Employing the interband exciton scattering model, we have derived a closed set of equations determining the 2D double-quantum coherence signal sensitive to the interband Coulomb interactions (i.e., many-body Coulomb interactions leading to the couplings between exciton and biexciton bands) in semiconductor nanostructures such as nanocrystals, quantum wires, wells, and carbon nanotubes. Our general analysis of 2D double-quantum coherence resonances has demonstrated that the interband Coulomb interactions lead to new cross-peaks whose appearance can be interpreted as a result of exciton and biexciton state mixing. The presence of the strongly coupled resonant states and weakly coupled background of off-resonant states can significantly simplify cross-peak analysis by eliminating the congested background spectrum. Our simulations of the 2D double-quantum coherence signal in PbSe NCs have validated this approach.


Apoptotic cell death of macrophage has become recognized as a significant mechanism responsible for the resolution of inflammation. The purpose of this study was to examine how the apoptotic cell death involves the formation and resolution of granulomas in rats intravenously inoculated with Cryptococcus neoformans (Cr. neoformans) and Mycobacterium bovis‐derived bacillus Calmette‐Guérin (BCG) vaccine. The number and size of granulomas in the livers obtained on days 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 after inoculation were examined by morphometric image analysis, as well as the occurrence of apoptotic cell death quantitatively analyzed by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)‐mediated dUTP‐biotin nick end‐labeling (TUNEL) procedure on tissue sections. In both groups the number and size of granulomas were maximized on day 10, then the granulomas were almost resolved until day 25 when the inoculated Cr. neoformans and BCG almost disappeared. From the induction to the resolving stages of granulomatous inflammation, TUNEL‐positive cells constantly appeared in granulomas, and the highest frequency of apoptotic cells in granulomas was observed in the earlier stage of granuloma formation. These results indicate that the maintenance and resolution of infectious granulomas are regulated by the balance between the influx of newly recruited macrophages and the apoptotic elimination of granuloma macrophages. The apoptosis of granuloma macrophages actively involves the cellular turnover in both granuloma formation and resolution.


Production of electricity in solar cells enables a flowing energy resource, sunlight, to be brought into the technological system. Although only small adverse environmental effects result from the operation of solar cells, production and sometimes disposal have more environmental impact. The impact is described for a number of types of solar cells, in various applications, and the technology is evaluated from an environmental point of view, as compared with power production fom fossil fuels and nuclear power. A life-cycle perspective is adopted, although the study is not a quantitative life-cycle assessment. Crystalline silicon (c-Si) and amorphous silicon (a-Si) cells, copper-indium-diselenide (CIS) and cadmium-telluride (CdTe) cells, are considered. c-Si cells require considerable amounts of energy during production. Both CIS and CdTe cells contain cadmium, but CIS to a smaller extent. Indium is a very scarce resource. All the technologies except CdTe involve use of toxic and/or explosive gases during production. Solar cells are used in consumer products such as pocket calculators. The energy production in this application is marginal. They may consitute an environmental problem if they contain cadmium or are used in connection with cadmium containing batteries. Stand-alone systems often require batteries, which contain heavy metals. They may contribute to electricity generation to some extent. They may have a positive influence on aesthetic natural values through reducing the need for power transfer to single, remote power consumers. Large scale electricity production in grid-connected systems are possible in a longer time perspective, and thus the assessment has a larger degree of uncertainty. The systems could make a large contribution to electricity production. However, over a certain production capacity, this requires energy storage, e.g. in water reservoirs or as hydrogen. Large scale electricity production in solar cells is assessed, from an environmental point of view, to be a better alternative than nuclear or fossil fuel based power generation.


In this paper, we present a new location fingerprinting database comprised of Wi-Fi received signal strength (RSS) and geomagnetic field intensity measured with multiple devices at a multi-floor building in Xi'an Jiatong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China. We also provide preliminary results of localization and trajectory estimation based on convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) network with this database. For localization, we map RSS data for a reference point to an image-like, two-dimensional array and then apply CNN which is popular in image and video analysis and recognition. For trajectory estimation, we use a modified random way point model to efficiently generate continuous step traces imitating human walking and train a stacked two-layer LSTM network with the generated data to remember the changing pattern of geomagnetic field intensity against (x, y) coordinates. Experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of our new database and the feasibility of the CNN and LSTM-based localization and trajectory estimation with the database.


This article utilises an original dataset covering all members of the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) to analyse the basis of support for Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt in the October 2022 British Conservative Party leadership election. The significance of our findings is that they form the basis for a new understanding of how conservatism in the UK is changing post-Brexit. Our political variables include constituency majority size, red wall status, constituency support for leave, an MP's position in the June 2022 vote of confidence in Johnson's leadership of the Conservative Party, ministerial status and rebellion rates on key legislation. Our ideological variables include EU referendum position and membership of the European Research Group and the Conservative Environment Network, along with whether MPs are classed as socially liberal, socially conservative or pro-levelling up. We find that candidates appealed to different, often rival, sections of the Conservative Party. In line with previous studies of this nature, social liberalism still represents a key dividing line within the party, and the European dimension of intra-party conflict has remained significant in light of the UK's decision to leave the European Union.


This paper presents a novel video coding technique where most frames are represented as their projection onto a proper basis (eigenspace) computed using principal component analysis (PCA). Since a video sequence contains regions with high time variations, a learning procedure is used to obtain an adequate basis. We also introduce the idea of bidirectional predicted frames to denote those frames that can be estimated from the nearest past and future PCA coefficients. Experimental results show the high quality/compression achieved using the new scheme with different eigenspace updating algorithms


AACR Annual Meeting-- Apr 14-18, 2007; Los Angeles, CA

4758

Doxorubicin is the lead member of the class of anthracyclines having antitumor activity against hematological and solid cancers, and plays a prominent role in breast cancer therapy. Long term cardiomyopathy hinders clinical use of anthracyclines. The total dosage of Doxorubicin in treatment protocols is limited because of this concern. The prevailing thesis is that Doxorubicin injures the heart by generating damaging free radicals through iron-catalyzed redox cycling. Didox is a unique ribonucleotide reductase inhibitor possessing free radical scavenging and iron chelating properties while exhibiting anticancer activity on its own. Therefore Didox was tested to see if it could decrease Doxorubicin toxicity without reducing its anticancer activity.

The cardioprotective effects of Didox were assessed in the rat, using a Langendorff model of heart perfusion. Acute Doxorubicin treatment caused nearly a 50% reduction in cardiac function, as monitored by Rate Pressure Product. Adding Didox to the Doxorubicin treatment preserved cardiac function. The presence of free radicals induced by Doxorubicin, as measured by EPR spin trapping, showed that Didox inclusion produced more than an 80% reduction in the Doxorubicin-induced DMPO-OH signal intensity.

Chronic Doxorubicin toxicity studies were performed by weekly single dose i.v. injections of Doxorubicin or Doxorubicin + Didox. The progression of cardiomyopathy was monitored using echocardiography. After 8 weeks of treatment, Doxorubicin treated animals demonstrated marked cardiomyopathy as evidenced by fractional shortening. Also chronic administration of Doxorubicin resulted in greater than 50% decrease in left ventricular function as measured by RPP, but Didox offered more than 40% restoration.

Also, we examined the effect of Didox and the classical ribonucleotide reductase inhibitor, hydroxyurea, as well as Zinecard, the iron chelator used clinically, to protect against cardiotoxicity in the mammary (16/c) mouse tumor model singly and in combination with Doxorubicin. Both Doxorubicin and the ribonucleotide reductase inhibitors had antitumor activity when used alone, producing a modest increase in survival over the untreated group. However, when Doxorubicin was combined with the ribonucleotide reductase inhibitors, there was a significant (greater than additive) enhancement of the anticancer activity.

These results further support our premise that a free radical scavenger can be used in conjunction with Doxorubicin to decrease its cardiotoxicity and not impede its antitumor activity, and in the case of Didox and other ribonucleotide reductase inhibitors may even enhance it. Therefore Didox has the potential to be a valuable addition to combination cancer treatment protocols that contain an anthracycline such as Doxorubicin.


Alfred Hitchcock, the master of the horror film, has been accused by many film critics and theorists of being a misogynist, displaying the brutal deaths of his female characters on screen because of a deeply rooted hatred for females that he had. Hitchcock's films have also been scrutinized under a Freudian psycho-analytic lens, and these criticisms postulate that Hitchcock's issues with women perhaps stem from issues with his own mother, and that this subconscious tension has been translated into on-screen brutality against women. The purpose of this essay is to debunk this prevalent myth that Alfred Hitchcock was a misogynist filmmaker, and instead argue through looking at his 1960 classic Psycho (Paramount, USA) that he was in fact in some forms an early feminist, with sharp critiques of the dominant, patriarchal society in which he lived. Hitchcock's female characters in Psycho provide evidence of Hitchcock's admiration of females, despite what psychoanalysis of the film might suggest. I argue that Freudian film critiques overlook the fact that the females in Psycho are assertive, dominant, and progress the action throughout the film, while the males are actually for the most part simply passive participants in a film dominated by strong female presences.


This study was undertaken in the summer of 2006 to identify the causes of waste in the printing houses in two major cities in Ghana, namely, Accra and Kumasi. The scope of the study was limited to printing houses operating in the above cities only. The relevant literature on offset lithographic printing, the categories and causes of waste, and its effects on the environment were reviewed. The method used in gathering data for the study consisted of questionnaires that were sent out to fifty-five printing houses in Accra and Kumasi. Forty-seven printing houses responded to the questionnaires. The data were thoroughly analyzed and, where necessary, presented in tables. Finally, findings are discussed, implications outlined, recommendations and areas of future research proposed, and conclusion drawn.


The normal, unrestrained, forward walking of the lobster was studied with a closed-circuit television system and a video-tape recorder. A frame-by-frame analysis was undertaken and measurements made of unilateral stepping sequences, contralateral and ipsilateral phase relations between pairs of legs, the movements at the leg joints primarily involved in stepping and their differences in each of the four pereiopods. The order of stepping was expressed in terms of the probability of any leg following any other leg and it was found that while there is a preferred order, there is considerable variation from the dominant pattern. The commonest deviations from the dominant gait are those involving the simplest types of re-ordering of the sequence. Pairs of contralateral legs show a strong tendency to alternate but all phase relations can occur. Similarly, while the ipsilateral legs show preferred phase relations, all possible relations do occur. The four pereiopods from anterior to posterior were found to have respectively, a pulling action, a combined pulling and rowing action, a rowing action and a combined pushing and rowing action. The same parameters of stepping were recorded from animals walking on a transparent, driven treadmill and, as no significant differences were found in comparisons with results from freely moving animals, subsequent results were obtained from animals walking on the treadmill where more detailed study and manipulation could readily be made. The stepping action of the third pereiopod during forwards walking involves major movements about two joints whereas the other pereiopods move about three joints. Detailed study of the intra-leg activity was therefore confined to the third pereiopod where the simpler action considerably simplified the problems involved in collecting and analysing data. Measurements were made of the angles swept out by the joints of the third pereiopod during movement. Electromyograms were recorded from the six muscles primarily responsible for these movements and from movement transducers placed at the joints. The duration of the movements and of the bursts of acitivity in the muscles and the interrelation between different muscle bursts were measured and a computer-aided analysis made to determine the characteristic features of the inter-burst relations during stepping. While there is considerable variability from step to step, the overall activity is relatively phase-constant over a wide range of stepping frequencies. When some of the key parameters of normal walking had been characterized, changes designed to alter the sensory input to the system were imposed.


The use of context is necessary for a rich interaction with the users and adaptation of the system to their needs. However, how to integrate context with the applications and the system is yet an unsolved problem. Looking at other services provided by our computing platforms, we ask ourselves: How can context be made a system service?. Making the context an application neutral system service would permit to share and update it from different sources an applications, making the user able to interact with it easily. Even applications which are not context aware would be able to benefit from this approach. We are designing and implementing and application called CUROCO to deal with this issues.


Effective communication between the pharmacist and the patient is an important aspect of pharmacotherapy as it ensures patient's compliance to drug therapy. Therefore, a study of the communication between the pharmacist and patient was carried out to determine the level of communication between the pharmacist and the patient, and to examine the factors that can effectively predict question asking behaviour by the patient and the provision of medication information by the pharmacist to the patient. Pharmacy departments in three government hospitals in Edo and Delta States were used for the study. In each of the hospitals, both the pharmacists (n=59) and the patients (96 males and 104 females) were observed as the patients were being attended to by the pharmacists within the drug dispensing area. This involved 265 new prescriptions sheets and 44 refill prescriptions sheets. Information on the prescriptions was obtained from the patients as they came into the pharmacy dispensing areas. The likelihood that specific types of information were provided under different conditions of prescription status, patient age, patient gender and patient question asking were investigated. Factors associated with administrative elements, continuity of therapy, contraindications, directions for use, interactions, monitoring, name of medication, purpose of medication, side effects, and solicitation of feedback were determined by an observation of pharmacist-patient encounters and recording whether or not each type of information was provided to patients. The effects of independent variables (socio-demographic characteristics, prescription status, patient age, patient gender and patient question asking) on the provision of information to patients were investigated using logistic regression analysis. Results indicate that the level of communication between the pharmacists and their patients was generally very poor. The pharmacists provided information to the patients mainly in connection with the prices of their medications (98.5%) and the directions for their use (98.5%). They hardly provided information to the patients in areas such as continuity of therapy, contraindications, interactions, monitoring, solicitation of feedback and the name, source, nature, purpose and side effects of their drugs. Patient's question asking was also generally poor and most patients tend to ask questions in relation to the price of their medications. The socio-demographic characteristics, prescription status and patient question asking were major predictors for the provision of information to patients. Pharmacists in the hospitals studied do not provide adequate drug information to their patients. This necessitates the re-orientation of pharmacists if they are to be able to provide effective pharmaceutical care services to patients. Key words: Consultation; counseling; dispensing; question-asking; pharmacist-patient communication Nig. J. Pharm. Res. 3(1) 2004: 23-34


Song I-H, Hermann KG, Haibel H, et al. Ann Rheum Dis (2011). doi:10.1136/ard.2010.147033 1 of 7 Accepted 13 March 2011 ABSTRACT Aim To investigate the relationship between active infl ammatory lesions on whole-body MRI (wb-MRI) and new development of chronic lesions on T1 MRI in patients with early axial spondyloarthritis (SpA) treated either with etanercept (ETA) or sulfasalazine (SSZ). Methods Wb-MRIs of 65 patients treated either with ETA (n=35) or SSZ (n=30) over 1 year were scored for active infl ammation, fatty lesions, erosions and ankylosis in the 23 vertebral units (VUs) of the spine and in the sacroiliac joints (SI joints). Scoring was performed by two blinded radiologists. Results If there was no previous infl ammation in the bone no new fatty lesions occurred in SI joint quadrants and only a few (0.6%) in spine VUs. There was a signifi cant relationship between disappearance of infl ammation and the appearance of fatty lesions: if baseline infl ammation resolved fatty lesions occurred in 10.5% of SI joint quadrants and 17.9% of VUs. If infl ammation did not resolve over 1 year, fatty lesions occurred less frequently: 2.4% (SI joint quadrants) and 7.2% (VUs). There was a signifi cantly higher increase of the mean fatty lesion score between baseline and week 48 in the ETA (4.0 vs 4.8 for the SI joints and 1.9 vs 2.7 for the spine) compared to the SSZ (3.0 vs 3.2 for the SI joints and 1.1 vs 1.2 for the spine, respectively) group (p=0.001 and p=0.020 for the differences). No signifi cant changes in the erosion or ankylosis score were observed in any of the two groups during this time. Conclusions These data indicate that there is a close interaction between infl ammation, tumour necrosis factor blockade and the development of fatty lesions in subchondral bone marrow of patients with axial SpA.


This study aimed to evaluate the human induced impact of a channel opening in a choked lagoon and attempted to establish the cause-effect links for the observed changes. The same lagoon system was sampled before and after the channel opening event, and the differences in fish and crustacean assemblages and environmental variables between these periods analysed. The opening of the artificial channel resulted in salinity increases, leading to a shift in species composition, favouring marine species and reducing abundance and diversity of previously dominant freshwater species. Furthermore, saltwater entrance into the choked lagoon caused an unexpected decrease in species richness and biomass, plus deterioration of ecosystem processes, reducing fishing capacity. The effects of salinity on the ecosystem vary depending on the ecosystem's composition and capacity to overcome salinity changes, thus specific monitoring projects are important strategies for developing coastal lagoon conservation management.


Film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) usually use for filter application, can be used to address aerospace filter application which need large band. Then, it needs to use piezoelectric material with high electromechanical coupling coefficient. So we use LiNbO3 cut YXl/36 which have coupling coefficient for longitudinal mode of 37.5%.


Using a preliminary exploratory case study the presented work investigates the feasibility of methods for the evaluation of user experience factors in human-humanoid interaction as well as measurements of societal impact in user studies. The case study is based on two tasks participants had to perform with the HRP-2 robot. The robot was controlled by the participants via speech commands to pick up (task1) and put down (task2) an object onto another place. Main goal of the case study was to explore the methodological concept on how to measure novice users' experiences during the collaboration with the humanoid robot HRP-2 via speech commands and if the general attitude towards robotics changes because of the interaction with the robot. To address users' experiences during the user study, participants were asked after each task to state their thoughts and feelings they had during the interaction (retrospective think aloud). Furthermore, participants were interviewed by means of two validated standardized questionnaires (NARS and AttrakDiff) and an especially developed questionnaire. The preliminary results show that retrospective think aloud is a good way to gather qualitative data on users' experiences. Furthermore a final interview on societal impact of humanoid robots gave insights into how novice users imagine a future society with robots.


Implicit Ordinary or Partial Differential Equations have been widely studied in recent times, essentially from the existence of solutions point of view. One of the main issues is to select a meaningful solution among the infinitely many ones. The most celebrated principle is the viscosity method. This selection principle is well adapted to convex Hamiltonians, but it is not always applicable to the non-convex setting.


Background
Perifosine, is a third generation alkylphospholipid analog which has promising anti-tumor efficacy in clinical trials of refractory/recurrent neuroblastoma (NB). However, perifosine's mechanism of action remains unclear. Previously, we have shown that perifosine changes global proteome and acetylome profiles in NB.

Methods
To obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the perifosine mechanism, we performed a quantitative assessment of the lysine ubiquitylome in SK-N-AS NB cells using SILAC labeling, affinity enrichment and high-resolution liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry analysis. To analyse the data of ubiquitylome, we performed enrichment analysis with gene ontology (GO), the Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway, ubiquitylated lysine motif, protein complex and protein domain. Protein-protein interaction was conducted to explore the crosstalk between ubiquitylome and previous global proteome/acetylome. Co-immunoprecipitation and western blotting were used to validate the results of the ubiquitylome analysis.

Results
Altogether, 3,935 sites and 1,658 proteins were quantified. These quantified ubiquitylated proteins participated in various cellular processes such as binding, catalytic activity, biological regulation, metabolic process and signaling pathways involving non-homologous end-joining, steroid biosynthesis and Ras signaling pathway. Ubiquitylome and proteome presented negative connection. We identified 607 sites which were modified with both ubiquitination and acetylation. We selected 14 proteins carrying differentially quantified lysine ubiquitination and acetylation sites at the threshold of 1.5 folds as potential targets. These proteins were enriched in activities associated with ribosome, cell cycle and metabolism.

Conclusions
Our study extends our understanding of the spectrum of novel targets that are differentially ubiquitinated after perifosine treatment of NB tumor cells.


We numerically and experimentally demonstrate strong coupling between the mid-infrared localized surface plasmon resonances supported by plasmonic metamaterials and the phonon vibrational resonances of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) molecules. The plasmonic resonances are tuned across the phonon resonance of PMMA molecules at 52 THz to observe the strong coupling, which manifests itself as an anti-crossing feature with two newly formed plasmon-phonon modes. It is also shown that the forbidden energy gap due to mode splitting is proportional to the overlapped optical power between the plasmonic resonance mode and the PMMA molecules, providing an effective approach for manipulating the coupling strength of light-matter interaction.


In this paper two descent methods with respect to a gap function for solving a class of monotone mixed variational inequalities are proposed. We show that the two algorithms, based on an exact and an Armijo-type line search procedure, respectively, are globally convergent. AMS Subject Classification: 65K10, 47J20


Geospatial datasets in the Linking Open Data (LOD) Cloud are rather of static nature and mainly consist of information such as a name, geo coordinates, an address, or opening hours. There is no linked dataset providing dynamic information about the "popularity" of certain places or the "Visiting frequency" of users in specific contextual situations. This type of information within the LOD Cloud, however, would enable a variety of new applications based on semantically enriched location analytics. In this paper, we present Linked Crowdsourced Data as a dataset, which links real user location preferences (e.g., check-ins, ratings, or comments) as well as specific context situations (e.g., weather conditions, holiday information, or measured networks) collected via crowdsourcing to static location data. We showcase the applicability of this dataset for location analytics use cases through a map visualization and highlight its added value with exemplary SPARQL queries that allow for location requests depending on historic context information.


Executive compensation has been extensively studied in market orientation economy; consequently the conflict of interest between the Principal and the Agent is clearly defined in a widely-held firm. A concentration-owned firm that dominates Asian capital markets have not such a conflict between the shareholders and the managers, but groups of shareholders in conflict are a concern. Since only one group of owner dominates the decision, executive compensation is hardly believed to be well established. Using a unique Thai listed company's data between 2002 and 2008 as a sample, this study presents empirical evidence on Agency theory outside the Anglo-Saxon setting. Ordinary least square method, fixed effects, two-stages least squares, generalised method of moments are deployed to test the hypotheses. In addition to all executive receives base pay, it reveals that bonus is the most common incentive while fewer than 10% of listed companies provide stock option to their executive. The econometric results reveal positive pay-performance sensitivity in Thai listed companies. However, ownership structure does play a vital role in the sensitivity. In a widely-held firm, the positive influence of firm performance on executive compensation is found. The evidence supports that widely-held firms have well established their executive compensation package. In the foreign-owned firm, the positive sensitivity reveals that foreign ownership actively take part in the compensation policy to serve the firm interests. Furthermore; Managerial power suggests that in the imbalance of power between groups of shareholder, there is no pay-performance sensitivity in neither family-owned nor corporate-owned firms. Further evidences indicate that operation cash flow and stock return are the consequence of executive bonus pay.


Trafficking in human beings is not a contemporary social phenomenon as its history reaches the ancient times. Recently it has become especially important because of the increasing scope of migration influenced by economic crisis in Europe and worldwide. The article investigates the phenomenon of human trafficking focusing on the social policy measures in victims of human trafficking (re-)integration into the labour market process. The research is based on the analysis of the situation in three EU member states – Austria, Finland and Lithuania, focusing on the role of NGOs and their activities in provision of social assistance for the victims of human trafficking in integration into the labour market process.


Aim: Our aim was to investigate the incidence of HPV related oral squamous cell carcinoma in the Israeli population.
Materials and methods: HPV typing was done by immunostaining for P16 of Tissue-Array sections, and PCR amplification from paraffin-embedded tissues [PCR Taq Mix (Promega Corporation, Israel)], on oral squamous cell carcinoma tissues spanning the period from 1996 to 2014.
Results: Immunoreactivity for P16 protein was found in 32 cases (39%), HPV16 DNA typing was found in 23 cases (28%), the HPV positive patients were significantly younger than HPV negative group, and demonstrated a higher histological differentiation.
Conclusion: A positive correlation between HPV infection and OSCC was found in the presented study; these results imply a possible involvement of HPV infection in oral carcinogenesis.


Since the population with a traumatic brain injury is principally young with many years of potential future earning capacity, understanding the issues affecting the vocational outlook for this group is critical. This article overviews the research to date on vocational outcome, emphasizing newly developed multivariate prediction models and encouraging a focus on actually examining the effects of different vocational interventions. The reasons for the variability in current study findings are reviewed with a framework proposed for more meaningful future research on the vocational rehabilitation process for this disability group. It is only through utilization of more standard intake and outcome variables and manipulation of interventions within this more standardized context that efficient and effective vocational rehabilitation for these survivors will be understood.


Increasing precipitation variability portends widespread negative consequences for future tree growth in the United States. Earth's hydroclimatic variability is increasing, with changes in the frequency of extreme events that may negatively affect forest ecosystems. We examined possible consequences of changing precipitation variability using tree rings in the conterminous United States. While many growth records showed either little evidence of precipitation limitation or linear relationships to precipitation, growth of some species (particularly those in semiarid regions) responded asymmetrically to precipitation such that tree growth reductions during dry years were greater than, and not compensated by, increases during wet years. The U.S. Southwest, in particular, showed a large increase in precipitation variability, coupled with asymmetric responses of growth to precipitation. Simulations suggested roughly a twofold increase in the probability of large negative growth anomalies across the Southwest resulting solely from 20th century increases in variability of cool-season precipitation. Models project continued increases in precipitation variability, portending future growth reductions across semiarid forests of the western United States.


SUMMARY
Sport-related concussion (SRC) affects an estimated 1.6 to 3.8 million Americans each year. Sport-related concussion results from biomechanical forces to the head or neck that lead to a broad range of neurologic symptoms and impaired cognitive function. Although most individuals recover within weeks, some develop chronic symptoms. The heterogeneity of both the clinical presentation and the underlying brain injury profile make SRC a challenging condition. Adding to this challenge, there is also a lack of objective and reliable biomarkers to support diagnosis, to inform clinical decision making, and to monitor recovery after SRC. In this review, the authors provide an overview of advanced neuroimaging techniques that provide the sensitivity needed to capture subtle changes in brain structure, metabolism, function, and perfusion after SRC. This is followed by a discussion of emerging neuroimaging techniques, as well as current efforts of international research consortia committed to the study of SRC. Finally, the authors emphasize the need for advanced multimodal neuroimaging to develop objective biomarkers that will inform targeted treatment strategies after SRC.


Bronchial necrosis with wall destruction and direct visualization into the cavity is seldom described in the context of lung cancer, except after radiation therapy. We describe 5 cases of cavitating lung cancer with direct communication with the airways, large enough to allow the passage of a flexible bronchoscope. We encountered all of these cases between May 2009 and January 2010. None of the patients had received radiation previously. During bronchoscopy, necrosis of the bronchus was evident with replacement of the involved lung by a large cavity lined by tumor tissue.


This paper examines critically the controversy surrounding the recently concluded population census in Nigeria which came up between March 21 and 25, 2006. While population census is a deliberate attempt to enumerate people within a delimited territory at a specific time so as to determine their number, their contribution over the land area and their basic socio-demographic and economic characteristics, many of such exercises have been juggled especially in Nigeria. Many infallible proofs for several scores of years have been showing that census taking in Nigeria has been surrounded by deliberate falsehood with the intents and purposes to derive one benefit or the other from the government. The paper argues that the Nigeria's 2006 population census was no way different from the past falsified ones in Nigeria. The paper concludes that for an accurate population census in Nigeria, population census should not be used for allocation of governmental benefits.

 Key words: Census, population, data.


The second patient was a 9 year old girl who first presented with a history of recurrent left knee swelling (two episodes in six months). Her initial serological evaluation showed an ELISA titre of 1/640, with four IgG bands on the western blot in both serum and synovial fluid. She received a two week course of intravenous penicillin G consisting of 100000 units per kg/day in four divided daily doses. Resolution of her symptoms was observed. At follow up, 13 weeks later, her ELISA was 1/1280 and the western blot showed seven IgG bands and no IgM reactivity. Four weeks later she developed a typical erythema migrans rash on her jaw after a deer tick bite, which resolved with oral penicillir, 250 mg four times a day for four weeks. Her ELISA titre three weeks after onset of this rash was 1/1280 and she had 12 reactive bands in the IgG western blot and one in the IgM. These two cases suggest that reinfection with B burgdorferi, manifesting as erythema migrans, is possible even after a previous infection resulting in a well established immune response. The elapsed time and resolution of the initial symptoms after treatment make it unlikely that the second erythema chronicum migrans (following a documented tick bite) was a result of the primary infection with B burgdorferi. It is unclear if progressive disease would have occurred in the absence of treatment, but the presence of erythema migrans suggests that bacterial replication can occur, at least locally, despite prior naturally induced immune response to B burgdorferi.


This study focuses on developing a pragmatic and robust method in the estimation of fracture orientation assuming a single set of aligned fractures. The Young's modulus in the direction of fracture orientation is larger than that in the perpendicular direction that helps to solve the problem of the ambiguity in fracture-orientation estimation existing in the method of using the variation of amplitude-variation-with-offset (AVO) gradients with azimuth. First, the relationship between the Young's modulus and fracture density and orientation is analyzed. The Young's modulus changes regularly with the variation of incident angles and azimuth, and the changing track is a cosine curve when the incident angle is fixed. The variation of the Young's modulus increases with the increase of fracture density. Second, we use the Young's modulus variation with azimuth to predict the fracture orientation. The Young's modulus inversion algorithm for different azimuths of prestack seismic data and the ellipse fitting of the Young's moduli in different azimuth with the least-squares algorithm are included in this proposed approach. Finally, we determine the advantage and robustness of our method in fracture-orientation estimation with synthetic and real-data examples. Compared with the conventional methods using AVO gradients, the direction of longer axis of the fitting ellipse of the Young's modulus in different azimuth indicates the fracture orientation without ambiguity.


This study was done to identify the current status of burnout research on Korean nurses and to suggest the directions for future research. Method: Fifty two articles between 1998 and 2007 were selected using the key words such as "Nurse" and "Burnout" from the database (RISS4U et al.). Results: 77.9% of studies were master`s theses unpublished in the nursing journals. All studies were cross-sectional and therefore did not allow casual inference. Hospital nurses were the most common subjects (21 studies). The most frequently used burnout measurement instrument was the Burnout Measure, while the Maslach Burnout Inventory was used in only 6 studies. 55.7% of studies reported the average burnout score as higher than the middle level. Among individual factors, variables significantly correlated to burnout were age, position, work experience, coping, and personality. Some of job factors including shift work, workloads, job stress, and organizational commitment were also significantly related to burnout. There was very little discussion about the influence of organizational factors analyzed by unit or institution level. Conclusion: In Korea, the next phase of nurse burnout research needs to consider the measurement tool selection for the international comparison and longitudinal design to find more specific causal relationships.


Simple structures process complex light beams that carry angular momentum Nanophotonics investigates the processing of light at the nanoscale, with the promise of transforming the telecommunication, biomedical, and computation industries. Advances in nanophotonics have traditionally been boosted but also limited by our capabilities of fabricating complex structures at the nanoscale. On page 805 of this issue, Ren et al. (1) try to break free of these limitations with their experimental demonstration of a simple nanostructure that can separate and process complex light modes carrying angular momentum. Thus, instead of processing light fields with complex nanostructures, the idea is to use comparatively simpler structures and push the complexity to the light fields themselves.


Cholesterol catabolism was stimulated (by cholestyramine) in post-weaned guinea pigs for a 4-wk period. The animals were then switched to regular Chow diet for another 4 wk. When subsequently challenged with 0.25% cholesterol-containing Chow, plasma cholesterol level was significantly (p less than 0.05) lower in cholestyramine pretreated guinea pigs when compared to control guinea pigs and this "hyporesponder" pattern was maintained throughout the study period. Cholestyramine pretreated animals continued to excrete significantly (p less than 0.05) higher bile acids even at 4 wk after switching to regular Chow diet. This study demonstrates that stimulation of cholesterol catabolism even at postweaning stages can still be as effective in improving subsequent cholesterol handling capacity as noted previously after manipulation at the neonatal stage.


This paper was based on an exploratory study carried out on student leadership in three public universities in Kenya in 2004/2005 academic year. The study was premised on the challenges facing student leadership and the transformative roles student leadership
plays in the management of student affairs and overall university management. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire from a sample of 34 student leaders and analyzed through descriptive statistics. Findings showed that most student leaders were first born in their families. Most of the students' parents were in low to middle level occupational category in the public sector, with about 50% of them having attained at least some college training. Most of the students resided in urban centers, with a significant majority coming from the major urban centers in the country – namely, Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret, Nakuru and Nyeri. Student leaders were prompted to leadership interests by many
factors, including past leadership experience in high school, service to students, a learning experience, and to develop a culture of dialogue with university management. Despite these values and intentions, student leaders still faced many challenges in their efforts to achieve the intended goals. This ranged from institutional rigidities, high student expectations and skepticism, betrayal from students' body, low participation rates by female students and tribalism/regionalism. This study observed the transformative nature of student leadership compared to what it was two decades ago and encouraged that
student leadership is an integral component of modern university management African Research Review Vol. 2 (3) 2008: pp. 195-221


The presence of ground ice in Arctic soils exerts a major effect on permafrost hydrology and ecology, and factors prominently into geomorphic landform development. As most ground ice has accumulated in near-surface permafrost, it is sensitive to variations in atmospheric conditions. Typical and regionally widespread permafrost landforms such as pingos, ice-wedge polygons, and rock glaciers are closely tied to ground ice. However, under ongoing climate change, suitable environmental spaces for preserving landforms associated with ice-rich permafrost may be rapidly disappearing. We deploy a statistical ensemble approach to model, for the first time, the current and potential future environmental conditions of three typical permafrost landforms, pingos, ice-wedge polygons and rock glaciers across the Northern Hemisphere. We show that by midcentury, the landforms are projected to lose more than one-fifth of their suitable environments under a moderate climate scenario (RCP4.5) and on average around one-third under a very high baseline emission scenario (RCP8.5), even when projected new suitable areas for occurrence are considered. By 2061–2080, on average more than 50% of the recent suitable conditions can be lost (RCP8.5). In the case of pingos and ice-wedge polygons, geographical changes are mainly attributed to alterations in thawing-season precipitation and air temperatures. Rock glaciers show air temperature-induced regional changes in suitable conditions strongly constrained by topography and soil properties. The predicted losses could have important implications for Arctic hydrology, geo- and biodiversity, and to the global climate system through changes in biogeochemical cycles governed by the geomorphology of permafrost landscapes. Moreover, our projections provide insights into the circumpolar distribution of various ground ice types and help inventory permafrost landforms in unmapped regions.


The authors describe the clinical, radiological, and postmortem findings of a case of cloverleaf skull syndrome. The presence of hindbrain herniation, abnormal cervical segmentation, and atlantoaxial subluxation illustrate the anatomical complexity of the skull base and the craniocervical junction that may coexist in this condition. Unavoidable division of occipital emissary veins during elevation of the skin flap at the time of vault remodeling surgery led to an acute and, ultimately, fatal rise in intracranial pressure. Postmortem examination and review of magnetic resonance imaging revealed an anomalous pattern of venous drainage of the intracranial structures that appeared to have developed in response to venous obstruction, secondary to intraosseous venous sinuses and stenosis of the jugular foramina. The relationship between venous hypertension, hindbrain herniation, and hydrocephalus in this situation is reviewed, and the implications for evaluation and management of this vexing disorder are discussed.


Simplified technology and low costs have spurred the use of location-detection devices in moving objects. Usually, these devices will send the moving objects' location information to a spatio-temporal data stream management system, which will be then responsible for answering spatio-temporal queries related to these moving objects. A large spectrum of research have been devoted to continuous spatio-temporal query processing. However, we argue that several outstanding challenges have been either addressed partially or not at all in the existing literature. In particular, in this paper, we focus on the optimization of multi-predicate spatio-temporal queries on moving objects. We present several major challenges related to the lack of spatio-temporal pipelined operators, and the impact of time, space, and their combination on the query plan optimality under different circumstances mof query and object distributions. We show that building an adaptive query optimization framework is key in addressing these challenges and coping with the dynamic nature of the environment we are evolving in.


Search engine query data, which provide information on individuals' attention allocation, have been proven by scholars to be useful in interpreting financial market performance. This paper explores the use of search volumes in stock market valuation and seeks to identify underlying stock market differences between the U.S. and China by extracting search volume data from their respective dominant search engines – Google and Baidu. On the overall market level, this paper investigates how search terms about financial markets relate to weekly returns of important market indices in each country; on the individual stock level, search volumes of selected company names in each country's stock market are used to study fluctuations in stock prices. Finally, a set of trading strategies are recommended after combining research results in this paper with search-based strategies proposed in previous studies.


The accelerated phase-out of ozone-depleting compounds and product labeling requirements have heightened the urgency for switching to acceptable alternatives. There are numerous ozone-depleting compound replacement applications where the combination of properties of pet-fluorocarbon liquids make them the preferred alternative based on perfomarance, safety, and environmental considerations. However, they will be best suited to specialized applications due to their relatively high cost and limited solubility for hydrocarbon soils.


Two central spectral processing models of the central auditory system for further processing the spatiotemporal firing pattern of the auditory nerve as outputs of the periphery auditory model are proposed. The temporal processing model capitalizes on the dominant periodicity in the firing pattern. The spatial processing model is based on the winner-take-all neural network mechanism and detects edges of discontinuities in the firing patterns. Experiments of noisy speech analysis showed that the proposed central auditory model can preserve prominent peaks at the formant resonances, while significantly reducing the output associated with the background noise. Noisy speech recognition experiments for both a small-scale classification task and a large-scale continuous speech recognition task showed that the proposed model provided a robust speech representation, and outperformed all other representations.<<ETX>>


Infants with Low Birth Weight (LBW) are infants which borned with a birth weight under 2500 grams. According to WHO estimated, more than 20 million infants in the world (15,5% from newborn infants in the world) every years borned with LBW and influenced about 16% LBW in developing countries. Datas of General Hospital Sundari Medan in 2012, there are 188 cases of LBW (8,6%) from 2170 birth. To know the characteristics of mothers and infants with LBW in General Hospital Sundari Medan in 2012,it is conducted a descriptive research by case series design.Population and sample totaled as 188 people.Data's been analyzed by using Chi-Square test, t-independent and Anova test. From the results, it was obtained that proportion of mothers with LBW infants based on sociodemographic, medical risk factors and patient records aged 20-35 years 79,8%, Islam 84%, housewives 54,3%, first pregnancy 52,7%, gestational age 37-42 weeks 54,8%, spacing pregnancy < 2 years 55,1%, hemoglobin concentration ≥11 gr% 35,6%, good pregnancy history 67%, no complication of pregnancy 66%, patient comes itself 88,3%. Proportion of infants with LBW based on 1500-<2500 grams 76,6%, no complication of LBW 85,6% . Mothers treatment on average 2,3 days, infants treatment of average 2,4 days, mothers circumstances when to go home healthy 83%, infants circumstances when to go home healthy 50,5%. There is no significant differences between spacing pregnancy (p= 0,614),hemoglobin concentration (p= 0,399), infants treatment of average based on complication of LBW (p= 0,878), mothers treatment on average based on circumstances when to go home (p= 0,377), infants treatment of average based on circumstances when to go home (p = 0,421). There is significant differences between mothers aged based on classification of LBW (X 2 = 9,873; p=0,007), parity based on classification of LBW (X 2 = 10,009; p= 0,002), gestational age based on classification of LBW (X 2 = 10,033; p=0,007), pregnancy history based on classification of LBW (X 2 = 14,770; p=0,000). The hospital is expected to complete the recording of status card especially hemoglobin concentration as well as the recording of antenatal care to know preganancy history. The hospital must increase quality of life for the infants and for the health department to give an information of nutrient for pregnancy women and ideal spacing pregnancy. Keywords : Low Birth Weight, The characteristics of mothers, The characteristics of infants


Hammett σm and σp values have been determined for the phenyl-ONN-azoxy and phenyl-NNO-azoxy groups by measuring the pKa values of the phenylazoxybenzoic acids in 50% ethanol. The σp+ value for phenyl-ONN-azoxy has been evaluated both from the rate of solvolysis of 4-phenyl-ONN-azoxyphenyldimethylcarbinyl chloride in aqueous acetone, and from the rate of bromination by acidified hypobromous acid. The two values obtained differ markedly, and the variations are interpreted in terms of differences in the geometry of the transition states for the two reactions.


The presence of hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) and its antibody (anti-HBe) was studied in 249 asymptomatic carriers of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) of different ethnic origin and clinical course. Among male homosexuals, renal transplant recipients, and hemodialysis patients, > 90% were HBeAg-positive. In contrast, anti-HBe was present in > 85% of HBsAg-positive Danish pregnant women and blood donors. In presumably immunologically intact persons, significantly elevated levels of transaminases were found in the HBeAg-positive group as compared with the anti-BHe group (P < 0.0001). Among persons with Down's syndrome, males showed a tendency toward clearing of HBeAg and development of anti-BHe as compared with females. In Eskimos a correlation was found between presence of hepatitis B e markers, age of the HBsAg carrier, and geographic origin of the carrier. A similar age relationship was found in Vietnamese refugees. It is proposed that in the general population a correlation may exist between the prevalence of HBsAg carriers and the percentage of HBeAg-positive HBsAg carriers.


In Italy the wine industry is an economic asset representing the 8% of the annual turnover of the Food & Beverage sector, according to Unicredit Industry Book 2019. Viticulture is strongly influenced by weather and climate, and winegrowers in Europe have already experienced the impact of climate change in terms of more frequent drought periods, warmer and longer growing seasons and an increased frequency of weather extremes. These changes impact on both yield production and wine quality.

Our study aims to understand the impact of climate change on wine production, to estimate the risks associated with climate factors and to suggest appropriate adaptation measurement. The weather variables that most influence grape growth are: temperature, precipitation and evapotranspiration. Starting for these variables we calculate a range of bioclimatic indices, selected following the International Organisation of Vine and Wine Guidelines (OIV), and correlate these with wine productivity data. According to the values of different indices it is possible to determine the more suitable areas for wine production, where we expect higher productivity, although the climate is not the only factor influencing yield.

Using the convection-permitting models (CPMs – 2.2 horizontal resolution) we investigate how the bioclimatic indices changed in the last 20 years, and the impact of this change on grapes productivity. We look at possible climate trends and at the variation in the frequency distribution of extreme weather events. The CPMs are likely the best available option for this kind of impact studies since they allow a better representation of surface and orography field, explicitly resolve deep convection and show an improved representation of extremes events. In our study, we compare CPMs with regional climate models (RCMs – 12 km horizontal resolution) to evaluate the possible added value of high resolution models for impact studies. To compare models' output to observation the same analysis it carried out using E-OBS dataset.

Through our impact study, we aim to provide a tool that winegrower and stakeholders involved in the wine business can use to make their activities more sustainable and more resilient to climate change.


In this paper, four different nondestructive testing (NDT) methods and static bending tests were done on poplar (Populus ussuriensis Kom.) and birch (Betula platyphylla Suk.) Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL). The effects of compression ratio on the modulus of elasticity (MOE) and modulus of rupture (MOR) of LVL with vertical load and parallel load were investigated. There were four compression ratios: 8.1%, 18.3%, 26.5%, and 33.1%. The microscopic structure of LVL was analyzed with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Results showed a strong correlation between each dynamic Young's modulus and the static MOR of LVL; the MOE and MOR of LVL changed with the increase of compression ratio. MOE and MOR were greatly increased when the compression ratio increased from 18.3% to 26.5%, and the microstructure of LVL changed greatly between different compression ratios by birch and poplar species.


Ventilation was studied during wakefulness and sleep in six healthy humans in normoxia (mean barometric pressure (PB) = 740 torr), and in hypobaric hypoxia (PB = 455 torr). Hypoxia caused hyperventilation and hypocapnic alkalosis (delta Pa,CO2 = ‐7 torr) during wakefulness and in all sleep states. Periodic breathing was the predominant pattern of breathing in all stages of non‐rapid eye movement (non‐r.e.m.) sleep in hypoxia, but was rarely observed during wakefulness or r.e.m. sleep. Periodic breathing was composed of repetitive oscillations of reproducible cycle length characterized by clusters of breaths with augmented inspiratory effort (VT/TI) and highly variable distribution of breath‐to‐breath minute ventilation (VE) and tidal volume (VT), which alternated regularly with prolongations of the expiratory pause of the last breath of each cluster (apnea duration = 5‐18 sec). Hypoxia‐induced periodic breathing was eliminated by: (a) acute restoration of normoxia coincident with a 3‐6 torr increase in Pa,CO2; and (b) augmented FI,CO2 (at constant arterial oxygen saturation) which rapidly and reversibly eliminated apneas and stabilized breathing pattern with a less than 2 torr increase in Pa,CO2. If hypocapnia was prevented (by augmented FI,CO2) during acute induction of hypoxia in non‐r.e.m. sleep, periodic breathing was also prevented. We propose that the genesis of hypoxia‐induced periodic breathing requires the combination of hypoxia and hypocapnia. Periodicity results from oscillations in CO2 about a CO2‐apnea threshold whose functional expression is critically linked to sleep state.


The authors present results of a study of charge spectra using plastic streamer tubes as a function of anode diameters and for an extensive selection of three component gas mixtures of argon, isobutane, and carbon dioxide. Chambers instrumented with longitudinal strip and pad readout were constructed with plastic steamer tubes with anode wires of one of six different diameters: 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, 200 mu m. The six chambers were simultaneously triggered by cosmic-ray muons, and the charge distributions were recorded for various voltages and gas mixtures. An unexpected scaling law may be at work during the transition to streamer mode.<<ETX>>


This paper compares the speech coder and speaker recognizer applications, showing some parallelism between them. In this paper, some approaches used for speaker recognition are applied to speech coding in order to improve the prediction accuracy. Experimental results show an improvement in Segmental SNR (SEGSNR). INTRODUCTION This section describes the speech coding and speaker recognition application trying to find common facts on their formulations, and new potential possibilities with the cross-fertilization between both applications, and a joint formulation suitable for both of them. Similarities between speaker recognition and predictive speech coding Several similarities exist between these applications. Among them, the most important are: Problem statement Without loss of generality we will assume that the speech signal ( ) x t is normalized in order to achieve maximum absolute value equal to 1 ( ( ) x ( ) 1 x t = ma ). Otherwise, the following normalization can be done: ( ) ( ) '( ) max ( ) x t x t x t = For speaker recognition applications, with a closed set of N users inside the database, the problem is: given a vector of samples [ ] (1), (2), , ( ) x x x L , try to guess to whom speaker it belongs, with i speaker [ ] 1, 2, i speaker ∈ , N . In order to achieve statistical consistency, this task is performed using several hundreds of vectors, and some kind of parameterization is performed over the signal samples, like a bank of filters, cepstral analysis, etc. For speech coding applications, the problem is: given a vector of previous samples [ ] (1), (2), , ( ) x x x L , try to guess which is the next sample: [ ] ( 1), ( 1) 1,1 x L x L + + ∈ − . Thus, the problem statement is the same with the exception that the former corresponds to a discrete set of output values, and the latter corresponds to a continuum set of output values. Taking into account this fact, the "speech predictor" can be seen as a "classifier". Signal parameterization Although strong efforts have been done in speaker recognition for obtaining a good parameterization of the speech samples in order to improve the results and to reduce the computational burden, this step is ignored in speech coding, where the parameterized signal is the own signal without any processing. Model Computation For speaker recognition applications, some kind of model must be computed. Usually it is computed using some training material different from the test signals to be classified. This model [1] can be as simple as the whole set of input vectors (Nearest Neighbor model [2]) or the result of some reduction applied on them (Codebook obtained with Vector Quantization [3], Gaussian Mixture Model [4], etc.), being the most popular the GMM. For predictive speech coding applications, the model is usually a LPC (Linear predictive Coding) model, but it can also be a codebook [5], Volterra series [6], neural networks [7], etc. These last kind of predictors belong to the 1 This work has been supported by the Spanish grant CICYT TIC2000-1669-C04-02 and COST-277


The research reported in this paper focuses on the assessment of the seismic performance of conventional steel moment-resisting frames (MRFs) and steel-concrete composite moment-resisting frames employing circular Concrete-Filled Steel Tube (CFST) columns. Two comparable archetypes (i.e. one steel MRF, with steel columns and steel beams; and one composite MRF, with circular CFST columns and steel beams) are designed, and used as the basis for comparison between the seismic performance associated with each typology. Both structures are designed against earthquake loads following the recommendations of Eurocode 8. The comparison of the obtained design solutions allows concluding that the amount of steel associated with the main structural members is higher for the steel-only archetype, even though the composite MRF has the higher level of lateral stiffness. This aspect is particularly relevant when one considers that a minimum level of lateral stiffness (associated with the P-Δ inter-storey drift sensitivity coefficient, θ), is imposed by the European code, which may ultimately govern the design process. The two case-studies are then numerically modelled in OpenSees, and their seismic performance is assessed through fragility assessment for a number of relevant limit states, and, finally, earthquake-induced loss estimation. In general, the results obtained clearly indicate that the composite MRF with circular CFST columns exhibits better seismic performance than the equivalent steel-only archetype. This is noticeably shown in the comparison of the fragility curves associated with the collapse limit state, which tend to show substantially higher probabilities of exceedance, at similar levels of 1st-mode spectral acceleration, for the steel-only case. Furthermore, seismic losses at several seismic intensity levels of interest tend to be higher for the steel MRF.


PURPOSE
To compare the effect of conventional phacoemulsification and femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery on the cornea using Scheimpflug imaging and noncontact specular microscopy.

METHODS
In each group, 38 eyes (38 patients) underwent cataract surgery using either femtosecond laser-assisted (Alcon LenSx laser) (femtolaser group) or conventional phacoemulsification (phaco group). Central corneal thickness, 3-mm corneal volume, and Pentacam Nucleus Staging (PNS) were determined by a rotating Scheimpflug camera (Pentacam HR, Oculus Optikgeräte GmbH), and the volume stress index was calculated at 1 day and 1 month postoperatively. Endothelial cell count was measured by noncontact specular microscopy preoperatively, 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month postoperatively.

RESULTS
Central corneal thickness was significantly higher in the phaco group (607±91 μm) than in the femtolaser group (580±42 μm) on day 1, but did not differ significantly preoperatively and at 1 week and 1 month. Volume stress index at day 1 was significantly lower in the femtolaser group than in the phaco group (P<.05) but did not differ significantly at 1 month. Multivariate regression analysis showed that the type of surgery had a significant effect on central corneal thickness.

CONCLUSIONS
Femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery causes less corneal swelling in the early postoperative period and may cause less trauma to corneal endothelial cells than manual phacoemulsification.


This case is a condensed version of UVA-M-0452. The case describes Procter & Gamble's adoption of value pricing, Wal-Mart's introduction of premium store brands, and the evolution of Wal-Mart's relations with its major vendors. In early 1994, Kimberly-Clark agreed to manufacture private-label training pants for Wal-Mart. Students must decide how Procter & Gamble should respond to Wal-Mart's decision to sell private-label diapers manufactured by Kimberly-Clark. Excerpt UVA-M-0654 Rev. May 21, 2018 Procter & Gamble, Private-Label Brands, and The Wal-Mart Partnership (A) In 1992, Procter and Gamble's (P&G's) largest and most profitable category was disposable diapers, which accounted for 16% of the company's worldwide revenues and over 20% of its profits. However, between 1988 and 1993, P&G's share of the $ 4 billion US disposable-diaper market dropped from over 50% to 38%, due in part to a rise in market share of private-label brands with favorable retailer margins., In early 1994, Kimberly-Clark (K-C) began to manufacture private-label training pants for Wal-Mart that appeared comparable to its own Huggies Pull-Ups, but would be priced 20% lower. Procter & Gamble: The Smale Era . . .


In today's world, companies demand applicable solutions to the problems in their environment. The central goal of university reform in the Republic of Croatia is the transition towards an integrated, competent, research-orientated and efficient higher education, with accredited programmes and institutions. Knowledge is today one of the fundamental levers of development. Knowledge management is the capability of active formation and creation of one's immediate and wider environment. Information and communication technologies, particularly the Internet and its applications, increase the volume, speed and accessibility of information, while eliminating the obstacles of space and time. The Bologna process in the new education structure for economists (undergraduate and graduate studies, specialist graduate studies, doctoral studies) requires continuous monitoring, adapting, updating, innovation and transparency of the devised model of education.


The clinical implications of depression in the context of rheumatoid arthritis are described. An overview of the diagnostic criteria for depression is provided, with specific focus on major depression and the associated subtypes. The neurobiological literature on major depression is briefly reviewed and the implications of the depression literature for the care of persons with rheumatoid arthritis are discussed.


When vitrectomy is performed in eyes without posterior vitreous detachment, complete removal of the posterior hyaloid may be important to relieve existing vitreoretinal traction or to remove a surface for subsequent cellular proliferation. We used two alternative techniques of detaching the posterior hyaloid in an unselected consecutive series of ten patients; we used either a tapered extrusion needle or a microvitreoretinal blade to initiate separation of the posterior hyaloid at the optic disc margin. After surgical peeling of the posterior hyaloid from the retina, complete removal of the posterior vitreous and surgical relief of posterior vitreoretinal traction were facilitated.


Intraluminal ureteral hematoma is a rare disease and only a few cases have been previously described. We report a case of intraluminal ureteral hematoma induced by anticoagulant therapy. A 65-year old man having the oral anticoagulant therapy for prevention of secondary thrombolism following atrial fibrillation was referred to us for gross hematuria. Ultrasound sonography (US) revealed right renal mild wide pelvis. Computed tomography (CT) showed the right ureteral submucosal hematoma. This ureteral hematoma penetrated the ureteral mucosa and caused macrohematuria. The patient had been anticoagulated on Warfarin with Bucolome for 18 days, so the prothrombin times (PT) was found to be excessively prolonged beyond the normal therapeutic range. The oral anticoagulation was stopped and intravenous Vitamin K2 was given, so PT was normalized. Though estimate hemorrhage quantity reached 1,200 ml, we had no blood transfusion. The hematoma was completely diminished 4 months later, no reccurence has been occurred. Bucolome has especially pharmacokinetic positive interaction to Warfarin, so we must check PT-INR frequently.


Coordination mechanism is a core technology in real-time cooperative multimedia system. There are two important criterions for it: real-time and interaction. Based on the discussion of distributed real-time cooperative multimedia system, a coordination mechanism is presented. By building a delay and delay variation bounded multicast tree, the coordination server is selected and adjusted. The algorithm of building delay and delay variation bounded multicast tree is described in detail. Simulation results and practical application show that the coordination mechanism has preferably capability of real-time and interaction.


This study examined intertextuality and interdiscursivity in email exchanges in an Institute in Malaysia. Intertextuality observed how and why the discourse community repeatedly used certain forms to respond to reoccurring rhetorical situations and how they used their professional knowledge to identify the authority of certain texts on other text. Interdiscursivity examined how and why the employees of the Institute appropriated the generic resources of a genre to create another. This study found that the discourse community skillfully used three types of intertextuality to achieve similar and contradicting communicative purposes. They also appropriated generic resources of a genre to create another.


Text Document Clustering is one of the fastest growing research areas because of availability of huge amount of information in an electronic form. There are several number of techniques launched for clustering documents in such a way that documents within a cluster have high intra-similarity and low inter-similarity to other clusters. Many document clustering algorithms provide localized search in effectively navigating, summarizing, and organizing information. A global optimal solution can be obtained by applying high-speed and high-quality optimization algorithms. The optimization technique performs a globalized search in the entire solution space. In this paper, a brief survey on optimization approaches to text document clustering is turned out.


Next generation reactors which are subjected to elevated temperatures must be designed to account for inelastic deformation along with elastic one. In order to simplify design analysis of perforated portions, conventionally axisymmetric models with equivalent elastic materials are employed. To extend to inelastic analysis, a method of Effective Stress Ratio (ESR) has been studied in recent years. Previous studies have shown that perforated plates have their own ESR and it is a function of geometry and is independent from their materials.In this study the only geometry dependence and physical meaning of ESR were clarified. ESR results were compared with Reference Stress Method (RSM) results for unit-ligaments with various ligament efficiencies. It was revealed that RSM results coincide with ESR. First meaning of ESR is stress ratio between solid plate and perforated plate at the same reference stresses. Second meaning of this ratio is how plasticity properties of equivalent solid plate have to be changed to give the same steady state deformation rate at the same mean boundary stress. Moreover, to clarify stress redistribution control mechanism at different ligament efficiencies, simple models were developed and an estimation method based on simple models was proposed for engineering use.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


The relevance of the study lies in the acute need to modernise the tools for a more accurate and comparable reflection of the demographic reality of spatial objects of different scales. This article aims to test the methods of "demographic rankings" developed by Yermakov and Shmakov. The method is based on the principles of indirect standardisation of the major demographic coefficients relative to the age structure. The article describes the first attempt to apply the method to the analysis of birth and mortality rates in 1995 and 2010 for 140 countries against the global average, and for the Baltic Sea states against the European average. The grouping of countries and the analysis of changes over the given period confirmed a number of demographic development trends and the persistence of wide territorial disparities in major indicators. The authors identify opposite trends in ranking based on the standardised birth (country consolidation at the level of averaged values) and mortality (polarisation) rates. The features of demographic process development in the Baltic regions states are described against the global and European background. The study confirmed the validity of the demographic ranking method, which can be instrumental in solving not only scientific but also practical tasks, including those in the field of demographic and social policy.


Even though Barach in 1964 advocated physical
exercise for patients with chronic lung diseases
(1), it was only in early 1970s that a liberal use of
exercise training was included in pulmonary rehabilitation
programmes (2). The relentless downhill course
of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
over many years and the concomitant worsening of
dyspnoea limit the activity of patients, leading to a
vicious cycle of increasing inactivity and dyspnoea.
This in turn aggravates the debilitating effects of the
disease. Exercise training has been advocated as an
important component in pulmonary rehabilitation to
improve well-being and to reduce subsequent hospital
admissions in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease.


The ability to generate robust walking gaits on bipedal robots is key to their successful realization on hard-ware. To this end, this work extends the method of Hybrid Zero Dynamics (HZD) – which traditionally only accounts for locomotive stability via periodicity constraints under perfect impact events – through the inclusion of the saltation matrix with a view toward synthesizing robust walking gaits. By jointly minimizing the norm of the extended saltation matrix and the torque of the robot directly in the gait generation process, we demonstrate that the synthesized gaits are more robust than gaits generated with either term alone; these results are shown in simulation and on hardware for the AMBER-3M planar biped and the Atalante lower-body exoskeleton (both with and without a human subject). The end result is experimental validation that combining saltation matrices with HZD methods produces more robust bipedal walking in practice.


Background : Due to the development of science and technology in the field of medicine, infertility hasbeen solved by the discovery of one of the most sophisticated ART program, known as IVF. Although thisprocedure has been carried out for more than 40 years, the failure rate is still very high. This problem isconsidered to be related with the characteristic of the patient undergoing IVF. This study aims to determinethe association between patient's multi-characteristics and IVF failure.Method : This research is an observational analytic research with cross-sectional method. The determinationof the research sample uses a total sampling technique by taking all members of the population in accordancewith the conditions.Result : Out of 102 couples undergoing IVF, 37 couples (36,3%) successfully obtained a pregnancy whilethe 65 other couples (63,7%) failed IVF or has not obtained a pregnancy. The result of the p value betweenIVF failure and maternal age is 0,03, with BMI 0,532, with sperm quality 0,577, with PCOS 0,297, withendometriosis 0,578, and with POR 0,027.Conclusion : Out of all the studied patient characteristics, only maternal age and POR are associated withIVF failure with the p value of 0,03 and 0,027 respectively. BMI, sperm quality, PCOS, and endometriosisdo not show a significant correlation with IVF failure.


This paper presents the concept of engineering risk, the algorithm of mean first order second moment (MFOSM) and the approach for long-term reservoir dynamic probability scheduling (LRDPS). MFOSM is applied to study the current stage risk in LRDPS and the risk analysis model is built up for corresponding annual scheduling. Tested in Dan Jiangkou plant, which belongs to Central China Power Grid, the experiment shows that the approach is feasible and can be the assistance of scheduling decision.


ABSTRACT Objectives This study explored the association of early dynamic changes in inflammatory markers with 30-day mortality in in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) patients. Methods This study retrospectively enrolled 85 IHCA patients. The outcome was 30-day mortality. A linear mixed model was used to analyze the dynamic changes in laboratory indicators within 72 h after recovery of spontaneous circulation(ROSC). Results Within 72 h after ROSC, the absolute monocyte count (AMC) showed no significant change trend, and the absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) showed an overall upward trend, while the absolute neutral count (ANC), white blood cell (WBC) count, platelet (PLT) count, neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and systemic immune-inflammation index (SII) showed overall downward trends. Cox multivariate analysis showed that the Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) (HR = 2.37, 95%CI (1.08, 5.17)), Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) score (HR = 2.55, 95% CI (1.00, 6.50)), abnormal creatinine level before IHCA (HR = 3.42, 95% CI (1.44, 8.10)) and PLR within 72 h after ROSC (HR = 2.99, 95% CI (1.44, 6.21)) were independent risk factors for 30-day mortality. Conclusions The PLR can be used as a predictor of 30-day mortality in IHCA patients.


The menisci play a major role in knee function regarding joint movement, stability, load distribution and load transmission. Injuries to the menisci cause pain, and meniscal tears are a common reason for patient referral. In Denmark, partial meniscectomy increased significantly until 2010, and several studies have questioned the long-term effect of meniscectomy as an overall procedure. A Danish national clinical guideline on knee meniscal pathology was published in May 2016, and this article is a short summary of updated knowledge on meniscal pathology and relevant conclusions from the guideline.


Although increasing the turbine inlet temperature has traditionally proved the surest way to increase cycle efficiency, recent work suggests that the performance of future gas turbines may be limited by increased cooling flows and losses. Another limiting scenario concerns the effect on cycle performance of real gas properties at high temperatures. Cycle calculations of uncooled gas turbines show that when gas properties are modelled accurately, the variation of cycle efficiency with turbine inlet temperature at constant pressure ratio exhibits a maximum at temperatures well below the stoichiometric limit. Furthermore, the temperature at the maximum decreases with increasing compressor and turbine polytropic efficiency. This behaviour is examined in the context of a two-component model of the working fluid. The dominant influences come from the change of composition of the combustion products with varying air/fuel ratio (particularly the contribution from the water vapour) together with the temperature variation of the specific heat capacity of air. There are implications for future industrial development programmes, particularly in the context of advanced mixed gas-steam cycles.Copyright © 2002 by ASME


Fifty-four 26-day-old female rats of the CD strain were divided into four groups of 10 or 11 each, i.e. 1) controls; 2) animals given 0.3 ml of a protein-free bovine pineal extract daily intraperitoneally for 28 days; 3) sham-operated animals; 4) pinealectomized animals. In a second experiment two groups of six each were divided into a ) control animals given a diet restricted with respect to Na, K and phosphate, and b) animals on the same diet, given 1.0 ml/day of the pineal extract. Pinealectomy caused ovarian hypertrophy ( P < .001), pituitary hypertrophy ( P < .001), and adrenal hypertrophy ( P < .05). The extract reversed these changes. Giving the extract to intact animals caused effects varying with the dose. The dose of 0.3 ml given daily caused gonadal atrophy ( P < .05), pituitary atrophy ( P < .001) and insignificant adrenal activity. The dose of 1.0 ml caused further gonadal atrophy ( P < .001) and significant adrenal atrophy ( P < .05).


STUDY OBJECTIVES
To determine the scalp topography of the N300 response to stimuli of different modalities and to investigate the relationship of the N300 component to K-complexes and vertex sharp waves seen in the un-averaged EEG.

DESIGN
Two experiments were conducted one using auditory; the other using respiratory occlusion stimuli presented during stage 2 sleep. Trials were classified on the basis of whether they produced a K-complex, a vertex sharp wave, or some other response. Auditory stimuli were presented in the form of an oddball paradigm, and averaged separately depending on whether they were "frequent" or "rare". In both experiments, responses were averaged separately based on the appearance of K-complexes, vertex sharps waves, or some "other" response to the stimuli.

SETTING
Data were collected in the Melbourne University Sleep Laboratory.

PARTICIPANTS
Young healthy male adults, eight in experiment 1 and six in experiment 2.

INTERVENTIONS
NA.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
Data were collected from 29 scalp sites. In all cases, N300 amplitude was maximal in the vertex sharp wave averages, despite being clearly present in the averages of K-complexes and "other" responses. The vertex maximal scalp topography of the N300 did not differ across response conditions or as a function of stimulus modality. This is consistent with the N300 being produced by the same intracranial generators in all cases. There were no effects of stimulus or response type on N300 latency.

CONCLUSIONS
N300 should be viewed as a multi-modal component with a different underlying generator mechanism than that of the K-complex.


_______________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT The issue of charging our mobile phone is very paramount to mobile phone users especially to those who use smartphones. Therefore, there is a need for improving the service or means for charging our mobile phone to a maximum efficiency as possible, and this is possible by coming up or designing a mobile phone charger which will at least minimize the current challenges of mobile phone users regarding with charging their phones so that they will enjoy the use of their mobile phones. Development of mobile phone charger using radio waves helps mobile phones user to have an efficient way of charging their mobile phone by simply having this type of charger which utilizes free radio waves available to charge their mobile phones. Under this project, the study will concentrate on capturing the radio waves from different sources and convert those radio waves to direct current (D.C) so as to charge a phone.


This paper discusses the attitude and views of travel consultants on the impact of Internet related technologies on their future employment and their abilities to cope with the threat of dis‐intermediation. The authors anticipate that changes in the travel distribution process brought about by the Internet and other technologies will result in retail travel agencies experiencing lower business volume and hence difficulty in maintaining business viability. Against this background, a number of questions need to be addressed. What is the attitude of consultants towards new technologies in travel distribution? Are travel consultants prepared to meet the new challenges? What will be the role of travel consultants? Using a survey of 102 travel consultants, the paper shows the lack of awareness and negative attitude displayed by travel consultants in this rapidly changing distribution environment. The paper further suggests measures and training programs that could be undertaken to address the situation.


Coal as a pillar of energy, which contributes a lot in our social economy. The coal enterprises are the representatives of our energy enterprises. In the long course of development, the traditional economic development model, such as overexploitation, over waste, insufficient utilization, has not only created serious wasting of resources and environmental destruction, but also hardly satisfy the need of economic development, and restrict the sustainable development process of the coal enterprises. The coal enterprises must transform from the traditional extensive coal industry to the circular economy multipurpose use sustainable industry to achieve sustainable development. Circular economy which can urge energy, environment and economy to coordinated development is an advanced development pattern. It is the inevitable choice when the coal enterprises research the new industrialization. This paper sets out from the coal enterprise develops circular economy, to illustrate strategic importance of circular economy to coal industry, to demonstrate the coal enterprises coal energy's effects to the environment, and propose related policies and measures, to realized a win-win situation of energy conservation and environmental conservation. Key words: Coal enterprise; Circular economy; Coal; Environment


We describe in this article a multiagent urban traffic simulation, as we believe individual-based modeling is necessary to encompass the complex influence the actions of an individual vehicle can have on the overall flow of vehicles. We first describe how we build a graph description of the network from purely geometric data, ESRI shapefiles. We then explain how we include traffic related data to this graph. We go on after that with the model of the vehicle agents: origin and destination, driving behavior, multiple lanes, crossroads, and interactions with the other vehicles in day-to-day, ?ordinary? traffic. We conclude with the presentation of the resulting simulation of this model on the Rouen agglomeration.


Work passion is defined as a strong inclination toward work to which people are willing to devote time and energy, which has good explanatory power over burnout, creativity, well-being and performance in the workplace. Based on the recent mainstream research, this paper makes a comprehensive review of the research on work passion. Firstly, it elaborates the origin, connotation and context of work passion, and then summarizes the static and dynamic theoretical perspectives of the research on work passion. Secondly, on the basis of systematically analyzing the antecedents and outcome variables of work passion, a multilevel integration model is put forward. Finally, this paper explores the future research directions, which aims to provide theoretical references for the study of staff management practice in the workplace and the research of work passion in China. This paper has some significance in the fields of innovation and creativity, employee well-being, workplace interpersonal relationship and so on.


Arthur von Hippel, a pioneer in the emergence of modern materials science, had a great goal: "the molecular designing of materials and devices." In this article, I describe how computational materials theory has evolved over the last half century, helping to transform that goal from dream to reality. I start with two great puzzles of the 1950s: why band theory and the nearly free electron picture work. These were resolved by Landau's quasiparticle theory and by pseudopotential theory, respectively.Together with the creation and development of density functional theory, key methodological advances, and the rapid evolution of computer hardware and software, these two insights have resulted in the achievement of the quantitative prediction of the structures and properties of complex materials. Bandgap engineering and design of multilayer multifunctional materials are given as examples of "molecular design."


htmlabstractAspect oriented programming aims at achieving better modularization
for a system's crosscutting concerns in order to improve its key quality
attributes, such as evolvability and reusability. Consequently, the adoption of
aspect-oriented techniques in existing (legacy) software systems is of interest to
remediate software aging. The refactoring of existing systems to employ aspectorientation
will be considerably eased by a systematic approach that will ensure
a safe and consistent migration.
In this paper, we propose a refactoring and testing strategy that supports such
an approach and consider issues of behavior conservation and (incremental) integration
of the aspect-oriented solution with the original system. The strategy is
applied to the JHOTDRAW open source project and illustrated on a group of selected
concerns. Finally, we abstract from the case study and present a number of
generic refactorings which contribute to an incremental aspect-oriented refactoring
process and associate particular types of crosscutting concerns to the model
and features of the employed aspect language. The contributions of this paper are
both in the area of supporting migration towards aspect-oriented solutions and
supporting the development of aspect languages that are better suited for such
migrations.


Using a high temperature virial expansion, we present a controllable study of the thermodynamics of strongly correlated Fermi gases near the BEC-BCS crossover region. We propose a practical way to determine the expansion coefficients for both harmonically trapped and homogeneous cases, and calculate the third order coefficient b{3}(T) at finite temperatures T. At resonance, a T-independent coefficient b{3,infinity};{hom} approximately -0.290 952 95 is determined in free space. These results are compared with a recent thermodynamic measurement of 6Li atoms, at temperatures below the degeneracy temperature, and with Monte Carlo simulations.


We examined the influence of different emotional cues (happy or sad) on temporal attention (short or long interval) using behavioral as well as event-related potential recordings during a Stroop task. Emotional stimuli cued short and long time intervals, inducing 'sad-short', 'sad-long', 'happy-short', and 'happy-long' conditions. Following the intervals, participants performed a numeric Stroop task. Behavioral results showed the temporal attention effects in the sad-long, happy-long, and happy-short conditions, in which valid cues quickened the reaction times, but not in the sad-short condition. N2 event-related potential components showed sad cues to have decreased activity for short intervals compared with long intervals, whereas happy cues did not. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for different modulation of sad and happy facial cues on temporal attention. Furthermore, sad cues inhibit temporal attention, resulting in longer reaction time and decreased neural activity in the short interval by diverting more attentional resources.


The bacterial insertion sequence IS21 when repeated in tandem efficiently promotes non-replicative cointegrate formation in Escherichia coli. An IS21-IS21 junction region which had been engineered to contain unique SalI and BglII sites close to the IS21 termini was not affected in the ability to form cointegrates with target plasmids. Based on this finding, a novel procedure of random linker insertion mutagenesis was devised. Suicide plasmids containing the engineered junction region (pME5 and pME6) formed cointegrates with target plasmids in an E.coli host strain expressing the IS21 transposition proteins in trans. Cointegrates were resolved in vitro by restriction with SalI or BglII and ligation; thus, insertions of four or 11 codons, respectively, were created in the target DNA, practically at random. The cloned Pseudomonas aeruginosa arcB gene encoding catabolic ornithine carbamoyltransferase was used as a target. Of 20 different four-codon insertions in arcB, 11 inactivated the enzyme. Among the remaining nine insertion mutants which retained enzyme activity, three enzyme variants had reduced affinity for the substrate ornithine and one had lost recognition of the allosteric activator AMP. The linker insertions obtained illustrate the usefulness of the method in the analysis of structure-function relationships of proteins.


The study was conducted based on the Moscow State Pedagogical University with the involvement of 126 students aged 17 to 21 years. Of these, 101 students suffered a coronavirus infection (experimental group). The control group consisted of 25 people who did not have COVID-19. The study included a questionnaire on the scale of asthenic condition, measurement of lung capacity, calculation of the Skibinsky index, determination of breath holding time, assessment of exercise tolerance, and cardiac rhythmography. Statistical data processing was carried out using the Microsoft Excel, STATISTICA 10 software package. Differences in the occurrence of deviations in the subjective and objective status of recovered and not ill students were noted. Most of the surveyed, who had asthenia, suffered from COVID-19 (85%). The recovered patients showed a significant decrease in the vital capacity of the lungs, and the presence of more pronounced shortness of breath in the six-minute walk test compared to the control group. According to the majority of the conducted tests, it was noted that the disease left fewer consequences for students who previously regularly went in for sports. To prevent the development and weakening of the manifestations of the post-COVID syndrome, all students should be strongly advised to increase the level of regular physical activity in any sport.


In the present thesis molecular genetic methods were used to address different biological and clinical aspects of Philadelphia (Ph) chromosome-positive leukemias and the BCR and ABL genes. In the first study, children with Ph-positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) were found to have essentially the same breakpoint locations in BCR as adults, a pattern which differs from the one seen in Ph-positive acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL). In the second study, the breakpoint position within the major breakpoint cluster region (M-bcr) of the BCR gene was determined in 133 Ph-positive CML patients. No correlation was found between the breakpoint site and different clinical and/or hematologic parameters, including duration of the chronic phase and survival time. In the third study, the CRK proto-oncogene was localized to chromosome band 17p13, a segment frequently deleted during disease progression in CML, offering a new candidate gene to be investigated for its possible involvement in the disease progression. In the fourth study, it was shown that both BCR genes are expressed in the peripheral blood of healthy individuals, making it unlikely that imprinting would account for the previously reported parental-specific involvement of chromosomes 9 and 22 in the t(9;22). The identification of the adaptor protein CRKL as the major phosphorylated protein in the CML cell line K562 in the fifth study, and the demonstration that BCR/ABL and ABL bind to and phosphorylate CRKL, indicate that CRKL is likely to play a biologically important role in the development of Ph-positive leukemias. In the sixth study, first steps were taken to evaluate the effects of interferon-alfa treatment on a transgenic mouse model for Ph-positive ALL. No prolonged survival or altered disease pattern was observed. In the final study, RNA in situ hybridization was used in an attempt to further elucidate the significance of the high expression of BCR in the brain. It was found that the expression of BCR was localized to highly specialized brain regions, reflecting a potentially interesting, yet presently poorly understood, function of BCR in the brain. (Less)