the down-sampling sequences. The down-sampling strategy can significantly reduce the dimension of the spectrum; while jointly exploiting the block sparsity among the down-sampling sequences avoids losing the information contained in the original spectrum. The second novelty of the proposed method is introducing the pattern-coupled prior into the SBL framework to characterize the inherent burst-sparsity in the sparse representation of spectrum. As illustrated in the paper, burst-sparsity commonly occurs in peak zones with more denser nonzero coefficients. Properly utilizing such burst-sparsity can further enhance the baseline correction performance. Results on both simulated and real datasets (such as FT-IR, Raman spectrum, and chromatography) verify the substantial improvement, in terms of estimation accuracy and computational complexity.


This paper analyzes the struggle for women's suffrage in Kuwait to determine how and why it was successful. The research highlights two paradoxical findings: first, democratic progress occurred despite the pacifying and hindering effects of modernization; second, it was supported more strongly and effectively by Kuwait's autocratic executive than the democratically elected Kuwaiti parliament. We delineate two psychological factors that were connected to the climax of the struggle as they were experienced and acted upon by a relatively small number of Kuwaiti middle- and upper-class women: transformative events and the tying of struggle goals to self-esteem. We examine these factors in the context of interaction between chaotic political circumstances and the new strategy and tactics that suffragists employed in the last phase of their struggle. The analytic approach involves process tracing, field research, interviews, and longitudinal analysis of primary and secondary sources.


The Special Collections and Archives Department in the Mary and Jeff Bell Library at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi contains nine land surveying map collections. These map collections contain tens of thousands of land surveying maps and documents of Corpus Christi, Nueces County, and the surrounding Texas region from the late 19 th century to the late 20 th century. These historic map collections are currently only available to in-person library visitors, restricting the availability of these maps to only those who are able to travel to Corpus Christi. The Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science (CBI), in collaboration with the Mary and Jeff Bell Library, is scanning these map collections so an online digital map library can be established. Currently, over 66,000 items have been scanned and cataloged from two of the nine map collections. During the course of scanning and cataloging the map collections, we have developed scanning and cataloging procedures, an automatic scan cropping application, a web-based cataloging system (BandoCat), a web-based document transcription system, and a web-based map georectification system. To publish the map collection to the public, we have chosen DSpace, hosted by the Texas Digital Library, as our publishing platform. We have utilized the DSpace REST API to create a custom solution that allows us to publish directly from within our cataloging system. The focus of this presentation will be a review of the recent progress on the project up to its current status. The review will cover our scanning procedures, cataloging procedures, use of DSpace REST API for publishing documents, and our cataloging, transcription, and georectification software. The presentation will be a mix of high-level discussion, system demonstration, and technical explanation.


Sleep seems essential to proper functioning of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The role of different neurotransmitters has been studied, mainly the catecholamines and serotonin. Less attention has been paid to the amino acid transmitters and histamine. Here, we focus on the activity of these molecules in the PFC during sleep and sleep deprivation (SD). We determined extracellular concentrations of histamine and 8 amino acids in the medial PFC before, during and after SD. Additionally, we systematically reviewed the literature on studies reporting microdialysis measurements relating to sleep throughout the brain. In our experiment, median concentrations of glutamate were higher during SD than during baseline (p = 0.013) and higher during the dark-active than during the resting phase (p = 0.003). Glutamine was higher during post-SD recovery than during baseline (p = 0.010). For other compounds, no differences were observed between light and dark circadian phase, and between sleep deprivation, recovery and baseline. We retrieved 13 papers reporting on one or more of the molecules of interest during naturally occurring sleep, 2 during sleep deprivation and 2 during both. Only two studies targeted PFC. Histamine was low during sleep, but high during sleep deprivation and wakefulness, irrespective of brain area. Glu (k = 11) and GABA (k = 8) concentrations in different brain areas were reported to peak during sleep or wakefulness or to lack state-dependency. Aspartate, glycine, asparagine and taurine were less often studied (1-2 times), but peaked exclusively during sleep. Sleep deprivation increased glutamate and GABA exclusively in the cortex. Further studies are needed for drawing solid conclusions.


Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have dominated a range of applications, from advanced manufacturing to autonomous cars. For energy cost-efficiency, developing low-power hardware for CNNs is a research trend. Due to the large input size, the first few convolutional layers generally consume most latency and hardware resources on hardware design. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an innovative architecture named SLIT to extract feature maps and reconstruct the first few layers on CNNs. In this reconstruction approach, total multiplyaccumulate operations are eliminated on the first layers. We evaluate new topology with MNIST, CIFAR, SVHN, and ImageNet datasets on image classification application. Latency and hardware resources of the inference step are evaluated on the chip ZC7Z020-1CLG484C FPGA with Lenet-5 and VGG schemes. On the Lenet-5 scheme, our architecture reduces 39% of latency and 70% of hardware resources with a 0.456 W power consumption compared to previous works. Even though the VGG models perform with a 10% reduction in hardware resources and latency, we hope our overall results will potentially give a new impetus for future studies to reach a higher optimization on hardware design. Notably, the SLIT architecture efficiently merges with most popular CNNs at a slightly sacrificing accuracy of a factor of 0.27% on MNIST, ranging from 0.5% to 1.5% on CIFAR, approximately 2.2% on ImageNet, and remaining the same on SVHN databases. key words: primary visual cortex, image classification, convolutional neural network, hardware architecture, FPGA, feature extraction


Abstract Background: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second leading cause of cancer deaths. Deaths invariably result from metastasis, most commonly to the bone. Tumor-microenvironment interactions of metastatic PCa in the bone are critical for growth at the metastatic site. These interactions suggest that therapies will need to target both tumor cells and the microenvironment to be successful. One target in both tumor and microenvironment is Src family kinases (SFKs), for which a phase three trial in combination with docetaxel is completed. Better targeting of SFKs will depend on understanding the tumor-stromal interactions that lead to its activation in both compartments. Aberrant Src activation de-represses cytokines including IL-8, contributing to the "vicious cycle" of metastatic growth in the bone. Stromal cells are a rich source of IL-8, but there is little information on how they affect tumor cells and viceversa. Here, we describe a feed-forward loop and paracrine mechanism of IL-8-mediated Src activation in PCa, both of which lead to increased tumor cell migration and invasion. Methods/Results: We demonstrate IL-8 and Src are overexpressed in more metastatic PC3-MM2 cells versus less metastatic PC3 cells. Previous work in the laboratory has demonstrated activated Src increases IL-8 expression. Through lentiviral knockdown of IL-8 in PC3-MM2 (PC3-MM2shIL-8) cells, we demonstrate that decreased IL-8 expression decreases Src activity in tumor cells. We also demonstrate that decreased IL-8 expression decreases migration and invasion while exogenous IL-8 rescues this phenotype. We next asked the effect of immortalized bone marrow-derived human stromal cells (HS5) on tumor cells. HS5 cells secrete high levels of IL-8. To determine if stromal-produced IL-8 affects Src activity in PCa, conditioned media from HS5 cells was added to PC3, PC3- MM2 and PC3-MM2shIL-8 cells. Src activity was increased in all cell lines. Conditioned media also increased migration and invasion of these cell lines. To determine if these increases were due, in part to IL-8, HS5 cells were infected with a lentivirus driving the expression of shIL-8 (HS5shIL-8) and conditioned media was collected. Addition of conditioned media from HS5shIL-8 cells to PC3 or PC3-MM2shIL-8 cell lines resulted in reduced Src activation, migration and invasion relative to HS-5 cells infected with a control vector. Conclusions/Future Directions: These results demonstrate stromal production of IL-8 increases Src activity and that stromal cells play a major role in metastatic properties of PCa cells. To confirm these in vitro studies, in vivo studies are being performed using co-injections of stromal cells and PCa cells. We will determine if: (1) stromal cells co-inoculated with tumor cells increase tumor growth and/or metastatic potential of PC3; (2) if knockdown of Src and/or IL-8 in stromal cells inhibits the ability to increase metastatic potential induced by stromal cells. Recent data from the Phase I/II dasatinib + docetaxel trial suggest that decreases in IL-8 levels after 21 days of treatment are associated with patient response (Araujo et al., unpublished). These results suggest that IL-8 from both tumor and stromal cells may be important inmetastatic potential and growth of prostate tumor cells in the bone. Understanding the roles of IL-8 and Src in PCa and the stromal microenvironment are important in better understanding PCa metastasis. Citation Format: Lynnelle Thorpe, John C. Araujo, Nila U. Parikh, Menashe Bar Eli, Gary E. Gallick. Contribution of stromal-derived IL-8 on prostate cancer progression [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Prostate Cancer Research; 2012 Feb 6-9; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(4 Suppl):Abstract nr A65.


The length of pollen viability after anther dehiscence is crucial to successful pollination (Stone et al1995), particularly for outbreeders. It determines the possibility of outcrossing between species, provided that limited specific reproductive barriers exist. With the rapid development of biotechnology, more transgenic crops, including transgenic rice, are becoming available, resulting in biosafety concerns about possible ecological risks. Evaluation of transgenes introgressing to wild rice species becomes an important issue for rice breeders, environmentalists, and policymakers. Studying pollen viability and longevity of wild and cultivated rice species as well as their hybrids is important in evaluating outcrossing frequencies.


Time-budget estimates of parental investment in captive populations of color-banded zebra finches demonstrate that relative attractiveness correlates with the apportionment of parental investment as predicted by the differential-allocation hypothesis: attractive birds incur smaller parental expenditures; unattractive birds have larger ones. This result occurred in two experiments: color banding was used to manipulate female attractiveness in one experiment and male attractiveness in another. Attractiveness was correlated with participation in parental behaviors but not with defensive and agonistic behaviors. The mean paternal expenditures (PE) were nearly identical in populations with color bands and in those without. Overall, males contributed 43%-45% of the total time expenditure during daytime hours. If parental investment increases nonlinearly with PE (the accelerating-cost hypothesis), estimates of expenditure are conservative estimates of differences in parental investment, at least at the extremes. Results reported here, combined with those reported previously, collectively show that unattractive birds have higher parental investment per offspring, shorter life spans, and lower long-term reproductive success than same-sex attractive birds. Results lend support to the idea that reproductive effort has a cost, a seldom-tested evolutionary principle; they show how individuals may profitably manipulate a finite supply of reproductive resources; and they demonstrate a mechanism by which sexual selection can operate in species with substantial biparental care.


As we head towards a southern hemisphere winter, many people are wondering if it's worth getting the flu vaccine. Generally speaking, if you are vaccinated, you're less likely to get the flu. But that's not the whole story. For most healthy people, it's about considering the cost and a few seconds of pain against the possibility that you'll need to take time off work and endure a few days of misery due to infection. Read the full article on The Conversation.


BACKGROUND
Dopamine (DA) has been shown to play a central role in regulating motivated behavior and encoding reward. Chronic drug abuse elicits a state of hypodopaminergia in the mesocorticolimbic (MCL) system in both humans and preclinical rodent models of addiction, including those modeling alcohol use disorders (AUD).

METHODS
Working under the hypothesis that reductions in the bioavailability of DA play an integral role in the expression of the excessive drinking phenotype, the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) inhibitor tolcapone was used as a means to amplify cortical DA concentration and drinking behaviors were then assessed. Sucrose and ethanol (EtOH) consumption were measured in P and Wistar rats in both a free choice drinking protocol and a novel cued access protocol.

RESULTS
Tolcapone attenuated the consumption of EtOH, and to a lesser extent sucrose, in P rats in the cued access protocol, while no effect was observed in the free choice drinking protocol. Tolcapone also decreased EtOH consumption in high drinking Wistar rats. A follow-up experiment using the indirect DA agonist d-amphetamine showed no change in EtOH consumption.

CONCLUSIONS
Collectively, these data suggest that COMT inhibitors may be capable of alleviating the extremely motivating or salient nature of stimuli associated with alcohol. The hypothesis is put forth that the relative specificity of tolcapone for cortical DA systems may mediate the suppression of the high seeking/drinking phenotype.


The partial product matrix (PPM) of a squarer is symmetric. To reduce the depth of PPM, it can be folded, shifted and rearranged. In this paper, we propose a squarer design method using partial product grouping method. The proposed squarers lead to up to 24.7%, 24.4% and 6.7% reduction in area, power consumption and propagation delay compared with conventional squarers.


It is well-known that water vapor is omnipresent. It would inevitably have a negative influence on VOC adsorption on novel porous materials in actual situations. In this work, the competitive adsorption behavior of water vapor with three VOCs, 1,2-dichloroethane (DCE), ethyl acetate (EA) and benzene, on MIL-101 in a humid atmosphere was investigated by isotherm measurement, breakthrough experiments and TPD experiments. The results showed that adsorption capacities of MIL-101 for DCE, EA and benzene were individually up to 9.71, 5.79 and 3.76 mmol g−1, much higher than those of other conventional adsorbents. Breakthrough experiments indicated that the presence of water vapor in the feed stream resulted in a sharp decrease in the VOCs working capacities of MIL-101 due to competitive adsorption of water vapor on MIL-101 surfaces. The breakthrough times and the working capacities of these VOCs became smaller with an increase in the relative humidity. TPD experiments indicated that the desorption activation energies of water vapor, DCE, EA and benzene on MIL-101 were 72.9, 47.14, 41.9, and 38.16 kJ mol−1, respectively. The stronger interaction of water vapor with MIL-101 formed strong competitive adsorption with VOCs on MIL-101, resulting in the sharp decrease of the VOCs working capacities in a humid atmosphere.


Background: Renal replacement therapy is indicated for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). The glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of ESRD patients at initiation of hemodialysis vary depending on several factors including comorbidities, physicians' practice and geographical region amongst others. Aim: We determined the levels of estimated GFR of ESRD patients at initiation of hemodialysis in a single tertiary centre in Nigeria Method: This was a retrospective study. Records of all ESRD patients dialysed over a 12 month period were collated. Patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) or acute-on-chronic kidney disease were excluded. GFR was estimated using CKD-EPI formula. Early dialysis was defined as dialysing at an estimated GFR of >10ml/min. Results: A total of 78 patients initiated haemodialysis during the period of review. Mean age was 45±18 years while male to female ratio was 1.2: 1. Serum creatinine concentration ranged from 4.8-19.4mg/dl with a median of 10mg/dl while estimated GFR ranged from 2-12ml/min with a median of 5ml/min. Seventy-one out of 78 (91%) ESRD patients dialysed late while only 9% dialysed early; early initiation of dialysis was commoner in patients with human immuno-deficiency virusassociated nephropathy (HIVAN) and obstructive uropathy. Among the patients with HIVAN and obstructive nephropathy, 50% and 66% respectively dialysed early (p=0.003). Conclusion: Majority of ESRD patients in the centre dialysed late. Patients with HIVAN and obstructive uropathy tend to dialyse early compared to ESRD due to other aetiologies. Further research geared towards identifying possible predictors of early dialysis among ESRD patients is required. Keywords: estimated glomerular filtration rate, haemodialysis initiation, HIVAN, obstructive uropathy


Abstract. Estimating sediment deposition in a stream, a standard procedure
for dealing with aggradation problem is complicated in an ungauged catchment
due to the absence of necessary flow data. A serious aggradation problem
within an ungauged catchment in Alabama, USA, blocked the conveyance of a
bridge, reducing the clearance under the bridge from several feet to a
couple of inches. A study of historical aerial imageries showed
deforestation in the catchment by a significant amount over a period
consistent with the first identification of the problem. To further diagnose
the aggradation problem, due to the lack of any gauging stations, local
rainfall, flow, and sediment measurements were attempted. However, due to
the difficulty of installing an area-velocity sensor in an actively
aggrading stream, the parameter transfer process for a hydrologic model was
adopted to understand/estimate streamflow. Simulated discharge combined with
erosion parameters of MUSLE (modified universal soil loss equation) helped
in the estimation of sediment yield of the catchment. Sediment yield for the
catchment showed a significant increase in recent years. A two-dimensional
hydraulic model was developed at the bridge site to examine potential
engineering strategies to wash sediments off and mitigate further
aggradation. This study is to quantify the increase of sediment yield in an
ungauged catchment due to land cover changes and other contributing factors
and develop strategies and recommendations for preventing future aggradation
in the vicinity of the bridge.


We introduce Knowledge Fusion Transformers for video action classification. We present a self-attention based feature enhancer to fuse action knowledge in 3D inception based spatio-temporal context of the video clip intended to be classified. We show, how using only one stream networks and with little or, no pretraining can pave the way for a performance close to the current state-of-the-art. Additionally, we present how different self-attention architectures used at different levels of the network can be blended-in to enhance feature representation. Our architecture is trained and evaluated on UCF-101 and Charades dataset, where it is competitive with the state of the art. It also exceeds by a large gap from single stream networks with no to less pretraining.


Several changes in agricultural policies in Mexico have taken place during the administration of President Fox, which started in December 2000. For the fist time in modern history an opposition party won the Presidential election in July of that year. The new government has shown a new attitude towards agriculture, seeing to the greatest possible extent market oriented policies and is pushing hard to change the attitude of Mexican farmers, in order to foster their entrepreneurial skills. Traditionally most farmers have relied heavily in government guidance for their production and marketing decisions. In contrast, the largest farmer organizations, with strong political ties to the former governing Party, do not share a large the new policy orientations. Moreover, the Fox administration does not hold a majority in Congress. Even though all political parties state that agriculture is one of their main priorities, a common view is lacking. Policy developments during the last two years should be analyzed under the perspective of compromise between the major players involved.


The current paper seeks to analyse the gap in government support for New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs) in the context of Thailand. To develop an analytical model for focused gap-analysis of government supporting schemes, the author integrated characteristics of NTBFs and various dimensions on entrepreneurial process and technology commercialisation. The related supporting measures for NTBFs in Thailand were identified and analysed by using the proposed model. This paper describes the benefits of this modelling process with suggestions for public interventions on fostering entrepreneurship and innovation.


Major online platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter allow third-party applications such as games, and productivity applications access to user online private data. Such accesses must be authorized by users at installation time. The Open Authorization protocol (OAuth) was introduced as a secure and efficient method for authorizing third-party applications without releasing a user's access credentials. However, OAuth implementations don't provide the necessary fine-grained access control, nor any recommendations, i.e., which access control decisions are most appropriate. We propose an extension to the OAuth 2.0 authorization that enables the provisioning of fine-grained authorization recommendations to users when granting permissions to third-party applications. We propose a multicriteria recommendation model that utilizes application-based, user-based, and category-based collaborative filtering mechanisms. Our collaborative filtering mechanisms are based on previous user decisions, and application permission requests to enhance the privacy of the overall site's user population. We implemented our proposed OAuth extension as a browser extension that allows users to easily configure their privacy settings at application installation time, provides recommendations on requested privacy permissions, and collects data regarding user decisions. Our experiments on the collected data indicate that the proposed framework efficiently enhanced the user awareness and privacy related to third-party application authorizations.


The combined and simultaneous measurements of both acousto-mechanical and dielectric loadings on purposely-sensitized TSM (thickness-shear-mode) quartz crystal resonators are evaluated as a multiparametric sensing approach for in-liquid chemical detection. This is made possible at low cost and in real time by the use of an automatic-capacitance-compensation (ACC) oscillator, which accurately keeps locked to the sensor resonance and advantageously outputs three signals respectively corresponding to the sensor series resonant frequency, quality factor, and parallel capacitance. Results are presented on cavitand-coated 10-MHz crystals in response to different chemical compounds in water solutions.


Strengthening parents' involvement culture in schools directorial and educational process is considered as a sign of efficient educational system. This study examines the restrictions of parent involvement in secondary schools. The research approach was qualitative and phenomenological and the research data were collected through semi-structured interviews from 18 parents, teachers, principal and students in three schools in Tehran 6th district. The collected data were analyzed and classified by Colaizzi's method. In order to ensure the truthworth of the study, the member checking, external audit, Triangulation and Prolonged Engagement methods were employed. According to the results, restrictions of parental involvement in 3 emergent themes include: school related factors, parent related factors and adolescent related factor.


Paraoxonase (PON1) is a High density lipoprotein (HDL-C) associated enzyme, is proposed to have anti-atherogenic effect by preventing LDL-C oxidation. Atherogenic index of plasma (AIP) is an index used to predict the risk of atherosclerosis. Aim of our present study was to investigate the relationship between AIP and paraoxonase activity in newly diagnosed ischemic heart disease (IHD) patients. Serum lipid profile and serum paraoxonase were estimated in 32 newly diagnosed ischemic heart disease patients and 32 healthy controls. Serum lipid profile was analyzed by Semi-autoanalyser and serum paraoxonase activity was determined spectrophotometrically using paraxon as substrate. AIP was calculated using formula log (TG/HDL-C). There was significant increase in Total cholesterol (TC), Triglyceride (TG), Low density lipoprotein (LDL-C) and AIP (p<0.01) and significant decrease in High density lipoprotein (HDL-C), paraoxonase (p<0.001) in cases compared to controls. Significant positive correlation was observed between AIP and TC/HC. According to our study IHD patients are more prone to the development of atherosclerosis due to high TC/HC ratio and AIP when compared to healthy controls. AIP can predict the size of LDL particle. Size and high LDL-C levels are important factors in the development of atherosclerosis. Decrease in HDL associated paraoxonase activity with increase in LDL-C along with high TC/HC and AIP indicate increased susceptibility to accelerated atherogenesis leading to Ischemic heart disease.


Background: Aloe vera L. (Syn.: Aloe barbadensis Miller; Hindi: Ghikanvar; AV) is a cactus-like perennial plant belonging to family Liliaceae, consists of high content of phenolic compounds, glycosides (aloins), 1,8-dihydroxyanthraquinone derivatives (aloe emodin), beta-1,4 acetylated mannan, mannose-phosphate and alprogen glucoprotein. Review revealed that leaf exudates and mucilaginous gel of Aloe possesses anti-inflammatory, antifungal, antibacterial, anticancer, antioxidant, cytoprotective, cardiac stimulatory and immuno modulatory activities. Therefore in present study we studied the effect of aloe vera gel on contractile and other property of rat myocardium using isolated heart model.
Methods: A total of 24 male albino rats were divided into four groups, one control and three experimental of six animals each. Aloe vera extract an aqueous solution of aloe barbadensis was prepared by taking 10 gm of gel from the fresh leaf of aloe plant and dissolved in 100 ml of distilled water. The hearts were perfused with aqueous solutions of Aloe in doses of 100mg, 200mg, and 300mg/l of Kreb's solutions.
Observation and Results: Our results showed that there was no significant deference in baseline HR and force of contraction among control and experimental groups. aloe vera in dose of 200mg/l and 300mg/l of Kerb's–Henseleits solution was intervened showed highly significant change in force of contraction and coronary flow as compared in control.
Conclusion: Our study showed that aloe vera causes increase in myocardial force of contraction and coronary flow; therefore aloe vera may be cardio protective.


Science has changed due to the arising of the Internet and Information and Communication Technologies. These changes includes the Open movement, regarding all the aspects in methodology and diffusion on Information and Knowledge, like Open Access and Open Science. Considering Education, efforts should be done for taking into account how these new ideas and skills are transferred to Bachelor students. Experiences in the University Oberta de Catalunya, an on-line elearning environment, are described.


Exposure to genotoxic environmental agents has detrimental effects on health span and aging. Macromolecular damage caused by these factors is also known to lead to diseases like cancer. Radiation therapy is the treatment of choice for malignant tumors and several non-malignant diseases. Despite its effectiveness, it often leads to unintended complications. Radio-sensitivity of healthy 'bystander' cells is an important factor in mediating these complications, which often result in several long-term and debilitating side effects. This incurs huge costs in patient care to maintain the well-being of survivors. Current efforts to understand the underlying molecular patho-physiology of radiation damage involve the use of in vitro human cell or rodent models. However, these methods have limitations, as in vitro models cannot perfectly mimic complex tissue micro-environments and in vivo rodent models are far too expensive, time-consuming, and restricted. To fill this critical gap, Drosophila melanogaster has been used as it is a genetically malleable and an inexpensive model to study radiation-induced damage. The conservation between humans and flies at the cellular and molecular levels allowed researchers to study similarities between flies and mammals in how they respond to radiation. DNA damage resulting from radiation exposure inhibits not only intestinal stem cell (ISC) proliferation but also causes extensive apoptosis in the enterocytes leading to increased intestinal permeability and reduced survival. To identify novel regulatory pathways that can alleviate radiation induced intestinal damage, a screen was performed using approximately strains from the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP). This Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) analysis identified several candidate genes. In this thesis, two of the top candidate genes and their role in regulating intestinal damage caused by radiation were characterized. In the first aim, Meltrin was characterized for the effect of its tissue-specific knockdown in the clearance of damaged Enterocytes (EC), the main absorptive cells in fly intestine. This characterization was achieved by measuring survival, gut damage, and prevalence of apoptotic cells in irradiated guts. In the second aim, the Msi was investigated for its role in reparative proliferation of intestinal stem cells (ISCs). Results from this thesis project have identified two new conserved genes involved in radiation damage repair with potential for future relevance as therapeutic targets.


Abstract The readmission rates of cruciate-retaining (CR) and a posterior-stabilizing (PS) total knee arthroplasty (TKA) have not been extensively evaluated. We aimed to determine the following: (1) What are the readmission rates of TKA performed with the use of CR and PS prostheses at 30, 60, and 90 days following discharge? (2) Were the causes of the unplanned readmission surgically or medically related? (3) What were the medical comorbidities associated with readmission? A prospectively collected database of 845 TKAs (441 CR and 404 PS TKAs) at 22 institutions (24 surgeons) was reviewed. Outcomes evaluated included the incidence of readmission at 30, 60, and 90 days after discharge, medical/surgical cause, and medical comorbidities. There were no significant differences in readmission rates between the two cohorts at the different time points. There was a readmission rate of 2% at 30 days and 3.2% at 60 days for the CR group, and 2.2% at 30 days and 4.0% at 60 days for the PS group after discharge. Medical causes accounted for a majority of the readmissions in both the CR and PS cohort. Readmitted patients had a higher incidence of increased body mass index, cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, and musculoskeletal disorders. The readmission rates for both prostheses in the setting of primary TKA are encouraging because these rates are lower than previously reported outcomes. The authors believe that the positive midterm clinical performance of the prostheses used in this study may have contributed to the lower readmission rates.


Evidence implicating synovial mast cells in the initiation and perpetuation of arthritis has increased. We have developed a method of joint lavage to monitor dynamic intraarticular events in the intact animal. Lavage was done before and after immunologic (passive sensitization followed by intravenous specific antigen or intraarticular anti-rat immunoglobulin E [IgE] heteroantiserum) and nonimmunologic (intraarticular calcium ionophore A-23187; phorbol 12-myristate, 13-acetate; and compound 48/80) synovial mast cell activation. To quantify and analyze synovial mast cell mediator release kinetics in situ, we measured lavage fluid histamine. With all activation protocols except A-23187, histamine release was evident within 5 minutes after introduction of the stimulus. The quantitative and chronological similarities between immunologically induced and compound 48/80-induced synovial mast cell histamine release kinetics suggested that connective tissue type mast cells are an important source of inflammatory mediators in rat joints. We also measured joint lavage fluid histamine levels in rats immunized with an active sensitization protocol. Histamine levels were determined by the autoanalyzer method and were confirmed by using a commercially available radioimmunoassay that uses a monoclonal antibody against acetylated histamine. We found that in many of these animals, at the peak of the serum IgE response, joint lavage fluid histamine levels were very high even before challenge with specific antigen, and that this increase was not due to diffusion into the joint of abnormally elevated plasma histamine. These data suggested that synovial mast cells are preferentially activated in states of high serum IgE immune responses. We have used a simple, inexpensive, rapid lavage technique to generate the first data on histamine release kinetics after selective synovial mast cell activation in the intact animal. The technique can be adapted for investigation of release kinetics of a variety of other substances from activated synovial cells and can be used in other arthritis models.


In the present paper, we verify the effectiveness of the two-relaxation-time (TRT) collision operator in reducing boundary slip computed by the immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method (IB-LBM). In the linear collision operator of the TRT, we decompose the distribution function into symmetric and antisymmetric components and define the relaxation parameters for each part. The Chapman-Enskog expansion indicates that one relaxation time for the symmetric component is related to the kinematic viscosity. Rigorous analysis of the symmetric shear flows reveals that the relaxation time for the antisymmetric part controls the velocity gradient, the boundary velocity, and the boundary slip velocity computed by the IB-LBM. Simulation of the symmetric shear flows, the symmetric Poiseuille flows, and the cylindrical Couette flows indicates that the profiles of the numerical velocity calculated by the TRT collision operator under the IB-LBM framework exactly agree with those of the multirelaxation time (MRT). The TRT is as effective in removing the boundary slip as the MRT. We demonstrate analytically and numerically that the error of the boundary velocity is caused by the smoothing technique using the δ function used in the interpolation method. In the simulation of the flow past a circular cylinder, the IB-LBM based on the implicit correction method with the TRT succeeds in preventing the flow penetration through the solid surface as well as unphysical velocity distortion. The drag coefficient, the wake length, and the separation points calculated by the present IB-LBM agree well with previous studies at Re = 10, 20, and 40.


Background and Purpose— Acute exposure to particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter <2.5 &mgr;m (PM2.5) is associated with acute cardiovascular and cerebrovascular mortality. The aim of this study was to evaluate these associations with specific causes of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular mortality in Mexico City. Methods— We obtained daily mortality records for Mexico City from 2004 to 2013 for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular causes in people ≥25 and ≥65 years old. Exposure to PM2.5 was assessed with daily estimates from a new hybrid spatiotemporal model using satellite measurements of aerosol optical depth PM2.5 and compared to ground level PM2.5 measurements with missing data estimated with generalized additive models PM2.5. We fitted Poisson regression models with distributed lags for all mortality outcomes. Results— An increase of 10 µg/m3 in aerosol optical depth PM2.5 was associated with increased cardiovascular (1.22%; 95% confidence interval, 0.17–2.28) and cerebrovascular mortality (3.43%; 95% confidence interval, 0.10–6.28) for lag days 0 to 1 (lag 0–1). Stronger effects were identified for hemorrhagic stroke and people ≥65 years. Associations were slightly smaller using generalized additive models PM2.5. Conclusions— These results support the evidence that acute exposure to PM2.5 is associated with increased risk of specific cardiovascular and cerebrovascular mortality causes.


This paper investigates the impact of manager turnover on the performance of young firms and examines the variation of this impact across firms with different ownership and control structures. Using a novel manager-shareholder matched dataset of young firms in the United Kingdom, I exploit shocks to managers' outside options induced by an area-based policy in support of local businesses. To disentangle the causal impact of manager departures from policy spillover effects, I compare firms with different ex-ante manager departure likelihood and different distance to policy regions. I find that manager departure has a significant negative causal impact on the subsequent performance of young firms. Moreover, manager departure leads to a substantial decline in the assets of founder-managed firms and a significant increase in bankruptcy risks of non-founder-managed firms. My findings suggest that managers have important human capital and that replacement frictions are substantial in young firms. The heterogeneous causal impact supports the existence of founders' private benefits of control and their "tight linkages" with firms.


Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in Stagira, Macedonia. He went to Athens and entered Plato's Academy when he was eighteen. He remained there until Plato's death in about 347 BC, when he left Athens to spend the next five years at Assos in Asia Minor and at Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, working on philosophy and biology. In 343 he was invited to return to Macedonia to tutor the son of Philip II of Macedonia, the future Alexander the Great. This lasted three or four years. After a further period at Stagira, Aristotle returned to Athens where he opened a philosophical school at the Lyceum or Peripatos. On the death of Alexander in 323 there was anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens, and to avoid the same fate as Socrates, Aristotle took refuge in Chalcis on the island of Euboea, leaving the school in the charge of his pupil Theophrastus. He died the following year.


Introduction: Antagonists of activin receptor signaling may be beneficial for cancer-related anemia and bone disease caused by malignancies such as multiple myeloma and solid tumors. Areas covered: We review evidence of dysregulated signaling by activin receptor pathways in anemia, myeloma-associated osteolysis, and metastatic bone disease, as well as potential involvement in carcinogenesis. We then review properties of activin receptor antagonists in clinical development. Expert opinion: Sotatercept is a novel receptor fusion protein that functions as a soluble trap to sequester ligands of activin receptor type IIA (ActRIIA). Preclinically, the murine version of sotatercept increased red blood cells (RBC) in a model of chemotherapy-induced anemia, inhibited tumor growth and metastasis, and exerted anabolic effects on bone in diverse models of multiple myeloma. Clinically, sotatercept increases RBC markedly in healthy volunteers and patients with multiple myeloma. With a rapid onset of action differing from erythropoietin, sotatercept is in clinical development as a potential first-in-class therapeutic for cancer-related anemia, including those characterized by ineffective erythropoiesis as in myelodysplastic syndromes. Anabolic bone activity in early clinical studies and potential antitumor effects make sotatercept a promising therapeutic candidate for multiple myeloma and malignant bone diseases. Antitumor activity has been observed preclinically with small-molecule inhibitors of transforming growth factor-β receptor type I (ALK5) that also antagonize the closely related activin receptors ALK4 and ALK7. LY-2157299, the first such inhibitor to enter clinical studies, has shown an acceptable safety profile so far in patients with advanced cancer. Together, these data identify activin receptor antagonists as attractive therapeutic candidates for multiple diseases.


Kidney transplantation (KTx) is the treatment of choice for end stage renal disease (ESRD), improving both
 quality, and quantity of life in the recipients. Living Donor Kidney Transplantation (LDKT) is both related to a longer
 patient and graft survival, and laparoscopic donor nephrectomy (LDN) is the procedure of choice by most transplants
 Centers. Even though many techniques have been used to secure both the renal artery and vein during
 laparoscopic nephrectomy (Hem-o-lock clips, titanium clips or Vascular Stapler), ligation and division of the renal
 hilum remain two critical steps, entailing a certain risk of serious complications. Mechanical EndoGIA vs. iDrive™
 Ultra Powered Stapling System (Autosuture; Covidien Surgical, Mansfield) have been compared. iDrive™ is a
 reusable, handled stapler computer-controlled stapling systems that runs on battery and can be used on multiplepatients.
 It comprises a hand-held control unit, and a loading unit, which consists in a powered EndoGIA cartridge.
 We evaluated safety, efficacy, maneuverability and ergonomics for renal vascular control during LDN. Moreover, the
 differences in costs between the two procedures were also analyzed. There were no malfunctions or complications
 related to the use of iDrive™ requiring conversion to open procedure. Advantages in maneuverability and costs were
 also observed. The total timing related to the use of the devices was statistically significant shorter for the iDrive™
 than for the EndoGIA being respectively 3.4 ± 0.4 minutes vs. 4.2 ± 0.4 minutes (p=0.0014). In our experience,
 iDrive™ is safe and feasible for separate ligation and accurate division of renal artery and vein during LDN. The
 system also helps to minimize the need for additional maneuvers to secure the renal hilum. Furthermore, it allows
 greater precision of cutting on the kidney vessels that will have to be used for transplantation.


Classical mesh partitioning algorithms were designed for rather static situations, and their straightforward application in a dynamical framework may lead to unsatisfactory results, e.g., excessive data migration among processors. Furthermore, special attention should be paid to their amenability to parallelization. In this paper a novel parallel method for the dynamic partitioning of adaptive unstructured meshes is described. It is based on a linear representation of the mesh using self-avoiding walks.


When dealing with CaratModory (outer) measures, a natural problem arises: how does one determine a nontrivial, interesting family of measurable sets? In particular cases of a metric or topological nature, it has been customary to assume that the measure is additive on sets which are a bit more than merely disjoint. The general approach of this paper, purely set-theoretical in nature, emphasizes a relation R which ''separates" sets, and describes certain sets, constructed with the aid of R, which turn out to be measurable whenever the measure is additive on sets which are separatively related.


. The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems has sparked discussions regarding developing ethically responsible technology. Consequently, various organizations have released high-level AI ethics frameworks to assist in AI design. However, we still know too little about how AI ethics principles are perceived and work in practice, especially in public organizations. This study examines how AI practitioners perceive ethical issues in their work concerning AI design and how they interpret and put them into practice. We conducted an empirical study consisting of semi-structured qualitative interviews with AI practitioners working in or for public organizations. Taking the lens provided by the In-Action Ethics framework and previous studies on ethical tensions, we analyzed practitioners' interpretations of AI ethics principles and their application in practice. We found tensions between practitioners' interpretation of ethical principles in their work and ethos tensions. In this vein, we argue that understanding the different tensions that can occur in practice and how they are tackled is key to studying ethics in practice. Understanding how AI practitioners perceive and apply ethical principles is necessary for practical ethics to contribute toward an empirically grounded, Responsible AI.


Modelling of the droplet formation and drying process in the synthesis of Zinc Oxide-Silicon Dioxide (ZnO-SiO2) composite have been conducted through a CFD modelling. In general, modelling of spray drying only focused on exploring the drying chamber section. The phenomenon builds in a consecutive electrospray and spray drying method has been successfully studied in this paper. The influence of carrier gas flow rate (2 to 10 L/min), precursor flow rate (1 to 10 ml/h), drying chamber temperature and applied voltage (12 to 14 kV) were investigated systematically. Numerical modelling was conducted to describe the mechanism of the composite droplet formation through the jet shape of the electrospray. Evaporation of the initial composite droplet was considered in the modelling, accounting for its size evolution. Simultaneous mass transfer modelling due to the composite evaporation was solved in combination with a general dynamic equation solution. The modelling results show that the applied voltage and the precursor flow rate effectively affected the composite droplet size. While the carrier gas flow rate and the drying chamber temperature, influenced the effectiveness of the composite particle formation in the spray drying synthesis.


Objective: To investigate the kinetics of myocardial engraftment of bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells (BMNCs) after intracoronary injection using 99mTc-d,l-hexamethylpropylene amine oxime (99mTc-HMPAO) nuclear imaging in patients with acute and chronic anterior myocardial infarction. Design: Nuclear imaging-derived tracking of BMNCs at 2 and 20 h after injection in the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery. Setting: Academical cardiocentre. Patients: Five patients with acute (mean (SD) age 58 (11) years; ejection fraction range 33–45%) and five patients with chronic (mean (SD) age 50 (6) years; ejection fraction range 28–34%) anterior myocardial infarction. Interventions: A total of 24.2×108–57.0×108 BMNCs (20% labelled with 700–1000 MBq 99mTc-HMPAO) were injected in the LAD coronary artery. Results: At 2 h after BMNC injection, myocardial activity was observed in all patients with acute (range 1.31–5.10%) and in all but one patient with chronic infarction (range 1.10–3.0%). At 20 h, myocardial engraftment was noted only in three patients with acute myocardial infarction, whereas no myocardial activity was noted in any patient with chronic infarction. Conclusions: Engraftment of BMNCs shows dynamic changes within the first 20 h after intracoronary injection. Persistent myocardial engraftment was noted only in a subset of patients with acute myocardial infarction.


4327 RNA helicase A (RHA), a member of the DexD/H box helicase family of proteins, is an integral component of the human transcriptosome. RHA has not previously shown to interact with tumor specific oncogenes. Ewing's sarcoma Family of Tumors (ESFT) are most often characterized by a chromosomal translocation t(11;22) that results in an aberrant transcription EWS-FLI1. Elimination of EWS-FLI1 protein from ESFT cells induces apoptosis and reduces xenograft tumor growth. We identified RHA as a novel partner for EWS-FL1 by unbiased phage display screening. We hypothesized that the interaction of RHA with the EWS-FLI1 results in a potent transcriptional activator/coactivator complex amplifying the functions of both proteins and together drive the malignant phenotype of ESFT. We produced and purified recombinant EWS-FLI1. EWS-FLI1 screening of a phage display library identified phage that bound to EWS-FLI1 and the tail proteins of those phage were sequenced. Co-immunoprecipitation experiments were performed with EWS and FLI1 antibodies. The direct binging of RHA and EWS-FLI1 was tested by ELISA. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay was performed in crosslinked TC32 and TC71 cells with antibodies recognized either RHA or FLI1. Decrosslinked chromatin was then subject to PCR with primers amplifying genomic region in the PTPL1 promoter. Transformation assays were performed in primary mouse fibroblasts that stably expressed low levels of EWS-FLI1 and were subsequently transfected with RHA and selected with G418 prior to being placed in soft agar. We found RHA occurring in a complex with endogenous EWS-FLI1 in ESFT cells by co-immunoprecipitation using both EWS and FLI1 antibodies. ChIP using antibodies to both RHA and FLI1 followed by PCR demonstrated that both proteins exist on the genomic region of the PTPL1 promoter. EWS-FLI1 regulated promoter activity was increased an a dose dependent fashion using co-transfected RHA along with endogenous Id2 promoter (3-fold increase) and the synthetic GGAA promoter (15-fold increase) in ESFT cell lines. Three independent transfections of mouse embryonic fibroblasts, stably expressed low levels of EWS-FLI1, with RHA or empty vector control were performed followed by soft agar colony assays. A 33% increase in colony formation was reproducibly seen in cells expressing both EWS-FLI1 and RHA. RHA appears to interact with EWS-FLI1 directly. Our studies demonstrate enhanced EWS-FLI1 function when RHA levels are increased. Ongoing studies are evaluating the impact of EWS-FLI1 upon RHA helicase and ATPase function. Further characterization of these interactions might allow for development of novel targeted therapeutic agents for anti-tumor activity.


The effectiveness of the addition of salt and acetonitrile in the sample matrix to induce narrowing of the analyte zones is demonstrated for the first time in micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC). Using coproporphyrin (CP) I and III isomers as test compounds, the use of sodium cholate (SC) as the micelle in the separation buffer and a high concentration of sodium chloride in the aqueous sample solution (without the presence of an organic solvent) were found to provide enhancement in peak heights for both CP I and III, but yielded very poor resolution of these two positional isomers at sample size of 10% capillary volume or larger. With the addition of acetonitrile as the organic solvent in the aqueous sample solution (acetonitrile‐salt mixtures), baseline/partial resolution of CP I and III was obtained even at large injection volumes, along with significant increase in peak heights for both isomers. Possible mechanisms responsible for the narrowing of analyte zones are briefly discussed. The effects of experimental parameters, such as concentrations of salt and acetonitrile, on peak heights and resolution of the test compounds were studied. Importantly, the usefulness of the present method was demonstrated for the MEKC determination of endogenous CP I and III present in normal urine samples with good separation and detection performances.