OBJECTIVE
Mitral annular calcification (MAC) and atherosclerosis are similar in regard to risk factors and pathogenesis. Increased red blood cell distribution width (RDW) has been shown to be associated with atherosclerotic diseases. However, no data evaluating the association of MAC with RDW has been available. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the relationship between MAC and RDW among patients with various cardiovascular risk factors.

METHODS
A total of 623 patients (MAC-positive group: n=413; control group: n=210) admitted to our cardiology outpatient clinics were enrolled between March and November 2014. Demographic, clinical, and laboratory parameters of all participants were recorded. RDW was analyzed from complete blood samples of study participants.

RESULTS
Patients in MAC-positive group showed older age and higher rate of hypertension. Mean RDW value was significantly higher in MAC-positive group, compared to control group (15.3±1.4% vs. 13.9±1.4%, p<0.001). In Pearson correlation analysis, statistically significant and positive correlation was determined between neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and RDW (r=0.284, p<0.001). In multivariate logistic regression analysis, age (OR: 1.041, p<0.001), hypertension (OR: 1.540, p=0.039), and RDW (OR: 5.351, p<0.001) were determined as independent predictors of MAC.

CONCLUSION
RDW levels were significantly increased in patients with MAC, and RDW was determined as an independent predictor for presence of MAC. Therefore, increased RDW can be used as a marker of continuing inflammatory process in MAC patients.


In order to enable both manufacturers and suppliers to be profitable on today' s highly competitive markets, manufacturers and suppliers must be quick in selecting best partners establishing strategic relationship, and collaborating with each other so that they can satisfy the changing competitive manufacturing requirements. A web-based supplier relationships (SR) framework is therfore proposed using multi-agent systems and linear programming technique to reduce supply cost, increase flexibility and shorten response time. Web-based SR approach is an ideal platform for information exchange that helps buyers and suppliers to maintain the availability of materials in the right quantity, at the right place, and at the right time, and keep the customer-supplier relationship more transparent. A multi-agent system prototype was implemented by simulation, which shows the feasibility of the proposed architecture.


The design of two-dimensional (2-D) digital filters can be accomplished using the singular-value decomposition (SVD) method proposed by the authors in the past. The method in its present form treats all the elements of the sampled frequency-response matrix uniformly. Although the method works very well, in certain applications improved designs can be achieved by preconditioning the frequency-response matrix in order to emphasize important parts and deemphasize unimportant parts of the matrix. The preconditioning can be achieved through the use of an optimal weighted low-rank approximation (WLRA). Current methods for WLRA provide only local solutions. In this paper, we propose a method that can be used to perform WLRA which is globally optimal for complex-valued matrices. The usefulness of the proposed method is demonstrated by applying it to the design of 2-D digital filters.


The objective of the study is to study the Physico-chemical properties and antioxidant activities of total, soluble and insoluble dietary fibers from defatted rice bran. Enzymatic-gravimetric method was used to obtain Total, Soluble and Insoluble fraction of dietary fiber from defatted rice bran. The fractions were used to study their structure (SEM), physical properties (color, density, porosity and oil or fat adsorption capacity), hydration properties (water holding, water binding and swelling emulsifying capacity), and antioxidant capacity (DPPH-scavenging activity, metal chelating and reducing power capacity). The physical properties except FBC of SDF were significantly higher than IDF and TDF; however hydration properties were lower than IDF and TDF (p<0.05). Compared to SDF, IDF showed the highest CEC, while its GDRI value was lowest (p<0.05). All dietary fiber fractions at high concentration (5% or 50 mg/mL) showed a high antioxidant activity.


ABSTRACT This article examines the influence of parents' education and employment status on the attained educational level of their children with special reference to gender differences. Our study analysed what determined the probability of Spanish young people completing university education. The study used a sample of 132,421 observations of people under the age of 28 not in any type of training or education selected using anonymized microdata from the most recent national population and housing census. An ordered probit model was used to capture the effect of various socioeconomic, environmental and cultural variables on the advancement and attainment of educational level according to gender. The results show that the most important variable in academic progress is the parents' educational level and that the mother's education level has a greater influence. Additionally, parental employment instability was found to be what most inhibits a child's academic progress.


Menthol has economic importance to the flavor, food and pharmaceutical industries. Ten menthol mint (Mentha spp) genotypes were assessed for essential oil content and composition at Southern Brazil environmental conditions at two harvest times (February and May). The experimental design was in completely randomized blocks with a 10 x 2 factorial for genotypes and harvest time. The essential oil was obtained by hydrodistillation in a Clevenger apparatus. The essential oil content varied from 0.8 to 5.3% and was greater in February for all the investigated genotypes. The main constituents identified in the essential oil samples were menthol (12 - 92.7%), mentone (2.2 - 56.9%), and neomenthol (2.9 - 12.1%). Menthol levels were superior in May and showed a negative correlation with mentone and neomenthol, which in turn were higher in February. Menthol levels were positively correlated with menthyl acetate. Pulegone, 1.8 cineol, and limonene were also detected in lower concentrations in some genotypes. Thirteen other essential oil constituents were identified as trace elements in essential oil. Mentha canadensis L. showed the highest essential oil content (5.3 % - February and 3.5% - May) as well as the highest menthol content (89.6% - February, 92.7% - May) in both harvests. From the analyzed results, Southern Brazil local environmental conditions are appropriated for menthol production, with two harvests and M. canadensis L. can be recommended as a promising genetic source. The summer harvest (February) favored oil yield, although with a slight decrease in menthol content. The challenge of achieving higher essential oil and menthol yields depends on strategies to increase herb yield by developing innovative agronomic practices.


Spiking neural networks (SNNs) that enable energy-efficient neuromorphic hardware are receiving growing attention. Training SNNs directly with back-propagation has demonstrated accuracy comparable to deep neural networks (DNNs). However, previous direct-training algorithms require high-precision floating-point operations, which are not suitable for low-power end-point devices. The high-precision operations also require the learning algorithm to run on high-performance accelerator hardware. In this paper, we propose an improved approach that converts the high-precision floating-point operations to low-bitwidth integer operations for an existing direct-training algorithm, i.e., the Spatio-Temporal BackPropagation (STBP) algorithm. The proposed low-bitwidth IntegerSTBP algorithm requires only integer arithmetic for SNN training and inference, which greatly reduces the computational complexity. Experimental results show that the proposed STBP algorithm achieves comparable accuracy and higher energy efficiency than the original floating-point STBP algorithm. Moreover, it can be implemented on low-power end-point devices to provide learning capability during inference, which are mostly supported by fixed-point hardware.


A survey on the loss of free amino acids (FAA) in aquaculture reared fish embryos and larvae was conducted. Twelve fish species from 14 studies were selected and a relationship between the rates of decay for total FAAs and temperature was observed. A Q10 coefficient of 2.98 ± 0.33 SD was estimated and applied as a correction factor in order to achieve a rate of decay of total FAAs common for all species. Based on the Q10 adjusted rate of decay and the overall FAA pool in newly spawned eggs, predictions on the estimated time of FAA depletion and daily loss of FAAs after hatching were achieved. Variation between the species for different FAAs was low, and the most outstanding essential FAAs were leucine, lysine, valine and isoleucine while alanine and serine dominated non-essential FAAs. Overall, leucine could be regarded as the most important among all species due to its common occurrence in newly spawned eggs and fast rate of decay. Based on the functions considered in the present study, it is possible to anticipate the availability of FAA diet needed in the form of live feed for pelagic first feeding marine fish larvae in aquaculture at different temperatures.


Do labour markets discriminate against workers with particular ethnic-sounding names? We use non-random sorting into inter-ethnic marriage and salient differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazi surnames to evaluate the causal impact of Sephardic affiliation on wages. Using the 1995 Israeli Census, we estimate the effect of a Sephardic sounding surname on wages. We first compare the wages of Israeli Jewish males born to Sephardic fathers and Ashkenazi mothers (SA), who are more likely to carry a Sephardic surname, with the wages of Israeli Jewish males born to Ashkenazi fathers and Sephardic mothers (AS). We find that Israeli labour markets discriminate based on perceived ethnicity: SA workers earn significantly less than their AS counterparts. We then exploit the custom of women to adopt their husbands' surnames to disentangle actual ethnicity from the ethnicity perceived by the market. Consistent with ethnic discrimination based on surnames, we find that it is father-in-law's ethnicity--rather than father's ethnicity--that shapes female wage rates. Finally, we find that labour markets discriminate based on surname only when those names provide additional information about ethnicity. When ethnicity can be discerned from skin tone, surnames do not provide additional explanatory power with respect to wages. Copyright 2014, Oxford University Press.


A 3-year-old girl affected by a virilizing tumor of the adrenal gland, without significant elevation in the levels of 17 ketosteroids (17-KS) urinary excretion, was studied clinically. Her symptoms started abruptyly at the age of 2, with progressive enlargement of the clitoris and the appearance of pubic hair. In various tests, the 17-KS levels barely exceeded the upper normal limits and at times remained within normal limits. The retropneumoperitoneum X-ray suggested an enlargement of the right adrenal gland and the presence of a neoplasm, which was actually discovered during surgery. Histopathological examination revealed a well-defined neoplasm, without capsule invasion and with accentuated cell polymorphism. Histoenzymology showed that the tissue lacked the enzymatic system involving 3 beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (3 beta-HSD). Indoxylesterase (I.EST-A) activity identified the tumor as originating from the internal layers of the adrenal cortex. The histochemical findings were correlated to the clinical picture and the levels of urinary 17-KS.


On January 1, 1988, a United Nations Convention became the first federal sales law in the United States. Disputes arising out of international sales contracts, formed after January 1, 1988 between merchants from signatory nations, may be governed by the United Nations Convention On Contracts For the International Sale Of Goods (CISG or Convention) rather than the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.) or foreign sales law, unless the parties specifically state otherwise.The structure of an international sale of goods differs from a local sale in ways which will affect traders' decisions about which law to choose as the governing law of their contract. In an international sale of goods between merchants, payment is made through a documentary sale or letter of credit transaction. In simplified form, the buyer takes the sales contract to his bank and receives a line of credit The buyer's bank notifies the seller's bank of the line of credit and the seller, after shipping the goods, presents the bill of lading and other required documents to his bank for payment The seller's bank presents the documents to the buyer's bank for reimbursement and the buyer's bank turns over the documents to the buyer so that the buyer can obtain the goods from the carrier.In a documentary transaction, the buyer has paid for the goods before receiving them. He nevertheless has a right to inspect the goods and can reject them if they do not conform to the sales contract and sue for a return of the purchase price.Because the buyer must pay for the goods before he can inspect them, the buyer can demand that a third party in the seller's country inspect the goods and that the seller include a certificate of inspection with the documents of sale. Although the letter of credit transaction and documentary sale are a valuable means of payment in international trade, they do expose the parties to certain risks. In a letter of credit transaction, the buyer has paid for goods without personally inspecting them. If the goods do not conform to the-sales contract, the buyer's' only recourse is a cause of action for damages. In a documentary sale transaction, if the buyer or the buyer's bank does not accept the seller's draft, the seller may incur expenses in reselling the goods in a foreign country. The seller's right to prevent the buyer from rejecting the goods and the buyer's right to avoid a contract were in the past dependent on domestic law, of either the buyer's or the seller's country, as determined by uncertain conflict of law rules. The CISG is designed to make the outcome of such disputes more certain. One area of the CISG which was vigorously debated and ultimately compromised is the seller's right to cure a late or defective performance. This Article will examine whether international traders will benefit by opting to use the CISG provisions regarding the seller's right to cure rather than the Uniform Commercial Code as the controlling law of their contracts.


Post‐GWAS analysis, in many cases, focuses on fine‐mapping targeted genetic regions discovered at GWAS‐stage; that is, the aim is to pinpoint potential causal variants and susceptibility genes for complex traits and disease outcomes using next‐generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. Large‐scale GWAS cohorts are necessary to identify target regions given the typically modest genetic effect sizes. In this context, two‐phase sampling design and analysis is a cost‐reduction technique that utilizes data collected during phase 1 GWAS to select an informative subsample for phase 2 sequencing. The main goal is to make inference for genetic variants measured via NGS by efficiently combining data from phases 1 and 2. We propose two approaches for selecting a phase 2 design under a budget constraint. The first method identifies sampling fractions that select a phase 2 design yielding an asymptotic variance covariance matrix with certain optimal characteristics, for example, smallest trace, via Lagrange multipliers (LM). The second relies on a genetic algorithm (GA) with a defined fitness function to identify exactly a phase 2 subsample. We perform comprehensive simulation studies to evaluate the empirical properties of the proposed designs for a genetic association study of a quantitative trait. We compare our methods against two ranked designs: residual‐dependent sampling and a recently identified optimal design. Our findings demonstrate that the proposed designs, GA in particular, can render competitive power in combined phase 1 and 2 analysis compared with alternative designs while preserving type 1 error control. These results are especially evident under the more practical scenario where design values need to be defined a priori and are subject to misspecification. We illustrate the proposed methods in a study of triglyceride levels in the North Finland Birth Cohort of 1966. R code to reproduce our results is available at github.com/egosv/TwoPhase_postGWAS.


Painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy (painful-DPN) is a highly prevalent and disabling condition, affecting up to one-third of patients with diabetes. This condition can have a profound impact, resulting in a low quality of life, disruption of employment, impaired sleep, and poor mental health with an excess of depression and anxiety. The management of painful-DPN poses a great challenge. Unfortunately, there are currently no Food and Drug Administration (USA) approved disease-modifying treatments for diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) as trials of putative pathogenetic treatments have failed at phase 3 clinical trial stage. Therefore, the focus of managing painful-DPN other than improving glycaemic control and cardiovascular risk factor modification is treating symptoms. The recommended treatments based on expert international consensus for painful-DPN have remained essentially unchanged for the last decade. Both the serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SNRI) duloxetine and α2δ ligand pregabalin have the most robust evidence for treating painful-DPN. Weak opioids (e.g., tapentadol and tramadol, both of which have an SNRI effect), tricyclic antidepressants, such as amitriptyline and α2δ ligand gabapentin, are also widely recommended and prescribed agents. Opioids (except tramadol and tapentadol) should be prescribed with caution in view of the lack of definitive data surrounding efficacy and concerns surrounding addiction and adverse events. Recently, emerging therapies have gained local licenses, including the α2δ ligand mirogabalin (Japan) and the high dose 8% capsaicin patch (FDA and Europe). The management of refractory painful-DPN is difficult; specialist pain services may offer off-label therapies (e.g., botulinum toxin, intravenous lidocaine,, and spinal cord stimulation), although there is limited clinical trial evidence supporting their use. Additionally, despite combination therapy being commonly used clinically, there is little evidence supporting this practice. There is a need for further clinical trials to assess novel therapeutic agents, optimal combination therapy, and existing agents to determine which are the most effective for the treatment of painful-DPN. This article reviews the evidence for the treatment of painful-DPN, including emerging treatment strategies, such as novel compounds and stratification of patients according to individual characteristics, (e.g., pain phenotype, neuroimaging, and genotype) to improve treatment responses.


This study examined the relationship between IFRS adoption and FDI in Nigeria and Ghana. Using ordinary least square as well as other diagnostic test, findings show a negative but insignificant relationship between IFRS adoption and FDI in Nigeria. Also, it was discovered that IFRS adoption has a positive and significant relationship in Ghana. Findings also show that IFRS adoption alone would not lead to FDI inflows and FDI is affected by other factors such as exchange rate, inflation and political instability. The study recommends that Effective execution of IFRS requires strategic planning and IFRS ought to be linked to an objective for it to have a beneficial outcome.


The purpose of this study was to know the effectiveness of Gracilaria sp. ethanol extract to inhibit the growth of Aspergillus niger. The results showed that the ethanol extract of Gracilaria sp. was not effective to inhibit the growth of A. niger. The minimum inhibitory concentration test (MIC) was carried out using extracts with 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.4%, 0.5%, 0.6%, 0.7 %, 0.8 %, 0.9%, 1%, 2% and 0% percentage. The MIC results showed that the minimum extract inhibiting A. niger was 0.8%. The results of the antifungal activity test showed that the ethanol extract of Gracilaria sp. was fungistatic against A. niger. On the third day incubation, the 4% extract inhibited the growth of fungi with an average diameter of 5 mm. The fungal colony test was carried out using extract with 0.5%, 1%, 2%, 4% and 0% concentration, and the results showed that extract with 4% concentration can inhibit fungi colony growth by 69%. Phytochemical analysis was conducted using the UV-Vis Spectrophotometry, and the results showed that the ethanol extract of Gracilaria sp. contained 366.33 mg/100g/GAE phenol, 2041.47 mg/100g flavonoids, and 3041.60 mg/100g/TAE tannins. Tannins are suspected to be the most dominant fungistatic compound with the largest amount.


Damage from traffic can seriously injure athletic field turfgrass, although fertility regimes can influence wear tolerance. While excess nitrogen (N) can reduce wear tolerance, moderate N has improved tolerance and hastened recovery from injury. Potassium (K) may enhance wear tolerance through regulation of turgor potential. This research was undertaken to determine shoot growth and wear tolerance of seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum Swartz) to N and K application. Field studies were conducted in 1998 at the Univ. of Georgia Experiment Station, Griffin. Grasses were established on U.S. Golf Association specification greens in 1996. Fertility treatments were applied at annual N rates of 196 and 392 kg.ha -1 and K rates of 92 and 392 kg-ha-'. The higher N rate increased wear tolerance, shoot growth, shoot density, visual quality, and color of the two ecotypes, AP 10 and AP 14, but reduced their visible range spectral reflectance, indicating greater absorption of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). Measured responses to K were minimal and no enhancement of wear tolerance in response to K treatment was noted.


Previous studies of the status of local magistrates in the Late Empire are unsatisfying and fail to explain when and why local magistracies ended. With the aid of legal, epigraphic, papyrological and literary sources, the author re-examines the functions and chronology of both regular and quasi-magistrates, among them the curator , defensor and pater civitatis. He finds that the expense of office-holding was only part of the reason for the extinction of regular magistracies. More critical was the failure of local magistrates to control finances and protect the plebeians.


An 84-year-old women had repeated gastrointestinal bleeding from a Dieulafoy lesion, i.e. a gastric or duodenal ulcer containing an aberrant artery. Her blood group was AB-D negative; her Rhesus phenotype was CCdee. In addition, antibody screening revealed anti-c alloantibodies as the result of a previous transfusion. Donors negative for D and c are very rare in Caucasian populations. Compatible red cell concentrates are available only from the European Bank of Frozen Blood of the Council of Europe, located at Sanquin in Amsterdam, Tthe Netherlands. The patient could be saved by requesting compatible erythrocyte concentrate from this blood bank. Severe blood loss poses a serious challenge in patients who are positive for alloantibodies against blood group antigens with a high frequency in the population, and in patients who are themselves negative for such antigens. The presence of alloantibodies is often the result of previous blood transfusions. In view of the large number of antigens on erythrocytes, one should therefore be conservative as to blood transfusion in order to prevent alloantibody formation.


Clouds consisting of ice particles have a crucial role in our climate system and profoundly influ-
ence the Earth's radiation. However, these clouds are poorly constrained in climate models mainly
due to uncertainties associated with estimation of their ice mass. It has been investigated by sev-
eral studies that the combined microwave millimeter/submillimeter spectral region is suitable for
observing the mass of ice clouds. One of the major uncertainty sources of the microwave ice mass
estimation is that the shape of ice particles is poorly known. It has been shown by several studies
that ice particles can take on extremely variable irregular shapes. It is therefore necessary to find
shape models that can approximate and simplify the reality. Two common simple shape models
frequently used are spheres and spheroids. They can be either solid (consisting of pure ice) or soft
(consisting of a homogeneous mixture of ice and air).
This thesis is concerned with examining the applicability of the simple models in estima-
tion of ice mass across the microwave spectral region. The focus is put on soft models. Three
databases consisting of optical properties of some randomly oriented non-spherical ice particles
and aggregates are considered as reference. The practical objective is to determine microphysical
characteristics (i.e., shape, volume or mass fraction of air, and refractive index) of a soft model
that mimics average optical properties of the reference data across all microwave frequencies from
90 to 874 GHz and size parameters (x) up to 6.
It is found that the volume air fraction of a soft model should vary with both size and frequency
to give the best fit of the reference data. It is therefore impossible to define a soft model with a
single air fraction working in a broad range of frequencies and particle sizes. It is also demon-
strated that determining the volume air fraction based on size-density parameterisations results in
underestimation of mean optical properties at larger size parameters (x > 0.5). Furthermore, it is
concluded that applying the Maxwell Garnett mixing rule with ice as inclusion and air as matrix
media (see section 3.4) underestimates the imaginary parts of refractive index of the soft models
at lower size parameters (x < 1 ).
Overall, it is concluded that soft models can be tuned to give proper results over a narrow range
of frequencies, but such a model lose its accuracy over other range of frequencies. One alternative
approach to soft models is applying a sector-like snowflake model to represent the mean optical
properties of the reference data. This was suggested by Geer and Baordo [2014] and confirmed by
Eriksson et al. [2014].


To the Editor. —Dr Rosenberg and colleagues 1 report 5 years of experience in treating patients with metastatic melanoma or renal cell cancer with interleukin-2. The poor clinical results that they achieved over that time (7% success rate compared with the spontaneous success rate of 5%) may be caused by an error in the model design on which their protocols were based. In their model experiments with immunogenic mouse tumors, 2 treatment of the tumor-bearing mice with interleukin-2 and tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte cells began 3 days after transplanting the tumor into the syngeneic host. They used the phrase "established pulmonary micrometastases" to describe the characteristics of the system, implying that 3 days after transplantation, the tumors had acquired the in vivo characteristics of an autochthonous tumor. These authors have overlooked reports from my laboratory that were published in 1977 that showed that immunogenic mouse tumor cells became "killer cell" resistant by


A lectotype of Didymograptus bifidus (J. Hall) is selected and the species is described fully. The occurrence of specimens that can be assigned to that species is discussed. Many specimens in North America, the British Isles, Norway, and Sweden have been incorrectly identified as D. bifidus. Several of these have been examined in the present study. They are described and compared with D. bifidus.


Time and resource constraints often force developers of highly configurable systems to assess their system's performance on very few configurations and to extrapolate from these to the entire configuration space, which allows many performance bottlenecks and sources of QoS degradation to escape detection until systems are fielded. To improve the assessment of performance across large configuration spaces, we present a modelbased approach to developing and deploying a new distributed continuous quality assurance (DCQA) process. Our approach builds upon and extends the Skoll environment, which is developing and validating novel software QA processes and tools that leverage the extensive computing resources of worldwide user communities in a distributed, continuous manner to significantly and rapidly improve software quality. This paper describes how our new DCQA performance assessment process enables developers to run formally-designed screening experiments that isolate the most significant options. After that, exhaustive experiments (on the now much smaller configuration space) are conducted. We implemented this process using model-based software tools and executed it in the Skoll environment to demonstrate its effectiveness via two experiments on widely used QoS-enabled middleware. Our results show that model-based DCQA processes improves developer insight into the effect of system changes on performance at an acceptable cost.


Introduction: Bacterial resistance to antibiotics and adverse effects of food preservatives and additives are common problems of health and therapeutic systems that solve the problem and controlling them necessitate achieving a new group of antimicrobial compounds. In this regard, compounds derived from plant extracts as potential sources are of great importance. Materials & methods: The study has been carried out in two different stages including extracting and determining anti-bacterial properties of aqueous, ethanolic and methanolic extractions against four strains of bacteria including Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus mutans. Disk diffusion and also well plate methods and afterwards measuring the diameter of inhibition zones were used as antimicrobial activity indicators. The antimicrobial activity of different extracts concentration was compared versus blank sample and common antibiotics that are used to treat bacterial infections. Findings: All three of aqueous, ethanolic and methanolic extracts of A.A could create significant anti-bacterial properties compared with blank and antibiotic samples. At a concentration of 100 mg/ ml aqueous extract equivalent to 30% of ciprofloxacin but methanol extracts with the greatest impact about 71% of Vancomycin were creating inhibitory activity against Escherichia coli and Enterococcus faecalis respectively. Minimum Inhibitory effect was resulted by aqueous extract against Escherichia coli and Enterococcus faecalis but the inhibitory effects of these extracts were significant in comparison with blank sample (p<0.01). & Conclusions: Aqueous, ethanolic and methanolic extrtacts of A.A showed varying degrees of anti-bacterial properties that this effect depends on the concentration used. So, probably this inhibitory effect on the bacterial activity is attributable to materials that the adequacy of their extracting depends on used solvent features. It might be achieved to new antimicrobial compounds by identification and extraction of these materials.


Motivation: Several functional gene annotation databases have been developed in the recent years, and are widely used to infer the biological function of gene sets, by scrutinizing the attributes that appear over- and underrepresented. However, this strategy is not directly applicable to the study of non-coding DNA, as the non-coding sequence span varies greatly among different gene loci in the human genome and longer loci have a higher likelihood of being selected purely by chance. Therefore, conclusions involving the function of non-coding elements that are drawn based on the annotation of neighboring genes are often biased. We assessed the systematic bias in several particular Gene Ontology (GO) categories using the standard hypergeometric test, by randomly sampling non-coding elements from the human genome and inferring their function based on the functional annotation of the closest genes. While no category is expected to occur significantly over- or underrepresented for a random selection of elements, categories such as 'cell adhesion', 'nervous system development' and 'transcription factor activities' appeared to be systematically overrepresented, while others such as 'olfactory receptor activity'—underrepresented. Results: Our results suggest that functional inference for non-coding elements using gene annotation databases requires a special correction. We introduce a set of correction coefficients for the probabilities of the GO categories that accounts for the variability in the length of the non-coding DNA across different loci and effectively eliminates the ascertainment bias from the functional characterization of non-coding elements. Our approach can be easily generalized to any other gene annotation database. Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics Online.


Laser double pulses offer interesting opportunities to increase the ablation performance of ultra short laser pulses. In recent published and performed experiments we have presented an optical setup that covers delay times from some picosecond up to 20 ns as well as first experimental results of ablating aluminium and silicon. In this paper we present further results of especially interesting time domains for both materials. The ablation efficiency on silicon with inter pulse delays from 6.3 ns to 15 ns was investigated. In this range the double pulse effect was mainly depending on the fluency. The double pulse efficiency increase is connected with a higher thermal impact on the work piece. The change of delay and repetition rate has no influence on the ablation efficiency for both single and double pulses. The experiments on aluminium concentrated on the pulse delays of 50 ps to 400 ps. The ablation depth per pulse is lower than for single pulse ablation in this range. Double pulse efficiency decreases up to a pulse delay of 150 ps.


Abstract The development of drones has been exceedingly rapid in the last few years. They can be used in many different areas of life, they are fit to solve a range of problems, in fact, in some fields they may open up new horizons. Besides their advantages, however, we must also see their downside. This article will focus on the development of these unmanned aerial vehicles and will elaborate on the regulations affecting the small-size devices, which are the most widespread. This section will be followed by the introduction of their potential use in law enforcement, with special focus on the protection of prisons. The paper will also discuss what hazards are involved in the illegal use of drones with regards to jails, and what response can be given to these new challenges.


Transactions with strong consistency and high availability simplify building and reasoning about distributed systems. However, previous implementations performed poorly. This forced system designers to avoid transactions completely, to weaken consistency guarantees, or to provide single-machine transactions that require programmers to partition their data. In this paper, we show that there is no need to compromise in modern data centers. We show that a main memory distributed computing platform called FaRM can provide distributed transactions with strict serializability, high performance, durability, and high availability. FaRM achieves a peak throughput of 140 million TATP transactions per second on 90 machines with a 4.9 TB database, and it recovers from a failure in less than 50 ms. Key to achieving these results was the design of new transaction, replication, and recovery protocols from first principles to leverage commodity networks with RDMA and a new, inexpensive approach to providing non-volatile DRAM.


The magnetic field is a field that is formed by moving electrical charges (electric current) which cause emergence of force in an electric charge that moves. Near all object that characteristic of metal can be pulled by a magnet. The part of magnetic field can penetratebuild, trees and the other object. Solenoid is a wire that can generate a magnetic field. Some research done to calculate the magnitude of the magnetic field in the solenoid. This research is an analytic study that analyzes the distribution of the magnetic field in the solenoid. It uses Matlab to generate different images later in the analysis of the distribution of the magnetic field on the drawing. The conclusion of this research is there is magnetic flux lines adjacent filed and straight. The distance between all the lines are actually the same. Outside the solenoid, magnetic flux lines open to the outside and closed to form a closed loop elongated. Magnetic flux density on the solenoid is thus much greater than outside of them.


The purpose of the current study was to further our understanding of the subjective experience of middle-age African American women who are HIV+ and on highly active antiretroviral therapy, particularly how self-reported lipodystrophy (LD), levels of body dissatisfaction, body image quality of life, and engagement in disordered eating behaviors are related. Multiple regression, MANOVA, MANCOVA, ANOVA, and chi-square were utilized to test hypotheses. Results revealed that HIV+ and HIV- women did not differ significantly on their levels of body dissatisfaction or drive for thinness. When HIV+ women were examined in more detail a pattern emerged: women who self-reported fat hypertrophy had significantly higher levels of body dissatisfaction, bingeing, but not purging, and dietary restriction and fear of weight gain compared to women who did not self-report LD. About 75% of the sample was overweight or obese, and when BMI was controlled for, these differences persisted for body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors for fat hypertrophy, but not fat atrophy. Overall, the findings indicate that the type of LD, specifically hypertrophy, is more related to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors, than LD in general. Clinical implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.


Nimesulide is a newer non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) with selective cyclo-oxygenase (COX)-2 blocking property and has demonstrated a potent analgesic and anti-inflammatory activity on oral and rectal administration. However, the Cmax through both these routes is reached only after 3 h of administration. Dose-dependent gastrointestinal side effects also limit the concentration of drug that can be achieved at the site of inflammation when administered through these routes. The present study was conducted to evaluate the antinociception induced by a new gel formulation of nimesulide when applied on the skin. Efficacy of topical nimesulide gel 1% (w/w) was studied on mice in the acetic-acid-induced writhing, tail flick latency (TFL) test and formalin-induced pain models. The antinociceptive effect of nimesulide was compared to diclofenac gel (1% w/w). Both the drugs induced dose-dependent analgesia with peak effect seen between 90 and 120 min after treatment. Greater antinociceptive effect (expressed as percent maximum possible effect) was seen in the writhing test than in the TFL test, indicating the peripheral action of both drugs. Nimesulide evidenced significant protection in the first phase of formalin-induced pain indicating modulation of peripheral nociceptors unlike other conventional NSAIDs. This suggests that COX-2 may be a primary contributor to afferent evoked increase in prostanoid-mediated changes in pain processing. Antinociception seen following drug application on the skin was lower than that seen on intraperitoneal administration, indicating localised action following topical application. The findings of the present study suggest that the transgel formulation of nimesulide provides significant analgesic activity when applied topically.


We address the problem of performance issues caused by thread divergence due to branches in applications run on GPU. We eliminate all branches in GPU code through a method we call Algorithm Flattening (AF). AF is counterproductive for CPU code, but optimizes GPU code substantially. The seemingly counterproductive nature of AF is why this method is new and different from previous work. However, AF produces a multiple times speedup from an already GPU accelerated set of test algorithms. AF works by replacing branched code with arithmetic operations. AF increases ILP and processor utilization, and eliminates null operations due to branch divergence in SIMD devices. Although AF requires evaluation of code from all branch paths, this deterministic approach non-intuitively provides a substantial performance improvement for GPU applications, and allows GPUs to be used to accelerate previously unsuitable applications.


The contribution of this paper is a novel peer-to-peer (P2P) middleware solution for extending the reach, scale and functionality of content delivery networks (CDNs). The research problem of extending legacy CDN functionality towards user-to-user content networking and enhancing the CDN quality attributes of reach and scale are addressed. The proposed P2P middleware solution extends the reach and scale of CDNs to cover the digital home environment via specialized virtual multimedia home gateways and extends the legacy CDN functionality by enabling user-generated content sharing via the P2P extended CDN infrastructure.


Language is the basic and most consummate way of communication between people. It can be materialized in two ways: spoken and written. Every society has a spoken language, even the primitive ones. Although only civilized societies have a written language with a defined alphabet. The presence of letters in the context of words determines the meaning, while the determined order of these in words presents a work of art. It is, thus, understandable to raise the question: Which letter is used the most and least in different languages? Or maybe there is similarity on their distribution even though it has to do with languages which use different alphabets? Or in general, which are the differences or what could different languages have in common when they interpret the same content?! The answer to this question remains within the scope of this paper


OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: To investigate the prognostic value of left ventricular mitral annular longitudinal displacement (LD) measured with color tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) in a large population suffering from acute coronary syndrome (ACS). METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: In total, 501 ACS patients underwent an echocardiography within 9 days after a percutaneous coronary intervention. Regional LD was obtained from the 6 mitral annular regions with TDI and GLD was calculated as an average. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: During a median follow-up time of 4.4 years 46 ACS patients suffered CVD. Mean value of GLD in the population was 8.11mm (±2.4). GLD and LD obtained from the inferior wall remained significant independent predictors after multivariate adjustment for clinical parameters, GLD (HR: 1.43, 95% CI: 1.12–1.82, p=0.014, per 1mm decrease), inferior LD (HR: 1.38, 95% CI: 1.14–1.66, p=0.001). Furthermore, inferior wall LD was the primary source of prognostic information in GLD since only inferior LD remained significant when both measures were included in the same model: GLD (HR: 0.95, 95% CI: 0.64–1.40, p=0.781); inferior LD (HR: 1.60, 95% CI: 1.15–2.22, p=0.005). Of all walls, only inferior wall LD remained as an independent predictor after multivariate adjustment. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: GLD provides independent prognostic information in ACS patients over and beyond all conventional echocardiographic measures. Regional inferior LD was the primary source of prognostic information gained from GLD. GLD proved to be a better predictor of cardiovascular events than conventional echocardiographic measures. This could lead to better risk stratification in the clinical setting and open up for earlier intervention in high-risk individuals.


Summary

1
Although metabolic resource losses are maintained at low rates during diapause, the accumulation of losses over a long period negatively affects organisms with prolonged diapause usually extending beyond 1 year. The seed-predatory weevil Exechesops leucopis (Jordan) (Coleoptera: Anthribidae) enters winter diapause at the final-instar larval stage within seeds of Styrax japonica Sieb. et Zucc. (Styracaceae) at a density of one larva per seed. After diapause, larvae pupate within the seeds and then emerge as adults.

2
The adult emergence pattern of a single cohort of E. leucopis was monitored for 5 years under seminatural conditions in the laboratory. The duration of diapause varied from 1 year (single winter) to 4 years (four winters). Adults that emerged after 1 year were smaller than those that emerged after 2 years or more. When temperature was not decreased experimentally in winter, no adults emerged in the following season.

3
Metabolic resource losses during diapause were examined by comparing adult body sizes between controls and groups in which emergence was delayed by 1 year under manipulated winter temperature regimes. Adults that emerged after an additional year in the larval stage were smaller than those in the control group. Moreover, the rates of reduction in body size as a consequence of diapause being extended experimentally were greater in smaller individuals. Thus smaller individuals have disadvantages in longer diapause, suggesting that weevils may vary the duration of diapause depending on individual body size.

4
Exechesops leucopis shows sexual dimorphism in the degree of eye protrusion. Eyestalk length affects male fitness through intrasexual selection. The duration of diapause affected the length of the eyestalks: when an additional year was spent in diapause, eyestalk length was nearly maintained in larger males but was greatly decreased in smaller males. In all females eyestalk length decreased according to the duration of diapause.


The objective of this case report is to evaluate the effects of maxillary distraction osteogenesis in an adult patient with maxillary deficiency by using a rigid external distraction device. A 25,6 year old adult male patient referred to our clinic with a chief complaint of poor esthetic facial appearance and functional insufficiency. He showed maxillary hypoplasia, mesofacial growth pattern and negative overjet. As the presurgical orthodontic therapy was completed, the distraction was performed at the rate of 1mm/day until required advancement was gained. After DO nearly 13.9 mm advancement was achieved. SNA increased from 78.1° to 92°. The vertical position of the mandible and the face was kept stable, and the soft tissue profile became more balanced. Maxillary rigid external distraction improved the soft tissue profile by increasing nasal projection, normalizing the nasolabial angle, and making the upper lip more prominent. Occlusion and facial profile changes was found to be stable in 1 year-4 month follow-up.


OBJECTIVES
Grey matter atrophy in the right hemisphere has been shown to be more severe in dementia patients with delusions, suggesting a neuroanatomical localization that may be pertinent to impending neurodegeneration. Delusional symptoms may arise when atrophy in these areas reduces the regulatory functions of the right hemisphere, in tandem with asymmetric neuropathology in the left hemisphere. We hypothesized that delusional patients with either amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or early Alzheimer Disease (AD) would experience more pronounced grey matter atrophy in the right frontal lobe compared with matched patients without delusions.

METHODS
We used neuroimaging and clinical data obtained from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. A comparison group of twenty-nine nondelusional MCI/early AD participants were compared with twenty-nine delusional participants using voxel-based morphometry, matched at baseline by age, sex, education, and Mini-Mental State Exam score. All included participants were diagnosed with amnestic MCI at study baseline.

RESULTS
Fifteen voxel clusters of decreased grey matter in participants with delusions were detected. Prominent grey matter decrease was observed in the right precentral gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus, right insula, and left middle occipital gyrus, areas that may be involved in control of thought and emotions.

CONCLUSION
Greater right fronto-temporal grey matter atrophy was observed in MCI or early AD participants with delusions compared to matched patients without delusions. Consistent with our predictions, asymmetric grey matter atrophy in the right hemisphere may contribute to development of delusions through loss of executive inhibition.


Paraduodenal pancreatitis (PP) is an uncommon abdominal pathology characterized by scarring of the pancreaticoduodenal space. Diagnosis of this inflammatory process is challenging as its clinical presentation is similar to that of pancreatic cancer. Currently, no definitive radiologic or pathologic features have been established to permit diagnosis of PP without surgical resection. However, the presence of eosinophilic concretions has been reported with increasing frequency in the histologic evaluation of PP. To the best of our knowledge, these concretions are distinctive for PP and not reported in neoplasms commonly involving the pancreaticoduodenal space. Herein, we discuss the case of a 60-year-old man who was found to have PP after pancreaticoduodenectomy for a paraduodenal mass with an initially nondiagnostic biopsy. Retrospective review of the preoperative FNA samples revealed eosinophilic concretions like those found in the final surgical specimen. If the identification of eosinophilic concretions in a background of inflammatory changes was to be accepted as a diagnostic criterion for PP, patients such as ours could be spared the morbidity associated with surgical resection.


INTRODUCTION
Despite the increasing acceptance of the TAPP-procedure by patients and general practitioners this method has to be further examined. In addition to the classic surgical criteria of examination, subjective aspects of patient comfort must be taken into consideration as they are getting more and more significant for the evaluation of different methods.

METHODS
According to this objective patients were clinically examined and questioned about specific topics of quality of life after TAPP-operations. Furthermore, the patients documentation (medical report/OP-report) was evaluated retrospectively.

RESULTS
Between1995 and 1998 endoscopic transabdominal preperitoneal hernioplasty was used for 267 inguinal hernia repairs in 204 patients. 155 patients could be interviewed about the operative outcome and 199 operated inguinal hernias could be examined physically and sonographically. The recurrence rate was 2.5 %, the rate of major complications was 4.4 %. Postoperative pain-syndrome were found as a major complication in only two cases (1.3 %), postoperative nervous disorders could be diagnosed in 3.5 % of the patients. Further subjective complaints were seen in 19 % of the patients. The median postoperative period until the resumption of sexual intimacy was approximately two weeks, but six male patients reported about long-lasting pain in copulation (3.9 %).

DISCUSSION
With regard to the aspects mentioned above, the TAPP-procedure provided exellent results in the examined patient cohort and therefore turned out to be at least comparable with competitive methods. Nevertheless, the postoperative pain in sexual activity that a few male patients complained of represents a new aspect which has to be further investigated.


A classification of marine organisms as deposit-feeders, suspension-feeders, carnivores, or scavengers is difficult becausc many species appear to be capable of using more than one feeding method. Thcse species are most probably 'opportunistic', varying their diet with local food availability. Efforts to reconstruct trophic webs and establish deposit-feederisuspension-feeder ratios in (paleo)faunas are seriously hampered by the presence of opportunistic feeders.


A series of low energy gap polymers comprising 2,7-linked carbazole or fluorene units flanked by thiophene or selenophene repeat units as alternating donor units and benzothiadiazole with or without alkoxy substituents as alternating acceptor repeat units is reported. The effects of replacing thiophene with selenophene in this series of polymers on their optical, electrochemical and photovoltaic device performance when fabricated into bulk heterojunction solar cells using PC70BM as an acceptor are investigated. Power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) ranging from 3.34 to 5.41% are obtained with these systems. Thiophene-based polymers are found to have higher efficiency compared to comparable selenophene-based polymers. We tentatively explain such differences on the basis of reduced molar absorbance and reduced charge-carrier mobility in the selenophene-based polymers.


Anaplastic large cell lymphomas (ALCLs) represent a subset of lymphomas in which the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene is frequently fused to the nucleophosmin (NPM) gene. We previously demonstrated that the constitutive phosphorylation of ALK chimeric proteins is sufficient to induce cellular transformation in vitro and in vivo and that ALK activity is strictly required for the survival of ALK-positive ALCL cells. To elucidate the signaling pathways required for ALK-mediated transformation and tumor maintenance, we analyzed the transcriptomes of multiple ALK-positive ALCL cell lines, abrogating their ALK-mediated signaling by inducible ALK RNA interference (RNAi) or with potent and cell-permeable ALK inhibitors. Transcripts derived from the gene expression profiling (GEP) analysis uncovered a reproducible signature, which included a novel group of ALK-regulated genes. Functional RNAi screening on a set of these ALK transcriptional targets revealed that the transcription factor C/EBPbeta and the antiapoptotic protein BCL2A1 are absolutely necessary to induce cell transformation and/or to sustain the growth and survival of ALK-positive ALCL cells. Thus, we proved that an experimentally controlled and functionally validated GEP analysis represents a powerful tool to identify novel pathogenetic networks and validate biologically suitable target genes for therapeutic interventions.


The proteolytic processing of beta-amyloid precursor protein (APP) was analyzed and compared for familial Alzheimer's disease and normal lymphoid cells, focusing on beta-amyloid-harbouring peptides and the extracellular fragments released into the medium. Tris/tricine gel electrophoresis of anti-beta A4-(8-17)-immunoprecipitated peptides and subsequent N-terminal amino acid sequencing revealed previously unidentified peptides; the 14-kDa peptide with a beta A4 N-terminus and the 12-kDa peptide with an Esch's-site N-terminus in the cytosols, and the same 12-kDa peptide predominating in the media. Moreover, some early onset familial Alzheimer's disease cells, but not normal cells, express a 4-kDa peptide with a beta-amyloid N-terminus in the cytosol. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis of the extracellular APP peptides immunoprecipitated with anti-APP-(144-654)-peptide showed that familial Alzheimer's disease cells are deficient in processing, especially the 50-53-kDa peptides with the Kunitz-protease-inhibitor domain. This may reflect their unique expression of a serine protease identified as cleaving APP at the beta-amyloid N-terminus.


This study was intended to suggest overseas expansion strategy of Korean fashion character through sensitive space creation. This study reviewed literature, and did internet searching and observation. For the research methods were the analysis of the main retail spaces utilizing character and case study for the classification of collaboration types between retail space and character. As a results, 8 collaboration types between space and character were extracted: collaboration between retail distribution space and character, collaboration between product space and character, collaboration between service space and character, collaboration between experience space and character, collaboration between moving space and character, collaboration between publicity & advertising space and character, and collaboration between exhibition space and character. This study suggested the necessity of consistent identity strategy between character and retail space for a new character brand and the effectiveness of collaboration strategy for enhancement of character brand awareness.


The authors have produced a very useful short book covering many of the challenges associated with anaesthetising such patients. An international group of 51 contributors have written chapters on the relevant topics related to anaesthetising these challenging patients. Each chapter is written by a different author in the form of an essay covering the controversies surrounding each aspect of care across preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative management. Examples of chapter topics include ''Can Morbidly Obese Patients Undergo Surgery at an Outpatient Centre?'', ''Do All Morbidly Obese Patients Have a Difficult Airway?'' and a total of 27 topics are discussed, covering many of the clinical areas where obese patients present differing challenges and questions compared with our routine daily clinical practice.


NASA's New Horizons spacecraft's voyage through the Pluto system centered on 2015 July 14 provided images of Pluto's small satellites Nix and Hydra at viewing angles unattainable from Earth. Here, we present solar phase curves of the two largest of Pluto's small moons, Nix and Hydra, observed by the New Horizons LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager and Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera, which reveal the scattering properties of their icy surfaces in visible light. Construction of these solar phase curves enables comparisons between the photometric properties of Pluto's small moons and those of other icy satellites in the outer solar system. Nix and Hydra have higher visible albedos than those of other resonant Kuiper Belt objects and irregular satellites of the giant planets, but not as high as small satellites of Saturn interior to Titan. Both Nix and Hydra appear to scatter visible light preferentially in the forward direction, unlike most icy satellites in the outer solar system, which are typically backscattering.


Let $G$ be a simple algebraic group. A closed subgroup $H$ of $G$ is said to be spherical if it has a dense orbit on the flag variety $G/B$ of $G$. Reductive spherical subgroups of simple Lie groups were classified by Krämer in 1979. In 1997, Brundan showed that each example from Krämer's list also gives rise to a spherical subgroup in the corresponding simple algebraic group in any positive characteristic. Nevertheless, up to now there has been no classification of all such instances in positive characteristic. The goal of this paper is to complete this classification. It turns out that there is only one additional instance (up to isogeny) in characteristic 2 which has no counterpart in Krämer's classification. As one of our key tools, we prove a general deformation result for subgroup schemes that allows us to deduce the sphericality of subgroups in positive characteristic from the same property for subgroups in characteristic zero.


The goal of the research were to get information about classroom management activities by teachers. The type of research is descriptive research. The population was all of the students in the class XI and XII SMK PLUS Bina Nusantara Mandiri Pariaman as much 100 people and the sample was  80 people. Sampling technique using krejcie table. The instrument of the research was a questionnaire likert scale models that have been tested for validity and reliability. The result of this research is classroom management activities by teachers in the SMK PLUS Bina Nusantara Mandiri  pariaman stay in pretty good.


The extreme reduction of the thermal conductivity by defects and folds in carbon nanocoils (CNCs) are first demonstrated using nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. The thermal conductivity for two different defect types with five different folds in the CNCs is extensively studied and the maximum reduction can be up to 70% at both room temperature and 600 K by comparison of the corresponding straight single-walled carbon nanotubes. We reveal that the phonon scattering by coupled defects and folds can govern the reduction of the thermal conductivity by calculating phonon polarization vectors.


Summary

Problems associated with the presence of a tracheal tube during anaesthesia for infant laryngeal surgery using the carbon dioxide laser are described. This paper discusses alternatives and describes an effective anaesthetic technique and a new tracheal tube.


In this paper, a novel energy-based signal, the removal energy density $e_{b}$, is proposed as the detecting signal to determine the breakthrough instances in bone drilling based on the energy approach during the process. The proposed signal is derived from the energy conversion and conservation in drilling process. And the relationship between the signal and the drilling parameter, e.g., drilling speed, feed rate and drill bit radius, is derived. Recursive least square with time forgetting factor is used to estimate $e_{b}$ from the drilling parameters and drilling torque information. Unlike the traditional force profile, this proposed signal profile is similar under different drilling parameters including drilling speed and feed rate, hence reducing the difficulty in setting a threshold for the detection. Experiment on porcine bone is performed. The results show that the proposed signal profile is more consistent than the commonly used force profile, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Aims. We present a new sample of bright galaxy pairs extracted applying an objective selection code to the UZC catalog. The sample is volume-limited to Mzw = −18.9 + 5l ogh and contains 89 galaxy pairs. Methods. We analyze the kinematical, morphological, and photometrical properties of galaxies belonging to this sample. Results. We show that velocity separation, |∆vr|, between pair members is significantly lower in spiral type (S+S) pairs than in earlytype (E+E) and mixed (E+S) pairs. This indicates that truly isolated galaxy pairs are more likely to be found among S+ Sp airs. We show that ellipticals are rare and underluminous in B and that late spirals (T ≥ 4) are overluminous. Conclusions. We confirm that the formation of bright ellipticals is a phenomenon linked to group/cluster environment. while galaxy– galaxy interaction may enhance the blue luminosity of disk galaxies through SF phenomena. This last statement is supported by the presence of strong FIR emission from early spirals in this sample and by the high frequency of the AGN/SB phenomenon, revealed mainly in pairs of low relative radial velocity separation showing signs of interaction.


The role of the university in national development is the subject of much discussion in Africa today. History shows that most African nations established at least one national university immediately after independence. The major purpose for establishing universities was for the institutions to play a pioneering role in addressing issues of national interest. Higher education institutions have a mandate to be proactive in addressing social issues and this not only requires commitment but also resources. Higher Education findings have often been instrumental in kick starting such efforts through higher education training. The challenges faced by universities to contribute effectively to national development can be supplemented by external funding. This is demonstrated through two case studies of externally funded higher education projects at the University of Zambia.


Western culture is in its kernel a technological culture. This culture is speeded up by technology and is characterized by a lot of problems, such as pollution and labour problems, the growing distance between developed and underdeveloped countries and the one-sidedness in the normative orientation. This culture is in a crisis because there is no agreement about the cause of and the way to solve the problems. At the bottom of the spiritual-historical background of Western culture the 'hidden' ideology of technology is active. The contents of this ideology implies that man pretends to be an autonomous master of reality, that he can therefore manipulate everything, that he can solve all old and new problems by scientific-technological control, and that he can guarantee the progress of material welfare, ideology as a driving force ensures a 'technological paradise ', in which the perspective of eternity has been lost. The ideology of technology is strengthened by the ideology of science and economy. Together they are the cause of cultural problems.


A backward-wave oscillator which is electronically tuned over a five to one frequency range is described. Oscillations were observed from 2,600 to 13,300 megacycles with power output up to 50 mw. Equations for starting current and efficiency are derived and compared to experimental results. Other aspects of backward-wave oscillators are also discussed.


We focus our attention on the class RMAX(2) of NP optimization problems. Owing to recent developments in interactive proof techniques, RMAX(2) was shown to be the lowest class of logical classification that contains problems hard to approximate. Namely, the RMAX(2)-complete problem MAX CLIQUE (of finding the size of the largest clique in a graph) is not approximable in polynomial time within any constant factor unless NP=P. We are interested in problems inside RMAX(2) that are not known to be complete but are still hard to approximate. We point out that one such problem is MAXlog n, n, considered by Berman and Schnitger: given m conjunctions, each of them consisting of log m propositional variables or their negations, find the maximal number of simultaneously satisfiable conjunctions. We also obtain the approximation hardness results for some other problems in RMAX(2). Finally, we discuss the question of whether or not the problems under consideration are RMAX(2)-complete.


Proceedings: AACR 103rd Annual Meeting 2012‐‐ Mar 31‐Apr 4, 2012; Chicago, IL

GSK2118436 is a potent and selective small-molecule inhibitor of BRAF kinase activity that is currently being developed for the treatment of BRAF mutation-positive tumors. This study evaluated the effect of a high-fat meal on the pharmacokinetics (PK) of a single 150 mg oral dose of GSK2118436 administered to patients with BRAF-mutant solid tumors. This was an open-label, randomized, two-period crossover study. In a cohort of 14 patients, GSK2118436 was administered under fasted state or with a high-fat meal, with a 1-week washout between periods. Blood samples were collected up to 96 hours post-dose to characterize the PK of GSK2118436 and its circulating metabolites. PK parameters were calculated by non-compartmental methods (WinNonlin 5.2). Geometric mean ratios (fed/fasted) for the point estimate and 90% CIs were calculated for Cmax and AUC0-α, and median difference (90% CI) was calculated for tmax using the Hodges-Lehmann non-parametric method. The absence of a food effect can be concluded if the 90% CIs are contained between 0.8 and 1.25 for Cmax and AUC0-α. Following administration of a high-fat meal, median Cmax concentrations were delayed by 3.7 h (90% CI: 2.4-5.0) compared with the fasted state. A high-fat meal decreased the exposure to GSK2118436, with geometric mean ratios (90% CI) for Cmax and AUC0-α of 0.49 (0.35-0.69) and 0.69 (0.57-0.85), respectively. Metabolite exposures were decreased to a similar extent. Based on the data generated in this study, it appears that there is a food effect for GSK2118436, as the 90% CI are not contained within the acceptable boundaries of 0.8 and 1.25. In clinical studies GSK2118436 has been administered on an empty stomach, and results from this study are consistent with these recommendations.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 3766. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-3766


In this study, the effect of post-process heat treatment on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Hastelloy-X superalloy fabricated via two different additive manufacturing technologies, namely, laser beam powder bed fusion (LB-PBF) and laser powder directed energy deposition (LP-DED), is investigated. Microstructure was examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) analysis, while mechanical properties were evaluated by macrohardness testing using the Rockwell B method. Microstructure of the alloys was studied thoroughly after several heat treatments that involve stress-relieving (at 1066°C for 1.5 hours), hot isostatic pressing (HIP at 1163°C for 3 hours under 103 MPa pressure), and/or solution treatment (at 1177°C for 3 hours). The results revealed that, for both LB-PBF and LP-DED Hastelloy-X, the post-process heat treatments resulted in uniform grain structure as well as partial dissolution of carbides, although they have different grain sizes.


The aim of this study was to determine how occupational stresses (job demands), control, and goal clarity were related to strain in Finnish nurses (n = 433). It was hypothesized that clear goals moderate the stress-strain relationship. The interaction between stresses, perceived control, and goal clarity was tested by hierarchical regression analysis. Troublesome patients and time pressure imposed the greatest job demands. Job demands and control were related to strain, but control did not moderate the stress-strain relationship. The results supported the moderating effect of goal clarity.


In the late sixties and early seventies the operation of weak normalization was formally introduced first in the case of analytic spaces and later in the abstract scheme setting (cf. [6] & [4]). The notion arose from a classification problem. An unfortunate phenomenon in this area occurs when one tries to parametrize algebraic objects associated with a space by an algebraic variety; the resulting variety is, in general, not uniquely determined and may, for example, depend on the choice of coordinates. Under certain conditions one does know that the normalization of the parameter variety is unique. The price one pays for passing to the normalization is that often this variety no longer parametrizes what it was intended to; one point on the original parameter variety may split into several in the normalization. This problem is avoided if one passes instead to the weak normalization of the original variety. One then obtains a variety homeomorphic to the original variety with universal mapping properties that guarantee uniqueness.


To The Editor:

With regard to the article "Long-Term Results of Treatment of Fractures of the Medial Humeral Epicondyle in Children" (2001;83:1299-305), Farsetti et al. are to be greatly commended for their efforts to compare the long-term outcomes of patients treated operatively and nonoperatively as well as for evaluating the potential roles of excision versus fixation of displaced medial epicondylar fragments. However, I have one important concern. If I understood the article correctly, valgus instability was evaluated by physical examination and not by stress radiographs or other objective measures. Speaking from experience in evaluating patients with elbow instability, I can attest to the fact that valgus instability …


The self-assembly of colloidal spheres into ordered nanostructures is one of the most common methods of fabricating crystal films, but the resulting films usually have small areas, muted structural colors, and weak mechanical properties. This paper presents a simple method for the large-scale fabrication of polymer crystal films with vivid structural colors and robust mechanical properties. In this approach, when aqueous polymer colloids, colloidal silica particles, and a small quantity of carbon black are blended and then cast on substrates by the casting method to evaporate water, three-dimensional ordered structures are produced, directly forming large-scale polymer crystal films with intense and tunable structural colors and strong mechanical properties.


BACKGROUND
Extramedullary hematopoiesis in patients without hematologic disorders is very rare and has apparently never been described previously in association with an ovarian steroid cell tumor.

CASE
An 18-year-old woman was admitted to our clinic due to primary amenorrhea. the On examination she had significant facial hirsutism, clitoromegaly and and Adam's apple. The serum level of testosterone was elevated. A 7-cm, right ovarian mass was enucleated during laparotomy. Histology revealed a steroid cell tumor with foci of myeloid metaplasia; bony trabecula formation was present. There was no evidence of hematologic or systemic disease. The hormone values became normal 1 month postoperatively.

CONCLUSION
This report describes a patient with agnogenic myeloid metaplasia in an ovarian steroid cell tumor with virilization; this association was not previously reported.


Synopsis : A photon rupture method, film removal by a focused one pulse of pulsed Nd-YAG laser beam irradiation, has been applied to investigate initial stage of localized dissolution of Zn and Zn-Al alloy coated steels, which were formed nitrocellulose films as a protective film, in 0.5 kmol m-3 H3BO3-0.05 kmol m-3 Na2B4O7 ( pH 7.4 ) with 0.01 kmol m-3 chloride ions. This method can remove oxide films and nitrocellulose films on coated layer by laser ablation without any contamination from film removing tools, and the removing speed is extremely high. At low applied potentials, all samples reformed oxide film after films were removed by this method. The oxide film formation kinetics follows on inverse logarithmic law in agreement with Cabrera-Mott theory. However, as increasing applied potential, after some period, localized dissolution occur at nitrocellulose films were removed area. The peak currents of Zn-5mass%Al coated steel specimens were larger than those of Zn and Zn-5mass%Al coated specimens. This result suggest that high aluminum containing coated layer does not show good corrosion resistance in frequently oxide film removal environments.


The molecular origins of second-order nonlinear effects in type I collagen fibrils have been identified with sum-frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy. The dominant contributing molecular groups are: 1), the methylene groups associated with a Fermi resonance between the fundamental symmetric stretch and the bending overtone of methylene; and 2), the carbonyl and peptide groups associated with the amide I band. The noncentrosymmetrically aligned methylene groups are characterized by a distinctive tilt relative to the axis perpendicular to the main axis of the collagen fiber, a conformation producing a strong achiral contribution to the second-order nonlinear effect. In contrast, the stretching vibration of the carbonyl groups associated with the amide I band results in a strong chiral contribution to the optical second-order nonlinear effect. The length scale of these chiral effects ranges from the molecular to the supramolecular.


As an exposition of the texts involved the work under review can be recommended as most reliable and trustworthy, but a number of errors on minor points are to be noticed here and there. Thus on p. 154 the compound jivikdkuldyakaranais wrongly analysed into jlvikd and dkuldyakarana, producing a non-existent word dkuldyainstead of kuldya"nest". On p. 77 the present tense of the root su"to give birth" appears as sute, and the meaning given to this is "swells", although the present tense of su"to swell" is svayati (Parasmaipada). This seems to have resulted from a confusion between the letters s and s (artificially the initial of suin the Dhdtupdtha). The same confusion appears in the meanings given to parimrsyati and dmrsyate on p. 252, which rest on a confusion of the roots mrsand mrs-. On p. 325 upalambhana is given the meaning "tromper" which it does not have, and a reference to the original text shows that pralambhanashould be read. It is not possible to see what is the justification for the meaning given to dydsayate ("il fait peigner") on p. 332, and kanduyate means only "to scratch oneself", not "desire ardently" (p. 82). The context in the verse quoted on p. 82 shows that ndgashould be translated "elephant", not "snake". In the quotation from Bhatti given on p. 176 pratlsur of the text is unaccountably replaced by pralipsur though the translation is correct. Though mistakes of this kind should have been avoided, they are not of a nature to effect the interpretation of the grammatical doctrines involved. In this respect the work is perfectly satisfactory and can be recommended without reserve to the students of Panini and his system.


We measured energy spectra of electrons emitted from sputter-cleaned amorphous carbon targets bombarded with swift ions of constant velocity (9 MeV/u, vP = 19v0) with a new UHV set-up at the heavy ion accelerator GANIL. The charge of the projectile qp varied from 6 to 45. At large electron energy, a qp2 scaling law is observed. For energies below the 1s ionisation threshold, strong reduction effects with increasing qp occur. A carbon Auger hypersatellite line due to double ionisation of the K shell appears for high projectile charge only. From these Auger spectra, the ratio of double and single ionisation was deduced as a function of qp and found to increase from a threshold up to a saturation.


The CALIPSO project deals with the development and optimization of low temperature (∼10 mK) solid state detectors. The goal of the project is to propose new strategies for improving the time resolution of cryogenic scintillating calorimeters, read with NTD thermistors. We will test new NTD-detector coupling techniques and optimize the NTD operation to make the response faster. In parallel, we will work on improving the scintillation light yield for different crystals at low temperatures. Rare events physics experiments utilizing the NTD-detector technology on a large scale, such as the ones searching for the neutrinoless double beta decay (CUORE, CUPID), could profit from the results of this project.


Children tracking system is a solution for parents to supervise their children remotely. The existing system provides a monitoring function that can report when the child enters and leaves the school bus. However, this system is not equipped with the function to report to the parents when the child leaves the bus at restricted areas, such as the mall. To implement such system a GPS with high accuracy is required. It will be a problem if a shopping mall and a school are neighbors and due to low accuracy the system gives false reports to the parent. Kalman filter can improve the accuracy of a GPS point. This paper presents a research that applies Kalman filter to the described children tracking system. Improvements are proved by comparing a system minus Kalman filter with a system that applies Kalman Filter. The result is Kalman filter improves the accuracy of the system as big as bla percent.


The inhibition of amyloid-β (Aβ) aggregation by photo-oxygenation has become an effective way of treating Alzheimer's disease (AD). New near-infrared (NIR) activated treatment agents, which not only possess high photo-oxygenation efficiency, but also show low biotoxicity, are urgently needed. Herein, for the first time, it is demonstrated that NIR activated black phosphorus (BP) could serve as an effective nontoxic photo-oxidant for amyloid-β peptide in vitro and in vivo. The nanoplatform BP@BTA (BTA: one of thioflavin-T derivatives) possesses high affinity to the Aβ peptide due to specific amyloid selectivity of BTA. Importantly, under NIR light, BP@BTA can significantly generate a high quantum yield of singlet oxygen (1 O2 ) to oxygenate Aβ, thereby resulting in inhibiting the aggregation and attenuating Aβ-induced cytotoxicity. In addition, BP could finally degrade into nontoxic phosphate, which guarantees the biosafety. Using transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans CL2006 as AD model, the results demonstrate that the 1 O2 -generation system could dramatically promote life-span extension of CL2006 strain by decreasing the neurotoxicity of Aβ.


Willem Frederik Hermans is considered to be one of the major Dutch authors of the twentieth century. In his novels ideals of every kind are unmasked, and his Weltanschauung leaves little room for pursuing a 'good life'. Nevertheless, there seems to be one option left to him, namely literature. In his poetic essays he explains that literature has nothing to do with escapism, but offers a vital way of facing the bleak facts of life. Literary critics and scholars have commented extensively on his poetic ideas, but have never truly addressed the riddle Hermans' œuvre confronts us with: what might be the value of writing in a world without values? In this article we will focus on this paradoxical problem, which could perhaps be characterized as one of 'aesthetics of nihilism'. We argue that Hermans' so-called autonomous and a-political literary position can certainly be interpreted as a form of commitment that goes far beyond literature. We will first give an overview of Hermans' work. Subsequently we will reflect on the social and cultural status of literary autonomy. Our main aim is to analyze a critical text by Hermans which seems clear at first sight but actually is rather enigmatic: the compact, well-known essay Antipathieke romanpersonages ('Unsympathetic Fictional Characters').[2]


We report studies of bulk heterojunction solar cells composed of self-assembled poly(3-butylthiophene) nanowires (P3BT-nw) as the donor component with a fullerene acceptor. We show that the nanostructure of these devices is the single most important variable determining their performance, and we use a combination of solvent and thermal annealing to control it. A combination of conductive and photoconductive atomic force microscopy provides direct connections between local nanostructure and overall device performance. Films with a dense random web of nanowires cause the fullerene to aggregate in the interstices, giving a quasi-ordered interpenetrating heterojunction with high short-circuit current density (10.58 mA/cm(2)), but relatively low open circuit voltage (520 mV). Films with a low density of nanowires result in a random bulk heterojunction composed of small crystalline PCBM and P3BT phases. Fewer nanowires result in higher open circuit voltage (650 mV) but lower current density (6.02 mA/cm(2)). An average power conversion efficiency of 3.35% was achieved in a structure which balances these factors, with intermediate nanowire density. The best photovoltaic performance would be realized in a material structure which maintains the interpenetrating network of nanowires and fullerene phases (high current density), but avoids the device bridging we observe, and the recombination and shunt losses associated with it (high open-circuit voltage).


Social-cognitive impairments in schizophrenia are markers that precede the illness and are present in first-degree relatives of patients. Adolescence and young adulthood are peak ages of risk for the onset of schizophrenia and are important windows to observe impairments that could signify the transition to schizophrenia. To explore these risk markers, this case series study described the social-cognitive profiles of young adults at familial high-risk (FHR) and investigated their relation to symptoms of schizophrenia and schizotypy. In this study, 13 controls and 4 participants at FHR completed assessments measuring symptoms, schizotypy, emotion regulation and recognition, theory of mind, and attributional style. Participants at FHR recognized fewer sad faces than controls but did not show other impairments. Furthermore, greater symptoms and schizotypy were associated with worse performance on some socialcognitive domains. Further investigation with larger samples is needed to explore if difficulty recognizing negative emotions is a risk marker for schizophrenia.


Seventeen microsatellite loci were used to identify the phylogenetic relationship among four Egyptian breeds and one Spanish line of rabbits. A total of 114 bucks rabbits belonging to four Egyptian breeds -Black Baladi (EBB), Gabali (EG), Red Baladi (ERB) and White Giza (EWG)and Spanish White New Zealand line from Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (NZW) were studied. All microsatellite loci typed were polymorphic. The average number of alleles per locus was 5.41, ranging from 2 to 12. A total of 16 private alleles were found in 7 out of 17 microsatellite loci used. Mean observed heterozygosity was 0.527, ranging from 0.477 in the NZW breed to 0.581 in the EWG. Lower values for Ho were found for all populations. The inbreeding coefficient of individuals relative to the total population (FIT) was 0.279. The overall within-population heterozygote deficit (FIS) was 0.165, ranging from 0.045 in NZW breed to 0.266 in EBB breed. The overall variation between population (FST) was 0.137, where the NZW breed showed the most differentiated population (FST = 0.194). The Neighbour-Joining tree of the Reynolds genetic distances (DR) among populations shows a clear separation of the Spanish population (NZW) from the Egyptians breeds and there is a population mixture in the Egyptian populations. Only the ERB may to cluster in one independent population.


The Suppression of gastric acid by long term use of PPI may decrease iron and vitamin B12 absorption and might be causing iron and vitamin B12 deficiency anaemia.  This comparative cross-sectional study was conducted among patients with peptic ulcer disease from November 2017 to March 2020; attending in the Internal Medicine department of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU). A total of   80  patients were included and divided into group-A (PPIs user) and group-B (non-PPI user), each group containing 40 patients each. The group-A  included patients who were taking PPIs for more than one year and  aged from  18 to 70 years and group-B the control group who were not taking PPIs for atleast 1(one) year. The data were analysed by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).The study shown that male were  18(45%) and 19(47.5%) in group A and B respectively  and female were 22(55%) and 21(52.5%) in group A and B respectively. The mean age of male and female was (year) 45.35 ± 12.46, 44.85 ± 15.24, respectively. Most of the patient took omeprazole 62.5% follwed by, esomeprazole 20%, pantoprazole 12.5%, rabeprazole 5%. About 47.5% of the patient took PPI for more than 2 years, and 52.5% took between 1-2 years. The mean (±SD) haemoglobin (Hb) level was 10.93±2.00 g/dl amongst  group-A and  13.16±1.68g/dl in group-B, the difference is statistically significant (P<0.001). The mean serum iron of the PPI users (group-A) was 46.43±22.79, and of non-PPI users (group-B) was 84.95±33.18, the difference between iron level between two group was statistically significant (odds ratio -6.38  ; CI-2.28-17.84 and P-value <0.001). The PPI user group, mean vitamin B12 was 449±166.99 and in non-PPI group it was 432.85±175.93, which was statistically nonsignificant (P-value -1.00). Amongst all the participant low serum concentrations of iron, ferritin and transferrin were found 23(57.5%), 18(45%) and 27(67.5%), respectively  in Group-A (PPI user group) and 7(17.5%), 7(17.5%) and 8(20%) respectively in Group-B (PPI-non user).The difference was statistically significant (p<0.05) between the two groups. But the value of TIBC was found to be high in 36 (90.0%) participants in both groups, which was statistically non-significant(p=0.33). Hematocrit (HCT)  were low in 35 (87.5%) participants in Group-A and 25(62.5%) in Group-B. The difference was statistically significant (p<0.05). Low MCV was found in 10(25%) in the PPI user group and 4(10%) in the non-user group, whish was statistically non-significant. No significant differences in vitamin B12 concentrations (pg/ml) 449±166.99 vs 432.85±175.93 were found between groups A and group B, respectively. There was a weak negative Pearson's correlation shown in ascatter diagram between duration of PPI use, and the iron level of group A (n=40) (r=-.311, p=.051). A negligible Pearson's correlation was seen in the scatter diagram between the duration of PPI use, and vitamin B12 level of group A  (r=+.05 p=.977). This study showed a significant decrease in haemoglobin, haematocrit, iron, ferritin, transferrin saturation in participants taking PPIs for more than one year, compared with age and gender-matched controls. No significant change of MCV, TIBC (Total Iron Binding Capacity) and vitamin B12 were noticed between groups. In conclusion, the study found  a significant decrease in hematologic indices and iron profile among patients receiving PPIs for longer than one year. There was no  substantial change of Vitamin B12 levels was detected between long-term PPIs users and non PPIs user groups. So, from the study it is suggested that  judicial prescription of long-term PPIs must be practiced. However, the small sample size and short study duration were the limitation of the study.
Bangladesh Med J. 2021 January; 50(1) : 27-32


In this letter, we show that coherent structures are related to folds of horseshoes which are present in chaotic systems. We develop techniques that allow us to construct coherent structures by manipulating folds in three prototypical problems: a 1-D chaotic map, a 2-D chaotic map, and a chaotically advected fluid. The ability to construct such structures is of practical importance for the control of chaotic or turbulent extended systems such as fluids, plasmas, and coupled oscillator arrays.


Electromagnetic interference produced by high-speed electrical and electronic systems (i.e., base stations, mobile phones, radar, television and radio transmitters) that facilitate daily life also caused a pollution to be dealtwith as a part of daily life. Increasing use of electronic devices arising from the rapid developments in science and technology increased electromagnetic interference in electronic devices well besides the electromagnetic pollution in the environment. Therefore, there is a tremendous need to develop effective protection against the negative effects of electromagnetic interference. The objective of this paper is to make the composite boards from the recycling of Tetra Pak packages and to investigate the effect of aluminum additive on absorption efficiency of electromagnetic interference at various frequencies. Experimental results showed that as the ratio of aluminum additive rate in the composite material increased, the attenuation ratio increased.


A broadening of the apparent linewidth of the semiconductor laser modes with external optical feedback is observed. This is shown to be due to the coherent nature of the feedback and multiple reflections in the external cavity. A theory for the steady-state behavior of the external-cavity semiconductor laser taking into account such coherent optical effects is developed. The inclusion of these effects is also important in the interpretation of the threshold data of such lasers.


An essential component of the proof is the following lemma. LEMMA C. Given u subharmonic on F and f locally of type-Bi, let U be defined on G as the upper function of sup u(p). If U < + c, then U is f(p) =a subharmonic on G. A consequence of theorem B is that the classical theorem of Iversen may be extended to maps which are locally of type-Bl. Lemma C admits a number of applications to other problems. By way of illustration we cite: THEOREM D: Let G have positive ideal boundary and let u be singular positive harmonic on G. If f:F -G is of type-BI, then u of is singular on F. Theorem D leads to the following consequence for convergent infinite Blaschke products: the set of Fatou boundary values of modulus one of a convergent infinite Blaschke product is the unit circumference and each such Fatou boundary value of modulus one is attained at infinitely many points of the unit circumference.


We perform electronic structure and quantum transport studies of dangling bond loops created on H-passivated Si(100) surfaces and connected to carbon nanoribbon leads. We model loops with straight and zigzag topologies as well as with varying lenght with an efficient density-functional based tight-binding electronic structure approach (DFTB) . Varying the length of the loop or the lead coupling position we induce the drastic change in the transmission due to the electron interference. Depending if the constructive or destructive interference within the loop takes place we can noticeably change transport properties by few orders of magnitude. These results propose a way to engineer the closed electronically driven nanocircuits with high transport properties and exploit the interference effects in order to control them.


Cocaine use in North America has reached epidemic proportions becoming one of the top causes of drug-related visits to US emergency rooms. The number of users has increased due to the popularity and accessibility of crack cocaine. The pharmacokinetic properties and effects of cocaine on the cardiovascular system can lead to serious complications. Cocaine is known to induce angina and precipitate myocardial infarction. Cocaine use has been associated with the development of dilated cardiomyopathy, left ventricular dysfunction, and can also predispose a patient to a variety of cardiac arrhythmias including sudden cardiac death. Additionally, cocaine use has been associated with spontaneous aortic and coronary dissection, mesenteric ischemia, stroke, venous thrombosis, and a variety of pulmonary complications. This review article focuses on the effects and complications of cocaine upon the cardiovascular system.


This short report summarises Statistics New Zealand's investigation into the effect of motherhood on women's pay in New Zealand. It is intended to guide future research in this area by measuring the difference in the gender pay gap between parents and non-parents of both sexes. In particular, we focus on the difference in the pay gap of mothers and fathers relative to women and men without children. As the gender pay gap is a measure of a negative effect on women, we call the difference between the size of the pay gap for parents and the size of the pay gap for non-parents the 'motherhood penalty'. Our analysis is an initial investigation that identified a need for further, more in-depth research. In this study, a parent is defined as a person with a dependent child living in the same house. Due to the nature of the survey, we could not identify parents whose child was no longer living with them. Because we are looking at the gender pay gap between parents and non-parents, we are not comparing the difference in pay between women with children and women without children. Key results Gender pay gap still exists in New Zealand In the June 2016 quarter, our analysis showed female hourly earnings were $22.40 on average, compared with $25.24 for males. This equates to a gender pay gap of 11 percent, similar to the pay gap shown by the existing median measure (see figure 1).  A significant 'motherhood penalty' exists The comparisons we make between gender pay gaps of employed mothers and fathers (parents) and employed women and men without children (non-parents) let us assess if there is a motherhood penalty, and if it changes depending on full-time or part-time work. In the June 2016 quarter: The gender pay gap between female and male parents (17 percent) was significantly larger than the gender pay gap between non-parents (5 percent), which puts the motherhood penalty at around 12 percentage points (figure 2). The motherhood penalty was greater for mothers working part time than for those working full time). However, the size of the motherhood penalty for part-time workers is more influenced by the very small gender pay gap for non-parents whowork part time.