The authors describe an experimental study of single-point diamond-machining techniques with a view to producing a low-cost production machine for the manufacture of infrared optical components such as aluminium mirrors, germanium lenses and zinc sulphide domes. These components may be machined to a high form accuracy and surface finish such that they require no subsequent polishing. Of the three possible machine configurations, X-Y, R- theta and spherical generation, the last two are considered the most efficient and cost effective for the present requirement. They have been extended to produce aspheric components with departures up to +or-2 mm from a best-fit sphere.


We present a treatment of potential scattering of a charged particle in a laser field undergoing jumplike fluctuations in amplitude, phase or frequency. Our method allows the inclusion of these three types of noise in a unified way for the case of random telegraph and, more generally, of pre-Gaussian statistics. The broadening of the lines corresponding to the various multiphoton processes is analysed as a function of the characteristic parameters of the model.


The guiding or ducting of O and X mode waves along magnetic-field-aligned density irregularities has been studied by integrating the Haselgrove equations in cylindrical coordinates r, ϕ, z, where the z axis is parallel to the magnetic field (B). The density profile of the irregularity is a monotonie function of the radius r; linear and Gaussian functions of r are applied. The density rises from a minimum at r = 0 to a maximum at its outer limit, usually defined by the cutoff condition for the frequency and mode in question. Quasi-helical paths are obtained whose shape projected onto the r-ϕ plane perpendicular to B generally resembles a rotating ellipse. These shapes are similar to the orbital path of a particle in a central potential field. Indeed, for O mode propagation restricted to r and ϕ and a linear radial density profile, a closed-form solution is obtained in the form of an elliptical integral. Peculiarities are found, such as rays that are perfectly circular and others that have a fixed quasi-elliptical shape in the r-ϕ plane. Other parameters varied in the study include the relative depletion of the axial density below ambient density and the ray starting position and direction. The results suggest that three-dimensional effects may be observable in certain areas of high-frequency research in the ionosphere-magnetosphere.


The primary purpose of human rights law is to contain the predatory pulses of the state. Just fifty years after the WWII, there is an impressive catalogue of universal and regional human rights instruments and institutions. Whether their mandate it simply to monitor, encourage compliance with, or enforce human right norms, human rights bodies have now become part of the normal fabric of international topography. This article argues, however, that many official international human rights bodies, such as the Human Rights Committee (HRC), are basically weak and ineffectual. These timid institutions, created to mediate human rights norms and deliver promises of protection, have fallen short. The solution is the creation of a Human Rights Court and a sister International Human Rights Commission, two institutions that would begin to give meaning to that promise, and turn a new leaf in the history of humanity.


PCR-based microsatellite analysis has been applied to define the relationships among 238 grapevine cultivars selected as representative of local germplasm in the Central and Western Mediterranean regions. The estimation of genetic distances among the five grapevines groups, based on cluster analysis, c2 tests and Principal Component Analysis, was coherent with a common geographic origin of cultivated grapes and of their primordial varietal radiation. In fact, genetic similarity was high among French and Iberian cultivars and among Greek and Balkan cultivars. The Italian grapes clustered in an intermediate position, reflecting its geographical location. Results show that the geographical distribution is consistent with a pattern of viticulture based on the origin of primordial varieties from regions in the Near East, and subsequent and multiple variety flows that linked different viticultural regions through different routes. This is coherent with the model of varietal diffusion proposed on the bases of archaeological and historical evidence, in which population movements and cultural exchange contributed to the phenomenon.


Objective. Primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) is an autoimmune disease in which the concentration of the acute-phase protein serum C-reactive protein (CRP) is low. We investigated whether levels of another acute-phase protein, serum amyloid A (SAA), are increased in patients with pSS and whether the immunological markers in patients with pSS are associated with variation in SAA levels. Methods. Serum SAA concentrations were measured by ELISA in 74 patients with pSS and in 56 control subjects with sicca symptoms. Results. Median SAA levels did not differ significantly between patients with pSS and subjects with sicca symptoms. In patients with pSS SAA concentrations correlated significantly with age, leukocyte count, CRP, interleukin 6, and C4. Unlike CRP, there was a significant inverse correlation between SAA and serum IgG levels and anti-SSA antibody titers, as well as a trend towards an inverse correlation between SAA and antinuclear antibody and rheumatoid factor titers. Conclusion. Our data imply that high SAA production could constitute a protective element in pSS: high SAA levels inhibit in particular various signs of B cell hyperreactivity, i.e., IgG and autoantibody production.


This paper appears in the March, 1972, issue of the Communications of the ACM. Its abstract is reproduced below.
 An operating system which is organized as a small supervisor and a set of independent processes are described. The supervisor handles I/O with external devices - the file and directory system - schedules active processes and manages memory, handles errors, and provides a small set of primitive functions which it will execute for a process. A process is able to specify a request for a complicated action on the part of the supervisor (usually a wait on the occurrence of a compound event in the system) by combining these primitives into a "supervisory computer program." The part of the supervisor which executes these programs may be viewed as a software implemented "supervisory computer." The paper develops these concepts in detail, outlines the remainder of the supervisor, and discusses some of the advantages of this approach.


The application of the Variance Targeting Estimator (VTE) is considered in GJR-GARCH(1,1) model, under three misspecification scenarios, which are, model misspecification, initial parameters misspecification and innovation distribution assumption misspecification. A simulation study has been performed to evaluate the performance of VTE compared to commonly used, which is the Quasi Maximum Likelihood Estimator (QMLE). The data has been simulated under GJR-GARCH(1,1) process with initial parameters ω = 0.1, α = 0.05, β = 0.85, γ = 0.1 and an innovation with a true normal distribution. Three misspecification innovation assumptions, which are normal distribution, Student-t distribution and the GED distribution have been used. Meanwhile, for the misspecified initial parameters, the first initial parameters have been setup as ω = 1, α = 0, β = 0 and γ = 0. Furthermore, the application of VTE as an estimator has also been evaluated under real data sets and three selected indices, which are the FTSE Bursa Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Index (FBMKLCI), the Singapore Straits Time Index (STI) and the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI). Based on the results, VTE has performed very well compared to QMLE under both simulation and the applications of real data sets, which can be considered as an alternative estimator when performing GARCH model, especially the GJR-GARCH.


While local government is found in all federal countries, its place and role in the governance of these countries varies considerably. In some countries, local government is considered an essential part of the federal nature of the state and recognized in the constitution as such, whereas in others it is simply a creature of the sub-national states/provinces. When referring to local government it is more correct to refer to local governments (plural), as these institutions come in all shapes and sizes, performing widely divergent functions. They range from metropolitan municipalities of mega-cities to counties, small town councils, and villages. Their focus is either multi-purpose in the case of municipalities or single purpose in the case of special districts and school districts. What unites these institutions of state is that there is no level of government below them. That is also their strength and the source of their democratic claim - they are the government closest to the people. Political science experts from across the globe examine local governments by drawing on case studies of Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Switzerland, Spain, South Africa, and United States.

Contributors include Raoul Blindenbacher (Forum of Federations), Martin Burgi (Ruhr-University Bochum), Luis Cesar (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Jaap de Visser (University of Western Cape), Habu Galadima (University of Jos), Sol Garson (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) Boris Graizbord (National College of Mexico), Rakesh Hooja (HCM Rajasthan State Institute of Public Administration, India), Andreas Kiefer (European Affairs Office of the Land Salzburg), Andreas Ladner (Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration), George Mathew (Institute of Social Sciences, India), Thomas Minger (Conference of Cantonal Governments, Switzerland), Mike Pagano (University of Illinois at Chicago), Chandra Pasma (Forum of Federations), Graham Sansom (University of Technology Sydney), Franz Schausberger (Salzburg University), Nico Steytler (University of Western Cape), Francisco Velasco Caballero (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid), and Robert Young (University of Western Ontario).


Semi-autonomous vehicles occasionally require control to be handed over to the driver in situations where the vehicle is unable to operate safely. Currently, such handover requests require the driver to take control almost instantaneously. We investigate how auditory pre-alerts that occur well before the handover request impact the success of the handover in a dual task scenario. In a study with a driving simulator, drivers perform tasks on their phone while the car is in an autonomous mode. They receive a repeated burst audio pre-alert or an increasing pulse audio pre-alert preceding the standard warning for immediate handover. Results show that pre-alerts caused people to look more at the road before the handover occurred, and to disengage from the secondary task earlier, compared to when there was no pre-alert. This resulted in safer handover situations. Increasing pulse pre-alerts show particular promise due to their communication of urgency. Our detailed analysis informs the design and evaluation of alerts in safety-critical systems with automation.


B. Feng's series valuable works is introduced and improved in this paper. Based on Einstein's four-dimensional space time in general relativity and the symmetry principle, B. Feng created his theory in field of elementary particle physics. He proposed 16-regular polytope to express the symmetries of elementary particles' manifold in 4-D space. The manifold's mode changing angle (δ) projected from 4D to 3D plays an important role in his theory. The mass spectrum of elementary particles is then predicted accordingly. The result formula is as:


The guava (Psidium guajava L.) cv. Paluma has been cultivated in Sao Francisco Valley, Northeastern of Brazil, for in natura consumption and processing purposes. In spite of its importance, there are few scientific knowledge regarding guava physiology, nutrition, irrigation and fertigation. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of weather conditions and different concentrations of N and K applied by fertigation in foliar contents of reducing sugars, total soluble sugars, starch, sucrose, amino acids, and proteins. The field experiment was carried out at Bebedouro Experimental Field and the biochemical evaluations at the Laboratory of Seed and Plant Physiology, both located at Embrapa Semi-Arido, Petrolina-PE. The doses of 200 g N and 100 g K2O; 400 g N and 200 g K2O; 600 g N and 300 g K2O; and 800 g N and 400 g K2O per plant were applied in an experiment field. The experimental design was totally randomized blocks, with four treatments and five blocks. The weather conditions influenced the plant photosynthesis, which affects the plants metabolism. Guava presented specific responses to N and K fertigation for each parameter evaluated. The weather conditions during the evaluation period influenced guava responses to N and K fertigation.


Drinking water disinfection was shown to be an important public health measure around the turn of the century. In the United States, it was perhaps the single most important factor in controlling typhoid fever, a waterborne disease that was rampant throughout the world during the last century. It may also be assumed that disinfection was important in limiting the number of cases of other diseases known to be capable of waterborne transmission, i.e., cholera, amebiasis, shigellosis, salmonellosis, and hepatitis A. Even though modern treatment has eliminated water as a major vehicle of infectious disease transmission, outbreaks still occur. In fact, the annual number has been increasing since 1966. Interruption in chlorination or failure to achieve adequate levels of chlorine residual is the most often identified deficiency of the involved water supplies. This finding indicates that waterborne microbial pathogens remain as a potential health threat and underscores the importance of disinfection. From the outset, chlorination has been the drinking water disinfectant of choice in the country. Numerous studies have demonstrated its ability to inactivate bacterial, viral, and protozoal pathogens when applied under proper conditions. However, the finding that chlorinated organics that are potentially carcinogenic are formed has prompted an evaluation of alternative disinfectants. The viable alternatives to chlorine currently under consideration for widespread use are ozone, chlorine dioxide, and chloramines. In terms of biocidal efficiency, ozone is the most potent of the three. Chlorine dioxide is about the equivalent of free chlorine in the hypochlorous acid form but much more efficient than the hypochlorite form of free chlorine. The chloramines are weaker biocides than hypochlorite. Although this general order of ranking of efficiency holds for diverse types of microorganisms, quantitative comparisons vary with different microorganisms and experimental conditions.


Recent environmental concern led to worldwide legislation banning the use of lead (Pb)
containing solders in microelectronic devices. Near eutectic Sn-Ag-Cu solders are
considered as replacement for traditional Pb-Sn solders. But Sn-Ag-Cu solder alloys can
not guarantee the required performance in wide ranging semiconductor products. The
aim of this work is to develop tin-based nanocomposite solder with improved high
temperature stability with respect to microstructure and properties.
In this study, Mo nanoparticles were used as a reinforcing material into the Sn-3.8Ag-
0.7Cu (SAC) solder. The Mo nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron
microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffractometer (XRD). The composite solder paste was
prepared by manually mixing of Mo nanoparticles into the SAC solder paste. The
melting behavior of the solder paste was determined by differential scanning
calorimetry (DSC). The as-prepared solder paste was placed on polycrystalline Cu
substrate and reflowed at 250oC for 45 seconds. After reflow, elemental compositions of
the nanocomposite solders were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma-optical
emission spectrometer (ICP-OES). The microstructural investigations, spreading rate
and wetting angle measurement were carried out on the solders after first reflow. After
that one set of samples subjected to multiple reflow up to six times and another set of
samples were put for high temperature aging up to 1008h at 100o-175oC.
Microstructural investigations were performed at the solder/substrate interface using
conventional scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high resolution field emission
scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX). To
evaluate the solder/substrate interaction in the liquid state in presence of Mo
nanoparticles, Cu wire (250 μm in diameter) was dipped into the liquid composite
solder at 250oC up to 15 min. After that, the solder-substrate reaction couple was taken
out from the molten solder and examined thoroughly by optical microscopy, SEM,
FESEM, and EDX.
Results reveal that after reflow only a fraction of Mo nanoparticles retain inside the
solder matrix. The spreading rate decreased and wetting angle is increased with the
addition of Mo nanoparticles to the SAC solder. It is found that Mo nanoparticles are
effective in suppressing the growth of total IMC layer thickness and scallop diameter
during reflow and high temperature aging. With the addition of Mo nanoparticles, the
diffusion coefficient is decreased but the activation energy of the IMC scallop growth
remains unchanged. The dissolution of Cu substrate and IMC formation are decreased
in presence of Mo nanoparticles.
From this present research, it was found that Mo nanoparticles do not dissolve or react
with the solder during reflow and high temperature aging. The retardation of IMC
thickness and scallop diameter is due to the discrete particle effect of Mo nanoparticles.
The intact, discrete nanoparticles, by absorbing preferentially at the interface, hinder the
diffusion flux of the substrate and thereby suppress the IMC growth. The retardation of
total IMC layer with the addition of Mo nanoparticles improves the reliability of the
solder joint.


Abstract Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the in vitro cytotoxicity and iNOS (inducible nitric oxide synthase) inhibitory, and antioxidant activity in order to assess the traditional usage of Liquidambar orientalis Mill resin extract. Methods: Different solvent extracts of Liquidambar orientalis Mill resin were prepared. The cytotoxicity of extracts was determined using MTT (3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)- 2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazoliumbromide) assay. HeLa (Human cervix adenocarcinoma), A-549 (Human alveolar adenocarcinoma), MCF-7 (Human breast adenocarcinoma), CaCo-2 (Human colon colorectal adenocarcinoma), mPANC96 (Human pancreas adenocarcinoma), PC-3 (Human prostate adenocarcinoma), U87MG (Human glioblastoma- astrocytoma) and as a normal cell line HEK293 (Human embryonic kidney cells) and Vero (African green monkey kidney epithelial cells) were used for testing cytotoxicity. RAW 264.7 (murine macrophage cell lines) was used to determine the inhibition levels of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS). HL-60 (human acute myeloid leukemia) was used to determine antioxidant activity as DCF production per cent. Results: Hexane, dichloromethane, methanol and water extracts were prepared, and their iNOS inhibitory, cytotoxic and antioxidant activity were investigated. The estimated IC50 values of extracts varied from 6.68 to 48.90 μg/ ml after treatment with different doses of extracts for 48 h. Inhibition of the hexane, dichloromethane, methanol, and water extracts on LPS-induced NO production in RAW 264.7 macrophage were showed that the all extracts inhibited NO production in activated RAW 264.7 cells, except methanol extract. Hexane, dichloromethane and methanol extracts inhibited NO production with IC50 values of 22 μg/ml, 22 μg/ml, and 21/ml μg, respectively. The antioxidant activity was determined by the production of DCF in HL-60 cells. The extracts showed a potent antioxidant effect, with an IC50 of in between from 19.01 to 39.77 μg/ml. Conclusion: This study is the first report showing the potential of Liquidambar orientalis Mill resin extracts for cytotoxicity, iNOS inhibition and the antioxidant activity as an alternative therapeutic approach for traditional uses. The results demonstrated that Liquidambar orientalis dichloromethane resin extracts showed strongest cytotoxic effect while all extracts except methanolic extracts exhibited moderate iNOS inhibition. All extracts other than hexane have a potent antioxidant effect in the cellular-based assay. In conclusion, further studies should focus on the purification of the active components of this extracts and to investigate the possible mode of action to obtain a better understanding of their potential use as cytotoxic, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant agents.


Although the number of female teachers in schools is higher, this is not evident when looking at leadership levels. Various studies have examined this situation. In this study, the perspectives of female teachers working in private schools who are gradually raising their educational levels are discussed in depth about female head teachers. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 37 female teachers working in private schools in the Anatolian part of Istanbul. The data were analysed using content analysis, one of the qualitative analysis methods. As a result of the research, three main themes were found among the characteristics of female leaders, the competencies of female leaders, and the impact on the work environment. Under the theme of characteristics of female leaders, there are five categories: being selfish, forming problematic working relationships, being detail-obsessed, being jealous, acting emotionally; under the theme of competencies of female leaders: they lead well, their leadership skills are weak, they cannot be fair and impartial, they are not solution-oriented. The theme of the impact of female leaders on the work environment is a chaotic environment; communication is important, supportive environment.


Society has already seen multiple potential futures of neurotechnologies through the multifaceted lens of science fiction. We do not know which of those futures we will come to live, but the strong force in society's evolutionary process will likely continue to be the insight and oversight developed by the bioethics community, pushing and being pushed by the advances of technology, improvements in medical care, and market competitiveness.The author thanks the "Ethical Dimensions in Neuroscience" Program of the Stanford University BioX Interdisciplinary Initiative and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics for supporting this work.


We have developed a novel target set to scale our Underwater Laser-illuminated Range-gated Imaging (ULRI) video system in a 3 m-tank with turbid water (attenuation coefficient 1.0 m -1). As light speed in water is 22.5 cm ns -1, the target set consists of a series of 3-bar targets at 22.5 cm intervals along the laser illumination direction, with the targets separated vertically. As a result, a sequence of good gated images, in steps of 1 ns delay, is presented, which is a revelation of the 'sliced-view' phenomenon for ns-level range-gating in such a limited water body. The Depth of Gating (DOG) and DOG-profile of the URLI system are measured for the first time, which can be used for evaluating gating-performance efficiently.


−121 Synthesiology English edition Vol.1 No.2 (2008) Considering the manufacturing process of advanced devices in the future, demand for high performance by achieving thinning and high integration of oxide electronics material with multiple functions is expected to increase. In the integration process of electronic devices such as MEMS, various R&Ds are conducted using vacuum thin film processes including sputter and CVD methods due to their manufacturing application potential. However, there are surprisingly few cases where thin film technology has reached a practical level through integration of semiconductor parts. This is due to the fact that, as, for example, in the cases of capacitor and filter parts fabrication, the property of material and the cost of production process in device application are at trade-off, and at this point, ingenious utilization of bulk material is more feasible in terms of cost, facility, and energy consumption. Highly pure raw material and ultra vacuum environment are necessary and


INTRODUCTION
Hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) therapy is applied in a growing number of cases for patients with different comorbidities and is considered a generally safe therapy. The main side effects related to HBO2 therapy are barotrauma, central nervous system- and pulmonary oxygen toxicity, claustrophobia, anxiety and visual disturbances. The aim of this study was to evaluate the incidence of side effects associated with HBO2 therapy and risk factors in a large cohort of patients treated for different indications.

METHODS
We conducted a retrospective analysis of 2,334 patients treated in the Sagol Center of Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, Assaf Harofeh, Israel, between June 2010 and December 2014. Patients were classified to one of three categories of indications: Category A--non-neurological indications; Category B--neurotherapeutic indications; and Category C--acute indications.

RESULTS
From a total of 2,334 patients, 406 (17.4%) experienced adverse event(s) (one or more) during HBO2 therapy sessions. The overall per-session incidence was 721:100,000 events:sessions (0.72%). The main complication was middle ear barotrauma, which occurred in 9.2% of patients and in 0.04% of sessions. Females and children under the age of 16 years had increased risk for barotrauma. Other complications--hypoglycemia, oxygen toxicity, dizziness, anxiety reactions, dyspnea and chest pain--occurred in 0.5-1.5% of patients.

CONCLUSIONS
Strict operational protocols, including pre-HBO2 therapy evaluations and in-chamber monitoring, are essential and improve patient safety. When applied, HBO2 therapy can be considered one of the safest medical treatments available today.


- - The article deals with the historical aspects and current trends in nature conservation and landscape protection in the Czech Republic. The internal structure of this branch is described as are some societal and eco nomic contexts. The legal framework of environmental protection and basic legal terms are mentioned. The current trends are shown on four sub-branches: protection of species, pro tection of dispersed greenery, regional protection, and geological protection. The analysis of concrete data allows to judge the state environmental policy and its negative and positive impacts on the nature conservation and landscape protection.


New Zealand and Australia's natural and mutual trust sets their efforts for a closer relationship apart from many other countries. The idea of a common Europe was seen as a solution to bitter conflict which has divided people and nations over several centuries. In North America, the Canadian Federation was created in the aftermath of the American Revolution to make the remaining British colonies strong in the face of American power. Because we have had none of this legacy in our part of the world, perhaps our perspective of development of our relations with Australia is too narrow. We have achieved closer economic relations. But have we fully recognised the potential of our relationship, or does CER represent a high-water mark? We can and we must go further. This paper traces the history of New Zealand's relationship with Australia, looking back at two earlier models before considering NAFTA (New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement) and CER. Australia and New Zealand share the same legal history, tradition, reliance on the common law, and common legal institutions. There is potential in CER for closer juridical relations to be developed between the two countries. What we aim to have at the end of the CER process is not a single Australasia, or the ANZAC peoples living separate existences side by side, but a vibrant, challenging and outward-looking community of two nations.


A new mixed software/hardware architecture is presented for the generation of video signals from a microprocessor system. This architecture uses fast physical addressing as a hardware interface for the transfer of data from the microprocessor system to the video memory of the system. The interface is based on the utilisation of a mixed software/hardware system and has three objectives. Firstly, the control of a relatively large video memory space while using a reduced range of the physical addressing zone of the microprocessor system. Secondly, the increase of the data transfer speed, and thirdly the possibility of a display conforming to different norms and standards.


An e~lanation is offered for the interesting feature that distribution ratios of anions with strong-base exchange resins are generally lower from con centrated HCl solutions than from comparable LiCl solutions. It is suggested. that this behavior is due to the invasion of the resin by nonexchange electrolyte at the high external-:solution concentrations and to the partial association of the acid species in the resin phase. That is, because of the nature of the latter phase, normally strong acids are differentiated, the weaker ones partially associating. This does not occur as readily with the lithium salts, and so the preferential association of nonexchange H+ with the weaker-aci.d anion (Cl- in most of the cases studied) represses the absorption of the other anion as a nonexchange electrolyte. If the anion interest the anion of a weaker acid than that of the macroelectrolyte, the reverse of the usual behavior should occur, namely, exchange from acid .solution should yield larger distribution ratios than exchange from lithium salt solutions. This is shown to be the case for Cl tracer exchanging with concentrated HBr and LiBr solutions. .


Off-angle impact behavior and specific energy absorption (SEA) of E-glass/polyurethane square tubes have been investigated under static and dynamic loading. Various fiber orientations, braided, CSM (Continuous Strand Mats), and RCM (Random Chopped Mats) lay-ups were used. Consistent test data suggested that dynamic off-angle crush forces are lower than the static ones. Dynamic maximum moments during a progressive crush are slightly higher than its static counterpart. Tubes constructed of CSM and RCM break-off when the maximum moment is reached whereas, tubes constructed of stitched/braided fiber fold upon reaching the maximum moment and remain intact. Specific energy absorption is reduced with the increase of impact angle due to combined loading effect. Certain lay-ups give more SEA than others. Ratios of average static to dynamic crush force are presented for different lay-ups and impact angles.


Bayesian Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is a promising approach for understanding uncertainty and structure in matrix data. However, a large volume of applied work optimizes traditional non-Bayesian NMF objectives that fail to provide a principled understanding of the non-identifiability inherent in NMF-- an issue ideally addressed by a Bayesian approach. Despite their suitability, current Bayesian NMF approaches have failed to gain popularity in an applied setting; they sacrifice flexibility in modeling for tractable computation, tend to get stuck in local modes, and require many thousands of samples for meaningful uncertainty estimates. We address these issues through a particle-based variational approach to Bayesian NMF that only requires the joint likelihood to be differentiable for tractability, uses a novel initialization technique to identify multiple modes in the posterior, and allows domain experts to inspect a `small' set of factorizations that faithfully represent the posterior. We introduce and employ a class of likelihood and prior distributions for NMF that formulate a Bayesian model using popular non-Bayesian NMF objectives. On several real datasets, we obtain better particle approximations to the Bayesian NMF posterior in less time than baselines and demonstrate the significant role that multimodality plays in NMF-related tasks.


Abstract The author gives a survey of the publications which have been made up to now regarding the problem of pipe smoking by machines. The parameters which should be set up for the establishment of standard conditions for the smoking of pipes are discussed. The following conditions were found to be useful: puff frequency: 6 puffs per minute, puff volume: 40 ml, duration of puff: 1.5 sec., total number of puffs: 100 puffs per pipe. The reproducibility of this smoking process was found to be satisfactory. The smoking with undivided puffs led to the same results as the smoking with subdivided puffs (puff series). When the same tobacco was once smoked in the pipe and on the other hand as a cigarette, the composition of the mainstream smoke changed. The smoke condensate of the pipe contained more water and more benzo[a]pyrene than the condensate of the cigarette. A possible explanation of this finding is discussed.


Yes-associated protein 1 (YAP1) is a transcriptional co-activator that is involved in cell proliferation and differentiation. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of inhibition of YAP1 activity with vertepofin on the differentiation of mesenchymal cells at different time-points. Inhibition of YAP1 from the beginning of culture with verteporfin resulted in the suppression of chondrogenesis and cell aggregation, as well as expression of N-cadherin and fibronectin. Culturing constitutively active YAP1-overexpressing cells for 3 days had no effect on cell aggregation and differentiation and increased the expression of N-cadherin, while culturing these cells for 7 days displayed decreased Alcian blue staining. Inhibition of YAP1 activity with verteporfin at the late stage of each culture with different culture periods did not affect chondrogenesis. When the medium of cells cultured for 3, 6, or 8 days was changed to medium containing verteporfin, no changes in Alcian blue staining were evident in the next 1 to 2 days. Interestingly, in cells grown for 8 days in normal medium and incubated for 2 more days in the presence of verteporfin, Alizarin red S staining and osteopontin expression increased. Collectively, our results revealed that verteporfin regulates cell aggregation during early-stage differentiation and promotes osteogenesis at a late stage by inhibiting YAP1 activity.


Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is defined as any degree of glucose intolerance that is diagnosed for the first time during pregnancy. The objective of this study is to know the glucose tolerance status after 15 years of pregnancy in patients diagnosed with gestational diabetes and to assess the long-term effect of GDM on the circulating miRNA profile of these women. To answer these, 30 randomly selected women diagnosed with GDM during 2005–2006 were included in the study, and glucose tolerance was measured using the National Diabetes Data Group criteria. Additionally, four miRNAs (hsa-miR-1-3p, hsa-miR-24-3p, hsa-miR-329-3p, hsa-miR-543) were selected for their analysis in the plasma of women 15 years after the diagnosis of GDM. In our study we discovered that, fifteen years after the diagnosis of GDM, 50% of women have some degree of glucose intolerance directly related to body weight and body mass index during pregnancy. Dysglycemic women also showed a significantly increased level of circulating hsa-miR-24-3p. Thus, we can conclude that initial weight and BMI, together with circulating expression levels of hsa-miR-24-3p, could be good predictors of the future development of dysglycemia in women with a previous diagnosis of GDM.


We examine the effect of combining internal and external R&D loci on innovation performance in family firms (FF) and nonfamily firms (non-FFs). Our longitudinal analysis of 27,438 firm-year observations of Spanish manufacturing firms from 1990 to 2016 shows that FFs can better exploit the benefits of simultaneously engaging in internal and external R&D activities, leading to a positive effect on innovation performance. Moreover, the relationship between combined internal and external R&D and innovation performance in FFs is contingent upon firm economic performance. By pointing to the importance of taking into account the combination of internal and external R&D loci to foster innovation in FFs, we challenge current family business innovation research.


Thoracolithiasis is the presence of one or more freely mobile pleural stones (with or without calcification) in the pleural space. They occur with a reported incidence of less than 0.1% and are benign and do not require intervention. Historically, they have led to unnecessary interventions - something unlikely in the era of multidetector computed tomography (CT). Thoracolithiasis should be included in the differential diagnosis of a single or multiple, mobile peripheral pulmonary nodules. Here, we review the imaging characteristics of a rare case of bilateral mobile thoracolithiasis.


This paper explores zero-label learning in Natural Language Processing (NLP), whereby no human-annotated data is used anywhere during training and models are trained purely on synthetic data. At the core of our framework is a novel approach for better leveraging the powerful pretrained language models. Specifically, inspired by the recent success of few-shot inference on GPT-3, we present a training data creation procedure named Unsupervised Data Generation (UDG), which leverages few-shot prompts to synthesize high-quality training data without real human annotations. Our method enables zero-label learning as we train task-specific models solely on the synthetic data, yet we achieve better or comparable results from strong baseline models trained on human-labeled data. Furthermore, when mixed with labeled data, our approach serves as a highly effective data augmentation procedure, achieving new state-of-the-art results on the SuperGLUE benchmark.


Background: Early identification of hearing loss and early intervention are crucial to maximize the develop-ment of receptive and expressive language abilities and communicative experience. Therefore, the need for uni-versal newborn hearing screening has been ratified by the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing. Objective physiolog-ical techniques which are not influenced by sleep or seda-tion, have to be applied to be able to provide adequate in-tervention before 6 months of age. Auditory steady-state potentials evoked by amplitude modulated noise or tran-sient stimuli might be useful in providing rapid and objec -tive tests of hearing during screening procedures.Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of auditory steady-state evoked potentials with white noise stimuli as a screening tool. Method: This study was approved by the Human Re-search Ethics Committee. The population of the study was composed of 30 newborns. The equipment used in the study was the MASTER. The stimuli was white noise amplitude modulated between 80 and 110 Hz, the elec-trodes position were: FZ active, M1 reference and M2 ground. All stimuli were presented at 40 dBSPL to 70 dB-SPL intensities. The ears were recorded simultaneously.Results: The data was inserted in Microsoft Ex-cel 2002 for Windows program, were analyzed speci-ficity, sensibility and likehood ratio. For the intensity of 50dBSPL considered as the point of pass-fail, the results for sensibility were 100%, specificity: 100% and LR+: ∞, which shows a near relation between ASSR screening and the gold standard assessment. There was a high fail index (10%), probably because were evaluated high risk children with risk factors for hearing loss (prematurity and low-weight), and the media of age was 28 days, its known that in this age, changes in ear canal-recorded sound levels across the assessment period can be observed, what may reflect differences in ear canal volume, canal resonance and middle eat mechanical properties.Conclusion: This work showed that the use of audi-tory steady state with white noise in hearing screening is possible, and a alternative tool for hearing screening as-sessment. Clinical application of the ASSR procedure in the neonatal population will need to take into account de -velopmental changes occurring in the first weeks of life. More studies have to be made to solidify these findings.Key words: auditory, steady state, hearing screening, white noise.


Ascertaining the ionizing radiation (IR)-induced bystander response and identifying its mechanistic regulation would raise a paradigm shift in our understanding of the radiobiological effects. Recent evidence from our lab and others clearly prompted that the transcriptional regulator NFκB would play a key role in induced responses in non-targeted bystander cells. In this study, for the first time, we investigated the orchestration of NFκB signaling after IR in an organ (heart) distant from the exposure field. The C57/BL6 mice either mock irradiated, exposed to single dose IR (SDR: 2 or 10Gy) or fractionated IR (FIR, 2 Gy/day for 5 days) were sacrificed 24h post-irradiation. All IR exposures were limited to the lower abdomen area (1cm diameter), while the rest of the animal was protected by a specially designed cerrobend shield. EMSA analysis was used to examine the changes in NFκB DNA binding activity in the heart. Transcriptional activation of 88 mediators associated with NFκB signaling pathway was assessed using QPCR profiling. Phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and p38 that play a key role in NFκB signal transduction were examined using immunoblotting. Induced DNA fragmentation was measured using TdT nick end labeling. IR significantly induced NFκB DNA binding activity in the heart. Further more, real-time QPCR profiling showed a significant and differential modulation in the transcriptional responses of NFκB signaling pathway molecules. To that end, of the 88 genes analyzed, 28, 51 and 41 genes were upregulated after 2Gy, 10Gy and FIR, respectively. More importantly, at these exposures13 out of 28, 27 out of 51 and 25 out of 41 induced mediators of NFkB pathway were significantly upregulated. Conversely, lower abdominal IR exposure markedly suppressed 44, 20 and 30 genes after 2 Gy, 10Gy and FIR, respectively in the heart of the exposed animals. Compared to 2Gy, FIR significantly induced 26 genes, while 10Gy upregulated 27 genes. In addition, 6 and 15 genes were significantly upregulated after acute dose of 2 and 10Gy as opposed to fractionated dose. Consistently, immunoblotting analysis revealed a profound phosphorylation of both ERK1/2 and p38 in the heart. Interestingly, distant IR exposure significantly enhanced DNA fragmentation in the heart tissue. Taken together, these data clearly indicated an induced abscopal response in mice heart after clinically relevant doses of IR exposure. More importantly, these data implies that orchestration of NFκB signal transduction may play a key role in induced abscopal responses. Funding Support: Presbyterian Health Foundation, OKC. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 486.


The concept of structural surface intensity is extended to the nonlinear domain introducing a physical quantity denominated nonlinear structural surface intensity (NSSI). This quantity is formulated for mechanical systems whose dynamic response is governed by nonlinear harmonic frequencies due to contact nonlinearities. A specific experiment simulating a "loose joint" type of damage in a stiffened bolted aluminum panel was designed to validate the NSSI formulation. Damage was introduced in the form of loose bolts characterized by a contact nonlinear response. The nonlinear response resulted from separation and impact at closure of the joined structures due to active interrogation by an external dynamic force. The results prove that NSSI is a monotonic function of the damage size.


To control costs and improve access, nations can adopt strategies employed in the United Kingdom to control pharmaceutical prices and spending. Current policy evolved from a system created in 1957 that allowed manufacturers to set launch prices, capped manufacturers' rates of return, and later cut list prices. These policies did not effectively control spending and had limited effects on purchase prices. The United Kingdom currently controls pharmaceutical spending in 4 ways. (a) Since 1999, it has typically paid no more than is cost-effective. (b) Since 2017, for medicines that will have a significant budget impact, National Health Service England seeks discounts from cost-effective prices or seeks to limit access for 2 years to patients with the greatest need. (c) Since 2014, statutes and a voluntary scheme have required branded manufacturers to pay the government rebates to recoup the difference between the global pharmaceutical budget and actual spending. (d) For hospitals, generics and some patented drugs are procured through competitive bidding; community pharmacies are reimbursed through a system that provides an incentive to beat average generic market prices. These policies controlled the growth of spending, with the largest effects following budget controls in 2014. Changes since 2008 have reduced savings, first by paying more than is cost-effective for cancer drugs and then by applying higher cost-effectiveness thresholds for some drugs used to treat cancer and certain other drugs.


In this thesis, an automatic emergency braking is developed using camera data. The vehicle used in the development is a Volvo XC90 equipped with a prototype version of a camera-based, automated parking system. The camera detection output is a 2D version of the static environment populated with obstacles represented by convex hulls. These are used to safely avoid real-world obstacles by braking if the car is on a collision course with any obstacle. The code for analyzing the data and performing a threat assessment and decision making was written in Python. The thesis resulted in a working demo where the car successfully avoids a side collision by performing a rotation. There are some imperfections though and the function needs additional work in order to be good enough for production, particularly in sensor fusion with, e.g., ultrasonic sensors which can detect objects that the camera is struggling to detect. (Less)


The study was conducted to ascertain the efficacy and safety of topical bepotastine besilate solution (BBOS) 1.5% in controlling allergic conjunctivitis. The study design was randomized and out-patient department (OPD) based. Total 50 patients were included. They had symptoms and signs of allergic conjunctivitis. Symptoms included ocular itching, conjunctival redness, watering running nose, lacrimation, photophobia and foreign body sensation and signs included papillae, follicles, chemosis, hyperaemia and cobblestones. The data was gathered together after detailed history taking. We recorded baseline symptoms score(BSS) of each patient who fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria. After that we started topical BBOS 1.5% one drop twice daily for 21 days and advised patients to immediately stop the drug and review in OPD in case of any aggravation of symptoms or burning sensation.
We examined patients on each follow up day 7, day 14 and day 21 by slit lamp biomicroscopy and recorded total mean symptoms and signs. Symptoms of allergic conjunctivitis especially ocular itching subsided within 7 days of the treatment, while other significant signs and symptoms subsided within 14 days of treatment. The interesting fact was observed that on 21st day of follow up cobblestones were flattened.
To conclude the use of bepotastin besilate 1.5% topically leads to an improvement in sign and symptoms in a significant number of patients. No significant side effects were noticed and patient compliance has been encouraging.
We recommended the use of BBOS 1.5% eye drop in all patents of mild to moderate allergic conjunctivitis.

Keywords: Allergic conjunctivitis, Bepotastine besilate ophthalmic solution (BBOS), Cobblestones, Itching, Redness.


The importance of explanations (XP's) of machine learning (ML) model predictions and of adversarial examples (AE's) cannot be overstated, with both arguably being essential for the practical success of ML in different settings. There has been recent work on understanding and assessing the relationship between XP's and AE's. However, such work has been mostly experimental and a sound theoretical relationship has been elusive. This paper demonstrates that explanations and adversarial examples are related by a generalized form of hitting set duality, which extends earlier work on hitting set duality observed in model-based diagnosis and knowledge compilation. Furthermore, the paper proposes algorithms, which enable computing adversarial examples from explanations and vice-versa.


Despite their vast distribution ranging from Central Europe to Siberia, hemiboreal oligotrophic pine forests remain poorly studied. Though they dependence on low productive soils, they are widespread on sandy deposits or in bogs. This study aims to classify and ecologically describe the vegetation of oligotrophic pine forests in the south of Western Siberia. In total 50 releves from nutrient-poor sandy substrates and bogs were sampled in the pre-Taiga zone of the Tyumen province covering the whole range from dry to wet habitats. Five vegetation types were defined by hierarchical clustering. Phi coefficient of association was calculated for groups and their combination, resulting in a high number of species with high fidelity to clusters. Floristic composition ranged from xero-mesophytic vegetation with high frequency of the tribe Pyroleae on dry sandy soils to pine-sphagnum-communities on bogs. The strongest environmental gradients influencing the floristic composition were soil humidity, nutrient supply and fire. Higher nutrient supply due to loamy subsoil increased vascular plant species richness, enabling common plants of hemiboreal birch forests to grow. Surface fires turned out to be a key process in dry pine forests, resulting in a destroyed bryophyte layer and to a partly altered vascular plant species composition. Fire regime plays an important role in maintaining the floristic composition and habitat structure over time. West-Siberian dry oligotrophic pine forests are ecologically, structurally and floristically quite similar to Central-European pine communities of the Peucedano-Pinetum.


We propose an efficient structure for sharpened, cascaded integrator comb (CIC) based, decimation filter. Novelty of proposed structure is that it can be achieved for any decimation factor and its efficient finite impulse response (FIR) implementation form. It consists of multirate cascade of sharpened CIC filters with lower (prime) decimation factors. Every cascade stage can be implemented in nonrecursive FIR form with sharpened higher order Comb filters as building blocks. Applying polyphase decomposition, every stage can work on lower decimation rate depending of decimation factor of that stage. Additionally, due to special pole structure of filter stages in cascade, first few stages can be implemented with reduction in system order, depending of stage position and decimation ratio.


Conquering imperial powers often use religion to control indigenous populations. I argue that religion served this purpose in Roman Britain, while simultaneously fulfilling Britons' practical and spiritual requirements. Rome's State and Imperial Cults were overt instruments of social control, fostering awareness of Britain's subjugation and sanctifying Roman rule. Yet Roman and Celtic polytheism coalesced to allow considerable religious freedom outside the official Cults' bounds. Thus Romano-British religion benefited not only society, but also the individual.


The subject of research is the global economy perceived through the prism of its conditions and transport challenges that its development is currently generating. The author justifies the hypothesis that transport being a lever of globalization processes and a stimulator of the development of the global economy requires improvement, and in all dimensions of its activity on an international scale. For this purpose, basic barriers and threats of transport and logistics that are or may appear in the global economy in the near future were identified. The potential effects resulting from this reason for the global economy and its selected sectors, mainly trade were also indicated. It also identifies actions that should be taken to eliminate or reduce existing transport barriers, including mainly infrastructure barriers, which should lead to an increase in the efficiency and effectiveness of the transport sector on a global scale. The publication uses the studies and reports of international organizations such as the WTO, WB, WEF regarding the subject under study. The obtained research results allowed to formulate conclusions that, firstly, the transport infrastructure and low quality of transport services are still a significant barrier to the development of many economies – including the world's leading ones – and, secondly, that it is necessary to undertake coherent, internationally coordinated stimulating activities for transport development on a global scale. Transport is becoming a factor determining further growth of competitiveness and ensuring the expected level of facilitation in world trade and the required efficiency of functioning of global supply chains.


In the present study I will examine the relationship between the Vı̄racōl ̄ iyam, an 11 century grammar of Tamil by the Buddhist Puttamittiran ̄ , and the Sanskrit grammatical treatises that served as its likely models. Based on the sections that describe the kārakas "factors of an action", I have been able to establish that two texts in particular, the Kātantra and the Prayogamukha, heavily influenced Puttamittiran ̄ 's presentation of the Tamil language. Furthermore, it has become evident by comparing the number and names of the sub-kārakas in these works with those in the Saddanı̄ti, a Pali grammar of the 12 century, that the Prayogamukha travelled in Buddhist circles as one of the basic texts for extending Sanskrit grammar to foreign languages, a thesis that is further substantiated by the presence of the Prayogamukha in Tibetan during the first wave of translation.


ABSTRACT Introduction: Pacients with Down's syndrome present an increase revalence of autoimune endocrine disorders. We communicate the case of 14 years and 6 months old pacient known with Down syndrome admitted in Endocrinology department with suspicion of hyperthyroidism, the diagnosis being confirmed by hormonal dosage. The particularity of the case consists in: symptomatology onset during puberty, clinical evolution with mild symptoms, without ocular involvement, morphological and functional remission obtained relatively soon after the initiation of antithyroid therapy, lack of posttherapy side effects, favorabile evolution under the "block and replace" therapy


Introduction Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is the most common cause of anaemia in primary care and causes >57,000 emergency admissions to hospital/yr at a cost to the NHS of £55.48 m. Effective identification and management is often overlooked. Dealing with IDA prevents complications and blood transfusion use with a cost saving of £8.43 m per year. These guidelines have been developed by expert nurses from relevant specialties. They are aimed at all nurses, health care assistants, midwives and health visitors from all specialties and backgrounds. Method The document gives guidance on; identifying IDA and escalating management understanding how IDA occurs, give dietary advice and using oral iron supplements, the use of intravenous iron with practical tips for its delivery.good patient information links. It gives specialist guidance to nurses working in renal disease, gastroenterology, obstetrics and gynaecology and patient blood management. Results The main guidance contains; Definition of IDA, iron metabolism and pathophysiology, storage or iron, causes of functional and actual iron deficiency, measuring iron status, common symptoms of anaemia, history taking and examination, dietary iron, oral iron supplements, practical advice for administrating intravenous iron, use of blood transfusion and preoperative optimisation of patients. The GI appendix discusses IDA in coeliac disease and inflammatory bowel disease, and gives case study examples to show the impact of effective nursing intervention on patiient outcomes. Conclusion These newly published Royal College of Nursing Guidelines provide an invaluable resource about all areas of iron deficiency management for nurses from all backgrounds and specialties. The specialist appendices provide extra information for nurses working within renal disease, obstetrics and gyanecology, patient blood management and gastroenterology. Disclosure of interest None Declared. References Arnott I, Bloom, S, Keshav S, Mowat C, Orchard T, Dalrymple J, Jones R, Saleem S, Fraser A, Mair S, Mason I. Iron deficiency anaemia in inflammatory bowel disease. 2013. Distributed in GUT, Frontline Gastro and BMJ clinical research Derbyshire E. Strategies to improve iron status in women at risk of developing anaemia. Nurs Stand. 2012;26(20):51–57 Goddard AF, James MW, McIntyre AS, Scott BS. Guidelines for the management or iron deficiency anaemia. Gut 2011;60:1309–1316 Pavord S, Myers B, Robinson S, Allard S, Strong J, Oppenheimer C. UK guideline on the management of iron deficiency in pregnancy. London: BCSH, 2011 Zimmerman MB, Hurrell RF. Nutritional iron deficiency. Lancet 2007;270(9586):511–520


Bluegill-degrading bacteria were isolated from various environmental sources. Brevibacillus sp. BGM1 degraded bluegill efficiently at 50 °C, and its culture supernatant showed the highest peptide and amino acid concentrations as trichloroacetic acid (TCA) soluble fraction (ASF) (10.7 mg/ml) of all supernatants obtained with bluegill as a substrate. Strain BGM1 secreted a protease(s) into the medium, and the concentration of peptides and amino acids gradually increased. The fertile effect of the degraded bluegill products (DGP) on Brassica rapa was also investigated. The root hair density of B. rapa grown with DGP at a concentration of 30 μg peptides and amino acids/ml was about 1.7 times higher than when grown with the same concentration of undegraded bluegill. DGP was shown to increase root hair numbers and adventitious root formation. The results of this study suggest that a specific peptide(s) for promotion of root hair is produced from the order Perciformes with a protease(s) from BGM1.


Tungsten oxide nanowires are integrated into gated wing-type field emission display (FED) devices, which are synthesized at low temperature of 550 °C by catalyzed-growth CVD way. The emission behaviors of the device are testified by transparent anode way to investigate their future application. These WO2 FED devices are found to have a turn-on field of 5.76 V/μm and their emission current density reaches 0.59 mA/cm2 when the applied field is 7.55 V/μm. It suggests that they should have a promising future in field emission applications if their emission uniformity can be further improved.


Enterovirus A (EV-A) species cause hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), threatening the health of young children. Understanding the mutual codon usage pattern of the virus and its host(s) has fundamental and applied values. Here, through examining multiple codon usage parameters, we found that the codon usage bias among EV-A strains varies and is clade-specific. EVA76, EVA89, EVA90, EVA91 and EVA92, the unconventional clade of EV-A strains, show unique codon usage pattern relative to the two conventional clades, including EVA71, CVA16, CVA6 and CVA10, etc. Analyses of Effective Number of Codon (ENC), Correspondence Analysis (COA) and Parity Rule 2 (PR2), etc., revealed that the codon usage patterns of EV-A strains are shaped by mutation pressure and natural selection. Based on the neutrality analysis, we determined the dominant role of natural selection in the formation of the codon usage bias of EV-A. In addition, we have determined the codon usage compatibility of potential hosts for EV-A strains using codon adaptation index (CAI), relative codon deoptimization index (RCDI) and similarity index (SiD) analyses, and found that EV-A showed host-specific codon adaptation patterns in different clades. Finally, we confirmed that the unique codon usage pattern of the unconventional clade affected protein expression level in human cell lines. In conclusion, we identified novel characteristics of codon usage bias in distinct EV-A clades associated with their host range, transmission and pathogenicity.


Horizontal and vertical cup to disc ratios are the most crucial parameters used clinically to detect glaucoma or monitor its progress and are manually evaluated from retinal fundus images of the optic nerve head. Due to the rarity of the glaucoma experts as well as the increasing in glaucoma's population, an automatically calculated horizontal and vertical cup to disc ratios (HCDR and VCDR, resp.) can be useful for glaucoma screening. We report on two algorithms to calculate the HCDR and VCDR. In the algorithms, level set and inpainting techniques were developed for segmenting the disc, while thresholding using Type-II fuzzy approach was developed for segmenting the cup. The results from the algorithms were verified using the manual markings of images from a dataset of glaucomatous images (retinal fundus images for glaucoma analysis (RIGA dataset)) by six ophthalmologists. The algorithm's accuracy for HCDR and VCDR combined was 74.2%. Only the accuracy of manual markings by one ophthalmologist was higher than the algorithm's accuracy. The algorithm's best agreement was with markings by ophthalmologist number 1 in 230 images (41.8%) of the total tested images.


The rotation rate measurement error produced by back-scatter from a partially coherent source has been investigated. The level of error introduced is shown to be dependent on the phase-modulation frequency. Operation at the correct frequency completely eliminates the coherent backscatter-induced errors. Taking into consideration realistic modulator stability conditions a source with a coherence length of tens of centimetres is feasible in an inertial grade, phase-modulated system.


The electrical characteristics of Cr/p–Si(100) Schottky barrier diodes have been measured in the temperature range of 100–300 K. The I-V analysis based on thermionic emission (TE) theory has revealed an abnormal decrease of apparent barrier height and increase of ideality factor at low temperature. The conventional Richardson plot exhibits non-linearity below 200 K with the linear portion corresponding to activation energy 0.304 eV and Richardson constant (A*) value of 5.41×10-3 Acm-2 K-2 is determined from the intercept at the ordinate of this experimental plot, which is much lower than the known value of 32 Acm-2K-2 for p-type Si. It is demonstrated that these anomalies result due to the barrier height inhomogeneities prevailing at the metal-semiconductor interface. Hence, it has been concluded that the temperature dependence of the I-V characteristics of the Cr/p–Si Schottky barrier diode can be successfully explained on the basis of TE mechanism with a Gaussian distribution of the barrier heights. Furthermore, the value of the Richardson constant found is much closer than that obtained without considering the inhomogeneous barrier heights.


For vehicle fuelapplication,biogas need to have high energy content. So, the gas has to be upgraded. The value of energy in the biogas is in direct proportion to the methane concentration. Raw biogas produced by anaerobic digester has methane content about 50-60% and carbon dioxide as main contaminant at 40-50% of volume. The methane content in biogas can be upgraded by carbon dioxide removal process. In contrary, carbon dioxide removal process need cost addition of biogas production. It is important to have an optimized biogas upgrading process in term of low energy consumption and high efficiency giving high methane content in biogas. On the other hand, it is very important to minimize emission of methane from upgrading process because methane have a greenhouse gas effect 23 times greater than carbon dioxide.Water scrubbing is simplest and cheapest technology to produce bio methane using biogas upgrading process.The best control process scenario need to keep the process work in optimal condition. But fluctuation of flow and concentration in biogas produced by anaerobic digester make difficultupgrading process control. By sensitivity analysis study, control scenario for this process can decided in the best way. Keyword— biogas, carbon dioxide removal, sensitivity analysis, upgrading biogas, water scrubbing.


Vibration of thin cylindrical shells made of a functionally gradient material composed of stainless steel and nickel is presented. The effects of the FGM configuration are studied by studying the frequencies of FG cylindrical shells. In this case FG cylindrical shell has Nickel on its outer surface and stainless steel on its inner surface. The study is carried out based on third order shear deformation shell theory. The objective is to study the natural frequencies, the influence of constituent volume fractions and the effects of configurations of the constituent materials on the frequencies. The properties are graded in the thickness direction according to the volume fraction power-law distribution. Results are presented on the frequency characteristics, the influence of the constituent various volume fractions on the frequencies. Keywords—Nickel, Stainless Steel, Cylindrical shell.


In most of social research surveys, households form a focal point of data collection and as such are a major source of socio-demographic data. Household surveys provide a cheaper alternative to full scale enumeration for timely data and are more relevant in understanding of the social and demographic issues. In order to get results which are representative of the population, it is necessary that probability sampling procedures be followed for sampling unit selection. However, elements of bias may enter in the final stages primarily because the sampling unit is not clearly defined or the definition of sampling unit fits more than one member of the household. The "Respondent Selection Problem�? is a common problem which is faced by social investigators in the field. In this paper I present a brief overview of various techniques which are used for respondent selection along with their merits and demerits. It is hoped that incorporation of such respondent selection procedures would make household surveys more probabilistic and increase the validity and the reliability of the surveys.


We report the clinical characteristics and the outcome of two cases of pontocerebellar hypoplasia (PCH) in one family. The objective of this report is to describe the mode of presentation, discuss the clinical course, and address the dilemma of prenatal diagnosis and the prospects for genetic diagnosis for PCH. The first case is a 4-year-old boy in whom the diagnosis was made in the neonatal period. Despite extensive prenatal follow-up during the mother's subsequent pregnancy, prenatal diagnosis could not be made and a second affected child was born. Both siblings have severe developmental delay. The cases raise an important ethical dilemma about the most appropriate intervention if the mother of a child affected with PCH becomes pregnant. PCH is considered to have an autosomal-recessive mode of inheritance and a recurrence risk of 25% in each pregnancy. Until recently when genetic mutations in PCH types 2, 4, and 6 began to be identified, the lack of well-recognized genetic testing precluded experts from making clear recommendations. The best advice to these parents was difficult or elusive. With two children currently affected, should the parents terminate or continue with the latest pregnancy? Extensive monitoring with serial prenatal ultrasound failed in the previous pregnancy and resulted in the birth of the second affected child. It is evident that serial ultrasound scan may not be helpful in making the diagnosis prenatally. Therefore, other diagnostic modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging may be necessary and should be considered. With the identification of genetic basis or mutations in PCH types 2, 4, and 6 and possible development of commercial genetic testing for these types of PCH, reproductive decision or genetic testing during pregnancy should be recommended to affected families to enable informed choices.


We discuss near - IR images of six passive galaxies ( SSFR < 10-2 Gyr- ') at redshift 1.3 < z < 2.4 with stellar mass M - 10 11 Me, selected from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), obtained with WFC3/IR and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). These WFC3 images provide the deepest and highest angular resolution view of the optical rest-frame morphology of such systems to date. We find that the light profile of these; galaxies is generally regular and well described by a Sersic model with index typical of today's spheroids. We confirm the existence of compact and massive early - type galaxies at z - 2: four out of six galaxies have re - I kpc or less. The WFC3 images achieve limiting surface brightness p -26.5 mag aresec -2 in the F160W bandpass; yet there is no evidence of a faint halo in the five compact galaxies of our sample, nor is a halo observed in their stacked image. We also find very weak " morphological k-correction" in the galaxies between the rest-frame UV (from the ACS z band), and the rest-frame optical (WFC3 H band): the visual classification, Sersic indices and physical sizes of these galaxies are independent or only mildly dependent on the wavelength, within the errors.


We have previously proposed a noise-robust speaker verification method using fundamental frequency (F0) extracted using the Hough transform. The method also incorporates an automatic stream-weight and decision threshold estimation technique. It has been confirmed that the proposed method is effective for white noise at various SNR conditions. This paper evaluates the proposed method in more practical in-car and elevator-hall noise conditions. The paper first describes the noise-robust F0 extraction method and details of our robust speaker verification method using multi-stream HMMs for integrating the extracted F0 and cepstral features. Details of the automatic stream-weight and threshold estimation method for multi-stream speaker verification framework are also explained. This method simultaneously optimizes stream-weights and a decision threshold by combining the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and the Adaboost technique. Experiments were conducted using Japanese connected digit speech contaminated by white, in-car, or elevator-hall noise at various SNRs. Experimental results show that the F0 features improve the verification performance in various noisy environments, and that our stream-weight and threshold optimization method effectively estimates control parameters so that FARs and FRRs are adjusted to achieve equal error rates (EERs) under various noisy conditions.


BACKGROUND
The effects of a dietary supplementation with the vegetable omega-3 α-linolenic acid (ALA) on cardiovascular homeostasis are unclear. In this context, it would be interesting to assess the effects of camelina oil.

OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to assess the cardiovascular and metabolic effects of camelina oil in hypertensive patients with metabolic syndrome.

METHODS
In a double-blind placebo-controlled randomized study, treated essential hypertensive patients with metabolic syndrome received during 6 months either cyclodextrin-complexed camelina oil containing ≈ 1.5 g ALA/day (n = 40), or an isocaloric placebo (n = 41), consisting in the same quantity of cyclodextrins and wheat starch. Anthropometric data, plasma lipids, glycemia, insulinemia, creatininemia, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and n-3, n-6 and n-9 fatty acids in erythrocyte membranes were measured. Peripheral and central blood pressures, arterial stiffness, carotid intima-media thickness and brachial artery endothelium-dependent flow-mediated dilatation and endothelium-independent dilatation were assessed.

RESULTS
Compared to placebo, camelina oil increased ALA (mean ± SD: 0 ± 0.04 vs. 0.08 ± 0.06%, P < 0.001), its elongation product eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 0 ± 0.5 vs. 0.16 ± 0.65%, P < 0.05), and the n-9 gondoic acid (0 ± 0.04 vs. 0.08 ± 0.04%, P < 0.001). No between-group difference was observed for cardiovascular parameters. However, changes in flow-mediated dilatation were associated with the magnitude of changes in EPA (r = 0.26, P = 0.03). Compared to placebo, camelina oil increased fasting glycemia (-0.2 ± 0.6 vs. 0.3 ± 0.5 mmol/L, P < 0.001) and homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR; -0.8 ± 2.5 vs. 0.5 ± 0.9, P < 0.01) index, without affecting plasma lipids, or inflammatory and oxidative stress markers. Changes in HOMA-IR index were correlated with the magnitude of changes in gondoic acid (r = 0.32, P < 0.01). Nutritional intake remained similar between groups.

CONCLUSION
ALA supplementation with camelina oil did not improve vascular function but adversely affected glucose metabolism in hypertensive patients with metabolic syndrome Whether this adverse effect on insulin sensitivity is related to gondoic acid enrichment, remains to be elucidated.


Objective: To examine whether household food insecurity is associated with serious psychological distress (SPD) in fathers and mothers in a nationally representative US sample. Methods: We analyzed cross-sectional, matched child-parent data from the 2014 to 2015 National Health Interview Survey (N = 18,456). Parental psychological distress was assessed using the Kessler-6 (K-6) scale. Family food security was measured using the USDA's 10-item Food Security scale, and households were dichotomized as food secure or food insecure. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to examine associations between SPD and food insecurity stratified by parental status (mother/father), controlling for sociodemographic factors. Results: One hundred forty-seven (2.0%) fathers, 444 (3.9%) mothers, and 591 (3.2%) of all parents had K-6 scores indicating SPD. A total of 2414 (13.1%) parents reported being food insecure, including 750 (10.4%) fathers and 1664 (14.8%) mothers. In multivariate analyses, food insecurity was significantly associated with SPD both among fathers and mothers (odds ratio [OR] = 4.2; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.4–7.3 and OR = 2.6; 95% CI, 1.9–3.5, respectively). Conclusion: This is the first study we are aware of to demonstrate that food insecurity is independently associated with SPD among fathers and mothers, and that fathers may be at higher risk of SPD than mothers in food insecure homes. These findings highlight the need to assess and treat the mental health of fathers, a historically underrepresented group in the fields of mental health and pediatrics, in addition to mothers, in food insecure homes.


In the second edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke argues that personal identity over time consists in sameness of consciousness rather than the persistence of any substance, material or immaterial. Something about this view is very compelling, but as it stands it is too vague and problematic to provide a viable account of personal identity. Contemporary "psychological continuity theorists" have tried to amend Locke's view to capture his insights and avoid his difficulties. This paper argues that the standard approach fails because it takes Locke to be a memory theorist, and does not focus enough on his claim that we need continuity of consciousness for personal persistence. An alternative reading of Locke is offered, emphasizing the role of self-understanding in producing continuity of consciousness. This alternative overcomes the difficulties with the standard approach, and shows how it is possible to attribute unconscious psychological elements to a person, even when personal persistence is defined in terms of consciousness.


One frustrating feature of the interference torts is the difficulty in defining precisely when an intentional interference becomes "tortious." While there has been no shortage of proposals to better define the interference torts, there is widespread uncertainty and dissatisfaction concerning the current state of the law. Attorneys have not been spared from the confusion. However, it is on the business side of the practice of the law, rather than the practice side, that attorneys are more likely to actually be held liable for tortious interference. In general, a tortious interference claim is a viable option for an attorney who feels that another attorney has wrongfully "stolen" a client or otherwise interfered with the attorney's "property." However, the risk that courts run in being too quick to classify such action as "improper" interference is that they may undermine two fundamental goals of the law governing lawyers: informed client decision making with respect to the goals of representation and informed client choice with respect to who will conduct the representation. This Article discusses the special problems that interference claims may present when both parties are attorneys and the relationship in question is an attorney-client relationship. The Article explores several reoccurring fact patterns involving attorney liability for tortious interference, including interference in the form of settlement of a client's claims, interference by a rival attorney, interference by an attorney providing advice to a represented client, and interference by an attorney who is, or was, associated with a plaintiff-attorney. This Article argues that the question of whether an attorney's interference is "improper" in these contexts should hinge less on whether a plaintiff's "property" interest in maintaining its relationship with a client has been disrupted and more on whether the defendant's conduct furthers or frustrates the goals of informed client decision making and informed client choice.


Last year a symposium on rheumatoid arthritis was held in Basel and the proceedings have subsequently been published as part of the 'Colloquia Geigy' Series. Most of the speakers were from Germany and Switzerland, and there were also smaller but distinguished representations from the United Kingdom and other European countries and from the U.S.A. The 79 papers are grouped into three themes. The first is that ofmorphology and biochemistry, much of the work presented being of an established descriptive nature with, however, good discussions of mechanisms of cartilage destruction and its possible inhibition, inflammation and its mediators, and metabolism ofsynovial cells. Thesecond part ranges widely over the question of an immunological pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis, and the third is devoted to the effects of anti-rheumatic drugs on pathogenetic mechanisms. A panel discussion on treatment follows, an attempt being made to isolate individual types of disease process and to speculate rather hopefully on their specific amelioration by drug therapy. The papers vary not only in quality but also in style, some being comprehensive reviews or essays, others brief resumes ofwork described more fully in other publications. Taken together they highlight many questions which have been extensively debated over the past few years, such as the uncertain status of cellular immunity in connective tissue diseases, the biological significance of rheumatoid factors and the identity of a possible antigen to which they may be responding, the role of immune globulin complexes and inclusions, the nature of trigger-agents or initiators (an 'immaculate infection'as MorrisZiffdescribes it, since no infectious agent has been identified), and the place of cytostatic treatment. Production and editorship are of high quality and the discussions are well put together, although once or twice comments mistakenly precede the paper to which they refer. The declared aim of the symposium was to evaluate developments of research and thus to establish a new basis for treatment. This could hardly be possible; as one of the participants observed, diseases such as tuberculosis or gout can be tackled by specific methodsdestruction of the tubercle bacillus or lowering of plasma uric acid. With rheumatoid arthritis no such objective can yet be defined. Nevertheless the book is a useful conspectus of the problems as they appear at present. J. T. SCOTT Kompendum der Rheumatologie. Ein Vademecum fur Klinik und Praxis (A Synopsis of Rheumatology). By W. MOLL. Second ed., 1972. Pp. 288, 22 figs. Karger, Basel (£3.85)


Tungsten-modified barium tantalum oxynitride is a new visible-light photocatalyst for water oxidation. In the present work, novel barium tantalum strontium tungsten oxynitride solid solutions, (BaTaO2N)1-x(SrWO2N)x, with a cubic Pm3[combining macron]m perovskite-type structure (x = 0.01 and 0.02) have been prepared by heating oxide precursors under an ammonia flow. These (BaTaO2N)1-x(SrWO2N)x catalysts exhibited photocatalytic water oxidation activity under visible light irradiation. The crystal structure, electron-density distribution, and optical properties of (BaTaO2N)1-x(SrWO2N)x (x = 0, 0.01, and 0.02) have been studied using synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction, Rietveld analysis, the maximum-entropy method (MEM), and UV-Vis reflectance measurements. The lattice parameters of (BaTaO2N)1-x(SrWO2N)x decreased linearly with increasing SrWO2N content x. The minimum electron density (MED) at the (Ta,W)-(O,N) bond, determined by the MEM analysis of (BaTaO2N)1-x(SrWO2N)x, increased with x, as supported by DFT-based calculations. These results indicate the formation of (BaTaO2N)1-x(SrWO2N)x solid solutions and enhanced covalent bonding due to the stronger W-N bond. The MED of the (Ta,W)-(O,N) bond was higher than that of (Ba,Sr)-(O,N), indicating that the (Ta,W)-(O,N) bond is more covalent. The presence of nitrogen in (BaTaO2N)1-x(SrWO2N)x was confirmed by the occupancy factor refined using neutron diffraction data and by the weight gain observed by thermogravimetric analysis in air. UV-Vis reflectance spectra and DFT calculations indicated that (BaTaO2N)1-x(SrWO2N)x contains W5+ cations with a [Xe] 4f14 5d1 electron configuration and exhibits a more n-type semiconducting character compared with BaTaO2N, which could improve the photocatalytic water oxidation activity under visible-light irradiation.


Adiponectin (AdN), an adipokine derived from the adipose tissue, has an insulin-sensitizing effect, and plasma AdN is shown to be decreased in obesity and/or insulin resistant state. To clarify whether changes in AdN are also responsible for the development of glucocorticoid-induced insulin resistance, we examined AdN concentration in plasma and AdN expression in the adipose tissue, using corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) transgenic mouse (CRH-Tg), an animal model of Cushing syndrome. We found, unexpectedly, that plasma AdN levels in CRHTg were significantly higher than those in wild-type littermates (wild-type: 19.7+/-2.5, CRH-Tg: 32.4+/-3.1 microg/mL, p<0.01). On the other hand, AdN mRNA and protein levels were significantly decreased in the adipose tissue of CRH-Tg. Bilateral adrenalectomy in CRH-Tg eliminated both their Cushing's phenotype and their increase in plasma AdN levels (wild-type/sham: 9.4+/-0.5, CRH-Tg/sham: 15.7+/-2.0, CRH-Tg/ADX: 8.5+/-0.4 microg/mL). These results strongly suggest that AdN is not a major factor responsible for the development of insulin resistance in Cushing syndrome. Our data also suggest that glucocorticoid increases plasma AdN levels but decreases AdN expression in adipocytes, the latter being explained possibly by the decrease in AdN metabolism in the Cushing state.


Sport - in particular high-performance sport - is a fascination that is used as a platform for societal concerns. This is the base for different interests in active and passive sports and the state's interest in top-class sport. In most countries, top-class sport is a national concern: states train their athletes in national training centres, support their sports associations in international competitions or promote applications for major sporting events. The articles in this volume provide a well-founded insight into the organisation of high-performance sport and show the different paths of selected countries.


Previous papers have dealt with gain in weight 1 and energy metabolism 2 of undernourished children. The current article opens the discussion of the substance metabolism of the same children, and will deal with some of the urinary nitrogenous constituents. Nitrogen balance, mineral metabolism and caloric intake and output will be discussed in papers to follow. Very little material is available on the substance metabolism of undernourished children, since most investigators of the problem of malnutrition have studied infants. Fleming 3 reports no difference in behavior of normal and marantic infants with respect to total urinary, creatinine and ammonia nitrogen, and Utheim 4 finds normal creatinine values, but a high excretion of ammonia nitrogen concurrent with high organic acids which decrease with improvement in the nutritional state of the infant. EXPERIMENTAL Most of the subjects used in this work have already been reported for gain in weight and for basal


Can function points predict duration of a project and hours worked on a project? His data set includes estimated hours, actual hours worked, actual project duration, and software size in function points. Using various regression techniques, his resulting R-squared-i.e., the amount of variance in actual hours that function points explain-is rather low at .258. (If it explained all of the variance, the R-squared would be 1.00). He concludes that other factors must significantly influence actual hours. The last section changes focus from software engineering products to the processes that create them. Suddenly, a rather large, non-deterministic element is introduced in the model: people. Nevertheless, the issue of having sound models with which to guide observation applies. Further, process is clearly an important factor, and there is consensus that quantitative analysis of process, though just emerging, is critical. Shep-perd discusses several types of models, including Data Flow Diagrams and life cycle models. This is an excellent introduction for students, researchers, or software professionals interested in software measurement. Shepperd makes his subject matter very accessible without oversimplification, and each chapter includes suggested readings and exercises, to further explore this challenging area. I highly recommend this book. Object-oriented (OO) analysis and design techniques are the focal point of this book. Although the book is relatively short, it manages to present the basics in introducing the reader to the subject. Highly technical readers will most likely find the book lacking in depth, however, someone with little or no OO background who is ready to learn OO technology will probably find the book helpful without being overwhelming. The first chapter of the book provides a comparison of struc-tured software development with object-oriented software development. Each approach is described and then a short example is used to demonstrate how each development strategy would be used to implement the example. The second chapter deals with the potential advantages and drawbacks of using OO. The standard benefits associated with OO are presented (Reusability, Extensibility, etc.) as are potential benefits such as increased chance of project success, reduced maintenance burden, reduction in application backlog and the ability to deal with complexity. Although listed as potential drawbacks, several of the items in this list could be viewed as potential benefits e.g. "Developers must work closely with users." I would probably promote this one as a potential benefit. The next two chapters of the book deal with the actual "how-to" of …


The main subject of this paper is demonstrating and comparing event-driven real-time control program models running on embedded systems. The paper do not deal with all possibilities of programming models, only with most important variations based on writer's opinion. The reader can find the advantages and disadvantages of each demonstrated models. The presented models are: sequential model, cooperative multitasking, traditional and hierarchical event-driven system, and active object computing model.


Bedding-parallel calcite veins in Devonian rocks from the southern part of the Holy Cross Mountains Fold Belt in central Poland occur as tabular bodies on shallow dipping as well as vertical Late Paleozoic map-scale and mesoscopic fold limbs. The syntaxial and antitaxial bedding parallel veins contain kinematic indicators such as rotated blocks, fibre boundary steps, boudin trains, beef-like structures and congruous steps. These structures show a sense of movement consistent with the flexural slip typical of folding resulting from buckling during layer-parallel shortening. We propose the mechanism of the gradual formation of the veins and the progression of fabric development which is mostly consistent with an increasing dip angle of the fold limbs and their gradual deformation. Textures of the veins and kinematic indicators within the veins point to the syntectonic growth of calcite during the Late Paleozoic buckle folding in the Holy Cross Mountains Fold Belt.


Potato virus Y (PVY, genus Potyvirus, family Potyviridae) causes high economic losses worldwide, especially in the production of seed potatoes (Solanum tuberosum). PVY control systems rely on measuring virus pressure and vector pressure in the field. Calculation of the vector pressure is based on the relative efficiency factors (REFs) of aphid species. These REFs express the transmission efficiency of aphid species in relation to the transmission efficiency of Myzus persicae, the most efficient vector of PVY. In this paper, we report on the determination of aphids' relative transmission efficiency factors (REFs) for isolates of the PVY strains PVYN, PVYNTN and PVYN-Wi. Biotype Mp2 of M. persicae was tested for its transmission efficiency for six PVY isolates (one PVYN, three PVYNTN and two PVYN-Wi isolates) and showed comparable average transmission efficiencies for all isolates. The transmission rate of this biotype for the six PVY isolates was set to 1 and Mp2 was used as an internal control in transmission experiments to determine the REFs of three other biotypes of M. persicae and 16 other aphid species (three biotypes per species when available) for the six PVY isolates. Comparing the calculated REFs for PVYN with the REFs reported in the previous century for PVYN, we observe overall comparable REFs, except for Aphis fabae, Aphis spp., Hyperomyzus lactucae, Macrosiphum euphorbiae and Rhopalosiphum padi, which have a lower REF in our experiments, and Aphis frangulae and Phorodon humuli, which have now a higher REF. Comparing the new REFs found for the PVYNTN strains with the new REFs for PVYN, we observe that they are overall comparable, except for A. frangulae (0.17 compared with 0.53) and Schizaphis graminum (0.05 compared with 0.00). Comparing the REFs calculated for PVYN-Wi with those calculated for PVYN, we can observe six aphid species with higher REFs (Acyrthosiphon pisum, A. fabae, Aphis nasturtii, Aphis spp., P. humuli and R. padi). Only the species A. frangulae shows a lower REF for PVYN-Wi compared with the transmission efficiency of PVYN. Three aphid species (Aulacorthum solani, Myzus ascalonicus and S. graminum) for which no REF was determined earlier were found to be capable to transmit PVY and their REFs were determine


Cultured bovine corneal endothelial cells (CBCEC) transport fluid from the basal to the apical surface. In this study, we examined whether the plasma membranes of these cells have water channels. We cultured BCEC on glass plates and monitored the intensity of the light scattered (IS) by the cells. We determined the kinetic constant (k) of the change in IS on exposure to a 10% hypoosmotic challenge to calculate the osmotic permeability (Pf) of the plasma membrane. At 37 degrees C, we found values of k = 0.68 +/- 0.07 s-1 and Pf = 93.3 +/- 33 microns/S (n = 13). The sulfhydryl reagent p-chloromercuribenzenesulfonate (pCMBS; 1 mM) reduced Pf by 75%; 5 mM dithiothreitol reversed such inhibition. The activation energy (Ea) of Pf in the range 10-37 degrees C was 4.7 +/- 0.7 kcal/mol (n = 5). The high Pf, values, the inhibition by pCMBS, and the low Ea strongly suggest the presence of water channels. Therefore, we tested whether the injection of poly(A)+ RNA prepared from CBCEC into Xenopus laevis oocytes results in the expression of water channels. Four days after injection, we measured oocyte Pf values from the rate of volume increase on exposure to hypoosmotic medium. In control oocytes injected with 50 nl of water, Pf was 13.4 +/- 0.3 microns/S (n = 63). In oocytes injected with poly(A)+ RNA (50 ng/oocyte in 50 nl water), Pf was 40.9 +/- 1.6 microns/S (n = 72).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Introduction: Medication reconciliation is a strategy to reduce medication errors and thereby decrease adverse drug events (ADE), which are a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. More than 50% of ADE are preventable. Medication reconciliation performed by a pharmacist at admission and discharge resulted in a 47% decrease in emergency department visits and an 80% decrease in drug related readmissions in the 12 months following discharge. The main aim of the study was to describe the interventions and outcome of a pharmacist-mediated medication reconciliation on admission and discharge in a private hospital medical ward. Method: The study was conducted at a 214 bed multi-disciplinary private hospital facility in Gauteng, South Africa over six months. The study followed a prospective quantitative, cross-sectional interventional design and was performed in a 36 bed medical ward. There was no control group for the study. Results: Two hundred patients (female = 71%; male = 29%) were included in the study. One thousand and one interventions were made during the study period (Admission: 677; Discharge: 677). The average time taken for the service on admission and discharge was 29.31 minutes per patient and cost $7.06 per patient. The cost savings generated by this service for the study period were $202, 353. Conclusion: The findings of this study demonstrate the benefits of a pharmacist performing medication reconciliation at admission and discharge. The cost-savings Idemonstrated by this study justifies the time invested in providing this service


Abstract:The estimation of causal effects in observational studies is usually limited by the lack of randomization, which can result in different treatment or exposure groups differing systematically with respect to characteristics that influence outcomes. To remove such systematic differences, methods to ''balance" subjects on observed covariates across treatment or exposure levels have been developed over the past three decades. These methods have been primarily developed in settings with binary treatment or exposures. However, in many observational studies, the exposures are continuous instead of being binary or discrete, and are usually considered as doses of treatment. In this manuscript we consider estimating the causal effect of early childhood lead exposure on youth academic achievement, where the exposure variable blood lead concentration can take any values that are greater than or equal to 0, using three balancing methods: propensity score analysis, non-bipartite matching, and Bayesian regression trees. We find some evidence that the standard logistic regression analysis controlling for age and socioeconomic confounders used in previous analyses (Zhang et al. (2013)) overstates the effect of lead exposure on performance on standardized mathematics and reading examinations; however, significant declines remain, including at doses currently below the recommended exposure levels.


Genetic diversity among the Newars of Nepal has been studied using Wright's FST and the ratio of observed variance to theoretical variance following Lewontin and Krakauer's 1973 method, based on six genetic characteristics. The gene differentiation among the Newars is only 1.7%. These observations are further corroborated by the results obtained through genetic distance analysis. The average heterozygosity per locus is high (ranging from 35 to 42%) for all the groups. About 95% of total gene diversity exists within the Newar groups, the intergroup components being only about 5%.


Urinary hydroxyproline excretion reflects collagen metabolism which is more in children than in adults due to the growth phase. Present study aims to find relationship between growth and hydroxyproline excretion. Study was done in 90 children of three age groups 6-9 yrs, 10-13 yrs and 14-16 yrs who formed three study groups Group I, Group II and Group III respectively with 30 children in each group .Thirty Adults in age group of 30-40 yrs formed the control group. 24 hrs Urinary Hydroxyproline was estimated in the study and control groups. Student T test was used for statistical analysis. Statistically significant increased excretion of Hydroxyproline (p<0.01) is seen in children in age group of 10-13yrs (Group-II) when compared to control group. Among groups also statistically significant increased excretion is seen in children of 10-13 yrs age group rather than in children of 6-9 yrs and 14-16 yrs age group. In our present study there was more excretion of hydroxy proline in Group II (10-13yrs) where the growth rate is more than in age group 6-9 and 13-16 yrs where the rate of growth is less, results indicate a good correlation between growth and urinary hydroxyproline. Hence it can be used as an effective indicator of growth in children.