Metal-insulator transitions in strongly correlated materials, induced by varying either temperature or dopant concentration, remain a topic of enduring interest in solid-state chemistry and physics owing to their fundamental importance in answering longstanding questions regarding correlation effects. We note here the unprecedented observation of a four-orders-of-magnitude metal-insulator transition in single nanowires of delta-K(x)V(2)O(5), when temperature is varied, which thus represents a rare new addition to the pantheon of materials exhibiting pronounced metal-insulator transitions in proximity to room temperature.


Lymphedema is a potentially debilitating condition with particularly high incidence among breast cancer patients following surgery. Horsechestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) and butcher's broom (Ruscus aculeatus) have been shown by herbalists to improve peripheral vascular circulation and lymphatic drainage. Nuclear medicine lymphoscintigraphy offers a tool to quantitate the effects of their combination in Horsechestnut Complex on lymphatic drainage rates. Methods: A prospective clinical trial in 15 normal volunteers was undertaken using a repeat measures design. Bilateral upper limb lymphoscintigraphy was performed on each volunteer at baseline and following a 3 month course of Horsechestnut Complex . Lymphatic drainage rates were quantitatively evaluated. Results: A significant increase was noted in the percentage of activity that migrated away from the injection site with respect to baseline versus follow up series. The baseline mean of 6.63% varied significantly from the follow up mean of 8.19% (p = 0.002) over a 2 hour sampling window. The matched pairs t test indicated a statistically significant difference (p = 0.017) with a mean increase in percentage migration of 1.56% after herbal treatment (95% CI 0.30% - 2.82%). Conclusion: The herbal formulation evaluated has the potential to accelerate lymphatic drainage in the normal population. A randomised controlled trial to evaluate the potential clinical benefits in breast cancer patients with post treatment lymphedema may be warranted.


A study was undertaken to assess the prevalence, mean intensity, abundance and seasonality of parasites of fish in a natural, freshwater, tropical lake, southeast Nigeria. A total of 1191 fish specimen belonging to four families ( Cichlidae, Bagridae, Hepsetidae and Channidae ), seven genera and nine species were collected from the lake and examined for parasites. Eleven (11) species of parasites comprising metacercariae of three digenetic trematodes, one cestode, five nematodes and two acanthocephalans were isolated. Clinostomoides sp. showed the highest range of sites of infection, and the operculum carried significantly more worm burden (F = 196.843, d.f. = 5, p = 0.000) than other sites infected by this parasite. Prevalence ranged from 0.7% in Clinostomum tilapiae infection of T. zillii to 71.7% in Neochinorhynchus sp.2 infection of Hepsetidae fasciatus with an overall prevalence of 59.5%. Mean intensity ranged from 1.0 ± 0.0 in Clinostomoides sp. and Proteocephalus sp. infection of P. obscura and Anemone occidentalis , respectively, to 76.5 ± 29.7 in Neoechinorhynchus sp. 2 infection of H. fasciatus. Neoechinorhynchus sp. 2 infection also had the highest mean abundance (54.90 ± 2.74) while the lowest was recorded in the Clinostomoides sp. infection of H. fasciatus . Patterns of infection were significantly different in the prevalence and abundance of Clinostomoides sp; Camallanus sp.3 and Neoechinorhynchus sp.1 while mean intensity was comparable in all cases. Keywords: Natural lake, freshwater, fish parasites, worm burden African Journal of Biotechnology , Vol. 13(3), pp. 502-508, 15 January, 2014


Wheat straw is a major potential source of waste biomass for renewable energy production, but its high salt content causes problems in combustion. Work was undertaken to evaluate straw washing as a means of reducing the alkali index of the straw by washing out light metal cations, primarily potassium. In addition to loss of salts, organic matter is also washed out of the straw and this is a potential source of energy through anaerobic biodegradation to produce methane as a fuel gas. The rate of washout of both potassium and organic carbon was dependent on the temperature of the washwater, although cold water washing could reduce the alkali index to a suitable level, after a long retention time. Using this technique an organically dilute washwater was produced with a chemical oxygen demand of around 2.0 g l-1, suitable for a short hydraulic retention time immobilised cell digester. An upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) was chosen for initial trials, but this was later compared with an anaerobic filter. As a control throughout the experiments digesters were also maintained on a synthetic wastewater which gave a performance baseline against which the activity and methane production potential of the UASB digesters could be judged. Initial trials showed an accumulation of potassium in the granular sludge bed and an initial apparent drop in the specific methane production and COD removal efficiency. This could be recovered and the potassium washed out of the bed by switching the feed from wheat straw washwater (WSW) to synthetic sewage. Repetitive cycling between these two substrates did not damage or disrupt the digestion process. When allowed to stabilise on WSW alone the COD removal was around 83% and the specific methane production was 0.216 l g-1 CODadded under pseudo steady state conditions. The accumulation of potassium also stabilised at around 11 mg g-1 granule wet weight. Under these conditions the organic loading rate could be increased to ~3 g COD l-1 day-1 without adversely affecting digester performance. Whilst operating on wheat straw washwater the conversion of COD to methane compared to the stoichiometric potential was less than that seen for the synthetic wastewater in the same digester with the same granular biomass. It is hypothesised that a proportion of the carbon converted is used in maintaining the osmotic integrity of the cells by a metabolically-linked potassium transport system. Evidence to show intracellular accumulation of potassium was provided by transmission electron microscopy coupled to EDX analysis of granular sections. Complementary studies were carried out to determine the resistance to salt toxicity of two different types of anaerobic inoculum, taken from a mesophilic municipal wastewater biosolids digester and a saline estuarine mud, for comparison with the UASB granules. Both of these inoculums had a higher tolerance to both Na and K than the granular material, and the wastewater plant digestate was used to further acclimate a dispersed growth inoculum to seed an anaerobic filter. In the acclimatisation, which was carried out in semi-continuous fed stirred tank digesters, the digestate successfully acclimated to 10 g l-1 of KCl, NaCl and a mixture of the two salts. When operated at the same loading on either synthetic wastewater or WSW there was no difference between performance of the UASB and anaerobic filter in either COD removal efficiency or specific methane production. A simple energy balance was conducted taking into account only the energy required for heating washwater to reduce the washing time necessary to meet the alkali index for the straw. This would, however, consume most of the energy produced by anaerobic digestion of the washwater even when other energy consuming activities were not considered.


Description Provides functions to test for a treatment effect in terms of the difference in survival between a treatment group and a control group using surrogate marker information obtained at some early time point in a time-to-event outcome setting. Nonparametric kernel estima-tion is used to estimate the test statistic and perturbation resampling is used for variance estima-tion. More details will be available in the future in: Parast L, Cai T, Tian L (2019) ``Using a Surrogate Marker for Early Testing of a Treatment Effect"


ABSTRACT. Ribeiro N.R., Monteiro G.A.S., Atallah F.A., Amaral L.G., Ferreira G.S., Santana C.L., Oliveira C.J.L. & Oliveira A.L.A. [Acid-basic changes due to caediopulmonary bypass in dogs]. Alteracoes acido-basicas decorrentes da circulacao extracorporea em caes. Revista Brasileira de Medicina Veterinaria, 35(Sup. 1):84- 90, 2013. Curso de Pos-Graduacao em Ciencia Animal, CCTA, Universidade Estadual Norte Fluminense Darcy Ribeiro, Av. Alberto Lamego, 2000, Parque California, Campos dos Goytacazes, RJ 28013-602 Brasil. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com The use of cardiopulmonary bypass technique becomes necessary for the surgical treatment of various disorders as atrial septal defects and ventricular, pulmonary and aortic stenosis, tetralogy of Fallot and valvular diseases and despite complications related to CPB, some studies indicate the technique to be applied as feasible. In Brazil, the CEC in routine veterinary care not yet been achieved with success due to this factor, it was evaluated the physiological changes caused to the body of dogs undergoing CPB with pediatric model. Four dogs were used, previously evaluated clinically and laboratory for their sanity. All dogs underwent CPB for 30 minutes at normothermia, and kept in constant monitoring for parameters hemogasometric made from venous blood samples, using cartridges CG4 (pH, pCO2 , PO2 , Total CO2 , HCO3 , lactate, SpO2 ). It was observed progressive decrease in pH and bicarbonate, the opposite of what happened with the lactate values. The tissue oxygenation during and after CPB was significantly reduced and there was an increase in the pO2 and ratios of CO2 . As conclusion the CPB caused damage to the animal organism that difficult the postoperative survival.


A compact inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion neutron source was developed. Imaging tests using the cylindrical IEC neutron source were conducted with the indirect imaging plate (IP) method using dysprosium foil and an imaging plate. An array of B4C powder contained in a stainless-steel blade and Cd pins was successfully imaged. To calculate thermal neutron flux of the device, we tested multiple types of IP and IP scanners with the indirect IP method to create a calibration curve, and it was confirmed that dental IP scanners, which are more widely used than industrial ones, can be applied to the indirect IP method.


The antenna proteins in photosystem II (PSII) not only promote energy transfer to the photosynthetic reaction center (RC) but provide also an efficient cation sink to re-reduce chlorophyll a if the electron transfer (ET) from the Mn-cluster is inhibited. Using the newest PSII dimer crystal structure (3.0 A resolution), in which 11 beta-carotene molecules (Car) and 14 lipids are visible in the PSII monomer, we calculated the redox potentials (Em) of one-electron oxidation for all Car (Em(Car)) by solving the Poisson-Boltzmann equation. In each PSII monomer, the D1 protein harbors a previously unlocated Car (CarD1) in van der Waals contact with the chlorin ring of ChlZ(D1). Each CarD1 in the PSII dimer complex is located in the interface between the D1 and CP47 subunits, together with another four Car of the other PSII monomer and several lipid molecules. The proximity of Car bridging between CarD1 and plastoquinone/Q(A) may imply a direct charge recombination of Car+Q(A)-. The calculated Em(CarD1) and Em(ChlZ(D1)) are, respectively, 83 and 126 mV higher than Em(CarD2) and Em(ChlZ(D2)), which could explain why CarD2+ and ChlZ(D2)+ are observed rather than the corresponding CarD1+ and ChlZ(D1)+.


Blockade of the strychnine-insensitive glycine site of the NMDA receptor is considered an attractive strategy for the development of novel neuroprotective and anticonvulsive agents. 7-Cl-kynurenic acid (7-Cl-KYNA) is a potent, selective antagonist of the NMDA/glycine receptor but penetrates poorly through the blood-brain barrier. Its prodrug, L-4-Cl-kynurenine (4-Cl-KYN), readily enters the brain from the circulation and provides antiexcitotoxic neuroprotection after systemic application. We now examined the effect of 4-Cl-KYN on seizures and neuronal loss caused by the systemic administration of the chemoconvulsant kainate (KA). 4-Cl-KYN (50 mg/kg, ip) was given 10 min before and 30, 120, and 360 min after KA (10 mg/kg, sc). Microdialysis and tissue level measurements in 4-Cl-KYN-treated rats showed increases in the concentration of 7-Cl-KYNA in several limbic brain regions of KA-injected animals. Continuous EEG recording for 24 h revealed that 4-Cl-KYN significantly delayed seizure onset and reduced the total time spent in seizures. Repeated 4-Cl-KYN administration also prevented KA-induced lesions in the piriform cortex and provided protection of hippocampal pyramidal cells in area CA1. In contrast, neurons in the hilus and in layer III of the entorhinal cortex were not protected. Consistent with the in vivo results, in vitro application of 7-Cl-KYNA to brain slices containing hippocampus and entorhinal cortex preferentially blocked low Mg(2+)-induced seizure activity in hippocampal pyramidal cells. Taken together, these data suggest that a prodrug approach using 4-Cl-KYN might offer advantages in the treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy.


In this study, the length-weight relationship (LWR) and Fulton's condition factor (K) of males and females of Octopus vulgaris were analyzed from June 2013 to May 2014. Among the 365 specimens sampled by industrial and traditional gear in the western coast of the Moroccan Mediterranean, the LWR for all specimens were found to be as follows: body weight (BW) = 0.557 dorsal mantle length = DML2.913 (n =365; r = 0.92), while this measurement was BW = 0.381 DML3.071 (n =191; r = 0.79) and BW = 0.811 DML2.756 (n =174; r = 0.91) for males and females, respectively. Statistically, there were significant differences in growth between males and females (p = 0.05). The values of Fulton's condition index ranged from 44.14 to 48.03 in males and from 14.86 to 44.50 in females. The lower value of the K index in males was between June and October, while for females it was between June until September, as well as between May and April. The best condition was recorded for individuals with a length between 10 and 14 cm DML, which represents the maturation stage of the specimens. The present results provided some basic information on the LWR and K values of Octopus vulgaris in the Moroccan Mediterranean coast, which would be useful for the stock management.


Introduction: Two Workshops in Ornithology: A General Introduction: Dedication to Eberhard Gwinner: Ulf Bauchinger and Wolfgang Goymann. . I. Measurement of Hormones from Droppings and Egg Yolk of Birds:. 1. Introduction to the European Science Foundation Technical Meeting: Analysis of Hormones in Droppings and Egg Yolk of Birds: Wolfgang Goymann and Susanne Jenni-Eiermann. 2. Potential Impact of Nutritional Strategy on Noninvasive Measurements of Hormones in Birds: Kirk C. Klasing. 3. Measurement of Corticosterone Metabolites in Birds' Droppings: An Analytical Approach: Erich Mostl, Sophie Rettenbacher, and Rupert Palme. 4. Noninvasive Monitoring of Hormones in Bird Droppings: Physiological Validation, Sampling, Extraction, Sex Differences, and the Influence of Diet on Hormone Metabolite Levels: Wolfgang Goymann. 5. Measuring Fecal Glucocorticoid Metabolites in Mammals and Birds: The Importance of Validation: Chadi Touma and Rupert Palme. 6. Measuring Fecal Steroids: Guidelines for Practical Application: Rupert Palme. 7. A Noninvasive Technique to Evaluate Human-Generated Stress in the Black Grouse: Marjana Baltic, Susanne Jenni-Eiermann, Raphael Arlettaz, and Rupert Palme. 8. Measuring Corticosterone Metabolites in Droppings of Capercaillies (Tetrao urogallus): Dominik Thiel, Susanne Jenni-Eiermann, and Rupert Palme. 9. Noninvasive Measures of Reproductive Function and Disturbance in the Barred Owl, Great Horned Owl, and Northern Spotted Owl: Samuel K. Wasser and Kathleen E. Hunt. 10. Synthesis of Measuring Steroid Metabolites in Goose Feces: Katharina Hirschenhauser, Kurt Kotrschal, and Erich Mostl. 11. Sampling Effort/Frequency Necessary to Infer Individual Acute Stress Responses from Fecal Analysis in Greylag Geese (Anser anser): Isabella B. R. Scheiber, Simona Kralj, and Kurt Kotrschal. 12. Investigating Maternal Hormones in Avian Eggs: Measurement, Manipulation, and Interpretation: Ton G. G. Groothuis and Nikolaus Von Engelhardt. 13. Measuring Steroid Hormones in Avian Eggs: Nikolaus Von Engelhardt and Ton G. G. Groothuis. 14. Corticosterone in Chicken Eggs: S Rettenbacher, E Mostl, R Hackl, and R Palme. 15. Steroids in Allantoic Waste: An Integrated Measure of Steroid Exposure in Ovo: Z Morgan Benowitz-Fredericks, Alexander S. Kitaysky, and John C. Wingfield. . II. Optimality in Bird Migration: Adaptations for Long-Distance Migration in Birds? The Search for Adaptive Syndromes:. 16. Are There Specific Adaptations for Long-Distance Migration in Birds? The Search for Adaptive Syndromes: Outline of the European Science Foundation Workshop: Ulf Bauchinger, Christiaan Both, and Theunis Piersma. 17. Flexible Seasonal Timing and Migratory Behavior: Results from Stonechat Breeding Programs: Barbara Helm, Eberhard Gwinner, and Lisa Trost. 18. Are Long-Distance Migrants Constrained in Their Evolutionary Response to Environmental Change?: Causes of Variation in the Timing of Autumn Migration in a Blackcap (S. atricapilla) and Two Garden Warbler (Sylvia borin) Populations: Francisco Pulido and Michael Widmer. 19. Spatial Behavior of Medium and Long-Distance Migrants at Stopovers Studied by Radio Tracking: Nikita Chernetsov. 20. Ecomorphology of the External Flight Apparatus of Blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) with Different Migration Behavior: Wolfgang Fiedler. 21. Melatonin and Nocturnal Migration: Leonida Fusani and Eberhard Gwinner. 22. Phenotypic Flexibility of Skeletal Muscles during Long-Distance Migration of Garden Warblers: Muscle Changes Are Differentially Related to Body Mass: Ulf Bauchinger and Herbert Biebach. 23. Is There a "Migratory Syndrome" Common to All Migrant Birds?: Theunis Piersma, Javier Perez-Tris, Henrik Mouritsen, Ulf Bauchinger, and Franz Bairlein


Simultaneous estimation of states and parameters using Extended Kalman filter need an approximate linearized equation for prediction of the error statistics, which lead to poor error covariance updates and in some cases unstable growth. In this work, we introduce a simultaneous on-line estimation of states and parameters using linear Kalman filter (KF) and fast genetic algorithm (GA), where the states are estimated by the KF and the parameters are estimated by the fast GA. The simulation results showed satisfactory results in both states and parameters estimation accuracy.


Mg, the A-site atom in C14 (MgZn2), C15 (MgCu2), and C36 (MgNi2) Laves phase alloys, was added to the Zr-based AB2 metal hydride (MH) alloy during induction melting. Due to the high melting temperature of the host alloy (>1500 °C) and high volatility of Mg in the melt, the Mg content of the final ingot is limited to 0.8 at%. A new Mg-rich cubic phase was found in the Mg-containing alloys with a small phase abundance, which contributes to a significant increase in hydrogen storage capacities, the degree of disorder (DOD) in the hydride, the high-rate dischargeability (HRD), and the charge-transfer resistances at both room temperature (RT) and −40 °C. This phase also facilitates the activation process in measurement of electrochemical discharge capacity. Moreover, through a correlation study, the Ni content was found to be detrimental to the storage capacities, while Ti content was found to be more influential in HRD and charge-transfer resistance in this group of AB2 metal hydride (MH) alloys.


Using social identity theory as a framework, the present study empirically tests the idea that women can maintain positions on corporate boards over a number of years through becoming part of the board's ingroup. A sample of 32 women directors who were part of a study of corporate directors in 1995 participated in the six‐year follow‐up. A series of hypotheses are tested using nonparametric statistical techniques to test differences in women directors' personal and board characteristics over the two time periods. Implications of the results are drawn for women seeking to maintain or gain board positions and for the applicability of social identity theory to the research area.


Management is one important components in educational institution or other institutions. Bad management mechanism will greatly affect the quality or out-putnya. To achieve these objectives effectively and efficiently, it is necessary to include professional management.The research aims to find out how reformulation in education management in an effort to improve the quality as well as knowing what constraints experienced in the reformulation of management education in improving the quality of Nurul Huda Pringsewu.The method used in this research is descriptive and qualitative data sources you want to use is the primary and secondary data sources. The primary data source in this study are those directly involved in Nurul Huda Pringsewu. Secondary data source in this study is documentation, bureaucratic systems and interviews.Based on the above analysis, reformulation of management at boarding Nurul Huda seen from the development of the form and its educational system. Likewise, the curriculum used, always follow the policy of the government in implementing the curriculum in schools or madrassas. This development is based on the interest of students and the public on the development and change of management education in schools Keywords : Reformulation of Management, Education and Quality Pesantren


We have manufactured rad-hard, InGaAs photodiodes using our proprietary Dual-Depletion Region (DDR) technology with bandwidths exceeding 10 GHz. The devices demonstrate high reliability and superior RF performance, thus, making them ideal for deployment in space for applications such as LIDAR and optical intersatellite links. The responsivity at 1064 nm is >0.45 A/W with optical return loss of 40 dB. The photodiodes have broad wavelength coverage from 800 nm to 1700 nm, and thus can be used at several wavelengths such as 850 nm, 1064 nm, 1310 nm, 1550 nm, and 1620 nm. The InGaAs photodiodes exhibit very low Polarization Dependence Loss (PDL) of 0.05 dB typical to 0.1 dB maximum. The typical Failure-in-time (FIT) values of these photodiodes are 0.011 and 15.384 at 25°C and 75°C respectively. FIT is defined as the number of failures per billion hours of operation. The photodiodes have been tested for different radiation tests such as 50 kRad gamma (Co 60) and protons with a fluence of 3 x 1011 p/cm2, and have passed typical qualification levels of random vibration.


Abstract Anetoderma is a rare skin disease, and its associated risk of thromboembolic events is unknown. Anetoderma is characterized by focal injury of elastic fibers in the dermis, clinically expressed by atrophic skin lesions. We report the case of a young person with anetoderma, drawing attention to the risk of associated thromboembolic peril.


We report two cases of a dural arteriovenous fistula of the anterior cranial fossa, one causing subarachnoid hemorrhage and one detected accidentally. The first case was incompletely treated by neurosurgery, and the second one was referred for endovascular therapy. Both fistulas were successfully occluded by transvenous embolization by using electrolytically detachable coils.


The article examines the genesis of the documenta exhibition as the largest forum in the world of contemporary art, based on the dialogical character of elite art and mass culture. On the example of 14 exhibitions held from 1955 to 2017 documenta traced the long path of development from a single art event as part of the Federal Exhibition of Gardens to a regular global event, studied the role of its artistic directors - curators.


Species in Carollia, although loosely recognizable by size and shape, show overlap in most morphological character states as well as in geographic distribution and use of resources. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding where and what this overlap is. Variation in the morphology of Carollia should correspond to the environment, yet such patterns remain unknown. Species may coexist as a function of environmental factors and sympatry may not be uniform along the distributional extent of these species. An informed perception of the morphological and ecological variation across their geographic range may clarify not only the limits and extents of their spatial and morphological boundaries, but also may provide insights into the relationships among size, shape and environment. In our quantitative analysis of the variation in morphology and environment we tried to answer what limits species distribution, as well as how morphology changes with the environment within and among species. A combination of multivariate contrasts and partial least square analyses were used to assess the correlations and interactions between size, shape, distribution and environment among C. castanea (small), C. brevicauda (medium) and C. perspicillata (large size) in Ecuador. We show how the three Carollia species vary and differentiate along an ecomorphological space of gradients, barriers, size and shape. From a macroecological perspective, and contrary to the theory of limiting similarity, the smallest species is the most distinct in its environmental space and also the one that experiences the strongest changes in shape across geographic regions. The other two more similar species, in both size and shape, show a larger overlap in their environmental space. This seems to suggest that size can act as a buffer in extreme or changing environments and that higher gene flow is more probable for larger high-altitude species.


We consider a physical process that leads to the generation of atomic Schr\"odinger cat states for a system of two level atoms. The effective interaction between atoms in a dispersive cavity leads to the superposition of atomic coherent states. We study in detail the quasidistributions for these states and demonstrate how the Schr\"odinger cat states can lead to interesting interferences over the surface of a sphere.


Decarbonisation of the current energy system is being globally regarded as the main approach for reducing anthropogenic CO2 emission levels and to ensure a carbon-free energy future. Yet, even though the deployment of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, has grown considerably in the last decades, its behavior is still intermittent and requires of additional energy backup solutions to meet the power requirements of the consumers. Conventional coal-fired power plants need therefore to operate more frequently in part load than in the past, providing larger amounts of balancing power. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) units installed to such power stations need to be able to respond fast and dynamically to the required power plant load fluctuations, which is regarded nowadays as a major obstacle limiting their deployment. At the Institute of Combustion and Power Plant Technology (IFK) of the University of Stuttgart, the 230 kWth Calcium Looping test facility has been modified in order to operate with a bubbling to turbulent fluidized bed (BFB/TFB) carbonator and a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) regenerator. This configuration allows to decouple flue gas and solid circulation between reactors, enabling operation of the system in full load and in different part load scenarios, down to very low flue gas loads. Experiments investigating the load flexible behavior of this novel Calcium Looping reactor configuration have been conducted in the context of the European RFCS research project FlexiCaL (Grant No. 709629). This paper introduces the main results obtained during the investigation of different load case scenarios (i.e. 100 %, 60 % and 40 %) at the BFB/TFB-CFB Calcium Looping 230 kWth pilot facility, in which carbonator CO2 capture efficiencies over 92 % were achieved during stable operation for at least 5 hours in all investigated load cases. In the regenerator, typical oxy-fuel combustion conditions with outlet CO2 volume fractions over 90 vol%dry could also be demonstrated. Additionally, this publication presents an estimation of the required carbonator area specific electric output (Acarb/Pel) for BFB systems in current power plant parks.


An oxygen mask which covers only a patient's nose is attached to the patient by a flexible strap. A clip is attached to the outer surface of the mask to hold the portion of the mask firmly in place relative to the bridge of the patient's nose. An exhaust port is included in the mask. The mask also includes an integral mixing valve for mixing air and gas such as oxygen to achieve a prescribed percentage mixture as may be required for patient therapy. The mixing valve is supported by a support member attached to the mounting strap.


Introduction
Questionnaire based assessment is a simple, scientific tool to collect responses from individuals and standardised questionnaires can be used to assess health care quality of a health care institution. The aim of this study was to assess health service quality of a private hospital on the basis of questionnaire-based data collected from the patients admitted in the hospital using service quality (SERVQUAL) questionnaire method.
Methods
A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted in 203 adult patients in Fishtail Hospital and Research Centre, Pokhara, Nepal from January 2015 to January 2016. The response of the patients towards various aspects of service provided by the hospital was collected using SERVQUAL questionnaire. The data was graded in Likert scale and SPSS software 24 was utilized to analyse the data.
Results
A total of 181(89.12%) patients were satisfied with the health service quality provided by the hospital that was assessed on the basis of parameters of SERVQUAL questionnaire and 156 (76.74%) patients graded various hospital factors as being good.
Conclusions
Based on SERVQUAL questionnaire we found that 89.12% of patients were satisfied with the service provided by our hospital and 76.74% of patients graded various hospital factors such as doctors, nurses, reception staff and food provided in canteen as being good. We recommend such surveys should be regularly performed in health care institutions to scrutinise and enhance the level of health care service quality.


Simulating the human mobility and generating large-scale trajectories are of great use in many real-world applications, such as urban planning, epidemic spreading analysis, and geographic privacy protect. Although many previous works have studied the problem of trajectory generation, the continuity of the generated trajectories has been neglected, which makes these methods useless for practical urban simulation scenarios. To solve this problem, we propose a novel two-stage generative adversarial framework to generate the continuous trajectory on the road network, namely TS-TrajGen, which efficiently integrates prior domain knowledge of human mobility with model-free learning paradigm. Specifically, we build the generator under the human mobility hypothesis of the A* algorithm to learn the human mobility behavior. For the discriminator, we combine the sequential reward with the mobility yaw reward to enhance the effectiveness of the generator. Finally, we propose a novel two-stage generation process to overcome the weak point of the existing stochastic generation process. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets and two case studies demonstrate that our framework yields significant improvements over the state-of-the-art methods.


Wildfires are managed in a complex dynamic environment where suppression effort, environmental, and geographic characteristics all influence wildfire outcomes. Suppression effort is largely driven by threats to values at risk. We develop a stochastic dynamic programming model of wildfire suppression to show that under certain conditions, suppression effort may be diverted from overall containment in order to protect specific values at risk. We then estimate a trivariate hazard model to determine the impact of threatened structures on three important wildfire outcomes: wildfire duration, size, and suppression costs. Our results suggest that expected wildfire duration and size increase when residential structures and outbuildings become threatened.


Clinical trials are studies that explore whether a treatment, drug or device is safe and effective for humans. These studies can show which medial method work best for certain diseases. A well-designed and a properly-analyzed clinical trial is a powerful tool for the development of new drugs. The first step in drug discovery (phase I) is very important to determine maximum tolerated dose (MTD). In the first part of the study, the classical 3+3 design, Continual Reassessment Method (CRM), and Bayesian Continual Reassessment Method (B-CRM) are compared in terms of selection probability of MTD and the number of treated patients. Among these designs, the B-CRM produced better results than the 3+3 and the CRM. In the second part of the study, we considered different model structures and priors in the B-CRM design. We evaluated power model, hyperbolic tanget model and logit model for gamma, uniform and lognormal prior. We found that if power or hyperbolic tangent model structure and uniform prior was selected, the MTD selection rates was the highest in B-CRM.


This paper introduces the process of using the narrative principles of double-listening and double-storied testimony as an approach to conducting research with Sudanese men who have resettled in Australia. It highlights the value of documenting not only the trauma story but also a person's response to it. While double-listening has been used in professional practice and community engagements, this approach also offers a valuable insight into how research can be conducted in respectful and resonant ways that create safer spaces to engage people's lived experiences.


Myeloperoxidase (MPO), a leukocyte hemoprotein released from neutrophils, is thought to be a potential participant in plaque formation and plaque rupture. Therefore, MPO is regarded as an early marker predicting the risk for atherosclerosis, especially for coronary artery disease and acute coronary syndrome. We generated hybridoma clones 1E3 and 3E8 secreting monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specific to human MPO. BALB/c mice were immunized with MPO protein purified from human neutrophils. Splenocytes from these mice were fused with the mouse myeloma cell line SP2/0. Based on isotyping of the mAbs, both clones 1E3 and 3E8 were referred to the IgG1 subclass. The specificities of 1E3 and 3E8 were assessed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and only 3E8 was confirmed by western blot. We developed a simple MPO-immunosorbent assay (MPO-ISA) on microplate based on both the immune activity and peroxidase activity of MPO. The mAb secreted by clone 3E8 was chosen as coating antibody to capture the plasma MPO without interfering with the peroxidase activity of MPO. Then, tetramethylbenzidine substrate was added to the microwell directly, catalyzed by captured MPO, and a colored product was formed. The simple MPO-ISA test has a sensitivity of 3.68 ng/mL. The linear concentration of MPO-ISA for commercial MPO standard ranged to 250 ng/mL. The average recovery rate is 101.02%. The imprecision within-day was <10% at three different MPO levels. The imprecision between-day was <10% at low and middle MPO levels and varied to 14.61% at the high MPO level. We found that the established MPO-ISA can detect the plasma MPO from human and cavy, but not from mouse and rat. Compared with the commercial human MPO ELISA assay, the MPO-ISA can be used to detect the natural human MPO protein, but not recombinant MPO polypeptides. The generated mAbs and MPO-ISA test may be useful tools to assess risk for inflammation and cardiac events.


This article explores an intriguing, yet underdeveloped line of inquiry in Derrida's late Death Penalty Seminars concerning the inherent visibility or spectacle of the death penalty. Showing how this inquiry surfaces in Derrida's engagement with Foucault, the article argues that Derrida's Seminars offer crucial resources for critically analyzing, and thus rethinking, sovereignty and the principle of capital punishment. In particular, it demonstrates how visibility forms a key component of the structural scaffolding around the death penalty put under pressure by deconstruction. It then develops this claim by drawing salient connections between the Seminars and Derrida's work on other visual forms.


Background: The early detection of COVID-19 patients with interstitial
pneumonia at high risk of dismal outcome is necessary to deliver proper
care and optimize management of limited resources. Objective: The aim of
this study was to analyse the performance of pre-existing scores in
predicting in-hospital mortality and ICU transfer at admission in an
Acute Medical Unit. Methods: 106 consecutive patients with acute
respiratory failure due to COVID-19 interstitial pneumoni admitted to
Acute Medical Unit were enrolled. The performances of NEWS, SIRS, RAPS,
REMS, qSOFA, APACHE II, CURB-65 and PSI were analysed by the Area Under
the Receiver Operator Characteristic (AUROCs) and standard indices of
accuracy. Results: Considering in-hospital mortality PSI and APACHE II
had the higher AUROCs, 0.83 (95% CI 0.75-0.91) and 0.80 (95% CI
0.71-0.88), followed by REMS, 0.77 (95% CI 0.67-0.86), and CURB-65,
0.73 (95% CI 0.63-0.82), whereas the AUROCs of the other scores were
< 0.7. PSI and APACHE II had good sensitivity (0.92 and 0.97),
negative predictive value (0.96 and 0.97) and negative likelihood ratio
(0.1 and 0.1), accurately identifying patients at low risk to die.
However, the low specificity (0.70 and 0.47) and positive likelihood
ratio (3.1 and 1.8) could limit their usefulness in predicting
in-hospital mortality. Considering ICU admissions all the scores, except
NEWS, SIRS and qSOFA, showed a worse performance. Conclusions: PSI and
APACHE II showed good prognostic results in predicting in-hospital
mortality but no pre- existing score validated for acute care settings
was totally satisfactory to predict adverse outcomes in COVID-19
interstitial pneumonia after admission to Acute Medical Unit. The
application setting and selected outcome criteria should always be
considered to evaluate and compare scoring systems' performance
analysis.


Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is an important food security crop in Rwanda but its productivity is low at 9 t/ha. In the past, the major potato research and development focused on seed production and distribution without targeted breeding to enhance productivity. The objective of this study was to determine yield and yield components response of potato genotypes in selected agro-ecologies of Rwanda to identify breeding parents. Fifteen agronomically stable genotypes were evaluated during 2011 at three locations: Kinigi, Rwerere and Nyamagabe with a randomised complete block design using three replications. Data were collected on yield and yield components. Further, a number of flower and tuber characteristics such as flower colour, pollen production, tuber shape, tuber flesh and skin colour, and depth of eyes were recorded. Across locations, genotype Kigega had the highest tuber yield at 32.4 t/ha, followed by Ngunda (32.3 t/ha) and Kirundo (26.9 t/ha), whereas Mabondo had the lowest yield (10.8 t/ha). At Nyamagabe genotype Kivu had the highest tuber yield of 16.7 t/ha, while Kinigi displayed the lowest at 1.8 t/ha. Genotype Ngunda was excellent yielder at Kingi with 47.2 t/ha tuber yield, while Bineza yielded low at 2.2 t/ha. At Rwerere, genotypes Victoria and Kigega were the best yielders at 45.7 and 44.7 t/ha, respectively, while Mabondo was the least yielder with 13.1 t/ha. Overall, the study identified potential breeding parents including genotypes Ngunda, Kirundo, Gikungu, Kigega, Victoria, Nderera and Bineza on the basis of medium to high responses for yield, desirable tuber characteristics and productive flowers for crosses. Location had strong effect on trait expression and contributed as the main source of variation. Genotypes Kigega and Kirundo had stable performance across locations in Rwanda. There is a need to develop potato varieties for specific agro-ecological adaptation in Rwanda.


In this study, the Clay – 220 mineral of Turkish origin from Kalemaden A.S., having a composition of the quarts, kaolinite, feldspar and the others with the weight percent of 36.20, 12.66, 48.03 and 3.11, respectively, was used as a raw material to investigate its transferability potential to a technological ceramic. The mineral was in the form of conglomerate rocks, which were prepared in the consecutive mineral processing procedures before taken it to the stage where carbothermal reduction - nitridation (CRN) was performed in an atmosphere controlled environment. Various process parameters, i.e., temperature, time and N2 – flow rate were tested in order to optimise the CRN process. SiAlON was formed at temperatures as low as 1300oC and its content increased with reaction temperature up to 1475oC. Above 1425oC, SiC becomes more predominant phase in the powdered product after CRN. Fine powders formed at temperature of 1350oC, which is the lowest value reported among the current literature, contain single crystalline phase of β-SiAlON. The results indicated that the best transformations and yield to the SiAlON ceramic were occurred on the previously prepared Clay – 220 samples in powder form that were processed at 1350oC for 6 hours with nitrogen flow rate of 1 lt/min.


Cadmium sulphide nanoparticles were grown using a wet chemical method, by dissolving the reactants, cadmium chloride and sodium sulphide in water, in the presence of mercaptoethanol (ME), which was used as a capping agent. Manganese chloride was used to dope the nanoparticles. It was found that the particle size varied with different concentrations of ME. At higher concentrations of ME, smaller sized nanoparticles were synthesized. This method also reveals the high stability of nanoparticles in water. Nanoparticle properties were investigated using UV-vis absorption, photoluminescence spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. The particle sizes were measured by the XRD technique, SEM and optical absorption spectra and were in the range 2-6 nm.


Rapidly developing electronization raises the intensity of electromagnetic radiation and brings avionics under harsh conditions, frequently resulting in significant failures. How to maintain aircraft's protection capacity against HIRF/L (high intensity radiated fields/ lightning) in service has become a important issue. This requires that a preventive maintenance program of aircraft HIRF/L protection has to be developed during researching and developing of aircraft. However, how to develop the program in the aviation is still being explored. This paper presents methods of developing the program, combining the recent research findings of both civil aviation and military aircraft. This method is mainly consist of -1) defining the levels of HIRF/L protection systems, 2) determining the maintenance tasks of level A system by the protection degradation from ED (environmental deterioration) and AD (accidental damage), and level B system by its similarity to other aircraft systems, 3) determining the maintenance interval;4) packing the maintenance tasks. According to this method, the maintenance tasks and intervals can be worked out. Thus the capability of HIRF/L protection and safety flights are ensured.


Highlights The findings of this original study ensure the detection of violations in the humoral regulation of the maternal immune interactions with semiallogeneic fetus, considered as a risk factor for developing sporadic conotruncal heart malformations in the next generation.Aim To study the role of female autoserum blood in limiting allogeneic interactions in short-term lymphocyte cultures of parents having children with conotruncal heart malformations.Methods 21 married couples (the study group) with children suffering from conotrucnal heart malformations (Tetralogy of Fallot) without chromosomal diseases were examined. The control group consisted of 21 families with three or more healthy children. The immune response in a mixed lymphocyte culture of parents was assessed by the increase in HLA-DR expression in the mixed culture with respect to spontaneous lymphocyte cultures. Primary staining of female and male lymphocytes with monoclonal antibodies to CD45, conjugated with various fluorescent dyes (PC-5 and PC-7), allowed assessing the immune response of female lymphocytes to male and vice versa.Results The effects of female autoserum on the mixed lymphocyte culture of parents were assessed. The obtained results reported that the birth of children with conotruncal heart malformations is associated with the interfering effect of female autoserum on HLA-DR expression on subpopulations of female lymphocytes (CD3+, HLA-DR+) and the activating effect on subpopulations of female lymphocytes (CD3-, HLA-DR+). The observed role of female autoserum in the study group may be associated with the absence of HLA-DR-blocking autoantibodies and high synthesis of cytokines by T2 and T3 helper lymphocytes.Conclusion The effects of female autoserum on allogeneic lymphocyte interactions of parents may be observed in short-term mixed lymphocyte cultures. The evaluation of the activating and interfering effects ensures timely identification of any violations in the humoral regulation of the maternal immune interactions with the HLA semiallogenic fetus, considered as a risk factor for developing sporadic conotruncal heart malformations in the next generation.


In electrical impedance tomography (EIT), various image reconstruction algorithms have been used in order to compute the internal resistivity distribution of the unknown object with its electric potential data at the boundary. Mathematically, the EIT image reconstruction algorithm is a nonlinear ill-posed inverse problem. This paper presents a simulated annealing technique as a statistical reconstruction algorithm for the solution of the static EIT inverse problem. Computer simulations with 32 channels synthetic data show that the spatial resolution of reconstructed images by the proposed scheme is improved as compared to that of the mNR algorithm at the expense of increased computational burden.


This thesis is about young Canadians who travel to Seoul, South Korea to teach English. The majority of these Canadians flock to Seoul in search of a livelihood and not out of a specific desire to live in South Korea. Through three months of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, I explore how they are racialized as white Westerners in South Korean society and how they respond to this positioning: I show how these Canadians oscillate between notions of privilege and the sincere vulnerabilities they face as transmigrant workers. This study is concerned with how subjects narrate their identities through their transnational movement given that these identities are relational and are never disinterested or value-free. As Canadians they fail to identify as migrant workers and rely on various normative discourses of superiority to symbolically displace their actual marginal status. Drawing on their prevailing, albeit unconscious, liberal values these Canadians rely on their understandings of progress, tolerance and universalism to make sense of South Korean society. Ultimately, most Canadian English teachers criticize and then attempt to civilize South Koreans. The concepts of race, nation and whiteness are central to this study as they provide a means to analyze the racialized narratives of these Canadians. Consequently, the manner in which racism and nationalism are interchangeable is unraveled in this transnational context.


The after-sales business has in recent years acquired a strategic role for firms manufacturing durable or capital goods, as it represents a source of revenue, profit and a means to achieve customer satisfaction and retention. The case study analysed in this article concerns a world player of heavy equipment based in Europe. This article analyses the spare parts classification method adopted by the company, and the allocation decisions concerning a second European warehouse and the transfer to that warehouse of a set of suppliers. A simulation model has been developed in order to support these choices. This study suggests that the support of quantitative methods such as spare part classification models and the use of simulation may be of great help to practitioners, in order to focus their effort on what really matters, to adopt cost-effective decisions and to assess the robustness of their decisions to varying exogenous conditions.


Low maternal plasma and urinary oestrogen concentrations in pregnancy are usually indicative of fetal problems, either placental insufficiency or fetal adrenal hypoplasia. Paediatricians, however, should follow obstetricians in becoming increasingly aware that deficiency of placental steroid sulphatase activity, a condition related to X linked ichthyosis, may produce the same abnormalities.


IRRIGATION AND OVERHEAD IRRIGATION IN GEORGIA COTTON by JARED WHITAKER (Under the Direction of Craig Bednarz) ABSTRACT This study was conducted to investigate agronomic effects of subsurface drip irrigation (SSD) in comparison to overhead irrigation in Georgia, such as maturity, lint yield and components, fiber quality, soil moisture, and water use. Studies were located at two Southwest Georgia locations in 2004 and 2005. Treatments included overhead irrigation, dryland, subsurface drip matched to overhead (SSD-matched), and subsurface drip based on soil moisture (SSD-fed). The SSD-fed treatment matured quicker than the overhead treatment. Lint yield from SSD was comparable to overhead irrigation in all environments, with yield distribution trending lower on the plant in the SSD treatments than the overhead treatment. SSD provided adequate soil moisture control while saving water when compared to overhead irrigation. Fiber quality data showed no difference between irrigation treatments. We conclude SSD irrigation provides the same positive effects as overhead irrigation while reducing water use, shifting yield distribution, and increasing maturity rate.


The photodissociation dynamics of propane molecules has been studied using the quasiclassical trajectory surface hopping (TSH) method in conjunction with Tully's fewest switches algorithm. The trajectories are propagated on potential energy surfaces computed on-the-fly using the multiconfiguration and multireference ab initio method starting in the lowest excited singlet state (HOMO → 3s Rydberg state) of propane at 157 nm with the emphasis on the site specificity of atomic hydrogen elimination, molecular hydrogen elimination, and their product branching ratios. Our dynamics simulation revealed that there are three primary dissociation channels: the atomic hydrogen elimination, the molecular hydrogen elimination, and the C-C bond scission. The trajectories indicate that the H2 elimination from the internal carbon atom (2,2-H2 elimination) and terminal carbon atom (1,1-H2 elimination) is the major process and follows a three centred synchronous concerted mechanism. 1,2-H2 and 1,3-H2 eliminations on the other hand are minor processes and exclusively follow the roaming mediated nonadiabatic dynamics. The probability of elimination of the hydrogen atom from two terminal groups (terminal hydrogen elimination) is greater than that from the internal CH2 group (internal hydrogen elimination). Almost 83% of atomic hydrogen elimination occurs through the asynchronous concerted mechanism from the terminal carbon atom via triple dissociation leading to CH3 + C2H4 + H products. This finding is in good agreement with a recent experimental observation. The present TSH study indicates that approximately one-third of the trajectories those resulted in a triple dissociation channel, CH3 + C2H4 + H completed in the ground singlet state following a nonadiabatic path (hopping from the first excited singlet S1 to the ground state S0) via the C-C and C-H dissociation coordinate conical intersection S1/S0. The products CH3(1 2A2″) + C2H4(1Ag) + H, obtained are ground state methyl radicals and ground state ethylene. The trajectories those ended in a triple dissociation channel CH3 + C2H4 + H adiabatically in the S1 state lead to CH3(1 2A2″) + C2H4 (1 3B1) + H, where singlet methyl radicals and triplet ethylene are formed in their corresponding lowest electronic state via a spin conserving route. Two channels, CH4 + CH3CH and C2H6 + CH2, are found to have minor contributions. In the case of methane elimination, the trajectories that follow an adiabatic path lead to CH3CH(1 1A″) + CH4,(1 1A1), where ethylidene is in the excited state and methane is in the ground state. Methane elimination via nonadiabatic path leads to CH3CH(11A') + CH4(1 1A1), where both ethylidene and methane are in the ground electronic state. Ethane eliminations follow the adiabatic path leading to C2H6(1 1A1g) + CH2(1 1B1) where ethane is in the ground state and methylene is in the first excited state.


We investigated the role of AMPKalpha2in basal, exercise training-, and AICAR-induced protein expression of GLUT4, hexokinase II (HKII), mitochondrial markers, and AMPK subunits. This was conducted in red (RG) and white gastrocnemius (WG) muscle from wild-type (WT) and alpha2-knockout (KO) mice after 28 days of activity wheel running or daily AICAR injection. Additional experiments were conducted to measure acute activation of AMPK by exercise and AICAR. At basal, mitochondrial markers were reduced by approximately 20% in alpha2-KO muscles compared with WT. In both muscle types, AMPKalpha2 activity was increased in response to both stimuli, whereas AMPKalpha1 activity was increased only in response to exercise. Furthermore, AMPK signaling was estimated to be 60-70% lower in alpha2-KO compared with WT muscles. In WG, AICAR treatment increased HKII, GLUT4, cytochrome c, COX-1, and CS, and the alpha2-KO abolished the AICAR-induced increases, whereas no AICAR responses were observed in RG. Exercise training increased GLUT4, HKII, COX-1, CS, and HAD protein in WG, but the alpha2-KO did not affect training-induced increases. Furthermore, AMPKalpha1, -alpha2, -beta1, -beta2, and -gamma3 subunits were reduced in RG, but not in WG, by 30-60% in response to exercise training. In conclusion, the alpha2-KO was associated with an approximately 20% reduction in mitochondrial markers in both muscle types and abolished AICAR-induced increases in protein expression in WG. However, the alpha2-KO did not reduce training-induced increases in HKII, GLUT4, COX-1, HAD, or CS protein in WG, suggesting that AMPKalpha2 may not be essential for metabolic adaptations of skeletal muscles to exercise training.


PurposeThe study examines the relationship between news intensity, media sentiment and market microstructure invariance-implied measures of trading activity and liquidity of Chinese property developer stocks during the 2020–2022 Chinese property sector crisis.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt the extension of the news article invariance hypothesis, which is a generalization of the market microstructure invariance conjecture, from January 2020 to January 2022 to test specific quantitative relationships between the arrival rate of public information, trading activity and a nonlinear function of a proxy for the probability of informed trading. Empirical tests are based on a dataset of 22,412 firm-day observations and two count-data models to correct for overdispersion and the excess number of zeros. Seventy-five stocks of Chinese companies from the property development industry (including the China Evergrande Group) were included in the sample.FindingsThe authors reject the news article invariance hypothesis but document a positive and significant relationship between the flow of public information and risk liquidity. Additionally, the authors find that the proxy for informed trading activity is positively related to the arrival rates of public information from October 2021 to January 2022.Originality/valueThe findings support the hypothesis that negative (positive) media sentiment induces significant deterioration (insignificant improvement) in stock liquidity. The authors find that an increase in the number of news articles about a company corresponds to a higher liquidity of Chinese property developers' stocks after controlling for media sentiment.


To gain further knowledge of the equine synovial fluid (SF) proteome, we propose a protocol based on the equalization of the relative concentrations of its proteins, which leads to the modification of the standard electrophoretic pattern revealing low-abundance proteins that otherwise remain undetected. Fresh SF samples were collected from ten macroscopically normal metacarpophalangeal joints of crossbred horses. The samples were processed using standard procedures as the control and via combinatorial peptide ligand libraries (CPLL) using low ionic forces (NaH2PO4 10 mM) at different pHs (4.0, 7.0, and 9.3) with 10% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and 25 mM DTT for protein resolubilization. Proteins were then separated by conventional 8% SDS-PAGE and stained with coomassie blue. After separation of the equalized proteins, there was a significant reduction in the albumin (the most abundant protein in the SF) and, at the same time, other protein bands arise that were not visible without CPLL processing. In addition, there was variation in the protein profiles at different pHs. The results suggest that protein equalization of the equine SF by CPLL could be a useful tool to better understand the articular homeostasis and/or for the detection of new biomarkers of joint pathology.


We create a quality value chain network concept to analyze the impact of supply chain quality (SCQ) on the customer lifetime value (CLV). We apply our framework to a rich dataset from a major restaurant chain utilizing text analysis of the complaints to measure SCQ, a two-stage least squares (2SLS) model with instruments to assess the impact of SCQ on customer experience, and a structural model of consumer purchasing behavior to eventually link customer experience to CLV. Note that we consider not only the impact of customer experience at the focal store but also that from adjacent stores on CLV. Considering such network effect significantly improves the model performance in predicting customer behavior and quantification of financial returns. We identify the profile of the most valuable customers and provide insights on which SCQ issues the supply chain should focus on, and which restaurants should be prioritized for supply chain improvements.


Fibroblast Growth Factors (FGFs) have been implicated in malignant transformation, tumour mitogenesis, angiogenesis and chemoresistance. The aim of this study was to determine which FGFs and FGFRs play functional roles in epithelial ovarian cancer. Restriction enzyme analysis of mRNA revealed that transformation was associated with a switch in FGFR2 and FGFR3, from the IIIc to the IIIb isoform. There was widespread expression of FGFs, including FGF7, in all tissues but, FGF3 and FGF19 were expressed by malignant cell lines and cancer tissue but were not present in normal tissue. Using FGFR-specific shRNAi we demonstrated that reductions in FGFR2 inhibited proliferation of ovarian cancer cell lines in vitro (>50%, p < 0.006), and reduced cisplatin IC50 (>60%, p < 0.0001). Cell cycle analysis revealed increased cisplatin sensitivity was associated with increased G2/M arrest and increased apoptosis. FGFR2 shRNAi reduced growth rates of ovarian tumour xenografts by 20% (p<0.006) and when combined with cisplatin caused a 40% reduction in proliferation rates (p<0.007). In contrast, RNAi-induced reductions in FGFR1 increased SKOV3 cell numbers, with associated changes in cell cycle but had no effect on ES2 cells. However, the cisplatin IC50 was reduced (>50%, p < 0.0001) by FGFR1 shRNAi in both cell lines and there was increased apoptosis (46-50%) compared with control cells (35%) (p < 0.004). Together our data suggest that combining FGFR2 inhibitors with platinum-containing cytotoxic agents for the treatment of epithelial ovarian cancer may yield increased anti-tumour activity. However, data on the inhibition of FGFR1 suggest that broad spectrum FGFR inhibitors may have unexpected effects on proliferation.


We have applied time-domain 3D elastic full-waveform inversion (FWI) to a known tunnel constructed 10 m below the surface with no distinguishing surface expressions. Multicomponent inversion experiments that use an initial model estimated from surface wave methods suggest that the vertical sources and the combination of vertical and longitudinal receivers result in the clearest image of the tunnel. We obtain an approximate 3D image of the tunnel using 24 vertical sources and 720 vertical and 720 longitudinal receivers. We find that increasing the number of vertical sources to 216 does not significantly improve the details of the tunnel. Further experimentation indicates that we can detect the tunnel using a reduced data set of 6–10 vertical sources and 216 vertical sensors. In addition, calculating the [Formula: see text] ratio helps remove artifacts from the inverted model and highlights the location of the tunnel. We compare the 3D inversion results with the 2D FWI results for the same tunnel that we previously evaluated. The variety of successful inversion experiments suggest that FWI is capable of imaging shallow tunnels in desert geologies.


Abstract A cluster of exceptionally large sediment fans occurs in Val Venosta, a glacial trough in the east-central Alps, Italy. Its 59 tributary valleys generate 49 fans with volume:catchment area ratios varying across four orders of magnitude. Geomorphological and statistical analysis distinguish 'allometric' and 'anomalous' fans. Catastrophic massive slope failure origins are suggested for the anomalous cases. They comprise 'outsize fans' and 'megafans', the latter attaining 400 m cone height and 2700 m radius, and dominating the trough. Above most fans, evidence is found for source cavities of comparable volume. Reconstruction of the missing sides and heads of two tributary valleys reveals lost mountains 700 m deep. They are credible sources for the Malser Haide, a globally significant 11 km-long megafan with an estimated volume of 1650 Mm3, and the St Valentin outsize fans. Generally, anomalous fans occur where landslides are funnelled, comminuted and controlled through 'debouchures' high enough above the trough floor for conoidal deposition. Although sedimentological data are sparse, these fans may represent a new category of catastrophic slope failure outcome, mimicking conventional sediment fans of incremental origin. The Val Venosta cluster is the largest in the Alps, with concentrated glacial erosion in conducive geology among the possible factors explaining anomalous fan incidence.


In this paper, we propose a new supervised clustering algorithm, coined as the homogeneous clustering (HC), to find the number and initial locations of the hidden units in radial basis function (RBF) neural network classifiers. In contrast to the traditional clustering algorithms introduced for this goal, the proposed algorithm is a supervised procedure where the number and initial locations of the hidden units are determined based on split of the clusters having overlaps among the classes. The basic idea of the proposed approach is to create class specific homogenous clusters where the corresponding samples are closer to their mean than the means of rival clusters belonging to other class categories. We tested the proposed clustering algorithm along with the RBF network classifier on the Graz02 object database and the ORL face database. The experimental results show that the RBF network classifier performs better when it is initialized with the proposed HC algorithm than an unsupervised k-means algorithm. Moreover, our recognition results exceed the best published results on the Graz02 database and they are comparable to the best results on the ORL face database indicating that the proposed clustering algorithm initializes the hidden unit parameters successfully.


Remote epitaxy is a promising technology that has recently attracted considerable attention, which enables the growth of thin films that copy the crystallographic characteristics of the substrate through two-dimensional material interlayers. The grown films can be exfoliated to form freestanding membranes, although it is often challenging to apply this technique if the substrate materials are prone to damage under harsh epitaxy conditions. For example, remote epitaxy of GaN thin films on graphene/GaN templates has not been achieved by a standard metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) method due to such damages. Here, we report GaN remote heteroepitaxy on graphene/AlN templates by MOCVD and investigate the influence of surface pits in AlN on the growth and exfoliation of GaN thin films. We first show the thermal stability of graphene before GaN growth, based on which two-step growth of GaN on graphene/AlN is developed. The GaN samples are successfully exfoliated after the first step of the growth at 750 °C, whereas the exfoliation failed after the second step at 1050 °C. In-depth analysis confirms that the pits in AlN templates lead to the degradation of graphene near the area and thus the alteration of growth modes and the failure of exfoliation. These results exemplify the importance of chemical and topographic properties of growth templates for successful remote epitaxy. It is one of the key factors for III-nitride-based remote epitaxy, and these results are expected to be of great help in realizing complete remote epitaxy using only MOCVD.


Although radiologic imaging and histological assessment of tumor tissues are classic approaches for diagnosis and monitoring of treatment response, they have many limitations. These include challenges in distinguishing benign from malignant masses, difficult access to the tumor, high cost of the procedures, and tumor heterogeneity. In this setting, liquid biopsy has emerged as a potential alternative for both diagnostic and monitoring purposes. The approaches to liquid biopsy include cell-free DNA/circulating tumor DNA (cfDNA/ctDNA), long and micro non-coding RNAs, proteins/peptides, carbohydrates/lectins, lipids, and metabolites. Other approaches include detection and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), extracellular vesicles (EVs), and tumor-activated platelets. Ultimately, reliable use of liquid biopsies requires bioinformatics and statistical integration of multiple data sets in order to achieve approval in a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) setting. This review provides a balanced and critical assessment of recent discoveries regarding tumor-derived biomarkers in liquid biopsies along with the potential and pitfalls for cancer detection and longitudinal monitoring.


Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006

1265

Resistance to anticancer drugs is the major problem in the treatment of many advanced cancers including androgen-independent prostate cancer. Recently, increased expression of Id-1, a basic helix-loop-helix protein, is reported in several types of advanced cancer. It is suggested that high expression of Id-1 may provide an advantage for cancer cell survival and inactivation of Id-1 may be able to increase cancer cells' susceptibility to apoptosis. To test this hypothesis, in this study, using RNA interfering technology, we inactivated the Id-1 gene in two androgen-independent prostate cancer cell lines, DU145 and PC3, and investigated if downregulation of Id-1 could lead to increased sensitivity to a commonly used anticancer drug, taxol. Using colony forming and MTT assays, we found that inactivation of Id-1 resulted in both decreased colony forming ability and cell viability in prostate cancer cells after taxol treatment. In addition, the si-Id-1 induced sensitization to taxol was associated with activation of apoptosis pathway demonstrated by increased apoptotic index, DNA laddering, sub-G1 phase of the cell cycle, as well as cleaved-PARP and Caspase 3. Furthermore, c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), one of the common pathways responsible for taxol-induced apoptosis, was also activated in the si-Id-1 transfected cells. Inhibition of JNK activity by a specific inhibitor, SP600125, blocked the si-Id-1-induced sensitivity to taxol. These results indicate that increased Id-1 expression in prostate cancer cells may play a protective role against apoptosis, and downregulation of Id-1 may be a potential target to increase sensitivity of taxol-induced apoptosis in prostate cancer cells.(Supported by RGC grants:HKU7314/01M, hku7490/03M, HKU7470/04M, HKU7478/03M)


Using Monte Carlo simulations, we study in detail the overlap distribution for individual samples for several spin-glass models including the infinite-range Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, short-range Edwards-Anderson models in three and four space dimensions, and one-dimensional long-range models with diluted power-law interactions. We study three long-range models with different powers as follows: the first is approximately equivalent to a short-range model in three dimensions, the second to a short-range model in four dimensions, and the third to a short-range model in the mean-field regime. We study an observable proposed earlier by some of us which aims to distinguish the "replica symmetry breaking" picture of the spin-glass phase from the "droplet picture," finding that larger system sizes would be needed to unambiguously determine which of these pictures describes the low-temperature state of spin glasses best, except for the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model which is unambiguously described by replica symmetry breaking. Finally, we also study the median integrated overlap probability distribution and a typical overlap distribution, finding that these observables are not particularly helpful in distinguishing the replica symmetry breaking and the droplet pictures.


The enantioface-differentiating (asymmetric) hydrogenation of various methyl ketones (R–COCH3) was carried out over the Raney nickel catalyst modified with (R,R)-tartaric acid and sodium bromide. The presence of an appreciable amount of carboxylic acid in the reaction system was indispensable for a high optical yield. The highest optical yield (74%) was obtained in the hydrogenation of 3,3-dimethyl-2-butanone in the presence of pivalic acid.


Nowadays, 21st
-century education emphasizes creative thinking skills among students all over the
world. Creativity is not only limited to art education but can also apply to STEM education inclusive of Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics to solve the real-world problems. However, there are still few
studies in Malaysia that focused on creativity in secondary school. The purpose of this study is to identify the
level of students' creativity based on four creativity domains including fluency, flexibility, originality and
elaboration. The research used survey design involving 54 students that underwent Chemistry subject in Melaka
Tengah district as the sample. This study used an open-ended question consisting of a Chemistry Creativity Test
to collect data. The data were analyzed using a quantitative and qualitative approach. The study found that
overall levels of chemistry students' creativity were at the lowest. The result also reported the majority of
chemistry students were unable to solve the real-world problem in many ways, lacking in producing a lot of
ideas, the ideas were less originality and lack of idea elaborations. The implication of this study is to provide
awareness of teachers to improve the student' creative thinking through effective teaching and learning strategy.


Objective: It is said that hypertension influence the aortic thoracic dissecion. Design and Method: We examined death cases due to thoracic aortic dissection in Osaka Medical Examiner's Office 2014. The death cases were 108 (Male 58 cases, Female 50 cases: average 72.2 year old). Results: In year, the most cases were in November (20 cases) and the second were in February (15 cases). 63 cases (58.3%) were diagnosed at autopsy. 20 cases were diagnosed thoracic aortic aneurism while alive. We investigated past history; hypertension, diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidemia. As a result, 39 cases were diagnosed hypertension, 9 cases were diabetes mellitus and 6 cases were hyperlipidemia. Conclusions: The result showed that hypertension influenced thoracic aortic dissection, but we thought there were few people examined the periodic medical check-up and many people did not receive the treatment for hypertension.


With the development of renewable energy, hydrogen energy is paid more and more attention. Hydrogen is an excellent energy carrier, but it is difficult to store and transport because of its special properties. Hydrogen blended with nature gas is considered to be one of best transition solutions to solve the problem of large-scale hydrogen transportation. But hydrogen embrittlement occurs when the pipeline steel used to transport natural gas is exposed to hydrogen environment. Referencing to ASME B31.12, X42 pipeline steel is selected as the research object in this paper. And the mechanical properties of X42 were tested by electrochemical hydrogen charging, slow strain rate tensile (SSRT) test and fatigue crack growth (FCG) test combined with thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS) and SEM. Hydrogen adsorption properties of X42 pipeline steel at room temperature was measured by TDS. SSRT test showed that the strength of X42 strengthened slightly in electrochemical hydrogen charging environment, but the plasticity decreased significantly, and the embrittlement degree of materials increased with the elevated current density. FCG test showed that the presence of hydrogen will accelerate the crack growth rate and reduce the fatigue life of materials. SEM images of tensile and fatigue specimens showed that hydrogen transforms the fracture mode from ductile fracture to cleavage fracture.


Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used for many purposes, servicing delivery, recreational, utility inspection, and film industries, among others. For some applications, use of UAVs can expose communities to a type of noise not currently experienced, with current noise sources
 typically related to transportation operations (e.g., aircraft, rail, road noise sources) and home activities (e.g., air conditioning units, lawn care). As such, it is important to understand the type of noise communities will experience with UAV operations. For this paper, a UAV flyover event
 and hover event are examined in terms of spectral content and the relationship of peak frequencies. In addition, the peak frequencies and relationships are discussed in terms of those typically associated with annoyance.


Forty-six patients were interviewed more than a year after treatment for carcinoma of the cervix to establish the effects of radiation therapy and of surgical therapy on sexual feelings and performance. Group 1 consisted of 22 patients who had undergone radiation therapy for stage I, II, or III cancer of the cervix. Group 2 consisted of 20 patients who had undergone hysterectomy with or without partial vaginectomy for carcinoma in situ. The irradiated patients experienced statistically significant decreases in sexual enjoyment, ability to attain orgasm, libido, frequency of intercourse, opportunity, and sexual dreams. The surgically treated group had no significant change in sexual function after treatment. Both groups experienced a change in self-image but did not feel that their partners or family viewed them differently. Myths about cancer and the actual effects of pelvic irradiation were found to have disrupted the sexual-marital relationships of many women. Therapeutic programs are discussed through which women can be helped through this difficult time in their lives.


A mobile flying projector is hard to build due to the limited size and payload capability of a micro aerial vehicle. Few flying projector designs have been studied in recent research. However, to date, no practical solution has been presented. We propose a versatile laser projection system enabling in-flight projection with feedforward correction for stabilization of projected images. We present a quantitative evaluation of the accuracy of the projection stabilization in two autonomous flight experiments. While this approach is our first step towards a flying projector, we foresee interesting applications, such as providing on-site instructions in various human machine interaction scenarios.


Automatic image annotation is an important problem in several machine learning applications such as image search. Since there exists a semantic gap between low-level image features and high-level semantics, the description ability of image representation can largely affect annotation results. In fact, image representation learning and image tagging are two closely related tasks. A proper image representation can achieve better image annotation results, and image tags can be treated as guidance to learn more effective image representation. In this paper, we present an optimal predictive subspace learning method which jointly conducts multi-view representation learning and image tagging. The two tasks can promote each other and the annotation performance can be further improved. To make the subspace to be more compact and discriminative, both visual structure and semantic information are exploited during learning. Moreover, we introduce powerful predictors (SVM) for image tagging to achieve better annotation performance. Experiments on standard image annotation datasets demonstrate the advantages of our method over the existing image annotation methods.


Abstract This paper investigates the syntactic properties of a construction with aller 'to go' and venir 'to come' followed by an infinitive, where these verbs express the speaker's emotions (surprise, annoyance, disapproval, etc.) about the event, and particularly about the agent responsible for bringing it about. It is shown that the infinitive following expressive aller and venir does not have clausal properties: it cannot be preceded by perfect auxiliaries nor can it bear sentential negation. In contrast with other uses of aller and venir (periphrastic future/past, conjectural, etc.), which are shown to be raising verbs, expressive aller and venir are argued to be functional verbs, merged into a functional head within the same clause as the infinitive (Cardinaletti and Giusti 2001, Cinque 2001, 2004a), in the modal domain below TP.


Early and late leaf spots caused by Cercospora arachidicola Hori and Cercospora personatum (Berk. & Curt.) Deighton are among the major biotic constraints to groundnut production in sub-saharan Africa. A two-year screening experiment was conducted in 2001 and 2002 at the Institute of Agricultural Research for Development farm, Maroua to identify resistant genotypes for the groundnut breeding programme. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi- Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) nine-point scale was used for Cercospora severity rating. Groundnut genotyes were grouped into various classes of resistance to leaf spots using the method suggested by the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (WECARD). The results indicate that no genotype was immune to both leaf spots. The genotype ICGV 91225 was found to be resistant to early leaf spot. No genotype was resistant to late leaf spot. The genotypes ICG 6902, #3-94, SAMNUT 22, SAMNUT 22, NC-GP 343, ICGV 91225, ICGMS 42 and Samnut 10 which were more resistant to Cercospora leaf spots at harvest than the check, Samnut 11, could be used as donor parents for late spot resistance breeding.


This article considers the general issues surrounding screening, in particular the problems involved in the collection and use of information derived from screening. Different forms of screening entail particular problems, which have their own ethical complexities. The legal and ethical issues arising from screening are likely to assume greater significance. The screening opportunities afforded by the Human Genome Project will provide humanity with choices that would have been inconceivable to any previous generation.


As today's knowledge workers tend to have less clearly defined outputs, many organizations are concerned with employees' non-work use of technologies during office hours. In addition, as organizations strive to increase the job efficiency of new hires, managers must collapse overall training time while providing constant on-the-job training. This manuscript argues that individuals' play with computer applications can be consider ed a form of self -directed, experiential learning. Drawing from information systems research and individual learning theories, an emerging framework for research on the role of application and technology play in individual learning is proposed. The framework suggests that self-directed experience and application of technology to work-related tasks is a moderator of the relationship between selfdirected experience and individual learning. The manuscript presents two real life examples to illustrate the inter-relationships of the constructs in the framework. Research recommendations and guidelines for practitioners are then presented. "The most powerful learning comes from direct experience."


Diet is a crucial determinant of organismal biology. Here we demonstrate the dramatic impact of a subtle shift in diet on the ability of Caenorhabditis elegans to survive pathogenic or abiotic stress. Interestingly, this shift occurs independently of canonical host defense pathways, arising instead from improvements in mitochondrial health. Using a variety of assays, we reveal that the most common C. elegans food source (E. coli OP50) results in a vitamin B12 deficiency that compromises mitochondrial homeostasis. Increasing B12 supply by feeding on E. coli HT115 or by supplementing bacterial media with methylcobalamin restored mitochondrial function, even if the bacteria were dead. B12 supplementation also efficiently increased host health without adversely affecting lifespan. Our study forges a molecular link between a dietary deficiency (nutrition/microbiota) and a physiological consequence (host sensitivity), using the host-microbiota-diet framework. The ubiquity of B12 deficiency (~10-40% of US adults) highlights the importance of our findings.


The exposure of living organisms to environmental and cellular stresses often causes disruptions in protein homeostasis and can result in protein aggregation. The accumulation of protein aggregates in bacterial cells can lead to significant alterations in the cellular phenotypic behavior, including a reduction in growth rates, stress resistance, and virulence. Several experimental procedures exist for the examination of these stressor-mediated phenotypes. This paper describes an optimized assay for the extraction and visualization of aggregated and soluble proteins from different Escherichia coli strains after treatment with a silver-ruthenium-containing antimicrobial. This compound is known to generate reactive oxygen species and causes widespread protein aggregation. The method combines a centrifugation-based separation of protein aggregates and soluble proteins from treated and untreated cells with subsequent separation and visualization by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and Coomassie staining. This approach is simple, fast, and allows a qualitative comparison of protein aggregate formation in different E. coli strains. The methodology has a wide range of applications, including the possibility to investigate the impact of other proteotoxic antimicrobials on in vivo protein aggregation in a wide range of bacteria. Moreover, the protocol can be used to identify genes that contribute to increased resistance to proteotoxic substances. Gel bands can be used for the subsequent identification of proteins that are particularly prone to aggregation.


In this paper a novel method for planning point-to-point robot trajectories will be introduced. With the new method, the requirement of an optimal path and the need of a slim motion due to the lack of free space can be compromised. The generated slim motion is suitable for applications where human-robot cooperation takes place and the workspace is considered to be constrained. This new method is based on the synchronized links motion with a constant ratio of the link angle positions. The proof that any PTP motion can be carried out under this constraint will be provided. The new method of synchronized motion will be illustrated at hand of some examples and compared with conventional methods.


Migration is currently considered as one of the foremost issues that the world is dealing with. According to UNDESA 2017 report there exist 258 million international migrants globally in the year 2017 (United Nations, 2017). When it comes to being a migrant destination, the Middle East region is one of the major spots especially for migrant workers. The region is also a popular destination for Ethiopian migrants. It is estimated that 44% of Ethiopian migrants globally is found in the Middle East region (Kuschminder , et al., 2013). Ethiopians migrate to this region because of breach and omission of their social, economic and political rights in their home country. Moreover, they face various types and degree of human right abuses and violations in their way and destination to the Middle East. This article looks deep and analyzes the concept of human security and its implication in migration studies. Moreover, it emphasizes on challenges and human right violations that Ethiopian migrants face in their home country, in their way and destination in the Middle East that jeopardizes their human security. The article is written by reviewing and analyzing various academic works on the area and surveys and reports of governmental and nongovernmental organizations.


We apply a direct downscaling approach to generate ensembles of local‐scale glacier mass balance projections from coarse‐scale general circulation model (GCM) data. The general modes of the atmospheric circulation over a large geographical region are linked statistically to Peyto Glacier's winter and summer balance separately. Our study focuses on the generation of ensemble projections derived from simulations with ECHAM5‐MPIOM forced with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ‐ Special Report on Emission Scenarios (IPCC‐SRES) A1B and B1. The resulting ensembles of mass balance projections show a moderate increase in winter balance and a steep decrease in summer balance. Together these results suggest continued frontal recession and downwasting of Peyto Glacier and a shift of the equilibrium line altitude by at least 100 m above that estimated for the 1966–2001 period suggesting that very little of the glacier will remain by 2100. Copyright © 2008 Crown in the right of Canada. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This paper analyzes an endogenous vertical multinational enterprise by explicitly modeling a distortion in the intermediate goods sector. Firms invest abroad to lower the cost of multistage production. The implications for international trade and investment differ markedly from the conventional wisdom of multinationals. Particularly, intrafirm trade in intermediates implies vertical investment complements rather than substitutes for trade. The decision to become a multinational depends on the level on foreign factor prices, the nature of the competition with foreign suppliers, transport, tariffs, and subsidiary plant costs. Marginal change in tariff may result in unintended welfare jumps as firm configuration shifts.


The Leipzig Corpora Collection offers free online access to 136 monolingual dictionaries enriched with statistical information. In this paper we describe current advances of the project in collecting and processing text data automatically for a large number of languages. Our main interest lies in languages of "low density", where only few text data exists online. The aim of this approach is to create monolingual dictionaries and statistical information for a high number of new languages and to expand the existing dictionaries, opening up new possibilities for linguistic typology and other research. Focus of this paper will be set on the infrastructure for the automatic acquisition of large amounts of monolingual text in many languages from various sources. Preliminary results of the collection of text data will be presented. The mainly language-independent framework for preprocessing, cleaning and creating the corpora and computing the necessary statistics will also be depicted.


Humanoid robotics development often depends on simulation and prototypes for new walking algorithms. The advantages of simulation such as low cost and risk make repeated experiments and development more straightforward. However, real world implementation can require extensive porting to move from a simulation environment to a hardware platform. This tedious task can be a huge time sink that drastically slows development cycles. This paper describes a way to eliminate this bottleneck. By developing standardized protocols for motors and sensors, a software controller can communicate with both platforms using the same interface.


We introduce a simple and fast iterative algorithm, named SCAOS (simple counterpropagation algorithm for optical signals), for simulating the counterpropagation of optical signals within a nonlinear fiber. Being based on the split-step Fourier method, the algorithm is easily implementable in many traditional optical simulators. Applications of the SCAOS algorithm to the vectorial nonlinear counterpropagation of a polarized pump and a probe signal demonstrate the phenomenon of lossless polarization attraction. The evolution of the signal polarization along the fiber, obtained by simulation, reveals that polarization attraction always entails a certain amount of degradation of the signal's degree of polarization. Two different setups are studied, involving different types of fibers with Kerr nonlinearity, and highlighting the dependence of the attraction phenomenon, as well as of its effectiveness, on the fiber type.


Meta-analytic evidence suggests that sexual recidivism rates range between 15% and 20% after follow-up periods of up to twenty years. Sex offender profiles can be differentiated according to their recidivism risk: specialized non-recidivists, versatile recidivists and specialized recidivists. The specialized non-recidivist offender group is the one raising more unanswered questions. This paper summarizes the factors that define the psychological profile of each group and a tentative explanation for the low recidivism rates. Some practical implications are discussed.


As part of the 25th edition of the Francophone Virology Days, Pr. Frédéric Laurent held the conference "Phages and phage therapy: from Félix d'Hérelle to 2.0 phages". Frédéric Laurent detailed the history of phages: from their discovery and their first use in early 1920s, through their abandonment in Western world in the 1940s in favor of antibiotics, then their reappearance in recent years within the context of the emergence of multi-resistant bacterial strains. Throughout this presentation, Pr. Laurent also detailed general functioning of phages, their chain of bioproduction and quality control, the progress to be made in the compassionate treatment of patients in therapeutic failures.


Ad hoc shared-ride systems built upon intelligent-transportation-system (ITS) technology represent a promising scenario for investigating the multicommodity-flow-over-time problem. This type of problem is known to be strongly NP-hard. Furthermore, capacity assignment in this shared-ride system is a problem to be solved in highly dynamic transportation and communication networks. So far, the known heuristics to this problem are centralized and require global knowledge about the environment. This paper develops a decentralized ad hoc capacity-assignment approach. Based on a spatial decomposition of the global optimization problem, the solution provides effective agent decisions using only local knowledge. The effectiveness is assessed by the trip quality for ride clients and by the required communication effort.


Infectious pneumonia has plagued bighorn sheep populations and stymied recovery efforts across the western United States for decades.  Here we present a simple, non-spatial, stochastic, discrete-time model that captures basic bighorn sheep demographics and in which we simulate the dynamics of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, the suspected primary causative agent in bighorn sheep respiratory disease. We then use the model to explore the impacts of management approaches, including augmentation, depopulation and reintroduction, density reduction, and test-and-cull, aimed at reducing or eliminating the pathogen, its transmission, or associated infection costs. Results suggest that test-and-cull (testing 95% of a herd and removing PCR-positive individuals) and depopulation and reintroduction (assuming ability to only depopulate 95% of the herd) offer the best probability of eliminating the pathogen, although neither are expected to be 100% successful. Augmentation (adding 30 adult ewes) does not increase the probability of pathogen extinction, and in some cases may prolong pathogen persistence and diminish herd recovery.  Density reduction (randomly removing 25-50% of the herd) only modestly increases the probability of stochastic pathogen extinction and herd recovery.  Stochastic pathogen extinction and herd recovery is predicted to occur on occasion without any management intervention. Ultimately, decisions to manage respiratory disease in wild sheep must weigh the predicted success of the management tool against financial, logistical, ethical, and value-based considerations. Here, we aim to supply mechanistic-based predictions of the relative efficacy of currently employed or proposed tools, as well as characterize the sensitivity of these predictions to our assumptions about how the disease process works.


Objective: This study aimed to identify the role of IL-18BPa in the regulation of immune responses associated with the pathogenesis of Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Methods: 65 Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients, 22 Osteoarthritis (OA) patients, and 40 sex and age matched healthy donors were enrolled in this study. Synovial fluids mononuclear cells (SFMC) and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were prepared by using Ficoll-Hypaque separation procedure. Super Array analysis was used to measure the expression profile of immune-related genes in RA synovial tissues (RA-ST) and in normal PBMC treated with recombinant human IL-18 binding protein a (IL-18BPa). The mRNA levels of T-helper 1 (TH1) and T-helper 2 (TH2) cytokines were measured by real-time PCR, and the protein levels of IFN-γ, IL-4 and IL-18BPa autoantibodies were detected by ELISA.
Results: High expression of IL-18BPa protein and messenger RNA (mRNA) are found in RA-SF and RA-ST. SuperArray analysis of immune related gene expression profile in normal PBMC treated with IL-18BPa indicated decreases in the gene expression of IFN-γ. IL-18BPa downregulated the mRNA expression of IFN-γ and IL-12, as well as, upregulated the mRNA expression of IL-4 and IL-10 in RA and normal subjects. IFN-γ and IL-12 upregulated the mRNA and protein expression of IL-18BPa in RA subjects. Autoantibodies against IL-18BPa were detected in plasma of RA patients (41.7%), in healthy subjects (4.0%), and none of OA patients, and also detected in SF of RA patients (37.9%) and OA patients (9%).
Conclusion: This study emphasizes the anti-inflammatory properties of IL-18BPa on cytokines milieu and the IL-18BPa auto-antibodies may play a role in aberrant regulation of IL-18BPa in RA patients.


Research and Development in the rangelands of Australia has typically been reductionist in nature, focussing on segments of what is in reality a deeply integrated system of interaction containing social and natural elements. For example, work on production and productivity has been poorly integrated with the issues of social systems (markets and marketing) and ecological sustainability, biodiversity and lately carbon storage and sequestration. The landscape's main resource has been seen as based in agriculture, and this in turn has been driven by the issues of production and productivity Agriculture faces increasing economic pressures in terms of long term net returns; in terms of political and social influence and in terms of wider community values surrounding natural resource management, food production systems and responses to climate change. Accommodating this new and exciting future, it is argued that there needs to be changes in both community attitudes and the direction of scientific research. Community attitudes need to be imaginative, proactive and recognise the changed economic, social and environmental context that rangelands inhabitants now find themselves in. For scientists, the challenges are similar, but also include the need to work in an interdisciplinary manner, to see research and development as underpinning and informing management as well as integrating research more fully with all areas in which it has an impact.


Chapters are neatly self-contained for reading aloud or alone, and the solid-lined monochromatic spot art, focused firmly on the critters and not the people, has the friendly openness of Spunky himself. Dog fans looking for something a little deeper than Nolan's Down Girl and Sit (Smarter than Squirrels, BCCB 11/04) will delight in Spunky's tail-wagging tale-telling, which could introduce a new generation of kids to the Bates family chronicles. DS