In early 1960s Britain a group of businessmen advocated for a university management institute like those in the United States. Demand for greater access to universities was growing rapidly; in 1963 the Conservative Macmillan Government accepted the majority of the recommendations of Lord Lionel Robbins' Committee on Higher Education, which resulted in a large-scale expansion of higher education provision in the United Kingdom. The Robbins Committee endorsed business management training within universities, but this received a lukewarm reception among university academics as well as among the civil servants who administered university funding during this period. The University Grants Committee within the Treasury, still reeling from cost overruns incurred on behalf of Imperial College in Kensington, was charged with controlling the enormous public spending likely to result from the Robbins expansion and looked for ways to economize wherever possible; it examined especially closely plans it believed derived from specific interest groups. The business school movement arose parallel to these macro-environmental developments and provides a case in point. This research explores the selection of a location for the London Business School and the tension between interested parties with regard to the location and character of its permanent accommodations. Borrowing and adapting the concept of the "expectation gap" from the accounting profession, the study explores and illustrates a small selection of these tensions between the businessmen who promoted the business school movement, who had a specific educational experience in mind for future management students, and the government officials and institutions called upon to provide that education.


Addition of bilirubin in vitro to hepatic microsomes or 9,333 g supernatant activated UDP glucuronyltransferase activity (UDPGT) for p-nitrophenol of livers from Sprague-Dawley rats, Wistar rats, icteric Gunn rats and nonicteric Gunn rats. However, injection of bilirubin at subtoxic doses using a variety of regimens failed to produce detectable activation of UDPGT in intact or bile duct-ligated rats. Pretreatment with intraperitoneal injections of bilirubin increased the rate of morphine glucuronide excretion in both Sprague-Dawley and icteric Gunn rats. Sulfadimethoxine did not affect morphin e excretion in Gunn rats. The data suggest that activation of UDPGT is of little, if any, significance in hyperbilirubinemia although the basis for increased excretion of morphine following bilirubin pretreatment has not been established.


The effect of beta-carboline (beta-CCE) on spontaneous motility and its development was studied in chick embryos between the 11th and 19th day of incubation. 1. Acutely administered beta-CCE (7.5 mg/kg e.w.) already induced significant activation of motility in 11-day-old embryos. From the 17th day of incubation activation acquired a paroxysmal character. 2. In spinal embryos (decapitated on the second day of incubation) there was no such activating effect, demonstrating that it is associated with supraspinal components of the CNS. 3. In chronic administration from the fourth day of incubation (1.55 +/- 0.24 mg/kg e.w./24h), beta-CCE led to reduced development of spontaneous motility. The effect was concentrated in the period between the fourth and eighth day of incubation. The chronic administration of beta-CCE augmented the activating effect of metrazol and weakened GABA-inhibition of spontaneous motility. 4. On the basis of their findings, the authors express the hypothesis that the benzodiazepine beta-CCE-sensitive component of the complex GABA receptor evidently already functions from the beginning of the second half of incubation of chick embryos.


We present the first results on the history of star formation in the universe based on the "cosmic spectrum," in particular the volume-averaged, luminosity-weighted, stellar absorption-line spectrum of present-day galaxies from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. This method is novel in that, unlike previous studies, it is not an estimator based on total luminosity density. The cosmic spectrum is fitted with models of population synthesis, tracing the history of star formation before the epoch of the observed galaxies, using a method we have developed that decouples continuum and spectral line variations and is robust against spectrophotometric uncertainties. The cosmic spectrum can only be fitted with models incorporating chemical evolution, and it indicates that there was a peak in the star formation rate (SFR) in the past of at least 3 times the current value and that the increase back to z = 1, assuming it scales as (1 + z)β, has a strong upper limit of β < 5. We find, in the general case, that there is some model degeneracy between star formation at low and high redshift. However, if we incorporate previous work on star formation at z < 1, we can put strong upper limits on the star formation rate at z > 1: e.g., if β > 2, then the SFR for 1 < z < 5 scales as (1 + z)α, with α < 2. This is equivalent to stating that no more than 80% of stars in the universe formed at z > 1. Our results are consistent with the best-fit results from compilations of cosmic SFR estimates based on UV luminosity density, which yield 1.8 < β < 2.9 and -1.0 < α < 0.7, and are also consistent with estimates of Ωstars based on the K-band luminosity density.


Heart attacks in young populations are frequently misdiagnosed as reflux disease or anxiety. Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is a coronary artery disease that classically manifests around the age of 45 years and has a fatal outcome if missed. Since it was first described in 1931, our understanding of SCAD has evolved tremendously, particularly with the advent of advanced coronary angiography. Electrocardiograms can show abnormality in the ST-segment, with an elevation of cardiac damage markers. The involvement of the coronary arteries is variable. The left main coronary artery is frequently reported as the main culprit. We are hereby reporting a case of SCAD in a young woman who presented with a heart attack. Particularly, her age is younger than the reported cases, cardiac catheterization revealed a left main artery dissection with a thrombolytic extension, and her complicated case was managed with coronary artery bypass and heart transplantation.


Re-introducing trees and shrubs into agricultural landscapes as agroforestry systems establishes a tension between long-term objectives, such as increasing shelter, water use, nature conservation and harvesting tree products, and the short-term objective of maximising crop and pasture profitability. This paper describes the growth of crops, pastures and trees at the tree–crop interface in agroforestry systems and the economic returns from alley farming and windbreak systems using various tree–crop competition management strategies in the Esperance region of Western Australia. Severing lateral tree roots (root-pruning), harvesting mallees and allowing them to coppice, or thinning trees for sawlog regimes increased the yield of crops and pastures in the competition zone. In some instances, these increases were significant: root-pruning increased the annual return from crops grown in the competition zone of Pinus radiata by up to $548/km of the tree line at 1 site. Conversely, root-pruning reduced tree growth by 14–43% across all sites. Therefore, where trees provide benefits, such as shelter from damaging winds, the benefits of reduced tree–crop competition may not offset the consequent reduction in rate of tree growth. For mallee–crop alley systems on agriculturally productive soils, mallee growth rates must be high enough to compensate for crop losses in the competition zone. On less agriculturally productive soils, block-planting mallees may be more profitable than alley systems or crops without competition (sole-crops). This research has shown that competition management strategies can be used to manipulate the relative productivity of trees, crops and pasture at the tree–agriculture interface. The use of these strategies will depend on the relative economic value of tree and crop products and the value placed on other tree benefits, such as shelter and reduced groundwater recharge.


Background: The prevalence of obesity in school children has been increasing worldwide, including in developing countries such as Indonesia. Childhood obesity is associated with an unbalanced diet, especially the lack of fruit and vegetable consumption. This study aimed to determine the factors that influence vegetable consumption behavior in school children in Indonesia. Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted in eight public elementary schools in a suburban area of Bogor Regency involving 433 students from the fifth grade. Data collection was conducted from November to December 2018. Data on the students' characteristics, knowledge, and attitude as well as availability of vegetables at home and at school were collected using a structured questionnaire. While, a 24-hour food recall was utilized to obtain information on vegetable consumption and overall diet. Data analysis was done using Chi-squared test and logistic regression. Results: The average daily intake of vegetables was 47.11 g, far below the recommend amount (250 g). Female students had significantly better vegetables intake compared with their male counterparts. The availability of vegetables at home and students' positive attitude toward vegetables were also significantly associated with better vegetable intake. Logistic regression analysis showed that availability of vegetables at home almost tripled the likelihood of better vegetable consumption (OR 2.822, 95% CI  1.822–4.372). Additionally, availability of vegetables at school and positive attitude toward vegetables doubled the odd for better vegetable consumption, OR 2.2 and 2.1 respectively (p<0.005). Conclusions: Vegetable consumption among schoolchildren was very low compared with the recommended portion. Better vegetable consumption was significantly associated with sex, availability, and students' attitudes. Vegetable availability at home was the strongest determinant influencing vegetable consumption among elementary school students involved in the study. Hence, parental support or home food environment is key in improving their diet quality to prevent obesity.


The history of the forces affecting the wellbeing of people defined as "the Bushman" in Botswana, South Africa and Namibia is well documented. The effects on their collective and individual consciousness of being victims of political, social, economic and culturalforces outside their control, have been dramatic. This paper attempts to unravel the often-unquestioned institutional assumptions that construct, entrench and perpetuate the marginalization of the Bushmen in the three countries. It argues that, until the assumptions embedded in the institution of the state are understood, governments will continue to design well-intentioned but badly-conceived social policies that reinforce rather than redress social injustices. The conclusion is that, under the current policy regime, it is unlikely that the conditions of the Bushmen will improve in theforeseeablefuture. A post-nationalist state model that seeks to work towards promoting inclusive social policies whose goal is to achieve equality and justice for all, is recommended.


Macroscopic realism, as introduced by Leggett and Garg, is the world view in which properties of macroscopic systems exist independent of and are not influenced by measurement. Motivated by classical physical laws such as Newtonian mechanics or Maxwell's electrodynamics, in this work we add the restrictive postulate that the observables of macroscopic objects are evolved continuously through space and time. Quantum theory violates both macroscopic realism and the continuity assumption. While decoherence or collapse models (e.g. due to a universal noise background or gravitational self energy) can restore macroscopic realism, we show that a continuous spatiotemporal description does not become possible in general. This shines new light on the question how the classical world arises out of the quantum realm.


The Omnipod® 5 Automated Insulin Delivery System is a waterproof (IP28) hybrid closed-loop system where the continuous glucose monitor (CGM) communicates directly with the algorithm on the Pod to modulate insulin delivery automatically. However, the system relies on Bluetooth® wireless technology, a radiofrequency with limited underwater transmission ability.
 Seven frequent swimmers participating in the Omnipod 5 trial reported 63 separate swimming sessions ranging 25-143 min (mean 75±30 min) . CGM-to-Pod wireless communication during swims had a median (IQR) success rate of 17% (5%, 29%) ; however, the communication success rate was 100% across all swims with CGM-to-Pod distance <8 cm (device edge to edge, n=5) . Despite communication limitations, percent time in automated mode was 99% during swims and automated modulations to insulin delivery continued to occur as needed (Table) .
 These results suggest that while in-water communication is challenged, Pod to CGM placement strategies can be practiced to better improve the connectivity. Moreover, the system by design remains in automated mode when CGM values are missed and does not revert the user back to manual mode settings.

 M.S.Hughes: Research Support; Insulet Corporation. R.S.Kingman: Research Support; Insulet Corporation. L.Hsu: Research Support; Insulet Corporation, Stock/Shareholder; Dexcom, Inc., Insulet Corporation, Tandem Diabetes Care, Inc. R.Lal: Advisory Panel; Provention Bio, Inc., Consultant; Abbott Diabetes, Biolinq, Capillary Biomedical, Inc., Deep Valley Labs, Gluroo, Morgan Stanley, Tidepool. B.A.Buckingham: Advisory Panel; Arecor, Lilly Diabetes, Medtronic, Other Relationship; Insulet Corporation, Research Support; Insulet Corporation, Lilly Diabetes, Medtronic. D.P.Zaharieva: Research Support; Insulet Corporation, International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes, Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

 Gift funding from Insulet Corporation


The calamitous bushfires experienced in south-eastern Australia during the southern summer of 2020 have given mankind an opportune token of the genuine detestations that can unfurl in a quickly warming world. As the need to decrease ozone-depleting substance emanations also, balance them with carbon sequestration picks up direness, much is made of the potential for agrarian soils to go about as a carbon sink (Poulton, Johnston, Macdonald, White, and Powlson, 2018). It is in this way opportune that the investigation of Sun et al. (2020) in this issue conveys a portion of authenticity about the potential for preservation agribusiness to sequester carbon in editing soils over the globe, and its relationship with farming profitability.


The difficulties in unravelling the tectonic structures, in some cases, prevent the understanding of the ore bodies' geometry, leading to mistakes in mineral exploration, mine planning, evaluation of ore deposits, and even mineral exploitation. For that reason, many geophysical techniques are introduced to reveal the type, dimension, and geometry of these structures. Among them, electric methods, self-potential, electromagnetic, magnetic and gravity methods. Global meta-heuristic technique using Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) has been utilized for assessing model parameters from magnetic anomalies due to a thin dike, a dipping dike, and a vertical fault like/shear zone geological structure. These structures are commonly associated with mineralization. This modern algorithm was firstly applied on a free-noise synthetic data and to a noisy data with three different levels of random noise to simulate natural and artificial anomaly disturbances. Good results obtained through the inversion of such synthetic examples prove the validity and applicability of our algorithm. Thereafter, the method is applied to real case studies taken from different ore mineralization resembling different geologic conditions. Data are taken from Canada, United States, Sweden, Peru, India, and Australia. The obtained results revealed good correlation with previous interpretations of these real field examples.


In cloud computing, requirements engineering is a greatly under-researched topic. Requirement elicitation is a key activity that helps in assemble the requirements of a system from different users, customers and stakeholders. Cloud services providers need methods to correctly elicit requirements from consumers, as the consumers of cloud services are more diverse and there occur some conflictions in the non-functional requirement of some kinds of consumers. Sometimes eliciting security requirements is an important task, because the cloud services are acquired by potential cloud consumers are secure for them to use. Both literature and market surveys are performed on different elicitation approaches that are followed by CSPs to fetch consumer requirements, recommendations and data from cloud service providers and from consumers of cloud computing services. This study aims to discuss the elicitation methods being used by cloud providers in Pakistan IT industry, and the resulting feedback of the consumers by these methods. This would lead to determine current elicitation methods are sufficient or there is a need to design a new elicitation method that can sufficiently provide with more customer satisfaction. We have used semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to gather information about the elicitation techniques that are used by cloud providers to elicit consumer requirements. This study is conducted in Pakistan IT industry. Somehow, this research enlightens the trend and scope of cloud computing in Pakistan. This study would be beneficial for cloud providers adequately gather their consumer requirements and enhance the knowledge of elicitation techniques that are used by cloud providers.


Efficient and safe intracellular delivery of proteins is highly desired in the development of protein therapeutics. Current methods of protein delivery commonly suffer from low loading efficiency, low stability in serum, and lack of versatility for different proteins. Here, we developed a platform for efficient protein delivery using mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) with lipid fusion. By different surface modifications on MSN, the positively charged MSN (MSN+) and the negatively charged MSN (MSN-), were generated for loading different proteins. The cargo proteins, based on the surface charges, can be selectively loaded in very high efficiency. The protein-loaded MSNs were fused with liposomes to form a protocell-like delivery system (MSN-LP) in order to prevent burst release of proteins. The lipid fusion significantly increases the stability of the nanosystem in physiological conditions, and the MSN-LP protocell can efficiently deliver proteins into cells. The cargo proteins can be released in cells in a sustained manner. Fifteen different proteins, including two protein complexes, were tested using this delivery system. Further analyses indicate that the proteins can maintain their functions after delivery into cells. Fluorescent proteins, GFP, and KillerRed show fluorescence in cells, indicating the correct folding of proteins during encapsulation and delivery. Protein activity analysis shows that KillerRed protein can generate ROS in cells, while SOD can eliminate ROS in cells. Hence, the proteins delivered by this system remain their structure and function in cells. This work provides a versatile strategy for charge-selective delivery of proteins with high loading efficiency and high stability.


The purpose of the research work is to establish the importance of physical activity to improve cognitive development in the subject of Physical Education with second-year high school students, it was oriented towards the use of an active teaching methodology. The research had a quantitative approach, of a quasi-experimental type, with a descriptive and correlational scope, with the goal of making statistical comparisons of the relationship of the study variables between the control and experimental groups; The intervention was carried out with the study or experimental group made up of 54 students who make up parallels A and B corresponding to the second year of high school; the technique used was the survey and the questionnaire was its instrument, made up of a total of 25 questions divided into two sections; When making the comparisons, the arithmetic median of the experimental group in the post-test reached 7.76 and in the control group 5.87; which means that after applying 3 workshops and 8 physical activities, after 8 weeks of intervention only with the students of the experimental group, the application of the proposal gave excellent results and achieved full compliance with the research objective; To verify this result, a satisfaction survey was


Aims Increasing antibiotic resistant organisms combined with frequent, inappropriate use of antibiotics is giving rise to infections which may no longer be able to be treated1. The aim of this prevalence study was to audit antimicrobial prescribing at a Hospital against Trust antimicrobial policies to determine whether the rising trend in antimicrobial prescribing is appropriate. Methods The data was collected in a point prevalence manner; prescriptions that were active at the time of auditing were included and those which were discontinued or prescribed and not yet administered were excluded. A data collection template was designed and distributed to ward pharmacists with education on how to complete. The following parameters were audited; allergy status, antibiotic name, route, indication, duration, review date as well as the ward and speciality. Ward pharmacists assessed whether the prescription was in line with Trust guidelines/ID/Micro recommendations. Data was collected into a central database, as well time taken to audit. The audit standards were 90% of patients prescribed an antimicrobial for an indication in line with Trust policy or ID/Micro 90% of patients prescribed an antimicrobial for a duration in line with Trust policy or ID/Micro 90% of patients have an allergy status documented Results 272 inpatient charts were reviewed. 153 of these patients (56%) were prescribed an antimicrobial.398 antibiotic prescriptions were included for audit. 38% of prescriptions were for medical/surgical prophylaxis. Prophylactic prescriptions were not included for further analysis. 85% of prescriptions had an indication documented either on the electronic chart (JAC) or written in the paper medical notes. 98% of prescriptions were as per policy or in line with recommendations from ID/Micro. 61% of prescriptions had a review date documented. 100% of patients had an allergy status documented. Average duration of antibiotic prescription was 8 days, range 1–50 days, median 5. 80% of prescriptions were IV. 70% of antimicrobial prescribing takes place in the ICU/cancer/transplant setting. Respiratory tract infections were the most common indication for antimicrobial prescribing, 35%. Amikacin was the most commonly prescribed antibiotic (15%), followed by piperacillin/tazobactam (14%). The audit cost in terms of pharmacist time was £763, at a total of 33 hours. Conclusions Policy compliant prescribing was very high at 98%; this figure is surprisingly high and poses questions as to the accuracy of data collection and whether bias was present. As a Trust we are now interested and will focus on improving intravenous to oral switches and reviewing and documenting patients' antimicrobial therapy regularly. As a tertiary/quaternary centre we treat complicated immunocompromised patients; we are unlikely to lower the burden of infection. Approximately 75% of antimicrobial prescribing was in the ICU and cancer and transplant setting, however we must optimise the use of antimicrobials and demonstrate good antimicrobial stewardship. This data will act as a baseline for a subsequent audits which will be carried out using the newly implemented EPIC® patient management system. Reference GOV.UK. 2019. Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). [ONLINE]Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/antimicrobial-resistance-amr-information-and-resources [Accessed 2 July 2019].


The antibacterial properties of thirty unprocessed honey samples from different floral origins produced in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were critically studied in relation to their antioxidant activities and total phenolic contents (TPC) expressed as gallic acid equivalents. The inhibitory action of the honey samples (diluted honeys and their phenolic extracts) was tested against selected bacteria, namely Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 24213, Micrococcus luteus ATCC 49732 and Escherichia coli ATCC 25922. The antioxidant activities of honey samples (diluted honeys and ethyl acetate extracts) were determined in terms of their anti radical power (ARP) as assessed by the DPPH scavenging assay and the Ferric-reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay respectively. The total phenolic content of the extracts was determined according to the Folin-Ciocalteau procedure. The color characteristic was determined for its relation to the studied parameters. The results indicated that the total phenolic content, antioxidant activity, antibacterial activity and the color characteristic differed widely among the different honey types. Total phenolic content of the tested honey samples was in the range 84.97 ±0.57 - 317.39 ±0.54 mg/100g honey as gallic acid equivalent. The antioxidant activities in terms of ARP and FRAP were found low in the bright honeys (Alkorrath and Alhandhal honeys), and was high for darker honeys (Wadi Dharaa and Wadi Dhebaa). The values of the ARP and FRAP were in the range 50.78 ±1.4 % - 99.52 ±0.2 % and 0.19 ±0.009 - 1.17 ±0.09mg mL-1, respectively. The bacterial growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Micrococcus luteus and Escherichia coli was inhibited by Wadi Dharaa phenolic honey extract and was not affected more by Alkorrath honey extract. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of honey samples was in the range 0.45 - 5.0 mgmL-1 in Al Korrath and Wadi Dharaa honey samples respectively. Marked correlation between the total phenolic contents, the antibacterial and antioxidant activities was noticed. The linear correlation between the values of the ARP, FRAP of honey samples and the corresponding TPC (R=0.60, R=0.71 respectively) was significant at p = 0.01. The physical characteristic (color) of the investigated honey samples was satisfactorily correlated with their antibacterial activity, total phenolic content and antioxidant activity. Correlations between the parameters analyzed were found to be statistically significant (p < 0.05).


Mining Information and Knowledge patterns from large databases have been recognized by many researchers as key research topic in database systems, Knowledgebase systems and in Information providing services. Clustering analysis method is one of the main analytical methods in data mining; the method of clustering algorithm will influence the clustering results directly. Clustering can be applied on database using various approaches based on distance, density, hierarchy and partition. The presence of Noise is a major problem in clustering. Noise is a data item that is not relevant to data mining. The Objective of the paper is present new algorithms for clustering techniques that handles the noise effectively. Our focus is to show the effect of noise on the performance of various types of clustering techniques and to study how noise affects the clustering process in terms of time and space. We have implemented various clustering techniques such as CURE, KMediods. We have computed time complexity and space complexity of various clustering techniques for different number of clusters. These results are presented in various visual presentations like Line Chart, Bar Chart. Then we will conclude which algorithm is more efficient to deal noise.


Domain structure, ferroelectric and magnetic properties of [001]-oriented multiferroic single crystals Pb(Fe0.5Nb0.5)O3–Pb(Yb0.5Nb0.5)O3–PbTiO3 (PFN–PYN–PT) with various compositions were investigated with the purpose of understanding the ferroelectric and magnetic order. The samples were determined to be rhombohedral phase or coexistence of tetragonal and rhombohedral phases by means of X-ray diffraction analysis and optical study. Furthermore, the domain configuration in tetragonal phase always takes on 90° domain wall. All samples exhibit well-developed saturated hysteresis loop, indicating no substantial increase of conductivity despite the introduction of Fe3+ ions. But the piezoelectric coefficients were reduced due to the introduction of PFN. In addition, the PFN–PYN–PT single crystals showed paramagnetic behavior, resulting from the –O–Fe3+–O–Nb/Yb/Ti–O–Fe3+–O– magnetic interaction. Interestingly, M–H hysteresis loops display a magnetic relaxor behavior.


BACKGROUND. Almost 2 million people in the UK are blind or partially sighted and this number is expected to double by 2030. Of this number, approximately 85% have residual vision (low vision) that can be used effectively for daily activities with appropriate visual aids. Bilateral macular disease is one of the leading causes of visual impairment especially in the elderly.
In advanced age related macular degeneration (AMD) patients develop a scotoma at the fovea, the most sensitive central area of the field of view. In order to read or recognise faces most patients with AMD adopt an eccentric fixation locus (the preferred retinal locus or PRL) that acts as a pseudo-fovea and is used as a reference point for the patient's oculomotor system. The PRL is placed upon parafoveal or extrafoveal retina depending on the scotoma size and location. Patients use one or more PRLs, depending on the task they are performing.
PURPOSE. To investigate how visual function varies with retinal eccentricity, to determine how visual function at the PRL compares to other retinal locations of comparable eccentricity, and to determine whether a more suitable eccentric retinal location could be found for the patient to be trained to use as their PRL.

METHODS. 24 patients with AMD and 19 normal vision subjects (8 young and 11 similar in age to the patients) were recruited. All AMD patients were tested on a Rodenstock scanning laser ophthalmoscope to identify the PRL location in their better eye. A SMI EyeLink eyetracker was used to assess peripheral visual acuity contrast sensitivity in both groups. 15 AMD patients and 11 normal vision subjects (6 young and 5 similar in age to the patients) were further tested on the SMI Eyelink eyetracker to assess peripheral sustained attention and reading speed with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP).

RESULTS. In normal vision subjects, visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, attention and reading speed declined with increasing retinal eccentricity, and varied with polar angle. For visual acuity, attention and reading speed performance was best along the horizontal meridian. Young normal vision subjects performed better in the retinal periphery for all tasks compared to the age-similar normal vision subjects. All AMD patients performed best at their PRL in the visual acuity, attention and reading speed tasks, but not in the contrast sensitivity task. Even at the PRL, AMD patients performed worse on all tasks than the age-similar normal vision control subjects at a similar eccentricity. Reading speed was poorly predicted by visual acuity and contrast sensitivity but well predicted by sustained attention.
CONCLUSIONS. For the visual functions measured in these experiments, it appears that most AMD patients found the area best suited for their PRL. It is the area with best acuity and reading performance, and most easily attended to. This implies that visual rehabilitation training should utilize the patient's selected PRL rather than training a new PRL. However, visual function at the PRL is generally worse than would be expected for healthy retina at that eccentricity. It is not clear whether this is because the peripheral retinal is not functioning normally or that patients are not making full use of this area. The ability to deploy attention at the PRL appears to be important in reading, however more clinical research is needed in this area. These data provide important information about the optimal eccentric retinal area for text presentation to achieve maximal reading rate and may be useful for developing new training programmes to help patients make best use of eccentric fixation.


Abstracf—Techniques for the design of magnetically tunable band-stop filters using ferromagnetic garnet resonators (such as yttrium-iron-garnet spheres) are presented. Design for prescribed response, starting from a low-pass lumped-element prototype filter is outlined. The filter structure consists of a strip line or waveguide with garnet spheres mounted at intervals of approximately a onequarter-wavelength or three-quarters-wavelength, at the center of the tuning range. Tuning is achieved by varying a biasing magnetic field. Techniques for enhancing the coupling to the garnet-sphere resonators are discussed, and the results of four trial designs which verify the theory are presented. The band-stop filter techniques are shown to also provide a very simple means for measuring the ferromagnetic resonance linewidth AH of garnet spheres.


Three dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) engine simulations can guide and/or complement experimental investigations and provide in-cylinder details that cannot be captured by conventional data acquisition methods. The main objective of this study was to establish a 3D RANS model (i.e., reasonable computational cost and running time) that can predict the efficiency and emissions of a 6V150 diesel engine under different operating conditions. The sub-models include renormalized k-epsilon turbulence model, G-equation model, solid cone breakup model (including hybrid KH-RT model and gas jet model), two-step soot formation model, and etc. The model was validated with experimental data from dynamometer tests. The results indicated that the numerical model captured the combustion and emission characteristics that occurred inside the combustion chamber, demonstrating its capability to evaluate engine characteristics during the development and optimization process.


The importance of mechanical stresses and strains has become well recognized in vascular physiology and pathology. To compute the stress and strain on the various components of the vessel wall, we must know the constitutive equations for the different layers of the vessel wall. The objective of the present study is to determine the constitutive equation of the coronary artery treated as a two-layer composite: intima-media and adventitial layers. Twelve hearts were obtained from a local slaughterhouse, and the right coronary artery and left anterior descending artery were dissected free from the myocardium. The vessel wall was initially mechanically tested biaxially (inflation and axial extension) as a whole (intact wall) and subsequently as intima-media or adventitial layer. A Fung-type exponential strain energy function was used to curve fit the experimental data for the intact wall and individual layers for the right coronary artery and left anterior descending artery. Two methods were used for the determination of material constants, including the Marquardt-Levenberg nonlinear least squares method and the genetic algorithm method. Our results show that there were no statistically significant differences in the material constants obtained from the two methods and that either set of elastic constants results in good fit of the data. Furthermore, at an in vivo value of axial stretch ratio, we find that the stiffness is as follows: intima-media > intact > adventitia. These results underscore the composite nature of coronary arteries with different material properties in each layer. The present results are necessary for analysis of coronary artery mechanics and to provide a fundamental understanding of vessel physiology.


Abstract [P(NH2)4]Cl has been prepared by ammonolysis of phosphorus pentachloride in liquid ammonia. The product was purified by reacting the byproduct, ammonium chloride, with diethylamine and removing the diethylamine hydrochloride. Suitable single crystals were obtained from an acetonitrile solution in a temperature gradient between 60 °C and room temperature. The crystal structure of [P(NH2)4]Cl has been determined by single crystal X-ray methods (Pbcn, a = 470.8(2), b = 1622.3(3), c = 756.3(2) pm, Z = 4). In the solid, [P(NH2)4]+ and Cl- ions are found, resembling a TlI-analogous structure. The N-H···Cl distances indicate N-H···Cl hydrogen bonding interactions. The distortion of the P-N sceleton of the cation and the very short P-NH2 distances (mean value: 161.2 pm) have been confirmed by ab initio calculations, which show a generalized anomeric effect of the electron pairs at nitrogen and pπdπ bonding.


Abstract The effects of short naps and exercise on the sleep quality and mental health of elderly people was investigated. 'Interventions' by short naps after lunch and exercise of moderate intensity in the evening were carried out for 4 weeks. After the 'intervention', awake time after sleep onset decreased significantly and sleep efficiency increased significantly, demonstrating that sleep quality had improved. Also, the frequency of nodding in the evening decreased significantly. These results demonstrate that proper awakening maintenance in the evening was effective in improving sleep quality. After the 'intervention', mental health and volition and physical health had also improved with improving sleep quality.


A key challenge in cross-lingual NLP is developing general language-independent architectures that are equally applicable to any language. However, this ambition is largely hampered by the variation in structural and semantic properties, i.e. the typological profiles of the world's languages. In this work, we analyse the implications of this variation on the language modeling (LM) task. We present a large-scale study of state-of-the art n-gram based and neural language models on 50 typologically diverse languages covering a wide variety of morphological systems. Operating in the full vocabulary LM setup focused on word-level prediction, we demonstrate that a coarse typology of morphological systems is predictive of absolute LM performance. Moreover, fine-grained typological features such as exponence, flexivity, fusion, and inflectional synthesis are borne out to be responsible for the proliferation of low-frequency phenomena which are organically difficult to model by statistical architectures, or for the meaning ambiguity of character n-grams. Our study strongly suggests that these features have to be taken into consideration during the construction of next-level language-agnostic LM architectures, capable of handling morphologically complex languages such as Tamil or Korean.


Abstract This study aims to examine whether the use of metacognitive self-assessment helps English as a foreign language (EFL) students to improve their metacognition. The study implemented an intervention technique on 540 students in Grades Four to Nine in a private school in Beirut. Students had to evaluate their performance on English tests in relation to their study skills and preparation. The four EFL teachers included students' study skills self-evaluation statements at the end of the English tests in the first term of 2019-2020 and responded to five questions to evaluate the intervention. Their responses indicated that younger learners were more responsive to the questions than those in the upper grades, and the students who responded were of all performance levels. Moreover, more students responded to the questions with time, and their evaluation of their performane on the tests became more accurate with time. Recommenadations to develop the learners' metacognitive skills were made accordingly.


We briefly review the current state of play in the area of agent-based software engineering, and then consider, 'what next?' We discuss a range of marketing activities that will together help in making people from other communities aware of work in this area. We then outline a number of research topics that are seen as vital to the future of the field. Although (as always) more research is needed, recent progress in both research and industrial adoption has been most encouraging, and the future of agent-based software engineering looks bright.


This paper introduces a blind channel estimation method for a block transmission system using fractional sampling at a receiver. In most digital communication systems, low-pass filters are placed at a transmitter to confine the transmitting waveform to an allocated bandwidth and at a receiver to improve the signal-to-noise (SNR) power ratio. Consequently, if the received waveform is sampled with sufficiently fast rate, the resulting discrete-time signal is band-limited and exhibits a smooth waveform. The method exploits this property for estimating the channel impulse response, via an interpolation formula. The method does not require knowledge of input statistics or the autocorrelation of the received signal. It is free of channel order estimation and thus robust against its overestimation. Moreover, the algorithm is quite efficient because it does not need to compute eigenvalues of a matrix.


3D geometry is one of the most extensively used data in military, engineering, and multimedia communication. In a distributed environment, efficient visual data exchange is desirable for real-time collaboration. Geometry compression is an effective way to distribute high-volume geometry data within limited bandwidth and storage capacity. In this paper, a new time-varying 3D geometry compression method based on 4D lifting wavelet transform is presented. In this hybrid approach, geometric information and animation are compressed based volume grid values. Surfaces are reconstructed from decompressed grid values. With rescaling and integer-to-integer lifting, compression ratio is significantly increased without compromising quality of surfaces.


While several studies have demonstrated that individuals' left-right orientation is linked to their support for democracy, thus far we know little about the historical roots of this association. Drawing on data from the European Values Study (1999–2008), the present study investigates to what degree this association is shaped by countries' authoritarian past. By distinguishing between countries with a democratic, left-wing authoritarian and right-wing authoritarian legacy, we demonstrate that the direction and strength of this association is aligned with the ideology of the authoritarian predecessor and that leftist orientations are linked to lower levels of support in left-wing legacies while the same holds for rightist orientations in countries with a right-wing legacy. In addition, we show that this association can for a large part be accounted for by individuals' support for the authoritarian predecessor and cannot be reduced to individuals' socialization under authoritarian rule. As such, our study highlights the importance of historical contextualization, when inferring shifts on the left-right dimension to changes in popular support for democracy.


In this paper we will illustrate how to constrain unavoidable Kähler corrections for N = 1 supergravity (SUGRA) inflation from the recent Planck data. We will show that the non-renormalizable Kähler operators will induce in general non-minimal kinetic term for the inflaton field, and two types of SUGRA corrections in the potential — the Hubbleinduced mass (cH), and the Hubble-induced A-term (aH) correction. The entire SUGRA inflationary framework can now be constrained from (i) the speed of sound, cs, and (ii) from the upper bound on the tensor to scalar ratio, r⋆. We will illustrate this by considering a heavy scalar degree of freedom at a scale, Ms, and a light inflationary field which is responsible for a slow-roll inflation. We will compute the corrections to the kinetic term and the potential for the light field explicitly. As an example, we will consider a visible sector inflationary model of inflation where inflation occurs at the point of inflection, which can match the density perturbations for the cosmic microwave background radiation, and also explain why the universe is filled with the Standard Model degrees of freedom. We will scan the parameter space of the non-renormalizable Kähler operators, which we find them to be order O(1), consistent with physical arguments. While the scale of heavy physics is found to be bounded by the tensor-to scalar ratio, and the speed of sound, O ( 1011 ≤ Ms ≤ 1016 ) GeV, for 0.02 ≤ cs ≤ 1 and 10−22 ≤ r⋆ ≤ 0.12.


Hypercholesterolemia is a cholesterol elevation condition in blood serum. Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus is a metabolic disorder which increases significantly in the whole world, associated with obesity and lipid accumulation in the body. Abelmoschus esculentus L Moench is used as an anti-obesity and hypercholesterolemia empirically.The objective of the study is to determine the anti-obesity anti-diabetic and anti-hypercholesterolemia effect of Abelmoschus esculentus L Moench ethanolic extract in animal high-fat diet model. We were conduct shortterm and long-term test. The Blood sample was collected from all rats after 8 hours fasting previously. In short-term (p = 0.000) and long-term test (p = 0.005) showed significantly different between the negative and positive group. Dose III showed no significantly different than positive group (p>0.05) in the short-term test. While, Dose I, II and III showed no significantly different than the positive group to decrease triglyceride level in the long-term test. Dose III showed the best effect to decrease triglyceride level in blood serum and equivalent to the positive group.


Hand amputations constitute a major cause of disability and public health concern with significant socio-economic dimensions. Aim To investigate hand amputation epidemiology, identify risk groups and estimate the potential for prevention. Methods EDISS in Greece, comprising four hospitals across the country, captures patient and injury information (demographics, accident conditions, injury description, outcome). During 1996–2004, among ∼0.5 million cases recorded, 86 211 were hand injuries resulting in 964 amputations (1.1%). To identify preventable amputation causes detailed injury descriptions regarding injury mechanism were examined. Results Among hand amputations 937 involved fingers, 23 palms and 4 wrists. The estimated (extrapolated) number of amputations was 3940 and the calculated overall incidence rate (IR) 3.62 per 10 000 person-years. The highest IR (8.02) was recorded among males 15–64 years old. The three most common mechanisms involved: tools in 445 (57.8%), doors in 172 (22.3%) and materials in 50 (6.5%) cases; of note, 148 victims were woodworkers (15.3%). The least common causes were animals, jewellery and fireworks (10, 7 and 6 cases respectively). Analysis of the accident conditions revealed the most common causes: lack of preventive measures/appropriate training and work overload. Most amputations due to doors were attributed to non-use of door handle while closing the door or could have been prevented by a chocking door closing mechanism. Conclusions Amputations of the hand constitute a small but non-negligible percentage of all hand injuries. The main risk group is young males and woodwork professionals, whereas doors pose a significant risk. Raising awareness and implementing simple measures could reduce the burden of this disabilitating injury.


Abstract A dominant feature of the low-level easterly wind flow in the Australian subtropics during summer is the trough development that occurs on both the western and eastern sides of the continent. This phenomenon is investigated analytically with a two-level model. A generalized solution is derived from the steady-state quasi-geostrophic equations governing uniform flow over arbitrarily shaped orography. The model solutions indicate that orography acting alone is of only marginal importance in producing the western trough. However, the high east coast orography is of significance in the formation of the eastern trough. Land-sea temperature contrast is parameterized in terms of equivalent orography with localized surface heating being mathematically equivalent to an orographic depression. The solutions including orography and surface heating acting together simulate well the lower layer flow over the Australian subtropics.


This paper introduces a cross adversarial source separation (CASS) framework via autoencoder, a new model that aims at separating an input signal consisting of a mixture of multiple components into individual components defined via adversarial learning and autoencoder fitting. CASS unifies popular generative networks like auto-encoders (AEs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs) in a single framework. The basic building block that filters the input signal and reconstructs the $i$-th target component is a pair of deep neural networks $\mathcal{EN}_i$ and $\mathcal{DE}_i$ as an encoder for dimension reduction and a decoder for component reconstruction, respectively. The decoder $\mathcal{DE}_i$ as a generator is enhanced by a discriminator network $\mathcal{D}_i$ that favors signal structures of the $i$-th component in the $i$-th given dataset as guidance through adversarial learning. In contrast with existing practices in AEs which trains each Auto-Encoder independently, or in GANs that share the same generator, we introduce cross adversarial training that emphasizes adversarial relation between any arbitrary network pairs $(\mathcal{DE}_i,\mathcal{D}_j)$, achieving state-of-the-art performance especially when target components share similar data structures.


One of the problems in using grating sensors is how to measure a small Bragg wavelength shift accurately. Nowadays demodulation techniques are mainly based on the edge filter, tunable filter, or interferometric scanning methods. Interferometric demodulation is widely accepted as the technology which can provide the high sensitivity. An interrogation system using the interferometric scanning method is presented, in which an unbalanced fiber M-Z interferometer is used as the wavelength scanner for temperature measurement. A novel fiber Bragg grating sensor system based on M-Z interferometric demodulation technique is presented in this paper. The temperature sensitivity measured in the experiment is almost consistent with that obtained from the theoretic calculation.


Abstract It has become a truism in discussions of Imperialist literature to state that the British empire was, in a very significant way, a textual exercise. Empire was simultaneously created and perpetuated through a proliferation of texts (governmental, legal, educational, scientific, fictional) driven significantly by a desire for what Thomas Richards describes as "one great system of knowledge." The project of assembling this system assumed that all of the "alien" knowledges that it drew upon could be easily assimilated into existing, "universal" (that is, European) epistemological categories. This belief in "one great system" assumed that knowledges from far-flung outposts of empire could, through careful categorization and control, be made to reinforce, rather than threaten, the authority of imperial epistemic rule. But this movement into "new" epistemic as well as physical spaces opened up the disruptive possibility for and encounter with Foucault's "insurrection of subjugated knowledges." In the Imperial Gothic stories discussed here, the space between "knowing all there is to know" and the inherent unknowability of the "Other" is played out through representations of failures of classification and anxieties about the limits of knowledge. These anxieties are articulated through what is arguably one of the most heavily regulated signifiers of scientific progress at the turn of the century: the body. In an age that was preoccupied with bodies as spectacles that signified everything from criminal behaviour, psychological disorder, moral standing and racial categorization, the mutable, unclassifiable body functions as a signifier that mediates between imperial fantasies of control and definition and fin-de-siècle anxieties of dissolution and degeneration. In Imperial Gothic fiction these fears appear as a series of complex explorations of the ways in which the gap between the known and the unknown can be charted on and through a monstrous body that moves outside of stable classification.


The
 purpose of this study was to analyze the subjective schemata of nursing
 unit managers in order to promote our understanding of individuals'
images of nursing as a profession. The study also sought to provide
appropriate strategies for improving the image of nursing based on
perceptions of the profession. The results, based on a Q study of
nursing unit managers at five Korean university hospitals, revealed
three distinct types of images of nursing as a profession: the views of
the Proud, the Self-Conflicted and the Progressive manager. It was found
 that these three types could change continuously through interaction
with their environment. Based the findings, the study also suggested
guidelines for constructing a desirable professional nursing image.


Different lithium salt concentrations in carbonate electrolyte were studied on the fast charging performance of LiNi0.6Mn0.2Co0.2O2 (NMC622)/graphite pouch cells. The cells with electrolyte concentration from 0.75 M to 1.50 M showed similar fast charging capabilities. Further increase of the concentration to 1.75 M and 2.00 M decreased the attainable capacity in fast charging. In the long-term cycling test, the capacity retention after 200 fast charging cycles increased with the increase of salt concentration in electrolyte. Cells with 1.5 M electrolyte showed the best overall performance in fast charging capacity and long-term cycling. Li plating were observed in the cells with 0.75 M, 1.00 M and 1.25 M electrolyte. It was improved with greatly reduced Li plating area in 1.50 M, and no Li plating at all in 1.75 M and 2.00 M electrolyte. Post-mortem analysis such as neutron powder diffraction (NPD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to characterize the electrode after cycling. It suggests that electrolyte concentration needs to be optimized for a given cell configuration with specific electrode and loading.

 Figure 1


Formation flying will quickly revolutionize the way science, remote sensing and surveillance missions are performed in space, enabling a whole new range of applications for small satellites. Currently, there are numerous missions in the planning stages involving formation flying of a constellation of micro or nanosatellites. However, to truly achieve the goals of these formation-flying missions, an accurate means of relative ranging, determining time and position measurements, intersatellite communications, and controlling the formation states is becoming critical. Today, while there are very expensive products available for positioning and attitude determination, none of them are capable of meeting the precise positioning accuracy and attitude determination requirements of formation flying, let alone the mass and power restrictions of these tiny space vehicles. This paper addresses the needs of future formation flying missions by discussing a technology with integrated capabilities for communicating, relative ranging, and exchanging precise timing among spacecraft within the constellation. This system is being developed by integrating a Carrier Phase Differential GPS (CDGPS) navigation sensor with a low power, inexpensive, compact ranging and communications system. The result of this integration is a low-cost, robust, secure GPS micro navigation and communication system for micro and nanosatellite constellations.


Context • Vulvovaginal candidiasis is the most common infection of the vulvovagina, which manifests with itching, a burning sensation, and leucorrhea. Some infections have been reported to be tolerant to conventional treatments, especially in immunosuppressed patients. New studies have suggested that ozone, which is the allotropic form of oxygen, may have antifungal effects. Objective • The study intended to compare the effects of ozononated olive oil and clotrimazole in the treatment of vulvovaginal candidiasis. Design • Patients were randomly assigned either to an ozone group or to a clotrimazole group in a randomized, controlled trial. Setting • The study took place in the Department of Gynecology of the School of Medicine at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in Mashhad, Iran. Participants • Participants were 100 female patients who had been referred to the women's gynecology clinic at the Omolbanin and Ghaem Hospitals and who had confirmed vulvovaginal candidiasis. Intervention • Patients in the ozone group were treated with ozonated olive oil or those in the clotrimazole group were treated with clotrimazole for 7 d. Outcome Measures • Patients were evaluated through an interview and a paraclinical examination at baseline and postintervention. The study measured changes in itching, burning, and leucorrhea using a questionnaire that patients completed at the end of the study and determined the presence of an infection with vaginal candidiasis through a culture both before acceptance into the study and after the treatments, if accepted. Results • Ozone and clotrimazole both reduced symptoms significantly and led to a negative culture for vaginal candidiasis (P < .05). No significant differences existed between the 2 groups in their effects on the symptom of itching and leucorrhea and on the results of the culture (P > .05). However, clotrimazole decreased the burning sensation significantly more than did ozone (P < .05). Conclusions • Considering the potential efficacy of ozonated olive oil in the improvement of the clinical and paraclinical aspects of treatment of patients with vulvovaginal candidiasis, the research team suggests that the treatment can be an effective topical treatment for those patients.


Objective To set up a real-time-PCR assay for the detection of norovirus RNA in stool samples from diarrhea cases in suspected norovirus infection epidemic,provide reliable and accurate technical support for the epidemic control. Methods The RNA extracted from 18 stool samples were detected for the norovirus nucleic acid by real-time-PCR. ResultsNorovirus nucleic acid was detected in 13 of 18 stool samples with the positive rate of 72.2%. Of 13 positive samples,6 were norovirus genotype I positive,6 were norovirus genotype Ⅱ positive,1 was both genotype I and genotype Ⅱ positive. Conclusion The real-time-PCR could be used to detect norovirus RNA and provide accurate and reliable results.


Magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) can successfully recover quantitative multi-parametric maps of human tissue in a very short acquisition time. Due to their pseudo-random nature, the large spatial undersampling artifacts can be filtered out by an exhaustive search over a pre-computed dictionary of signal fingerprints. This reconstruction approach is robust to large data-model discrepancies and is easy to implement. The curse of dimensionality and the intrinsic rigidity of such a precomputed dictionary approach can however limit its practical applicability. In this work, a method is presented to reconstruct balanced gradient-echo (GRE) acquisitions with established iterative algorithms for nonlinear least-squares, thus bypassing the dictionary computation and the exhaustive search. The global convergence of the iterative approach is investigated by studying the transient dynamic response of balanced GRE sequences and its effect on the minimization landscape. Experimental design criteria are derived which enforce sensitivity to the parameters of interest and successful convergence. The method is validated on simulated and experimentally acquired MRI data. Keywords: MR Fingerprinting, quantitative MRI, Bloch equation, nonlinear least squares, sequence design.


Abstract Objective: Psychophysical tuning curves (PTCs) have been used predominantly in laboratory settings to assess frequency selectivity in the auditory system. Recently, a fast-PTC procedure has been developed for diagnosis of cochlear dead regions. In this study the clinical feasibility of using fast PTCs in adults was investigated. Success rate (the number of successes per number of attempts) and repeatability were assessed. The range of the tip frequency (ftip) shift was established and different methods of ftip estimation compared. Design: Fast PTCs were measured for signal frequencies (fs) of 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 Hz on two occasions using an upward-sweeping masker. Five methods were used to estimate ftip for each PTC. Study sample: Thirty-two adults with normal hearing were tested. Results: All participants were able to successfully complete the task, the majority of them with minimal training. The moving average, quadratic function, and double lowpass filtering methods had the highest success rate in ftip estimation. The quadratic function method had the smallest 95% range of − 3.4% fs to 10.2% fs and the best test-retest reliability of 5.1% fs. Conclusions: Fast PTCs show potential for clinical use due to a high success rate with minimal training required. We suggest the quadratic function method for routine clinical use as it had the smallest 95% range, a high success rate in ftip estimation and the best test-retest reliability. For fast PTCs measured for signal frequencies from 500 to 4000 Hz using an upward-sweeping masker, we suggest the normative range of ftip to be − 3% fs to 10% fs with a test-retest reliability of 5% fs.


Vitamin A and iron deficiencies are prevalent in preschool children being a public health concern. The study aimed at developing a flour blend formulation made of sorghum, pumpkin pulp and seeds and examining its contribution to the daily nutrient requirement for iron and vitamin A among preschool children. Three flour blends were formulated using a mixture of fermented sorghum flour, pumpkin seed flour and pumpkin pulp flour with the following ratios 80:10:10 (FP1), 70:15:15 (FP2) and 60:20:20 (FP3), respectively whereas control was made of 100% fermented sorghum flour. The flour blends and the control were analyzed for moisture content, protein, crude fiber, crude fat, ash, carbohydrate, beta-carotene and iron content. Further, sensory tests were conducted using a nine-hedonic scale to evaluate consumers acceptability of porridge made of the flour samples. Microbial analysis was conducted to establish the safety of developed flours. The results show that as the proportion of pumpkin pulp and pumpkin seed flours increased the protein content, ash, vitamin A and iron content significantly (P<0.05) increased. The flour blend FP3 recorded the highest amount of protein (22.87%), vitamin A (875.00 µg RAE/100g) and iron (27.51 mg/100g). The FP2 flour blend was the most preferred with sensory score of 7.91 and had ability to meet >70% of daily protein, iron and vitamin A requirements of preschool children thus most suitable for a feeding trial. The findings of this study demonstrate that pumpkin pulp and pumpkin seed can be used to enhance the nutritive value of sorghum and as such meet the protein, iron and vitamin A requirements of preschool children aiding in the eradication of nutritional deficiencies.


The correction of power factor in electric power systems is called reactive power compensation. A synchronous motor is used as a capacitive reactive power generator in compensation systems. It is less costly for an enterprise to use a synchronous motor as both mechanical power generator and power factor corrector, which increases their efficiency. There are various studies on increasing the efficiency, capacity and stability of a power system using power factor correction under different operating conditions. This study focuses on the power factor correction of the system by controlling the excitation current of the synchronous motor via fuzzy logic thanks to the asynchronous motor connected to the system.


Abstract Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) increase developmental vulnerabilities for adult psychopathology, and behavioural addictions in particular. However, our understanding of the common psychological mechanisms underlying various behavioural addictions is currently limited. The present study explores self-report emotion dysregulation and depression severity as candidate transdiagnostic processes for addictions known to be related to ACEs such as gambling, food, and internet (social media) use. A large community sample of working adults (n = 1,231) was surveyed online. Validated self-report assessments of gambling, food, and social media addiction severity were administered. The study found that cumulative ACEs were linked to clinical symptoms of gambling, food, and social media addiction through the mediator of emotion dysregulation. Specific emotion dysregulation mechanisms common to gambling, food, and social media addictions include poor control of impulses when upset, and poor clarity about emotions. Additionally, emotion dysregulation and depression serially mediated the association between ACEs, and food and social media addiction severity. The study specifies emotion- and mood-related clinical targets for clinical assessments and interventions that could benefit adults with a history of ACEs.


Background/Aim: In pancreatic cancer tissues, hypoxic areas exist due to poor blood flow. Attenuation of the pharmacological efficacy of existing anticancer drugs in these hypoxic areas necessitates the search for novel anticancer compounds. We aimed to determine whether erastin exhibits anticancer effects in a hypoxic environment. Materials and Methods: Pancreatic cancer cell lines were subjected to cobalt chloride, a hypoxia-mimicking agent. Cell viability assay, measurement of reactive oxygen species, and western blotting analysis were conducted to investigate the efficacy of erastin under hypoxic environments. Results: Erastin exhibited remarkable cytotoxicity and induced apoptosis under hypoxic conditions. Furthermore, erastin triggered the intracellular accumulation of reactive oxygen species in a hypoxic environment. Subsequent treatment with N-acetylcysteine, an antioxidant, markedly attenuated cytotoxicity, and apoptosis. Conclusion: Erastin induces cell death by accumulation of intracellular reactive oxygen species and inducing apoptosis under hypoxic conditions, proving its potential for further development as a novel anticancer compound.


Instead of constructing complex declarative queries, many users prefer to write their programs using procedural code embedded with simple queries. Since many users are not expert programmers or the programs are written in a rush, these programs usually exhibit poor performance in practice and it is a challenge to automatically and efficiently optimize these programs. In this article, we present UniAD, which stands for Unified execution for Ad hoc Data processing, a system designed to simplify the programming of data processing tasks and provide efficient execution for user programs. We provide the background of program semantics and propose a novel intermediate representation, called Unified Intermediate Representation (UniIR), which utilizes a simple and expressive mechanism HOQ to describe the operations performed in programs. By combining both procedural and declarative logics with the proposed intermediate representation, we can perform various optimizations across the boundary between procedural and declarative code. We propose a transformation-based optimizer to automatically optimize programs and implement the UniAD system. The extensive experimental results on various benchmarks demonstrate that our techniques can significantly improve the performance of a wide range of data processing programs.


In this investigation an attempt has been made to study the effect of welding on fusion
characteristics of pulsed current gas tungsten arc welded AZ31B magnesium alloy joints. Five joints were fabricated using different levels of welding speed (105 mm/min –145 mm/min). From this investigation, it is found that the joints fabricated using a welding speed of 135 mm/min yielded superior tensile properties compared to other joints. The formation of finer grains and higher hardness in fusion zone and uniformly distributed precipitates are the main reasons for the higher tensile properties of these joints.


REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY
The relationship of conformation to future potential injury is a standard approach in practise but, at present, is largely based on subjective observations.

OBJECTIVE
To measure conformation in 3-year-old Thoroughbreds and objectively test its relationship with the occurrence of musculoskeletal problems.

METHODS
Conformation measurements were taken from photographs using specific reference points marked on the horses and processed on the computer. Clinical observations were recorded for each horse on a regular basis. Stepwise (forward) logistic regression analysis was performed to investigate the relationship between the binary response of the clinical outcomes probability and the conformation variables by the method of maximum likelihood.

RESULTS
Clinical outcomes significantly (P<0.05) associated with conformational variables included effusion of the front fetlock, effusion of the right carpus, effusion of the carpus, effusion of the hind fetlock, fracture of the left or right carpus, right front fetlock problem and hind fetlock problem.

CONCLUSIONS
Offset knees (offset ratio) contributed to fetlock problems. Long pasterns increased the odds of a fracture in the front limb. An increase in the carpal angle as viewed from the front (carpal valgus) may serve as a protective mechanism, as the odds for a carpal fracture and carpal effusion decreased with an increase in the carpal angle.

POTENTIAL RELEVANCE
This study demonstrates relationships between conformation and musculoskeletal disease in the racehorse. The information may be useful in selection and management of the racing Thoroughbred.


Background: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has increased the burden for the medical systems around the world. In Hong Kong, the pandemic not only affects the local populations, but also the healthcare workers. Healthcare workers, especially nurses, involving in COVID-19 treatments are highly susceptible to adverse psychological outcomes (e.g., anxiety symptoms). Studies have shown that socio-demographic characteristics, COVID-19-specific worries, and work settings-related variables are associated with healthcare workers' well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, relevant studies for nurses in Hong Kong are limited. This study examined the psychosocial correlates of anxiety symptoms among nurses in Hong Kong. Methods: Nurses (N = 1,510) working in hospitals and community settings were recruited through nursing associations in Hong Kong between August 8, 2020 and September 22, 2020. They were invited to complete a cross-sectional survey measuring their anxiety symptoms, sociodemographic characteristics, COVID-19-specific worries, and satisfaction with work and workplace pandemic-control guidelines. Results: 17.2% of nurses reported moderate to severe levels of anxiety symptoms. Results from hierarchical regressions found that higher COVID-19-specific worries (contracting COVID-19, family members contracting COVID-19 due to their nursing work, insufficient protective equipment at workplace) (βs ranged from 0.07 to 0.20, ps < 0.01), higher perceived stigma of being a healthcare worker (β = 0.18, p < 0.001), and lower work satisfaction (β = −0.21, p < 0.001) were associated with higher anxiety symptoms. Conclusion: A moderate proportion of nurses in Hong Kong did report levels of anxiety symptoms amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Futures studies could focus on the contributing factors of anxiety symptoms to design for effective strategies to promote nurses' well-being during pandemic situations.


Exosomes derived from human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) play potential protective roles in asthma. However, the underlying mechanisms remain not fully elucidated. Herein, exosomes were isolated from BMSCs, and the morphology, particle size, and exosome marker proteins were identified by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA), and Western blot, respectively. Then airway smooth muscle cells (ASMCs) were treated with transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) to construct a proliferation model and then incubated with BMSCs-derived exosomes. We found that exosome incubation increased miR-221-3p expression and inhibited proliferation, migration, and the levels of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins including fibronectin and collagen III. Moreover, FGF2 was identified as a target gene of miR-221-3p. FGF2 overexpression reversed the inhibitory effects of exosomal miR-221-3p on ASMC progression. Besides, the phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) is inhibited by exosomal miR-221-3p, which was reversed by FGF2 overexpression. And ERK1/2 signaling activator reversed the effects of exosomal miR-221-3p on ASMC progression. Additionally, an ovalbumin (OVA)-induced asthmatic mice model was established, and exosome treatment alleviated airway hyper-responsiveness (AHR), histopathological damage, and ECM deposition in asthmatic mice. Taken together, our findings indicated that exosomal miR-221-3p derived from BMSCs inhibited FGF2 expression and the ERK1/2 signaling, thus attenuating proliferation, migration, and ECM deposition in ASMCs and alleviating asthma progression in OVA-induced asthmatic mice. Our findings may provide a novel therapeutic strategy for asthma.


Tunneled dialysis catheters have played an important role in providing vascular access for hemodialysis for over 20 years, yet limitations associated with poor flow, thrombosis, and infections due to the transcutaneous nature of catheters have led to the development of alternative vascular access devices. This article reviews two historical devices—the Hemasite and the Bentley DiaTAP button—and provides an overview of two new fully subcutaneous vascular access devices—the LifeSite Hemodialysis Access System (Vasca, Inc., Tewksbury, MA) and the Dialock Hemodialysis System (Biolink Corp., Norwell, MA). These new subcutaneous devices differ significantly from currently available tunneled dialysis catheters in their design and method of use and may result in improved outcomes in hemodialysis patients. Indeed, initial clinical experiences with this new class of fully implanted access devices validate a subcutaneous approach to hemodialysis access and suggest that their high flow rates and low complication rates may make subcutaneous devices an attractive alternative to dialysis catheters for hemodialysis patients.


Drawing on arguments from institutional theory, this study examines how social norms— specifically, local religious social norms—affect the motivational impact of equity-based incentives. We test our model using longitudinal data on local religious norms, CEO equity incentives and firm value. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find that local religious social norms attenuate the impact of CEO option incentives upon firm value. Furthermore, we find that the attenuating impact of local religious social norms increases with managerial discretion. These findings provide valuable insight for human resource professionals and boards aiming to design compensation contracts that are aligned with firm goals. Our findings also contribute to research on the motivational effect of equity incentives by demonstrating importance of considering the social context in which executives are embedded.


In search for the cellular mechanisms of graviperception in basidiomycete fruit bodies, nuclear and vacuole motility was investigated in the fungus, Flammulina velutipes. In this organism, hyphal nuclei are closely linked with the actin cytoskeleton, which is involved in gravity perception. Active motion of the nuclei appears aligned with the axis of gravity, and is maintained after spatial reorientation of the cell. The vacuoles showed low motility not aligned with the gravity axis at all. The nuclear density was determined with 1.22 g/cm3. Calculation of the forces exerted by the nuclei shows that nuclear displacement in the submicrometer range already fulfills the physical minimum condition for a statolith. Based on these findings, a function of nuclei as statoliths in basidiomycete hyphae is proposed.


Today Internet has become an integral part of most of our life. The attempt to display media files through Internet was started from the mid-20th century. Several research works have been reported to provide Video on Demand model in distributed environments like RMI, Component based, SOA and Grid computing. Inspite of these developments, it is been understood that very little progress has been made for several decades, primarily due to the high cost and limited capabilities of computer hardware and standards. Thus it is necessary to develop a model that is reliable, scalable and cost-effective. The proposed research work aims to implement the Video on Demand Service in Cloud Environment in a more secure, scalable and cost effective manner. The performance measures like upload time and download time are analyzed with different video files of varying sizes that are divided into block blobs of 32KB, 64KB and 1MB and are reported.


A new cobalt(II) phosphate compd. has been synthesized using high-temp. flux methods in the CsCl/NaCl media at 650°C. The title compd., Na3CsCo7(PO4)6, forms vibrant purple plate crystals. It crystallizes in a monoclinic space group C2/c (no. 15) with the cell dimensions a = 12.844(3)A, b = 10.764(2)A, c = 15.630(3)A, β = 113.54(3)°, and V = 1980.96(3)A3. The X-ray single crystal structure reveals that the Co2+ cations adopt CoOn coordination, including square-planner (n = 4), square pyramidal (n = 5) and octahedral (n = 6) geometries. These polyhedra share corner oxygen atoms to form an extended three-dimensional network structure. The Co2 cations are magnetic ions, and the possible magnetic lattice can be viewed as being constructed by triangular lattices, see the structure below. In this presentation, we will discuss the results of solid state synthesis, crystal growth, structure anal., UV-Vis spectroscopy, and magnetic characterization of the title compd.


The Mekong River Commission (MRC) was established in 1995 and represents a third chapter in the Mekong Project's organizational history. The MRC's predecessors – the Mekong Committee (1957–78) and the Interim Mekong Committee (1978–95) – operated under difficult circumstances, yet made many contributions to transboundary river basin planning and international diplomacy. The MRC's 2001 Work Programme represents a shift in Mekong basin planning from the era of the Mekong Committee. This shift is largely embodied by a change from a project–oriented focus to an emphasis on better management and preservation of existing resources. The MRC is in a position to help address the related issues of population growth, environmental preservation and regional security. In doing so, the MRC will benefit from the programmes and international collaboration established by its predecessors.


Background: Prevention of unintentional opioid overdose deaths is effective through overdose prevention trainings (OPTs), in which laypersons are taught overdose response through six actions. This longitudinal study examines trainee knowledge 12 months after OPT completion. Methods: Participants were enrolled following OPT at six sites. At the 12-month follow-up, participants were asked to name the drug overdoses that naloxone reverses and name overdose response actions. A 6-point scale was created and was comprised of the number of correct overdose response actions mentioned (check breathing; administer sternum rub; call 911; give rescue breathing; administer naloxone; put victim in recovery position). Mean knowledge was compared by participant sociodemographic characteristics, confidence, and site of OPT training (indoors versus outdoors). Results: Of 344 OPT participants, 273 were reached at 12 months. Nearly all (99%) participants identified that naloxone reverses heroin overdoes; 77% identified that naloxone reverses opioid analgesics overdoses; and 68% identified that naloxone reverses methadone overdoses. Overdose response actions most frequently mentioned were giving naloxone (86%) and calling 911 (76%). The remaining four actions were mentioned by less than 40% of participants. Overall mean knowledge score was 2.7 out of 6. Mean knowledge scores were higher for college graduates than those with less than college education (3.2 vs 2.6, P < 0.001), for those who felt very confident (mean score [ms] = 2.9), compared to somewhat confident (ms = 2.4) and a little or not at all confident (ms = 1.5) in their ability to reverse an overdose (P < .001), and for indoor-training recipients (3.0 vs 2.5, P = 0.02). There were no differences in mean knowledge scores for trainees by age, race, or gender. Conclusions: These findings suggest the need for several improvements in OPT curriculum, including emphasis on naloxone reversal of opioid analgesic and methadone overdoses, and all 6 rescue actions. Lower knowledge scores among outdoor-trained participants likely reflect session brevity, suggesting that outdoor trainings need to be enhanced.


Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecologic malignancy in the US. Our group and others has shown that CD8+ lymphocyte infiltration in the ovarian tumor epithelium is associated with prolonged survival in patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC). Despite the increasing evidence on stromal involvement in tumor progression, the underlying genetic composition of the stromal cells that could regulate the infiltration and activation of CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in ovarian cancer is not fully understood. How tumor heterogeneity contributes to a different in immune response remains a challenge question that needs to be addressed. The present study seeks to evaluate the roles and to delineate the underlying mechanisms by which stromal cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) modulates immune response in ovarian cancer, particularly immune suppression by CAF-derived protein factors. By laser microdissection of tumor tissue samples from HGSOC patients, we generated cell type specific expression profiles and identified a CAF-specific gene signature for ovarian cancer. Genes expressed exclusively by CAFs that are associated with differential immune response were identified by comparing CAF expression profiles from HGSOC patients with high and low tumor-infiltrated CD8+ T cell densities. Among the differentially expressed genes identified, immunostaining results showed a significant inverse correlation between stromal MFAP5 expression and intratumoral CD8+ T cell density in HGSOC tissue samples (p = 0.006). The results were further confirmed by correlating stromal MFAP5 protein expression and intratumoral CD8+ T cell density. Our recent studies showed that increased stromal MFAP5 expression is associated with poorer survival in HGSOC patients and MFAP5 modulates ovarian caner invasion and motility potential. Together with our preliminary data showing that MFAP5 modulates the expression of immune-related genes, we hypothesize that stromal MFAP5 may generate an immunosuppressive microenvironment through suppressing CD8+ T cell activation and trafficking in the ovarian tumor tissue. Cell culture experiment showed that recombinant MFAP5 protein treatment induced expression of CD47, an immune checkpoint protein, in cancer cells and downregulated CXCL13, a chemokine essential for immune cell adhesion, in endothelial cells. Using animal models, these findings were further validated. Based on our data, animal studies will be performed to further evaluate the efficacy of immune activation by targeting stromal MFAP5 in ovarian cancer treatment. Delineating the molecular mechanism by which MFAP5 modulates the immune responses in ovarian cancer will help to design novel treatment modalities based on stromal MFAP5 blockade, which will promote activation and trafficking of cytotoxic CD8+ T cells and improve patient survival rates. Citation Format: Tsz-Lun Yeung, Cecilia S. Leung, Kwong-Kwok Wong, Samuel C. Mok. Stromal heterogeneity and immune response in ovarian cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 4145.


The relevance of scalp EEG recording on the selection of patients for epilepsy surgery usually is based on the concordance between the location of the epileptogenic focus and the presumed ictal origin of clinical seizures visually identified or video recorded. Bilateralisation and/or spreading of the epileptiform events are among the causes of the relative lack of agreement between scalp topography and origin of EEG potentials. Computer methods mainly if they are adaptive and use multistrategic approaches improve the accuracy on the detection of the epileptogenic focus, extracting relevant information on the location and spreading of epileptiform events.


Media link events in society into meaningful plotlines for public consumption. For social issues such as homelessness this storytelling process continues until an issue is resolved or another concern takes precedence. This article investigates British Independent Television News 1 (ITN) portrayals of homelessness from January 1993 to December 2002 (n = 99). News items are explored as instalments in a larger news narrative through which the public is offered engagements with homeless characters. A quantitative content analysis was used to establish the general prevalence of items throughout the year, story locations, causes and solutions offered for liomelessness, and character roles A qualitative narrative analysis was used to explore the function of these story elements in the overall patterning of the ITN story of homeless/less. Of particular note was the promotion of a philanthropic approach to service delivery through the characterization of homeless people as needy victims and the maintenance of estranged relationships between the viewing public and homeless people. The significance of ITN's exclusion of homeless people from public deliberations regarding their needs is discussed in relation to the failure of this wealth nation to resolve homelessness.


In the last eighteen months of his life Dag Hammarskjold was taken up with two major African issues, the Congo and South Africa. In the Congo he organised a United Nations (UN) mission to stabilise the country as it threatened to collapse into chaos following decolonisation; in South Africa he tried to deal with the conflict situation after the Sharpeville massacre by engaging in discussions with the South African Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd. For that purpose he made a long-delayed visit to South Africa in January 1961. What did he try to achieve through his contacts with the South African government, and what other significance did his visit have for the unfolding history of apartheid and the struggle against it? This paper will focus on these questions, while a more substantial version, with detailed references to the sources upon which it is based, will be presented to the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation in mid-2011 as part of the commemorations marking fifty years since Hammarskjold's death.


Electron energy-loss spectra of (V1-xCrx)2O3 (x=0.012) at the antiferromagnetic insulating (AFI), paramagnetic metallic (PM) and paramagnetic insulating (PI) phases have been measured using a high-resolution transmission electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) microscope. The changes in the EELS spectra at the transition from the PM phase to the AFI phase are interpreted in a similar manner to the case of V2O3 [Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 37 (1998) 584]. The change in the electronic structure at the transition from the PM phase to the PI phase (Mott transition) was revealed for the first time. A sharp peak observed at 1.0 eV in the PM phase did not appear in the PI phase. The t2g peak of the O 1s → V 3d(t2g) EELS spectra shows an energy increase of 0.5 eV at the transition from the PM phase to the PI phase. This increase is interpreted to occur by the splitting of the bonding egπ band, which is partially filled in the PM phase, into the fully occupied lower band and the unoccupied upper band, and by the lifting of the unoccupied band to an energy higher than the Fermi level in the PM phase. The t2g peak also shows a decrease in intensity but an increase in the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) at the transition. The decrease in intensity occurs due to the decrease of the hybridization of the V 3d with the O 2p orbitals resulting from an increase of the V–O distance. The increase in the FWHM results from the lifting of the a1g* band due to the decrease of the lattice constant cH and the splitting of the egπ and egπ* bands each into two bands due to electron correlation.


I identified acoustical features that distinguish the two song categories, A and B, of the Adelaide's Warbler (Dendroica adelaidae). Like many other wood-warbler species, male Adelaide's Warblers have functionally structured song repertoires such that A and B song categories are distinguished by common usage among males. The particular song types used in a given catego, however, vagreatly among individual males. Therefore, I focused my analysis on acoustical features other than song types. Song categories were distinguished by three major features: (1) the sound energy within a given B song was concentrated into a narrower frequency band, which was shifted about 600 Hz lower than for A songs; (2) the structure of B songs tended to be more complex, as they contained more note types and greater contrast between successive types than did A songs (discriminant function analysis using structural and frequency data correctly classified 85% of songs to catego); and (3) the singing behavior associated with B-song sequences was more complex, due to inclusion of a larger number of song types, more frequent switching or alternating between them, and a more rapid rate of song deliver. Overall, the B categoappears to represent a more complex and lower frequency signal than the A catego. Differences between the two song categories, which parallel data available for other paruline species, should reduce signal ambiguity and are consistent with several nonmutually exclusive functional interpretations: The B-song catego, used in intrasexual interactions, might represent a more aggressive signal or might be specialized for caring motivational information. Females might find the higher-fre- quency A-song categomore appeasing or stimulating. Song categories A and B also might be specialized for traveling different distances, at different times of day, or through different microhabitats. Received 5 December 1994, accepted 16 February 1995.


An investigation was carried out to characterize the tensile behavior of multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) modified epoxy nanocomposites in the glassy, viscoelastic, and rubbery regimes. 1 and 2 wt% MWCNT predispersed epoxy was used in this study. The cured samples were characterized using dynamic mechanical analysis for selection of different temperatures. The stress–strain behavior and toughness were determined in the temperature band of 25–140 °C. Addition of 1% CNT resulted in 16% improvement in the storage modulus at glassy state but 6% reduction in storage modulus was seen for 2% CNT-epoxy system. Tensile results showed that the strength and modulus have improved for 1% CNT-epoxy system. This study also revealed that for all the three systems, failure strain was maximum near the glass transition temperature ( T _g) and significantly reduced above T _g. Also the CNT-modified epoxies showed improved toughness.


An equivalence relation in the set of all square binary matrices is described in this work. It is discussed a combinatoric problem about finding the cardinal number and the elements of the factor set according to this relation. We examine the possibility to get some special elements of this factor set. We propose an algorithm, which solves these problems. The results we have received are used to describe the topology of the different weaving structures.


Artificial insemination is frequently used to circumvent infertility resulting from a man's physical or psychological inability to impregnate his partner by sexual intercourse. 1 When artificial insemination is accomplished using semen from a woman's husband (AIH), few ethical problems are believed to exist. In this instance, AIH is seen merely as a physical technique for overcoming barriers to effective impregnation in the context of marriage. When, for various reasons, semen is used from an unrelated donor (AID), many ethical problems have surfaced. As will be detailed later, these ethical considerations range from fear that AID is analogous to adultery and doubt about the donor's responsibilities to the child to varied beliefs about the nature of parenthood itself. All these issues arose in the case described herein. However, the case raises special clinical and ethical For editorial comment see p 419. problems. It concerns AID in a lesbian and the handling


Many microalgae release polysaccharides, but the effects of the polysaccharides on mutual flocculation of microalgae and clay in aquatic environments have not been well studied. Aphanothece halophytica Frémy is a bloom‐forming cyanobacterium in salterns and can release large amounts of polysaccharide (AH‐RPS). In the present study, we investigated the effect of AH‐RPS on mutual flocculation of cyanobacterium and clay and further explored the mechanisms by which AH‐RPS affected mutual flocculation. We determined that AH‐RPS possessed clay‐dispersing activity as defined as the ability to inhibit the flocculation and sedimentation of clay suspensions in water. Supplementation of AH‐RPS in cyanobacterial cell suspensions and in the culture media containing the same kaolin clay concentration dose dependently decreased flocculation of cyanobacterial cells and increased clay‐dispersing activity. These findings indicate that the clay‐dispersing activity of AH‐RPS was related to its inhibitory effect on mutual flocculation of cyanobacterial cells and clay particles. Moreover, the clay‐dispersing activity of AH‐RPS was stable from pH 3 to pH 10 and was increased by adding NaCl, MgCl2, CaCl2, or low concentrations of KCl (up to 0.4 M). Taken together, our data suggest that AH‐RPS might maintain its clay‐dispersing activity and inhibit mutual flocculation of microalgae and suspended clay in saltern brine.


This paper adopts and investigates the non-dominated sorting approach for extending the single-objective Cuckoo Search (CS) into a multi-objective framework. The proposed approach uses an archive composed of primary and secondary population to select and keep the non-dominated solutions at each generation instead of pairwise analogy used in the original Multi-objective Cuckoo Search (MOCS). Our simulations show that such a low computational complexity approach can enrich CS to incorporate multi-objective needs instead of considering multiple eggs for cuckoos used in the original MOCS. The proposed MOCS is tested on a set of multi-objective optimization problems and two well-studied engineering design optimization problems. Compared to MOCS and some other available multi-objective algorithms such as NSGA-II, our approach is found to be competitive while benefiting simplicity. Moreover, the proposed approach is simpler and is capable of finding a wide spread of solutions with good coverage and convergence to true Pareto optimal fronts.


Genetic control over sensitivity to experimental adjuvant arthritis was studied in different strains of inbred, recombinant and congeneic mice. The development of adjuvant arthritis is genetically regulated, with sensitivity to adjuvant arthritis controlled by H62-complex. The genes controlling sensitivity to adjuvant arthritis were shown to be located in (S-region) H-2 system.


Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in various tasks. However, their suitability for domain-specific tasks, is limited due to their immense scale at deployment, susceptibility to misinformation, and more importantly, high data annotation costs. We propose a novel Interactive Multi-Fidelity Learning (IMFL) framework for the cost-effective development of small domain-specific LMs under limited annotation budgets. Our approach formulates the domain-specific fine-tuning process as a multi-fidelity learning problem, focusing on identifying the optimal acquisition strategy that balances between low-fidelity automatic LLM annotations and high-fidelity human annotations to maximize model performance. We further propose an exploration-exploitation query strategy that enhances annotation diversity and informativeness, incorporating two innovative designs: 1) prompt retrieval that selects in-context examples from human-annotated samples to improve LLM annotation, and 2) variable batch size that controls the order for choosing each fidelity to facilitate knowledge distillation, ultimately enhancing annotation quality. Extensive experiments on financial and medical tasks demonstrate that IMFL achieves superior performance compared with single fidelity annotations. Given a limited budget of human annotation, IMFL significantly outperforms the human annotation baselines in all four tasks and achieves very close performance as human annotations on two of the tasks. These promising results suggest that the high human annotation costs in domain-specific tasks can be significantly reduced by employing IMFL, which utilizes fewer human annotations, supplemented with cheaper and faster LLM (e.g., GPT-3.5) annotations to achieve comparable performance.