Aims: The present study analyzed the effects of Saccharomyces boulardii on the biochemical parameters of microbial hindgut metabolism disturbed by clindamycin. Methods: The experiments were carried out under in vitro conditions using the semicontinuous colon-simulation technique. This technique is standardized for quantitatively measuring parameters of microbial hindgut metabolism. The fluid and particle phase of pig hindgut contents were used for the in vitro incubations. The 5-day control period was followed by clindamycin exposure alone (312.5 mg/day for 5 days) or by a combined treatment of clindamycin and S. boulardii (400 mg/day for 5 days). Results: Clindamycin resulted in significant decreases in production rates of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) which were associated with substantial changes in molar SCFA proportions at the expense of butyrate. These effects could at least partly be compensated for by S. boulardii, in particular by enhancements of acetate and propionate fermentation to control levels. In contrast, butyrate fermentation could not be reconstituted. In a second experiment the potential use of S. boulardii as a substrate for hindgut microbial metabolism was studied by comparing living and autoclaved yeast. Propionate and butyrate fermentation rates were unaffected whereas acetate fermentation tended to be higher in the presence of living yeast. Conclusions: S. boulardii can be effective to compensate for changes in microbial fermentation in response to antibiotic treatment. Despite the lack of statistical significance it might be concluded that the increase in fermentation end products can only partly be explained by the utilization of the yeast as a substrate for microbial metabolism.


THE ONLY THING THAT WILL SHOCK YOU MORE THAN THE FIRST CHAPTER . . . IS THE LAST. . . Jess and Heather were once best friends - until the night Heather's sister Flora vanished. The night that lies tore their friendship apart. But years later, when a brutal double murder shakes their childhood town, Jess returns home. Because the suspect is Heather. What happened to the girl you used to know? Then She Vanishes is the twisty, compulsive new thriller from the bestselling author of Local Girl Missing, Last Seen Alive and Do Not Disturb ___________ 'It has twist upon twist upon twist, and even then the final twist took me by surprise. So good!' 5* Reader Review 'A riveting, edge-of-your-seat excitement fest - the plotting was so sinfully clever that I was kept endlessly guessing' 5* Reader Review Praise for Claire Douglas: 'Kept me up last night - scary, twisty, all too believable' Jane Corry 'A page-turning slow burn' Cara Hunter 'Thrillingly tense and twisty' B A Paris 'Tense, claustrophobic and gripping' Paula Daly


Consider real-time applications running on an ATM network, we require the ATM network to provide a transmission guarantee for real-time service. However, when congestion occur in the ATM network, the delays encountered by cells begin to increase rapidly, buffers overflow and drop cells beyond a specified limit, and the throughput begins to drop, even approaching zero or deadlock. We first review some congestion control methods, then we present results of a study of congestion control for real-time communication based on ATM networks. In ATM networks, congestion usually results in cell loss. Based on the time limit and priority, the cells that compete for the same output line could be lined according to the character of real-time service. We adopt a priority control algorithm for providing different QoS bearer services that can be implemented by using threshold methods at the ATM switching nodes, the cells of different deadline and priority could be dealt with according to the necessity. Experiments show the proposed algorithm is effective in the congestion control of ATM real-time networks.


The Hopfield network has been applied to the power system economic dispatch problem with very promising results. However, it has been found that the unit commitment problem cannot be tackled accurately within the framework of the conventional Hopfield network. This is due to the fact that both discrete and continuous terms must be considered to fully model the problem. This paper presents an augmented network architecture with a new form of interconnection between neurons giving a more general energy function containing both discrete and continuous terms. A comprehensive cost function for the unit commitment problem is developed and mapped to this energy function. Results show that this technique outperforms previous neural network methods. The new method also compares favourably with Lagrangian relaxation. Detailed results for a power system with thermal, hydro and pumped storage units are presented.


We examined parental decision concerning pregnancy management in women having fetuses with neural tube defects (NTDs) to determine whether severity of defect or method of detection has an impact on the decision making process. Analysis of decisions by 50 women, whose pregnancies were affected by an isolated neural tube defect (NTD) and characterized by a singleton gestation at 24 gestational weeks or less with normal chromosomal complement (46,XX or 46,XY), were assessed. All 23 women carrying fetuses with anencephaly elected to terminate their pregnancies. Of the 27 women carrying fetuses with spina bifida, 21 (77.8%) elected to terminate their pregnancies and 6 (22.2%) elected to continue their pregnancies. Of the 6 pregnancies that were continued, 4 were initially detected by ultrasonography and 2 were ascertained by maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein screening; defects ranged from 2 to 14 vertebral bodies, and none of the defects were craniad to the T9 level. This is in comparison to 5 of the 21 spina bifida cases that were elective pregnancy terminations, which were characterized by fetal lesions craniad to the T9 level. Severity of NTD thus appears to influence the decision to continue or terminate an affected pregnancy.


Abstract Aim To assess the long-term cost-effectiveness of an atrial fibrillation disease management program (i.e. the SAFETY program) from the Australian healthcare system perspective. Methods A multistate Markov model was developed based on patient-level data from the SAFETY randomized controlled trial. Predicted long-term survival, dependent on hospital admission history, was estimated by extrapolating parametric survival models. Quality-adjusted life years (QALY) and life years (LY) were the primary and secondary outcome measures used to estimate the incremental cost-utility/effectiveness ratio (ICUR/ICER). Both deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses (PSA) were undertaken. Results The SAFETY program was associated with both higher costs ($94,953 vs. $78,433) and benefits [QALY (3.99 vs 3.60); LY (5.86 vs 5.24)], with an ICUR of $42,513/QALY or ICER of $26,356/LY, compared to standard care. Due to the extended survival, the SAFETY was associated with a greater number of hospitalizations (14.85 vs 11.65) and higher costs for medications ($25,084 vs $22,402) and outpatient care ($12,904 vs $11,524). The cost per hospitalization for an average length of stay, analytical time horizon, and cost of medication are key determinants of ICUR. The PSA showed that the intervention has a 70.4% probability of being cost-effective at a threshold of $50,000/QALY. Conclusions The SAFETY program has a high probability of being cost-effective for patients with atrial fibrillation. It is associated with uncertainty that further research could potentially eliminate; implementation with further evidence collection is recommended.


Wind speed and temperature forecasting accurately for an urban area are two critical elements to mitigate cost and energy in engineering calculations. Recently, researchers have employed a combination of mesoscale Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and microscale models of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate wind flow in urban areas. Employing machine learning algorithms is also introduced as another promising alternative/complementary tool. In this work, a WRF model is developed to calculate wind speed at 10m above the ground in two different residential regions with different upwind roughness in Singapore. The results are validated by the literature. Using the validated model, Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) models are developed to compare with numerical weather models and evaluate their performance in prediction. Prediction results' accuracy is evaluated using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), and obtained errors below 0.19 and 5%, respectively. The models can provide high-resolution data as boundary conditions for CFD modeling at the local/building scale, which leads to understanding the more realistic behavior of the flow field in a built environment. In addition, they support an extended range of urban microclimate analysis, renewable energy integration practices, and smart city planning efforts.


Azafullerenes derived from nitrogen substitution of carbon cage atoms render direct modifications of the cage skeleton, electronic, and physicochemical properties of fullerene. Gas-phase ionized monometallic endohedral azafullerene (MEAF) [La@C81N]+ formed via fragmentation of a La@C82 monoadduct was detected in 1999, but the pristine MEAF has never been synthesized. Here, we report the synthesis, isolation, and characterization of the first pristine MEAF La@C81N, tackling the two-decade challenge. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction study reveals that La@C81N has an 82-atom cage with a pseudo C3v(8) symmetry. According to DFT computations, the nitrogen substitution site within the C82 cage is proposed to locate at a hexagon/hexagon/pentagon junction far away from the encapsulated La atom. La@C81N exists in stable monomer form with a closed-shell electronic state, which is drastically different from the open-shell electronic state of the original La@C82. Our breakthrough in synthesizing a new type of azafullerene offers a new insight into the skeletal modification of fullerenes.


A lot of nowadays machine vision tasks imply real-time video stream processing at rates of order of (25 frames / sec) x (640 x 480 pixels / frame) x (24 bit / pixel) = 184 Megabit / sec and higher. As reasonable estimations show, a very limited number of operations (even quite primitive) is allowed to be applied to each pixel of every video frame being processed in order to realize the processing rate required. Hence implementing algorithms widely exploiting formal methods (e.g. sorts of iterative approaches, transformations in multidimensional feature space etc) over the whole video stream becomes unaffordable. A potential (and practically working) overcome is introducing a cascade approach. From architectural viewpoint cascade processing consists of several predefined stages. Video frame passes through them from the zero stage (original frame) to the final stage (processing results). Some stages can be skipped, and the whole processing can be canceled at any stage. Passing through two sequential stages can be viewed as applying some operation to the information left to be processed. The keystone of cascade approach is designing an optimal sequence in which the simplest operations precede the more complex ones, so that the processing mechanism becomes essentially non-uniform and non-linear in terms of processing rates: the great amount of useless data is discriminated on the initial quick stages while the further analysis exploits smart algorithms over comparatively low data flux. The presentation demonstrates a practical example of cascade approach for the task of airplanes' tail identification numbers recognition.


Phytochemicals containing heteroatoms (N, O, S, and halogens) often have biological activities that are beneficial to humans. Although targeted profiling methods for such phytochemicals are expected to contribute to rapid chemical assignments, thus making phytochemical genomics and crop breeding much more efficient, there are few profiling methods for the metabolites. Here, as an ultrahigh performance approach, we propose a practical profiling method for S-containing metabolites (S-omics) using onions (Allium cepa) as a representative species and (12)C- and (13)C-based mass spectrometry (MS) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) analyses by liquid chromatography-Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance-mass spectrometry (LC-FTICR-MS). Use of the ultrahigh quality data from FTICR-MS enabled simplifying the previous methods to determine specific elemental compositions. MS analysis with a resolution of >250,000 full width at half-maximum and a mass accuracy of <1 ppm can distinguish S-containing monoisotopic ions from other ions on the basis of the natural abundance of (32)S and (34)S and the mass differences among the S isotopes. Comprehensive peak picking using the theoretical mass difference (1.99579 Da) between (32)S-containing monoisotopic ions and their (34)S-substituted counterparts led to the assignment of 67 S-containing monoisotopic ions from the (12)C-based MS spectra, which contained 4693 chromatographic ions. The unambiguous elemental composition of 22 ions was identified through comparative analysis of the (12)C- and (13)C-based MS spectra. Finally, of these, six ions were found to be derived from S-alk(en)ylcysteine sulfoxides and glutathione derivatives. This S-atom-driven approach afforded an efficient chemical assignment of S-containing metabolites, suggesting its potential application for screening not only S but also other heteroatom-containing metabolites in MS-based metabolomics.


Antimicrobial susceptibility patterns and plasmid profiles of Vibrio species isolated from edible crabs ( Callinectes sapidus ) were evaluated. A total of 40 crabs and the obtained water samples collected from four different markets in Lagos State were examined. Morphological and biochemical techniques were used to identify the Vibrio spp present in the samples. Susceptibility of bacteria isolates to 8 antibiotics was studied using a disc diffusion method and plasmid profile was determined by agarose gel electrophoresis. The total viable Vibrio count in unprocessed samples ranged from 3.30 to 5.80 Log10cfu/g while the processed ones was 1.80 to 2.5 Log10cfu/g. The identified Vibrio spp included, V. cholerae, V. harveyi. V. mimicus, V. parahaemolyticus, V. furnissii and V. fluvalis . Results revealed that Vibrio isolates from the samples expressed total (100%) antibiotic resistance to amoxcycilin and augumentin, 83.3% to cotrimoxazole, 72.2% to tetracycline, 66.6% to nitrofurantoin, 61.6% to gentamicin, 33.3% to nalidilixic acid and no resistance to ofloxacin. The isolates had a multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index ranging from 0.25–0.88. Plasmid profile of 10 isolates which showed multiple resistance to antibiotics revealed that 7 harboured plasmid with bands ranging from 23130 bp – 20240 bp as molecular weight. Isolation of Vibrio spp from seafood of this nature is considered as a potential danger for consumers.


In the internal network of a large organization, there may be a large
number of security measures or products in place, such as antivirus,
Intrusion Prevention/Detection Systems (IPDS), Firewalls, security patch
management, etc., and there is still some malware, mostly APT threats,
that goes undetected.
One of the activities that malware will conduct is "phone home",
to either fetch updates and instructions from the remote Command and
Control (C&C) servers, or send back stolen information. It is challenging,
but also may be proven fruitful to proactively detect these malware
phone-home activities. But before that, an analyst must be aware of the
most common techniques which were used in order for attackers to
exfiltrate data through these channels.
The first part of this thesis covers tools and techniques for malware
analysis and reverse engineering, as well as the setup and
documentation of a basic lab environment.
The second part focuses on analyzing and documenting core
techniques and attributes of known Command and Control channels for
Malware communication (C2 channels) and examines implementations
of such covert channels through common computer network protocols.
In the final part, we propose and develop a covert data exfiltration
method based on established techniques.


The goal of this article is to conduct comparative and structural-semantic research into belief narratives concerning flying serpents and treasure-bearers in East Slavic (Belarusian, Estonian Russian, other Slavic traditions) and Finno-Ugric (Estonian, Votic, Livonian, Finnish, Vepsian) regions related to Baltic and Scandinavian beliefs. The source material was collected between the 19th and 21st centuries. Based on the available materials, a character profile was created with respect to the following features while describing a flying serpent and a treasure-bringer: description of the origin (how and from whom the supernatural being originates), general forms of appearance, aspects of time and location, as well as the creature's behaviour (active/passive; rituals) and genre affiliation (the process of storytelling, perception of the character).


The main purpose of the study was to explain tobacco dependence and consumption of cigarettes from a motivational perspective on a sample of high school students of both sexes. We used four scales of the Wisconsin Inventory of Smoking Dependence Motives, a scale of parental rules and a scale of smoking friends; as well as two international measures for cigarette consumption and a tobacco dependence questionnaire. The multiple regression analysis of tobacco dependence showed that the key exposure, parental rules and positive reinforcement, accounted for 54.30% of the variance. In this study, was developed a structural model of the tobacco dependence that included the four motives and the number of days of consumption, which fits well with the data; all direct effects on measures of dependency were significant, as the covariance among the motives. According to the Wald statistic obtained in the latent class analysis, there were significant differences among the three groups in the four indicators: dependency, exposure to key, smoking friends and number of days of consumption.


The Telephone Game: Exploring Inductive Biases In Naturalistic Language Use Stephan Meylan University of California, Berkeley Brett Goldstein University of California, Berkeley Anna Rafferty University of California Berkeley Tom Griffiths University of California, Berkeley Abstract: In the classic telephone game, the content of a spoken message evolves as it passes from player to player. Beyond its entertainment value, the telephone game may have consider- able scientific utility: Here we investigate the nature of the linguistic knowledge people use to comprehend language by tracking the evolution of a set of visually-presented sentences in a web-based version of the telephone game. Initial sentences are selected from a range of probabilities according to n- gram language models. Both unigram and trigram probabilities of responses increase over the course of iterated transmission for sentences with the lowest initial probabilities, suggesting that edits are conditioned on participants' implicit probabilistic knowledge of their native language. Further investigations of word-level changes reveal not all words and sequences are subject to edits; rather, participants are more likely to change lower probability words and sequences, and replace them with higher probability content.


Background: The present study examined patterns and predictors of reading comprehension growth in first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers in the upper grades of primary school. Previous research suggests that L1 and L2 readers differ in their growth trajectories and that differences in language proficiency play a role in this. However, how predictors at different levels of processing influence growth has not been investigated. In particular, the role of unification skills such as syntactic integration and the ability to form a situation model of a text is under‐investigated.
Method: In a longitudinal study, 63 L1 Dutch and 109 L2 Dutch readers were followed from fourth to sixth grade (mean ages 10 to 13 years). L2 children had a variety of language backgrounds. In Grades 4–6, reading comprehension was assessed. In Grade 4, participants were also assessed on cognitive ability (nonverbal reasoning and working memory), decoding, vocabulary, and unification skills (syntax and situation model building ability). Patterns and predictors of growth were investigated by means of mixed‐effects modelling. Results: Reading comprehension growth was predicted by vocabulary and decoding, such that participants with lower decoding or vocabulary scores made more reading comprehension gains. L1 and L2 readers with high vocabulary scores did not differ in their reading comprehension growth. L2 readers with low vocabulary made less reading comprehension gains than L1 readers with low vocabulary. Unification skills predicted initial reading comprehension but not growth. Conclusions: Findings suggest that linguistic skills above the word level predict initial reading comprehension but not growth. Children with lower initial literacy skills caught up on reading comprehension, but this was less true for L2 children. L2 children with high vocabulary, however, did not differ from their L1 peers.


Cystic fibrosis is one of the severe childhood disorders with early manifestation of multiple organ involvement. The respiratory and digestive tracts are suffered the most, the prognosis of disease course depends on the degree of the impairment of these systems.   The results of the analysis of cystic fibrosis prevalence in Primorsky Krai according to the neonatal immunoreactive trypsin screening in 102 251 newborn are shown in the article. The age, sex, clinical and severity structure of cystic fibrosis was studied in 71 children. The prevalence of 13 mutations of transmembrane regulator conductance gene in 41 patients was determined. Correlations between time of pulmonary complications manifestation, P. Aeruginosa infection development, chronic hypoxemia degree, malnutrition, genetic status and severity of the disease were found. Key words : cystic fibrosis, children, respiratory tract, digestive tract.


An ultrastructural study was conducted of the Malpighian tubules of Anopheles quadrimaculatus, both uninfected and following infection with Dirofilaria immitis. The Malpighian tubules in Anopheles are composed of primary and stellate cells. The primary cells are the predominant cell type and are characterized by the presence of membrane-bound, intracellular, mineralized concretions and large apical microvilli containing mitochondria. Following the infective blood meal, the microfilariae enter the primary cells of the Malpighian tubules and reside in the cytoplasm in a clear zone without a delimiting membrane. Cells in infected tubules differ from those in uninfected tubules in that the membranes of the vacuoles surrounding the concretions are disrupted in many specimens. The apical and basal cell membranes and the mitochondria associated with these are not disrupted during the first 6-8 days of infection. These observations differ sharply from those previously described in Aedes taeniorhynchus infected with D. immitis. The observations are consistent with the hypothesis that the extended transport capacity observed in previous physiological studies of An. quadrimaculatus infected with D. immitis are dependent on the prolonged normal ultrastructure of the apical microvilli, mitochondria, and basal membranes.


A bilateral distributed delay model is developed which is useful in modeling a number of reversible processes with or without losses. It is shown that as k, the number of stages in the delay process, becomes large the solution of the distributed delay model approaches that of a first-order partial differential equation with a number of important applications in modeling distributed parameter flow processes in the real world. It is also shown that with smaller k values the distributed delay model introduces z-axis diffusion which can be useful in modeling some flow-plus-diffusion processes. This paper is concluded with an illustrative application of the bilateral distributed delay.


This paper presents an innovative approach to extracting factors which are shown to predict the VIX, the S&P 500 Realized Volatility and the Variance Risk Premium. The approach is innovative along two different dimensions, namely: (1) we extract factors from panels of filtered volatilities - in particular large panels of univariate financial asset ARCH-type models and (2) we price equity volatility risk using factors which go beyond the equity class. These are volatility factors extracted from panels of volatilities of short-term funding and long-run corporate spreads as well as volatilities of energy and metals commodities returns and sport/future spreads.


Modern decision support systems require very quick (interactive) responses from the DBMS, but pose complex queries on large volumes of data. In this paper, we present a novel solution to this problem: we precompute concise histogram statistics on the data to answer the queries quickly but approximately. Our hypothesis is that many decision support applications can tolerate small errors in query results in return for large reductions in response times. In particular, we propose the use of multiple histograms to approximate the data cube and answer aggregate queries approximately using this summarized data. We enhance histograms to estimate the quality of the approximate answers. We primarily explore the interaction among various histograms on the data cube in order to minimize the space needed when an upper bound on the errors is given. Our main contribution in this paper is an efficient technique for selecting a provably near-optimal set of histograms on the data cube. Extensive experiments show that our technique results in very accurate and concise statistics. Our technique is general in nature and can also be used for selecting a set of histograms (or other statistics) on a relation for the purpose of selectivity estimation.


Abstract Most of the time suppressed and disempowered throughout man's history, the gender of woman has undergone a dissipating process where such an overpowering oscillation between two genders occurs. In spite of the fact that this bias creates a generalization, the position of the 'womanhood' wasn't always under subjugation. As a matter of fact, this essay intends to throw light upon women's past, present and future' by relying on mainly Leila Ahmed's flagship works into by drawing a map showing how the veil plays a critical role in the representation of women.


Syntactic priming (SP) is the effect by which, in a dialogue, the current speaker tends to re-use the syntactic constructs of the previous speakers. SP has been used as a window into the nature of syntactic representations within and across languages. Because of its importance, it is crucial to understand the mechanisms behind it. Currently, two competing theories exist. According to the transient activation account, SP is driven by the re-activation of declarative memory structures that encode structures. According to the error-based implicit learning account, SP is driven by prediction errors while processing sentences. By integrating both transient activation and associative learning, Reitter et al.'s hybrid model 2011 assumes that SP is achieved by both mechanisms, and predicts a priming enhancement for rare or unusual constructions. Finally, a recently proposed account, the reinforcement learning account, claims that SP driven by the successful application of procedural knowledge will be reversed when the prime sentence includes grammatical errors. These theories make different assumptions about the representation of syntactic rules (declarative vs. procedural) and the nature of the mechanism that drives priming (frequency and repetition, attention, and feedback signals, respectively). To distinguish between these theories, they were all implemented as computational models in the ACT-R cognitive architecture, and their specific predictions were examined through grid-search computer simulations. Two experiments were then carried out to empirically test the central prediction of each theory as well as the individual fits of each participant's responses to different parameterizations of each model. The first experiment produced results that were best explained by the associative account, but could also be accounted for by a modified reinforcement model with a different parsing algorithm. The second experiment, whose stimuli were designed to avoid the parsing ambiguity of the first, produced somewhat weaker effects. Its results, however, were also best predicted by the model implementing the associative account. We conclude that the data overall points to SP being due to prediction violations that direct attentional resources, in turn suggesting a declarative rather than a RL based procedural representation of syntactic rules.


The ability of the central M atom of the MCl3 - anion, with M=Be, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba, to engage in a noncovalent bond with an approaching nucleophile is gauged by ab initio methods. The N atom of pyridine forms a M⋅⋅⋅N bond with an interaction energy between 12 and 21 kcal mol-1 , even though the π-hole above the M atom is not necessarily positive in sign. Despite a strong Coulombic repulsion between two anions, CN- is also able to approach the M atom so as to engage in a metastable complex that is higher in energy than the individual anions. The energy barrier separating this complex from its constituent anion pair is roughly 20 kcal mol-1 . Despite the endothermic formation reaction energy of the CN- ⋅⋅⋅MCl3 - complex, the electron topology signals a strong interaction, more so than in pyridine⋅⋅⋅MCl3 - with its exothermic binding energy. The dianionic complex is held together largely on the strength of interorbital interactions, thereby overcoming a repulsive electrostatic component. The latter is partially alleviated by the pyramidalization of the MCl3 unit which makes its π-hole more positive. The complex sinks below the separate monomers in energy when the system is immersed in an aqueous medium, with a binding energy that varies from as much as 20 kcal mol-1 for Be down to 1.2 kcal mol-1 for Ba.


This paper describes two directed intervention crossover approaches that are applied to a bio-control dynamic system. Unlike traditional uniform crossover, both the calculated expanding bin (CalEB) method and targeted intervention with stochastic selection (TInSSel) approach actively choose an intervention level and spread based on the fitness of the parents selected for crossover. Results indicate that these approaches lead to significant improvements over uniform crossover (UC) when a penalty is introduced for each intervention point used by the crossover algorithm.


Abstract:The narrator-protagonist of Aleksandr Ivanov's novella "Stereoscope. A Twilight Story" (1909) stumbles upon a portal into a three-dimensional photographic world—the uncanny " bygone spaces" that cause him to veer between " fear" and nostalgic "rapture." These emotions are contradictory but also inseparable, which becomes clear when the narrator's experiences are read through the lens of Walter Benjamin's concept of aura. The story as a whole prefigures Benjamin's "definition of the aura as the aura of distance opened up with the look that awakens in an object perceived": the photograph in "Stereoscope" is endowed with a gaze, at once threatening and beguiling, that saps the protagonist's agency. Because Ivanov's text seeks to enact the protagonist's adventures for the reader, the"Twilight Story" not only testifies to the enduring power of the photographic image, but also showcases the auratic possibilities of language.


BACKGROUND
Studies from different parts of the world on thyroid dysfunction have shown it to be widespread in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM); however, there is insufficient local data to support this observation.

AIM
To determine the burden of thyroid dysfunction among patients with T2DM at a Tertiary Hospital in South east Nigeria with emphasis on its prevalence and pattern of presentation.

METHODS
Four hundred and seventy two subjects were recruited for the study. All the subjects (100%) were of African descent. Three hundred and fifty-four (354) of them were patients with T2DM, while 118 subjects who did not have T2DM served as the controls. This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study involving patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus attending the Diabetes Clinic, or receiving treatment in the Medical Wards. Subjects were recruited using systematic sampling. The first patient was selected by simple random sampling, and subsequently, every consecutive subject was selected. Blood samples were tested for HbA1c, fT3, fT4 and thyrotropin, thyroid stimulating hormone. Socio-demographic information was retrieved from patient medical records. We used the student t-test for statistical comparison of quantitative variables such as weight, height, blood pressure, serum TSH, serum T3; while for comparison of proportions, we used the chi squared test. We set a p-value of less than 0.05 to be statistically significant.

RESULTS
Females formed the majority of the study population accounting for 56.5% of the type 2 DM patients and 62.7% of the controls. We observed that the mean age of the type 2 DM patients was 57.5 (±9.3) years, which was similar to the mean age of controls: 57.7±8.9 (p=0.17). We also observed that the mean age at diagnosis of DM was 54±7.6 years, while the mean duration of DM for all the type 2 DM patients was 6.5±2.8 years. We observed that in patients with T2DM, the prevalence of thyroid dysfunction was 12.4%, and among the controls a prevalence of 1.7% was observed (P <0.05). Females formed the majority (75%) of T2DM patients with thyroid dysfunction and hypothyroidism was the most common type of thyroid dysfunction (93.2%) observed in this study.

CONCLUSION
Prevalence of thyroid dysfunction in T2DM patients in this study was 12.4% which was high compared to 1.7% observed in the controls (P = 0.001). Majority of those who had thyroid dysfunction were females. About 9 in 10 of all subjects with thyroid dysfunction had hypothyroidism.


Game and physical activity are the main tools for children to learn because they learn quickly through personal experience and multi-sensor teaching methods which encourage their natural sense of curiosity. Game, in all its forms, presents numerous possibilities for interaction of children with persons and objects in real and imaginary situations. Small children must have a committed specialist to interact even with the parents. In this way children will try hard to improve what they know better by helping and inspiring them as a way promoting interest and will to continue learning. Scholars consider quite positive the involvement of parents in the learning process because parents are constantly informed of the situation and progress of their children. This applies even to the classes of physical education and training sessions in all sports disciplines where teacher- parent cooperation would strongly affect the improvement of their children performance. By knowing better the specifics of sports activities and its role in their psycho-motor development, there have to be used all the possibilities to encourage children to be involved in sports activities and there have to be found all the possibilities to increase their performance. From ower experience as teacher of physical education, trainer of young ages and professional basketballer I have learned that involvement of parents and cooperation with them is extremely useful and this is the reason why I have elaborated further on this topic. An ideal environment for the children is a teaching environment of work flow, high quality and careful programme planning.


In the present observational study, thirty aborted human fetuses of 13-38 weeks gestational age with no obvious congenital abnormality were obtained. To study the histology of spleen in relation to the gestational age, spleen was procured after dissection of fetuses and slides were prepared with H & E staining. The findings were noted under the light microscope. On looking over the literature on development and the important functions served by the spleen as haemopoeitic and lymphoid organ, the following study was undertaken. In the study, the mean body weight of fetuses was 130.83 at 14 week and 3150gm at the age of 38 week. The average crown rump length of fetuses at 14 weeks was 115mm and was 330mm at 38 week. Histologically, at 13 week of age there were large numbers of cells of irregular shape with large nucleus centrally. Few small thin walled vessels are seen. At 20 week of age, clearcut division of red and white pulp was seen. Our study may be regarded as a preliminary study including some detailed results. The histological findings acquired in our study will be beneficial for the evaluations about the fetal spleen.


Visual Place Recognition (VPR) is a crucial component of 6-DoF localization, visual SLAM and structure-from-motion pipelines, tasked to generate an initial list of place match hypotheses by matching global place descriptors. However, commonly-used CNN-based methods either process multiple image resolutions after training or use a single resolution and limit multi-scale feature extraction to the last convolutional layer during training. In this paper, we augment NetVLAD representation learning with low-resolution image pyramid encoding which leads to richer place representations. The resultant multi-resolution feature pyramid can be conveniently aggregated through VLAD into a single compact representation, avoiding the need for concatenation or summation of multiple patches in recent multi-scale approaches. Furthermore, we show that the underlying learnt feature tensor can be combined with existing multi-scale approaches to improve their baseline performance. Evaluation on 15 viewpoint-varying and viewpoint-consistent benchmarking datasets confirm that the proposed MultiRes-NetVLAD leads to state-of-the-art Recall@N performance for global descriptor based retrieval, compared against 11 existing techniques. Source code is publicly available at https://github.com/Ahmedest61/MultiRes-NetVLAD.


The Texmix demonstration presents an original interface to navigate a collection of broadcast news shows, exploiting speech transcription, natural language processing and image retrieval techniques. Navigation is performed through keywords search or through time or through maps, with links automatically created either between reports to follow the story or to the Web to know more about a story, a person or a fact. Image search technology is also integrated to find portions of the collection with similar images. We also present two original features to dynamically access videos, namely dynamic summary and geotagging.


Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are potent new tools for a molecular targeted approach to modify the course of multiple sclerosis (MS). Besides natalizumab, which was approved in 2006, three other mAbs (alemtuzumab, rituximab and daclizumab) were successfully tested in Phase II MS trials. In this review, introductory notes on the development and systematic nomenclature of therapeutic mAbs in general, set the stage for a detailed discussion of the four mAbs mentioned. We summarize non-MS indications, expression and function of target antigens, scientific rationales for MS therapy, putative modes of action and pharmacological aspects. Particularly, we provide a critical discussion of clinical MS trials, including protocols and interim analyses of trials currently underway. The natalizumab section pays special attention to the clinical handling of safety issues and the diagnostic use of neutralizing antibodies. We finally develop a scenario for how each of the four mAbs might evolve into the market of MS therapeutics within the coming years.


By inducing double-strand breaks (DSB), it is possible to initiate DNA recombination. For a long time, it was not possible to use DSB induction for efficient genome engineering due to the lack of a means to target DSBs to specific sites. This limitation was overcome by development of modified meganucleases and synthetic DNA-binding domains. Domains derived from zinc-finger transcription factors or transcription activator-like effectors may be designed to recognize almost any DNA sequence. By fusing these domains to the endonuclease domains of a class II restriction enzyme, an active endonuclease dimer may be formed that introduces a site-specific DSB. Recent studies demonstrate that gene knockouts via non-homologous end joining or gene modification via homologous recombination are becoming routine in many plant species. By creating a single genomic DSB, complete knockout of a gene, sequence-specific integration of foreign DNA or subtle modification of individual amino acids in a specific protein domain may be achieved. The induction of two or more DSBs allows complex genomic rearrangements such as deletions, inversions or the exchange of chromosome arms. The potential for controlled genome engineering in plants is tremendous. The recently discovered RNA-based CRISPR/Cas system, a new tool to induce multiple DSBs, and sophisticated technical applications, such as the in planta gene targeting system, are further steps in this development. At present, the focus remains on engineering of single genes; in the future, engineering of whole genomes will become an option.


In this experiment, a new type of nutritional drink—millet skim milk beverage—was developed based on combining skim milk with millet and nutritional resource utilization. The effects of NaHCO3 concentrations in soaking water (0, 0.5 g/100 mL, and 1.0 g/100 mL) and blanching time (0, 15, and 30 min) on the physicochemical properties of millet skim milk were studied. The parameter changes caused by the above treatment were evaluated via color analysis, physicochemical analysis and sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). Soaking in water containing NaHCO3 had a significant (p < 0.05) effect on pH, specific gravity, viscosity, and stability. The blanching treatment had a significant (p < 0.05) influence on the total solids of the samples. However, blanching only slightly affected the physical properties of the samples. In addition, soaking and blanching treatments had significant (p < 0.05) effects on the b* value of millet skim milk beverage, whereas there was no significant (p > 0.05) change in L* and a*. SDS-PAGE analysis indicated that the blanching treatment had a significant (p < 0.05) effect on band 5 and band 6 and that the soaking treatment also had a significant effect on the bands of 6 and 7 (p < 0.05). By analyzing the substantial effects, we concluded that the optimum process conditions were soaking with 0.5 g/100 mL NaHCO3 solution and blanching for 15 min.


The premorbid period of schizophrenia is caused by various factors and can be considered as one of the most important periods of the patient's life, which affects the further course of schizophrenia and adaptive capabilities, which in turn indicates that the features of the premorbid period also affect the ability of patients with schizophrenia to form therapeutic compliance. The aim of the study was to study the premorbid features of patients with paranoid schizophrenia with cerebral hemodynamic disorders. It should be concluded that ontogenetic biological factors, hereditary burden, cognitive disorders, characterological personal characteristics are risk factors for the development of cerebral vascular dystonia in patients with paranoid schizophrenia.


To understand the mechanisms of speech perception in everyday listening environments, it is important to elucidate the relative contributions of different acoustic cues in transmitting phonetic content. Previous studies suggest that the envelope of speech in different frequency bands conveys most speech content, while the temporal fine structure (TFS) can aid in segregating target speech from background noise. However, the role of TFS in conveying phonetic content beyond what envelopes convey for intact speech in complex acoustic scenes is poorly understood. The present study addressed this question using online psychophysical experiments to measure the identification of consonants in multi-talker babble for intelligibility-matched intact and 64-channel envelope-vocoded stimuli. Consonant confusion patterns revealed that listeners had a greater tendency in the vocoded (versus intact) condition to be biased toward reporting that they heard an unvoiced consonant, despite envelope and place cues being largely preserved. This result was replicated when babble instances were varied across independent experiments, suggesting that TFS conveys voicing information beyond what is conveyed by envelopes for intact speech in babble. Given that multi-talker babble is a masker that is ubiquitous in everyday environments, this finding has implications for the design of assistive listening devices such as cochlear implants.


ABSTRACT This article extends the literature on copulas with discrete or continuous marginals to the case where some of the marginals are a mixture of discrete and continuous components. We do so by carefully defining the likelihood as the density of the observations with respect to a mixed measure. The treatment is quite general, although we focus on mixtures of Gaussian and Archimedean copulas. The inference is Bayesian with the estimation carried out by Markov chain Monte Carlo. We illustrate the methodology and algorithms by applying them to estimate a multivariate income dynamics model. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.


Abstract This article addresses the importance of research and development (R&D) collaboration for environmental adaptation in the Swedish pulp and paper industry. It reviews the collaborative efforts initiated during the first half of the twentieth century, and investigates in particular how these efforts were influenced by the advent of modern environmental legislation in the late 1960s. We find that during the early period the underlying motives for environmental R&D collaboration were related to the presence of local resistance to pollution, over time turning into increased requirements from tightening environmental regulation. When the Swedish Environmental Protection Act was implemented in 1969, the long-lasting tradition of collaborative R&D activities facilitated the development and the adaptation of cleaner technologies in the sector. The article concludes that in the case of the Swedish pulp and paper industry, the significant environmental improvements witnessed during the 1960s and onwards can only be fully comprehended by acknowledging the role of the industry-wide collaborative activities in R&D. The positive outcomes of this collaboration were in turn reinforced by an environmental regulation system, which facilitated long-term investments in environmental R&D and, in contrast to their Finnish and American counterparts, encouraged internal process changes in the industry.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the current status of cybersex addiction, demographic factors influencing the level of cybersex addiction, and relationships between sexual knowledge, sexual attitude, and cybersex addiction among Korean college students. Methods: Using a cross-sectional study design, 6,000 college students were recruited through proportional quota sampling from May 2011 to October 2011. Results: Almost 10 percent(9.3%) of the participants had moderate or severe addiction to cybersex. The level of cybersex addiction differed significantly according to gender, major, and economic status. Significant association was observed between sexual knowledge, sexual attitude, and cybersex addiction. Conclusion: The significant demographic factors mentioned above, as well as sexual knowledge and attitude should be factored in when designing interventions for cybersex addiction among college students. Conduct of more qualitative and longitudinal research on this topicis needed in order to prevent and to intervene in cybersex addiction among college students.


A bridge pile project is an underground concealed one;the degree of difficulty for its construction is great.It is affected by bad geological condition and apt to produce unsafe defect and cause incident. The acoustic transmission method is convenient for use.It is an accurate,high efficient measuring method to control the quality of the bridge with buried pipes.This paper takes the bridge across the Sujia River in Wulong County as an example,where the pipes are buried in advance and measured by the acoustic transmission method.The ocular dianostic method of the wave is adopted as well as the traditional velocity-amplitude diagnostic method for comparison and analysis.Then the core is drilled for confirmation.Test results show that the ultrasonic transmission method is reliable and accurate and this has hot rid of the potential safety hazard of the bridge across the Sujia River effectively.So the sound wave perspective method is an indispensable key detection means to control the security quality of the base of the bridge and guarantee the security of the pier base and the gridge.


Abstract  The genus Eois comprises an important part of megadiverse assemblages of geometrid moths in mountain rainforests of southern Ecuador. In this study we report: (i) on the construction of a DNA barcode library of Eois for identification purposes; and (ii) the exploration of species diversity through species delimitation by pair‐wise distance thresholds. COI barcode sequences were generated from 408 individuals (at least 105 species) collected on a narrow geographic scale (∼40 km2) in the Reserva Biológica San Francisco. Analyses of barcode sequence divergence showed that species delimitations based solely on external morphology result in broad overlap of intra‐ and interspecific distances. Species delimitation at a 2% pair‐wise distance threshold reveals a clear barcoding gap. Fifty‐two previously unrecognized species were identified, 31 of which could only be distinguished by an integrative taxonomy approach. Twelve additional putative species could only be recognized by threshold‐based delimitation. Most splits resulted in two or three newly perceived cryptic taxa. The present study increased the number of Eois species recorded from that small area of Andean mountain forest from 102 to 154 (morphology‐ plus integrative taxonomy‐based) or even 166 (sequence‐based), leaving the species accumulation curve still far from reaching an asymptote. Notably, in no case did two or more previously distinguished morphospecies have to be lumped. This barcode inventory can be used to match larvae to known adult samples without rearing, and will therefore be of vital help to extend the currently limited knowledge about food plant relationships and host specialization.


This article presents a straightforward approach to incorporate a Value at Risk (VaR) constraint into the asset allocation mechanism of life-cycle investment funds. It makes use of tactical tilts in asset allocation which take into account current market conditions, risk tolerance, and time to retirement. The attractive feature of this strategy is that it is easy to implement and does not require assumptions about the distribution of returns or estimating investor's utility function. It also has the potential to deliver significantly higher terminal wealth to fund participants than present life-cycle asset allocation strategies.


This paper introduces an important source of torque ripple in permanent-magnet synchronous machines with tooth-coil windings (TC-PMSMs). It is theoretically proven that saturation and cross-saturation phenomena caused by the nonsynchronous harmonics of the stator current linkage cause a synchronous inductance variation with a particular periodicity. This, in turn, determines the magnitude of the torque ripple and can also deteriorate the performance of signal-injection-based rotor position estimation algorithms. An improved dq-inductance model is proposed. It can be used in torque ripple reduction control schemes and can enhance the self-sensing capabilities of TC-PMSMs.


ABSTRACT In order to study primate lentivirus evolution in the Colobinae subfamily, in which only one simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) has been described to date, we screened additional species from the three different genera of African colobus monkeys for SIV infection. Blood was obtained from 13 West African colobids, and HIV cross-reactive antibodies were observed in 5 of 10 Piliocolobus badius, 1 of 2 Procolobus verus, and 0 of 1 Colobus polykomos specimens. Phylogenetic analyses of partial pol sequences revealed that the new SIVs were more closely related to each other than to the other SIVs and especially did not cluster with the previously described SIVcol from Colobus guereza. This study presents evidence that the three genera of African colobus monkeys are naturally infected with an SIV and indicates also that there was no coevolution between virus and hosts at the level of the Colobinae subfamily.


The study presents early findings from an ongoing pilot study of a cognitive‐behavioral treatment for assisting active-duty military members with deployment-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) designed for use by psychologists working in an integrated primary care clinic. Treatment protocol is based primarily on Prolonged Exposure but also includes elements of Cognitive Processing Therapy that were adapted for use in primary care. Individuals were recruited from the population of patients consulted to the psychologist by primary care providers during routine clinical care. The 15 participants include active-duty or activated reserve Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom veterans seeking help for deployment-related PTSD symptoms, with a PTSD Checklist-Military Version score 32, and interest in treatment for PTSD in primary care. Baseline and 1-month posttreatment follow-up evaluations


The child-saving movement emerged in the United States during the nineteenth century and influenced the development of the juvenile justice system. Child-savers stressed the value of redemption and prevention through early identification of deviance and intervention in the form of education and training. Humanitism and altruism were not the only motivating factors for the child-savers. There is suggestions that an additional and perhaps overriding aim was to expand control over poor and immigrant children. The Child Savers were 20th Century Progressive era reformers whose intent was to mitigate the roots of child delinquency and to change the treatment of juveniles under the justice system. These women reformers organized in 1909 to stem the tide of 10,000 young offenders who passed annually through the city"s court system. The greatest accomplishment of the Child Savers was the creation of the first juvenile court which appeared in Cook County, Illinois in 1899. This court was founded on two principles both highly advocated by the Child Savers. These two principles were formed on the basis that "juveniles were not ready to be held accountable for their actions" and "that they were not fully developed and could rehabilitate easier than adults". This issue of juvenile delinquency was a big issue between the 19th and the 20th centuries, therefore the contributions of the Child Savers, both good and bad are evident in their history. Also the establishment of juvenile courts in cities across the United States was one of the earliest social welfare reforms of the progressive Era, and represented a major change in the way in which the law dealt with wayward children. The essence of the juvenile court idea, and of the juvenile court movement, is the recognition of the obligation of the great mother state to her neglected and erring children, and her obligation to deal with them as children and wards, rather than to class them as criminals and drive them by harsh measures into the ranks of vice and crime.


In this paper, an optimal design of stable digital low pass infinite impulse response (IIR) filter using Particle Swarm Optimization with Constriction Factor and Inertia Weight Approach (PSO-CFIWA) has been presented. In the design process, the filter length, pass band and stop band frequencies, feasible pass band and stop band ripple sizes are specified. IIR filter design is a multi-modal optimization problem. The conventional gradient based optimization techniques are not efficient for digital IIR filter design due to the sub-optimality problem. Given the filter specifications to be realized, the PSO-CFIWA algorithm generates a set of optimal filter coefficients and tries to meet the ideal frequency response characteristic. In this paper, for the given problem, the design of the optimal IIR low pass filter of order eight has been performed. The simulation results have been compared to those obtained by the well accepted evolutionary algorithms such as particle swarm optimization (PSO), real coded genetic algorithm (RGA). The results justify that the proposed optimal filter design approach using PSO-CFIWA outperforms RGA and PSO, not only in the accuracy of the designed filter but also in the convergence speed and solution quality i.e. the stop band attenuation. Further, the pole zero analysis justifies the stability of the designed optimized IIR filter.


Summary The increasing flow of data along with rapid advancements in computing domain have led to the need of new paradigms to optimize the oil and gas exploration workflows. This brings the need of adopting the fourth industrial revolution (IR4), which is a result of emerging technologies such as Big Data, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Our method to adopt IR4 in the exploration domain is based on three pillars. First, alignment is required among entities within a corporate to overcome challenges and establish a roadmap with common goals. Second, awareness needs to be raised among all stakeholders. This can be achieved through formal education, online programs, and workshops. Third, empowerment from different aspects is required, including computing infrastructure, data access, and across domain collaboration. Adopting such paradigm shift is challenging, especially for oil and gas exploration. This is due to the high degree of uncertainty in interpretation data, a return of investment that is not straightforward to measure, and multiple data related challenges such as quality, integration, and traceability. To adopt this new transformation, we recommend a number of steps. Those include data science skills development and a cyclic transformation approach to develop IR4 business cases.


In a retrospective case series of 10 children with cryptogenic FIRES, we sought to describe the early clinical course and potential biomarkers following anakinra initiation. Six children achieved anesthetic withdrawal within 3 weeks of therapy and one in week four. Of the available cEEG (six children), CRP (10 children), and serum cytokine (six children) studies, there were temporal changes in highly epileptiform bursts (observed in three children), CRP, IL‐6, and IL‐10 levels that might parallel clinical progression. These observations may represent candidate biomarkers for monitoring clinical progression and therapeutic interventions including anakinra, which merits further investigation in future studies.


With an ever-increasing importance of wind power generation in power systems, the necessity of choosing the appropriate type of technology for the wind turbine generators becomes more significant. In the current paper, fixed and variable speed wind turbines and the application of energy storage system (ESS) to smoothen the wind farm output power are studied. A detailed analysis of the influence of equipping the fixed speed induction generators (FSIG) with an energy storage system on the power system's transient stability is presented. Further, a comparison is made between the wind farm with variable speed induction generators (DFIG) and wind farm with ESS-equipped FSIG to suggest the better choice of generator for the wind farm from power system transient stability point of view. The simulations are performed using PSCAD software, with a 9 bus system. It is suggested that ESS-equipped FSIG wind turbine has a better transient performance than DFIG wind turbine and would be the better choice in wind farms.


Purpose
This study aims to empirically investigate the role of learning for suppliers of individualized customizations from a communication perspective.

Design/methodology/approach
Five companies providing individualized customizations are investigated through an in-depth qualitative approach. The empirical material is based on data from five presentations in one workshop and seven interviews.

Findings
Four important categories of communication processes between suppliers and customers that stimulate learning were identified: the identification and confirmation of existing knowledge, the identification of knowledge gaps and the creation of new knowledge, the definition of relations and procedures and evaluation and learning.

Practical implications
These findings can help suppliers of individualized customizations become aware of the important role of organizational learning in their day-to-day operations and the value of improving as a learning organization.

Originality/value
This cross-disciplinary study brings together organizational learning and customization research. It is a study that focuses on communication in customization tasks as a base for learning.


The state-of-the-art in example-based multimedia event detection (MED) rests on heterogeneous classifiers whose scores are typically combined in a late-fusion scheme. Recent studies on this topic have failed to reach a clear consensus as to whether machine learning techniques can outperform rule-based fusion schemes with varying amount of training data. In this paper, we present two parametric approaches to late fusion: a normalization scheme for arithmetic mean fusion (logistic averaging) and a fusion scheme based on logistic regression, and compare them to widely used rule-based fusion schemes. We also describe how logistic regression can be used to calibrate the fused detection scores to predict an optimal threshold given a detection prior and costs on errors. We discuss the advantages and shortcomings of each approach when the amount of positives available for training varies from 10 positives (10Ex) to 100 positives (100Ex). Experiments were run using video data from the NIST TRECVID MED 2013 evaluation and results were reported in terms of a ranking metric: the mean average precision (mAP) and R0, a cost-based metric introduced in TRECVID MED 2013.


The present paper addresses the issue of the stochastic control of the optimal dynamic reinsurance policy and dynamic dividend strategy, which are state-dependent, for an insurance company that operates under multiple insurance lines of business. The aggregate claims model with a thinning-dependence structure is adopted for the risk process. In the optimization method, the maximum of the cumulative expected discounted dividend payouts with respect to the dividend and reinsurance strategies are considered as value function. This value function is characterized as the smallest super Viscosity solution of the associated Hamilton-Jacobi- Bellman (HJB) equation. The finite difference method (FDM) has been utilized for the numerical solution of the value function and the optimal control strategy and the proof for the convergence of this numerical solution to the value function is provided. The findings of this paper provide insights for the insurance companies as such that based upon the lines in which they are operating, they can choose a vector of the optimal dynamic reinsurance strategies and consequently transfer some part of their risks to several reinsurers.


Large-scale Gaussian process (GP) modeling is becoming increasingly important in machine learning. However, the standard modeling method of GPs, which uses the maximum likelihood method and the best linear unbiased predictor, is designed to run on a single computer, which often has limited computing power. Therefore, there is a growing demand for approximate alternatives, such as composite likelihood methods, that can take advantage of the power of multiple computers. However, these alternative methods in the literature offer limited options for practitioners because most methods focus more on computational efficiency rather than statistical efficiency. Limited accurate solutions to the parameter estimation and prediction for fast GP modeling are available in the literature for supercomputing practitioners. Therefore, this study develops an optimal composite likelihood (OCL) scheme for distributed GP modeling that can minimize information loss in parameter estimation and model prediction. The proposed predictor, called the best linear unbiased block predictor (BLUBP), has the minimum prediction variance given the partitioned data. Numerical examples illustrate that both the proposed composite likelihood estimation and prediction methods provide more accurate performance than their traditional counterparts under various cases, and an extremely close approximation to the standard modeling method is observed.


Obesity is now recognised as one of the most important risk factors for heart disease. Obese individuals have high circulating levels of leptin, a hormone secreted by adipose tissue and involved in energy homeostasis. Growing evidence suggests that leptin may contribute to the development of cardiac dysfunction. In a large prospective study leptin has been shown to be an independent risk factor for coronary heart disease. An independent positive association has also been found between plasma leptin levels and heart rate in hypertensive patients and heart transplant recipients. In animal studies chronic leptin infusion increased heart rate and blood pressure. It has also been demonstrated that circulating leptin levels are elevated in patients with heart failure. The level of plasma leptin was associated with increased myocardial wall thickness and correlated with left ventricular mass, suggesting a role for this hormone in mediating left ventricular hypertrophy in humans. Moreover, leptin directly induced hypertrophy and hyperplasia in human and rodent cardiomyocytes, accompanied by cardiac extracellular matrix remodelling. Leptin may also influence energy substrate utilisation in cardiac tissue. These findings suggest that leptin acting directly or through the sympathetic nervous system may have adverse effects on cardiac structure and function, and that chronic hyperleptinaemia may greatly increase the risk of cardiac disorders. Additional studies are needed to define the role of leptin in cardiac physiology and pathophysiology, nevertheless the reduction in plasma leptin levels with caloric restriction and weight loss may prevent cardiac dysfunction in obese patients.


Prediction methods to identify single-cross hybrids with superior yield performance have the potential to greatly improve the efficiency of commercial maize (Zea mays L.) hybrid breeding programs. Our objectives were to (1) identify marker loci associated with quantitative trait loci for hybrid performance or specific combining ability (SCA) in maize, (2) compare hybrid performance prediction by genotypic value estimates with that based on general combining ability (GCA) estimates, and (3) investigate a newly proposed combination of the GCA model with SCA predictions from genotypic value estimates. A total of 270 hybrids was evaluated for grain yield and grain dry matter content in four Dent × Flint factorial mating experiments, their parental inbred lines were genotyped with 20 AFLP primer-enzyme combinations. Markers associated significantly with hybrid performance and SCA were identified, genotypic values and SCA effects were estimated, and four hybrid performance prediction approaches were evaluated. For grain yield, between 38 and 98 significant markers were identified for hybrid performance and between zero and five for SCA. Estimates of prediction efficiency (R) ranged from 0.46 to 0.86 for grain yield and from 0.59 to 0.96 for grain dry matter content. Models enhancing the Schrag et al. 2006. Theor. Appl. Genet. 113:1037-1047. 11 GCA approach with SCA estimates resulted in the highest prediction efficiency if the SCA to GCA ratio was high. We conclude that it is advantageous for prediction of single-cross hybrids to enhance a GCAbased model with SCA effects estimated from molecular marker data, if SCA variances are of similar or larger importance as GCA variances.


Syringa oblata Lindl.is a native deciduous shrub species in China's temperate regions.Genetic resources of the species has been seriously degraded,remaining few scattered distributions.4 natural populations and 1 cultivated population of Syringa oblata.were analyzed using morphological markers.Morphological diversity among and within populations were analyzed based on 14 phenotypic traits,including three capsule characters,two foliage traits,five seed and four seedling traits,of 30 sample trees from each population.Variance analysis showed that there were significant variation among/within populations.The coefficient of variation(CV) was 14.25% to 29.13%,and phenotypic differentiation coefficient(Vst) ranged from 1.85% to 86.67%,the mean value of 5 populations was 43.93%.The variation within population was the main part of the phenotypic variation,variance component of within population variance was 56.06%.There is close relationship between the 10 phenotypic traits and ecological gradient variation in spatial distribution.Cluster analysis based on average taxonomic distance(Dist) of morphological traitsshowed that the 5 populations of Syringa oblata were divided into two groups and that the cultivated population was clustered into northern group.According to the research result,the lilac germplasm resources collections and protection strategy should be focused on protecting more populations as many as possible.On the other hand,integrality is also important.A selective breeding strategy should be employed not only selecting genetic variation within but also among populations.


Stable oleate capped, visible light emitting ZnO quantum dots (QDs) have been synthesized by a modified sol–gel method and examined for large-scale synthesis. Surface chelation with oleate ligands and their implications on particle growth were investigated by comprehensive NMR experiments and photoluminescence measurements. High-resolution electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction confirmed the high crystallinity and well-dispersed character of the ZnO QDs. The here investigated ZnO nanocrystals were found to be suitable for phase transfer synthesis (non-polar to polar dispersion medium) even after prolonged storage time that was verified by unchanged visible light emission. The absorption wavelength could be tuned by adjusting the nucleation kinetics and upon anchoring bulky ligands that provide control over the surface defects responsible for the optical (visible) properties. The demonstrated phase transfer studies make visible light emitting ZnO QDs accessible for a wide range of applications like ink-jet printing for nano-electronics, cell labelling or theranostic studies.


Aim The aim of this study was to identify and summarise the effectiveness of physical activity (PA) interventions on PA levels for pregnant women with overweight and obesity, with a specific emphasis on the behaviour change techniques (BCTs) employed. Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis of PA intervention studies using the PRISMA statement was conducted. Searches were conducted of eight databases in January 2018. Strict inclusion/exclusion criteria were employed. Primary outcome measures included change in PA levels, subjectively or objectively measured with physical fitness as a secondary outcome. The BCT taxonomy V1 was used to identify BCTs. Meta-analyses using random effect models assessed the intervention effects on PA. Other PA outcomes were summarised in a narrative synthesis. Results From 8024 studies, 17 met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 11 studies provided data suitable for inclusion in a meta-analysis. Significant increases were found for metabolic equivalent (SMD 0.38 [0.07, 0.70], Z=2.40 P=0.02) and physical fitness (VO2 max) (SMD 0.55 [0.34, 0.75], Z=5.20 P=<0.001). Six additional studies were narratively described, five of which reported an increase in PA for the intervention group versus the control. 'Self-monitoring of behaviour' was the most frequently used BCTs (70.6%), with 'social support' unique to this population. Discussion This review revealed a slight increase in PA for pregnant women with overweight and obesity. However, these conclusions are tentative because of the poor methodological quality of the included studies. A range of BCTs clusters that could be used to help improve physical activity levels during pregnancy was identified, including: 'goals and planning', 'feedback and monitoring' and 'shaping knowledge' with 'social support' being unique to this population. Future studies should consider PA measures carefully so that studies can be meaningfully compared and intervention developers need to use recognised and standardised taxonomies so that BCTs can be accurately assessed.


This paper describes a fully mechanized homogeneous immunoassay using the immunoactivation method for the rapid and specific determination of human granulocyte elastase (EC 18.104.22.168) in plasma. The method uses anti-elastase antibody fragments from sheep, conjugated to horseradish peroxidase. These enzyme-antibody conjugates bind to the elastase-alpha 1-proteinase inhibitor complex present in plasma. A separate sample blank with non-specific sheep antibody fragments conjugated to horseradish peroxidase corrects for errors introduced by the sample matrix. Measurements were performed with the clinical chemistry analyser Hitachi 717. A single determination can be performed in 10 min, requiring 24 microliters sample volume. The measuring range is about 20 to 1000 micrograms/l elastase. For within-run precision the coefficients of variation are 4.77%, 4.48% and 1.85% for elastase concentrations of 45.7, 89.1 and 385.4 micrograms/l; for day-to-day precision the coefficients of variation are 15.81%, 7.19% and 4.12% for elastase concentrations of 31.1, 65.5 and 440.2 micrograms/l, respectively. Correlation (y = bx + a) of results with those from the heterogeneous immunoassay showed a good agreement (r = 0.93, b = 1.11, a = -27.0, N = 121). Interferences by endogeneous substances and by drugs at therapeutic doses were not observed. The reference interval, determined by using plasma from 215 healthy individuals (C-reactive protein less than 5 mg/l, leukocyte count 4-8 x 10(9)/l), was 9-56 micrograms/l (2.5th to 97.5th percentile), with a median of 27 micrograms/l.


As our global climate warms, people, and economies utilizing water resources sourced by snow and ice melt in mountain areas are disproportionately affected relative to locations that rely on rainfall. Worldwide, the vast majority of those impacted by snowfall changing to rainfall and earlier melt from a warming climate live in Asia. The Brahmaputra River originates in the declining glaciers and snowfields of the Chinese and Bhutanese Himalaya before flowing to the mega population centers of the Bangladesh delta. Bhutan's economy relies on water resource-dependent hydropower and agriculture imposing important questions about the impact of climate change on the long-term viability of water supplies in these important economic sectors. To clarify potential effects on water supplies in a warming world, and specifically to quantify the role of meltwater to river discharge in the headwaters of the Brahmaputra basin, we utilize a combined field observation-remote sensing approach to quantify river discharge source waters in a representative headwater basin, the Chamkhar Chhu. Using 4 years of water isotope and chemistry data together with a Bayesian Monte Carlo mixing model run seasonally in 2016, we find that the Chamkhar Chhu is mostly a rain-dominated basin at the lower elevation of our study domain (2591 m a.s.l.), with peak contributions from snowmelt in the early-monsoon and ice melt in the post-monsoon seasons. The radioactive tritium isotope shows glacier ice at the terminus was formed before the 1960s bomb spike while groundwater and river water samples taken in August (late monsoon) are sourced from mostly newer water inputs that show little tritium. The influence of the highly reacted Tsampa tributary, sourced by a debris covered glacier, and additional groundwater inputs generally increase major ion concentrations with distance from the glacier snout. An overall decreasing trend in the minimum snow and ice cover extent maps produced using MODIS Terra data from 2000 to 2017 suggest a lessening of cryospheric water resource availability in the basin, although this timeseries is short compared to the timescale of atmospheric-oceanic oscillations controlling snowfall. While decreasing snow and ice resources will likely lead to changing melt water contributions to river discharge, the overall impact on the water resources may be buffered by rainfall contributions as previous studies forecast an increase in precipitation for the region that will likely make up for lower melt water inputs.


Resistance to existing antibiotics has emerged as a major problem in healthcare. Novel antibiotics for which bacteria have not yet acquired resistance need to be developed to combat drug-resistant pathogens. Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases are leading targets for novel anti-infectives. The validation of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases as drug targets for anti-infectives has been established in an animal system. Using several conceptually distinct approaches, new inhibitors of synthetases have been developed as drug prototypes.


: This paper deals with the problem of semantic image segmentation of street scenes at night, as the recent advances in semantic image segmentation are mainly related to daytime images. We propose a method to extend the learned domain of daytime images to nighttime images based on an extended version of the CycleGAN framework and its integration into a self-supervised learning framework. The aim of the method is to reduce the cost of human annotation of night images by robustly transferring images from day to night and training the segmentation network to make consistent predictions in both domains, allowing the usage of completely unlabelled images in training. Experiments show that our approach significantly improves the performance on nighttime images while keeping the performance on daytime images stable. Furthermore, our method can be applied to many other problem formulations and is not specifically designed for semantic segmentation.


Orofacial granulomatosis (OFG) is considered as an uncommon disease and nomenclature of the disease was subjected to debate for a long time. Although various aetiological agents such as food substances, food additives, dental materials and various microbiological agents have been implicated in the disease process its precise pathogenesis is yet to be elucidated. Delayed type of hypersensitivity reaction appears to play a significant role, although the exact antigen inducing the immunological reaction varies in individual patients. However, evidence for the role of genetic predisposition to the disease is sparse. The underlying immunological mechanism appears to show some similarities between OFG and Crohn's disease, emphasizing the need for more comparative studies of the two entities. Therefore, we propose the term idiopathic OFG as a better term for those cases restricted to oral region without any identifiable known granulomatous disease and the diagnosis should not be changed until the patient develops systemic manifestations of a specific granulomatous condition. This review attempts to discuss the role of different aetiological agents and certain aspects of pathogenesis of OFG.


Many shale plays are being successfully developed throughout North America. These shale plays are being evaluated based on a number of criteria, but primarily through typical unconventional and tight formation gas reservoir characteristics. Prospective shale plays share several interesting characteristics such as mineralogy, rock mechanics, and geomechanics. It is the intent of this paper to highlight and demonstrate the interrelationship of these characteristics, and to show their importance on completion and stimulation design and more importantly to the very prospectivity of an unconventional shale play. This paper will first show, through an analysis of the mineralogy, that shale plays are made up of mostly silica and carbonate material and have few clay constituents. In other words, the prospective shales are actually fine-grained clastics and not shale!Second, prospective shales tend to be brittle, with the static Young's Modulus generally in excess of 3.5 x 10 6 psi. Of course, this brittleness is related to the lack of clay constituents that make up these rocks. In addition, prospective shales tend to satisfy clastic correlations of dynamic to static Young's Modulus. They do not behave like typical shales, but more like finegrained isotropic (on a core scale) clastics! Finally, gas can flow through induced fractures or natural fissures under effective stress conditions in these shale plays. As a result, water-frac treatments are the stimulation of choice! However, proppant is still necessary in at least the near wellbore vicinity to provide a conductive pathway to the wellbore.This paper focuses on three key elements (mineralogy, rock mechanics, and geomechanics) of prospective shale plays and benefits the petroleum industry by: 1. Integrating the laboratory core work with multi-disciplinary data to develop a shale and unconventional reservoir prospectivity evaluation tool, 2. Illustrating how this multi-disciplinary dataset influences completion and stimulation design, execution, and well performance, and 3. Demonstrating how this multi-discipline dataset can be used to identify and mitigate well completion and stimulation risks in these unconventional reservoirs.


Recent developments in remote sensing (RS) technology have made several sources of auxiliary data available to support forest inventories. Thus, a pertinent question is how different sources of RS data should be combined with field data to make inventories cost-efficient. Hierarchical model-based estimation has been proposed as a promising way of combining: (i) wall-to-wall optical data that are only weakly correlated with forest structure; (ii) a discontinuous sample of active RS data that are more strongly correlated with structure; and (iii) a sparse sample of field data. Model predictions based on the strongly correlated RS data source are used for estimating a model linking the target quantity with weakly correlated wall-to-wall RS data. Basing the inference on the latter model, uncertainties due to both modeling steps must be accounted for to obtain reliable variance estimates of estimated population parameters, such as totals or means. Here, we generalize previously existing estimators for hierarchical model-based estimation to cases with non-homogeneous error variance and cases with correlated errors, for example due to clustered sample data. This is an important generalization to take into account data from practical surveys. We apply the new estimation framework to case studies that mimic the data that will be available from the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission and compare the proposed estimation framework with alternative methods. Aboveground biomass was the variable of interest, Landsat data were available wall-to-wall, and sample RS data were obtained from an airborne LiDAR campaign that produced simulated GEDI waveforms. The results show that generalized hierarchical model-based estimation has potential to yield more precise estimates than approaches utilizing only one source of RS data, such as conventional model-based and hybrid inferential approaches.


Understanding the mechanisms that control the positive and negative selection of B cells by self and foreign antigens and the generation of B cell subsets, are two important questions in B cell immunology. In this thesis, I described a bimodal switch, consisting of an RNA binding protein/microRNA suppressor Lin28b and a microRNA family let-7, which converts B cell negative selection in late ontogeny into positive selection and helps B1 B cell generation in adult life. In this project, I used the anti-HEL (hen egg lysozyme) transgenic mouse model to show how an intracellular self-antigen positively select B1 cells in early ontogeny but is tolerogenic to B cells in later life. I used this model to investigate the transcriptional profiles of antigen-specific B cells at different stages in ontogeny, in the presence and absence of cognate self-antigens. I have found that immature anti-HEL-specific B cells in fetal and neonatal life with intrinisic capacity for positive selection by self-antigen, have a transcriptional profile characterized by expression of Lin28b. In contrast, immature anti-HEL B cells from adult marrow, which are unable to undergo positive selection, show the reciprocal expression of the let-7 family. Expression of transgenic Lin28b reconstitutes the fetal B1 lineage in adult BM chimeras and rescues positive selection. This is inducible by transient expression of Lin28b suggesting that the switch is not hard-wired or specific to a precursor lineage. I have used genetic and functional approaches to identify pathways downstream of the Lin28b/let-7 switch, including some proteins that have already been shown to be involved in B cell selection. It is highly likely that similar functions will operate in humans, where fetal B1-like cells may be similarly self-renewing and Lin28b is involved in stem cell maintenance, development in early ontogeny and oncogenesis.


The ATP-dependent tubulin-tyrosine ligase (TTL) restores the carboxy-terminal tyrosine of alpha tubulin in alpha beta tubulin that has been previously detyrosinated. Here we show that the carboxy-terminal tetradecapeptide of detyrosinated alpha tubulin is used by TTL as a substrate, albeit at 50-fold lower efficiency than alpha beta tubulin. The minimal system provided by the TTL/peptide combination mirrors the TTL/tubulin system in all aspects tested, and shows a pronounced substrate inhibition. Synthetic peptides varying in length and/or containing single amino acid replacements were used to analyze the TTL specificity for the carboxy-terminal sequence of detyrosinated alpha tubulin. Peptides ending like alpha tubulin with the sequence Gly-Glu-Glu are optimally tyrosinated once a peptide length of 12 residues is reached. Position -1 of this recognition sequence, to which the tyrosine is added, must be glutamic acid. Position -2 accepts only an acidic amino acid but glutamic acid is by far preferred over aspartic acid. These results explain why a subpopulation of brain alpha tubulin, which ends with the sequence Gly-Glu, is not tyrosinated by TTL. The carboxy-terminal dodecapeptide of brain alpha tubulin with its polyglutamyl side-chain on position -6 shows the same substrate activity as the corresponding synthetic peptide lacking the side-chain. We discuss the substrate specificity of TTL for different alpha tubulins and speculate why tubulin is a better substrate than the optimal peptide covering the carboxy-terminal of detyrosinated alpha tubulin.


A method to estimate the intrinsic and extrinsic patterns of a camera model is presented. The intrinsic parameters of camera center and focal length are estimated with a calibration device which is adjusted iteratively with four independent motions. Experimentation demonstrates that inexperienced users rapidly converge to satisfactory estimates. Extrinsic parameters define the position and orientation of the camera in a world coordinate frame. The straightforward formulation of this mapping leads to a complex system of nonlinear equations. Solutions based on nonlinear estimation techniques used unconstrained sets of known target points. These methods may converge to an incorrect solution and are characteristically ill-conditioned. By imposing a simple regularity on the arrangement of calibration points, the problem can be decomposed into a series of simple one- or two-parameter linear equations. The approach is described, and empirical tests of the accuracy of the method are given.<<ETX>>


The phenomena of the turbulent coherent structures and collapse of vortex are indispensable to realize high performance in heat transfer with a small pressure loss. Not only time-mean thermo- and fluid- dynamics but also unsteady and sequential 3D-phenomena are very important to study and control these phenomena in engineering applications. The most percentage of heat transfer enhancement were given birth for very short time period, when the turbulent structure just come and make effect on the heat transfer field near wall. But the time-dependent correlations between unsteady fluid and heat transfer fields are still unknown, which are most interesting and exciting to investigate experimentally. In this study, the three-dimensional velocity measurement system would be improved with multi-color field by the illumination optics for liquid crystal projectors and image processing for the detection of 3-D velocity vector. The unsteady collapse processes of periodic vortex by plate are investigated near wall region on the plane, and are shown by graphic figures. The results also are shown about the effects of unsteady velocity field with the adding the micro-bubbles near wall for control.


One obstacle for the widespread deployment of network-based control systems (NBCS) is the stochastic delay induced by the underlying shared and open networks. Denial of service (DoS) attacks cause significant disruptions to the Internet, compounding the delay jitter and loss of packets that are used to transmit sensor measurements and control signals. Existing works have mainly focused on controller design under network normal operation, which might be inadequate to the threats of DoS attacks. In this paper, the authors present two mitigation measures from the viewpoint of network intrusion detection and response. The basic idea is that the routers close to the attack sources actively drop the attack traffic or lower-priority traffic to protect the resource for the legitimate application traffic. The simulation results indicate that the proposed defense measures are effective for ameliorating the NBCS performance degradation. We suggest that a plausible direction for the security of NBCS may combine the proposed network defense measures with specific controller design to compensate for delay jitter/packet loss.


We propose a near-term quantum simulator based on the fluxonium qubits inductively coupled to form a chain. This system provides long coherence time, large anharmonicity, and strong coupling, making it suitable to study Ising spin models. At the half-flux quantum sweet spot, the system is described by the transverse field Ising model (TFIM). We evaluate the propagation of qubit excitations through the system. As disorder increases, the excitations become localized. A single qubit measurement using the circuit QED methods is sufficient to identify localization transition without introducing tunable couplers. We argue that inductively coupled fluxoniums provide opportunities to study localization and many-body effects in highly coherent quantum systems.


In 2013 American Express introduced the use of "social" commerce for their card holders into Twitter using the notion of "Order by tweet:" transactions were initiated and confirmed within Twitter using unique hashtags. Shortly after American Express, in 2014, Amazon.com initiated their version of social commerce with #AmazonCart, where product requests were sent from Twitter to user's carts in Amazon. These implementations were some of the first examples of social commerce actually executing transactions in the context of a social media platform. This paper examines the processes that were used and allows analysis of some of the strengths and limitations of the resulting approaches. In addition, the resulting case suggests a number of emerging issues within the context of the case setting.


This study aimed at the comparison of relationship between attachment styles(secure, avoidant, ambivalent) and alexithymia components(difficulty identifying feeling, difficulty describing feeling, externally oriented thinking) among patients with substance use disorder and normal people. To achieve the goal' 71 patients were selected among clients referring to addiction renunciation centers in Tehran city' and 68 normal subjects were selected using at-hand sampling. Data from the subjects were collected using the Adult Attachment Inventory and Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Data were analyzed using logistic regression. The predictor variables are attachment styles and alexithymia components. The criterion variable is addiction. Results showed a significant difference between attachment styles and alexithymia components in addicted men and normal men. In other word, avoidant attachment and all components of alexithymia have significant relation with substance use.


ABSTRACT Tang, W.G.; Hao, N.; Wang, Y., and Xhao, J.Y., 2020. Green product design with dynamic control model. In: Bai, X. and Zhou, H. (eds.), Advances in Water Resources, Environmental Protection, and Sustainable Development. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 115, pp. 349-353. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The paper presents a dynamic environmentally friendly and resource saving model that considers the production and inventory decisions of one manufacturer who produces the green product. We investigate the nature of price, green level, production and inventory optimal decisions in the light of a pattern of seasonal demand, which focus on the dynamic issues, by using the optimal control theory. Finally, we use the numerical examples for simulations and systematically simulate the optimal dynamic decisions of the manufacturer and analyze the trend of them.


Objectives: To discover the perceived size of pool of doctors considered to be underperforming in general practice in the Northern Deanery and to discover whether these perceptions are based on formal assessments. Design: Postal questionnaire. Setting: Area covered by the Northern Deanery. Subjects: Seven health authority directors of primary care, seven secretaries of local medical committees, and 14 chief officers of community health councils. Results: The response rate was 100% for directors of primary care and secretaries of local medical committees and, after one reminder, 92% for chief officers of community health councils. Numbers of doctors perceived to be underperforming ranged from none to over 15 in different health authority areas. Main areas for concern were communication skills, clinical skills, and management skills. Patients' representatives were concerned about lack of power of patients and health authorities and doctors' lack of accountability. Health authorities were concerned about lack of power, identification of underperforming doctors, and doctors' professional loyalty. Local medical committees were concerned about the problem of identifying underperformance. A number of methods were used for identification, and there was no common method applied. Conclusions: The number of doctors thought to be underperforming was small. Work still needs to be done on developing tools that can be used in everyday practice to enable doctors to confirm for themselves, their colleagues, and their patients that they are providing an adequate level of care. See Editor's choice Postgraduate Institute for Medicine and Dentistry, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4AB George Taylor, deputy director general practice firstname.lastname@example.com


Next month, the European Space Agency will launch a space probe with a deceptively modest goal. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) Pathfinder won9t observe Earth or search space for quasars or exoplanets. Instead, it will set two cubes of gold-platinum alloy—each slightly larger than a golf ball—floating freely in weightlessness and attempt to measure their distance apart to the nearest trillionth of a meter. The mission is a proof of concept for the roughly €1 billion Evolved LISA (eLISA). To be launched in roughly 20 years if all goes well, eLISA aims to detect the gravitational waves emitted by some of the universe9s most titanic processes, such as the death spiral of the supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies. Physicists on Earth are hunting gravitational waves with laser interferometers—devices with kilometers-long arms that will change length slightly if a wave ripples past, squeezing and stretching space. eLISA will do the same thing, except that its "arms" will consist of three spacecraft orbiting millions of kilometers apart.