Tick‐borne encephalitis (TBE) virus is one of the most important flaviviruses associated with neurological disease in Europe. Cross‐reactive antibodies elicited by different flaviviruses can make difficult the interpretation of ELISA and hemagglutination‐inhibition (HI) tests for the diagnosis of TBE. Neutralization tests, which are more specific, are not in common use because they are difficult to perform and standardize. A plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT), optimized previously in vaccinated children, was evaluated in sera from acute cases of TBE, collected for diagnostic purposes, and from healthy human population and wild ruminants, collected for serosurvey purposes. The PRNT results were compared with the results of ELISA and HI tests. In acute TBE disease, most sera were positive for IgM antibodies by ELISA and with high HI antibody titers; neutralizing antibodies were detected in 71.4% of patients, at a very low titer (1:10 NT50) in almost all cases. Seroprevalences of 8% and 6.5% for anti‐TBE ELISA antibodies were found in healthy subjects and wild ruminants, respectively. Among anti‐TBE positive healthy subjects, a very low 1:10 NT50 titer was detected in 17.4% of cases, while NT80 titers ranging from 1:10 to 1:80 were detected in 65.2% of cases. Among wild ruminants, 90.9% of ELISA and HI positive samples showed a positive, ≥1:10 NT80 titer. In conclusion, neutralization assays can be useful for the diagnosis and serosurveys of TBE. J. Med. Virol. 81:665–671, 2009 © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Background: Neutrophil-lymphocyte count ratio (NLCR) has been reported as better indicator of bacteremia than procalcitonin (PCT), and better predictor of mortality than C-reactive protein (CRP) in various medical conditions. However, large controversy remains upon this topic. We compared the efficiency of NLCR with conventional inflammatory markers in predicting the prognosis of critical illness. Methods: We performed a multiple-centered retrospective cohort study consisting of 536 ICU patients with outcomes of survival, 28- and 7-day mortality. NLCR was compared with conventional inflammatory markers such as PCT, C-reactive protein (CRP), serum lactate (LAC), white blood cell, neutrophil and severity score APACHE II (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II) to evaluate the predictive value on outcomes of critical illness. Then receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves were constructed to assess and compare each marker's sensitivity and specificity respectively. Results: NLCR values were not differential among survival and mortality groups. Meanwhile remarkable differences were observed upon APACHE II score, CRP, PCT and LAC levels among survival and death groups. ROC analysis revealed that NLCR was not competent to predict prognosis of critical illness. The AUROCs of conventional markers such as CRP, PCT, LAC and APACHE II score were more significant in predicting 28- and 7-day mortality. Conclusions: NLCR is not competent and less reliable than conventional markers CRP, PCT, LAC and APACHE II score in assessing severity and in predicting outcomes of critical illness.


This study aims to determine the level of customer satisfaction to service quality of the Regional Water Company Malang. The research method used in this research is quantitative descriptive with a population of Malang PDAM customers. The sample in this study of 180 respondens taken with the probability sample. Data taken with questionnaires and interviews and using descriptive percentages. The results showed overall customer satisfaction level would include poor service quality that is equal to 62.25%, which means that customers feel less satisfied with the service taps. Elements of customer satisfaction that are less good at, there are 9 categories of Serviceability, delivery systems, service procedures, disciplinary care workers, service personnel responsibilities, personnel service capabilities, service cost reasonableness, cost certainty, and certainty of service schedules. While there are 8 elements of both categories of product quality, service requirements, clarity of frontline employees, speed of service, justice get service, politeness and friendliness of staff, comfortable environment, and environmental security. Because customer satisfaction is a comparison between expectations and actual performance it is recommended to the taps to increase the service element that has not met customer expectations or the category of poor service and conduct regular research to determine customer satisfaction on the quality of services provided and research results need to be evaluated and followed up.


The effect of the co-inoculation of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and Azospirillum on micro-propagated banana seedlings development during their adaptation phase was determined. At the time of transplanting, banana seedlings were inoculated with an indigenous mycorrhizal inoculum containing 10 spores/g at four doses: 0, 50, 100 and 200 g. Seventy days after fungal inoculation, 20 ml of Azospirillum in four concentrations (0, 106, 107 and 108 CFU/ml) were applied. Finally, after 98 days from the start of the experiment a second dose (40 ml) of Azospirillum in the concentrations mentioned above was inoculated. Plants were harvested 5 months after transplanting and the growth and nutritional parameters were evaluated. The analysis of the data showed that banana plants co-inoculated with 200 g of AMF and 1.5E8 CFU/ml of Azospirillum presented greater development, an increase of 7 times in height, 4 times in perimeter, 16 times in leaf area, 12 times in aerial biomass, and 8 times in root biomass en relacion a las plantas control. The results achieved were due to synergism between fungus-bacteria when inoculated at higher doses, with lower doses stimulating growth is minimal. The co-inoculation in high doses demonstrates adequate support and cooperative effect between HMA and Azospirillum crops. In addition, co-inoculation promotes optimal nutritional status because microorganisms allowed plants achieve greater absorption of phosphorus and nitrogen relative to those treated with single inoculation and the control.sphorus and nitrogen relative to those treated with single inoculation and the control.


Strategy, investment, behaviour and results The drives to make effective business decisions are essentially generated by the need for human (as opposed to professional or expert) comfort, and therefore informed and influenced by the need to make outcomes as predictable and assured as possible, and that those in key organisational and managerial positions turn to the behaviours that they have learned over the entire period of their lives, rather than to professional expertise, knowledge and influence that are available to them in their organisations. This comfort and assurance is in turn driven by the fact that it is corporate rather than personal resources that are at risk and so on the face of it 'there is little that can go wrong'. This is much more comforting at a human level, and much less dependent on the expertise of others, than relying on emerging techniques and tools such as business and web analytics, which are harder to use professionally, and require dependence and trust at a human level. Influences on behaviour can be seen in the form of: - Bullying, pulling rank and using power of personality and position to get decisions through an implemented - Employing uncritical people in senior positions to reinforce comfort and assurance. Influences on decisions can be tracked through relating intended outcomes to actual results and then in turn evaluating the key drivers of the decisions present at the time. The conclusions are that a body of knowledge and understanding in this area needs to be developed and implemented. A body of learning and understanding is required to be brought to the fore, so that those who arrive in top senior and critical positions can undertake some specialist development in this critical area before taking key decisions based on their own preferences and personality and position.


The article discusses the problem of gas supplies to smaller communities in the Czech Republic with significant solid fuel consumption. Besides ecological, economic, organisation and the technical aspects it also deals with financing of gas supplies to smaller communities, which is rather demanding from the pay back point view.


Background: The conventional management of the symptomatic stenosis of intracranial artery is the administration of antithrombotic agents while controlling the vascular risk factors. Despite medical therapy, the stroke risk for patients with intracranial artery stenosis remains high. Recently, balloon angioplasty with or without stent placement has emerged as a potential therapeutic option. This study was aimed to assess the efficacy, safety and clinical outcome of balloon angioplasty without stent placement for patients with symptomatic middle cerebral artery (MCA) stenosis. Methods: Between February 1996 and December 2004, 41 cases (40 consecutive patients) with symptomatic MCA stenosis greater than 50% were treated with balloon angioplasty. Patient records were retrospectively reviewed for angiographic findings, periprocedural complications, and long-term outcome. Results: Mean stenosis rate (75.4%) was significantly reduced after the procedure (26.6%). The procedure revealed that 4 of the 41 (9.7%) patients developed major related complications (one death and 3 minor strokes). Other minor related complications were also observed in 7 patients, which included 3 transient neurological deficits, 3 asymptomatic dissections and 1 asymptomatic petechial hemorrhage. During the follow-up period (2-108 months), none of the patients developed ischemic stroke in the territory of treated MCA, however one patient developed TIA at the 12 month after angioplasty. Conclusions: Angioplasty without stent placement is technically feasible, safe and effective in the patients with symptomatic MCA stenosis.


This study investigates the influence of various forms of peer observation and feedback on student learning. We recruited twelve graduate students enrolled in a course entitled, Statistics in Education and Psychology, at a university in northern Taiwan. Researchers adopted the case study method, and the course lasted for ten weeks. Students were first required to learn the content and complete homework assignments through online peer assessment activities. Data were collected from interviews and student journals for content analysis. The results demonstrate that the quality of feedback improved from the first peer assessment to the second; however, the amount of advanced feedback decreased. Although students adjusted their homework according to the feedback provided by their classmates, they did not fully accept this criticism. Students valued specific feedback more highly than scores; however, the desire to obtain high scores motivated many students to modify their papers. When students discovered that peer reviewers were unable to understand their work, they would rewrite it with more extensive explanations and adopt feedback to generate new ideas or research directions. Finally, the students made valuable modifications to their work with the help of feedback from others, and most of the students had a positive impression of peer observation after participating in online peer assessment activities.


The zirconium spectrum is recorded on the 3 m normal incidence spectrograph of the Physics Department, Lund University; analysis of Zr IV is revised and extended. Identification of thirty-four 4p6 nd-4p5 4d2 (n = 4, 5, 6) transitions led to establish twelve 4p5 4d2 levels. Fifteen transitions are added to the analysis of the one-electron spectrum, establishing 7p levels and revising 6d.


Although current face anti-spoofing methods achieve promising results under intra-dataset testing, they suffer from poor generalization to unseen attacks. Most existing works adopt domain adaptation (DA) or domain generalization (DG) techniques to address this problem. However, the target domain is often unknown during training which limits the utilization of DA methods. DG methods can conquer this by learning domain invariant features without seeing any target data. However, they fail in utilizing the information of target data. In this paper, we propose a self-domain adaptation framework to leverage the unlabeled test domain data at inference. Specifically, a domain adaptor is designed to adapt the model for test domain. In order to learn a better adaptor, a meta-learning based adaptor learning algorithm is proposed using the data of multiple source domains at the training step. At test time, the adaptor is updated using only the test domain data according to the proposed unsupervised adaptor loss to further improve the performance. Extensive experiments on four public datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Background Exposure to natural environments may affect respiratory health. This study examined the association of exposure to green and blue spaces with lung function in children, and assessed the mediation effect of air pollution and physical activity. Methods The study used data from the Generation XXI, a population-based birth cohort from the Porto Metropolitan Area (Portugal). Residential Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) at different buffers (100, 250 and 500 m), the accessibility to urban green spaces (UGS) within 400 and 800 m and the minimum distance to the nearest UGS and to the nearest blue spaces were assessed at birth, 4, 7 and 10 years of age. Three life-course measures were calculated: averaged exposure, early-life exposure (birth) and exposure trend over time (change in exposure). Forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) and forced expiratory flow between 25% and 75% of FVC (FEF25–75%) at 10 years were used as outcomes. To assess associations, linear regression models and path analysis were used. Results This study included 3278 children. The adjusted models showed that increasing the NDVI exposure over time within 100 m of the child's residence was associated with higher values of FEV1 (L) and FEF25–75% (L·s−1) (β 0.01, 95% CI 0.0002–0.03 and β 0.02, 95% CI 0.001–0.05, respectively). No significant associations were observed for the remaining measures of exposure, and no mediation effect was found for pollution or physical activity. Conclusion Increasing exposure to greenness at close proximity from residences was associated with improved lung function. While the mechanism remains unknown, this study brings evidence that city greening may improve children's respiratory health. More people are living in urban areas lacking natural spaces, which can have deleterious health effects. Children who increased their exposure to greenness had better lung function. Making cities greener may lead to respiratory health improvements. https://bit.ly/39ZGG4c


Background
Resistance against antimicrobials critically important to human medicine has been frequently observed in livestock and clinical settings where the selection pressure imposed by antimicrobial use is high. Today, it is detected in wildlife even in the absence of a direct selection pressure. On Penguin Island, 660 m from the coast of Western Australia, Escherichia coli isolated from little penguin and feral pigeon faecal samples (n = 20) was found to be phenotypically resistant to extended-spectrum cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones. It was hypothesised that the frequent observations of resistance against CIAs in this group of birds were a result of horizontal gene transfer. However, mobile genetic elements have historically been challenging to characterise using second-generation sequencing technology alone. These difficulties have been linked to coverage bias caused by library preparation, and to insufficient read length to assemble long, repetitive genomic regions. To address the limitations of read length, second-generation sequencing technologies were used in conjunction with third-generation sequencing technologies to produce more contiguous assemblies while maintaining accuracy. To address coverage bias, the performance of the Nextera XT and Nextera Flex library preparation kits were evaluated to assess whether either library preparation kit was associated with reduced sequencing bias.

Results
The results of the library preparation kit comparison found that the Nextera Flex library preparation kit produced more even coverage than the Nextera XT kit, however tagmentation bias, GC content bias, de novo assembly quality and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) gene detection was either unchanged or poorer than Nextera XT.

Resistance to extended-spectrum cephalosporins observed in the E. coli isolates was mediated mainly by blaCTX-M-15 and was shown to have circulated through the different isolates via mobile genetic elements such as ISEcp1, IS26 and Tn2. Resistance against fluoroquinolones occurred primarily through mutations in quinolone resistance-determining regions, with only a minority of isolates harbouring plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance genes. Using a combination of second and third generation sequencing technology, a composite transposon conferring multidrug-resistance to macrolides, folate pathway inhibitors and aminoglycosides was found in varying conformations in over half of the E. coli isolates.

Conclusions
This study was the first to assess the Nextera Flex library preparation kit in the context of AMR research and found that coverage bias was markedly improved. However, this did not impact the practical applications of whole-genome sequencing data such as de novo assembly or AMR gene detection.

Using a combination of second and third-generation sequencing technologies, this study established the presence of multiple mobile genetic elements conferring resistance to critically important antimicrobials in E. coli isolated from avian wildlife on Penguin Island, Western Australia.


The Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP) is one of the foundations of the theory of General Relativity and several alternative theories of gravitation predict violations of the EEP. Experimental constraints on this fundamental principle of nature are therefore of paramount importance. The EEP can be split into three sub-principles: the universality of free fall (UFF), the local Lorentz invariance (LLI) and the local position invariance (LPI). In this paper we propose to use stable clocks in eccentric orbits to perform a test of the gravitational redshift, a consequence of the LPI. The best test to date was performed with the Gravity Probe A (GP-A) experiment in 1976 with an uncertainty of 1.4 × 10 − 4 . ?> Our proposal considers the opportunity of using Galileo satellites 5 and 6 to improve on the GP-A test uncertainty. We show that considering realistic noise and systematic effects, and thanks to a highly eccentric orbit, it is possible to improve on the GP-A limit to an uncertainty around ( 3 − 4 ) × 10 − 5 ?> after one year of integration of Galileo 5 and 6 data.


Bronchiolar stem cells have been functionally defined in vivo on the basis of their resistance to chemical (naphthalene) injury, their infrequent proliferation relative to other progenitor cell types, and their coexpression of the airway and alveolar secretory cell markers Clara cell secretory protein and pro‐surfactant protein C, respectively. Cell surface markers that have previously been used for their prospective isolation included Sca‐1 and CD34. Using transgenic animal models associated with stem cell expansion, ablation, and lineage tracing, we demonstrate that CD34pos cells do not belong to the airway epithelial lineage and that cell surface Sca‐1 immunoreactivity does not distinguish between bronchiolar stem and facultative transit‐amplifying (Clara) cell populations. Furthermore, we show that high autofluorescence (AFhigh) is a distinguishing characteristic of Clara cells allowing for the fractionation of AFlow bronchiolar stem cells. On the basis of these data we show that the defining phenotype of the bronchiolar stem cell is CD45neg CD31neg CD34neg Sca‐llow AFlow. This refinement in the definition of bronchiolar stem cells provides a critical tool by which to assess functional and molecular distinctions between bronchiolar stem cells and the more abundant pool of facultative transit‐amplifying (Clara) cells. STEM CELLS 2009;27:612–622


Patients with recurrent and refractory multiple myeloma have a very limited survival expectance. Allogeneic transplantation might offer an option for cure in myeloma and the recent development of non-myeloablative conditioning regimens has reduced transplant related morbidity and mortality and rendered this treatment feasible in elderly patients. The role of non-myeloablative allogeneic transplantation for multiple myeloma however, has not yet been defined. We have analyzed the results of patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma treated at our institution. Between 08/1999 and 02/2004, 56 patients with relapsed (n=54) or refractory (n=2) myeloma were treated with non-myeloablative allogeneic transplantation. The median beta2microglobulin at the time of diagnosis was 2.75 mg/l, and median age at the time of transplant was 54.5 years (39.2–67.8). The median time from diagnosis to transplant was 3.6 years. Prior to allogeneic transplantation, patients received reinduction chemotherapy which included an autologous transplantation for 30 patients. The median number of previous cycles of conventional chemotherapy was 9. The conditioning regimen was 2 Gy TBI with (n=43) or without (n=3) fludarabin 3 x 30 mg/m² for 46 patients, the remaining 10 patients received a melphalan containing regimen. Acute toxicity was low with a WBC 90 % donor chimerism by day 56. Acute GvHD Grade II-IV occurred in 36 % of patients with 22 % Grade III-IV, and 61 % experienced chronic GvHD. Total transplant related mortality reached 20 %, with a day 100 TRM of 5 %. 32 patients experienced relapse or progressive disease, and 32 % of patients died due to relapse. The Kaplan-Meier estimate of overall survival and progression free survival at 18 months was 40 % and 25 %, respectively, with a median follow up of survivors of 21 months. Patients who experienced cGvHD had a significantly higher overall survival estimate (60 % vs. 20 % at 18 months, p=0.03). The number of cycles of pretreatment before allogeneic transplantation had a statistically significant negative influence on overall (p=0.02) and progression free survival (p=0.006). We conclude that non-myeloablative allogeneic transplantation is feasible in patients with relapsed multiple myeloma. The significant poor prognostic factors we identified were absence of chronic GvHD and number of cycles of pretreatment. Allogeneic transplantion should therefore be considered as an option earlier in the course of the disease.


The avadānas are teaching stories that illustrate the qualities of a pious and spiritual life. There is a long tradition of using them to engage audiences of the laity in an effort to pass on the deeper spiritual truth of Buddhism. However, when a small handful of such stories, out of the hundreds that exist, achieve a distinctive prominence within a particular community, the reasons for this are likely to be found less in the universal truths of the stories than in the ways those stories have been adapted to the unique conditions and needs of that community. Understanding this process requires an approach that addresses the role of domestication: including redacting and editing to effectively localize the stories. A case study in Newar Buddhism demonstrates these processes.


Flavour will play a crucial role in understanding physics beyond the Standard Model. Progress in developing a future programme to investigate this central area of particle physics has recently passed a milestone, with the completion of the conceptual design report for SuperB, a very high luminosity, asymmetric e+e− collider. This article summarizes the important role of SuperB in understanding new physics in the LHC era.


Chronic adriamycin (ADR) intoxication with cardiomyopathy developed in young Beagle dogs given weekly IV injections (1 mg/kg of body weight) for 20 weeks (cumulative dose 400 mg/m2). Eighteen dogs were allotted equally to three groups: group A received ADR only, group B was given ADR and simultaneous weekly doses of vitamin E (17 mg/kg of body weight as alpha-tocopherol acetate), and group C received ADR, weekly doses of vitamin E as in group B, and selenium (0.06 mg/kg of body weight as selenite). The dogs reacted with cutaneous hyperemia, head shaking, and vomiting immediately after ADR injection. After 4 to 6 weekly injections, all the dogs developed alopecia that was present initially over the head and subsequently extended to the ventral portions of the neck, thorax, and abdomen and the proximal inner areas of the limbs. Other skin lesions present in alopecic areas were secondary ulcerative dermatitis and melanosis. Testicular atrophy and cachexia developed in the dogs, but damage was not present in bone marrow, alimentary tract, kidney, and bone with the dosage schedule utilized. Hematologic studies showed no significant alterations. Supplementation with vitamin E alone or with selenium failed to alter the incidence and severity of extracardiac ADR-induced lesions. This study shows that the dog is a good model for studies of chronic ADR-induced cardiotoxicity, as cardiac damage was consistently produced and ADR-associated extracardiac lesions were of minimal severity.


Erosion in 33 unlined spillways in rock has been studied for dams in Australia, South Africa and the USA. Geological factors which influence the amount of erosion have been identified using published and project data and spillway site inspections by the authors. These are the orientation, persistence, spacing and nature of rock defects including bedding partings, joints, foliation and shears. The presence of kinematically viable blocks which can be detached and the persistence of the basal defect for these blocks are the most important factors. Where spillways discharge on to a natural slope the presence of valley stress relief features, such as sheet joints parallel to the slope, or kinematically viable blocks, often with open sub-vertical defects, can lead to significant erosion even with small spillway discharges. The mechanism can be one of slope instability rather than erosion as water pressure destabilizes the slope. A rock mass characterization index, the 'Rock Mass Erodibility Index' (RMEI), which considers spillway flow conditions and erosion mechanisms, has been developed. It can be used as a guide to spillway erosion and, when coupled with stream power for spillway flows, provides a method for preliminary assessments of likely amounts of spillway erosion.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the anesthetic method and the prevention of the ophthalmic complication in endoscopic surgery for sphenoid sinus disease.

METHOD
All 65 patients underwent local anesthesia with improved surface anesthesia. Arrest blood completely in the surgical operation. The position of sphenoid sinus, the assimilation and destruction of sinus wall, the location and the appearance of lesion were determined carefully. To avoid damaging the optic nerve, the behavior of eyes was observed intently.

RESULT
The follow up period ranged from 6 months to 2 years. Five patients were lost to follow up. 53 of 60 patients recovered. 7 patients had recurrence among them with 2 cases of inverted papilloma and 5 cases of spheniod sinusitis with nose polyp, but they were successfully resected by endoscopic endonasal sinus surgery. Ophthalmic complication occurred in 5 patients.

CONCLUSION
Endoscopic sphenoid sinus surgery can be performed successfully under local anesthesia with improved surface anesthesia. Familiarity with the anatomic marker and variable anatomy, and meticulous surgical technique are essential for reducing ophthalmic complication.


As a branch of sphere decoding, the K-best method has played an important role in detection in large-scale multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. However, as the numbers of users and antennas grow, the preprocessing complexity increases significantly, which is one of the major issues with the K-best method. To address this problem, this paper proposes a preprocessing algorithm combining Cholesky sorted QR decomposition and partial iterative lattice reduction (CHOSLAR) for K-best detection in a 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) 16 $\times$  16 MIMO system. First, Cholesky decomposition is conducted to perform sorted QR decomposition. Compared with conventional sorted QR decomposition, this method reduces the number of multiplications by 25.1% and increases parallelism. Then, a constant-throughput partial iterative lattice reduction method is adopted to achieve near-optimal detection accuracy. This method further increases parallelism, reduces the number of matrix swaps by 45.5%, and reduces the number of multiplications by 67.3%. Finally, a sorting-reduced K -best strategy is used for vector estimation, thereby, reducing the number of comparators by 84.7%. This method suffers an accuracy loss of only approximately 1.44 dB compared with maximum likelihood detection. Based on CHOSLAR, this paper proposes a fully pipelined very-large-scale-integration architecture. A series of different systolic arrays and parallel processing units achieves an optimal tradeoff among throughput, area consumption, and power consumption. This architectural layout is obtained via TSMC 65-nm 1P9M CMOS technology, and throughput metrics of 1.40 Gbps/W (throughput/power) and 0.62 Mbps/kG (throughput/area) are achieved, demonstrating that the proposed system is much more efficient than state-of-the-art designs.


The quantity, genetic type and maturity of organic matter dispersed in the Kimmeridgian strata of the central part of the Polish Lowlands were determined on the basis of results of Rock-Eval, stable carbon isotope composition of bitumen, their fractions and kerogen, biomarker distribution in saturate and aromatic hydrocarbon fraction, elemental composition of kerogen, vitrinite reflectance and maceral composition analyses of 225 rock samples collected from 32 boreholes. The study was conducted separately for Lower and Upper Kimmeridgian rocks in the Szczecin-Miechow and Kościerzyna-Pulawy synclinoriums and Mid-Polish Anticlinorium. The best source rocks with TOC up to 6.8 wt.%, were found in the vicinity of Gostynin in the Mid-Polish Anticlinorium. Generally, the Upper Kimmeridgian strata are fair and good potential source-rocks whereas the Lower Kimmeridgian strata have much lower hydrocarbon potential. Gas-prone, terrigenous Type-III kerogen predominates in the Lower Kimmeridgian strata. The contribution of oil-prone, marine Type-II kerogen increases in the Upper Kimmeridgian rocks. In the whole profile, only low-sulphur kerogen was recorded, although the situation, when high-sulphur Type-IIS kerogen was mixed with re-worked, non-generative Type-IV kerogen supplied to the sedimentary basin with rocks from eroded land, cannot be excluded. Sedimentary conditions of organic material were variable, usually anoxic and suboxic with domination of siliclastic material in mineral matrix. The maturity of the dispersed organic matter refers mostly to the final phase of the microbial process, or to the initial phase of the low-temperature thermogenic process ( oil window ). The most mature rocks, corresponding up to 0.75% in the vitrinite reflectance scale, were recognised in the deepest buried parts of the basin (axial part of the Mogilno-Łodź Segment of the Szczecin-Miechow Synclinorium). The most prospecting source rocks were recognised in this area.


We report theoretically on a pure frequency-induced polarization bistability in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) subject to orthogonal optical injection, i.e., the master laser light polarization is orthogonal to that of the slave VCSEL. As the frequency detuning is scanned from negative to positive values and for a fixed injected power, the VCSEL exhibits two successive and possibly bistable polarization switchings. The first switching (from the slave laser polarization to the injected light polarization) exhibits a bistable region whose width is maximum for a given value of the injected power. Such a dependency of hysteresis width on the injected power is similar to that recently found experimentally by Hong et al.[Electron. Lett. 36, 2019 (2000)]. The bistability accompanying the second switching (from the injected light polarization back to the slave laser free-running polarization) exhibits, however, significantly different features related to the occurrence of optical chaos. Interestingly, the width of the bistable region can be tuned over a large range not only by modifying the injection parameters but also by modifying the device parameters, in particular the VCSEL linewidth enhancement factor.


Abstract DAMBE is a comprehensive software workbench for data analysis in molecular biology, phylogenetics, and evolution. Several important new functions have been added since version 5 of DAMBE: 1) comprehensive genomic profiling of translation initiation efficiency of different genes in different prokaryotic species, 2) a new index of translation elongation (ITE) that takes into account both tRNA-mediated selection and background mutation on codon–anticodon adaptation, 3) a new and accurate phylogenetic approach based on pairwise alignment only, which is useful for highly divergent sequences from which a reliable multiple sequence alignment is difficult to obtain. Many other functions have been updated and improved including PWM for motif characterization, Gibbs sampler for de novo motif discovery, hidden Markov models for protein secondary structure prediction, self-organizing map for nonlinear clustering of transcriptomic data, comprehensive sequence alignment, and phylogenetic functions. DAMBE features a graphic, user-friendly and intuitive interface, and is freely available from http://dambe.bio.uottawa.ca.


Rice husk ash (RHA), a solid waste from biomass power plant was used as a raw material to synthesize Na-A and Na-X zeolites. In fact, high silica content inside this material opens a possibility to become a potential zeolite precursor. In this study, a medium particle of RHA has been reused to prepare zeolite with high purity. After segregated by mechanical sieving, the medium particle fraction of RHA was subjected to alkali fusion treatment followed by dissolution and then residue separation to produce clear silicate supernatant as the silica source for preparing the low-silica zeolites. High purity of Na-A and Na-X zeolites were prepared using hydrothermal treatment by optimizing the process condition, curing time, hydrothermal temperature and Si/Al molar ratio in the reaction mixture.


Evaluation of projects on integrated eCare is key to implementation and widespread use. The evaluation must, though, be thorough and include research methods from multiple different research traditions simultaneously. This implies a necessity of knowledge from all research paradigms and understanding of proper reporting. In this chapter, guidance for evaluation of integrated eCare is provided, along with discussions of advantages and disadvantages related to certain decisions that must be made during the research process. As an aid for understanding, real-life examples of evaluation are provided to illustrate challenges and possible solutions throughout the chapter.


Among objective audiologic tests, the most important were tests of brain stem auditory evoked potentials. The objective of the study was to test the configuration, degree of hearing loss, and response characteristics of auditory brain stem evoked potentials in children with hearing loss occurred due to infectious disease. A case control study design was used. The study group consisted of 54 patients referred for a hearing test because of infectious diseases caused by other agents or that occurred as congenital infection. Infectious agents have led to the emergence of various forms of sensorineural hearing loss. We have found deviations from the normal values of absolute and interwave latencies in some children in our group. We found that in the group of children who had the diseases such as purulent meningitis, or were born with rubella virus and cytomegalovirus infection, a retrocochlear damage was present in children with and without cochlear damage.


ABSTRACT A modern low cost microcomputer and accessories were used to create a very low frequency (VLF) receiver for geophysical prospecting. The signals were detected by induction coils, which were then amplified, digitized by a sound card, and analyzed by a Raspberry Pi computer. The computer used a Linux operating system and the Python programming language. The peripheral devices were "off-the-shelf"' commercial items except for the preamplifiers and the induction coils, which were designed and constructed by the authors. A test profile showed typical VLF anomalies across a weak conductor.


Background: To examine the temporal variation and outcomes of liver transplantation between pre- and post-Share 35 eras for patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed among 4380 patients with end-stage liver disease from the United Network for Organ Sharing database from 2009 to 2017 due to primary diagnosis of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis or cryptogenic cirrhosis with body mass index greater than 30. Cox regressions were used to model the effect of Share 35 policy on patient and graft survival comparing the first 3 years of Share 35 policy to an equivalent time period before. Results: The number of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis-related transplants increased from 232 (14.1%) in 2009 to 266 (20.5%) in 2017. In post-Share 35 era, average waitlist time and cold ischemic time decreased, while Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) scores increased with higher proportion of recipients having MELD ≥35. No significant difference in average length of hospitalization or survival was found after Share 35. Conclusions: The Share 35 policy benefits patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis from reduced liver transplantation waiting time. It is also associated with comparable outcomes in 2 eras without increasing cold ischemic time or posttransplant length of hospitalization.


Many active compounds have limited aqueous solubility, so there is great need for delivery systems suitable for hydrophobic and amphiphilic drugs. One approach to this problem has been to use lipid‐based vesicles as drug carriers. The history, properties, and applications of niosomes have been recently reviewed. Niosomes have been investigated for drug delivery through the most common routes of administration, such as intramuscular, intravenous, subcutaneous, ocular, oral, and transdermal. Niosomes appear to be multilamellar surfactant structures, and are thus best suited for hydrophobic or amphiphilic drugs. Niosomes are promising vehicle for drug delivery and being non‐ionic; it is less toxic and improves the therapeutic index of drug by restricting its action to target cells. They are vesicular systems similar to liposomes that can be used as carriers of amphiphilic and lipophilic drugs. Recently, niosomes have been studied by many researchers as a choice of oral drug delivery system to provide better oral bioavailability consideration, high penetration property of the niosome encapsulated agents through biological membrane and their stability. The present formulation study on metformin is an attempt to prepare niosomal drug delivery system and evaluate its in‐vitro Performance. The ormulations were prepared with different types of surfactant. The study is based on formulation of etformin nbility of metformin


This paper focuses on coexistence and self-coexistence challenges between secondary heterogeneous wireless networks/users sharing TV Whitespace spectrum. The coexistence problems arise from having several primary and secondary networks of different technologies cohabiting the same licensed spectrum simultaneously. The self-coexistence problems arise from many secondary systems /users coexisting at the same place while using identical or different technologies. In particular, fair distribution of available spectrum becomes a serious issue. In this paper, we use a game theoretic approach to model the self-coexistence problem as a competitive game between secondary networks. We show that our game belongs to the class of congestion-averse games which are known to possess pure Nash equilibria. This leads us to a decentralized approach for spectrum sharing among systems with different PHY/MAC characteristics. We show that our proposal outperforms other centralized algorithms in terms of user fairness and per-user theoretical data rates.


The local fired brick production technique is the known method of brick making especially in Jimma Town. Firing of bricks in local brick production method is conducted by burning of much amount of woods. But this method of firing bricks by burning of woods will affect the environment. The locale firing technique is difficult to control the firing temperature, which will result in non-uniform burnt bricks. The major objective of this experimental study was to compare the compressive strengths of locally fired clay bricks and the local unfired cement and lime stabilized clay bricks. Specifically, the index properties of soil used for brick production, the compressive strength of locally fired clay bricks and stabilized clay bricks had been determined and to compare with the standard specifications. This study, it was used contents of the stabilizer for cement and lime of 10%, 12% and 14%, respectively. The mix ratio applied 1:9, 1:7 and 1:6 by volume of clay with stabilizer 10%, 12% and 14%. Based on the result at 28 th day, the mean compressive strength test, the 10%, 12% and 14% cement Stabilized clay bricks have compressive strengths of 2.91Mpa, 3.28Mpa, and 3.79Mpa respectively, which are better than the mean compressive strength of the locally fired clay bricks which is 2.73Mpa. On the other hand, the 28 th day mean compressive strengths of the lime stabilized clay bricks were 2.19Mpa, 2.51Mpa and 2.69Mpa, respectively. Therefore, these results showed that the Fired Clay Brick fails the minimum mean compressive strength requirement based on the ES, ASTM and IS standards. But the Stabilized Clay Bricks fulfill the minimum compressive strength requirements of IS standard for stabilized bricks. Among these three methods, the cement stabilized clay bricks indicated better in quality than both locally fired and lime stabilized bricks.


[structure: see text] The total synthesis of (+)-crocacin D is described. The convergent asymmetric synthesis relies on the use of a Stille cross-coupling between an (E)-vinyl stannane with an (E)-vinyl iodide to establish the (E,E)-dienamide moiety followed by a mild and efficient copper-catalyzed coupling between (+)-crocacin C and a (Z)-vinyl iodide to establish the challenging (Z)-enamide function.


Bovine mastitis is the most costly disease for dairy farmers and the most frequent reason for the use of antibiotics in dairy cattle; thus, control measures to detect and prevent mastitis are crucial for dairy farm sustainability. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a sensitive method to magnetically detect Streptococcus agalactiae (a Group B streptococci) and Streptococcus uberis in raw milk samples. Mastitic milk samples were collected aseptically from 44 cows with subclinical mastitis, from 11 Portuguese dairy farms. Forty-six quarter milk samples were selected based on bacterial identification by conventional microbiology. All samples were submitted to PCR analysis. In parallel, these milk samples were mixed with a solution combining specific antibodies and magnetic nanoparticles, to be analyzed using a lab-on-a-chip magnetoresistive cytometer, with microfluidic sample handling. This paper describes a point of care methodology used for detection of bacteria, including analysis of false positive/negative results. This immunological recognition was able to detect bacterial presence in samples spiked above 100 cfu/mL, independently of antibody and targeted bacteria used in this work. Using PCR as a reference, this method correctly identified 73% of positive samples for streptococci species with an anti-S. agalactiae antibody, and 41% of positive samples for an anti-GB streptococci antibody.


In making the deep neural network, activation functions play an important
role. But the choice of activation functions also affects the network in term of optimization and to
retrieve the better results. Several activation functions have been introduced in machine learning for
many practical applications. But which activation function should use at hidden layer of deep neural
networks was not identified.

The primary objective of this analysis was to describe which activation function must be
used at hidden layers for deep neural networks to solve complex non-linear problems.

The configuration for this comparative model was used by using the datasets of 2 classes
(Cat/Dog). The number of Convolutional layer used in this network was 3 and the pooling layer was
also introduced after each layer of CNN layer. The total of the dataset was divided into the two parts.
The first 8000 images were mainly used for training the network and the next 2000 images were
used for testing the network.

The experimental comparison was done by analyzing the network by taking different activation
functions on each layer of CNN network. The validation error and accuracy on Cat/Dog dataset
were analyzed using activation functions (ReLU, Tanh, Selu, PRelu, Elu) at number of hidden
layers. Overall the Relu gave best performance with the validation loss at 25th Epoch 0.3912 and validation
accuracy at 25th Epoch 0.8320.

 It is found that a CNN model with ReLU hidden layers (3 hidden layers here) gives
best results and improve overall performance better in term of accuracy and speed. These advantages
of ReLU in CNN at number of hidden layers are helpful to effectively and fast retrieval of images
from the databases.


One of us has developed an improved partial ossicular replacement prosthesis that is easier to implant and, based on pilot clinical measurements, results in better high-frequency hearing as compared to patients receiving one of the alternative prostheses. It is hypothesized that the primary reason for this is because of the relatively light weight (about 25 mg) and low compliance of the prosthesis, which could conceivably result in better high frequency vibrational characteristics. The purpose of our initial work was to develop an instrument suitable for objectively testing the vibrational characteristics of prostheses. We have developed a laser based device suitable for measuring the vibrational characteristics of the oval window or other structures of the middle ear. We have tested this device using a piezoelectric transducer excited at audio frequencies, as well as on the oval window in human temporal bones harvested from cadavers. The results illustrate that it is possible to non-invasively monitor the vibrational characteristics of anatomic structures with a very inexpensive photonic device.


Context : Cancer of the breast is a common malignancy in Nigerian women and various imaging examinations, including the chest radiograph are routinely requested in all patients with this disease. Objective : The objective of this study was to determine the positive yield from routine chest radiographs in Nigerian patients with locally advanced stage 3 breast cancers but who had no clinical symptoms or signs of pulmonary or pleural metastatic disease. Methods : This descriptive retrospective study evaluated clinical records and chest radiographs of 61 female Nigerian patients with local stage 3 histologically diagnosed breast cancers, who presented at the radiotherapy unit of the University College hospital, Ibadan, over a 12-month period. All abnormalities on the chest radiographs were documented. Results : The ages of the study group ranged from 25 to 67 years with a mean of 47years. Fortyseven (77%) of the patients had normal chest radiographs. Of the 14 abnormal radiographs, bilateral lung parenchymal metastases were seen in 4 cases one of whom also had bilateral pleural effusion. Other abnormal findings included hilar adenopathy, right lower lobe collapse, lymphagitis carcinomatosis and cardiomegaly. Conclusion : The authors conclude that a 23% detection rate from these screening chest radiographs is high and should be recommended as over 70% of Nigerian Patients with breast cancers present with advanced tumors.


The purpose of this study was to identify markets for, and competitors to, the United States forest industries in the next 30 years. The Global Forest Products Model was used to make predictions of international demand, supply, trade, and prices, conditional on the last RPA Timber Assessment projections for the United States. It was found that the United States, Japan and Europe would remain important markets out to 2030, but China would grow into the world's largest importer of roundwood and manufactured products. Mexico would become an important importer of sawnwood and papers; and the Republic of Korea of wood panels and pulp. The United States' share of exports of industrial roundwood and paper and paperboard would increase, while its exports of sawnwood would decline, replaced by exports from Canada, Finland, Austria, Chile, and New Zealand. Besides Finland and Austria, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand would remain the main competitors to U.S. exports of wood based panels.


From a clinical perspective, the use of mobile technologies such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) within hospital environments is not new. A paradigm shift however, is underway towards the acceptance and utility of such systems within community-based healthcare environments. Notwithstanding, introducing new technologies and associated work practices has intrinsic risks which must be addressed. In situations where end-users of a system are traditionally averse to technology through entrenched paper-based work practices (for example, community health workers), the process of managing change bears considerable determination in system implementation success. The authors propose a novel approach to end user acceptance within the context of a mandated mobile health system in a community health setting. The ePOC (electronic point-of-care) project is used to demonstrate how higher levels of user acceptance are achievable in these implementation environments where traditionally low levels of technology acceptance and use are common.


Deep-learning models are highly parameterized, causing difficulty in inference and transfer learning. We propose a layered pathway evolution method to compress a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) for classification of masses in DBT while maintaining the classification accuracy. Two-stage transfer learning was used to adapt the ImageNet-trained DCNN to mammography and then to DBT. In the first-stage transfer learning, transfer learning from ImageNet trained DCNN was performed using mammography data. In the second-stage transfer learning, the mammography-trained DCNN was trained on the DBT data using feature extraction from fully connected layer, recursive feature elimination and random forest classification. The layered pathway evolution encapsulates the feature extraction to the classification stages to compress the DCNN. Genetic algorithm was used in an iterative approach with tournament selection driven by count-preserving crossover and mutation to identify the necessary nodes in each convolution layer while eliminating the redundant nodes. The DCNN was reduced by 99% in the number of parameters and 95% in mathematical operations in the convolutional layers. The lesion-based area under the receiver operating characteristic curve on an independent DBT test set from the original and the compressed network resulted in 0.88±0.05 and 0.90±0.04, respectively. The difference did not reach statistical significance. We demonstrated a DCNN compression approach without additional fine-tuning or loss of performance for classification of masses in DBT. The approach can be extended to other DCNNs and transfer learning tasks. An ensemble of these smaller and focused DCNNs has the potential to be used in multi-target transfer learning.


Background Normal thyroid hormone blood levels are essential for the growth and development of tissues and maintenance of organ function. Antiepileptic drugs may induce disturbances in thyroid hormonal levels. Aim This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of antiepileptic drugs on the thyroid gland of adult male albino rats using hormonal assay, histological study, and morphometric study. Materials and methods This study included 30 adult male albino rats divided into control and experimental groups. The latter group was equally subdivided into two subgroups (IIA and IIB). Rats of subgroups IIA and IIB were given 200 mg/kg/day valproate sodium and100 mg/kg/day phenytoin, respectively, for 5 weeks through a gastric tube. After 5 weeks, blood samples of all rats were taken for hormonal assay. Thereafter, all rats were sacrificed and specimens of thyroid glands were extracted and processed for histological and morphometric studies. Results In subgroup IIA (valproate-treated group), hormonal assay revealed mild significant decrease in serum T3 and T4, with decrease in free thyroxine (FT4) and increased thyroid stimulating hormone. Mild thyroid follicle changes were observed with mild interstitial exudate and amalgamated highly stained colloid in some follicular lumen. Morphometric study showed increased follicular epithelial height and decreased dimensions of follicles. However, in subgroup IIB (phenytoin-treated group), hormonal assay showed moderate significant decrease in serum T3 and T4, with decreased FT4 and nonsignificant changes in thyroid stimulating hormone levels. It also revealed signs of thyroid follicle destruction as disrupted follicles with desquamated follicular cells in their lumen and severe interstitial exudate. Highly vacuolated cytoplasm in the follicular cells and amalgamated scanty colloid in the follicular lumen were seen. Morphometric study demonstrated decreased follicular epithelial height and dimensions of follicles. Conclusion Study clarified less damaging effects of valproate sodium compared with phenytoin on the thyroid gland and its hormones. Therefore, the use of these drugs should be justified in clinical situations under direct medical supervision.


This article discusses modern approaches to the organization of distance learning for students with disabilities in higher education. The positive aspects of this system are identified and some risks that cause a decrease in the effectiveness of teaching students with disabilities in higher education institutions are highlighted, the main components of the distance learning system. It describes the necessary conditions and pedagogical principles of distance learning for students with disabilities, the basic requirements for the ВЕСТНИК КазНПУ им. Абая, серия «Педагогические науки», №3(67), 2020 г. 68 selection of material for lectures and practical (seminar) classes with students with various developmental disabilities.


kenya's forest resources kenya is internationally considered to have low forest cover since less than 10% of its 569,250-km 2 land area is classified as forest area (mEnr 2005). nevertheless, the forest sector provides forest-related goods and services and is a vital part of the livelihoods of the kenyan people. The forest's most significant contributions are energy for domestic and industrial processes, timber for construction and environmental services such as regulation of water flows, regulation of local climate conditions and provision of carbon reservoirs and sinks. it is estimated that 80% of the population uses biomass wood for energy while urban people rely heavily on hydro-electric power (l uvanda and muthike 2008).


Eco-town development projects have often prevailed throughout the World to initiate the new form of sustainable development plans. As a future development type, the eco-town project shares underlying notions with sustainable development, which has been recently revised into a wider definition; (i) energy efficiency, (ii) climate adaptation, and (iii) socio-economic development. There are four types of eco-town projects based on its characteristics and aims depending on project sites, regions, or countries. This paper tried to demonstrate the types of eco-town projects and summarizes its strategy plans from each type. Many eco-town cases can be placed in one of types, however there cannot be strictly discrete classification by its complicated and composite characteristics of them. In conclusion, the analyzed types can be a useful strategy plan for pursuing further eco-town projects in domestic as well as in international regions.


Faced with global and systemic crises, neoliberal oriented governments are taking on more authoritarian forms of governance. By using the power of the media, justice, the police, and a set of government technologies, this authoritarian style manifests itself in alternating phases of low-key brutality and crises of ostentatious repression designed to frighten and demoralize opposition social movements. Confronted with these modes of government, the social movements adopt different tactics of mobilization, ranging from direct confrontation to forms of compromise and civil disobedience. With the climate crisis as well as the globalization of social struggles, these movements adopt new political strategies, which question the dichotomy between violence and non-violence. Using a historical and anthropological approach, this paper studies two cases in contemporary Indonesia and France. It shows that the objectives of the groups involved and the national socio-political and cultural background shape the local specificities of these strategies. The comparison, however, reveals similarities at both levels. It shows the persistence and even strengthening of class and oligarchy networks in the implementation of authoritarian-style neoliberal policies. It also points to the respective effectiveness of violent and non-violent tactics in the implementation of militant strategies.


Linear theory methods of the coupled spacecharge waves for copropagating electron beams considering coefficients of electron interaction and a reduction of plasma oscillations are developed. Interaction of copropagating electron beams promising to amplification of microwaves in electron mode regimes to create devices of millimeter and submillimeter wavelength ranges. Equations of the coupled waves are written down and solutions of the dispersive equation in coupling regime of three and four waves are received. Large signal modes are investigated within model of large particles which has carried out the trajectory analysis of interaction processes of two copropagating electron beams with differ energy. Features of interaction modes with the gain and no gain waves are considered.


Abstract The size of crystal grains in ice formed by accretion of supercooled droplets has been determined for a wide range of air (−11 to −25°C) and deposit (0 to −16°C) temperatures. At air temperatures of −14°C and below, the dependence of the crystal size on both air and deposit temperatures has been determined and found to be more marked at the lower temperatures. The aspect ratio (as the average of the ratios of the length to maximum width of the crystals) has also been determined for the same accretions. This parameter, too, has been found to depend on air and deposit temperatures, in a way which could help in resolving the ambiguity deriving from the analysis of crystal size alone, when investigating the growth conditions of hailstones.


This study is a longitudinal examination of the changes that have taken place in the utilization of production management tools and techniques through the 1981-1988 time period. Results suggest that small electronic manufacturing firms are actively attempting to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their manufacturing process. Of particular interest is the apparent emphasis on seeking to contain costs while simplifying the manufacturing process.


Chemical and molecular-based computers may be promising alternatives to modern silicon-based computers. In particular, hybrid systems, where tasks are split between a chemical medium and traditional silicon components, may provide access and demonstration of chemical advantages such as scalability, low power dissipation, and genuine randomness. This work describes the development of a hybrid classical-molecular computer (HCMC) featuring an electrochemical reaction on top of an array of discrete electrodes with a fluorescent readout. The chemical medium, optical readout, and electrode interface combined with a classical computer generate a feedback loop to solve several canonical optimization problems in computer science such as number partitioning and prime factorization. Importantly, the HCMC makes constructive use of experimental noise in the optical readout, a milestone for molecular systems, to solve these optimization problems, as opposed to in silico random number generation. Specifically, we show calculations stranded in local minima can consistently converge on a global minimum in the presence of experimental noise. Scalability of the hybrid computer is demonstrated by expanding the number of variables from 4 to 7, increasing the number of possible solutions by 1 order of magnitude. This work provides a stepping stone to fully molecular approaches to solving complex computational problems using chemistry.


Background: Beliefs about type 2 diabetes (T2D) medications predict treatment adherence; yet, factors that influence these beliefs are poorly understood. Further, prior studies reduce the complex interplay between beliefs about treatment necessity and medication-related concerns to a single dimension by using a difference score. This study examined correlates of T2D medication beliefs and modeled the multidimensional associations of beliefs and adherence.
 Methods: Participants were 812 primarily disadvantaged and ethnic minority adults with T2D (Female = 56.9%; Latino = 86.5%; Mean [SD] Age and A1C = 59.2 [10.8], 9.3 [1.8], respectively) recruited for a self-management trial. Informed by the Common Sense Model and prior research, relations of patient- and illness-related factors with medication beliefs (Horne, Weinman, Hankins, 1999) were examined using linear regression. Confirmatory and exploratory polynomial regression examined associations of medication beliefs and self-reported adherence.
 Results: Hispanic ethnicity (p < .01) , insulin use (p < .05) , greater number of medications (p < .05) , and lower levels of education (p < .05) were associated with stronger necessity beliefs. Lower income (p < .05) and Hispanic ethnicity (p < .01) were associated with greater concerns. Adherence was lowest among those with strong concerns and weak necessity beliefs. Non-reciprocal effects were also observed, which could not have been assessed using a difference score. Patients with ambivalent beliefs had lower adherence than those with indifferent beliefs.
 Discussion: Indicators of lower SES were associated with concerns about T2D medications. Increased disease severity and Hispanic ethnicity were associated with stronger necessity beliefs. However, Hispanics also reported more concerns about their medications. Results further support use of polynomial regression to assess medication beliefs and adherence. Addressing concerns, in particular, may enhance T2D medication adherence.

 A.G.Asman: None. L.A.Phillips: None. E.A.Walker: None. L.D.Pappalardo: None. J.S.Gonzalez: Consultant; Virta Health Corp.

 National Institutes of Health (R18 DK098742) Einstein–Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center (P30 DK020541) New York Regional Center for Diabetes Translation Research (P30 DK111022) J.S.G. is supported by National Institutes of Health (RDK104845, RDK121298, RDK121896)


Ischemic cardiomyopathy, disease of the heart muscle due to coronary artery disease, is the most common cardiomyopathy. It is often difficult to discern the etiology of heart failure, and often there are multiple underlying causes. Ischemic cardiomyopathy most often pres - ents with a dilated morphology with wall motion defects and a history of previous myocar dial infarction or confirmed coronary artery disease. Mechanisms of myocardial depression in ischemia are necrosis of myocardial cells resulting in irreversible loss of function or reversible damage, either short term through myocardial stunning or long term through hibernation. In ischemic cardiomyopathy, echocardiography may be extended with stress testing or other imaging modalities such as myocardial scintigraphy and cardiac magnetic resonance tomography. Coronary angiography is often considered a gold standard; how -ever, other modalities such as positron emission tomography can be needed to detect small vessel disease. Cardiac revascularization, through percutaneous coronary intervention and coronary artery bypass grafting, both in acute coronary syndrome and in stable coronary artery disease, relieves symptoms and improves prognosis. Therapy should aspire to treat ischemia, arrhythmias in addition to heart failure management, which includes device therapy with cardiac resynchronization therapy, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, and mechanical support as bridging or destination therapy in end-stage disease.


Significant shear strength reduction with the increase of the height of slender plain concrete beams with no web reinforcement is a well-known phenomenon called size effect. The American Concrete Institute's ACI 318 Building Code allows steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) to replace conventional minimum shear reinforcement in slender beams; however, the beam's height is limited to 610 mm (24 in.) This is due to the fact that, except for a very few tests, the majority of test results on shear behavior of SFRC beams has been evaluated on specimens with an effective depth of 178 mm (7 in.) to 572 mm (22.5 in.). The object of this research was to investigate the size effect of SFRC beams in shear as well as the long-term shear performance (up to 33 months after casting) of SFRC beams by experimentally testing four pairs of SFRC slender beams with an extended observance time after casting. These beams had total heights of 457 mm (18 in.), 610 mm (24 in.), 915 mm (36 in.), and 1220 mm (48 in.), and one pair of beams was 457 mm (18 in.) high companion beams made of plain concrete. The only variable parameter was the overall depth, while the remaining key factors were held constant including shear span to effective depth ratio of 3.5, longitudinal reinforcement ratio (approximately 2.7%), compressive strength of concrete (targeted at 42 MPa), steel fiber volume fraction (0.75%), and types of steel fiber (hooked-end fibers conformed to ACI requirements). Test results indicate that the normalized shear stress at failure is substantially increased for all SFRC specimens as a result of fiber inclusion. In spite of the various effective depths of the specimens, the discrepancy in normalized shear strengths was relatively marginal. Also, even though the specimens were tested at a quite high age ranging from 502 to 1005 days and exposed to weather, no degradation was observed in terms of their shear behavior.


A study of private and public sector managers, including 2,000 from the NHS, revealed consensus on the qualities of an effective leader. These included: concern for others, approachability, intellectual ability, communication skills, charisma and the ability to unite people. Integrity was seen as particularly important by public sector managers. Public sector managers were rated significantly higher by their staff than those in the private sector. The results point to the need for caution in introducing private sector managers to the NHS.


The study is based on the survey conducted in 1981 by the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) with the purpose of clarifying a role of user charges in municipal solid waste management. The survey attempts to cover the total number of 60 cities and intergovernmental agencies in Japan which charge, according to the 1977 national survey conducted by Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare, the user for the municipal (residential) collection and disposal (treatment) service. The NIES survey was carried out by mail as well as telephone calls to local goverment officials.Responses are made by 51 local governments, 14 of which employs a flat fee type, the remaining 37 a variable fee type. The variable fee type consists of various types, in which the change varies with either the quantity of refuse collected or the frequency or spot where service is offered. Particularly, 16 local governments employ a variable fee type of trash bag in which the user purchases trash bags from a government. The price of bag is fixed to cover production cost, billing costs and charge.Two important findings derived from our analysis of the survey are: the hypothesis that when service consumers must pay a higher fee, they will demand less service than other consumers with a lower price, is verified based on a statistical hypothesis testing of two mean values between a flat fee category (14 samples) and a trash bag category (16 samples). Second, cities with higher population densities are more likely to have lower ratios of charge revenues to total municipal solid waste treatment costs.Finally, the demand function and the cost function for municipal solid waste treatment service are estimated by the least squares method. These functions together with the marginal-cost-pricing rule and externality as well as public good concept, are utilized to provide an economic rationale for the second finding.


Uwhangchungsimwon (UCW), a multi-component herbal product, has long been used to treat vascular diseases such as headache, dizziness, high blood pressure, and stroke. Though the prophylactic actions of UCW are well known, insufficient experimental evidence exists on its effectiveness against stroke. Here, we investigated the mechanism underlying the efficacy of UCW in oxygen glucose deprivation/re-oxygenation (OGD/R)-injury to the primary cortical neurons using an in vitro ischemia model. Neurons secrete vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which acts as a neurotrophic factor in response to an ischemic injury. VEGF modulates neuroprotection and axonal outgrowth by activating the VEGF receptors and plays a critical role in vascular diseases. In this study, cortical neurons were pretreated with UCW (2, 10, and 50 µg/mL) for 48 h, incubated in oxygen-glucose-deprived conditions for 2 h, and further reoxygenated for 24 h. UCW effectively protected neurons from OGD/R-induced degeneration and cell death. Moreover, the role of UCW in sustaining protection against OGD/R injury is associated with activation of VEGF-VEGFR and insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor expression. Therefore, UCW is a potential herbal supplement for the prevention of hypoxic-ischemic neuronal injury as it may occur after stroke.


In the article the author enumerates teaching process organization requirements in the sphere of foreign language text listening during the autonomous work of non-linguistic university students. The author gives some practical recommendations about listening skill formation when teaching future holders of bachelor's and master's degrees.


Abstract The complete mitochondrial genome of the Epinephelus tukula was presented in this study. The mitochondrial genome is 16,503 bp long and consists of 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes and a control region. The gene order and composition of Epinephelus tukula mitochondrial genome was similar to that of most other vertebrates. The nucleotide compositions of the light strand are 28.37% of A, 29.00% of C, 26.36% of T and 16.26% of G. With the exception of the NADH dehydrogenase subunit 6 (ND6) and seven tRNA genes, all other mitochondrial genes are encoded on the heavy strand.


The theoretical context related to green urban area shas incorporated concepts regarding sustainable development and governance, which has resulted in the development of economic, environmental and social indicators applicable to the the management and planning of green areas. The implementation of these indicators requires the following considerations: 1) multidisciplinary conception of sustainable development; 2) particular ways of management and planning, and 3) civic participation in management and planning, although there are shortcomings that must be detected and corrected. Good management and planning will therefore depend of the technical and administrative strengths of local governments in Latin America that will permit the incorporation of sustainable and governance perspectives. Keywords: 1. cities, 2. urban spaces, 3. urban parks, 4. citizen participation, 5. urbanism.


This work evaluates the best practices for managing the corrosive effect of chloride-based deicers on the metallic components of equipment fleet. The first part evaluates the effectiveness of salt removers for washing the bare metals. Dip-dry tests were used to simulate the field condition. Carbon steel (C1010), Aluminum alloy (Al1100) and stainless steel (SS304L) were included in the test program to evaluate the use of water, soapy water, and a commercial salt remover in washing practices. The corrosion behavior of metals was periodically characterized using linear polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements. The morphology of corrosion coupons were examined by scanning electron microscopy and digital photos. Salt remover could significantly enhance the anti-corrosion performance of carbon steel and stainless steel in 30% MgCl2 solution, but not that of the aluminum alloy. The second part is focused on the evaluation of an innovative sugar beet by-product for use as a deicer additive. Modified dip-dry tests were used to simulate the field condition. Bare and coated C1010 samples were included in the test program to evaluate the potential benefits of this "green" deicer additive. The corrosion behavior of the samples was periodically characterized using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The results reveal that the use of sugar beet by-product can enhance the corrosion resistance of carbon steel and the mechanism of protection is the formation of an adsorbed protective organic layer on the metallic surface. The role of this additive in the corrosion of coated steel is more complicated.


The United States currently suffers from a mass drug addiction issue. Though various strategies have been put into place to battle this problem, there are still some holes in the knowledge we have of the mechanisms underlying addiction specifically, the role that metabolism plays in addiction. This study aims to explore the potentially essential part that such metabolites play in the acquisition of addiction, aiming to raise attention to the topic for further laboratory experiments. ISSN: 2652-4422


SUMMARY: Solitary fibrous tumors are rare spindle cell neoplasms that typically occur in the thorax but have been described in various locations within the abdomen and head and neck region. The most common extrapleural site is the oral cavity, but these tumors have been also described in the orbit, nasopharynx, paranasal sinuses, salivary glands, and larynx.1–3 We describe a case of a solitary fibrous tumor of the buccal space successfully treated with percutaneous CT-guided cryoablation.


Self-reports suggest >50% of university students cheat at some point in their academic career (Christensen Hughes JM, McCabe DL. Can J High Educ 36: 49-63, 2006), although objective values of academic misconduct (AM) are difficult to obtain. In a physiology-based department, we had a concern that students were altering written tests and resubmitting them for higher grades; thereby compromising the integrity of our primary assessment style. Therefore, we directly quantified the prevalence of AM on written tests in 11 courses across the department. Three thousand six hundred and twenty midterms were scanned, and any midterm submitted for regrading was compared with its original for evidence of AM. Student characteristics, test details, and course information were recorded. On a department level, results show that this form of AM was rare: prevalent on 2.2% of all tests written. However, of the tests submitted for regrading, 17.4% contained AM (range: 0-26%). The majority of AM was conducted by high-achieving students, (60% of offenders earned >80%), and there was a trend toward women being more likely to commit AM (P = 0.056). While our results objectively show that this type of AM is low, we highlight that large competitive courses face significantly higher prevalence, and high-achieving students may have gone underreported in previous literature. Vigilance should be employed by all faculty who accept tests for regrading.


Heat is one of the basic constituents of energy which can be stored as well as extracted from solar ponds. Different types of solar ponds are available but main focus in this paper is on salinity gradient solar pond which is one of the emerging technologies. It can recover energy from brine water sources present in Pakistan with minimum land utilization and capturing maximum solar radiations. Numerous renewable technological sources are currently under use all across the world. However, inadequate research has been done upon salinity gradient solar ponds, which are cheaper and easy to operate and maintain. The salinity gradient solar ponds constitutes of three layers or zones: the lower convective zone with maximum brine concentration, non- convective zone with highest salinity gradient and the upper convective zone which has minimum concentration of brine. The brine water can be sourced from post reverse osmosis or through any other saline water source. Solar pond technologies may have numerous feasible applications including brine management, electricity production and providing heat for different industrial processes. The paper reviews different ways to optimize the efficiency of solar ponds while making it cost effective at the same time. Most of the research on salinity gradient solar ponds has experimented on external heat exchangers in which the heat is usually extracted from lower convective zone. Heat extracted is studied on independent variables such as brine load, height of solar pond, conductivity of heat exchanger, temperature and pH of the water.  The heat extracted was further considered for steam generation. The steam could be utilized as a driving force for electricity generation and workability of industrial power plants. The economic feasibility based on the current conditions of Pakistan is also discussed.


Plane of array irradiance derived from common measurement sources is not usually directly applicable in modelling the energy yield of photovoltaic systems. Corrections to an effective irradiance value are required due to the differences in the spectral and angular response of irradiance measurement instruments (typically pyronometers or reference cells) when compared to the installed system. Empirical methods to provide this correction based on easily measured parameters are attractive both because of the simplicity of their implementation and the ability to tailor the solution to fit the system under study. Unfortunately the most common methods to correct for spectrum and angle of incidence do not adequately capture performance under non-ideal conditions. Here we demonstrate that for silicon modules an improved surface function combining air mass and clearness index is capable of being used as a site independent measure of spectral mismatch. Following a correction for precipitable water the same result is obtained from the procedure applied to cadmium telluride modules.


Development and testing of new more effi cient and environmentally friendly waste management technologies is one of the priorities of agroecology aimed at introducing the basic principles of the sustainable use of natural resources. An example of such a technology may be the recycling of cattle manure into the bedding for farm animals. (Research purpose) Feasibility study of diff erent technological options for the production of bedding from manure under conditions of an operating livestock enterprise. (Materials and methods) In the study, three options of this technology were considered as exemplifi ed by a dairy farm for 100 milking cows: Option 1 – separation of manure into fractions followed by aerobic fermentation of the solid manure fraction in a drum-type fermentor; Option 2 – mixing the unprocessed manure with peat and its subsequent aerobic fermentation in a drumtype fermentor; Option 3 – mixing the unprocessed manure with peat and its subsequent aerobic fermentation in a chambertype fermentor. The author has estimated capital and operation costs as well as labour inputs and payback period. (Results and discussion) The number of facilities and equipment required for manure recycling and the resulting product storage has been calculated for each option. The author has made an economic assessment of the three options. For Option 1, the capital costs of implementation amount to 18.2 million roubles, operating costs – 8.9 million roubles, labour inputs – 5.1 man-hour per tonne, and the payback period – 2.1 years. It has been revealed that options 2 and 3 feature high capital costs, therefore, bedding production with the use of peat proved to be ineffi cient. (Conclusions) The study has allowed to determine the most effi cient and economically feasible technological method of manure recycling: manure separation into fractions with subsequent aerobic fermentation of the solid fraction in a drum-type fermentor. Options 2 and 3 have been found economically unfeasible.


This letter reports on 1.5-V single work-function W/WN/n/sup +/-poly gate CMOS transistors for high-performance stand-alone dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and low-cost low-leakage embedded DRAM applications. At V/sub dd/ Of 1.5-V and 25/spl deg/C, drive currents of 634 /spl mu/A//spl mu/m for 90-nm L/sub gate/ NMOS and 208 /spl mu/A-/spl mu/m for 110-nm L/sub gate/ buried-channel PMOS are achieved at 25 pA//spl mu/m off-state leakage. Device performance of this single work function technology is comparable to published low leakage 1.5-V dual work-function technologies and 25% better than previously reported 1.8-V single work-function technology. Data illustrating hot-carrier immunity of these devices under high electric fields is also presented. Scalability of single work-function CMOS device design for the 90-nm DRAM generation is demonstrated.


This paper fulfils the programme announced in part IV of the series by examining the detailed application of the general quantum theory of fluids to liquid He II. It is shown that although the classical laws of hydrodynamics and thermodynamics are formally obeyed by the quantum liquid, important divergences arise in the manner of their interpretation. Without introducing any assumption other than the validity of the general laws of quantum mechanics, it is possible to explain qualitatively and quantitatively the well-known properties of liquid helium, including the thermodynamic discontinuity, the thermomechanical effect, the transfer effect, and the presence of thermal waves in the liquid. The connexion with earlier theories is traced, and it is shown that although they are in agreement with the theory here proposed in certain respects, their fundamental concepts are in need of considerable revision. The theory can be applied with slight changes to the phenomenon of superconductivity.


In this article, we describe the synthesis of a perfluoro-tagged polyglycerol dendron and its aggregation behavior in the presence of polyglycerol dendrimers with perfluorinated shells in water. The perfluoro-alkyl–perfluoro-alkyl interactions between the perfluorinated shells of the dendrimers and the perfluorinated tags of the dendrons lead to highly stable supramolecular architectures, due to self-assembly of the perfluorinated moieties. Furthermore, we show that the size of the resulting supramolecular complexes can be tuned by simple variation of the dendrimer–dendron ratio. Complexes at various ratios are characterized by optical microscopy, DLS, and TEM. In general, the results presented herein demonstrate that perfluoro-alkyl–perfluoro-alkyl interactions are applicable for the formation of stable supramolecular structures in water and thus provide a new tool for the design of supramolecular architectures in addition to traditional non-covalent interactions.


Extrapair paternity (EPP) has proved to be widespread and highly variable among birds and other taxa, including socially monogamous species. A multitude of hypotheses have been put forward to explain this variation, but its occurrence is not fully understood. Male age, social dominance rank, song and breeding density or synchrony have been among the suggested correlates of EPP, but results so far are inconclusive. We interspecifically cross-fostered blue tits (Parus caeruleus) and great tits (Parus major) in the wild, thus manipulating males to exhibit reduced social dominance rank, sing aberrant songs, and consequently be perceived as low-quality males as compared to controls. This allowed us to test if male quality had an influence on loss of paternity. We found no statistically significant differences between cross-fostered and control males of either species, neither with respect to levels of cuckoldry nor proportions of extrapair young (EPY) in the broods. Paternity levels were comparable to other studies on the same species. No effect of density could be detected on levels of EPP either, while an age effect seemed to be present at least in the blue tit, EPY being almost absent in broods of older blue tit males. We conclude that the effects of male quality on paternity loss are minor, if any, in these populations. Copyright 2005.


The method for radio channel pulse response processing with baseband conversion by six-port reflectometer technique is described. The received signal is converted by baseband conversion, digitized and the pulse response of radio channel is processed by proposed algorithms. These algorithms are working in real time and are able to estimate the amplitude, phase and delay of the received signal in each of propagation paths. The most promising algorithm (Exponential Power Descend Algorithm) achieved recovery successfulness of all signal paths equal approximately 90 % for SNR = 2.5 dB. Ill. 9, bibl. 11 (in English; summaries in English, Russian and Lithuanian).


TUDIES of serum proteins in taxonomy had their beginnings with the classical work of NUTTALL (1904) who used the antigenic properties of sera as criteria for classification. Subsequently, numerous studies were made of serum differences between species. In these studies in vitro precipitation of serum-antiserum mixtures was employed to distinguish sera either by the degree of flocculation or the presence or absence of an interfacial ring. The results of these investigations were summarized by LANDSTEINER and VAN DER SCHEER (1924, 1940). The differences found in the sera of species were quantitative in that antisera reacted more strongly with the serum of the homologous than of heterologous species. Relatively few studies were made in which the serum antigens of one species could be sharply differentiated from those of another. SASAKI (1937) reported that he was able to differentiate the serum of the White Leghorn chicken (Gallus gallus) from that of the guinea fowl (Numida meleagris) by absorbing antisera to one species with the serum of the heterologous species. According to SASAKI (1935) similar results had been obtained previously by ISHIHARA and MISAO in their studies of carp and by SASAKI in an investigation of a species cross in ducks. In a series of papers CUMLEY and IRWIN (1940, 1942, 1943, 1952) reported that segregation of serum antigens occurs among backcross progeny of species and generic hybrids in accordance with an hypothesis of unifactorial inheritance. The genes responsible for the serum specificities are not the same as the causative genes for the differentiating cellular substances and may be independent of or loosely linked to these genes. More recently there have been a number of intraspecific studies implicating genes in the formation or properties of serum proteins. THOMPSON, FOSTER, GOWEN, and TAUBER (1954) reported differences among strains of mice with respect to the globulin component as determined electrophoretically. There were also differences among the mouse strains with respect to the total serum protein content. A protein with hemoglobin binding properties, i.e. haptoglobin, has been studied in man by SMITHIES and WALKER ( 1956). They presented family data to support their hypothesis that the synthesis of the haptoglobins is under the control of a two allele system. Evidence in support of this hypothesis has also been obtained by F. GALATIUS-JENSEN (1957). Genetic control of protein synthesis is also indicated in the suggestive evidence that the


The results of the reported study showed considerable differences in the causes of attending dental health service offices, and differences in the health state of the stomatognathic system in the studied populations in certain provinces. Not always these differences were due to the index of dental health service availability. The index of this availability had a significant effect on the results of the therapeutic activity of dentists, and was unrelated to the results of prophylactic activities. Usually more teeth with active caries and more missing teeth were in the provinces with prevalence of peasant population. At the same time these provinces had a lower per cent of subjects with unfilled gaps in teeth. High per cent of studied subjects with missing teeth, usually not replaced or only partially reconstructed can be explained by very low attendance of patients to prosthetic laboratories.


Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a functional alteration of the cerebral cortex, which presents structural neurodevelopmental anomalies that affect synaptic function and the pattern of connections within and between cortical columns. From its etiological aspect, ASD has an important genetic load, considering a polygenic disorder, derived from a combination of "de novo" genetic mutations, associated to a predisposition derived from common inherited variations. The main genetic anomalies associated with ASD involve genes that encode proteins of the synapse. Thus, in patients with ASD, alterations in the initial development of the synapses have been described in the connection circuits between complex processing cortical areas. The molecular complexity observed in the predisposition to develop an ASD, together with the diversity of structural phenotypes, has made animal models reproduce only partially the ASD. To advance in the experimental study it is therefore necessary to develop representative models, such as cellular models derived from human cells. In recent decades, the advances in stem cell biology give us a way to apply experimental paradigms in cells derived from individuals with ASD. Currently, induced pluripotent cells (IPs) derived from human adult cells allow deepening the study of molecular and cellular bases of the neuronal development in humans, as well as the anomalies in this development, which give rise to disorders such as ASD. However, they present inherent problems derived from the experimental manipulation that involves the reprogramming of gene expression, therefore other models are also been explored.


Objective: To evaluate efficacy, safety, and tolerability of efinaconazole topical solution, 10% in a cohort of Japanese patients with mild to moderate toenail onychomycosis. Methods: A subgroup analysis of patients, aged 22-70 years, randomized to receive efinaconazole topical solution, 10% or vehicle from a multicenter, double-blind, vehicle-controlled 48-week study evaluating safety and efficacy. The primary end point was complete cure rate (0% clinical involvement of target toenail, and both negative potassium hydroxide examination and fungal culture) at Week 52. Results: The primary end point, complete cure, was achieved in 30.6% of patients treated with efinaconazole compared to 12.3% with vehicle (Observed case, P=.006), and was significantly better than that seen in the non-Japanese patients (P<.001). Treatment success (percent affected target toenail ≤10% at week 52) for efinaconazole was 60.6% compared to 33.3% with vehicle (P<.001). The majority of adverse events (AEs) were mild (16.6%) or moderate (81.1%) and few Short Research Article Rosen and Lin; IJTDH, 29(1): 1-7, 2018; Article no.IJTDH.36283 2 (7.8%) associated with efinaconazole. Eleven patients (6.0%) treated with efinaconazole discontinued the study due to AEs. Conclusions: Once daily efinaconazole topical solution, 10% may provide a useful topical option in the treatment of mild to moderate onychomycosis among ethnic Japanese patients.


A large part of an auditor's work includes evaluation of an organization's compliance with laws and regulatory requirements, internal policies and procedures, and other rules that an entity must follow. The objective of this case is to assist you in understanding both the importance of compliance auditing, and the need for auditors to exercise professional judgment when interpretation of rules is required. The case involves a hypothetical university's adherence to NCAA rules and regulations. The first part of the case provides exposure to various resources needed to develop an understanding of both intercollegiate athletics and compliance with rules established by its governing body, the NCAA. The second part requires you to use judgment in interpreting different scenarios that may or may not indicate compliance violations.


These articles on the roentgenologic examinations of the spinal cord and its surroundings cover myelography with positive and negative contrast media, angiography of spinal cord angiomas and vertebral phlebography. Viewpoints on new contrast media are also considered. The greater as well as the most interesting part of the book deals with technical problems in myelography. The two dominant methods of performing myelography, i.e. with positive and negative contrast media, are compared and evaluated in the introduction as well as the conclusion. JIROUT, in dealing with the pneumographic demonstration of normal and abnormal spinal arachnoidal structures, as well as writers who consider normal and abnormal findings in the cervical region, malformations in the sacral region, and disk protrusions in the lumbar region, all prefer gas myelography. It is evident that this offers a better chance than positive contrast myelography of revealing pathologic conditions of the spinal canal. It is difficult to go into all the details of the various articles, some of which are in French and some in English; suffice it to say that many are of great value in giving new aspects on different diagnostic problems. The book is excellently illustrated. The appearance of this volume is a sign of an increasing interest in roentgenologic procedures in the examination of the spinal cord and its surroundings. In contrast to the opinion of the publishers of the volume the reviewer has always considered gas myelography superior to myelography with a positive contrast medium, a view that has been further confirmed by reading this book. Bengt Liliequist


We have studied in Drosophila melanogaster the effects of allozyme variation at the alpha Gpdh and Adh loci on the following fitness components: female fecundity, egg hatchability, egg-to-adult survival under near-optimal and competitive conditions, rate of development under near-optimal and competitive conditions, and mating capacity of males. Significant effects of the alpha Gpdh locus on rate of development under competitive conditions (SS greater than FS greater than SS), and of the Adh locus on egg hatchability (FF = SS greater than FS) and egg-to-adult survival under competitive conditions (FF greater than SS = FS) were revealed. Possible natural selection mechanisms involved in the maintenance of allozyme polymorphisms at the alpha Gpdh and Adh loci are described. These mechanisms and the fitness of In(2L)t may account for the persistence and clinal distribution of the two allozyme polymorphisms in nature.


The paper provides a new direction to controlling psychological balance in emotion-logic encounter. A dynamics of co-existing multiple emotions is considered, and the condition for stability of the dynamics is determined by Lyapunov approach. Stabilization of the emotional dynamics is ascertained through Hebbian learning by autonomous adaptation of parameters of the dynamics. A novel scheme for stabilization of emotion-logic encounter is proposed by over-powering logic over emotion or vice-versa, based on the personality of the subject.


Objective High-dose radiation is well known to induce and modulate the immune system. This study was performed to evaluate the correlation between clinical outcomes and changes in natural killer cell activity (NKA) after Gamma Knife Radiosurgery (GKS) in patients with brain cancer. Methods We performed an open-label, prospective, cross-sectional study of 38 patients who were treated with GKS for brain tumors, including metastatic and benign brain tumors. All of the patients underwent GKS, and blood samples were collected before and after GKS. NKA was measured using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit, to measure interferon-gamma (IFNγ) secreted by ex vivo-stimulated NK cells from whole blood. We explored the correlations between NK cell-produced IFNγ (NKA-IFNγ) levels and clinical parameters of patients who were treated with GKS for brain tumors. Results NKA-IFNγ levels were decreased in metastatic brain tumor patients compared to those with benign brain tumors (p<0.0001). All the patients who used steroid treatment to reduce brain swelling after GKS had an NKA-IFNγ level of zero except one patient. High NKA-IFNγ levels were not associated with a rapid decrease in brain metastasis and did not increase after GKS. Conclusion The activity of NK cells in metastatic brain tumors decreased more than that in benign brain tumors after GKS.