This research aimed to assess the impact of implementation of ISO 9001: 2008 on the job performance of employees in the Vice Presidency for Development & Quality – Najran University (VPDQ-NU). Researchers used a Quasi-experimental and descriptive method. For the Quasi-experimental method, the total sample size was (15 employee) who Stayed in the job for two consecutive years (2012/2013, 2013/2014) and received their evaluation of job performance from VPDQ-NU. For the descriptive method, researchers used the results of Internal Audit action records and designed a questionnaire to achieve research objectives. Twenty-two employees in VPDQ-NU responded to the questionnaire. The result of this research from three sources (Quasi-experimental - Internal Audit action records - Designed questionnaire) shows that there is positive effectiveness of ISO 9001:2008 to improve job performance of employees in VPDQ-NU. Based on this research, a key recommendation is the mainstream implementation of quality management system (ISO 9001: 2008) at all administrations and departments in the Najran University to ensure continuous improvement of the job performance of employees. Keywords : ISO 9001: 2008, Job performance, Quality management system


Abstract Many planets have been detected in close binary stars with separation only ~20 AU. These discoveries challenge the current theory of planet formation because binary stars with such an close separation are thought to have strong perturbations and thus inhibit planet formation around them. To address this issue, another scenario had been suggested: the binary separation was wider enough for binary formation in early stages, but it shrank to the present one after a transient triple star phase (stellar scattering phase). Here, we investigate how could planet survive or be ejected under this scenario. We find that (1) the odds of planetary survival are significantly reduced if scatterings between planets and/or planetesimals are included (2) circumbinary planets/planetesimals could be readily formed during such a transient phase.


Our twenty-four-day, thirteen-presentation tour through ten "Western" orthopaedic departments began on the way to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, when those of us participating in the 2011 John J. Fahey, MD, Memorial North American Traveling Fellowship (NATF) caught glimpses of each other in airports while connecting to various flights. Finally, we made formal introductions in the Saskatoon International Airport after a seemingly exhaustive interview by the Canadian Border Control. We all greeted and got to know each other briefly in the airport while comparing our web searches of each other to our real impressions.

The first to arrive was Dr. Peter Rose. Originally from Houston, Texas, he had studied physics at the University of Houston before pursuing a degree at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. After medical training, including a stint at the National Institutes of Health pursuing research, Dr. Rose did his residency training at the Mayo Clinic and was recruited to the faculty following two fellowships as a Mayo Foundation Scholar in spine and oncology. In order to participate in the NATF, he left a wife and baby daughter behind at home.

Sitting next to Dr. Rose on a Saskatoon Airport bench was Dr. Kelly Lefaivre, who hailed from Vancouver, British Columbia, where she was born and raised. She had completed an undergraduate degree at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, followed by medical school and orthopaedic residency at the University of British Columbia. After obtaining a master's degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health and finishing a fellowship in orthopaedic trauma at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dr. Lefaivre accepted an academic position in orthopaedic trauma at the University of British Columbia. She was the only fellow on this journey to visit her hometown and be able to reunite, albeit briefly, with her husband …


1 Geological Survey of Serbia, Rovinjska 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. E-mails: firstname.lastname@example.com; firstname.lastname@example.com Abstract. Five typical bauxite samples from three ore deposits from the wider area of Grebnik Mt. (Metohija, Serbia) were examined with the optical microscopic, X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) and chemical methods. The occurrences in bauxites were studied and described and the presence of major minerals was determined: diaspore, boehmite and hematite; minor minerals: quartz, goethite, rutile, kaolinite and hydro-hematite; as well as anatase, brookite, magnetite and chromite, which occur only sporadically. According to the quantity of main Al-bearers, three types of bauxite ore were recognized: diaspore, boehmite and boehmite-diaspore. Unit cell dimensions of major minerals were determined, mostly with values within reference data. However, all of the studied hematites have smaller a0 and V0 values, most probably due to the substitution of Fe3+ by Al3+. All samples are further classi?ied as iron-rich and ferritic bauxites. It was found that there were changes in origin conditions between major Al-hydroxides minerals and hematite, as well as between the diaspore and boehmite. Determined chemical compositions put this raw material into high-quality raw materials for obtaining the electro corundum and alumina. The synthesis of the obtained data indicate that Grebnik's bauxites have some unique characteristics, more or less different from most of the World's known bauxite ore deposits.


Under-segmentation of an image with multiple objects is a common problem in image segmentation algorithms. This paper presents a novel approach for the splitting of clumps formed by multiple objects due to under-segmentation. The algorithm includes two steps: finding a pair of points for clump splitting, and joining the pair of selected points. In the first step, a pair of points for splitting is detected using a bottleneck rule, under the assumption that the desired objects have roughly convex shape. In the second step, the selected pair of splitting points is joined by finding the optimal splitting line between them, based on minimizing an image energy. The performance of this method is evaluated using images from various applications. Experimental results show that the proposed approach has several advantages over existing splitting methods in identifying points for splitting as well as finding an accurate split line.


Purpose of reviewConcomitant with the obesity epidemic, a fatty liver due to nonalcoholic causes has become the most common liver disorder. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) covers a range from benign steatosis to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which in turn may progress to cirrhosis. NAFLD predicts, independent of obesity, the metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes and can progress to cirrhosis. This review focuses on studies in humans addressing effects of dietary changes in NAFLD. Recent findingsCross-sectionally, increased intake of fructose and simple sugars characterizes patients with NAFLD compared with weight-matched controls. Increased fructose intake is also associated with hepatic insulin resistance and fibrosis severity in NASH. Intake of saturated fat may also be increased in NAFLD. Dietary intervention studies have shown that liver volume and fat content changes significantly within a few days in response to caloric restriction or excess despite no or small changes in body weight. Weight loss by bariatric surgery decreases liver fat and inflammation but effects on fibrosis are uncertain. Hepatic insulin sensitivity generally changes in parallel with changes in liver fat content in NAFLD. Human data are limited regarding effects of isocaloric changes in diet composition on liver fat content. SummaryMaintenance of normal body weight and avoidance of intake of excess lipogenic simple sugars would seem beneficial for prevention of NAFLD and its metabolic consequences.


The authors investigate the relationship between the quality of institutions and output volatility. Using instrumental variable regressions, they address whether higher entry barriers and lower property rights protection lead to higher volatility. They find that a 1-standard-deviation increase in entry costs increases the standard deviation of output growth by roughly 40 percent of its average value in the sample. In contrast, property rights protection has no statistically significant effect on volatility.


Within the continental United States, average annual temperature increased during the Twentieth Century by approximately 0.65 oC. The most extreme warming occurred throughout the northern and western United States (IPCC 2007a; Williams and others 2010). Disturbances such as fire, drought, grazing, urbanization, and energy development are predicted to have a heightened impact on the western United States under a changing climate. For example, extreme drought conditions accompanied by rising temperatures characterized the American Southwest during the past decade (Floyd and others 2009).


Recognition of a nonmarine to marine transition in sedimentary rocks at Glade Creek and Big Bar in the southern Klamath Mountains permits reconstruction of the approximate position of a north-trending Early Cretaceous (Valanginian) shoreline. At the southern end of the Klamath Mountains, the shoreline is displaced 60 mi or more to the east by a west-northwest-trending fault zone. South of this fault zone the shoreline is buried at a much lower level beneath late Cenozoic rocks in the Great Valley. This large displacement probably is the result of differential movement along a system of left-lateral tear faults in the upper plate of the Coast Range thrust. The westward bulge of the Klamath arc also may have resulted from this faulting, as the amount and direction of the bulge is comparable with the displacement of the Valanginian shoreline. Basal clastic strata at both Glade Creek and Big Bar contain abundant fresh-water or brackish-water clams, many of which consist of unabraded paired valves. These are conformably overlain by Valanginian marine strata containing Buchia crassicollis solida. The position of the Valanginian shoreline beneath the Great Valley cannot be directly observed because it is buried by thick late Cenozoic deposits. However, its approximate westernmost limit must lie between the outcrop belt of marine strata on the west side of the valley and drill holes to basement on the east side, in which equivalent strata are absent. Franciscan rocks containing Valanginian fossils occur 10 mi southwest of Glade Creek, but these are deep-water marine eugeosynclinal rocks that were deposited far to the west of the shoreline. The deformation responsible for the displacement of the Valanginian shoreline and juxtaposition of the Franciscan rocks and Klamath Mountain basement rocks involved eastward under-thrusting of the Franciscan beneath the Coast Range thrust contemporaneous with differential movement along tear faults within the upper plate.


Introduction Cytochrome (cyt) bo from Exherichia coli is a member of a superfamily of homologous protonmotive oxidases which includes mammalian cyt c oxidase [ l ] . It has become evident that the copperhaem binuclear centre is very similar in all of these oxidases even though the haem type and reducing substrate vary. This binuclear centre is the site of oxygen binding and reduction to water, and the notion that local ligand movements in the binuclear centre drive proton translocation between proton channels in the protein structure [21 has become widely adopted as the most likely working model for the primary chemistry that drives vectorial proton translocation (for detailed variants on this theme, see [ 3-71). We have embarked on a detailed study of ligand binding dynamics in order to gain further insight into such possible protonmotive chemistry. Site-directed mutagenesis in bacterial systems o f conserved possible metal ligands allowed fairly definitive assignment of four histidine ligands to the three metal centres (two haem groups and one copper, Cu,,) in the critical subunit I of these oxidases [ X,9 1. Further biophysical analyses led to reassignment of the two remaining conserved histidines of subunit 1, together with the identification of other amino acids which might influence the metal centre chemistry. A summary of the view reached by our own laboratory of the possible ligands around Cu,,. based on data in [X,O] and on our measurements of mutation effects on recombination o f carbon monoxide after laser photolysis [lo], is shown in Figure 1. Complementary types of spectroscopic data from other laboratories have produced a remarkably consistent model [ 11-13]. We found that mutation of two histidine ligands (H333I,, H3341,) led to an acceleration of the rate of recombination of carbon monoxide with the binuclear centre [lo], a result also observed if the wild-type enzyme is grown in copper-limited conditions so that Cull is absent [14,15]. We have deduced that an acceleration of recombination rate of fivefold or more can be taken as a strong indication that Cu,, is absent. Indeed, we have often observed heterogeneity of CO recombination in


We studied the association of cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen-4 gene (CTLA4) polymorphisms with the development of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in Korean children and adolescents. A total of 176 Korean subjects (92 females and 84 males) with childhood-onset T1D were studied. The A/G polymorphism at position 49 in CTLA4 exon 1 and the C/T polymorphism at position -318 in the CTLA4 promoter were analyzed by PCR-RFLP methods. The genotype and allele frequencies of the CTLA4 polymorphisms in the T1D patients were not different from those in the controls. These polymorphisms were not associated with the clinical characteristics or the development of autoimmune thyroid disease in the T1D patients. The frequency of the A allele was significantly higher in the patients that did not have two out of the three susceptible HLA-DRB1 alleles, which were DRB1*0301, *0405 and *09012, compared to the controls (P<0.05). These results suggest that CTLA4 polymorphisms do not directly confer any susceptibility to T1D. However, a CTLA4-mediated susceptibility effect on the development of T1D might be significant in children and adolescents that do not have susceptible HLA class II alleles.


Cooperative transmissions emulate multi-antenna systems and can improve the quality of signal reception. In this paper, we propose and analyze a cross layer random access scheme, C-ALOHA, that enables cooperative transmissions in the context of ALOHA system. Our analysis shows that over a fading channel C-ALOHA can improve the throughput by 30%, as compared to standard ALOHA protocol.


OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess the level of satisfaction of the family members attended in a nursery unit of a hospital in São Paulo, SP, Brazil. METHODS A questionnaire structured on liker scale (QSEnf 10) was applied to check the levels of familiar satisfaction during hospitalization. RESULTS Most of the volunteers indicated that are satisfied with the services provided for each specialty, ranging from 81.5 to 100%. The average satisfaction score of 33 for the nursing team, 36.9 for doctors, 19.5 for physiotherapists, 19.0 for psychologists and 18.3 for nutritionists. On the other hand, a few were unsatisfied with the services provided in some specialties. CONCLUSIONS Among the main factors associated with the dissatisfaction of family members is related to the lack of information or inaccurate information and the delay in responding to special requests.


Recently, halosulfuron injury in soybean through off-target movement of halosulfuron when applied to rice fields has been reported. Sulfonylurea-tolerant (ST) soybean varieties have enhanced tolerance for sulfonylurea herbicides and might provide an option for mitigating injury to soybean from halosulfuron drift. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of halosulfuron on growth and yield of selected soybean varieties with ST trait alone and stacked with glyphosate resistance trait. Soybean plants were treated with halosulfuron at 0, 0.0043, 0.0087, 0.017, 0.034, and 0.069 kg ai/ha rate at the V3 growth stage in the greenhouse and at 0.034 kg/ha rate (labeled use rate in rice) in the field studies. All soybean varieties containing the ST trait exhibited some halosulfuron injury, but survived the halosulfuron application in the greenhouse. In field studies, a single POST application of halosulfuron at 0.034 kg/ha to soybean at three-trifoliolate leaf stage or at full bloom stage resulted in halosulfuron injury to a certain extent regardless of ST trait. Halosulfuron did not have a significant effect on yield of ST varieties compared to their respective nontreated controls. Severe halosulfuron injury in two non-ST varieties resulted in yield loss.


Evidence exists as to what constitutes successful disability management (DM), with many describing recent upsurge in the area as a major paradigm shift. Despite the benefits of return-to-work (RTW) programs in reducing costs and improving workplace morale, many workplaces appear unwilling or unable to develop and implement successful RTW programs. A review of the literature reveals a lack of coherent theoretical frameworks for implementing DM. This paper presents a model developed to assess the maturity of DM practices in construction organizations. The model is part of an overall research project aiming to evaluate DM in the Manitoban construction industry and its relation to health and safety performance. This project is conducted by the University of Manitoba Construction Engineering and Management Group and funded by the Workers' Compensation Board of Manitoba. The proposed model is based on existing construction industry maturity models and the concept of process improvement and relies on leading and lagging indicators of performance at the organizational level, thus enabling a thorough evaluation of it. Once validated, the model should help construction organizations evaluate their DM practices against best practices, identify and address areas where improvements are needed, and assess and benchmark DM performance on a regular basis, thus providing a framework to guide the advancement of DM. Similarly, the model can be used by Worker's Compensation Boards, safety associations and other regulatory bodies across Canada and elsewhere for auditing purposes.


Automation of directional drilling processes has gained interest as drilling operators seek more cost-effective solutions and consistent performance. Automation and control–although a mature topic in many industries–has recently started to take place in the drilling world as well. Hence, there is a great potential for rapid and significant improvements.
 Currently, directional drilling operations are primarily managed by directional drillers who make steering decisions based on available pre-job reports, real-time data and geometric calculations. The resulting performance is contingent on directional drillers' skill set, knowledge of the drilling tool, and familiarity with the local geology. Automating this process brings the promise of standardized drilling decisions with consistent accurate well placement with improved borehole quality, and the flexibility to adapt to new technologies in drilling tools and sensors. Automation also increases safety level in operations by reducing the on-site crew size since directional drillers can remotely manage multiple wells.
 This work proposes a model-based control approach for automated steering in drilling operations. Two different models are presented. First, a comprehensive wellbore propagation model which considers multiple factors, such as the geometric feedback embedded in the wellbore trajectory, the drilling tool mechanical properties and actuation principle, the bit/rock interaction laws and kinematic relations between the bit motion and the newly created borehole, then a reduced-order model tailored for control applications. The control approach presented is applicable for both rotary steerable systems (RSS) and mud motors. Testing results are presented and discussed at the end of the paper.


Existing datasets of economic sanctions rely primarily on secondary sources and do not tend to take full advantage of government documents related to economic coercion. Such data may miss sanctions, and do not capture important details in how coercive measures are threatened, imposed and removed. The latter processes often have much to do with the domestic politics in sender countries. Understanding these processes may be necessary in order to fully account for sanctions' effectiveness. We present a natural language processing (NLP) approach to retrieving sanctions-related government documents. We apply our method to the case of US sanctions. The United States is the world's pre-eminent user of sanctions. Our method can be applied to other cases. We collect all sanctions events originating in the office of the US president, and all congressional sanctions, for 1988–2016. Our approach has three advantages: (1) by design, it captures all sanctions-related documents; (2) the resulting data are disaggregated by imposing branch of government; (3) the data include the original language of the measures. These features directly shed light on interbranch delegation, domestic (partisan) conflict, and policy priorities. We show that our data record more episodes than most existing sanctions' data, and have features that other datasets lack. The availability of the original text opens up new avenues for research and analysis.


Homogeneous cosmological models with non-vanishing intrinsic curvature require a special treatment when they are quantized with loop quantum cosmological methods. Guidance from the full theory which is lost in this context can be replaced by two criteria for an acceptable quantization, admissibility of a continuum approximation and local stability. A quantization of the corresponding Hamiltonian constraints is presented and shown to lead to a locally stable, non-singular evolution compatible with almost classical behaviour at large volume. As an application, the Bianchi IX model and its modified behaviour close to its classical singularity is explored.


Background
Although terminal ileal ulcers can be observed occasionally in colonoscopy examination, the prognosis, clinical significance and treatment guidelines are unclear.
Methods
All patients diagnosed with terminal ileal ulcers from March 2014 to March 2018 were enrolled. We extracted data of gender, age, clinical symptoms, number of terminal ileal ulcers, pathological outcome, treatment programs.
Results
Of 42 individuals, one patient diagnosed with tuberculosis and received anti-tuberculosis treatment. The other 41 individuals chose to follow up or 5-ASA plus probiotics treatment. Logistic regression analysis showed no significant difference in treatment selection and gender (P=0.848), age (P=0.481), ulcers (p=0.116), symptoms (P=0.326). All individuals had good prognosis.
Conclusion
Individuals with terminal ileal ulcers have a good prognosis regardless of follow-up or treatment.


A biphasic pattern of collagen biosynthesis was found in the aortae of spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) rats; the time course of the rate of biosynthesis is similar to that described in the heart by Sen and Bumpus. In comparison to age-matched controls, collagen biosynthesis is elevated in the SHR rats, diminishes during the first fourteen weeks and rises again at the stage of established hypertension. In the period of established hypertension, the increased rate of collagen biosynthesis was associated with a pronounced rise of the collagen type I to type III ratio. On the other hand, in the pre-hypertensive stage, the proportion of collagen type III clearly exceeds the proportion of collagen type I in SHR rats.


"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me." Mitchell, quoting Jesus (Matt. 25.36; Davis Life in the Iron-Mills) Rebecca Blaine Harding (not yet Davis) must have been a bit dismayed when she read her first published story, Life in the Iron-Mills, (1) in its April 1861 Atlantic Monthly form. An entire paragraph had been excised from the manuscript (holograph) she had submitted in 1860. (2) When in 1972 Tillie Olsen reprinted Life in the Iron-Mills, she naturally used the Atlantic Monthly text, since she found it "in one of three water-stained, coverless volumes of bound Atlantic Monthlys ... in an Omaha junkshop" (157). Ticknor and Fields published a new version of the story in an 1865 collection of fiction from the Atlantic Monthly. (3) Olsen's reprint and Cecelia Tichi's 1997 edition were both based on the Atlantic's version of the story. Neither Olsen nor Tichi indicate awareness of the 1865 text. This 1865 version restores the substance of the holograph paragraph in two paragraphs, rather than one. The holograph and the 1865 texts contain Davis's full artistic vision, though the holograph is the superior text. It offers internal coherence to the story and is stylistically superior--more poetic, more technically accurate, and less effusive and declamatory--than the 1865 version of the story which, nonetheless, surpasses the Atlantic Monthly text. Because the story we have been reading is truncated, we have not been able to understand fully Davis's view of social justice. An examination of the various literary lives of Life in the Iron-Mills explains the way the publishing business attempted to mediate the vast social reform theories abounding in the mid-nineteenth century, including Davis's, and also discloses the "secret ... that has lain dumb for centuries" the "terrible dumb question" at the heart of the story (13-14). (4) The holograph version and, less effectively, the 1865 text target the Evangelical Protestant church as the primary social institution which had failed at what she believed was its most elemental task to allow "brotherly love" to inhere in the church and then suffuse American culture, thereby eliminating poverty. (5) Were that vision to be realized, the Evangelical Protestant Church would become the instrument of humanitarian reform needed to moderate an industrial, capitalist economy that was running amuck. If the "Christian" nation were genuinely to enact Christian charity in public policy, the American dream would be available to one and all. HOLOGRAPH AND ATLANTIC TALES VERSIONS The passage the Atlantic Monthly text omits occurs in the church scene, about two-thirds of the way into the story where the Welsh immigrant, iron-mill puddler Hugh Wolfe enters an Evangelical Protestant church. Between the paragraph which begins with "Shall I go over the history of the hours of that night?" and the succeeding paragraph, which begins "Wolfe rose at last" (48-49), this paragraph appears in the holograph: Years ago, a mechanic tried reform in the alleys of a city as swarming and vile as this mill town, who did not fail. Could Wolfe have seen him as He was, that night, what then? A social Pariah, a man of the lowest caste, thrown up from among them, dying with their pain, starving with their hunger, tempted as they are to drink, to steal, to curse God and die. Theirs by blood, by birth. The son, they said, of Joseph the carpenter, his mother and sisters there among them. Terribly alone, one who loved and was not loved, and suffered from that pain; who dared to be pure and honest in that devil's den; who dared to die for us though he was a physical coward and feared death. If He had stood in the church that night, would not the wretch in the torn shirt there in the pew have "known the man"? His brother first. And then, unveiled his God. …


The main objective of this paper is to analyze the factors determining the capital structure of Spanish small and medium-sized enterprises. This analysis is grounded on agency theory, pecking order theory, and the signaling approach. The following elements were taken into consideration: i) the quantitative variables of the enterprises, and ii) qualitative or strategic variables, finally providing an analysis of the explanatory power of the firms' reputation, the ownership and control structure, and the relationship between the SMEs and the finance company. A definition of the relationships which might be expected between the proposed variables and the total borrowing ratio, according to the conceptual framework under consideration was given as well. A survey of 410 Spanish SMEs was considered in the empirical analysis. Firstly, we divided the survey into groups, according to the debt-equity ratio, and the application of an ANOVA test, then we tested for significant differences in the variables for each group. Next, we established a model of hierarchical regression for an overall comparison of the hypotheses that the theoretical model provided. Among the most relevant results, we should highlight that the only proposed hypotheses to be tested were those referring to the variables: 'number of finance companies' and 'existence of real covenants unrelated to the business'. It may be said that dealing with a greater number of companies and establishing a personal covenant increases the possibility of fund-raising on the credit market, thereby avoiding a situation of credit rationing. However, there is no confirmation of the explanatory power of the reputation or the ownership and control structure variables.


For some ancient Jews, "diaspora" (together with its cognates) was an actor's and not an observer's term. But its import was primarily theological: God punished the Jews for their sins by dispersing them from their native land of Israel. Yet "diaspora" retains analytic utility for historians, if taken to refer to the geographically and temporally varied modes of Jewish life outside Palestine. It is not known to what extent diaspora Jews were emigrants from Palestine and their descendants; nor do we know how numerous they were. But we can follow the evidence where it exists. The main lesson is that the onset of Roman rule created crises around the integration of the Jews into their host societies. Intentionally or not, in the cities of the east (and the big villages of Egypt) the Romans fomented discord between different elements of the population. In Egypt, this led at once to the ultimately lethal—for the Jews, anyhow—three-way competition between Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians. Even in Asia Minor, normally understood as the best-case scenario for Jews under Roman rule, the evidence indicates that Jewish life in the Roman imperial period was more fragile, constrained, fraught, and impermanent than is often supposed.


ABSTRACTAbdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a clinical challenge in risk assessment, recognition, treatment, and prevention. This article explores the pathogenesis, presentation, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of AAA.


The structures of the generalized Fokker-Planck equation derived in the previous publication (quoted as I) are examined in detail by considering the motion of electron beam in a high temperature electron plasma. The dynamical shielding factor provides the basis of a unified theory of the plasma oscillations. and the static shielding of the particles interaction in the plasma. The friction and diffusion coefficient are cakulated by taking into consideration the non-local space-time correlation effect. It is shown that the non-local correlation effect substantially modifies the contributions of the plasmon emission process. Rough estimation of the friction coefficient shows that the non-local correlation effect may increase the amount of the frictional drag at higher velocity. This effect may be essential to resolve the Langmuir paradox.


The 3′-terminal adenylic acid residue in several human small RNAs including signal recognition particle (SRP) RNA, nuclear 7SK RNA, U2 small nuclear RNA, and ribosomal 5S RNA is caused by a post-transcriptional adenylation event (Sinha, K., Gu, J., Chen, Y., and Reddy, R. (1998) J. Biol. Chem. 273, 6853–6859). Using the Alu portion of the SRP RNA as a substrate in an in vitro adenylation assay, we purified an adenylating enzyme that adds adenylic acid residues to SRP/Alu RNA from the HeLa cell nuclear extract. All the peptide sequences obtained by microsequencing of the purified enzyme matched a unique human cDNA corresponding to a new adenylating enzyme having homologies to the well characterized mRNA poly(A) polymerase. The amino terminus region of the human SRP RNA adenylating enzyme showed ∼75% homology to the amino terminus of the human mRNA poly(A) polymerase that includes the catalytic domain. The carboxyl terminus of the human SRP RNA adenylating enzyme showed less than 25% homology to the carboxyl terminus of poly(A) polymerase, which interacts with other factors and provides specificity. The SRP RNA adenylating enzyme is coded for by a gene located on chromosome 2 in contrast to the poly(A) polymerase gene, which is located on chromosome 14. A recombinant protein for the SRP RNA adenylating enzyme was prepared, and its activity was compared with the purified enzyme from HeLa cells. The data indicate that in addition to the SRP RNA adenylating enzyme, other factors may be required to carry out accurate 3′-end adenylation of SRP RNA.


NF-κB plays a pivotal role in pathogenesis in general arthritis. However, the participation of NF-κB in inflammation of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is poorly understood. We examined NF-κB expression in rat TMJs with synovitis induced by condyle hypermobility. By immunohistochemistry, NF-κB immunoreactivity was found mainly in the cytoplasm, not the nucleus, of the synovial lining cells of induced-synovitis and control TMJs. Southwestern histochemistry, a new method for detecting transcription factors, showed greater NF-κB expression in the nucleus of the synovial lining cells in the hypertrophic synovium than in control synovium. Increased numbers of the synovial lining cells with immunoreactivity for inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), which is transcriptionally regulated by NF-κB, were also seen in the inflamed synovium. These findings indicate that excess mechanical stress increases NF-κB activation in the TMJ and suggest that active NF-κB is involved in the progression of TMJ inflammation.


This article deals with the diagnosis, therapy and prognosis of intracerebellar haematomas. The characteristic symptoms and the value of computer tomography for an early diagnosis and the surgical therapy are discussed. Prognosis and complications are analysed in comparison with other works. Guiding rules for a rapid diagnosis and the choice of the respective therapy are given and an early surgical therapy is recommended.


Two laboratory engines, one direct injection and one indirect injection, were operated for a range of speeds, loads, injection timings, fuels, and steady and transient conditions. Rate of combustion data were derived and analyzed using a double Wiebe's function approximation. It is shown that three of the six function parameters are constant for a wide range of conditions and that the other three can be expressed as linear functions of the amount of fuel injected during ignition lag. Engine noise, smoke, and thermal efficiency correlate with the parameters describing the amount of premixed combustion and diffusive combustion duration. These characteristics may be optimized by reducing the quantity of premixed combustion while maintaining the duration of diffusive combustion to less than 60 /sup 0/CA.


Sepsis is a syndrome associated with excessive inflammation. Since mortality from sepsis remains high, more laboratory research is needed to provide insight into more effective ways to use novel, potentially more beneficial agents in sepsis. We investigated the ex vivo immunomodulatory effect of a novel polyclonal Ab preparation, trimodulin, containing IgM (∼23%), IgA (∼21%) and IgG (∼56%). Using whole blood and purified PBMCs from healthy volunteers and patients with sepsis, various ex vivo investigations upon endotoxin challenge and pre- and post-trimodulin treatment were performed. Endotoxin-induced TNF-α secretion was noticeably lower with than without trimodulin, implying attenuation of the hyper-responsive state. Trimodulin also lowered TLR2, TLR4, CD11b and CD64 detection on LPS/lipoteichoic acid-stimulated monocytes. These responses were observed in cells from healthy volunteers only shortly after ex vivo endotoxin stimulation and in whole blood from patients with early-stage sepsis. Furthermore, trimodulin markedly reduced lymphocyte proliferation and release of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines, but did not affect phagocytosis or oxidative-burst activities of endoxin-stimulated cells. Thus, trimodulin mitigated monocyte and lymphocyte hyperinflammatory responses early after endotoxin exposure. Determining whether early in vivo administration of trimodulin will elicit similar positive immunomodulatory effects and offer a clinical benefit warrants investigation.


This paper is concerned with linear algebra based methods for solving exactly polynomial systems through so-called Gr\"obner bases, which allow one to compute modulo the polynomial ideal generated by the input equations. This is a topical issue in non-linear algebra and more broadly in computational mathematics because of its numerous applications in engineering and computing sciences. Such applications often require geometric computing features such as representing the closure of the set difference of two solution sets to given polynomial systems. Algebraically, this boils down to computing Gr\"obner bases of colon and/or saturation polynomial ideals. In this paper, we describe and analyze new Gr\"obner bases algorithms for this task and present implementations which are more efficient by several orders of magnitude than the state-of-the-art software.


GREEK DINERS: HOW GREEKS HAVE KEPT TRADITIONALAND AMERICANIZED GREEK FOODWAYS ALIVE IN AMERICAN DINERS Michelle L. Roth, M.A. George Mason University, 2014 Thesis Director: Linda J. Seligmann This thesis explores the connection between the social space of the American diner and Greek immigrant ownership of diners. Its aim is to understand what the relationship is between Greeks and American diners and how these relationships have been created. This thesis begins with a historical overview of events that sparked Greeks to immigrate to the United States and is followed by a brief history of the American diner in order to comprehend its place in American culture. These respective histories are important in order to understand how and when these two concepts became intertwined. In order to further understand how Greek immigrants and diners are connected, participant observation was conducted at three diners in Virginia. Interviews were conducted at two of the three diners. The diners are located in three different regional spaces: urban, suburban, and rural in order to examine the similarities and differences in customers, employees, diner owners, ingredients used, and the cost of food in the regions in which they are located. This study also looks at the roles that diffusion, regionalism, ethnic identity and the social construction of space have played in connecting Greek immigrants with American diners.


A variety of factors, including ultraviolet (UV) exposure, have been implicated in the pathogenesis of melasma. However, UV‐induced hyperpigmentation usually recovers spontaneously, whereas melasma does not. Recently, we detected downregulation of the H19 gene on microarray analysis of hyperpigmented and normally pigmented skin from patients with melasma, and identified significant clinical correlations. The H19 downregulation was not accompanied by a reciprocal change of the imprinted gene, insulin‐like growth factor II. Moreover, methylation pattern of the H19 promoter region in maternal ICR was variable. The H19 knockdown in melanocyte monoculture did not result in obvious tyrosinase overexpression, whereas the knockdown in a mixed cell culture system, composed of H19 siRNA transfected normal human keratinocytes and non‐transfected normal human melanocytes, did induce not only a tyrosinase overexpression but also an increase of melanosome transfer. Estrogen treatment of the H19 RNA knockdown in the mixed cell culture was more than an additive effect on the tyrosinase overexpression, whereas UV irradiation was not. These findings suggest that downregulation of H19 and a sufficient dose of estrogen might be involved in the development of melasma.


OBJECTIVE
To obtain the normal values of four-phase rhinomanometry specific parameters of normal adult Chinese and analyze the correlation between four-phase rhinomanometry and acoustic rhinometry measurement results.

METHODS
Eighty-five normal adults were recruited. The HRR2 four-phase rhinomanometry was used to acquire the effective resistances in inspiration, expiration and total breathing process (Reffin, Reffex, Refft) and vertex resistance in the process of inspiration and expiration (Vrin and Vrex). The Eccovision acoustic rhinometry was used to measure the minimum cross-sectional area (MCA) and the nasal volume of 0-5 cm nasal cavity (V5).

RESULTS
Reffin (x(-) +/- s) was (1.28 +/- 1.02) Pa/(cm(3).s) for male, (1.55 +/- 1.03) Pa/(cm(3).s) for female; Reflex (x(-) +/- s) was (1.43 +/- 1.07) Pa/(cm(3).s) for male, (1.75 +/- 1.14) Pa/(cm(3).s) for female; Refft (x(-) +/- s) was (1.34 +/- 0.99) Pa/(cm(3).s) for male, (1.62 +/- 1.03) Pa/(cm(3).s) for female; Vrin (x(-) +/- s) was (1.31 +/- 1.03) Pa/(cm(3).s) for male; (1.60 +/- 1.03) Pa/(cm(3).s) for female, Vrex (x(-) +/- s) was (1.46 +/- 1.04) Pa/(cm(3).s) for male, (1.82 +/- 1.17) Pa/(cm(3).s) for female. No statistically significant difference was found between men and women (r = 0.661, -0.397, 0.127, 0.649, -0.684, P > 0.05, respectively). There was no significant correlation between Reffin, Reflex, Refft, Vrin, Vrex and age, height, weight, head circumference, body surface area, body mass index (P > 0.05, respectively). However, there was significant correlation between Reffin, Reflex, Refft, Vrin, Vrex and MCA, V5 (P < 0.05, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS
The results of four-phase rhinomanometry show significant correlation to acoustic rhinometry.


Although there has been much research in the area of data analytics in recent years (e.g. Shum and Ferguson 2012), there are questions regarding which analytic methodologies can be most effective in informing higher education teaching and learning practices (Gibson and de Freitas, 2016).

This project focuses on one module within the School of Computing and Communications in the STEM faculty to gain a clearer understanding on why students might, or might not, engage with computer aided learning and teaching (TELT) resources. We explore the use of specific TELT resources on the module 'Communications Technology', a print-based module with a range of online resources designed to supplement the text.

The research questions cover two key areas; the effectiveness of the analytics tools and students' perception of the TELT resources.
Via data analytics we can review:
• When the students engage with the TELT resources and whether this is at predicted times during the module.
• Whether students revisit the TELT resources.
Via individual student feedback we can explore:
• What motivates students to engage with TELT resources.
• Whether students understand topic more deeply as a result of using TELT resources.
• If students are deterred if the resources are too complicated/time consuming.

The findings should be of interest to module teams across many universities. This project will build on previous work undertaken in this area, e.g. Herodotou et al (2017) and Tempelaar et al (2017), and contribute to the wider body of knowledge in the area of data analytics.


There has recently been worldwide interest in the question of greater monetary policy autonomy for central banks. According to the December 1991 Treaty on European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), for example, the European Central Bank is supposed to assume practically unlimited responsibility for monetary policy. The authors set in context the issue of central bank independence and compare different indices of central bank independence.


This paper examines the relationship between calving date and production costs on Irish dairy farms from 2000-2007. Using data from the National Farm Survey, the median calving dates of 400 dairy farms are studied each year using econometric analysis to determine the relationship between calving date and production costs. Farms are divided into five categories according to their median calving date. These categories are imputed into a panel dataset as dummy variables. Unobservable individual effects are controlled for using a fixed effect model; examples of such effects are land quality and managerial ability, Results suggest that when scale and those unobserved effects are controlled for, there was no significant difference in total cost of production per litre according to median calving date


Kwortnik, Lynn, and Ross demonstrated across multiple studies and service-industry contexts that voluntary tipping (a form of buyer monitoring) is a more effective employee control mechanism for improving service than is compensating workers with a service charge on the bill or a fixed wage per hour. However, Kwortnik et al.'s studies were United States-based, where tipping behavior is common and generally accepted; such is not the case in many other countries around the world. Thus, the aim of this research note is twofold: (a) to replicate Kwortnik et al.'s results in the United States and, (b) to examine whether the results hold in other countries given cross-cultural differences that may affect the efficacy of buyer monitoring as a means to improve service. Using data from 10 countries across several continents, we show that (a) Kwortnik et al.'s findings only partially replicate in the United States, (b) the buyer monitoring principle does not hold worldwide, and (c) buyer monitoring is more effective in influencing service motivation and behavior in Western (individualistic) than in Eastern (collectivistic) cultures.


The introduction of reactive groups such as –NH2, –COOH etc. onto a poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL) backbone was necessary for further modification but a well-controlled approach remains a challenge for synthetic chemistry. Carboxyl functionalized PCL was typically prepared via three steps involving the synthesis of the corresponding monomer with a carboxyl-protecting group, polymerization and the removal of the protection. Except for obtaining purified monomers and a decent polymerization, the most critical step in carboxyl PCL synthesis was the deprotection from the degradable main chain. Therefore, electronic effects and steric hindrance of the protecting group were taken into account with the aim for controllable polymerization and feasible deprotection. Substituents including –CH3, H and NO2 with discriminative electronegativity on the para position of the benzyl protecting group have been selected to investigate their behavior in monomer preparation, polymerization and deprotection, respectively. It turned out that the electron donating group (–CH3) displayed the highest selectivity in the monomer preparation, excellent control over the polymerization degree and the most efficient removal of the protecting groups without degradation of the backbone. In addition, the reactivity of the pendant carboxyl groups on PCL was demonstrated by amidation with 4-amino-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyloxy (4-amino-TEMPO). Our results also provide guidance information on preparing well-defined biodegradable polymers with pendant reactive groups such as polypeptides, expanding the library of novel biomaterials.


This paper presents a correction and a generalization of the solution presented previously (for original papers see R. D. Radcliff and C. A. Balams, "Modified propagation constants for nonuniform plane wave transmission through conducting media," IEEE Transactions in Geoscience Remote Sensing, vol. GE-20, no. 3, p. 408-411 (1982) and C. A. Balams, Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics, New York: Wiley (1989)) for the effective propagation constants of nonuniform plane waves at the planar interface of two isotropic homogeneous possibly lossy media of infinite transverse dimensions.


In this paper, we are concerned with a natural extension of the standard cutting stock problem, in which there are multiple stock sizes available instead of a single one. Based on decomposing problem of this type into the standard cutting stock ones, a new model called OneDCSP_M is proposed and its solution algorithm is developed. The quality of the algorithm is evaluated by comparing its results with the ones obtained by Belov and Scheithauer.


In German-language communication studies, the long-running debate about the increasingly important practical relevance of the subject is currently being picked up once again. In this article a refl ection on the history of the subject since 1945 will be used to formulate a prediction for the possible development of the subject and the practice-related research being undertaken within it. Four basic "currencies" of academic success will be drawn upon to do this: reputation, public attention, funding, and evaluation results. Th ese assist in constructing an alternative chronology of the subject, which also demonstrates the social forces which aff ect the "currencies." Th is leads to the conclusion that the current incentive structures for each individual scientist in communication studies could lead to a bisection of the subject. One group will orientate itself increasingly on the requirements of modern science-based society and predominantly solve practical problems, while the second group will remain more dedicated to the classic understanding of science.


In most teleost fishes, the optic nerves decussate completely as they project to the mesencephalic region. Examination of the decussation pattern of 25 species from 11 different orders in Pisces revealed that each species shows a specific chiasmic type. In 11 species out of the 25, laterality of the chiasmic pattern was not determined; in half of the individuals examined, the left optic nerve ran dorsally to the right optic nerve, while in the other half, the right optic nerve was dorsal. In eight other species the optic nerves from both eyes branched into several bundles at the chiasmic point, and intercalated to form a complicated decussation pattern. In the present study we report our findings that Spratelloides gracilis, of the order Clupeiformes, family Clupeidae, shows a particular laterality of decussation: the left optic nerve ran dorsally to the right (n=200/202). In contrast, Etrumeus teres, of the same order and family, had a strong preference of the opposite (complementary) chiasmic pattern to that of S. gracilis (n=59/59), revealing that these two species display opposite left–right optic chiasm patterning. As far as we investigated, other species of Clupeiformes have not shown left–right preference in the decussation pattern. We conclude that the opposite laterality of the optic chiasms of these two closely related species, S. gracilis and E. teres, enables investigation of species-specific laterality in fishes of symmetric shapes.


Chronic pain affects ~20% of the worldwide population. The clinical management of chronic pain is mostly palliative and results in limited success. Current treatments mostly target the symptoms or neuronal signaling of chronic pain. It has been increasingly recognized that glial cells, such as microglia, and inflammatory signaling play a major role in the pathogenesis of chronic pain. Caspases (CASPs) are a family of protease enzymes involved in apoptosis and inflammation. They are pivotal components in a variety of neurological diseases. However, little is known about the role of CASPs in microglial modulation as to chronic pain. In particular, our recent studies have shown that CASP6 regulates chronic pain via microglial inflammatory signaling. Inhibition of microglia and CASP signaling might provide a new strategy for the prevention and treatment of chronic pain.


Abstract Following a request from the European Commission, the Panel on Additives and Products or Substances used in Animal Feed (FEEDAP) was asked to deliver a scientific opinion on the efficacy of the additive consisting of Companilactobacillus farciminis (formerly Lactobacillus farciminis) CNCM I‐3740 (tradename: Biacton®) for chickens for fattening, turkeys for fattening and laying hens. The additive is a preparation containing viable cells of C. farciminis CNCM I‐3740 at the minimum concentration of 1 × 109 CFU/g additive. It is intended to be used as a zootechnical additive in feed for chickens for fattening, turkeys for fattening and laying hens at the recommended application level of 5 × 108 CFU/kg complete feed. In the context of previous opinions, no conclusions could be drawn on the efficacy of the additive in any of the target species based on the data provided. As regards chickens for fattening, in the former opinions the supplementation of the additive at the recommended level showed a significantly greater weight or weight gain compared to birds in the control group only in two studies. New statistical analysis data of one efficacy trial were submitted. The results showed that Biacton® supplemented at 8.5 × 108 CFU/kg feed or at higher levels significantly improved the feed to gain ratio of chickens for fattening compared to control birds or to birds receiving the additive at the recommended level. Therefore, the Panel concluded that Biacton® has the potential to be efficacious in chickens for fattening at the concentration of 8.5 × 108 CFU/kg complete feed. This conclusion was extrapolated to turkeys for fattening.


We introduce a fast simple method for computing the real continuous wavelet transform (CWT). The approach has the following attractive features: it achieves O(N) complexity per scale, the filter coefficients can be analytically obtained by a simple integration, and the algorithm is faster than a least squares approach with negligible loss in accuracy. Our method is to use P wavelets per octave and to approximate them with their oblique projection onto a space defined by a compactly supported scaling function. The wavelet templates are expanded to larger sizes (octaves) using the two-scale relation and zero-padded filtering. Error bounds are presented to justify the use of an oblique projection over an orthogonal one. All the filters are FIR with the exception of one filter, which is implemented using a fast recursive algorithm.


OBJECTIVE
To identify factors that can effectively predict the efficacy of laparoscopic splenectomy (LS) in the treatment of immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP).

METHODS
From January 2007 to September 2012, 78 patients with ITP underwent laparoscopic splenectomy were retrospectively analyzed. According to the postoperative platelet (PLT) count and haemorrhagic manifestations, they were divided into effective group and ineffective group. Nine influencing factors were univariate analyzed and multivariate analyzed.

RESULTS
In effective group (65 cases) and ineffective group (13 cases), average PLT count of 1 day before surgery was 47×10(9)/L vs. 21×10(9)/L, average operative time was (166 ± 46) minutes vs. (139 ± 29) minutes. Univariate analysis result: PLT count of 1 day before surgery (Z = -2.776, P = 0.005) and operative time (t = 2.723, P = 0.011) was statistically significant in 2 groups, the rest factors did not significantly influence the result. Multivariate analysis revealed that only PLT count of 1 day before surgery was statistically significant (OR = 0.964, 95%CI: 0.932-0.997, P = 0.031) in 2 groups, but operative time (P = 0.051) was not statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS
PLT count of 1 day before surgery is a predict factor in LS for ITP. Because of the limited sample number, further multi-center prospective study with large sample is warrant.


In order to achieve sustainable development, Vietnam has been adopting new development policies using a combination of the environment protection legal system, environmental economic instruments, sanctions, environmental standards, strategic environmental assessment (SEA), environmental impact assessment (EIA), and environmental protection planning (EPP). This paper deals with an analysis of the shortcomings of current legal framework for EIA and post-EIA. The result shows that the legal system of EIA was formed, developed, amended and supplemented continuously to fit with the recent changed situations in Vietnam. To cope with the dynamical economic development of the country, the legal framework is required to be more versatile and adaptive, to create maximum openness for the investment environment while still ensuring good environmental protection. The study findings provide a scientific basis for proposing an enhanced legal framework of environmental management to meet current demands of sustainable development in Vietnam.


Background: Up-to-date and appropriate estimates of the usual intakes of key nutrients are crucial for monitoring the nutritional adequacy of the Canadian population. Comprehensive, nationally-representative nutrient estimates for Canadian children and adolescents are available using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) – Nutrition 2004, however results are scarce for the most-recent 2015 data. The objective of this research was to assess nutrient intakes of Canadian children and adolescents using data from the CCHS 2015 Public Use Microdata Files (PUMF) Methods: Participants' first 24-hr dietary recall, and the second-day recall from a subset of participants were used to estimate usual intakes of macronutrients, vitamins and minerals in children and adolescents (2-18 years). Usual intakes by Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) age-sex groups were estimated using the National Cancer Institute (NCI) method, adjusted for age, sex, misreporting status, weekend/weekday, and sequence of recall analyzed (first/second), with consideration for outliers (N=5,493). Usual intakes from food and beverages were assessed for prevalence of inadequacy in relation to the DRI recommendations. Results: Children 2-3y consumed a percentage of total energy from protein above the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range (AMDR). Among children and adolescents, 71% met the AMDR for carbohydrates and 63-71% met the AMDR for total fat. With the exception of calcium and vitamin D, a very low prevalence (<10%) of inadequate intakes was observed for select micronutrients among Canadian children 2-8y, while a substantial proportion of adolescents (>15%) did not meet requirements for vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, calcium, magnesium and zinc.Conclusions: Canadian children and adolescents may not be meeting recommendations for short fall nutrients such as calcium, potassium, vitamin A and vitamin D. Fibre intake continues to remain low, while sodium intake exceeded recommendations. These findings provide important, updated baseline estimates on the nutrient intakes of this subpopulation in Canada for continued monitoring of adherence to the 2019 Canada's Food Guide and may be useful to inform future public health nutrition policies, programs and initiatives.


Transition metal-free oxidation with air at room temperature has been achieved by simply using ascorbate (vitamin C) and catalytic amounts of menadione (vitamin K3). A combination of the mentioned vitamins transforms atmospheric oxygen into hydrogen peroxide, which is able to oxidize arylboronic acids and other chemical moieties.


Appropriate management of strategy is essential for the survival and success of businesses. Effective communication is key for effective implementation of strategy. The use of visualization in strategy communication has effects on the quality of the communication. Various studies find contradictory results regarding whether these effects are positive or negative. A systematic discourse on how visualization can be successfully implemented in strategy communication does currently not exist. In this study, the first step towards creating such a discourse is made. Requirements for the effective use of strategy visualizations were formulated. The key drivers of these requirements were determined to be strategic content, strategy communication, functional visuals and usability. An existing strategy visualization method, technology roadmapping, was analyzed using the requirements. Technology roadmaps scored predominantly positive, according to the formulated requirements, but showed some room for improvement. A recommendation is made that addresses the shortcomings that technology roadmaps showed during the analysis. In conclusion, in order to effectively visualize strategy, the main focus during the design phase should be addressing its strategic content, strategic communication value, functional visuals and usability.


In this editorial update, we provide perspective regarding what has transpired since these commentaries were written and published online in July 2020 (Scott et al. 2020). We remain in the midst of a pandemic that has rapidly and catastrophically spread worldwide. Indeed, as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, it has underscored social inequalities and divides affecting the world. Though not comprehensive, here we highlight a selection of these pressing issues, which warrant additional critical examination. Namely, we discuss the racial inequalities, gender inequalities, and political divides that have been magnified during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of October 2020, there have been over 50 million COVID-19 infections and over 1.25 million deaths from the disease. More than 6,000 people continue to die each day, with more than 1,000 of those coming from the United States (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirusdeaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants; Yan and Maxouris 2020). Public policy, marketing, and consumer psychology play a crucial role in how public health measures have been embraced or rejected. New terminology such as "COVID burnout" captures the exhaustion faced by individuals, organizations, and governments alike as they persist with steps to prevent the spread of the disease through mask wearing, social distancing, and hygiene practices as well as cope with the accompanying financial, social, and emotional costs (Blaschka 2020; Lufkin 2020). Governments face uncertainty in balancing, on the one hand, health priorities such as reducing the spread of disease to avoid the downstream impact of an overwhelmed healthcare system and, on the other hand, economic priorities such as minimizing bankruptcies among companies and individuals. Differing cultural norms and political infrastructures resulted in varied levels of stringency in governmental responses to COVID-19 in different parts of the world (e.g., containment measures taken, economic support provided, consistency of response; Hale et al. 2020). For example, South Korea, with 8.81 COVID-19 deaths per million, is identified as an exemplar of virus containment; in contrast, the United States and Brazil have struggled with containment, resulting in 679.06 and 744.26 deaths per million, respectively. These varied approaches have affected citizens' perceptions of their country's response; for instance, citizens of Australia, Denmark, and South Korea are satisfied with their country's response, but citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom indicate that their countries have done a poor job (Devlin and Connaughton 2020). Individuals, communities, organizations, and governments have been coping with the impact and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has raged across the globe affecting nearly every aspect of life. Individuals face uncertainty about employment, financial stability, and food and housing availability; and the vulnerable—particularly those who lack financial resources, power, and/or advocacy—are disproportionately affected. For example, in the United States, individuals in nursing homes make up 40% of the COVID cases, laying bare the particular vulnerability of the elderly and the disabled (Alonso-Zaldivar 2020). Moreover, around the world, individuals in lower-power positions, such as ethnic and racial minorities and well as migrant workers, are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and its associated policies (Jordan 2020; Quayyum and Kpodar 2020). Job loss, coupled with stay-at-home orders that keep children home from school, has shifted the way families function, and this has especially affected women. Large companies as well as small businesses


Mob justice is a silent Monster especially in developing countries. Hundreds of people continue to die without being subjected to legal court prosecution. This book explores the issue of mob justice and tracks the causes of the vice that is common in most African cities towns and rural areas. It tackles the issue from a human rights perspective and can be useful to lawyers, advocates, human rights activists, the police, and the justice sector in general. Although the case study is on Uganda, the issues in the book are applicable to most African situations and is thus recommended to readers in the rest of Sub Saharan countries where mob justice is rampant. The book is an important resource given the fact that there isn't adequate literature on mob justice. It therefore provides an important glimpse into the challenge that continues to threaten the core principle of natural justice where people are supposed to be innocent until proved guilty by competent courts of Law. Academicians, social researchers justice sector, and other readers will find this book invaluable.


Taliban uprising in Swat followed by military operations and floods severely damaged the tourism industry of Swat. Skiing festival in Malamjabba and Aman Festival in Kalam were instrumental in bringing tourists back to Swat in post conflict scenario. The study focused on the contribution of Skiing at MalamJabba in revival of tourism and post conflict peace building. Mixed method approach was used to collect data from fifty respondents that included tourists, tourism service providers and representatives of relevant stake holders from government and private organizations. Questionnairs followed by in depth interviews were used to collect the data. Findings of the study indicated that skiing played a very important role in the revival of tourism. Most of the tourist whose primary motivation was skiing at Malamjabbaalso visited or had intentions to visit other areas of Swat. Local communities are engaged in the industry at different levels constituting about 91 percent of the total labor force. Winter sports and increasing range of tourism products means increasing tourist season in the area that provides sustainable source of livelihoods for local community. Engagement of youth in sports and income generating activities provides an important tool for the peace building in the area.


We developed a new headholder for the fixation and repositioning of patient head in PET study. The device consists of acryl frame and headrest of thermoplastic resin. Special gel is placed on the headrest to adapt different shape of occipit a in each patient. Individual face mask was made with thermoplastic resin just before the PET study and was fixed with the holder using plastic taper. It took about 2-3 min to fix the patient head using these system. Immobilization of the patient's head during PET study was good. Accuracy of repositioning in the same patient was relatively good between separate PET studies.


BACKGROUND
Gastrointestinal (GI) tract duplication cysts or enteric duplication cysts are rare congenital malformations sometimes found on the mesenteric aspect of segments of the alimentary tract. Enteric duplication cysts are lined by normal GI epithelium and may be classified as foregut, mid-gut, and hindgut cysts. Except in very rare cases of retroperitoneal enteric duplication cysts, these cysts communicate with the GI tract and share a common blood supply. Concurrent congenital malformations are not uncommon and malignant transformation within enteric duplication cysts has also been reported.

METHODS
We describe a case of a noncommunicating enteric duplication cyst in a 52-year-old woman.

RESULTS
The patient presented with a presacral cystic mass requiring frequent drainage procedures that was primarily believed to be of neural origin. Upon resection, the lesion contained heterotopic tissue, including ciliated bronchial epithelium, squamous and transitional epithelia, and pancreatic and gastric tissue. Focal, low-grade intestinal adenoma was present, but malignancy was not detected in this case.

CONCLUSION
To our knowledge, this is the sixth reported case of a noncommunicating enteric duplication cyst in the English medical literature.


ABSTRACT Preliminary data on the agromyzid fauna (Diptera: Agromyzidae) collected during the "Our Planet Reviewed" expedition in Mitaraka (French Guiana) is provided. A total of 138 specimens representing 10 genera and 50 morphospecies are recorded. Melanagromyza Hendel, 1920 and Ophiomyia Braschnikov, 1897 were the most diverse genera with 15 and 14 species respectively, followed by Phytobia Lioy, 1864 (five species), Japanagromyza Sasakawa, 1958 and Calycomyza Hendel, 1931 (four species each), Liriomyza Mik, 1894 (three species), Nemorimyza Frey, 1946 (two species), and Agromyza Fallén, 1810, Cerodontha Rondani, 1861, and Phytoliriomyza Hendel, 1931 (one species each). Except for Liriomyza and Nemorimyza, all of these genera are recorded from French Guiana for the first time. Nearly 90% of the specimens were collected with a 6 m long Malaise trap installed for eight days on a rocky outcrop (site "savane roche 2") during the third phase of the expedition in August 2015. Prior to this expedition, only four species of Agromyzidae Fallén, 1823 were reported from French Guiana.


Functional investigation of purified integral membrane proteins (IMPs) is hampered by the need to insert these hydrophobic proteins from the detergent-solubilized state into liposomal membranes. Here we report reintegration of IMPs into a lipid environment within minutes, an order of magnitude faster than currently used standard techniques. The new approach yielded optimal results for IMPs solubilized in the detergent lauryl-maltose neopentyl glycol (LMNG) and is therefore termed LMNG Auto-insertion Reintegration (LAiR). LAiR displays superior performance to standard methods in terms of protein activity, long-term stability and proton tightness of proteoliposomes. LAiR reconstituted vectorial control of membrane-bound activity by the transmembrane ion motive force, a property particularly important in mitochondrial function, which was undetectable by standard reintegration methods. LAiR also preserved fragile IMP properties that are prone to disruption upon reintegration, including long-term multi-subunit integrity, inhibitor susceptibility, and higher-order oligomeric states. LAiR proved suitable for reintegration into liposomes as well as into surface-tethered membrane bilayers, and was compatible with IMPs and lipids from prokaryotic and eukaryotic sources. We anticipate a broad scope for LAiR as a powerful tool in fundamental research, pharmaceutical applications, and biotechnology.


A follow-up to the authors' October 1979 analysis of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, this study details the pros and cons of the various strategies that personnel managers will have to consider in order to successfully cope with PDA.


Abstract The objective of this study was the model comparison and economic evaluation of different methods of soil tillage and crop stand establishments used. Based on yield results (winter wheat, spring barley, and white mustard cultivated in three-crop rotation) from field experiments with conventional, conservation with minimum tillage, and no-tillage methods conducted at the site Prague-Ruzyně, model economic balances were evaluated. Prices of the main products were determined based on the yield results from the period 2010-2013 and the current market prices. In the individual tillage systems, the total costs of production of evaluated crops were counted up and profitability was calculated as a ratio of profit to total costs. The highest total costs of crop cultivation were identified in cereals under conventional soil tillage, on the contrary, the lowest in cereals cultivated under conservation tillage technology. As for the growing technologies, the highest profitability was found in winter wheat, as for the tillage methods, it was in the conservation variant with minimum tillage. The economic evaluation for individual crops was based on standards of growing technologies and particular work operations.


The excess leakage current across ultra-thin dielectrics has been studied for different ionizing radiation sources. Namely, X-rays, 8 MeV electrons, and three ion beams with different LETs values have been used on large area MOS capacitors with 4-nm thick oxides. Small oxide fields were applied during irradiation, reaching 3 MV/cm at most. For ionizing radiation with relatively low LET (<10 MeV cm/sup 2//mg), only Radiation Induced Leakage Current (RILC) was observed, due to the formation of neutral defects mediating electron tunneling via a single oxide trap. For high LET values, instead, the gate leakage current could be described by an empirical relation proper of Soft Breakdown (SB) phenomena detected after electrical stress. Moreover, the typical random telegraph signal noise feature of this Radiation induced Soft Breakdown (RSB) currents was observed during and after irradiation. RSB can be attributed to conduction through a multi-defect path across the oxide, produced by the residual damage of dense ion tracks. The oxide field applied during irradiation enhances the RSB intensity, but RSB can be achieved even for irradiation at zero field, being LET the main factor leading to RSB activation. The dose dependence of both RILC and QB have been investigated, showing a quasi linear kinetics with the cumulative dose. We have also studied the effect of modifying the angle of incidence of the ion beam on the intensity of the gate leakage current.


This study concentrates on preserving privacy in a network of agents where each agent seeks to evaluate a general polynomial function over the private values of her immediate neighbors. We provide an algorithm for the exact evaluation of such functions while preserving privacy of the involved agents. The solution is based on a reformulation of polynomials and adoption of two cryptographic primitives: Paillier as a Partially Homomorphic Encryption scheme and multiplicative-additive secret sharing. The provided algorithm is fully distributed, lightweight in communication, robust to dropout of agents, and can accommodate a wide class of functions. Moreover, system theoretic and secure multi-party conditions guaranteeing the privacy preservation of an agent's private values against a set of colluding agents are established. The theoretical developments are complemented by numerical investigations illustrating the accuracy of the algorithm and the resulting computational cost.


Background Various studies have shown that non-surgical periodontal treatment is correlated with reduction in clinical parameters and plasma levels of inflammatory markers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of long-term weekly supragingival irrigations with aerosolized 0.5% hydrogen peroxide as maintenance therapy followed by non-surgical periodontal treatment on clinical parameters, plasma levels of inflammatory markers, and morphological changes in gingival tissues of patients with periodontitis. Material/Methods In total, 43 patients with chronic periodontitis were randomly allocated to long-term maintenance therapy. The patients' periodontal status was assessed using clinical parameters of approximal plaque index, modified gingival index, bleeding index, pocket probing depth, and plasma levels of inflammatory markers (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and white blood cell count) at baseline and after 1, 2, and 3 years. The morphological status of gingival tissues (immediately after supragingival irrigation) was assessed microscopically. Results Complete data were obtained on 34 patients. A highly statistically significant and consistent reduction was observed in all long-term clinical parameters and plasma levels of inflammatory markers. Morphological data showed abundant spherical bubbles in gingival tissues. Conclusions 1. The present study showed that non-surgical periodontal treatment with long-term weekly supragingival irrigations with aerosolized 0.5% hydrogen peroxide improved clinical periodontal status and plasma levels of inflammatory markers and may be a promising method in periodontology. 2. We found that supragingival irrigation with aerosolized 0.5% hydrogen peroxide created large numbers of spherical bubbles in gingival tissues.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of electromyographic biofeedback compared with conventional physical therapy for improving upper-extremity function in patients following a stroke.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS
A literature search was done for the years 1976 to 1992. The selection criteria included single-blinded randomized control trials. Study quality was assessed for nine criteria. For functional (disability index or stage of recovery) and impairment outcomes, meta-analyses were performed on odds ratios for improvement versus no improvement. Mann-Whitney U-Test probability values were combined across studies.

RESULTS
Six studies were selected, and outcome data were obtained for five studies. The common odds ratio was 2.2 for function and 1.1 for impairments in favor of biofeedback. The estimate of the number needed to treat to prevent a nonresponder was 11 for function and 22 for impairments. None of the meta-analyses were statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
The results do not conclusively indicate superiority of either form of therapy. Although there is a chance of Type II error, the estimated size of the effect is small. Given this estimate of little or no difference, therapists need to consider cost, ease of application, and patient preference when selecting these therapies.


1 Dept. of Computer Information, Daeduk College, Deajon, Korea 2 Dept. of Computer Science, Namseoul Univ., Cheonan, Korea Summary SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) is a general-purpose transport protocol for IP network data communications. This paper examines methods of guaranteeing multi-streaming management and fairness among streams within SCTP associations. We investigated an important aspect of fairness adjustment between streams of SCTP, the underlying congestion control mechanism. In this paper, we propose that separated congestion control with a fairness compensation module is more efficient than the standard SCTP. Proposed SCTP-SCF overcomes existing problems in the traditional SCTP when a multi-streaming feature is used.


A repetitive manoeuvre called torso rotation (TR) is known to temporarily reduce the gain of the horizontal vestibulo-ocular reflex by 10-15% in healthy humans. TR consists of a series of rhythmical rotations of the eyes, head and upper body executed continuously for 30 minutes while standing. Our aim was to investigate whether TR affects the ability to hold the head in a fixed fore-aft position relative to space while walking on a treadmill with eyes closed. Ten healthy subjects stood in a carefully standardized position on a stationary treadmill. The treadmill started unexpectedly and ran for 4 s at 29 cm/s. The test stimulus was a linear acceleration in the fore-aft direction at the moment of treadmill start-up. Linear head position (i.e., ability to stabilize the head) was measured during and following the stimulus. A mechanical system prevented head rotation. Two series of 60 trials were performed before TR (control 1 and control 2 series) and one after TR. Before TR, subjects drifted rearward at an average drift velocity +/- S.D. = 3.1 +/- 0.9 cm/s. This drift was reasonably stable over time within and between the two control series. After TR, head holding ability was further impaired, with subjects having more difficulty to stabilize their head after treadmill start-up. In the first 10 trials after the arrest of TR, the average drift velocity was significantly larger than before TR(6.1 +/- 1.5 cm/sec, p < 0.01). Recovery to control values followed a roughly exponential time course, with 67% recovery occurring in the first 3.4 minutes after TR. Our results indicate that TR impairs the ability to sense and/or respond to fore-aft linear accelerations of the head following treadmill start-up in the absence of vision.


A novel approach towards automatic detection of perceived ringing regions is presented. The algorithm takes into account both the physical structure and the human visual perception of the ringing artifacts. All perceived ringing regions are explicitly captured by means of a newly proposed edge detector, followed by an efficient analysis of ringing visibility around each detected edge segment. Determining visibility is based on luminance masking and texture masking as typical for the human visual system. The proposed detection method is validated by comparing its performance with the ringing regions resulting from a psychovisual experiment.


The increasingly competitive business environment, the rapid changes and also the increase in the activities' complexity within a company require permanent adjustment in a quick manner. ERP have been created as a solution or a response to such attempts, and have the ability to process a high amount of aggregated data and information in order to improve processes and make them even more efficient. Most specialists believe that there is no Enterprise Resource Planning without any financial and accounting information in the operations they administer in these systems. A financial-accounting pattern gathers and strengthens information related to all the activities of a company thus allowing unitary management to be possible. A financial-accounting pattern itself is not the most important but it is necessary when implementing any ERP application. All the data in a system are centralized in such a financial-accounting pattern, therefore providing the support for various reports.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study is to evaluate age-related changes in the secretory flow of pancreatic juice in the main pancreatic duct noninvasively by means of nonpharmacologic cine-dynamic MRCP using spatially selective inversion recovery (IR) pulse.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Fifty-three subjects without a history of pancreatic disease were included. Four-second breath-hold MRCP using spatially selective IR pulse was performed every 15 seconds during 5 minutes (acquiring a total of 20 images) in cine-dynamic fashion. The secretion grade was classified into five grades by the distance of pancreatic juice inflow within the tagged area. The mean secretion grade and the frequency of secretion in cine-dynamic MRCP were compared among three age-range groups (group 1, < 40 years; group 2, 40-70 years; and group 3, > 70 years). Statistical analysis was performed using Spearman rank correlation coefficient and Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests.

RESULTS
The secretion grade and the frequency of secretion were significantly reduced with aging (r = -0.77, p < 0.001; and r = -0.74, p < 0.001, respectively). The mean secretion grade and the frequency of secretion were significantly lower in group 3 than in group 2 (mean grade, 0.36 vs 1.48, p = 0.001; and 4.8 vs 11.9 times, p = 0.001) and were lower in group 2 than in group 1 (mean grade, 1.48 vs 2.48, p < 0.001; and 11.9 vs 16.2 times, p = 0.011).

CONCLUSION
Cine-dynamic MRCP using spatially selective IR pulse was able to show the age-related decrease of the secretory flow of pancreatic juice in the main pancreatic duct visually and noninvasively.


Espionage and counter-espionage services have traditionally operated under a cloak of secrecy, their shadowy activities providing the basis for countless books, films, documentaries and debates. Despite recent public relations exercises aimed at reassuring the public that the UK's MI5 and MI6 are open to government scrutiny, the perception remains that they are in fact highly autonomous, secretive and largely unaccountable for their activities. In this analysis, two constitutional lawyers shed light on the legal powers and basis of this murky area of government, comparing the very different situations in Canada and Australia, and asking how, in a democratic state, can the competing interests of national security and open government be reconciled.


The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the distributed protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called miners. Conventional wisdom asserts that the mining protocol is incentive-compatible and secure against colluding minority groups, that is, it incentivizes miners to follow the protocol as prescribed. We show that the Bitcoin mining protocol is not incentive-compatible. We present an attack with which colluding miners' revenue is larger than their fair share. The attack can have significant consequences for Bitcoin: Rational miners will prefer to join the attackers, and the colluding group will increase in size until it becomes a majority. At this point, the Bitcoin system ceases to be a decentralized currency. Unless certain assumptions are made, selfish mining may be feasible for any coalition size of colluding miners. We propose a practical modification to the Bitcoin protocol that protects Bitcoin in the general case. It prohibits selfish mining by a coalition that command less than 1/4 of the resources. This threshold is lower than the wrongly assumed 1/2 bound, but better than the current reality where a coalition of any size can compromise the system.


We will investigate the value and inactive region of optimal stopping and one-sided singular control problems by focusing on two fundamental ratios. We shall see that these ratios unambiguously characterize the solution, although usually only near boundaries. We will also study the well-known connection between these problems and find it to be a local property rather than a global one. The results are illustrated by a number of examples.


Summary: Gentamicin was added to 45 normal and abnormal patient sera samples, which were then quantitated by bioassay and fluorescent immunoassay. Bioassay results were dramatically reduced in more than half of the sera with elevated inorganic phosphorous, uric acid, creatinine, and alkaline phosphatase values when compared with the results for fluorescent immunoassay. Erroneous bioassay results could lead to patient toxicity.


Robust estimators of location and dispersion are often used in the elliptical model to obtain an uncontaminated and highly representative subsample by trimming the data outside an ellipsoid based in the associated Mahalanobis distance. Here we analyze some one (or k)-step Maximum Likelihood Estimators computed on a subsample obtained with such a procedure. We introduce different models which arise naturally from the ways in which the discarded data can be treated, leading to truncated or censored likelihoods, as well as to a likelihood based on an only outliers gross errors model. Results on existence, uniqueness, robustness and asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators are included. A remarkable fact is that the proposed estimators generally keep the breakdown point of the initial (robust) estimators, but they could improve the rate of convergence of the initial estimator because our estimators always converge at rate n 1/2 , independently of the rate of convergence of the initial estimator.


The national police was created by an Act passed by the Vichy government on April 23, 1941. Its formation was completed by the incorporation of the Parisian municipal police force by a July 9, 1966 Act of parliament. Despite its youth, the police have experienced numerous reforms. Various measures aiming to motivate the personnel, to improve their training, and to valorize the profession have been introduced. Provisions extending and diversifying the fight against delinquency have been implemented. A better definition of the areas of territorial competency of the police and the gendarmerie has been envisaged, as well as a coordination of the action of the national and municipal police units. The relationship between the police and the justice system has been clarified. Nevertheless, in the recent period, delinquency has increased slowly but steadily. The reduction of the working week of policemen seems to frustrate many reforms, although, compared to its European neighbors, France has the highest policemen/inhabitants ratio. This indicates that, in order for the reform goals to be achieved, an absolute consistency must exist between the various measures introduced, otherwise they will be useless.


In this paper we propose an efficient stochastic optimization algorithm to search for Bayesian experimental designs such that the expected information gain is maximized. The gradient of the expected information gain with respect to experimental design parameters is given by a nested expectation, for which the standard Monte Carlo method using a fixed number of inner samples yields a biased estimator. In this paper, applying the idea of randomized multilevel Monte Carlo methods, we introduce an unbiased Monte Carlo estimator for the gradient of the expected information gain with finite expected squared $\ell_2$-norm and finite expected computational cost per sample. Our unbiased estimator can be combined well with stochastic gradient descent algorithms, which results in our proposal of an optimization algorithm to search for an optimal Bayesian experimental design. Numerical experiments confirm that our proposed algorithm works well not only for a simple test problem but also for a more realistic pharmacokinetic problem.


Purpose: To investigate the association between prenatal opioid exposure (POE) and newborn infants' motor performance to aid in the early identification of developmental delays. Methods: Nineteen infants with POE requiring pharmacological treatment, 27 infants with POE without pharmacological treatment, and 25 infants without POE were assessed via the Test of Infant Motor Performance (TIMP). Results: Infants in both groups with POE had lower TIMP scores than infants without POE. There was no difference between the TIMP scores of infants with POE who required pharmacological treatment and infants with POE who did not require pharmacological treatment. Conclusions: The TIMP can detect differences in motor performance of infants with POE. Regardless of whether infants required pharmacological treatment, POE was associated with lower motor performance. Those working in hospital or early intervention settings can use the TIMP to identify early delays in infants with POE and refer for intervention.


The effect of the strain dynamics of surface irregularities on acoustic phonon scattering in thermodynamically stable, atomically irregular solid surfaces, is put in analytic form. The corresponding intensity reflection coefficients are calculated in general as configurational averages in these surfaces. They are dispersive, implying diffraction effects. The ideally flat surface results are retrieved as an appropriate limit.


This course will provide an opportunity for participants to establish or advance their understanding of research through critical exploration of research language, ethics, and research approaches.


The book is extracted from a dissertation on 'Factors Influencing Growth of Micro-enterprises Manufacturing Metallic Products at Kamukunji in Nairobi, Kenya'. The design of the study happens to be a correlational survey built on a conceptual model of factors influencing growth. Data were collected from 354 micro-enterprises. Non-parametric analysis of variance tests the relationship between entrepreneur and enterprise profiles and growth. Factor analysis points out sampling adequacy for personality attributes (KMO = .82), transferable experiences (KMO = .74), and stakeholder patronage (KMO = .87). Bartlett's Test of Sphericity reveals significance at .001 levels which emphasises principal component analysis relevancy for the data set. Cumulative variance explained (R2) findings indicate that the personality attributes (60.85%), transferable experiences (61.26%), and stakeholder patronage (65.33%) models remain conceptually valid. Key recommendations turns out to be development of personality attributes during entrepreneurs formative years; enhancement of transferable experiences through skills training of entrepreneurs; and participatory stakeholder patronage for enterprise growth.


Spin-lattice relaxation time TI for 31P was measured as a function of temperature at 28.2 MHz in a powder sample of C S ~ . ~ ( N H ~ ) ~ H ~ P O ~ (CADP) crystallized from a solution with a molar ratio x = 0.2. This crystal has the same structurc as CsH2P04 (CDP), which exhibits a low-temperature pseudo-onediniensional ferroelectric phase transition at 159 K and a superionic transition at 504 K on heating. The measured temperature dependence is explained in terms of hydrogen bond dynamics.


ABSTRACT China has experienced notable loss of farmland and increase in food imports during the past three decades. This article provides an econometric examination of the interactions between virtual land use through food trade and farmland loss in China. The results show that net virtual land imports have grown from 2.37 million hectares (Mha) in 1987 to 33.51 Mha in 2013, accounting for one-quarter of China's farmland in 2013. The analysis on causality indicates there has been bidirectional feedback: the aggravated farmland conversion stimulated virtual land imports, which in turn increased construction encroachment on farmland.


INTRODUCTION
Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental disorders. Benzodiazepines belong to the group of anxiolytic sedatives and the most prescribed drugs in the world. The aim in ours study was to evaluate the differences in the exposure of the population to benzodiazepines (in period from 2014-2018) between Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia, the three countries of the Southwestern Balkans with varying degrees of socioeconomic development.

STUDY DESIGN
A academic investigator initiated, pharmacoepidemiological difference-in-difference time series analysis of population exposure to benzodiazepines between the three, geographically close Balkans countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia) with varying degrees of socioeconomic development has been carried out. Study was conducted as academic investigator initiated, in a retrospective manner on monthly basis international data set from January 2014 to December 2018.

RESULTS
At the annual level, during the study period from January 2014 to December 2018, compared to Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia had higher DIDs, from 5 fold (Croatia) to 6 fold (Serbia), for all benzodiazepines in total. By analyzing the differences-in-difference, we have shown that influence of both time (month) and country on DIDs is significant as well as their mutual interaction (the country x month) for all benzodiazepines in total.

CONCLUSION
Serbia and Croatia must implement explicit measures of reducing benzodiazepine prescription in health primary care based on evidence-based recommendations in the indications where general medicine practitioners/family doctors most commonly prescribe these medicines. Without providing a realistic supplement/alternative to benzodiazepines such as increasing the availability of psychotherapy and improving the structure of psychiatric professionals in healthcare settings, implicit measures are not recommended for reducing prescription, implementing accountability measures for prolonged prescription of benzodiazepines, and in particular for "masked" somatic diseases. All this comes to the fore by raising economic development and socioeconomic stability.