The diagnostic value of a new tumor marker, CYFRA 21-1, was studied in the blood samples collected from 22 controls, and 87 pre-treatment patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix. Sensitivity and specificity of CYFRA 21-1 was compared with those of squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCC) measured in the sera of the same patients. Serum CYFRA 21-1 levels were higher in patients with squamous cell carcinoma than in controls (p < 0.05), and correlated with FIGO stage (Stage IIb-IV vs. Stage Ib-IIa, p = 0.0477). Using 2.5 ng/ml as cut-off value, elevated CYFRA 21-1 levels were found in 13.6% of controls, 34.8% of patients with Stage Ib-IIa squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix, and 63.5% of patients with Stage IIb-IV squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix. However, there was less sensitivity and specificity of CYFRA 21-1 than those of SCC in detecting squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix. CYFRA 21-1 may not be a better tumor marker than SCC for squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix.


The object of investigation of the paper is a special type of difference equations containing the maximum value of the unknown function over a past time interval. These equations are adequate models of real processes which present state depends significantly on their maximal value over a past time interval. An algorithm based on the quasilinearization method is suggested to solve approximately the initial value problem for the given difference equation. Every successive approximation of the unknown solution is the unique solution of an appropriately constructed initial value problem for a linear difference equation with "maxima," and a formula for its explicit form is given. Also, each approximation is a lower/upper solution of the given mixed problem. It is proved the quadratic convergence of the successive approximations. The suggested algorithm is realized as a computer program, and it is applied to an example, illustrating the advantages of the suggested scheme.


We aimed to identify the early stress response and plant performance of Medicago truncatula growing in axenic medium with ammonium or urea as the sole source of nitrogen, with respect to nitrate-based nutrition. Biomass measurements, auxin content analyses, root system architecture (RSA) response analyses, and physiological parameters were determined. Both ammonium and ureic nutrition severely affected the RSA, resulting in changes in the main elongation rate, lateral root development, and insert position from the root base. The auxin content decreased in both urea- and ammonium-treated roots; however, only the ammonium-treated plants were affected at the shoot level. The analysis of chlorophyll a fluorescence transients showed that ammonium affected photosystem II, but urea did not impair photosynthetic activity. Superoxide dismutase isoenzymes in the plastids were moderately affected by urea and ammonium in the roots. Overall, our results showed that low N doses from different sources had no remarkable effects on M. truncatula, with the exception of the differential phenotypic root response. High doses of both ammonium and urea caused great changes in plant length, auxin contents and physiological measurements. Interesting correlations were found between the shoot auxin pool and both plant length and the "performance index" parameter, which is obtained from measurements of the kinetics of chlorophyll a fluorescence. Taken together, these data demonstrate that both the indole-3-acetic acid pool and performance index are important components of the response of M. truncatula under ammonium or urea as the sole N source.


textabstractIn early embryonic life, the primitive heart tube consists of two layers, the myocardium and the endocardium.
Eventually the heart tube loops to form a four-chambered structure providing for a circulation of blood by
rhythmic contractions of the myocardium. With the increase in heart size and myocardial work load, a separate
vasculature for the free myocardial wall is required. The formation of this coronary system is preceeded by the
outgrowth of the epicardium, covering the naked heart tube. Our studies were performed on quail and chicken
embryos, because of the high resemblance with human cardiac development. Avian embryos develop in
approximately three weeks and were staged according to the Hamburger&Hamilton (HH) stages. In avian
embryos the epicardial development starts at stage HH15 which is at three days of embryonic development, and
is completed at stage HH25, which is after seven days of incubation. Epicardial cells are derived from the
proepicardial organ (PEO), that protrudes as a cauliflower-like structure from the mesothelial lining of the body
cavity near the sinus venosus and primitive liver, towards the inner curvature of the heart. The villi of the PEO
reach the heart at the posterior atrial side where the sinus venosus myocardium is incorporated and the epicardial
cells start to spread over the naked heart tube, until they eventually cover the myocardium completely.


This paper addresses the problem of efficient planning DVB-H networks assuming that the existing broadcasting and cellular infrastructure can be used in the network deployment. The planning objective consists in deciding which existing cellular sites should be used jointly with the broadcasting towers in a minimum cost deployment. A multi-objective genetic algorithm has been utilized to seek minimum cost network configurations as a function of the area coverage level. We investigate the achievable cost savings offered by a hybrid infrastructure compared to using only the existing broadcasting towers and the cellular sites separately


There has been a growing recognition regarding the use of social networks to engage communities in government actions. However, despite increasing awareness of social networks, there is very limited evidence for their application in relation to climate policy. This study fills this gap by assessing the potential of social networks for engaging local communities in climate adaptation policy, drawing on a case study of the Shoalhaven region in Australia. Participants from key representative groups were recruited using a purposive snowball sampling technique (N = 24). By mapping knowledge acquisition and diffusion networks in relation to climate adaption at the local scale, this study identified key nodes within the networks. Findings demonstrate that although climate adaptation information was acquired from a diverse range of sources, the sharing knowledge networks were far more dispersed. Furthermore, although 165 knowledge sources were identified, three nodes had coverage cross the entire network, and as such acted as boundary spanners within the sharing network. This research demonstrates the utility of social network analysis to reveal the underlying knowledge networks and structures that influence community engagement pathways and in doing so outlines key implications in relation to engaging local communities in climate policy and action. Policy relevance The rapid development of adaptation as a mainstream strategy for managing the risks of climate change has resulted in the emergence of a broad range of adaptation policies and management strategies globally. However, the success of these initiatives is largely dependent on their acceptance and uptake by local communities, which to date remains a significant challenge. Accordingly, policy makers require novel approaches to overcome barriers to community engagement so as to enhance the likely success of community engagement pathways. This article demonstrates the value of using social network analysis to reveal the underlying knowledge network structures. This approach makes it possible to identify key individuals within a community who can disseminate adaptation information quickly across broad geographic ranges. By utilizing this approach, policy makers globally will be able to increase the extent to which adaption initiatives are accepted and adhered to by local communities, thus increasing their success.


In order for international humanitarian and development organizations to integrate effective programs, the communities they seek to benefit must be informed, engaged and active in the process. Yet the targeted communities are rarely given an opportunity to contribute in shaping programs that meet their needs. This paper shares the experiences and lessons learned from a home gardening project that combined photography in which participants took photos for three-months. The purpose of the project was not only to enable women to grow food for their families but also empower them to show through photos the day-to-day challenges they face in Haiti; issues that organizations may take into account as they undertake humanitarian and development efforts. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere where 80% of its people live below the international poverty line of $2 per day and 54% live in abject poverty surviving on just $1.25 per day. Poverty levels are reflected in a very high infant mortality rate where 52 of every 1,000 children are dying before the age of one year (in the U.S. it is six per 1,000). This poverty is forcing at least 225,000 Haitian children to work as unpaid household servants, which is considered to be a modern-day form of slavery. Haiti is also the world's first black-lead republic. Located just 838 miles from Florida it is roughly the size of Maryland. With just over 10 million residents, it shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. The primary languages spoken are French and Creole. Its indigenous name, Ayiti, means "land of the high mountain." The home gardening project equipped 50 participants through training and education with the essential knowledge to establish and sustain their gardens for family consumption. Additionally, as the project evolved, participants took photos of their everyday lives using disposable cameras. The idea was to use pictures that they took so they could tell their stories of the daily challenges they face. The photos from forty developed disposable cameras were used to create two photo albums, one from the researcher's point of view, the other from the participants' perspective. Key research lessons learned from this experience are: a) Research how you can wire the money to the country you will be employed, b) culture and traditions could alter the purpose of the research, c) be open to feedback, d) journal or make voice recordings to document experiences, e) get involved with different aspects of the organization, and f) build meaningful relationships with project staff and participants. Developing and implementing projects based on photography is a way to assess the needs of a community.  This approach may allow non-governmental, faith-based, humanitarian, and governmental organizations to engage with target populations before proposing efforts to address such issues as poverty and food insecurity.


The magnetic properties of the intermetallic compounds Gd1−xYxMn2Ge2 (0≤x≤0.5) (tetragonal crystal structure of the type ThCr2Ge2) have been measured in fields up to 40 T in the temperature range 4.2–120 K on free powders (whose particles are free to rotate in a magnetic field), fixed powders, and polycrystalline bulk samples. The temperature dependence of the crystal structure parameters of some of these intermetallic compounds was determined from x-ray diffraction measurements. It was found that the temperatures of magnetic disordering of the gadolinium magnetic subsystem and the transition of the manganese subsystem from the ferromagnetic to the antiferromagnetic state decrease as the gadolinium content is decreased, so that in compositions with x<0.3 this transition is a first-order phase transition, and with further decrease of the gadolinium content it becomes second-order. In intermetallic compounds of this system with x=0.3 and 0.4 another spontaneous first-order transition is observed at lower temperatures. In a magnetic field the magnetization of all the investigated intermetallic compounds except for the composition x=0.5 undergo a metamagnetic transition. The T-x, H-x, and H-T magnetic phase diagrams are constructed. The experimental data are interpreted with allowance for the fact that according to the results of previous studies, the Mn-Mn exchange interaction is antiferromagnetic, and thus the examined intermetallic compounds are two-sublattice ferrimagnets with negative exchange interaction in one of the sublattices. Calculations performed within the framework of this model in the Yafet-Kittel approximation, which assumes that the sublattice with negative exchange can be divided into two sub-sublattices, permit a quantitative description of the experimental results in most cases.


A review is given comparing the status of cutback bitumen versus bitumen emulsion usage in the different countries in western Europe. The function of cationic surfactants as adhesion agent and bitumen emulsifier is explained. Cationic bitumen emulsions are dominantly used in surface dressing and the aspects of this technology are discussed in detail. The test methods for bitumen emulsion and their relationship with practice is given. A survey on western European emulsion specifications is included. Tack coat emulsions, slurry seal emulsions and future expectations are briefly discussed (a).


With the use of a microscope equipped with polarization and fluorescence, and simple laboratory techniques, the presence of and/or contamination by cementing additives can be confirmed in fieldblended cementing compositions. The initial learning process involved in this procedure is observing and learning the appearance of neat cements and the various additives using plain, polarized and fluorescence light microscopy. When individual characteristics such as color, size, shape and texture of each additive are noted, these can easily and quickly be qualitated when viewed under the microscope, whether they are present as the only additive in a blend or with various other additives.


This paper is devoted to the classification of quantum systems among the quantum spaces. In the normed case we obtain a complete solution to the problem when an operator space turns out to be an operator system. The min and max quantizations of a local order are described in terms of the min and max envelopes of the related state spaces. Finally, we characterize min-max-completely positive maps between Archimedean order unit spaces and investigate entanglement breaking maps in the general setting of quantum systems. Bibliography: 34 titles.


Introduction: Stress managing severely ill patients is known to can jeopardise the mental health of nurses. The presence of COVID-19 with its known risks to health care staff potentially exacerbates this distress. We sought to examine the mental health of female nurses who had volunteered to work in the epicentre of the pandemic in wuhan. Methods: We undertook the initial survey (standard questionnaire) early in the disease on the 20/1/20 and a follow up was obtained on the return of the staff to their usual residence/work. We used a novel rapid and repeatable health care survey using the mini programmes in WeChat Results and Discussion: The WeChat surveys produced a rapid and moderately prolific response. The vast majority were in Wuhan or surrounding districts. There was a significant reporting of unhappiness and emotional exhaustion which improved on follow-up and nursing felt that their work was valuable. They had real concerns for their own, colleagues and family safety Conclusion: The use of a WeChat survey app proved most useful in obtaining rapid and repeatable surveys as this difficult time. I could be useful for the examination of staff wellbeing in similar situations.


This paper reports upon brackish water impoundment studies conducted in the coastal marshes of Southwest Louisiana with a valued Louisiana delicacy, the red swamp crawfish, Procambarus clarki. Survival, growth and reproduction were recorded in an attempt to better evaluate the potential of Louisiana's brackish coastal areas for crawfish culture. The initial field experiments were begun in 1967, with the stocking and management of an experimental 5.6 acre pond at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge using the commonly accepted management techniques. Crawfish samples were taken and recorded from the study area throughout the season. Records were maintained of water pH, temperature and salinity. Soil and water analyses were made prior to draining in 1969. Vegetation types were identified and recorded before inundation and approximately two weeks after draining in an effort to determine the types of food and cover available. The results of this study proved very promising for the crawfish farming potential of thousands of acres of our less saline coastal wetlands.


Site preparation by mounding is a commonly used silvicultural treatment that improves tree growth conditions by mechanically creating planting microsites called mounds. Following site preparation, the next critical step is to count the number of mounds, which provides forest managers with a precise estimate of the number of seedlings required for a given plantation block. Counting the number of mounds is generally conducted through manual field surveys by forestry workers, which is costly and prone to errors, especially for large areas. To address this issue, we present a novel framework exploiting advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imaging and computer vision to estimate the number of mounds on a planting block accurately. The proposed framework comprises two main components. First, we exploit a visual recognition method based on a deep learning algorithm for multiple object detection by segmentation. This enables a preliminary counting of visible mounds, as well as other frequently seen objects (e.g., trees, debris, accumulation of water), to be used to characterize the planting block. Second, since visual recognition could be limited by several perturbation factors (e.g., mound erosion, occlusion), we employ a machine learning estimation function to predict the final number of mounds based on the local block properties extracted in the first stage. We evaluate the proposed framework on a new UAV dataset representing numerous planting blocks with varying features. The proposed method outperformed manual counting methods in terms of relative counting precision, indicating that it has the potential to be advantageous and efficient under challenging situations.


Non-O1, non-O139 Vibrio cholera (NOVC) are considered non-pathogenic organisms, but in some cases, it is known to be responsible for self-limiting intestinal and extra-intestinal infections in immunocompetent individuals. On the other hand, NOVC bacteremia affects mainly immunocompromised patients with significantly high mortality rates. We report a case of an 80-year-old female with a 20-year history of multiple abdominal surgeries. She is also known to have ischemic heart disease and atrial fibrillation. The patient presented with abdominal pain and signs of septic shock. Her abdominal imaging showed features of ascending cholangitis, while her blood culture grew V. cholera. She was discharged after completing the course of antibiotics but then came back with a similar presentation. The repeated blood culture showed Clostridium perfringens, while other cultures were negative. The patient's condition worsened due to sepsis, and she passed away. NOVC bacteremia is a fatal disease even in hosts who are not receiving immunosuppressants or chemotherapy. It may present without a history of diarrhea or seafood ingestion. In such situations, abdominal imaging is necessary to identify the presence of intra-abdominal infections.


Dimocarpus longan Lour. is an edible and traditional herb in China, commonly referred to as longon. An improved randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) protocol was here developed in order to determine the geographical origins of D. longan samples collected from 5 provinces in the southern and southwestern areas of China, including Sichuan, Hainan, Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi. Generally, the improved RAPD method generated good fingerprinting of the 5 samples using the selected 17 primers. In particular, primers SBS-A5, SBS-A13, SBS-I9, SBS-I20, SBS-M1, and SBS-Q12 produced distinguishable bands that clearly separated all 5 cultivars, suggesting that there are variations in RAPD genetic sites among the samples. The similarity index ranged from 0.69 to 0.76. The Sichuan and Hainan clades clustered together with a 0.73 similarity index. The Guangxi and Fujian clades clustered together with a 0.76 similarity index, and they formed the sister clade to the Sichuan/Hainan clade with a 0.71 similarity index. The Guangdong clade was in a basal polytomy with a 0.70 similarity index. Based on the abundant DNA polymorphisms, these longan accessions are distinguishable using our improved RAPD technique. Therefore, RAPD analysis is an effective technique in distinguishing the geographical origins of D. longan. Moreover, the improved method could also be employed for a variety of applications including genetic diversity and fingerprinting analyses.


Organolead-halide perovskites can be promising materials for next-generation solar cells because of its high power conversion efficiency. The method of precise fabrication is required because both solution-process and vacuum-process fabrication of the perovskite have problems of controllability and reproducibility. Vacuum deposition process was expected to achieve precise control; however, vaporization of amine compound significantly degrades the controllability of deposition rate. Here we achieved the reduction of the vaporization by implementing the laser evaporation system for the codeposition of perovskite. Locally irradiated continuous-wave lasers on the source materials realized the reduced vaporization of CH3NH3I. The deposition rate was stabilized for several hours by adjusting the duty ratio of modulated laser based on proportional-integral control. Organic-photovoltaic-type perovskite solar cells were fabricated by codeposition of PbI2 and CH3NH3I. A power-conversion efficiency of 16.0% with reduced hysteresis was achieved.


The thesis is based on the data analysis and detector development of the EMU01/CERN, E863/BNL and UA1/CERN experiments. Particle fluctuations are studied with the scaled factorial moments in the fragmentation region of oxygen-induced emulsion interactions from 3.7 to 200 A GeV. The intermittency indices show an energy independent behaviour in the target and projectile regions of pseudorapidity. In order to study the origin of the fluctuations, jet-like and ring-like substructures of particles produced in the azimuthal plane are investigated for the S-Au, S-Em and O-Em interactions at 200 A GeV. The study shows that the two-particle azimuthal correlations can be well understood if Bose-Einstein correlations and gamma conversion are included. A nuclear rescattering model, which incorperates the FRITIOF model, has been developed. The model can well describe multiplicity distributions of slow recoiling protons, evaporation particles and their correlations with particles produced in high energy heavy-ion collisions. In the autumn of 1994, truly heavy nuclei (Pb) were accelerated to 158 A GeV/c at the CERN/SPS. In order to improve the measurements of Pb-induced collisions, an automatic system based on the CCD technique and image processing was developed. This system has been used to measure densities of the particles produced. Mini-jet production is studied using the UA1 1987 minimum bias data sample for p bar p interaction at 630 GeV of C.M.S energy. The study shows that the transverse energy distribution of mini-jets is in good agreement with the QCD prediction. The angular distributions of two leading jets show the behaviour of elastic scattering of partons with gluon exchange. (Less)


Objective To study whether new pharmacological and non-pharmacological guidelines lowered numbers of painful procedures in neonates and changed the amount and frequency of analgesic therapy as compared to the results of our previous study in 2001. Design A prospective observational study.Setting: Level III NICU of the Erasmus MC-Sophia Children's Hospital, Rotterdam. Participants Neonates admitted at postnatal ages less than 3 days with length of stay at least 72 hours. Main outcome measures Number of all potentially painful procedures and analgesic therapy recorded at the bedside during the first 14 days of NICU stay. Results A total number of 21076 procedures were performed in the 175 neonates studied during 1730 patient-days (mean 12.2). The mean number of painful procedures per neonate per day was 11.4 (SD 5.7), significantly lower than the number of 14.3 (SD 4.0) in 2001 (p<0.001). The use of analgesics was 36.6% compared to 60.3% in 2001. Failed procedures encompassed sixty-three percent of all peripheral arterial line insertions vs. 37.5% in 2001 and 9.1% venipunctures vs. 21% in 2001. Conclusions The mean number of painful procedures per NICU patient per day declined and analgesic treatment changed to a more tailored or individualized approach. Non-pharmacological pain- or stress reducing strategies like NIDCAP and sucrose were fully embedded in our pain management. As further reduction of the number of painful procedures is unlikely we should explore newer pharmacological agents and apply non-pharmacological interventions more frequently.


This paper examined the challenges of promoting innovation and creativity among library and information science professionals in Nigeria using the experience of selected libraries in Imo state. The study used a sample size of seventy (70) respondents. Data were collected by using self-designed and well-structured questionnaires. The data were analyzed quantitatively using frequency counts and percentages. The results of the study revealed that library and information science professionals in Imo state are innovative and creative especially in the area of resources organization, e-resources management, CD-ROM management services and the attitude of librarians towards ICT is positive. The study findings also revealed that the challenges to effective application of innovative and creative skills are centers; librarians with innovative and creative skills should be recognized and motivated by encouraging them and organizing of in-associated with lack of finance to acquire technological facilities, lack of ICT skills, non-attendance to conference / workshop, unconducive work environment and lack of management interest in library services. It is therefore recommended that staff be allowed to attend conference / workshops organized for librarians; modern technologies be installed in library and information house training for staff. The paper concludes that if we must innovate and create avenues for successful change that will culminate in efficient library services delivery; we must embrace the wind of ICTs.


The stable hydrogen isotope ratios (δD) of leaf wax n-alkanes record valuable information on plant and ecosystem water relations. It remains, however, unknown if leaf wax n-alkane δD values record only environmental variation during the brief period of time of leaf growth or if leaf wax n-alkane δD values are affected by environmental variability throughout the entire lifespan of a leaf. To resolve these uncertainties, we irrigated Populus trichocarpa trees with a pulse of deuterium-enriched water and used compound-specific stable hydrogen isotope analyses to test if the applied tracer could be recovered from leaf wax n-alkanes of leaves that were at different stages of their development during the tracer application. Our experiment revealed that only leaf wax n-alkanes from leaves that had developed during the time of the tracer application were affected, while leaves that were already fully matured at the time of the tracer application were not. We conclude from our study that under controlled environmental conditions, leaf wax n-alkanes are synthesized only early in the ontogeny of a leaf. Our experiment has implications for the interpretation of leaf wax n-alkane δD values in an environmental context, as it suggests that these compounds record only a brief period of the environmental variability that a leaf experiences throughout its life.


IGBT-based voltage source converters (VSC) connected back-to-back (BTB) is a new technology that can provide reliable interconnection of power systems. At American Electric Power-Central Power and Light's (AEP-CPL)-Eagle Pass substation, a 36 MVA VSC based BTB tie, interconnecting AEP-CPL's and Comision Federal de Electricidad's (CFE) power systems, provides needed reactive power support for dynamic voltage control at the two ends of the BTB tie. At the same time it maintains a controlled bi-directional power transfer between the two power systems. The field tests performed during commissioning have demonstrated the capability of the BTB tie to provide independent control of the voltage at both ends and the real power transfer between AEP-CPL's and CFE's power systems. Stability of the BTB tie control system is. also demonstrated in normal operation as well as during "black start" of the BTB tie.


Date of Award 3-1975 Document Type Project Abstract In an era today of rapid growth in knowledge, the average contemporary man has forgotten the Creator, applauding only the creations of his own mind. It has been and is the task of theologians, whether pastors or professors,. to keep alive the option of belief in the reality of God--to remind man to clap. In the theologian's field of knowledge, as in all arenas of thought, literary works have exploded, bombed, and even splintered in a mind-expanding wilderness of information. Access to this knowledge and its availability to theologians was the impetus for the following study. Recommended Citation Johnson, Richard Alvin, "A Study of Christian (Systematic) Theology Books Used as Texts in A. T. S. Schools" (1975). Western Evangelical Seminary Theses. 421. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/wes_theses/421  Download


Knowledge Distillation (KD) refers to transferring knowledge from a large model to a smaller one, which is widely used to enhance model performance in machine learning. It tries to align embedding spaces generated from the teacher and the student model (i.e. to make images corresponding to the same semantics share the same embedding across different models). In this work, we focus on its application in face recognition. We observe that existing knowledge distillation models optimize the proxy tasks that force the student to mimic the teacher's behavior, instead of directly optimizing the face recognition accuracy. Consequently, the obtained student models are not guaranteed to be optimal on the target task or able to benefit from advanced constraints, such as large margin constraints (e.g. margin-based softmax). We then propose a novel method named ProxylessKD that directly optimizes face recognition accuracy by inheriting the teacher's classifier as the student's classifier to guide the student to learn discriminative embeddings in the teacher's embedding space. The proposed ProxylessKD is very easy to implement and sufficiently generic to be extended to other tasks beyond face recognition. We conduct extensive experiments on standard face recognition benchmarks, and the results demonstrate that ProxylessKD achieves superior performance over existing knowledge distillation methods.


This study aimed to assess the performance of three zeolite membranes in the removal of trivalent metal ions from aqueous solution using a cross-flow mode of operation. Three types of zeolite membrane, MCM-41, MCM-48 and FAU, were prepared on a low-cost, circular ceramic support by hydrothermal treatment. The three zeolite membranes were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and contact angle measurements. The XRD results confirmed the formation of zeolites. The deposition of zeolite on the ceramic support and hydrophilicity of zeolite membranes were monitored by FESEM and contact angle measurement, respectively. The pore size of the MCM-41, MCM-48 and FAU membrane was found to be 0.173 μm, 0.142 μm, and 0.153 μm, respectively, which was lower than that of the support (1.0 μm). The fabricated zeolite membranes were used to investigate the separation behavior of trivalent metal ions (Al 3+ and Fe 3+ ) from aqueous solution at various applied pressures. It was observed that an increase of applied pressure leads to a slight decrease in the removal efficiency. Among the various zeolite membranes, the FAU membrane showed the maximum rejection of 88% and 83% for Fe 3+ and Al 3+ separation, respectively.


X-ray diffraction (XRD) characterization of natural and intercalated smectites is usually limited to the apparent d-value estimated from the peak maxima in the raw data. This can lead to the misinterpretation of the measured data. In the case of XRD, the interference function is modulated by instrumental factors (Lorentz-polarization factor, diffraction geometry) and physical factors (structure factor, surface roughness effect). These effects lead to diffraction profile distortions, depending on the diffraction angle and peak full width at half maximum (FWHM). As a result, the diffraction profiles for structures with large line broadening (FWHM > 1°) exhibit a significant peak shift (Δd ∼ 1.5 Å), especially at low angles (2θ ≤ 10°). The present work deals with the detailed analysis of all these effects, their corrections and their consequences for the interpretation of diffraction patterns (including possible errors in determining lattice parameters or the structure model). The investigated materials were montmorillonites (MMT) intercalated with hydroxy-Al polymers. Diffraction profile analysis revealed the corrected d-values and showed that the intercalated sample is not a mixed-layered structure. As a result a structural model of the interlayer is presented.


With mobile devices becoming ubiquitous, collaborative applications have become increasingly pervasive. In these applications, there is a strong need to obtain a count of the number of mobile devices present in an area, as it closely approximates the size of the crowd. Ideally, a crowd counting solution should be easy to deploy, scalable, energy efficient, be minimally intrusive to the user and reasonably accurate. Existing solutions using data communication or RFID do not meet these criteria. In this paper, we propose a crowd counting solution based on audio tones, leveraging the microphones and speaker phones that are commonly available on most phones, tackling all the above criteria. We have implemented our solution on 25 Android phones and run several experiments at a bus stop, aboard a bus, within a cafeteria and a classroom. Experimental evaluations show that we are able to achieve up to 90% accuracy and consume 81% less energy than the WiFi interface in idle mode.


The reflection and transmission of a few-cycle femtosecond Ti:Sa laser pulse impinging on a metal nano-layer have been analyzed. The thickness of the layer was assumed to be of the order of 2 – 10 nm, and the metallic free electrons were represented by a surface current density at the plane boundary of a dielectric substrate. The target studied this way can be imagined for instance as a semi-transparent mirror produced by evaporating a thin aluminum layer on the surface of a glass plate. The exact analytical solution has been given for the system of the coupled Maxwell-Lorentz equations describing the dynamics of the surface current and the scattered radiation field. It has been shown that in general a non-oscillatory frozen-in wake-field appears following the main pulse with an exponential decay and with a definite sign of the electric field. The characteristic time of these wake-fields is inversely proportional with the square of the plasma frequency and with the thickness of the metal nano-layer, and can be larger then the original pulse duration. The magnitude of these wake-fields is proportional with the incoming field strength, and the definite sign of them is governed by the cosine of the carrier-envelope phase difference of the incoming ultrashort laser pulse. As a consequence, when we let such a wake-field excite the electrons of a secondary target (say an electron beam, a metal plate or a gas jet), we obtain 100 percent modulation depth in the electron signal in a given direction. This scheme can perhaps serve as a basis for the construction of a robust linear carrier-envelope phase difference meter.


The proposed Scaling-Up Energy Access project was launched in 2013 and expected to be phased out in November 2017. The project covers the Northern and Western provinces of Rwanda. The project expected to upgrade and rehabilitate two existing substations in Northern Province, the Gifurwe substation to 10MVA capacity and the Rulindo substation (also to be relocated) to 20MVA capacity; (ii) build about 464 km of medium voltage (MV) and 710 km of low-voltage (LV) distribution networks in both provinces; and (iii) connect 25,438 households and priority institutions (179 schools, 29 health centers and 25 sector administration offices) to the grid along the constructed distribution network areas. According to the project evaluation report of September, 2017 on performance of Scaling-Up Energy Access project, the project managed to achieve its targets in respect of connecting 179 schools, 29 health centers and 25 sector administration offices. By 15 September, 2017 which is the time the performance evaluation was carried out, and only 15, 568 households were connected against 25,438 targeted. The project evaluation report did not reveal the factors behind the failure of Scaling-Up Energy Access project to connect all of the targeted households. Given this situation; several factors like resources inadequacy, poor monitoring and evaluation, lack of technical designs, lack of effective contract management systems, poor infrastructures like roads, dispersed households and poor access to finance for local people are said to be on the top of the factors that led to poor performance of Scaling-Up Energy Access project in respect of connecting all of the targeted households. Up to now, there is no consensus among the project's stakeholders about the real factors that led to poor performance of Scaling-Up Energy Access project in respect to connecting all targeted households. Therefore, the researcher is eager to analyze the factors affecting performance of rural electrification projects in Rwanda. The researcher undertook quantitative research. Its sample size equaled to 158 respondents. Primary data were collected through the use of questionnaires. Based on the information drawn from findings the researcher concluded that the effect of technical design factors on performance of Scaling up Energy Access Project is significant. It was found out that the project could not perform without operational feasibility. Project also should not succeed without efficacy of technical feasibility. The findings demonstrated that there is a strong relationship between resource factors and performance of Scaling Up Energy Access Project. The study found out that financial resources have a great effect on successful completion of the project's activities. It showed that the increase of one unit in resource factors would increase the performance of Scale Up Energy Access project by .298 units if other variables remain constant. The findings study demonstrated that there is a strong relationship between contract factors and performance of Scaling Up Energy Access Project where the increase of one unit in resource factor increases the performance of Scaling Up Energy Access Project by .176 units if other variables stay constant. After analysis and interpretation of data, the researcher came up with the following recommendations: Project management should consider technical design factors in order to ensure effective implementation of project activities, Project managers should put much emphasis in availing enough resources including human, financial and material so as to ensure the successful performance of the projects and Project managers and their project teams must consider the contract factors so as to ensure that the tendering processes are effective and all materials needed are available on time.


This review paper mentions that the appearance of new uses underlines the need for a greater quality of service (QoS) not only for conveying accurately or increasing certain traffic, but also conveying it as soon as possible, which implies a network management even more complex. These lead to development of technology known as Multi- Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). Due to the MPLS technology mechanisms traffic engineering, QoS and security become possible for IP network to be efficient. Various methods of engineering of traffic for IP networks have been specified for several years (such as DiffServ (Differentiated Services), IntServ/RSVP (Integrated Services / Resource Reservation Protocol) to get end-to-end quality of service but MPLS is found simple, scalable and better among them. This allows the traffic in network to manage in a more effective way and avoid the cases of congestion. In this review paper principle operation of MPLS is discussed. We strongly focus on the importance of the MPLS used for the transport of the IP datagram and the traffic as well as underlined the advantages of MPLS utility in the IMS platforms to provide guarantees of QoS from beginning to end. At the end of this review paper simulation results from an MPLS network is mentioned.


What is the impact of rhetorical history on employees? We address this question by interviewing 29 workers in two organizations. Our critical interpretation of the findings suggests that managers willfully craft historical narratives to regulate workers' identity and, ultimately, advance the organization's agenda. Managers achieve this by peddling historical narratives that instill certain logics in workers. These logics, in turn, influence workers' identification and involvement with the organization. The first logic, reflected glory, exploits the idea that what is historical is prestigious and coaxes workers into basking in their organization's historical glory through identification. The second logic, preservation, exploits the idea that what is historical must be preserved and urges workers to be involved in their work to stave off the demise of the organization's legacy. We further contend that organizations reinforce these logics using narrative resources—concepts that lend historical narratives more persuasiveness—such as place or longevity. Nevertheless, workers do not remain passive. While some engage in traditional resistance tactics, others leverage their collective memory as a counter-narrative to the organization's narratives. While much has been said about the strategic uses of rhetorical history, we conclude by discussing its limitations and hitherto overlooked moral implications.


The Notch pathway plays a central role in embryonic development, the regulation of stem and progenitor cells, and is implicated in many human cancers. Notch1 is also known to be activated by oncogenic mutations in tumors including T cell leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and non-small cell lung cancer. Here we report the discovery of similar mutations in breast cancer. We have developed a primary human xenograft model from a patient bearing an activating Notch1 mutation and have shown that blocking Notch signaling in this model with a novel anti-Notch1 antibody, OMP-52M51, impeded tumor growth and reduced cancer stem cell (CSC) frequency. OMP-52M51 is a humanized antibody that binds with high affinity and selectivity to human Notch1 and antagonizes Notch signaling. Additionally, we sought to determine the frequency of Notch pathway activation across a large panel of human tumors (n>600) by an immunohistochemistry assay that detects the activated form of Notch1 using a polyclonal antibody that specifically recognizes the Notch1 intracellular domain (ICD). Using this test and a rigorous H-score cut-off of 30, we found elevated Notch1 in 7-29% of the following cancers: chemo-resistant breast, gastric, cholangiocarcinoma, esophageal, hepatacellular carcinoma (HCC), and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). The class of patients that showed the highest frequency of elevated Notch1.ICD was chemo-resistant breast cancer (∼30%). This frequency was significantly higher than in unselected breast cancer patients, suggesting that Notch1 signaling plays a significant role in breast cancer chemoresistance. Interestingly, the human xenograft model which showed sensitivity to OMP-52M51 was derived from a patient that failed to respond to pre-operative chemotherapy and developed metastatic disease following surgery. Thus, chemo-resistant breast cancer as well as the other tumors with high Notch1.ICD may represent important classes of patients who could benefit from anti-Notch1 therapy in the clinic. Citation Format: Belinda Cancilla, Jennifer Cain, Min Wang, Lucia Beviglia, Jalpa Shah, Austin Gurney, John Lewicki, Laura Esserman, Tim Hoey, Ann M. Kapoun. Anti-Notch1 antibody (OMP-52M51) impedes tumor growth and cancer stem cell frequency (CSC) in a chemo-refractory breast cancer xenograft model with an activating Notch1 mutation and screening for activated Notch1 across multiple solid tumor types. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 3728. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-3728


Rural women's active support for the decade-long Maoist insurrection in Nepal has captured the attention of academics, military strategists, and the development industry. This essay considers two theories that have been proposed to account for this phenomenon. The "failed development" hypothesis suggests that popular discontent with the government is the result of uneven, incomplete, or poorly executed development efforts and recommends more and better aid as the route to peace. In contrast, the "conscientization" model proposes that, at least in some cases, women's politicization may be the unexpected result of successful development programs that aimed to "empower" women by raising their consciousness of gender and class-based oppression. Drawing on the testimonies of women who participated in such programs in Gorkha district—a Maoist stronghold where women are reported to have been especially active—I argue that both of these explanations reflect assumptions about social subjectivity that are critically out of synch with the realities of rural Nepal. Gorkhali women's support for the rebels embodies a powerful critique of neoliberal democracy and the Nepal state, but one that is based on morally-grounded ideas about social personhood in which self-realization is bound up in mutual obligation and entails personal sacrifice—not the culturally-disembedded  valorizations of autonomy, agency, and choice that most models presume. Theorists of subaltern political consciousness—and of the relations between development and violence—must engage with the gendered moral economies of the people they aim to empower if they ultimately hope to promote sustainable peace.


We report the clinical and biological course of infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 in 11 liver transplant recipients who acquired this infection between 1985 and 1987. Eight patients were infected by blood or blood products from graft-related transfusions and one by the graft itself; the remaining two patients were infected after transplantation and had independent risk factors. All patients received a triple-drug immunosuppressive regimen including cyclosporine. The mean duration of follow-up after liver transplantation was 52 months (standard error, +/- 32 months). Chronic graft rejection was documented in four cases. The cumulative incidences of HIV-related complications and HIV-related deaths were 82% and 27%, respectively. Three patients died rapidly of HIV disease. The survival rate 7 years after transplantation was 36% among the 11 HIV-infected patients, whereas it was approximately 70% among HIV-negative liver transplant recipients during the same period. The course of HIV infection in the four survivors did not appear to differ from that in other patients infected by blood transfusion.


Skin infections are a major cause of preventable hospitalization, with young people being particularly susceptible. Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infection typically presents as skin infection. CA-MRSA infection rates have increased rapidly in the past decade. Exploration of literature specific to young people aged 14–18 years is therefore timely. Integrative review using the methods described by Whittemore and Knafl was undertaken. Electronic databases of Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Google databases were searched for English-language articles published after 1990. Twenty primary studies were included and the findings are reported here. Data analysis revealed factors influencing skin infections in young people may be host-, transmission-, or pathogen-specific. Strategies to address host and transmission factors may be effective in controlling skin infection rates in young people.


Heating of dialkyl acylphosphonates with sulphonic acids under anhydrous conditions leads to the formation of alkyl sulphonates an alkyl carboxylates. 31P N.m.r. spectroscopy revealed that the reaction of equimolar amounts of dimethyl benzoylphosphonate (1) and toluene-p-sulphonic acid at room temperature gives dimethyl phosphonate (6) in 50% yield. It is proposed that the by-product of this reaction, benzoic toluene-p-sulphonic anhydride (8), reacts with the excess of toluene-p-sulphonic acid, to yield toluene-p-sulphonic anhydride (9) and benzoic acid. Heating of these two compounds with dimethyl phosphonate was shown to yield methyl toluene-p-sulphonate and methyl benzoate, respectively. A postulated by-product of these reactions is phosphenous acid (HPO2). Quantum mechanical calculations by the MNDO/H method carried out on dimethyl benzoylphosphonate and its protonation products show that the preferred site of protonation of dimethyl benzoylphosphonate is the PO oxygen, and that protonation at this site is followed by C–P bond breaking, with zero energy of activation, leading to dimethyl phosphite and benzoylium cation.


The present study evaluates the effect of insulin and amino acids on nitrogen balance in the immediate postoperative period in moderately stressed patients who have undergone major abdominal surgical operations. Patients were randomly assigned into two large groups (n = 16 each) and four subgroups (n = 8 each). Groups ICON and IINS received an infusion of total parenteral nutrition solution containing 0.25 g of nitrogen per kilogram per day with a calorie:nitrogen (C:N) ratio of 150:1. Groups IICON and IIINS received twice the load of nitrogen with a C:N ratio of 75:1. Groups IINS AND IIINS received an additional continuous infusion of insulin at a rate of 1.0 mU/kg per minute for 7 days. During the total parenteral nutrition period, the patients were kept NPO, and 24-hour urine output was collected for estimation of total nitrogen excretion and nitrogen balance. Net nitrogen excretion (grams per kilogram per day) averaged 0.143 +/- 0.06 in IINS and 0.23 +/- 0.08 in ICON (p < .05) and 0.178 +/- 0.6 in IIINS and 0.25 +/- 0.10 in IICON (p < .05). Nitrogen balance (grams per day) was positive in the four groups: +0.65 +/- 3.8 in IINS and +6.74 +/- 2.94 in ICON (p < .05), and +14.4 +/- 2.61 in IIINS and +11.63 +/- 6.44 in IICON (p = not significant). The average nitrogen incorporation (percent per day) was: 41.3 +/- 6.2 in IINS and 14.6 +/- 20.1 in ICON (p < .05), and 58.3 +/- 4.5 in IIINS and 38.7 +/- 26.2 in IICON (p = not significant).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


The  success  of  a  New  Product  Development (NPD)  process  strongly  depends  on  the  deep comprehension of market needs and Analytic Hierarchy Process  (AHP) has been commonly used  to  find weights for  customers'  preferences.  AHP  best  practices  suggest that  low‐consistency  respondents  should  be  considered untrustworthy;  however,  in  some NPD  cases  –  such  as the one presented here – this stake can be extremely big. This paper deals with the usage of AHP methodology to define  the weights  of  customer  needs  connected  to  the NPD process of a  typical  impulse buying good, a snack. The  aim of  the paper  is  to  analyse  in  a  critical way  the opportunity  to  exclude  or  include  non‐consistent respondents in market analysis, addressing the following question:  should  a non‐consistent potential  customer  be excluded  from  the  analysis  due  to  his  inconsistency  or should  he  be  included  because,  after  all,  he  is  still  a potential  consumer?  The  chosen  methodological approach  focuses  on  evaluating  the  compatibility  of weight  vectors  among  different  subsets  of  respondents, filtered  according  to  their  consistency  level.  Results surprisingly  show  that  weights  do  not  significantly change when non‐consistent respondents are excluded.


The survival of eukaryotic organisms during environmental changes is largely dependent on the adaptive responses elicited by signal transduction cascades, including those regulated by the Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) pathways. The Cell Integrity Pathway (CIP), one of the three MAPK pathways found in the simple eukaryote fission of yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, shows strong homology with mammalian Extracellular signal-Regulated Kinases (ERKs). Remarkably, studies over the last few decades have gradually positioned the CIP as a multi-faceted pathway that impacts multiple functional aspects of the fission yeast life cycle during unperturbed growth and in response to stress. They include the control of mRNA-stability through RNA binding proteins, regulation of calcium homeostasis, and modulation of cell wall integrity and cytokinesis. Moreover, distinct evidence has disclosed the existence of sophisticated interplay between the CIP and other environmentally regulated pathways, including Stress-Activated MAP Kinase signaling (SAPK) and the Target of Rapamycin (TOR). In this review we present a current overview of the organization and underlying regulatory mechanisms of the CIP in S. pombe, describe its most prominent functions, and discuss possible targets of and roles for this pathway. The evolutionary conservation of CIP signaling in the dimorphic fission yeast S. japonicus will also be addressed.


Hermetism, a behavior that isolates ant colonies, was studied in the laboratory between two ant species in Chile, Camponotus morosus Smith and Linepithema humile Mayr. Ants from fi ve nests of C. morosus and L. humile were used, transferring ten individuals per nest of one of the colonies to receiving nests of the other. Conducts, including antennal exploration (AE), mandible opening (MO), dorsal fl exion of the abdomen (DFA), biting (Bi), ventral fl exion of the abdomen (VFA), fi ght (Fi), transport of the intruder ant (TI), moving backwards (MB), and death (De) were recorded during ten min, with ten replicates. The times of occurrence ± SD of each event were analyzed with the Student t test. The events AE, MO, DFA, and MB had a short latency time in receiving L. humile, while C. morosus presented lesser latency for the events Bi, VFA, and Fi. When analyzing by χ2 the frequency of occurrence of each event per species, AE and MO were similar in both species, and in aggression and rejection events like DFA, Bi, VFA, Fi, MB, TI, and De, there were greater frequencies of observations in C. morosus that in L. humile. From these results, C. morosus is a more hermetic ant than L. humile.


A transluminal intracoronary reperfusion catheter was used in eight patients, seven with acute myocardial infarction and one with unstable angina after failed emergency coronary angioplasty. After placement of the reperfusion catheter across the occlusion, symptoms of ischemia resolved in each patient. Chest pain recurred 3 hr later in a single patient who underwent successful repeat angioplasty. The catheter was withdrawn within 6 hr after introduction. Control coronary angiography showed a patent vessel in all but one. Repeat angioplasty or bypass surgery was unnecessary. During 1 year mean follow-up time all patients remained free of symptoms. The reperfusion catheter is a safe and effective means of perfusing a coronary artery after failure of thrombolytic therapy and coronary angioplasty in cases where emergency bypass surgery is not performed because operative morbidity is expected to outweigh the benefit of myocardial salvage, or when it cannot be immediately organized.


This monograph is intended to be considered as my habilitation (D.Sc.) thesis; because of that and as everything has already appeared in English, it is performed exclusively in Russian. The monograph comprises a detailed introduction and seven chapters that represent part of my work influenced by Ap\'ery's proof from 1978 of the irrationality of $\zeta(2)$ and $\zeta(3)$, the values of Riemann's zeta function. Chapter 1 is about"at least one of the four numbers $\zeta(5)$, $\zeta(7)$, $\zeta(9)$ and $\zeta(11)$ is irrational"(based in part on arXiv:math.NT/0206176). Chapter 2 explains a connection between the generalized multiple integrals introduced by Beukers in his proof of Ap\'ery's result and the very-well-poised hypergeometric series; it is based on arXiv:math.CA/0206177. Chapter 3 surveys some arithmetic and hypergeometric $q$-analogies and establishes the irrationality measure $\mu(\zeta_q(2))<3.518876$ for a $q$-analogue of $\zeta(2)$; it closely follows the text in Sb. Math. 193 (2002), 1151--1172, but also incorporates the sharper analysis of the hypergeometric construction by Smet and Van Assche (arXiv:0809.2501 [math.CA]) to produce the improvement upon the 2002 result. Chapter 4 is devoted to the measure $\mu(\zeta(2))<5.095412$ and is based on arXiv:1310.1526 [math.NT]; Chapter 5 is establishing the estimate $||(3/2)^k||>0.5803^k$ for the distance from $(3/2)^k$ to the nearest integer, with the English version published in J. Th\'eor. Nombres Bordeaux 19 (2007), 313--325. Chapter 6 reproduces the solution (from arXiv:math.CA/0311195) to the problem of Asmus Schmidt about generalized Ap\'ery's numbers. Finally, Chapter 7 is about expressing the special $L$-values as periods (in the sense of Kontsevich and Zagier), in particular, as values of hypergeometric functions; it is based on the publication in Springer Proc. Math. Stat. 43 (2013), 381--395.


Background: The traditional method of treating chronic periodontitis initially is non surgical therapy which involves oral hygiene instructions and mechanical instrumentation using either hand or machine driven instruments. This reduces infection and then subsequent healing of the periodontal tissues with a resultant pocket elimination or reduction.General Aim: The aim of this study was to determine if hand and ultrasonic instrumentation produce comparable periodontal pocket reduction among Ghanaian patients with moderate chronic periodontitis.Methodology: The study was an interventional study, spanning a period of 5 months for each patient. Twenty patients with pocket depth 5 – 7 mm between the ages of 30 – 81 years were treated using hand and ultrasonic instrumentation at the University of GhanaDental School clinic. Periodontal parameters measured include plaque scores, bleeding on probing (BOP) scores, probing pocket depth (PPD), probing attachment level (PAL) and gingival recession. Significance level was set at 0.05.Results: The mean PPD at baseline for patients treated using hand instrumentation was 5.5mm and was reduced to 3.4mm at fifth session of instrumentation. Ultrasonic instrumentation recorded a reduction of baseline value of 5.5mm to 3.6mm at fifth session.Bothmethods of instrumentation recorded a significant reduction of the mean PPD without a significant difference in the mean reduction between the two methods of instrumentation.Conclusion: The use of hand or ultrasonic instrumentation produced similar results with respect to reduction in BOP, plaque scores, PPD and PAL


In patients with suspected phaeochromocytoma, biochemical screening of urine or blood for excess secretion catecholamines and/or their metabolites is performed. Elevated levels of catecholamines and metanephrines help in establishing the diagnosis of phaeochromocytoma. In two patients with adrenal lesions who were subjected to biochemical testing significantly elevated urinary normetanephrines appeared to establish the diagnosis of phaeochromocytoma. However, on subsequent investigations, this was demonstrated to be a 'false positive' finding. Both these patients were on sulfasalazine, an anti-inflammatory drug used in inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. Sulfasalazine can cause analytical interference in some assays for urinary normetanephrine and result in spuriously elevated levels, leading to misdiagnosis of phaeochromocytoma. In this report, one patient underwent adrenalectomy and another had conservative management. Although this has been previously reported, increased awareness of the possibility of false-positive results on urinary metanephrines testing is important to reduce the potential for misdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment.


Molecular epidemiological study of novel strain of Rubella virus isolated during the outbreak in Western Siberia in 2004 was described. Detailed phylogenetic analysis performed based upon entire SP-region, which encodes all three Rubella structural proteins (C, E2, and E1), was implemented. This analysis provides characterization of this strain and classifies it as 1H genotype, thereby correcting previous classification of this strain based upon shorter nucleotide sequence, only encoding E1 protein. Therefore, this study identified the genotype of the Rubella virus not previously detected in Western Siberia (and even entire Russian Federation), which highlights the importance of more extensive characterization of genetic variability of the Rubella virus, especially with regard to potential influence of vaccination on the Rubella virus mutagenesis.


The impacts of anomalous events in the Pacific Ocean associated with the El Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on rainfall over northern and northeastern regions of South America were evaluated for the period from 1900 to 2007 using composite analyses. The El Nino (La Nina) events in the Pacific, that together with a cold (warm) Atlantic Equatorial Mode (AEM) form an interbasin gradient between the Pacific and Atlantic were analyzed considering separately those for which the gradient forms during the ENSO onset phase from those for which the gradient forms during the ENSO demise phase. The results show that the rainfall pattern over the northern and northeastern region of South America is reinforced under an interbasin gradient during the initial phase of the ENSO event. In this case, a possible explanation is that the AEM with opposite sign of the ENSO event in its onset stage creates favorable conditions for the development of an interhemispheric gradient in the Tropical Atlantic acting in the same direction of the interbasin gradient, and collaborating to reinforce the El Nino (La Nina) effect on the precipitation. On the other hand, for ENSO events for which the interbasin gradient forms in the demise stage, the impact on the precipitation is more significative in the northern and central-western regions of the basin. A possible explanation for these differences is linked to the alterations in the east-west atmospheric circulation associated with the east-west gradient of the SST anomalies. The result of this study might be useful mainly for climate monitoring purposes.


Stochastic dynamic programming is used to investigate optimal holding of primary tropical forest in humid Costa Rica when future nonuse benefits of forest conservation are uncertain and increasing. The quasi-option value of maintaining primary forests is included as a component of investment in natural capital. Although the impact of uncertainty on conservation incentives is substantial, our results indicate that a rising trend in future benefits and compensation by the international community for beneficial spillovers are more important factors in determining optimal holdings of forest stocks. Without compensatory payments, however, further deforestation may be warranted.


To deepen the understanding of the acupoint indications, clarify the targeting of acupoints, and provide a basis for the composition of acupuncture prescriptions, it is suggested to add acupoint identification into the textbook Meridians and Acupoints, and a preliminary assumption that relevant acupoints can be identified by taking the indications, locations, and meridians as the key points is proposed. In this paper, acupoints for treating stomach disease, acupoints of eye region, and five-shu points of lung meridian are taken as examples, combined with ancient literature and modern scientific research achievements, the main indications of acupoint is identified, which is of great significance to the discipline's development, talent training, and achievement transformation.


Software comprehension is one of the largest costs in the software lifecycle. In an attempt to control the cost of comprehension, various complexity metrics have been proposed to characterize the difficulty of understanding a program and, thus, allow accurate estimation of the cost of a change. Such metrics are not always evaluated. This paper evaluates a group of metrics recently proposed to assess the "spatial complexity" of a program (spatial complexity is informally defined as the distance a maintainer must move within source code to build a mental model of that code). The evaluation takes the form of a large-scale empirical study of evolving source code drawn from a commercial organization. The results of this investigation show that most of the spatial complexity metrics evaluated offer no substantially better information about program complexity than the number of lines of code. However, one metric shows more promise and is thus deemed to be a candidate for further use and investigation.


This chapter discusses standards and innovation in the context of business models: how firms and industries create new ways of capturing value from products and services. Business model development encompasses all manner of direct and neighboring opportunities for creating new markets and creating streams of revenue for new products. Business modelling itself conforms quite well to any definition of innovation. Using the example of digital radio broadcasting, the authors show how the development of standards was also part of the process of working out various business models to expand the commercial possibilities of this technology, thus integrating the standardization and innovation processes in a particularly direct way.


In this essay, which includes seven images drawn from various museums as well as the Huntington Library, art historian Karen Hearn examines an aspect of mid-seventeenth-century portraiture—the depiction ofpatches on the face—and contextualizes it in terms of fashion, social and gender norms, medicinal practices, and differences (and exchange) among countries in early modern Europe. Addressing patches shown on the faces of Dutch women painted by Cornelius Johnson, an English portraitist who had migrated to the Dutch Republic, Hearn focuses on his portrait of an unknown Englishwoman in which a patch was subsequently overpainted. Using some English sources, including Pepys's Diary, the essay considers the practice of patch-wearing by both men and women, in England as well as Holland.


Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a common dysbiosis of the human vagina in which commensal vaginal lactobacilli are displaced by mixed pathogenic bacterial populations. Current treatments by antibiotics result in short- term cure but often lead to recurrence. Lactobacilli are being actively developed as a probiotic treatment option for BV, given their ability to inhibit growth of pathogenic microorganisms and to maintain the health and stability of the vaginal tract microbiota. Therefore, incorporation of freeze-dried lactobacillus and metronidazole (MET) into matrix-type silicone elastomer vaginal rings (VR) is a long-effective novel treatment of BV which can also prevent recurrence. Here, MED-4870 matrix-type VRs containing four different lyoprotectants of three concentrations were manufactured by reaction injection molding, and Shore M Hardness test, compression test and twist test were applied to determine the impact of incorporation of lyoprotectants on mechanical characteristics of VRs. Results indicated that incorporation of lyoprotectants can increase the resistance force and decrease the rotational angles of the VRs. As the category and concentration of incorporated lyoprotectant also have impact on the releasing profile of MET and protecting ability of lactobacillus during freeze-drying process, more research such as in-vitro release tests and microbiology tests will be needed.


A 38-year-old Caucasian male presented with a 4-week history of nose bleeds, gross hematuria and blurred vision. He was a smoker, who had used cannabis and cocaine previously. At presentation, he had features of malignant hypertension (blood pressure 220/120 mmHg), was hypoxic on room air, with no signs of fluid overload or heart failure. He had acute renal failure with radiological evidence of alveolar hemorrhage. Renal biopsy showed extensive ischemic collapse of glomeruli and severe fibrointimal thickening of the arteries with fibrinoid deposits in the wall. Auto-immune screen was negative. Serum creatinine peaked at 749 micromol/l. Adequate control of blood pressure and supportive oxygen therapy lead to a complete clinical and radiological resolution of the pulmonary hemorrhage and he did not need dialysis. Eighteen months on, his serum creatinine is stable at 279 micromol/l with good blood pressure control. Malignant hypertension is not a recognized cause of the renal-pulmonary syndrome and physicians should be aware of the possibility, if only to avoid inappropriate treatments like plasmapheresis and immunosuppression. History of cocaine use is important in the setting of an acute vascular event.


Determining the structure of a market plays an important role for policy makers to adopt efficient policies to enhance social welfare of their societies. This welfare is fulfilled more and more whenever the industry is reached to a competitive framework. The Car maker industry is one of the important industries that create a considerable value added in terms of the pre and post production chains in all the countries. This industry is the second largest industry in Iran that uses about 600 thousands workers. Accordingly, this study first aims to estimate the strategies adopted by the dominant players of the industry, Iran Khodro and Saipa companies, based on a game-information theoretic framework and then measure the market power of them in accordance with the generalized maximum entropy estimator. The results show that the Lerner index value for Iran Khodro and Saipa is 0.67 and 0.49 respectively indicating that the two companies play an important role in the industry and the industry is so far from the competitive environment.


Until now, seismic-isolation structures have not yet been applied in the railway field. The reason is that though a seismic-isolation structure can reduce the inertial force to the structure, the energy absorption causes big response displacement on the structure, which adversely effects the running safety of the trains supported by the structure. In this paper, a methodology for seismic running safety assessment is introduced, and a new type of seismic-isolation foundation is proposed, which can convert the seismic response displacement in the lateral direction of track to the longitudinal direction that has a less adverse effect on the running safety of the train. The isolation foundation is composed of FPS (Friction Pendulum System) slider, concave plate and guide ditch. Moreover, through model experiments and 3D numerical simulation, it is verified that the proposed foundation can keep both the effects of the seismic isolation and the running safety of the train during an earthquake.


Economists have recently started to theoretically analyse the performance implications of transparency in organisations where the principal has private information. An important finding in this literature is that the principal may want to partly withhold information from the agent, and to expose him to uncertainty about the true state of nature. In this paper, we report empirical evidence that such uncertainty exposure is more detrimental to agent effort than previously thought. We design an experiment, in which an agent has only probabilistic beliefs about the true state of nature and needs to choose costly effort that benefits the principal. The true state relates to his fixed-wage, which can either be high or low. Prior to effort choice, the principal can create full transparency by disclosing the true state to the agent via costly communication. Our results show that principals should always create full transparency: even if this requires her to disclose 'bad news' (the low state), effort increases by 47 percent relative to non-disclosure. We show that the value of transparency extends beyond positive effects of the personal communication involved. However, half the principals misperceive this value and disclose information too restrictively, thereby foregoing 30 percent of their potential profits. To help overcome this misperception, we provide evidence on agents' various motivations to reward even the disclosure of bad news.


Phylogenetic analysis was performed on a set of 242 morphological characters. The taxon sample included 31 Libellula, and representative species from selected libeluline tribes, from all libellulid subfamilies, from all libelluloid families, from all anisopteran superfamilies, and Epiophlebia. Corduliinae was shown to be paraphyletic even among genera characterized by a well developed anal loop bisector. Sympetrini was found to be polyphyletic with Crocothemis the sister group to Libellulini. The traditional placement of Trameini, far from Libellulini is in doubt, because it is here placed as the sister group to Crocothemis + Libellulini. Kennedy's phylogeny of Libellula was largely corroborated, with the following exceptions: the subgenera Libellula, Eolibellula, and Syntetrum form a monophyletic group which is the sister group to a clade including Belonia, Holotania, Neotetrum, and Eotainia subgenus nov. [type species Mesothemis composita Hagen]; and Eurothemis is determined to be the sister group of Ladona instead of Neotetrum. In addition we confirm Belonia to be monophyletic, and find Platetrum + Plathemis to form a monophyletic group, sister to Ladona + Eurothemis; these four subgenera together form the sister group to Libellula sensu stricto (s.s.).


Vector coupled-mode theory is extended beyond the conventional first-order treatment. Good results are obtained from the extended theory in the case of waveguides with large index discontinuity.


Depression is a common response among cancer patients to their diagnosis and treatment; however, it goes undetected by healthcare providers in about 50% of cases. Communication skills training has been suggested as means to help nurses detect and respond to patient depression. We developed and pilot tested a communication skills training workshop based around 6 strategies. The training program consisted of 2 half-day experiential workshops that included didactic teaching, exemplary video, and role play. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the communication skills training. Fifteen nurses were recruited from the ambulatory nursing service at (redacted). Standardized patient assessments were used to measure strategy uptake. The presence of each strategy was rated on a 4-point scale from "not attempted" to "successfully attempted." Nurses also completed evaluations of the training program. The nurses attempted 3 of 6 strategies more commonly after training, and a trend to significance was observed in a fourth strategy. The nurses reported more confidence to deal with patient depression and had greater self-efficacy. This short training program demonstrated success in improving nurse communication skills and confidence in dealing with patient depression. A larger trial of the training is planned.


Non-invasive brain imaging techniques allow understanding the behavior and macro changes in the brain to determine the progress of a disease. However, computational pathology provides a deeper understanding of brain disorders at cellular level, able to consolidate a diagnosis and make the bridge between the medical image and the omics analysis. In traditional histopathology, histology slides are visually inspected, under the microscope, by trained pathologists. This process is time-consuming and labor-intensive; therefore, the emergence of Computational Pathology has triggered great hope to ease this tedious task and make it more robust. This chapter focuses on understanding the state-of-the-art machine learning techniques used to analyze whole slide images within the context of brain disorders. We present a selective set of remarkable machine learning algorithms providing discriminative approaches and quality results on brain disorders. These methodologies are applied to different tasks, such as monitoring mechanisms contributing to disease progression and patient survival rates, analyzing morphological phenotypes for classification and quantitative assessment of disease, improving clinical care, diagnosing tumor specimens, and intraoperative interpretation. Thanks to the recent progress in machine learning algorithms for high-content image processing, computational pathology marks the rise of a new generation of medical discoveries and clinical protocols, including in brain disorders.


The topic of this paper was initially theorized by Plato in one of his dialogues, Meno. The problem concerns the process of learning which a child goes through during their development. Plato questions how a child can produce complex structures being exposed to the environment for a short period; and it is called as the poverty of the stimulus or Plato's problem. This monograph was done through researches based on two main paradigms about language learning: Nativism and Connectionism paradigms. While Nativist hypothesis makes use of abductive theory and believes on the existence of a language acquisition device which contains the rules common to all languages; Connectionist paradigm explains it through findings of neuroscience. Instead of claiming that we are born with a device, Connectionist researchers state that we learn through the construction of networks and maturation of the brain. As a result, Connectionism is able to answer more questions about the poverty of the stimulus than Nativism. Having computational networks as its main instrument, the Connectionist paradigm has a larger area for further studies since technology is evolving dayby-day.


Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is a heritable bone disorder with clinical features that include bone fragility, blue sclerae, and short stature. There are four main subtypes of OI, encompassing a wide range of clinical severity. The majority of patients have mutations in either the COL1A1 or COL1A2 gene that ultimately lead to an abnormal synthesis of or a decrease in the production of collagen. Bisphosphonates have been used effectively in adults and children to treat other bone disorders, since they have been proven to increase bone density through inhibition of bone resorption. Recent studies have demonstrated the advantages of pamidronate therapy in the treatment of children and adolescents with the more severe forms of OI. Pamidronate consistently increases bone mass, vertebral growth, and quality-of-life while decreasing the number of fractures in children with severe OI. Long-term effects are promising, and benefits of pamidronate therapy appear to outweigh the possible risks.


We outline the epidemiology of the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), sepsis and severe sepsis among intensive care unit (ICU) patients in Japan. One survey conducted in the ICU of a university hospital suggested that the prevalence of SIRS reached 84% among all ICU patients, and that about 8% of patients with SIRS progressed to severe sepsis. Gram-positive cocci were the most common isolates (58%) from ICU patients with sepsis. Moreover, a graded severity was noted from SIRS to sepsis and severe sepsis, with total in-hospital mortality of 6%, 20% and 63%, respectively. Thus, every effort should be made to decrease the risk of sepsis in ICU patients.


The maximum energy product of bonded magnets is advancing every year. The highest maximum energy product of any bonded magnet achieved is 25 MGOe (200 kJ/m/sup 3/) in the Nd-Fe-B system by d-HDDR treatment. There is a great demand for even higher energy bonded magnets with the desire for smaller, more efficient electric motors. Bonded magnets made from d-HDDR treated anisotropic magnet powder have low squareness due to low squareness of the powder. The authors developed a method to increase squareness of d-HDDR powder, and succeeded in developing the world's highest energy bonded magnet with 26.6 MGOe (213 kJ/m/sup 3/). This was achieved through Dy-diffusion treatment followed by d-HDDR treatment, as well as an increase in the density of the bonded magnet. This magnet has little aging loss after being held at 393 K for 878 h.


This study investigates the effects on private saving rates of a number of policy and non-policy variables. The analysis covers the period 1968–1994. The empirical private saving model for Turkey is estimated. The findings support the hypothesis that private saving rates have strong inertia. The evidence indicates that government saving does not tend to crowd out private savings and the Ricardian equivalence does not hold strictly. Income level has a positive impact on private saving rate, and growth rate of income is not statistically significant. From a policy point of view, financial depth and development measures in Turkey suggest that countries with deeper financial systems tend to have higher private saving rates. Private credit and real interest rates try to capture the severity of the borrowing constraints and the degree of financial repression for Turkey. Moreover, the negative impact of life expectancy rate lends support to the life-cycle hypothesis. The precautionary motive for saving is supported by the findings that inflation captures the degree of macroeconomic volatility and has a positive impact on private saving in Turkey.


Previously we showed that the nuclear import receptor Importin-9 wraps around the H2A-H2B core to chaperone and transport it from the cytoplasm to the nucleus (Padavannil et al. 2019). However, unlike most nuclear import systems where RanGTP dissociates cargoes from their importins, RanGTP binds stably to the Importin-9•H2A-H2B complex and formation of RanGTP•Importin-9•H2A-H2B facilitates H2A-H2B release to the assembling nucleosome (Padavannil et al. 2019). Here we show cryo-EM structures of Importin-9•RanGTP and of its yeast homolog Kap114, including Kap114•RanGTP, Kap114•H2A-H2B, and RanGTP•Kap114•H2AH2B. In combination with hydrogen-deuterium exchange analysis of Importin-9 complexes and nucleosome assembly assays, we explain how the conserved Kap114/Importin-9 importins bind H2A-H2B and RanGTP simultaneously and how the GTPase primes histone transfer to the nucleosome. We show that RanGTP binds to the N-terminal repeats of Kap114/Importin-9 as in Kap114/Importin-9•RanGTP, and H2A-H2B binds via its acidic patch to the Kap114/Importin-9 Cterminal repeats as in Kap114/Importin-9•H2A-H2B. RanGTP-binding in RanGTP•Kap114•H2AH2B changes Kap114/Importin-9 conformation such that it no longer contacts the surface of H2AH2B proximal to the H2A docking domain that drives nucleosome assembly, positioning it for transfer to the assembling nucleosome. The reduced affinity of RanGTP for Kap114/Importin-9 when H2A-H2B is bound may ensure release of H2A-H2B only at chromatin.


Introduction. The paper focuses on the study of the framework of the evaluative utterance. Frame composition can be considered as an autonomous configuration consisting of a body, a setof standard patterns of speech acts, members of speech situation.Purpose. The aim of this research is to explore the updating of frame structure that realizes the evaluative potential.Methods. The research was carried out by means of the methods of Speech act analysis, framing technique, structural, semantic and contextual analysis.Results. The notion "frame" is used mainly for the description of such elements of consciousness, which are composed for demonstrating situations in object-human cognitive activity. Frame structure can be viewed as a specific formation consisting of a core, a number of standard models of speech acts, participants of speech episode. Also, a significant placeoccupies the objective, plan and consequent. So, the evaluative situation can be associated with the frame, as it consists of appraisal of the objects of the outer world and depicts the cohesion of concepts of the object and the subject, materialized in the system of parts of speech, as wellas all the components of utterances that constitute the situation. The paper looks at the evaluative utterance as the result of a certain perception pattern, picture, and script in the communicativeactivity. According to socio-role position relations between participants of communication are spread chiefly in the social domain of communication, where social role demonstrates interactional rules between the subject of communicative process and its object.Conclusions. The realized scheme of the evaluative utterance is related to the accomplishment of the frame pattern of a typical communicative act in the form of a holistic multi-layered creation – functional-semantic formation. Materialization of a frame pattern occurs on the background of social interplay, where the functional-semantic representation of the evaluative frame is benefited by resolving in its structure such components as the illocutionary act-event, topical proposition and conventional grammatical construction.


Gamification principles were applied to three online courses for undergraduate college students. A theoretical framework is presented for describing how student motivation and engagement are produced by psychological and biological underpinnings that operate at a micro-behavioral level to produce student engagement and involvement. The model makes visible the behavioral microunits out of which emerges the flow of interactions in an online task team or community. Online instructional activities can be managed to allow students to satisfice many of these needs, and at the same time to provide optimizing venues for their continued satisficing. An instructional architecture illustrates the combination of gamification strategies that we currently use in our online classes. It involves task collaboration, group chat, and social networking affordances. A list of 22 game mechanics is defined and applied to online instructional activities.


With question answering system in medicine, users could use sentences in daily life to raise questions. The question answering system will analyze and comprehend these questions and return answers to users directly. Aiming at the problems in automatic diagnosis for medicine, such as low precision of question answering, imperfect expression of domain knowledge, low reuse rate, and lack of reasonable theory reference models, we put forward the information integration method of semantic Web based on pervasive agent ontology (SWPAO method) in medicine, which will integrate, analyze, and process enormous Web information and extract answers on the basis of semantics. A novel approach for automatic diagnosis in medicine based on ontology and fuzzy rough set is brought forward. The data mining algorithm for automatic diagnosis rules in medicine is brought forward: (1) computing the measurement matrix of effect; (2) extracting rules; (3) computing the importance of rules; (4) shearing the rules by genetic algorithm. In this paper, rough sets method is used to take potential diagnosis rule from the decision‐making table in medicine. These rules can offer effective automatic diagnosis service. With the SWPAO method as the clue, we mainly study the method of concept extraction based on uniform semantic term mining, pervasive agent ontology construction method on account of multipoints and the answer extraction in view of semantic inference. Meanwhile, we present the structural model of the question answering system applying ontology, which adopts OWL language to describe domain knowledge base from where it infers and extracts answers by Jena inference engine, thus the precision of question answering in QA system could be improved. In the system testing, the precision has reached 86% and the recalling rate is 93%. The experiment indicates that this method is feasible, and it has the significance of reference and value of further study for the question answering systems in medicine. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


The sacrum and perisacral soft tissues are not readily amenable to investigation by conventional radiological techniques. Computed tomography (CT) has provided an excellent imaging modality for the evaluation of these areas. This article describes the normal CT anatomy of the sacrum, the CT technique for evaluating the sacrum and perisacral soft tissues and the contribution of CT to the assessment of the many disorders that may involve the sacrum. Conditions discussed include osseous tumors of the sacrum, spinal dysraphism, cauda equina tumors and cysts, lesions arising primarily in the presacral space and sacral trauma. The use of CT scanning of the sacrum following intrathecal administration of Metrizamide is described.


Abstract Contemporary training for power sports involves diverse routines that place a wide array of physiological demands on the athlete. This requires a multi-faceted nutritional strategy to support both general training needs – tailored to specific training phases – as well as the acute demands of competition. Elite power sport athletes have high training intensities and volumes for most of the training season, so energy intake must be sufficient to support recovery and adaptation. Low pre-exercise muscle glycogen reduces high-intensity performance, so daily carbohydrate intake must be emphasized throughout training and competition phases. There is strong evidence to suggest that the timing, type, and amount of protein intake influence post-exercise recovery and adaptation. Most power sports feature demanding competition schedules, which require aggressive nutritional recovery strategies to optimize muscle glycogen resynthesis. Various power sports have different optimum body compositions and body weight requirements, but increasing the power-to-weight ratio during the championship season can lead to significant performance benefits for most athletes. Both intra- and extracellular buffering agents may enhance performance, but more research is needed to examine the potential long-term impact of buffering agents on training adaptation. Interactions between training, desired physiological adaptations, competition, and nutrition require an individual approach and should be continuously adjusted and adapted.


OBJECTIVE: To compare test positivity rates of liquid-based and conventional cytology. METHODS: This study was a cluster randomized controlled trial with family practice as the unit of randomization, performed within the Dutch national cervical screening program. Women aged 30–60 years (n=89,784) recruited from 246 family practices were included. One-hundred twenty-two practices (49,222 individuals) were randomly assigned to the experimental arm, and 124 practices (40,562 participants), to the conventional arm. Inclusion was performed during a 3-year period between April 2003 and July 2006. Cytologic test positivity rates of liquid-based compared with conventional cytology was compared in terms of crude and adjusted odds ratios, applying a per-protocol analysis. RESULTS: Crude ratios of the odds of test positivity rates of liquid-based compared with conventional cytology for atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance or more severe, low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion or more severe, and high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion or more severe were 0.95 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.82–1.10), 1.00 (95% CI 0.83–1.20), and 0.97 (95% CI 0.77–1.22), respectively. Liquid-based cytology resulted in fewer unsatisfactory tests (odds ratio 0.30, 95% CI 0.23–0.38). The results did not change when the odds ratios were adjusted for age, study site, study period, and urbanization level. Of 128 women screened with liquid-based cytology, one unsatisfactory preparation is avoided. CONCLUSION: This study found no statistically significant difference in cytologic test positivity rates between liquid-based and conventional cytology. However, liquid-based cytology resulted in significantly fewer unsatisfactory tests. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: Nederlands Trial Register, www.trialregister.nl, NTR1032 LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: I


Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is widely used in signal separation and image compression. Motivated by its successful applications, we propose a new cryptosystem based on NMF, where the nonlinear mixing (NLM) model with a strong noise is introduced for encryption and NMF is used for decryption. The security of the cryptosystem relies on following two facts: 1) the constructed multivariable nonlinear function is not invertible; 2) the process of NMF is unilateral, if the inverse matrix of the constructed linear mixing matrix is not nonnegative. Comparing with Lin's method (2006) that is a theoretical scheme using one-time padding in the cryptosystem, our cipher can be used repeatedly for the practical request, i.e., multitme padding is used in our cryptosystem. Also, there is no restriction on statistical characteristics of the ciphers and the plaintexts. Thus, more signals can be processed (successfully encrypted and decrypted), no matter they are correlative, sparse, or Gaussian. Furthermore, instead of the number of zero-crossing-based method that is often unstable in encryption and decryption, an improved method based on the kurtosis of the signals is introduced to solve permutation ambiguities in waveform reconstruction. Simulations are given to illustrate security and availability of our cryptosystem.


Augusto Pinochet's regime permanently altered Chilean politics during his seventeen years as dictator of Chile. By the late 1980s, Pinochet's hold on power remained unyielding, political reconciliation with the military was unimaginable, and civil war seemed inevitable. Notwithstanding the lack of substantive political change, on March 11, 1990, Pinochet ceremoniously handed the presidential sash to the leader of his legal opposition, Patricio Aylwin, thus initiating a peaceful transition to civilian rule in Chile.My dissertation examines the context and content of the Franja de Propaganda Electoral of 1988. What loosely translates as "official space for electoral propaganda" - was a nationally televised, largely uncensored, 30-minute political program, representing the two sides of the 1988 Plebiscito; the NO campaign in opposition to the military regime, and the pro-Pinochet SI campaign.The Franja Electoral became a mediated space of Chilean politics, just beyond the repressive reach of the Pinochetista regime, within which a seemingly impossible transition was not only articulated, but also, through which, a transformation of Chilean political culture was engendered. To help explain this transformation, I draw from a conceptual framework known as mediatization theory, to examine the Franja Electoral as a sample case for the mediatization of Chilean politics. I propose that this case is best understood as an historical, political, and theoretical process, rooted in the cultural assimilation of an imagined political configuration. The mediatization of Chilean politics was a process that would ultimately help reconcile a contradictory relationship between what was politically viable as a social and historical course of action, with what was represented as acceptable in a mediated, televisual space of political culture.Furthermore, this project helps in the recovery of an exceptionally rare, complete collection of the 1988 Franja Electoral, and includes one of only a handful of content analyses performed on this important audio-visual material. Finally, my use of mediatization theory involves the incorporation of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), to analyze the Franja Electoral as an artifact of Chilean political culture - a mediated representation of an enduring qualitative alteration in the meaning of Democracy in Chile.


Sleep may have several negative consequences in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Sleep is typically fragmented with diminished slow wave and rapid-eye-movement sleep, which likely represents an important contributing factor to daytime symptoms such as fatigue and lethargy. Furthermore, normal physiological adaptations during sleep, which result in mild hypoventilation in normal subjects, are more pronounced in COPD, which can result in clinically important nocturnal oxygen desaturation. The co-existence of obstructive sleep apnea and COPD is also common, principally because of the high prevalence of each disorder, and there is little convincing evidence that one disorder predisposes to the other. Nonetheless, this co-existence, termed the overlap syndrome, typically results in more pronounced nocturnal oxygen desaturation and there is a high prevalence of pulmonary hypertension in such patients. Management of sleep disorders in patients with COPD should address both sleep quality and disordered gas exchange. Non-invasive pressure support is beneficial in selected cases, particularly during acute exacerbations associated with respiratory failure, and is particularly helpful in patients with the overlap syndrome. There is limited evidence of benefit from pressure support in the chronic setting in COPD patients without obstructive sleep apnea.