There are advantages in the use of quantum computing in the elaboration of attacks on certain pseudorandom generators when compared with analogous attacks using classical computing. This paper presents a polynomial time quantum attack on the Blum–Micali generator, which is considered secure against threats from classical computers. The proposed attack uses a Grover inspired procedure together with the quantum discrete logarithm, and is able to recover previous and future outputs of the generator under attack, thereby completely compromising its unpredictability. The attack can also be adapted to other generators, such as Blum–Micali generators with multiple hard-core predicates and generators from the Blum–Micali construction, and also to scenarios where the requirements on the bits are relaxed. Such attacks represent a threat to the security of the pseudorandom generators adopted in many real-world cryptosystems.


ABSTRACT During sporulation in diploid Saccharomyces cerevisiae, spindle pole bodies acquire the so-called meiotic plaque, a prerequisite for spore formation. Mpc70p is a component of the meiotic plaque and is thus essential for spore formation. We show here that MPC70/mpc70 heterozygous strains most often produce two spores instead of four and that these spores are always nonsisters. In wild-type strains, Mpc70p localizes to all four spindle pole bodies, whereas in MPC70/mpc70 strains Mpc70p localizes to only two of the four spindle pole bodies, and these are always nonsisters. Our data can be explained by conservative spindle pole body distribution in which the two newly synthesized meiosis II spindle pole bodies of MPC70/mpc70 strains lack Mpc70p.


The authors present a case of a racehorse with acute respiratory distress, bilateral epistaxis and laryngeal swelling following a laryngeal tie-forward procedure. An emergency tracheostomy was performed following brief endoscopic examination identifying significant pharyngeal collapse and a minimally patent airway. No cranial nerve deficits or obvious neurological abnormalities were present. Lateral radiographs ruled out a fracture and provided a preliminary diagnosis of hyperextension injury. CT 24 hours later showed marked soft tissue swelling consistent with haemorrhage associated with the ventral straight muscles, causing median septum disruption. No fractures were identified. Endoscopy four days postoperatively confirmed the haemorrhage was external to the guttural pouches consistent with ventral straight muscle rupture. The horse was treated conservatively with five weeks of box rest. The tracheostomy tube was removed 19 days postoperatively. The horse was then discharged and gradually returned to exercise, winning a race nine months later.


This paper presents a simple oil-exporting-country dynamic growth model with investment, consumption, passive military spending, and active military spending. Passive military spending (arms buildup) adds to security, while active military spending (conflict) depletes it, but adds to output and hence civilian capital (as a proxy for geopolitical risk premium in oil prices) in a non-monotonic way (some geopolitical risk is good for an oil exporter, but too much risk is not). It is shown that when the risk premium is sufficiently small, the optimal policy function does not support any positive active military spending at any levels of civilian capital and security. However, with sufficiently high geopolitical risk premium, the model country engages in controlled conflict (positive active military spending) when civilian capital is low. A controlled conflict in the latter case can shift the production function up, allowing the country to boost its consumption and arms buildup. This explains the big increase in the geopolitical risk premium following the Arab Spring, which included, among other disruptions, a military intervention by Saudi Arabia in Bahrain, as well as the smaller geopolitical risk premium following the recent Saudi-led war against the Houthis in Yemen. If oil prices remain low, depleting the civilian capital of Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporters, it may be rational, according to our model, to expect greater military activity, both to deal with geopolitical risks in the region, and to boost oil prices through the geopolitical risk premium.


Resveratrol, a dietary phytoalexin, has emerged as a promising chemopreventive agent due to its antiproliferative and pro-apoptotic action toward cancer cells and its ability to inhibit tumor growth in animals. Gastric adenocarcinoma cells respond to resveratrol treatment with suppression of DNA synthesis, activation of nitric oxide synthase, induction of apoptosis and inhibition of total PKC and PKC alpha activity. Here we demonstrate that treatment of gastric adenocarcinoma SNU-1 cells with resveratrol results in time and concentration dependent accumulation of tumor suppressors p21(cip1/WAF-1) and p53 and is preceded by loss of membrane-associated PKC delta protein and a concomitant increase in cytosolic PKC alpha. Arrest of the cell cycle at transition of S to G(2)/M phases correlates with the profile of (3)H-thymidine incorporation and accumulation of p21(cip1/WAF-1) and was temporally dependent on increase of p53. SNU-1 cells respond to resveratrol treatment with up-regulation of both Fas and Fas-L proteins, whereas in KATO-III cells, with deleted p53, only Fas-L is increased after resveratrol treatment. Although Fas and Fas-L proteins in SNU-1 cells and Fas-L in KATO-III cells were elevated within 24 h of cell treatment with low concentrations of resveratrol, significant apoptotic response at these concentrations was observed only after 48 h. Altogether, our findings indicate that resveratrol engages PKC alpha and delta signals in gastric adenocarcinoma SNU-1 cells prior to up-regulation of antiproliferative and pro-apoptotic signals. The specific cell death signals engaged by resveratrol appear to be cell type dependent and suggest that resveratrol has chemopreventive potential even after mutational changes have occurred.


Idealised rural lifestyles depicted in Japanese produced TV dramas and movies contrast with the tightly-held traditions and hard work of the real, rural Japan. Furusato (old hometown), fureai (connectedness to each other), and shizen (nature) are concepts assumed lost in urbanisation, an urban-rural dichotomy, becoming tropes in these dramatic 'pseudo-ethnographies', used by government economic and tourism policies designed to repopulate regional Japan. Tourism campaigns encouraging locals to experience Japan are swathed in nationalism. The rural is exemplified as authentic Japan, guardian of values, culture and community and historic components of tourism culture, over time transformed to 21st century staged authenticities. The reimaging of this Japanese rural space then becomes an existential authenticity for the visitor or new community member. Using a human geography lens for the movie, Departures, this paper deconstructs the transformation of staged authenticities into existential ones as visitors become part of the rural space and places.


BACKGROUND
Fabry's disease is an X-linked inborn error of metabolism. The patients lack or have very low activity of the enzyme alpha-galactosidase A. This results in deposition of sphingolipids in endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells; thus the disease can affect nearly every organ in the body. Renal failure is the most common cause of death, but cardiac involvement is frequent.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
We describe two brothers with Fabry's disease and provide a review of the literature in the field.

RESULTS
Both patients had extensive electro- and echocardiographic findings.

INTERPRETATION
Fabry's disease should be suspected in men with unexplained electro- and/or echocardiographic signs of left ventricular hypertrophy and a short PQ interval in the ECG.


This paper discusses the PharmaGate incident which followed the release of South Africa's draft national IP policy. This incident consisted of a public exchange between a pharma organisation and the Minister of Health about a strategy developed for the organisation to counter the state's patent law reform plans and its impact on access to medicines. The paper uses critical discourse analysis to examine the strategy and the parties' statements. It makes three arguments. First, that the main rhetorical devices in their discourse were intentionally based on war or combative metaphors. Secondly, it finds that the state's position, as articulated by the Minister, falls into the narratives of "unity and Ubuntu" and "liberation ethic and demands of nationhood." This stance sought to advance the interests of the global south in a spirit of Ubuntu and asserted the state's sovereign right to set its own policy and legislative path in the interests of its citizenry. Consequently, the state rejected what it perceived as an intrusion and misdirection by international business interests. Finally, the paper argues that the parties in this encounter employed arguments that have been made at international fora and illustrates the iterative relationship between national and international health diplomacy debates.This paper has several implications for health policy makers, interest groups and the public at large. Primarily, it shows that the imagery and rhetoric used in such IP and health policy discourse is of great significance and that this behooves ethical choices by parties to discourse. The paper's methodology demonstrates how to deconstruct rhetoric. Such deconstruction is useful for policy makers in their engagement with stakeholder submissions. It is also of use to participants and followers of IP and health policy debates. Hopefully, such awareness will make for unbiased evaluation of policy options and more intentional and appropriate interventions.


We investigated the effects of Cimicifuga racemosa (CR) plant extracts on the changes in levels of the cerebral monoamines norepinephrine (NE), dopamine (DA), and serotonin (5-HT), the respective metabolites 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG), 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC), and 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), and plasma corticosterone in mice subjected to acute immobilization stress. Single oral administration of the CR extract (1,000 mg/kg) significantly attenuated plasma corticosterone levels that had been increased as a result of enforced immobilization. Acute immobilization stress caused significant changes in the corresponding amine-to-metabolite ratios in the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and cortex; however, CR-extract treatment significantly attenuated the MHPG/NE change in the hypothalamus, and the 5-HIAA/5- HT changes in each region of the brain. Our results suggest that the CR extract interacts not only with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis but also with the sympathetic adrenomedullary (SAM) system under stress conditions. Thus the CR extract can alleviate acute stress responses by suppressing the changes of amine-to-metabolite ratio in brain.


In this paper, we talk about Sensor Networks,their different applications and problems encountered, precisely the routing problem which constitutes a major constraint in this type of networks. To address some of the limitations, a new protocol,called Energy Based Protocol (EBP), was proposed. EBP operates under different scenarios and showed, after its simulation using TinyOS, many advantages in terms of load balancing, free looping, minimizing packet error rate and maximizing network lifetime. EBP could be implemented in different applications: hospital surveillance, forest monitoring, etc.


One of the main issues when orally administering microorganism-based probiotics is the significant loss of bioactivity as they pass through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. To overcome these issues, here, we propose to encapsulate the probiotic yeast Kluyveromyces lactis on chemically crosslinked gelatin hydrogels as a means to protect the bioactive agents in different environments. Hydrogels were prepared by the chemical crosslinking of gelatin, which is commercially available and inexpensive. This is crucial to ensure scalability and cost-effectiveness. To explore changes in key physicochemical parameters and their impact on cell viability, we varied the concentration of the crosslinking agent (glutaraldehyde) and the gelatin. The synthesized hydrogels were characterized in terms of morphological, physical-chemical, mechanical, thermal and rheological properties. This comprehensive characterization allowed us to identify critical parameters to facilitate encapsulation and enhance cell survival. Mainly due to pore size in the range of 5–10 μm, sufficient rigidity (breaking forces of about 1 N), low brittleness and structural stability under swelling and relatively high shear conditions, we selected hydrogels with a high concentration of gelatin (7.5% (w/v)) and concentrations of the crosslinking agent of 3.0% and 5.0% (w/w) for cell encapsulation. Yeasts were encapsulated with an efficiency of about 10% and subsequently tested in bioreactor operation and GI tract simulated media, thereby leading to cell viability levels that approached 95% and 50%, respectively. After testing, the hydrogels' firmness was only reduced to half of the initial value and maintained resistance to shear even under extreme pH conditions. The mechanisms underlying the observed mechanical response will require further investigation. These encouraging results, added to the superior structural stability after the treatments, indicate that the proposed encapsulates are suitable to overcome most of the major issues of oral administration of probiotics and open the possibility to explore additional biotech applications further.


Background

Contemporary researchers found single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in nitric oxide synthase 1 adaptor protein (NOS1AP) gene are associated with altered QT intervals and SCD. However, the clinical utility and implications of these SNP have not been described. This study aims to explore the clinical utility and implications of SNPs in nitric oxide synthase 1 adaptor protein (NOS1AP) in patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) for secondary prevention.
Methods

We firstly conducted a case-control study to evaluate the associations between hot-spot SNPs in NOS1AP (rs12143842, rs10494366, rs12567209 and rs16847548) and patients with ICD for secondary prevention. Then the clinical values of the positive SNPs were further evaluated in these patients. All patients were divided into three groups according to different genotypes of the positive SNPs. ICD interrogation data at 3, 12 months, and 3 years after implantation, which include rapid ventricular arrhythmia episodes and appropriate therapies, were analyzed in three genotypes.
Results

Case-control study revealed significant allelic association between rs10494366 and ICD recipients who experienced appropriate therapies. After a mean follow-up time of 31.70 ± 9.15 months, we detected not only significant difference among three genotypes on the distribution of ICD shocks and appropriate therapies, but apparently also the correlation of rs10494366 and ICD shocks. Furthermore, under kaplan-meier and cox regression analysis, TT genotype both showed higher risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD) compared with GG genotype.
Conclusions

The present study revealed that SNP rs10494366 was associated with appropriate therapies and SCD in patients with ICD for secondary prevention for the first time.


Avocado (Persea americana Mill.) is a plant that can flourish in tropical regions like Indonesia. Avocado seeds have the hypoglycemic effect and can be used for traditional medicine. The ethanol extract of avocado seeds contains several secondary metabolite compounds such as alkaloids, triterpenoids, tannins, flavonoids, and saponins. Aims of this study are to identify groups and structures of flavonoid compounds in avocado seeds. 4,000 g of avocado seed powder produces ethanol 170 gcondensed extract with maseration process. 100 g of viscous ethanol extract using ethyl acetate and water yielded 25.6 g of ethyl acetate extract with partition process. The separation of ethyl acetate extract by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) with G-F254 stationary phase and n-butanol mobile phase : acetic acid: water (BAA) phase (4:1:5) produces positive fractions containing flavonoids.Results of avocado seeds isolate analysis with FT-IR showed that isolate has OH functional group, CH aliphatic, C=O, C=C aromatics, and CH aromatic, while analysis with UV-Vis spectrophotometer showed the absorption peak at 285 nm and 320 nm wavelength, so the hypothesis of isolate is flavonoid compound flavanon group with hydroxy group at C-7 atom.


Voice over IP is an effective technology to reduce communication fee between people by means of the Internet. However, the quality of communication in the Internet is still a major challenge to real-time voice communication, such as excessive delay, packet loss, and high delay jitter, all these impair the communication quality. In order to improve the quality of communication between Voice Communication, this paper presents a Real-time Voice Communication model based on the mechanism of double-buffered circular queue to control the audio playing in communication. Finally, a collection of experiments are done for verifying the audio quality and offer some evaluation data for designed model. And experiments show that the audio quality in designed model is good and its delay is less than 50ms, which could be seen from the comparison of waveform simulation diagram.


In recent years' driver fatigue is one of the major causes of vehicle accidents in the world. A direct way of measuring driver fatigue is measuring the state of the driver i.e. drowsiness. So it is very important to detect the drowsiness of the driver to save life and property. This project is aimed towards developing a prototype of drowsiness detection system. This system is a real time system which captures image continuously and measures the state of the eye according to the specified algorithm and gives warning if required.
Though there are several methods for measuring the drowsiness but this approach is completely non-intrusive which does not affect the driver in any way, hence giving the exact condition of the driver. For detection of drowsiness the per closure value of eye is considered. So when the closure of eye exceeds a certain amount then the driver is identified to be sleepy. For implementing this system several OpenCv libraries are used including Haar-cascade. The entire system is implemented using Raspberry-Pi.


A new movement to develop course-based undergraduate research experiences (CURE) is emerging, although the benefits of such programs have not yet been fully evaluated. We examined effects of a field-based CURE project on science attitudes, career choice, and perceived knowledge of undergraduate wildlife students (n = 32) at the University of Wyoming in 2012. In this project, junior and senior students gained practical experience, used their own data to learn various modeling approaches, and disseminated results orally and in written form. We used a mixed-method study with pre- and postactivity surveys and focus group interviews to evaluate the change in student perceptions. Our results illustrate that participation in the CURE project resulted in benefits similar to those reported from traditional undergraduate research experience programs. Participants reported increased understanding of the scientific method, clarification of their career choices, and greater confidence in their perceived knowledge of science. These changes were more pronounced among male participants. Concurrently students gained valuable skills that are required by practicing wildlife biologists. Based on these results it appears that adoption of CURE projects in similar natural resources programs could provide a large number of undergraduate students with equivalent opportunities to those currently experienced by a select few through traditional undergraduate research experience programs. © 2017 The Wildlife Society.


Based on upset physical mechanism together with reasonable transistor size, a robust 10T memory cell is first proposed to enhance the reliability level in aerospace radiation environment, while keeping the main advantages of small area, low power, and high stability. Using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company 65-nm CMOS commercial standard process, simulations performed in Cadence Spectre demonstrate the ability of the proposed radiation-hardened-by-design 10T cell to tolerate both 0 1 and 1 0 single node upsets, with the increased read/write access time.


Of 815 patients with prostatic carcinoma registered in Tokai Urological Cancer Registry between 1989 and 1991, 683 patients followed up until April to July 1992 were analyzed. The patients were between 48 and 94 years old (mean 73.2). The clinical stage was A in 96 (14.1%), B in 118 (17.3%), C in 117 (17.1%) and D in 352 (51.5%) patients. The histological study well differentiated adenocarcinoma in 150 (22%) patients, moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma in 305 (44.6%), and poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma in 194 (28.4%) patients. There were 12 undifferentiated adenocarcinomas and 22 were not classified. The incidence of patients with poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma increased with the progression of clinical stage. Hormonal therapy was the main treatment (92.8%) and a variety of hormonal therapies with surgery or chemotherapy were attempted through out the clinical stages. Overall survival rate at 5 years was 48.6%. The 5-year survival rage for stage A, B, C and D carcinoma was 84.7, 93.1, 51.8 and 30.3%, respectively. Significant differences in the survival of patients were noted among stage A or B, stage C and stage D (Logrank test: p < 0.0001). The 5-year survival rate was 70.2% for well differentiated, 53.0% for moderately differentiated, and 32.6% for poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma (Logrank test: p < 0.0001). Disease-specific death was observed in 128 patients (66%), and cardio- or cerebrovascular death accounted for 16 (8%) deaths.


Mining is known in releasing of heavy metals and environmental pollutants due to their toxicity, persistence in the environment, and bio-accumulative nature. Leaching activity of mining has a major role in releasing of chemicals which toxify to the mining environment. Such activity contaminates the terrestrial ecosystems with toxic heavy metals that lead to the environmental problem of public health concern. In Ethiopia, even the mining trend is accounted long time, the environmental and social impacts are underestimated and not taken as an issue for a long time. However, these impacts are become very risky and problematic from time to time, since mining companies are not dedicated to their environmental and social impact assessment commitments. Being persistent pollutants, heavy metals accumulate in the environment and consequently contaminate the food chains. Accumulation of potentially toxic heavy metals in biota causes a potential health threat to their consumers including humans. Phytoremediation is more cost-effective than alternative mechanical or chemical methods of removing hazardous compounds from the soil. Vetiver grass is a perennial grass belonging to the Poaceae family with short rhizomes and a massive, finely structured root system. The deep root system makes the vetiver grass extremely drought tolerant and very difficult to dislodge when exposed to strong water flow. The main purpose of this study is to review the ecological impacts of mining in releasing leached wastes/drainages/ and the possible and effective techniques of treatment via Phytoremediation technology.


Capital is one of the important aspects in the development of farming system because with large capital, it is expected that the farming will run more and provide welfare for farmers who do the farming. Capital can be obtained from external sources by using loan. This research aims to determine the factors that influence the decision of farmers to use loan at Rice-Fish farming in Seyegan District, Sleman Regency, Yogyakarta. In this research, data were collected from 50 respondents by questionnaires and interviews with proportional sampling method where 25 respondents were taken from Margodadi Village, Seyegan District and adjusted to take 25 respondents from Margoluwih Village, Seyegan District.  To analyze the factors that influence the decision of farmers using loan used Binary Logistic Regression Model. Partial test result shows that variables influence farmer's decision to borrow money are farmer's education level, land area, the use of fish seeds, and loan procedures.


We explore an efficient approach to establish a foundational video-text model. We present VideoCoCa that maximally reuses a pretrained image-text contrastive captioner (CoCa) model and adapt it to video-text tasks with minimal extra training. While previous works adapt image-text models with various cross-frame fusion modules, we find that the generative attentional pooling and contrastive attentional pooling layers in CoCa are instantly adaptable to flattened frame embeddings, yielding state-of-the-art results on zero-shot video classification and zero-shot text-to-video retrieval. Furthermore, we explore lightweight finetuning on top of VideoCoCa, and achieve strong results on video question-answering and video captioning.


The TRIGA Mark-III nuclear reactor has several intrinsic security specifications related with the reactor core and a biological shield provided by the bathtub itself. However, to shield the exposition to gamma rays and thermal neutrons is vital for protecting the workers exposed to ionizing radiation or the incorporation of radioactive material. For this reason, in this work we present a study for designing the shield for the neutron diffractometer of the nuclear reactor, with sufficient thickness to diminish the neutron flux (4.8x108 n/cm2-s), and simultaneously to allow the reduction of the dose speed. (Correlation between the absorbed dose and the probability that the stochastic effects appear). For considering the shield dimensions it is necessary to select the adequate materials which allow the attenuation of the gamma radiation and the neutron flux in the peripheral of the diffractometer. The shield design proposed is constituted by a polythene mixture, paraffin and boron, (PBP). A statistic analysis of the results, allows establishing the viability of the design proposed, reducing the neutron flux until an 80%.


The capability of powder diffraction has greatly increased in X-ray diffraction field since the advent of synchrotron light source, particularly third generation synchrotron source, such as SPring-8. In neutron field, J-PARC is about to start. This means we will have advanced powder diffraction instruments in both X-ray and neutron diffraction fields. The capability of powder diffraction is surely affected by the method used in data analysis. The most common analytical method is Rietveld refinement. Recently, the sophisticated analytical method called MEM/Rietveld, become powerful tool to extract the structural information included in the accurately measured experimental data. In this article, possibilities of powder diffraction utilizing advanced neutron source, i.e. J-PARC and/or advanced neutron and X-ray sources simultaneously, will be described bearing in mind that improvement of the advanced analytical method would occur.


Background Recent studies have revealed that the TERT gene plays crucial roles in cancer initiation and development. Genome-wide analysis studies and case-control studies have demonstrated that polymorphisms in the TERT gene are associated with various cancers. Materials and methods In the current study, we analyzed the associations of eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the TERT gene with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in a Chinese Han population. A total of 467 NSCLC patients and 526 healthy individuals were recruited for SNP genotyping using a TaqMan assay. Results Our results revealed that the allelic frequencies of rs2853677 and rs2853691 were significantly different between the NSCLC and control groups (P=0.004 and 0.001, respectively). Moreover, the T allele of rs2853677 and the A allele of rs2853691 might be the protective factors against NSCLC (OR=0.766; 95%CI: 0.639–0.918 and OR=0.714; 95%CI: 0.584–0.875, respectively). Additionally, stratified association analysis of the eight SNPs with the different pathological NSCLC stages (I+II and III+IV) and different pathological types (adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma) revealed that none of the SNPs were significantly different between patients with different pathological stages and pathological types. Conclusion Our results indicated that rs2853677 and rs2853691 in the TERT gene might be associated with NSCLC in this Chinese Han population.


Abstract This discussion is a response to Richard Hudson's response to my article, 'The policy and policing of language in schools' (Cushing 2019). Hudson argues that current education policy in England generally rejects and avoids prescriptivism and sets out to illustrate this in reference to a number of policy documents. As in my original article, I conceive of language policy as p/Political and one way in which language ideologies get turned into practices, through a series of policy mechanisms such as curricula, tests, and guidance for teachers. I show how these mechanisms do not 'reject' prescriptivism, but explicitly perpetuate it, and thus act as a system of coercion which can lead teachers into reproducing these ideologies in their practice. I argue that Hudson's argument is limited because of its depoliticised stance and understanding of key sociolinguistic concepts and issues, such as 'Standard English', 'linguistic correctness', and language education itself. (Language education policy, language ideologies, critical applied linguistics, schools, England)*


Background Few studies have analized the persistence of ultrasound (US) abnormalities in patients (pts) with Psoriatic Artritis (PA) during the phase of minimal disease activity (MDA) Objectives To investigate the prevalence of US alterations at enthesis, joint and tendon levels in pts with psoriatic arthritis (PA) during a phase of MDA. Methods Pts treated with anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) for at least 12 months and with at least 6 months duration of MDA were consecutively recruited at 6 Italian centers. In every center, the local rheumatologists provided PA pts to be examined by US. Personal history, demographic and clinical data were recorded. Each patient underwent the following US examinations: metacarpophalangeal (MCP), knee and tibio-tarsal (TT) joint, flexor and extensor tendon of hand digit, flexor and extensor tendon at carpal area, flexor and extensor tendon of foot, and enthesis of common extensor tendon insertion on the lateral epicondyle of the humerus, quadriceps tendon, patellar tendon, Achilles tendon and plantar fascia insertions on the calcaneus. Each examination were performed by rheumatologists expert in US, to assess synovitis (joint effusion, synovial proliferation, and power Doppler (PD) signal), and bone erosions, flexor tendon tenosynovitis, hand finger extensor tendon tenonitis, and enthesel involvement using an Esaote MyLabClass with a 5–13 or 6–18 MHz linear probe. The following elementary lesions were assessed at each enthesis: morphologic abnormalities (hypoechogenicity and/or thickening), entheseal calcific deposits, cortical abnormalities (bone erosion and/or proliferation), adjacent bursitis and intraenthesis and perienthesis (tendon body and/or bursa) PD signal. All US findings were scored using a 4 degree semiquantitative scoring system. US acute enthesitis was defined by the presence of entheseal edema or PD signal. US chronic entheseal alterations by the presence of calcifications, erosions, or enthesophytes. US peripheral active synovitis if synovial hypertrophy was associated with the presence of PD signal. US examinator were blind of clinical data of the pts. Results Sixty-three pts were recruited (mean age 53±13y, mean PA duration 13±8y, mean MDA duration 21±11m). At US examination 66.7% of pts had at least one peripheral joint involved (17.5% had peripheral active synovitis), 47.6% had acute enthesitis and 95.2% chronic enthesopathy. US bursitis was present in 22.2% of pts, 3.7% had hand extensor finger tendon involvement.Table 1 shows clinical and demographical data of the pts and table 2 the US results Nail involvement Previous dactylitis FamHyst IBP Patients with abnormality (%) 28.3 42.9 23.9 19.7Table 2. US abnormalities in 63 pts in MDA Perypheral active sinovitis Joint peripheral involvement Chronic entheseal alterations Acute entheseal alterations Tenosynovitis Patients with abnormality (%) 17.5 66.7 95.2 47.6 29.6 Conclusions Joint, entheseal and tendon abnormalities have a high prevalence in PA patients treated with anti-TNF during MDA. Disclosure of Interest None declared


Two cases of constriction of the pulmonary artery secondary to mediastinal lymphoma are reported. Both patients had clinical symptoms of pulmonary embolism. Radionuclide lung scans showed no perfusion of the right lung in one patient, and diminished perfusion of the right lung in the other. Pulmonary angiography revealed diffuse concentric narrowing of right main pulmonary arteries in both patients and of lobar branches in one, in whom severe encasement of the right pulmonary artery by a lymphomatous mass confirmed at autopsy. The decisive role of pulmonary angiography in determining the underlying pathology in patients with abnormal perfusion scans is illustrated.


The objective of the present study was to estimate ruminal feed N outflow in lactating cows using the omasal sampling, compartmental flux or in situ method. A total of five ruminally fistulated Finnish Ayrshire dairy cows were used in a 5 × 5 Latin square study with 21 d periods. Experimental silages of grass or red clover harvested at two stages of maturity in addition to a supplement of 9·0 kg concentrate/d were fed to the cows. In vivo omasal N flow was determined using the omasal sampling technique. Ruminal in situ N flow was calculated from N intake and degradability (38 μm nylon bags). The samples of ruminal contents and faeces were divided into seven particle-size fractions by wet sieving; the concentrations of indigestible neutral-detergent fibre and N were used to calculate N flow in the compartmental flux method. In vivo omasal N flow was greater for the red clover silage diets than for the grass silage diets. The N flow calculated using the compartmental flux technique and that calculated using the in situ technique were highly correlated, but both were less than and poorly correlated with the in vivo N flow. In both in situ and compartmental flux techniques, forage maturity increased the particle-associated N flow, with the increase being significantly greater for the red clover diets than for the grass silage diets. In conclusion, the compartmental flux and in situ methods described the N flow associated with the particle fractions rather than the total ruminal outflow of feed N.


In this paper we consider the class of $\textit{permutominoes}$, i.e. a special class of polyominoes which are determined by a pair of permutations having the same size. We give a characterization of the permutations associated with convex permutominoes, and then we enumerate various classes of convex permutominoes, including parallelogram, directed-convex, and stack ones.


The use of different types of low quality water for irrigation in agriculture is common practice in many countries due to limited freshwater resources. Pathogens may contaminate fruit and vegetables when feces contaminated water is used for irrigation or postharvest processing. A laboratory study was carried out to investigate the effect of a coagulant produced from seeds of the Moringa oleifera tree (MO) in reducing Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts and turbidity in wastewater and stream water. Glass jars ( n = 60) containing 500 mL wastewater obtained from the inlet to the primary settling tanks from a Danish sewage treatment plant were spiked with 6.1 x 10 5 ± 6.2 × 10 4 oocysts L − 1 , while glass jars ( n = 18) containing 500 mL stream water were spiked with approx. 100, 1000 or 10,000 oocysts. To half of the wastewater and stream water 4 mL L − 1 of a 5% w / v MO seed extract was added, while the remaining water was left untreated. The water was stirred slowly for 20 min and subsequently left to sediment for 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 min (wastewater) or 60 min (stream water), with three (stream water) or six (wastewater) replicate glass jars representing each time point. In wastewater, MO seed extracts reduced the C. parvum oocyst load signi fi cantly ( p = 0.03) by 38% in the interval 15 to 90 min compared to a 0.02% reduction in the untreated wastewater. Furthermore, the number of oocysts L − 1 was signi fi cantly ( p N 0.0001 – p = 0.041) reduced in the treated wastewater at all fi ve sampling times compared to untreated wastewater. Likewise, the oocyst loads in the supernatant of MO treated stream water were noticeably lower compared with untreated stream water at all three spikes. The turbidity was reduced to 10.9 ± 0.3 Nephelometric turbidity units (NTU) (i.e. 94.7% reduction) and 13.7 ± 2.1 NTU (i.e. 91.7% reduction) in the treated wastewater and stream water, respectively. In contrast, the turbidity was 55.3 ± 4.4 NTU and 46.2 ± 1.6 NTU in untreated wastewater and stream water, respectively. M. oleifera seeds are readily available in many tropical countries where the tree is common, and our results clearly demonstrate that MO seed extract may be used by farmers for treatment of different types of surface water prior to irrigation use. Yet, adding MO seed extract to the low quality water did not successfully remove all oocyst. However, treatment of wastewater with MO seed extract signi fi cantly improved the water quality with regard to number of oocysts present and turbidity of the water. Further experiments with addition of higher concentrations of MO are needed to establish whether MO seed extract can be used to obtain safe irrigation water free of C. parvum oocysts and other protozoan parasites.


The Homeric epics are generally called realistic. The first part of this paper investigates what is meant by this label. It appears that there are in fact several forms of realism: historical, ontological, daily-life, and descriptive realism. In the second part it is shown that underneath this realistic surface many conventions lie hidden: highly stylized type-scenes form the basis of daily-life realism; the many speeches for which Homer is famous are possible because all the characters speak Greek and all the warriors on the Iliadic battle field know each other's name; the innumerable single fights of the Iliad are not the result of a special fighting method, but of the narrative convention of selective focus.


Background: Propensity score (PS) is a popular method for reducing multiple confounding effects in observational studies. It is applicable mainly for situations wherein the exposure/treatment of interest is dichotomous and the PS can be estimated through logistic regression. However, multinomial exposures with 3 or more levels are not rare, e.g., when considering genetic variants, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which have 3 levels (aa/aA/AA), as an exposure. Conventional PS is inapplicable for this situation unless the 3 levels are collapsed into 2 classes first. Methods: A simulation study was conducted to compare the performance of the proposed multinomial propensity score (MPS) method under various contrast codings and approaches, including regression adjustment and matching.Results: MPS methods had more reasonable type I error rate than the non-MPS methods, of which the latter could be as high as 30~50%. Compared with MPS-direct adjusted methods, MPS-matched cohort methods have better power but larger type I error rate. Performance of contrast codings depend on the selection of MPS models. Conclusions: In general, two combinations had relatively better performance in our simulation of ternary exposure: MPS-matched cohort method with Helmert contrast and MPS-direct adjusted regression with treatment contrasts. Compared with the latter, the former had better power but larger type I error rate as a trade-off.


Restructuring of electronic spectrum in a buckled silicene monolayer under some applied voltage between its two sublattices and in presence of certain impurity atoms is considered. A special attention is given to formation of localized impurity levels within the band gap and the to their collectivization at finite impurity concentration. It is shown that a qualitative restructuring of quasiparticle spectrum within the initial band gap and then specific metal-insulator phase transitions are possible for such disordered system and can be effectively controlled by variation of the electric field bias at given impurity perturbation potential and concentration. Since these effects are expected at low impurity concentrations but at not too low temperatures, they can be promising for practical applications in nanoelectronics devices.


The finite thickness of the ground plane is taken into account in the cavity model to analyse some aperture coupled microstrip patch antennas at millimetre-wave frequencies (60 GHz). The thickness has a strong effect on impedance matching at high frequencies owing to the ratio between the thickness and the wavelength, which increases with frequency. The calculated results are compared to those obtained by experiment for several antennas with different input impedances due to different slot lengths. Close agreement is found between the calculated and experimental results.


Bubble-electrospinning is suggested to produce micro/nano fibers. Contrary to classical electrospinning where a high voltage is applied to overcome the surface tension of the Taylor's cone, in bubble-electrospinning, the voltage is applied to overcome the bubble's surface tension, which mainly depends upon the size of the bubble. Instead of single jet, millions of charged jets are observed simultaneously. In this article, we design a single bubble-electrospinning to primarily study the effect of concentration on the spinning procedure. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) is used in the experiment. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011


Recent years have seen the wide application of NLP models in crucial areas such as finance, medical treatment, and news media, raising concerns of the model robustness and vulnerabilities. In this paper, we propose a novel prompt-based adversarial attack to compromise NLP models and robustness enhancement technique. We first construct malicious prompts for each instance and generate adversarial examples via mask-and-filling under the effect of a malicious purpose. Our attack technique targets the inherent vulnerabilities of NLP models, allowing us to generate samples even without interacting with the victim NLP model, as long as it is based on pre-trained language models (PLMs). Furthermore, we design a prompt-based adversarial training method to improve the robustness of PLMs. As our training method does not actually generate adversarial samples, it can be applied to large-scale training sets efficiently. The experimental results show that our attack method can achieve a high attack success rate with more diverse, fluent and natural adversarial examples. In addition, our robustness enhancement method can significantly improve the robustness of models to resist adversarial attacks. Our work indicates that prompting paradigm has great potential in probing some fundamental flaws of PLMs and fine-tuning them for downstream tasks.


Unification, or two-way pattern matching, is the process of solving an equation involving two first-order terms with variables. Unification is used in type inference in many programming languages and in the execution of logic programs. This means that unification algorithms have to be written over and over again for different term types. Many other functions also make sense for a large class of datatypes; examples are pretty printers, equality checks, maps etc. They can be defined by induction on the structure of user-defined datatypes. Implementations of these functions for different datatypes are closely related to the structure of the datatypes. We call such functions polytypic. This paper describes a unification algorithm parametrised on the type of the terms, and shows how to use polytypism to obtain a unification algorithm that works for all regular term types.


Medical records of three series of clinically probable multiple sclerosis (MS), consisting of 54, 180 and 51 patients, were screened for past or present coexisted disorders in which autoimmune mechanisms are believed to play a role. The comparison showed that idiopathic optic neuritis and chronic retinitis juxtapapillaris were significantly more frequent among MS patients than in control populations. One case of severe periphlebitis retinae and another one of myasthenia gravis-like syndrome were also encountered in MS population but lacked comparable control groups. This is consistent with data suggesting that MS was associated so far with four autoimmune disorders. They either possibly shared with MS common etiopathogenesis (idiopathic optic neuritis, peripheral demyelinating neuropathy), formed extending component of the perivenous inflammatory process (periphlebitis retinae) or belonged to the HLA linkage group (hypocomplementaemia C3).


Humans perceive entities such as objects, patterns, events, etc. as concepts, which are the basic units in human intelligence and communications. In addition, perceptions of these entities could be abstracted and generalised at multiple levels of granularity. In particular, such granulation allows the formation and usage of concepts in human intelligence. Such natural granularity in human intelligence could inspire and motivate the design and development of pattern identification approach in Data Mining. In our opinion, a pattern could be perceived at multiple levels of granularity and thus we advocate for the co-existence of hierarchy and granularity. In addition, granular patterns exist across different sources of data (mul-timodality). In this paper, we present a cognitive model that incorporates the characteristics of Hierarchy, Granularity and Multimodality for multi-view patterns identification in crime domain. Such framework is implemented with Growing Self Organising Maps (GSOM) and some experimental results are presented and discussed.


Spectral interferences from matrix elements in solutions are investigated utilizing Laser Enhanced Ionization (LEI) in flames. Mechanisms which influence the analytical selectivity are discussed and it is shown that the selectivity can be significantly increased by a proper choise of experimental parameters. This is exemplified by determination of low concentrations of Mg in a matrix of Na. The spectral interference, occurring in one-step excitation LEI, is diminished by a factor of 70 when utilizing two-step excitation LEI. The spectral resolution is further improved to a total factor of 1300 by an optimized choice of laser light intensities without any significant loss in sensitivity. It is pointed out that an efficient correction for signal contributions from interfering substances can be made in two-step excitation LEI without scanning the laser wavelengths. Background signals emanating from NO molecules inherent to the flame gases are also detected and virtually eliminated. The very high sensitivity and selectivity achieved by two-step excitation LEI shows that the method is widely applicable for trace element analysis.


Vehicular networks enable vehicles to generate and broadcast messages in order to improve traffic safety and efficiency. However, due to the nontrusted environments, it is difficult for vehicles to evaluate the credibilities of received messages. In this paper, we propose a decentralized trust management system in vehicular networks based on blockchain techniques. In this system, vehicles can validate the received messages from neighboring vehicles using Bayesian Inference Model. Based on the validation result, the vehicle will generate a rating for each message source vehicle. With the ratings uploaded from vehicles, roadside units (RSUs) calculate the trust value offsets of involved vehicles and pack these data into a "block." Then, each RSU will try to add their "blocks" to the trust blockchain which is maintained by all the RSUs. By employing the joint proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, the more total value of offsets (stake) is in the block, the easier RSU can find the nonce for the hash function (PoW). In this way, all RSUs collaboratively maintain an updated, reliable, and consistent trust blockchain. Simulation results reveal that the proposed system is effective and feasible in collecting, calculating, and storing trust values in vehicular networks.


Introduction: Cluster of Differentiation 9 (CD9), known as Motility Related Protein (MRP-1) regulates cell adhesion, motility, migration and proliferation. Many studies have stated conflicting results on prognostic significance of invasive breast carcinomas with CD9 expression that had performed on tumour tissues. Aim: To assess the inter-relationship of CD9 expression of tumour cells and stromal immune cells in breast carcinoma with clinicopathological parameters which include age, tumour size, grade, histological type, lymph nodes, tumour staging and molecular classification. Materials and Methods: An observational prospective (2020 July to 2021 June) and retrospective (2019 October to 2020 June) study was done in 71 cases of resected primary invasive breast carcinoma over a period of one and half year at Sri Devaraj Urs Medical College, Karnataka, India. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining was done using CD9 antibody. Tumour cells (T-CD9) expression was evaluated by Immunoreactivity scoring (IS= Intensity score × Extent of staining). The stromal cells (S-CD9) expression was evaluated by Percentage (%) of stromal area occupied by CD9 stained immune cells. Chi-square test was used as test of significance for qualitative data. The p-value of <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Out of 71 cases, T-CD9 expression was noticed in 40 cases (56.34%) and IS <4 considered as negative was observed in 31 cases (43.66%). However there was no association with age, tumour size, grade and molecular markers for the expression of both T-CD9 and S-CD9. Human Epidermal growth factor receptor 2 neu (HER2neu) negative was associated with T-CD9 expression (p-value=0.05). Hence CD9 can be used as prognostic marker for Her2neu negative cases. Conclusion: CD9 expression was not significantly associated with tumour cells (T-CD9) and stromal cells (S-CD9) in breast carcinoma cases. However it was significantly associated with Her2neu negative tumour cells. T-CD9 showed more positivity in Luminal A followed by Triple negative whereas S-CD9 showed more positivity in Luminal B. CD9 did not show association with any parameters except Her2neu negative.


Federalism refers to an agreement between several states which agree to be united as a nation state but with shared administrative responsibility. Under the dual federalism theory, the federal and the state governments are co-equals with specific powers granted by the constitution. In contrast, cooperative federalism denotes that although the federal government is supreme over the states, both acts cooperatively to solve common problem. Malaysia practices dual federalism as legislative powers of the federal and state governments are separated in the Federal Constitution. Rather than fostering cooperation, dual federalism in Malaysia has created tension between different levels of governments in the water sector as highlighted in the Selangor water woes. This paper evaluates issues arising in the Malaysian water sector from the federalism perspectives. Towards this end, doctrinal analysis on relevant laws and commentaries are made to appreciate the meaning of federalism and different approaches towards federalism. The paper concludes that different approaches towards federal-state relation can assist in improving the water sector and solve water conflict between different levels of governments in Malaysia.


Interval therapy is the concept of intermittent applications with drug-free intervals, based on the observation that in many cases L-tryptophan has the best effects on disturbed sleep during the drug-free interval after-short-term application. This concept was formulated as an experimental hypothesis to be tested in the sleep laboratory in a predictive, double-blind design, comparing a 4-night placebo period following repetitive 3 X 2 g L-tryptophan application with baseline. All patients, severe chronic insomniacs, 5 males and 3 females (mean age 38.4 years) improved significantly at the predefined level of 0.05. Analyses of the polygraphic recordings proved highly significant sleep improvements in the parameters that are indicators of insomnia. No side effects were seen. It can be concluded that the interval therapy with L-tryptophan is a potent treatment for chronic primary insomnia.


This is the final report for project MALSF MEPF 09/P108, funded by the Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund, the aim of which is to provide data for the typical underwater radiated noise levels from marine aggregate dredgers in the UK fleet during normal operations. The work is aligned with the stated aims of the ALSFMEPF to reduce the environmental footprint of marine extraction of aggregates, and follows directly from the key knowledge gap identified in the initial scoping study conducted in MEPF Project 08/P21 [Thomsen et al, 2009]. The key finding of the study is the noise output of dredging vessels is similar to a 'noisy merchant vessel' and is substantially quieter in terms of acoustic energy output than some other anthropogenic noise sources such as seismic airguns and marine pile driving. This project has been an extensive study of the noise generated by the UK's fleet of trailing suction hopper dredgers during marine aggregate extraction. The objectives of the work were (i) to develop a suitable methodology for measuring underwater noise radiated by dredgers, (ii) undertake measurements on UK dredgers at up to four sites and report, whilst disseminating the results to the wider stakeholder community. In the report, data is presented for 6 vessels, measured across 3 different areas around the UK's coast.


Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an exciting technology that enables innovation in how we design and manage networks. Although this technology seems to have appeared suddenly, SDN is part of a long history of efforts to make computer networks more programmable. In this paper, we trace the intellectual history of programmable networks, including active networks, early efforts to separate the control and data plane, and more recent work on OpenFlow and network operating systems. We highlight key concepts, as well as the technology pushes and application pulls that spurred each innovation. Along the way, we debunk common myths and misconceptions about the technologies and clarify the relationship between SDN and related technologies such as network virtualization.


It is important to protect children and unsuspecting adults from the harmful effects of objectionable materials, such as pornography, violence, and hate messages, which are now prevalent on the World-Wide Web. This calls for effective tools for web content analysis and filtering of objectionable contents. Our study of existing web content filtering systems has identified a number of deficiencies in these systems. Using the analysis of pornographic web pages as a case study, we present an intelligent bilingual web page categorization engine that can determine if an English or Chinese language web page contains pornographic materials. We have implemented the categorization engine to perform offline web page analysis and near-instantaneous online filtering. Performance evaluation of our system has verified its effectiveness.


Fast and accurate solutions of low-frequency electromagnetics problems are obtained with an iterative solver based on hierarchical matrices. Iterative solvers require matrix-vector multiplications (MVMs). The results show significant reductions both in CPU time and memory consumption compared to the O(N2) complexity of ordinary matrix filling and MVM.


[1] Numerical models of bedrock valley development generally do not include weathering explicitly. Nevertheless, weathering is an essential process that acts in concert with the transport of loose debris by seepage and runoff to form many bedrock valleys. Here we propose a numerical model for bedrock valley development that explicitly distinguishes weathering and the transport of loose debris and is capable of forming bedrock valleys similar to those observed in nature. In the model, weathering rates are assumed to increase with increasing water availability, a relationship that data suggest likely applies in many water-limited environments. We compare and contrast the model results for cases in which weathering is the result of runoff-induced infiltration versus cases in which it is the result of seepage- or subsurface-driven flow. The surface flow–driven version of our model represents an alternative to the stream-power model that explicitly shows how rates of both weathering and the transport of loose debris are related to topography or water flow. The subsurface flow–driven version of our model can be solved analytically using the linearized Boussinesq approximation. In such cases the model predicts theater-headed valleys that are parabolic in planform, a prediction broadly consistent with the observed shapes of theater-headed bedrock valleys on Mars that have been attributed to a combination of seepage weathering and episodic removal of weathered debris by runoff, seepage, and/or spring discharge.


Proceedings: AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010‐‐ Apr 17‐21, 2010; Washington, DC

Purpose: Among human malignancies, head and neck cancer (HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer type in the world. Multiple genetic and epigenetic changes may contribute to the development of HNSCC. One of the epigenetic alterations, aberrant methylation in the promoter regions of multiple genes that lead to transcriptional silencing, has been shown in various cancer types including HNSCC. In this study we aimed to evaluate the epigenetic changes specific to HNSCC by investigating aberrant promoter hypermethylation of a panel of 24 tumor suppressor genes.

Experimental Design: We investigated methylation of the promoter regions by methylation-specific multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MS-MLPA). The methylation status of the selected genes were analyzed in 126 patients with HNSCC. Tumor and corresponding normal tissue samples were obtained during surgical resection. Probes added to the samples hybridized with their target sequence and were amplified by PCR depending on the methylation status of the target. The amplified products were detected by sequence type capillary electrophoresis. Peak sizes and areas were normalized and the relative signal peaks were compared to determine the methylation status.

Results: 18 of 24 (75 %) genes displayed methylation in the tumor samples while none of the corresponding normal tissue samples were methylated. In 67.5 % (85/126) of the tumors the promoter regions were hypermethylated in at least one of the genes. The most frequently methylated genes were RARB (retinoic acid receptor beta), CHFR (checkpoint with forkhead and ring-finger domains) and CDH13 (Cadherin 13) genes. In 50 (39.7 %) patients, methylation was observed in more than one gene.

Conclusions: Methylation of the CHFR, RARB and CDH13 gene promoters is a frequent event in HNSCC, demonstrating potential for these genes as biomarkers in detection strategies.

Note: This abstract was not presented at the AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010 because the presenter was unable to attend.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 4902.


The original concept of extradosed posttensioning in bridges is to obtain larger eccentricity of the tendons and thus to generate larger bending moments, opposing the effect of external loading. This concept has been modified to constitute hybrid extradosed-cable supported bridges. However, the initial idea has the advantage to allow continuous prestressing, the number of costly anchors being minimized. On the basis of a set of geometrical equations and equalizing the live loads to a set of external forces, the conditions for concrete compression and tension are verified. In addition, the compliance with conditions for launching as a whole structure of extradosed bridges is examined. Some clarifying conclusions have been found, such as the necessity to supplement extradosed prestress by additional centered prestress. An optimum deviator height has been derived and the amount of required prestress is a relatively stable fraction of the bridge girders. As the main span length increases, the extradosed prestress becomes more effective, although the auxiliary centered prestress takes the largest part in the total amount, thus confirming the character of this type of structures, which remains principally a prestressed concrete girder system The feasibility of launching as a whole has been demonstrated, provided the main span length does not exceed 60 m.


Objective: We aimed to determine prevalence and epidemiological characteristics of cases coinfected with hepatitis B virus (HBV)/hepatitis C virus (HCV) in Turkey. Material and Methods: The data for this study was obtained from Turk-Hepatitis Registry (HEP-NET) Project, which includes real-life cohort of hepatitis patients from 15 centers in Turkey, and is supported by Viral Hepatitis Society. In the project, 10,165 hepatitis cases were evaluated in 10 hospitals. Re- sults: According to initial visit results, HBV/HCV coinfection was detected in 99 patients. The ratio was 974/100 000. The mean age of the cases was 40.9+21.7 years, 56.6% of them were males and 43.4% were females,. The major risk factors were dental therapy, any surgical procedure, he - modialysis and blood transfusion. The mean alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels were 70.9±49.1 IU/L in coinfected patients. In 12% of cases HBeAg was positive. The median HCV RNA level was found 0 IU/mL (minimum: 50-maximum: 2.18x107 IU/mL), and the median HBV DNA level was found 2.50x102 IU/mL (minimum: 12-maximum: 1.70x108 IU/mL). In 8.1% of the patients both HCV RNA and HBV DNA were positive, and in 87.5% of cases HCV infection was dominant. The most important risk factor was hemodialysis (25%) in this group. Conclusion: This is the most de - tailed study which evaluates the prevalence of HBV/HCV coinfection in Turkey. HBV/HCV coin - fection prevalence was not higher than HBV or HCV monoinfections. In cases where both HCV RNA and HBV DNA were positive, HCV was predominant.


Oral cancer is the sixth most common cancer worldwide and Malaysia ranked 14 in the world for oral cancer incidence. Despite recent advancement in treatment modalities, the prognosis and survival rates for oral cancer patients have not improved significantly over the past decades. Ganodermalucidum has long been used in Chinese traditional and conventional medicine for prevention and treatment of various diseases. The cytotoxic effect of G. lucidum towards oral cancer cell line was determined in this study using in vitro model study. After 24 h treatment with G. lucidum, the IC 50 of G. lucidum extract obtained was 310 ± 0.1 μg/mL. Thus, this study shows a preliminary evidence of G. lucidum cytotoxic activity towards oral cancer cell line, ORL-48T. Keywords : oral cancer; ganodermalucidum; MTT assay; cytotoxic effect; IC 50 .


An (edge-)weighted graph is a graph in which each edge e is assigned a nonnegative real number w(e), called the weight of e. The weight of a cycle is the sum of the weights of its edges, and an optimal cycle is one of maximum weight. The weighted degree w(v) of a vertex v is the sum of the weights of the edges incident with v. The following weighted analogue (and generalization) of a well-known result by Dirac for unweighted graphs is due to Bondy and Fan. Let G be a 2-connected weighted graph such that w(v) ≥ r for every vertex v of G. Then either G contains a cycle of weight at least 2r or every optimal cycle of G is a Hamilton cycle. We prove the following weighted analogue of a generalization of Dirac's result that was first proved by Posa. Let G be a 2-connected weighted graph such that w(u)+w(v) ≥ s for every pair of nonadjacent vertices u and v. Then G contains either a cycle of weight at least s or a Hamilton cycle. Examples show that the second conclusion cannot be replaced by the stronger second conclusion from the result of Bondy and Fan. However, we characterize a natural class of edge-weightings for which these two conclusions are equivalent, and show that such edge-weightings can be recognized in time linear in the number of edges.


This study assessed the abundance and nesting sites characteristics of red-headed picathartes (Picathartes oreas) in protected and unprotected forest in Cross River State, from August 2016 to January 2017. Data were collected through oral interviews, and field observations, using area search and quadrant methods. Data on bird and nest were tested using one-way ANOVA and t-test while tree species diversity indices were calculated using Paleontological Statistics Software Package, version 16. Results revealed that a mean of 38±52 individual bird from six colonies were sighted during the survey. Higher number of 20 (52.63%) individuals from two colonies was recorded in the undisturbed montane rain forest of the Okwangwo Division of the Cross River National Park than the disturbed montane rain forest with 18 (47.37%) individuals from four colonies. A total of 40 (50%; n = 20 each) nests of red-headed picathartes were sighted during the survey around the undisturbed and disturbed montane rain forest respectively. All (100%; n = 40) the nests observed were attached to the south-eastern side of the rocks and all the nests were constructed with mud mixed with grass. Colony Six was on the highest altitude with an elevation of 529 m, followed by colony two with an elevation of 342 m while the lowest elevation was 195 m recorded in colony three. Tree diversity index was higher in the protected forest (3.352; 3.227) than in the unprotected forest (1.846). Characteristic features of Picathartes oreas habitat were rock, hill, valleys and rivers and streams. It was evidenced by the study that Picathartes oreas still nests both in the disturbed and undisturbed forest but the level of disturbance and type of crops grown may have impact on the nesting behaviour. Therefore, anthropogenic activities should be regulated in the area, to ensure the conservation of Picathartes oreas.
Keywords: Picathartes oreas; abundance; nesting sites characteristics; unprotected and protected forest.


The concept of instantaneous parameters, which has previously been associated exclusively with 1-D measures like the instantaneous frequency and the group delay, are extended to the 2-D time-frequency plane. Such generalized instantaneous parameters are associated with the short-time Fourier transform. They may also be interpreted as local moments of certain time-frequency distributions. It is shown that these measures enable local signal behavior to be characterized in the time-frequency plane for nonstationary deterministic signals. The usefulness of the generalized instantaneous parameters is demonstrated in their application to optimal selection of windows for spectrograms. This is achieved through window matching in the time-frequency plane. An algorithm is provided that illustrates the performance of this window matching. Results based on simulated and real data are presented.


Disruption of tumor blood supply causes tumor hypoxia. Hypoxia can induce cell death, but cancer cells that remain viable in the absence of oxygen often possess an increased survival potential, and tumors formed by these cells tend to grow particularly aggressively. Thus, developing approaches aimed at increasing the susceptibility of malignant cells to hypoxia-induced death represents a potentially important avenue for cancer treatment. Molecular mechanisms that control the survival of cancer cells under hypoxia are not well understood. In an effort to understand them we found that hypoxia downregulates Beclin-1, a mediator of autophagy, in malignant intestinal epithelial cells. The reversal of this downregulation promoted autophagosome accumulation, enhanced the activation of a pro-apoptotic protease caspase-9 and subsequent caspase-9-dependent activation of two other pro-apoptotic proteases caspases 3 and 7 in these cells. Furthermore, the reversal of hypoxia-induced downregulation of Beclin-1 stimulated caspase-9-dependent apoptosis of the indicated cells under hypoxia. Interestingly, we found that Beclin-1-dependent caspase-9 activation in hypoxic cells was not associated with an increased release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria to the cytoplasm (such release represents a frequently occurring mechanism for caspase-9 activation). We also observed that Beclin-1-dependent apoptosis of hypoxic malignant cells was independent of FADD, a mediator of death receptor signaling. We conclude that hypoxia triggers a feedback mechanism that delays apoptosis of oxygen-deprived malignant intestinal epithelial cells and is driven by hypoxia-induced Beclin-1 downregulation. Thus, approaches aimed at the disruption of this mechanism can be expected to enhance the susceptibility of such cells to hypoxia-induced apoptosis.


Background: Patients having CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles and receiving clopidogrel are at higher risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Ticagrelor is a more effective and expensive antiplatelet that is unaffected by the CYP2C19 polymorphism. The main aim of the current research is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness among CYP2C19 genotype-guided therapy, universal ticagrelor, and universal clopidogrel after a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Methods: A two-part simulation model, including a one-year decision-analytic model and a 20-year followup Markov model, was created to follow the use of (i) universal clopidogrel, (ii) universal ticagrelor, and (iii) genotype-guided antiplatelet therapy. Outcome measures were the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER, cost/success) and incremental cost-utility ratio (ICUR, cost/qualityadjusted life years [QALY]). Therapy success was defined as survival without myocardial infarction, stroke, cardiovascular death, stent thrombosis, and no therapy discontinuation because of adverse events, i.e. major bleeding and dyspnea. The model was based on a multivariate analysis, and a sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the model outcomes. Results: Against universal clopidogrel, genotype-guided therapy was cost-effective over the one-year duration (ICER, USD 6,102 /success), and dominant over the long-term. Genotype-guided therapy was dominant over universal ticagrelor over the one-year duration and cost-effective over the long term (ICUR, USD 1,383 /QALY). Universal clopidogrel was dominant over ticagrelor over the short term, and cost-effective over the long-term (ICUR, 10,616 /QALY). Conclusion: CYP2C19 genotype-guided therapy appears to be the preferred antiplatelet strategy, followed by universal clopidogrel, and then universal ticagrelor for post-PCI patients in Qatar.


One of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) projects is the Logistics Reduction and Repurposing (LRR) project, which has the goal of reducing logistics resupply items through direct and indirect means. Various technologies under development in the project will reduce the launch mass of consumables and their packaging, enable reuse and repurposing of items, and make logistics tracking more efficient. Repurposing also reduces the trash burden onboard spacecraft and indirectly reduces launch mass by one manifest item having two purposes rather than two manifest items each having only one purpose. This paper provides the status of each of the LRR technologies in their third year of development under AES. Advanced clothing systems (ACSs) are being developed to enable clothing to be worn longer, directly reducing launch mass. ACS has completed a ground exercise clothing study in preparation for an International Space Station technology demonstration in 2014. Development of launch packaging containers and other items that can be repurposed onorbit as part of habitation outfitting has resulted in a logistics-to-living (L2L) concept. L2L has fabricated and evaluated several multi-purpose cargo transfer bags for potential reuse on-orbit. Autonomous logistics management is using radio frequency identification (RFID) to track items and thus reduce crew time for logistics functions. An RFID dense reader prototype is under construction and plans for integrated testing are being made. A heat melt compactor (HMC) second generation unit for processing trash into compact and stable tiles is nearing completion. The HMC prototype compaction chamber has been completed and system development testing is under way. Research has been conducted on the conversion of trash-to-gas (TtG) for high levels of volume reduction and for use in propulsion systems. A steam reformation system was selected for further system definition of the TtG technology.


Abstract To evaluate safety and therapeutic effect along 12 months of allogenic adipose tissue-derived stromal/stem cells (ASCs) transplantation with cholecalciferol (VITD) in patients with recent-onset type 1 diabetes (T1D). Prospective, phase II, open trial, pilot study in which patients with recent onset T1D received ASCs (1xKgx10 6 cells) and VITD 2000UI/day for 12 months (group 1) and were compared to controls with standard insulin therapy (group 2). Adverse events, C-peptide area under the curve (CPAUC), insulin dose, HbA1c and frequency of FoxP3+ in CD4+ or CD8+ T-cells(flow cytometry) were evaluated at baseline(T0), after 3(T3), 6(T6) and 12 months(T12). Eleven patients completed follow up (7:group 1;4:group 2). Group 1 had lower insulin requirement at T3(0.24±0.18vs0.53±0.23UI/kg,p=0.04), T6(0.24±0.15vs0.66±0.33 UI/kg,p=0.04) and T12(0.39±0.15vs0.74±0.29 UI/Kg,p=0.04).HbA1c was lower at T6 (50.57±8.56vs72.25±10.34 mmol/mol,p=0.01), without differences at T12 (57.14±11.98 in group 1 vs. 73.5±14.57 mmol/min in group 2, p=0.16). CPAUC was not significantly different between groups at T0(p=0.07), higher in group 1 at T3(p=0.04) and T6(p=0.006), but similar at T12(p=0.23). IDAA1c was significantly lower in group 1 than group 2 at T3,T6 and T12 (p=0.006, 0.006 and 0.042, respectively). IDDA1c was inversely correlated to FoxP3 expression in CD4 and CD8+ T cells at T6 (p<0.001 and p=0.01, respectively). In group 1, one patient had recurrence of a benign teratoma that was surgically removed, not associated to the intervention. ASCs with VITD without immunosuppression were safe and associated lower insulin requirements, better glycemic control, and transient better pancreatic function in recent onset T1D, but the potential benefits were not sustained.


This study presents a novel, robust gait recognition algorithm for human identification from a sequence of segmented noisy silhouettes in a low-resolution video. The proposed recognition algorithm enables automatic human recognition from model-based gait cycle extraction based on the prediction-based hierarchical active shape model (ASM). The proposed algorithm overcomes drawbacks of existing works by extracting a set of relative model parameters instead of directly analysing the gait pattern. The feature extraction function in the proposed algorithm consists of motion detection, object region detection and ASM, which alleviate problems in the baseline algorithm such as background generation, shadow removal and higher recognition rate. Performance of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated by using the HumanID Gait Challenge data set, which is the largest gait benchmarking data set with 122 objects with different realistic parameters including viewpoint, shoe, surface, carrying condition and time.


During the period from November 1987 to March 1988, 301 strains of S. aureus isolated from clinical specimens were collected from 6 hospitals in Okinawa main island. Thirty seven percent of the strains were resistant to methicillin (MRSA, MIC greater than or equal to 12.5 micrograms/ml). There was a difference in an isolation frequency among the hospitals from 13 to 52%. The strains were isolated from pus, sputum and urine with high frequency. As coagulase typing of MRSA, Type II and III strains predominantly isolated with 54% and 40%, respectively. Among the antimicrobial agents tested, about 90-99% MRSA were resistant to beta-lactam antibiotics and aminoglycosides and no resistant strain was observed to MINO. To IPM/CS and OFLX, 84% and 75% of the strains were sensitive, respectively. MRSA is a hospital strain and may be a causative microorganism for a hospital and opportunistic infection.


The aim of this project was to study clinical, radiographical and biochemical features of developing, symptomatic knee osteoarthritis (OA) prospectively in individuals aged 35-54 from the general population. A questionnaire to a random sample of 2 000 individuals in the district of Laholm, Sweden, identified 279 individuals (15% of the population) with chronic (>3 months) knee pain. Of these, 204 accepted to participate in baseline examinations. The minimum prevalence of symptomatic tibiofemoral OA for the general population was 1.5 % according to the Kellgren and Lawrence radiographic system and 1.1 % according to the Ahlback system. The health status measured by SF-36 (Short Form 36) was impaired in individuals with symptomatic tibiofemoral OA compared both to those without radiographic changes (p at least <0.05) and to the general population in corresponding age groups (p at least <0.01). Clinical signs as measured by two independent rheumatologists showed a low interobserver agreement and a low association with radiographical signs of OA. The ratios between concentrations of aggrecan and COMP (cartilage oligomeric matrix protein) were higher in knee joint synovial lavage fluid of individuals with tibiofemoral OA than in those without OA (p<0.001). The serum levels of COMP were higher in those with bone scan abnormalities (p<0.01) and the serum concentrations of COMP increased (p<0.001) over a 3-year period in the individuals with radiographic OA after 3 years, but remained unchanged in the individuals with normal radiographs at follow up. Similar changes were found for serum BSP (bone sialoprotein) in relation to bone scan abnormalities (p<0.05) and the levels increased over the 3-year period in the group with radiographic OA at follow-up (p< 0.001). Radiographic knee OA and knee pain with impaired health status is frequently found in middle-aged individuals. Prospective monitoring of the individuals in this project including synovial fluid and serum measurements of tissue markers should add important information regarding pathogenetic features, prognostic markers and features of importance for development of therapy of knee OA.


This article has supplementary material on the web site: www.jdbp.org. ABSTRACT: Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether service losses during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic were associated with worsened parent mental health or child behavioral health among families of children with autism spectrum disorder and to identify factors associated with favorable parent appraisals of habilitative teletherapy (applied behavior analysis; speech, occupational, physical therapy) for their child. Method: This web-based survey study was conducted from May to July 2021 with parents whose children were receiving habilitative therapy for autism from an integrated health system. A total of 322 parents responded to the survey (20% response rate). The outcome variables were pandemic-related parent mental health, pandemic-related child behavioral health, and appraisal of habilitative teletherapy. Predictors were COVID-19–related services changes in health care or child care, COVID-19 history (COVID-19 stress, testing positive for COVID-19), and child autism factors (autistic behaviors, caregiving strain). Results: Loss of regular child care was associated with higher odds of worsened parent mental health (odds ratio [OR] = 2.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.5–4.8); higher levels of caregiving strain were associated with worsened child behavioral health (OR = 2.3, 95% CI = 1.4–3.8). Higher levels of COVID-19 stress were associated with more favorable appraisals of telehealth (β = 0.4, p < 0.01), whereas higher caregiving strain scores were associated with less favorable appraisals of telehealth (β = −0.2, p < 0.01). Conclusion: During COVID-19, caregiving factors were associated with worsened parent mental health and worsened child behavioral health, and telehealth is not preferred by all families. Policy interventions to support caregivers, such as affordable, high-quality child care and paid family leave, are a high priority.


In this paper a new and more comprehensive characterization of the insulating state of matter is developed. This characterization includes the conventional insulators with energy gap as well as systems discussed by Mott which, in band theory, would be metals. The essential property is this: Every low-lying wave function $\ensuremath{\Phi}$ of an insulating ring breaks up into a sum of functions, $\ensuremath{\Phi}={{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}_{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\infty}}}^{\ensuremath{\infty}}{\ensuremath{\Phi}}_{M}$, which are localized in disconnected regions of the many-particle configuration space and have essentially vanishing overlap. This property is the analog of localization for a single particle and leads directly to the electrical properties characteristic of insulators. An Appendix deals with a soluble model exhibiting a transition between an insulating and a conducting state.


Introduction Difficulties with neck mobility often interfere with patients' activities of daily living (ADL) after cervical posterior spine surgery. The range of motion of the cervical spine decreases markedly after multilevel cervical posterior decompression and fusion (PDF). However, details regarding the limitations of cervical spine function due to postoperative reduced neck mobility after multilevel PDF are as yet unclarified. The present study aimed to clarify the quality of life and its related factors after PDF, and the optimal fixed neck position in multilevel PDF that minimizes the limitations of ADL accompanying markedly reduced postoperative neck mobility. Methods Limitations of ADL involving neck extension, rotation, and flexion were investigated in 32 consecutive patients who underwent C2-T1 PDF using the responses to the cervical spine function domain of the Japanese Orthopedic Association Cervical Myelopathy Evaluation Questionnaire (JOACMEQ). The EuroQol 5 Dimension, Japanese Orthopedic Association score, and five domains of the JOACMEQ were also investigated. We investigated the risk factors regarding the fixed neck position in PDF for the impossibility to perform ADL involving each of three movements using cut-off values obtained from receiver-operating characteristic curves. Results Postoperative comprehensive quality of life was significantly related to neurological improvements and to poor outcomes of cervical spine function after PDF. The significant risk factors for impossibility to perform ADL involving neck rotation were a C2-C7 lordotic angle ≥ 6° (P = 0.0057) or a proportion coefficient of C2-T1 tilt angle/C2-C7 lordotic angle ≤ 1.8 (P = 0.0024). There were no significant risk factors for impossibility to perform ADL involving neck extension or flexion. Conclusions The optimal fixed neck position in C2-T1 PDF to reduce postoperative limitations of ADL involving neck mobility is a C2-C7 lordotic angle of less than 6°, or a C2-T1 tilt angle (°) of greater than 1.8 × the C2-C7 lordotic angle (°).


Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) occurs as a result of atherosclerosis, which involves plaque formation on the inner walls of the arteries. This reduces the size of the vessel's lumen and restricts blood flow to the leg muscles, leading to pain, the death of tissue and even the amputation of the lower leg. One treatment method for PAD is the placement of a stent, which acts as a scaffold holding open the artery, increasing blood flow to the lower extremities. However, the stents for PAD are known to fail more regularly due to the complicated biomechanical conditions such as heavy calcified and long atherosclerotic lesions. Stenting in the peripheral arteries still fail in 25% of vessels after 2 years. One of the major influences on the rate of restenosis is the rate at which the platelets become activated. This activation is controlled by changes of wall shear stress, which is in turn influenced by the flow rate, and pressure. This study hypothesizes that stents in the arteries can cause the reflection of the waveform, which would alter the flow rate and pressure waveforms, causing increase in the rate of restenosis. This is potentially why various in-vivo studies have found that stents with thicker struts cause increased levels of restenosis. In this study, the effect of stent design on haemodynamic flow will be investigated, with the intention of optimising the designs currently in use in medicine. By setting up an in-vitro experiment, with an artificial artery, it is possible to record the flow rate, change in diameter and pressure caused to the blood flow by the stent. In this experiment, it is intended to use a series of 3D printed stents of two designs (Palmaz and Zigzag), with differing, strut thickness to determine which causes the most reflection, in an attempt to optimise the stent design. Abstract Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) occurs as a result of atherosclerosis, which involves plaque formation on the inner walls of the arteries. This reduces the size of the vessel's lumen and restricts blood flow to the leg muscles, leading to pain, the death of tissue and even the amputation of the lower leg. One treatment method for PAD is the placement of a stent, which acts as a scaffold holding open the artery, increasing blood flow to the lower extremities. However, the stents for PAD are known to fail more regularly due to the complicated biomechanical conditions such as heavy calcified and long atherosclerotic lesions. Stenting in the peripheral arteries still fail in 25% of vessels after 2 years. One of the major influences on the rate of restenosis is the rate at which the platelets become activated. This activation is controlled by changes of wall shear stress, which is in turn influenced by the flow rate, and pressure. This study hypothesizes that stents in the arteries can cause the reflection of the waveform, which would alter the flow rate and pressure waveforms, causing increase in the rate of restenosis. This is potentially why various in-vivo studies have found that stents with thicker struts cause increased levels of restenosis. In this study, the effect of stent design on haemodynamic flow will be investigated, with the intention of optimising the designs currently in use in medicine. By setting up an in-vitro experiment, with an artificial artery, it is possible to record the flow rate, change in diameter and pressure caused to the blood flow by the stent. In this experiment, it is intended to use a series of 3D printed stents of two designs (Palmaz and Zigzag), with differing, strut thickness to determine which causes the most reflection, in an attempt to optimise the stent design.


The article recasts the pre-history of philosophy as it is understood by G. W. F. Hegel, so as to examine what a "Lyrical Presentation of History" might have been. The essay argues that Hegel's treatment of history at the end of his Lectures on Aesthetics suffers from an inattention to the specific philosophical content of modern lyrical poetry, which can be located in his claim that lyrical poetry is primarily concerned with the subject. In contrast, the author argues that Hegel's account ought to have led him to hold that lyrical poetry is primarily concerned with subjective, alienated worlds, which he calls "counterworlds". The essay ends with a brief treatment of three poems by Paul Celan to show how this shift in the meaning of lyrical poetry would have led Hegel to give greater weight to lyrical poetry in his theory of history.


Abstract The study of the petrogenesis of some magmatic rocks with special geochemical attributes provides effective information for us to explore the deep geodynamic background of their formation. A series of granitic porphyry dykes have been found in the mélange zone of the Asa region in southern Tibet, whose genesis may be closely related to the evolution of the Meso-Tethyan Ocean. Regional geodynamic evolution is investigated by whole-rock geochemical analysis, zircon U–Pb dating and Lu–Hf isotopic analysis of two porphyritic granites. The Asa porphyritic granites have high SiO2 (74.29–78.65 wt %) and alkalis (Na2O + K2O = 6.51–9.35 wt %) contents, and low Al2O3 (11.60–14.51 wt %), CaO (0.04–0.19 wt MgO (0.01–0.10 wt %) contents. They are enriched in Zr, Nb, Ce, Y and Hf and depleted in Ti, Ba, Sr and P, consistent with A-type granites. The samples are relatively rich in LREEs, with LREE/HREE ratios of 1.73–3.04. They display negative Eu anomalies (Eu/Eu* = 0.24–0.28) and obvious Ce anomalies in some samples. Zircon U–Pb analyses show that the porphyritic granites formed in late Early Cretaceous time, 107.4 to 105.5 Ma. Zircon εHf(t) values are in the range of 6.9 to 12.0. These data indicate that the porphyritic granites were sourced from interaction between mantle-derived and juvenile lower crust-derived melts, with the addition of oceanic sediment-derived melts. This occurred when the subducting Bangong–Nujiang oceanic crust split to create a slab window. Rising asthenosphere triggered re-melting of lower crust basalts, resulting in the formation of the late Early Cretaceous A-type granites around Asa.


The study of the dielectric and acoustic constants, performed in a K0.99Li0.01TaO3 crystal between 4 and 30 K, puts in evidence a strong analogy between the kinetics of these two susceptibilities. In particular, the two characteristic times measured for each of them have near values and they are roughly constant in all the temperature range. An explanation in terms of tetragonal domains, with quadrupolar order and dipolar disorder, is suggested.


A low band gap small molecule chromophore has been incorporated into a polymer/fullerene bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cell yielding increased carrier generation in the near infrared and increased overall short circuit current. The use of a small concentration of a soluble oligothiophene with a diketopyrrolopyrrole core can extend the absorption and photocurrent of poly(3-hexyl thiophene):[6,6]-phenyl C71 butyric acid methyl ester solar cells to 800 nm. Photocurrent from the dye embedded within the polymer BHJ is demonstrated, and the use of soluble small molecule sensitizers as a path toward high efficiency solar cells is discussed.


KF-streptococcus agar is, according to Kenner and coworkers, a selective medium for the isolation and enumeration of fecal (or Group D) streptococci in water. The selectivity is based on the presence of sodium azide in a mass concentration of 400 mg/L in the final medium. In certain lots of commercially available dehydrated medium the sodium azide amount was found to be only half of that amount. This resulted in insufficient suppression of background flora, in particular of Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus coagulans, and unclassified non-Group D streptococci. Supplementary addition of sodium azide to these batches to bring the final level of this compound to about 400 mg/L resulted in the restoration of the selective properties. The results of this investigation stress the need for adequate quality control of selective media.


The latter part of the 19th and the first several decades of the 20th century can be described as a "golden age" for plant exploration and collecting. During the initial years of this period, agricultural scientists from the United States and elsewhere devoted considerable resources to collecting potential new crops for farmers as well as superior plants or cultivars of the species that farmers were already growing. Over time, there was a shift toward collecting unadapted germplasm, or raw material that possessed traits that plant breeders and other scientists could use for cultivar improvement and other types of research. Although many institutions and individuals were involved in plant collecting during this period, the creation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Seed and Plant Introduction in 1898, resulted in the largest single program devoted to plant exploration. This office employed many individuals, including David Fairchild, P.H. Dorsett, Frank Meyer, Walter Swingle, and Wilson Popenoe. These and many other individuals collected-and introduced into the United States-seeds and plants of thousands of fruits, vegetables, nuts, ornamentals, cereals, forages, oilseeds, and other types of crops. Although the mission of most of the plant explorations during this period was to collect any plants that appeared interesting or potentially useful, others focused on collecting targeted species. Much of the material collected during this era is still maintained by the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS), and much more of it shows up in the pedigrees of cultivars grown by farmers and gardeners today. In addition to collecting plants for immediate and future use, scientists of this era, such as Nicolai I. Vavilov and Jack Harlan, contributed greatly to the understanding of the evolution of plants and plant genetic diversity, and the interdependence of plants and civilization.


The exponential growth in wireless services has resulted in an overly crowded spectrum. The current state of spectrum al- location indicates that most usable frequencies have already been occupied. This makes one pessimistic about the feasibility of integrating emerging wireless services such as large-scale sensor net- works into the existing communication infrastructure. Cognitive radio is an emerging dynamic spectrum access technology that can be used for flexibly and efficiently achieving open spectrum sharing. Cognitive radio is an intelligent wireless communication system that is aware of its radio environment and that is capable of adapting its operation to statistical variations of the radio frequency. In ad hoc cognitive radio networks, a common control channel (CCC) is usually used for supporting transmission coordination and spectrum-related information exchange. Determining a CCC in distributed networks is a challenging research issue be- cause the spectrum availability at each ad hoc node is quite different and dynamic due to the interference between and coexistence of primary users. In this paper, we propose a novel CCC selection protocol that is implemented in a distributed way according to the appearance patterns of primary systems and connectivity among nodes. The proposed protocol minimizes the possibility of CCC disruption by primary user activities and maximizes node connectivity when the control channel is set up. It also facilitates adaptive recovery of the control channel when the primary user is detected on that channel.


More than ever before, thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) is actively used for interior and exterior applications in the automotive industry. Foamed TPO parts use far less material than their solid counterparts and, thereby, reduce material cost, weight, and fuel usage. However, foamed TPO is not yet in mainstream use because the appropriate foaming technology is not yet well developed. The literature reports the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a blowing agent for TPO;1–3 there is, however, little research on the use of nitrogen (N2) as a blowing agent, despite nitrogen's numerous advantages. In this study, various talc contents were added to a TPO matrix consisting of polypropylene blended with a metallocene-based polyolefin elastomer. The effect of talc on the TPO foams blown with N2 was studied with a batch foaming simulation system. The simulated results were compared actual foam extrusion results. The influence of the N2 content and processing conditions on the cell nucleation behavior is discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010


Jerome Cornfield was one of the leading biostatisticians of the mid‐20th century and made major contributions to the methods and practice of statistics in many areas. One of Cornfield's major areas of interest was clinical trials. He considered and wrote about many of the issues that continue to concern clinical trialists today. His work ranged from philosophical treatises about the approaches to inference from clinical trials, all the way to assessing the details of the conduct of a particular trial to determine how to best interpret the results. It is interesting to see how many of today's 'hot topics' in clinical trials methodology were addressed in Cornfield's works in the 1960s and 1970s. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.