Summary The development of rural areas is a complex social, economic, political and cultural issue of immense importance to the development of society as a whole. The vitality of rural communities, which represent a specific socio-spatial phenomenon, affects the development of global society and is inextricably linked to the development and issues of urban areas of each society. Both in theory and development practice, rural development as a complex and enduring process has long been unjustifiably reduced to the economic-agrarian matrix, often reflected in the modernization of agriculture and the centralized and sectoral management of and influence on rural development. The primary focus of this paper is on the social capital of rural communities, i.e. social relations and connections within local rural communities which, alongside other important development factors, are one of the prerequisites to maintaining their vitality. The paper presents the results of a survey on social capital conducted on 281 farms in the region of Vojvodina (Serbia), indicating the characteristics of the social capital on the farms considered and the farmers' attitudes towards the development and life of their local communities. The social capital of the surveyed farmers was found to be only relatively good, suggesting that the overall social capital in Serbia is underdeveloped because all the farms considered are located in Vojvodina, i.e. the most developed agricultural area in Serbia characterized by rural settlements with the most favorable infrastructural, demographic and economic conditions.


The reaction mechanism of cycloaddition between phenyl aziridine and heterocumulene catalysed by iron salts in water has been modeled computationally to trace the origin of the excellent regioselectivity toward 5-substituted product formation. The calculations reveal that the Lewis-acidic iron centre activates and increases the electrophilicity of the heterocumulene upon binding, so that a nucleophilic aziridine-attack can be invoked. The preferential opening of the substituted C2–N bond in the following intermediate, dictated by the stability of an incipient carbocation is the key for such selectivity. Since the aziridine ring-opening step is asynchronous, concerted in nature, the iminoazoselenolidine ring retains the stereopurity at the chiral carbon.


Aim: The aim of the study was to compare the effectiveness of intrauterine perfusion of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) in improving assisted reproductive technology (ART) outcomes in women with thin endometrium and recurrent implantation failure (RIF) undergoing frozen embryo transfer (FET). Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at GG Hospital, Fertility and Women's Speciality Centre, Chennai, India, between March 2016 and September 2019. The study group comprised of 132 demographically identical women with RIF and thin endometrium undergoing FETs. The mean age of the participants in both the groups was 33.18 ± 4.30 and 32.5 ± 5.02, respectively. These women were randomly divided into PRP Group A (n = 56) and G-CSF Group B (n = 76). Both the groups were initiated with the conventional preparation for FET using estradiol valerate and micronized progesterone along with a trigger (10,000 IU of human chrionic gonadotropins (HCG)). Intrauterine PRP and G-CSF were then administered for those patients with thin endometrium (≤0.8 cm) on days 16 and 18, and sequential embryo transfers were performed as day 3 embryos along day 5 blastocyst. Results: The average endometrial thickness before the infusion of PRP and G-CSF was 0.67 ± 0.09 and 0.70 ± 0.08, whereas after the infusion, it improved to 0.78 ± 0.14 and 0.75 ± 0.06, respectively. P value between Groups A and B was 0.0968 and hence statistically not significant, indicating similar improvement by both the methods. P value for implantation rate, clinical pregnancy rate, live birth rate (LBR), and miscarriage rate was 0.182, 0.695, 0.287, and 0.270, respectively. It was found that there is no statistically significant difference in ART outcomes in both the PRP and G-CSF groups. Conclusion: Intrauterine infusion of PRP and G-CSF was beneficial in improving LBR in RIF with thin endometrium, both being statistically comparable. There were no differences to show superior of one over the other.


This review synthesized the findings from twenty-one studies of the associations between job stress and well-being among migrant workers in China. We conducted a systematic review and a meta-analysis of the correlations between two types of job stress (i.e. high job demands and lack of job resources) and two aspects of well-being (i.e. positive aspects and negative aspects). The results revealed a modest but significant association between job stress and positive aspects of well-being (r = -.179), and a modest but significant association between job stress and negative aspects of well-being (r = .256). Importantly, the association between job stress and negative aspects of well-being was larger than the association between job stress and positive aspects of well-being. Neither association was moderated by the indicators of job stress or by a set of study characteristics and sample characteristics. The findings contribute to the literature by clarifying the inconsistent findings of occupational health psychology research regarding the effect of job stress on Chinese migrant workers' well-being. The findings suggest that future studies should distinguish the differential effects of job stress on positive versus negative aspects of well-being.


Carbon thin film was bombarded with high charge state Xeq+ ions, and the secondary carbon yields were measured as a function of charge state in the broad range of q = 8 to 44 at the kinetic energy of 1.0 MeV and, also, q = 44 at 175 keV. It is found that the secondary ion yields per incident ion increase with increasing q; the increase rate is remarkably high in q > 26 with the rate of q8.5 and rather moderate in q > 31. The yield and spectra of the secondary ions are not very different for 1.0 MeV and 175 keV for Xeq+ (q = 44) ion incidence.


Single-cell transcriptomics has recently emerged as a powerful tool to analyze cellular heterogeneity, discover new cell types, and infer putative differentiation routes. The technique has been rapidly embraced by the hematopoiesis research community, and like other technologies before, single-cell molecular profiling is widely expected to make important contributions to our understanding of the hematopoietic hierarchy. Much of this new interpretation relies on inference of the transcriptomic landscape as a representation of existing cellular states and associated transitions among them. Here we review how this model allows, under certain assumptions, charting of time-resolved differentiation trajectories with unparalleled resolution and how the landscape of multipotent cells may be rather devoid of discrete structures, challenging our preconceptions about stem and progenitor cell types and their organization. Finally, we highlight how promising technological advances may convert static differentiation landscapes into a dynamic cell flux model and thus provide a more holistic understanding of normal hematopoiesis and blood disorders.


Current models suggest that the transcription factor ThPOK, the "master regulator" of CD4 commitment, is selectively induced in developing abTCR+ thymocytes by strong/persistent TCR signals, although direct evidence for this conjecture is lacking. We show that strong TCR signals mediated by antibody treatment or high affinity endogenous ligands cause ThPOK induction in thymocytes of the distinct gd T cell lineage. A key ThPOK cis-acting element, the distal regulatory element (DRE), is sufficient to mediate TCR dependent gene activation in gd thymocytes. Additionally, we demonstrate that ThPOK controls maturation and repertoire selection of developing gd thymocytes. Thus, lack of functional ThPOK causes a severe reduction in mature gdTCR+ thymocytes and a shift in Vg usage, while constitutive ThPOK expression leads to a striking increase in mature gd thymocytes. These results demonstrate that ThPOK expression in gd thymocytes is regulated by the strength of TCR signaling, define an important new role for ThPOK in gd T cell development/maturation, and lend strong support to the view that development of most gd T cells depends on TCR engagement/signaling.


Zinc‐fingers and homeoboxes 2 (ZHX2) and zinc‐finger and BTB domain containing 20 (ZBTB20) repress the postnatal expression of α‐fetoprotein (AFP) by interacting with the AFP gene promoter regions. ZHX2 inhibits the expression of AFP and cyclins A and E. ZBTB20 is negatively regulated by CUX1, which promotes cell‐cycle progression, suggesting that AFP reactivation is closely linked to hepatocyte proliferation. A slight elevation in the serum AFP level often occurs in patients with chronic hepatitis C in the absence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and is an independent risk factor for HCC development to complement the fibrosis stage. In addition, the sustained elevation of AFP after interferon therapy is a risk factor of HCC development. AFP levels are clinically useful in predicting the outcomes of liver transplantation and sorafenib therapy for HCC patients. A low preoperative AFP level is a predictor of long‐term survival and is associated with a low recurrence rate of HCC after liver transplantation. AFP response (≥20% decrease in AFP during 6–8 weeks of treatment) rather than radiological outcomes is a significant prognostic factor for survival in sorafenib‐treated HCC patients. Highly sensitive Lens culinaris agglutinin‐reactive AFP (AFP‐L3) is 5–10 times more sensitive than conventional AFP‐L3, and useful for early detection of HCC in patients with total AFP below 20 ng/mL.


10 January 2013 O VER the past years, an increasing number of studies report adverse outcomes associated with transfused blood components. Of this extensive and growing literature, outcomes after erythrocyte transfusions are the most numerous. Although erythrocytes are licensed for storage up to 42 days, reports suggest that units stored longer than 14–21 days may potentially be associated with a greater risk of morbidity and mortality, what is referred to as "the storage lesion."1,2 There are ongoing controversies relating storage duration of allogeneic erythrocytes with the risk of adverse patient outcomes. However, most of these reports are based on special patient populations, such as cardiac surgical patients, trauma patients, and intensive care unit patients. This patient selection is likely due to the fact these are easier groups to study because of their high incidence of bleeding and subsequent erythrocyte transfusion and their high relative mortality compared with other patients. However, this critically ill group is simultaneously at risk of multiorgan system dysfunction because of causes that may also reflect their underlying illness and confound interpretation of the postulated effects of stored erythrocytes on transfused patients. Defining the adverse effects of transfusions has been based on clinical endpoints ranging from mortality to multiorgan system dysfunction, mechanical ventilation duration, infection rate, intensive care unit/hospital length of stay, and hospitalization cost, as examples.3,4 However, the molecular and mechanistic causes of the erythrocyte storage lesions are complex and extend beyond oxygen delivery and tissue oxygenation because they impact on patient outcomes. A diverse number of mechanisms are believed to be responsible for the "storage lesion," including increased nitric oxide scavenging from erythrocyte microparticles and/or cellfree hemoglobin in older blood5 and impaired nitric oxide production with reduced nitric oxide synthesis by dysfunctional endothelial cells, collectively reducing nitric oxide levels below a critical threshold in vascular beds causing vasoconstriction and impaired organ flow.1,2,6 However, multiple mechanisms have been implicated.4,7 Despite the extensive use of erythrocyte transfusions, many of our clinical practices have evolved out of recommendations and consensus evaluation that have not been consistently tested in robust clinical trials.1,8 Clinical studies attempting to provide evidencebased approaches to transfusion practices have only been recently published. This complex literature describing variable effects of erythrocyte storage on patient outcomes is largely observational and mostly retrospective and offers divergent conclusions.9 The few randomized pilot studies have not been powered to detect differences in clinical endpoints because of relatively small patient numbers.8,10 However, most of these studies have evaluated more critically ill patients. Furthermore, the erythrocyte storage effects on clinical outcomes remains in a state of equipoise and limited data exist outside of cardiac surgery and trauma.6,8 In this issue of ANESTHESIOLOGY, Saager et al.11 retrospectively analyzed 6,994 patients from their data base of 86,483 adult general surgical patients. The information was obtained from 2005 to 2010 from the Cleveland Clinic Perioperative Health Documentation System registry and merged with blood product data from perioperative management. Of note is the current study used only leukocyte-reduced, allogeneic erythrocyte transfusions in the evaluation. The authors grouped patients who received Clinical Studies of Erythrocyte Outcomes and Mortality


Structures and mineral growths formed in seven successive deformational phases in gneisses in late Archaean times form a basis for the determination at chronological sequences from place to place in the Presvecokarelides of eastern and eastern central Finland. Refolded folds and refolded metamorphic rock fabrics, formed under particular P-T conditions and deformed under other P-T conditions, together with a variety of igneous masses whose positions structural sequences can be determined, provide such a complex framework that the likelihood of random matching is remote while the lack of expression of one parameter does not appreciably reduce the strength of the correlation. Isotopic data demonstrating corresponding events in the gneisses from different parts of the region is an additional factor for correlation. With this being associated with matching complex structural frameworks that show evidence of having been formed under the same successive stress systems, together with matching metamorphic and igneous histories, the gneisses of the Presvecokarelides of eastern and eastern central Finland are interpreted as having formed in one orogenic regime. Corresponding sets or features in the granitoid association of northern Finland indicate that the successively formed stress systems were operative over a large crustal segment, while the expression of the various structural metamorphic and igneous features and their interrelations correspond, in many respects, to those of orogens whose evolution has been related to the movement of large lithospheric plates.


Summary Transient receptor potential channel subfamily A member 1 (TRPA1) is a Ca2+-permeable cation channel that serves as one of the primary sensors of environmental irritants and noxious substances. Many TRPA1 agonists are electrophiles that are recognized by TRPA1 via covalent bond modifications of specific cysteine residues located in the cytoplasmic domains. However, a mechanistic understanding of electrophile sensing by TRPA1 has been limited due to a lack of high-resolution structural information. Here, we present the cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures of nanodisc-reconstituted ligand-free TRPA1 and TRPA1 in complex with the covalent agonists JT010 and BITC at 2.8, 2.9, and 3.1 A, respectively. Our structural and functional studies provide the molecular basis for electrophile recognition by the extraordinarily reactive C621 in TRPA1 and mechanistic insights into electrophile-dependent conformational changes in TRPA1. This work also provides a platform for future drug development targeting TRPA1.


In face perception, besides physiognomic changes, accessories like eyeglasses can influence facial appearance. According to a stereotype, people who wear glasses are more intelligent, but less attractive. In a series of four experiments, we showed how full-rim and rimless glasses, differing with respect to the amount of face they cover, affect face perception, recognition, distinctiveness, and the attribution of stereotypes. Eyeglasses generally directed observers' gaze to the eye regions; rimless glasses made faces appear less distinctive and resulted in reduced distinctiveness in matching and in recognition tasks. Moreover, the stereotype was confirmed but depended on the kind of glasses – rimless glasses yielded an increase in perceived trustworthiness, but not a decrease in attractiveness. Thus, glasses affect how we perceive the faces of the people wearing them and, in accordance with an old stereotype, they can lower how attractive, but increase how intelligent and trustworthy people wearing them ap...


Background: Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a highly complex and effective surgery even though its perioperative bleeding may increase the need for blood transfusion and its associated infection risk, cardiovascular overload, increased costs, and mortality. As tourniquet reduces intraoperative bleeding it may be associated with postoperative bleeding, venous thrombosis, and distal ischemia. The reperfusion may trigger a local and systemic inflammatory response. Anesthetic preconditioning (APC) with sevoflurane minimizes ischemia-reperfusion syndrome (I/R). This study evaluated the effects of APC with sevoflurane on perioperative bleeding in TKA.Methods: We allocated 30 patients into two groups: a sevo group (sevoflurane 2% for 15 minutes before the tourniquet) and a control group (propofol infusion). Laboratory tests were collected right before the tourniquet (LAB PRE, in the operating room) and after its release at four moments: LAB POST (immediately after), LAB 2 (two hours after), LAB 12 (12 hours after), and LAB 24 (24 hours after). The volume of the suction drain was measured at one, two, 12, and 24 hours after the end of the surgery. Antifibrinolytics were not administered.Results: There was no statistically significant difference in bleeding-related variables, such as drained volume and hemoglobin and hematocrit measurements. Drainage volume was higher in the first two hours after the procedure, while hematocrit decreased pre- to post-operatively and between two- and 12-hours post-procedure.Conclusion: Sevoflurane as an anesthetic preconditioning did not reduce postoperative bleeding in TKA surgery.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov – NCT03379103; December 20, 2017.


Background Gut derived innate lymphoid cells of type 3 (ILC)3 are increased in number in the circulation and inflamed tissues of AS patients. Factors influencing the maintainace of ILC3 in an activated status are not clear. The atypical chemokine receptor D6 is a decoy and scavenger receptor for most inflammatory CC chemokines and acts preventing exacerbated inflammatory reactions. Mice lacking D6 expression in the non-hematopoietic compartment display a significant increase of pro-inflammatory monocytes in the peripheral blood and in secondary lymphoid tissues. The role of D6 in human inflammatory disorders has not been inverstigated. Objectives To evaluate whether modulation of D6 expression occurs in the gut and in BM of AS patients and accompanied with a selective increase of pro-inflammatory CXCR1highLy6highTL1A+CCR7+ cells in the circulation and inflamed tissues of AS and to study the effect of these cells in modulating ILC3 differentiation. Methods RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry were used to evaluate the expression of D6 in the gut and bone marrow of AS patients and controls. Different monocyte substes were analyzed by flow cytometry in the peripheral blood, gut, synovial fluids and bone marrow of AS patients and controls. Isolated peripheral CXCR1highLy6highTL1A+CCR7+ cells were co-coltured with isolated peripheral ILC3 and changes in ILC3 frequency were evaluated by flow cytometry. Results D6 was significantly down-regulated in the ileum and in the bone marrow of AS patients compared to controls. D6 deficiency was accompanied by a complex monocyte/macrophage signature. Tissue resident CXCR1highLy6low macrophages were expanded in the ileum of AS patients compared to controls. A significant increase in the frequency of pro-inflammatory CXCR1highLy6high monocytes producing high levels of TL1A and IL-23 was observed in the ileum of AS patients. In the peripheral blood a statistically significant increase in the frequencies of both bone marrow derived CXCR1lowLy6High and intestinal derived CXCR1highLy6highCCR7+TL1A+IL-23+ monocytes, the latest being also expanded in AS synovial fluids and bone marrow. Isolated pro-inflammatory CXCR1highLy6highTL1A+IL-23+CCR7+ monocytes from peripheral blood of AS induced the expansion and activation, evaluated through the production of IL-22 and IL-17, of ILC3. Conclusions In this study we provide the first demonstration that absence of D6 expression in the gut and in the inflamed tissues of AS patients selectively induced the intestinal accumulation and re-circulation of pro-inflammatory CXCR1highLy6highTL1A+IL-23+CCR7+ monocytes. Since the ability of these cells in promoting ILC3 expansion and activation, these cells may promote a sustained pro-inflammatory status in AS. Disclosure of Interest None declared


Until recently, molecular studies on human norovirus (HuNoV), a major causative agent of gastroenteritis, have been hampered by the lack of an efficient cell culture system. Murine norovirus-1 (MNV-1) has served as a surrogate model system for norovirus research, due to the availability of robust cell culture systems and reverse genetics. To identify amino acids involved in RNA synthesis by the viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (NS7), we constructed NS7 mutants in which basic amino acids surrounding the catalytic site were substituted with alanine. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay revealed that these residues are important for RNA binding, particularly R396. Furthermore, in vitro RNA synthesis and reverse genetics were used to identify conserved amino acids essential for RNA synthesis and viral replication. These results provide additional functional insights into highly conserved amino acids in NS7 and provide potential methods of rational attenuation of norovirus replication.


Previous work has found strong links between the choice of social media images and users' emotions, demographics and personality traits. In this study, we examine which attributes of profile and posted images are associated with depression and anxiety of Twitter users. We used a sample of 28,749 Facebook users to build a language prediction model of survey-reported depression and anxiety, and validated it on Twitter on a sample of 887 users who had taken anxiety and depression surveys. We then applied it to a different set of 4,132 Twitter users to impute language-based depression and anxiety labels, and extracted interpretable features of posted and profile pictures to uncover the associations with users' depression and anxiety, controlling for demographics. For depression, we find that profile pictures suppress positive emotions rather than display more negative emotions, likely because of social media self-presentation biases. They also tend to show the single face of the user (rather than show her in groups of friends), marking increased focus on the self, emblematic for depression. Posted images are dominated by grayscale and low aesthetic cohesion across a variety of image features. Profile images of anxious users are similarly marked by grayscale and low aesthetic cohesion, but less so than those of depressed users. Finally, we show that image features can be used to predict depression and anxiety, and that multitask learning that includes a joint modeling of demographics improves prediction performance. Overall, we find that the image attributes that mark depression and anxiety offer a rich lens into these conditions largely congruent with the psychological literature, and that images on Twitter allow inferences about the mental health status of users.


Hydrothermal coprecipitation experiments in NH 4 Cl solutions have been used to establish values for sulfur isotope fractionation between sphalerite and galena over the temperature range 600 degrees to 275 degrees C. The experimental data yield a linear function described by the equation 1,000 1n alpha (sub sph-gal) = 7.0 X 10 5 T (super -2) . This result is slightly different from results published by other workers.Sphalerite and galena crystallized in NH 4 I solutions at 500 degrees C show a reversed order of S 34 enrichment, delta S 34 sph 34 gal instead of delta S 34 sph > delta S 34 gal . This striking effect is interpreted to reflect differences in the energetics of growth on the octahedral faces typical of galena grown in NH 4 I and the cubic faces of galena grown in NH 4 Cl.


Orange/Jazztel: Convergence meets Consolidation in the Spanish Telecoms Sector* In a nutshell: The Orange/Jazztel transaction takes place in a market that tipped toward fixed-mobile multiple…


Links to databases and other resources for American Indian Leadership. Also helpful for those researching Native American education, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and related topics.


This paper aims to close a gap in the literature on the cost of payment systems by analyzing the cost of cash and debit cards in Austria. No prior analysis exists, as far as the authors are aware. Using novel data from several sources, the unit costs for cash and debit card payments in 2013 are estimated to be Euro 0.40 and & Euro 0.39, respectively, which are close to the most cost-efficient countries in Europe (the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries). Although Austrian consumers have a much stronger preference for cash than consumers in these countries, the Austrian payment industry appears to have developed relatively cost-efficient institutional structures by relying upon centralization and international outsourcing. However, cost efficiency could be further increased by increasing the share of debit card payments or other cost-efficient digital payment methods.


When considering the work of post-colonial scholars, it becomes apparent that missing from the list of the oppressed and marginalized are those who are doubly colonized with physical and mental disabilities. If, as Frantz Fanon has argued, Othering occurs on the basis of physical and verbal difference, then that colonized subject who is Other in terms of body and voice is made doubly Other by means of her disability. In this paper, I examine the social framing and ideological work of disabled characters in two texts, Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day and Fatima Gallaire-Bourega's You Have Come Back. Using these texts' main characters—Baba, who is autistic (Desai), and the Madwoman and the Cripple (Gallaire-Bourega)—I argue that the incorporation of a disability studies perspective in post-colonial and feminist critiques can enrich our understanding of the dialectic between colonizer and colonized and refigure our consideration of hybridity. Though Desai and Gallaire-Bourega resist simple "answers" to the question of how gender intersects with disability in post-colonial worlds, both offer provocative instances of the transgressive potential of "different" bodies.


Abstract Action potential (AP) burst firing caused by the activation of low-voltage-activated T-type Ca2+ channels is a unique mode of neuronal firing. T-type channels have been implicated in diverse physiological and pathophysiological processes, including epilepsy, autism, and mood regulation, but the brain structures involved remain incompletely understood. The medial habenula (MHb) is an epithalamic structure implicated in anxiety-like and withdrawal behavior. Previous studies have shown that MHb neurons fire tonic APs at a frequency of ∼2–10 Hz or display depolarized low-amplitude membrane oscillations. Here, we report in C57BL/6J mice that a subpopulation of MHb neurons are capable of firing transient, high-frequency AP bursts mediated by T-type channels. Burst firing was observed following rebounding from hyperpolarizing current injections or during depolarization from hyperpolarized membrane potentials in ∼20% of MHb neurons. It was rarely observed at baseline but could be evoked in MHb neurons displaying different initial activity states. Further, we show that T-type channel mRNA, in particular Cav3.1, is expressed in the MHb in both cholinergic and substance P-ergic neurons. Pharmacological Cav3 antagonism blocked both burst firing and evoked Ca2+ currents in MHb neurons. Additionally, we observed high-frequency AP doublet firing at sustained depolarized membrane potentials that was independent of T-type channels. Thus, there is a greater diversity of AP firing patterns in MHb neurons than previously identified, including T-type channel-mediated burst firing, which may uniquely contribute to behaviors with relevance to neuropsychiatric disease.


As optical coherence tomography (OCT) has increasingly become a standard modality for imaging the retina, automated algorithms for processing OCT data have become necessary to do large scale studies looking for changes in specific layers. To provide accurate results, many of these algorithms rely on the consistency of layer intensities within a scan. Unfortunately, OCT data often exhibits inhomogeneity in a given layer's intensities, both within and between images. This problem negatively affects the performance of segmentation algorithms and little prior work has been done to correct this data. In this work, we adapt the N3 framework for intensity inhomogeneity correction, which was originally developed to correct MRI data, to work for macular OCT data. We first transform the data to a flattened macular space to create a template intensity profile for each layer giving us an accurate initial estimate of the gain field. N3 will then produce a smoothly varying field to correct the data. We show that our method is able to both accurately recover synthetically generated gain fields and improves the stability of the layer intensities.


Lolium perenne L. is commonly used alone or in association with blue-grass and fescues in sport fields, parks, and gardens. During 2003, symptoms of an unknown disease were observed on L. perenne turfgrass in western Buenos Aires. Initial symptoms were indefinite yellow and green dappled spots that extended downward from the leaf tip, turned brown and finally gray, causing leaf death. Segments of symptomatic leaf tissues were surface sterilized and placed on 2% potato dextrose agar in petri dishes. After 4 days at room temperature, blackish brown colonies developed with dark brown septate conidiophores. Conidia were 21 to 29 × 9 to 13 μm, 3-septa, curved at the third cell from the base that is longer and darker than the others. Cells at each end are subhyaline and intermediate cells are medium brown. These characteristics are consistent with Curvularia lunata (Wakker) Boedijng (1). Pathogenicity tests were performed in five plastic trays with substrate of natural soil and sand (1:1 [v/v]) where the turfgrass (L. perenne cv. El Cencerro) was seeded. Plants were inoculated by spraying a suspension of 2 × 106 conidia per ml of sterile distilled water. Controls were sprayed with sterile distilled water. The trays were covered with transparent plastic bags, sprayed periodically with water, and incubated at 25°C in a greenhouse for 20 days. The first symptoms were observed 3 days later. After 9 days, 24% of the grass surface area showed blight lesions. C. lunata was consistently reisolated from affected tissues. Control plants remained symptomless. To our knowledge, this is the first report of C. lunata affecting L. perenne in Argentina. Reference: (1) M. B. Ellis and I. A. S. Gibson Cochliobolus lunatus (conidial state: Curvularia lunata). Page 474 in: Descriptions of Pathogenic Fungi and Bacteria. CMI, Kew, Surrey, UK, 1975.


In this chapter, we are concerned with mesh-generation methods and mesh-adaptivity issues. Many techniques are nowadays available to complete meshes of arbitrary domains for computational purposes. Planar, surface, and volume meshing have been automated to a large extent. Over the last few years, meshing activities have been focused on adaptive schemes, where the features of a solution field must be accurately captured. To this end, meshing techniques must be revisited in order to be capable of completing high-quality meshes conforming to these features. Error estimates are therefore used to analyze the solution field at a given stage, and, on the basis of the results of the infunction they yield, adapted meshes are created before computing the next stage of the solution field. A number of novel meshing issues must be addressed, including how to construct a mesh that can adapt to what the error estimate prescribes, how to handle large-size meshes, how to consider moving boundary problems, and so on.

Keywords:

mesh generation;
mesh adaptation;
adaptivity;
h-method;
adaptive computation;
parallel meshing;
moving boundary problems;
FEM applications;
CFD;
solid mechanics


Here we report the design and preparation of a novel self-reporting sensor for cholic acid, an important biological compound produced in hepatocytes. Traditional detection methods of cholic acid are mostly dependent on analytical equipment, and are either time-consuming or require a derivatization process. In this work, a new approach based on molecularly imprinted photonic hydrogels (IPHs) is described, by which direct, sensitive and label-free detection of cholic acid can be achieved without any derivatization treatment and expensive instruments. The unique 3D ordered porous hydrogels that reveal optical changes in responsive to cholic acid concentration were prepared by combining colloidal crystal templating with the molecular imprinting technique. Due to their special hierarchical porous structure, which consists of 3D-ordered interconnected macroporous arrays with nanocavities derived from molecular imprinting, the formed photonic hydrogels allow rapid and ultrasensitive detection of the target analyte. The interconnected macropores are favorable for the rapid transport of the analyte in the hydrogel, while the inherent high affinity of nanocavities distributed in thin hydrogel walls allows IPHs to recognize the analyte with high specificity.


We propose a new method for creating computationally efficient and compact convolutional neural networks (CNNs) using a novel sparse connection structure that resembles a tree root. This allows a significant reduction in computational cost and number of parameters compared to state-of-the-art deep CNNs, without compromising accuracy, by exploiting the sparsity of inter-layer filter dependencies. We validate our approach by using it to train more efficient variants of state-of-the-art CNN architectures, evaluated on the CIFAR10 and ILSVRC datasets. Our results show similar or higher accuracy than the baseline architectures with much less computation, as measured by CPU and GPU timings. For example, for ResNet 50, our model has 40% fewer parameters, 45% fewer floating point operations, and is 31% (12%) faster on a CPU (GPU). For the deeper ResNet 200 our model has 48% fewer parameters and 27% fewer floating point operations, while maintaining state-of-the-art accuracy. For GoogLeNet, our model has 7% fewer parameters and is 21% (16%) faster on a CPU (GPU).


Communication is a process of transferring the information from one entity to another. Speech is one of the most common modes of communication. The person who suffers from severe motor impairment, severe cerebral palsy, head trauma and spinal injuries cannot able to express their thoughts in the form of speech. The development of direct neurocontrol over virtual or physical devices would improve quality of life immensely for those who suffer from impaired communication skill. In this methodthe development of an Electroencephalogram (EEG) based Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system is proposed. The thoughts of the individual are extracted from the brain activity of a particular disordered patient and it is stored in the form of data.The word frequencies for basic essential requirements such as food, water and assisting work should be generated and the data is stored in matrix representation. Already obtained EEG signal and the word frequencies should be compared and the matched frequencies are stored separately. Finally, the matched frequencies of corresponding words are displayed using LCD display and then the words are converted into audible signal by using speech synthesizer.


A total order protocol is a fundamental building block in the construction of distributed fault-tolerant applications. Unfortunately, the implementation of such a primitive can be expensive both in terms of communication steps and of number of messages exchanged. This problem is exacerbated in large-scale systems, where the performance of the algorithm may be limited by the presence of high-latency links.Optimistic total order protocols have been proposed to alleviate this problem. However, different optimistic protocols offer quite distinct services. This paper makes an overview of different optimistic approaches and shows how they can be combined in a single adaptive protocol.


Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) changed healthcare across the world. With this change came an increase in healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and a concerning concurrent proliferation of MDR organisms (MDROs). In this narrative review, we describe the impact of COVID-19 on HAIs and MDROs, describe potential causes of these changes, and discuss future directions to combat the observed rise in rates of HAIs and MDRO infections.


The effect of the occupational activity on the physical capacity of work is of great interest for labour physiology. In connection with that, the physical capacity for work of the miners from coal industry, at different age and with different length of service was studied. Submaximum loading of bicycle ergometer was applied--50, 100 and 150 wt. The maximum working capacity was determined by the nomogram of Astrand. The miners, aged from 21-30 (3.4 l/min maximum oxygen consumption) have the highest capacity. At the age of 31-40, it is abruptly dropped (2.54 l/min maximum oxygen consumption) anf is maintained at the same level after that age (2.49 l/min maximum oxygen consumption). The decrease of the physical capacity for work of the miners, over the age of 30, ie greater than the "normal" age decrease as well as than that of the workers from other occupations. The high physical capacity for work of the young miners (to the age of 30) allows the performance of heavy physical work (allowable energy expenditure 5.1 kcal/min, and in peak loading--8.5 Ical/min). The established decrease of the physical capacity for work after that age determines the lower allowable energy loss at work (3.8 kcal/min). The discrepancy between the real physical capacity for work of the workers between 31 and 50 years of age and corresponding allowable energy expenditure as well as the higher energy expenditure determined during work is a circumstance that requires particular attention. In fact, measures intended not to allow the exceeding of the maximum allowable loading are necessary for the older workers.


Abstract. Shumka S, Berberi E, Kulici M, Muçaj S, Vladi F. 2022. Assessing the relationship between biodiversity conservation and slow food culture in selected protected areas in Albania. Biodiversitas 23: 1319-1326. Information on the knowledge, uses, and abundance of natural resources in protected areas can provide insight into conservation status and strategies in these locations and human attitudes. The slow-food concept is introduced to accommodate agriculture and food production with strong consideration on environment sustainability, biodiversity conservation and social justice. This paper investigates the slow food knowledge, perception, and contribution to nature conservation in Albania's five protected areas. The performed work is based on a field survey and structured questionnaire aiming to link the current stands within slow food, biodiversity conservation and perceptions of the tourism sector in the protected areas. Our integrated analysis found that the coverage of food biodiversity items related to slow food culture that are relevant to prescribed management plans of the protected areas was at the low level from 4-9 out of 17 considered categories. This was directly related to the low level of conservation at the mid-term assessment that varied from 0 to 62% of originally planned ones. The data also confirmed that the visitors were imposed to a situation of readiness for paying extra for the consumption of the locally based product (i.e., in line with slow food concept) within a specific protected area with their response ranging from 0 to 18%. The information can be used towards generating sustainable use and conservation plans that are appropriate for the local communities and protected areas.


In this article, a novel AM-PM conversion model is compared to the classical behavioral quadrature one. The proposed model can be seen as a phase statement of compression and desensitization. These two models are closely related. However, the proposed method does not have the limitations considered in the classical model, which can be seen in the investigation of the AM-PM conversion introduced in a given carrier due to the presence of several signals, as is the case in multicarrier amplifiers. The method allows us to find the design conditions to reduce the AM-PM conversion introduced by nonlinear circuits. To show the dependence of the AM-PM conversion as a function of several input tones and frequency spacing, which is not considered in the classical model, the performance of medium power BJT and GaAsFET operating at 900 and 1900 MHz, is investigated when one, two, and three tones are simultaneously fed at the input. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.


Forest recreation can be successfully conducted for the purpose of psychological relaxation, as has been proven in previous scientific studies. During the winter in many countries, when snow cover occurs frequently, forest recreation (walking, relaxation, photography, etc.) is common. Nevertheless, whether forest therapy conducted in a forest environment with a snow cover will also have a positive effect on psychological indicators remains unknown. Furthermore, male subjects frequently participate in forest therapy experiments, whereas females are rarely involved. Thus, in this study, the effectuality of forest recreation during winter and with snow cover was tested on 32 young females. For these reasons, the experiment involved 15-minute periods of relaxation in a forest environment or in an urban environment, in addition to a pre-test under indoor conditions. Four psychological questionnaires (POMS, PANAS, ROS, SVS) were administered to participants before and after interventions. Results showed that participants' levels of negative mood, as measured by different aspects of the POMS questionnaire (tension-anxiety, anger-hostility, depression-dejection, confusion, fatigue), decreased after exposure to the forest environment. In contrast, both tension-anxiety and anger-hostility increased in the urban environment. The indicator of negative affect from the PANAS questionnaire also increased after exposure to the urban environment, whereas the indicator of positive affect based on PANAS was higher in the forest environment than in the urban environment. Restorativeness and subjective vitality exhibited higher values after exposure to the forest environment in comparison to those from the control and pre-test. The changes in these indicators demonstrates that forest recreation in the snow during winter can significantly increase psychological relaxation in young females, as well as showing that recreation can be successfully conducted under these winter conditions.


Alzheimer's (AD) is the leading cause of dementia among elderly people. Considering the complex heterogeneous etiology of AD, there is an urgent need to develop multitargeted drugs for its suppression. β-amyloid cleavage enzyme (BACE-1) and acetylcholinesterase (AChE), being important for AD progression, have been considered as promising drug targets. In this study, a robust and highly predictive group-based QSAR (GQSAR) model has been developed based on the descriptors calculated for the fragments of 20 1,4-dihydropyridine (DHP) derivatives. A large combinatorial library of DHP analogues was created, the activity of each compound was predicted, and the top compounds were analyzed using refined molecular docking. A detailed interaction analysis was carried out for the top two compounds (EDC and FDC) which showed significant binding affinity for BACE-1 and AChE. This study paves way for consideration of these lead molecules as prospective drugs for the effective dual inhibition of BACE-1 and AChE. The GQSAR model provides site-specific clues about the molecules where certain modifications can result in increased biological activity. This information could be of high value for design and development of multifunctional drugs for combating AD.


We estimate a demand function for household floor space in the Kanto area in Japan by using a survey questionnaire, and conduct calibrations to investigate whether effective demand is consistent with the prescribed targeted or minimum floor space in Japan¡¦s Basic Act for Housing. The results indicate that one- and two-person families can afford relatively large houses, but many three-person families with lower incomes and most four- and five-person families cannot afford housing that meets the Act¡¦s targeted housing standards. This result implies that further subsidies are needed to achieve the Act's targets.


We consider the inelastic scattering of few photons by a ladder-type quantum system residing in a semi-infinite waveguide. Two scenarios, namely 2-photon scattering and 3-photon scattering, are investigated. The single photons are described by continuous temporal pulse functions, according to which the exact forms of the stationary output field states can be derived. Based on the exact analysis of the nonlinear dynamics, the spectral entanglement among the output photons mediated by the ladder-type quantum system is simulated. In the 2-photon scattering case, strong correlation between the output photons can be observed if each input photon is in resonance with a transition frequency of the system. In particular, there exists a weak two-photon process for the non-resonance case, where two input photons can couple to the transition between the first and third levels of the system if a two-photon resonance condition is satisfied. In the 3-photon scattering case, the presence of an ancillary photon could significantly influence the correlation pattern. There exist two nonlinear terms, one is for 2-photon inelastic scattering and the other for 3-photon inelastic scattering, in the 3-photon output state. As a result, both two-photon and three-photon processes can be observed in the pattern of spectral entanglement.


We study the behavior of plasmon resonances of metal nanospheres embedded in an absorbing medium. First-principles far-field computations based on the general Lorenz–Mie theory show that increasing absorption in the host medium broadens and suppresses plasmon resonances in the extinction and effective scattering efficiency factors and suppresses resonance features in the phase function. These effects of absorption are analogous to those on the morphology-dependent resonances of dielectric particles with large size parameters. © 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement


Background : Malaria remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality, thus there is need for quick, reliable inexpensive diagnostic tool to facilitate its prompt treatment especially in resource poor settings. Objectives : To compare the sensitivity of a locally available Histidinerich protein-2 based rapid diagnostic test (RDT) with the standard microscopy. Methods : This study was carried out to test the performance of an histidine rich protein -2 rapid diagnostic test (RDT) against the standard microscopy in the diagnosis of malaria among febrile under-five children attending Paediatric Clinic of NAUTH Nnewi. A total of 200 children under the age of five years were recruited for the study. Data on socio-demographic characteristics and symptoms were collected through an interviewer administered questionnaire. Blood sample was collected in EDTA bottle after observing universal precautions. All of them were tested with both Giemsa stained blood smear and Histidine rich protein-2 (HRP-2) rapid diagnostic test (RDT). Results : There were 118 males and 82 females, giving a male: female ratio of 1.44:1. Their ages ranged from 3-59 months and the average age was 27+17.49 months. Average number of days the subjects had fever before presentation were 3.78+1.95 days with a range of 1- 14 days. Body temperature ranged from 35.9-40.40C with average of 37.7+0.80C. Forty (20%) were positive by microscopy while 42 (21%) were positive by rapid diagnostic test. Twenty-percent of those positive by microscopy (n=8) were negative by RDT while 23.8% of those positive by RDT (n=10) were negative by microscopy. Using microscopy as a gold standard, the sensitivity of the RDT was 80%, the specificity was 93.8%. The positive and negative predictive values were 76.2% and 94.9% respectively. Conclusion : Based on these findings, the RDT demonstrated reasonable concordance with microscopy and was recommended for use at every level of healthcare in the diagnosis of malaria. Keywords : Malaria, RDT, Microscopy, under- five.


The three-dimensional moment approach is developed which allows the detailed calculation of the emission spectrum of matter in the wave zone for arbitrary parameters of radiation and matter using the integrated characteristics of interaction of laser radiation with matter. It is shown that ionisation processes can cause the broadening of the emission spectrum that exceeds its blue shift.


This study invited 10 of the 22 sex offenders enrolled in a prison-based rehabilitation program in one of the prisons in Israel to engage in the two first of the 4-D (Discover, Dream, Design, and Deliver) stages of the Appreciative Inquiry . Consistent with the responsivity principle, and the IA tenets, program participants were interviewed to Discover components to which they were responsive and Dream/envision additional ones that would increase engagement and progress. Content analysis of the interviews indicated that despite the initial decision to enrol based on external incentives, participants eventually engaged in group therapy and expressed the desire to understand and regulate their sexual behaviour. While the the modules of Cognitive Behabioral Group Therapy (CBT) were viewed as assets, the lack of sufficient recruitment criteria, the large therapy group size, and its open-ended structure were mentioned as impediments reaching therapeutic goals. Social workers/therapists were criticized for their request that they be informers, and for their accusative therapeutic style whenever sexual issues were broached. Recommendations derived from the offenders' narrative were to increase staff professionalism to create a therapeutic alliance that promotes trust and open communication. Criminal justice practitioners may then take up the challenge of the never-ending process of Appreciative Inquiry to Design and Deliver program components envisioned by the participants to increase participants' responsivity to the program and thus its effectiveness.


The increasing interest in 2 µm laser systems can be attributed to their large number of applications e.g. in medicine, remote sensing, and gas detection. Thulium doped solid-state lasers offer excellent properties for the generation of 2 µm laser radiation, since they can be pumped at around 800 nm, where high performance laser diodes are available, while due to a cross relaxation process a quantum efficiency of up to two can be achieved. Sesquioxides offer great properties as host crystals for thulium doping, such as strong Stark splitting, high thermal conductivities and low phonon energies. Recently efficient high power laser operation could be achieved in Tm:Lu2O3 and Tm:Sc2O3 [1,2] and preliminary results on mode-locking of Tm:Lu2O3 with carbon nanotube saturable absorbers were obtained [3]. Especially for mode-locking broad and smooth emission spectra are essential for obtaining ultra short pulse lengths.


various problems which arise when God is conceived as the ultimate explanation, ground and goal of actuality. Notions of the perfection, creativity, purposiveness, goodness, temporality, eternity and infinity of God are examined in order to investigate how the concept of God may be held to provide a coherent answer to the demand for total intelligibility in a world containing free agents and contingent events. It is a concept, for instance, which sees God


A problem inherent in designing power-gated circuits is the overhead of the state-retention storage required to preserve the circuit state in standby mode. Reducing the amount of retention storage is known to be the most influential factor in minimizing the loss of the benefit (i.e. power saving) by power-gating. In this paper, we address a new problem of high-level synthesis with the objective of minimizing the size of retention storage to be used in the power-gated circuits. Specifically, we propose a complete design framework, called HLS-pg, that starts from the power-gating-aware scheduling, allocation, and controller synthesis down to the final circuit layout. The key contribution of the work is to solve the power-gating-aware scheduling problem, namely, scheduling operations that minimizes the number of retention registers required at the power-gating control step, while satisfying resource and latency constraints. In experiments on benchmark designs implemented in 65-nm CMOS technology, HLS-pg generates circuits with 27% less leakage current, with 6% less circuit area and wirelength, compared to the power-gated circuits produced by conventional high-level synthesis.


Enhancers are transcription factor platforms that also bind RNA polymerase II and generate enhancer RNAs (eRNA). Although eRNAs have been suggested as predictors of enhancer activities and possibly key components facilitating transcription, there is little genetic evidence to support this. We address the biology of eRNAs in vivo and investigate eRNA patterns, expression levels and possible functions within a mammary-specific super-enhancer that is composed of three units with distinct transcriptional capacities. We show that eRNA levels do not correspond with the activities of their respective enhancer units. However, changes in eRNA expression upon deletion of individual enhancer units reflect the change in overall super-enhancer activity. These data provide genetic evidence that eRNA levels are not a reliable readout of individual enhancers, but they predict super-enhancer activity in the absence of constituent elements.


As an important spiritual core to implement the educational goal of education for morality, core literacy provides strong theoretical support for the reform of the normal students' professional curriculum of and points out a clear direction of reform. The key to the core literacy of normal students is the comprehensive literacy of disciplines. Only by improving the comprehensive literacy of normal students can their core literacy be improved, so as to enhance their teaching strength. The primary and secondary education in our countries, can be driven by excellent normal students, showing a strong vitality. As the enhancement and extension of chemistry knowledge in high school, organic chemistry teaching in university has become an important cornerstone for normal students to improve their professional abilities. Therefore, the concept of core literacy should be integrated into the normal education of organic chemistry. In the teaching process, normal students internalize "what they have learned" into "what they have used", so as to cultivate their own core literacy and lay a solid foundation to become excellent educators in the future.


Current induced wire explosions have been studied for many years for applications in exploding bridge wires and as radiation sources. Typical media are air, water and vacuum. In this effort, experiments are conducted in ambient air for the purpose of validating numerical simulations performed with the magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) code ALEGRA. In addition to the electrical quantities current, voltage, and the action integral, derivative parameters, such as pressure and shock wave velocity, are also measured and compared.


Background: Between 2003 and 2009, there were approximately 20,000 brain deaths per million people per year in China.These cases represent an important source for organ donation. As it is neurologists who are primarily involved in determining brain death, their knowledge and attitude toward brain death and organ donation directly affects decisions of family members regarding organ donation.Methods: This qualitative study was conducted in 2019. Data on neurologists' knowledge and attitudes towards brain death and organ donation were obtained from fifteen neurologists in the Departments of Neurology from Chinese hospitals using a content analysis approach as achieved in semi-structured interviews. Results: Overall, these neurologists conveyed a positive attitude toward organ donation after brain death. However, they noted the importance of considering and respecting the opinions of these patients' families. From the data analysis, 4 themes and 12 categories were developed. The 4 themes included: 1) brain death organ donation as a good thing, 2) interacting with brain death patient's family, 3) cultural influences on organ donation with brain death and 4) strategies to improve organ donation rates in patients with brain death.Conclusion: The results of this study have provided some new and important information regarding the knowledge and attitude of Chinese neurologists toward brain death and organ donation. Such information is critical for guiding government and health care systems in designing strategies to improve donation rates and decisions from brain death patients.


Tumour necrosis factor (TNF)‐α, a proinflammatory cytokine central to many autoimmune diseases, has been implicated in the depigmentation process in vitiligo. We review its role in vitiligo by exploring its pro‐ and anti‐inflammatory properties and examine the effects of blocking its actions with TNF‐α antagonist therapeutics in reports available in the literature. We found that TNF‐α inhibition halts disease progression in patients with progressive vitiligo but that, paradoxically, treatment can be associated with de novo vitiligo development in some patients when used for other autoimmune conditions, particularly when using adalimumab and infliximab. These studies reinforce the importance of stating appropriate outcomes measures, as most pilot trials propose to measure repigmentation, whereas halting depigmentation is commonly overlooked as a measure of success. We conclude that TNF‐α inhibition has proven useful for patients with progressive vitiligo, where TNF‐α inhibition is able to quash cytotoxic T‐cell‐mediated melanocyte destruction. However, a lingering concern for initiating de novo disease will likely prevent more widespread application of TNF inhibitors to treat vitiligo.


The tendons of flexor digitorum profundus are most often interconnected and making them less able to move independently than the superficial tendons. The reason for this is the cross connective tissue-ligamentous connection between the tendons of the profundus. The recognition of this so called quadriga phenomenon is important in the clinical practice, when the presence of this syndrome hinders the strength and the movement of the tendons after operative reconstruction. In his work the author describes the anatomical foundation, the biomechanical correlations and the clinical importance of the quadriga syndrome in the mirror of literature data.


Neighborhood area network (NAN) is one of the most important sections in smart grid communications. It connects residential customers as part of a two-way communication infrastructure responsible for transmitting power grid sensing and measuring status, as well as the control messages. In this paper, we propose a cost-effective, flexible, and sustainable NAN design using wireless technologies such as IEEE 802.11s and IEEE 802.16, as well as renewable energy such as solar power. We propose an optimization problem to minimize total cost. To solve the problem, we also study the problem of selecting the optimal number of gateways in a NAN. Moreover, in order to achieve fairness for the customers and to meet the most critical latency requirements, we propose geographical deployment methods for gateway data aggregate points (DAPs). Different transmission power of each gateway DAP is also carefully determined for the fairness, as well as for the maximum power efficiency. Unlike other researches using game theoretical approaches in multiaccess systems, we manage to achieve the global optimum solution and our results are more energy efficient.


Recent work in distance metric learning has focused on learning transformations of data that best align with specified pairwise similarity and dissimilarity constraints, often supplied by a human observer. The learned transformations lead to improved retrieval, classification, and clustering algorithms due to the better adapted distance or similarity measures. Here, we address the problem of learning these transformations when the underlying constraint generation process is nonstationary. This nonstationarity can, for example, be due to changes in the feature subspaces in which class dichotomies are apparent. We propose online convex ensemble strongly adaptive dynamic learning (OCELAD), a general adaptive, online approach for learning and tracking optimal metrics as they change over time that is highly robust to a variety of nonstationary behaviors in the changing metric. We apply the OCELAD framework to an ensemble of online learners. Specifically, we create a retro-initialized composite objective mirror descent (COMID) ensemble (RICE) consisting of a set of parallel COMID learners with different learning rates, and demonstrate parameter-free RICE-OCELAD metric learning on both synthetic data and a highly nonstationary Twitter dataset. We show significant performance improvements and increased robustness to nonstationarities relative to previously proposed batch and online distance metric learning algorithms.


We prepared the Ni80-xCrxP16B4 (x = 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27 and 30 at.%) alloy ingots in an Ar flow atmosphere without evacuation and then produced the alloy ribbons by melt-spinning in evacuation and air. Their thermal stability and other charasteristics were studied and the alloy composition was optimized. A supercooled liquid state appeared at Cr content of more than 9 at.%, and their Tg and Tx increased with increasing Cr content. The 2 Tx increases up to about 45 K with increasing Cr content up to 15 at.%, and then saturates in more higher Cr content. Thus we select the Ni65Cr15P16B4 alloy as an optimized composition for PEFC separator. Moreover, the precise grooves were successfully formed under viscous flow process. The groove-formed sample possessed a single glassy phase, and the Tg, Tx and 2Tx were not changed.It indicates that the sample was not thermally affected by hot-pressing in this experimental condition.


Residents in an area where both trains and cars pass through are exposed to not only road traffic noise but also railway noise. Nevertheless, the degree of annoyance the caused to the residents is being under evaluated as the noises have been evaluated separately. Therefore, this study aimed at evaluating the integrated noise of road traffic and railway, and proving the accuracy of the evaluation result.


BACKGROUND
Dietary calcium has been proposed to reduce appetite in human studies. Postprandial satiety is mainly controlled by gut hormones. However, the effect of calcium on appetite and the role of gut hormones remain unclear.

OBJECTIVES
We examined whether oral administration of calcium reduces food intake in rats and investigated the underlying mechanism.

METHODS
Male Sprague Dawley rats (8-12 wk old) were used after an overnight fastifffng. In a series of 2 trials with 1-wk interval between challenges, food intake was measured 0.5-24 h after oral gavage of a vehicle (saline containing 1.5% carboxymethyl cellulose) as the control treatment, or the vehicle containing various calcium compounds [calcium chloride (CaCl2), calcium carbonate, calcium lactate, in a random order] at 150 mg calcium/kg dose. A conditional taste aversion test was conducted. In separate experiments, plasma calcium and gut hormone concentrations were measured 15 or 30 min after oral administration of the calcium compounds. In anesthetized rats, portal peptide-YY (PYY) concentrations were measured after intraluminal administration of a liquid meal with or without additional calcium.

RESULTS
Oral CaCl2 reduced food intake acutely (30 min, ∼20%, P < 0.05) compared with control rats, without taste aversion. Plasma PYY concentration was higher (100%, P < 0.05) in CaCl2-preloaded rats than in control rats, 15 min after administration. In anesthetized rats, luminal meal + CaCl2 induced a 4-fold higher increase in plasma PYY than the control treatment did. Oral administration of a calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) agonist suppressed food intake (∼30%, P < 0.05), but CaCl2 and CaSR agonist did not suppress food intake under treatment with a PYY receptor antagonist. Furthermore, the CaSR antagonist attenuated the effect of CaCl2 on food intake.

CONCLUSIONS
CaCl2 suppresses food intake partly by increasing CaSR-mediated PYY secretion in rats. Our findings could at least partially explain the satiating effect of calcium.


This paper is part of the project named "Coordinating Competencies and Knowledge in the Auto Industry" (CoCKEAS) carried on by some research groups associated to GERPISA International Network and subdivided in five work packages. This one is conventionally indicated as workpackage N.1. It is focused upon the analysis of the evolution of the relationship between automakers (Original Equipment Manufacturers – OEMs) and the specific type of suppliers who directly interact with them, also carrying out the task of coordinating a hierarchy of other suppliers which are located upwards in the automobile supply chain. This specific type of suppliers, occupying the higher place in a multilevel hierarchy, are labelled First Tier Suppliers (FTSs). The paper analyses the recent evolutions that are characterising this part of the supply chain with particular attention to: the redefinition of the division of labour between OEMs and component suppliers; the transformation induced by the process of internationalisation and globalisation; the growth in outsourcing; the design of shared platforms; the impact of innovation and modular production on the restructuring of the automotive industry; the major trends in the new pattern of production processes organisation and the likely transformations induced by the growing role of ICT.


Abstract Chronic energy intake restriction (CEIR) in virgin female mice is one of the most effective ways of reducing significantly mammary adenocarcinoma in C3H/Bi mice, a strain which develops mammary adenocarcinoma associated with the murine mammary tumor virus spontaneously and at high incidence. In this study, the influence of chronic energy intake restriction imposed on fully mature (4- to 5-month-old), breeding female C3H/Bi mice was addressed, and the influence of energy intake where energy was derived largely from fat versus diets in which energy was derived largely from carbohydrates on tumor development and survival rate was investigated. The results show that chronic energy intake restriction can be delayed until full maturation and successful reproduction and still reduce significantly the incidence of mammary tumor development in this relatively short-lived strain of mice. Our findings demonstrate that the overriding dietary factor controlling mammary tumor development in these experiments in C3H/Bi mice was the level of energy intake, regardless of the primary source of energy (fat or carbohydrates).


A novel Bi4Ti3O12/g-C3N4/BiOBr(BTO/CN/BOB) composite was synthesized by a solvothermal-mechanical mixed thermal method. The composition, structure, and micromorphology of the samples were analyzed. The BTO/CN/BOB composite photocatalyst shows better photocatalytic performance for tetracycline hydrochloride (TC) degradation compared to Bi4Ti3O12 and binary composite photocatalysts. The highest degradation rate of TC can reach 89.84% using the BTO/CN/BOB photocatalyst under the optimal conditions, and BTO/CN/BOB still exhibits good photocatalytic properties after recycling. Moreover, it also shows good photodegradation activity for different kinds of antibiotics, implying its wide application prospect. The photocatalytic performance and reuse stability of BTO/CN/BOB were significantly improved, which may be because of the enhanced spectral absorption range and efficient electron transfer capability by the synergistic effect and interaction among Bi4Ti3O12, BiOBr, and g-C3N4. Finally, the possible degradation pathway and electron transfer mechanism of the dual Z-scheme heterojunction are proposed.


In this paper, we propose a bidimensional attention based recursiveautoencoder (BattRAE) to integrate clues and sourcetargetinteractions at multiple levels of granularity into bilingualphrase representations. We employ recursive autoencodersto generate tree structures of phrases with embeddingsat different levels of granularity (e.g., words, sub-phrases andphrases). Over these embeddings on the source and targetside, we introduce a bidimensional attention network to learntheir interactions encoded in a bidimensional attention matrix,from which we extract two soft attention weight distributionssimultaneously. These weight distributions enableBattRAE to generate compositive phrase representations viaconvolution. Based on the learned phrase representations, wefurther use a bilinear neural model, trained via a max-marginmethod, to measure bilingual semantic similarity. To evaluatethe effectiveness of BattRAE, we incorporate this semanticsimilarity as an additional feature into a state-of-the-art SMTsystem. Extensive experiments on NIST Chinese-English testsets show that our model achieves a substantial improvementof up to 1.63 BLEU points on average over the baseline.


Our ambition in this paper is to begin to specify in argumentative terms (some of) the steps involved in a decision-aiding process. To do that, we make use of the popular notion of argument schemes, and specify the related critical questions. A hierarchical structure of argument schemes allows to decompose the process into several distinct steps---and for each of them the underlying premises are made explicit, which allows in turn to identify how these steps can be dialectically defeated via critical questions. This work initiates a systematic study which aims at constituting a significant step forward for forthcoming decision-aiding tools. The kind of system that we foresee and sketch here would allow: (i) to present a recommendation that can be explicitly justified; (ii) to revise any piece of reasoning involved in this process, and be informed of the consequences of such moves; and possibly (iii) to stimulate the client by generating contradictory arguments.


An attempt has been made to provide some vital aspects on spawning frequency and fecundity of Cobia based on the samples collected from fishery exploratory surveys and from the landing centers at Mumbai. Frequency of spawning was determined based on the modes of ova diameters in the mature ovaries. The Ova Diameter study indicated that Cobia follows a protracted spawning season with the individual spawning more than once in a season. Absolute fecundity estimated ranged from 1,231,630 to 1,800,350 numbers. Fecundity index obtained was from 2,123 to 2,372 eggs per gram ovary weight. The results obtained in the present study were compared with similar studies round the world and discussed.


Consistent labeling is a fundamental problem in multiple-camera-multiple-human tracking. We present a new consistent labeling method called CPSPL that is used in our P2P human tracking system with multiple calibrated cameras, media servers, human trackers and trajectory mergers. The proposed method differs from most existent ones in that it only uses projective lines for establishing the correspondence between the tracked objects in multiple camera views, as well as correct the object location errors in a single camera view. In the world coordinates, the projective lines passing through the same person from separate cameras are often skew lines. We use the common perpendicular segments of projective lines to determine whether they pass through the same person. Although CPSPL method involves only simple geometric operations, the experiment results show its surprising accuracy in multiple-camera-multiple-human tracking.


The need to recover high-dimensional signals from their noisy low-resolution quantized measurements is widely encountered in communications and sensing. In this paper, we focus on the extreme case of one-bit quantizers, and propose a deep detector network, called LoRD-Net, for signal recovering from one-bit measurements. Our approach relies on a model-aware data-driven architecture, based on a deep unfolding of first-order optimization iterations. LoRD-Net has a task-based architecture dedicated to recovering the underlying signal of interest from the one-bit noisy measurements without requiring prior knowledge of the channel matrix through which the one-bit measurements are obtained. The proposed deep detector has much fewer parameters compared to black-box deep networks due to the incorporation of domain-knowledge in the design of its architecture, allowing it to operate in a data-driven fashion while benefiting from the flexibility, versatility, and reliability of model-based optimization methods. We numerically evaluate the proposed receiver architecture for one-bit signal recovery in wireless communications and demonstrate that the proposed hybrid methodology outperforms both data-driven and model-based state-of-the-art methods, while utilizing small datasets, on the order of merely ~ 500 samples, for training.


Individual differences and age-related normal and pathological changes in mental abilities require the use of cognitive screening and assessment tools. However, simultaneously occurring deficits in sensory processing, whose prevalence increases especially in old age, may negatively impact cognitive-test performance and thus result in an overestimation of cognitive decline. This hypothesis was tested using an impairment-simulation approach. Young normal-hearing university students performed three memory tasks, using auditorily presented speech stimuli that were either unprocessed or processed to mimic some of the perceptual consequences of age-related hearing loss (ARHL). Both short-term-memory and working-memory capacities were significantly lower in the simulated-hearing-loss condition, despite good intelligibility of the test stimuli. The findings are consistent with the notion that, in case of ARHL, the perceptual processing of auditory stimuli used in cognitive assessments requires additional (cognitive) resources that cannot be used toward the execution of the cognitive task itself. Researchers and clinicians would be well advised to consider sensory impairments as a confounding variable when administering cognitive tasks and interpreting their results.


Abstract Traffic congestion across the world has reached chronic levels. Despite many technological disruptions, one of the most fundamental and widely used functions within traffic modeling, the volume–delay function has seen little in the way of change since it was developed in the 1960s. Traditionally macroscopic methods have been employed to relate traffic volume to vehicular journey time. The general nature of these functions enables their ease of use and gives widespread applicability. However, they lack the ability to consider individual road characteristics (i.e., geometry, presence of traffic furniture, road quality, and surrounding environment). This research investigates the feasibility to reconstruct the model using two different data sources, namely the traffic speed from Google Maps' Directions Application Programming Interface (API) and traffic volume data from automated traffic counters (ATC). Google's traffic speed data are crowd-sourced from the smartphone Global Positioning System (GPS) of road users, able to reflect real-time, context-specific traffic condition of a road. On the other hand, the ATCs enable the harvesting of the vehicle volume data over equally fine temporal resolutions (hourly or less). By combining them for different road types in London, new context-specific volume–delay functions can be generated. This method shows promise in selected locations with the generation of robust functions. In other locations, it highlights the need to better understand other influencing factors, such as the presence of on-road parking or weather events.


Jugulo-tympanic paragangliomas are the most common primary neoplasm of the middle ear, but little is still known about the histological features differentiating the benign and malignant forms. We investigated, with an immunohistochemical procedure, the expression of neurotrophins with their receptors, in fifteen samples of paragangliomas, and MIB-1 in order to consider them as prognostic factors of malignancy. We observed a general positivity for NGF – TrKA – NT4 – TrKC in the cytoplasm, and a strong expression for BDNF in the extracellular space. MIB-1 was moderate in the nucleus of neoplastic cells, weak in the cytoplasm and totally absent in the extracellular space. The comparison between the clinical recurrences and the rate of cytoplasmatic neurotrophins showed strong immunoreactivity in recurrent patients. It should be emphasized that 2 of the 3 recurrences had a wider distribution of the neutrophins, leading to hypothesize the involvement of these substances in the cell proliferation of glomus tumors. Malignant forms of these rare glomus tumors cannot be clearly identified using MIB-1 as a prognostic marker, although we can affirm that neurotrophins and their receptors can be considered as a panel of potential diagnostic markers to monitor the development of such malignancies. Although the small number of patients does not allow definitive conclusions to be made, our findings showed a possible trend towards significance which requires a more powerful study to evaluate this further.


Lawns must be managed increasingly under less frequent or deficit irrigation. Deficit irrigation can reduce gas exchange, carbon assimilation, and physiological function in both warm- (C4) and cool- (C3) season turfgrasses, yet limited research has compared the physiological response to increasing levels of soil water deficit. The objectives of this greenhouse study were to compare three commonly used transition-zone turfgrasses—bermudagrass [Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers.] (C4), buffalograss [Buchloe dactyloides (Nutt.) Engelm.] (C4), and tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) (C3)—and their ability to maintain quality and physiological function under water deficit stress. Visual turf quality, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), reflective canopy temperature, and gross photosynthesis were evaluated initially near field capacity (FC), and subsequent soil water deficit [48% (moderate) and 33% (severe) of plant-available water] conditions. Bermudagrass and tall fescue had similar quality ratings near FC, although the photosynthetic rate was greater for bermudagrass. Compared with other turfgrasses, bermudagrass maintained greater turf quality, NDVI, and photosynthetic rates further into water deficit stress. Tall fescue quality and photosynthetic rates declined most rapidly in both experiments as a result of the combined heat and drought stress. Buffalograss used less water compared with other species, and maintained consistent turf quality, NDVI, and photosynthetic rates under moderate and severe water deficit. These results support the notion that buffalograss and bermudagrass are better adapted than tall fescue at maintaining functional and ecosystem services with shallow soil depths in landscape situations under imposed summertime water restrictions.


Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an animal model of multiple sclerosis, has long been thought to be mediated by Th1 CD4 (cid:1) T cells. Using adoptive transfer techniques, transfer of CNS specific Th1 T cells was sufficient to induce EAE in naive mice. However, recent studies found a vital role for IL-17 in induction of EAE. These studies suggested that a fraction of IL-17-producing T cells that contaminate Th1 polarized cell lines are largely responsible for initiation of EAE. In this study, we tracked the appearance and cytokine production capacity of adoptively transferred cells within the CNS of mice throughout EAE disease. IL-17-producing, adoptively transferred cells were not enriched over the low percentages present in vitro. Thus, there was no selective recruitment and/or preferential proliferation of adoptively transferred IL-17-producing cells during the induction of EAE. Instead a large number of CNS infiltrating host T cells in mice with EAE were capable of producing IL-17 following ex vivo stimulation. The IL-17-producing T cells contained both (cid:2)(cid:3) and (cid:4)(cid:5) TCR (cid:1) T cells with a CD4 (cid:1) CD8 (cid:6) or CD4 (cid:6) CD8 (cid:6) phenotype. These cells concentrated within the CNS within 3 days of adoptive transfer, and appeared to play a role in EAE induction as adoptive transfer of Th1 lines derived from wild-type mice into IL-17-deficient mice induced reduced EAE clinical outcomes. This study demonstrates that an encephalitogenic Th1 cell line induces recruitment of host IL-17-producing T cells to the CNS during the initiation of EAE and that these cells contribute to the incidence and severity of disease. The Journal of Immunology, 2008, 180:


A prototype bi-directional neural interface system is presented with closed-loop and embedded DSP capabilities. The system includes 32-electrode stimulation capability, eight multiplexed low-noise low-power bio-potential sensing channels with on-chip digital FFT, and a Cortex M3-based microcontroller for implementing closed-loop algorithms. The stimulation subsystem can provide a maximum stimulation current of 12mA with approximately 3% accuracy per channel. The sensing subsystem uses a fully differential chopping amplifier achieving a noise floor <;100nV/rtHz with approximately 1μA current from 2V supply. A 13bit continuous-time sigma-delta ADC is used to sample the amplifier output at the rate of 33kHz. The ADC consumes approximately 100nA while achieving an ENOB of 12b with a 250Hz date rate. A hardware implementation of a cached-FFT is included in the sensing IC to perform spectral analysis of the bio-potential signal. The resulting multiple spectral signatures can be selectively sent to the microcontroller allowing for algorithmic control of the stimulator system. The system partition was designed to minimize overall computational power while providing user flexibility. The sensing performance of the prototype has been demonstrated with 2-D cursor control in a non-human primate brain machine interface (BMI) model using 20 features simultaneously.


the freedom of the psychiatric profession on the other. The author's contention is that if National Health Insurance in the U.S.A. were introduced, cover should be based on the psychiatric needs of the community and not on arbitrary cost limitations. One of the arguments put forward is that the treatment of a neurosis may be covered, even iflong and expensive, if the treatment is instituted for the improvement of symptoms and not the quality oflife; though the author believes that the latter may flow from the former. Not only does the discussion fail to distinguish adequately between symptoms and quality of life but it neglects the alternative model in which treatment might, if effective, simultaneously cause an improvement in both symptoms and quality of life. The case made for psychiatric need is not intellectually advanced by this book. Substantial space is devoted to an examination of psychotherapy but the author himself does not explore critically the studies on psychotherapy but prefers to use generalised statements from other reviews. Al though at pains to convince the reader that psycho therapy is more than simply a good relationship between two people , he fails to relate the process of the relationship to theory, a necessity if the test of a good therapy is that the theory can help one adequately predict an outcome. These points are more adequately dealt with in an appendix by Parloff. In the British National Health Service, with its finite limitson resources, readerswillbe familiar withthe dilemma ofthebook inadifferent form,namely;what alternatives are foregone if some patients are entered into long and extensive therapy.


PURPOSE
The aim of this study is to present the earliest functional changes in Stargardt disease in family with three affected and one unaffected children.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Four children: three girls (4, 7, 10, year old) and one boy (13 year old) and their parents (34 rear old mother and 36 year old father) were examined. Visual acuity (Snellen card), color perception (Ishihara's cards), electroretinography (flash full-field ERG--standard and chromatic) and electrooculography (EOG) were done. For ERG and EOG LKC equipment and UTAS E-2000 program was used.

RESULTS
13 year old boy has had visual acuity about 5/50 for about 3 years, nystagmus and no color perception. On his ocular fundus abnormal macular reflex (like beaten metal) was seen. Visual acuity about 5/12 was found in 7 year old girl during routine examination at school, but color perception and ocular fundus were normal. The others examined family members had visual acuity 5/5 without correction and no changes on ocular fundus. Color perception was normal in girls and mother. The father had red-green deficiency. Arden ratio in EOG was below normal (1.4) only in boy but dark trough and light peak amplitudes were lower than normal also in girls 4 and 7 year old and these two girls were also suspected of Stargardt's disease. ERG was nearly abolished in boy and markedly abnormal in his 7 year old sister. In father's ERG small reduction of cone function especially after chromatic stimulations was found. ERG was normal and similar in mother and 10 year old daughter. ERG was not done in the youngest girl. Two years later loss of visual acuity to 4/50 occurred in girl previously 7 and to 5/6 in the youngest sister.

CONCLUSION
Detail analysis of EOG and ERG results may lead to diagnose retinal dystrophy in preclinical stadium.


We present MOFI, a new vision foundation model designed to learn image representations from noisy entity annotated images. MOFI differs from previous work in two key aspects: ($i$) pre-training data, and ($ii$) training recipe. Regarding data, we introduce a new approach to automatically assign entity labels to images from noisy image-text pairs. Our approach involves employing a named entity recognition model to extract entities from the alt-text, and then using a CLIP model to select the correct entities as labels of the paired image. The approach is simple, does not require costly human annotation, and can be readily scaled up to billions of image-text pairs mined from the web. Through this method, we have created Image-to-Entities (I2E), a new large-scale dataset with 1 billion images and 2 million distinct entities, covering rich visual concepts in the wild. Building upon the I2E dataset, we study different training recipes, including supervised pre-training, contrastive pre-training, and multi-task learning. For constrastive pre-training, we treat entity names as free-form text, and further enrich them with entity descriptions. Experiments show that supervised pre-training with large-scale fine-grained entity labels is highly effective for image retrieval tasks, and multi-task training further improves the performance. The final MOFI model achieves 86.66% mAP on the challenging GPR1200 dataset, surpassing the previous state-of-the-art performance of 72.19% from OpenAI's CLIP model. Further experiments on zero-shot and linear probe image classification also show that MOFI outperforms a CLIP model trained on the original image-text data, demonstrating the effectiveness of the I2E dataset in learning strong image representations.


We apply a recent proposal for defining states and observables in quantum gravity to some simple models. First, we consider the toy model of a Klein-Gordon particle in an external potential in Minkowski spacetime and compare our proposal to the theory obtained by deparametrizing with respect to a choice of time slicing prior to quantization. We show explicitly that the dynamics defined by the deparametrization approach depends upon the choice of time slicing. On the other hand, our proposal automatically yields a well defined dynamics, manifestly independent of the choice of time slicing at intermediate times, but there is a memory effect'': After the potential is turned off, the dynamics no longer returns to the standard, free particle dynamics. Next, we apply our proposal to the closed Robertson-Walker quantum cosmology with a homogeneous massless scalar field. We choose our time variable to the size of the Universe, so the only dynamical variable is the scalar field. It is shown that the resulting theory has the expected semiclassical behavior up to the classical turning point from expansion to contraction; i.e., given a classical solution which expands for much longer than the Planck time, there is a quantum state whose dynamical evolutionmore » closely approximates this classical solution during the expanding phase. However, when the time'' takes a value larger than the classical maximum, the scalar field becomes frozen'' at the value it had when it entered the classically forbidden region. The Taub model, with and without a homogeneous scalar field, also is studied, and similar behavior is found. In an Appendix, we derive the form of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation on minisuperspace for the Bianchi models by performing a proper quantum reduction of the momentum constraints; this equation differs from the usual form of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which is obtained by solving the momentum constraints classically, prior to quantization.« less


Titan's ionosphere contains a plethora of hydrocarbons and nitrile cations and anions as measured by the Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer and Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) on board the Cassini spacecraft. Data from the CAPS Ion Beam Spectrometer (IBS) sensor have been examined for five close encounters of Titan during 2009. The high relative velocity of Cassini with respect to the cold ions in Titan's ionosphere allows CAPS IBS to function as a mass spectrometer. Positive ion masses between 170 and 310 u/q are examined with ion mass groups identified between 170 and 275 u/q containing between 14 and 21 heavy (carbon/nitrogen/oxygen) atoms. These groups are the heaviest positive ion groups reported so far from the available in situ ion data at Titan. The ion group peaks are found to be consistent with masses associated with polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC), including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and nitrogen-bearing polycyclic aromatic molecular ions. The ion group peak identifications are compared with previously proposed neutral PAHs and are found to be at similar masses, supporting a PAH interpretation. The spacing between the ion group peaks is also investigated, finding a spacing of 12 or 13 u/q indicating the addition of C or CH. Lastly, the occurrence of several ion groups is seen to vary across the five flybys studied, possibly relating to the varying solar radiation conditions observed across the flybys. These findings further the understanding between the low-mass ions and the high-mass negative ions, as well as with aerosol formation in Titan's atmosphere.


Control problems for distributed systems, described by parabolic PDEs, are considered. The goal of the study is to develop an adaptive strategy including online parameter identification for efficient control of the systems. The developed strategy is based on the method of integrodifferential relations, a projective approach, and a suitable finite element technique. An adaptive control algorithm with predictive estimates of the desired output trajectories is proposed and its specific features are discussed.


Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a commonly occurring pathogen that can cause severe disease in children, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals with a large, unmet clinical need. We developed a high-throughput, primary cell-based antiviral RSV assay to enable identification of small molecules using cytopathic effect (CPE) as a phenotypic end point. To provide increased biological relevance, we developed our assay with primary human small airway epithelial cells (SAECs), which originate from known sites of RSV infection and replication instead of a more traditional immortalized cell line. Using purchased low-passage cells, cost-effective large-scale culture methods were developed to provide assay-ready frozen SAECs. A high-throughput screening campaign using the GSK Screening Collection was performed. The screen was executed in 384-well plates over a 12-week period with an average Z′ of 0.5. The screen yielded 17 post-entry hits with activity in the primary cells, which were not active in immortalized cells. Potencies for this class of compounds were equal between the primary and immortalize cell lines. For entry inhibitors, the number was much lower, with increased potency observed in immortalized cells. This is the first known use of frozen primary human cells for an RSV high-throughput screening phenotypic campaign.


We examine the problem of fitting clearing functions that estimate the expected output of a production resource as a function of its expected workload from empirical data. Unlike most regression problems, the independent variables are not directly controllable due to the presence of a planning model that controls releases to the production system, and the release decisions made by the planning model are themselves dependent on the estimated clearing function. We propose an iterative refinement procedure that uses simulation experiments to resample data from the production system as the parameters of the clearing function are iteratively updated. We compare the iterative procedure to previously used approaches with promising results.


The COMPASS experiment, at CERN SPS, has been compiling for more than a decade successful and precise results on nucleon structure and hadron spectroscopy, leading to statistical errors much smaller than previously measured. The new COMPASS spin physics program, starting this year, aims to a rather complete nucleon structure description; this new representation goes beyond the collinear approximation by including the quark intrinsic transverse momentum distributions. The theoretical framework, for this new picture of the nucleon, is given by the Transverse Momentum Dependent distributions (TMDs) and by the Generalised Parton Distributions (GPDs). The TMDs, in particular Sivers, Boer-Mulders, pretzelosity and transversity functions will be obtained through the polarised Drell-Yan process, for the first time. The results will be complementary to those already obtained via polarised Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS). Also unpolarised SIDIS will be studied, allowing the knowledge improvement of the strange quark PDF and the access to the kaon fragmentation functions (FFs). Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) off an unpolarised hydrogen target will be used to study the GPDs, in a kinematic region not yet covered by any existing experiment.


Naringin is an abundant flavanone in pomelo, grapefruit as well as lime and its variants, has been shown to exhibit certain antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and hypoglycemic effects. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the protective effects of naringin against ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and to elucidate the potential underlying mechanism. Firstly, a mouse model of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) was established. Next, osteocalcin (OC), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and triglyceride (TG) activity values, inflammatory factor and oxidative stress were evaluated in the AS mice. Then, the Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) protein expression levels in the AS mice were investigated using western blot analysis. The results showed that naringin increased OC, ALP and TG activity values in the AS mouse model. Furthermore, inflammatory factor and oxidative stress levels in the AS mice were restrained by treatment with naringin. Furthermore, JAK2 and STAT3 protein expression levels were reduced by treatment with naringin. In conclusion, the present results indicated that the protective effects of naringin against AS are exerted via the induction of ossification, suppression of inflammation and oxidative stress and the downregulation of JAK2/STAT3 in mice.


Since its inception in Mexico City the Mexican Telephone Company tried to deal with a budding market in an organized way. to do so it used several methods and approaches, including monopy pricing, suing potential competitors for patent violations, and controling the supply of technology. This essay intends to analyze the Mexican Telephone Company's corporate policies in Mexico City during the Porfirian Age (1881-1911)