In this work thin ZnO layers were grown by metal-organic PECVD (RF 13.56 MHz) on Si wafers. Zn acetylacetonate was used as a precursor and oxygen as oxidant. A system for dosed injection of the precursor and oxidant into the plasma reactor was developed. The influence of the substrate surface topology and temperature on the structural properties of the deposited layers was studied. ZnO and graphite powder dispersions were used to modify the silicon wafers before starting the deposition process of the layers. Some of the ZnO layers were deposited on the back, unpolished, side of Si wafers. Depositions at 400 °C were performed to examine the effect of the substrate temperatures on the layer growth. The film structure was examined by XRD and SEM. The results show that all layers are crystalline with hexagonal wurtzite structure. The crystallites are preferentially oriented along the c-axis direction perpendicular to the substrate surfaces. ZnO layers deposited on thin ZnO seed films and clean Si surface exhibit well-developed grain structures and more c-axis preferred phase with better crystal quality than that of the layers deposited on graphite seed layer or rough, unpolished Si wafer.


Wildfires and outbreaks of the spruce budworm, Choristoneura fumiferana (Clem.), are the two dominant natural disturbances in Canada's boreal forest. While both disturbances have specific impacts on forest ecosystems, it is increasingly recognized that their interactions also have the potential for non-linear behavior and long-lasting legacies on forest ecosystems' structures and functions. Previously, we showed that, in central Canada, fires occurred with a disproportionately higher frequency during a 'window of opportunity' following spruce budworm defoliation. In this study, we use Ontario's spatial databases for large fires and spruce budworm defoliation to locate where these two disturbances likely interacted. Classification tree and Random Forest procedures were then applied to find how spruce budworm defoliation history, climate, and forest conditions best predict the location of such budworm–fire interactions. Results indicate that such interactions likely occurred in areas geographically bound by hardwood content in the south, the prevalence of the three major spruce budworm host species (balsam fir, white spruce and black spruce) in the north, and climate moisture in the west. The occurrence of a spruce budworm–fire interaction inside these boundaries is related to the frequency of spruce budworm defoliation. These patterns provide a means of distinguishing regions where spruce budworm attacks are likely to increase fire risk.


Engineering graphics (EG) is the subject of transferring information from design into manufacture. Developing ability to create and read graphical representation of engineering structure is essential for individual. Therefore, training engineers able to use the graphical language to communicate is vital in every engineering college. However, in the classroom, where lecture time is limited, it is hard for the instructors to illustrate clearly the relationship between the 3D geometry and their 2D projection using only one kind of presenting technique. This work gives a brief insight into the potential and challenges of using Augmented Reality (AR) in Engineering Graphics Education. An AR-based system specifically designed for EG instruction were studied and developed. The system aims at improving the spatial awareness and interest of learning.


This study was carried out to investigate the effect of nutritional knowledge on food habits of male employees in Korea. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to 265 male employees of Seoul and Kyunggi area in Korea. The data were analyzed by t-test and ANOVA using SPSS (ver 12.0). Regarding the general aspects of subjects, the highest percent of ages were between the age 21-30 year old. Most respondents were graduates from a university. About twenty percent of male employees" average income was 1-2 million won per month. Most of their families were nuclear families. Eighty three percent of the respondents did not experience any education on nutrition and obtained food and nutritional information from television and internet. The respondents had a high level of perceived knowledge (86.2%); yet, the accuracy of knowledge was lower than the perceived knowledge (72.31%). Regarding the nutritional knowledge, single groups showed a lower score than married groups and groups living with family. Higher nutritional knowledge correlated with higher educational levels, among man in their twenties and thirties. With regards to their eating habits, the frequency of food intake within a weekly period was significantly different; a large percentage of respondents had high frequencies of instant food, alcohol consumption, and smoking. The higher scores regarding dietary habits were for age groups ranging from 41-60 year old, married individuals, nuclear family groups and educational groups with university degrees. Based on the results of this study, male employees have problem concerning food habits in that they are unbalanced and have a tendency to skip meals. Therefore, for the improvement of nutritional status and eating behavior of male employees, the importance of nutrition needs to be emphasized with proper nutritional education programs.


Maxillofacial injuries result from a variety of daily activities. Traffic accidents, interpersonal violence, and falls represent some of the most common etiological factors behind maxillofacial fractures. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the social distancing measures imposed by healthcare authorities aimed at abolishing the spread of the viral infection. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of social distancing measures on the incidence of maxillofacial injuries. Methods: Data were retrieved from the medical file registry at the Galilee Medical Center, Nahariya, Israel. Incidence, gender, age, etiology, and cost of hospitalization during the COVID-19 lockdown and the previous periods were retrieved. Results: A decrease in maxillofacial fractures was registered during the 2020 lockdown; younger patients had the largest share of maxillofacial traumas during this period. The midface was the most involved facial region in both periods, and a reduction of 62.3% in the cost of OMF fracture treatment was observed during the COVID-19 era. Conclusions: The occurrence, etiology, and cost of treatment of maxillofacial injuries during the COVID-19 period were different from those in the corresponding period in the pre-COVID-19 era. These results can provide a guide to help design programs for the prevention of OMF trauma.


The increasing frequency and intensity of droughts and floods, coupled with increasing temperatures and declining rainfall totals, are exacerbating existing vulnerabilities in southern Africa. Agriculture is the most affected sector as 95% of cultivated area is rainfed. This review addressed trends in moisture stress and the impacts on crop production, highlighting adaptation possible strategies to ensure food security in southern Africa. Notable changes in rainfall patterns and deficiencies in soil moisture are estimated and discussed, as well as the impact of rainfall variability on crop production and proposed adaptation strategies in agriculture. Climate moisture index (CMI) was used to assess aridity levels. Southern Africa is described as a climate hotspot due to increasing aridity, low adaptive capacity, underdevelopment and marginalisation. Although crop yields have been increasing due to increases in irrigated area and use of improved seed varieties, they have not been able to meet the food requirements of a growing population, compromising regional food security targets. Most countries in the region depend on international aid to supplement yield deficits. The recurrence of droughts caused by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) continue devastating the region, affecting livelihoods, economies and the environment. An example is the 2015/16 ENSO drought that caused the region to call for international aid to feed about 40 million people. In spite of the water scarcity challenges, cereal production continues to increase steadily due to increased investment in irrigated agriculture and improved crop varieties. Given the current and future vulnerability of the agriculture sector in southern Africa, proactive adaptation interventions are important to help farming communities develop resilient systems to adapt to the changes and variability in climate and other stressors.


3D Scanning has allowed for the scanning of spaces serving as a valuable tool for verifying existing conditions. The cost, setup and processing times associated with procuring this activity limits its use within an active construction site. With setup consisting of multiple scans from triangulated views of one another, achieving an accurate scan can be troublesome. Recent developments of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technologies have enable indoor tracking of spaces through an array of sensors. The Google® Tango Tablet incorporates SLAM technology within a handheld device. Paired with the tablets depth sensors and software, 3D scanning can be achieved quickly and at substantially lower costs. This paper presents findings of a research study which investigated the 3D scanning applications of Handheld SLAM devices. This research helps us to explore an emerging technology that could allow for significant costs and time saving for the construction industry. This research will be a great aid in determining the value and best applications of handheld SLAM devices.


This paper proposes an improved Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control for the inverter's photovoltaic (PV) string connection. This is achieved by replacing MPPT control microcontrollers across each PV string with a single central microcontroller controlling all PV strings' Maximum Power Point (MPP). The proposed system, in addition to making the PV string system more power efficient, also reduces the overall system cost. However, replacing multiple controllers across each string with a single central controller makes the MPPT problem multi-dimensional, increasing the complexity. To solve this, we first used the Jaya algorithm for solving the multi-dimensional MPPT problem. Then, the proposed Multi-Dimensional MPPT (MDMPPT) Jaya is compared to another metaheuristic, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and a conventional algorithm, the Perturb and Observe (P&O). The results prove the superiority of the proposed Jaya algorithm over PSO and P&O.


Aerobic glycolysis in cancer cells, also known as the Warburg effect, is an indispensable hallmark of cancer. This metabolic adaptation of cancer cells makes them remarkably different from normal cells; thus, inhibiting aerobic glycolysis is an attractive strategy to specifically target tumor cells while sparing normal cells. Macrosphelide A (MSPA), an organic small molecule, is a potential lead compound for the design of anti-cancer drugs. However, its role in modulating cancer metabolism remains poorly understood. MSPA target proteins were screened using mass spectrometry proteomics combined with affinity chromatography. Direct and specific interactions of MSPA with its candidate target proteins were confirmed by in vitro binding assays, competition assays, and simulation modeling. The siRNA-based knockdown of MSPA target proteins indirectly confirmed the cytotoxic effect of MSPA in HepG2 and MCF-7 cancer cells. In addition, we showed that MSPA treatment in the HEPG2 cell line significantly reduced glucose consumption and lactate release. MSPA also inhibited cancer cell proliferation and induced apoptosis by inhibiting critical enzymes involved in the Warburg effect: aldolase A (ALDOA), enolase 1 (ENO1), and fumarate hydratase (FH). Among these enzymes, the purified ENO1 inhibitory potency of MSPA was further confirmed to demonstrate the direct inhibition of enzyme activity to exclude indirect/secondary factors. In summary, MSPA exhibits anti-cancer effects by simultaneously targeting ENO1, ALDOA, and FH.


Content based image retrieval is an active research issue that had been famous from 1990s till present. The main target of CBIR is to get accurate results with lower computational time. This paper discusses on the comparative method used in color histogram based on two major methods used frequently in CBIR which are; normal color histogram using GLCM, and color histogram using KMeans. A set of 9960 images are used to test the accuracy and the precision of each methods. Using Euclidean distance, similarity between queried image and the candidate images are calculated. Experiment results shows that color histogram with K-Means method had high accuracy and precise compared to GLCM. Future work will be made to add more features that are famous in CBIR which are texture, color, and shape features in order to get better results.


Nowadays, due to the advantages of non-contact and high-speed, vision-based pose measurements have been widely used for aircraft performance testing in a wind tunnel. However, usually glass ports are used to protect cameras against the high-speed airflow influence, which will lead to a big measurement error. In this paper, to further improve the vision-based pose measurement accuracy, an imaging model which considers the refraction light of the observation window was proposed. In this method, a nonlinear camera calibration model considering the refraction brought by the wind tunnel observation window, was established first. What's more, a new method for the linear calibration of the normal vector of the glass observation window was presented. Then, combining with the proposed matching method based on coplanarity constraint, the six pose parameters of the falling target could be calculated. Finally, the experimental setup was established to conduct the pose measurement study in the laboratory, and the results satisfied the application requirements. Besides, experiments for verifying the vision measurement accuracy were also performed, and the results indicated that the displacement and angle measurement accuracy approximately increased by 57% and 33.6%, respectively, which showed the high accuracy of the proposed method.


Background

Mistletoe extract, which is usually used as a complementary agent for cancer patients, provides an anticancer effect on various malignancies. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of mistletoe extract (Abnoba Viscum Q®) on tumor responses in neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for locally advanced rectal cancer.
Methods

The rectal cancer patients who underwent neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy were analyzed from Jan 2018 to Jul 2020. In the mistletoe group (MG), the patients were administered Abnoba Viscum Q® subcutaneously during chemoradiotherapy, and it was maintained just before surgery. Patients' demographics, clinical outcomes, and histopathological outcomes were compared between chemoradiation with the MG and nonmistletoe group (NMG).
Results

A total of 52 patients were included. There were MG of 15 patients and NMG of 37 patients. Baseline demographics were statistically similar between the two groups except the CA19-9 and tumor location levels from anal verge. There was no difference in the clinical stage for both groups. We also observed better tumor response in MG in terms of TRG, T stage, and overall TNM stage. Tumor response was significantly better in MG comparing NMG in terms of pathologic complete response rate (53.3% vs 21.6%, p = 0.044), good responder of tumor regression grade (66.7% vs 32.4%, p = 0.024), T downstaging (86.7% vs 43.2%, p = 0.004), and overall downstaging (86.7% vs 56.8%, p = 0.040). The toxicities during NCRT in both groups were minimal.
Conclusion

MG treated with chemoradiation combined with mistletoe extract showed better outcomes than NMG in terms of tumor responses. This diversity in treatment may elevate the method to hope for better oncologic outcomes. Prospective and randomized studies with long-term follow-up are warranted to confirm and extend this study.


Nasal mucociliary clearance was measured in healthy young human subjects and tracheal clearance in the experimental animal under a wide variety of conditions. There is a broad range of clearance rates whether at standard ambient conditions (23 degrees C, 50% relative humidity) or in the face of a number of environmental variables. The degree to which those differences are attributable to the effectiveness of ciliary beating or the character of airway secretions is not known. Studies of tracheobronchial secretions simultaneous with clearance measurement in the anaesthetized dog have not yet provided a definite answer. Variations in upper respiratory defence mechanisms may bear some relationship to the aetiology of small airway disease in the lungs.


Introduction: The sipunculans are a group of marine invertebrates that have been little studied in the tropical eastern Pacific (TEP). Antillesoma antillarum is a species belonging to the monospecific family Antillesomatidae, considered widely distributed in tropical and subtropical localities across the globe. Objective: The main objective of this work was to examine the morphological and molecular differences between specimens from both coasts of tropical America to clarify the taxonomy of this species. Methods: We examined the morphology with material from the Mexican Caribbean and southern Mexican Pacific. To perform molecular analyses, two sequences of the COI molecular marker were obtained from specimens collected in Panteón Beach, Oaxaca, southern Mexican Pacific, and compared with four sequences identified as A. antillarum in GenBank, all of them from different localities. A phylogenetic reconstruction was performed with the maximum likelihood method and genetic distances were calculated with the Kimura 2P model and compared to reference values. Results: The phylogenetic analysis revealed three different lineages of Antillesoma that are well supported by bootstrap values: Antillesoma antillarum sensu stricto from the Caribbean Sea and Florida; a sister group to the one represented by our samples from the Mexican Pacific; and a third group from Thailand. Conclusion: Based on morphological traits and molecular data, Antillesoma mexicanum sp. nov. is described from the Mexican Pacific, differing from A. antillarum in the trunk papillae, color patterns and, additionally, the specimens from the Caribbean attain significantly bigger trunk sizes than the ones Pacific.


This paper reviews the relationship between investment appraisal techniques and strategic decision making in property development. The study is based on a survey developed by the author in the city of Porto Alegre and supported by Fapergs and Sinduscon/RS. The work leads to a scenario where property developers do not often make use of investment appraisal techniques, but adopting contingencial approaches prior to deciding on their development projects.


Although bestiality is an infrequent form of animal cruelty, the possibility of identifying a potential link between these acts and later interpersonal violence is an area of research that deserves further exploration. In a replication of the Hensley, Tallichet, and Singer study and based on survey data from male inmates at a medium- and maximum-security prison in a southern state, the present investigation examines whether inmates who engaged in childhood bestiality (n = 23) differ from those who did not (n = 157) in terms of race, childhood residence, education, commission of a personal crime (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated/simple assault), and the number of personal crimes committed. The results revealed that respondents who had engaged in childhood bestiality were more likely to commit adult interpersonal crimes on two or more occasions as compared to those who had not engaged in bestiality. These findings lend further support to the sexually polymorphous theory that childhood bestiality may be a potential precursor to adult interpersonal violence.


The electronic and charge transport properties of Metal-Quinolates (Metal = Li, Na, K, Rb and Cs) compounds are theoretically investigated using AustinFrisch-Petersson functional with dispersion (APFD) corrected density functional theory (DFT). The calculated energy gap between highest occupied molecular orbital and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital ranges from 3.40 eV for LiQ to 0.93 eV for CsQ. The ionisation potential, electron affinity and chemical hardness of the compounds are calculated. We found that the electron hopping rate, kelectron of CsQ is around 150 times greater than LiQ. We suggest that CsQ is the most efficient charge injecting or transport material for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Dimer formation is desirable with all M-Quinolate with different electronic structures and (CsQ)2 dimer shows the lowest dimerisation energy.


In this paper, a smoothing algorithm for training max-min neural networks is proposed. Specifically, we apply a smooth function to approximate functions and use this smoothing technique twice, once to eliminate the inner operator and once to eliminate the operator. In place of actual network output by its approximation function, we use all partial derivatives of the approximation function with respect to weight to substitute those of the actual network output. Then, the smoothing algorithm is constructed by the gradient descent method. This algorithm can also be used to solve fuzzy relational equations. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of our smoothing algorithm for training max-min neural networks.


Power system state estimation is a key component of real-time monitoring, enabling extensive analysis and decision making for grid security and efficiency. One challenge that has seen recent interest involves the monitoring and mitigation of geomagnetically induced currents (GICs). These quasi-dc currents are the result of solar activity and can cause additional reactive power losses in transformers. The subsequent loss of reactive power support may result in voltage deviation at many buses. In a traditional state estimator, these voltage deviations may be masked by or attributed to incorrect estimations of generator reactive power output. Alternatively, the voltage state estimate may accumulate additional error, due to trying to match measurements to equations that do not represent the actual physical system and condition. This paper presents a case study that shows the need for state estimation models that consider GIC effects and analyzes the required increase in GIC-related measurements and models incurred therein.


Studies on metabolism of prostaglandin E2 in man have led to the identification of a dicarboxylic acid as a major urinary metabolite. This study examiens the structure of urinary metabolites of PGF2 alpha in man. Female subjects were injected intravenously with radioactive PGF2 alpha (35 mcg 200 mcCi/mcmole) and unlabeled PGF2 alpha. Urine samples were collected and processed as described. Gas-liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry were used to analyze the C values of the derivatives. The structures of the different derivatives are described. A metabolite of the PGF2 alpha is shown to correspond to a metabolite formed from PGE2. The metabolites were found to differ only in the functional group at C-5. Further studies on the structure of the remaining urinary metabolites of PGF2 alpha are being conducted in the authors laboratory.


Entity Matching is the task of deciding if two entity descriptions refer to the same real-world entity. State-of-the-art entity matching methods often rely on fine-tuning Transformer models such as BERT or RoBERTa. Two major drawbacks of using these models for entity matching are that (i) the models require significant amounts of fine-tuning data for reaching a good performance and (ii) the fine-tuned models are not robust concerning out-of-distribution entities. In this paper, we investigate using ChatGPT for entity matching as a more robust, training data-efficient alternative to traditional Transformer models. We perform experiments along three dimensions: (i) general prompt design, (ii) in-context learning, and (iii) provision of higher-level matching knowledge. We show that ChatGPT is competitive with a fine-tuned RoBERTa model, reaching a zero-shot performance of 82.35% F1 on a challenging matching task on which RoBERTa requires 2000 training examples for reaching a similar performance. Adding in-context demonstrations to the prompts further improves the F1 by up to 7.85% when using similarity-based example selection. Always using the same set of 10 handpicked demonstrations leads to an improvement of 4.92% over the zero-shot performance. Finally, we show that ChatGPT can also be guided by adding higher-level matching knowledge in the form of rules to the prompts. Providing matching rules leads to similar performance gains as providing in-context demonstrations.


We welcome the opportunity to address the points raised by Mark et al . in their discussion of the chemical abrasion isotope dilution thermal ionization mass spectrometry (CA–ID–TIMS) U–Pb age constraint on the Rhynie Chert Konservat-Lagerstatte presented by Parry et al . (2011) and also to make some further observations of our own. We begin by briefly providing some context for the benefit of the wider readership. Two radio-isotopic age constraints on the Rhynie Chert Konservat-Lagerstatte and, by corollary, its parental hydrothermal (hot-spring) system have recently been published. The first of these is a weighted mean 40Ar/39Ar plateau age of 403.9 ± 2.1 Ma (2σ) derived from the analysis of two samples of vein-hosted hydrothermal K-feldspar and a single sample of hydrothermally altered andesite (Mark et al . 2011). In order to account for systematic uncertainties associated with the 40Ar/39Ar geochronometer, Mark et al . (2011) recalculated their individual sample ages with reference to the Fish Canyon Tuff sanidine (FCs) age of 28.201 Ma (Kuiper et al . 2008), thereby producing a 'U–Pb comparable' mean age of 407.1 ± 2.2 Ma (2σ). An alternative 'preferred age' for the Rhynie hot-spring activity (407.6 ± 2.2 Ma (2σ)) has now been produced from the 'raw' data using the optimization model of Renne et al . (2010, 2011) (this discussion). The 40Ar/39Ar system calibrations on which these various ages are based are summarized in Table 1. The second radio-isotopic age constraint in question is a weighted mean 206Pb/238U zircon age of 411.5 ± 1.3 Ma (2σ, including decay constant- and tracer calibration-related uncertainties; MSWD = 0.12, n = 4) yielded by the Milton of Noth Andesite, a moderately altered basaltic andesite lava flow (cum …


Abstract The movement of fertiliser sulphur (S), within soils belonging to the recent and yellow-brown earth soil groups, was investigated by applying 35S labelled gypsum fertiliser to several field trials. Under contrasting spring rainfall conditions. and at the same rate of S fertiliser application, a markedly different pattern of S distribution occurred on two recent soils of similar texture. Year-toyear variations in winter rainfall (hence leaching) also influenced fertiliser S movement at the sites studied. The magnitude of this effect depends to some extent on soil type. Halving the rate of fertiliser S application did not affect the depth of fertiliser S penetration on two soils of differing texture but resulted in 50% less fertiliser S in anyone soil depth investigated. A 2-month delay in fertiliser S application, in spring, resulted in less leaching losses on a sandytextured soil. Little difference occurred in the distribution of fertiliser S in a heavier-textured soil. The significance of the re...


An infestation of a sooty tern colony on Bird Island, Seychelles, with the ixodid tick Amblovomma loculosum was studied during visits to the colony in 1993 to 1995. During the infestation, adult ticks were numerous during the birds' incubation, larvae were abundant when young chicks were present, and there was some evidence that nymphs were found when older chicks were present. The life cycle of the tick appeared closely synchronized with that of its host. Following a breeding failure of the sooty terns, caused by adverse weather in August-September 1994, few adult ticks were found during the birds' breeding season of 1995, suggesting that the absence of chicks late in the 1994 breeding season led to starvation of the ticks and their failure to survive their diapause until the onset of the birds' next breeding season.


Five genotypes as lines and two varieties as testers of greengram (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek) were studied in line x tester analysis. The study reveals tht the gene action involved in controlling characters namely, plant height, number of branches per plant, number of clusters per plant, number of pods per plant and seed yield per plant is non-additive gene action. The parents Pusa 9531, HUM 1 and Vamban 1 recorded superior mean performance for seed yield per plant, number of clusters per plant and number of pods per plant. The parent CO 5 recorded. superior mean performance for all characters. The parent KM 2163 showed good combining ability for all characters except plant height and high mean for number of clusters per plant and pods per plant. The cross Vamban 1 x KM 2163 and CO 5 x KM 2163 showed superior mean performance for all the characters except plant height and non-significant sea for all the characters. The gene action involved in these crosses might be of additive type. Hence, this cross could be subjected to further selection to obtain high yielding segregants through pedigree breeding programme.


Poland is about to face social changes caused by a huge number of refugees and immigrants heading towards Europe. Not all of them come from societies whose culture is close to ours. The crisis of the peaceful idea of coexistence of cultures ((Multikulti) inspires us to analyse the European experience in the process of building integrated society and to draw conclusions. In this way we can avoid repeating some mistakes of other countries. In this situation, education must be a strong foundation of a state policy.


This article investigates the implications of Baumol's cost disease for a publicly provided good in the presence of distortionary taxation. A model is presented in which the publicly provided good experiences low labour productivity growth relative to the private good. The public sector will grow monotonically with the productivity differential between sectors and the tax rate will be pushed to the top of the Laffer curve over time. This article also finds that the desire for redistribution will be crowded out by the impact of unbalanced growth and Baumol's cost disease.


Based on an empirical study involving novice translators, this article discusses the advantages of hermeneutic approach to translation teaching (Stolze 2011) as seen from translation students' point of view. Fifteen translation students participated in a pre-experimental procedure during which they were asked to translate a few texts of children's literature from English into Polish. The aim of the procedure was to check and verify the influence of the hermeneutic approach on novice translators' translation competence acquisition. Afterwards, the participants were given a special questionnaire and were asked to fill it in. The questions that they were asked to answer were concerned with their opinions relating to the hermeneutic approach to translation teaching. In the paper, opinions concerning the advantages of the approach are presented and discussed.


Abstract Background Environmental factors are strongly implicated in late-onset of inflammatory bowel disease. Here, we investigate whether high levels of perfluoroalkyl substances are associated with (1) late-onset inflammatory bowel disease, and (2) disturbances of the bile acid pool. We further explore the effect of the specific perfluoroalkyl substance perfluorooctanoic acid on intestinal barrier function in murine tissue. Methods Serum levels of perfluoroalkyl substances and bile acids were assessed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled to a triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer in matched samples from patients with ulcerative colitis (n = 20) and Crohn's disease (n = 20) diagnosed at the age of ≥55 years. Age and sex-matched blood donors (n = 20), were used as healthy controls. Ex vivo Ussing chamber experiments were performed to assess the effect of perfluorooctanoic acid on ileal and colonic murine tissue (n = 9). Results The total amount of perfluoroalkyl substances was significantly increased in patients with ulcerative colitis compared to healthy controls and patients with Crohn's disease (p < .05). Ex vivo exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid induced a significantly altered ileal and colonic barrier function. The distribution of bile acids, as well as the correlation pattern between (1) perfluoroalkyl substances and (2) bile acids, differed between patient and control groups. Discussion Our results demonstrate that perfluoroalkyl substances levels are increased in patients with late-onset ulcerative colitis and may contribute to the disease by inducing a dysfunctional intestinal barrier.


The detonation of a helium shell on a white dwarf (WD) has been proposed as a possible explosion triggering mechanism for SNe Ia. Here, we report ZTF 18aaqeasu (SN 2018byg/ATLAS 18pqq), a peculiar Type I supernova, consistent with being a helium-shell double-detonation. With a rise time of ≈18 days from explosion, the transient reached a peak absolute magnitude of MR ≈ −18.2 mag, exhibiting a light curve akin to sub-luminous SN 1991bg-like SNe Ia, albeit with an unusually steep increase in brightness within a week from explosion. Spectra taken near peak light exhibit prominent Si absorption features together with an unusually red color (g − r ≈ 2 mag) arising from nearly complete line blanketing of flux blueward of 5000 Å. This behavior is unlike any previously observed thermonuclear transient. Nebular phase spectra taken at and after ≈30 days from peak light reveal evidence of a thermonuclear detonation event dominated by Fe-group nucleosynthesis. We show that the peculiar properties of ZTF 18aaqeasu are consistent with the detonation of a massive (≈0.15 ) helium shell on a sub-Chandrasekhar mass (≈0.75 ) WD after including mixing of ≈0.2 of material in the outer ejecta. These observations provide evidence of a likely rare class of thermonuclear supernovae arising from detonations of massive helium shells.


FinTech has proven its true potential in traditional financial offerings by delivering digital financial services to individuals worldwide. The pandemic has accelerated how people interact with financial services and has resulted in long-term changes to societies and economies. FinTech has expanded access to financial services and has made such changes possible. FinTech or Financial Technology refers to using new technologies for financial services. Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and cloud computing are a few technologies currently being applied to FinTech. In this paper, we consider FinTech, which partly uses blockchain technology. Blockchain technology plays a vital role in the financial sector as it ultimately lifts trust and the need for third-party verification by using consensus-based verification. This survey provides a comprehensive summary of the most relevant blockchain-based FinTech implementations and an overview of FinTech sectors and segments. For each segment, we provide a critique and a discussion on how each blockchain implementation contributes to solving the majority of problems faced by FinTech companies and researchers. This research aims to direct the future of financial solutions by providing an outline of the applications of blockchain technology and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for FinTech. We discuss various implementations, limitations, and challenges of blockchain-based FinTech applications. We conclude this work by exploring possible strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis and future research directions.


Locating apparent horizons is not only important for a complete understanding of numerically generated spacetimes, but it may also be a crucial component of the technique for evolving black-hole spacetimes accurately. A scheme proposed by Libson, Mass\'o, Seidel, and Suen, based on expanding the location of the apparent horizon in terms of symmetric trace-free tensors, seems very promising for use with three-dimensional numerical data sets. In this paper, we generalize this scheme and perform a number of code tests to fully calibrate its behavior in black-hole spacetimes similar to those we expect to encounter in solving the binary black-hole coalescence problem. An important aspect of the generalization is that we can compute the symmetric trace-free tensor expansion to any order. This enables us to determine how far we must carry the expansion to achieve results of a desired accuracy. To accomplish this generalization, we describe a new and very convenient set of recurrence relations which apply to symmetric trace-free tensors.


Experiments on Bose-Einstein condensates in optical cavities have observed a coherent state of the matter-light system-superradiance. The nature of these experiments demands consideration of collective dynamics. Including cavity leakage and the backreaction of the cavity field on the condensate, we find a rich phase diagram including multiphase coexistence regions, and persistent optomechanical oscillations. The proximity of the phase boundaries results in a critical slowing down of the decay of many-body oscillations, which can be enhanced by large cavity loss.


Much is known about motivations for giving to charities generally. However, much less has been identified about bequestors as a unique type of charitable donor. This paper explores the motives and barriers for charitable bequest giving. Hypotheses are drawn from the general philanthropic literature and tested using survey data from Australia, a nation distinguished by very high lifetime (inter vivos) giving but low estate (post mortem) giving. The results show that belief in the efficacy of charitable organizations is requisite for leaving a bequest, as the deceased donor has no control over the enactment of the gift. This effect is mediated by the perceived difficulty of making a charitable bequest, which forms an important barrier for leaving such a legacy. Having family whose financial needs are perceived as not taken care of and the perception of financial inability to make a difference also form barriers for bequest giving. The results confirm that bequests constitute a distinctive charitable behaviour, with unique motives and barriers compared to other types of inter vivos giving. While charitable behaviour in general is driven by altruistic attitudes and political and religious values, as well as social reputation, these factors do not affect charitable bequest making as expected. Surprisingly, we find a negative relationship between financial resources and the inclination to leave a charitable bequest. The article ends with suggestions for ways charities might connect more meaningfully with their bequestors or with donors who might consider bequeathing to them. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The promise of broadband power line (BPL) communications - broadband access to virtually every home in the United States - remains unfulfilled if the radio emissions from these systems cause significant harmful interference to other users of the wireless spectrum. This article presents an elementary analysis of the physical mechanisms underlying these emissions, from which the interference characteristics of BPL systems can be derived. Numerical models are evaluated for idealized systems using overhead medium-voltage wires, a configuration that is of particular interest for U.S. deployments. The central conclusions of the analysis are: (i) BPL interference is governed primarily by two parameters: signal power and electrical balance of system excitation; (ii) interfering emissions are typically confined to the immediate vicinity of the BPL wire, but long-range effects cannot be neglected; and (iii) measurements on an installed BPL system suggest that it is operating within, but very close to, the limits set by rules recently adopted by the Federal Communications Commission.


Vietnam not only has a long history in traditional medicines but also has a diversity of medicinal plants to this day. Therefore, since 2016, the Government has introduced that the production of available medicinal materials was prioritized field in the development of pharmaceutical industry. However, until now, there is still little research related to drugs from medicinal materials and traditional medicines in our country, so we conducted this research to provide an overview of the registration situation of this drug group in Vietnam throughout the period 2009-2020. The results showed that in 12 years, drugs from medicinal materials and traditional medicines had had 2985 registration numbers, accounting for 6.9% of all registered drugs. Among 11 effect groups based on traditional medicines, the group of heat-clearing, detoxifying, dispelling rashes, and diuresis ranked first with 21.0%. Domestic drugs accounted for a large amount, with 2814 numbers (94.3%). Capsules and tablets were the two dosage forms with the highest number, holding 54.6%. In terms of drug components of registered traditional medicines, there were 87 products in single-component form and more than 1200 products in combination form. Our country had 224 manufacturers of this drug group, and 81 of them achieved GMP. In general, the registration of drugs from medicinal materials and traditional medicines met the guidelines set out by the Government, and manufactured drugs were qualified to serve the needs of people. However, in order to develop the field of drugs from medicinal materials and traditional medicines like other countries in Southeast Asia, in the coming years, Vietnam needs more support from the state management agencies and research efforts from pharmaceutical companies.
Keywords: Registration number, Drugs from medicinal materials, Traditional medicines, Vietnam.
References
[1] The Government, Resolution No. 226-CP Regarding the Development of Traditional Ethnic Medicine in Close Combination with Modern Medicine, in Order to Build Vietnamese Medicine, Hanoi, 1978 (in Vietnamese).[2] The Government, Resolution No. 37-CP Strategic Orientation of People's Health Care and Protection in the Period 1996-2000 and Vietnam's National Drug Policy, Hanoi, 1996 (in Vietnamese).[3] The National Asembly, Law of Pharmacy, No. 105/2016/QH13, Hanoi, 2016 (in Vietnamese).[4] N. H. Trang, Analyzing and Evaluating the Group of Registered Traditional Medicines for Circulation in Vietnam Until 2006, Department of Pharmacoeconomics and Management, Hanoi University of Pharmacy, 2006 (in Vietnamese).[5] N. T. H. Yen, T. H. Ngan, VNU Journal of Science: Situation Analysis of the Drug Registration in Vietnam from 2009 to 2019, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2021, pp. 2, https://doi.org/10.25073/2588-1132/vnumps 4297 (in Vietnamese).[6] World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, Access to Medical Products in the South-East Asia Region 2019: Review of Progress, https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/32682, 2019 (accessed on: March 27th, 2021).[7] Ministry of Health, Health Statistics Yearbook 2018, Medical Publshing House, Hanoi, 2018 (in Vietnamese).[8] The Prime Minister, Decision No. 1893/QD-Ttg Issuing the Program of Developing Traditional Medicine, Combining Traditional Medicine with Modern Medicine by 2030, Hanoi, 2019 (in Vietnamese).[9] The Prime Minister, Decision No. 68/QD-Ttg Approving the National Strategy on Development of the Vietnam Pharmaceutical Industry up to 2020, with A Vision Toward 2030, Hanoi, 2014 (in Vietnamese).[10] Drug Administration of Vietnam, List of Manufacturers of Drugs and Drug Materials in Vietnam that Satisfy the GMP Standards, https://dav.gov.vn/danh-sach-cssx-thuoc-nguyen-lieu-lam-thuoc-tai-vn-dap-ung-tieu-chuan-gmp-cap-nhat-den-ngay-0892020-n2930.html/, 2020 (accessed on: September 25th, 2020) (in Vietnamese).[11] Ministry of Health, Decision No. 3657/QD-BYT Issuing the List of 100 Medicinal Materials with High Medical and Economic Values to Focus on Development in 2020-2030, Hanoi, 2019 (in Vietnamese).[12] Ministry of Health, Circular No.19/2018/TT-BYT Introducing List of Essential Medicines, Hanoi, 2018 (in Vietnamese).[13] Ministry of Health, Circular No.05/2015/TT-BYT Promulgation of List of Oriental Medicines, Herbal Medicines and Traditional Ingredients Covered by Health Insurance, Hanoi, 2015 (in Vietnamese).[14] N. V. Cuong, Pharmaceutical Industry Update Report April 2020, http://www.fpts.com.vn/FileStore2/File/2020/04/10/Pharmaceutical_Update_Report_Apr2020_108753a8.pdf/, 2020 (accessed on: March 20th, 2021) (in Vietnamese).[15] Traphaco Joint Stock Company, Annual Report 2020, http://traphaco.com.vn/upload/files/20210322_TRA_AR2020%20-%20kyduyet%20(1).pdf/, 2020 (accessed on March 20th, 2021) (in Vietnamese).[16] The Prime Minister, Decision No. 1976/QD-Ttg Approving the Master Plan on Medicinal Plant Development Through 2020, with Orientations Toward 2030, Hanoi, 2013 (in Vietnamese).


Gestational diabetes mellitus is one of the most common endocrine diseases that occur during pregnancy. Disorders of blood glucose metabolism during pregnancy can increase the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, such as pregnancy-related hypertension, preeclampsia, eclampsia, miscarriage, macrosomia, and neonatal hypoglycemia. Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) can safely and effectively monitor blood glucose changes in patients with gestational hyperglycemia, thereby reducing adverse pregnancy outcomes. Hence, this article aimed to provide a comprehensive review of the progress and indications for using CGM in pregnant patients with diabetes. CGM can reduce blood glucose fluctuations and the occurrence of serious hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia events and can provide time in range (TIR). TIR is an important indicator of blood glucose level. Patients with a higher TIR during pregnancy have better gestational outcomes.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to review and illustrate various clinical applications of phase-contrast MRI.

CONCLUSION
Cardiac MRI has emerged as a valuable noninvasive clinical tool for evaluation of the cardiovascular system. Phase-contrast MRI has a variety of established applications in quantifying blood flow and velocity and several emerging applications, such as evaluation of diastolic function and myocardial dyssynchrony.


This research investigates a hypothesis posed by previous authors, which argues that the helical nature of the flow in supercell updrafts makes them more resistant to entrainment than nonsupercellular updrafts because of the suppressed turbulence in purely helical flows. It was further supposed that this entrainment resistance contributes to the steadiness and longevity of supercell updrafts. A series of idealized large-eddy simulations were run to address this idea, wherein the deep-layer shear and hodograph shape were varied, resulting in supercells in the strongly sheared runs, nonsupercells in the weakly sheared runs, and variations in the percentage of streamwise vorticity in updrafts among runs. Fourier energy spectrum analyses show well-developed inertial subranges in all simulations, which suggests that the percentages of streamwise and crosswise vorticity have little effect on turbulence in convective environments. Additional analyses find little evidence of updraft-scale centrifugally stable flow within updrafts, which has also been hypothesized to limit horizontal mass flux across supercell updrafts. Results suggest that supercells do have smaller fractional entrainment rates than nonsupercells, but these differences are consistent with theoretical dependencies of entrainment on updraft width, and with supercells being wider than nonsupercells. Thus, while supercells do experience reduced fractional entrainment rates and entrainment-driven dilution, this advantage is primarily attributable to increased supercell updraft width relative to ordinary convection, and has little to do with updraft helicity and rotation.


The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze two types of taekwondo players` goal-orientedness, i.e. assignment-orientedness and self-orientedness and also determine possible associations among goal-orientedness, perceived freedom and self-actualization so that it can help golf players resolve any potential problem in exerting their own abilities amid competitions with others, and also provides a basic reference material for their better athletic ability. This study took total 257 samples from male and female teenage taekwondo players at middle and high schools in Seoul and Gyeonggi province according to stratified cluster random sampling. Data from those samples were individually input in computer and analyzed via standard multiple regression analysis using SPSS 14.0 for Window so as to determine Relationship of perceived freedom and self-actualization depending on sociodemographic characteristics. As a result, this study came to the following conclusions: First, Goal-orientednessby and perceived freedom are related. Secon, Goal-orientednessby and self-actualization are related.


OBJECTIVE To evaluate the respiratory rate as an indicator of hypoxia in infants < 2 months of age. SETTING Pediatric emergency unit of an urban teaching hospital. SUBJECTS 200 infants < 2 months, with symptom(s) of any acute illness. METHODS Respiratory rate (by observation method), and oxygen saturation (SaO2) by means of a pulse oximeter were recorded at admission. Infants were categorised by presence or absence of hypoxia (SaO2⩽ 90%). RESULTS The respiratory rate was ⩾ 50/min in 120 (60%), ⩾ 60/min in 101 (50.5%), and ⩾ 70/min in 58 (29%) infants. Hypoxia (SaO2 ⩽ 90%) was seen in 77 (38.5%) infants. Respiratory rate and SaO2 showed a significant negative correlation (r = −0.39). Respiratory rate ⩾ 60/min predicted hypoxia with 80% sensitivity and 68% specificity. CONCLUSION These results indicates that a respiratory rate > 60/min is a good predictor of hypoxia in infants under 2 months of age brought to the emergency service of an urban hospital for any symptom(s) of acute illness.


ABSTRACT This paper deals with the recent transformations of the military-humanitarian technology for managing migration in the Mediterranean Sea, focusing on two naval operations, i.e. the European Union Operation Sophia deployed in the central Mediterranean and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) operation in the Aegean Sea, both deployed between 2015 and 2016 and still underway. Building on archival research on both missions and interviews with officials of Operation Sophia, we propose the notion of 'biopolitical warfare' to discuss these military-humanitarian interventions in the field of migration. These operations, we argue, stage a move to the offensive in the military-humanitarian government of migration by enlisting warfare against the logistics of migrant journeys. We then situate this argument within both the activist and the International Relations (IR) discourses on migration in the Mediterranean context: we differentiate the framework of 'warfare' from the 'war on migrants' argument deployed since the 1990s as part of activist discourse; we discuss the migration and warfare nexus in relation to the deployment of 'migrants as a human bomb' which has characterized the international relations discourse in Mediterranean countries since the early 2000s, including the recent Turkish–Greek context that led to the NATO intervention. Subsequently, the paper focuses on the targets and operations of the EU and NATO interventions and mobilizes the concept of 'hybrid war' to discuss how military and humanitarian techniques and rationales work when deployed as instruments of migration containment.


Current state of the art methods for generating semantic segmentation rely heavily on a large set of images that have each pixel labeled with a class of interest label or background. Coming up with such labels, especially in domains that require an expert to do annotations, comes at a heavy cost in time and money. Several methods have shown that we can learn semantic segmentation from less expensive image-level labels, but the effectiveness of point level labels, a healthy compromise between all pixels labelled and none, still remains largely unexplored. This paper presents a novel procedure for producing semantic segmentation from images given some point level annotations. This method includes point annotations in the training of a convolutional neural network (CNN) for producing improved localization and class activation maps. Then, we use another CNN for predicting semantic affinities in order to propagate rough class labels and create pseudo semantic segmentation labels. Finally, we propose training a CNN that is normally fully supervised using our pseudo labels in place of ground truth labels, which further improves performance and simplifies the inference process by requiring just one CNN during inference rather than two. Our method achieves state of the art results for point supervised semantic segmentation on the PASCAL VOC 2012 dataset \cite{everingham2010pascal}, even outperforming state of the art methods for stronger bounding box and squiggle supervision.


Shared decision making (SDM) is a collaborative process in which patients, families, and clinicians develop a mutually agreed upon treatment plan when more than one reasonable treatment option exists. This cooperative engagement fosters improvements in patient satisfaction, disease management, and outcomes and also has the capacity to promote evidence-based care. Thus, this seventh installment of our Evidence-Based Medicine in Otolaryngology series focuses on SDM. We introduce SDM, including its potential to reduce decisional conflict and decisional regret, when it should be used, its potential benefits, barriers to implementation, and its role in the management of chronic disease and otolaryngological conditions.


This study aims to investigate the effect of the incidence angle on the aerodynamic characteristics of the flow around a Savonius wind rotor. Six configurations with different incidence angles equal to θ=0°, θ=30°, θ=60°, θ=90°, θ=120° and θ=150° were studied. For this, we have developed a numerical simulation using the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code Fluent. The considered numerical model is based on the resolution of the Navier-Stokes equations in conjunction with the k-e turbulence model. These equations are solved by a finite volume discretization method. Particularly, we are interested in visualizing the velocity field, the mean velocity, the static pressure, the dynamic pressure, the turbulent kinetic energy, the dissipation rate of the turbulent kinetic energy and the turbulent viscosity. Results confirm that the variation of the incidence angle has an effect on the local characteristics. Our numerical results were compared with those obtained by anterior results. The comparison shows a good agreement and confirms the numerical method.


Mental health challenges such as stress, anxiety and depression are on the rise worldwide. Health virtual communities (VCs) is a rising paradigm that has proven to be efficient and effective in delivering mental health interventions that address self-management, diagnosis and treatment targeting people facing mental health challenges. However, current Health VCs have limited application; they lack the ability to provide access to coordinated services and to continuously collect and integrate data originating from different devices in a streamlined manner. The Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning represent a unique opportunity to expand the Health Virtual Community applications in the mental health domain; however, they represent a unique situation where challenges arise. This article will discuss the opportunities and challenges that virtual communities, machine learning and IoT represent for mental health research.


Storing and manipulating Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) file formats is an essential but difficult task in biological data analysis. The easyfm (easy file manipulation) toolkit (https://github.com/TaekAndBrendan/easyfm) makes manipulating commonly used NGS files more accessible to biologists. It enables them to perform end-to-end reproducible data analyses using a free standalone desktop application (available on Windows, Mac and Linux). Unlike existing tools (e.g. Galaxy), the Graphical User Interface (GUI)-based easyfm is not dependent on any high-performance computing (HPC) system and can be operated without an internet connection. This specific benefit allow easyfm to seamlessly integrate visual and interactive representations of NGS files, supporting a wider scope of bioinformatics applications in the life sciences. Author summary The analysis and manipulation of NGS data for understanding biological phenomena is an increasingly important aspect in the life sciences. Yet, most methods for analysing, storing and manipulating NGS data require complex command-line tools in HPC or web-based servers and have not yet been implemented in comprehensive, easy-to-use software. This is a major hurdle preventing more general application in the field of NGS data analysis and file manipulation. Here we present easyfm, a free standalone Graphical User Interface (GUI) software with Python support that can be used to facilitate the rapid discovery of target sequences (or user's interest) in NGS datasets for novice users. For user-friendliness and convenience, easyfm was developed with four work modules and a secondary GUI window (herein secondary window), covering different aspects of NGS data analysis (mainly focusing on FASTA files), including post-processing, filtering, format conversion, generating results, real-time log, and help. In combination with the executable tools (BLAST+ and BLAT) and Python, easyfm allows the user to set analysis parameters, select/extract regions of interest, examine the input and output results, and convert to a wide range of file formats. To help augment the functionality of existing web-based and command-line tools, easyfm, a self-contained program, comes with extensive documentation (hosted at https://github.com/TaekAndBrendan/easyfm) including a comprehensive step-by-step guide.


Statement of the problem. The article is devoted to the problem of studying the language view of the world of a child with motor alalia. Today, the issue of studying the language view of the world, both collective and individual, is well developed. In line with the anthropocentric approach and sociolinguistic direction, pictures of the world of social groups, typical members of society and outstanding individuals are being restored. By researching Russian and foreign scientific sources in this linguistic direction, the author seeks to find out how well-developed is the direction of research of the language view of the world of a child with motor alalia as a representative of the child population, and determines the level of relevance of this direction for the science of language.
The purpose of the article is to highlight the main directions of classical and modern research on this topic, the origins of the study and the current state of the issue.
The research methodology contains a theoretical analysis of scientific literature and periodicals, analysis and synthesis of the data obtained.
Research results. Studying the literature and publications in periodical scientific publications, the author comes to the conclusion about the prospects of this direction: the formed theoretical and methodological base correlates with the modern interest in the linguistics of children's speech and psycholinguistic problems.
Conclusion. A child with motor alalia is a representative of a child's social group. The restoration of this child's linguistic view of the world complements the information about the child's linguistic view of the world and is a variant of the existence of the human linguistic view of the world.


Infrared absorption properties of silica nanoparticles were studied. The transverse optical and the longitudinal optical phonon modes from the silica were proved to be the characteristic spectroscopic fingerprint signals. Based on this, a sandwich-structured immunoassay was performed, and the detection of the analyte (human IgG) was achieved by using biofunctional silica nanoparticles as infrared probes. The immunoassay based on Fourier transform infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy of silica nanoparticles shows significant value for potential applications in many areas, such as biomedicine, food safety, and waste treatment.


Communicating securely is what everyone wants. Earlier it was simply data hiding then reversible data hiding and currently its encrypted data hiding reversibly. Introducing new challenge is always as important as keeping it unreachable to the hacker. In proposed work security is enhanced by encrypting data and then embedding the encrypted form of data. Reserve Room before encryption gives an added advantage for enough space for data hiding. Haar wavelet is best suitable wavelet amongst other wavelet like symlet, bior, coiflet and contourlet, when the input image is encrypted image rather than a plain image. The quality of image has been evaluated by performance analysis like MSE, PSNR and hiding capacity on different types of color images and results were compared. Minimum errors with high SNR rate at various data hiding capacity were seen. General Terms Your general terms must be any term which can be used for general classification of the submitted material such as Pattern Recognition, Security, Algorithms et. al.


Many biologically inspired approaches have been investigated in relation with researches on mobile robot(s) that can effectively locate targets that induce gradient information. Here, we concentrate on realizing an adaptive searching behavior in mobile robot that is simple, yet effective with and without sensing the gradient information. We are interested in two searching behaviors found in biological creatures: bacterial chemotaxis, probably the simplest yet effective gradient sources searching behavior found in living creatures; and Levy walk, specialized random walks with fractal movement trajectories that optimize random search for sparsely and randomly distributed target(s). Our approach is to implement and combine the two searching behaviors based on "yuragi", a Japanese word for biological fluctuation.


In this article we focus on the level of subjective well-being and its determinants among the unemployed as compared to those currently in paid labour. We subject three strongly contradictory theoretical approaches to an empirical test. The first is the traditional deprivation theory, which maintains that unemployment is a major psychological stressor. The second is the incentive theory, which claims that the level of well-being among the unemployed may be sufficiently high to discourage them from actively and effectively searching for a new job and re-entering the labour market. The third approach emphasizes the adverse effects of financial stress for subjective well-being during unemployment. We use the European Social Survey (ESS) data from 21 countries in our empirical analysis. We find no support for the incentive theory. The deprivation theory points in the right direction by stressing the psychological factors associated with unemployment but makes a notable omission by disregarding the financial strain which, according to our analysis, proves to be crucial for the well-being of the unemployed.


This study investigates the possibility of decreasing the sheet density of paper made from unbleached kraft pulp for the middle layer in board production. The objective was to evaluate how treatments in a compressive screw equipment pressure expansion (PREX) plug screw feeder, atmospheric (HCatm) and pressurised high-consistency refining (HCpress refining) affect both fibre and paper properties and, in particular, how fibre curl affects sheet density.The plug screw pre-treatments and HC refining were performed under atmospheric and steam-pressurised conditions at 100 degrees C, 125 degrees C and 175 degrees C. Even though fibre curl increased considerably during plug screw treatment and HCatm and HCpress refining, the density of the paper sheets did not decrease, as had been expected. A possible explanation for this result may be that the fibres become more flexible during curl treatment, resulting in increased sheet density.In order to obtain fibres that were both very curly and stiff, three ways of improving the fibre stiffness were tested: 1) lowering the pH during refining, 2) drying the fibres (hornification) and 3) treating the fibres with 1,2,3,4-ButaneTetraCarboxylic Acid (BTCA). If the fibres are dried (hornified), there is a lowering effect on sheet density. However, fibre curl does not have any lowering effect on sheet density. If the pH is decreased during plug screw treatment, the sheet density may be reduced but, again, the fibre curl does not have any positive effect on sheet density. Fibres treated with BTCA had a marked lowering effect on sheet density. With this treatment, the fibre curl does have a positive effect on sheet density. The BTCA-treated fibres were also used to lower sheet density. A mixture of 15% by weight BTCA- treated fibres resulted in an approximately 9% density reduction.


Historical Introduction : Theories of the Basin Ranges VIEWS OF KING AND GILBERT Gilbert9s explanation of the isolated mountain ranges in the Great Basin of the western United States as uplifted and more or less dissected fault-blocks has received, since its first announcement in 1874, several modifications, the most important of which is one proposed two years later by Powell, whose contribution thus made to the solution of the Basin-Range problem is not so well known as it deserves to be. It may be recalled, in this connection, that the first theory to account for the Basin ranges was proposed in 1870 by King, who then announced that they consist of "a series of conformably stratified beds, reaching from the early Azoic up to the late Jurassic period, when these level beds were compressed into vast mountain corrugations and elevated above the sea in a general wide and high plateau," . . .


Power gating is an effective technique for reducing leakage power in deep submicron CMOS technology. Microarchitectural techniques for power gating of functional units have been developed by detecting suitable idle regions and turning them off to reduce leakage energy consumption; however, wakeup of functional units is needed when instructions are ready for execution such that wakeup overhead is naturally incurred. This study presents time-based power gating with reference pre-wakeup (PGRP), a novel predictive strategy that detects suitable idle periods for power gating and then enables pre-wakeup of needed functional units for avoiding wakeup overhead. The key insight is that most wakeups are repeated due to program locality. Thus, the pre-wakeup predictor learns the wakeup events and selects which prior branch instruction can provide early wakeup (wakeup patterns are visible); these information are then used to adequately prepare available functional units for instruction execution. Simulation results with benchmarks from SPEC2000 applications show that substantial leakage energy reduction with negligible performance degradation (0.38% on average) is worthwhile.


OBJECTIVE: To review the in vitro receptor binding data of calcium-channel blockers (CCBs) and in vivo studies in humans regarding the use of dual calcium-channel blocker therapy, with a focus on the use of this therapy for hypertens DATA SOURCE: A MEDLINE search was conducted to identify literature pertaining to CCBs. STUDY SELECTION: In vitro studies and investigations that evaluated CCB receptor binding and the interactions between subclasses of CCBs were chosen. All studies in humans and clinical trials that evaluated the use of dual CCB therapy in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases were selected for review. Also, case reports describing the use of dual CCB therapy were included in this article. DATA EXTRACTION: The methodology, results, and conclusions of the selected data were evaluated. Data regarding the in vitro receptor binding kinetics of CCBs, as well as interactions, were reported. Because there is limited information on dual CCB therapy for hypertension, clinical studies using this treatment for ischemic heart disease were also reviewed. They were summarized and compared on the basis of the degree of disease control (e.g., blood pressure, exercise tolerance), adverse effects, and other clinical endpoints of pharmacologic therapy. DATA SYNTHESIS: In vitro studies have identified binding sites for the dihydropyridine (nifedipine), diphenylalkylamine (verapamil), and benzothiazepine (diltiazem) subclasses of CCBs, and indicate that they are allosterically related to each other within the voltage-sensitive calcium-channel receptor. Dihydropyridine binding affinity is decreased with concomitant verapamil binding, but is enhanced by concomitant diltiazem binding. Dual CCB therapy has been shown to be efficacious in patients with ischemic heart disease. Although this therapy is limited by dose-related adverse effects, it appears to have an important role in patients with ischemia that is refractory to conventional therapy, or for those whose therapeutic options are limited by contraindications. Theoretically, many patients with hypertension may benefit similarly from dual CCB therapy. Because data evaluating this treatment option are sparse, recommendations regarding safety, efficacy, and the role of dual CCB therapy for hypertension would be premature. CONCLUSIONS: Controlled data evaluating dual CCB therapy for the treatment of hypertension are lacking. This treatment modality may be beneficial in the future, but requires further investigation to determine safety and efficacy.


Postmenopausal women with frontal recession may represent a diagnostic challenge, as frontal fibrosing alopecia and alopecia areata may be clinically difficult to distinguish. A 53‐year‐old postmenopausal woman presented with a progressive fronto‐temporal marginal alopecia with sparing of her eyebrows. Scalp biopsy of the affected frontal hairline revealed peribulbar lymphocytic inflammation, but no evidence of lichenoid inflammation, perifollicular fibrosis or scarring. Whereas the pathology strongly favoured alopecia areata, the clinical features overlapped with frontal fibrosing alopecia, a variant of lichen planopilaris targeting the frontal scalp. This paper presents an atypical clinical presentation of alopecia areata, which may be mistaken for frontal fibrosing alopecia.


Wine has been described previously as a rich source of polyphenols. However, an accurate screening of its complete phenolic profile is still lacking. In the present work, the analysis of 38 polyphenols in wine using ultra high performance liquid chromatography-linear ion trap/orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-LTQ/Orbitrap MS) was explored. Wines were directly detected. The sample was loaded onto a Thermo Hypersil Gold C18 column (100 mmx 2.1 mm, 1.9 µm) using a gradient elution of acetonitrile/water containing 0. 1% (v/v) formic acid for the separation. UPLC-LTQ/Orbitrap mass spectrometer acquired full scan MS date for quantification, and data dependent MS2 product ion spectra for identification and/ or confirmation. The regression coefficients (R2) for the calibration curves (two orders of magnitude up to the lowest calibration level) in the study were ≥ 0.99. The limits of detection for the 38 compounds were 0.002-0.50 mg/kg. The average recoveries at three spiked levels were in the range of 90%-102% with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.51%-2.56%. Mass errors were always ≤ 5 ppm. This procedure was then successfully applied to the analysis of the polyphenols in wines.


Abstract The 5th Generation of mobile networks (5G) is expected to be rolled out by 2020. New and revolutionary applications are already being envisioned, real-time control of machines, the Tactile Internet for wireless, Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things and self-driving cars, among others. To make this possible important enhancements and improvements in today's existing telecommunication technologies form an end-to-end perspective are required. Early testing and fast prototyping of new approaches and solutions will help to shape the evolving technologies. One of the technical enablers for 5G are two concepts based on the softwarisation and virtualisation of the core network, known as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation, NFV. Fraunhofer FOKUS has set up the Open5GCore testing environment to start shaping, together with its partners, the nascent 5G technologies by addressing these topics together with other relevant technological developments. After a short motivation, the architecture of the open5GCore is presented, followed by a functional description of supported features.


The damage rates of peach pyralid moth(Dichocrocis punctiferalis), which damages the chestnut fruits, were investigated annually from 1995 to 2010 according to year, region, and maturity. The damage rate by D. punctiferalis was the highest (34.5%) in 1998 and was the lowest (17.9%) in 2000. The pattern of the damage rate showed a repeating three-year cycle. There was a negative correlation () between rainfall and damage rate. There was a positive correlation () between temperature and damage rate. The average damage rate of all surveyed regions was 22.2%. Of the surveyed areas, Hapcheon had the highest at 27% and Hamyang had the lowest at 15.0%. The damage rate of chestnut fruit depending on the maturity was 26.1% in an early maturing cultivar (Dantaek), and 19.3% and 21.1% in a late maturing cultivar (Eungi) and a medium maturing cultivar (Chukpa), respectively.


Long before the shouting contests over national health care and decades before Tea Partiers raised a collective ARGHHH!, a conservative, antigovernment movement was forged. The problem with government, these activists said, is that there is too much of it. When taxes and regulation go down, happiness and good will go up. For decades American conservatives have called for the market to do its magic work without interference.


Fact-checking has become one of the most relevant activities of recent years, as a result of the increase in the flow of fake news and of the ease to spread news through platforms such as social media. The goal of the research is to assess the task of fact-checking developed by initiatives that use Spanish as a vehicle for comparing inaccurate and false information. We carried out a case study of 19 international projects that use Spanish as the main language to materialise their fact-checking actions and the analysis of contents published aims at understanding where these companies develop their activities, how are them internally organized and which methods they use to translate the data obtained to the audience. Results show that most of fact-checking projects in Spanish –launched most of them in the period 2014-2016– remain active. In South America, these organizations have more weight. Most of them have a journalistic nature, although there is a large number of civic and independent projects. Among strategies for verification, text is the preferred formula, although some innovative methods to present the degree of accuracy of assessed contents have been found.


In CO2 storage projects, CO2 usually enters the target reservoir at a lower temperature than that of the surrounding rock and its density is increased. The injection temperature affects how much CO2 can be stored. In this work we investigate the impact of heat exchange during CO2 injection into the Surat Basin, Australia, using integrated reservoir modelling. We evaluate the aquifer storage and sealing capacities, as well as pressure build up and CO2 plume migration.
 Flow simulations of CO2 injection into the Precipice Sandstone were conducted with injection temperature from 40 to 80°C. The modelling domain consists of the reservoir sandstone, an overlying transition zone (muddy sandstone) and above it, the ultimate seal. The distribution of porosity, permeability and capillary pressure is heterogeneous. Heat exchange between rock and fluids was enabled in the commercial simulator to evaluate changes in fluid properties due to wellbore cooling. The initial temperature was set to 80°C. The injector's wellbore pressure drop is modelled honouring a constant well head pressure of 15,000 kPa. The maximum allowed bottom-hole pressure is 90% of a thermally reduced fracturing pressure.
 The viscosity of water and CO2 increases during cooling of the near wellbore zone; thus, pressure build up grows faster in the case of lower injection temperatures. Although the bottom-hole pressure becomes higher, injection rate is constrained by well head pressure. Heat exchange also increases the density and saturation of CO2 at the plume edge, which causes a sharper and faster advancing front. Higher pressure in the reservoir forces fluids to migrate to the transition zone, which also reduces its temperature. CO2 flows preferentially through the lowest capillary pressure channels and is able to permeate slightly into the transition zone. These physical conditions at the bottom of the well (lower temperature and higher pressure) lead to a denser CO2 plume and a greater mass is stored in the reservoir each year.
 This work analyses non-isothermal injection of CO2 into an aquifer using integrated reservoir modelling. It illustrates how reservoir cooling may increase the rate of CO2 storage and slight migration to the transition zone.


In this work we characterize a low-power radio-frequency atmospheric plasma (plasma needle) in terms of dissipated (input) and emitted power per unit surface (power outflux). The plasma is a non-thermal source, used for treatment of biological tissues and other vulnerable surfaces. A calibrated thermal probe is used to determine the power emitted from the plasma towards treated surfaces. Transmission of the emitted plasma power through various media (solid layers, fluids and physiological media) is studied for a broad range of plasma conditions. These data give insight into various contributions to the power outflux (thermal conduction, radiation and energetic species), as well as the penetration depth of the plasma into treated objects. The power outflux is shown to be a very important parameter, which determines the performance of the plasma tool. For the effectiveness and reproducibility of the process the power outflux is much more important than the nominal power setting. Thus, a thermal probe should become a standard control unit in surface processing reactors.


The angiogenic potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is critical for adult vascular regeneration and repair, which is regulated by various growth factors and cytokines. In the current study, we report that knockdown SUMO-specific peptidase 1 (SENP1) stimulated the SUMOylation of MRTF-A and prevented its translocation into the nucleus, leading to downregulation of the cytokine and angiogenic factor CCN1, which significantly impacted MSC-mediated angiogenesis and cell migration. Further studies showed that SENP1 knockdown also suppressed the expression of a chemokine receptor CXCR4, and overexpression of CXCR4 could partially abrogate MRTF-A SUMOylation and reestablish the CCN1 level. Mutation analysis confirmed that SUMOylation occurred on three lysine residues (Lys-499, Lys-576, and Lys-624) of MRTF-A. In addition, SENP1 knockdown abolished the synergistic co-activation of CCN1 between MRTF-A and histone acetyltransferase p300 by suppressing acetylation on histone3K9, histone3K14, and histone4. These results revealed an important signaling pathway to regulate MSC differentiation and angiogenesis by MRTF-A SUMOylation involving cytokine/chemokine activities mediated by CCN1 and CXCR4, which may potentially impact a variety of cellular processes such as revascularization, wound healing, and progression of cancer.


A clinical case is presented: endoprosthesis of the articular depression of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) was used in the treatment of a patient with a complication which developed several years after insertion of an isolated endoprosthesis of the mandibular condylar process. This case is presented as a proof of the efficiency of a complete TMJ endoprosthesis.


Optimistic protocols designed for parallel discrete event simulation (PDES) rely heavily on the global virtual time(GVT) calculation. Since the simulation uses large amounts of memory, the GVT is used to synchronize processes and discard obsolete system information. In this paper we present a new algorithm, the continuously monitored global virtual time (CMGVT). System information, such as the local virtual time (LVT) of each process and information about messages in transit, is appended to simulation messages. We describe and analyze three variants of our GVT algorithm: direct, indirect and transitive knowledge. The direct knowledge algorithm maintains only the local information about outstanding messages. The indirect version is augmented with the information about the knowledge of its direct neighbors. Finally, the transitive version is the most comprehensive. It keeps track of the outstanding messages sent by all processes in the system.


In the paper the two-dimensional elliptic equation with integral boundary conditions is solved by finite difference method. The main aim of the paper is to investigate the conditions for the convergence of the iterative methods for the solution of system of nonlinear difference equations. With this purpose, we investigated the structure of the spectrum of the difference eigenvalue problem. Some sufficient conditions are proposed such that the real parts of all eigenvalues of the corresponding difference eigenvalue problem are positive. The proof of convergence of iterative method is based on the properties of the M-matrices not requiring the symmetry or diagonal dominance of the matrices. The theoretical statements are supported by the results of the numerical experiment.


The efficient delivery of siRNAs or shRNA-encoding DNA plasmids in vivo is an essential prerequisite for the therapeutic application of RNA interference (RNAi). Polyethylenimines (PEIs) are water-soluble synthetic polymers with protonable amino groups which are able to form non-covalent complexes with DNA and siRNAs, mediating their protection against nucleolytic degradation as well as cellular uptake and intracellular release. Here we show the therapeutic efficacy of PEI/shRNA- or PEI/siRNA-mediated RNAi in various mouse tumor models upon systemic treatment. The intraperitoneal (i.p.) administration of shRNA constructs targeting HMGA2 reduced or abrogated the growth of subcutaneous (s.c.) or i.p. ovarian carcinoma xenografts, respectively. Anti-tumor efficacies of PEI/siRNA-mediated gene knockdown were evaluated in s.c. prostate or pancreatic xenografts for VEGF knockdown. The comparison of (i) PEI/siRNA-mediated targeting of the growth factor VEGF, (ii) treatment with the therapeutic anti-VEGF antibody Avastin and (iii) a combination of both revealed, dependent on the tumor model, comparable or additive anti-tumor effects. Critical for in vivo siRNA delivery are the PEIs or PEI derivatives being used. The recently introduced low molecular weight PEI F25-LMW demonstrated favorable features regarding the long-term storage of the complexes, the absence of side effects in mice, and high therapeutic efficacy. Furthermore the grafting of PEI with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) markedly alters PEI complexes with regard to physicochemical properties, biological activity and biocompatibility. We show, however, that in contrast to DNA transfection efficacies, siRNA-mediated gene targeting in vitro is much less dependent on the PEGylation of PEI. In vivo, biodistribution studies reveal distinct siRNA delivery profiles being dependent on the route of injection and the degree and pattern of PEGylation. The induction of erythrocyte aggregation and hemorrhage in the lung upon i.v. injection, which is dependent on the N/P ratio in the complex, are critical parameters. Furthermore, in liver and spleen, but not in lung and kidney, siRNA levels are dependent on macrophage activity. Thus, a panel of certain modified or non-modified low-molecular weight PEIs are promising candidates for therapeutic siRNA-mediated gene targeting and represent a powerful delivery platform for the application of siRNAs in anti-tumor treatment. Citation Information: In: Proc Am Assoc Cancer Res; 2009 Apr 18-22; Denver, CO. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; 2009. Abstract nr 4635.


This research examines the relationship between residents of a mature tourist destination and tourism. To do this, the place attachment and rootedness shown by the residents towards the place where they live are assessed, as are their attitudes and level of satisfaction towards tourism. To carry out the research, 770 surveys were completed in the city of Benalmádena (Costa del Sol, Spain). Unlike other previous studies on place attachment, the level of place attachment and rootedness are assessed separately, using a specific indicator for rootedness. The results show that place attachment and rootedness behave differently in relation to the attitude towards tourism. Another significant result is that residents' attitudes towards tourism in this destination are positive, being more favourable among native residents. Finally, residents show a clear level of place attachment and satisfaction with tourism development, which seems to be related to remarkable social resilience. Despite the strong vulnerability of the mass tourism model, Benalmádena displays significant resilience due to its social structure.


: Cloud computing is becoming need of the hour and provides resources to the machines that needs it. Cost to the users is on the basis of pay per use. The machines requirement must be satisfied by cloud provider in order to be competitive in current environment. Resource allocation and execution of entire job is critical in this situation. Proposed literature works towards allocating resources and provides mechanism to search for the resources if not available. ACO with gravity search is proposed in this case. Ant colony optimization look for the available resources and if not available GSA is implemented to perform the job. Makespan and Flowtime is considerable reduced in this case.


An on-line search of the literature on organic amendments from 1971-81 revealed 125 papers in which they were used to reduce nematode populations in order to increase yields. Oil cakes have been the most popular type of organic amendment used while sawdust, compost, green manure and chicken manure have also shown promise. The types of amendment used and the crops and nematodes involved have been analysed and tables and figures show current areas of research and possible future lines of investigation into this promising means of nematode control for the farmer and smallholder.


Transcription is central to qualitative research, yet few researchers identify the quality of different transcription methods. We explored the quality of verbatim transcripts from traditional transcriptionists and court reporters by reviewing 16 transcripts from 8 focus group discussions using four criteria: transcription errors, cost, time of transcription, and effect on study participants. Transcriptionists made fewer errors, captured colloquial dialogue, and errors were largely influenced by the quality of the recording. Court reporters made more errors, particularly in the omission of topical content and contextual detail, and were less able to produce a verbatim transcript; however, the potential immediacy of the transcript was advantageous. In terms of cost, shorter group discussions favored a transcriptionist and longer groups a court reporter. Study participants reported no effect by either method of recording. Understanding the benefits and limitations of each method of transcription can help researchers select an appropriate method for each study.


Background of the problems that occurred at the Mereubo Health Center of 114 toddlers in Peunaga Cut Ujong Village there were 3 under five malnourished toddlers, 111 under five with good nutrition status, and in Meureubo village there were 2 under five underfives and 139 underfives with good nutrition status. The purpose research was looked relation of dietary habbits and weaning with nutritional status of children. The research method is analytic survey with cross sectional survey design. The population in this study were all children aged 9-59 months in Peunaga Cut Ujong Village and Meureubo Village, Meureubo District, West Aceh Regency with 255 toddlers, and use formula solvin the sample was 72 toddlers with technic sample was simple random sampling, and analysis used chi-square-test . The results showed an association of dietary habbits (P.Value 0.015 <0.05 and OR value = 0.067), as well as the relationship of weaning (P.Value 0,000 <0.05 and OR value = 17.0) with the nutritional status of children under five in the Village Peunaga Cut Ujong, then there is a relationship between dietary habbits (P.Value 0.011 <0.05 and OR value = 0.135) and the relationship between weaning (P.Value 0.001 <0.05 and OR value = 16.7) with the nutritional status of children in Meureubo Village. The research conclusion was relationship weaning  was stronger than dietary habbits with  nutrional status. The suggestions to the puskesmas provide understanding to mothers about the importance of eating patterns and provide exclusive breastfeeding and breastfeeding for two to toddlers, so that toddlers obtain nutritional status and growth development properly.


Load and price prediction are an important component in the economic and secures operation of the competitive restructured power system energy market. This paper presents the use of an artificial neural network to half hourly ahead load prediction and half hourly ahead price prediction applications. By using historical weather, load consumption, price and calendar data, a multi-layer feed forward (FF) neural network trained with Back propagation (BP) algorithm was developed for the half hour ahead prediction. The developed algorithm for half hourly prediction has been tested with Australian market data. The result of ANN prediction model is compared with the conventional Multiple Regression (MR) prediction model.


We herein morphologically diagnose the 5 natural groups of fish blood flukes and name them. Species of Chimaerohemecidae Yamaguti, 1971 infect chimeras, sharks, and rays (Chondrichthyes) and have C-shaped lateral tegumental spines and a non-sinusoidal testis or lack spines and have a sinusoidal testis. Species of Acipensericolidae n. fam. infect sturgeons and paddlefish (Acipenseriformes) and have a robust, bowl-shaped, pedunculate anterior sucker, lateral tegumental spines that are spike-like (not C shaped), an inverse U-shaped intestine (anterior ceca absent) with posterior ceca terminating near the excretory bladder, 6 testes (inter-cecal ovoid or oblong, lacking deep lobes; including 1 post-ovarian testis), a Laurer's canal, and a dextral common genital pore. Species of Sanguinicolidae Poche, 1926 infect primarily later-branching freshwater ray-finned fishes (Teleostei) and have a diminutive anterior sucker, a medial esophageal swelling (pouch), short, radial ceca of approximately equal length or short anterior ceca plus an elongate, dendritic posterior cecum, testis with appendix-like lateral lobes, no Laurer's canal, and separate or common genital pores. Species of Elopicolidae n. fam. infect ladyfishes, tarpons, and catadromous eels (Elopomorpha) and have a robust, bowl-shaped, pedunculate anterior sucker, lateral tegumental spines that are spike-like (can be lost in adult), short or indistinct anterior ceca, posterior ceca that terminate at level of the testis(es), a single testis or 2 testes, a Laurer's canal present or absent, and a sinistral common genital pore and atrium. Species of Aporocotylidae Odhner, 1912 primarily infect later-branching marine and estuarine ray-finned fishes (Teleostei) and have a spheroid anterior sucker with concentric rows of circumferential spines or the spheroid anterior sucker is lost in adults or adults have a diminutive anterior sucker, a sinuous esophagus lacking a pouch, an X- or H-shaped intestine having 4 ceca, long anterior ceca (or secondarily lost), smooth posterior ceca that extend posteriad in parallel with respective body margin and terminate near the posterior body end, testis(es) that lack appendix-like lateral lobes, no Laurer's canal, and a sinistral common genital pore or separate genital pores that are sinistral. Our 28S phylogeny recovered the fish blood flukes as monophyletic and each of the morphologically diagnosed families as monophyletic and sister to the remaining blood flukes infecting turtles and homeotherms. Acipensericolidae was recovered sister to the clade comprising Chimaerohemecidae + Sanguinicolidae and Elopicolidae + Aporocotylidae. The branching order and interrelationships of these families remains unsettled perhaps because of low taxon sampling among non-aporocotylids and extinction of intermediate taxa.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among perceived health status, physical symptom, and depression in the elderly of Rural areas. Method: subjects were 633 elders selected during Feb. to May in 2005. All subject agreed to participate and filled out the survey questionnaire after signing the consent form. scales used in this study are the Perceived Health Status, the Physical Health Questionnaire(PHQ) and the Geriatric Depression Scale(GDS). Data was analyzed by the SPSS/PC 12.0 program. Result: 1) The mean score of perceived health status was 7.78; the mean score of physical symptom was 18.56; the mean score of depression was 8.53, and 64.6% of the subjects belonged to the depression group. 2) Perceived health status had significant relationship with educational level, spouse, and economic status; between physical symptom and educational level, number of chronic disease; between depression and spouse, economic status, number of chronic disease. 3) Depression had negative correlation with perceived health status, but had positive correlation with physical symptom. Conclusion: Considering these findings, it is necessary that depression management programs and care intervention programs considering regional and environmental elements for the elderly in Rural areas.


The purpose of this study were to know the effect of pearl oyster culture activities to the water quality (physical, chemical, biological parameters), and the sediment of culture site, waters quality status of pearl oyster culture site as well. The research was done at 10 stations, which were 9 stations located around pearl oyster culture site, and 1 station located at out of pearl oyster culture site (as control). Results showed that the sources of pollution were from pearl oyster feces and biofouling produced from cleaning of pocket and its shell. An in organic matter of the feces produced (50.52-78.75 %) was higher than the organic matter (21.25-49.48 %). The amount of biofoulling trash increased with the size and dominated by organic matter. Sea water quality observed was under sea water quality standard of marine organism (aquaculture) decided by government, except phosphate. Twenty four species of plankton collected, consist of 4 phylum, that were Bacillarophyta (diatom), Protozoa, Arthropoda, and Mollusca. Plankton Diversity Index showed the level of low to high pollution condition indicated ecological suppression and decreasing of waters quality. The amount of total bacteria and Vibrio spp. at all stations were normal, that was less than 106 cfu/ml. Integrated physical, chemical and biological parameters assessment found that pollution index was 2-3, mean of low pollution. Result of Cluster assessment indicate that there was real characteristic differentiation between first group (1-9) and second group (control). First group was around the pearl oyster culture waters, and second group was out of the pearl oyster culture waters. So the pearl oyster culture activities affected the waters quality.


In this study, we designed, formulated, and investigated the potential antitumor activity of a folate receptor (FR)-mediated double-targeted drug delivery system. The system comprised of the FR ligand folic acid (FA), glycine-phenylalanine-leucine-glycine (Gly-Phe-Leu-Gly, GFLG), which can be specifically cleaved by cathepsin B, and the anticancer drug mitomycin C (MMC). The antitumor effect of FA-GFLG-MMC was compared to that of MMC. 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay revealed that FA-GFLG-MMC has a significantly higher inhibitory effect on HeLa, SiHa, and PC9 cells (high FR expression) than that on 16HBE and A549 cells (low FR expression). Furthermore, FA-GFLG-MMC inhibited cancer cell proliferation in a dose-dependent manner. Free MMC was toxic to both cancer and normal cells. Apoptosis of the HeLa, SiHa, and PC9 cells was higher than that of the A549 cells; however, the apoptotic effect on 16HBE cells was minimal. Proapoptotic protein bcl-2-associated X-protein (BAX) and antiapoptotic protein BCL-2 play critical roles in cellular defense and apoptotic signal transduction. BAX/BCL-2 ratio is used to determine the intensity of an apoptotic signal and assess whether a cell will survive or undergo apoptosis. BAX and BCL-2 expression in cells treated with 5 μM FA-GFLG-MMC was studied by Western blotting. FA-GFLG-MMC increased the BAX/BCL-2 ratio in HeLa, SiHa, and PC9 cells. The results show that FA-GFLG-MMC can effectively inhibit tumor cell proliferation by inducing apoptosis. Therefore, the system developed can enhance the delivery of anticancer drugs to cancer cells and thereby reduce their toxic effects on normal cells.