Aim - Brand logos are considered to be important elements as identification and in representing a company to stakeholders. A trend is to strive for a more modern brand appearance by rejuvenating the brand logo. This study's aim is to examine the extent to which companies do well to switch from a traditional- to modern brand logo.
Method - A preliminary- and main study were performed in order to investigate this topic. The preliminary study revealed by means of a quantitative method that the former- and recent logos of Douwe Egberts, Peijnenburg, Mona, De Koninck, Tassimo, and Honest Tea were most suitable to incorporate in the main study. The main study aimed to examine through a quantitative approach if brands obtain a higher perceived brand modernity, attitude towards the logo and brand, brand commitment, and purchase intention by means of utilizing a modern brand logo, than by using a traditional brand logo.
Findings - The main study demonstrated that brands with modern brand logos commonly achieve a higher perceived brand modernity, a more positive attitude towards the logo and brand, and a higher inclination to buy the company's products among consumers. Moreover, it appeared that a higher familiarity with a brand logo results in a more positive attitude towards the logo, and a positive attitude towards the logo and brand leads to a higher purchase intention.
Limitations and future research - Using real brands as stimuli brings potential biases. Performing similar research but with fictive brands and brand logos is therefore a recommendation. Additionally, a limitation is that the use of a quantitative method restricts to define why certain research results are what they are. Performing qualitative research more focused on logo design characteristics is another recommendation for future research.
Practical implications - It can be recommended to modernize brand logos because this generally generates the most positive effects. However, prior to modifying the brand logo always observe if core brand values are congruent with modernity. Furthermore, it is advised to establish a marketing study to determine for which brand logos consumers have a positive attitude, instead of just implementing a new brand logo. Oftentimes the meaning designers allocate to a brand logo is incongruent with how consumers interpret it.


A 38-year-old woman with systemic lupus erythematosus presented to the dermatology department with diffuse nodules and plaques on her face, trunk and extremities. A lesional biopsy revealed large dermal mucin deposits. Papulonodular dermal mucinosis is characterized histologically by diffuse dermal mucin without the classic epidermal or inflammatory changes seen in lupus erythematosus (LE). This rare variant of LE should be distinguished from other cutaneous mucinoses.


BACKGROUND
High sodium intake has been associated with various noncommunicable disease like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, or stroke. To estimate accurately sodium intake is challenging in clinical practice. We investigate the usefulness and limitations of assessing sodium intake simultaneously by dietary assessment and urinary samples in both children and adults.

METHODS
We used a cross-sectional study design inviting 298 Chilean subjects (74 children and 222 adults) aged between 9 and 66 years of both genders. Sodium intake by dietary assessment was obtained from Chilean food composition data, based on FAO tables. Sodium and creatinine excretion were measured in 24-hour urine samples, in all participants.

RESULTS
Adequate urinary collection was obtained in 81% of children (59/74) and 61% of adults (135/222). The mean sodium intake by dietary assessment was similar to the sodium excretion in 24 hours (3,121±1,153mg/d vs. 3,114±1,353mg/24h, P = nonsignificant) in children but was significantly lower (3,208±1,284mg/d vs. 4,160±1,651mg/24h, P < 0.001) in adults. In both children and adults, sodium intake correlated with urinary sodium excretion (r = 0.456, P < 0.003 and r = 0.390, P < 0.001, respectively). Secondary analyses also suggested that the dietary assessment was more inaccurate in overweight adult subjects.

CONCLUSIONS
Our results showed that average sodium intake was higher than recommended in both children and adults (WHO ≤2,000mg/d). The sodium intake estimated by dietary assessment correlated with urinary excretion in all subjects, but in obese adults was more inaccurate than in children. Future studies to validate the appropriate test to assess sodium intake by age and nutritional status are warranted.


The discovery of extended TeV emission around the Geminga and PSR B0656+14 pulsars, with properties consistent with free particlepropagation in the interstellar medium (ISM), has sparked considerable discussion on the possible presence of such halos in othersystems. Here we make an assessment of the current TeV source population associated with energetic pulsars, in terms of size andestimated energy density. Based on two alternative estimators we conclude that a large majority of the known TeV sources haveemission originating in the zone energetically and dynamically dominated by the pulsar (i.e. thepulsar wind nebula), rather than froma halo of particles diffusing in to the ISM. Furthermore, whilst the number of established halos will surely increase in the future, wefind that it is unlikely that such halos contribute significantly to the total TeVγ-ray luminosity from electrons accelerated in PWN


In many situations, lighter steel structures are used to the heavier alternatives such as reinforce concrete or prestess concrete. With the development of steel as a construction material, the varieties of steel sections were also increased. Among these sections, the Hollow structural sections (HSS) or Structural hollow sections were the most reliable one. Extensive research has been carried of corrugated web beam and girders, but fewer amounts of research for corrugated column and its utilization and advantages is available. In current project, five types of innovative hollow steel section (HSS) column are designed; fabricated and tested. The present work is divided in two broad parts such that in the first part, the study of the behavior of the innovative corrugated steel column under axial loading using UTM was conducted, this part being called experimental work. In the second part, the results of the practical experiments are checked with theoretical results which are obtained by analytical method by using computer software ANSYS. The results obtained from experimental testing and computer analysis are compared and validated. The comparison of corrugated hollow column with conventional hollow column is done to know the advantages of innovative column over conventional column.


Driving cycle is used to assess fuel consumption, pollutant emissions and performance of the vehicle. The aim of this paper is to extract the driving cycle for refuse collection truck and estimate its braking energy. For this purpose, after selecting the target truck and geographic area, the equipment needed to measure the required variables were prepared and mounted on the truck. Then, the actual data were collected from the performance of the target Truck while performing its mission. Since the amount of braking energy depends on the speed, truck mass and road grade, the speed of the vehicle is measured simultaneously with the truck mass and road grade. The collected data are then processed and subdivided into micro-trips. The micro-trips are clustered according to the number of state spaces using the K-Means algorithm. Next, the representative micro trips are selected from within the clusters and the final driving cycle is generated. The representative driving cycle shows that the truck speed is zero at 47% of the working time. Finally, the amount of braking power and accumulative braking energy in the driving cycle is calculated.


In chronic kidney disease, activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) leads to cardiac hypertrophy, which affects morbidity and mortality. In patients with renal insufficiency and heart failure, the expression of midkine, a heparin-binding growth factor, is increased. Therefore, we investigated the association between midkine and EGFR in the induction of cardiac hypertrophy and dysfunction in chronic kidney disease. We performed subtotal nephrectomies in midkine-knockout mice and wild-type mice. We found that subtotal nephrectomy-induced cardiac hypertrophy and phosphorylation of extracellular signal–regulated kinase 1/2 and AKT were attenuated in midkine-knockout mice compared with wild-type mice. An antiphosphotyrosine receptor antibody array was used to demonstrate that EGFR phosphorylation in the heart was also lower in midkine-knockout mice than in wild-type mice. Midkine induced EGFR, extracellular signal–regulated kinase 1/2, and AKT phosphorylation and led to hypertrophy in neonatal rat cardiomyocytes. Pretreatment with EGFR inhibitors or EGFR silencing suppressed midkine-stimulated phosphorylation of extracellular signal–regulated kinase 1/2 and AKT, induction of fetal cardiac gene expression, and hypertrophy in cardiomyocytes. To confirm the association between midkine and EGFR in vivo, mice subjected to subtotal nephrectomy were treated with the EGFR inhibitor gefitinib. Gefitinib treatment attenuated subtotal nephrectomy-induced cardiac hypertrophy. These results indicate that midkine might be a key mediator of cardiorenal interactions through EGFR activation, which plays a crucial role in cardiac hypertrophy in chronic kidney disease.


The thesis report is about women entrepreneurship in Serbia – how it looks like to be a female entrepreneur, what the perceived enabling factors are and what need to be changed to increase women entrepreneurship in Serbia.
The study is based on the theories of gender and entrepreneurship as a foundation for the literature review and analysis of the empirical data. The empirical study consists of eleven semi-structured interviews with Serbian females entrepreneurs. Interviews aiming to illustrate perceived enabling factors for the female entrepreneurship and driving factors linked to business start-up and. Female entrepreneurship seen through the glasses of gender theory and gender contracts shed a light upon the different position of males and females entrepreneurs. With a hope that illustration of the gender aspects in entrepreneurship would raise awareness and further investigation of gender related differences.
The main conclusion based on the literature review and empirical illustrations is that comprehensive measures are needed in order to increase women entrepreneurship. Policy makers, representatives of banks, experts, and NGO's must work together in order to encourage and support female entrepreneurship in Serbia. Specific measures need to introduce credit lines for females, guarantee funds establishment and launch of business incubators.
Furthermore, alarming on women inequality requires changes in the traditional role of women and making "invisible" female "visible".


In this paper, we present the results of performance analysis for the Microsoft Azure virtual machines. The tests used NASA's well known NAS parallel benchmarks for High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. Several tests were executed using different HPC cluster configuration. Both computation and communication times were measured to study the effect of Virtual Machines (VMs) computing and networking features on the execution and communication time of the benchmarks. We concluded that the communication behavior of any benchmark or application has the most influence on the HPC cluster configuration selection.


In this paper, Lagrangian formulation of a horizontal rotating beam with active constrained layer damping (ACLD) treatment is presented. The problem is approached by the Rayleigh-Ritz method. By assuming modal functions as the displacement shape functions and using effective damping model of the visco-elastic material (VEM) layer, the number of degrees of freedom of the system is greatly reduced. The damping of the visco-elastic material is characterized by a shear (storage) modulus and a loss factor. Also the dynamic behavior of the rotating ACLD beam is analyzed in the time domain. The effects of control gains, shear modulus and loss factor of the VEM on the dynamic response are also investigated.


Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is increasingly recognized as a global public health problem. The increased prevalence of CKD has led to a rise in the number of dialysis patients, and is associated with elevated morbidity and mortality due to the increased risk of cardiovascular disease [1]. Regenerative medicine strategies are highly anticipated for CKD, since patients with CKD never recover their renal function, and there are no radical treatments besides renal transplantation. With this as the goal, vigorous efforts have been made for the directed differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) [2,3] into kidney lineage cells, while research using human ESCs [4] or induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) [5,6] has not been fully developed [7]. By mimicking signals that occur during embryonic development, to the extent that they are known, a stepwise protocol was explored to differentiate pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into clinically useful cell types in adult organs. Currently, most of the studies aiming to generate renal cells from PSCs have also adopted the strategy of mimicking renal development [7]. The kidneys are derived from an early embryonic germ layer, the intermediate mesoderm (IM) that is located between the lateral and paraxial mesoderms [8]. In vertebrates, the IM successively develops three kidneys: the pronephros, mesonephros and metanephros. The three kidneys are similar in that they consist of a basic functional unit, the nephron, although the number of nephron differs among the kidneys. The mammalian adult kidney, metanephros, is formed by the reciprocal interaction between two tissues derived from the IM, the metanephric mesenchyme and ureteric bud. The ureteric bud induces the metanephric mesenchyme to differentiate into nephrons and interstitium. The nephron progenitors in metanephric mesenchyme differentiate into epithelia constituting glomeruli, proximal or distal renal tubules, or Henle's loop. The metanephric mesenchyme may contain at least two other precursor populations, in addition to the epithelial progenitors: vascular precursor cells that give rise to vascular and glomerular endothelia and vascular smooth muscle cells; and stromal precursors that eventually differentiate into interstitial cells within the adult kidney. The ureteric bud elaborates the lower urinary tract system, from the collecting ducts through the renal pelvis and ureters, to a part of the urinary bladder [8]. Most of the mechanisms underlying the lineage commitment, by which the IM gives rise to the metanephric mesenchyme and ureteric bud, and how the two precursors differentiate into adult renal cell types, are unknown. Further examinations will be required to elucidate the mechanisms, which will eventually help reproduce the tissues in vitro from PSCs. Our group has recently published a report on the highly efficient differentiation of human PSCs into IM cells [9]. These human IM cells have the developmental potential to further differentiate into adult and embryonic renal cells, such as glomerular podocytes, proximal renal tubular cells and ureteric bud cells. Furthermore, they can form 3D renal tubular structures when co-cultured with mouse metanephric cells in organ culture settings. However, the efficiency of tubule formation is very low, at around 5% of the organ cultures. We reasoned that this observed low efficiency resulted from the developmental immaturity of the IM cells. Therefore, our group is currently developing efficient differentiation protocols from human PSC-derived IM cells into the two kidney


Ecosystem services can maintain or increase crop yield in agricultural systems, but data to support management decisions are expensive and time‐consuming to collect. Furthermore, relationships derived from small‐scale plot data may not apply to ecosystem services operating at larger spatial scales (fields and landscapes).

Precision yield data (PYD) can be used to improve the accuracy and geographic range of ecosystem service studies but have been underused in previous studies: out of 370 literature records, we found that less than 2% of all records were used to study biotic or landscape effects on yield. We argue that this is likely due to low data accessibility and a lack of familiarity with spatial data analysis.

We provide examples of analysis using simulated PYD, and outline two case studies of ecosystem services using PYD. Ecologists and agronomists should consider using PYD more broadly, as it can be used to test hypotheses about ecosystem services across multiple spatial scales, and could be used to inform the design of multifunctional farming landscapes.


Abstract 5NosoAE is a webserver that can be used for nosocomial bacterial analysis including the identification of similar strains based on antimicrobial resistance profiles (antibiogram) and the spatiotemporal distribution visualization and phylogenetic analysis of identified strains with similar antibiograms. The extensive use of antibiotics has caused many pathogenic bacteria to develop multiple drug resistance, resulting in clinical infection treatment challenges and posing a major threat to global public health. Relevant studies have investigated the key determinants of antimicrobial resistance in the whole-genome sequence of bacteria. However, a web server is currently not available for performing large-scale strain searches according to antimicrobial resistance profiles and visualizing epidemiological information including the spatiotemporal distribution, antibiogram heatmap, and phylogeny of identified strains. Here, we implemented these functions in the new server, referred to as 5NosoAE. This server accepts the genome sequence file in the FASTA format of five nosocomial bacteria, namely Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterococcus faecium and Staphylococcus aureus for query. All visualizations are implemented in JavaScript and PHP. This server will be useful for physicians and epidemiologists involved in research on infectious disease. The 5NosoAE platform is available at https://nosoae.imst.nsysu.edu.tw.


With mobile applications and associated services becoming increasingly popular, concerns are being raised about private data leakages have raised. Previous solutions to this well-known set of problems have approached it from the ground up but required rewriting the operating system which is unnecessary and burdensome. In this work, a framework we proposed to overcome these issues by applying a pseudo data technique and cloud-based decision-making system to identify potential privacy leakages.


The treatment of the axiomatic theory of oating-point numbers is out of reach of current SMT solvers, especially when it comes to automatic reasoning on approximation errors. In this paper, we describe a dedicated procedure for such a theory, which provides an interface akin to the instantiation mechanism of an SMT solver. This procedure is based on the approach of the Gappa tool: it performs saturation of consequences of the axioms, in order to rene bounds on expressions. In addition to the original approach, bounds are further rened by a constraint solver for linear arithmetic. Combined with the natural support for equalities provided by SMT solvers, our approach improves the treatment of goals coming from deductive verication of numerical programs. We have implemented it in the Alt-Ergo SMT solver.


Amaranth is an annual herb native to temperate and tropical regions. Cultivated by Native Americans for the nutritional properties of its seeds, the latter are very digestible and also an interesting source of starch and proteins. For the future, amaranth appears as a promising raw material for the biorefinery of whole plants, all parts of the plant being potentially usable for different food and non-food applications.
This study especially aims to investigate the possible uses of pith from stems for material applications. For that, plants from the Amaranthus cruentus variety were cultivated in 2018 near Auch (Gers, France). Stems were manually harvested at plant maturity. Representing up to 90% w/w of the aerial part of amaranth plant, stems were then dried in a ventilated oven to facilitate their conservation. They are composed of a bark on their periphery and a pith fraction in their middle. The structure of stems was studied from ten samples, and the pith fraction was estimated manually to 27% w/w. Due to the difference in density between bark and pith fractions, a fractionation process associating grinding and blowing steps made possible the continuous separation between bark and pith.
As for sunflower and corn, amaranth pith particles have an alveolar (i.e. a microporous) structure similar to that of expanded polystyrene, and they reveal a very low bulk density (e.g. 48-52 kg/m3 for 4-16 mm particle size, and 58-61 kg/m3 for 1.25-2.50 mm particle size), making them a promising raw material for the thermal insulation of buildings. Cohesive and low-density insulation blocks were successfully obtained from amaranth pith, primarily mixed with a starch-based binder, through compression moulding at ambient temperature. Different operating conditions were tested, especially including (i) the size distribution of amaranth pith particles, (ii) the binder content, and (iii) the filling level of the mould. All produced samples were then characterized in terms of (i) density, (ii) bending and compression properties, and (iii) thermal insulation properties (measured through the hot wire method). All insulation blocks revealed low density, ranging from 90 to 140 kg/m3. Such innovative materials could be sustainable and viable options for the thermal insulation of buildings.


One of the basic challenges to robust iris recognition is iris segmentation. To represent the iris, some researchers fit circles, ellipses or active contours to the boundary pixels of the segmented iris. In order to get an accurate fit, the iris boundary must first be accurately identified. Some segmentation methods operate on a pre-processed gray-scaled image, while others use a thresholded binary edge image. The Hough transform is a popular method used to search for circular or elliptical patterns within the image. Many irises are slightly elliptical, and suffer from eyelid/eyelash occlusion, specular reflections and often the pupil and iris centers are not co-located. Each of these issues can cause a segmentation error. This research uses of a feature saliency algorithm to identify which measurements, used in common iris segmentation methods, jointly contain the most discriminatory information for identify the iris boundary. Once this feature set is identified, an artificial neural network is used to near-optimally combine the segmentation measurements to better localize and identify boundary pixels of the iris. In this approach, no assumption of circularity is assumed when identifying the iris boundary. 322 measurements were tested and eight were found to contain discriminatory information that can assist in identifying the iris boundary. For occluded images, the iris masks created by the neural network were consistently more accurate than the truth mask created using the circular iris boundary assumption.


This paper discuss assets chemical resistance test of self-compacting concrete made with different percentage of steel fibres and without steel fiber and fly ash. Three different mix designs are expressed to carry out this test. The cubes are cast and cured for 28 days in clean water and immersed in three different chemical solutions like 5% sulphate, 5% Alkali, and 5% sulphuric acid for a period of 50 days. After the 50 days period, percentage of weight loss and percentage of loss of strength in three different chemical like sulphate, Alkali, sulphuric acid attack are found out. The test results conclude that the specimens which are immersed in 5% sulphuric acid have created important damage. The weight loss and strength loss was found in Sulphuric acid immersion. The obtained values of the percentage strength loss were 19.4% 16.2% and 14.2% and weight loss 0.48% 0.45% and 0.43% respectively. IndexTerms self-compacting concrete, chemical resistance test, Steel Fiber, Fly ash.


To clarify the Bauschinger effect behavior in a dual phase steel and the influence of strain again on it, tension-compression tests were carried out using a Mn-V low alloy steel. This steel shows extremely large transient softening and considerable amount of permanent softening. The strain againg at 448 K has been found to diminish the transient softening but to remain the permanent softening. The anistropy in magnetic coercivity in plastically deformed specimens was measured and has been considered to be related with the long range internal stress (back stress). The relationship between the back stress and the magnitude of the permanent softening is discussed.


This paper discusses the issues involved with the introduction of the storyboard and the animatic in a design studio exercise. Storyboards - sketches used in film planning -, and the animatic - basically a moving storyboard - allow the student to understand space within in the context of a narrative. The purpose of the exercise was to enable the expression of subjectively experienced space in an early stage of urban context analysis. Differently than the traditional approach to animation which results a camera traveling through a path, the exercise approached animation from the perspective of the stories about the place.


Lan Li* Tongren College, Tongren 554300, Guizhou, China. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Abstract: The English teaching model in today's college should adapt to the trend of the times and attach importance to college English translation teaching to improve students' English application ability, allow students to participate more fully in the classroom, and accelerate the training process of English application ability. Based on the analysis and research on the problems existing in English translation teaching in colleges and universities, this article explores the implementation ways to improve college students' English application ability.


This study was designed to detect the effect of an oral and intraperitoneal (I/P) immunization of mice with B. Abortus RB51 to protect mice against a wild strain of B. abortus I/P challenge infection. Three groups of mice were used in this study. The first group (1 G) immunized with 10 *2 CFU of B. Abortus RB51 intraperitonealy (I/P). The second group (2 G) immunized orally with 10 *2 CFU dose (Ten minutes prior immunization, all mice were drenched with 0.2 ml of 10% sodium bicarbonate to neutralize gastric acidity). Whereas, the third group (3group) inoculated with 0.2 ml phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and acted as the control group. The results indicated that there was a significant difference (P<0.05) in antibody titer at 5 week in the I/P group and in the 3 week in oral group, while there was no significance between the two route through all the periods. However, after the challenge, the antibody titer raised to 0.84±0.11 and 1.14±0.11 in the two route and control group in 3 and 7 day post challenge respectively. The Ab titer reached 1.44±0.11 in the I/P route and remain at 1.14±0.11 in oral and control at 10th day/post-challenge. The oral inoculation gave a mild infection, which was cleared at 5 week after infection, and it induced a humoral response. However, I/P challenge gave moderate infection, which was cleared at 6 week after infection. Wild B. Abortus was isolated at a lowest level after the challenge from internal organs, in animals immunized I/P compared with the other two groups. In conclusion, I/P and oral immunization were able to give protection against the virulent wild strain B. abortus in mice. Besides, the probability of these mice in transmitting the vaccine to other animals was low and vaccine was safety in pregnant vaccinated mice.


Plasma glucose concentrations were measured in heparinized dog blood as the blood was sheared in polycarbonate coni-cylindrical test cells. The glucose depletion rate during the 4 hr tests increased with increasing shear rate (480 to 2100 sec-1) but was independent of the surface/volume ratio (7.0 and 12.7 cm-1). These results suggest that the glucose metabolism in red cells (the dominant consumer of blood glucose) increases more from shear-induced stretching or tearing of red cells that adhere to the wall than from cell-boundary collisions. (Changes in platelet and leukocyte glucose metabolism would not have been detected in our measurements of whole blood glucose concentrations.) The rate of glucose depletion was also independent of the extent and rate of hemolysis and the extent of microemboli formation (as measured by SFP). When insulin-induced hypoglycemic blood was used to fill the test cells, the resulting hemolysis and SFPs were not significantly different from hemolysis and SFPs produced in normoglycemic blood from the same donors. Thus red cells (which have negligible glycogen stores) do not depend significantly on plasma glucose to resist hemolysis, and platelets may rely on their substantial glycogen storage to form microemboli during hypoglycemia.


Recent research has shown that portfolio optimization theory can be extended to generation self-scheduling in a competitive energy market. This letter considers the self-scheduling problem in the case where the mean vector and covariance matrix of the probability distribution of prices are only known within given bounds, and the probability distribution is otherwise arbitrary. Under the above assumptions, it is shown that a method for optimization over symmetric cones can be used to (1) compute the worst-case robust profit with probability level beta and (2) optimize the self-schedule for a given probability level beta of the corresponding worst-case robust profit.


Several models for predicting the risk of non‐sentinel lymph node (NSLN) metastasis in breast cancer patients with positive sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) have been developed. The purpose of this study was to validate and compare these models in Chinese patients. A total of 159 breast cancer patients with positive SLNs treated at our institution were included. Among them, 81 (50.9%) patients had at least one NSLN involvement. The Cambridge, Mou, Mayo, Tenon, MDA, Memorial Sloan‐Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), Ljubljana, SNUH, Turkish, Louisville, Stanford, and Saidi models were evaluated and compared using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, calibration plots, and false negative (FN) rates. The Cambridge and Mou models outperformed the others, both with area under the ROC curves (AUCs) of 0.73. The Mayo, Tenon, MDA, MSKCC, Turkish, Ljubljana, SNUH, and Louisville models had AUCs of 0.68, 0.66, 0.66, 0.64, 0.63, 0.62, 0.61, and 0.60, respectively. The Stanford and Saidi models did not present any discriminative capabilities, with AUCs of 0.54 and 0.50, respectively. The Cambridge, MSKCC, and Mayo models were well calibrated. With adjusted thresholds, the Mayo model outperformed the others by classifying the highest proportion of patients (20%) into the low‐risk group. Our study revealed that the Cambridge and Mou models performed well in Chinese patients. The ROC curves, calibration plots, and FN rates should be used together for the accurate evaluation of prediction models. Selection of these models should be based on the clinicopathological features of the targeted population. The models specifically designed for patients with micrometastases or macrometastases of SLNs are needed in the future. (Cancer Sci 2012; 103: 274–281)


We study the musical genre of punk to discuss how the embodiment of music and musical practices operate as a "technology of the collective." This furthers our understanding how music, as a cultural form, becomes a tangible resource used in the constitution of collective identity. By utilizing the subculture of hardcore punk as a vehicle for exploration, this approach helps us understand how musical practices operate at the analytical level of embodied practices. We explore how aspects of embodiment illuminate displays of involvement and group membership, as well as solidarity and community. Music becomes the conduit between identity, conventionalized expressions, and the ways people form investments to configure their social worlds.


INTRODUCTION
Spirulina (Spirulina platensis) is a dietary supplement valued for its immune-enhancing properties. We previously reported that the immunostimulatory effect of spirulina can be traced to a high-molecular- weight polysaccharide fraction. This fraction, labeled Immolina, activates nuclear factor kappa-B in human monocytic THP-1 cells and increases expression of proinflammatory cytokines.

OBJECTIVE
To characterize further the immunostimulatory effects of Immolina on THP-1 cells, we evaluated its effect on genes encoding the chemokines interleukin (IL)-8, MCP-1, MIP-1alpha, MIP-1beta, IP-10, the cytokines tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, IL-1beta, and the enzyme cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-2).

METHODS
THP-1 cells were exposed to concentrations of Immolina ranging from 1 ng/mL to 100 microg/mL and changes in gene expression were assessed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). For comparison, THP-1 cells were activated with 1 ng/mL of TNF-alpha, 10 ng/mL of IL-1beta, or 10 ng/mL of lipopolysaccharide using the same assay conditions. To assess the response of THP-1 cells to Immolina at the protein level, we probed culture supernatants using a cytokine array immunoblot assay.

RESULTS
RT-PCR analysis revealed that Immolina dose-dependently increased the expression of all 5 chemokines tested as well as the expression of TNF-alpha, IL-1beta, and COX-2. The cytokine array immunoblot assay revealed an increase in the chemokines IL-8 and MIP-1beta. Thymidine uptake experiments verified that Immolina did not affect the viability and growth rate of THP-1 cells.

CONCLUSIONS
The results of the experiments demonstrate that Immolina activates THP-1 cells in a manner that is consistent with the recruitment of diverse populations of leukocytes in response to inflammatory and infectious signals.


In the method of ortho-hydroxylation studied, phenol, its derivatives or homologues, are condensed with 2-chloro-5-nitrobenzophenone, (Ph.CO.C6H3.NO2.Cl or, for convenience, RCl ) giving aryloxy-nitrobenzophenones of type 1. These, on successive treatment with concentrated sulphuric acid, acetic acid, and hydrogen peroxide, afford o-hydroxyaryloxy-nitrobenzophenones of type 2, which undergo scission in boiling piperidine to give simple derivatives or homologues of catechol. Methylation of type 2 affords compounds of type 3 which on scission yield guaiacol derivatives. Diazomethane is the most reliable methylating agent since it is shown that in suitable compounds of type 2 and in alkaline media, the group R may migrate from one to the other oxygen atom. A preliminary investigation into the possible advantages of 2-chloro-3:5-dinitrobenzophenene over the nono-nitro compound gave promising results. 1. R.O.C6H5; 2. R.O.C6H4.OH; 3. R.O.C6H4.CMe; 4. R O.C6H3.(OH)2; 5. R.O.C6H3.OH.OMe. Renewed hydroxylation, applied to compounds of types 2 and 3, yields those of types 4 and 5 respectively. When heated with piperidine compounds of type 4 in general were not cleaved to pyrogallols, but underwent rearrangement followed by cyclisation, the products finally isolated being derivatives of 4-hydroxy-7-nitro-9-phenylfluorone. The latter process was blocked by the presence of methyl substituents in the positions flanking the two free hydroxyl groups, and in this case with piperidine normal scission to 4:6-dimethylpyrogallol took place. The presence of bromo substituents in these positions did not prevent fluorone formation which was attended by expulsion of one bromine atom. Methylation or tosylation of the hydroxyl groups before treatment with piperidine resulted in normal scission, affording partial O-derivatives of pyrogallol. In one case 1:2:3:4-tetramethoxybenzene was synthesised from phenol by a combination of three hydroxylations and one rearrangement. In an addendum the cyclisation by concentrated sulphuric acid of 2-aryloxy-5-nitrobenzaldehydes is described and is shown to take a different course from that of the 2-arylthio- analogues.


Objective: To reduce the risk of varicoses in primigravida by wearing elastic stockings with mechanical compression. Method: A prospective study was performed in a randomized single blinded trial with analysis of variance and repeated measures. The study was done at The Obstetrics and Gynecology Department Immanuel Hospital Bandung, with subjects obtained from the Obstetrics outpatient clinic during the period of May 2008 to March 2009. This study consisted of a population of 66 primigravidas randomly allocated in to 2 groups, 34 women in control group and 32 women in study group. Women in the study group were instructed to wear elastic stockings, while the control group was not. Measurements of veins dilatation were carried out using a Color Duplex Ultrasound. Results: The 12 week examination didn't show any significant change on left femoral veins diameters in both groups. Examination at 34 weeks gestational age showed significant changes on left femoral veins in study group and control group (subsequently 0,83 ± 0,07 cm and 1,02 ± 0,35 cm). It also happened on examination at 2 weeks post-partum. The incidence of reflux was found only in the study group at sapheno-femoral junction in 6 of 34 women. Conclusion: Mechanical compression provide protective effect from the development of varicoses shown by the reduced incidence in developing reflux in blood flow in saphenous-femoral junction, in addition to minimal dilatation of the lower limbs and pelvic veins. [Indones J Obstet Gynecol 2010;34-1:7-11] Keywords: varicoses; pregnancy; endothelial injury; saphenous femoral junction; reflux; mechanical compression


A type of As2S3 chalcogenide glass mid-infrared dual-core photonic crystal fiber has been proposed. The dual-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) consists of two asymmetric cores. The high polarization property and the coupling characteristics have been studied by using the finite element method and mode coupling theory. Numerical results show that the birefringence at wavelength λ = 10 μm is up to 0.01386 and the coupling length can reach wavelength λ = 5 μm, 261 μm and 271.44 μm for x-polarized mode and y-polarized mode, respectively. It demonstrates that a 6.786-mm-long fiber can exhibit an extinction ratio of better than −10 dB and a bandwidth of 180 nm.


We humans hear the way we do because of at least three major forces. The first is phylogeny, the evolutionary changes in the auditory system since its beginnings. Another is embryology, the development of the system in each individual. Finally, there is the biologically determined mechanism we are born with and our interaction with the environment in early postnatal life. This series of articles reviews each aspect so that we may have a fuller appreciation of how it is we come to hear the way we do. Part I described the phylogeny of the auditory system. Part II traces the development in prenatal life of the internal, middle, and external ear and the nervous system by days, weeks, and months. Wherever possible, parallels are drawn between phylogenetic and embryologic development. Part III considers the postnatal aspects of auditory development.


Tonsils excised from human beings for chronic tonsillitis have been shown to be an accessible and sufficiently rich source of human lymphocytes. Tonsil cells produced interferon as intensively as blood leukocytes and the properties of this interferon were similar to those of leukocyte interferon. The optimal conditions for interferon production by tonsil cells were established.


Background and Objectives Tourniquet pain often limits the use of intravenous regional anesthesia (IVRA). Intravenous (IV) lidocaine has been shown to be effective in the management of acute and neuropathic pains. We tested the hypothesis that a priming IV injection of lidocaine might have an analgesic effect on tourniquet pain during IVRA. Methods A prospective, randomized, double- blind study was conducted on 40 patients scheduled for carpal tunnel decompression. No sedation was given. Each patient received either 1 mg/kg of IV lidocaine (group L) or 0.1 mL/kg of IV isotonic saline (group control = C) 5 minutes before IVRA. Thereafter, they received 3 mg/kg of plain 0.5 % lidocaine into the isolated and exsanguinated arm. A double-cuffed tourniquet was used. Pain at the tourniquet and the surgical sites was assessed every 5 minutes using a linear visual analog scale (VAS) and a verbal rating scale (VRS) during the surgical procedure and the immediate postoperative period (60 minutes). Results Demographic data and duration of proximal and distal tourniquet were similar in each group. Significant differences in the pain scales were observed for the distal tourniquet at tourniquet inflation time and 15 minutes after (P = .03 and .005, respectively) in the group L. For the proximal tourniquet, only the VRS was significantly improved (P = .03). No analgesic benefit was observed in the immediate postoperative period. Conclusions Priming IV lidocaine when compared with isotonic saline is effective in reducing tourniquet pain in IVRA.


In the long history of rising and persistent unemployment in Europe almost all institutions - employment protection legislation, unions, wages, wage structure, unemployment insurance, etc. - have been alleged and found guilty to have caused this tragic development at some point in time. Later, welfare state institutions in interaction with external shocks were identified as more plausible causes for rising equilibrium unemployment in Europe. Monetary policy has managed to be regarded as innocent. Based on the assertion of the neutrality of money in the medium and long run, the search for causes of European unemployment has shied away from the policy of central banks. But actually the institutional setup regarding monetary policy is very different between the FED and the Bundesbank (ECB). We argue that the interaction of negative external shocks and tight monetary policies may have been the major - although probably not the only - cause of unemployment in Europe remaining a t ever higher levels after each recession. We identify the monetary policy of the Bundesbank as asymmetrical in the sense that the Bank did not actively fight against recessions, but that it dampened recovery periods. Less constraint on growth would have kept German unemployment at lower levels.


Study on the growth of carbon crystal produced from coconut shell has been conducted. This research was aimed to study the effects of PVA as stimulant agent in the from of either powder or solution on structural growth of carbon crystal and its physic che mical properties and the effect of temperature (1000 - 1500 o C) on the characters of the carbon. Several methods of characteristics were performed including FTIR to determine the functional groups of the carbon, XRD to identify the structure of carbon crysta l, SEM - EDS to analyze the topography of surface and to analyze the component of material. The product characteristics of carbon material showed that there was a change on the physic - chemical properties of the raw material which has been sintered at 1000 o C, at which coke was produced in this process. Fabrication process at 1500 o C in the presence of PVA gave carbon material from charcoal amorphous to carbon with semi crystalline structure.


We show that the Lyα optical depth statistics in the proximity regions of quasar spectra depend on the mass of the dark matter halos hosting the quasars. This is owing to both the overdensity around the quasars and the associated infall of gas toward them. For a fiducial quasar host halo mass of (3.0 ± 1.6) × 1012 h−1 M☉, as inferred by Croom and coworkers from clustering in the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey, we show that estimates of the ionizing background (Γbkg) from proximity effect measurements could be biased high by a factor of ≈2.5 at z = 3 owing to neglecting these effects alone. The clustering of galaxies and other AGNs around the proximity effect quasars enhances the local background but is not expected to skew measurements by more than a few percent. Assuming the measurements of Γbkg based on the mean flux decrement in the Lyα forest to be free of bias, we demonstrate how the proximity effect analysis can be inverted to measure the mass of the dark matter halos hosting quasars. In ideal conditions, such a measurement could be made with a precision comparable to the best clustering constraints to date from a modest sample of only about 100 spectra. We discuss observational difficulties, including continuum flux estimation, quasar systematic redshift determination, and quasar variability, which make accurate proximity effect measurements challenging in practice. These are also likely to contribute to the discrepancies between existing proximity effect and flux decrement measurements of Γbkg.


We have studied spin correlation in a double quantum-dot–quantum-wire coupled device revealed in low-temperature transport characteristics. We demonstrate nonlocal control of the Kondo effect in one dot by manipulating the spin states of the other. The modulation of the local density of states in the wire region due to the Fano-Kondo antiresonance and the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yoshida exchange interaction are the two possible mechanisms underlying the observed features. When the dot states are indirectly probed in the side-coupled geometry, double suppression of the wire conductance is observed due to the Fano-Kondo antiresonance involving both dots. © 2006 American Vacuum Society. DOI: 10.1116/1.2218866


While the osteopenia associated with oestrogen deficiency is thought to arise from a relative defect in bone formation with respect to resorption, oestrogen administration itself leads to a decrease, rather than an increase, in bone formation. This decrease in bone formation, which arises from oestrogen's inhibitory effect on bone turnover, presumably masks any underlying tendency of oestrogen treatment towards stimulation of bone formation. To investigate this further, we have examined the early effect of discontinuing the administration of oestradiol-17 beta (OE2; 40 micrograms/kg) on bone formation indices in ovariectomized 13-week-old rats, before the turnover-induced increase in formation occurs. Histomorphometric indices were assessed at the proximal tibial metaphysis 0, 7, 10, 13 and 16 days following discontinuation of OE2 treatment. Measurements of body weight, uterine weight and longitudinal growth rate confirmed that there were rapid effects of OE2 deficiency on these parameters. We could detect no significant increase in bone resorption, as measured by osteoclast surface and number, until 16 days after ending treatment with OE2; this was coincidental with a reduction in bone volume. Shorter periods of OE2 deficiency were associated with a marked decrease in bone formation, as assessed by dynamic histomorphometric indices. This inhibition of bone formation was largely due to a reduction in double fluorochrome-labeled trabecular surfaces, which were decreased by approximately 70%. We conclude that ending OE2 administration in ovariectomized rats caused a striking decrease in trabecular bone formation, if such indices are assessed prior to the subsequent turnover-induced increase in formation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


250 Conclusions: Although there appears to be a trend toward a worsening of cardiac function with clozapine treatment, further investigations need to be carried out taking into account confounding factors that are known to be implicated in cardiac dysfunction. Establishing a clearer understanding of the link between the two will help patients and clinicians balance the risk of cardiac problems and improved psychopathology and help to institute cardiac monitoring guidelines for patients treated with clozapine.


Reflected ultrasound has been used for investigation of the mitral valve region in early infancy. The material consists of two patients with mitral atresia, three patients with mitral stenosis and aortic valvular atresia, five patients with mitral and aortic valvular stenosis, one patient with cor triatriatum, and one patient with severe degree of aortic valvular stenosis with a normal mitral valve. The results are compared with ultrasoundcardiographic findings in ten infants without heart disease. A specific abnormal echo was obtained in cases with mitral atresia and cor triatriatum. The patients with a combination of mitral and aortic valvular lesions could be separated into two groups by means of ultrasoundcardiography. This separation reflected the functional state of the left ventricle based on the degree of mitral stenosis and hypoplasia of the left ventricle. This noninvasive technic has been found useful as a complementary method for the investigation of the mitral valve region. It can even be per...


The major nonspecific porin of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, OprF, produces a large channel yet allows only a slow diffusion of various solutes. Here we provide an explanation of this apparent paradox. We first show, by introduction of tobacco etch virus protease cleavage site in the middle of OprF protein, that most of OprF population folds as a two-domain protein with an N-terminal β-barrel domain and a C-terminal periplasmic domain rich in α-helices. However, sedimentation of unilamellar proteoliposomes through an iso-osmotic gradient showed that only about 5% of the OprF population produced open channels. Gel filtration showed that the open channel conformers tended to occur in oligomeric associations. Because the open channel conformer is likely to fold as a single domain protein with a large β-barrel, we reasoned that residues near the C terminus may be exposed on cell surface in this conformer. Introduction of a cysteine residue at position 312 produced a functional mutant protein. By using bulky biotinylation reagents on intact cells, we showed that this cysteine residue was not exposed on cell surface in most of the OprF population. However, the minority OprF population that was biotinylated in such experiments was enriched for the conformer with pore-forming activity and had a 10-fold higher pore-forming specific activity than the bulk OprF population. Finally trypsin treatment, which preferentially cleaves the C-terminal domain of the two-domain conformer, did not affect the pore-forming activity of OprF nor did it digest the minority conformer whose residue 312 is exposed on cell surface.


In everyday life the subject of parenting and child upbringing is often discussed among people who find themselves in the role of parents, babysitters and grandparents striving for best results (Pecek Cuk and Lesar, 2009).
My thesis focuses on parenting styles of mothers and fathers in Slovenia and in Finland. In the first, theoretical part, I have explained the concepts of socialization and parenting. I have defined the meaning of the term family and different family types. I have also compared statistical data on family types in Slovenia and Finland and defined changes in families and in family roles. I have defined the term of parenting, which expands into the definition of different parenting styles: the authoritarian, authoritative and permissive parenting style. There is also a chapter representing different parenting styles. Firstly I have displayed the data which represent parenting styles according to the sex of the parent and secondly I have shown the data related to parenting different sexes of children. I have concluded this chapter with cultural differences between Slovenia and Finland which are best described with their own view on family policies.
The empirical part of my thesis bases on the data from a survey which I performed on 190 students in their third and fourth year of high school. The data were collected in 2015 at Solski center Celje, Gimnazija Lava in Slovenia and at the Apollon Yhteiskoulu in Helsinki, Finland. The analysis of the results has shown that the majority of mothers and fathers are using an authoritative parenting style and that their parenting styles do not differ much. The comparison between countries has shown that in both countries and with both parents the most represented parenting style is the authoritative parenting style. The data that deserve the most of our consideration show the differences in parenting styles among fathers. The data show that fathers in Slovenia are more likely to use neglectful, authoritarian and permissive parenting style as opposed to mothers in Slovenia or both parents in Finland. In the conclusion the data also show that no matter the sex of the child, the most represented parenting style is the authoritative parenting style.


A general model is proposed to simulate the acoustics of coup led rooms. It is based on a diffusion equation, solved numerically to perform acoust ic predictions. The presence of scattering objects –or the "fittings"– is also taken into acc ount. Distinct sub-volumes can be defined, representing either coupled volumes or zones with d ifferent fitting characteristics. Some sample results are presented, and compared with ray-tr acing results and experimental data. Two situations are assessed: two coupled classrooms, and a room divided into two zones, one empty, one fitted [1]. The diffusion-model predic tions match the other data satisfactorily, both in terms of sound attenuation and soun d decay. Diffusion-based results are obtained with the advantage of low computational time co mpared to ray-tracing results.


Differential scanning calorimetry has been used to characterized the thermal denaturation of gastric (H+,K+)-ATPase. The excess heat capacity function of (H+,K+)-ATPase in highly oriented gastric vesicles displays two peaks at 53.9°C (Tm1) and 61.8°C (Tm2). Its thermal denaturation is an irreversible process that does not exhibit kinetic control and can be resolved in two independent two-state processes. They can be assigned to two cooperative domains located in the cytoplasmic loops of the α-subunit, according to the disappearance of the endothermic signal upon removal of these regions by proteinase K digestion. Analysis of the thermal-induced unfolding of the enzyme trapped in different catalytic cycle intermediates has allowed us to get insight into the E1-E2 conformational change. In the E1 forms both transitions are always observed. As Tm1 is shifted to Tm2 by vanadate and ATP interaction, the unfolding mechanism changes from two independent to two sequential two-state transitions, revealing interdomain interactions. Stabilization of the E2 forms results in the disappearance of the second transition at saturation by K+, Mg2+-ATP, and Mg2+-vanadate as well as in significant changes in Tm2 and ΔH1. The catalytic domain melts following a process in which intermolecular interactions either in the native or in the unfolded state might be involved. Interestingly, the E2-vanadate-K+ form displays intermediate properties between the E1 and E2 conformational families.


Excessive nitrogen (N) application to rice (Oryza sativa L.) crop in China causes environmental pollution, increases the cost of rice farming, reduces grain yield and contributes to global warming. Scientists from the International Rice Research Institute have collaborated with partners in China to improve rice N fertilization through site-specific N management (SSNM) in China since 1997. Field experiments and demonstration trials were conducted initially in Zhejiang province and gradually expanded to Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangsu, Hubei and Heilongjiang provinces. On average, SSNM reduced N fertilizer by 32% and increased grain yield by 5% compared with farmers' N practices. The yield increase was associated with the reduction in insect and disease damage and improved lodging resistance of rice crop under the optimal N inputs. The main reason for poor fertilizer N use efficiency of rice crop in China is that most rice farmers apply too much N fertilizer, especially at the early vegetative stage. We observed about 50% higher indigenous N supply capacity in irrigated rice fields in China than in other major rice-growing countries. Furthermore, yield response of rice crop to N fertilizer application is low in China, around 1.5 t ha− on average. However, these factors were not considered by rice researchers and extension technicians in determining the N fertilizer rate for recommendation to rice farmers in China. After a decade of research on SSNM in China and other Asian rice-growing countries, we believe SSNM is a matured technology for improving both fertilizer N use efficiency and grain yield of rice crop. Our challenges are to further simplify the procedure of SSNM and to convince policy-makers of the effectiveness of this technology in order to facilitate a wider adoption of SSNM among rice farmers in China.


Tumor progression is a multistep process in which cancer cells perform an intricate cross-talk with their surrounding stromal environment, generating a bidirectional communication that affects tumor survival, proliferation and aggressiveness. Among several cell types that constitute the tumor stroma, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) selectively migrate toward tumor microenvironment and contribute to the active formation of tumor-associated stroma, thus promoting cell survival, angiogenesis, invasion, evasion of immune system and metastasis.
In this thesis, I investigated the role of bone marrow-derived MSCs (BM-MSCs) in tumor processes, deepening the involvement of specific signaling pathways underlying their recruitment and activity into tumor microenvironment. In particular, innovative therapeutic tools have been tested to: 1) inhibit BM-MSC-mediated growth and aggressiveness of osteosarcoma (OS) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell lines by targeting CXCR4; 2) interfere with BM-MSC recruitment by triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells through modulation of PDGFRβ signaling.
For the first purpose, I tested a new CXCR4 inhibitor, Peptide R, which was recently developed as an anticancer agent to overcome the toxicity of the well-known CXCR4 antagonist AMD3100. I observed a reduction in BM-MSC-mediated OS and HCC migration and invasion and a parallel decrease in BM-MSC-dependent phosphorylation of ERK and AKT. Furthermore, Peptide R, targeting and inhibiting CXCR4, prevented Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) of OS and HCC cells promoted by BM-MSCs.
For the second purpose, I used a novel aptamer-based PDGFRβ inhibitor, named Gint4.T. Aptamers, thanks to their unique characteristics (low size, good target affinity, no immunogenicity, high stability), represent a new class of molecules with a great potential to rival monoclonal antibodies in both therapy and diagnosis. I observed that Gint4.T, binding PDGFRβ, inhibited the phosphorylation of the receptor and its downstream signaling significantly preventing in vitro BM-MSC cell migration and blocking cell proliferation. Finally, I found that Gint4.T strongly reduced in vitro BM-MSC migration stimulated by two different Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) cell lines, suggesting that it could interfere with BM-MSC recruitment and their pro-tumorigenic activity within breast cancer microenvironment.
Therefore, this study represents an initial development of novel tumor microenvironment-targeting therapies that, in combination with conventional approaches-oriented to tumor cells, may offer more effective alternative to treat cancer patients by targeting BM-MSCs.


This article explores the treatment of agency permanent establishments in Brazilian tax regulations. Brazil's legislation does not have general permanent establishment rules. However, it deals with certain types of agency PEs. After analyzing domestic regulations we have also explored the limited case law there is in Brazil about this topic. The last section of the article is dedicated to the interaction between Brazil's domestic rules and the double tax conventions signed by the country.


So opined English-born Clive Barnes in January 1974, reviewing an Off-Broadway production of David Williamson's The Removalists for the New York Times. Barnes had already seen London's Royal Court production (in July-August 1973) of this play which, first performed in Melbourne and Sydney 'alternative' theatres two years before, had quickly won its young writer a national reputation. By the time Barnes reviewed the play, that reputation was becoming international, for at the end of 1973 Williamson had won the London Evening Standard's George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright.


Prevalence rates for asthma in various parts of the world are different and this cannot be entirely explained by differences in methodology. Low prevalence rates are found in third world countries, particularly marked for children. The reasons for these differences are obscure but are largely environmental. Some suggestions are made herein about their nature.


Stable helical radicals are promising multi-functional molecules in light of intriguing magnetic and chiroptical properties. Attempts were made to extend diphenylmethyl-fused NiII porphyrin radical to helical system as the first air-stable organic neutral helical radicals. Intramolecular Pd-catalyzed twofold C-H arylation of methyl- or methoxy-introduced meso-diphenylmethyl NiII porphyrins gave a mixture of the target and rearranged radicals. Oxidative fusion reaction of meso-(bis(1-naphthyl)methyl) NiII porphyrins provided doubly fused NiII porphyrin radicals. One of the helical radicals was separated into enantiomers that showed mirror-image circular dichroism (CD) spectra up to 1300 nm. The helical dinaphthylmethyl-fused NiII porphyrin radical displayed solid-state magnetic property mostly arising from monomeric radicals, different from the parent diphenylmethyl-fused NiII porphyrin radical that showed antiferromagnetic coupling due to π-stacked pairing.


Aims Effectively tackling severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is a global public health priority. Most treatment programmes report short-term outcomes at discharge. There is limited evidence about subsequent mortality and morbidity. The authors aimed to address this research gap by describing longer-term outcomes following SAM treatment. Methods One year after discharge, the authors attempted to trace all survivors from a large urban, inpatient-based SAM treatment programme. 796/1024 (78%) had been enrolled in a probiotic randomised controlled trial which had no overall effect. Detailed baseline and follow-up data were available. Results From July 2006 to March 2007, 1024 patients contributed to 1187 admission episodes for SAM treatment. 697/1024 (68.1%) had oedematous malnutrition. 459/1024 (45%) were known HIV seronegative, 445/1024 (43%) known seropositive. Long-term outcomes were determined for 899/1024 (88%). Mortality risk was greatest early in the programme: 238/1024 (23%) children died during initial inpatient treatment, 84/1024 (8%) in the subsequent 90 days and a further 105/1024 (10%) over the subsequent year. Preliminary Cox regression showed that HIV was strongly associated with mortality. Of the total 427 deaths, 274/427 (64%) were known seropositive but only 77/427 (18%) were known seronegative. Low admission weight-for-age, low admission weight-for-height were and age <12 months were also associated with mortality after adjusting for age, sex, height-for-age, mid-upper arm circumference, and admission oedema. Initial treatment cure (reaching weight-for-height >80% of NCHS median) was associated with long-term survival. Of 471 initial cures, 372/471 (79%) were still alive at 1 year. Total known long-term programme survivors were 472/1024 (46%). At 1 year, mean weight-for-height z-score (WHZ) of those measured was −0.03 (SD 1.2, n=396) compared to baseline WHZ of −2.25 (SD1.3, n=976). Height-for-age (HAZ) remained low: HAZ −3.05 (SD 1.4) at 1 year compared to −3.23 (SD 1.4) at baseline. Putting these in context, mean WHZ of the oldest sibling in the family was −0.23 (SD 0.9, n=59) and HAZ −1.75 (SD 1.7, n=59). Conclusions In this study, most children who were successfully cured in a SAM treatment programme remained alive 1 year after discharge. Overall mortality was however high. Community-based strategies could play an important role in earlier identification and treatment of high-risk children as well as longer-term support of children discharged from nutrition programmes.


Some angiosperms are limited to a range of possible flower colors. This limitation can be due to the lack of an anthocyanin biosynthetic gene or to the substrate specificity of a key anthocyanin biosynthetic enzyme, dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR). Cymbidium hybrida orchid flowers primarily produce cyanidin-type (pink to red) anthocyanins and lack the pelargonidin-type (orange to brick-red) anthocyanins. To investigate the underlying molecular mechanism of this flower color range, we cloned a Cymbidium DFR gene and transformed it into a DFR- petunia line. We found that the Cymbidium DFR did not efficiently reduce dihydrokaempferol (DHK), which is an essential step for pelargonidin production. Phylogenetic analysis of a number of DFR sequences indicate that the inability to catalyze DHK reduction has occurred at least twice during angiosperm evolution. Our results indicate that developing a pelargonidin-type orange flower color in Cymbidium may require the transformation of a DFR gene that can efficiently catalyze DHK reduction.


Hanle effect in InAs/GaAs quantum dots (QDs) is studied under optical orientation as a function of temperature over the range of 150-300 K, with the aim to understand the physical mechanism responsible for the observed sharp increase of electron spin polarization with increasing temperature. The deduced spin lifetime Ts of positive trions in the QDs is found to be independent of temperature, and is also insensitive to excitation energy and density. It is argued that the measured Ts is mainly determined by the longitudinal spin flip time (T1) and the spin dephasing time (T2 *) of the studied QD ensemble, of which both are temperatureindependent over the studied temperature range and the latter makes a larger contribution. The observed sharply rising of the QD spin polarization degree with increasing temperature, on the other hand, is shown to be induced by an increase in spin injection efficiency from the barrier/wetting layer and also by a moderate increase in spin detection efficiency of the QD.


A quantitative comparison of the performance of the most common reactor configurations proposed for the oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) is made on the basis of numerical calculations with phenomenological reactor models. The configurations that are analyzed can be divided into two main categories, namely, packed-bed reactors (including conventional packed beds with external cooling, packed-bed membrane reactors, and adiabatic packed beds with post cracking) and fluidized bed reactors (bubbling fluidized bed reactor, circulating fluidized bed reactor, and fluidized bed membrane reactor). The challenges in both configuration types, mainly the heat management in the case of the packed-bed reactors and the low C 2+ yields obtained in fluidized bed reactors, are evaluated and quantified. To ensure a fair comparison, La 2 O 3 /CaO is chosen as the OCM catalyst for all the considered cases, mainly in view of the availability of a comprehensive kinetics model. The results show that, with conventional configurations, it is not possible to achieve high C 2+ yields that are needed to make the process economically viable. However, the results also indicate that the C 2+ yield can be significantly improved by feeding the oxygen distributively along the reactor axial length.


The era of communication technology has now a great impact in our daily lives. Learning approaches are now evolving from traditional slide-based lectures into much more dynamic ones, where technology plays a key role in order to improve the students' academic performance and engagement. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to develop interactive classroom environments supported by mobile Tablet PC technology, which integrates formative assessment into classroom practices and provides immediate feedback to students. We describe practical guidelines to design and develop both lecture materials and active learning exercises in the context of this next-generation technology.


Reinforcement learning is a powerful learning paradigm in which agents can learn to maximize sparse and delayed reward signals. Although RL has had many impressive successes in complex domains, learning can take hours, days, or even years of training data. A major challenge of contemporary RL research is to discover how to learn with less data. Previous work has shown that domain information can be successfully used to shape the reward; by adding additional reward information, the agent can learn with much less data. Furthermore, if the reward is constructed from a potential function, the optimal policy is guaranteed to be unaltered. While such potential-based reward shaping (PBRS) holds promise, it is limited by the need for a well-defined potential function. Ideally, we would like to be able to take arbitrary advice from a human or other agent and improve performance without affecting the optimal policy. The recently introduced dynamic potential based advice (DPBA) method tackles this challenge by admitting arbitrary advice from a human or other agent and improves performance without affecting the optimal policy. The main contribution of this paper is to expose, theoretically and empirically, a flaw in DPBA. Alternatively, to achieve the ideal goals, we present a simple method called policy invariant explicit shaping (PIES) and show theoretically and empirically that PIES succeeds where DPBA fails.


We present here the first density functional theoretic study into the mechanism of cysteine dioxygenation by a model of cysteine dioxygenase enzymes. A large active site model containing the ligands bound to iron plus amino acid residues that are involved in hydrogen bonding interactions with the substrate is used. The reaction takes place via multi-state reactivity patterns on competing singlet, triplet, and quintet spin states, whereby the latter is the ground state in most complexes. Several new intermediates have been predicted, which have not been anticipated before. The dioxygen-bound complex is in a singlet spin ground state, and a state crossing to the quintet spin state leads to an FeOOS ring structure that splits into a cysteinyloxide radical that reorients and abstracts an electron from the iron center. In the final step, the oxoiron donates the oxygen atom to the substrate to produce cysteine sulfinic acid in a highly exothermic process. The rate-determining step is the initial step in the reaction mechanism on the quintet spin state surface.


IAGOS (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System) is a European Research Infrastructure for global observations of atmospheric composition using commercial aircraft. Commercial aircraft are ideal platforms for providing long-term in-situ measurements with high vertical and temporal resolution, particularly at cruise altitude (between 9 and 13 km) in the climate-sensitive region of the atmosphere known as the upper troposphere-lower stratosphere (UTLS). IAGOS also provides landing and take-off profiles at almost 300 airports throughout the world which are of major interest for air quality issues. Fully automated instruments are permanently installed on Airbus A330 aircraft operated by different airlines. Data are collected on about 500 flights per aircraft per year. All the aircraft measure the abundances of many essential climate variables, chiefly ozone and the precursor carbon monoxide, water vapour, clouds and meteorological parameters. Additional instruments can be installed to measure nitrogen oxides, aerosols, or the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. The data are transmitted in near to real real time to weather services and are freely available for the scientific community, national air quality prediction centres and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). We describe the importance of these measurements in the monitoring of global atmospheric composition and air quality. In particular, we show examples from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) where IAGOS data are used in the evaluation and improvement of forecasts of air quality over Europe, and discuss how the development of the IAGOS data transmission and instrumentation may fertilize infrastructure development for other airborne platforms.


Purified alpha 1-antitrypsin (alpha 1AT) was previously shown to prevent primary antibody response and lymphocyte DNA synthesis. We have reported that radiolabelled alpha 1-AT could bind to human lymphocytes and inhibit surface proteolytic activity. However, the radiolabelling method brings no information on the eventual heterogeneity of alpha 1AT distribution among the population nor on the presence of alpha 1AT on untreated lymphocytes. In this report, we have investigated these two points using indirect fluorescence followed by flow cytofluorometric analysis. The presence of alpha 1AT was revealed on a variable percentage of untreated peripheral blood and tonsillar lymphocytes. The incubation of cells with additional alpha 1AT induced an increase of the percentages of fluorescent lymphocytes. This binding was specific and could be inhibited by pretreatment with the protease inhibitor tosyl-L-phenylalanine-chloromethyl-ketone (TPCK) (2 X 10(-5)M). Furthermore, TPCK and EDTA (3 mM) could displace alpha 1AT initially bound to the lymphocyte surface.


On 2016, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda officially came into force. With its 17 Goals countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change on global, regional and national levels. Education is explicitly recognized in the SDGs as the Goal number 4. To achieve "inclusive and equitable quality education" countries started to develop national programs aiming to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda according to their specific needs and challenges. Brazil declared to adopt main SDGs in the country´s dimension, including the target "to ensure equal access of all people to quality education".


B cells specific for the SARS-CoV-2 S envelope glycoprotein spike were isolated from a COVID-19-infected subject using a stabilized spike-derived ectodomain (S2P) twenty-one days post-infection. Forty-four S2P-specific monoclonal antibodies were generated, three of which bound to the receptor binding domain (RBD). The antibodies were minimally mutated from germline and were derived from different B cell lineages. Only two antibodies displayed neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2 pseudo-virus. The most potent antibody bound the RBD in a manner that prevented binding to the ACE2 receptor, while the other bound outside the RBD. Our study indicates that the majority of antibodies against the viral envelope spike that were generated during the first weeks of COVID-19 infection are non-neutralizing and target epitopes outside the RBD. Antibodies that disrupt the SARS-CoV-2 spike-ACE2 interaction can potently neutralize the virus without undergoing extensive maturation. Such antibodies have potential preventive/therapeutic potential and can serve as templates for vaccine-design. IN BRIEF SARS-CoV-2 infection leads to expansion of diverse B cells clones against the viral spike glycoprotein (S). The antibodies bind S with high affinity despite being minimally mutated. Thus, the development of neutralizing antibody responses by vaccination will require the activation of certain naïve B cells without requiring extensive somatic mutation. Highlights Analysis of early B cell response to SARS-CoV-2 spike protein Most antibodies target non-neutralizing epitopes Potent neutralizing mAb blocks the interaction of the S protein with ACE2 Neutralizing antibodies are minimally mutated


Transportation constitutes a large part of the forest industry's raw material costs. Transport also contributes a significant proportion of the carbon dioxide emissions. In order to reduce both the cost and environmental impact different types of decision support are required. These, in turn, require extensive information about the road network and correct information on road path selection and transport distances. In the development of national road data base for forestry (SNVDB) a road selection application has been included. The road selection application states chosen roads and distances between two points.
The aim of this study has been to quantify the reliability in the road selection and possible systematic errors in transport distances. This is done in order to estimate the economic effect of a transition from the present distance calculation methods to using the "least expensive path" application.

The results showed that the road selection application (with its current calibration parameters) chose another road than used in reality in 16 % of the cases. In 46 % of the cases the incorrect road choice resulted from discrepancies in SNVDB. The analysis showed that the distances generated by with the road selection application were on average 1.4 % longer than for the present calculation method. The variation the two, however were large, ranging from -5.4 % to 5.6 %.

The change in the average transport distances, while appearing small, translates into a large annual expenditure for Stora Enso Skog's transport organization because of the large volumes involved.

The parameters used in this study were not the first and definitely not the last that will be tested. In order to find a road selection application that chooses the true transport road, more tests are needed in order to continuously analyze new selection parameters. Distance measurement with SNVDB still has certain deficiencies but has the potential to be developed into a suitable tool for both transport planning and payment.


Found on the walls of ancient caves in northern France, the earliest known maps do not depict the earth but the brightest stars of the milky way. Although we know little about the people who painted these maps, we know that they, like us, looked for answers and meaning. Mapping as material testimony of this desire signals a basic function of human placemaking. Discarding the biographical shallowness of cartography, this paper investigates how maps might assume social agency. Since spaces are (socially) constructed not only of sight but also of memories, affect, or tactile experiences, I investigate how maps enter spatiotemporal relationships and become agents of social critique by asking: When do maps exceed their role as material artifacts by interfacing with mental geographies of individuals or societal structures? Unfolding the social lives of maps, the paper proposes, demonstrates their ability to exceed traditionally assumed utilitarian roles as lifeless transmitters of 'objective' facts, instead revealing cartographic assemblages of identity, memory, trauma, and protest.


Gonorrhea is one of the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infections in England. Over 41,000 cases were recorded in 2015, more than half of which occurred in men who have sex with men (MSM). As the bacterium has developed resistance to each first-line antibiotic in turn, we need an improved understanding of fitness benefits and costs of antibiotic resistance to inform control policy and planning. Cefixime was recommended as a single dose treatment for gonorrhea from 2005 to 2010, during which time resistance increased and subsequently declined. We developed a stochastic compartmental model representing the natural history and transmission of cefixime sensitive and resistant strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in MSM in England, which was applied to data on diagnoses and prescriptions between 2008 and 2015. We estimated that asymptomatic carriers play a crucial role in overall transmission dynamics, with about 40% of infections remaining asymptomatic and untreated, accounting for 96% of onward transmission. The fitness cost of cefixime resistance in the absence of cefixime usage was estimated to be such that the number of secondary infections caused by resistant strains is only about half as much as for the susceptible strains, which is insufficient to maintain persistence. However, we estimated that treatment of cefixime-resistant strains with cefixime was unsuccessful in 84% of cases, representing a fitness benefit of resistance. This benefit was large enough to counterbalance the fitness cost when 31% of cases are treated with cefixime, and when more than 51% of cases were treated with cefixime the resistant strain had a net fitness advantage over the susceptible strain. Our findings have important implications for antibiotic stewardship and public health policies, and in particular suggest that cefixime could be used to treat a minority of gonorrhea cases without raising resistance levels.


Removal of contaminants from polluted environments could be improved by taking advantage of the catabolic capacity of some microorganisms in a process called bioremediation. Nowadays, the use of microbial associations (also called microbial consortia) is gaining attention, because they seem to have a wider degradation spectrum than that exhibited by isolated strains. M10 is a bacterial consortium obtained from hydrocarbon-contaminated Antarctic soils. The members of the M10 consortium have been isolated and identified, being its main components bacteria belonging to the Pseudomonas, Sthenotrophomonas and Sphingobacterium genera (1). The use of the M10 consortium as a bioaugmentation tool proved to enhance phenanthrene removal from Antarctic soils (2). Transmission electronic microscopy (TEM) images of M10 revealed the presence of morphological diversity among the cells grown in liquid culture with phenanthrene as sole carbon and energy source (Figure1, A and B). This morphological diversity is in agreement with the idea of M10 as a complex microbial association. Images in Figure 1, C and D are compatible with the presence of an extracellular matrix around the cells. This matrix, that seems to be forcing or helping bacterial cells to stay close together is associated to the surface of only some members of the consortium.


BACKGROUND: Culture of seaweed is expanding globally due to wide range application of seaweeds including human consumption as nutritious food. Despite the availability of naturally occurring seaweeds, utilization is scarcely noticed in Bangladesh. Therefore, some value added seaweed food and functional food products were experimentally manufactured and those products were found to be promising for commercial production. Proximate composition and shelf-life determination by organoleptic evaluation were conducted on four value added seaweed food products; namely, seaweed jelly, soup, ice-cream, curd and two functional food products; namely, seaweed singara, samosa. METHODOLOGY: Crude protein, lipid, moisture and ash content of above mentioned food and functional foods items were analyzed according to standard procedure of AOAC, 2000. To study shelf life, two sets of sample; each set of sample included previously mentioned 4 value added seaweed food items and 2 value added seaweed functional food items stored both in ambient condition and in freezer at -18°C were investigated for 1 month. KEY FINDINGS : Crude protein content of seaweed jelly, soup, ice-cream and curd was 8.71%, 9.04%, 14.96% and 16.60%; lipid content was 6.76%, 12.67%, 10.33% and 1.10%; moisture content was 42.75%, 56.94%, 51.68% and 58.06%; ash content was 19.05%, 16.27%, 8.02% and 9.10%, respectively. Average proximate composition value of seaweed singara, samosa was found respectively as 9.80% and 10.01% crude protein, 6.88% and 6.17% lipid, 32.08% and 27.44% moisture, 13.20% and 10.01% ash. All value added seaweed food and functional food products kept open in ambient condition had a shelf life of not more than three days. Shelf life of seaweed food and functional foods in freezer was at least 1 month. CONCLUSION: Determination of optimum use of seaweeds in product development, spoilage mechanism , development of more new products, effect of these products on human health, seaweed culture technique etc. should be investigated.


Driving and understanding electric vehicles can be quite different from a traditional vehicle. Theexpectations from the driver of an electric vehicle needs to be considered when designing theInstrument Panel Cluster interface.This thesis treats the testing, evaluation and redesign of the instrument panel cluster´s interface inthe electric vehicle Saab Zero Emission. The instrument panel cluster is the area in front of thesteering wheel which holds the gauges and instruments. The areas other than the Instrument PanelCluster, such as the center console and infotainment/navigation system were not included in thestudy.The Instrument panel was tested and evaluated using an array of different methods includingheuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough and user testing. The user testing was performed in adriving simulator using the think aloud method, to enable the observer to follow the users cognitivepath.Using the result from the testing and evaluation, new designs for the instrument panel cluster weremade. Several overall layouts and individual gauges were developed separately. When the finallayout was selected using evaluation matrixes, gauge designs were chosen to form a completesolution.The result was a cluster which is adapted for an electric vehicle. The speedometer is an analoggauge and the rest of the instruments in the panel are presented on a seven inch color display. Toavoid overloading the user with information, the cells which contain the different gauges can beexpanded or collapsed. The expanded view reveals more details whilst the collapsed view onlyshows that gauge's main information. Only one cell can be expanded at a time, and the userswitched between the cells by using buttons on the steering wheel. The interface is adapted for enelectric vehicle and intended to be more user friendly and ergonomic in a cognitive sense.The cluster was implemented in the Saab Driving Simulator for future testing and evaluation. Inorder to further develop the interface, the improvements should be tested and compared with thetest results of the present interface.


The authors present an integrated approach to compiling Fortran 77D and Fortran 90D programs for efficient execution on MIMD (multiple-instruction multiple-data) distributed-memory machines. the integrated Fortran D compiler relies on two key observations. First, array constructs may be scalarized into FORALL loops without loss of information. Second, loop fusion, partitioning, and sectioning optimizations are essential for both Fortran D dialects. A portable run-time library can also reduce the complexity and machine-dependence of the compiler. All optimizations except coarse-grain pipelining and data prefetching have been implemented in the current Fortran D compiler prototype.<<ETX>>


A highly-efficient phase photothermal method is developed for quantitative measurements of the small optical absorption coefficient in thin plates made of highly transparent materials in which bulk losses significantly exceed surface losses. The bulk absorption coefficient at 10.6 μm is estimated in polycrystalline diamond plates grown from the vapour phase (a CVD diamond). The results are compared with those for natural and synthetic diamond single crystals and with the concentrations of nitrogen and hydrogen impurities. The absorption coefficient of the best samples of the CVD diamond did not exceed 0.06 cm-1, which, taking into account the high thermal conductivity of the CVD diamond (1800–2200 W mK-1 at room temperature), makes this material attractive for fabricating output windows of high-power CO2 lasers, especially for manufacturing large-size optics.


Introduction: This report showed that clinically significant adductor muscle contraction can be possible even when the anterior and posterior branches of the obturator nerve are completely blocked. Case Presentation: A 66-year-old male patient visited Gil Medical Center, Gachon University College of Medicine, Incheon, South Korea during the year 2016. He underwent transurethral resection of the bladder (TURB) of a bladder tumor under spinal anesthesia and obturator nerve block (ONB). ONB was performed at the right-side inguinal crease by an ultrasound-guided block of the anterior and posterior branches. At the beginning of surgery, he exhibited grade IV obturator reflex; therefore, general anesthesia was applied and the surgery completed. After the effect of neuromuscular blockade had been completely reversed, we confirmed twitching of the pectineus muscle by ultrasound using a nerve stimulator (stimulation current 0.3 mA). Main branches of the right obturator nerve were still completely blocked when we rechecked the previously blocked-site (stimulation current 2 mA). Conclusions: The described case cautions that investigators must be aware more than two branches may pass adjacent to interfascial layers at the inguinal crease level and that a missed obturator nerve branch might result in severe adductor muscle contraction. We report this observation and suggest the possibility of an anatomical variant that requires the need for nerve stimulation and ultrasound for obturator nerve block verification.


Ad hoc networks are formed by intermediate nodes which agree to relay traffic. The link between nodes is broken when a node rejects to relay traffic. Various parameters like depreciation in the energy of a node, distance between nodes and mobility of the nodes play a vital role in determining the node's rejection to relay traffic. The objective of this paper is to propose a novel model that identifies the cooperative nodes forming stable routes at the route discovery phase. The weight factor of the different parameters decides the varied type of networks where the proposed model can be applied. Hence, an Artificial Neural Network based non-deterministic generic predictive model is proposed to identify the varied types of networks based on the weight factor. This study has been substantiated by simulation using OMNET++ simulator. We are sure that this paper will give a better solution to identify cooperative nodes thereby improving the performance of the network.


Femtocells are low-power, low-cost and user-deployed home base stations that can improve poor indoor coverage and enhance system capacity. However, as femtocells are deployed extensively, the two-tier interference will become serious, including the interference from macrocells and that from femtocells. Thanks to the low side lobe, the E-plane horns based reconfigurable antenna can be used to reduce the interference and enhance the capacity. In this paper, we investigate the effects of applying E-plane horns based reconfigurable directional antenna on link reliability and capacity of the orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) based femtocell systems. We compare our newly designed E-plane horns based reconfigurable antenna,and the sector antenna provided in the IEEE 802.16m, as well the omni-directional antenna. It is shown that E-plane horns based reconfigurable antenna system has higher femtocell capacity than the IEEE 802.16m sector antenna system due to the advantages of low side lobe and high main-lobe gain.


In early clinical trials, vaccination with allogeneic cancer cells enhanced the overall survival in some patients with malignancies. Because the administered vaccine cells were cultured at pO2=20 kPa, it is unclear whether they provided an adequate antigen match to tumor cells in situ where pO2 is generally much lower. Thus, we postulate that hypoxically grown vaccine cells will provide a better antigen match to tumors in situ. We are testing this hypothesis by studying the effects of hypoxia on prostate cancer (CaP) cells. LnCaP and VCaP cells were cultured at pO2=2 kPa or 20 kPa and analyzed by 2-D gel electrophoresis. The difference in pO2 affected the proteome mostly quantitatively (i.e., by change in spot intensity). Using a threshold of fivefold change, we found that hypoxia decreased the levels of thirteen proteins and increased of four in VCaP cells. These results are in line with the reports showing that hypoxia affects expression only of a small fraction of total cellular protein and that the content of total protein is not altered significantly. To determine if the hypoxia-dependent changes affected immune reactivity of the cells, we took advantage of the spontaneous autoantibodies against tumor-associated antigens (TAAs). Hence, we compared the binding to lysates of LnCaP and VCaP cells of antibodies pooled from CaP patients (n=25), healthy controls (n=25), rheumatoid arthritis (n=17), colorectal cancer (n=10) and lung cancer (n=10). CaP patient sera plasma reacted with numerous spots, some even in control groups and thus considered nonspecific. CaP sera plasma specifically bound to seven spots; four were hypoxia-specific. All selected spots were excised from the gel, trypsin-digested, and identified by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry as heat shock 70 kDa protein 4; protein disulfide isomerase A3; heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein L and leucine-rich repeat-containing protein 47. With the exception of the latter, the proteins have been identified or validated as TAAs before, but apparently none in CaP. CaP patient antibodies bound to lysates of LnCaP cells grown at pO2=2 kPa, but less than to such VCaP cell lysates. Our results confirmed the findings that hypoxia affects the proteome mostly quantitatively. Lysates of hypoxic CaP cells revealed novel potential TAAs suggesting the potential immunologic relevance of antigens in the hypoxic proteome. Thus, pO2 control can provide a tool for the development of more effective immunotherapy for CaP and possibly other cancers. Support: DOD PC094680 (CRG), PCF Creativity Award (CRG), Mayo Clinic Prostate SPORE 5P50CA091956 (SV-P); Mrs. Adelyn L. Luther, Singer Island, Florida and Mayo Clinic Cancer Center (SV-P). Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2011 Nov 12-16; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2011;10(11 Suppl):Abstract nr C223.


With currently practiced technology, lignin is either incinerated in the recovery cycle of pulping or wasted in wastewater treatment systems, resulting in its underutilization. However, lignin can be converted to value-added products. In this work, the copolymerization of soda lignin (SL) and acrylamide (AM) was carried out using potassium persulphate (K2S2O8) as an initiator in an aqueous solution to prepare water-soluble lignin-acrylamide (SL-AM) copolymer as a dry strength additive. The results showed that the optimal copolymerization conditions were 7.5 AM/SL molar ratio, 3.0 wt.% (based on lignin) of K2S2O8, 90 °C, and 4 h of reaction time, which resulted in a SL-AM copolymer with 100% solubility at 10 g/L concentration at pH 7 in water, a grafting ratio of 398%, and a molecular weight of 1.94×105 g/mol. The prepared SL-AM copolymer was characterized by elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (H-NMR) spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). By adding 1.0 wt.% of SL-AM copolymer to the pulp, the tensile, tear, and burst strengths were increased by 23.1%, 22.7%, and 15.2%, respectively, which implies that the resultant copolymer was an effective strength additive for papermaking.


The Internet and electronic communications have revolutionized how consumers obtain legal information and assistance. The availability of legal forms and services has developed at lightning speed and countless consumers are using these forms, rather than consulting attorneys. At the same time, many regulators of the legal profession appear to be frozen in time. Some take the position that the provision of interactive forms amounts to the unauthorized practice of law and others question arrangements that appear to involve the sharing of legal fees with non-lawyers. Even for those interested in regulating the provision of on-line services, one complication to doing so relates to the fact that the forms and services are provided around the world, rather than being limited to particular jurisdictions. Published as part of the symposium on "Lawyering in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," this article examines the regulatory challenges and the manner in which a private governance approach using third-party certification can be used to improve access to legal services while advancing consumer protection.


An alkaline-tolerant bacterium, which grew on various carbohydrates between pH 6 and 9-5, was isolated from soil and identified as Bacillus circulans. Lactose-grown organisms exhibited a transmembrane pH gradient (ΔpH) of −47 mV at pH 6-6, but no ΔpH at pH 9-0. The transmembrane electrical potential (Δψ) was −66 mV at pH 6.6 and −115mV at pH 90. Thus the total protonmotive forces at the two pH values were essentially the same. Lactose-grown organisms transported thiomethyl β-D-galactopyranoside (TMG) at pH 6.6 and at pH 9.0, but transport at the alkaline pH was dependent upon addition of ascorbate/ N,N,N',N' -tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine (TMPD) or preincubation with lactose. In the presence of ascorbate/TMPD, the TMG transport system exhibited similar kinetics and substrate specificities at pH 6.6 and pH 9.0, and resulted in accumulation of chemically unmodified TMG to a concentration approximately 180 times greater than the external concentration. Experiments in which a diffusion potential was generated in starved organisms or in which organisms were treated with nigericin indicated a lack of correlation between the rate of TMG uptake and the magnitude of Δψ. By contrast, the rate of TMG uptake correlated with cellular ATP levels in organisms incubated at different pH values and in organisms treated with N,N'-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide, arsenate or nigericin.