Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a childhood onset neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. ADHD is related to several co-morbidities, such as opposition defiant disorder, conduct disorder, mood and anxiety disturbances, as well as tics and Tou-rette's syndrome. The objective of this report is to shed an alternative light on the personality of Ernesto ''Che" Guevara, discussing whether he might have had ADHD. Several published biographies of Che Guev-ara were reviewed. Established ADHD criteria ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , Fourth Edition), were used as a framework to evaluate Che's behaviour. In addition, we compared the main features of Che's reported behaviour to the set of abnormalities leading to the diagnosis of ADHD in adults proposed by Wender and colleagues and known as the UTAH ADHD criteria. Analysis of the most renowned biographies of Ernesto ''Che" Guevara suggests that he may have had ADHD.


Objectives: To examine how exercise at moderate and maximal intensities affects performance on a choice response time, whole body psychomotor task. Methods: Subjects (n  =  12) were tested on a three-choice response time task, after rest and after exercise at 70% and 100% maximum power output (W˙max). The dependent variables were time to begin forward momentum (initiation time) and time to complete the movement (movement time). Stride time for the first and second strides and number of strides to cover first 1.1 m were also measured. Blood lactate concentrations and heart rate were recorded before and after completion of each psychomotor test. The subjects subjectively assessed the amount of effort that they used to complete the task. Results: Repeated measures analysis of variance showed a significant effect for initiation (F2,22  =  11.47, p<0.001) and movement times (F2,22  = 14.61, p<0.001). Post hoc least significant difference (LSD) tests showed that initiation time after exercise at 70% W˙max was significantly faster than that in the other two conditions. Speed of initiation after rest was significantly quicker than that after exercise at W˙max. For movement time, LSD tests showed that time after maximal exercise was significantly slower than that in the other two conditions. Stride time for the second stride showed a significant effect (F2,22  =  6.20, p<0.01). LSD tests found that time after exercise at W˙max was significantly slower in the other two conditions. Stepwise multiple regression analyses found that the increment of change, from rest, of lactate concentrations could significantly predict the increment of change in initiation (R2  =  0.40) and movement (R2  =  0.50) times. Conclusions: Exercise affects a whole body task differently from purely cognitive tasks. Central factors are probably more important than peripheral factors.


Proceedings: AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011‐‐ Apr 2‐6, 2011; Orlando, FL

Proliferation under selective pressures exerted by an unstable microenvironment, requires tumor cells employ adaptive mechanisms that confer growth advantage. Adaptation to adverse conditions results in cellular phenotypes that typify neoplastic transformation and offer unique opportunities for selective targeting of cancer cells. Agents that target tumor cell mitochondria with high selectivity hold clinical significance due to the adaptive, modulatory and essential role of this organelle in cancer cell energy production, metabolism and apoptosis. To this end, we have identified a series of novel, mitochondriotropic phosphonium salts, (TP compounds), that have shown broad-spectrum anti-cancer and anti-angiogenic activity in preclinical evaluation. A high-throughput MTT-based screen of over 10,000 drug-like small molecules for anti-proliferative activity identified the phosphonium salts TP187, 197 and 421 and numerous close analogues as having IC50 concentrations in the sub-micromolar range. TP treatment induced cell cycle arrest, lowered oxygen consumption, and increased mitochondrial superoxide production. Administered as single agents in a mouse model of human breast cancer, TP compounds significantly decreased tumor growth with no observed toxicities. Protein microarray data demonstrated significant down-regulation of integrin and growth factor mediated signaling pathways governing key processes including cancer cell survival, proliferation and tumor angiogenesis. At low micromolar concentrations, TP compounds prevented integrin-mediated cell adhesion to fibronectin and vitronectin coated substrates and tumor cell haptotaxsis on vitronectin coated boyden chambers. Similar concentrations of TP compound also prevented growth factor induced endothelial cell tube formation in 3-D culture using basement membrane extracts. Taken together, these results suggest that as mitochondria-targeted agents, TP compounds act to inhibit tumor cell proliferation and angiogenic capacity.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2542. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-2542


BACKGROUND
Lanthanum carbonate (LC) has been proposed as a new phosphate binder. Presented here are the results from one centre that participated in a multicentre trial to assess the effect of treatment with LC and calcium carbonate (CC) on the evolution of renal osteodystrophy in dialysis patients. Bone biopsies were performed at baseline, after 1 year of treatment and after a further 2-year follow-up period to assess the lanthanum concentration in bone and plasma.

METHODS
Twenty new dialysis patients were randomized to receive LC (median dose 1250 mg) for 1 year (n = 10), followed by 2 years of CC treatment or CC (n = 10) during the whole study period (3 years).

RESULTS
After 36 weeks of treatment, steady state was reached with plasma lanthanum levels varying around 0.6 ng/ml. Six weeks after cessation of 1 year of treatment, the plasma lanthanum levels declined to a value of 0.17 +/- 0.12 ng/ml (P < 0.05) and after 2 years to 0.09 +/- 0.03 ng/ml. Plasma and bone lanthanum levels did not correlate with the average lanthanum dose at any time point. The mean bone concentration in patients receiving LC increased from 0.05 +/- 0.03 to 2.3 +/- 1.6 microg/g (P < 0.05) after 1 year and slightly decreased at the end of the study to 1.9 +/- 1.6 microg/g (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
Bone deposition after 1 year of treatment with LC is low (highest concentration: 5.5 microg/g). There is a slow release of lanthanum from its bone deposits 2 years after the discontinuation of the treatment and no association with aluminium-like bone toxicity.


The resilience, defined here as the speed with which a system returns to equilibrium state following a perturbation, is investigated for both food web energy models and nutrient cycling models. Previous simulation studies of food web energy models have shown that resilience increases as the flux of energy through the food web per unit amount of energy in the steady state web increases. Studies of nutrient cycling models have shown that resilience increases as the mean number of cycles that nutrient (or other mineral) atoms make before leaving the system decreases. In the present study these conclusions are verified analytically for general ecosystem models. The behavior of resilience in food web energy models and nutrient cycling models is a reflection of the time that a given unit, whether of energy or matter, spends in the steady state system. The shorter this residence time is, the more resilient the system is.


Huygens' principle (HP), extinction theorem (ET), and Franz's / Franz-Harrington formulation (FHF, which is a mathematical expression of surface equivalence principle) are the important components of electromagnetic (EM) theory, and they are generalized from the following aspects.
1) Traditional HP, ET, and FHF in homogeneous isotropic environment are generalized to inhomogeneous anisotropic lossy environment. 2) Traditional FHF for homogeneous isotropic material system is generalized to inhomogeneous anisotropic lossy material system in this paper, and will be further generalized to metal-material combined system in future works. 3) The Huygens' surface in traditional HP and ET is a single closed surface. In this paper, it is generalized to the "Huygens' surface" which is constructed by multiple closed surfaces. In future works, it will be further generalized to the "Huygens' boundary" which includes some lines and open surfaces. 4) For a material body, traditional FHF has only ability to express the external scattering field and the internal total field (the summation of scattering and incident fields) in terms of the equivalent sources on material boundary, and it is generalized to formulating the internal scattering and incident fields in this paper.
In addition, the relationships among HP, ET, and FHF are studied, and it is proved that HP and ET are equivalent to each other.


Specific antisera against 11 micrococcal phages could be produced by immunization of rabbits. Using the neutralisation test all antisera were tested against their homologous and heterologous phages. The corresponding K-values were calculated. It could be demonstrated that phages coming from the same micrococcal donor strain can be of different genetical relationship. Therefore it was concluded that micrococci can be not only lysogenic but also polylysogenic.


Abstract: In this paper, I consider some issues concerning Hume's epistemology of testimony. I'll particularly focus on the accusation of reductivism and individualism brought by scholars against Hume's view on testimonial evidence, based on the tenth section of his An enquiry concerning human understanding. I first explain the arguments against Hume's position, and address some replies in the literature in order to offer an alternative interpretation concerning the way such a defense should go. My strategy is closely connected with Hume's notion of virtue and the role it plays in his epistemology, mainly as presented in his A treatise of human nature. I address the problem of how the section "Of miracles" in the Enquiry must be properly understood, as several misunderstandings of Hume's epistemology of testimony emerge partially from the particular character and aim of that section.


There are some problems in Chinese economic structure, such as three- industries' development is not balance, too much high reliance on foreign trade, the contribution of consumption is relatively low and so on. By using vector auto regression (VAR) model and impulse response function, adopting the quarterly data from 1996 to 2010, this article analyses the industrial restructuring effect of monetary policy from two aspects. First, it shows that China's monetary Policy has indeed an obvious industrial effect among three-industries. Second, from a new perspective, the effects are also different between domestic demand and export. In order to adjust the industrial structure and to promote the domestic demand, China's government can implement differentiated monetary policy among different industries and different fields of economy.


This paper analyzes the relationship between deregulation and productivity growth in the context of a mixed developing economy. A generalized shadow cost function approach is used to model the effects of regulation and measure total factor productivity growth. We use a panel of Indian private and public sector banks, observed during 1985-1996, to empirically examine the effect of deregulation on productivity. A disaggregated analysis is done for public and private banks to examine the presence of ownership effects. Our results indicate that significant decline in regulatory distortions and the anticipated increases in total factor productivity growth did not materialize in Indian banking following deregulation. While private sector banks improved their performance mainly due to the freedom to expand output, public sector banks did not respond well to the deregulation measures.


In volume 2 of this monumental work, Mircea Eliade continues his magisterial progress through the history of religous ideas. The religions of ancient China, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Buddha and his contemporaries, Roman religion, Celtic and German religion, Judaism, the Hellenistic period, the Iranian syntheses, and the birth of Christianity - all are encompassed in this volume.


In this paper, polydimethylesiloxane (PDMS) as a candidate for high voltage insulation applications is investigated as to the aging behavior at different temperatures in air. Three models according to ISO 11346, to Gillen et al, and to Hoang and Lowe were applied to determine endurance limits in terms of a time-to-failure after aging in hot air. Aging was performed in air from 150 to 170°C. Tensile tests were performed on unaged and aged PDMS specimens at ambient temperature using strain-to-break values as a performance indicator for the degree of aging. For PDMS, the effects of aging were found to depend strongly on the aging conditions. The activation energies and corresponding lifetime predictions for the chosen temperature range derived from these models are compared and interpreted as to their practical relevance. As a measure of the endurance limits, the decrease in strain-to-break to 50%, of the value of the unaged reference state was applied. Data used for the various models indicate that although all three methods are based on Arrhenius behavior, different lifetimes can be deduced. Despite all the differences, Gillen and ISO approach seems to give more reliable trends in lifetime than the H and L method.


What is "patriarchal poetry"? How can it be both attractive and tempting and yet be so hegemonic that it is invisible? How does it combine various mixes of masculinity, femininity, effeminacy, and eroticism? At once passionate and dispassionate, Rachel Blau DuPlessis meticulously outlines key moments of choice and debate about masculinity among writers as disparate as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Louis Zukofsky, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Allen Ginsberg, choices that construct consequential models for institutions of poetic practice.As DuPlessis writes, There are no genderless subjects in any relationship structuring literary culture: not in production, dissemination, or reception; not in objects, discourses, or practices; not in reading experiences or in interpretations. And, as she reveals in careful and enthralling detail, for the poets at the center of this book, questions of masculinity loomed large and were continuously articulated in their self-creation as writers, in literary bonding, and in its deployment.These gender-laden choices, debates, and contradictions all have a striking influence today. In this empathic yet critical historical polemic, DuPlessis reveals the outcomes of these many investments in the radical reconstruction of masculinity, in their strains, incompleteness, tensions and failures. At the heart of modernist maleness and poetic practices are contradictions and urgencies, gender ideas both progressive and defensive.In a striking book on male behavior in poetic dyads, the third book in a feminist critical trilogy, DuPlessis tracks the poetic debates and arguments about gender that continuously affirm patriarchal poetry."


Historical structures are the values that are of great importance to that country, showing the roots of a country, and must be passed on from generation to generation. This study attempts to make a contribution to this goal. Seismic damage pattern estimation in a historical brick masonry minaret under different ground motion levels is investigated by using updated finite element models based on ambient vibration data in this study. Imaret Mosque which was built in 1481 AD is selected for an application. Surveying measurement and material tests were conducted to obtain a 3D solid model and mechanical properties of the components of the minaret. Firstly, the initial 3D finite element model of the minaret was analyzed and numerical dynamic characteristics of the minaret were obtained. Then, ambient vibration tests as well as operational modal analysis were implemented in order to obtain the experimental dynamic characteristics of the minaret. The initial finite element model of the minaret was updated by using the experimental dynamic results. Lastly, linear and nonlinear time-history analyses of the updated finite element model of the minaret were carried out using the acceleration records of two different level earthquakes that occurred in Turkey, in Afyon-Dinar (1995) and Çay-Sultandağı (2002). A concrete damage plasticity model is considered in the nonlinear analyses. The conducted analyses indicate that the compressive and tension stress results of the linear analyses are not as realistic as the nonlinear analysis results. According to the nonlinear analysis, the Çay-Sultandağı earthquake would inflict limited damage on the minaret, whereas the Dinar earthquake would damage some parts of the elements in the transition segment of the minaret.


In eighteenth-century Europe, artistic production was characterised by significant geographical and cultural transfer. For innumerable musicians, composers, singers, actors, authors, dramatists and translators – and the works they produced – state borders were less important than style, genre and canon. Through a series of multinational case studies a team of authors examines the mechanisms and characteristics of cultural and artistic adaptability to demonstrate the complexity and flexibility of theatrical and musical exchanges during this period.


Background: Video capsule endoscopy provides noninvasive visualization of the small bowel, but yield is often limited by debris. At our institution, preparation with polyethylene glycol (PEG) and simethicone is used to improve visualization. Aims: We hypothesized that linaclotide and simethicone would yield equal to better results. Methods: We enrolled 29 subjects for the experimental regimen of linaclotide and simethicone. We maintained standard NPO status, clear liquid period, and simethicone dose. Subjects received 290 μg of linaclotide 1 h prior to capsule. We randomly selected 30 historical PEG controls. Two blinded gastroenterologists graded visualization as ideal/excellent, good, fair, or poor and measured small bowel transit time. Results: Thirteen men and 16 women were enrolled with an average age of 61. There was no significant difference in exam quality between linaclotide and control. Preparation was rated as ideal/excellent or good in 19 of 28 of linaclotide and 18 of 28 PEG subjects when recorder entered the small bowel (p = 0.78, chi-square). Median small bowel transit was 192 min (linaclotide) versus 202 min (PEG), respectively (p = 0.93, t test). Three studies (1 linaclotide and 2 PEG) failed to leave the stomach; 1 linaclotide subject had recorder failure. Diagnostic yield was similar (18/29 for linaclotide and 16/30 for PEG, p = 0.50, chi-square). There were no serious side effects. No differences in age, sex, BMI, or frequency of diabetes, GERD, or gastroparesis were measured between the groups. Conclusions: Single-dose linaclotide 1 h before capsule endoscopy was equally effective when compared to PEG in terms of visualization and transit time. This trial was registered at ClincialTrials.gov, number NCT02465385.


Bursting modes, which are identified as bounce precession frequency fishbone modes, are observed on a low aspect ratio tokamak, the national spherical torus experiment (Ono M. et al 2000 Nucl. Fusion 40 557). They are predicted to be important in high current, low shear discharges with a significant population of trapped particles with a large mean bounce angle, such as produced by near tangential beam injection into a small aspect ratio device. Such a distribution is often stable to the usual precession-resonance fishbone mode. These modes could be important in ignited plasmas, driven by the trapped alpha particle population.


Color is widely used for content-based image retrieval. In these applications the color properties of an image are characterized by the probability distribution of the colors in the image. These probability distributions are very often estimated by histograms although the histograms have many drawbacks compared to other estimators such as kernel density methods. In this article we investigate whether using kernel density estimators instead of histograms could give better retrieval results based on hue descriptors of color images. In this article we introduce the Fourier series coefficients as descriptors of hue distributions. We argue that under certain conditions these coefficients are optimal in a least squared error sense. We will also apply Parseval formula to compute the similarity of two distributions directly from these Fourier coefficients. Our experiments show that this modification of the kernel based similarity estimation has better retrieval performance than the histogram methods and we will also show that the method is insensitive to parameter changes as long as they are selected in a reasonable range. © 2005, IS&T - The Society for Imaging Science and Technology.


The Disease of Expertise, is a poem composed by poet, playwright, musician and researcherTawona Sitholé. Within the poem,Sitholé challenges the contemporary constructs of modernity, knowledge, and knowledge production in the scope of globalized economies. Utilizing Covid-19 and the corresponding global pandemic as a backdrop into the inquiry of knowledge, and economic development Sitholé incorporates his own lived experience and local knowledge to highlight contemporary issues relating to globalization, structural inequities, and questions of knowledge within the Global South.


: Community of philosophical inquiry (CPI) is a way of practicing philosophy in a group that is characterized by conversation; that creates its discussion agenda from questions posed by the conversants as a response to some stimulus (whether text or some other media); and that includes discussion of specific philosophers or philosophical traditions, if at all, only in order to develop its own ideas about the concepts under discussion. The epistemological conviction of community of philosophical inquiry is that communal dialogue, facilitated by a philosophically educated person, recapitulates and reconstructs the major elements—and even the positions or claims—of the tradition, in one form or another, through the distributed thinking characteristic of dialogical discourse. The pedagogical locus of control of CPI is the group as a whole, which is understood as potentially self-regulating through a process of ongoing dialectical transformation. The role of the facilitator is to act, among other things, from the Socratic "position of ignorance" as a bridge between concepts and arguments and as a trigger for conceptual system transformation.


This study was performed to investigate the in vivo effects of acetylcholine, a stimulator of endogenous NO production, and nitroprusside, an exogenous NO-donor, on hemodynamics in the normotensive (WKY) and the hypertensive (SHR) rat. Anesthetized rats were given microspheres for the measurement of cardiac index (CI), total vascular resistance (TPRI), regional blood flow and vascular resistance. Infusion of acetylcholine (2 microg/kg/min) caused a marked decrease in TPRI by (-35+/-5%, +/-SEM) in the WKY (n=8), whereas in the SHR (n=8) a less pronounced reduction was seen (-14+/-3%, p<0.01 between groups). CI increased by 27+/-9% in the WKY, but was unaltered in the SHR. Blood pressure decreased similarly (17-20%). Acetylcholine significantly increased blood flow by about 40% in the kidneys and the heart in the WKY, but had no significant effect in the SHR. Other tissues, such as skeletal muscle and cerebral tissues, showed no major changes. Infusion of nitroprusside (1 microg/kg/min) reduced blood pressure by 5 to 10% in the strains. The regional effects of nitroprusside did not differ between the strains. In conclusion, the acetylcholine-induced vasodilation in the kidney and the heart was attenuated in the SHR compared to the WKY. These findings might suggest a difference in the endothelial response between the SHR and the WKY in some, but not in all, tissues.


Description Australia rethinks strategies after 2019 to 2020 bushfires The surge of extreme wildfires around the world, most recently in Canada, provides a frightening glimpse of the potential for intense fires driven by climate change to cause remarkable damage to human and environmental life. From 2019 to 2020, Australia experienced unprecedented wildfires (commonly referred to as bushfires), which increased the burned area by 800% relative to the 1988 to 2001 average (1). As well as causing dangerous "fire weather," extreme heat combined with record low rainfall caused widespread dieback of vegetation, guaranteeing that wildland fuels burnt at maximal intensity (2). The societal and environmental impacts have spurred Australia to rethink wildfire management and work toward innovative solutions. This includes driving research into the effects of climate change on fire, optimizing approaches to prescribed burns, and leveraging Indigenous knowledge and expertise of Aboriginal communities. These approaches could prove vital not only for Australia but for managing extreme fires elsewhere in the world.


Rural renewable electrification programs are increasingly being used as a means of providing the rural poor in developing countries with access to electricity. Those programs have varied significantly in design and implementation, as well as in their degrees of success. The explanations for the lack of success and the non-sustainability of the earliest programs are widely accepted as these tended to be technical demonstration projects that relied totally on funding from donor organisations or governments. These projects ignored or overlooked the vital question of how ongoing operational, maintenance and replacement costs would be met. Many genuine programs, however, also met with limited success and much effort has been invested in attempting to understand the reasons for this lack of success. To increase the rates of success of these programs, best practice guidelines were developed. Despite these efforts, many programs have continued to meet with limited success. These points required better explanations of the reasons for program success and failure, which requires a greater understanding of these programs.
This thesis looks more closely at solar PV electrification programs being undertaken in the Asia-Pacific region to understand why some programs continue to be more successful than others. It aims to understand the decisions behind the planning and implementation of the programs and the reasons that are being implemented in the way that they are, the selection of program objectives, the actual benefits of the programs the and causes of any factors that contribute to their apparent success or lack of success. This understanding is obtained by undertaking in-depth comprehensive field surveys to obtain the views of all program stakeholders. The outcomes of these field surveys are then used to develop a comprehensive set of success criteria and a set of indicators that can be used to measure the success of rural renewable electrification programs. A roadmap that could be followed by the program planners and implementers to ensure program success is also provided.


The conductance catheter (CC) allows thorough evaluation of cardiac function because it simultaneously provides measurements of pressure and volume. Calibration of the volume signal remains challenging. With different calibration techniques, in vivo left ventricular volumes (V(CC)) were measured in mice (n = 52) with a Millar CC (SPR-839) and compared with MRI-derived volumes (V(MRI)). Significant correlations between V(CC) and V(MRI) [end-diastolic volume (EDV): R(2) = 0.85, P < 0.01; end-systolic volume (ESV): R(2) = 0.88, P < 0.01] were found when injection of hypertonic saline in the pulmonary artery was used to calibrate for parallel conductance and volume conversion was done by individual cylinder calibration. However, a significant underestimation was observed [EDV = -17.3 microl (-22.7 to -11.9 microl); ESV = -8.8 microl (-12.5 to -5.1 microl)]. Intravenous injection of the hypertonic saline bolus was inferior to injection into the pulmonary artery as a calibration method. Calibration with an independent measurement of stroke volume decreased the agreement with V(MRI). Correction for an increase in blood conductivity during the in vivo experiments improved estimation of EDV. The dual-frequency method for estimation of parallel conductance failed to produce V(CC) that correlated with V(MRI). We conclude that selection of the calibration procedure for the CC has significant implications for the accuracy and precision of volume estimation and pressure-volume loop-derived variables like myocardial contractility. Although V(CC) may be underestimated compared with MRI, optimized calibration techniques enable reliable volume estimation with the CC in mice.


Voice Activity Detection (VAD) refers to the problem of distinguishing speech segments from background noise. Numerous approaches have been proposed for this purpose. Some are based on features derived from the power spectral density, others exploit the periodicity of the signal. The goal of this letter is to investigate the joint use of source and filter-based features. Interestingly, a mutual information-based assessment shows superior discrimination power for the source-related features, especially the proposed ones. The features are further the input of an artificial neural network-based classifier trained on a multi-condition database. Two strategies are proposed to merge source and filter information: feature and decision fusion. Our experiments indicate an absolute reduction of 3% of the equal error rate when using decision fusion. The final proposed system is compared to four state-of-the-art methods on 150 minutes of data recorded in real environments. Thanks to the robustness of its source-related features, its multi-condition training and its efficient information fusion, the proposed system yields over the best state-of-the-art VAD a substantial increase of accuracy across all conditions (24% absolute on average).


This article deals with the Roman grammarians' interpretation of impersonal passive constructions and verbal government. A direct object depending on impersonal passive verbs is unattest-ed in Classical Latin, whereas it is possible in Early and Late Latin and is treated as a feature of colloquial language. I suppose that the passage concerning the passive verbs in Ars de nomine et verbo (GL 5. 372. 35–373. 20), written by the 5th-century A. D. grammarian Consentius, pro-vides evidence for such a usage. The examples from Terence ( per quem res geretur maxime ), Cicero ( rem agi ), and Virgil ( iam tempus agi res ), the meaning of which remains unclear for Consentius, are discussed in this passage. Each of them contains a form of the noun res and passive-looking verb forms geretur and agi , which may have either passive or impersonal meaning. In the latter case the noun inevitably becomes a direct object. According to Classical Latin grammar rules, such an impersonal meaning is impossible, and, consequently, the forms of the noun res are subjects of the subordinate and infinitive clauses. The passage discussed in this pa-per should be included among other 5 th -century Latin examples in which direct objects depend on impersonal passive verbs. Besides, the passage is remarkable from the standpoint of ascribing a colloquial feature to the standard classical texts which were read in Roman schools.


Nowadays, many components in automobile, aircraft, offshore structure and industry require lightness and high strength. However, since developments of advanced materials have limitations, it mainly is applying to method of surface hardening. This study offered research about camshaft that is one among engine important component. The material used in this study is 0.53% carbon steel as structure material of camshaft, splineshaft, coupling, pulley, driveshaft et cetera. Camshaft is processed using mainly carbon steel, and receives wear and fatigue by special quality high speed of parts. Therefore, camshaft need surface hardening to improve camshaft's fatigue life and increase durability of engine. This study compare to residual stress and martensite microstructure created by high frequency induction treatment, and these results lead to the conclusion of fatigue crack growth characteristics.


In this paper, a three-port bidirectional modular circuit applied in charging and discharging equalization for lithium-ion battery strings is proposed. This circuit consists of four MOSFETs and one transformer which provide a simple structure to be easily modularized. Compared to conventional individual cell equalization schemes, it utilizes the transformer as the energy transfer element, allowing direct transfer of energy between arbitrary two cells of three-cell battery module, thus improving the equalization efficiency significantly by using much less number of equalizers for long battery strings. Simulation results are presented to validate the circuit operation and confirm its capability to equalize the three-cell battery module.


Author(s): Li, Wei-Chang | Advisor(s): Nguyen, Clark T.-C. | Abstract: This dissertation describes a MEMS-based frequency-selective power amplifier that performs both signal filtering and power amplification, while consuming zero power when there is no input, i.e., zero-quiescent power consumption. The frequency-selective power amplifier employs a micromechanical resonant switch (resoswitch) as a key building block similar to those recently used for zero-quiescent power radio receivers, but capable of handling higher powers. This document details the design, fabrication, and characterization of these higher frequency and higher power micromechanical resoswitches, and employs them as power amplifiers. Here, the mechanical Q of the resoswitch largely governs the threshold input level that instigates power gain. Theoretical and experimental studies of Q, as well as Q enhancement techniques and high-Q structural design, are discussed. Further, post-fabrication laser trimming addresses the frequency accuracy of the vibrating devices. A model that replaces laser blasted holes with stiffness-modifying cracks captures well the frequency shift dependence on laser blast location. The accuracy of this theory further enables a deterministic trimming protocol that specifies the laser targeting sequence needed to achieve a required amount of frequency tuning with minimal Q reduction. The resoswitch used to demonstrate the frequency-selective power amplifier employs slots to engineer stiffness along orthogonal axes of a wine-glass disk resonator structure. The slots realize displacement amplification—a larger displacement magnitude along the output than the input axis—allowing impact switching only to the output electrodes, not the input, all of which improves reliability. A finite element analysis (FEA)-based model predicts the displacement gain as a function of disk size and slot dimension/location.To improve impact contact resistance, this work employs metal for the slotted-disk resoswitch, achieved via a CMOS-compatible surface micromachining process that essentially replaces normally-used polysilicon material with aluminum metal, which serves as both structural and interconnect material. This not only improves contact resistance, but also reduces parasitic resistance, which in turn reduces feedthrough currents. When embedded in a switched-mode power amplifier circuit, the Al displacement-amplifying resoswitch performs signal filtering and power amplification that first filters an incoming signal with channel-like selectivity and then amplifies the signal with a power gain of 13.8 dB. More importantly, unlike transistor-based circuits, the resoswitch-based frequency-selective power amplifier consumes zero power while in standby. Measurements indicate that sputtered aluminum has high mechanical Q at low frequencies, as a folded-beam capacitive-comb-driven micromechanical resonator fabricated via the aforementioned process achieved a Q up to ∼20,000. Unfortunately, the higher frequency slotted-disk used in the displacement amplifier did not fare as well, as its Q was only on the order of 1,000. An effort to study the Q limits of different resoswitch designs included an experimental study of intrinsic loss mechanisms using cryogenic operation to enhance resonator Q and better elucidate important energy loss mechanisms. Here, operation of a 61-MHz wine-glass disk resonator at temperatures as low as 5K reduces temperature-dependent energy loss and raises Q to as high as 362,000, likely devoid of thermoelastic friction. On the other hand, introduction of slots into a wine-glass disk structure (to effect displacement gain) reduces Q by introducing thermoelasting damping, which this document models in detail. A displacement-amplifying elliptic disk solves this problem by deriving gain-induced stiffness differences from geometric ratioing rather than Q-degrading slots, which permits simultaneous displacement gain and high-Q. Finally, this work includes a study of laser trimming to trim power amplifier frequency to a desired range. Here, laser trimming offers flexible bidirectional frequency tuning with minimal effect on Q. Unlike other frequency tuning methods, laser trimming does not require added process steps, e.g., sputtering of frequency-shifting metal materials on structures. Rather, laser trimming offers precise post-fabrication frequency adjustment via blasts of controlled size and location on a given resonator. A model that captures the frequency shift dependency on laser blast location shows good agreement with measured results on micromechanical clamped-clamped (CC)-beam resonators. The theory provides a modeling framework for laser trimming applicable to other types of beam resonators, e.g., free-free beams, cantilevers, and even disks or rings by altering the boundary condition matrices.


Background and Objective: Natural and Synthetic Zeolite (SZ) is potentially useful for biopharmaceuticals and bio tools due to its unique and outstanding physical and chemical properties. Thus, the present study aimed to evaluate the possible effect of synthetic zeolite in (STZ)-induced diabetic rats. Materials and Methods: About 4 groups of rats were used, (I) normal control, (II) SZ group, (300 mg/kg/day), (III) STZ group, diabetic rats acted as positive control and (IV) STZ+SZ group, included diabetic rats treated with synthetic zeolite (300 mg/kg/day), statistical analysis comparisons between means were carried out using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by a post hock (Tukey) multiple comparisons test at p>0.05. Results: After six weeks, treatment of diabetic animals with synthetic zeolite markedly exhibited a significant reduction in glucose, lipids, DNA fragmentation, Alanine Aminotransferase (ALAT), Aspartate Aminotransferase (ASAT), urea, creatinine, Malondialdehyde (MDA) and Nitric Oxide (NO) levels concomitant with a significant rise in insulin, Glutathione (GSH), Superoxide Dismutase (SOD) and Catalase (CAT) values close to the corresponding values of healthy ones. Conclusion: In conclusion, synthetic zeolite exhibits multi-health benefits with promising potentials against STZ-induced diabetes, this behaviour may be attributed to its antioxidant and free radical scavenging mechanisms.


Scrapie is a naturally occurring transmissible spongiform encephalopathy of sheep and goats. There are different strains of sheep scrapie that are associated with unique molecular, transmission, and phenotype characteristics. However, in the United States, very little is known about the potential presence of scrapie strains. Scrapie strain and PRNP genotype could both affect susceptibility, potential for transmission, incubation period (IP), and control measures required for eliminating scrapie from a flock. The investigators evaluated 2 US scrapie isolates, No. 13-7 and x124, after intranasal inoculation to compare clinical signs, IPs, spongiform lesions, and patterns of PrPSc deposition in sheep with scrapie-susceptible PRNP genotypes (QQ171). After inoculation with x124, susceptibility and IP were associated with valine at codon 136 (V136) of the prion protein: VV136 sheep had short IPs (6.9 months), those in AV136 sheep were 11.9 months, and AA136 sheep did not develop scrapie. All No. 13-7 inoculated sheep developed scrapie, with IPs of 20.1 months for AA136 sheep, 22.8 months for AV136 sheep, and 26.7 months for VV136 sheep. Patterns of immunoreactivity in the brain were influenced by inoculum isolate and host genotype. Differences in PrPSc profiles versus isolate were most striking when examining brains from sheep with the VV136 genotype. Inoculation into C57BL/6 mice resulted in markedly different attack rates (90.5% for x124 and 5.9% for No. 13-7). Taken together, these data demonstrate that No. 13-7 and x124 represent 2 distinct strains of scrapie with different IPs, genotype susceptibilities, and PrPSc deposition profiles.


An increasing range of industries have a growing dependence on software based systems, many of which are safety-critical, real-time applications that require extremely high dependability. Multi-version programming has been proposed as a method for increasing the overall dependability of such systems. We describe an experiment to establish whether or not the multi-version method can offer increased dependability over the traditional single-version development approach when given the same level of resources. Three programs were developed independently to control a real-time, safety-critical system, and were put together to form a decentralized multi-version system. Three functionally equivalent single-version systems. were also implemented, each using the same amount of development resources as the combined resources of the multi-version system. The analytic results from this experiment show that 1) a single-version system is much more dependable than any individual version of the multi-version system, and 2) despite the poor quality of individual versions, the multi-version method still results in a safer system than the single-version solution. It is evident that regarding the single-version method as a "seem-to-be" safer design decision for critical applications is not generally justifiable. We conclude by describing plans for a follow up study based on our initial findings.


ABSTRACT Objective: to assess the difficulty in swallowing medications and correlate it with age and gender in healthy adults and elderly. Methods: a total of 439 asymptomatic healthy volunteers (270 females and 169 males), who were not taking any medication on a regular basis, aged from 20 to 84 years, were questioned as for dysphagia, by using the Eating Assessment Tool (EAT-10). Question number five of the EAT-10, specifically, approached the difficulty in swallowing drugs, considering zero as "no swallowing problem" and 1 to 4 as "some degree of difficulty" (4 as great difficulty).The chi-square test (x2) was used for the statistical analysis. Results: a total of 365 (83%) volunteers reported having no difficulty in swallowing medications (89% of men and 80% of women), whereas 74 (17%) reported some degree of difficulty (11% of men and 20% of women)(p = 0.01). These represented 20% of those aged between 20 and 49, and 9% of those aged 50 and over (p = 0.02). Conclusion: in this study, it was observed that both age and gender influence on medication swallowing, a difficulty more frequent among women and young adults. Some degree of difficulty was reported by 17% of the volunteers.


Bakau kurap (R. mucronata) is a true mangrove. The height of thismangrove could reach 27 m and rarely exceed 30 m. The diameter trunk of this mangrove could reach 70 cm. R. mucronata stands was found in Lampung Mangrove Center (LMC) , it was located in Margasari Village district Labuhan Maringgai, East Lampung Regency.The purposes of this study were to determine the diameter increment, growth models and stand growth past of R. mucronata at LMC. The research was conducted on July to August 2015. The method used measurement of diameter time series for three years (201 3, 2014, and 2015) on circle form permanent plots with a radius 7 m of lengthare divided into three thinning blocks (A, B, and C). Block C was the control block or block that was not thinnedand large thinning in blocks A and B, respectively 54.5% and 41.7%. The results indicated that the biggest diameter increment of three block at the age of 22 nd years = 0.467 cm year -1 . The estimation model of stand diameter (D) and diameter increment (MAI -d) based on the age of stand (X)could be formulated as follows: 1) Blok A D = 8,996 X 0,021 ; MAI-d = 0,451 X 0,035 , 2) Blok B D = 8,215 X 0,124 ; MAI-d = 0,412 X 0,039 , 3) Blok C D = 7,159 X 0,074 ; MAI-d = 0,359 X (-0,012) . Forecasting growth stands diameter R. mucronata age of 32 nd years on the blocks A, B and C in a row


We develop efficient randomized algorithms to solve the black-box reconstruction problem for polynomials over finite fields, computable by depth three arithmetic circuits with alternating addition/multiplication gates, such that output gate is an addition gate with in-degree two. These circuits compute polynomials of form $G\times(T_1 + T_2)$, where $G,T_1,T_2$ are product of affine forms, and polynomials $T_1,T_2$ have no common factors. Rank of such a circuit is defined as dimension of vector space spanned by all affine factors of $T_1$ and $T_2$. For any polynomial $f$ computable by such a circuit, $rank(f)$ is defined to be the minimum rank of any such circuit computing it. Our work develops randomized reconstruction algorithms which take as input black-box access to a polynomial $f$ (over finite field $\mathbb{F}$), computable by such a circuit. Here are the results. 1 [Low rank]: When $5\leq rank(f) = O(\log^3 d)$, it runs in time $(nd^{\log^3d}\log |\mathbb{F}|)^{O(1)}$, and, with high probability, outputs a depth three circuit computing $f$, with top addition gate having in-degree $\leq d^{rank(f)}$. 2 [High rank]: When $rank(f) = \Omega(\log^3 d)$, it runs in time $(nd\log |\mathbb{F}|)^{O(1)}$, and, with high probability, outputs a depth three circuit computing $f$, with top addition gate having in-degree two. Ours is the first blackbox reconstruction algorithm for this circuit class, that runs in time polynomial in $\log |\mathbb{F}|$. This problem has been mentioned as an open problem in [GKL12] (STOC 2012)


High-attenuation object-induced streaking and shadow artifacts in computerized tomography (CT) are somewhat connected to the misfit of the X-ray projection data to the range space of the Radon transform. This misfit is mainly due to the beam hardening factor of the projection data which is unavoidable for polychromatic sources. The major difficulty in dealing with the beam hardening-induced streaking and shadow artifacts comes from its highly nonlinear nature depending on geometries of high attenuation objects. In this work, we investigate the mathematical characteristics of those streaking and shadow artifacts from the structure of the projection data. We also proposed a metal artifacts reduction method by incorporating the recent technique of the nonlinear beam-hardening corrector. Numerical simulations show that the proposed method effectively alleviates the streaking artifacts without changing the background images. Mathematics subject classification: 65N38, 65N30.


Advance Directives are under-utilized, both from the fact that few Americans have them and that health professionals don't always rely on Advance Directives provided by patients. Many health professionals have philosophical objections to their use. Using a fictitious case as background, five different objections to the use of Advance Directives will be discussed and arguments against those objections will be posed along with suggestions to improve Advance Directives.


Since vaccines of the typhoid group are administered intravenously in arthritis, iritis, thrombo-angiitis obliterans and other conditions and since there does not seem to have been any adequate study of the reaction caused by these vaccines, an inquiry into the more detailed nature of the normal response to the injection should serve a useful purpose. During a series of experiments designed to determine the effect of various hypothalamic lesions on the course of fever induced in cats by the intravenous injection of typhoid-paratyphoid vaccine, sixteen normal cats were studied. Pinkston1recorded the inguinal temperature of twelve normal cats to which typhoid-paratyphoid vaccine had been administered intravenously. He made readings every 10 to 30 minutes "until the body temperature had started toward normal." Cannon and Pereira2described the temperature curves obtained for ten normal cats after intravenous or intramuscular injection of a suspension of dead typhoid bacilli. They did


ABSTRACT In this article, we operationalize Communicatively Restricted Organizational Stress (CROS). CROS is a new variable previously conceptualized as a perceived inability to communicate about a particular stressor within an organizational context and operationalized as having two dimensions of prevalence and distress. The present investigation presents data from two studies (total N = 918) aimed at developing and validating a measure of CROS. In Study 1, we generated and tested a series of items intended to tap into the dual dimensions of CROS with currently employed organizational members (n = 373). In Study 2, we collected a second sample (n = 545) and confirmed the factor structure of the measure identified in Study 1. We present evidence of reliability, content validity, and construct validity. The final result is a two-dimensional measure of CROS we call the CROS-14. Our discussion includes information on implementation, scoring, and potential future applications of the CROS-14.


ISO 26262-5 requires the determination of hardware safety metrics, including SPFM and LFM. Latent and residual diagnostic coverage are also important metrics to assess the effectiveness of safety mechanisms. Achieving ASIL-B, ASIL-C or ASIL-D compliance is challenging, and requires a detailed analysis of faults in the safety mechanisms. This paper introduces a systematic, largely automated process to compute safety metrics. It covers accurate fault analysis in safety mechanisms with and without error-correcting capabilities. The approach scales to large SoCs, provides accurate results, and significantly reduces the need for manual analysis and fault simulation. Experiences and results of its application to a number of gate-level netlist designs are reported. Keywords—ISO 26262; SEooC; FMEDA; safety mechanisms; diagnostic coverage; residual faults; latent faults; SPFM; LFM.


Abstract:Code-switching and code-meshing pedagogies, though they are two vastly different approaches, do not consider that some features of African American Verbal Tradition (AVT) are and/or have become rhetorically effective mainstream communication structures in academic writing. This article explores how teaching language/dialect difference in majority white school settings, using contrastive-analysis techniques such as code switching may have highly negative effects on African American Language (AAL) speakers. Code-switching maintains that AAL and other "nonstandard" language varieties are only appropriate for use in the home or social settings. Thus, as an alternative to code-switching pedagogical practices, the author introduces a comparative approach that may be applied across all minority language groups. This technique highlights African and African American contributions to standardized American written communication structures and demonstrates the value of AVT in academic settings. In the accompanying lesson plan, students are invited to think about how the English language, as a field, is constantly evolving and changing in our diverse, ever-widening international community; they are then given opportunities to use various writing instruction pedagogies to articulate theories, histories, methods, and practices.


In this work, a new data-driven fiber channel modeling method, generative adversarial network (GAN) is investigated to learn the distribution of fiber channel transfer function. Our investigation focuses on joint channel effects of attenuation, chromic dispersion, self-phase modulation (SPM), and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise. To achieve the success of GAN for channel modeling, we modify the loss function, design the condition vector of input, and address the mode collapse for the long-haul transmission. The effective architecture, parameters, and training skills of GAN are also displayed in the article. The results show that the proposed method can learn the accurate transfer function of the fiber channel. The transmission distance of modeling can be up to 1000 km and can be extended to arbitrary distance theoretically. Moreover, GAN shows robust generalization abilities under different optical launch powers, modulation formats, and input signal distributions. Comparing the complexity of GAN with the split-step Fourier method (SSFM), the total multiplication number is only 2% of SSFM and the running time is less than 0.1 seconds for 1000-km transmission, versus 400 seconds using the SSFM under the same hardware and software conditions, which highlights the remarkable reduction in complexity of the fiber channel modeling.


The COVID-19 pandemic is a worldwide problem. The clinical spectrum of SARS-CoV-2 infection varies from asymptomatic or paucity-symptomatic forms to conditions such as pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome and multiple organ failure. Objective: describe a clinical case of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the patient with sarcoidosis and cardiovascular pathology developing acute respiratory syndrome and lung edema. Material and Methods. There were analyzed accompanying medical documentation (outpatient chart, medical history), clinical and morphological histology data (description of macro- and micro-preparations) using hematoxylin and eosin staining. Results. Lung histological examination revealed signs of diffuse alveolar damage such as hyaline membranes lining and following the contours of the alveolar walls. Areas of necrosis and desquamation of the alveolar epithelium in the form of scattered cells or layers, areas of hemorrhages and hemosiderophages are detected in the alveolar walls. In the lumen of the alveoli, a sloughed epithelium with a hemorrhagic component, few multinucleated cells, macrophages, protein masses, and accumulated edematous fluid were determined. Pulmonary vessels are moderately full-blooded, surrounded by perivascular infiltrates. Signs of lung sarcoidosis were revealed. Histological examination found epithelioid cell granulomas consisting of mononuclear phagocytes and lymphocytes, without signs of necrosis. Granulomas with a proliferative component and hemorrhage sites were determined. Giant cells with cytoplasmic inclusions were detected - asteroid corpuscles and Schauman corpuscles. Non-caseous granulomas consisting of clusters of epithelioid histiocytes and giant Langhans cells surrounded by lymphocytes were detected in the lymph nodes of the lung roots. Hamazaki-Wesenberg corpuscles inside giant cells were found in the zones of peripheral sinuses of lymph nodes. In the lumen of the bronchi, there was found fully exfoliated epithelium, mucus. Granulomas are mainly observed subendothelially on the mucous membrane, without caseous necrosis. Histological examination of the cardiovascular system revealed fragmentation of some cardiomyocytes, cardiomyocyte focal hypertrophy along with moderate interstitial edema, erythrocyte sludge. Zones of small focal sclerosis were determined. The vessels of the microcirculatory bed are anemic, with hypertrophy of the walls in small arteries and arterioles. Virological examination of the sectional material in the lungs revealed SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Conclusion. Based on the data of medical documentation and the results of a post-mortem examination, it follows that the cause of death of the patient R.A, 50 years old, was a new coronavirus infection COVID-19 that resulted in bilateral total viral pneumonia. Сo-morbidity with competing diseases such as lung sarcoidosis and cardiovascular diseases aggravated the disease course, led to the development of early ARDS and affected the lethal outcome.


It is a popular challenge to design distance bounding protocols that are both secure and efficient. Motivated by this, many distance bounding protocols against relay attacks have been advanced in recent times. Another interesting question is whether these protocols provides the best security. In 2010, Kara et al. analysis the optimal security limits of low-cost distance bounding protocols having bit-wise fast phases and no final signature. As for the classification, they have introduced the notion of k-previous challenge dependent (k-PCD) protocols where each response bit depends on the current and the k previous challenges. They have given the theoretical security bounds for two specific classes k = 0 and 1, but have left the security bounds for k ≥ 2 as an open problem. In this paper, we aim to answer the open question concerning the security limits of 2-PCD protocols. We describe two generic attacks for mafia and distance frauds that can be applied on any 2-PCD protocols. Then, we provide the optimal trade-off curve between the security levels of mafia and distance frauds that determines the security limits of 2-PCD protocols. Finally our results also prove the conjecture that 2-PCD protocols enhance the security compared to 0-PCD and 1-PCD cases.


The objective of this paper was to investigate variations in the risk of suicide by socioeconomic status/position (SES) for men and women. Data on 15,648 suicide deaths between 18-65 year old men and women over the period 1981-1997 were linked to data on SES indicators, using a nested case control design. Cox's proportional hazard regression models were fitted separately for men and women. The results showed that suicide, in both men and women aged 18 to 65 years, is strongly associated with a range of commonly measured indicators of SES, and that the association does vary by sex even after adjusting for these SES measures simultaneousely and controlling for the effect of health status. Low economic status, measured as low income, unskilled blue-collar work, unspecific wage work and unemployment, tends to increase suicide risk more prominently in men than in women; marital status seems to have a comparable influence on suicide risk in the both sexes and the risk is significantly higher among the singlers; parenthood is protective against suicide and the protective effect is statistically stronger for women; living in a big city tends to raise suicide risk for women but reduce the risk for men; Foreign citizens living in Denmark have a lower risk for suicide compared with Danish dwellers but the reduced risk is mainly confined to male immigrants. Our findings reflect the reality of the SES distribution of suicide risk, and underscore the importance and necessity of taking sex, various SES proxies and health factors into consideration mutually and simultaneously for a better understanding of this association.


Background and Purpose— The Stroke Imaging Research (STIR) group, the Imaging Working Group of StrokeNet, the American Society of Neuroradiology, and the Foundation of the American Society of Neuroradiology sponsored an imaging session and workshop during the Stroke Treatment Academy Industry Roundtable (STAIR) IX on October 5 to 6, 2015 in Washington, DC. The purpose of this roadmap was to focus on the role of imaging in future research and clinical trials. Methods— This forum brought together stroke neurologists, neuroradiologists, neuroimaging research scientists, members of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), industry representatives, and members of the US Food and Drug Administration to discuss STIR priorities in the light of an unprecedented series of positive acute stroke endovascular therapy clinical trials. Results— The imaging session summarized and compared the imaging components of the recent positive endovascular trials and proposed opportunities for pooled analyses. The imaging workshop developed consensus recommendations for optimal imaging methods for the acquisition and analysis of core, mismatch, and collaterals across multiple modalities, and also a standardized approach for measuring the final infarct volume in prospective clinical trials. Conclusions— Recent positive acute stroke endovascular clinical trials have demonstrated the added value of neurovascular imaging. The optimal imaging profile for endovascular treatment includes large vessel occlusion, smaller core, good collaterals, and large penumbra. However, equivalent definitions for the imaging profile parameters across modalities are needed, and a standardization effort is warranted, potentially leveraging the pooled data resulting from the recent positive endovascular trials.


Focusing on the Government of Ontario's unwillingness to call a public inquiry into the death of Dudley George, an Aboriginal protester, and the Government of Canada's willingness to interfere with an inquiry into the deployment of Canadian forces to Somalia, this article argues that governments appear increasingly reluctant to support a commission of inquiry into a public crisis even where it can serve as a catalyst for addressing larger and more pressing concerns of institutional and policy reform. It first addresses "start-up problems" associated with the fact that the decision to appoint a commission of inquiry lies within the sole discretion of cabinet. It also canvasses incentives and disincentives on political actors and the media to call for the establishment of a commission of inquiry. It then examines "shut down problems" associated with governmental efforts to prematurely end or restrict a commission's activity. Borrowing several features from the Independent Counsel and the Inspector General Models in the United States, the article proposes that the Law Commission of Canada act as a permanent base of operations for federal commissions of inquiry, and suggests that commissions of inquiry adopt non-confrontational methods and procedures that encourage governments and other parties to sit down and engage in a constructive exercise of fact-finding, policy formulation and structural reform.


Background It is supposed that IL-1β inhibition may be associated with cardiovascular risk reduction [1, 2], but it isn't known what effect of it is on endothelial function. Objectives To assess canakinumab effects on structural and functional parameters of vasculature. Methods Open-label prospective study of 20 pts (17 (85%) males and 3 (15%) females) with chronic gout was performed in 2014–2015 y. at the V. A. Nasonova Research Institute of Rheumatology. All patients received one dose of canakinumab 150 mg subcutaneously. Lab parameters (uric acid, cholesterol, triglycerides, hsCRP and interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels), 24 hour BP monitoring, comprehensive Echo-CG, duplex scanning of carotid arteries the intima-media thickness (TIM) measurements of near and far wall were taken from both common carotid arteries (CCA), vascular wall stiffness was evaluated before injection of canakinumab and on days 14 and 120 after. The quantification of serum hsCRP levels was done with highly sensitive immune turbidimetric test, serum IL-6 levels was detected using of "xMAP" technology (Human Grp I Cytokine 27-plex panel) and on the analyzer "BioPlex-200" (Bio-Rad, the USA). Lipid-lowering and antihypertensive therapy was not modified during the study. Statistical analysis was performed using the application package STATISTICA 10.0 (StatSoft.Inc., USA). Differences were considered significant at p<0.05. Results Baseline TIM in the CCA was 0,83 [0.71; 0.94] mm, while by the end of the study it dropped to 0,74 [0.69; 0.84] mm (p=0.022). Median baseline pulse wave velocity (PWV) in the aorta was 14,12 [10; 17] m/s, dropping during the study to 13,1 [11; 14] (p=0,79). Falling down of baseline arterial stiffness index was documented in 13 (65%) pts, and by the end of the study in 7 out of them not a single joint was tender or swollen, hsCRP levels >5 mg/l was in 5 out of 13 pts, who was statistically significantly more rare as compared to pts without positive changes of this index (in 6 out of 7 pts (86%)) (p=0.043). Median of serum hsCRP level and IL-6 level in pts who had reduction of PWV was significantly smaller then in others pts at 120 days (respectively, hsCRP level – 2.7 [2.3; 7.7] mg/dl vs 11.5 [6.9; 17.7] mg/dl (p=0.0084) and IL-6 level – 5,9 [3,9; 7.7] pg/ml vs 12,6 [10,8; 22,4] pg/ml) (p=0,44). Based on BP monitoring data no changes from baseline BP measured before injection of Canakinumab, and on Day 14 or Day 120, occurred. Mean levels of cholesterol and triglycerides didn't change as well Conclusions IL-1β inhibitor Canakinumab may have positive effect on TIM parameters. Effects of Canakinumab on arterial stiffness parameters depend on the potency of anti-inflammatory effect. References Ridker P.M., Thuren T., Zalewski A., Libby P. Interleukin-1β inhibition and the prevention of recurrent cardiovascular events: rationale and design of the Kanakinumab Anti-inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Study (CANTOS). Am Heart J. 2011; 162(4):597–605. M. Ridker, Ridker P.M., Lüscher T. F. Anti-inflammatory therapies for cardiovascular disease DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehu203 1782-1791 First published online: 26 May 2014 Disclosure of Interest None declared


At first, considering the Einstein framework, we introduce some new static traversable wormholes, and study the effects of a dark energy-like source on them. Thereinafter, a brief review on Einstein field equations in Lyra manifold is presented, and we address some static traversable wormholes in the Lyra manifold which satisfy the energy-conditions. It is also shown that solutions introduced in the Einstein framework may also meet the energy conditions in the Lyra manifold. Finally, we focus on vacuum Lyra manifold and find some traversable asymptotically flat wormholes. In summary, our study shows that it is theoretically possible to find a Lyra displacement vector field in a manner in which traversable wormholes satisfy the energy conditions in a Lyra manifold.


Although ship detection methods based on deep learning have achieved remarkable progress, the design of the universal ship detection (USD) system is rarely studied. The main challenge of USD lies in the notorious domain bias and shift problem across multiple domains. This article implements USD based on domain-invariant representations to alleviate this issue. Specifically, the proposed method integrates a multilevel domain classification network (MDCN) and a domain-centric cut-paste module (DCM). First, the backbone network is facilitated to learn domain-independent image features from multiple domains through MDCN, thereby reducing the disturbance of domain-specific features to universal detector. Furthermore, the proposed method combines the domain-related synthetic samples generated by DCM to provide MDCN with strong supervision information, which further motivates the network to be more attentive to the domain-invariant representations at the instance level. Finally, we conduct experiments on multiple ship datasets in the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical domains to verify the effectiveness of the method. The results show that the proposed method outperforms baseline by around 2.95% average precision (AP50), which achieves an effective USD system by complementing the information between domain-invariant representations.


In this manuscript, the existence of traveling-wave solutions to Boussinesq systems  ηt + ux + (ηu)x + auxxx − bηxxt = 0, ut + ηx + uux + cηxxx − duxxt = 0, is established. We prove that all the systems with a < 0, c < 0 and b = d exhibit traveling-wave solutions with small propagation speeds. The result complements our earlier work [6] on a restricted family of the systems where both existence and stability of traveling-wave solutions were established in the presence of large surface tension, namely when a+ b+ c+ d < 0.


Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 46, 2005

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Germ-line mutations of the adenomatous polyposis coli (Apc) gene have been linked to familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), an autosomal dominantly inherited human disease that predisposes to colon cancer. ApcMin/+ mice (Min), heterozygous for the Apc gene mutation, a nonsense mutation at codon 850, progressively develop intestinal tumors in a manner that is analogous to that observed in patients with FAP,,. Folate, a water-soluble B vitamin and important cofactor in 1-carbon transfer, is an important nutritional factor that may modulate the development of colorectal cancer. Folate intake protects against colorectal cancer and enhances the efficacy of cancer chemotherapy. In this present study, we studied the effects of Apc gene mutation and folate intake on the pathology of intestinal and extra-intestinal tissues. Compared with normal C57BL/6 (B6) mice, increased splenic hematopoiesis occurs in the Min mice, indicated by splenomegaly, increased red pulp cellularity and splenic megakaryocytes. Splenic histo-pathology demonstrates decreased lymphoid follicle number (the white pulp) along with significant CD3 positive T cell depletion within the spleens of the Min mice. Lymphoid follicle depletion was also observed in both the small intestine and colon of the Min mice. Extra intestinal tissues were also affected in the Min mice with testicles showing a decreased number of the secondary spermatides and spermatozoa as well as more degenerated Leydig cells. In both strains, folate deficiency has significant effects upon the small intestinal villus and the number of primary and growing follicles in ovaries in contrast to the mice fed with normal diet. In the Min mice, folate deficiency increases splenic hematopoiesis and lymphoid depletion as reflected by further increased splenomegaly and number of splenic megakaryocytes and decreased number of splenic and intestinal lymphoid follicles. In summary, the Apc gene mutation causes increased splenic hematopoiesis, lymphoid depletion in the spleen and intestine, and abnormalities of male reproductive tissues at 12 weeks of age. Folate deficiency further increases abnormal splenic hematopoiesis and lymphoid depletion caused by Apc gene mutation.


Ketone ester ((R)-3-hydroxybutyl (R)-3-hydroxybutyrate) has gained popularity as an exogenous means to achieve ketosis. Regarding its potential as a therapeutic prodrug, it will be necessary to study its pharmacokinetic profile and its proximal metabolites (beta-hydroxybutyrate, 1,3-butanediol, and acetoacetate) in humans. Here we develop and validate two LC-MS methods for quantifying KE and its metabolites in human plasma. The first assay uses a C18 column to quantitate ketone ester, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and 1,3-butanediol, and the second assay uses a hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) column for the quantitation of acetoacetate. The method was partially validated for intra- and inter-day accuracy and precision based on the ICH M10 guidelines. For both the assays, the intra- and inter-run accuracy was ±15% of the nominal concentration, and the precision (%CV) was <15% for all 4 molecules being quantified. The matrix effect for all molecules was evaluated and ranged from −62.1 to 44.4% (combined for all molecules), while the extraction recovery ranged from 65.1 to 119% (combined for all molecules). Furthermore, the metabolism of ketone ester in human plasma and human serum albumin was studied using the method. Non-saturable metabolism of ketone ester was seen in human plasma at concentrations as high as 5 mM, and human serum albumin contributed to the metabolism of ketone ester. Together, these assays can be used to track the entire kinetics of ketone ester and its proximal metabolites. The reverse-phase method was used to study the metabolic profile of KE in human plasma and the plasma protein binding of 1,3-BD.


PURPOSE
To retrospectively compare morphologic and metabolic changes in bone metastases in response to systemic therapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) with integrated positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The institutional review board waived the requirement for informed consent and approved this HIPAA-compliant study. A retrospective analysis was performed with 102 women (mean age, 55 years) with MBC who received systemic treatment. All patients underwent integrated PET/CT before and after treatment. Two reviewers analyzed the images in consensus. Morphologic changes, including morphologic patterns, and lesion attenuation were evaluated. Standardized uptake value (SUV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) were analyzed to evaluate metabolic changes. Uni- and multivariate analyses were performed to identify factors that enabled response duration (RD) to be predicted.

RESULTS
At baseline, the morphologic patterns of the target lesions were lytic (n = 33), sclerotic (n = 22), mixed (n = 42), and unclassified (n = 5). Progression of sclerotic change after treatment was identified in 49 patients (48%). After treatment, the mean attenuation of the lesion increased, whereas the mean SUV and TLG decreased. Increases in attenuation correlated significantly with decreases in SUV (r = -0.510, P < .001) and TLG (r = -0.491, P < . 001). Univariate analysis revealed that the increase in attenuation and the decrease in SUV were potential predictors of RD. Multivariate analysis revealed that an increase in the change in SUV was a significant predictor of RD (relative risk, 2.4; P = .003).

CONCLUSION
A decrease in SUV after treatment was an independent predictor of RD in patients with MBC who had bone metastases.


Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have become one of the key digital circuit implementation media over the last decade. A necessary part of their creation lies in their architecture, which governs the nature of their programmable logic functionality and their programmable interconnect.FPGA architecture has a dramatic effect on the quality of the final device's speed performance, area efficiency, and power consumption. This survey reviews the historical development of programmable logic devices, the fundamental programming technologies that the programmability is built on, and then describes the basic understandings gleaned from research on architectures. We include a survey of the key elements of modern commercial FPGA architecture, and look toward future trends in the field.


Intravascular papillary endothelial hyperplasia (IPEH) or reactive vascular endothelial lesion is a rare benign condition and is also known as Masson's hemangioma. It may appear as a primary or pure form developing in a distended vessel, or it can be associated with hemangiomas, pyogenic granulomas, or lymphagiomas. It is usually confined to the lumen of preexisting vessels or vascular malformations. Nearly all the lesions are intimately associated with a thrombus in various stages of organization. The main significance of IPEH is its clinical and histological resemblance to soft-tissue sarcoma and possible misinterpretation as such. We hereby report a case of IPEH clinically and radiologically misdiagnosed as soft tissue sarcoma, in a 47-year-old man, presenting as a soft tissue mass in the left scapular region.


Transition economies are going through a process of changing the role of the state, allowing a greater role for the private sector. This is consistent with the market-oriented approach of the WTO. Remaining state agencies and enterprises will need to adapt their ways of doing business, including in their approach to procurement of goods and services, for economic and legal reasons. There is some hesitation about privatization, as for foreign direct investment, and, where accepted, about the precise timing. Where privatization of basic service monopolies occurs, the role of the state shifts towards a regulatory function. In some private sector activities, a non-interventionist approach to competition may be justified by market considerations, while in others a pro-active policy may be necessary to ensure the benefits of economic liberalization.


Mixed Reality (MR) is a technique to blend together the real life with virtual reality. Using this technique it is, for instance, possible for experts to assist persons several miles away to perform tasks by talking and visually aid them. In this thesis the main issue is to see how the delay in such a system for remote assistance eects the users. A controlled test was carried out with 20 test persons of dierent backgrounds. The study shows that it is very likely to be able to use an MR system for remote assistance even if there is a delay between the user and the expert. As long as they both are aware of the problem and are able to take it easy and do not have to move around too much it is still possible to work with delays to up to 4000 ms. Furthermore, the average time of completion for a task did not increase with the added delay. It was linear, i.e. the task is not more difficult toperform when the instructions are delayed.


Theaflavins in black tea and other fermented tea have attracted many studies because of their stronger antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects among bioactives other than catechins. However, within the four major theaflavins, namely theaflavin, theaflavin-3-O-gallate, theaflavin-3′-O-gallate and theaflavin-3,3′-O,O-digallate, their biological properties are different. A method to efficiently and selectively synthesize targeted theaflavins with desired property is a key condition for further evaluation. Herein, we have summarized the sources of polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and the yields of total and individual theaflavins based on some available publications. This overview lays the foundation for a comprehensive review in this area of researchin the near future.


Cutaneous biopsies were collected from multibacillary leprosy patients who attended the out-patient department of Jalma Institute for treatment at different time intervals, i.e. 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, 30 months, 36 months and 42 months after starting multidrug therapy (MDT) when they were still skin smear positive. Biopsies were processed for inoculation into mouse foot pad (MFP) and estimation of bacillary ATP levels by bioluminescent assay (ATP assay) by earlier established procedures. Viable bacilli were detectable after 1 year (25% cases by MFP and 31% cases by ATP assay), 2 years (8% cases by MFP and 12% cases by ATP assay) and 3 years (4% cases by both MFP and ATP assays). Overall, the percentage of the persisters was 10% by MFP and 13% by ATP assay. It would be important to carry out surveillance studies in larger number of BL/LL cases to know the trends and also the resultant relapses.


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

VDUP1 (TXNIP) is a tumor suppressor protein that contributes to the regulation of cell proliferation through its role as an inhibitor of thioredoxin (TRX). VDUP1 expression is decreased in a variety of tumor cells relative to non-tumor cells and enforced expression of VDUP1 slows tumor cell growth. 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 (VD3) has long been known to increase VDUP1 expression in tumor cells, although the full extent of VDUP1 regulation is not known. Preliminary experiments with Drosophila mutants lacking Hedgehog (Hh) secretion suggested that VDUP1 expression could be regulated by the Hh signaling pathway. Experiments were conducted to determine the ability of cyclopamine (CYCLO), an inhibitor of Hh signaling, to regulate VDUP1 expression in breast cancer cells. MDA-231 and MCF-7 cells, grown in RPMI 1640 medium containing 10% fetal calf serum, were treated with CYCLO (5-20 μM) or vehicle (methanol) for 24-72 hrs. Using an anti-VDUP1 antibody, VDUP1 localization was determined by immunofluorescence staining of cells grown on gelatin-coated coverslips following fixation in 4% paraformaldehyde. VDUP1 expression in methanol-treated MDA-231 cells showed a greater expression of VDUP1 in nuclei, indicated by overlapping expression with the nuclear marker histone deacetylase, as compared to cytoplasm. Treatment with 20 μM CYCLO for 72 hours resulted in a decrease in nuclear VDUP1 expression, coupled with a dramatic increase in cytoplasmic VDUP1. This redistribution of VDUP1 from the nucleus to the cytoplasm was detected as early as 24 hours after initiation of treatment with 20 μM CYCLO and was also detected following treatment with 10 μM CYCLO for 72 hours. The CYCLO-induced decrease in nuclear VDUP1 was confirmed with Western blotting. In contrast, no such changes were detected in CYCLO-treated MCF-7 cells. To investigate the direct effect of CYCLO treatment on vdup1 promoter activity, a 1.7 kb fragment of the human vdup1 promoter was inserted upstream of a luciferase gene to generate a vdup1/pLuc plasmid. vdup1/pLuc was co-transfected into CYCLO-treated cells (20 μM), along with a β-galactosidase plasmid and luciferase activity was determined. CYCLO treatment of MDA-231 cells resulted in a significant decrease in luciferase activity, as compared to methanol-treated cells. No changes in luciferase activity were seen following similar experiments conducted with MCF-7 cells. These results demonstrate the novel finding that inhibition of Hh signaling alters both the level of VDUP1 expression and the intracellular distribution of VDUP1 in MDA-231 cells. Future experiments will be directed at determining the mechanisms responsible for the change in the subcellular distribution of VDUP1 seen following CYCLO treatment.

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 3894.


The extent of stress faced by skilled employees in organizations is often substantial. In several professions, stress is intrinsic to the duty itself, where competing demands, challenges and pressures escort the duty and therefore cannot be avoided. On the organizational level, stress exists in every company. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that contribute of to work stress among Bank Rakyat's employees. This study also aimed to determine if there were any statistically significant differences in the respondents' level of work stress by demographic factors (gender, status, education qualification, job position and length of service). The survey was carried out at 12 branches of Bank Rakyat in the northern region of the Malaysian Peninsula. A total 154 bank employees participated in this study. Data was collected through a 40-item questionnaire on a five-point Likert Scale. The findings of this study showed that only organizational factors had a significant influence on work stress level. The study also revealed that the overall level of work stress among the respondents was moderate. While on the difference between the level of work stress by demographic factors, this study found that there was no statistically significant difference between these factors.


Medial temporal lobe (MTL) areas are well known to serve episodic memory functions; their contribution to semantic memory has been occasionally noticed but not studied in detail. In the present fMRI study, 35 right-handed and 35 left-handed healthy subjects performed a semantic decision paradigm during which subjects heard spoken concrete nouns designating objects and had to decide on whether these objects were available in the supermarket and cost lest then a certain amount of money. The control paradigm consisted of sequences of low and high tones where subjects had to decide whether a sequence contained two high tones. The resulting contrast activation of semantic decision versus tone decision involved neocortical temporal, parietal, and prefrontal areas. Additional significant, bilateral activations in the MTL, the hippocampal formation, and adjacent areas were found. The exact incidence and location of activation was studied in a single-subject analysis for all 70 subjects. At the chosen threshold of P,0.001, 94% of subjects showed activations in the MTL and inferior temporal lobe (ITL). Activations were found along the longitudinal axis of the MTL, including the hippocampal formation and the parahippocampal gyrus. In the ITL, parts of the fusiform and lingual gyri were activated. Activations were similar in right- and left-handers. We conclude from this study that the MTL and parts of the ITL can be added to the areas activated by semantic verbal memory processing.  2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Theme: Neural basis of behaviour


Research synthesis and meta-analysis provide a pathway to bring together findings in a given domain with greater systematicity, objectivity, and transparency than traditional reviews. The same techniques and corresponding benefits can be and have been applied to examine methodological practices in second language (L2) research (e.g., Plonsky, 2013). In the first half of this paper, we integrate findings, trends, and critiques from a number of syntheses to both illustrate the potential of this approach and to promote more methodologically informed research practices. Our emphasis here is on study designs and sampling practices. In the second half, we provide an example of a methodological synthesis that reviews the use of one particular statistical technique as applied in L2 research: exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Here and throughout the chapter, we provide specific recommendations for primary research as well as for future efforts to synthesize methodological practices in the field.


Proline is widely known as the only proteogenic amino acid with a secondary amine. In addition to its crucial role in protein structure, the secondary amino acid modulates neurotransmission and regulates the kinetics of signaling proteins. To understand the structural basis of proline import, we solved the structure of the proline transporter SIT1 in complex with the COVID-19 viral receptor ACE2 by cryo-electron microscopy. The structure of pipecolate-bound SIT1 reveals the specific sequence requirements for proline transport in the SLC6 family and how this protein excludes amino acids with extended side chains. By comparing apo and substrate-bound SIT1 states, we also identify the structural changes which link substrate release and opening of the cytoplasmic gate, and provide an explanation for how a missense mutation in the transporter causes iminoglycinuria.


With the rapid development of machine learning, autonomous driving has become a hot issue, making urgent demands for more intelligent perception and planning systems. Self-driving cars can avoid traffic crashes with precisely predicted future trajectories of surrounding vehicles. In this work, we review and categorize existing learning-based trajectory forecasting methods from perspectives of representation, modeling, and learning. Moreover, we make our implementation of Target-driveN Trajectory Prediction publicly available at https://github.com/Henryliu/TNT-Trajectory-Predition, demonstrating its outstanding performance whereas its original codes are withheld. Enlightenment is expected for researchers seeking to improve trajectory prediction performance based on the achievement we have made.


A constant volume combustion simulation has been used to compute the ignition delays of pure fuels and binary fuel mixtures in air. Minima in the ignition delays were predicted by a comprehensive chemical kinetic mechanism for binary fuel mixtures with methane. A model has been developed to predict the occurrence of autoignition in a spark ignited engine. Experimental pressure data from a CFR engine were used in the model to simulate the temperature-pressure history of the end gas and to determine the time when autoignition occurred. Comprehensive chemical kinetic mechanisms were used to predict the reactions in the end gas. Methanol, methane, ethane, ethylene, propane and N-butane were used as fuels. The initial temperatures in the model were adjusted to give agreement between predicted and observed autoignition. Engine data for methane-ethane mixtures indicated a problem with the kinetic mechanism.


We have determined that two infants with perinatal lethal osteogenesis imperfecta in one family had the same new dominant point mutation. Although not detected in his dermal fibroblast DNA, the mutation was detected in somatic DNA from the father's hair root bulbs and lymphocytes. The mutation was also detected in the father's sperm, demonstrating that mosaicism in the father's germ line explains recurrence. The presence of both germ-line and somatic mosaicism indicates that the mutation occurred prior to segregation of the germ-line and somatic cell progenitors. About one in eight sperm carry the mutation, which implies that at least four progenitor cells populate the germ line in human males. The observation that the mosaic individual is clinically normal suggests that genetic diseases can have both qualitative and quantitative components.


Attention is an important mechanism that can be employed for a variety of deep learning models across many different domains and tasks. This survey provides an overview of the most important attention mechanisms proposed in the literature. The various attention mechanisms are explained by means of a framework consisting of a general attention model, uniform notation, and a comprehensive taxonomy of attention mechanisms. Furthermore, the various measures for evaluating attention models are reviewed, and methods to characterize the structure of attention models based on the proposed framework are discussed. Last, future work in the field of attention models is considered.


The purpose of this study is to show pressure distribution of the bearing girder in large vessel engine and to consider finite elements analysis using the pressure distribution. Various kinds of the exciting forces act on a bearing girder. And at the same time, it is necessary to consider the contact between a crankshaft and a bearing girder because a bearing girder supports a crankshaft. However it is to need the computer resource with much time if we apply the contact element to a complex solid model and perform a repeated analysis. Thus we have accomplished a contact analysis in the simplistic finite element model of the bearing girder. After that we take a pressure distribution, and apply this to actual finite element model and accomplish finite element analysis. The result of stresses and strains has been produced using superposition method. The concept of superposition method is to find the resultant deflection of several loads acting on a member as the sum of contributions of individual loads. The results were compared with measured results and were verified to be accurate. Resulting analyzed strain favorably coincides with measured strain. The experiment result justifies this paper method.


In the present study, cuttlefish bones are used to prepare highly porous hydroxyapatite (HA) scaffolds via hydrothermal treatment at 200 °C. Raw cuttlefish bones (CB) and the hydrothermal products have been analyzed and compared for their composition and microstructure, using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Optical Microscopy (OM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), porosity estimation and compressive strength measuring techniques. Characterization reveals that cuttlebone has high porosity approaching above 70%, and possesses the laminar structure of aragonite mixed with some organic materials. The compressive strength of the CB-HA is improved after coating with both polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and polycaprolactone (PCL). Furthermore, our in vitro biocompatibility studies revealed that CB-HA and PVA coated CB-HA scaffolds are non-cytotoxic and support the adherence and proliferation of rMSCs, comparable to pure HA scaffolds. Altogether, our results suggest that naturally derived CB-HA, PVA and PCL coated CB-HA scaffolds are potential cheap candidates for bone tissue engineering applications, and also that PVA and PCL coatings provide better mechanical strength.


We aim to increase understanding and improve taxonomy of seven names currently treated in Bacidia that were described from Russian territory based on material collected during 19th-century expeditions: Bacidia alborussula , B. freshfieldii , B. graminum , B. indigens , B. primigenia , B. subabbrevians , and B. xylophila . B. alborussula , B. graminum , and B. indigens are transferred here to Haematomma , Lecania , and Bacidina , respectively. Bacidia freshfieldii and B. subabbrevians belong in the Ramalinaceae and are provisionally kept in Bacidia even though none of them is congeneric with the type of that genus. B. primigenia belongs in Arthrorhaphis , but we refrain from making any new combination owing to its questionable status as a species distinct from A. grisea . B. xylophila is a younger synonym of Lecania subfuscula . We designate lectotypes for names previously not typified and for which syntypes exist: Lecidea alborussula , L. graminum , L. indigens , and L. subabbrevians .


Well-dispersed AuNPs@CDs nanocomposites were successfully synthesized from the reduction of chloroauric acid by carbon dots (CDs) at room temperature. The as-prepared AuNPs@CDs were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and the results indicate AuNPs@CDs nanocomposites with a core–shell structure. The AuNPs@CDs are found to possess intrinsic peroxidase-like activity, and the catalytic activity is higher than that of AuNPs. The mechanism of peroxidase-like activity of AuNPs@CDs was investigated by fluorescence spectroscopy, electron spin resonance and cyclic voltammetry, and it is found that the mechanism could be ascribed to facilitating the electron transfer between TMB and H2O2.


Saphenous vein grafts remain an essential part of coronary artery bypass surgery. However, their inferior long-term patency due to graft attrition often means recurrent ischemia or infarction. Repeat surgical revascularization carries a significantly higher morbidity and mortality and is frequently associated with less symptomatic improvement as compared with the initial surgery. Thus, nonsurgical alternatives are preferred in such a situation, particularly when the lesions are technically approachable and amenable to these transcatheter procedures. Traditionally, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty has been the standard approach. However, there are certain shortcomings of this technique, principally its inadequacy in treating certain adverse lesion morphologies. Problems include an appreciable risk of coronary debris embolization and acute complications in old vein grafts, and the prohibitively high restenosis rate for stenoses situated at the ostium or the proximal and middle segments of grafts. Newer, second-generation intravascular techniques such as stents, atherectomy, and laser procedures have been introduced in an effort to overcome these problems. This review presents an update of the results of these new tools together with some suggestions on their clinical utility in a vein graft setting.


ABSTRACT Introduction: In the present study we were interested in the processing of audio-visual integration in schizophrenia compared to healthy controls. The amount of sound-induced double-flash illusions served as an indicator of audio-visual integration. We expected an altered integration as well as a different window of temporal integration for patients. Methods: Fifteen schizophrenia patients and 15 healthy volunteers matched for age and gender were included in this study. We used stimuli with eight different temporal delays (stimulus onset asynchronys (SOAs) 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 200 and 300 ms) to induce a double-flash illusion. Group differences and the widths of temporal integration windows were calculated on percentages of reported double-flash illusions. Results: Patients showed significantly more illusions (ca. 36–44% vs. 9–16% in control subjects) for SOAs 150–300. The temporal integration window for control participants went from SOAs 25 to 200 whereas for patients integration was found across all included temporal delays. We found no significant relationship between the amount of illusions and either illness severity, chlorpromazine equivalent doses or duration of illness in patients. Conclusions: Our results are interpreted in favour of an enlarged temporal integration window for audio-visual stimuli in schizophrenia patients, which is consistent with previous research.


A number of growth phenomena observed in vitro have shown that cells, at high densities, produce and release substances which, when they have reached a given concentration, arrest further growth. In vivo, these possibilities can be studied on the model of rapid regeneration of the rat liver after 65-70% partial hepatectomy (PH). We evaluated the course of liver regeneration after PH in animals treated with dialysates (DIA) of intact rat tissues. In addition to kidney and lymph node DIA, we were particularly interested in the effect of liver and spleen DIA. The experiments were carried out on male rats weighing 210-240 g. The relevant DIA was administered 24 h prior to PH; the controls were given physiological saline. The animals were killed just before PH and 24, 48, 30 and 72 h and 14 days after. DIA obtained from intact liver tissue inhibited the regeneration process induced by PH and its effect persisted 48 h after PH. Compared with the controls and with the rats given kidney DIA, DNA synthesis in the liver 24 h after PH was reduced to 77%. After spleen DIA, several (still hypothetical) factors probably acted together synergically (factors belonging to the immune system--RES--and spleen-produced factors capable of promoting proliferation of the hepatocytes--the "portal blood factor"). We arrived at this conclusion from an evaluation of liver DNA synthesis 24 h after 24h after PH, when synthesis was altogether markedly raised, but attained far higher values after the administration of spleen DIA.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)