The doses per X-ray film given by UNSCEAR (1972) for diagnostic X-ray exposures in pregnancy in Britain have never been justified. Dose per film is an inadequate substitute for a knowledge of dose per examination. Extensive measurements were made in the UK during routine obstetric radiography in 1958 giving a mean fetal whole-body dose of 0.61 cGy in that year. It will have changed little in the next few years. A risk coefficients for childhood cancer caused by X-raying in late pregnancy can then be derived from data for children born in 1958-61. It is 4-5*10-4 per cGy with 95% confidence limits 0.8-9.5*10-4 per cGy and applies equally to cancer incidence and mortality.


The aim of this study was to investigate how solar drying setup and choice of juice pretreatment determine the microbiological quality in a fruit juice concentration process called solar assisted pervaporation (SAP). With this process, hygienic membrane pouches and solar energy are used to concentrate and preserve fruit juices. In this study, citrus (tangerine) marmalades were produced with SAP membrane pouches under realistic conditions in rural Mozambique with three solar drying setups and eight juice pretreatments. The results showed that the choice of solar drying setup had a negligible effect on the total aerobic plate count but a significant effect on the yeast plate count. Pasteurization as a juice pretreatment lowered the total aerobic count and the probability of fermentation, while lemon juice had no beneficial effect on the microbiological quality. The recommendations are to add sucrose and pasteurize the juice before drying and to use a direct active solar dryer. Practical Applications: Solar drying is a sustainable approach to food preservation for the future. However, there are food safety challenges with solar drying that make the process difficult to control. One challenge is the direct contact between the product and the surrounding air since the air may be contaminated with microorganisms. One approach to reduce the probability of contamination is by solar drying fruit juices with membrane pouches that provide a hygienic barrier between the product and the surrounding air. These types of pouches are especially suitable for juicy, citrus fruits that are difficult to preserve with traditional solar drying practices. The pouches can be used to concentrate citrus juices into marmalades in rural areas of tropical countries where established infrastructure is not available. This study investigated the hygienic nature of the approach in rural Mozambique with the help of small-scale producers to determine the optimal way to produce safe marmalades. (Less)


Professor Trevor Duke and colleagues at the Centre for International Child Health, University of Melbourne, have made a remarkable contribution to international child health. Over the past 11 years, they have undertaken annual structured searches for published reports of controlled trials of interventions addressing child health in developing countries, and assembled summaries in a compendium that is easily accessible to clinicians, policymakers and research funders. They present an analysis of the controlled trials that have been included in these annual compendia.1

The results are encouraging: there has been a sevenfold increase in the number of trials published each year, providing a significant expansion in the evidence base for many common conditions, most notably the prevention and treatment of malaria. New knowledge of effective interventions from these trials has been generated alongside political will arising from the Roll Back Malaria initiative. Over the last 11 years, many endemic regions have experienced a decline in disease due to falciparum malaria.

The greatest number of published trials were on nutrition. Perhaps this is unsurprising given that recent estimates suggest that undernutrition causes 45% of childhood mortality, principally by increasing the likelihood of common life-threatening infectious diseases. Nearly three-quarters of nutritional intervention trials were of micronutrients. However, in the 2013 Lancet series on maternal and child nutrition, of the five nutrition-related interventions …


Objective: To compare the efficacy of per cutaneous FNA biopsy with open lymph node biopsy. Setting: Nishtar Hospital, Multan. Sample size: 50 patients. Duration: One year. Results: Maximum numberof cases 35 (70%) were between the ages of 11-40 years. During this procedure adequate specimens were obtained from all cases for cytological interpretation and no complication was observed. Benign result in 30 cases while malignant disease was observed in 19 cases and an unsatisfactory result was observed in one case. Results of this study showed that tuberculosis is still a common disease in our population. Overall accuracy of FNAB cytology was 98% on comparison with histological diagnosis indicating the usefulnessof this technique. Conclusion: FNAB-C may be performed by clinician, pathologist or radiologist as an outpatient procedure. So along with other advantages it brings a new dimension of cooperation between the medical specialist, cytopathologist and radiologist in this era of emphasis on ambulatory care.


It is of great interest to study the processes of metal supply and migration in the natural environment. It was discovered in this study that metal content in fish is higher than that in the Ishim River water by 2-3 orders of magnitude and by an order of magnitude lower than that in the bottom sediments. Among fish tissues, the highest degree of accumulation of toxicants was observed in liver and gills. In all examined fish species, iron content was higher than the maximum allowable concentration. The physical appearance of the examined fish (fins, gills, heart) correlated with score 0, which corresponds to environmental welfare. The liver of the examined fish turned out to be the most sensitive indicating organ. The average grade for pike liver was 1.7; the roach individuals were mainly characterized by damaged liver (scores 3 and 4; very poor), a twofold reduction in the liver size and cirrhosis. Bream individuals were also characterized by poor condition of their liver (scores 2 and 3). A conclusion was drawn that the morphological parameters of the liver and muscles of the examined fish species provide the data regarding the functional state of individuals during a certain period of their life cycle; whereas gonadal condition is a crucial indicator of the reproductive potency of the species (a criterion of its adaptive plasticity).


Background Fascial plane blocks are a valuable and important aspect of patient care. However, nerve blocks sometimes present with a technical difficulty that can lead to upsetting the operating room schedule, cause discomfort to the patient, or lead to inadequate block. Potential predictors of this difficulty were evaluated. Methods In a single-blind study, ultrasound image quality was evaluated on a grading metric, and its correlation with several factors that could potentially impact the difficulty of a procedure, including age, BMI, weight, length of surgery, IV fluids, and pre- vs postoperative block, was assessed. Results No correlation was found between any of our anesthetic, patient, or surgical factors, and the resulting image quality. Conclusion The study population was limited compared to our initial goals. We found no correlation between studied variables and image quality, but confounding factors that may affect image quality have not been ruled out.


Variance component estimation algorithms, in conjunction with automated in-process measurement technology, can be effective tools for identifying and eliminating major sources of manufacturing variation in assembly processes. Whether a particular set of variation sources are diagnosable depends critically on how the sensor system is laid out. Diagnosability tests are mathematical in nature and provide little insight into why a particular sensor layout may be nondiagnosable or how to modify the layout to ensure diagnosability. This paper translates the mathematical diagnosability conditions into a set of more conceptually meaningful conditions that provide better insight into the reasons behind the nondiagnosability. Note to Practitioners - This paper was motivated by the problem of identifying and eliminating major sources of variation in discrete-part manufacturing, which are critical steps in improving product quality. The effectiveness of statistical algorithms for estimating sources of variation depends on whether the sensor system for measuring key product and process variables is laid out properly, so that a particular set of diagnosability conditions are satisfied. This paper translates the rather abstract mathematical conditions for diagnosability into a set of more intuitive and conceptually meaningful conditions. This provides practitioners with insight into why a sensor system may be nondiagnosable and how to add or adjust sensors in order to ensure diagnosability. The diagnosability characterization can also be used to enhance performance and reduce computational expense in numerical search strategies for optimizing sensor layout.


Background: Most documented studies have focused on mental health status of Health care workers during the pandemic but there are very few studies, focusing on mitigation of mental health problems among nurses. There is an increasingly urgent need to understand mental health impact of COVID-19 and address these impacts through research. Objective: To study psychosocial responses and preparedness for covid-19 and to assess effectiveness of intervention among nurses working in COVID-19 hospitals of eastern Nepal. Methods: Prospective explanatory mixed-method study was conducted among 278 nurses by purposive sampling. Self administered questionnaire method was used for data collection. Psychosocial strengthening program was delivered and effectiveness was assessed after 4-5 weeks of intervention among 192 nurses. DASS-21, Composite measure of personal financial burden scales and in-depth interview guide were used to collect data. Chi-square and paired t test, and Pearson's correlation test were used at 95% confidence interval. Results: Mild depression was found among 13.7%, moderate and severe depression were found among 9.4% and 1.1% respectively. Similarly, mild, moderate, severe and extremely severe anxiety were found among 21.2%, 8.6%, 3.2%, 2.2% respectively. Stress was mild among 9%, moderate 1.4% and severe in 0.7% of the participants. Lack of PPE and fear of transmitting infection to family were found as frequent causes of problems during in-depth interview. Mean Scores of Depression, Anxiety and Stress were significantly decreased after receiving psychosocial strengthening program (p=<0.001 for each). Majority of the participants (92.8%) had made infection prevention preparation and 11.2% of the participants had high financial worry.Conclusion: Anxiety and depression were common problems though having adequate preparedness to deal with COVID-19. Psychosocial strengthening program was effective in reducing the problems.


We used latent growth curve analysis to extend research on associations between early puberty and adverse peer relations by examining the role of pubertal timing in the developmental trajectories of peer victimization and offending from early- to mid-adolescence. We made use of three-wave longitudinal data collected annually from a cohort of Swedish adolescents (N = 1,515, 51% girls, X ¯ age at T1 = 13.0 years). The results revealed negative developmental trends for peer victimization and offending. Early pubertal timing was linked to higher initial levels and a steeper decrease of peer victimization and offending. The only effect of pubertal timing that differed between the genders was that the initial level of offending was stronger for boys than girls. In conclusion, the negative impact of early pubertal timing on peer victimization and offending occurs in the early stages of adolescence and disappears thereafter.


The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) has been implicated in the growth and development of a number of human cancers including breast cancer. The activity and expression of membrane associated proteins such as the EGFR may be modulated by the physical state of the membrane. Activation of the EGFR depends on the lateral diffusion and dimerisation of receptor monomers. Changes in membrane fluidity may therefore affect activation of the EGFR and hence growth signalling via this receptor. Using the technique of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching, the lateral diffusion of number of fluorescent lipid probes was studied in three breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7, MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7AdrR). The antiestrogen drug tamoxifen which is widely used in the treatment of breast cancer, was demonstrated to decrease membrane fluidity in breast cancer cells e.g. in MCF-7 cells a 24 hour incubation with l0-6M tamoxifen decreased the lateral diffusion coefficient of the AF18 probe from 203 xl0-10cm2/s to 15.4 xl0-10cm2/s. Tamoxifen treatment had a general effect on membrane fluidity which was observed using different lipid probes and was not dependent on the estrogen receptor status of the cell line. Tamoxifen's ability to decrease membrane fluidity may be due to its ability to adopt a conformation which resembles the steroid nucleus. The steroids cholesterol, 17?-estradiol and the steroidal antiestrogen ICIl82,780 all had a similar effect on membrane fluidity. Tamoxifen has previously been reported to have several actions unrelated to inhibition of estrogen action. Tamoxifen can inhibit the growth of cells in the complete absence of estrogens and also inhibit cells which do not express the estrogen receptor. Tamoxifen can inhibit EGF-stimulated growth of MCF-7 breast cancer cells by a mechanism distinct from induction of TGF? production. Tamoxifen had no effect on the cell surface expression or affinity of the EGFR and it did not inhibit the EGFR tyrosine kinase activity in isolated cell membranes. However, in intact cells tamoxifen treatment inhibited EGFR autophosphorylation. This effect could be due to stabilisation of the membrane by tamoxifen and consequent reduction in the lateral diffusion of the EGF receptor, reducing dimerisation and autophosphorylation of the receptor. This would reduce growth stimulation initiated via the EGFR. Tamoxifen can be demonstrated to reduce EGFR mobility in A431 cells. These cells have elevated levels of EGFR which allow a sufficient level of signal for FRAP measurements of receptor mobility. It is therefore possible that tamoxifen's membrane effects contribute to its anticancer action by interfering with EGFR function. The rate of internalisation of the EGFR was not altered by tamoxifen treatment which suggests that EGFR lateral diffusion is not a rate-limiting factor in receptor internalisation. Tamoxifen treatment also had no effect on the adriamycin sensitivity of the drug resistant cell line MCF-7AdrR.


The UK has a rapidly ageing population, and the number of people aged over 75 is projected to double in the next 30 years. In November 2014, King's College London introduced the Older Person's Nurse Fellowship, a pioneering programme designed to give senior nurses the knowledge and skills to optimise quality of life for older people, and lead the way in transforming care and services. This article examines the fellowship programme, its aims and intended effect on practice. It also highlights a series of case study articles by four of the first cohort of fellows beginning in the March issue of Nursing Older People, which will show how the programme is helping senior nurses to improve care in a variety of settings.


Composite waste is a growing issue due to the increased global demand for products manufactured from these advanced engineering materials. Current reclamation methods produce short length fibres that, if not realigned during remanufacture, result in low-value additives for non-structural applications. Consequently, to maximise the economic and functional potential, fibre realignment must occur. The High Performance Discontinuous Fibre (HiPerDiF) technology is a novel process that produces highly aligned discontinuous fibre-reinforced composites, which largely meet the structural performance of virgin fibres, but to date, the environmental performance of the machine is yet to be quantified. This study assessed the environmental impacts of the operation of the machine using life cycle assessment methodology. Electrical energy consumption accounts for the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions, with water consumption as the main contributor to ecosystem quality damage. Suggestions have been made to reduce energy demand and reuse the water in order to reduce the overall environmental impact. The hypothetical operation of the machine across different European countries was also examined to understand the impacts associated with bulk material transport and electricity from different energy sources. It was observed that the environmental impact showed an inverse correlation with the increased use of renewable sources for electricity generation due to a reduction in air pollutants from fossil fuel combustion. The analysis also revealed that significant reductions in environmental damage from material transport between the reclamation facility to the remanufacturing site should also be accounted for, and concluded that transportation routes predominantly via shipping have a lower environmental impact than road and rail haulage. This study is one of the first attempts to evaluate the environmental impact of this new technology at early conceptual development and to assess how it would operate in a European scenario.


Abstract:  This paper seeks to empirically explore the causal link between the level of financial development and economic growth in 13 sub-Saharan African countries. The empirical investigation is carried out in a vector autoregression (VAR) framework based on the theory of cointegration and error-correction representation of cointegrated variables. The results of the cointegration analysis provide evidence of the existence of a long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth in almost all (12 out of 13) of the countries. With respect to the direction of long-term causality, the results show that financial development plays a causal role on economic growth, again in eight of the countries. At the same time, evidence of bidirectional causal relationships is found in six countries. The findings imply that African countries can accelerate their economic growth by improving their financial systems.


The origin of murine ovarian teratomas and their use to estimate centromere-to-gene distances is discussed. As an example of how such a system can be used, the distance from the centromere of chromosome 7 to the Gpi-1 locus was determined by analyzing the Gpi-1 phenotypes in 47 ovarian teratomas from Gpi-1a/Gpi-1b females. The percent recombination was estimated to be 10.6. It is suggested that ovarian teratomas and parthenotes may be used for half-tetrad analysis.


Cardiovascular disease is cited as the underlying cause of death in one out of every three deaths within the United States; this burden on the health care system percolates down to affect patients on an individual level. In part, the problem arises from the low regenerative capacity of cardiovascular system cells, for example, cardiac myocytes, and from oxidative stressors to the human body. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) are a type of stem cell, and various clinical conditions including hypertension and renal failure underlie their dysfunction. EPCs are classified as either early or late outgrowth endothelial progenitor cells depending on the time they appear in circulation and at the site of injury after an inciting event. Their function is paracrine through the release of cytokines, growth factors and chemokines such as interleukin-6 and vascular endothelial growth factor, and they are involved in transdifferentiation into vascular smooth muscle cells and potentially cardiac myocytes. They are beneficial to the modification of cardiovascular cell apoptosis, fibrosis, and contractility. In times of stress, the normal function of endothelial progenitor cells is altered; this creates a maladaptive cycle where stress and failed coping mechanisms enhance each other toward the culmination of cardiovascular disease. The development of the cardiovascular system follows gastrulation in the embryonic period, and the cells that form the system are derived from the mesoderm; being mesoderm, the vascular cells exhibit heterogeneity in their origin and function. The need to understand the molecular and cellular regulatory pathways during development can amalgamate efforts of endothelial cell and cardiovascular system pathophysiology for the advancement of patient cardiovascular reserve and function.


(18)O tracer is used to investigate the development of porous anodic films at constant current in phosphoric acid on electropolished aluminum. A barrier layer and porous region form initially with the pore size related to the surface texture of the substrate. Subsequently, major pores emerge, with their sizes related to the anodizing voltage. The evolution of the film is accompanied by increases in growth rate and formation efficiency. The (18)O ions of a preformed oxide are retained in the film during anodization in a nonenriched electrolyte, with (18)O being partitioned among (i) the surface region of texture-dependent porosity, (ii) the walls of major pores, and, in diminishing amounts, (iii) the inner region of the barrier layer. (c) 2010 The Electrochemical Society. [DOI: 10.1149/1.3490640] All rights reserved.


Fingerprints are well known to be an important aspect of a criminal investigation due to their ability to identify an individual. Today, there are numerous methods to enhancing latent fingerprints. Some of these methods were performed on the adhesive side of various types of tapes in order to determine which method produced the greatest print development. The methods used were: dusting using various powders, small particle reagent (SPR), crystal violet, and cyanoacrylate fuming. Only two of the techniques used preformed well across a majority of the tapes. Even though all of the techniques did not preform well on all of the tapes they gave some valuable information that could be used to better results. The most successful techniques were the cyanoacrylate fuming and crystal violet. Both of these methods developed prints that were detailed with superior contrast compared to the other methods performed. Even though both techniques were superior, the cyanoacrylate fuming developed the higher quality prints. The cyanoacrylate fuming performed greatest when fumed with water for humidity followed by a dusting of fingerprint powder.  These two methods were both simple to perform and were completed within a timely manner. Overall, the cyanoacrylate fuming could be preformed more efficiently because multiple prints could be developed at one time.


Synthetic jet potentially useful in electronics cooling is investigated both numerically and experimentally. In the present study, a confined three dimensional synthetic jet with sinusoidal moving wall is considered. Computations are carried out using the FLUENT software with the coupled user defined function describing the diaphragm movement. In this study the effect of various geometrical parameters influencing the flow field and heat transfer are investigated. The effects of change in orifice geometry (circular, square and rectangular), orifice aspect ratio, and jet-to-plate distance are studied for a given hydraulic diameter. The heat transfer results obtained from the synthetic jet is compared with the continuous jet. An electromagnetic actuator is used as an oscillating diaphragm for the generation of synthetic jet. A stainless steel foil with 0.05 mm thickness is used as the test specimen. The surface temperature of the test specimen is measured by using a thermal imaging technique during synthetic jet impingement and a constant temperature anemometer has been employed for velocity measurement. Tests are carried out for Reynolds number of 5448, varied range of jet-to-plate distance (1–18). The maximum value of the heat transfer coefficient is found to be 16 times more than the heat transfer coefficient for natural convection.


Because hammering sound tests are inexpensive and can be performed easily, they are commonly used as an inspection method for examining the presence of defect areas (voids or peelings) in aged concrete structures. However, the evaluation of the health of concrete using hammering sounds depends on the subjective experience of the inspector. Therefore, there is a demand to develop a highly reliable and objective diagnostic method that is accurate and efficient. In this study, we used a convolutional autoencoder (CAE) to develop a diagnostic method that could assist the inspectors with quantitative diagnostic results of tapping sound when detecting defect areas in concrete. In particular, we verified the anomaly detection accuracy of hammering sound data of actual bridges that have deteriorated over time using the proposed CAE model.


The probability density function of Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) crosstalk for WDM systems with dispersion compensated links is studied and the parameters, mean power depletion and crosstalk variance, are derived. Contrary to the present papers, where these parameters are determined for the most affected channel, the expressions derived here are applicable for any channel. In addition, the presented analysis is more realistic in the sense that the SRS generated by the DCF is taken into account. The derived expressions facilitate in studying the effects of the modulation format (NRZ versus RZ) on the strength of SRS. The procedure of calculating the power penalty due to SRS and the optimum threshold are also presented.


We discuss production of $W^+ W^-$ pairs and $t \bar t$ quark-antiquark pairs in proton-proton collisions induced by two-photon fusion including transverse momenta of incoming photons. The unintegrated inelastic fluxes (related to proton dissociation) of photons are calculated based on modern parametrizations of deep inelastic structure functions in a broad range of $x$ and $Q^2$. We focus on processes with single and double proton dissociation. Highly excited remnant systems hadronise producing particles that can be vetoed in the calorimeter. We calculate associated gap survival factors. The gap survival factors depend on the process, mass of the remnant system and collision energy. The rapidity gap survival factor due to remnant fragmentation for double dissociative (DD) collisions is smaller than that for single dissociative (SD) process. We observe approximate factorisation: $S_{R,DD} \approx S_{R,SD}^2$ when imposing rapidity veto. For the $W^+W^-$ final state, the remnant fragmentation leads to a taming of the cross section when the rapidity gap requirement is imposed. Also for $t \bar t$ quark-antiquark pairs such a condition reverses the hierarchy observed for the case when such condition is taken into account. Our results imply that for the production of such heavy objects as $t$ quark and $\bar t$ antiquark the virtuality of the photons attached to the dissociative system are very large ($Q^2 <$ 10$^{4}$ GeV$^2$). A similar effect is observed for the $W^+ W^-$ system.


We consider the problem of target localization by a network of passive sensors. When an unknown target emits an acoustic or a radio signal, its position can be localized with multiple sensors using the time difference of arrival (TDOA) information. In this paper, we consider the maximum likelihood formulation of this target localization problem and provide efficient convex relaxations for this nonconvex optimization problem. We also propose a formulation for robust target localization in the presence of sensor location errors. Two Cramer-Rao bounds are derived corresponding to situations with and without sensor node location errors. Simulation results confirm the efficiency and superior performance of the convex relaxation approach as compared to the existing least squares based approach when large sensor node location errors are present.


The aim of the present study was to compare change in work status, fatigue and health related quality of life (HRQoL) from admission to 6 months after discharge among patients with breast and gynecological cancer who participated in an Inpatient Rehabilitation Program (IRP) or an Outpatient Rehabilitation Program (ORP) respectively. Women aged 18-67 years, being on sick-leave or self-reported being in need of sick-leave were included. The IRP consisted of a three weeks stay and one week booster stay at a rehabilitation center. The ORP consisted of seven weekly sessions at an academic cancer hospital. Both programs included physical exercise, patient education and group discussions. Patient-reported work status was the primary endpoint and was assessed at admission (T0) and six months after discharge (T2). Secondary endpoints were physical fatigue and HRQoL. Cochran-Armitage test for trend was used to analyze differences in change in work status between the programs. Linear regression analyses were used to analyze difference in change for the secondary endpoints. No difference in change of work status was observed between IRP and ORP from start of program (T0) to T2, as 73% improved their work status in the IRP and 76% in ORP. Fatigue and HRQoL improved substantially irrespective of programs and without differences between the programs. Outpatient rehabilitation might be as effective as inpatient rehabilitation but needs to be confirmed in a controlled study.


Controlled release swellable tablets of phenobarbital were prepared by a simple direct compression process using hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) as the matrix former. The effects of the viscosity grades of HPMC and HPMC/lactose ratio and ethylcellulose (EC)/sodium carboxymethylcellulose (NaCMC) and their concentrations on the release behavior of phenobarbital from HPMC matrices were investigated. In order to determine the mode of release, the data were analyzed based on the equation Q= K t n . Higher drug release rate was found for formulations with lower HPMC/lactose ratios and lower HPMC viscosity grades. The viscosity of HPMC polymer has a large influence on the erosion rate of matrix tablet. Use of low viscosity grade of HPMC polymer is desired for drugs that are poorly water soluble such as phenobarbital since the erosion rate of tablet matrix is the controlling factor for drug release. As the proportion of EC or NaCMC in admixture with HPMC increased, the release rates gradually increased. It is also observed that the amount of HPMC played a dominant role, affecting the drug release in binary mixtures. In vitro release studies demonstrated that use of an appropriate blend of HPMC and EC or NaCMC enables to better control of drug release profiles and approach to zero order kinetic.


In this study, some respiratory functions of athletes from four different sport branches who constitute Kyrgyzstan National Team have been examined. To research, 9 Greco-Roman style wrestlers (24±4,5years), 10 freestyle wrestlers (22,10±3,21 years), 8 judoists (23,6±1,89 years), 8 male athletes (22,29±2.87 years) and 3 female athletes (21.67±2.08 years) totally 35 male and 3 female national athletes have been included. Forced vital capacities (FVC), forced ventilation volumes (FEV1) and peak expiratory flow (PEF) which connected the respiratory levels of the athletes have been measured in preparation stage before 2016 Summer Olympic Games. By being performed istatistical evaluation by SPSS 21.0, it was usedthe computer package program. "One Way ANOVA" test an identifying the differences between the groups and the differences at (P<0,05) level have been accepted as significant. FVC values taken from Judoists were similar to those of male athletes (p>0,05) and significantly higher than other branches (p<0,05). FVC levels of wrestling and athletic athletes reflected similar results (p>0,05). When PEF levels examined, the results of judo and male athletes have been found statistically similar (p>0,05). PEF scores of Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling and female athletes have not been found statistically different (p>0,05). FEV1 results of the judoists have been found similar to those of the Greco-Roman style wrestlers (p>0,05) while these results have been found significantly higher than the results of freestyle wrestling and athletic athletes (p<0,05). As a result, Judo athletes' FVC, PEF and FEV1 levels have been found better than other branches involved in the study.


Heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems have been extensively used to provide desired indoor environment in buildings. It is well acknowledged that 25-35% of the total energy use is consumed by buildings, and space heating systems account for 50-60% of the building energy consumption. Furthermore, roughly half of the energy consumed goes to operation of heating systems. In the past few years the energy use has shown rapid growth. Therefore, it is necessary to design and operate HVAC systems to reduce energy consumption and improve occupant comfort. To improve energy efficiency, HVAC systems should be optimally controlled and operated. This study focuses on developing advanced control strategies and fault tolerant control (FTC) using information from fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) for hot water heating (HWH) systems. To begin with, HWH system dynamic models are developed based on mass, momentum and energy balance principles. Then, embedded intelligent control strategies: fuzzy logic control and fuzzy logic adaptive control are designed for the overall system to achieve better performance and energy efficiency. Moreover, in designing the advanced control strategies, the parameter uncertainty and noise from measurement and process are taken into account. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) technique is utilized to handle system uncertainty and measurement noise, and to improve system control performance. After that, a supervisory control strategy for the HWH system is designed and simulated to achieve optimal operation. Finally, model-based FDD methods were developed by using fuzzy logic to detect and isolate measurement and process faults occurring in HWH systems. The FDD information was employed to design model-based FTC systems for various faults and to extend the operating range under failure situations. The contributions of this study include the development of a large scale dynamic model of a HWH system for a high-rise building; design of fuzzy logic adaptive control strategies to improve energy efficiency of heating systems and design of model-based FTC systems by using FDD information.


Based on IEEE 802.15.4, the contention-free period (CFP) adopts a guarantee
 time slot (GTS) mechanism to ensure each device can access the radio
 channel. However, it is hard to get the authority to access the radio
 channel due to more competitor access the radio channel simultaneously. To
 cope with this issue, we proposed a guarantee time slot mechanism to enhance
 the performance and utilization by using CFP. Our proposed method ensures
 each device has the authority to access the radio channel without any
 additional step. By comparing with the method of IEEE 802.15.4, the
 experimental results show that data average transmission delay and energy
 consumption can be reduced dramatically. In addition, the bandwidth and
 performance of network is improved since the pre-allocation mechanism can
 reduce the number of control packets. Several experiments have been
 conducted to demonstrate the performance of our work.


Young men were subjected to laboratory inductions of anger and anxiety after undergoing a physiological assessment of vagal tone, an index of parasympathetic nervous system functioning that has been associated with emotion regulation in prior research. We tested whether: (i) young men's emotional reactivity and recovery were associated with their global attachment style or their perceptions of security in specific, current attachment relationships; (ii) such associations were mediated by vagal tone; and (iii) such effects were moderated by the physical presence of romantic attachment figures. As predicted, vagal tone was negatively associated with attachment anxiety and positively associated with perceptions of security in current attachment relationships. Men with high perceptions of security in current relationships showed more effective recovery from laboratory-induced anger, and vagal tone mediated this association. In contrast, the physical presence of romantic attachment figures showed no association with emotional reactivity or recovery and did not moderate the aforementioned effects.


It is often suggested that decisions are made when accumulated sensory information reaches a fixed accuracy criterion. This is supported by many studies showing a gradual build up of neural activity to a threshold. However, the proposal that this build up is caused by sensory accumulation is challenged by findings that decisions are based on information from a time window much shorter than the build-up process. Here, we propose that in natural conditions where the environment can suddenly change, the policy that maximizes reward rate is to estimate evidence by accumulating only novel information and then compare the result to a decreasing accuracy criterion. We suggest that the brain approximates this policy by multiplying an estimate of sensory evidence with a motor-related urgency signal and that the latter is primarily responsible for neural activity build up. We support this hypothesis using human behavioral data from a modified random-dot motion task in which motion coherence changes during each trial.


Adolescence is an essential phase of human development and is characterized by significant physical changes and maturation, so the adolescents face different problems in dealing with these rapid changes which affect their satisfaction with their bodies and self-esteem. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of counseling enrichment sessions for adolescents about their body image and self-esteem. Design: A quasi-experimental design was used. Setting: The study was conducted in Zahraa Helwan preparatory secondary girls school at Wadi Hof. Sample: Purposive sample including 180 adolescent girls. Tools: A semi-structured interview questionnaire was used to collect the data and involved four parts: Part 1. Demographic characteristic data, Part 2. Anthropometric measurements. Part 3. Body Image test, and Part 4. Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory. Results: There was a positive relation between body image and self-esteem pre and post counseling enrichment sessions which mean that, the girls' body image was affected dependently on their self-esteem. Also body image and self-esteem were improved post counseling enrichment sessions with highly statistically significant difference. Conclusion: The counseling enrichment sessions for body image and self-esteem have positive effect on adolescents. Recommendations: Therapeutic programs to guide those who have unsatisfied body image to optimize consensus, improve their mental health and self-esteem. And teachers, parents, and school nurses should receive periodically education related to the development of secondary sexual characteristics during puberty of adolescents.


Lasso simultaneously conducts variable selection and supervised regression. In this paper, we extend Lasso to multiple output prediction, which belongs to the categories of structured learning. Though structured learning makes use of both input and output simultaneously, the joint feature mapping in current framework of structured learning is usually application-specific. As a result, ad hoc heuristics have to be employed to design different joint feature mapping functions for different applications, which results in the lackness of generalization ability for multiple output prediction. To address this limitation, in this paper, we propose to augment Lasso with output by decoupling the joint feature mapping function of traditional structured learning. The contribution of this paper is three-fold: 1) The augmented Lasso conducts regression and variable selection on both the input and output features, and thus the learned model could fit an output with both the selected input variables and the other correlated outputs. 2) To be more general, we set up nonlinear dependencies among output variables by generalized Lasso. 3) Moreover, the Augmented Lagrangian Method (ALM) with Alternating Direction Minimizing (ADM) strategy is used to find the optimal model parameters. The extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


BACKGROUND
Current hepatitis A vaccines are either licensed for children >2 years of age, as in the U.S. or Chile, or >1 year of age, as in Europe and other parts of the world. Recent recommendations for immunization against hepatitis A have included routine vaccination of children in areas or regions of higher endemicity. However, data on hepatitis A vaccination in toddlers aged between 1 and 2 years are scarce.

METHODS
This open clinical study investigated the reactogenicity and immunogenicity of two doses (0, 6-month schedule) of an inactivated hepatitis A vaccine (Havrix pediatric, Glaxco SmithKline Biologicals, Rixensart, Belgium) in 120 seronegative children aged 12-24 months.

RESULTS
Pain at the injection site and irritability were the most frequently reported local and general symptoms, respectively. No serious adverse events related to the study vaccine were reported. One month after the first dose, all but one subject had antibodies against hepatitis A with a GMT of 159 mIU/mL. After the booster dose, all had antibodies with a GMT of 2,939 mIU/mL.

CONCLUSIONS
Our data show that the inactivated hepatitis A vaccine was well tolerated by these toddlers and that the vaccine elicits a good immune response.


The article assesses the threat posed by digital banking as seen in the context of a long series of innovations in the banking sector that includes telephone banking, payment cards, the development of capital markets, internet, smartphones, and cloud computing. It focuses on the economics of banking services and banks' two main functions – as providers of liquidity and loans – and analyses whether these could be displaced by peer-to-peer and marketplace lending. Digital banking is currently one of the main strategic issues faced by banks in terms of threats and opportunities. It raises also public policy issues: its impact on the profitability and solvency of banks, the protection of borrowers and investors, and the systemic importance of the new players, the fintechs starts-up specialised in financial services.


Summary: Properties of a series of hyperbranched polyfluorenes were investigated. Increasing the benzene "crosspoint" density blue-shifts the absorption and PL since the crosspoints interrupt π-electron conjugation, decreasing conjugation length, and thus increasing chromophore band gap. The relative intensity of S10 → S00 transition in PL increases with crosspoint density increase, indicating that the energy and the energy distribution of vibronic transitions were controlled by hyperbranch structure. When the polymer solution is cooled down, the lattice vibration is reduced and the effective conjugation length (coherence length for electron wavefunction) is increased, thus causing bathochromic shift in absorption and PL. These polymers do not favor excimer formation in solution due to their remarkable rigidity and extra-large molecular size. With increase in crosspoint density, LED color changed from green to violet. In double-layer LEDs, PPV not only improves hole injection/transport but also contributes to device emission through its bulk emission and interfacial emission as a result of interfacial energy transfer. Higher electrical field favors interfacial energy transfer probably by facilitating hole–electron recombination and by encouraging the excitons formed in polyfluorene layer to migrate to the interface and to further diffuse into PPV layer. The polymer with more crosspoints shows higher EL efficiency. The crosspoints interrupt π-electron conjugation, isolate excitons and inhibit intrachain exciton annihilation. They can also increase rigidity of the macromolecular backbone, and the large spatial hindrance of these macromolecules makes the molecular packing very difficult, thus decreasing interchain exciton annihilation. All these structural features help to increase exciton lifetime and improve LED performance.

Synthesis of the hyperbranched polyfluorenes.


It was found that in the myocardium of the individuals who had died from acute alcoholic intoxication and the animals given ethanol the content of anaerobic M-isoforms of lactate dehydrogenase increased that indicated the activation of anaerobic glycolysis.


BACKGROUND
Despite its high prevalence and health burden, many aspects of endometriosis remain unclear, including risk factors and the underlying biological mechanisms. Exposures during early life, including in utero, are thought to play an important role in the subsequent onset of the condition. To date, however, much of the evidence from studies on early life exposures and diagnosed endometriosis appears mixed and difficult to assess.

OBJECTIVE AND RATIONALE
This study aims to provide a systematic review of the epidemiologic evidence on early life factors associated with the subsequent diagnosis of endometriosis. In utero and early life exposures have previously been linked to a range of adult health outcomes, including infertility.

SEARCH METHODS
A systematic review of case-control, cross-sectional and cohort studies was conducted using the search terms 'endometriosis'[MeSH] AND ('risk factors'[MeSH] OR 'protective factors'[MeSH]) AND ('in utero', 'fetal', 'neonatal, 'perinatal', 'developmental origins', 'early life', 'childhood' OR 'life course') in Embase, PubMed and Scopus databases. The review included articles published in English until 10 June 2018 with original data from studies with diagnosed endometriosis. The quality of primary studies was evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale by both authors independently. Due to the degree of inconsistency in the measurements and study methods, a qualitative assessment of findings was undertaken rather than meta-analysis.

OUTCOMES
The search retrieved 70 records without duplicates that contained 20 records on human case-control, cross-sectional or cohort studies, from which 11 papers/studies were selected based on their assessment score. The majority of studies found that women born with low birthweight (<2.5 kg or <5.5 lb) were more likely to be diagnosed with endometriosis. For other early life factors, the evidence is mixed or limited, with further research needed on the association of endometriosis with preterm birth, in utero exposure to diethylstilbestrol and to maternal smoking, passive smoking in early life, and infant formula feeding (compared with breastfeeding).

WIDER IMPLICATIONS
While the weight of evidence points to low birthweight as a risk factor for diagnosis of endometriosis, future research is warranted on this and other key early life exposures where the findings are mixed to provide more robust evidence and for insights on potential causal pathways. Such research, however, needs to address current methodological issues, such as the use of prospective data from large population-based studies, better diagnostic methods to confirm disease free status, more consistent definitions of variables and consideration of potential biological mechanisms to guide the analyses. The improvements will advance the future synthesis of evidence to support clinically relevant risk assessment for a more timely diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis.


Many computer vision systems require users to upload image features to the cloud for processing and storage. These features can be exploited to recover sensitive information about the scene or subjects, e.g., by reconstructing the appearance of the original image. To address this privacy concern, we propose a new privacy-preserving feature representation. The core idea of our work is to drop constraints from each feature descriptor by embedding it within an affine subspace containing the original feature as well as adversarial feature samples. Feature matching on the privacy-preserving representation is enabled based on the notion of subspace-to-subspace distance. We experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of our method and its high practical relevance for the applications of visual localization and mapping as well as face authentication. Compared to the original features, our approach makes it significantly more difficult for an adversary to recover private information.


This article introduced the realization of electron ballast inversion electrical parameter test system design using the modern test technology,proposed the main research object,the test content,the main electrical parameter computational methodand and the test principle of electronic ballast test system;Introduced the experimental system plan designing and the essential technology.This system has high test precision,completed function,high reliability and a higher practical value.


This paper aims to investigate how social network marketing affects consumers' sustainable purchase behavior (CSPB) while considering the role of Eco-friendly attitude. The statistical population of the study included Iranian users of online social networks with at least one online purchasing experience. An online questionnaire was distributed on Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp platforms as the most popular networks in the country. By use of convenience sampling, commonly used in quantitative studies to overcome bias, 450 out of 475 returned questionnaires were acceptable, showing a response rate of 94.7%. The results indicated that an increase in Eco-friendly attitude positively increases the effect of word of mouth on consumers' sustainable purchase behavior. Meanwhile, Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) revealed that to reach a 50% level of consumers' sustainable purchase behavior, six essential necessary conditions are required: an eco-friendly consumers' attitude at no less than 50%, the trend at no less than 57.1%, word of mouth at no less than 45.5%, interaction at no less than 42.9%, customization at no less than 35.3% and entertainment at no less than 26.7%. Furthermore, the Importance-Performance Matrix Analysis (IPMA) was investigated as a strategic tool. The results of IPMA showed that "buy products that use biodegradable material in packaging", "buy those products that are picked up and recycled", and "buy biodegradable products even if they belong to a less well-known company" show desirable performance and high importance and there is a great opportunity for expansion in this area.


Heroin exposure can cause various complications like seizures, stroke, spongiform encephalopathy, transverse myelopathy, plexopathy, compartment syndrome, rhabdomyolysis and renal failure due to various mechanisms. We report here a young male who smoked heroin for the first time and developed transverse myelitis, rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney injury requiring dialysis. His renal recovery was complete by four weeks, while neurological improvement occurred 8 to 12 weeks later. This case suggests a common pathogenic mechanism of heroin intoxication involving multiple systems of the body.


Introduction/Background Pelvic exenteration is a major surgical procedure for advanced or recurrent gynaecological cancer. It is a potentially curative treatment but it could also be performed with palliative intent. Locally advanced vulvar cancer is rare and extremely challenging to manage. We aim to report our experience with pelvic exenteration for locally advanced vulvar cancer in our centre. Methodology All patients undergoing pelvic exenteration between December 2014 and April 2019 at the Swansea Gynaecological Oncology Centre were identified through our surgical database. Patient characteristics, the indications for the procedure, pathology results and outcomes were retrospectively analysed. We used frequencies and percentages to describe the sample. Mean values were calculated where appropriate. Statistical analyses were performed with IBM SPSS 25.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA). Results 6 women were identified who had pelvic exenteration for locally advanced vulvar cancer during the study period. All were squamous cell carcinoma. The mean age of the women was 54.2 years (42–64 years). 5 women underwent posterior pelvic exenteration while 1 women underwent total pelvic exenteration. 3 patients required VRAM flap. 2 women died during the study period but they had pelvic exenteration with palliative intent and both had positive margins on histology, with an average survival of 8.5 months. The remaining 4 women had negative margins on histology and are still alive despite 3 of them having positive lymph nodes. 4 women had a form of radiotherapy or chemotherapy or both. Conclusion Pelvic exenteration is a major procedure with high morbidity but it is a reasonable treatment option for women with locally advanced vulvar cancer for both curative and palliative intent. We continue to closely follow up all our patients. Disclosure Nothing to disclose


To fast evaluate HW/SW implementation of multiprocessor SoC communication, we present a method to simulate operating systems (OSs) on a simulation host without running instruction set simulators and generic OS simulation models. The method enables fast timed OS simulation including the preemption of task execution. Together with the fast simulation of synthesizable HW code (e.g. in synthesizable C), it will enable fast evaluation of HW/SW implementation of multiprocessor SoC communication.


This paper proposes a method for detecting temporal changes of the three-dimensional structure of an outdoor scene from its multi-view images captured at two separate times. For the images, we consider those captured by a camera mounted on a vehicle running in a city street. The method estimates scene structures probabilistically, not deterministically, and based on their estimates, it evaluates the probability of structural changes in the scene, where the inputs are the similarity of the local image patches among the multi-view images. The aim of the probabilistic treatment is to maximize the accuracy of change detection, behind which there is our conjecture that although it is difficult to estimate the scene structures deterministically, it should be easier to detect their changes. The proposed method is compared with the methods that use multi-view stereo (MVS) to reconstruct the scene structures of the two time points and then differentiate them to detect changes. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms such MVS-based methods.


This work proposes an Android-based platform to warn the medical staff of the onset of allergy reactions during a provocation test in a hospital. The portable system carries out the analysis of the heart rate variability for the early detection of allergic reactions in patients undergoing allergy provocation tests at hospitals. The proposal is composed of an ECG (electrocardiogram) acquisition system and an Android device (Smartphone, Tablet) that monitors and evaluates the results in real time, increasing the safety of allergic tests. At present, food and drug allergic tests are a major problem for patients because of their long duration and intrusion. However, the authors have designed an algorithm for detecting allergy reactions that have focused on reducing the time of the tests and the number of doses. This algorithm runs on an Android platform, and it is able to provide alarms for the medical staff if there is an allergy reaction. The proposed monitoring system is very suitable for the health monitoring during the provocation tests.


We discuss cosmological models for an eternal universe. Physical observables show no singularity from the infinite past to the infinite future. While the universe is evolving, there is no beginning and no end the universe exists forever. The early state of inflation is described in two different, but equivalent pictures. In the freeze frame the universe emerges from an almost static state with flat geometry. After entropy production it shrinks and "thaws" slowly from a "freeze state" with extremely low temperature. The field transformation to the second "big bang picture" (Einstein frame) is singular. This "field singularity" is responsible for an apparent singularity of the big bang. Furthermore, we argue that past-incomplete geodesics do not necessarily indicate a singularity or beginning of the universe. Proper time ceases to be a useful concept for physical time if particles become massless. We propose to define physical time by counting the number of zeros of a component of the wave function. This counting is independent of the choice of coordinates and frames, and applies to massive and massless particles alike.


We observe that carriers in graphene can be accelerated to the Fermi velocity without heating the lattice. At large Fermi energy | EF| > 110 meV, electrons excited by a high-power terahertz pulse ETHz relax by emitting optical phonons, resulting in heating of the graphene lattice and optical-phonon generation. This is owing to enhanced electron-phonon scattering at large Fermi energy, at which the large phase space is available for hot electrons. The emitted optical phonons cause carrier scattering, reducing the drift velocity or carrier mobility. However, for | EF| ≤ 110 meV, electron-phonon scattering rate is suppressed owing to the diminishing density of states near the Dirac point. Therefore, ETHz continues to accelerate carriers without them losing energy to optical phonons, allowing the carriers to travel at the Fermi velocity. The exotic carrier dynamics does not result from the massless nature, but the electron-optical-phonon scattering rate depends on Fermi level in the graphene. Our observations provide insight into the application of graphene for high-speed electronics without degrading carrier mobility.


We present the development of a lumped element model for the BGA transition using both measurements and simulations results. Measurements of the test structure are used to generate a circuit model for a single bump configuration. This model is used to calibrate EM simulations of the bump geometry. Furthermore, the effect of the bump diameter on the equivalent circuit model is presented. This model approach is scaleable and extendible to a more global behavior of BGA interconnects for RF packaging.


[reaction: see text] Substituent effects on the ring-opening reactions of 2-aziridinylmethyl radicals were studied systematically for the first time utilizing the ONIOM(QCISD(T)/6-311+G(2d,2p):B3LYP/6-311+G(3df,2p)) method. It was found that various substituents on the nitrogen atom had a relatively small effect on the ring opening of the 2-aziridinylmethyl radical. A pi-acceptor substituent at the C(1) position reduced the energy barrier for C-C cleavage dramatically, but it increased the energy barrier for C-N cleavage significantly at the same time. When the C(1) substituent is alkyl, the ring opening should always strongly favor the C-N cleavage pathway, regardless of whether the N substituent is alkyl, aryl, or COR. When the C(1) substituent is CHO (or CO-alkyl, CO-aryl, or CO-OR but not CO-NR(2)), the ring opening strongly favors the C-C cleavage pathway, regardless of whether the N substituent is alkyl, aryl, or COR. When the C(1) substituent is aryl (or alkenyl or alkynyl), the ring opening should favor the C-C cleavage pathway if the N substituent is alkyl or COR. If both the C(1) substituent and the N substituent are aryl, the ring opening should proceed via both the C-C and C-N cleavage pathways. The solvent effect on the regioselectivity of the ring opening of the 2-aziridinylmethyl radicals was found to be very small. The substituent effects on C-C cleavage could be explained successfully by the spin-delocalization mechanism. For the substituent effects on C-N cleavage, an extraordinary through-bond pi-acceptor effect must be taken into account. Furthermore, studies on bicyclic 2-aziridinylmethyl radicals showed that the ring strain could also affect the regiochemistry of the ring-opening reactions.


Titanium dioxide (TiO2) films were irradiated with a femtosecond laser to alter their photoconductive properties. The TiO2 films irradiated with the femtosecond laser were darkened without changing the topography of the TiO2 film surface. The electrical resistance of the films as a function of time were measured under visible light illumination. The transient electrical resistance decreased as time was increased after turning on the light, and then it increased as time was increased after turning off the light.


Zero pronouns, or dropped arguments, are a remarkably frequent phenomenon in Korean. This single syntactic form is made up of diverse subcategories, each of which is characterized by distinct semantic and pragmatic properties. More widely acknowledged types are those that depend on other linguistic expressions for their reference: such text-dependent types include anaphoric and discourse-deictic zero pronouns. Other text-independent types are deictic zero pronouns, generic and specific indefinite zero pronouns and situational zero pronouns, although it is possible for some of these text-independent types to enter coreferential relations with other nominal expressions in their surroundings. Previous research focusing on anaphoric zero pronouns, most notably that based on Centering Theory, claims that information-theoretic notions such as saliency govern their felicitous use and interpretation. While the general insight holds true, various efforts to encapsulate it by way of precise formulation of Cf-ranking or other hierarchies fall short, largely due to the fact that the notion is encoded by heterogeneous linguistic factors whose relations cannot be expressed single-dimensionally. From a language processing point of view, the diverse nature of Korean zero pronouns presents the unique challenge of blending the tasks of categorization and identification of their antecedents. In this dissertation, using Maximum Entropy as the machine learning method of choice, various statistical models for Korean zero pronoun resolution have been successfully trained and tested on two Korean Treebank corpora. These Models serve as a valuable opportunity for empirically testing various theoretical claims and observations made on Korean zero pronoun anaphora. Features used in constructing the models and making predictions on zero pronoun reference encode linguistic properties surrounding zero pronouns and their potential antecedents. The features found to have a particularly strong contribution are indeed those that encode the linguistic aspects that are commonly cited in the linguistic literature as playing a crucial role in Korean zero pronoun usage, such as topic-hood, subject-hood and the nullness of form. While the relative importance of such features does not directly translate to linguistic hierarchies, it nevertheless provides support to some of the specific criteria used in them.


AbstractIgG4-related systemic disease is now recognized as a systemic disease that may affect various organs. The diagnosis is usually made in patients who present with elevated IgG4 in serum and tissue infiltration of diseased organs by numerous IgG4+ plasma cells, in the absence of validated diagnosis criteria. We report the clinical, laboratory, and histologic characteristics of 25 patients from a French nationwide cohort. We also report the treatment outcome and show that despite the efficacy of corticosteroids, a second-line treatment is frequently necessary. The clinical findings in our patients are not different from the results of previous reports from Eastern countries. Our laboratory and histologic findings, however, suggest, at least in some patients, a more broad polyclonal B cell activation than the skewed IgG4 switch previously reported. These observations strongly suggest the implication of a T-cell dependent B-cell polyclonal activation in IgG4-related systemic disease, probably at least in part under the control of T helper follicular cells.


We have recently demonstrated that the cell wall beta-glucan of Candida albicans could be solubilized by sodium hypochlorite, followed by dimethylsulfoxide-extraction (NaClO-DMSO method). In this study, applying this method to Aspergillus spp., we prepared mycelial cell wall beta-glucan and examined its physical properties and immunotoxicological activity. The acetone-dried mycelia of Aspergillus spp. were oxidized by the NaClO-DMSO method. An analysis of (13)C NMR spectra revealed the preparations to be composed of alpha-(1 --> 3) and beta-(1 --> 3)-D-glucan. Also, the proportion of alpha-(1 --> 3) and beta-(1 --> 3)-D-glucan varied. Furthermore, a solubilized Aspergillus beta-glucan (ASBG) was prepared from OX-Asp by urea-autoclave treatment. ASBG showed limulus activity similar to Candida solubilized beta-glucan (CSBG), and there was little difference in the activity of ASBG between various Aspergillus spp. ASBG affected the production of IL-8 by human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). ASBG should be useful for analyzing the clinical role of beta-glucan.


Most current implementations of multi-touch screens are still too expensive or too bulky for widespread adoption. To improve this situation, this work describes the electronics and software needed to collect more data than one pair of coordinates from a standard 4-wire touch screen. With this system, one can measure the pressure of a single touch and approximately sense the coordinates of two touches occurring simultaneously. Naturally, the system cannot offer the accuracy and versatility of full multi-touch screens. Nonetheless, several example applications ranging from painting to zooming demonstrate a broad spectrum of use.


The Franks Tract State Recreation Area (Franks Tract) is an example of a complex contemporary park mired in ecological and socio-political contestation of what it is and should be. Located in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, it is a central hub in California's immense and contentious water infrastructure; an accidental shallow lake on subsided land due to unrepaired levee breaks; a novel ecosystem full of 'invasive' species; a world-class bass fishing area; and a water transportation corridor. Franks Tract is an example of an uncommons: a place where multiple realities (or ontologies) exist, negotiate and co-create one another. As a case study, this article focuses on a planning effort to simultaneously improve water quality, recreation and ecology in Franks Tract through a state-led project. The article examines the iterative application of participatory mapping and web-based public surveys within a broader, mixed method co-design process involving state agencies, local residents, regional stakeholders, consultant experts and publics. We focus on what was learned in this process by all involved, and what might be transferable in the methods. We conclude that reciprocal iterative change among stakeholders and designers was demonstrated across the surveys, based on shifts in stakeholder preferences as achieved through iterative revision of design concepts that better addressed a broad range of stakeholder values and concerns. Within this reconciliation, the uncommons was retained, rather than suppressed.


BACKGROUND
Ionic liquids (ILs; salts with melting points below 100 degrees C) exhibit wide liquid ranges, non-flammability, and thermal stability among other properties. These unique salts are best known as "green" alternatives to traditional volatile organic solvents, which are utilized in both academia and industry. Our current study compares the developmental toxicity potential of three representative ionic liquids, with various chain lengths: 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([C(2)mim]Cl), 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([C(4)mim]Cl), and 1-decyl-3methylimidazolium chloride ([C(10)mim]Cl).

METHODS
From gestation days (GD) 6-16, mated CD-1 mice were orally dosed with one of the following: 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000 mg/kg/day [C(2)mim]Cl; 113, 169, or 225 mg/kg/day [C(4)mim]Cl; 50, 75, or 100 mg/kg/day [C(10)mim]Cl; or the vehicle only. Dams were sacrificed on GD 17, and their litters were examined for adverse effects.

RESULTS
Fetal weight was significantly decreased in the two highest dosage groups exposed to [C(4)mim]Cl and [C(10)mim]Cl in comparison with their controls, but the [C(2)mim]Cl treated groups were not affected. An apparent teratogenic effect was associated with both [C(4)mim]Cl and [C(10)mim]Cl, as the offspring exhibited certain uncommon morphological defects. However, the incidences of malformations were low and no correlation between incidence and dosage could be made. No morphological defects were observed in any of the [C(2)mim]Cl-treated groups, despite maternal morbidity at the highest dosage level.

CONCLUSIONS
This study indicates that [C(4)mim]Cl and [C(10)mim]Cl may have adverse effects on development at high maternal exposures and strongly supports the supposition that the toxicity of imidazolium-based ILs is influenced by alkyl chain length.


BACKGROUND
Mental health consequences related to divorce have been documented, but might be caused by concomitant factors such as conflicts and loss of parental contact (PC). We investigated these relationships and mental health among adolescents.

METHODS
The study was based on data from four cross-sectional surveys carried out between 1997 and 2009 among tertiary school students in Førde, Norway. We established two groups according to divorce experience (DE) with or without loss of PC. Frequencies of DEs were calculated with 95% confidence intervals. The group with no DE was used as reference group in all the analyses.

RESULTS
The divorce rate increased by 34% (6.8% absolute increase) between 1997 and 2009, but no sign of attenuated effects on emotional health was observed. Mental complaints were not attenuated as time since divorce increased. A majority of those losing contact with parents had no contact with their fathers. The study revealed only a modest increase of health complaints if PC was preserved, but a marked increase when the adolescents experienced loss of PC following the divorce. Interaction analyses showed no gender differences, and parental support and confidence in parent(s) did not mediate the associations between divorce and distress.

CONCLUSIONS
Emotional distress after divorce is not attenuated as divorce prevalence increases, but the deleterious effects of divorce on the well-being of adolescents seem to be confined to those experiencing a concomitant loss of PC. Efforts aiming at reducing parental hostility and improving mutual parental responsibility and care therefore seem important.


Multicasting offers group communication a considerable efficiency gain, particularly for large groups. As the size of the group increases, management and protocols become more complex and severe scaling problems can arise, for example in the routers at the network layer, for reliable file distribution at the transport layer and for large scale Peer-to-Peer file sharing or processing sharing systems at the application layer. Hierarchies help to reduce complexity, state space requirements and the number of messages exchanged between participants. In this paper, we propose the use of clustering algorithms to help in determining hierarchical multicast trees. Clustering algorithms help to partition user populations according to a variety of criteria. Here, we principally consider proximity. We apply the k-means clustering algorithms iteratively to construct successive hierarchical levels. We examine the performance of the technique for multicast groups, first based on the geographical location of the participants and, secondly, based on the usual weighted graph representation of network topology. The results show that it is a promising technique for multicast tree construction. The report concludes with suggestions for applying the clustering technique in a variety of ways. Emphasis is placed on the transport and application layers to produce tree-based overlay networks.


In the past few years, fiber optic sensing technologies have played an increasingly important role in the health monitoring of civil infrastructures. These innovative sensing technologies have recently been successfully applied to the performance monitoring of a series of geotechnical structures. Fiber optic sensors have shown many unique advantages in comparison with conventional sensors, including immunity to electrical noise, higher precision and improved durability and embedding capabilities; fiber optic sensors are also smaller in size and lighter in weight. In order to explore the mechanism of seepage-induced slope instability, a small-scale 1 g model test of the soil slope has been performed in the laboratory. During the model's construction, specially fabricated sensing fibers containing nine fiber Bragg grating (FBG) strain sensors connected in a series were horizontally and vertically embedded into the soil mass. The surcharge load was applied on the slope crest, and the groundwater level inside of the slope was subsequently varied using two water chambers installed besides the slope model. The fiber optic sensing data of the vertical and horizontal strains within the slope model were automatically recorded by an FBG interrogator and a computer during the test. The test results are presented and interpreted in detail. It is found that the gradually accumulated deformation of the slope model subjected to seepage can be accurately captured by the quasi-distributed FBG strain sensors. The test results also demonstrate that the slope stability is significantly affected by ground water seepage, which fits well with the results that were calculated using finite element and limit equilibrium methods. The relationship between the strain measurements and the safety factors is further analyzed, together with a discussion on the residual strains. The performance evaluation of a soil slope using fiber optic strain sensors is proved to be a potentially effective approach.


A three-stranded DNA that is a putative intermediate of homologous recombination is a novel DNA triplex, R-form DNA. In R-form DNA the third strand includes both purines and pyrimidines and is parallel to the identical strand of the duplex. To test and refine our previously proposed R-form base triplets we have used two approaches: (1) dimethyl sulfate protection of R-form DNA; and (2) thermal dissociation of R-form DNAs in which the duplex strands were substituted in a strand-specific manner with either 7-deaza-guanine or 7-deaza-adenine. Together, the footprinting and isosteric substitution results demonstrate that the third strand in R-form DNA is in contact with the purines in the N7 position in the major groove of the Watson-Crick duplex in three ((GC):G, (AT):A and (TA):T) out of the four possible triplets. Furthermore, these results suggest that the N7 positions of the duplex play a significant role in stabilizing the DNA-DNA contacts during the homology recognition process.


This paper is based on my Master's thesis where I discuss climate politics from the perspective of international environmental justice. I examine how climate change is framed as a problem from the point of view of responsibility in the political statements of the Montreal Climate Conference in 2005. I analyse the research data with the help of frame analysis and Perelman's theory of argumentation thus looking for argumentation concerning responsibility, its underlying premises and techniques of argumentation. The results suggest that climate change is framed as a problem in two different ways. In some statements (mainly from developed countries) climate change is considered as a problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Here, describing climate change as a treatable global problem and highlighting economic aspects is typical. In other statements (mainly from developing countries) climate change is represented as a problem of vulnerability and scarce resources. The perspective is local and statements emphasise climate change as a threat to the development efforts of these countries. The premises and techniques of argumentation differ between frames. In addition, there is struggle within frames; both frames encompass different claims about how responsibility should be distributed and what responsibility includes. Keywords: environmental justice, responsibility, climate politics, Montreal Climate Conference, framing, rhetorical analysis


We are interested in the following problem we call global sum. Each processor starts with a single real value. At each time step, every directed edge in the graph can simultaneously be used to transmit a single (bounded) number between the processors (vertices). How many time steps s are required to ensure that every processor acquires the global sum? We know that s is bounded below by the diameter and above by two times the diameter. We conjecture that for vertex symmetric graphs, s is equal to the diameter. We show this is true if the diameter is 2.


During the last decades in the United Kingdom several educational buildings were built with a strong environmental ethos, real icons of a new generation of low-energy sustainable buildings. In some of the buildings post occupancy evaluations were held and building's performance was revealed. Also in the Netherlands during the last years several new concepts were developed for sustainable schools. This is an interesting topic as many of those schools had problems concerning energy efficiency, indoor air quality and thermal comfort. In the case of sustainable schools much effort went into the design process of the schools to try to find better solutions to face the problems of the traditional designs. This resulted in different solution concepts, which raises the question which are better school concepts. From literature three evaluations from the UK and one overview of 5 sustainable educational buildings from the Netherlands are given, which show that sustainable educational buildings are not always without flaws. In the paper two of the first Dutch sustainable elementary schools are compared with 9 more traditional schools of the Netherlands to conclude whether the sustainable schools perform better than traditional schools.


As smart grid develops and renewables advance, challenges caused by uncertainties of renewables have been seriously threatening the energy system's safe operation. Nowadays, the integrated electric-gas system (IEGS) plays a significant role in promoting the flexibility of modern grid owing to its great characteristic in accommodating renewable energy and coping with fluctuation and uncertainty of the system. And hydrogen, as an emerging and clean energy carrier, can further enhance the energy coupling of the IEGS and promote carbon neutralization with the development of power-to-hydrogen (P2H) technology and technology of blending hydrogen in the natural gas system. Dealing with the uncertainty of renewables, a robust schedule optimization model for the integrated electric and gas systems with blending hydrogen (IEGSH) considering the dynamics of gas is proposed and the iterative solving method based on column-and-constraint generation (C&CG) algorithm is implemented to solve the problem. Case studies on the IEGSH consisting of IEEE 39-bus power system and 27-node natural gas system validate the effectiveness of the dynamic energy flow model in depicting the transient process of gas transmission. The effectiveness of the proposed robust day-ahead scheduling model in dealing with the intra-day uncertainty of wind power is also verified. Additionally, the carbon emission reduction resulting from the blending of hydrogen is evaluated.


BACKGROUND
According to a recent study, the severity of periodontal disease of individuals referred for periodontal care is greater now than in 1980. Variability in the standard of periodontal care in general dental practices may result in less than desirable outcomes and consequences of poorer periodontal health.

METHODS
A sample of 100 newly referred dental patients from three separate periodontal practices in the greater Kansas City, Missouri area participated in this study. Data were collected from three sources: 1) a clinical chart audit, 2) current periodontal disease status as determined by clinical examination, and 3) a patient response questionnaire on past professional care and personal oral care habits. Bivariate analyses were performed using a statistical package.

RESULTS
Of the 100 subjects, 74 were diagnosed as periodontal case type IV at the point of referral, of which 29.8% were treatment planned by the periodontist for two or more extractions. Teeth treatment planned for extraction were significant as a function of disease severity (P = 0.0001). Periodontal treatment provided in general dental practices did not vary because of disease severity. The incidence of deep cleanings (scaling and root planing) was reported slightly higher (32.4%) for case type IV than for case type III (26.9%), but this difference was not statistically significant. The average number of cleanings received in the general dental office was less than the standard of care according to the severity of the disease.

CONCLUSION
If one assumes that the data obtained in the Kansas City practices are representative of a larger geographic area, it indicates that dentistry may be failing to address issues of the timely diagnosis of periodontal disease, appropriate treatment, and/or timely referral for treatment.


The most common discomfort at first trimester of pregnancy is nausea followed by vomiting, known as morning sickness. The condition tends to be worse if it is not treated properly, which will cause poor pregnancy outcome. Some brewed herbs including cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg can be used as mouthwash to relieve nausea and vomiting, however there were lack of study to prove its efficacy. This study was aimed to determine the effectiveness of brewed herbs (cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg) mouthwash in dealing with morning sickness among pregnant women. This is a quantitative – pre experiment study with one group pretestpostest design, held in the work area of Candiroto Subdistrict Public Health Center-Temanggung Regency. A total sampling was conducted with 45 respondents. Pregnancy-Unique Quantification of Emesis/Nausea (PUQE) index was used as measurement tool, and Wilcoxon statistical test was applied. The result showed both brewed clove and nutmeg were effective in overcoming morning sickness (p-value 0.001 and 0.016 respectively; z-score -3.426 and -2.401 respectively), while cinnamon was not (p-value 0.19, z-score -1.604). The PUQE-score mean difference for clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon were 6.47; 0.93; and 0.53 respectively. It can be inferred that clove is the most effective herb in overcoming morning sickness compared to nutmeg and cinnamon. It is recommended for pregnant women to use brewed clove as mouthwash in alleviating morning sickness. Health practitioners were suggested to promote the use of brewed clove in dealing with morning sickness. There is an opportunity for the health office in collaboration with local herbal industry to develop nonpharmacological product such as clove mouthwash to treat morning sickness.


We describe results of a concerted research effort held in "Laboratoire de Planetologie de Grenoble" and "Laboratoire de Chimie Physique", where experimentalists as well as theoreticians, have developed laboratory tools in order to measure accurate rates of ion molecule reactions, and tools to estimate the uncertainty propagation in the models of Titan Ionospheric Chemistry, which are becoming increasingly complex. Laboratory measurement results will be presented for energy-selected (internal and translational energy) ion-molecule reactions and doubly charged molecular ion reactions. We will also present a new project with an experimental set-up, which will be installed in a near future in "Laboratoire de Planetologie de Grenoble". A very high-resolution mass spectrometer is proposed to study the Titan ionosphere Chemistry, in particular the molecular growth paths leading to big molecular ions observed by the INMS instrument on board Cassini. A parallel modeling effort with uncertainty analysis will be conducted in Orsay and Grenoble.


This paper investigates the pyrolysis of PODEn (n = 3,4,5) using ReaxFF molecular dynamics simulation. A large-scale model, which contains 2000 PODEn molecules, is simulated at 3000 K. The higher frequencies of the initial PODEn decomposition reaction at α or β C-O bond show that the α or β C-O bond in PODEn is not easy to break, which is approximately half the number of the other type of C-O bond dissociation. Furthermore, the bond dissociation energies (BDEs) are calculated using the ReaxFF method. The BDE of α or β C-O bond is higher than that of the other C-O bond, ~3–11 kcal/mol, indicating that BDE is one of the factors causing the different proportions of bonds broken. The evolution of pyrolysis products is also investigated. The results reveal that long-chain pyrolysis products from the initial PODEn decomposition are prone to further reaction, while a large amount of CH3O and CH3 remains in the system. This helps explain the difficulty in α and β C-O bond dissociation reactions. The results of the pyrolysis products are consistent with the result in further chemical kinetic simulation. The C2 species in pyrolysis products is relatively low, especially for C2H4 and C2H3, which is around zero. This supports the ability of PODEn to reduce soot emission.


Bookstart is a reading promotion programme for small children aged 0-3. In this thesis we have examined how librarians work with this programme in Landskrona. The librarians are reaching out to preschools, open preschools and child health care centers to develop a long-term programme in collaboration with these institutions. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of collaboration between different professions around reading promotion in the form of Bokstart. To do this we have interviewed librarians, preschool teachers and nurses with the same professional objective, which is reading promotion aimed at small children.

When working with small children one has to engage the entire family, which is incorporated in the term Family literacy. Previous research indicates that family literacy programmes are effective in developing children's literacy and has long term effects for childhood literacy development. We have used new institutional theory and culture geography in our analysis. This theory provides the tools necessary to analyse how professionals deal with their organisations and the surrounding world in order to legitimize the programs that they implement.

The librarians have made up a new word; to "bookstartify" (bokstartifiera) a conversation. This is when the conversation with a family goes beyond the classic reference interview and book tips to include for example practical examples of how to read with your small children and talk about the benefits of this. We think that the term boookstartify is useful in a wider perspective to formalize the concept of Bokstart. The responsibility of working with family literacy programmes fall somewhere between school, health care, and the library. Therefore collaboration between these institutions is vital. In order to ensure a long term impact on children's literacy formal policy is required to ensure such programs are implemented.


To investigate the influence of carbon fiber (CF) surface treatment on the flexural strength and tribological properties of the short-cut CF/polyimide (PI) composites, pitch-based short-cut CF were treated by rare earth. The CF before and after treatment was examined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The flexural strength of the specimens was determined in a three-point test machine. The friction and wear behaviors of PI composites sliding against GCr15 steel rings were evaluated on an M-2000 model ring-on-block test rig. The results show that the surface of the treated CF became rougher and there formed lots of active groups after rare earth treatment. The flexural strength of PI composites with rare earth treated CF was improved. The friction coefficient and wear rate of PI composites with rare earth treated CF were lower than that with untreated CF.


SUMMARY: Diploid isolates of Hansenula holstii Wick, and H. wingei Wick. usually produce two or three ascospores per ascus. An unusual nuclear event during meiosis might account for less than the expected number of four. When acridine orange or Feulgen staining was used, meiosis in both species followed the pattern established in higher plants and animals. Deoxyribonuclease treatment destroyed nuclear staining material. Six chromosomes were seen during prophase I. Three bivalents seen during metaphase I divided and moved to two poles with loss of distinct chromosomes for the remainder of meiosis. When only two or three spores were formed in an ascus, apparently normal nuclei, not enclosed in spore walls, were pushed against the ascus wall. The haploid (n) chromosome count in both H. holstii and H. wingei was shown to be three.


How ambitious are MPs in European parliaments and how does progressive ambition affect their strategies? We argue that progressively ambitious members of parliament try to generate individual visibility and seek the support of party leaders who decide on promotion while at the same time ensuring reelection by adjusting to electoral system incentives. Using novel data from a 15-country MP survey we show that progressive ambition is widespread in Europe and Israel. As hypothesized, progressively ambitious MPs are more likely to favor personal rather than party-centered electoral campaigns and to address the national or regional party leadership instead of their local party. Electoral system features and party ideology also have the theoretically expected effects.


Amifostine is the agent of proved cytoprotective activity against alkylating drugs and rubidomycine. Its protective effect against other cytotoxic drugs is doubtful. BFM-83 induction therapy for ANLL (ARA-C + RUB + VP-16) which is applied to children with acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia (ANLL) commonly contributes to severe adverse reactions. We administered amifostine to three children: 2 boys with ANLL (7 and 11 yrs) and 1 girl with MDS (3 yrs) during etoposide and rubidomycine induction therapy in order to decrease chemotherapy-related adverse reactions. Doses of amifostine were 740 mg/m2, 910 mg/m2 and 910 mg/m2 respectively. Efficacy of the therapy was evaluated on the base of blast decline in the bone marrow, efficacy of the cytoprotection by myelo and nephrotoxicity symptoms analysis. Chemotherapy-related adverse effects in the children protected by amifostine were less severe and observed by the shorter periods as compared with the historical control group of 20 patients treated according to BFM-83 without cytoprotection. These cases show the potential beneficial effect of amifostine during BFM-83 induction therapy for ANLL. The further randomised clinical study of the proposed cytoprotection should be performed to establish its value.


In these 28 years after the transformation of the system from a communist to the democratic one and toward a market economy, the democratization of Albania has faced various problems, which have often led to the loss of public trust in the political class and the political system in general. This loss of public trust, in large part of the cases, has come as a result of the public discovery of various corruption scandals, political clientelism, illicit influences or a political decision-making process that is often conceived as closed and monopoly of those who have been elected or appointed to leading positions. For this purpose, that of channeling and controlling the impacts that particular vested interests exert on the decision-making process, a good part of countries in Europe in the last years, have begun to consider undertaking regulatory reforms for lobbying in their environments. The main objective of regulating lobbying activity in Albania on a legal basis would be precisely the handling/curbing of such informal relationships that exist at various levels between interest groups and decision-makers and which are often on corrupt and clientelistic grounds. This paper argues that the best system for regulating lobbying in Albania should be that of a statutory type, in which lobbyists on a legal basis be obliged to register in a publicly accessible register and to disclose data on critical aspects of their activity.


A Petri net model is referred to as Boolean if the only possible markings are sets, i.e., places are marked or not without further quantification; moreover, also the enabling conditions and firing rule are based on this principle of set-based token arithmetic. Elementary Net systems are an example of a class of Boolean nets, and so are the recently introduced set-nets. In our investigation of the synthesis problem for set-nets, it would be useful to know how this new net model can be fitted into the general theory of net synthesis based on the generic concept of τ -nets. Here, we demonstrate how set-nets and the idea of Boolean operations on tokens provide an opportunity to classify a wide variety of Boolean nets that are amenable to region-based net synthesis.


A new discrete-time switched networked control system model with interval time-varying delay is proposed and the stability problem is studied based on the average dwell time method. By defining new Lyapunov functional and by making use of novel techniques, some new less conservative criteria of exponential stability for the closed-loop NCS are obtained. An illustrative example is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.


A food frequency questionnaire was used to estimate and compare the dietary fat and fiber consumption of 94 premenopausal women in Kuopio (rural Finland, where there is a relatively low risk of breast cancer) and 61 American women in New York (where there is a high risk of breast cancer). In keeping with previous reports concerning middle-aged men, both groups had high fat intakes, but the Finnish women had considerably higher fiber intakes (24 +/- 11 vs. 16 +/- 6 g). Serum and breast fluid growth hormone and prolactin levels were compared in 29 of these American women and 24 of the Finnish women. All were healthy and had regular menstrual cycles. Serum growth hormone levels, which were measured by radioimmunoassay, were higher in the Finnish women; all but three of their breast fluids contained detectable growth hormone, frequently at extremely high concentration. In contrast, only 2 of the 29 breast fluids from American women had detectable amounts of growth hormone. Of the Finnish samples, 10 were also measured by an immunoradiometric assay with high specificity for the 22,000-dalton growth hormone molecule; all but 3 had values less than 3.0 ng/ml. Serum and breast fluid prolactin concentrations, which were determined by radioimmunoassay, were no different in the two groups; both groups frequently had considerably higher levels in breast fluid compared with the corresponding serum.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


A haploid is an organism that looks like a sporophyte, but has the chromosome complement of a reduced gamete. There are several ways in which haploids can occur or be induced in vivo: spontaneously, mostly associated with polyembryony, and through abnormal processes after crosses, like pseudogamy, semigamy, preferential elimination of the chromosomes of one parental species, and androgenesis. In the crops described, haploids are or are near to being used in basic research and plant breeding. The application of haploids in breeding self-pollinated crops is based on their potential for producing fully homozygous lines in one generation, which can be assessed directly in the field. Early generation testing of segregating populations is possible through haploids, because doubled haploids (DH) possess additive variance only. Haploids can also be applied in classical breeding programmes to make these more efficient through improved reliability of selection. The application of haploids in cross-pollinated crops is also based on a rapid production of DH-lines, which can be used as inbred lines for the production of hybrid varieties. By means of haploids all natural barriers to repeated selfing are bypassed. In autotetraploid crops there are two types of haploid. One cycle of haploidization leads to dihaploids; a second cycle produces monohaploids. The significance of dihaploids is in their greatly simplified genetics and breeding and in the possibility of estimation of the breeding value of tetraploid cultivars by assessing their dihaploids. The main drawback of dihaploids is their restriction to two alleles per locus. Also, after doubling, it is impossible to achieve tetra-allelism at many loci, the requirement for maximal performance of autotetraploid cultivars. Tetra-allelism can be obtained when improved dihaploids have a genetically controlled mechanism of forming highly heterozygous restitution gametes with the unreduced number of chromosomes. Monohaploids, after doubling or twice doubling, may lead to fully homozygous diploids and tetraploids. These are important for basic research, but not yet for practical application. Meiotic data of potato homozygotes at three ploidy levels are presented.