Vaporization studies have been carried out by mass loss Knudsen effusion on the Ni-P and Cr-P systems and by Knudsen effusion mass spectrometry on the VSi, Cr-Si and Ti-Si systems. The experimental data were used to calculate enthalpies of formation of the intermediate phases in these systems. The stabilities of the 1 :1 compounds, expressed as enthalpies of atomization, have been compared with each other and with data on silicides, phosphides, and sulfides from the literature to assess factors for inclusion in a phenomenological model for stability. These factors include a) the number and type of bonding electrons, b) effective nuclear charges, c) valence state energies, d) the degree of partial electron transfer with a resulting Madelung energy, and e) contributions from Lewis acid-base interactions involving back-donation of electrons.


Although the preparation of transition metal sulfides/oxides electrodes has been relatively perfected, it is still challenging to fabricate multi-component transition metal sulfides/oxides core-shell structure electrodes with excellent electrochemical performance. Herein, CoMoO4/MoO3@CuCoNi-S grown on nickel foam (NF) is first synthesized via facile hydrothermal and electrodeposition methods. The CoMoO4/MoO3@CuCoNi-S electrode presents an exceptional specific capacitance (2600.0 F g-1 at 1 A g-1) and 68.3% of its initial capacitance at 10 A g-1. Moreover, a CoMoO4/MoO3@CuCoNi-S//active carbon (AC) device is assembled for determining its electrochemical application. It reveals a high energy density of 42.1 W h kg-1 at a power density of 800.2 W kg-1, an extended voltage window of 1.6 V and excellent stability with 96.9% retention after 5000 cycles at 2 A g-1. This work offers a reference case for the development of multi-component transition metal sulfides/oxides core-shell structure composites for energy storage.


Multicystic appearance in a mature teratoma is a common feature of a common tumour but little information is available on the mechanism of their constitution. Various authors have named this multicystic appearance differently and have given several hypotheses for their occurrence. The present case report describes a case of mature cystic teratoma in a 38 year old female with multiple cystic spaces resembling those seen in pneumatosis cystoides intestinalis, with a review of cases of mature cystic teratoma with multicytic appearance described in the past.


A variety of sintered fibrous ceramic (SFC) materials have been developed over the last 50 years as thermal barrier materials for reentry applications. SFC materials typically exhibit very low thermal conductivities combined with low densities and good thermal stability up to 2500 F. These materials have flown successfully on the space shuttle orbiters since the 1960's. More recently, the McDonnell Douglas Corporation successfully used SFC tiles as a heat shield on the underside of its DC X test vehicle. For both of these applications, tiles are machined from blocks of a specific type of SFC called an alumina-enhanced thermal barrier (AETB). The sizes of these blocks have been limited by the manufacturing process. In addition, as much as 80 to 90 percent of the material can be lost during the machining of tiles with significant amounts of curvature. To address these problems, the NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field entered a cooperative contract with the Boeing Company to develop a vacuum-assisted forming process that can produce large (approximately 4 square feet), severely contoured panels of AETB while saving costs in comparison to the conventional cast-and-machine billet process. For shuttle use, AETB is slurry cast, drained, and fired to form square billets conforming to the shape of the filtration box. The billets are then cut into tiles of the appropriate size for thermally protecting the space shuttle. Processing techniques have limited the maximum size of AETB billets to 21.5 square inches by 6.5-in. thick, but the space shuttles use discrete heat shield tiles no more than 8 to 12 square inches. However, in other applications, large, complex shapes are needed, and the tiling approach is undesirable. For such applications, vacuum-assisted forming can produce large parts with complex shapes while reducing machining waste and eliminating cemented joints between bonded billets. Because it allows contoured shapes to be formed, material utilization is inherently high. Initial estimates show that the amount of material lost during machining can be reduced by 50 percent or more. In addition, a fiber alignment favorable for minimum heat transfer is maintained for all panel shapes since the fibers are aligned parallel to the contoured surface of the forming tool or mold. The vacuum-assisted forming process can complete the entire forming operation in a matter of minutes and can produce multiple parts whose size is limited only by the size of the forming tool. To date, panels as large as 2 square feet have been demonstrated The vacuum-assisted forming process starts with the fabrication of a permeable forming tool, or mold, with the proper part contour. This reusable tool is mounted over an internal rib support structure, as depicted in the diagram, such that a vacuum can be pulled on the bottom portion of the tool. AETB slurry is then poured over and around the tool, liquid is drawn from the slurry, and the part forms over the tool surface. The part is then dried, fired, and finished machined. Future plans include an evaluation of the need for additional coatings and surface-toughness treatments to extend the durability and performance of this material.


: A study of 425 patients demonstrated that a pyodestructive process, located anywhere, affects platelet functional properties, resulting in the first place, in disorders of spontaneous cell disaggregation. Impaired platelet functional properties are conducive to the development of postoperative purulent and thromboembolic complications.


Direct observation of optical emission from H‐related complexes in molecular beam epitaxy grown bulk GaAs and GaAlAs, as well as InGaAs/GaAs strained multiquantum wells (MQWs), is obtained from liquid He photoluminescence experiments. Hydrogenation is achieved by low‐energy ion irradiation from a Kaufman source. The volume incorporation of hydrogen, for equal treatment, is dependent upon the density of impurities and defects where H can bind. For moderate H treatment, in addition to passivation of shallow acceptors, in GaAs we observe novel emission bands, δ, peaking at 1.360, and γ, peaking at 1.455 eV. After heavy hydrogen treatment in GaAs of low radiative efficiency−even p type originally−there appears a deeper structure α at ∼1.20 eV, of the kind known for ''internal'' transitions in the Ga vacancy‐donor complex. Equivalent bands are found in bulk GaAlAs and also in InGaAs/GaAs MQWs. The results allow an approximate estimate of the various optically active Ga‐vacancy levels, as affected by the different degrees of hydrogenation of the dangling bonds, and a comparison with theoretical values. Moreover, they provide evidence for the creation of a H‐related donor whose binding energy is of order 25 meV. Finally, the γ band is suggestive of a transition between localized conduction and valence states associated with the local distortion that is introduced in the lattice when H binds to impurities, defects, and lattice atoms.


Morphometric data of the reproductive organs and the gonadal and extra-gonadal sperm reserves were determined in sexually mature M'bororo bulls. The mean body weight was 560±15.8kg and measured 175.8± 4.3cm at the withers. The mean paired testes weight and scrotal circumference were 266.5± 28.9g and 28.2±0.8cm, respectively. The body weight was significantly and positively correlated with the testicular sperm reserves (P < 0.05). The paired testicular sperm reserves was 27.3±3.1 x 10 9 . The mean weights of the accessory glands were: Seminal Vesicles, 42.2±4g; ampullae, 12.4±2.0g; Prostate gland, 2.2±0.29g and 1.3±0.3g for the bulbourethral gland. The mean penile length was 80.9±2.9cm while the glans penis and the urethral process measured 3.1 ±0.1 cm and 1.9±0.1cm, respectively. Keywords: Morphometric Studies, sperm reserves, M'bororo bull


We study the spin-$1$ Heisenberg model on the square lattice with the antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor $J_1$ and the next-nearest-neighbor $J_2$ couplings by using the infinite projected entangled-pair state (iPEPS) ansatz and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculation. The iPEPS simulation, which studies the model directly in the thermodynamic limit, finds a crossing of the ground state from the N\'eel magnetic state to the stripe magnetic state at $J_2/J_1 \simeq 0.549$, showing a direct phase transition. In the finite-size DMRG calculation on the cylinder geometry up to the cylinder width $L_y = 10$, we find a very small intermediate regime $\sim 0.005 J_1$ between the two magnetic order phases, which may imply the absent intermediate phase. Both calculations identify that the stripe order comes with a first-order transition at $J_2/J_1 \simeq 0.549$. Our results indicate that unlike the spin-$1/2$ $J_1-J_2$ square model, quantum fluctuations in the spin-$1$ model may be not strong enough to stabilize an intermediate non-magnetic phase.


Large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity in the past few years and have achieved undeniably impressive results on benchmarks as varied as question answering and text summarization. We provide a simple new prompting strategy that leads to yet another supposedly"super-human"result, this time outperforming humans at common sense ethical reasoning (as measured by accuracy on a subset of the ETHICS dataset). Unfortunately, we find that relying on average performance to judge capabilities can be highly misleading. LLM errors differ systematically from human errors in ways that make it easy to craft adversarial examples, or even perturb existing examples to flip the output label. We also observe signs of inverse scaling with model size on some examples, and show that prompting models to"explain their reasoning"often leads to alarming justifications of unethical actions. Our results highlight how human-like performance does not necessarily imply human-like understanding or reasoning.


BACKGROUND
Arterial catheterization is painful and is associated with patient stress and anxiety. Analgesia is usually provided by subcutaneous injection of local anaesthetic. An alternative is topical anaesthesia, such as Rapydan which is a novel topical anaesthetic patch containing 70 mg each of lidocaine and tetracaine. We therefore tested the hypothesis that Rapydan patch analgesia is non-inferior to subcutaneous local anaesthetic.

METHODS
Ninety patients undergoing elective major cardiac surgery were included in this prospective, double-blind clinical trial. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either a lidocaine/tetracaine patch, followed by subcutaneous injection 0.5 ml of normal saline solution, or placebo patch with subsequent subcutaneous injection of 0.5 ml of lidocaine 1%. Pain during arterial catheterization using 100-mm-long visual analogue scale (VAS) was the primary outcome. Other outcomes were pain during anaesthetic/saline injection and plasma tetracaine concentrations.

RESULTS
VAS pain scores during arterial puncture were comparable in both groups and Rapydan was non-inferior to subcutaneous lidocaine. Pain scores at the time of subcutaneous injection were significantly lower (better) in patients assigned to the lidocaine/tetracaine patch than to lidocaine (P=0.001). Plasma tetracaine concentrations never exceeded the detection limit of 25 ng ml(-1) at any time in any patient.

CONCLUSIONS
Both the lidocaine/tetracaine patch and subcutaneous injection of lidocaine provided comparable pain control during arterial catheter insertion. Subcutaneous lidocaine caused discomfort during injection, whereas the lidocaine/tetracaine patch required placement 20 min before the procedure. Given adequate time, the patch provided better overall analgesia by obviating the need for subcutaneous infiltration.


Rodney Brooks' call for 'new mathematics' to revitalize the disciplines of artificial intelligence and artificial life can be answered by adaptation of what Adams has called 'the informational turn in philosophy', aided by the novel perspectives that program gives regarding empirical studies of animal cognition and consciousness. Going backward from the necessary conditions communication theory imposes on animal cognition and consciousness to sufficient conditions for machine design is, however, an extraordinarily difficult engineering task. The most likely use of the first generations of conscious machines will be to model the various forms of psychopathology, since we have little or no understanding of how consciousness is stabilized in humans or other animals.


Natural hybrid zones have provided important insights into the evolutionary process, and their geographic stability/instability over time can help to disentangle the underlying biological processes that maintain them. Here, we leverage replicated sampling of an identical transect across the hybrid zone between yellow-shafted and red-shafted flickers to assess its stability over ~60 years (1955-1957 to 2016-2018). Using a plumage scoring approach that we validate with independent multispectral photography, we identify a ~73 km westward shift in the hybrid zone center towards the range of the red-shafted flicker but no associated changes in width. By integrating previous work in the same geographic region, it appears likely that this movement has occurred rapidly in the years since the early 1980s, prior to which the hybrid zone had remained stable over the previous century. This recent, rapid movement may be related to changes in climate or land management in contemporary times.


Viral infections are a natural and inevitable part of life. In healthy individuals, mortality increases when the body's innate immune system quickly activates, creating a cytokine storm. A rapid and excessive release of cytokines into the bloodstream can cause acute respiratory distress syndrome and death. This communication proposes inhibiting cytokine storm development through forced atopy. Hyper-allergenic skin cream therapy stimulates adaptive immunity to support innate immunity before acute infection.


Electromagnetic lenses have been applied since early 1950s as a means of obtaining electronic steerable antennas. One weakness of a conventional lens, however, is the fact that only one feed point can be used at a time, in order to generate a single beam in the radiated field. The purpose of this paper is to propose a kind of geodesic lens with an uniform distribution of feeders along the lens input, being all the feeders used at all times, for any direction of the output beam. Therefore, all the feeding points contribute equally to the total radiated power and electronic steering can be obtained by properly setting only the phases of the several supplies at the input of the lens.


The executive branch, or government, is typically not elected directly by the people, but rather formed by another elected body or person such as the parliament or the president. As a result, its members are not directly accountable to the people, individually or as a group. We consider a scenario in which the members of the government are elected directly by the people, and wish to achieve proportionality while doing so.
We propose a formal model consisting of $k$ offices, each with its own disjoint set of candidates, and a set of voters who provide approval ballots for all offices. We wish to identify good aggregation rules that assign one candidate to each office.
As using a simple majority vote for each office independently might result in disregarding minority preferences altogether, here we consider an adaptation of the greedy variant of Proportional Approval Voting (GreedyPAV) to our setting, and demonstrate -- through computer-based simulations -- how voting for all offices together using this rule overcomes this weakness. We note that the approach is applicable also to a party that employs direct democracy, where party members elect the party's representatives in a coalition government.


Abstract—Accurate heading information is crucial for
many mobile services such as navigation, autonomous
vehicles, and robot applications. The standard way to
obtain heading information is by using a tri-axis
magnetometer, which can measure the signal intensity of
the magnetic field in three orthogonal directions. However,
a magnetometer is known to be highly susceptible to
environmental interferences that may easily generate error
up to thousands of nano-tesla, causing unacceptable errors
(e.g., 40 degrees) in the direction output and rendering the
mobile service useless. We present a novel design for
interference resistant heading measurement using multiple
magnetometers. In this design, multiple magnetometers
are placed around a circle, imitating the manual rotation
of a single magnetometer. This arrangement allows us to
automatically calibrate the devices against external
interference, using the classic ellipse fitting method. We
have implemented a system consisting of a STM32F103RC
microcontroller and six AKM8975 magnetic sensors.
Evaluation in realistic environments shows that our design
can adaptively update the calibration parameters,
reducing the original heading error from 150 degrees to
below 2.5 degrees, and the heading error remains stable in
environments with different patterns of magnetic
perturbation.


Since Europeans first settled in Australia their doctors have been interested in the visual arts. Some have been hobby painters and sculptors, a few with great distinction. Some have been gallery supporters and administrators. A few have written art books. Some have been outstanding photographers. Of the larger number of doctors who have collected art, only those are mentioned who have made their collections public or have made important donations to galleries. The subject of Australian doctors and the visual arts will be discussed in six articles in this and following issues of the journal. The first deals with doctor‐artists in New South Wales.


With the idea of improving the understanding of the inducing mechanism between lightning electromagnetic fields and the voltage produced in an overhead line lying over ground of finite conductivity, field measurements were carried out in Mexico in 1984. Measurements included the voltage at one end of an experimental line and the corresponding electric field produced by close lightning. The experimental set-up result of voltage measured when the line was terminated at both ends in its characteristic impedance are reported. The vertical electrical field measurements are also given. Comparisons with calculations that account for the horizontal electric field along the line are presented.<<ETX>>


Pregnancy-associated cancer is defined as malignancy diagnosed during gestation or up to 1 year post partum. Treatment of cancer during pregnancy is complicated by the risk of harm to the fetus and limitations in safety data. Postpartum patients receiving chemotherapy, tyrosine-kinase inhibitors or hormonal agents should avoid breast feeding to avoid drug excretion in breast milk. Patients who will receive cytotoxic chemotherapy should be advised of the potential impact on their future fertility and offered fertility-preservation options. Breast cancer is the most common pregnancy-associated malignancy and is most frequently either invasive ductal or lobular carcinoma. Breast lymphoma is an exceedingly rare diagnosis that typically presents with unilateral disease in the seventh decade of life. Here, we present the case of a woman who presented with bilateral breast masses during the second trimester of pregnancy and was ultimately diagnosed with primary breast Burkitt's lymphoma.


In this paper we consider finite sets of independently and identically distributed random variables X1, X2, * *, Xn. Our aim is to characterize their common distribution function F(x) by properties of the set X1, X2, , X,". The problem can best be formulated by using statistical terminology. We consider a population and a sample X1, X2,', X, of n independent observations drawn from this population with population distribution function F(x). As usual, a measurable and single-valued function S = S(X1, X2, *, Xn) of the observations is called a statistic. Assumptions concerning the properties of the distributions of certain statistics, based on a sample from the population, will in general impose restrictions on the population distribution function F(x). We are interested in assumptions which determine the population distribution function at least to the extent that it belongs to a certain family of distribution functions. Three different types of assumptions are considered. In the first part we make assumptions which either give explicitly the distribution ofS or which relate it in some specified manner to the population distribution F(x). In the second we suppose that two suitably chosen statistics Si = Sl(Xl, X2,, X.) and S2 = S2(X1, X2,* * *, Xn) are given. The assumption that the statistics S1 and S2 are independently distributed can be used to characterize various populations. We also consider briefly the characterization of a population by the stochastic independence of more than two statistics. Finally we assume that the conditional expectation of Si, given S2, equals the unconditional expectation of Si and show that this hypothesis can also be used to characterize populations. This property is weaker than complete independence of the two statistics; its use in investigations of this kind seems to be new. The third part deals with the characterization of populations by means of the property that two different linear statistics are identically distributed. We denote the population distribution function by F(x). The characteristic function f(t) of F(x) is given by (1.1) f (t) =f eilxdF (x), while (1.2) ps(t) =lnf(t)


Explosive reactive modules can contain low-density foam between the reactive sandwiches in order to prevent sympathetic detonation between the sandwiches. In the present study, the influence of the intermediate material on the protection capability of the ERA modules has been investigated, with special interest on sandwiches with a lightweight rear plate that are designed to give a fast acceleration of the forwards moving plate in order to minimize the length of the precursor. The study showed that introduction of an intermediate material do influence on the protection capability of the armour and that it could be either an overall improvement or deterioration. The mechanisms that have to be balanced are the deceleration of the flyer plates, that decreases the protection capability, and the erosion of the jet tip while penetrating the intermediate material, which improves the protection capability. A simple solution to avoid the deteriorative effect is also discussed.


The survey on nutrition in preschool children was accomplished in Klaipeda city. In the survey participated 382 children aged 3-6 years; their parents were interviewed. Chi-square test was used and the significance level p ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant. The study revealed that the majority of children in this study (92.1%) took breakfast every day, and 1.7% children never eat breakfast. Boys more often do not take breakfast than that of girls. 71.2 % children eat four or more times per day, and about one third (28.6%) – eat three times per day. The majority of children like to eat meat every day or few times per week, but they rare eat fish. Boys eat more meat and more fish than that of girls. 2.5% boys and 0.2% girls never eat fish. The majority of children prefer to eat fruits and vegetables every day or almost every day. Older preschool children more often eat fruits and vegetables than that of younger ones. Only about 16 % of children eat dark or white bread every day. Pre-school aged children prefer to eat white bread. The girls like to eat dark, and boys like to eat dark bread. Subjectively the majority of parents (78.5%) think, as their child is in good health, and 13.4 % of parents stated as their child health is very good.


Partial updating of LMS filter coefficients is an effective method for reducing computational load and power consumption in adaptive filter implementations. This paper presents an analysis of convergence of the class of Sequential Partial Update LMS algorithms (S-LMS) under various assumptions and shows that divergence can be prevented by scheduling coefficient updates at random, which we call the Stochastic Partial Update LMS algorithm (SPU-LMS). Specifically, under the standard independence assumptions, for wide sense stationary signals, the S-LMS algorithm converges in the mean if the step-size parameter /spl mu/ is in the convergent range of ordinary LMS. Relaxing the independence assumption, it is shown that S-LMS and LMS algorithms have the same sufficient conditions for exponential stability. However, there exist nonstationary signals for which the existing algorithms, S-LMS included, are unstable and do not converge for any value of /spl mu/. On the other hand, under broad conditions, the SPU-LMS algorithm remains stable for nonstationary signals. Expressions for convergence rate and steady-state mean-square error of SPU-LMS are derived. The theoretical results of this paper are validated and compared by simulation through numerical examples.


Background: Individuals have different preference of doing certain work at certain hours. This preference is called chronotype and it can have influenced on shift workers. The work of nursing profession in demanding and the long shift work, especially the night shift work, can impact one's vigilance and mathematical abilities which can result in increased risk of patient's safety.

Aims and Objectives: The present study was undertaken to observe the effects of night shift on psychomotor vigilance and mathematical abilities of the nurses of different chronotypes.

Materials and Methods: A total of 50 nurses working at various hospitals of Junagadh city were studied for their chronotype. Their psychomotor vigilance and mathematical abilities near the end of their night shift and morning shift were studied.

Results: Psychomotor vigilance and mathematical abilities of morning chronotype were highly affected by the night shift while they were at their best after the morning shift. Evening chronotype was affected by both the morning and night shift; however, their performance did not decrease drastically like morning chronotypes.

Conclusion: Ten hours night shift and lack of conducive environment at home for the naps might have resulted in inability to cope up with the interference in circadian cycle by the night shift. Reduction in the shift length might improve the performance of morning chronotypes after the night shift and evening chronotypes after the morning shift.


The number of patients placed on kidney transplant waiting lists is rapidly increasing, resulting in a growing gap between organ demand and the availability of kidneys for transplantation. This organ shortage has forced medical professionals to utilize marginal kidneys from expanded criteria donors (ECD) to broaden the donor pool and shorten wait times for patients with end-stage renal disease. However, recipients of ECD kidney grafts tend to have worse outcomes compared to those receiving organs from standard criteria donors (SCD), specifically increased risks of delayed graft function (DGF) and primary nonfunction incidence. Thus, representative methods for graft-quality assessment are strongly needed, especially for ECDs. Currently, graft-quality evaluation is limited to interpreting the donor's recent laboratory tests, clinical risk scores, the visual evaluation of the organ, and, in some cases, a biopsy and perfusion parameters. The last few years have seen the emergence of many new technologies designed to examine organ function, including new imaging techniques, transcriptomics, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and new solutions in organ perfusion, which has enabled a deeper understanding of the complex mechanisms associated with ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI), inflammatory process, and graft rejection. This review summarizes and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of current conventional diagnostic methods and a wide range of new potential strategies (from the last five years) with respect to donor graft-quality assessment, the identification of IRI, perfusion control, and the prediction of DGF.


Chemical engineers who develop fundamental models often have difficulties estimating all model parameters due to problems with parameter identifiability and estimability. These two concepts are reviewed, as are techniques for assessing identifiability and estimability. When some parameters are not estimable from the data, modellers must decide whether to conduct new experiments, change the model structure, or to estimate only a subset of the parameters and leave the others at fixed values. Estimating a reduced number of parameters can lead to better model predictions with lower mean squared error (MSE). MSE-based techniques for parameter subset selection are discussed and compared. © 2011 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering


Urban regeneration is extremely important process for Russian cities,
which faced to the challenges of post-industrial economy. In an attempt, to explain
needs of urban regeneration in Russian megacities author analyzed the social and
economic trends and some historic features of Russian cities development. The article
identified the key areas for regeneration such as the regeneration of historic core,
the regeneration of the urban environment due to the massive constructions of sport
facilities and associated infrastructure and the complex regeneration through the
implementation of key spatial strategies and several projects. In conclusions author
summarizes the main task of regeneration projects carried out in Russia and offers
some recommendations to improve the implementation process.


Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is a species in which most nitrate is assimilated in the green shoot. A physiological role for the small amount of nitrate reductase activity in the roots can be questioned on the basis of relative magnitude. In this investigation, cotton plants were grown on nutrient solutions containing either 1 or 5 mM nitrate, and balance sheets were developed for the transport and metabolism of nitrate and reduced nitrogen in the root and shoot during exponential growth. At either nitrate level, assimilation in the roots was adequate to supply all the nitrogen for root growth. However, some of the reduced nitrogen was exported in the xylem, leaving a net deficit of about 10% at 1 mM nitrate and 36% at 5 mM nitrate. This deficit was presumably satisfied by reduced nitrogen from the shoot. Thus, at these two nitrate concentrations, root growth apparently depended more upon nitrogen assimilated in the roots themselves than upon nitrogen from the shoot. The different fates of nitrogen assimilated in the root and in the shoot may be related to the demonstrated differential regulation of nitrate reductase activity in these two sites.


The inactivation of Bacillus subtilis spores by ultrasonic treatments under static pressure (Mano‐Sonication, MS) and a combined MS/heat treatment (Mano‐Thermo‐Sonication) was investigated. The sporicidal effect of MS treatments depended on static pressure, amplitude of ultrasonic waves and treatment temperature. At 70 °C, pressure increments up to 500 kPa caused progressively more inactivation. An MS treatment at 500 kPa and 117 μm of amplitude for 12 min inactivated approximately 99% of the B. subtilis spore population. Over 500 kPa, further increments in pressure did not increase the percentage of inactivation. In the range 90–150 μm, an exponential relationship was observed between the amplitude of ultrasonic waves under pressure and the number of survivors. While an MS treatment (20 kHz, 300 kPa, 70 °C, 12 min) at 90 μm inactivated 75% of the B. subtilis spore population, the same treatment at 150 μm inactivated 99·9% of this population. The MS treatments at temperatures higher than 70 °C (MTS) led to more spore inactivation. In the range 70–90 °C, the combination of heat with an MS treatment (20 kHz, 300 kPa, 117 μm, 6 min) had a synergistic effect on spore inactivation. The inactivating effect of ultrasound was due neither to titanium particles eroded from the sonication tip, nor to free radicals released during ultrasonic treatment. The MS treatments sensitized spores of B. subtilis to lysozyme.


This thesis presents an examination of the teaching of Latin and Greek in Scotland's universities and schools, both private and public, in the nineteenth century. This was the period when the Classics occupied a central position in Scottish education and, as a result, more undergraduates studied these ancient languages than ever before, or since. The thesis also details the very different institutional traditions exemplified by the nation's ancient schools and universities which were the subject of extensive government examination by a succession of Royal Commissions. This native, largely unexplored, tradition in teaching Latin and Greek is shown to be in marked contrast, both in content and pedagogical philosophy, to the English model as exemplified by the classical curricula taught at Oxford, Cambridge and the leading English public schools. This thesis also examines the anglophile forces which attempted to dilute this Scottish tradition of the 'democratic intellect'; a process that was accelerated by the creation, in 1873, of the Scotch Education Department, based in London, which controlled all school inspection and was later responsible for the introduction and management of the national School Leaving Certificate in 1888. The final chapter provides an examination of the importance of two events: the creation of Scotland's first modem university college, Dundee College, in 1882 and the impact of the admission of women to all the nation's universities a decade later.


Overhead crane system is largely used in the heavy industries as the main part of material handling mechanism. The overhead crane operated by the electric motor and its controller shall fulfill two major requirements which are fast response as well as accurate positioning during moving the goods from one location to another location. However, to simulate the real overhead crane system is tedious and time consuming due to the large structure and safety reasons. Thus, this project will try to simulate the performance of the prototype version of the overhead crane system that has been predicted to perform like the original one but in a small scale. In order to simulate that, a mathematical model of the geared DC motor-based of overhead crane control system prototype shall be formulated. The mathematical model is developed and tested by using Matlab/Simulink  software. The mathematical model is being tested in two conditions, without controller and with controller. To acquire the gain value of the  controller, first method of the Ziegler-Nichols method is applied. The developed model will be verified for various positions and loads. The performance of the model will be measure in terms of the time response which are rise time, peak time, percentage overshoot, and settling time as well as the steady-state error for the position accuracy. The results will confirm that a good mathematical model will give the best projection to imitate the performance of the real size of the overhead crane.
Keywords: Geared DC motor, overhead crane system, first method of Ziegler-Nichols, time respond, position accuracy


In this paper, we study the topological properties and the gap sequences of Bedford–McMullen sets. First, we introduce a topological condition, the component separation condition (CSC), and a geometric condition, the exponential rate condition (ERC). Then we prove that the CSC implies the ERC, and that both of them are sufficient conditions for obtaining the asymptotic estimate of gap sequences. We also explore topological properties of Bedford–McMullen sets and prove that all normal Bedford–McMullen sets with infinitely many connected components satisfy the CSC, from which we obtain the asymptotic estimate of the gap sequences of Bedford–McMullen sets without any restrictions. Finally, we apply our result to Lipschitz equivalence.


Wideband microwave imaging systems are recently used in various applications including airport security, surveillance, through-wall imaging and medicine. For the operation of such high-resolution systems, sparse multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) arrays are of interest to reduce the hardware complexity and cost of conventional planar arrays. In this paper, we present a method for the optimal design of two-dimensional MIMO arrays in near-field imaging. Using a statistical framework, the optimality criterion is defined based on the image reconstruction quality. A modified version of the sequential backward selection algorithm is used to optimize the criterion over all possible locations of desired number of antenna elements. The designs obtained with the algorithm are compared with the commonly used sparse array configurations such as Mills Cross array and curvilinear structure composed array in terms of image reconstruction quality.


Cloud-based engineering services and applications can enable a more flexible, dynamic and integrated usage of software solutions such as CAD, CAM, CFD and PLM. On-demand availability of extensive computing power can lead to significantly improved products, especially for small- and medium-sized companies. In addition to these technical advantages, offering such integrated solutions in the Cloud opens the door to new business models for the software vendors, who can e.g. sell their software on a pay-per-use basis, thus attracting more possible customers. However, to exploit these benefits, such Cloud-based services must be easily accessible and combinable with minimal manual effort - even if they are provided by different software vendors. In this work, we propose a workflow (which is typically a chain of single services) description and execution system based on semantic technologies which abstracts from vendor-specific interfaces and thus allows an effective usage of Cloud-based engineering services in common workflows.


This paper presents a subband denoising technique, called the adaptive subband Wiener filtering (ASWF), based on a critical-band gammatone filterbank. The ASWF is derived from the generalized subband Wiener filtering (SWF) equation and reduces noises according to the estimated signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in each auditory channel and in each time frame. Design of the subband noise estimator will be presented. This critical-band denoising technique would be of interest to auditory-based speech and audio applications. Objective and subjective tests demonstrated the proposed technique can improve the perceptual quality of speeches.


Validation of biomechanical computer models of impact biodynamics cannot be accomplished without desccriptive experimental data. The research program, therefore, involved data gathering on the kinematics and damage response of three human cadaver subsystems: the head, the thoraco-abdomen, and the pelvis. Fourteen unembalmed human cadavers were utilized in 68 dynamic impact tests. The research program entailed 14 head impacts (6 subjects), 41 thoraco-abdominal impacts (11 subjects), and 13 pelvis impacts (10 subjects). In addition, the thoraco-abdominal tests were supplemented with static three-point tests conducted on rib specimens from 5 of the dynamically tested cadavers.


The cyclic, periodic cyclic and negative cyclic homologies of associative algebras are fitted into the context of cotriple homology of Barr and Beck. As applications of these results, an axiomatic description of the cyclic homology theory and the Hopf type formulas in the sense of Brown-Ellis are given.


In addition to emerging coronaviruses (SARS-CoV, MERS, SARS-CoV-2), there are seasonal human coronaviruses (HCoVs): HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63 and HCoV-HKU1. With a wide distribution around the world, HCoVs are usually associated with mild respiratory disease. In the elderly, young children and immunocompromised patients, more severe or even fatal respiratory infections may be observed. In Africa, data on seasonal HCoV are scarce. This retrospective study investigated the epidemiology and genetic diversity of seasonal HCoVs during nine consecutive years of influenza-like illness surveillance in Senegal. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from ILI outpatients or from SARI hospitalized patients. HCoVs were diagnosed by qRT-PCR and the positive samples were selected for molecular characterization. Among 9337 samples tested for HCoV, 406 (4.3%) were positive: 235 (57.9%) OC43, 102 (25.1%) NL63, 58 (14.3%) 229E and 17 (4.2%) HKU1. The four types circulated during the study period and a peak was noted between November and January. Children under five were the most affected. Co-infections were observed between HCoV types (1.2%) or with other viruses (76.1%). Genetically, HCoVs types showed diversity. The results highlighted that the impact of HCoVs must be taken into account in public health; monitoring them is therefore particularly necessary both in the most sensitive populations and in animals.


In the present study, the chronic toxicity of dietary copper to Moina monogolica Daday was investigated. Microalgal growth inhibition tests were conducted for 96 h with the green algae Chlorella pyrenoidosa exposed to copper. The 96‐h median effective concentration (95% confidence interval) was 509.12 (388.68–629.56) μg/L. Then, C. pyrenoidosa was exposed for 96 h to a control and to seven dissolved copper concentrations. Cellular copper concentration accumulated in a dose‐dependent manner and was plotted against cell density. These algae were used as food in a 21‐d bioassay with M. monogolica in seawater to which no dissolved copper was added. Brood size was not reduced in the first brood, but significant reductions at all algal‐exposure copper concentrations (44.78–817.17 μg/L) were observed in all subsequent broods, with increasing magnitude in each brood. Neither longevity nor number of broods per female was significantly affected, even at the highest copper exposure, though both endpoints did show a consistent downward trend with increasing copper exposure. Total reproduction, brood size, and net reproductive rate were decreased significantly in all dietary copper exposures (algae exposed to 44.78–817.17 μg/L). In contrast, the intrinsic rate of natural increase was reduced significantly only with algae exposed to greater than 619.27 μg/L, most likely because of the heavy influence of early reproduction on this metric. Because cell density in algal cultures decreased with increasing copper concentrations, it is possible that changes in the nutritional content of the algal diet could have played a role in causing the observed changes in reproduction of M. monogolica.


Steroidal hormones were express in different part of brain such as hippocampus. Then any changes in sex hormones induce neuronal changes in hippocampus and their part. The aim of this study is the evaluation of subiculum neuronal density in ovarectomized rats in compare with normal rats. Eighteen female Wistar Rats weight (300-350 g) were completely divided into two experimental groups and one control group. Animals were anesthetized under interaperitoneal injection of a mixture (1:2) of 10% ketamin and 2% xylazine then the gonads were removed. After one month and two, Animals were decapitated and their brain dissected, fixed in 10% formalin, sectioned in 7μm thickness and stained by H.E.By applying stereological techniques and systematic random sampling scheme the neuronal density of cubiculum were estimated. Statistical analyses showed significant increase (p<0/01) in the subiculum neuronal density in experimental groups. Then reduce the steroidal hormones induced neuronal degeneration in subiculum in way that reduced the neuronal density of subiculum.


Traditionally, large integrated land-use and transport models require considerable amounts of computer resources, restricting their use to a small number of metropolitan or regional planning authorities and to an elite of consultancy firms. The increasing availability of microcomputers should be able to extend the use of models to a much larger community of planners. However, even the most efficient packages existing today cannot be fitted into the standard desk-top machines. The purpose of this paper is to describe a package for land-use and transport simulation for microcomputers, showing that this is not only possible, but also that there is no need to sacrifice detail or accuracy. Furthermore, the need to produce highly compact and efficient models has forced the research team to look for completely new algorithms and even new theoretical developments. In designing the models, economy of resources was also extended to data requirements, calibration, and evaluation, and considerable attention was devoted to making the models easy to handle and the results easy to interpret. The authors begin by describing the theoretical base of the models, briefly covering random utility, decision chains, and hierarchies. Next, a summary of the mathematical formulation is presented, finishing with a description of the operative characteristics of the computer programs and complementary features.


Constitutional mismatch repair deficiency (CMMRD) syndrome is a rare autosomal recessive genetic disorder caused by biallelic germline mutations in one of the mismatch repair genes. Carriers are at exceptionally high risk for developing, typically in early life, hematological and brain malignancies, as well as cancers observed in Lynch syndrome. We report a homozygous MLH1 missense variant (c.1918C>A p.(Pro640Thr)) in a Tunisian patient with CMMRD syndrome and a family history of early-age colorectal cancer. The proband presented initially with colonic oligopolyposis and adenosquamous carcinoma of the caecum. He later developed several malignancies, including undifferentiated carcinoma of the parotid, grade 4 IDH-mutant astrocytoma, and ampulla of Vater adenocarcinoma. The patient was older than typical for this disease and had a remarkably prolonged survival despite developing four distinct aggressive malignancies. The current report highlights the challenges in assessing the pathogenicity of the identified variant and the remarkable phenotypic diversity in CMMRD.


We introduce a new and very simple explicit numerical method for a system of stiff ordinary differential equations (ODEs) that arises from combustion. The main aim of this paper is to show that, contrary to popular belief, an almost trivial explicit method can solve a small class of large nontrivial stiff systems surprisingly efficiently. The algorithm, which is motivated by the theory of Markov jump processes, is very simple and easy to implement. Various numerical experiments are performed to assess the efficiency of the algorithm. For this the ignition of a stoichiometric mixture of n-decane and air at constant pressure and temperature is calculated using a mechanism containing 1218 species and 4825 reactions. For the considered system at moderate accuracy requirements, the new algorithm exhibits performance several orders of magnitude better than standard explicit methods and in the same order of magnitude as the implicit solver packages DASSL and LSODE. The numerical experiments also indicate that the approximate solution obtained from the new algorithm converges to the exact solution of the ODE. Furthermore, we address limitations of our numerical scheme, such as its restriction to the high-temperature regime and moderate accuracy.


Reaction of the quinolones 6-8 with hydrazine afforded the hydrazide 9-11 in moderate yields. Condensation of 9 and 11 with CS2 /KOH furnished the potassium salts 13 and 14, respectively, which spontaneously afforded the 3-(1,2,4-triazolyl)-quinolones 15 and 16, respectively, on treatment with hydrazine. Reaction of 9 in refluxing CS2 /KOH gave the 3-(1,2,4-oxadiazolyl)-quinolone 17. Alternatively, 15 was prepared from 17. The azide derivative 12, obtained from 10, furnished the a-amino ester derivative 18, on reaction with the glycine ethyl ester. Coupling of 10 with various sugars gave the N'-aldehydoglycosyl-quinolone-3-yl)carbohydrazides 19a-e. The newly synthesized compounds were screened for their antibacterial activity.


Objective The thiazide-sensitive Na-Cl cotransporter (TSC) is located in the distal renal tubules. Several mutations of the TSC gene cause Gitelman's syndrome, which is an autosomal recessive disease characterized by low blood pressure and hypokalemia. Recently, an association between TSC gene polymorphisms (Arg904Gln, G2736A; Thr465Thr, C1420T; Gly264Ala, G816C) and essential hypertension has been reported in Sweden. We examined the genetic involvement of the TSC gene in essential hypertension in Japanese. Design Participants were recruited from outpatients of Osaka University Hospital. We investigated 386 hypertensive and 371 normotensive subjects. Methods Genotypes of TSC polymorphisms (G2736A, C1420T, G816C) were determined by the TaqMan polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, and statistical significance was examined using JMP 5.0.1J (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina, USA). The allele frequency of A2736 and T1420 was 6.0 and 3.0%, respectively, whereas we could not detect the G816C polymorphism in this study. Only the G2736A polymorphism was significantly associated with the prevalence of hypertension (P < 0.04), and the estimated odds ratio was 1.8 (95% confidence interval, 1.1–3.0) in A2736 allele carriers. The odds ratio for hypertension in A2736 carriers was increased to 2.2 (1.1–4.9) in women (n = 413), and further to 3.3 (1.4–8.0) in women with early onset of hypertension (⩽ 50 years old). In addition, all subjects with the homozygous A2736 allele in this study (n = 2) and the Swedish study (n = 5) were hypertensive. Conclusion G2736A polymorphism of the TSC gene is a genetic predisposing factor for essential hypertension in Japanese women.


BACKGROUND. A transition toward sustainable lifestyles and changing individual behaviour plays a crucial role in tackling global challenges such as climate change. Spillover effects describe when one environmentally sustainable behaviour (ESB) leads to another, often initiated by a behaviour change intervention. Thus, studying spillover effects is a promising approach to better understand the holistic relationship between ESBs within and between different contexts (e.g. work, home).
Based on identified literature gaps, this thesis addressed the following research questions: (1) "How does a behaviour change intervention in the workplace affect environmentally sustainable behaviours at home?" (2) "What role does identity play in the emergence of positive and negative contextual spillover effects (or a lack thereof)?". Building on Identity Process Theory, a theoretical framework was proposed that explains positive, negative, and a lack of spillover.
METHOD. A mixed-methods approach was used to assess spillover from work to home by evaluating the effects of a meat reduction intervention in a workplace on employees' ESBs at home with an intervention-control group design. In a private sector company, 82 employees were surveyed and 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted. A multinomial regression was used to analyse the quantitative and template analysis to analyse the qualitative data.
FINDINGS. The findings provide evidence for both positive and a lack of spillover effects. The quantitative results showed no change in red meat consumption at home nor in other, related ESBs at home. The qualitative data analysis, on the other hand found positive contextual spillover effects (e.g. increase in local food consumption). Furthermore, identity was found to play an important role for positive spillover effects, which was found both in the quantitative and qualitative data.
DISCUSSION. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, including future research. This study provides insights into contextual spillover effects from a behaviour change intervention at work to ESBs at home.


Importance
Historical data reveal that, compared with women, men are more likely to pursue a head and neck surgical oncology fellowship, but little is known about possible gender differences in academic productivity.

Objective
To assess demographic trends and academic productivity among American Head & Neck Society (AHNS) fellowship graduates.

Design, Setting, and Participants
This cross-sectional study used electronically published data from the AHNS on fellowship graduates in the US and Canada from July 1, 1997, to June 30, 2022. Scopus was used to extract h-indices for each graduate.

Exposure
Scholarly activity.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Main outcomes were changes in demographic characteristics and academic productivity among AHNS graduates over time. Data analysis included effect size, η2, and 95% CIs.

Results
A total of 691 AHNS fellowship graduates (525 men [76%] and 166 women [24%]) were included. Over the study period, there was an increase in the number of programs offering a fellowship (η2, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.68-0.89) and an increase in the absolute number of women who completed training (η2, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.38-0.78). Among early-career graduates pursuing an academic career, there was a small difference in the median h-index scores between men and women (median difference, 1.0; 95% CI, -1.1 to 3.1); however, among midcareer and late-career graduates, there was a large difference in the median h-index scores (midcareer graduates: median difference, 4.0; 95% CI, 1.2-6.8; late-career graduates: median difference, 6.0; 95% CI, 1.0-10.9). A higher percentage of women pursued academic positions compared with men (106 of 162 [65.4%] vs 293 of 525 [55.8%]; difference, 9.6%; 95% CI, -5.3% to 12.3%).

Conclusions and Relevance
This cross-sectional study suggests that women in head and neck surgery begin their careers with high levels of academic productivity. However, over time, a divergence in academic productivity between men and women begins to develop. These data argue for research to identify possible reasons for this observed divergence in academic productivity and, where possible, develop enhanced early faculty development opportunities for women to promote their academic productivity, promotion, and advancement into leadership positions.


Objectives: The correlations between red cell distribution width (RDW) and worse outcome of cardiovascu lar diseases has been demonstrated recently. We aim to determine the association of RDW levels with early adverse events after coronary artery bypass surgery. Materials and Methods: 105 consecutive patients (92 males, 13 females; mean age 60.9±10.9 years) were enrolled in the study. Combined adverse event was defined as in-hospital death, postoperative myocardial infarction, reoperation due to hemodynamic instability, early repeat revascularization or prolonged ventilation period. The patients divided into two groups; those encounter with adverse events and those without. Logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the independent predictor value of RDW for adverse events. Results: There were 17 (16.2%) adverse events following surgery. RDW levels were significantly higher in the adverse events group (14.3±1.3% vs. 13.6±1.0%, p=0.021). Multivariate logistic regression models showed that RDW, when adjusted with hemoglobin levels was a strong independent predictor of early post operative adverse events after surgery (HR=1.84 per 1% increase; 95% CI: 1.04-3.26, p=0.036). Conclusions: Our study showed that RDW level may be a very practical and readily available parameter that predicts early adverse events following coronary artery bypass surgery without bringing out any additional


The clinical and counseling psychology profession has witnessed a steady increase in research on the development and application of Hispanic/Latino-centered therapeutic approaches; however, little attention has been given to incorporating the dynamics of a client's language background in treatment. The authors discuss the important role of language representation and emotions and the implications for conducting therapy with bilingual clients who speak Spanish and English. The contributions of psychoanalysis and psycholinguistics that have guided the research on language issues in counseling and therapy are presented, and future directions in research, training, and practice are outlined.


Methods of quantitative cytochemical analysis were applied to the study of the reaction of the hypothalamohypophysial neurosecretory system (HHNS) to single and course administrations of lithium chloride (in doses of 200 mg/kg). Reaction of the HHNS proved to depend directly on the amount of lithium administered and was characteriaed by the activation of the synthesis and elemination of the neurosecretion with a single administration on the preparation, or depression of the hormonopoiesis in the hypothalamus and exhaustion of the neurosecretion stores in the neurohypophysis in its course application. During the restoration (7 to 30 days after stopping the drug administration) the state of the HHNS gradually approached the initial level. The authors came to the conclusion that the changes in the central mechanisms of the neuro-endocrine regulation at the hypothalamic level caused by lithium were significant in the pathogenesis of the side-action of its salts


We present the clustering properties of low-z (z ≤ 1.4) galaxies selected by the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program Wide layer over 145 deg2. The wide-field and multiwavelength observation yields 5,064,770 galaxies at 0.3 ≤ z ≤ 1.4 with photometric redshifts and physical properties. This enables the accurate measurement of angular correlation functions, and the subsequent halo occupation distribution (HOD) analysis allows us to identify the connection between baryonic and dark halo properties. The fraction of less-massive satellite galaxies at z ≲ 1 is found to be almost constant at ∼20%, but it gradually decreases beyond . However, the abundance of satellite galaxies at z > 1 is quite small even for less-massive galaxies due to the rarity of massive centrals at high-z. This decreasing trend is connected to the small satellite fraction of Lyman break galaxies at z > 3. The stellar-to-halo mass ratios at 0.3 ≤ z ≤ 1.4 are almost consistent with the predictions obtained using the latest empirical model; however, we identify small excesses from the theoretical model at the massive end. The pivot halo mass is found to be unchanged at at 0.3 ≤ z ≤ 1.4, and we systematically show that is a universal pivot halo mass up to z ∼ 5 that is derived using only the clustering/HOD analyses. Nevertheless, halo masses with peaked instantaneous baryon conversion efficiencies are much smaller than the pivot halo mass regardless of redshift, and the most efficient stellar-mass assembly is thought to be in progress in dark halos.


Review: A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy By J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks Reviewed by Byron Anderson Northern Illinois University, USA J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks. A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007. xi, 404 pp. ISBN: 978-0-262-68161-2 (paperback); US$26.00. Printed on recycled paper. In studies conducted from 1990 to 1998, the World Bank established that 94 percent of the world's disaster deaths occurred in developing countries, and that when geographically plotted these deaths showed a major North-South divide. Roberts, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mellon Environmental Studies Program at the College of William and Mary, and Parks, Development Policy Officer in the Department of Policy and International Relations at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, examine broad patterns in climate disasters over the last two decades focusing on hydrometerological disasters, including windstorms, drought, floods, and heat waves. The authors attempt to synthesize theories, examining both political causes and social and historical determinants of vulnerability to climate disasters. Authority is enhanced throughout by referencing one or more of the twenty-eight indices used that present intervening variables in climate change, such as the Total Carbon Emissions by Nation, Gini Index of Income Inequality, and GDP per Capita. From these indices, disasters are modeled, using multivariate analysis and correlations, standardized regression coefficients, and other rubrics. Synthesizing theories and modeling disasters, while effective, may be suspect to some researchers and challenging to lay readers. The book's premise is that the issue of global climate change is fundamentally about injustice and inequality, causing poor countries to suffer the effect of a problem to which they contributed virtually nothing (p. 97). There is a bias against rich countries when examining causes of climate change, and


: Conventionally, the static angle of attack and static elevator tests are carried out separately to estimate hydrodynamic stability derivatives of underwater vehicles. However, it is difficult to verify the interaction between the angle of attack and elevator angle in such cases. In this study, we perform a static elevator with angle of attack test where both the angle of attack and elevator angle are varied simultaneously. The experimental results show that the angle of attack has an influence on the elevator control force and that this tendency is dependent on the sense in which the angle of attack and elevator angle are varied. We predict level flight performance using hydrodynamic derivatives estimated through this experiment. The predictions considering the effect of angle of attack show good agreement with trials conducted in the open sea.


ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to investigate the crystallization of superfine ammonium perchlorate (AP) particles using some advanced liquid antisolvent crystallization (LASC) methods containing liquid antisolvent equipped with Y-jet mixer (LASY) and evaporation antisolvent crystallization (EASC) methods. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction techniques were used to investigate the crystal-size distribution (CSD), average particle size (APS), sphericity, uniformity coefficient (UC), and crystallinity of prepared samples. Also, microstructure image processing (MIP) technique in combination with MATLAB and the Rosin–Rammler (RR) equation were used to analyze specifications of the prepared particles. The results of MIP analysis technique were illustrated that the particles obtained with the LASY method represented higher sphericity (0.89–0.92) than EASC method (0.79–0.82). Also according to the Rosin–Rammler analysis results, the highest uniformity coefficient was related to the LASY method (3.83–4.02). The results of this study were shown that the LASY method can be considered as a safe and simple procedure for rapid preparation of superfine ammonium perchlorate particles with regular morphology.


The excretory organs of insects offer potential physiological targets for insect control. In this study, RNA-seq was utilized to identify a set of transporter and receptor genes enriched in the excretory organs of the brown planthopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens, which is considered the most important phloem-feeding insect pest in rice. A total of 1565 and 1084 transcripts were upregulated in the excretory organs, Malpighian tubules, and hindgut, respectively, compared to the midgut, which was enriched for transport activity and oxidoreductase activity. Eight potentially important genes were selected for the exploration of biological function, including one sodium/potassium-ATPase (NKA) subunit (ATP1A1), five aquaporins (AQPs), and two neuropeptide receptors. RNA interference (RNAi) assays showed that the knockdown of ATP1A1 and two AQP genes in BPH resulted in significant lethal phenotypes (corrected mortalities = 42.9-63.6%, 7 days after injection) and significantly reduced honeydew amounts. Our findings suggest that several genes enriched in excretory organs were important for BPH survival, which could be new insect control targets.


van der Waerden proved in 1933 that every finite-dimensional locally bounded representation of a semisimple compact Lie group is automatically continuous. This theorem evoked an extensive literature, which related the assertion of the theorem (and its converse) to properties of Bohr compactifications of topological groups and led to the introduction and study of classes of so-called van der Waerden groups and algebras. In the present paper we study properties of (not necessarily continuous) locally relatively compact homomorphisms of topological groups (in particular, connected locally compact groups) from the point of view of this theorem and obtain a classification of homomorphisms of this kind from the point of view of their continuity or discontinuity properties (this classification is especially simple in the case of Lie groups because it turns out that every locally bounded finite-dimensional representation of a connected Lie group is continuous on the commutator subgroup). Our main results are obtained by studying new objects, namely, the discontinuity group and the final discontinuity group of a locally bounded homomorphism, and the new notion of a finally continuous homomorphism from one locally compact group into another. The notion of local relative compactness of a homomorphism is naturally related to the notion of point oscillation (at the identity element of the group) introduced by the author in 2002. According to a conjecture of A. S. Mishchenko, the (reasonably defined) oscillation at a point of any finite-dimensional representation of a `good' topological group can take one of only three values: 0, 2 and . We shall prove this for all connected locally compact groups.


With the advent of smartphone indirect ophthalmoscopy, teleophthalmology - the use of specialist ophthalmology assets at a distance from the patient - has experienced a breakthrough, promising enormous benefits especially for healthcare in distant, inaccessible or opthalmologically underserved areas, where specialists are either unavailable or too few in number. However, accurate teleophthalmology requires high-quality ophthalmoscopic imagery. This paper considers three feature families - statistical metrics, gradient-based metrics and wavelet transform coefficient derived indicators - as possible metrics to identify unsharp or blurry images. By using standard machine learning techniques, the suitability of these features for image quality assessment is confirmed, albeit on a rather small data set. With the increased availability and decreasing cost of digital ophthalmoscopy on one hand and the increased prevalence of diabetic retinopathy worldwide on the other, creating tools that can determine whether an image is likely to be diagnostically suitable can play a significant role in accelerating and streamlining the teleophthalmology process. This paper highlights the need for more research in this area, including the compilation of a diverse database of ophthalmoscopic imagery, annotated with quality markers, to train the Point of Acquisition error detection algorithms of the future.


N-phthaloyl GABA (P. GABA) inhibited gastric ulceration induced by 3 hr restraint stress at 4 degrees C (CRS) in albino rats. Antiulcer activity of P. GABA was compared with sodium valproate and cimetidine. P. GABA, sodium valproate and cimetidine showed a dose dependent reduction of gastric ulceration. Pretreatment with GABA antagonists-bicuculline methiodide (0.5 mg/kg, im) or 3 mercaptopropionic acid (2 mg/kg, im) reversed the antiulcerogenic activity of both the drugs (P. GABA and sodium valproate). GABA antagonists as such did not induce gastric ulceration in normal rats.


Procamallanus laeviconchus is a common parasite of the catfish Clarias gariepinus. Adult worms were in vitro cultivated in seven different types of media. NCTC 109 (formula IV) formed of 70% NCTC 109 and 30% buffer saline was the best medium for the maintenance of the parasite at pH 6.5-6.7 and 20-23°C for six days. In vitro study revealed that flubendazole was more effective against P. laeviconchus than mebendazole and levamesole. Flubendazole caused a high mortality rate (90%) for both males and females when used at a concentration dose of 100 ppm. It was found that the water fruit extract of Ammi majus is more effective on male and female Procamallanus laeviconchus than the water flower extract at very high concentrations.


We present a novel inference scheme, self-speculative decoding, for accelerating Large Language Models (LLMs) without the need for an auxiliary model. This approach is characterized by a two-stage process: drafting and verification. The drafting stage generates draft tokens at a slightly lower quality but more quickly, which is achieved by selectively skipping certain intermediate layers during drafting Subsequently, the verification stage employs the original LLM to validate those draft output tokens in one forward pass. This process ensures the final output remains identical to that produced by the unaltered LLM, thereby maintaining output quality. The proposed method requires no additional neural network training and no extra memory footprint, making it a plug-and-play and cost-effective solution for inference acceleration. Benchmarks with LLaMA-2 and its fine-tuned models demonstrated a speedup up to 1.73$\times$.


BACKGROUND
There is increasing interest in lifestyle modification and integrative medicine approaches to treat and/or prevent mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD).

OBJECTIVE
To address the need for a quantifiable measure of brain health, we created the Resilience Index (RI).

METHODS
This cross-sectional study analyzed 241 participants undergoing a comprehensive evaluation including the Clinical Dementia Rating and neuropsychological testing. Six lifestyle factors including physical activity, cognitive activity, social engagements, dietary patterns, mindfulness, and cognitive reserve were combined to derive the RI (possible range of scores: 1-378). Psychometric properties were determined.

RESULTS
The participants (39 controls, 75 MCI, 127 ADRD) had a mean age of 74.6±9.5 years and a mean education of 15.8±2.6 years. The mean RI score was 138.2±35.6. The RI provided estimates of resilience across participant characteristics, cognitive staging, and ADRD etiologies. The RI showed moderate-to-strong correlations with clinical and cognitive measures and very good discrimination (AUC: 0.836; 95% CI: 0.774-0.897) between individuals with and without cognitive impairment (diagnostic odds ratio = 8.9). Individuals with high RI scores (> 143) had better cognitive, functional, and behavioral ratings than individuals with low RI scores. Within group analyses supported that controls, MCI, and mild ADRD cases with high RI had better cognitive, functional, and global outcomes than those with low RI.

CONCLUSION
The RI is a brief, easy to administer, score and interpret assessment of brain health that incorporates six modifiable protective factors. Results from the RI could provide clinicians and researchers with a guide to develop personalized prevention plans to support brain health.


The accurate attenuation range of many precision rotary vane attenuators is limited to about 40 dB because of a transmission error term that is not accounted for in the familiar cos/sup 2//spl theta/ attenuation law. This paper presents a modified law that makes it possible to extend the useful dynamic attenuation range. The same modified law also makes it practical to reduce the length of the rotor section and, therefore, to develop compact rotary vane attenuators that are accurate over reduced dynamic attenuation ranges. The modified law requires the additional calibrations of the incremental attenuation and incremental phase change at the 90/spl deg/ vane angle setting. To verify the modified law, a precision compact WR 112 rotary vane attenuator was fabricated and tested. The attenuator has a total dynamic attenuation range of about 30 dB and a rotor section length approximately one-third that of a conventional WR 112 attenuator. Application of the modified law resulted in good agreement between theoretical and measured incremental attenuations over the total dynamic attenuation range.


For years, area 5 of the parietal cortex was thought to be a somatic sensory structure. This view was challenged by recordings during active movements in alert behaving monkeys, which suggested that area 5 also contained populations of neurons that issued nonspecific, context-dependent "commands" about intended motor responses. Recent studies have revealed that area 5 generates a representation of the spatiotemporal form of arm movements and arm postures, although the parameter space of that representation is still controversial. They also showed that many area 5 cells are recipient to centrally generated signals about the motor relevance of external sensory signals. These new results support the hypothesis that area 5 contributes to the sensorimotor guidance of motor behavior, by contributing to the somatomotor and visuomotor transformations presumed to underlie visually guided behavior. However, area 5 appears to be less directly implicated than the premotor cortex in the process of selecting the nature of the response to instructional signals.


Summary Thrombin Activatable Fibrinolysis Inhibitor (TAFI) is a carboxypeptidase B-like proenzyme that after activation by thrombin down regulates fibrinolysis. Thrombomodulin (TM) stimulates the activation of both TAFI and protein C whereas activated protein C (APC) inhibits the activation of TAFI by down regulating thrombin generation. Recently, protein C inhibitor (PCI) was identified as a potent inhibitor of thrombin bound to TM and it can thereby regulate the balance between TAFI activation, and inhibition of TAFI activation by APC. Both in a purified system and in plasma, activation of TAFI and protein C by IIa-TM could be inhibited by PCI. Previously we found in plasma that at low concentrations (~1 nM), TM predominantly stimulated the activation of TAFI whereas at higher concentrations of TM (~10 nM) the activation of protein C resulted in inhibition of the activation of TAFI. In agreement with this, PCI inhibited the activation of TAFI at 1 nM TM whereas at 10 nM TM PCI inhibited the activation of protein C resulting in an increase in the activation of TAFI. This suggests that PCI can up regulate TAFI activation by inhibiting the protein C activation. PCI may therefore be an important regulator in the balance between coagulation and fibrinolysis by differentially inhibiting the activation of TAFI and of protein C. The local TM concentration plays an important role in the outcome of this process.


1. A modification of the vascular perfusion technique was used to investigate sugar transfer from the lumen of the rat small intestine to the vascular perfusion technique was used to investigate sugar transfer from the lumen of the rat small intestine to the vascular bed. 2. With this method the transfer of both D‐[3H]galactose and L‐[14C]glucose were followed in the same experiments. The results indicate that when equimolar concentrations of the two sugars are perfused through the lumen there is a preferential transfer of galactose from the mucosal epithelium to the vascular bed as well as from lumen to the epithelial layer. 3. At high rates of galactose transfer from the lumen to the vascular bed, accumulation of the sugar within the mucosal epithelium is minimal unless the vascular flow is stopped. 4. Phlorizin inhibits galactose transfer from the lumen to the vascular bed, but the inhibition of sugar transfer appears to be restricted to the luminal face of the epithelial cells since the selectivity of the basolateral exit process is unaffected. 5. Replacement of Na+ by K+ in the luminal perfusate reduces the rate of galactose transfer by a factor of 40, but does not completely abolish the preferential transfer of galactose. The presence of luminal Na+ also stimulates the exit of galactose from the mucosal epithelium to the vascular bed. 6. The presence of D‐glucose in the vascular perfusate produces a two‐ to threefold increase in the rate of sugar transfer from the lumen to the vascular bed. This effect is not observed with vascular galactose or luminal glucose.


Zinc increases the affinity of human growth hormone (hGH) for the human prolactin receptor (hPRLR) due to the coordination of one zinc ion involving Glu-174hGH and His-18hGH. In contrast, binding of hPRL to the hPRLR is zinc-independent. We engineered in binding site 1 of hPRL a hGH-like zinc coordination site, by mutating Asp-183hPRL (homologous to Glu-174hGH) into Glu (D183E mutation). This mutation was also introduced into G129R hPRL, a binding site 2 mutant (Goffin, V., Kinet, S., Ferrag, F., Binart, N., Martial, J. A., and Kelly, P. A. (1996) J. Biol. Chem. 271, 16573–16579). These analogs were characterized using a stable clone expressing both the hPRLR and a PRLR-responsive reporter gene. The D183E mutationper se decreases the binding affinity and transcriptional activity of hPRL. However, this loss is partially rescued by the addition of zinc and the effect is much more marked on bioactivity than on binding affinity. These data indicate that the D183E mutation confers zinc sensitivity to hPRL biological properties. Due to an impaired site 2, the agonistic activity of G129R analog is almost nil. Although the double mutant D183E/G129R displays lower affinity (∼1 log) compared with G129R hPRL, it unexpectedly recovers partial agonistic activity in the absence of zinc. Moreover, whereas zinc increases the affinity of D183E/G129R, it paradoxically abolishes its agonistic activity. Our results demonstrate that the biological properties of hPRL analogs do not necessarily parallel their overall affinity. Rather, the relative affinities of the individual binding sites 1 and 2 may play an even more important role.


While the government of Tanzania has been implementing community health fund (CHF) for more than two decades, the uptake of the scheme has been persistently low due to management and performance problems. As a response, from 2011 a new initiative was adopted that changed the overall structure, management and benefit packages of the CHF. This paper assesses the implementation of the newly re-structured CHF in Gairo District in Morogoro Region. This study employed a descriptive qualitative case study design using three types of data collection techniques, namely individual interviews (n=14), focus group discussions (n=4) and document review. A thematic approach was used to analyse the data. Findings show that the re-structured CHF has improved the pooling and provider payment mechanism compared to the old CHF. Benefit packages have been expanded to include referral services up to regional level. However, stakeholders, including community members, had negative perceptions of the restructured CHF owing to high annual premium rates, low incentive to enrolment officers, weak registration network and poor quality of health care services. In order to improve CHF performance and achieve universal health coverage, the central Government needs to invest more in the improvement of the quality of health care services, particularly availability of drugs and medical supplies. Additionally, the government should make CHF scheme compulsory to all members of the community who do not have alternative health insurance.


The cloud computing is a new computing model which comes from grid computing, distributed computing, parallel computing, virtualization technology, utility computing and other computer technologies and it has more advantage characters such as large scale computation and data storage, virtualization, high expansibility, high reliability and low price service. The security problem of cloud computing is very important and it can prevent the rapid development of cloud computing. This paper introduces some cloud computing systems and analyzes cloud computing security problem and its strategy according to the cloud computing concepts and characters. The data privacy and service availability in cloud computing are the key security problem. Single security method cannot solve the cloud computing security problem and many traditional and new technologies and strategies must be used together for protecting the total cloud computing system.


© 1998 Canadian Medical Association (text and abstract/résumé) OBJECTIVE: Initial reports suggest that laparoscopic splenectomy is a difficult procedure with a steep learning curve and limited scope. The objective of this study was to review various approaches to simplify the operation. DESIGN: A descriptive study of a prospective database. SETTING: A tertiary care teaching hospital. PATIENTS: Fifty-one consecutive patients, seen over a 4-year period, who underwent laparoscopic splenectomy (partial laparoscopic splenectomy in 1 patient) for a wide variety of disorders. INTERVENTIONS: Anterior and lateral surgical approaches to laparoscopic splenectomy and the selective use of preoperative splenic artery embolization. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blood loss, morbidity, mortality and rate of conversion to open splenectomy, operating time and postoperative hospital stay. RESULTS: The morbidity (11%), death rate (2%), and rate of conversion were low. The recovery rate of accessory spleens was high (24%). Average operating time (3 hours), postoperative stay (3 days) and volume of blood loss improved with time. CONCLUSIONS: Laparoscopic splenectomy is a reliable procedure for patients with spleens less than 20 cm long. For spleens 20 to 30 cm long, preoperative embolization is advisable, and the surgeon should be experienced. Laparoscopic splenectomy should not be performed for spleens more than 30 cm long. The lateral approach has eliminated most of the difficulty with this procedure for spleens less than 20 cm long (no embolization). The anterior approach is reserved for large spleens and partial laparoscopic splenectomy (with embolization).


which cast a deep shadow to the water's edge, while on the other is a sloping clearing with rocks, tufts of flowers and brush, and here and there an occasional tree cropping out of the solid earth. Through the haze in the distance Whiteface Mountain is dimly outlined, against the gray morning sky. The natural forms are completely comprehended, yet in it there is also that rare spiritual and lyric interpretation of nature which is typical of Wyant's work. The precision of detail in the foreground, giving way to a broader characterization in the middle distance, would indicate that it is a work of the artist's middle


This research paper discusses the issue of meta language communicative competence (MCC) enhancement model. At first the research reviews the problem of meta language communicative competence development generally in science, and represents the literature review. Further shows the meta language communicative competence enhancement model in teaching process with its enhancement. This investigation represents the model of MLCC process with its necessary components, applied to the language teaching. Consideration of model in gas pects requires the MLCC denotion study, within the framework of language methodology science.This research is of significant value, as a contribution to the language teaching policy not only in Kazakhstan but abroad as well. It demonstrates that MCC development process helps to improve the teaching process and make the system work properly. In recent years, in line with the communicative and especially the competence approach in the domestic and foreign science actively developed the problem of enhancement of meta communicative competence MLCC "as a mandatory competency component of professional development of a modern specialist" in different branches of science: philosophy, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, cultural studies, economics, ethics. Such a multifaceted study of the phenomenon of MLCC is determined by the dynamics of social life, to find the real needs of today's ideological orientation, the necessity of its formation in the learning process. In the present time, a considerable fund is accumulated that allows you to explore the topic of the research: issues of implementation of meta language communicative competence enhancement model. Necessity of this research, as it follows from the above, is conditioned by the urgent need to train specialists in MLCC in a foreign language in the framework of activities, as well as its theoretical and practical underdevelopment.


Nitrogen in the ocean plays a key role in primary production, and biological activities, such as assimilation of phytoplankton and decomposition of organic matter are well studied. However, nitrogen cycle of the basin scale is still unclear because of the quite long time scale of the processes such as denitrification, sediment processes, and advection caused by meridional overturning circulation. Furthermore, the impact of the atmospheric and riverine nitrogen input has not been clarified. Human activities will change the nitrogen cycle in the ocean shifting riverrine and atmospheric nitrogen inputs, so that it is required to study the nitrogen balance in the whole ocean. To evaluate the nitrogen cycle in the ocean, we created a marine biogeochemical model including processes such as nitrogen fixation, denitrification, atmospheric and riverine nitrogen input, then embedded it into an Earth System Model: MIROC-ESM 5.9 developed by Program for Risk Information on Climate Change, JAMSTEC. We spun up MIROC-ESM for 800 years and analyzed the results of the last 10 simulated years. The model results showed that riverine nitrogen and atmospheric nitrogen inputs changes the production of phytoplankton about 20% and 10%, respectively, especially in the subtropical region of the eastern North Pacific and equatorial region of the western Atlantic Ocean. Riverine nitrogen input changed nitrate concentration up to ±2.5 umol L in the high latitudes such as the subarctic and polar regions (excluding the coastal regions). Our results showed the importance of riverine and atmospheric nitrogen inputs to the basin-scale nitrogen cycle.


What would prompt a 48-year-old family doctor with four children to join the Army Reserve and serve a couple of four-month deployments at combat hospitals in Iraq? Having done so myself at age 53, I could not resist Paradise General, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Hnida's memoir.

A family doctor in Littleton, Colorado, Hnida joined the army at age 48. He attributes the decision not to patriotism, love of adventure, or the need to escape a bad situation but to an accumulation of traumatic events that he felt had to be faced in a crucible of fire.

His father was a factory worker who had been a lieutenant, leading men to their death at Anzio Beach in World War II. He never got over memories of killing, flying body parts, and the fear of failure. After decades as "a mean drunk," he told his son (then a college senior) about his demons, said, "I hope I wasn't a bad father," and died four days later.

The next trauma was the loss of nine of his young patients in the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. He said of that time, "and as they fell, so did I."

Soon after, Hnida's daughter was raped by a college teammate, which left her with "days of darkness" and her father with rage and guilt. "It seemed the only way to lift myself out was to serve penance: do something to protect . . . young people. Memories of my Dad's experiences resurfaced, and I suddenly knew where I was needed, where I could find help, where I might find peace. That place was war."

Needless to say, it was an unusual approach to self-therapy ("I hoped I was setting a good example instead of playing the over-the-hill fool"), but it seems to have worked.

Like most doctors in private practice, he had no enemies at home but insurers and hospital administrators and no boss. Suddenly, he found himself a major in the army, ordered around (often gratuitously) by younger men, an experience I had as well. Whereas I felt my ignorance of regulations warranted it, Hnida lipped off like Alan Alda in MASH. But he had the good fortune to work at a field hospital whose doctors (all middle-aged reservists) banded together to survive the imperious colonels.

In 2004, Hnida served on convoys transporting detained insurgents to Camp Cropper (formerly Abu Ghraib), at which Saddam Hussein was held and had ordered tens of thousands tortured and killed. Hnida acknowledges the 2003 abuse of insurgents there by rogue American soldiers, who were jailed for it.

His second tour was at a field hospital in Tikrit. Before deploying, he had the same cursory medical exam I'd had: an audiogram, a few vaccinations, and a review of medical history. If you'd had a checkup in the past few years and reported no recent concerns, the army did not do a physical or psychological exam prior to deployment. (As assistant secretary of defense, I worked to change that in 2007, though the examination is still not as thorough as I tried to make it.)

Another parallel was Hnida's (and my) fear that we were not medically prepared for work in a combat hospital: the hours are long and the injuries are shocking due to the power and proximity of roadside bombs. Most field hospitals had no neurosurgeon, ophthalmologist, or vascular surgeon and sometimes not even an orthopedist. We did the best we could, and — as published data reveals — managed exceptionally well, because of well-trained, courageous medics and corpsmen and a superb system of resuscitation and hemorrhage-control surgery, followed by immediate evacuation in flying ICUs.

New injuries, new teammates and equipment, 100-hour work weeks, taking (or evading) orders from young colonels, and the risk — however small — that one of the mortars or rockets fired by poorly trained insurgents would hit the canvas hospital, chow hall, or the thin aluminum "hootch" in which we slept, all made for an intense experience. It brought back the loneliness, self-doubt, silliness and rebelliousness, anger, and bonding that most physicians left behind with their internships.

And it made it hard to fit in again when we got home. A part of Hnida was left behind in Iraq, and he was wiser from his experience. As I observed in myself and dozens of other reserve doctors who had deployments like his, we — like Hnida — were shaken by the experience but eventually adjusted and stopped expecting garlands and parades. We rarely run into the patients we treated, but there is a certain satisfaction in having been there and done our best, and it is particularly helpful when we see patients who served. We find ourselves spending a little more time with them (especially those who are still readjusting) and helping their families and employers understand that most of them will emerge stronger, wiser, and gentler leaders and teammates because of the experience.

Readers who have served will find a few smiles and chuckles in this war diary, while those who have not may be tempted to join the Army Reserve and make a good organization great. If you do, Hnida's book is fair warning that you — and your family and civilian medical practice — will be changed as well and mostly for the better.


The paper introduces the basic situation for the design of temporary footbridge over Lijiang river in Guilin by adopting the scheme with 7 spans steel truss continuous beam.


To improve the cellulolytic activity of a yeast strain displaying endoglucanase II (EGII) from the filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei QM9414, the genes encoding the cellulose‐binding domain (CBD) of EGII, cellobiohydrolase I (CBHI) and cellobiohydrolase II (CBHII) from T. reesei QM9414, were fused with the catalytic domain of EGII and expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Display of each of the recombinant EGIIs was confirmed using immunofluorescence microscopy. In the case of EGII‐displaying yeast strains in which the CBD of EGII was replaced with the CBD of CBHI or CBHII, the binding affinity to Avicel and hydrolytic activity toward phosphoric acid swollen Avicel were similar to that of a yeast strain displaying wild‐type EGII. On the other hand, the three yeast strains displaying EGII with two or three tandemly aligned CBDs showed binding affinity and hydrolytic activity higher than that of the yeast strain displaying wild‐type EGII. This result indicates that the hydrolytic activity of yeast strains displaying recombinant EGII increases with increased binding ability to cellulose.


Background: Cis-acting sequences regulate region-specific DNA demethylation. Results: DNA demethylation of a fragment from the mouse H19/Igf2 imprinted control region requires two Sox-Oct motifs, one of which is methylation-sensitive. Conclusion: The Sox-Oct motif functions to induce DNA demethylation in P19 cells. Significance: The Sox-Oct motif might be a key element to induce region-specific DNA demethylation as well as activate transcription in undifferentiated cells. DNA demethylation is used to establish and maintain an unmethylated state. The molecular mechanisms to induce DNA demethylation at a particular genomic locus remain unclear. The mouse H19/insulin-like growth factor 2 (Igf2) imprinted control region (ICR) is a methylation state-sensitive insulator that regulates transcriptional activation of both genes. The unmethylated state of the ICR established in female germ cells is maintained during development, resisting the wave of genome-wide de novo methylation. We previously demonstrated that a DNA fragment (fragment b) derived from this ICR-induced DNA demethylation when it was transfected into undifferentiated mouse embryonal carcinoma cell lines. Moreover, two octamer motifs within fragment b were necessary to induce this DNA demethylation. Here, we demonstrated that both octamer motifs and their flanking sequences constitute Sox-Oct motifs (SO1 and SO2) and that the SO1 region, which requires at least four additional elements, including the SO2 region, contributes significantly to the induction of high-frequency DNA demethylation as a Sox-Oct motif. Moreover, RNAi-mediated inhibition of Oct3/4 expression in P19 cells resulted in a reduced DNA demethylation frequency of fragment b but not of the adenine phosphoribosyltransferase gene CpG island. The Sox motif of SO1 could function as a sensor for a hypermethylated state of the ICR to repress demethylation activity. These results indicate that Sox-Oct motifs in the ICR determine the cell type, DNA region, and allele specificity of DNA demethylation. We propose a link between the mechanisms for maintenance of the unmethylated state of the H19/Igf2 ICR and the undifferentiated cell-specific induction of DNA demethylation.


Although the mechanism of unresponsiveness to recombinant human erythropoietin therapy in dialysis patients has been studied extensively in recent years, many aspects remain unclear. We previously found that administration of erythropoietin induces interleukin-1beta, a cytokine that inhibits erythropoiesis. The present study investigated the involvement of tumour necrosis factor-alpha, another cytokine which inhibits erythropoiesis. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were obtained from 18 patients on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, who were being treated with erythropoietin for renal anaemia, and were cultured with various concentrations of erythropoietin (0, 1, 5, 10, and 50 U/ml). Then the tumour necrosis factor-alpha level in the culture supernatant was assayed. The 18 patients were divided into four groups on the basis of the haematocrit after treatment: group A (n = 3), <23.0%; group B (n = 5), 23.0-24.9%; group C (n = 7), 25.0-26.9%; and group D (n = 3), > or =27.0%. In group A, the tumour necrosis factor-alpha level in the culture supernatant was increased by incubation with erythropoietin, while it was not increased in other groups. The tumour necrosis factor-alpha level was significantly higher in group A than in the other groups at erythropoietin concentrations of 5 U/ml. These results suggested that induction of tumour necrosis factor-alpha is one of the reasons for unresponsiveness to recombinant human erythropoietin.


In this work, we prepared calcium phosphate from commercial calcium carbonate and orthophosphoric acid, and from corbicula shells and orthophosphoric acid, by a hydrothermal process. The chemical composition and powder properties of the products were investigated. Commercial calcium carbonate and corbicula shells reacted with orthophosphoric acid to produce calcium hydrogen phosphate via the hydrothermal process. The reaction between commercial calcium carbonate and orthophosphoric acid occurred in 1 h at 120 oC, while the reaction between corbicula shells and orthophosphoric acid needed over 3 h at 120 oC.


The 2009 national and provincial elections have come and gone. As expected, the results have reshaped politics. The new President has promised a marked improvement in the service delivery and performance of the public sector. Holding on to old dogmas or introducing new theories will not be his primary concern. Local government's privileged status in the Constitution may very well be one of those 'dogmas' that can be sacrificed in the name of effective service delivery.