Evolution of virus expression in different lymphoid organs as well as in solid syngeneic tumors of mice inoculated with an MuLV was studied with the aid of in vitro XC co‐culture technique. When normal adult mice of strain XLII were inoculated intraperitoneally with a cultured Rauscher virus (RC), the virus could be detected, 10 days after inoculation, only in bone marrow in small amounts and there‐after no virus could be found in any of the organs tested, including bone marrow, spleen, thymus, lymph node and kidney. However, when age‐ and sex‐matched parallel mice bearing syngeneic subcutaneous non‐viral tumors were inoculated similarly with the RC virus, the virus could be detected abundantly not only in bone marrow and spleen but also in tumors during the first 3 weeks and even 6 weeks after virus inoculation. Transitional decrease or disappearance of the virus was observed around the 25th‐31st day in organs and tumors of the inoculated mice. When the tumor mass was removed from these mice by surgery, the virus disappeared rapidly and definitely from all the organs tested. The virus recovered from in vitro explanted and cultured tumors, taken from mice inoculated with the virus, induced typical lymphoid leukemia in BALB/c mice inoculated as newborns. However, from certain aspects (hypertrophy of the thymus and lymph nodes), this virus was different from the original RC virus.


Tendons are viscoelastic, which implies loading rate dependency, but loading rates of contractions are often not controlled during assessment of human tendon mechanical properties in vivo. We investigated the effects of sustained submaximal isometric plantarflexion contractions, which potentially negate loading rate dependency, on the stiffness of the human Achilles tendon in vivo using dynamometry and ultrasonography. Maximum voluntary contractions (high loading rate), ramp maximum force contractions with 3 s loading (lower loading rate) and sustained contractions (held for 3 s) at 25%, 50% and 80% of maximal tendon force were conducted. No loading rate effect on stiffness (25–80% max. tendon force) was found. However, loading rate effects were seen up to 25% of maximum tendon force, which were reduced by the sustained method. Sustained plantarflexion contractions may negate loading rate effects on tendon mechanical properties and appear suitable for assessing human Achilles tendon stiffness in vivo.


Objectives To characterise the costs to the UK National Health Service of cardiovascular (CV) events among individuals receiving lipid-modifying therapy. Design Retrospective cohort study using Clinical Practice Research Datalink records from 2006 to 2012 to identify individuals with their first and second CV-related hospitalisations (first event and second event cohorts). Within-person differences were used to estimate CV-related outcomes. Setting Patients in the UK who had their first CV event between January 2006 and March 2012. Participants Patients ≥18 years who had a CV event and received at least 2 lipid-modifying therapy prescriptions within 180 days beforehand. Primary and secondary outcome measures Direct medical costs (2014 £) were estimated in 3 periods: baseline (pre-event), acute (6 months afterwards) and long-term (subsequent 30 months). Primary outcomes included incremental costs, resource usage and total costs per period. Results There were 24 093 patients in the first event cohort of whom 5274 were included in the second event cohort. The mean incremental acute CV event costs for the first event and second event cohorts were: coronary artery bypass graft/percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (CABG/PTCA) £5635 and £5823, myocardial infarction £4275 and £4301, ischaemic stroke £3512 and £4572, heart failure £2444 and £3461, unstable angina £2179 and £2489 and transient ischaemic attack £1537 and £1814. The mean incremental long-term costs were: heart failure £848 and £2829, myocardial infarction £922 and £1385, ischaemic stroke £973 and £682, transient ischaemic attack £705 and £1692, unstable angina £328 and £677, and CABG/PTCA £−368 and £599. Hospitalisation accounted for 95% of acute and 61% of long-term incremental costs. Higher comorbidity was associated with higher long-term costs. Conclusions Revascularisation and myocardial infarction were associated with the highest incremental costs following a CV event. On the basis of real-world data, the economic burden of CV events in the UK is substantial, particularly among those with greater comorbidity burden.


Charlotte Bronte complained about Jane Austen's lack of passion, but the trademark irony in her novels was applied to many risque subjects, in ways that have become increasingly obvious, making the myth of a sexless Austen untenable. In the last half century, a number of commentators have pointed at lesbian inclinations and attachments in Austen's novels, generally focusing on the protagonist of Emma. Seemingly unnoticed by critics, Mansfield Park includes a lesbian subplot, discreetly but firmly embedded onto the main narrative, facilitating the internal development of the protagonist Fanny Price, contributing to the novel's debate on 'nature versus improvement', and inspiring some of the most outrageous humour in the book. The present essay traces the lesbian subplot in Mansfield Park , and poses an invitation to marvel anew at a complex novel full of rich subversive moods.


BACKGROUND
Pain of myofascial origin is a well-recognized pathology characterized by the presence of two components: referred pain; which is often distant from its source and specific to each muscle, and the trigger point, a localized hyperirritable band present in the affected muscle and able to reproduce the referred pain when stimulated. Myofascial pain (MP) commonly coexists in patients with acute or chronic pain of other etiologies. The uniqueness of the clinical presentation of some MPs and the lack of training of most specialties represent a clinical challenge. Thus, many patients with MPS receive less than optimal management of this condition.

OBJECTIVE
Pain at the anterior torso, originating at the posterior torso, can mimic common pathologies that correlate with the same anatomical area such as cardiac and intra-abdominal conditions. These clinical characteristics could be caused by MP of the iliocostalis thoracis-lumborum (ITL) muscle. However, this entity has not been well addressed in the medical literature. In this report we characterize the manifestations, diagnosis, and clinical implications of ITL MP.

STUDY DESIGN
Observational assessment.

SETTING
Two university-based academic emergency medicine departments (ED) in an urban setting in the United States.

METHODS
A convenience sample of 43 patients who presented to the ED with pain at the anterior aspect of the torso (chest, abdomen, or pelvis) and clinical evidence of MP originated in the ITL muscle.Of a clinical trial of patients with MP, we describe a subgroup of patients with MP of the ITL which was clinically evident by the presence of a trigger point (TP) in its ability to reproduce the referred pain present at the anterior aspect of the torso. Patients received a TP injection. In this trial we intend to demonstrate that TP injections using particulate steroids mixed with a local are no more effective than saline alone to treat MP. The primary outcome was pain control (decrease in intensity of 50% or more below baseline numeric pain rating). A follow-up telephone interview was performed by third-party abstractors.

RESULTS
Forty-three patients presented with pain of the anterior torso and ipsilateral back, both correlating with the level of the TP of the ITL muscle. The pain had been present from 2 days to 7 years. The most common locations of pain were the right-lower quadrant and the left side of the chest. In many of them a pattern of missed diagnosis was evident despite extensive workups and consultations. Only 17 patients were able to identify the precipitating event; the most common was coughing. Two weeks after TP injection, all patients still had satisfactory pain control. After treatment, no missed pathology or returns to the ED were reported.

LIMITATIONS
This descriptive portion of the ongoing study does not affect the integrity of the trial itself but could be subject to the introduction of subject selection and selective reporting bias. Similarly, this convenience sample does not establish the incidence of this pathology and challenges the external validity to other clinical settings.

CONCLUSIONS
Anterior torso pain often resulted in extensive workups before ITL myofascial pain was diagnosed. TP injections were diagnostic and therapeutic of ITL myofascial pain.


A model to estimate the viscosity of aluminosilicate melts, including alkali oxides, was constructed in the present study. The model is based on an earlier model, and considers the bonding state of oxygen in molten silicate and the flow mechanism of melts with a network structure. The straightforward method of Susa et al. to evaluate bonding states of oxygen in chemical compositions was applied to the present model since their method can easily be extended to any multi-component system. The calculation results of our model can express the dependence on viscosity in quaternary aluminosilicates containing alkali oxide and their subsystems.


In a given environment, the ability for the swarm of robots to succeed in the accomplishment of the assigned task greatly depends on global properties assigned to the swarm, and individual capabilities each robot has. Examples of such global properties are the ability to distinguish among themselves at least one (or, more) robots (leader), to agree on a common global direction (sense of direction), or to agree on a common handedness (chirality). The individual capacities of each robot are its moving capabilities and its sensory organs. To deal with cost, flexibility, resilience to dysfunction, and autonomy, many problems arise for handling the distributed coordination of swarms of robots in a deterministic manner. This issue is motivated by the minimal level of ability that the robots are required to have in the accomplishment of basic cooperative tasks. In other words, the feasibility of some given tasks is addressed assuming swarm of autonomous robots either devoid or not of capabilities like (observable) identifiers, direct means of communication, means of storing previous observations, sense of direction, chirality, etc. Leader election and arbitrary pattern formation are fundamental tasks for a set of autonomous mobile robots. The former consists in moving the system from an initial configuration were all entities are in the same state into a final configuration were all entities are in the same state, except one, the leader. The latter consists in the design of protocols allowing autonomous mobile robots to form any (arbitrary) geometric pattern. The solvability of both these tasks turns out to be necessary in order to achieve more complex tasks. During this tutorial, we address both problems. We first consider the deterministic solvability of the pattern formation problem assuming swarms of anonymous robots. Next, under the same assumptions, we provide a complete characterization (necessary and sufficient conditions) on the robots positions to deterministically elect a leader. Finally, we show that Leader Election and Pattern Formation are two equivalent problems in the precise sense that, the former is solvable if and only if the latter problem is solvable.


The formulation and computation of an optimal load shedding time algorithm is presented. This new concept was developed as an enhancement to the application of optimal load shedding for corrective control to support future islanded power systems with anticipated, enhanced communications infrastructure. The methodology combines nonlinear mathematical programming and discretized differential-algebraic power systems equations to estimate the optimal amount of load to be shed as well as the best time to shed it. Several simulated scenarios are studied and results presented.


A 54-year-old man experienced weight gain. He was diagnosed as having hyperglycemia, hypertension and liver damage. Liver biopsy showed steatohepatitis. We initially suspected him as having hyperadrenocorticism. However, both adrenocorticotropic hormone and cortisol levels were low. Later, it was revealed that he took medicine to relieve his gonalgia. His hyperglycemia, hypertension and liver damage improved after he discontinued taking the medicine. An analysis of this medicine showed that it contained desoximetasone, a glucocorticoid compound that had not been approved for medical use in Japan. To adequately diagnose clinical conditions, it is necessary to survey the patient's medicinal history in detail.


With the rapid development in wireless communication technologies, the IEEE 802.11 WLANs are experiencing a huge popularity and widespread deployment. Designed with traditional layered architecture, current WLANs adopt functional layer partitioning and aim at optimization at individual layers. However, in a highly dynamic and media sharing wireless environment, the capacity enhancements at individual physical layers may not necessarily benefit, and sometimes even degrade the system performance with multiple users. It has been shown that in a multiuser setting, one can increase the throughput substantially if partial knowledge of the channels at the receiver sides is known. The challenge is to make good matching of the instantaneous channel conditions of multiple users with the bandwidth and time allocation to each user. In this paper, we address the issue of cross layer design in the proposed "weighted fair scheduling based on adaptive rate control" (WFS-ARC) framework, where the PHY layer knowledge is shared with the MAC and LLC layer in order to provide efficient resource allocation. We evaluate the WFS-ARC approach in ns-2 and the simulation results demonstrate that our design can significantly improve the system throughput.


which have complications ? What most people think of as " influenza " is a complaint very like measles (one has thought of it as " morbilliform 'flu ")-the complications are much the same. And streptococcal throats ? Here the theoretical indication is stronger, but the position is not so clear as might appear. Large-scale throat swabbing has revealed that, where there are cases of infectious tonsillitis in a village, practically everybody gets a dose of it. In most cases the symptoms are minimal. Presumably a useful topping-up of immunity to haemolytic streptococci results. But all cases are to some extent at risk of complications. Yet the crux of it all is not so much there as in the question, How much harm would be done ? These drugs are obviously life-saving when used with careful discrimination. As other correspondents have stressed, there is grave danger of their value being destroyed through misguided use, inducing resistant bacteria and allergy. Apart from this there are the toxic effects to be reckoned with, and here surely is the chief fallacy. These drugs have themselves a complication rate. There seems to be a widespread tendency to belittle this. Overt cases of such effects may not be many, but they obviously do occur; and it is only reasonable to suppose that there may be considerably more subclinical effects. There may yet be long-term effects of which we know nothing. Most frightening suggestion of all, there may be genetic effects. Shall we ever be able to prove or disprove this ? " Modern drugs are so complicated, you don't know what you are doing "-this chance remark heard when sulphonamides came in has coloured one's thinking ever since, and might well be more widely heeded. All these drugs ought not to be looked upon as beneficent substances with occasional (euphemistic word !) side-effects, but rather as materials essentially toxic to the body yet with incidental good effects. Finally, one can hardly leave the subject without pointing out the medico-legal hazards of this policy, which, after all, has not official sanction. It is indeed not a little disturbing to think how easily danger to the community can arise in this way. In all earnestness, it is to be hoped that all who have embarked on prophylactic therapy of this sort will reconsider the matter, and abandon it stat.-I am, etc.,


Abstract: Throughout the last decades uncertainty analysis has become an essential part of environmental model building (e.g. Beck 1987; Refsgaard et al., 2007). The objective of the paper is to introduce stochastic and setmembership uncertainty modelling concepts, which basically differ in the assumptions that are made with respect to the uncertainty characterization. Stochastic uncertainty modelling is most frequently applied and is characterized by probability density functions (pdf's) or simply by means and (co)variances. Typical approaches are the Bayesian and the Monte Carlo Markov Chain methods. Alternatively, a set-membership or bounded-error characterization, as opposed to a stochastic characterization, is favoured when assumptions about distribution or estimates of mean and covariance cannot be satisfactorily tested, as with small data sets or heavily structured (modelling) errors. The bounded-error characterization is in essence deterministic. Both approaches, using tools as DREAM, GLUE, exact and approximate bounding, MCSM and a pavement-based technique, were tested on a real-world example. The example, based on Wasson's (1994) sediment yield – area data and after a log-log transformation of the data, is a linear static problem with two parameters.


The effectiveness of minimal occlusion therapy and the CAM vision stimulator are discussed as well as optical correction of neonatal aphakia. Results of several early studies and work in progress are given.


1999 Activation of NF-κB is often observed following treatment with topoisomerase poisons and is generally considered to relay an anti-apoptotic signal. Consequently, inactivation of signalling molecule such as NF-κB is considered as an important strategy to improve therapeutic efficacy of anticancer drugs. In this study, this hypothesis was investigated using i) two human cell lines, CEM (leukaemia) and A549 (non-small cell lung cancer), ii) two topoisomerase poisons etoposide and camptothecin and iii) two other compounds as control, tafluposide a catalytic inhibitor of topoisomerases and an antimitotic drug, vinorelbine. Effects of these compounds on NF-κB activation have been evaluated by Western-blotting, immunocytochemistry, TRANSAM™ and induction of reporter gene. Activation of NF-κB was observed only in CEM cells treated with either etoposide or camptothecin. Effects of these compounds, in combination with a NF-κB inhibitor, triptolide, parthenolide or panepoxydone, were also investigated. CEM cells were exposed in vitro for 120 hours to each of the NF-κB inhibitors combined simultaneously with either etoposide, camptothecin, tafluposide or vinorelbine. Cytotoxicity was then evaluated by an ATPlite assay and effects were studied using the Median Effect Analysis. Surprisingly, an antagonism was noted for each combination of topoisomerase poisons with NF-κB inhibitors whilst an additivity or a synergism was observed when a NF-κB inhibitor was combined with tafluposide or vinorelbine. These data indicate that inhibition of NF-κB is not a viable route to promote the activity of topoisomerase poisons in this cellular model but it may be a profitable strategy to strengthen the anticancer activity of other drugs such as tafluposide and vinorelbine.


In this paper, we introduce the notion of semi-invariant submanifolds of a nor- mal almost para contact manifold. We study their fundamental properties and the particular cases. The necessary and sufficient conditions are given for a submanifold to be invariant or anti-invariant. Also, we give some results for space form and we construct an example. We think that these results will contribute to the differential geometry.


In this paper we propose a semi-random technique to design irregular LDPC codes with low error floor. In particular, the suggested technique is related to a popular class of irregular LDPC codes that can be encoded in linear time, and tries to avoid both low-weight codewords and near-codewords, which limit the performance of the belief propagation decoder. Besides, an easy and effective rule to design puncturing patterns for this class of LDPC codes is provided. The effectiveness of the new design criteria is proved by comparison with literature results.


The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a short form of the Genderism and Transphobia Scale and assess adolescents' attitudes toward transpeople. A total of 800 Spanish adolescents aged between 14 and 18 years (50.70% girls, 49.30% boys) completed the Spanish version of the scale and other related questionnaires. The short form of the scale is composed of 12 items clustered into two factors (Transphobia/Genderism and Gender Bashing) that explain 54.22% of the variance. All the items showed good discriminating power, and the present scale demonstrated adequate reliability and validity. In the study, boys exhibited significantly more negative attitudes toward transpeople than girls did, both in the affective/cognitive dimension (Transphobia/Genderism) and in the behavioral dimension (Gender Bashing). Moreover, adolescents showed significantly more negative attitudes toward gender-nonconforming men than toward gender-nonconforming women. These results are discussed in terms of their relevance to the maintenance of discriminatory attitudes toward sexual diversity.


Two demographic challenges confront Europe today: population ageing and population decline. These challenges are two sides of the same demographic coin. While low fertility and increasing longevity cause populations to rapidly grow older, low fertility also leads to population decline. This paper describes recent and expected changes in the size and composition of the European population and the underlying demographic trends in fertility, mortality and migration. Although international migration is now the major cause of European population growth, it is questionable whether migration can prevent population decline. International migration spurs population diversity in different ways across Europe and is the most volatile demographic phenomenon as it depends on both push and pull factors that are difficult to manage. From a demographic perspective the challenges of international migration for citizenship, both from intra-European migration and more particularly from migration from outside Europe, are likely to increase in the near future.


This article is an inquiry into Russian legal culture and is based on the assumption that any institution transplanted from one social environment to another will be reinterpreted and reshaped, so that it can be accepted into the receiving society. The process of adaptation creates an opportunity to examine the receiving society's established practices and way of thinking. To demonstrate their effects, this article explores the author's research findings carried out in two Russian towns where institutions of media self‐regulation were set up. The findings are analyzed comparatively in order to identify how the key players in the two towns interpreted the initial ideas, established procedures and rules for the newly set up institutions, and defined the roles that were attributed to them. The results of the two‐city case study are then used to interpret some specifics of the internal logic of the local legal culture.


The absence of high performance p-type transparent semiconductor still remains as a roadblock to the development of future generation optoelectronics. Here, highly conducting p-type transparent semiconductor based on Y incorporated LaCuOS oxychalcogenide is achieved for the first time, and the maximum Y substitution to obtain single phase is found to be 25%. By enhancing both the hole mobility and concentration of LaCuOS phase, Y substituted oxychalcogenide single phase La0.75Y0.25CuOS exhibits an outstanding p-type conductivity of 89.3 S.cm-1 with high optical transparency, which is the highest among all transparent oxychalcogenides with band gap above 3 eV reported so far. The structural, electronic and optical as well as the thermoelectric properties of La1-xYxCuOS with different Y substitution level are investigated, and the power factor was greatly enhanced to 4.322 μW m-1 K-2 after Y substitution. The highly performing diode based on p-type La0.75Y0.25CuOS thin film and n-type Al doped ZnO heterojunction with high rectifying ratio of 300 are demonstrated, indicating its promising aspect for next generation invisible electronics and optoelectronics.


Injuries to Lisfranc complex are infrequent, usually a result of high energy trauma. Upto 20% of these go unrecognized initially and can have significant long term consequences. Complete isolated dislocation of cuboid is extremely rare. When present, it is usually in conjunction with the complex injuries of hindfoot and midfoot.We report a case of 30yr old male, presenting to the emergency room after having sustained a motor vehicle accident with injury to right foot and ankle region.The injury was diagnosed to be Lisfranc injury with associated cuboid dislocation, the latter part was missed initially. Lisfranc injury is most commonly associated with second metatarsal fracture but rarely it can also be associated with cuboid dislocation which can be easily missed on initial evaluation. High suspicion of this type of injury should be present following high energy trauma as it can result in prolonged recovery and significant long term morbidity.


This paper proposes a new sustain waveform to improve the luminous efficiency of an AC plasma display panel (AC-PDP). The new sustain waveform is a superimposed waveform, which adds a ramp-waveform to a square-waveform, and has an increasing voltage slope between the rising and falling edge. This waveform can induce a longer-sustained discharge at the rising edge plus a self-erasing discharge at the falling edge, thereby improving the luminous efficiency, When compared with the conventional square sustain waveform, the proposed sustain waveform with a 9.3 V//spl mu/s voltage slope achieved a 65% higher luminous efficiency in a 4-in AC-PDP test panel even at a low frequency (62 kHz).


The application of mass collaboration in different areas of study and work has been increasing over the last few decades. For example, in the education context, this emerging paradigm has opened new opportunities for participatory learning, namely, "mass collaborative learning (MCL)". The development of such an innovative and complementary method of learning, which can lead to the creation of knowledge-based communities, has helped to reap the benefits of diversity and inclusion in the creation and development of knowledge. In other words, MCL allows for enhanced connectivity among the people involved, providing them with the opportunity to practice learning collectively. Despite recent advances, this area still faces many challenges, such as a lack of common agreement about the main concepts, components, applicable structures, relationships among the participants, as well as applicable assessment systems. From this perspective, this study proposes a meta-governance framework that benefits from various other related ideas, models, and methods that together can better support the implementation, execution, and development of mass collaborative learning communities. The proposed framework was applied to two case-study projects in which vocational education and training respond to the needs of collaborative education–enterprise approaches. It was also further used in an illustration of the MCL community called the "community of cooks". Results from these application cases are discussed.


The virus of lymphocytic choriomeningitis may be found in association with the erythrocytes of mice and guinea-pigs during the experimental disease. The concentration of the virus in the erythrocytes has no relation to the amount present in the blood serum and the washings of the erythrocytes. The association is firm, apparently taking place in the stroma of the red blood cells. Strains of the virus differ from one another in the ability to attach themselves to the erythrocytes of mice and guinea-pigs. When a strain shows a decidedly greater virulence for one species than the other, there is observed a consistent infectivity of erythrocytes of the species for which the virulence of the strain is greater. The virus may be recovered only irregularly from the erythrocytes of mice and guinea-pigs when the infecting strain shows low virulence for both animal species.


Three new species of the genus Neoperla in the montivaga species group, N. baisha Kong & Li, sp. nov., N. bicurvata Kong & Li, sp. nov., and N. furcomaculata Kong & Li, sp. nov., are proposed from Hainan Province, China. Their taxonomic relationships are discussed with related congeners.


Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS), a nondestructive analytical technique, may someday be used to rapidly and simultaneously quantify several soil properties in agricultural fields. The objectives of this study were to examine the influence of moisture content on the accuracy of NIRS analysis of soil properties and to assess the robustness of a NIRS multivariate calibration technique. Four hundred agricultural soil samples (<2 mm) from Iowa and Minnesota were studied at two moisture levels: moist and air-dried. The soil properties tested included total C, organic C, inorganic C, total N, CEC, pH, texture, moisture, and potentially mineralizable N. About 70% of the Iowa samples were selected for the calibration set, and the rest of the Iowa samples and all of the Minnesota samples were assigned to validation set I and validation set II, respectively. Calibrations were based on partial least-squares regression (PLSR), using the first differentials of log (1/R) for the 1100 to 2500-nm spectral range. The results for the calibration set and validation set I indicated that NIRS-PLSR was able to predict many soil properties (total C, organic C, inorganic C, total N, CEC, % clay, and moisture) with reasonable accuracy for both the air-dried (R2 > 0.76) and moist (R2 > 0.74) soils. The results for validation set II showed that NIRS-PLSR was able to predict some properties of soils (total C, organic C, total N, and moisture content) from a different geographic region, but other soil properties in validation set II were not accurately predicted. Although NIRS-PLSR predictions are slightly more accurate for air-dried soils than for moist soils, the results indicate that the NIRS-PLSR technique can be used for analysis of field moist samples with acceptable accuracy as long as diverse soil samples from the same region are included in the calibration database.


A 69-year-old man was admitted with right flank pain. The patient was diagnosed with advanced gastric cancer with multiple metastases in the liver and abdominal lymph nodes and underwent chemotherapy. Three days following the initial administration of S-1 plus cisplatin, the patient developed tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) with increased LDH, hyperuricemia, hyperkalemia, and elevated creatinine. Although rare, TLS following chemotherapy for solid tumors is a potentially fatal complication, and high physician awareness is required, especially in patients with risk factors, such as bulky disease.


The concept of emergency free tissue transfer for severe extremity injuries represents a cutting-edge technology. We discuss our very positive results with this technique. The conceptual reasons for these favorable results, compared with conventional approaches, are also discussed. An initial, radical debridement is the most important part of the operation. This is then followed by osteosynthesis. The correct type of free tissue transfer is chosen according to the requirements of the soft tissue defect. Qualitatively better results with earlier definitive rehabilitation were achieved with free tissue transfer performed during the acute stage of limb wound treatment. The follow-up period ranged from 3 months to 8 years. We experienced neither flap loss, osteomyelitis, nor severe wound infection. Using the modern concept of emergency free tissue transfer, we reduced the rate of flap loss and associated morbidity while achieving a functionally improved reconstruction.


ABSTRACT Background: Sexual violence and wartime rapes are prevalent crimes in violent conflicts all over the world. Processes of reconciliation are growing challenges in post-conflict settings. Despite this, so far few studies have examined the psychological consequences and their mediating factors. Our study aimed at investigating the degree of longtime readiness to reconcile and its associations with post-traumatic distress within a sample of German women who experienced wartime rapes in 1945. Methods: A total of 23 wartime rape survivors were compared to age- and gender-matched controls with WWII-related non-sexual traumatic experiences. Readiness to reconcile was assessed with the Readiness to Reconcile Inventory (RRI-13). The German version of the Post-traumatic Diagnostic Scale (PDS) was used to assess post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology. Results: Readiness to reconcile in wartime rape survivors was higher in those women who reported less post-traumatic distress, whereas the subscale "openness to interaction" showed the strongest association with post-traumatic symptomatology. Moreover, wartime rape survivors reported fewer feelings of revenge than women who experienced other traumatization in WWII. Conclusions: Our results are in line with previous research, indicating that readiness to reconcile impacts healing processes in the context of conflict-related traumatic experiences. Based on the long-lasting post-traumatic symptomatology we observed that our findings highlight the need for psychological treatment of wartime rape survivors worldwide, whereas future research should continue focusing on reconciliation within the therapeutic process.


We propose some Bayesian methods to address the problem of fitting a signal modeled by a sequence of piecewise constant linear (in the parameters) regression models, for example, autoregressive or Volterra models. A joint prior distribution is set up over the number of the changepoints/knots, their positions, and over the orders of the linear regression models within each segment if these are unknown. Hierarchical priors are developed and, as the resulting posterior probability distributions and Bayesian estimators do not admit closed-form analytical expressions, reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are derived to estimate these quantities. Results are obtained for standard denoising and segmentation of speech data problems that have already been examined in the literature. These results demonstrate the performance of our methods.


Abstract Not Available – First paragraph follows:
Stable flies are blood-sucking pests of cattle, horses, and other warm-blooded animals in many parts of the world. The pain associated with stable fly bites upsets livestock feeding patterns, reducing weight gains, feed efficiency, and milk production. Although few studies have been done on such losses, reductions of up to a half pound a day in weight gain and 30 to 40 percent in milk yield have been observed.


In a 3-D seismic infill survey, a two dimensional, E-W trending salt intrusion in Mesozoic formations endangered the visibility of the underlaying target zone. Modification to the standard acquisition scheme incorporating all laid geophone lires resulted in more than 800 active traces per record and extended offsets up to 10.200 metres. Special processing of these extra long offsets show significant improvement in time-domain reflection continuity for pre-salt events.


We report the first experimental determination of the electron affinity of gallium. The experiment was performed using the laser photodetachment electron spectrometry technique. Photoelectron kinetic energy spectra from and were used to calibrate the energy scale for the photoelectron energy spectra. The electron affinity was determined to be . This measurement is compared to several recent calculations of the electron affinity of gallium.


The diagnosis of concealed WPW syndrome (C-WPW) has only been made when a retrograde conduction through Kent bundle was confirmed during electrophysiological study (EPS). However, recent EPS suggested the concealed anterograde conduction through Kent bundle (CACK) during programmed electrical stimulation in C-WPW. If we could non-invasively detect an evidence of CACK during sinus rhythm (SR), it is very useful in making differential diagnosis in patients who complain paroxysms of tachycardia. High resolution ECG using signal averaging technique was recorded in 142 patients. 22 C-WPW (C), 20 AV nodal reentrant tachycardia (A), both diagnosed by EPS and 100 control subjects (N) who have no evidence of pre-excitation and no tachycardia episodes were compared. The duration of high frequency micropotentials which preceded further to the earliest upstroke of QRS complex of surface ECG (PPD) were measured. Results; (1) PPD was zero in most of N. (2) The mean PPDs were 0.97 +/- 2.08 msec (range: -4-8) in N, 1.55 +/- 2.50 msec (0-8) inA and 7.86 +/- 3.99 msec (0-19) in C, respectively (p < 0.001, C:N, C:A). (3) The rates of positive early potential, defined as 6 msec or more PPD; mean + 2SD of N, were 5/100 (5%) in N, 3/20 (15%) in A and 17/22 (77.3%) in C, respectively (p < 0.001, C:N, C:A). (4) In some of C, who showed long PPD, CACK was documented during EPS. The presence of high frequency micropotentials in C suggests that CACK may exist and produced small amounts of pre-excitation even during SR.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Smart transportation cities are based on intelligent systems and data sharing, whereas human drivers generally have limited capabilities and imperfect traffic observations. The perception of Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) utilizes data sharing through Vehicle-To-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-To-Infrastructure (V2I) communications to improve driving behaviors and reduce traffic delays and fuel consumption. This paper proposes a Double Agent (DA) intelligent traffic signal module based on the Reinforcement Learning (RL) method, where the first agent, the Velocity Agent (VA) aims to minimize the fuel consumption by controlling the speed of platoons and single CAVs crossing a signalized intersection, while the second agent, the Signal Agent (SA) proceeds to efficiently reduce traffic delays through signal sequencing and phasing. Several simulation studies have been conducted for a signalized intersection with different traffic flows and the performance of the single-agent with only VA, DA with both VA and SA, and Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) are compared. It is shown that the proposed DA solution improves the average delay by 47.3% and the fuel efficiency by 13.6% compared to the Intelligent Driver Model (IDM).


All ten instruments aboard the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) were brought back to full operation July 21, according to NASA. Problems with the drives for the satellite's solar array led flight controllers to shut down the satellite's instruments on July 2 (see Eos, June 16, 1992).

Subsequent tests showed that the main drive, now in use again, has a damaged but usable clutch, according to John Donley, UARS deputy project manager. The back-up drive, however, cannot be used safely. "We've lost our basic redundancy," he said


The roles of heme oxygenase(HO)-1 in human inflammations Heme oxygenase(HO)-1 is an enzyme, an inducible form of HO, which catalyzes heme into carbon mon-oxide(CO), Fe 2+ , and biliverdin. CO suppresses apoptosis and macrophage activation, whereas biliverdin is converted into bilirubin, an antioxidant. Fe 2+ stimulates the production of ferritin, a protective protein. Various noxious stimuli such as hypoxia or heavy metal loading induce expression of HO-1, which possesses cytoprotective effects mediated by the heme degradation products. Indeed, forced or chemically induced expression of HO-1 has beneficial effects on respiratory, inflammatory, renal diseases, and inflammatory disorders in animal models. On the other hand, HO-1 deficiency leads to systemic inflammation in mice and a patient. HO-1 is involved in pathogenesis of various diseases. Some of malignant tumors express abundant HO-1, resulting in suppressed apoptosis of tumor cells, whereas reduced expression of HO-1 is implicated in degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer dementia. Our preliminary results showed increased expression of HO-1 in joint lesions of rheumatoid arthritis and circulating leukocytes from patients with adult-onset Still's disease and hemophagocytic syndrome, though the role of HO-1 remains unknown in these diseases. Exces-sively expressed HO-1 appears toxic in some conditions. HO-1 induction by auranofin and statins has been shown to contribute to the pharmacological effects at least in part. To optimize HO-1 expression may lead to development of novel therapeutic strategies in various diseases including inflammatory


For hundreds of years since the enactment of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, the nation-state has been the mainstay of the international system. The nation-state has witnessed the rise and fall of empires, wars, economic turmoil, and political chaos, yet through it all it has remained relatively stable. Nation-state also has a dark side in the guise of neo-colonialism and the subjection of millions of people through the invoking of political sovereignty as imperial legitimacy. However, nothing has challenged the core foundations of the nation-state then the emergence of globalization in the 21st century. In many respects, globalization has superseded the governmental ability of the nation-state by circumventing it through the integration of commerce, finance, trade, and technology. No longer is the nation-state the conduit by which TNC's (Trans National Corporation), Diplomats, NGO's (Non-Governmental Organization), and Supranational organizations must filter through in order to operate in and around its geographical sphere. The legitimacy of the state was its cloak of sovereignty which gave it card Blanche in the international system. The presence of globalization has had an evolutionary impact upon the way nations govern, communicate, negotiate, and interact with each other. These impacts are both positive and negative. In terms of positive attributes, the technological advancements due to globalization has improved commerce through increased FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in economically challenged nations, targeted infrastructure development, advanced literacy, inspired democratic movements via social networks, and created emerging middle class in rising powerhouses such as India and China. The negative effects of globalization is that it has pulled and tugged at the local, social, and economical moral fabrics of a nation-state which in turn causes unrest, financial meltdown, poverty, hunger, dissension, and interstate wars between ethnic, tribal, and religious groups due to the inability of the current structure of the nation-state to effectively harness its destructive elements. In essence, the purpose of this research is to examine the challenges of globalization to the political validity of the nation-state in the 21st century and to create a new political construct of national sovereignty that recognizes the importance of the nation-state and its stability of the international order.


Researchers say that in 2020, deaths from cancer, dominated by breast and cervical cancers, left 1,047,000 children without a mother. The findings highlight the need to accelerate cancer prevention initiatives and improve treatment, especially in developing countries.


centimetres.Induction was uneventful; restlessness occurred during recovery. He has had experience of ether previously and has asked for "Evipan" in future. Removalof nails (perionychia).Therewere three cases;the dose was 3'5 cubic centimetres. In three of these casesit was necessaryto have the assistanceof a restraining pair of hands, but no patient has any recollection of interference. 2. EndoscopicExami'fUl,tions. Endoscopicexamination was carried out in three cases. In two of these casessigmoidoscopywas carried out; in one casecystoscopywas performed. The dose was 6·0 to 7·5 cubic centimetres. All three patients had received preliminary narcosis. 3. ShortMajor Operations.-Preliminarynarcosis was adoptedbefore some of the major operations; the drugsusedwere "Omnopon",0'04 gramme (two-· thirds of a grain), and scopolamine, 0·43 milligramme (one one-hundred-and-fiftiethof a grain). Thoracotomyfor empyemawas performedon one patient, who received an injection of five cubic centimetres. The full dose of ten cubic centimetres was given in all the other cases,as follows: Appendicectomywas performedin three cases. Sympathectomy (presacral) was performed for dysmenorrhooain one case. Tonsillectomy was performedin one case. Reflexesreturnedbefore completion of the operation, but there was no serious hindrance. Consciousnessreturnedin half to three-quartersof an hour, and the patientsdozedfor a further period up to sixty minutes. In certain cases no preliminary narcosis was used: Appendicectomywas performed in one case. Excision of piles was performedin one case. Partial mammectomywas performedin one case. Fistula-in-omo was operatedon in one case. We do not consider "Evipan" a suitable amesthetic for abdominaloperations,on accountof the impossibility of foretelling the duration of the operation. It is not in the best interestsof surgery to work against the clock. True, the drug can be repeated,but fluctuation in the depth of auresthesia is a seriousdrawback. Many of the minor complications which occur during the administration of "Evipan" anresthetic can be explained by errors in technique,the most common being a too slow or too rapid rate of injection.


This paper presents a clinical comorbidity between a cerebral arterial aneurysm and a zoophilic behavior. This association has not been previously described before in the literature cited by PubMed. A 42-years old patient, without previous medical history, presented at the hospital with quite sudden onset of zoophilic behavior, disorientation and altered consciousness, was investigated and diagnosed with an aneurysm in the posterior cerebral artery. The case is unique due to the uncommon psychiatric presentation (zoophilic behavior), and its organic substrate: the presence of posterior cerebral arterial aneurysm with interpeduncular


Sports rankings play a very important role in modern sport. They most often determine who will be considered the favorite of a specific match or fight. In other cases, they decide on the seeding of a player (team) in the tournament, or determine whether he will be able to participate in it at all. There is no one consistent methodology for creating sports rankings. Each discipline has its own rules. Some are based on more or less complicated mathematical calculations, others are based on the subjective opinions of the experts who create them. In this study, we will look at sports rankings on the examples of football, chess and professional boxing, which represent completely different approaches to the methodology of creating rankings.
The FIFA football ranking is based on multifactorial calculations taking into account, among other things, the type of match played, its result, and the expected result of the match based on the analysis of the strength of both teams. In professional boxing, no single ranking has been created so far and each federation proposes its own rankings, to which an alternative may be the system based on the algorithm proposed by boxrec.com. In chess, the Elo system remains the dominant way of classifying players, although alternative methods often turn out to be more precise.


Seat position and angle are adjusted electrically in the power seat of an automobile, and the quality of the vehicle's interior is degraded by fluctuating sound frequencies related to that seat. In this research, a sound stabilization design for the operating sound of the power seat was proposed considering the uncertainty inherent in the production assembly. Initially, the fluctuations' influence on the sound quality was evaluated by varying the frequency and the Sound Pressure Level of the operation sound, and a standard value for the sound stabilization was determined by utilizing the Taguchi method to consider the SN ratio. Next, the Taguchi method was adapted to consider a simplified model of the joint elements of the seat slide. Then, an optimal control factor for sound stabilization was specified. The sound stabilization was applied, leading to a target value for the optimal control factor that was specified in the simplified model for the joint of the power seat. Finally, that target value was optimized using the optimal control factor. We concluded that it is possible to achieve sound stabilization of power seat operation while considering the uncertainty in production assembly in this research.


This paper addresses the problem of matching images and captions in a joint latent space learnt with deep canonical correlation analysis (DCCA). The image and caption data are represented by the outputs of the vision and text based deep neural networks. The high dimensionality of the features presents a great challenge in terms of memory and speed complexity when used in DCCA framework. We address these problems by a GPU implementation and propose methods to deal with overfitting. This makes it possible to evaluate DCCA approach on popular caption-image matching benchmarks. We compare our approach to other recently proposed techniques and present state of the art results on three datasets.


We present a code- and input-sensitive sanitization synthesis approach for repairing string vulnerabilities that are common in web applications. The synthesized sanitization patch modifies the user input in an optimal way while guaranteeing that the repaired web application is not vulnerable. Given a web application, an input pattern and an attack pattern, we use automata-based static string analysis techniques to compute a sanitization signature that characterizes safe input values that obey the given input pattern and are safe with respect to the given attack pattern. Using the sanitization signature, we synthesize an optimal sanitization patch that converts malicious user inputs to benign ones with minimal editing. When the generated patch is added to the web application, it is guaranteed that the repaired web application is no longer vulnerable. We present refinements to previous sanitization synthesis algorithms that reduce the runtime sanitization cost significantly. We evaluate our approach on open source web applications using common input and attack patterns, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.


Background: Despite the tremendous efforts regarding post hospital discharge services, the literature regarding health status, social and medical support of ICU survivors in Saudi Arabia is very limited. The main aim of our study is to conduct a general survey to describe health, medical and social status of ICU survivors. Methods: This was a cross- sectional study conducted at a tertiary academic center in Saudi Arabia. The phone survey has been conducted by the study investigators after getting a verbal consent for participation. A list of patients who were discharged from the hospital after an intensive care unit's admission from January 2018 to December 2018 was obtained. Results: Majority of our participants have no issues in concentration and only small percentage reported that they experience one or more of anxiety, depression, despair, and blue mood. A larger percentage of our subjects were satisfied by the support they received from their relatives, social support, and access to medical services. Conclusion: ICU survivors discharged from one center in Saudi Arabia reported great general health and satisfied by social and medical support but functional and mental status and multidisciplinary team approach worth further investigations.


Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is one of a group of disorders characterized by association with HLA-B27 histocompatibility complex, seronegativity for rheumatoid factor, and propensity for inflammation at entheses, synovial articulations, and cartilaginous articulations. The radiographic hallmark of the disease is ankylosis, and the principle sites of involvement are the sacroiliac joints and spine, with less frequent involvement of other joints, including the pubic symphysis, hips, shoulders, knees, hands, feet, and sternoclavicular, acromioclavicular, sternomanubrial, and temporomandibular joints. Following a brief discussion of the basic pathophysiology and typical clinical findings of AS, we describe the typical magnetic resonance imaging features of the disease as it is manifests in the axial skeleton. Finally, a brief mention of special considerations in the radiographic evaluation of the AS patient in the setting of trauma is made.


For generations government regulations and business traditions confined financial activities within national borders. Leaders and borrowers maintained relationships with domestic bankers, who offered little in the way of innovation or advantage. But the abolition of fixed exchange rates, along with hyper-inflation in the 1970s spelled the beginning of the end for this system. By the 1980s the financial game in the UK, Japan and USA was being played ith some important new rules, and by many new players. The old world of "relationship" banking had given way to financial transactions based upon price and product innovation. Macroeconomic forces and the policies of central bankers have profoundly altered international trade, exchange rates, and the flow of capital around the world. David Meerschwam explains these economic forces, describes the dramatic effects of de-regulation in the major centres of finance, and shows how financial services firms have had to alter their strategies and develop new skills in order to compete.


An argon atmospheric pressure plasma jet was employed to treat L929 murine fibroblasts cultured in vitro. Experimental results showed that, compared with the control cells, the treatment of fibroblasts with 15 s of plasma led to a significant increase of cell viability and collagen synthesis, while the treatment of 25 s plasma resulted in a remarkable decrease. Exploration of related mechanisms suggested that cold plasma could up-regulate CyclinD1 gene expression and down-regulate p27 gene expression at a low dose, while it could down-regulate CyclinD1 expression and up-regulate p27 expression at a higher dose, thus altering the cell cycle progression, and then affecting cell viability and collagen synthesis of fibroblasts.


Coumarin (1,2-benzopyrone) is a natural compound whose metabolism in humans was established in the 1970s. However, a new metabolite was recently identified in human plasma, indicating that the metabolism of coumarin has not been completely elucidated. To complement the knowledge of its metabolism, a rapid and sensitive method using UPLC-QTOF-MS was developed. A total of 12 metabolites was identified using MetaboLynxTM software, including eight metabolites not previously reported in human urine. The identified biotransformation included hydroxylation, glucuronidation, sulfation, methylation, and conjugation with N-acetylcysteine. The present work demonstrates that the metabolism study of coumarin was incomplete, possibly due to limitations of old techniques. The identification of eight inedited metabolites of such a simple molecule suggests that the information regarding the metabolism of other drugs may also be incomplete, and therefore, new investigations are necessary.


Perception results from the integration of incoming sensory information with pre-existing information available in the brain. In this EEG (electroencephalography) study we utilised the Hierarchical Frequency Tagging method to examine how such integration is modulated by expectation and attention. Using intermodulation (IM) components as a measure of non-linear signal integration, we show in three different experiments that both expectation and attention enhance integration between top-down and bottom-up signals. Based on multispectral phase coherence, we present two direct physiological measures to demonstrate the distinct yet related mechanisms of expectation and attention. Specifically, our results link expectation to the modulation of prediction signals and the integration of top-down and bottom-up information at lower levels of the visual hierarchy. Meanwhile, they link attention to the propagation of ascending signals and the integration of information at higher levels of the visual hierarchy. These results are consistent with the predictive coding account of perception.


This article discusses the implications of the rule of law crisis on a core area ofEUlaw: competition law. It analyses the reforms of the judiciary in selected EU Member States and the reaction of EU institutions. The article shows that the reforms of the judiciary give rise to doubts regarding the independence and expertise of courts which are responsible for reviewing the decisions of national competition authorities adopted under Articles 101–102 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and national competition laws. As a result, the effective judicial protection required by EU primary law is undermined. In addition, mutual trust, upon which the decentralized enforcement of EU competition law is based, is put into question. The article calls upon EU institutions, and in particular the European Commission, to monitor closely the developments in Member States which may affect the enforcement of EU (and national) competition rules.


Sustainability has been a topical issue for more than 20 years not only dealing with environmental/ecological, social/cultural and economic issues. Combining social, economic, and environmental initiatives in education is a complex process that should result in a completely new vision of educational institutions. It raises the necessity for a management structure to encourage and support the sustainability initiatives within the organisation. The article deals with one aspect of a larger scale and long-term grounded theory research to explore and define the concept of a sustainable team in educational institution. This article answers the research questions on how students are seen and perceived in the education management hierarchy of an educational institution, and what fosters the development of sustainable team in an educational institution. The data were collected by the content analysis of the education management hierarchy structure reflected on 33 homepages of educational institutions; content analysis of 62 students' teaching practice assignments on the education management hierarchy structure; 12 interviews with school administration on the state of the art of sustainable team. Research sample was 107 educational institutions: 23 primary schools, 66 secondary schools, and 18 state gymnasiums with broad geographical representation – the schools in the capital, cities, small towns, and countryside. Sustainable team achieves institutional goals and cultivates a culture where collaboration, appreciation, and teamwork are valued. According to the data of the study, there is a misunderstanding of the notion of a sustainable team in educational institutions in Latvia. There is also a lack of evidence of students as meaningful players in how the education management hierarchy is seen and interpreted which slows down the implementation of the sustainability initiatives.


Global biodiversity is threatened by the anthropogenic restructuring of animal communities, rewiring species interaction networks in real-time as individuals are extirpated or introduced. Conservation science and adaptive ecosystem management demand more rapid, quantitative, and non-invasive technologies for robustly capturing changing biodiversity and quantifying species interactions. Here we develop molecular ecological network analyses (MENA) as an ecosystem assessment tool to address these needs. To construct the ecological network, we used environmental DNA from feces to identify the plant and mammal diet of two carnivores: puma (Puma concolor) and bobcat (Lynx rufus); two omnivores: coyote (Canis latrans) and gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus); and two herbivores: black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) in a well-studied Californian reserve. To evaluate MENA as a comprehensive biodiversity tool, we applied our framework to identify the structure of the network, patterns of trophic interactions, key species, and to assess its utility in capturing the biodiversity of the area. The high dietary taxonomic resolution enabled the assessment of species diversity, niche breadth and overlap. The network analysis revealed a dense ecological network with a high diversity of weakly connected species and a community that is highly modular and non-nested. The significant prevalence of tri-trophic chain and exploitative competition patterns indicates (i) the removal or reintroduction of a top predator would trigger a trophic cascade within this community, directly affecting their prey and indirectly the plant communities, and (ii) the potential impact of indirect effects between two predators that consume the same prey. These results suggest that the recent resurgence of puma in the study area may impact the herbaceous and woody vegetation and the population size of other predators. This effect of fluctuating predator populations and plant communities could be predicted through MENA's fine-scale assessment of the diet selection and the identified keystone species. Although just using a subset of species, MENA more rapidly, accurately, and effectively captured the broader biodiversity of the area in comparison to other methodologies. MENA reconstructed and unveiled the hidden complexity in trophic structure and interaction networks within the community, providing a promising toolkit for biodiversity and ecosystem management.


BackgroundWith the outbreak of COVID-19, Japan declared a state of emergency on April 7, 2020, and certain social measures were taken, including requests for store closures. In recent years, before the outbreak, Japan has been implementing policies to expand the acceptance of foreign students and technical interns from overseas, mainly from middle-income countries to meet the challenges of a declining birthrate, an aging society, and a declining population. Because of said policies, the number of Vietnamese nationalities living in Japan has surged to more than 400,000. However, some reports mentioned the hardships experienced by these individuals in Japanese society. It is not clear what their health-related situation and living conditions are actually like under the COVID-19 epidemic. MethodThe application Facebook, which is frequently used by Vietnamese people, was used to solicit research participants and obtain their responses on a structured questionnaire asking about their present health-related situations changes in the living environment in COVID-19 via Google Form.Result196 Vietnamese residents in Japan responded to the survey. The 25.4% of respondents have some kind of health problem, of which 14.2% have a mental problem and 5.6% have Symptoms of suspected COVID-19 infection were present. The 50% of these respondents chose a counseling center to deal with the symptoms of suspected COVID-19, which follows the Japanese policy direction. In fact, more than 80% of respondents said that they feel difficulty in visiting a medical institution in Japan, with problems being anxiously of medical cost and the language barrier given that most of the individuals are students and apprentices with short tenures in Japan. Furthermore, 65.8% is dissatisfied with Japanese measures against COVID-19. A total of 53.5% experienced income reduction and 27.0% experienced housing environment deterioration after COVID-19 epidemic. ConclusionIt is necessary to grasp the current situation of Vietnamese people living in Japan, since they are considered to be a vulnerable group in an emergency environment, and to take appropriate measures to aid in their predicament as soon as possible.


Theory and research in social, evolutionary, and political psychology indicates that subjective feelings of threat and exposure to objectively threatening circumstances—including pandemic diseases—may contribute to increased affinities for political conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism, and prejudice against out-group members. We investigated these possibilities in the context of Italy, which was the first Western country to be severely affected by the spread of COVID-19. Early on in the pandemic, from March 3–8, 2020, we surveyed 757 Italian adults ranging in age from 18 to 78 years. Results revealed that antipathy toward immigrants and sexual minorities was predicted by (male) sex, COVID-19 anxiety, RWA, and political distrust. Furthermore, COVID-19 anxiety magnified the effect of RWA on disliking of immigrants and sexual minorities (but not obese or disabled people). Contrary to prediction, political trust failed to attenuate the effects of COVID-19 anxiety or RWA on out-group antipathy. Implications for the theories of right-wing authoritarianism and political ideology as motivated social cognition, as well as the state of contemporary Italian politics are discussed.


We discuss how the spatial extent of physical endurants influences the conceptualization of their spatial qualities. Comparing the spatial dimensionality of a physical endurant with the spatial dimensionality of its qualities leads to an interesting formal ontological question. Should a spatial quality be conceptualized as having a value range instead of a single value when its bearer has a higher spatial dimensionality? For example, the one-dimensional depth quality can be conceptualized as having a value range when it is assigned to the three-dimensional water body of a lake. In terms of the foundational ontology DOLCE, the "value" of a quality, sometimes called quale, is located at an atomic region at a certain time. Allowing a value range at a time is to model qualities as being located at non-atomic regions at a time. That might be philosophically debatable, yet, this modeling approach enables the development of information discovery systems that can cope with ontologically imprecise user queries and can assist the user in defining ontologically precise quality specifications. This brings formal ontology closer to practical applications.

The investigation is based on the foundational ontology DOLCE and introduces a classification for spatial qualities based on their spatial dimensionality.


Otto Theodor "Ted" Benfey, emeritus professor of chemistry and the history of science at Guilford College, is the recipient of the 2019 HIST Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry by the American Chemical Society Division of the History of Chemistry. The award includes a plaque and $1,500. Benfey is a leader in chemical education and the history of science. He has written 7 books on chemistry and the history of chemistry, 14 monograph chapters on the history of chemistry, and 89 articles and reviews on chemistry and the history of science. He is credited with strengthening the chemistry curriculum at Guilford College. He started a program offering evening classes to continuing education students, and he enhanced the college's ties with chemical industry. In 1988, Benfey took over as editor at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, where he oversaw the publication of Chemical Heritage. Benfey will receive the award


ntroduction: Desmoids of the chest wall are benign and rare tumors that usually arise from the fascia of the pectoralis major muscle, uncommonly from the mammary gland. These tumors sometimes can be locally aggressive, infiltrating surrounding tissues. Clinically they can appear suspicious for malignancy, as palpable and firm masses infiltrating the pectoral muscles.
Case reports: We report the cases of a two young women with an extra-abdominal desmoid. The first case is a pectoralis major desmoids; the patient underwent a wide excision with clear margins and after a follow-up of 12 months is disease free. The second case is about a desmoid arising from the mammary gland. This patient had a wide mammary resection, but one mammary margin was closed; in consideration of the need of a more aggressive surgery in front of a benign disease, the patient refused a further treatment with knowledge of the risk of recurrence.
Discussion: The desmoid tumors are rare and benign diseases that can present serious problems in the differential diagnosis with malignant diseases. In the management of these tumors surgery has a key role with the goal to obtain a good local control through a wide excision with clear margins, avoiding, when it's possible, aggressive procedures.
Conclusions: Management of desmoid tumors sometimes is difficult and may take in consideration the need of an aggressive surgery in front of a benign disease. A radical excision with a good cosmetic result must be the goal of each surgeon.


Symbolic regression (SR) is the process of discovering hidden relationships from data with mathematical expressions, which is considered an effective way to reach interpretable machine learning (ML). Genetic programming (GP) has been the dominator in solving SR problems. However, as the scale of SR problems increases, GP often poorly demonstrates and cannot effectively address the real-world high-dimensional problems. This limitation is mainly caused by the stochastic evolutionary nature of traditional GP in constructing the trees. In this paper, we propose a differentiable approach named DGP to construct GP trees towards high-dimensional SR for the first time. Specifically, a new data structure called differentiable symbolic tree is proposed to relax the discrete structure to be continuous, thus a gradient-based optimizer can be presented for the efficient optimization. In addition, a sampling method is proposed to eliminate the discrepancy caused by the above relaxation for valid symbolic expressions. Furthermore, a diversification mechanism is introduced to promote the optimizer escaping from local optima for globally better solutions. With these designs, the proposed DGP method can efficiently search for the GP trees with higher performance, thus being capable of dealing with high-dimensional SR. To demonstrate the effectiveness of DGP, we conducted various experiments against the state of the arts based on both GP and deep neural networks. The experiment results reveal that DGP can outperform these chosen peer competitors on high-dimensional regression benchmarks with dimensions varying from tens to thousands. In addition, on the synthetic SR problems, the proposed DGP method can also achieve the best recovery rate even with different noisy levels. It is believed this work can facilitate SR being a powerful alternative to interpretable ML for a broader range of real-world problems.


The purpose of this study was to modify the biodistribution and pharmacokinetics of tilisolol, a beta-blocker, using the palmitoyl prodrug approach. After intravenous administration of tilisolol and O-palmitoyl tilisolol in rats, drug concentrations were determined in blood, bile, urine, and several tissues. The concentration-time profiles of tilisolol and O-palmitoyl tilisolol were analyzed pharmacokinetically. The blood concentrations of O-palmitoyl tilisolol after intravenous administration of O-palmitoyl tilisolol were about 10-fold higher than those of tilisolol after intravenous administration of tilisolol. The biliary excretion rates of O-palmitoyl tilisolol and tilisolol after intravenous administration of O-palmitoyl tilisolol were about 10- to 100-fold larger than those of tilisolol after intravenous administration of tilisolol. In addition, the hepatic uptake clearance of O-palmitoyl tilisolol after intravenous administration of O-palmitoyl tilisolol was 3.6-fold higher than that of tilisolol after the intravenous administration of tilisolol. In the in vitro experiments, it was demonstrated that the distribution ratios between blood cells and plasma (blood/plasma) of O-palmitoyl tilisolol and tilisolol was 95.7 and 55.5%, respectively. These findings suggest that O-palmitoyl tilisolol exists as a binding form with biological components, especially blood cells, in systemic circulation. In conclusion, the palmitoyl prodrug approach is useful as a drug delivery system to deliver the parent drug to the liver.


In this paper we investigate the quantitative importance of efficiency wages in explaining fluctuations in Bulgarian labor markets. This is done by augmenting an otherwise standard real business cycle model a la Long and Plosser (1983) with unobservable workers effort by employers and wage contracts as in Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984). This imperfection in labor markets introduces a strong propagation mechanism that allows the model to capture the business cycles in Bulgaria better than earlier models. The model performs well vis-a-vis data, especially along the labor market dimension, and in addition dominates the market-clearing labor market framework featured in the standard RBC model, e.g Vasilev (2009).


OBJECTIVE
To examine "near-miss" cases to identify the weak points of our department.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
This prospective study took place at the Libreville Hospital Maternity Center for six months, from 1 June to 31 December 2006. It included all pregnant women with a severe obstetrical complication (uterine haemorrhage with signs of shock, eclampsia, severe infection) or whose condition required a major intervention to prevent death. The quality of these patients' management was studied from their arrival in the department to their discharge.

RESULTS
The prevalence of near-misses was of 3.15%, that is, 137 cases among 4350 deliveries. Ruptured ectopic pregnancies, haemorrhage following clandestine elective abortions, and post-partum haemorrhages (third stage of delivery) were the three primary causes for near misses. Almost 40% of these women waited more than 45 minutes before seeing any qualified personnel. Once the patient was seen, clinical examinations were impossible for 22% because of the lack of the appropriate material. The average time to surgery was 5 hours and 15 minutes. The lack of sterilized surgical linens was one of the major causes of delay in surgical management.

CONCLUSION
The number of patients seeking care in our department, relative to the staff resources, makes it difficult to optimise the quality of emergency obstetric care.


A review of experimental methodology can uncover the shortcomings of a particular driving assessment technique, providing insight for the development and refinement of this assessment technique, and its application for further studies. By employing a case study as the backdrop for such a review, a context is created within which the specific application of the assessment technique can be examined and discussed. This paper presents the results of the examination of the driver assessment techniques as applied to the case study which investigated the relationship between conversation intensity while using a cell phone and driver performance. A secondary task technique was applied to study the influence of the intensity of conversation on the degradation of driving performance attributed to using a cellular telephone. Forty participants drove through simulated driving environments and engaged in cellular telephone conversations with the experimenter. After driving through each environment participants provided a rating of the workload experienced during the cellular telephone conversation during the drive. Accelerator input, speed, steering input, and lane position measurements were recorded while participants drove through particular sections of the simulated driving environments. Results of the study indicated the variation of steering input increased when the cellular telephone was used. As far as differences between the male participants and female participants, the males generally drove faster and the females responded more quickly to a situation requiring a sudden braking or steering maneuver. Overall, the drivers perceived the workload to be greater when using a cellular telephone. However, the use of the case study to examine the driver assessment and secondary task techniques indicated there were several positive and negative attributes which need to be considered in future research where such techniques are to be applied. For example, an analysis of the performance measures revealed that changes in the horizontal alignment of the roadway created lasting perturbations in the data. In particular, increased variations in steering input and lane position were observed for a considerable distance and time after a participant exited a curved section of roadway. These perturbations subsequently interfered with the application of the secondary task. Results of this case study are discussed in terms of the positive and negative attributes of employing the driving assessment techniques and secondary techniques, how to enhance the utility of these techniques, and the theoretical and practical application of these techniques for on-road and simulated driving environment research.


This paper deals with the issue of the spatial horizontal variability of soil moisture in the root zone of a shallow soil at the large scale. The problem of water flow in the unsaturated zone is formulated so that topography appears explicitly as a forcing for the movement and redistribution of soil moisture. This formulation emphasizes the role of the lateral redistribution of water that is induced by topography. A stochastic theory is developed to relate the statistical distribution of soil moisture to that of elevation. This approach will ultimately facilitate the use of the readily available data sets describing topography for the purpose of defining the large‐scale distribution of soil moisture. The steady state horizontal distribution of soil moisture under homogeneous bare soil conditions is regulated by three distinct factors: topography, climate, and soil properties. First, topography, forces a distribution of soil moisture that tends to mimic the elevation field at large scales. The other two factors are the vertical divergence of water in response to the climate forcing (evaporation) and the capillary resistance to water movement. The climate forcing tends to smooth the spatial distribution of soil moisture. However, the capillary forces exerted by the soil matrix tend to resist displacement of water and hence exert adverse effects against the topography and climate forcings. The variance of the soil moisture distribution increases with the variance of the elevation field and decreases with the correlation scale of the elevation field and the magnitude of the climate forcing. The impact of capillary forces on the vertical fluxes of water is more significant than their impact on the topographically induced horizontal fluxes, owing to the larger hydraulic gradient in the vertical direction resulting from the disparity in scale between the vertical and horizontal directions.


The purpose of Lesotho Highlands Water Project is primarily to supply water from Lesotho to Gauteng Province, the industrial region of South Africa. In addition, the hydroelectric scheme at Muela will supply enough electrical power to meet the needs of Lesotho. The project consists of a number of dams, reservoirs and tunnels, and a hydroelectric scheme which will be constructed in four phases. Construction operations, if the project runs to completion, will last until around 2020. Phase IA commenced in 1987 and consists of Katse Dam, a Transfer Tunnel from the impounded reservoir to the Muela Hydroelectric Power Station, the Muela Dam, and a Delivery Tunnel from the latter dam to the outfall on the Ash River, which is part of the Vaal River system. The tunnels total some 81 km in length. Except for the adits which were drilled and blasted, the tunnels were constructed by five tunnel boring machines. The Katse Dam and Transfer Tunnel were constructed in the basalts of the Drakensberg Formation. Many of these basalts have been subjected to deuteric alteration and consequently contain expansive clay minerals. Their presence can mean that the basalts disintegrate rapidly on exposure, which led to increased excavation at the dam site, and slabbing and spalling from the perimeter of the tunnel. The Muela Hydroelectric Power Station and Delivery Tunnel South were constructed primarily in sandstones of the Clarens Formation. These sandstones presented few problems during excavation and this tunnel was bored 20 months ahead of schedule. It was anticipated that the Delivery Tunnel North would be the most difficult to excavate as it runs through a succession of mudstones and sandstones. Hence, this tunnel was excavated by a double-shielded tunnel boring machine which could bore through varied ground and provide protection against rock fall, while simultaneously installing precast lining segments.


Abstract Polycrystalline samples of Nd1-xPrxBa2Cu3O7-δ with 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.30 were made by standard solid state methods. The transport and superconducting properties were studied by the resistivity and the thermoelectric power measurements as a function of temperature and doping concentration. The resistance and the thermoelectric power were increased by increasing doping concentration. The pseudogap temperature was measured from downturn deviation in a linear dependence of resistance as a function of temperature. The resitivity, the thermoelectric power, the critical temperature, and the pseudogap temperature results suggested that the hole concentration in CuO2 planes was decreased by increasing Pr doping concentration. The resistivity and the thermoelectric power results were analyzed by the bipolaron and the phenomenological narrow band model, respectively. A good agreement between models and data was obtained. On the basis of these models, it was inferred that the localization tendency is one of the main reasons for decreasing the hole concentration in the CuO2 plane, which results in the strong depression of the superconductivity.


Twenty-five knees in 24 patients with infected total knee replacements were treated with debridement, component removal, and insertion of an antibiotic impregnated cement spacer block. Intravenous antibiotics were administered for 6 weeks during which time the patients' knees were kept in a knee immobilizer nonweightbearing. These cases were reviewed retrospectively to determine radiographically the amount of bone loss that occurred during the period before reimplantation. Tibial and femoral bone loss occurred frequently from invagination of the cement spacer block into the femoral and tibial cancellous bone. Tibial bone loss was present in 10 (40%) cases and averaged 6.2 mm. Femoral bone loss was present in 11 (44%) cases and averaged 12.8 mm. Bone loss was more common when spacer blocks were undersized. None of the 15 spacer blocks that were made with a small intramedullary stem displaced. Three of the remaining 10 spacer blocks made without an intramedullary stem did displace with associated bone loss. Antibiotic spacer blocks used in the two-stage treatment of infected total knee replacements can be associated with subsequent tibial and femoral bone loss.


The domain wall mobility derived from the generalized Landau-Lifshitz equation taking into account nonconservation of magnetization modulus yields two distinctly different damping constants. The first one is related to ferromagnetic resonance line width which is independent of in-plane field. The second is due to the presence of the domain wall and is transverse field dependent. The relative importance of the two constants depends very much on the presence or absence of the in-plane field. The formulation also allows us to make a reasonable estimate of the longitudinal susceptibility of the sample.


A combined pyrolysis and gasification process for sewage sludge was studied in this paper for the purpose of its safe disposal with energy self-balance. Three sewage sludge samples with different dry basis lower heat values (LHV(db)) were used to evaluate the constraints on this combined process. Those samples were pre-dried and then pyrolysed within the temperature range of 400–550 °C. Afterwards, the char obtained from pyrolysis was gasified to produce fuel gas. The experimental results showed that the char yield ranged between 37.28 and 53.75 wt% of the dry sludge and it changed with ash content, pyrolysis temperature and LHV(db) of the sewage sludge. The gas from char gasification had a LHV around 5.31–5.65 MJ/Nm3, suggesting it can be utilized to supply energy in the sewage sludge drying and pyrolysis process. It was also found that energy balance in the combined process was affected by the LHV(db) of sewage sludge, moisture content and pyrolysis temperature. Higher LHV(db), lower moisture content and higher pyrolysis temperature benefit energy self-balance. For sewage sludge with a moisture content of 80 wt%, LHV(db) of sewage sludge should be higher than 18 MJ/kg and the pyrolysis temperature should be higher than 450 °C to maintain energy self-sufficiency when volatile from the pyrolysis process is the only energy supplier; when the LHV(db) was in the range of 14.65–18 MJ/kg, energy self-balance could be maintained in this combined process with fuel gas from char gasification as a supplementary fuel; auxiliary fuel was always needed if the LHV(db) was lower than 14.65 MJ/kg.


Comparison of some experimental data and deterministic dynamical models of heartbeat show that it is essential to consider stochastic mathematical models. The Zeeman heartbeat model is one of the main heartbeat models whose stochastic dynamics is less studied. Especially, investigating bifurcations in stochastic dynamical models can be useful for identifying abnormal cardiac rhythms. This paper is concerned with two essential features of the two dimensional stochastic Zeeman heartbeat model i.e., stability and bifurcation. To achieve this approach, Taylor expansion, polar coordinate transformation, and stochastic averaging procedure will be used to convert the classical system into an Ito averaging diffusion system. Furthermore, we consider several theorems which provide sufficient conditions of drift and diffusion coefficients to establish stochastic stability, D-bifurcation and phenomenological bifurcation of the model. In the end, numerical simulation plays an important role to show the influences of the noise severity and confirm our theoretical results.


In the 19th and early 20th centuries, in the territories of Poland annexed by three partitioners, books and periodicals printed in Polish played an important role in shaping and maintaining national ties among Poles living under Russian, Prussian and Austrian rules. In the period of the Partitions of Poland, all processes involving the book – printing, collecting and reading – as well as such institutions as publishing houses, bookshops and libraries were closely connected with different spheres of social life, especially politics, law and economics. That is why the situation of the Polish book on the eve of the restoration of national independence can be best captured by analysing those external, yet very important, factors. The interrelations of politics and law with the book are best reflected in publishing policies which developed under the influence of censorship, being a form of official examination of materials going to press. After the uprisings in 1830, 1863 and 1905, the partitioners tightened the legislation setting limits on Polish cultural and academic texts. As a result, on the one hand, the number of books officially published in Polish decreased and, on the other hand, the number of those published illegally increased. The most important publishing centres in the 19th century were Warsaw and Vilnius in the territory annexed by Russia, Cracow and Lviv in Austria, and Poznanin Prussia. In the Polish territories annexed by three partitioners, the control over publications varied (being strictest under Russian rule) and hence the authorities hindered the circulation of printed materials across the borders. In the 19th century, collecting Polish books and other national mementoes became very popular, which resulted in establishing private libraries rich in valuable manuscripts, incunabula, old and new prints, cartography and other special collections. The biggest of those libraries joined together and were put to public use by establishing new ones whose functioning was legally guaranteed by the foundation act. Such libraries were the Ossolinscy Library and the Bawarowscy Library in Lviv, the Ordynacja Krasinskich Library and the Ordynacja Zamojskiej Library in Warsaw, the Dzialynscy Library in Kornik, the Raczynscy Library in Poznan, and the Ordynacja Przeździeckich Library in Czarny Ostrow in Podolia. Those institutions helped not only to preserve Polish written works, but also to compile Polish bibliography. The most important work compiled at the end of the 19th century was Bibliografia polska by Karol Estreicher (22 volumes released between 1872–1908). When Poland regained its independence in 1918, a lot of enterprises involving the book, which had been started during the period of the Partitions, were continued.


The present study examined whether bullying, defending, and outsider behaviors in preschool children were associated with two conscience aspects (empathic concern and internalization of rules) and with emotion understanding. We also investigated whether emotion understanding moderated the relationship between these dimensions and bullying roles. Participants were 105 children (51 males), aged 36 to 76 months. Bullying roles were assessed through peer nominations. Internalization of rules and empathic concern were observed in classroom and their scores derived from selected Q-Sort items. Emotion understanding was evaluated with the Puppet Interview administered to children. Results showed that empathic concern and internalization of rules were negatively associated with bullying and outsider behaviors, whereas emotion understanding correlated with defending behavior. The interaction between emotion understanding and internalization of rules was also significant: Low scores on rule-compatible conduct were associated with bullying or outsider behavior, in particular for those children with poor emotion understanding.


High reliability guarantees for Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) require accurate knowledge of channel statistics used as an input for rate selection. Exploiting the spatial consistency of channel statistics arises as a promising solution, allowing a base station to predict the propagation conditions and select the communication parameters for a new user from samples collected from previous users of the network. Based on this idea, this article provides a timely framework to exploit long-range channel spatial correlation through so-called statistical radio maps, enabling URLLC communications with given statistical guarantees. The framework is exemplified by predicting the channel capacity distribution both in a location-based radio map and in a latent space rendered by a channel chart, the latter being a localization-free approach based on channel state information. It is also shown how to use the maps to select the transmission rate in a new location that achieves a target level of reliability. Lastly, several future directions and research challenges are also discussed.


pressure plasmas has received growing attention in recent years for the potential
use of these plasmas in biomedical applications, air treatment and chemical
synthesis. As oxygen, H2O is a good precursor of reactive oxygen species (ROS)
and the two can be combined to create cocktails of ROS (O, OH, O3, 1O2, OOH and
H2O2) of different compositions. These plasmas tend to be electronegative and
display interesting dynamics, particularly when created in small gaps. From a
practical point of view, it is important to understand the chemical pathways leading to
the production of the biologically relevant ROS, as this will provide guidelines for the
optimization of the plasma sources for a particular application.


MOTIVATION
p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase activation plays an important role in resistance to chemotherapeutic cytotoxic drugs in treating multiple myeloma (MM). However, how the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway is involved in drug resistance, in particular the roles that the various p38 isoforms play, remains largely unknown.

METHOD
To explore the underlying mechanisms, we developed a novel systems biology approach by integrating liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and reverse phase protein array data from human MM cell lines with computational pathway models in which the unknown parameters were inferred using a proposed novel algorithm called modularized factor graph.

RESULTS
New mechanisms predicted by our models suggest that combined activation of various p38 isoforms may result in drug resistance in MM via regulating the related pathways including extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathway and NFкB pathway. ERK pathway regulating cell growth is synergistically regulated by p38δ isoform, whereas nuclear factor kappa B (NFкB) pathway regulating cell apoptosis is synergistically regulated by p38α isoform. This finding that p38δ isoform promotes the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 in MM cells treated with bortezomib was validated by western blotting. Based on the predicted mechanisms, we further screened drug combinations in silico and found that a promising drug combination targeting ERK1/2 and NFκB might reduce the effects of drug resistance in MM cells. This study provides a framework of a systems biology approach to studying drug resistance and drug combination selection.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION
RPPA experimental Data and Matlab source codes of modularized factor graph for parameter estimation are freely available online at http://ctsb.is.wfubmc.edu/publications/modularized-factor-graph.php.


Abstract. Romania faces the challenges of a developing country preparing to cope with disasters, be they natural or technological. The paper entails comprehensive research on technological accidents triggered by natural hazards (so-called Natech accidents). The research is based on a survey conducted by the competent authorities on the Seveso II Directive in 2009. This survey enabled the identification of Natech hazards and their correlation with the vulnerability of local communities and infrastructures. The Natech hazards were analyzed also in terms of their inclusion in the emergency planning process, starting from the current legislation. The results indicate that the number of incidents (including Natech events) has significantly decreased subsequent to the appropriate implementation of emergency plans and safety reports.


Lifestyle is how a person lives. It is an interest, opinion, behavior and behavioral orientation of an individual, group or culture. Lifestyle diseases are defined as diseases linked with the way people live their life. This is commonly caused by lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating, stress, Alcohol, drugs and smoking. The incidence of lifestyle diseases like hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and obesity-associated with cardiovascular diseases are high on the rise. In Ayurveda, lifestyle disorders have been explained in different contexts. Santarpanajanya vikaras and diseases caused due to Gramya Ahara-Viharas, which are said in Charaka Samhita and Rasanimittameva Sthoulya concept in Sushruta Samhita are mainly considered under lifestyle diseases. In India, rapid urbanization and globalization largely contribute towards an increased number of people suffering from lifestyle disorders. The urban people have a less physically active lifestyle more exposure to products and technologies that could be unhealthy. As Ayurveda is a life science and describes the prevention and management of lifestyle disorders, the world is attracted to its potential. Ayurveda provides a better solution for lifestyle disorders in the form of Pathya Ahara (diet) and Vihara (lifestyle), Panchakarma treatment like shodhana (Vamana, Virechana, Basti, Raktamokshana and Nasya), Shamana chikitsa and Rasayana chikitsa. The main aim of Ayurveda is to provide an individual's physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.


The compelling power of humor makes it a recurrent topic for research in many fields, including communication. Three theories of humor creation emerge in humor research: the relief theory, which focuses on physiological release of tension; the incongruity theory, singling out violations of a rationally learned pattern; and the superiority theory, involving a sense of victory or triumph. Each theory helps to explain the creation of different aspects of humor, but each runs into problems explaining rhetorical applications of humor. Because each theory of humor origin tries to explain all instances of humor, the diverging communication effects of humor remain unexplained. Humor's enactment leads to 4 basic functions of humor in communication. Two tend to unite communicators: the identification and the clarification functions. The other 2 tend to divide 1 set of communicators from others: the enforcement and differentiation functions. Exploration o f these effects-based functions of humor will clarify understanding of its use in messages. Humor use unites communicators through mutual identification and clarification of positions and values, while dividing them through enforcement of norms and differentiation of acceptable versus unacceptable behaviors or people. This paradox in the functions of humor in communication as, alternately, a unifier and divider, allows humor use to delineate social boundaries.