Oil-in-water emulsions stabilized using cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) form extremely stable and high-volume creaming layers which do not coalesce over extended periods of time. The stability is a result of the synergistic action of Pickering stabilization and the formation of a CNF percolation network in the continuous phase. The use of methyl cellulose (MC) as a co-emulsifier together with CNF further increases the viscosity of the system and is known to affect the droplet size distribution of the formed emulsion. Here, we utilize these highly stable creaming layer systems for in situ polymerization of styrene with the aim to prepare an emulsion-based dope for additive manufacturing. We show that the approach exploiting the creaming layer enables the effortless water removal yielding a paste-like material consisting of polystyrene beads decorated with CNF and MC. Further, we report comprehensive characterization that reveals the properties and the performance of the creaming layer. Solid-state NMR measurements confirmed the successful polymerization taking place inside the nanocellulosic network, and size exclusion chromatography revealed average molecular weight (Mw) of polystyrene as approximately 700,000 Da. Moreover, the amount of the leftover monomer was found to be less than 1% as detected by gas chromatography. The dry solids content of the paste was ∼20% which is a significant increase compared to the solids content of the original CNF dispersion (1.7 wt%). The shrinkage of the CNF, MC and polystyrene structures upon drying—an often-faced challenge—was found to be acceptable for this composite containing highly hygroscopic biobased materials. At best, the two dimensional shrinkage was no more than ca. 20% which is significantly lower than the shrinkage of pure CNF being as high as 50%. The paste, which is a composite of biobased materials and a synthetic polymer, was demonstrated in direct-ink-writing to print small objects. With further optimization of the formulation, we find the emulsion templating approach as a promising route to prepare composite materials.


Objectives To describe patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) treated with Belimumab (BLM). Material and methods Review of patients with SLE treated with BLM from 2012 to 2017. Results We enrolled 18 patients, 16 women and 2 men. The median age at of SLE diagnose was 34.3 (IQR 27–45.7) years and the median age at BLM start was 2.2 (IQR 38.9–47) years. The received sDMARDs median number was 2.5 (IQR 2–4). Before starting BLM 7 patients had received rituximab, 4 cyclophosphamide, 1 abatacept and 1 one efalizumab. At BLM begin 17 patients were taking prednisone, 13 hydroxycloroquine, 7 methotrexate, 1 azatioprine, 1 mycophenolate and 1 leflunomide (table 1). The median BLM bolus received was 8.5 (IQR 2–32.7) and it was stopped in 4 patients due to lack of efficacy; this 4 patients had persistence of arthritis and non of them had received bDMARD before. 13 patients had at least one antiphospholipid autoantibody positive and 4 developed antiphospholipid syndrome. The median titer of antinuclear antibodies (ANA) was 1/360 (IQR 1/160–1/1280). All patients but one had ANA positive; among them 9 patients were antiRo positive, 4 antiLa, 4 antiSm and 4 antiRNP positive antibodies. 9 patients were antiDNA positive and 5 were positive for rheumatoid factor (RF) able 1 shows SLEDAI, C3 and C4, antiDNA levels. At BLMin 5 patients had renal involvement; 3 of them improved after 3 months of treatment. Among 14 patients with joint involvement, 3 improved by month 3, 2 by month 6 and 1 by month 7 after treatment beginning. 3 patients had heart and lung disease; no one of them improved with BLM. Among 9 patients with skin disease only one showed improvement after 12 months of treatment. 9 patients had haematological disorders: 1 improved by month one, 1 by month 3, one by month 5 and 2 my month 6 of treatment. Conclusion In this series BLM improved SLEDAI and complement levels allowing sparing of maintenance corticosteroid in SLE patients.Abstract PS7:140 Table 1 Baseline characteristicsAbstract PS7:140 Table 2 One year follow up after BLM treatment


Progress is described in 3 general areas corresponding to the specific aims of the proposal, including DNA strand breaks in the epidermis as a function of radiation penetration; oncogene activation in radiation-induced rat skin cancers; and carcinogenesis in rat skin induced by the neon ion beam. Numerous experiments have established that DNA strand breaks per unit dose in the rat epidermis are reduced by about 60% when the radiation penetration is reduced from 1.0 mm to 0.2 mm. The activation of oncogenes in the radiation-induced rat skin cancers followed a pattern. Four highly malignant cancers exhibited activation of K-ras and c-myc oncogenes, while the remaining 8 cancers exhibited only one or the other of these 2 oncogenes. Of 5 squamous carcinomas, 4 showed K-ras activation and 1 showed c-myc activation. Approximately 200 rats were exposed to the neon ion beam at the Bevalac in Berkeley, CA. The carcinogenicity of energetic electrons (2.0 MeV) was determined in conjunction with the neon ion experiment. It is too early to evaluate tumor incidence in the neon ion experiment, but for electrons an unusually large excess of connective tissue tumors, fibromas and sarcomas, have been observed so far. 59 refs., 2 tabs.


Fungal spoilage of bread can be a great problem; however, it can be explored as a producer of enzymes. The fungi were isolated from breads, and their activity for α-amylase production was planned. The results identified nine fungi on spoiled breads. Aspergillus fumigatus occurred with 85% frequency, followed by other isolates. Starch yeast (SY), white flour (WF), and black flour (BF) were applied as substrates for α-amylase activity using fungal isolates. The SY was the best, followed by WF and BF for α-amylase activity. Using SY, A. niger showed the greatest potency for α-amylase (7.67 U/mL) unlike Monilia sitophila, which reflected low α-amylase activity (2.69 U/mL). Using WF, A. fumigatus reflected high amylase activity (5.76 U/mL) while A. niger, A. terreus, and Penicillium expansum showed less activity (5.12 U/mL, 4.41 U/mL, and 3.56 U/mL, respectively). The temperature 30 °C and pH 6 were the optimum for α-amylase activity by A. niger, A. fumigatus, and P. chrysogenum, using the three media, but α-amylase activity of A. fumigatus at 40 °C was higher than at 20 °C. At the ninth day of incubation, the maximum α-amylase activity was reported using SY, while at the twelfth day, maximum activity was reported using WF and BF.


Despite promising natural gas huff 'n' puff (HnP) field-pilot results, the dominant oil-recovery mechanisms during this process are poorly understood. We conduct systematic natural-gas (C1 and a mixture of C1/C2 with the molar ratio of 70:30) HnP experiments on an ultratight core plug collected from the Montney tight-oil formation, under reservoir conditions (P = 137.9 bar and T = 50°C). We used a custom-designed visualization cell to experimentally evaluate mechanisms controlling gas transport into the plug during injection and soaking phases and oil recovery during the whole process. The tests also allow us to investigate effects of gas composition and initial differential pressure between injected gas and the plug (ΔPi = Pg−Po) on the gas-transport and oil-recovery mechanisms. Moreover, we performed a Péclet number, NPe, analysis to quantify the contribution of each transport mechanism during the soaking period.
 We found that advective-dominated transport is the mechanism responsible for the transport of gas into the plug at early times of the soaking period (NPe = 1.58 to 3.03). When the soaking progresses, NPe ranges from 0.26 to 0.62, indicating the dominance of molecular diffusion. The advective flow caused by ΔPi during gas injection and soaking leads to improved gas transport into the plug. Total system compressibility, oil swelling, and vaporization of oil components into the gas phase are the recovery mechanisms observed during gas injection and soaking, while gas expansion is the main mechanism during depressurization phase. Overall, gas expansion is the dominant mechanism, followed by total system compressibility, oil swelling, and vaporization. During the "puff" period, the expansion and flow of diffused gas drag the oil along its flowpaths, resulting in a significant flow of oil and gas observed on the surface of the plug. The enrichment of injected gas by 30-mol% C2 enhances the transport of gas into the plug and increases oil recovery compared to pure C1 cases.


Whole-cell patch-clamp techniques were used to study enzymatically dispersed epicardial coronary artery smooth muscle cells. Depolarizing voltage pulses of 500millisecond duration from -60 mV (118 mmol/L CsCl, 22 mmol/L tetraethylammonium chloride, and 5 mmol/L EGTA pipette solution) elicited inward L-type calcium currents (ICa). When EGTA was omitted from the pipette solution, an outward current was superimposed on the calcium current, and repolarizing voltage steps produced an inward tail current (IT). The amplitude of these inward currents was proportional to the Ica amplitude from -30 to +50 mV. The time course of decay of the current was well fit by a single exponential equation. The time constant (r) of this equation did not change with the size of IT but was clearly voltage dependent (shorter at more negative potentials). Changing the chloride reversal potential from -1.3 to -39.7 mV by anion substitution using methanesulfonate as the chloride replacement in the pipette solution shifted the zero current level of IT from 0.9±0.56 to -33.1±0.85 mV. The tail current was blocked by nifedipine (10-6 mol/L) and by isosmolar calcium substitution with barium in the bath solution and was enhanced by the dihydropyridine agonist Bay K 8644 (10-6 mol/L). IT was also ne of the initial events in agonist activation of O § vascular smooth muscle cells is a transient rise in intracellular calcium, which is due primarily to release of stored calcium. Membrane potential changes associated with agonist activation may then regulate subsequent fluctuations in intracellular calcium levels by affecting the rate of entry of calcium across the plasma membrane. These two events are highly interrelated, because the initial elevation of intracellular calcium has the potential to stimulate any of several calcium-activated ion conductances including potassium,12 chloride,3-6 and a nonselective cation channel,7 which may itself be highly permeable to calcium. These conductances may also be intermittently activated by spontaneous release of calcium from the sarcoplasmic reticulum,8 9 and this process could conceivably contribute to "resting" potential. Factors such as the number, location, regulation, and calcium and voltage sensitivity of these channels must play an important role in determining the way in which membrane potential is altered in response to a given stimulus. Received May 5, 1994; accepted June 22, 1994. From the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and the Department of Pediatrics (F.S.L.), Division of Pediatric Cardiology, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City. Correspondence to Dr Erwin F. Shibata, 5-472 Bowen Science Bldg, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242. C 1994 American Heart Association, Inc. blocked by the chloride channel blockers DIDS (10-4 mol/L) and niflumic acid (10` mol/L). Caffeine (10`2 mol/L), which releases intracellular calcium stores, caused an inward current at holding potentials (-60 mV), which was inhibited by DIDS. Caffeine also inhibited subsequent attempts to elicit IT by depolarizing pulses (88% reduction in IT). Bay K 8644 potentiated both ICa and IT elicited by depolarizing pulses in the presence of caffeine; however, IT remained much smaller than control (before caffeine), despite an ICa that exceeded control values. These results suggest that rabbit coronary artery myocytes possess a calcium-activated chloride conductance, which is activated by depolarizing voltage pulses and the resultant calcium current. Calcium released from intracellular stores in response to inward calcium currents (calcium-induced calcium release) appears to be the primary trigger for activation of the chloride current. This chloride current may contribute to the depolarization observed in response to agonists, which elicit the release of intracellular calcium stores. (Circ Res. 1994;75:742-750.)


ABSTRACT A 2016 image by cartoonist Chris Kelly powerfully brings together two regimes of detention in Australia, one 'domestic' and directed largely at Indigenous prisoners, the other 'offshore', and directed at refugees and asylum seekers. In both cases, it was CCTV footage which provided the means of exposure of violent abuses in these detention systems, although this exposure simultaneously exposes the very failure of CCTV, as a mechanism deigned precisely to magnify the state's powers of surveillance. This paper traces the interactions between inmates, advocates, activists and artists in these two campaigns of exposure. It reprises James Der Derian's 2001 concept of MIME-NET (Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network) to explore the possibilities of a new social activism of images.


Trastuzumab is part of the standard treatment for patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER‐2)‐positive breast cancer, but not all patients respond to trastuzumab. Altered microRNA (miR) expression levels in cancer cells have been correlated with prognosis and response to chemotherapy. The authors of this report hypothesized that altered miR expression levels in plasma are associated with sensitivity to trastuzumab in patients with HER‐2 positive breast cancer.


Importance: Individuals who have been sexually abused are at a greater risk for poor health, but associations with economic outcomes in mid-life have been overlooked. Objectives: We investigated associations between child sexual abuse ([≤]18 years) and economic outcomes at 33-37 years, while considering type of report (official/retrospective) and characteristics of abuse (type, severity, and chronicity). Design: This cohort study used data collected for the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Kindergarten Children. Setting: The Quebec Longitudinal Study of Kindergarten Children is a population-based sample. Participants: Participants were 3,020 boys and girls attending kindergarten in the Canadian Province of Quebec in 1986/88 and followed up until 2017. Main outcome/Measures: Child sexual abuse (0-18 years old) was assessed using both retrospective self-report questionnaires and objective reports (notification to Child Protection Services). Information on employment earnings was obtained from government tax return records. Tobit regressions were used to test associations of sexual abuse with earnings adjusting for sex and family socioeconomic background. Results: Of the 3,020 participants 1,320 [43.7%] self-reported no sexual abuse, 1,340 [44.3%] had no official report but were missing on the retrospective questionnaire, 340 [11.3%] reported retrospective sexual abuse, and 20 [0.7%] had official report. In the fully adjusted model, individuals who retrospectively reported being sexually abused earned US$4,031 (CI=-7,134 to -931) less per year at age 33-37 years, while those with official reports earned US$16,042 (CI=-27,465 to -4,618) less, compared to participants who were not abused. Among individuals with retrospectively reported abuse, those who experienced intra-familial abuse earned US$4,696 (CI=-9,316 to -75) less than individuals who experienced extra-familial abuse, while participants who experienced penetration earned US$6,188 (CI=-12,248 to -129) less than those who experienced non-contact abuse. Conclusion and Relevance: Child sexual abuse puts individuals at risk for lasting reductions in employment earnings in adulthood. Early identification and support for sexual abuse victims could help reduce the economic gap and improve long-term outcomes.


In order to study the influence of parameters on the dynamics of triopoly game, this article constructed a triopoly game model with capacity constraint and three different decision-making rules: bounded rational method, adaptive method and naive method. By employing the iso-elastic price function and the logarithmic cost function, numerical simulations were carried out to analyze the effects of the output adjustment speed and the weight and the capacity constraint on the model's dynamics. The results show that improper values of the output adjustment speed and the weight can induce chaotic variation of the three players' outputs. Moreover, the increasing output adjustment speed can cause higher average profit for the player with bounded rational strategy while the increasing weight can induce higher average profit for the player with adaptive method. Furthermore, when the capacity constraint drops, the three players' average profits will decrease their outputs' amplitude as well. From the view point of maximum profit, naive strategy is optimal among the three strategies.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the correlation of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) with birth weight and gestational age in newborn infants.

METHODS
The screening of CH was conducted in all the live births in 2005 of Zhejiang Province, the blood samples were collected from heel stick. The thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) was measured by time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay (TRFIA). If TSH was>9.0 mU/L, the infant was recalled for further examination.

RESULTS
A total of 387,926 infants were screened in 2005, of whom 289 cases were identified with CH. The prevalence rate was 1/1,342. Among the 289 CH cases, the prevalence of premature infants, term infants and post term infants were 1/1,454, 1/1,469 and 1/246, respectively. The CH prevalence of post term infants was significantly higher than that in other two groups (P<0.01). The prevalence of low birth weight infants, normal weight infants and macrosomia was 1/575, 1/1,505 and 1/473, respectively. The prevalence of low birth weight infants and macrosomia was significantly higher than that of normal weight group (P<0.01).

CONCLUSION
The prevalence of CH is associated with the birth weight and gestational age. To reduce the prevalence of CH in children, it is crucial to prevent post term, low birth weight, and macrosomia cases.


In this study the relationship of parental self-esteem, parental rearing and adolescent adult attachment was investigated. A total 448 senior high school students completed EMBU(Egna Minnen av Barndoms Uppfostran, or ―Own memories of parental rearing‖, Perris et al., 1980), the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR; Brennan, Clark, &Shaver, 1998), and their parents completed The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES; Rosenberg, 1965). The results suggested that parental global self-esteem has no effect on the adolescent attachment to parents. Parental positive rearing behaviors have been significantly associated with avoidance to parents. Furthermore, the negative rearing behaviors, such as paternal denying and rejecting, maternal punitiveness, maternal overinvolved and overprotective behavior, can predict the adolescent avoidance and anxiety to parents.


Diabetic macular edema (DME) is one of the main causes of visual impairment in patients with diabetic retinopathy (Williams et al., 2004). The common diagnostic tools for assessing macular edema are stereo-ophthalmoscopy and fluorescein angiography. Stereoscopic examination of the fundus at the slit-lamp or on stereoscopic color fundus photographs is the standard method, as defined by the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS), for evaluating macular thickening and for starting treatment when the clinical significant macular edema level has been reached (ETDRS Report Number 10, 1991). Fluorescein angiography is a complementary method for further detecting vascular leakage. However, these methods are subjective and seem to be insensitive for small changes in retinal thickness (Hee et al., 1995; Shahidi et al., 1991). In 1991 a revolutionary device was introduced in ophthalmology – optical coherence tomography (OCT) – and it dramatically improved the diagnosis of macular pathology (Huang et al., 1991). OCT provides detailed information about retinal microstructure and measures retinal thickness with high precision and reproducibility (Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network [DRCRN], 2007; Paunescu et al., 2004; Polito et al., 2005; Puliafito et al., 1995). The recently introduced spectral-domain OCT (SD OCT) machines have numerous improvements that enhance our ability to examine retinal microstructure and obtain more reliable measurements.


With the consideration of fast gain saturation, an approximate analytical solution of nondegenerate four-wave mixing between short optical pulses in a semiconductor optical amplifier is presented. It is simple and agrees well with the rigorous solution. In addition, conditions for the optimum pump input energy and the time delay between the pulses are also investigated.


Commentators view online screening and automated feedback interventions as low-cost ways of addressing alcohol and other drug-related harms. These interventions place people into categories of risk based upon scores from standardised screens and provide automated feedback about a person's level of risk of developing alcohol and other drug 'problems'. In this article, we examine how one particular alcohol and other drug online screening and feedback intervention enacts risky alcohol and other drug use and users, and explore how these enactments compare to alcohol and other drug users' own accounts of risk. In order to do this, we undertook a qualitative analysis of intervention content and intervention recipients' responses (n = 489) to an open-ended question about their experience of the online screening and feedback intervention. Our analysis highlights how the online screening and feedback intervention draws on prevention science to cultivate a sense of expertness and objectivity. Intervention recipients' accounts of risk were either overshadowed by the 'expert' risk account provided by the intervention, 'validated' by the intervention or were not accurately reflected by the intervention. In the latter case, intervention recipient comments draw attention to the way in which the intervention enacts alcohol and other drug use as inherently risky without accounting for the context and purpose of use. While the online screening and feedback intervention assumes that people are capable of self-monitoring and managing their alcohol and other drug use and risk, recommendations for help provided enact intervention recipients as fragile and in need of professional help. We suggest that there is a need for the development of interventions that are better equipped to take account of the complexity of alcohol and other drug use and risk experiences and subjectivities.


We investigated the interfacial electronic structures of Al/adenine/indium-tin-oxide (ITO) and Al/thymine/ITO using in situ ultraviolet and x-ray photoemission spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations. Adenine shows both an interface dipole and level bending, whereas thymine shows only an interface dipole in contact with ITO. In addition, thymine possesses a larger ionization energy than adenine. These are understood with delocalized π states confirmed with theoretical calculations. For the interface between nucleobases and Al, both nucleobases show a prominent reduction of the electron injection barrier from Al to each base in accordance with a downward level shift.


Abstract A grafted frame is a new kind of frame which combines a modal frame and some relevance frames. A grafted model consists of a grafted frame and a truth-value assignment. In this paper, the grafted frame and the grafted model are constructed and used to show the completeness of S1. The implications of S1-completeness are discussed. A grafted frame does not combine two kinds of frames simply by putting relations defined in the components together. That is, the resulting grafted frame is not in the form of , or more generally, in the form of ,…>, which consists of a non-empty set with several relations defined on it.1 Rather, it resembles the construction of fibering proposed by D. M. Gabbay and M. Finger (see [4] and [3]). On a grafted frame, some modal worlds, which belong to the initial modal frame, are attached by some relevance frames. However, these two semantics have important differences. Consider the combined semantics involving semantics of relevance logic and modal logic. A fibred model and a grafted model proposed in this paper differ in the following respects. First, a fibred model is constructed from a class of modal models and a class of relevance models. A grafted model consists of a grafted frame and a truth-value assignment, where the grafted frame is constructed from a modal frame and some relevance frames, and the assignment is a union of a modal truth-value assignment VM and some relevance truth-value assignments VR . VM (VR ) defined in this paper is not the same as the assignment contained in a modal (relevance) model. Second, in a fibred model each relevance world is associated (or fibred) with a modal model and each modal world with a relevance model.2 To be the grafted frame on which a grafted model is based, it is enough to have some modal worlds attached by some relevance frames. Moreover, no relevance world is associated with a modal frame in the grafted frame. Third, fibred models are intended to provide an appropriate semantics to combined logics. Grafted frames and grafted models are inspired to characterize S1, which, containing only one modality □, is not a combined logic. It is shown in this paper that S1 is sort of a meta-logic of the intersection of S0.4 and F, where S0.4, a new system proposed in this paper, is in turn a meta-logic of the relevance logic.


The growth of connected devices, mostly due to the large number of internet of things IoT deployments and the emergence of mobile cloud services, introduces new challenges for the design of service architectures in mobile cloud computing MCC. An MCC framework should provide elasticity and scalability in a distributed and dynamic way while dealing with limited environment resources and variable mobile contexts web applications, real-time, enterprise services, mobile to mobile, hostile environment, etc. that may include additional constraints impacting the design foundation of cloud services. We show in this work how service-oriented architecture SOA can be a key solution to provide distributed mobile cloud services and how OSGi platform can be an adaptive and efficient framework to provide such implementation. We adapt the proposed MCC framework to different architecture contexts. The first one is a traditional centric model, where mobile devices are reduced to consuming services. The second one is a distributed model where the power of mobile-to-mobile interaction offers unlimited value-services opportunities, and finally, three-tier architecture is considered with the introduction of the cloudlet notion. For each context, we explore the performance of our service-oriented framework, and contrast it with alternative existing solutions.


Banking industry is one sector that affects the economy of Indonesia and a strategic role in driving the country's economy. Competition in the banking industry more competitive, the establishment of banking companies over the years shows that the banking sector is a potential sector in the economy. Gender issues are social, cultural and refers to the responsibilities, roles, patterns of behavior, quality, and others are masculine and feminine. Women now bear the same responsibilities as men in the management of business organizations. Employee turnover rate at XYZ Bank during the last three years is likely to increase and mostly occurs in women employees. The increase in the number of employees leaving the show that employees are still not quite satisfied with his work in the company. This study was conducted to determine the factors that influence job satisfaction and employee turnover intentions of men and women in XYZ Bank Branch Bogor. The research method using SEM (structural equation modeling). The results showed the factors that affect job satisfaction has significant and positive effect on job satisfaction. Cultural organizations also have a significant and positive effect on job satisfaction. Job satisfaction has a negative and significant impact on turnover intentions. Factors that influence job satisfaction for women employees do not have a significant effect on turnover intention, but for a men employee job satisfaction, factors have a negative and significant impact on turnover intentions. Meanwhile, organizational culture does not have a significant effect on turnover intentions.It means, there has been no effort on the organizational culture at XYZ Bank Branch Bogor to reduce employee turnover intention. It is interesting to study in future studies, whether it occurs only in XYZ Bank Branch Bogor or occurred in other companies too.


Abstract Psychosocial treatments like psychotherapy and group therapy are common for the treatment of depression in the general population. Depression in people with intellectual disability presents challenges, because people with intellectual disability often cannot consent to various treatments, clinicians and family members must be involved and use their best judgment. A selected review was conducted to highlight the progress in psychosocial treatment of depression within the last four decades. The main search terms were intellectual disability (ID), depression, and treatment. Nine articles were chosen; and included cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), computer-assisted CBT, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), exercise therapy, behaviour activation, self-help intervention, dialectal behaviour therapy (DBT), and psychodynamic/psychoanalytical therapy. There were no articles on mental health nursing. Adaptions included smaller groups (in group intervention), visual material, simplifying of concepts, longer duration/more sessions, more practical help, more repetitions when learning new skills, more guiding, professional caregiver/family involvement, and individual support within group interventions.


This article focuses on the issue of participant selection in supply networks risk management. Though there are many ways and applications which are introduced to selection partcipant in viewpoint of risk management, the practical effect of these methods is not considerable full and satisfactory. In this paper, we introduce a non-linear programming(NLP) method based on multiplicative and fuzzy preference relations to rank the candidates of probable participants in supply networks in viewpoint of risk management. The sound performance of discrimination power, the convience of applications and the relatively accuracy of perception expressions make this method of ranking suitable to participants selection in supply networks risk management. Numberial example and demostration are present at last.


Segmentation of the retinal blood vessels using filtering techniques is a widely used step in the development of an automated system for diagnostic retinal image analysis. This paper optimized the blood vessel segmentation, by extending the trainable B-COSFIRE filter via identification of more optimal parameters. The filter parameters are introduced using an optimization procedure to three public datasets (STARE, DRIVE, and CHASE-DB1). The suggested approach considers analyzing thresholding parameters selection followed by application of background artifacts removal techniques. The approach results are better than the other state of the art methods used for vessel segmentation. ANOVA analysis technique is also used to identify the most significant parameters that are impacting the performance results (p-value ¡ 0.05). The proposed enhancement has improved the vessel segmentation accuracy in DRIVE, STARE and CHASE-DB1 to 95.47, 95.30 and 95.30, respectively.


This paper reports the outcome of a study into classroom uses of broadband-connected Internet in the UK. The study focuses on how some teachers and pupils made use of this new teaching and learning resource during the period of its initial introduction in one local education authority. The settings investigated consisted of a range of classrooms, from Reception through to Year 10 (ie pupils aged 5 to 15 years). In line with Woolgar's (2002: 6) observation that 'attention at the macro-level gives rather little clue as to how these technologies are actually used and experienced in every day practice', this small-scale case study focuses on the micro level of implementation, seeking to understand whether and how the positive and encouraging claims made at the levels of policy and curriculum development on behalf of broadband Internet in schools are realised when that technology is implemented in individual classrooms. Given the newness to all involved of this technology within schools, we approached our research in an extremely exploratory and open-minded way: we wished both to learn about the developing broadband-related practices of individual teachers and learners in classrooms, and we also hoped to sharpen and refine our understandings of how research should look at these issues and what questions it should be asking. We believe that the opportunity to carry out this research has opened up a number of important lines for further enquiry that should be pursued seriously and with some urgency if the full potential of this new resource is to be achieved.


A fruitful direction for future data mining research will be the development of technique that incorporates privacy concerns. Specifically, we address the following question. Since the primary task in data mining is the development of models about aggregated data, can we develop accurate models without access to precise information in individual data records? We analyze the possibility of privacy in data mining techniques in two phasesrandomization and reconstruction. Data mining services require accurate input data for their results to be meaningful, but privacy concerns may influence users to provide spurious information. To preserve client privacy in the data mining process, techniques based on random perturbation of data records are used. Suppose there are many clients, each having some personal information, and one server, which is interested only in aggregate, statistically significant, properties of this information. The clients can protect privacy of their data by perturbing it with a randomization algorithm and then submitting the randomized version. This approach is called randomization. The randomization algorithm is chosen so that aggregate properties of the data can be recovered with sufficient precision, while individual entries are significantly distorted. For the concept of using value distortion to protect privacy to be useful, we need to be able to reconstruct the original data distribution so that data mining techniques can be effectively utilized to yield the required statistics.
 Analysis
Let xi be the original instance of data at client i. We introduce a random shift yi using randomization technique explained below. The server runs the reconstruction algorithm (also explained below) on the perturbed value zi = xi + yi to get an approximate of the original data distribution suitable for data mining applications. Randomization We have used the following randomizing operator for data perturbation: Given x, let R(x) be x+€ (mod 1001) where € is chosen uniformly at random in {-100…100}.
Reconstruction of discrete data set
P(X=x) = f X (x) ----Given
P(Y=y) = F y (y) ---Given
P (Z=z) = f Z (z) ---Given
f (X/Z) = P(X=x | Z=z)
= P(X=x, Z=z)/P (Z=z)
= P(X=x, X+Y=Z)/ f Z (z)
= P(X=x, Y=Z - X)/ f Z (z)
= P(X=x)*P(Y=Z-X)/ f Z (z)
= P(X=x)*P(Y=y)/ f Z (z)
Results
In this project we have done two aspects of privacy preserving data mining. The first phase involves perturbing the original data set using 'randomization operator' techniques and the second phase deals with reconstructing the randomized data set using the proposed algorithm to get an approximate of the original data set. The performance metrics like percentage deviation, accuracy and privacy breaches were calculated. In this project we studied the technical feasibility of realizing privacy preserving data mining. The basic promise was that the sensitive values in a user's record will be perturbed using a randomizing function and an approximate of the perturbed data set be recovered using reconstruction algorithm.


In Reply.— We agree with Ms Burtness' comments about the importance of rape crisis centers. Physicians should investigate the availability of such centers in their communities. Unfortunately, rape crisis centers are not available in all areas. If available, the physician should mention the centers to the victim and stress their helpfulness. In addition, many victims may feel uncomfortable sharing their feelings in a group setting and will refuse to participate. In these situations, the ongoing support of the physician, family, and friends is particularly important in aiding the recovery of a rape victim.


Drawing on campaigns waged and administrative burdens managed by the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation (GAC) in Kakadu National Park to manage the effects of existing uranium mining and further proposed mining, this article draws attention to some of the techniques and coalitions that GAC has created to manage its would-be managers. It uses the case of monitoring the operations and particularly the rehabilitation of the Ranger Uranium mine and of halting the opening of a second mine, known as Jabiluka, to consider the less conspicuous paperwork battles that take place amid and in the aftermath of these public battles. In considering these contests, we argue that the double valency of holding to account needs to be considered, to avoid dichotomising Indigenous people as either coopted by or opposed to administration, a bifurcation which fails to recognize the complexity and inevitability of contemporary Indigenous management regimes. This is neither a celebration of Indigenous counter-administration, nor a false positing of Aboriginal alternatives to institutionalized worlds. Concluding, we note that when the organizational toil of drawing the locus of power in decision-making towards Aboriginal interests is made apparent, the notion that there is an alternative to institutionalized forces of settler colonialism, represented by Indigenous resistance, is complicated. We mark this organizational work as evidencing the unrelenting nature of administrative violence under active


CONTEXT
The morphologic spectrum of mammary fibroepithelial lesions ranges from fibroadenoma, a common benign neoplasm, to phyllodes tumor, an uncommon lesion that can sometimes recur and metastasize.

OBJECTIVE
To focus on problems encountered in the diagnostic evaluation of fibroepithelial tumors, highlighting the diagnostically relevant morphologic features and providing an update on the immunohistochemical profile and genetic alterations of these rare neoplasms.

DATA SOURCES
A PubMed search of the English-language literature identified published reports on fibroepithelial lesions, with a special focus on phyllodes tumor. The results and conclusions of these studies form the basis of this review.

CONCLUSIONS
The distinction between fibroadenoma and phyllodes tumor is usually not problematic, especially in excision specimens. In some cases, however, the diagnostic evaluation of fibroepithelial lesions can be challenging, especially if only limited material is available. Morphologic predictors of local recurrence of phyllodes tumor include cellularity and cytologic atypia, mitotic activity, positive margins, infiltrative borders, fibroproliferative satellite nodules, and past history of fibroadenoma. Predictors of distant metastasis include size, tumor necrosis, and stromal overgrowth. None of these parameters, however, constitutes a definite marker of malignancy. Presently, molecular and immunohistochemical techniques play a limited role in the diagnosis of fibroepithelial lesions.


1. Mammary tissue of pregnant rabbits is found to contain an agent which inhibits the growth of Bashford Adenocarcinoma 63 in mice but this material is without effect on the Crocker Sarcoma 180. 2. Of the tissues so far studied the mammary gland of rabbits has yielded the most active product. 3. From the results it is probable that pregnancy enhances the production of the agent but this cannot be considered as established beyond doubt. 4. The factor is found, with diminished activity, only in the protein fraction obtained from the aqueous extract by full saturation with ammonium sulfate.


Introduction- Epidemiological studies have shown that air pollution affects lung health in children. Aims- To evaluate the effects of gestational and postnatal exposure to concentrated ambient particles (CAPs) derived from vehicular emissions on pulmonary inflammation and lung function in young mice. Methods- Mice (n=14/group) were continuously exposed to either filtered air (control group) or CAP (600µg/m3/day) from gestational day 5 (intrauterine exposure) to postnatal day 40 using a Harvard Ambient Particle Concentrator. At the end of exposures, mice were submitted to functional evaluation using FlexiVent small animal ventilator (SCIREQ, Montreal, PQ, Canada). Airway resistance, tissue damping and tissue elastance (Htis) were measured using the forced oscillation technique. Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid was collected to obtain differential cell counts. Data were analyzed Student9s T test. Results: There was a significant increase in the Htis (p=0.02) in the exposed group (35.64±14.70cmH2O/mL/s) when compared to the non-exposed group (26.61±5.31cmH2O/mL/s). There were no differences in BAL fluid cellularity (p=0.3). Conclusions- Our findings showed that the combined exposure during prenatal e postnatal life to particulate air pollution affects lung function. We speculate that the observed changes in tissue elastance could be related to abnormal lung development.


abstract Inelastic deformation of the rock near the edges of the thin tabular excavations (stopes) of deep-level mines sometimes occurs violently, resulting in a seismic event. These seismic events are produced in the highly-stressed rock near the edges of the stopes and appear to be the result of shear failure across a plane; these conclusions are based on seismic as well as underground observations. The seismic events occurring near stopes can be described using a model based on the theory of dislocations; they result from two edge dislocations of opposite sign annihilating each other and releasing energy. The instantaneous convergence of the stope that is observed to occur at the time of a large mine tremor is compatible with the observed seismic energy of the tremor, according to analysis based on the dislocation model.


Background : To explore the feasibility, efficacy and safety of ultrasound mediated microbubbles destruction(UMMD) assisted dual delivery of β-amyloid antibody loaded by microbubbles (MB Aβ ) and neural stem cells (NSCs) on Alzheimer's disease(AD). Methods : 27 APP/PS1 double transgenic mice and 33 wild-type mice were used. The dual delivery of β-amyloid antibody and NSCs group (US+MB Aβ +NSCs), single delivery of β-amyloid antibody group (US+MB Aβ ), US+MB group, Control group and Wild group, were involved in the experiment. MB Aβ or MB were injected via the tail vein, followed by NSCs or saline administration and exposed to ultrasound once a week for four times. The survival of NSCs was detected with the in vivo imaging method. Mice in each group were used for behavioral function evaluation and the pathology tests. Brain samples were used to detect β-amyloid deposition, BDNF and synaptophysin expression. Results : BBB was opened by UMMD with an opening time about 10 h. The transplanted NSCs survived in AD brain for no more than 72 h. The learning and spatial memory function was significantly improved in the US+MB Aβ +NSCs group, US+MB Aβ group came second. Immunochemistry results showed amyloid plaques reduction in the US+MB Aβ +NSCs group at the cortex and hippocampus. Higher level of BDNF was demonstrated in the US+MB Aβ +NSCs group than the US+MB Aβ group and the Control group with Western Blot and immunofluorescence examination, but synaptophysin remained no significant changes. Conclusions : UMMD assisted combined delivery of β-amyloid antibody and NSCs to AD mice brain can help to clear the Aβ peptide, increase BDNF level and restore the impaired neural function, which was superior to β-amyloid antibody delivery group. Therefore, the combined targeted delivery assisted by UMMD strategy may be a promising and safe method on treating AD.


The effects of storage temperature and ripening stage on the ripening rate of freshly harvested tomatoes before storage were determined. Respiration was slower in tomatoes harvested at mature green stage of ripening, and the respiration rate increased until the tomatoes reached to the pink and light-red stages of maturity. The maximum CO 2 production occurred in toma-toes harvested at pink, light-red and red stages of maturity, whereas the minimum O 2 consumption occurred in tomatoes harvested at turning, pink and light-red stages of maturity. The highest levels of ethylene were produced by tomatoes harvested at breaking, turning and pink stages of maturity. The tomatoes were stored in normal atmospheric conditions, and the respiration rate was affected by the storage period. With exten-sion of the storage period to 3 weeks, the CO 2 production and O 2 consumption of the tomatoes increased. The ripening stage did not have any effect on CO 2 production with the increasing of storage period in normal atmospheric conditions, but during this peri-od O 2 consumption increased.


In this thesis, several new optical fibre devices are described. These devices are based on fibres with special structures or materials, fabricated by the MCVD technique. Light propagation and intermodal coupling in twin-core (TC) fibres are investigated both theoretically and experimentally. A cascaded TC fibre filter is demonstrated and so are TC fibre intermodal couplers using both mechanical gratings and fibre acoustic flexural waves, which can be used as filters, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) taps and frequency shifters. Photosensitivity in both transition-metal-doped fibre and cerium-doped fibre with applications for making fibre in-core gratings are also studied. UV-induced absorption and refractive index change are investigated. A large absorption change occurs when fibre is exposed to pulsed UV. The fibre IR loss eventually recovers to its original level. The UV-induced refractive index change in cerium fibre is found to be the same order of magnitude as that reported in germanosilicate fibres. Some other devices and effects, including a gold-implanted fibre polariser, excitation poling in second harmonic generation and a spatial model converter, are also studied. The gold-implanted polariser is much easier to be massproduced and spliced to an ordinary fibre with a low loss than its liquid-metal-implanted counterpart. Excitation poling gives an improved efficiency in second harmonic generation. The spatial model converter provides an easy low-loss connection for waveguides with different spatial modes.


The phenotypic trait "starry colony" in Saccharomyces is associated with a high spontaneous rho- petite mutability. Genetic analysis of this trait has shown the high rho- mutability to be caused by several modifying genes present together in the cell genome. Every single modifying gene only produces a relatively small enhancement in the rho- mutability. Mutations in four nuclear srm (spontaneous rho- mutability) loci were isolated after mutagenic treatment of highly rho- mutable haploid cells. In contrast to the modifying genes, each of these mutations has a pronounced effect on the spontaneous rho- mutability, causing significant decrease in it.


Different from the existing voltage source converter (VSC)-based high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system, this article proposes a new voltage source inductive filtering converter (VSIFC)-based HVDC transmission system. It uses the inductive filtering transformer and the related full-tuned branches to replace the commutating reactor and/or transformer and the high-pass damping filters, which makes the VSIFC-HVDC with more obvious characteristics on integrated design and installation. This article concerns on the converter operating characteristics of the VSIFC-HVDC system, which include harmonic suppression in the AC valve winding of the transformer, and the active and the reactive power (P and Q) operating ability of the VSIFC. The equivalent circuit model and the mathematical model of the VSIFC are established. Based on this, the theoretical analysis is performed. Then, within the PSCAD/EMTDC environment, the filtering and the P and Q characteristics of the new VSIFC and the traditional VSC-based HVDC transmission systems are simulated, respectively. By comparison, it validates the theoretical analysis, and shows that the VSIFC-HVDC not only reduces the polluted area of the harmonic, but also has the better transmitted power ability and the wider reactive power control range.


It is well-known that failure of unreinforced, pre-notched concrete beams in bending is mainly governed by the tensile strength ("ductile" behaviour) or by the fracture toughness (brittle behaviour) depending on the geometrical scale (beam size), and the value of the relative notch depth. In particular, relatively large beams made of high-strength concrete and with a small relative notch depth, show a brittle structural behaviour (unstable crack propagation); whereas relatively small beams made of low-strength concrete and with a large relative notch depth, show a relatively ductile structural behaviour (stable crack propagation). In this contribution, the damage progress, due to crack formation and propagation, in unreinforced, pre-notched concrete beam specimens, tested in three-point bending, is analysed by the Acoustic Emission (AE) and Digital Image Correlation (DIC) techniques. Beams with rectangular cross-section were considered. A relative notch depth (a/d) equal to 0.5 is assumed in all cases. The loading process was operated by controlling the vertical displacement. The specimens were instrumented by four transducers measuring the vertical displacements in correspondence to the supports and at mid-span, and the Crack Mouth Opening Displacement (CMOD). In addition, two AE transducers were located near the notch to acquire the AE signals originated by material damage. Moreover, the evolution of the deformation process was monitored around the notch by a DIC system, therefore obtaining the time evolution of strains. By analysing the acquired data, a correlation between the AE signals registered and the displacements/strains measured at several points was looked for. Furthermore, the fracture energy of each specimen was evaluated, according to RILEM recommendation, based on the measured load–deflection curves. Scale effects on fracture energy, bending strength, and AE energy per unit area were investigated.


Hexafluoroisopropanol (HFA) extensively utilized in the design of 157 nm resists provides attractive but complex dissolution characteristics. Poly(norbornene hexafluoroalcohol) (PNBHFA), which is equivalent to polyhydroxystyrene for 248 nm lithography, exhibits linear dissolution kinetics in 0.26 N tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) aqueous solution while weaker developers could induce swelling, resulting in multi-stage dissolution. We have found that the dissolution rate of PNBHFA in 0.26 N TMAH (3,000-8,000 A/sec) is not controlled by polymer molecular weights but affected more significantly by the endo/exo isomer ratio of NBHFA employed in polymerization.PNBHFA with a higher exo concentration dissolves more slowly and exhibits less hydrogen-bonding. The H-bonding interaction is not affected by molecular weight. The HFA OH in the exo isomer interacts more strongly with an acid generator and ester. Dissolution of exo-enriched PNBHFA is more strongly inhibited by addition of an acid generator. Lithographic performance of our PNBHFA blend resist is affected by the endo/exo ratio of NBHFA. Copolymers of two similar TFMAs with NBHFA and vinyl ether bearing norbornane hexafluoroalcohol (VENBHFA) exhibit very different surface segregation when blended with PNBHFA. The hydrophilicity of our TBTFMA copolymer system has been vastly improved by incorporating a polar comonomer carrying two HFA groups, which has decreased the 157 nm absorption to 0.9-1.1/μm. The transparency can be further increased by using such co- and terpolymers as a dissolution inhibitor or contrast booster of the most transparent vendor fluoropolymers.


This paper proposes a novel tag collection algorithm for improving the performance of iterative tag collections in active RFID systems. In the proposed tag collection algorithm, a reader assigns fixed response slot numbers to the tags newly identified via a tag numbering phase, and then collects additional data sequentially from all the tags without tag collisions in the following tag collection phase, in which the tag responds in its own assigned slot. This lowers the cost of empty slots and collided slots during iterative tag collections. The simulation results showed that the proposed tag collection algorithm could achieve higher tag collection performances as the tag mobility was lower, compared with the standard tag collection algorithm and the modified tag collection algorithm that was proposed in a previous study.


This study focuses on the synthesis and characterization of the inclusion complex of β-Cyclodextrin (β-CD) with dicationic ionic liquid, 3,3′-(1,4-Phenylenebis [methylene]) bis(1-methyl-1H-imidazol-3-ium) di(bromide) (PhenmimBr). The inclusion complex was prepared at room temperature utilizing conventional kneading technique. Proton (1H) NMR and 2D (1H–1H) COSY NMR were the primary characterization tools employed to verify the formation of the inclusion complex. COSY spectra showed strong correlations between protons of imidazolium and protons of β-CD which indicates that the imidazolium ring of PhenmimBr has entered the cavity of β-CD. UV absorption indicated that β-CD reacts with PhenmimBr to form a 2:1 β-CD-PhenmimBr complex with an apparent formation constant of 2.61 × 105 mol&−2 L2. Other characterization studies such as UV, FT-IR, XRD, TGA, DSC and SEM studies were also used to further support the formation of the β-CD-PhenmimBr inclusion complex.


Machine learning systems have become popular in fields such as marketing, financing, or data mining. While they are highly accurate, complex machine learning systems pose challenges for engineers and users. Their inherent complexity makes it impossible to easily judge their fairness and the correctness of statistically learned relations between variables and classes. Explainable AI aims to solve this challenge by modelling explanations alongside with the classifiers, potentially improving user trust and acceptance. However, users should not be fooled by persuasive, yet untruthful explanations. We therefore conduct a user study in which we investigate the effects of model accuracy and explanation fidelity, i.e. how truthfully the explanation represents the underlying model, on user trust. Our findings show that accuracy is more important for user trust than explainability. Adding an explanation for a classification result can potentially harm trust, e.g. when adding nonsensical explanations. We also found that users cannot be tricked by high-fidelity explanations into having trust for a bad classifier. Furthermore, we found a mismatch between observed (implicit) and self-reported (explicit) trust.


Abstract This study employed a variety of nonlinear dynamic analysis techniques to explore the complex phenomena associated with a magnetically levitated system involving a suspended ferromagnetic ball. The aim was to develop a method with which to assume control over chaotic behaviour. Rich dynamics were investigated numerically using Poincare maps, phase portraits, time responses and frequency spectra. Our results reveal that the nonlinear characteristics of magnetic forces cause period-doubling bifurcations which can lead to chaotic motion. Analysis based on the largest Lyapunov exponent was also used to identify the onset of chaotic motion. Finally, a continuous feedback control method based on synchronisation characteristics was developed for the suppression of chaotic oscillations. Simulation results support the feasibility of the proposed method. Finally, some robustness analysis of parametric perturbation on a maglev system with synchronisation control is confirmed by Lyapunov stability theory and numerical simulations.


Aim This study aimed to assess the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) and its determinants. Methods A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted on 300 newly diagnosed patients with CRC in China's Heilongjiang province, measuring HRQoL using the EuroQol five-dimension five-level (EQ-5D-5L). Kruskal-Wallis analyses were performed to identify the independent variables associated with the EQ-5D-5L utility scores. Predictors of the utility scores were confirmed using a Tobit regression model. Results The respondents had a mean EQ-5D-5L utility score of 0.617 (SD=0.371) and a median of 0.740 (range: −0.348 to 1.000). Pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression were major concerns of the respondents, with a prevalence of over 60% (all levels inclusive). The Kruskal-Wallis analyses found lower utility scores in those who were not married, worked as a farmer, enrolled with the new rural cooperative medical scheme and had lower household income (p<0.05). Those who were at a later stage of CRC, underwent surgical only therapy and had a stoma also had lower EQ-5D-5L scores than others (p<0.05). The Tobit regression model confirmed these predictors, except for occupation and marital status. Conclusion Patients with CRC have poor HRQoL, with pain/discomfort and depression/anxiety as the most frequently reported problems. The poor HRQoL is associated with the seriousness of the disease condition, as well as the low socioeconomic status of the patients.


This article contains a review of modal stability theory. It covers local stability analysis of parallel flows including temporal stability, spatial stability, phase velocity, group velocity, spatio-temporal stability, the linearized Navier-Stokes equations, the Orr-Sommerfeld equation, the Rayleigh equation, the Briggs-Bers criterion, Poiseuille flow, free shear flows, and secondary modal instability. It also covers the parabolized stability equation (PSE), temporal and spatial biglobal theory, 2D eigenvalue problems, 3D eigenvalue problems, spectral collocation methods, and other numerical solution methods. Computer codes are provided for tutorials described in the article. These tutorials cover the main topics of the article and can be adapted to form the basis of research codes. Copyright © 2014 by ASME.


Many short‐lived species complete their life cycles during brief seasonal windows of favourable environmental conditions. Such species may persist in the face of climate warming by migration to track their seasonal climate niche in space and/or by phenological shifts to track favourable conditions in time within the year. To describe the seasonal climate niche of the short‐lived annual Mollugo verticillata in California, we used data from herbarium specimens and historic climate records to estimate environmental conditions at the location, month and year of each collection. We used these data in a MaxEnt framework to construct a seasonal species distribution model (SDM) of the species' climate niche within the total climate space available across all seasons and locations in California. The model provides fine‐scale spatial and temporal predictions of habitat suitability, predicting both where and when the species should be observed. We compared the predictions of the model to those from a conventional SDM based on mean annual climate data. Both models showed that M. verticillata is limited to warm environments within California. However, the seasonal SDM also predicted phenology by mapping climate suitability across the state for each month of the year. Mollugo verticillata is limited to warm months, and its seasonal climate niche shifts in space across California in the course of the year. We used the seasonal SDM to map the predicted future species distribution for each month of the year under three warming scenarios. The species is predicted to expand its range and occur earlier in the year in most locations; in the warmest locations, seasonal suitability is predicted to decline in the warmest months, which may result in bimodal phenology with a mid‐summer gap. Synthesis. We developed a novel species distribution model using herbarium records and monthly weather data, which predicts not only where a short‐lived species should be found but also when during the year it is predicted to occur in those areas. This model can be used to predict how climate change will affect the species distribution in space as well as seasonal phenology across the landscape.


Double taxation agreements pose a particular analytical problem. While they provide a coherent structure that encourages cross-border investment, the agreements also provide opportunities for taxpayers to avoid their domestic tax obligations. To prevent tax avoidance, some countries enact domestic general anti-avoidance rules to protect their domestic interests. These rules raise questions as to what the relationship between the domestic law and the double tax agreement is. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Committee on Fiscal Affairs provides Commentary on the Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development Model Double Tax Agreement. This Commentary sets out an analytical framework from which this relationship is to be evaluated. This paper argues that the framework is of little practical significance. The paper concludes that the weight and usefulness of the Commentary lies in a guiding principle set out in the Commentary. Consequently, the wider interpretative approaches do not practically add to the analysis and should be given little weight.


The role of human resources as a change agent in the organizational change process holds great importance. Hence, it is crucial to identify ways human resources can support change. This paper investigates the direct and indirect relationships between human resource management (HRM) practices and organizational performance, as well as the mediating role of the organizational change process in these relationships. The proposed model integrates primary HRM practices, organizational change components, organizational performance, employee retention, and organizational abandonment. We collected data to evaluate the relationships between the model variables through a survey questionnaire applied to 441 Romanian employees in the healthcare industry. The paper used structural equation modeling to test the model's validity and hypotheses. The results show that HRM practices directly impact organizational performance and have a mediated impact through the organizational change process. Additionally, the direct and mediating effects are consistent, and healthcare employers consider appropriate HRM practices and effective management of the organizational change process as essential drivers to achieve superior performance. The empirical findings provide valuable insights for government policymakers, stakeholders, and health managers on how suitable HRM practices can influence organizational performance.


Transformers have recently emerged as a powerful tool for learning visual representations. In this paper, we identify and characterize artifacts in feature maps of both supervised and self-supervised ViT networks. The artifacts correspond to high-norm tokens appearing during inference primarily in low-informative background areas of images, that are repurposed for internal computations. We propose a simple yet effective solution based on providing additional tokens to the input sequence of the Vision Transformer to fill that role. We show that this solution fixes that problem entirely for both supervised and self-supervised models, sets a new state of the art for self-supervised visual models on dense visual prediction tasks, enables object discovery methods with larger models, and most importantly leads to smoother feature maps and attention maps for downstream visual processing.


The purpose of this thesis is to develop a generic and operative road map for implementing radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and describe how this road map should be applied at Nowaste Logistics. Furthermore, the purpose is to carry out the RFID implementation at Nowaste Logistics according to the developed road map until a system design is selected and a system integrator is chosen. A plan for a pilot will also be set up.

The generic road map is developed following an innovative renewal process. This is done by studying literature concerning RFID implementation models and guidelines and analyse these to develop an operative road map for the RFID implementation process. The road map is then applied at Nowaste Logistics to determine which system design and system integrator should be chosen for their RFID implementation.

The thesis uses existing research to develop a generic road map. The thesis also provides insights into how the generic road map should be applied during an RFID implementation at a third party logistics provider.

The road map is developed prior to the RFID implementation, but refined during the implementation process. This has to be considered if the road map is applied within other industries, even though the road map is designed to be generic.

The practical implication from this thesis is a generic road map which is applied at Nowaste Logistics to guide them in their RFID implementation process. Furthermore, the execution of this road map results in a system design, a system integrator choice and a pilot design.

The value of this thesis is a generic road map, which describes the RFID implementation process and is practically illustrated by an implementation at a third party logistics provider in the retail industry.


One hundred patients undergoing scheduled upper limb orthopaedic surgery were studied to determine if the speed of injection of the local anaesthetic solution could modify the extent and depth of anaesthesia with the axillary approach to the brachial plexus. The blocks were performed using the 'orthogonal two-needle technique' in which two needles are positioned on the upper and on the lower aspect of the axillary artery, orthogonal to the neurovascular bundle and directed towards the fascial compartment containing the radial nerve. The patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups to receive one of three injection rates (10, 20 and 30 s) (n = 30). In consequence to the results obtained in these patients, a further group of 10 patients was a posteriori added for whom the injection time for each single shot of anaesthetic solution was increased to 1 min. In each group the same mixture and volume of anaesthetic solution (a 30 mL mixture of equal parts of 0.5% bupivacaine with adrenaline 1:200,000 and 2% lignocaine) was injected in two separate boluses of 15 mL each through the two positioned needles. A significant association was found between the injection rate and the anaesthetic spread for all tested areas with the exception of the regions supplied by the median nerve. A greater speed of injection was associated with less anaesthetic spread and more frequent block failure. A clear association between the anaesthetic spread to all branches of the brachial plexus and a slower injection rate of the local anaesthetic was found.


We have developed a voltage control scheme to reduce control time using a delay monitor and step-by-step supply-voltage control. With this scheme, voltage control steps are adaptively controlled, and there are temporary overshoots in the reference voltage. Experimental results with a 65-nm CMOS device indicate that the adaptive voltage control steps successfully reduce the voltage control time by about 35 % over that with fixed step. Simulation results indicate that temporary reference voltage overshoots reduce control time by more than 50%. The combination of these schemes is also effective for control time reduction.


A 20-year-old male, presented with cough, haemoptysis, breathlessness and wheezing for the past one month. Contrast enhanced computerised tomographic (CECT), scan of chest and fibreoptic bronchoscopy revealed an endotracheal mass that on histopathological examination showed adenoid cystic carcinoma of trachea. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of chest confirmed involvement of adjacent prevertebral, para-oesophageal and subcarinal lymph nodes rendering the tumour inoperable.


Background
To investigate the effect of Candida albicans airway colonization on hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia (HABP) in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Methods
SLE patients with HAP were enrolled in this retrospective cohort study from January 2015 to December 2018. According to the culture results of respiratory tract secretions and antifungal treatment, patients were divided into non-C. albicans colonization group (NCG), C. albicans colonization with antifungal treatment group (CTG) and C. albicans colonization without antifungal treatment group (CNTG). Twenty-eight days of all-cause mortality after the onset of HABP of each group was assessed, total duration of antibiotic treatment, changes of inflammatory cytokines and markers of immune status were documented.

Results
A total of 269 SLE patients with HABP were finally included in the study. Among them, 69.1% (186/269) were found C. albicans airway colonization, and 36.1% (97/269) received antifungal treatment. No difference of 28 days of all-cause mortality after HABP onset was found among the three groups (10.8% vs. 13.4% vs. 15.7%, P>0.05). Duration of antibiotic treatment of HABP due to Acinetobacter baumannii was shorter in CTG (11.21±2.45 days) than that in CNTG (12.89±3.87 days) as well as HABP due to Pseudomonas aeruginosa (10.57±2.66 vs. 12.56±3.04 days) (P<0.05, respectively). Antifungal treatment could decrease the level of interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α and interferon-γ in CTG than in CNTG (P<0.05, respectively). In addition, it could regulate immune function by decrease the concentration of interleukin-17 and elevate the counts of CD4+Th lymphocyte as well (P<0.05, respectively).

Conclusions
C. albicans airway colonization was not associated with HABP mortality in SLE patients. Antifungal therapy in these patients might shorten the duration of antibiotics in treating HABP due to A. baumannii and P. aeruginosa.


Unmanned aerial vehicle is one of the main announced use cases of 5G/IMT2020, which is expected to have various applications in many fields. These devices have limited capabilities in terms of energy and processing. Due to the complex structure of unmanned aerial vehicle networks and the high mobility constraints, design of efficient routing protocol, for supporting such network, is a challenge. Thus, efficient routing of data among unmanned aerial vehicles between source and destination is an important issue in designing unmanned aerial vehicle networks. Proactive routing protocols are one of the main categories of routing protocols developed for mobile ad hoc networks and vehicular ad hoc networks. Optimized link state routing protocol is one of the most common proactive routing protocols that has been modified to support unmanned aerial vehicle networks, considering high mobility feature of the network. In this work, we propose a latency and energy-efficient proactive routing protocol for dense unmanned aerial vehicle networks, with high-density devices, based on optimized link state routing protocol algorithm, referred to as multi-objective optimized link state routing protocol. The proposed routing protocol is topology aware and can be used for low-latency and high-mobility applications. The proposed multi-objective optimized link state routing protocol routing algorithm considers all modified versions of optimized link state routing protocol and introduces a novel method for selecting multipoint relay nodes that considers the traffic load on the communication channel and the load on each unmanned aerial vehicle node. Moreover, the proposed algorithm considers the communication link stability and the energy constraints. The system is simulated over a reliable environment for various scenarios, and it is compared to the original optimized link state routing protocol and its modified versions. Simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol achieves higher efficiency in terms of latency, energy, and reliability.


An efficient process was developed for the low-cost production of phytases using Hansenula polymorpha. Glucose or glucose syrups, previously reported as repressive substrates, were used as main carbon sources during fermentation. Glucose was even the most productive substrate for high-level production of phytases. Compared with the process using glycerol, the standard carbon source used for this process until now, the use of glucose led to a reduction of more than 80% in the raw materials costs. In addition, exceptionally high concentrations of active enzyme (up to 13.5 g/L) were obtained in the medium, with phytase representing over 97% of the total accumulated protein. These levels greatly exceed those reported so far for any yeast-based expression system. Very efficient downstream processing procedures were developed with product recovery yields over 90%. Both the fermentation and downstream processing were successfully tested in pilot scale up to 2000 L. As a result, H. polymorpha can be used as a highly competitive system for low-cost phytase production.


Bacteroides oris and B. buccae, two new species isolated from periodontal pockets and the superficially cleaned tooth surface coronal to the gingival margin, from various types of human infections, and from chicken intestinal contents are described. They were obligately anaerobic, gram-negative, nonpigmenting, nonmotile, non-spore-forming rods that did not grow well in 10% bile and that fermented carbohydrates. Although we had previously identified many of these strains as members of B. ruminicola subsp. brevis biovar (biotype) 3 (Holdeman et al. [ed.], Anaerobe Laboratory Manual, 4th ed., 1977), in the present study, we found that the strains had no deoxyribonucleic acid homology with the type strains of B. ruminicola subsp. ruminicola or B. ruminicola subsp. brevis. The strains also had no deoxyribonucleic acid homology with the type strain of B. oralis. ATCC 27518, which we deposited as representative of human isolates of B. ruminicola subsp. brevis biovar 3, is now identified as a strain of B. oris. The type strains of B. oris and B. buccae are B. oris ATCC 33573 and B. buccae ATCC 33574, respectively.


Conditions for existence and global attractivity of the equilibria of a realistic model of a synchronous generator with constant field current connected to an infinite bus are derived. First, necessary and sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of equilibrium points are provided. Then, sufficient conditions for local asymptotic stability and almost global attractivity of one of these equilibria are given. The analysis is carried out by employing a new Lyapunov-like function to establish convergence of bounded trajectories, while the latter is proven using the powerful theoretical framework of cell structures pioneered by Leonov and Noldus. The efficiency of the derived sufficient conditions is illustrated via extensive numerical experiments based on two benchmark examples taken from the literature.


One of the goals of requirements engineering is to capture and document innovation in the form of new product requirements. These product requirements need to express new system functions or new qualities that are most desired by customers while maintaining customer familiarity with existing products. This paper explores the contradiction between the customer desire for revolutionary advancement and their desire to maintain familiarity with existing systems. This customer inertia creates a bias toward incremental (evolutionary) advancement, potentially multiplying the risks associated with revolutionary innovations. We present a review of scenarios illustrating this stakeholder bias and propose a research agenda for further work in the area.


The method of anticodon loop replacement has been used to make derivatives of yeast tRNA(Phe)GmAAY with the substitution at the 37 position (tRNA(Phe)GAAA), and at both the anticodon (tRNA(Phe)GCAG) and the 37 position. A quantitative study of the interaction of various types of yeast deacylated tRNA: tRNA(Phe)GmAAY, tRNA(Phe)GAAA, tRNA(Phe)GCAG, and tRNA(Phe)-Y with the P site of the 70S ribosome.poly(U) complex was carried out at different Mg2+ concentrations and temperatures. The replacement of the Y base on the nonmodified adenosine decreases the interaction enthalpy from 39 to 24 kcal/mole, whereas the complete removal of the Y base reduces the interaction enthalpy to 16 kcal/mole. The replacement of the second letter of the anticodon (A) with cytosine leads to a drop in the enthalpy to 6 kcal/mole, which is typical of tRNA interaction with the P site in the absence of poly(U). In the absence of poly(U) the affinity of tRNA(Phe)-Y for the P site of the 70S ribosome is 5 times lower than the affinity of tRNA(Phe)GmAAY and tRNA(Phe)GCAG. Thus, in the ribosome the modified nucleotide not only stabilizes the codon-anticodon interaction owing to the stacking interaction with the stack of codon-anticodon bases, but also lowers the free energy of binding as a result of the interaction of the modified nucleotide itself with the hydrophobic center of the P site on the ribosome.


According to The American Cancer Society, In the US. they estimated that there will be 160,390 deaths from lung cancer and that 213,380 new cases will be diagnosed in 2007. The accurate diagnosis of the lung nodule in case of determine either malignant or benign requires a lot of resources to read the ever increasing volume of detecting nodules on high resolution computed tomography (HRCT). So, the motivation for developing and enhancing the performance and accuracy of computer-aided-diagnosis systems (CADx) for HRCT has been the focus of many research groups to alleviate this burden. In this work, we report the results of a new CADx system that provides enhanced detecting performance. We utilize an optimized set of texture features using feature selection and apply the new system using Datasets provided by National Cancer Institute (NCI)'s and The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA). The results compared well to previous work with classification accuracy performance of 89.4% and 86% sensitivity and 93% specificity. The implementation details and analysis of the proposed system are described in this paper. The results of the new system will contribute a significant impact on the accuracy of such systems and hence the enhancement of detecting process outcome.


Zero-valent iron (ZVI)- and zero-valent aluminium (ZVA)-activated persulfate (PS) oxidation procedure was applied to remove the industrial pollutants 3,5-dichlorophenol (3,5-DCP; 12.27 µM) and 2,4-dichloroaniline (2,4-DCA; 12.34 µM) from aqueous solutions. The effects of PS concentration and pH were investigated to optimize heterogeneous treatment systems. Negligible removals were obtained for both pollutants by individual applications of nanoparticles (1 g/L) and PS (1.00 mM). PS activation with ZVI resulted in 59% (1.00 mM PS; 1 g/L ZVI; pH 5.0; 120 min) and 100% (0.75 mM PS; 1 g/L ZVI; pH 5.0; 80 min) 3,5-DCP and 2,4-DCA removals, respectively. The ZVA/PS treatment system gave rise to only 31% 3,5-DCP (1.00 mM PS; 1 g/L ZVA; pH 3.0; 120 min) and 47% 2,4-DCA (0.25 mM PS; 1 g/L ZVA; pH 3.0; 120 min) removals. The pH decreases from 5.0 to 3.0 and from 3.0 to 1.5 enhanced contaminant removals for ZVI/PS and ZVA/PS treatments, respectively. Pollutant removal rates were in correlation with the consumption rates of the oxidants. Metal ion (Al, Fe) release increased in the presence of PS and with decreasing pH.


Background: Korean milk consumption and low-fat milk sales are steadily increasing. The purpose of this study was to examine the association of metabolic syndrome according to the type of milk. Methods: The subjects included 5,553 persons who aged 19 to 64 years, from the data of the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) 2013-2015. All subjects were divided by intake of type of milk that are 'whole milk intake group', 'low-fat milk intake group' and 'no milk intake group'. And the subects were classified as 19-39 years old and 40-64 years old. In order to check differences of demo-sociographic characteristics and metabolic risk factors in three groups, the data was analyzed by chi-square test, t-test and binary logistic regression analysis. Results: For subjects aged 40-64, whole milk intake group had lower relevance with metabolic syndrome than no milk intake group (odds ratio [OR] 0.807, P=0.035, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.660-0.985). But low fat milk intake group was't relevant (OR 0.879, P=0.350, 95% CI 0.670-1.152). Looking at the 19-39 year-old subjects, whole milk and low fat milk intake group were not associated with metaboic syndrome (OR 1.023, P=0.911, 95% CI 0.686-1.525; OR 1.547, P=0.103, 95% CI 0.915-2.617). Conclusions: The results of this study show that whole milk intake is less relevant to the metabolic syndrome than no milk intake. Low fat milk intake was not relevant. More researches are needed to determine the effects of low fat milk and whole milk on metabolic syndrome. Korean J Health Promot 2017;17(4):234-241


Tumor cells have long been observed to share several biological characteristics with normal stem/progenitor cells; however, the oncogenic mechanisms underlying the stemness features remain elusive. Here we report the involvement of BCL2L1 in SOX2-mediated cell survival and chemoresistance in lung cancer. SOX2 was associated with poor prognosis in lung cancer patients and was expressed in a subclass of lung cancer cells the survival and chemoresistance of which were dependent on SOX2 stem cell signaling. SOX2 promoted chemoresistance, and silencing of SOX2 perturbed mitochondrial function, causing marked apoptosis and autophagy. Moreover, SOX2 knockdown attenuated tumor growth in a xenograft mouse model. SOX2 induced BCL2L1 expression, the ectopic expression of which rescued the effects of SOX2 silencing on apoptosis, autophagy, and mitochondrial function. SOX2 and BCL2L1 expression levels were significantly correlated in human lung tumors, supporting the involvement of BCL2L1 in SOX2-mediated oncogenesis. Our findings reveal for the first time that SOX2-BCL2L1 signaling maintains mitochondrial integrity and enhances cell survival, leading to increased chemoresistance in lung cancer cells. Citation Format: Yu-Ting Chou, Chih-Chan Lee, Shih-Hsin Hsiao, Sey-En Lin, Sheng-Chieh Lin, Yuan-Hung Wang, Cheng-Wen Wu. SOX2-mediated cell survival and chemoresistance in lung cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5253. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-5253


Proinflammatory cytokines play a key role in the pathophysiology of muscle atrophy. In addition, n3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) exert an inhibitory effect on proinflammatory cytokines affecting many inflammatory diseases. We hypothesized that dietary supplementation of fish oil could attenuate lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced muscle atrophy. Weanling pigs were used in a 2 × 2 factorial design and the main factors included diet (5% corn oil or 5% fish oil) and immunological challenge (LPS or saline). After 21 d of treatment with either fish oil or corn oil, pigs received an i.p. injection of either saline or LPS. At 4 h postinjection, blood and muscle samples were obtained. Fish oil led to enrichment of eicosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, and total n3 PUFAs in muscles. Fish oil increased muscle protein mass, indicated by a higher protein:DNA ratio in gastrocnemius and longissimus dorsi (LD) muscles. In addition, fish oil increased Akt1 mRNA abundance and decreased Forkhead Box O (FOXO) 1 and FOXO4 mRNA abundance. Fish oil also increased phosphorylation of Akt and FOXO1 in gastrocnemius and LD muscles. Fish oil decreased the mRNA abundance of muscle atrophy F-box (MAFbx) and muscle RING finger 1 in gastrocnemius and LD muscles. Moreover, fish oil reduced the plasma tumor necrosis factor (TNF) α, muscle TNFα, and prostaglandin E2 concentrations, and muscle TNFα and cyclooxygenase 2 (COX2) mRNA abundance. Finally, fish oil downregulated the mRNA abundance of muscle toll-like receptor (TLR4) and its downstream signaling molecules [myeloid differentiation factor 88 (MyD88), TNFα receptor-associated factor 6 (TRAF6), and NF-κB p65], and nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain protein (NOD1), NOD2, and their adaptor molecule [receptor-interacting serine/threonine-protein kinase 2 (RIPK2)]. These results indicate fish oil may suppress muscle proinflammatory cytokine production via regulation of TLR and NOD signaling pathways and therefore improve muscle protein mass, possibly through maintenance of Akt/FOXO signaling.


Astronomy is undergoing a methodological revolution triggered by an unprecedented wealth of complex and accurate data. The new panchromatic, synoptic sky surveys require advanced tools for discovering patterns and trends hidden behind data which are both complex and of high dimensionality. We present DAMEWARE (DAta Mining & Exploration Web Application REsource): a general purpose, web-based, distributed data mining environment developed for the exploration of large data sets, and finely tuned for astronomical applications. By means of graphical user interfaces, it allows the user to perform classification, regression, or clustering tasks with machine learning methods. Salient features of DAMEWARE include its ability to work on large datasets with minimal human intervention, and to deal with a wide variety of real problems such as the classification of globular clusters in the galaxy NGC1399; the evaluation of photometric redshifts; and, finally, the identification of candidate Active Galactic Nuclei in multiband photometric surveys. In all these applications, DAMEWARE allowed us to achieve better results than those attained with more traditional methods. With the aim of providing potential users with all needed information, in this paper we briefly describe the technological background of DAMEWARE, give a short introduction to some relevant aspects of data mining, followed by a summary of some science cases and, finally, provide a detailed description of a template use case.


Background: Biomechanical studies on retrograde intramedullary fixation for tibiotalocalcaneal fusion have been reported, but no studies have investigated dorsiflexion stiffness, load-to-failure, fatigue endurance, and plastic deformation using different distal screw orientations. Also, no studies have examined the effect of bone density on different distal screw orientations while using a fatigue loading mode. Methods: Eight matched pairs of cadaver legs were used. In one leg from each pair an intramedullary nail was inserted with lateral-to-medial distal screws and in the other with posterior-to-anterior screws. These samples underwent dorsiflexion fatigue testing with determination of initial and final stiffness, load-to-failure, and degree of plastic deformation at failure. DEXA scanning was done of each cadaver specimen to determine bone mineral density. Statistical analysis was performed using the Student t-test and a Pearson correlation. Significance level was set at p < 0.05. Results: The specimens with posterior-to-anterior screws had a significantly higher fatigue endurance load-to-failure (1130.0 ± 362.0 N compared to 801.0 ± 227 N, p = 0.01). They also had significantly higher final stiffness (203.1 ± 23.1 N/mm compared to 146.6 ± 46.2 N/mm, p = 0.05) and lower plastic deformation (2.4 ± 1.5 mm compared to 3.8 ± 2.3 mm, p = 0.04). There was a statistically significant correlation between bone mineral density and the difference in construct deformation with posterior-to-anterior and lateral-to-medial screw orientation (r = 0.76, p = 0.03). Conclusions: In this biomechanical investigation of tibiotalocalcaneal arthrodesis with intramedullary nail fixation, posterior-to-anterior distal screw orientation provided more stable fixation than lateral-to-medial screw orientation.


An analysis of plasma initiation by neutral beams in the presence of a confining vacuum magnetic field is presented. Plasma startup by NBI alone was demonstrated in LHD in 1999, and since then this has become an indispensable technique for producing plasmas over a wide range of magnetic field strengths. The method is simple: injecting high power neutral beams into a thin gas target, waiting for a few hundred milliseconds until a thin `seed' plasma appears and then adding a gas puff or injecting a pellet to build up the main plasma. The mechanism of the process is considered to be as follows. A small number of fast ions created by collisions with background neutrals are confined in the magnetic field. They ionize the background neutrals and heat the thin seed plasma produced earlier. Numerical calculations based on this physical model can reproduce well the observed time evolution and input power dependence of the plasma buildup. The essential point is that its electron temperature should be high enough to ionize the neutrals added by gas puffing or pellet injection. Because the main energy loss process from this partially ionized plasma is by charge exchange of ions, the ionization degree should become high enough that the electron temperature increases. Therefore, the initial target gas density is important for building up plasma within a limited time.


: We report a case of gastric sarcoidosis in a 36-year old woman. The clinical and endoscopic ultrasonography findings initially suggested linitis plastica. Subsequently the discovery of unexpected gastric and then, bronchial granulomas after bronchoscopy and bilateral ocular fixation on gallium scanning, led to the diagnosis of sarcoidosis. Endoscopic ultrasonography showed abnormal hypertrophy of the third hyperechoic layer. These findings usually suggest among the etiologies of giant gastric folds, malignant diseases and particularly linitis plastica.


Search methods are useful in hierarchical task network (HTN) planning to make performance less dependent on the domain knowledge provided, and to minimize plan costs. Here we investigate Monte-Carlo tree search (MCTS) as a new algorithmic alternative in HTN planning. We implement combinations of MCTS with heuristic search in PANDA. We furthermore investigate MCTS in JSHOP, to address lifted (non-grounded) planning, leveraging the fact that, in contrast to other search methods, MCTS does not require a grounded task representation. Our new methods yield coverage performance on par with the state of the art, but in addition can effectively minimize plan cost over time.


The pulmonary form of acute miliary tuberculosis is admittedly the most rapidly fatal of all types of phthisical lesions. Its diagnosis does not as a rule present many difficulties because the marked prostration, cyanosis and dyspnea, which are apparently out of all proportion to the scant signs in the chest, constitute a veritable diagnostic triad. The roentgen-ray findings in such cases may at first be inconclusive; but, before long, the appearance of the characteristic diffuse dissemination of the miliary tubercles dispels any doubt as to the true nature of the process. A form of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis is not infrequently observed in which the miliary tubercles appearing in large numbers is an important element in the lesion. These may be confined to the upper lobes, but are most commonly found in the lower lobes. It is only rarely that one finds a chronic case in which the miliary tubercles are


This paper addresses the issue of wireless bandwidth partitioning of a Mobile WiMAX cell. The authors consider a Complete Partitioning strategy, where the wireless bandwidth capacity of a cell is divided into trunks. Each partition is strictly reserved to a particular type of connection. Four IEEE 802.16e 2005 service classes are distinguished: UGS, rtPS, nrtPS, and ErtPS. The authors consider mobility and differentiate new call request from handoffs. In addition, the authors take into consideration the Adaptive Modulation and Coding AMC scheme, through the partition of the cell into different areas associated to a particular modulation and coding scheme. The purpose of the paper is to determine, using an analytical model and a heuristic approach, the nearly optimal sizes of the partition sizes dedicated to each type of connection, which is characterized by its service class, type of request and modulation, and coding scheme.


Penile erection is a part of the human male sexual response, involving desire, excitation (erection), orgasm (ejaculation), and resolution, and autonomic nerves are involved in all phases. Autonomic innervation of smooth-muscle cells of the erectile tissue is provided by the cavernous nerve. Motor and sensory innervation is derived from the pudendal nerves and their terminal branches, that is, the dorsal nerves of the penis, which carry impulses from receptors harbored in the penile skin, prepuce, and glans. Erection begins with an increased flow in the pudendal arteries and dilatation of the cavernous arteries and helicine arterioles in association with relaxation of the smooth muscles of the trabecular network, causing engorgement of blood in the corpora. This leads to compression of subtunical venules by the resistant tunica albuginea and erection. During detumescence these events are reversed.


A 5-week-old baby with coagulopathy due to hepatic mitochondrial disorder developed a bladder haematoma secondary to suprapubic urine aspiration. Unlike previously reported cases, the haematoma manifested itself only as concentric thickening of the bladder wall without an intraluminal component. The ultrasound and CT features are described. Recognition of these findings is important when discussing the differential diagnosis of bladder wall thickening.


This paper deals with a three-phase line-interactive uninterruptible power supply system with active series-parallel power-line conditioning capability, which has sinusoidal output voltage regulation capability and unity power factor. In this system, two active power filter topologies are applied. The first one is a series active power filter which can compensate supply voltage harmonics and voltage unbalances as well. The other is a parallel active power filter which has the following main goals: reactive power compensation; load current harmonics suppression; and battery bank charging during normal power supply conditions. During input power failure, the parallel filter maintains uninterruptible power for critical loads, delivering power from the battery bank without power interruption, ensuring sinusoidal output voltages with constant RMS voltage value and low total harmonic distortion (THD). Therefore the proposed line-interactive UPS has low THD sinusoidal input currents with unity power factor. The control algorithm and mathematical models of the proposed three-phase line-interactive UPS system are described, and digital simulations are presented to verify the good dynamic responses of the versatile scheme.


Aim: to study the diagnostic value of CD4 marker and procalcitonin (PCT) at patients with sCAP in connection with the respiratory pathogen.

Materials and methods: we studied 32 patients (pts) with sCAP and identified respiratory pathogen: physical examination, identification of agent, HIV-test, CD4 counting, the study of PCT level on 1st day before antibiotic therapy.

Results: depending on the etiology of sCAP patients were retrospectively divided into 2 groups: group 1 - 24 HIV-negative pts, who were divided into 2 subgroups: 1A - 15 pts with Gr+bacteria, 1B - 9 patients with Gr-bacteria, group 2 - 8 HIV-positive pts with Pneumocystis pneumonia.

View this table:

Levels of CD4 and PCT in groups and subgroups

Pts of group 1 had strong inverse correlation between CD4 and PCT (r =-0,73, p < 0,05) in contrast with group 2.

Conclusions: 1)decreasing of CD4 at HIV-negative patients less than 500 ml-1 significantly increases the risk of sCAP causing Gr- agents, which, in turn, is accompanied with severe systemic inflammatory response; 2) for Pneumocystis pneumonia at HIV-positive patients do not observe correlation between CD4 and system response.