Iagree with Ortega et al that the term "stroke" is vague and more precise terms such as infarct or ischemia should be used in radiology reporting. Unfortunately, the term stroke is a ubiquitous part of the general (nonradiologic) medical lexicon and national guidelines, particularly given the new emphasis on timely stroke therapy. In this context, what is being referred to is ischemic stroke. What used to be classified as hemorrhagic stroke is now best classified as simply "intracranial hemorrhage," which, as was pointed out in the original editorial, carries a different set of etiologies, symptoms, and therapies than ischemic stroke. To ease the confusion on this terminology, it is being suggested that the term stroke be reserved for what used to be called ischemic stroke, supplanting the ancient definition of the term stroke. Finally, examples of hypoxia causing ischemia would include etiologies of hypoxic-ischemic injury such as carbon monoxide poisoning. In these cases, vascular perfusion may be preserved but the perfusing blood may lack adequate oxygen, resulting in ischemia. Perhaps a comma may have helped, "Ischemic events are caused by hypoperfusion of a region of the brain secondary to vascular occlusion, or hypoxia."


This paper presents the current work of the IEEE Intercloud Testbed project. The notion of an Intercloud has been an active research topic. Within the IEEE several researchers formed a Standards Working Group (IEEE P2302) where a specific set of conventions, formats, and protocols were proposed. It was decided by those in the Standards Working Group that due to the scale, variability of component Compute Clouds, and lack of insight into extremely large Compute Cloud operational issues, such a system could not realistically be fully defined without live experimentation. Therefore it was decided to set up a specifically structured organization within the IEEE in parallel to the Standards Working Group, to provide a structure for a live, experimental testbed. This paper describes the innovative organizational structure and various policies were used to provide the desire context. Also covered are how we sorted the issues around governance of the namespace, and the technical details of reference "Root" and "Exchange" functions. Ongoing work includes the plan to bootstrap the new testbed.


With the development of active distribution networks, new challenges such as overvoltage and power loss become critical. The reactive power optimisation serves as a voltage control measure to minimise the total transmission loss by coordinating the continuous and discrete reactive power compensators while guaranteeing the specific physical and operating constraints. To address the daily operating times of discrete control variables, the dynamic reactive power optimisation (DRPO) is set up to minimise total energy loss over several time periods when considering the inter-temporal constraints. However, DRPO is in fact a large-scale mixed integer non-linear non-convex programming that is difficult to solve. Therefore, second-order cones are employed to relax the non-convex power flow equations to obtain a mixed integer second order cone programming model. Furthermore, a sensitivity-based relaxation and decomposition method is proposed to further improve the computational performance. Solution quality and computational performance are compared with traditional methods on IEEE-33, 123 and 615-bus systems as well as two real-world distribution networks in China. The Results demonstrate that the fast performance and effectiveness of the proposed technique.


Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is an enigmatic and deadly vascular disease with no known cure. Recent years have seen rapid advances in our understanding of the molecular underpinnings of PAH, with an expanding knowledge of the molecular, cellular, and systems-level drivers of disease that are being translated into novel therapeutic modalities. Simultaneous advances in clinical technology have led to a growing list of tools with potential application to diagnosis and phenotyping. Guided by fundamental biology, these developments hold the potential to usher in a new era of personalized medicine in PAH with broad implications for patient management and great promise for improved outcomes.


The authors conducted a longitudinal study of psychological adaptation to AIDS in subjects with and without lifetime and current substance use disorders (SUD), in a cohort of HIV+ gay/bisexual subjects. A sample of HIV+ gay/bisexual men (n = 183) and an HIV- comparison group (n = 84) were assessed for SUD, depression, and anxiety disorders. Among HIV+ men, combined lifetime (42%) but not current (11.5%) SUDs were more prevalent than in HIV- men (27% and 10%, respectively). HIV+ men with current SUD reported more depression, distress and diminished quality of life than HIV+ men with no SUD, but HIV-illness severity did not differ. HIV+ men in recovery did not differ from men with no lifetime history. Most HIV+ gay/bisexual men with SUD discontinue or reduce substance use before or subsequent to knowledge of their HIV infection, probably in an attempt to adopt a healthier lifestyle. However, for some HIV+ men, persistent substance abuse/dependence is accompanied by higher levels of distress and diminished quality of life, underscoring their need for treatment intervention.


Three picture-word interference experiments were conducted to investigate how segmental and tonal information is processed in Cantonese spoken word planning. The picture names were all Cantonese monosyllables with a consonant-vowel-consonant structure. Significant facilitation effects on naming latencies were found when the target (e.g., 星 /sing1/, "Star") and the auditory word distractor (e.g., /ging2/, /sik6/, or /soeng3/) shared two identical phonemic segments (regardless of the segments' syllable-internal position), than when they were unrelated, whereas no reliable effects were obtained when they shared only the vowel (e.g., /dim3/), the coda (e.g., /hung2/), or together with the tone (e.g., /bit1/ or /fung1/). Furthermore, the facilitation effect observed in the consonant + consonant + tone-related condition (e.g., /soeng1/) was reliably larger than that in the consonant + consonant-related condition (e.g., /soeng3/). These results suggest that activation of a single segment is not effective in influencing Cantonese word production and that the lexical tone in Cantonese has a unique role to play. A model which assumes interactivity between lexical and sublexical (including tonal and segmental representations) levels of processing in Cantonese spoken word planning can best account for the available results.


We performed an international trial with a newly developed multidimensional assessment protocol for substitution voices based on the European Laryngological Society protocol for 'common dysphonia'. However, as sound production in SV is largely irregular, we needed some adaptations, in particular of the dimensions perception, acoustic analysis and visual evaluation. The protocol consisted of clinical information, the IINFVo perceptual rating scale, visual examination (level and quality of vibration), acoustic registration of vowels, vcv, cvcvcv and text (which was later analysed with the Auditory Model Based Pitch Extractor (AMPEX)), aerodynamic measurements (Vital Capacity, Maximum Phonation Time, and Maximal Intensity), and self-evaluation (of i) voice quality and ii) degree of invalidity). Six centers participated. We retained 96 suitable files (out of 102). Variance analysis demonstrates significance for i) all perceptual parameters (except for Voicing), MPT and Maximal Intensity and ii) type of surgery and/or main anatomical vibration source. There is no correlation at all between the patient's perception of his /her disability and perceptual parameters, MPT, quality of vibration. Correlation between the acoustical analysis and the subjective rating was only moderate (Pearson < 0.62; standard deviation >1.8).


We present a new method for performing differential emission measure (DEM) inversions on narrow-band EUV images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The method yields positive definite DEM solutions by solving a linear program. This method has been validated against a diverse set of thermal models of varying complexity and realism. These include (1) idealized Gaussian DEM distributions, (2) 3D models of NOAA Active Region 11158 comprising quasi-steady loop atmospheres in a nonlinear force-free field, and (3) thermodynamic models from a fully compressible, 3D MHD simulation of active region (AR) corona formation following magnetic flux emergence. We then present results from the application of the method to AIA observations of Active Region 11158, comparing the region's thermal structure on two successive solar rotations. Additionally, we show how the DEM inversion method can be adapted to simultaneously invert AIA and Hinode X-ray Telescope data, and how supplementing AIA data with the latter improves the inversion result. The speed of the method allows for routine production of DEM maps, thus facilitating science studies that require tracking of the thermal structure of the solar corona in time and space.


Three approaches confer chemical selectivity upon a sensor-based system.1 The "traditional" approach uses a single sensor functionalized with a chemically sensitive material selective for the analyte. This works well when interferences are few, or chemically unlike the analyte, or when highly specific materialsse.g., suitable biological or molecular-recognition complexessare available. Even with exquisite selectivity, the transducer platform often must include a physical selectivity mechanism as well, so that nonspecific adsorption does not defeat a carefully crafted interface. An example is wavelength-specific optical detection that can differentiate between analytes physisorbed on the surfaces of a molecular cage and those residing inside. In contrast, a "nonspecific" transducer such as the mass-sensitive surface acoustic wave (SAW) device cannot differentiate between physisorbed and molecularly complexed mass on the surface of a device, unless a secondary perturbation such as a change in mechanical or electrical properties accompanies the mass change.2 Recent advances in both miniaturized and "micro" versions of traditional analytical techniques drive a second approach to chemical selectivity, that of separating analytes in time, space, or the spectral domain.3-5 Typified by electrophoretic separations in microfabricated channels on glass chips, the micro-total-analytical system (μ-TAS) approach can diminish the role of the sensor to that of a nonspecific detector that responds to any impinging compound. The elapsed time from sample introduction to detection, rather than detector selectivity, identifies the analyte. We focus in this Account on chemical sensor arrays as a means to obviate the difficult, costly process of developing a new material with high chemical specificity for each analyte: one array can provide distinct responses for tens of chemicals and mixtures. We emphasize that many of the subsections of this Account are, to varying degree, "platform independent", so that arrays of optical fibers, electrochemical sensors, chemiresistors, metal oxides, or thermal devices can be conceptually substituted for the SAW platforms that we discuss in detail. The moderate selectivity requirements for arrays allow consideration of a much wider range of materialsseverything from common organic polymers to porous ceramicssthan for molecularly specific sensors. Furthermore, arrays retain some of the "passive sampling" features of discrete sensors that μ-TAS must relinquish due to its reliance upon addition of reagents, pumping, mixing, and the like.


OBJECTIVE
The evaluation of the role of sonohysterosalpingography with saline with air as a contrast solution (HYCOSY), in the assessment of uterine cavity and tubal patency, versus hysterosalpingography (HSG) and laparoscopy with dye test combined with hysteroscopy.

MATERIAL AND METHOD
Prospective study of 95 infertility patients, with ages 25-40 years (median 31), in which HYCOSY was compared with HSG regarding the diagnostic acuracy for uterine cavity pathology and tubal patency, and compared to laparoscopy with dye test combined with hysteroscopy as gold standard.

RESULTS
The sensibility, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) for the diagnostic of uterine cavity pathology was: HYCOSY versus hysteroscopy of 72.1%, 96.15%, 93.93% and 80.64% respectively; HSG versus hysteroscopy was 83.3%, 60.7%, 63.6% and 81.6%; both methods combined versus hysteroscopy 95.34%, 61.53%, 67.21% and 94.11%. The same parameters for the tubal patency were: HYCOSY versus dye test laparoscopy 81.39%, 87.69%, 67.30% and 97.79%; HSG versus dye test laparoscopy 61.9%, 85.3%, 56.5% and 87.9%; both methods combined versus dye test 86%, 76%, 52.9% and 94.6%.

CONCLUSION
HYCOSY can be used in combination with HSG for selecting the patients that need further more invasive investigations, in order to describe uterine and tubal pathology.


Every project of construction is expected to completed on
schedule according to standard quality and the budgeted expense.
So that, the method to measure cost and time performance is
needed to control the implementation. One of the method is
earned Value method. This method can show time and cost
performance. It uses budgeted cost of work scheduled (PV) ,
Budgeted of work performed (EV) and Actual cost of wark
performed (AC).
This Earned Value Analysis was conducted on project of
development of Administration building. Existing progress of
project 8 % out of 17 % that planned.
Monitoring using EV took 3 months from Maret – Juni
2007. The result is CPI and SPI. CPI at the project was 1, that
means there was no cost underrun happened. While SPI was less
than 1, that means the project was behind schedule estimate cost
to complete was still less than budgeted. EAC was Rp.
4.492.217,48. total expected duration was 64 weeks. It means
longer than original schedule. From interview with site engineer,
it can be known that project delayed was caused by bad weather,
unavailable material on site, and lack of expert.


To the Editor: At first glance, the recent 447-patient randomized controlled trial in major orthopedic surgery with new goal-directed fluid management methodology may revitalize the debate, although no effect was demonstrated. Importantly, the concept of goal-directed fluid management has been discussed for more than a decade and, although initially promising, still remains debatable. However, a closer look on the methodology of the study again shows that the gold standard of an randomized controlled trial in perioperative medicine may not always be the "gold standard" when it is performed in a clinical setup that limits the potential interaction between the intervention and the outcome. Thus, the trial had a primary outcome on length of stay which was similar between the groups (about 6 days), which is very far from common practice in many international centers with length of stay around 1 to 3 days in optimized pathways. Interpretation is therefore difficult, because there was no information about perioperative care principles or why the patients were hospitalized, and as such the actual impact of the optimized fluid management on length of stay will be probably be negligible, as other factors clearly will determine length of stay. The power analysis assumes a reduction in length of stay from 6 to 5 days, but it is difficult to understand from the assumed focus on fluid management per se versus the known impact of care traditions (pain management, mobilization, physiotherapy). Finally, it is surprising that patients with high comorbidities or recommended to a cardiac output monitor were excluded, which essentially may represent those patients who may benefit from goal-directed fluid management. In summary, this is another perioperative outcome randomized controlled trial interventional study which unfortunately prevents sufficient interpretation by not considering available evidence-based care principles shown for many years to reduce length of stay in the specific surgeries investigated. competing Interests


BACKGROUND
Pneumocystis jiroveci (formerly Pneumocystis carinii) pneumonia (PCP) is a major cause of mortality in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected infants in Africa, but the prevalence of mutations in the gene encoding dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS) in isolates from Africa has not been reported.

METHODS
This study investigated the prevalence of DHPS mutations in P. jiroveci isolates from South African HIV-infected children with PCP by amplifying DNA using 2 different polymerase chain reactions.

RESULTS
P. jiroveci DNA from 30 respiratory specimens was amplified; 26 specimens (86.7%) contained wild-type DHPS alleles. Of the 4 samples (13.3%) with DHPS mutations, 2 contained a homogenous population with single DHPS mutations, 1 contained a homogenous population with 2 DHPS mutations, and the fourth contained a heterogenous population of organisms with both wild-type and single-mutant DHPS genotypes. Only 1 child was receiving trimethoprim-sulphamethoxazole (TMP-SMZ) prophylaxis; this patient was infected with wild-type P. jiroveci. The mortality rate (overall, 20 [66.7%] of 30 children) was not significantly different between children infected with wild-type P. jiroveci (17 [65.4%] of 26) and those infected with mutant strains (3 [75%] of 4; P=.8).

CONCLUSIONS
DHPS mutations are uncommon in P. jiroveci isolates from South Africa. However, increasing use of TMP-SMZ prophylaxis may result in widespread development of mutations.


A study of the classic line spectral frequency (LSF) extraction methods along with the assumptions made during their estimation is presented. LSF extraction is investigated from an over-sampling and decimation perspective and LSFs are shown to contain high-frequency variations that led to spectral overlapping problems. An anti-aliasing filter prior to decimation, with a cut-off frequency dependent on the final LSF vector transmission rate, is proposed to alleviate the aliasing problem of the classic extraction methods. The proposed method shows a clear advantage because it produces the same quantisation distortion as the classic methods at a lower bit requirement, with significant reduction in 2 and 4 dB outliers that greatly affect synthesised speech quality. This was also confirmed through a listening test.


Anagliptin is a Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor used in the treatment of diabetes. Five simple, specific, sensitive, rapid and economical UV- Spectrophotometry methods have been established for the determination of Anagliptin in bulk and in-house tablets. All five methods of UVSpectrophotometry based upon Zero Order, First Order and Second Order derivative Spectrophotometry have been established considering amplitude and Area under Curve of the spectrum. In all five methods, Anagliptin obeyed linearity in the concentration range of 2-8 μg/mL with correlation coefficient (r2>0.999). The % amount of drug estimated in the developed methods was found to be good agreement with label claimed in in-house tablet formulation. All the methods were validated as per International conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines. All these proposed methods were proved to be linear, accurate, precise and rugged and also adequately sensitive. Key words: Anagliptin, UV-spectro photometry, Area Under Curve technique, Derivative Spectro photometry, Validation.


A new member of the dynamin GTPase family (OPA1) was recently identified in humans and shown to be mutated in patients with dominant optic atrophy. To understand better the function of mammalian OPA1, we isolated a mouse ortholog (mOPA1) from brain and raised a specific antibody against its C terminus. The subcellular distribution of mOPA1 overexpressed in COS-7 cells largely overlapped that of endogenous cytochrome c, a well known mitochondrial marker, and dramatically affected mitochondrial morphology, altering it from tubular to vesicular. Mitochondrial targeting was mediated by the N-terminal region of mOPA1 as follows: deletion of the 124 N-terminal amino acids eliminated mitochondrial targeting, although fusion of the N-terminal 60 or 90 amino acids of mOPA1 with green fluorescent protein resulted in its mitochondrial targeting. mOPA1 was expressed widely in the mouse brain, especially in neurons of olfactory bulb, cerebral cortex, piriform cortex, hypothalamus, hippocampus, red nucleus, cochlear nucleus, motor trigeminal nucleus, facial nucleus, cerebellar nucleus, and Purkinje cells. Within dissociated cerebellar cells, mOPA1 protein was clearly observed in the dendrites and somas of neuronal cells, as well as in astrocytes and meningeal cells. In each case, it was distributed in the vesicular pattern seen in other cell types.


The present study investigated in a longitudinal manner from seven consecutive competition years (2002-2003 through 2008-2009) the final results of men's handball National Major League matches from seven European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Poland, Spain and Sweden). The results showed that there were significant differences between the countries with regards to the total number of goals scored per match. Nonetheless all the countries followed a consistent pattern of significant increase in the total number of goals scored per match, which over the years amounted to an increase of roughly five goals per match, from 52.9 to 57.9 goals, meaning an increase of 10%. The seven countries were heterogeneous also with regards to the percentage of close games i.e. of matches with a goal difference of two or less, as well as with regards to the outcome of the matches (home win, away win, and draw). The present findings provide experts in handball with valuable information regarding general trends in modern handball with regards to pace of the game, home advantage importance and the quantification of competitiveness based on the results of close games as well as specific differences between countries in Europe.


We investigate theoretically the phase behavior of particles with limited valence in two dimensions, by solving the first-order Wertheim theory form. As previously found for three dimensions, in two dimensions also the valence has a strong impact on the phase diagram, controlling the location of the gas–liquid coexistence. On decreasing the valence, the critical density and temperature decrease while the region of gas–liquid instability shrinks and vanishes. At low temperatures, the system reaches its ground state with particles forming a fully bonded network which spans the system.


An electrode design rule for high performance top-illuminated bulk-heterojunction organic photovoltaics is proposed, that enables the device architecture to be simplified by removing the need for the electron selective layer at the interface with the low work function reflective electrode. This new guideline for electrode design is underpinned by device studies in conjunction with a study of the energetics at the interface between five widely used solution processed organic semiconductors of both electron donor and acceptor type, and a stable low work function reflective substrate electrode. The magnitude and distribution of space charge resulting from ground-state electron transfer from the electrode into each organic semiconductor upon contact formation is derived from direct measurements of the interfacial energetics using the Kelvin probe technique, which enables the variation in potential across the entire film thickness used in the devices to be probed.


The topology of the electronic band structure of solids can be described by its Berry curvature distribution across the Brillouin zone. We theoretically introduce and experimentally demonstrate a general methodology based on the measurement of energy- and momentum-resolved optical transition rates, allowing to reveal signatures of Berry curvature texture in reciprocal space. By performing time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of atomically thin WSe$_2$ using polarization-modulated excitations, we demonstrate that excitons become an asset in extracting the quantum geometrical properties of solids. We also investigate the resilience of our measurement protocol against ultrafast scattering processes following direct chiroptical transitions.


The present study was performed to evaluate the effect of medicinal plant extract on relieving hangovers in mice administered alcohol. The animals were divided into three groups. Each group was treated with fermented plant extract, non-fermented plant extract, or water 30 min after consuming ethanol (2 mL/kg). A locomotor activity test showed that all groups had decreased motor activity until 40 min after plant extract administration. The mice treated with water had lower motor activity until 100 min post-administration. However, the group treated with non- fermented plant extract showed increased motor activity 40 min post-administration, and the higher activity level was maintained until 120 min post-administration. The animals treated with fermented plant extract had a level of motor activity between those of the groups treated with water or non-fermented plant extract. Blood was collected from each mouse 120 min post-administration and aldehyde concentration was measured. The group treated with non-fermented plant extract had a significantly higher (p < 0.05) aldehyde concentration than the other groups. These results demonstrate that the non-fermented medicinal plant extract helped alleviate hangovers 40 min after administration by reducing aldehyde concentrations in the blood.


BackgroundIncreasing numbers of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are undergoing total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Whether postsurgical adverse events (AEs) are higher in patients with SLE than patients with osteoarthritis (OA) is unknown. ObjectivesThis study aims to compare AEs within 6 months of TKA. MethodsPatients in a single institution's arthroplasty and SLE registries who underwent TKA from 2007 to 2014 were eligible. SLE cases were matched 1:2 to OA on age, sex, year of TKA, and procedure type. AEs were collected through chart review and registry responses. Baseline characteristics were compared and regression analysis performed to determine predictors of AEs. ResultsFifty-two SLE TKA were matched to 104 OA TKA. There was no difference in follow-up between groups. SLE patients had more comorbidities (≥1 Charlson-Deyo comorbidity: SLE 38.4% vs. OA 17.3%; P-value < 0.001) and steroid use (preoperative [SLE 28.8% vs. OA 1.9%, P-value < 0.001] and perioperative "stress-dose" [30.8% vs. 2.9%, P-value = 0.01]). SLE patients did not experience more major (SLE 25.0% vs. OA 19.2%; P-value = 0.41), minor (15.4% vs. 10.6%; P-value = 0.39), or total (38.5% vs. 27.9%; P-value = 0.18) AEs. AEs were not increased among patients on stress-dose steroids. In a multiple logistic regression analysis controlling for comorbidities and diagnosis, neither SLE (OR 1.61, 95% CI 0.74–3.50) nor >1 comorbidity (OR 1.05, 95% CI 0.46–2.39) was an independent risk factor for AEs. ConclusionSLE is not an independent risk factor for increased AEs 6 months after TKA. Stress-dose steroid use does not heighten AE risk. These findings should inform recommendations for SLE patients considering TKA.


ABSTRACT
Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a genetic disorder that affects multiple organ systems but often goes unrecognized, and a delay in diagnosis can lead to multiple complications. Healthcare professionals should be educated on the many signs and symptoms associated with the disorder, know how to treat them symptomatically, and recommend routine screening to assess for complications. Correctly identifying, diagnosing, and treating TSC can give patients a better quality of life and prevent further complications associated with the disorder.


We provide a PAC-Bayesian bound for the expected loss of convex combinations of classifiers under a wide class of loss functions (which includes the exponential loss and the logistic loss). Our numerical experiments with Adaboost indicate that the proposed upper bound, computed on the training set, behaves very similarly as the true loss estimated on the testing set.


Abstract In social context, a stranger can be identified as one who is excluded from a group. This group can sometimes have only a few members, while in other cases it can consist of a whole nation or of an entire society. From a digital perspective, there are two kinds of citizens: first, those who are members of the digital information society. They are able to take part in social and public communication on several levels. Their habits often make life easier, and the pace they live their lives at is faster than of those before them. They are the digital natives. Second, there are those who designed the digital world, but ironically they are the ones who do not really understand how it works in practice. They are the digital immigrants, the strangers. In our study, our key point is that digital immigrants, who have been in this world longer than the so-called digital natives, are perceived as strangers as they are in many ways excluded from today's digital information society. The rituals of their daily interaction, routine, and media consumption as well as information gathering differ from those who are "full members" of the information society.


The semiclassical backreaction equations are solved in closed Robertson-Walker spacetimes containing a positive cosmological constant and a conformally coupled massive scalar field. Renormalization of the stress-energy tensor results in higher derivative terms that can lead to solutions that vary on much shorter time scales than the solutions that would occur if the higher derivative terms were not present. These extra solutions can be eliminated through the use of order reduction. Four different methods of order reduction are investigated. These are first applied to the case when only conformally invariant fields, with and without classical radiation, are present. Then they are applied to the massive conformally coupled scalar field. The effects of different adiabatic vacuum states for the massive field are considered. It is found that if enough particles are produced, then the Universe collapses to a final singularity. Otherwise it undergoes a bounce, but at a smaller value of the scale factor (for the models considered) than occurs for the classical de Sitter solution. The stress-energy tensor incorporates both particle production and vacuum polarization effects. An analysis of the energy density of the massive field is done to determine when the contribution from the particles dominates.


Operators want to maintain awareness of the structure being tested while observing sensor data. Normally, the human's gaze shifts to a separate device or screen during the experiment for data information, missing the structure's physical response. The human–computer interaction provides valuable data and information but separates the human from the reality. The sensor data does not collect experiment safety, quality, and other contextual information of critical value to the operator. To solve this problem, this research provides humans with real‐time information about vibrations using an augmented reality (AR) application. An application is developed to augment sensor data on top of the area of interest, which allows the user to perceive real‐time changes that the data may not warn of. This paper presents the results of an experiment that show how AR can provide a channel for direct sensor feedback while increasing awareness of reality. In the experiment a researcher attempts to closely follow a moving sensor with their own sensor while observing the moving sensor's data with and without AR. The results of the reported experiment indicate that augmenting the information collected from sensors in real time narrows the operator's focus to the structure of interest for more efficient and informed experimentation.


The purpose of this study is to determine risk factors associated with mortality in surgical patients with vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) infections. The hospitalizations of surgical patients with VRE infections from January 1998 to December 2001 were reviewed. Statistical analysis was performed using the Student's t test, chi square, and Fisher's exact test. Thirty-one surgical patients (male:female, 14:17) with a mean age of 51.9 years (range, 21–83 years) developed VRE infection. Infections included bacteremia (12), urinary tract (11), surgical site (seven), and soft tissue (five) infections and intra-abdominal abscess (one). Nine (29.0 per cent) patients received recent outpatient antibiotics and 20 (64.5 per cent) were on steroids. Fifteen (48.4 per cent) patients were treated with intravenous vancomycin before infection. Twelve (38.1 per cent) patients died with a trend toward advanced age (60.7 vs 46.5 years; P = 0.06). The incidence of VRE infection in kidney transplant patients was 1.8 per cent. Six transplant patients (five kidney and one kidney/pancreas) developed VRE infections with four deaths. Hypertension (P = 0.04), coronary artery disease (P = 0.02), and the need for intra-arterial pressure monitoring (P = 0.04) were associated with mortality. Isolate location, gender, diabetes, renal dysfunction, respiratory disease, liver disease, and serum albumin were not associated with mortality. Kidney transplant patients have a high incidence of VRE infection. Surgical patients with VRE infections have a high mortality rate. Hypertension and coronary artery disease are risk factors for mortality.


The current American Concrete Institute (ACI) and Canadian Standard Association (CSA) code provisions on the shear strength of a simply supported concrete deep beam and its end anchorage details suggest that deep beams should be designed using the strut-and-tie model approach. Although this is a useful methodology to design members in disturbed regions, the quality of the design is highly dependent on the truss model that designers create. In this paper, we investigate the validity of the current ACI and CSA design codes on these issues by comparing the estimates by the codes with those of the shear strength equations of concrete deep beams proposed by Hong et al. (2002) The comparison shows that deep beam members designed by the ACI and CSA strut-and-tie approaches retain the shear strengths close to the values predicted by the shear strength equations, but its requirements on end anchorage details may be rather conservative.


The Sami are the only indigenous population formally recognized in the EU, nevertheless, this significant acknowledgment came only in relatively recent times, after centuries of forced assimilation policies and thanks to crucial fights for self-determination and identity recognition. This article intends to offer an analysis of two cases of Sami life narratives orally transmitted as joiks, musical expressions traditionally sung a cappella and characterized by a highly descriptive value. The focus is to present, through a set of transdisciplinary approaches, intimate and social perceptions of indigeneity and the related narrative outcomes which may take place in the peculiar empathic relationship established between the narrator-performer and the audience. Lawra Somby's Im manne gaarkah and Niiles-Jouni Aikio's Ies joiks will respectively direct the study through 1) the author's individual life experience and perception of the colonial assimilation and the consequent language loss and 2) a rare case of self-joiking, an acoustic self-portrait or musical autobiography which through both verbal and musical components aims at the narration and interpretation of a Sami's own life experience.


Objective: This study examined the impact of an in-home screening and educational intervention on help seeking among rural impoverished individuals with untreated mental disorders. The effect of including a significant other in the intervention and reasons for not seeking help were explored. Method: The sample was randomly selected from households in nine rural counties in Virginia. The short form of the CIDI was used to screen 646 adult residents. Respondents who screened positive were randomly assigned to one of three groups: 1) no intervention, 2) an educational intervention, or 3) the educational intervention with a significant other. A list of local sources of health and mental health care was distributed. At one-month post interview, respondents were telephoned to inquire about help seeking. Results: Almost one-third (32.4%) of these respondents screened positive for at least one disorder. Five hundred and sixty-six (87.6%) were successfully followed up, and thirty-three of the 566 (5.8%) reported that they had sought professional help since the interview. Eighty-four subjects who screened positive and received the educational intervention reported in follow up that they had discussed the interview with a friend or family member, but only eleven (13.1%) received encouragement to seek treatment. The predominant reason endorsed for not seeking help was "felt there was no need," even among respondents who were informed that they had a disorder. Conclusions: A significant proportion of this rural impoverished sample screened positive for a mental disorder. Few individuals sought professional help and significant others did not encourage them to seek treatment. The implication of these results for investigators and service providers is that motivating individuals to seek mental health services is a complex process; more attention must be devoted to the development of culturally relevant methods for facilitating help seeking.


We present a detailed investigation of light emission phenomena connected with the presence of hot carriers in AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors. Electrons heated by the strong electric field at the base-collector junction lead to both impact ionization and light emission. A new general-purpose weighted Monte Carlo procedure has been developed to study such effects. The measured hot electroluminescence is attributed to radiative recombinations within the valence and the conduction bands. Good agreement is found between theory and experiment.


Purpose: To determine whether a reduction in the intensity of Total Therapy (TT) reduces toxicity and maintains efficacy. Experimental Design: A total of 289 patients with gene expression profiling (GEP70)-defined low-risk multiple myeloma were randomized between a standard arm (TT4-S) and a light arm (TT4-L). TT4-L employed one instead of two inductions and consolidations. To compensate for potential loss of efficacy of TT4-L, bortezomib and thalidomide were added to fractionated melphalan 50 mg/m2/d for 4 days. Results: Grade ≥3 toxicities and treatment-related mortalities were not reduced in TT4-L. Complete response (CR) rates were virtually identical (P = 0.2; TT4-S, 59%; TT4-L, 61% at 2 years), although CR duration was superior with TT4-S (P = 0.05; TT4-S, 87%; TT4-L, 81% at 2 years). With a median follow-up of 4.5 years, there was no difference in overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). Whereas metaphase cytogenetic abnormalities (CAs) tended to be an adverse feature in TT4-S, as with predecessor TT trials, the reverse applied to TT4-L. Employing historical TT3a as training and TT3b as test set, 51 gene probes (GEP51) significantly differentiated the presence and absence of CA (q < 0.0001), seven of which function in DNA replication, recombination, and repair. Applying the GEP51 model to clinical outcomes, OS and PFS were significantly inferior with GEP51/CA in TT4-S; such a difference was not observed in TT4-L. Conclusions: We identified a prognostic CA-linked GEP51 signature, the adversity of which could be overcome by potentially synergizing anti–multiple myeloma effects of melphalan and bortezomib. These exploratory findings require confirmation in a prospective randomized trial. Clin Cancer Res; 23(11); 2665–72. ©2016 AACR.


Background/Aims: A child presented with hepatic veno-occlusive disease after having been administered a short course of treatment with a traditional herbal remedy. The child subsequently died. Postmortem liver histology confirmed the diagnosis. This study aimed to investigate the hypothesis that the herbal remedy was the cause of veno-occlusive disease. Methods: Extracts of the traditional remedy were analysed by colorimetry and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Cultured hepatocytes were treated with an extract of the plant material and examined for morphological changes. Results: The screening analyses indicated the presence of toxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which were later confirmed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The cell studies indicated dose related toxicity, with necrosis at high concentrations and apoptosis and abnormalities of the cytoskeleton at lower concentrations. Conclusions: The simple screening techniques used allowed rapid confirmation of the presence of toxic pyrrolizidines in the remedy. The in vitro method confirmed the toxicity of herbal extracts to hepatocytes.


: This small-scale study found that nurses did not always administer all the analgesia prescribed to patients, even though patients reported suffering pain.


In this article, we describe a proof of concept of the potential use of a biocatalytic process for the functionalization of technical soda lignins from wheat straw through the selective acylation of primary hydroxy groups of lignin oligomers by acetate or hexanoate, thus preserving their free, unreacted phenols. The selectivity and efficiency of the method, although they depend on the structural complexity of the starting material, have been proven on model compounds. Applied to technical lignins, the acylation yield is only moderate, due to structural and chemical features induced by the industrial mode of preparation of the lignins rather than to the lack of efficiency of the method. However, most of the physicochemical properties of the lignins, including their antioxidant potential, are preserved, advocating the potential use of these modified lignins for industrial applications.


Malignant hyperthermia (MH) is a potentially lethal pharmacogenetic disease, triggered by inhalative anesthetics or depolarizing muscle relaxants in genetically predisposed individuals. Linkage analysis have revealed MH to be a heterogenetic disease with about 50% of MH families linked to the locus of the ryanodine receptor calcium channel (RYR1). We investigated the frequency of the 23 published MH linked RYR1 gene mutations in the Swiss MH population and compared our findings to the results of the in vitro contracture test (IVCT). IVCT was performed following the protocol of the European MH Group and mutation screening was done by PCR amplification of genomic DNA followed by restriction enzyme digestion or SSCP. We identified RYR1 gene mutations in 40% of unrelated MH families (19/48) with a high incidence of the mutation V2168M (27%). IVCT results revealed a significantly stronger functional effect of mutations R614C and V2168M as compared to mutations G2434R and R2458C. This is the first time that such a high incidence of RYR1 gene mutations in an MH population has been found, supporting the use of molecular genetic testing for the diagnosis of MH susceptibility in suitable families. In addition our data show that different RYR1 gene mutations are associated with different IVCT phenotypes. Hum Mutat 18:357–358, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


We examine the statistical properties of polarization maps from Planck 2018 within the patch of sky observed by the BICEP2/Keck experiment using the one point distribution function (1PDF), skewness, and kurtosis statistics. Our analysis is performed for the Q and U Stokes parameters and for the corresponding E- and B-modes of the CMB signals. We extend our analysis by studying the correlations between CMB polarization maps and residual maps (the difference between the full signal and the CMB map) for the frequency range of 100–217 GHz with both the Q/U and E/B approaches. Although all the CMB maps reveal almost Gaussian statistical properties for Q/U and E/B domains, we have detected very significant anomalies for cross-correlations with residuals at 100 GHz at the level of 3.7σ for the Commander map and 5.2σ for NILC, for both the Q and U parameters. Using the NILC-Commander difference, which does not contain a cosmological signal, we find a sub-dominant non-Gaussian component in Q skewness and kurtosis at the level of 4.3σ and 10σ, respectively. For the B-mode we have found a very high level of cross-correlation (0.63–0.69) between the NILC/Commander maps and the 143 GHz total signal, which cannot be associated with the cosmological component. These strong deviations suggest that remnants of foregrounds, systematic effects, and component separation exist in the 2018 Planck CMB polarization maps in the BICEP2 sky area, which is far away from the Galactic plane. Our analysis also demonstrates the preferability of the Q/U domain over E/B for determination of the statistical properties of the derived CMB signals, due to non-locality of the transition Q/U → E/B.


We develop a new 3D ambient noise tomography (3D ANT) method for geotechnical site characterization. It requires recording ambient noise fields using a 2D surface array of geophones, from which experimental crosscorrelation functions (CCFs) are then extracted and directly inverted to obtain an S-wave velocity ( VS) structure. The method consists of a forward simulation using 3D P-SV elastic wave equations to compute the synthetic CCF and an adjoint-state inversion to match the synthetic CCFs to the experimental CCFs for extraction of VS. The main advantage of the presented method, as compared with conventional passive-source seismic methods using characteristics of Green's function (GF), is that it does not require equal energy on both sides of each receiver pair or far-field wavefields to retrieve the true GF. Instead, the source power spectrum density is inverted during the analysis and incorporated into the forward simulation of the synthetic CCFs to account for source energy distribution. After testing on synthetic data, the 3D ANT method was applied to 3 h of ambient noise recordings at the Garner Valley Downhole Array (GVDA) site in California, using a surface array of 196 geophones placed on a 14 × 14 grid with 5 m spacing. The inverted 3D VS model is found to be consistent with previous invasive and noninvasive geotechnical characterization efforts at the GVDA site.


The Mantel correlogram is an elegant way to compute a correlogram for multivariate data. However, recent papers raised concerns about the power of the Mantel test itself. Hence the question: Is the Mantel correlogram powerful enough to be useful? To explore this issue, we compared the performances of the Mantel correlogram to those of other methods, using numerical simulations based on random, normally distributed data. For a single response variable, we compared it to the Moran and Geary correlograms. Type I error rates of the three methods were correct. Power of the Mantel correlogram was nearly as high as that of the univariate methods. For the multivariate case, the test of the multivariate variogram developed in the context of multiscale ordination is in fact a Mantel test, so that the power of the two methods is the same by definition. We devised an alternative permutation test based on the variance, which yielded similar results. Overall, the power of the Mantel test was high, the method successfully detecting spatial correlation at rates similar to the permutation test of the variance statistic in multivariate variograms. We conclude that the Mantel correlogram deserves its place in the ecologist's toolbox.


Personal devices and access systems have recently become more diversified, and there is a need for technology that enables users to flexibly and securely create their own private services in a user-driven manner, utilizing the presently available access systems and devices. To this end, the authors have designed User-driven Service Creation Architecture (USCA). It enables users to create a secure private network as a substrate for such services. This network is called a Personal Network (PN) and is an extension of the concept of Personal Area Network (PAN). It is organized by the personal devices related to services that users wish to enjoy or offer. This paper focuses on the security issue of USCA: how to certify the eligibility of users or devices wishing to join a PN. It proposes a device authentication and registration method, with the assistance of cellular systems, IMS/MMD (IP Multimedia System/ MultiMedia Domain). By means of this method, users can bind the correctness of devices to their cellular phone, and can thus create secure PNs only with solicited devices.


The study is aimed to know the consumer decision choice on cracker relatedto price, income level, occupation and ethnicity; to know the most favoritecracker; and to know housewives perception on cracker quality in BanjarbaruMunicipality. Primary and secondary data were used in the study.Respondents were selected through multistage random sampling.InBanjarbaru, there are 7 types of crackers available based on its specificingredient, i.e.: shrimp, fish, rambak (cowhide), wheat, onion, terasi(fermented shrimp), and sweet potato. The level of preference from thehighest are shrimp cracker, followed by fish, rambak, onion, and wheatcracker. Terasi and sweat potato are the less favorite cracker.Coefficientcorrelation of Spearman's rank was used to know housewives perception oncracker quality. The coefficient is 8.99 and significant, which mean that thereis a positive correlation between the housewives perception and crackerquality.


New far-infrared photometry with ISOPHOT, onboard the Infrared Space Observatory , is presented for 58 galaxies with homogeneous published data for another 32 galaxies all belonging to the 12 µm galaxy sample. In total 29 Seyfert 1's, 35 Seyfert 2's and 12 starburst galaxies, about half of the 12 µ m active galaxy sample, plus 14 normal galaxies for comparison. The ISO and the IRAS data are used to define color-color diagrams and spectral energy distributions (SED). Thermal dust emission at two temperatures (one cold at 15-30K and one warm at 50-70K) can fit the 60–200 µm SED, with a dust emissivity law proportional to the inverse square of the wavelength. Seyfert 1's and Seyfert 2's are indistin-guishable longward of 100 µ m, while, as already seen by IRAS, the former have flatter SEDs shortward of 60 µ m. A mild anti-correlation is found between the [200 - 100] color and the "60 µ m excess". We infer that this is due to the fact that galaxies with a strong starburst component, and thus a strong 60 µ m flux, have a steeper far-infrared turnover. In non-Seyfert galaxies, increasing the luminosity corresponds to increasing the star formation rate, that enhances the 25 and 60 µ m emission. This shifts the peak emission from around 150 µ m in the most quiescent spirals to shorter than 60 µ m in the strongest starburst galaxies. To further quantify these trends, we followed Rowan-Robinson and Crawford (1989) in iden-tifying with the IRAS colors three idealized infrared SED: that of pure quiescent disk emission, pure starburst emission, and pure Seyfert nucleus emission. Even between 100 and 200 µ m, the quiescent disk emission remains much cooler than the starburst component. Seyfert galaxies have 100–200 µ m SED ranging from pure disks to pure starbursts, with no apparent contribution from their active nuclei at those wavelengths.


Pensions may be provided for in a modern society by several methods, viz., voluntary individual savings, mandatory fully funded occupational pension systems, and mandatory social security financed by pay-as-you-go. The specific mixture of the three systems we will call the pension composition. We assume that individual workers decide about their own individual savings, that the fully funded occupational system is decided upon by the age cohort of the median worker and that social security is decided upon by the median voter. For a given demography and interest rate the joint result of those decisions is a Pareto- equilibrium. Nowadays most of capital supply stems from individual and institutionalised pension savings. For ease of exposition we will assume that individual and collective pension savings are the only source of capital supply. When capital supply equals demand from industry there is equilibrium on the capital market with a corresponding equilibrium interest rate. In this paper we assume a demography with hundred age brackets and we investigate how changes in the birth and survival rates affect the pension composition and the capital market equilibrium. Our conclusion is that the demographic effects are considerable not only for the resulting pension composition, but also for macro-economic variables as the wage rate, the interest rate and the capital-income ratio. It follows that the pension composition in general and social security in particular is determined by the demography and cannot be used as long-term political instrument. We find that this is relevant for the present century, where birth and mortality rates in most western countries are steeply declining.


This thesis examines the utility of temporal studies of cancer in practice, particularly from the perspective of analyses of the three underlying time components, age, period of event and birth cohort. This enquiry encompasses a review of temporal studies and routine data sources, as well as a more critical appraisal of the strategies available for APC analysis and presentation. Specific methods are then applied to trends in cancer incidence and mortality in Europe.
The central aims of the thesis are:
1) to comprehensively review the graphical and analytical approaches available, particularly in relation to APC modelling and their usage in current practice;
2) on the basis of 1), to provide broad but sensible guidelines for the analyses of time trends;
3) on the basis of 2), to practically demonstrate the utility of time trends and the APC model;
4) to consider the benefits and limitations of systematic approaches applied to time trend studies.
The recommended strategies are used as guiding principles for a detailed analysis of trends in incidence and mortality rates of three cancers (cervix, endometrium and testis) in European populations. The analyses of these neoplasms - purposely selected given their differing temporal and aetiological profile as well as their means of prevention - provides a platform to demonstrate the utility of APC analyses and the specified recommendations in practice. This motivates a discussion of the difficulties inherent in such studies and the consequences of introducing systematic approaches to the analyses of cancer trends.


Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of the urine dipstick in diagnosing UTIs in children at a tertiary care centre in Pakistan. Methods: 72 inpatients at the Aga Khan Hospital pediatric ward, getting laboratory urinalysis due to UTI suspicion, were included. Dipstick tests were done on the urine samples being sent to the lab for microscopy. The sensitivity, specificity and likelihood ratios (LRs) of dipstick LE, and pyuria and bacteriuria on microscopy were calculated and compared, using urine culture results as the gold standard for diagnosis. Results: The specificity of dipstick LE, pyuria and bacteriuria were 77%, 77% and 90% respectively, while the positive likelihood ratios were was 28%, 44% and 49% respectively. Urine cultures were done for 58 patients, with 5 positive cultures, so plausible estimates of sensitivity were not made. Conclusions: Urine microscopy is a more accurate screening test for ruling in UTIs than the dipstick. Keeping in mind its diagnostic limitations, the dipstick can be used to help rule in a UTI, although confirmation by cultures is recommended. Further studies are needed to validate these results in children and to evaluate the dipstick's sensitivity for ruling out disease.


Forensic image recognition is an important tool in many areas of law enforcement where an agency wants to prosecute possessors of illegal images. The recognition of illegal images that might have undergone human imperceptible changes (e.g., a JPEG-recompression) is commonly done by computing a perceptual image hash function of a given image and then matching this hash with perceptual hash values in a database of previously collected illegal images. To prevent privacy violation, agencies should only learn about images that have been reliably detected as illegal and nothing else. In this work, we argue that the prevalent presence of separate departments in such agencies can be used to enforce the need-to-know principle by separating duties among them. This enables us to construct the first practically efficient architecture to perform forensic image recognition in a privacy-preserving manner. By deriving unique cryptographic keys directly from the images, we can encrypt all sensitive data and ensure that only illegal images can be recovered by the law enforcement agency while all other information remains protected.


The Health Sector Strategic Plan (HSSP) aims to ensure access to basic health care by the Ugandan population through the delivery of the National Minimum Health Care Package (NMHCP). This requires availability of well-trained health professionals. This study demonstrates that the PrivateNot-For-Profit (PNFP) Health Training Institutions - the majority in Uganda - have remained grossly under-funded, which poses a threat to achievement of the HSSP. They are faced with decreasing income from fees, dwindling donor support and over-dependence on government grants which are both uncertain and erratic. Consequently, vital activities for students' training such as field trips, teaching and reading materials are left unsatisfied as a copying mechanism, but not without negative implications for quality. It is recommended that government increases and guarantees its support to these Health Training Institutions as a way of maintaining quality of health worker training. At the same time, the training institutions need to diversify their funding options to include designing short tailor-made courses, mobilizing alumni contributions, research and consultancies, self-help projects like farming, canteens and stationeries as well as fund-raising activities as a way of bridging their funding gap. This should be coupled with more efficiency mechanisms and prudent management to avoid wastage of the already scarce financial resources.


We distinguish between two models of adult cortical reorganization, adaptive and constant somatotopy, using functional magnetic resonance imaging maps corresponding to individual thumb and fourth-finger digits in a patient with a right-hand fourth digit tendon transfer that salvaged impaired function of the right thumb. Comparison of motor and sensory maps for both digits and both hands was consistent with a model of 'adaptive somatotopy' in which thumb control was taken over by regions adjacent to the fourth finger control cluster rather than at the presurgical lateral region as predicted by a model of 'constant somatotopy'. These findings are the first to demonstrate that rerouting of peripheral input, in the absence of brain injury, is sufficient to drive cortical reorganization resulting in recovery of lost motor function, and further suggest an adaptive mechanism associated with brain tissue engaged in intact motor functions.


The article analyzes the activities of assistant barristers and their role in the history of the Russian Bar system. In particular, the author proves the proposition that in practice assistant barristers were an independent part of the Bar system. They were both jurors and members of private attorney institutions. In this regard, the article describes the main activities of St. Petersburg Council of barristers concerning assistant barristers, in particular their status, legal education, forms of control of their daily practice, etc. Simultaneously, the author pays special attention to the analysis of the creation and improvement of the legal base for assistant barristers' activities. In the author's opinion, it was done up to 1917. Particular attentionis paid to the work of the Commission of assistant barristers related to establishing and holding legal conferences at which there were delivered lectures and discussed essays on various topical issues of law practice.


In this article, we investigate how accurately the squared error captures perceptual errors introduced by Fourier phase spectrum changes. We measure the perceptual error using the Auditory Image Model by Patterson et al.. The squared error is found to represent the perceptual error well for low squared errors but it saturates. Thus, a further increase in squared error does on average not lead to any further increase in perceptual error. This suggests that encoding phase using squared-error trained codebooks only improves perceived quality when operating at high bit rates. To verify this, phase was encoded with codebooks of different sizes. As expected, increasing the codebook size has very little influence on the average perceptual error for low rates, which is confirmed by listening tests. Our results suggest that a direct phase codebook is an inefficient representation of the relevant information contained in phase.


The mitochondria in the lower Malpighian tubule of the insect Rhodnius prolixus can be stimulated by feeding in vivo and by 5-hydroxytryptamine in vitro, to move from a position below the cell cortex to one inside the apical microvilli. During and following their movement into the microvilli, the mitochondria are intimately associated with the microfilaments of the cell cortex and microvillar core bundle. Bridges approximately 14 nm in length and 4 nm in diameter are observed connecting the microvillar microfilaments to the outer mitochondrial membrane and microvillar plasma membrane. Depolymerization of all visible microtubules with colchicine does not inhibit 5-HT-stimulated mitochondrial movement. On the other hand, treatment with cytochalasin B does block mitochondrial movement, suggesting that microfilaments play a role in the mitochondrial motility. We have labeled the microvillar microfilaments, which are 6 nm in diameter, with heavy meromyosin, which supports the contention that they contain actin. A model of the mechanism of mitochondrial movement is presented in which mitochondria slide into position in the microvilli along actin-containing microfilaments in a manner analogous to the sliding actin-myosin model of skeletal muscle.


The development of hydraulic fracturing technology has dramatically increased the supply and lowered the cost of natural gas in the United States, driving an expansion of natural gas-fired generation capacity in several electrical interconnections. Gas-fired generators have the capability to ramp quickly and are often utilized by grid operators to balance intermittency caused by wind generation. The time-varying output of these generators results in time-varying natural gas consumption rates that impact the pressure and line-pack of the gas network. As gas system operators assume nearly constant gas consumption when estimating pipeline transfer capacity and for planning operations, such fluctuations are a source of risk to their system. Here, we develop a new method to assess this risk. We consider a model of gas networks with consumption modeled through two components: forecasted consumption and small spatio-temporarily varying consumption due to the gas-fired generators being used to balance wind. While the forecasted consumption is globally balanced over longer time scales, the fluctuating consumption causes pressure fluctuations in the gas system to grow diffusively in time with a diffusion rate sensitive to the steady but spatially-inhomogeneous forecasted distribution of mass flow. To motivate our approach, we analyze the effect of fluctuating gas consumption on a model of the Transco gas pipeline that extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Northeast of the United States.


With the rapid development of intelligent vehicles and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS), a new trend is that mixed levels of human driver engagements will be involved in the transportation system. Therefore, necessary visual guidance for drivers is vitally important under this situation to prevent potential risks. To advance the development of visual guidance systems, we introduce a novel vision-cloud data fusion methodology, integrating camera image and Digital Twin information from the cloud to help intelligent vehicles make better decisions. Target vehicle bounding box is drawn and matched with the help of the object detector (running on the ego-vehicle) and position information (received from the cloud). The best matching result, a 79.2% accuracy under 0.7 intersection over union threshold, is obtained with depth images served as an additional feature source. A case study on lane change prediction is conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed data fusion methodology. In the case study, a multi-layer perceptron algorithm is proposed with modified lane change prediction approaches. Human-in-the-loop simulation results obtained from the Unity game engine reveal that the proposed model can improve highway driving performance significantly in terms of safety, comfort, and environmental sustainability.


Nurses frequently provide potential study participants with informed consent forms and information regarding involvement in research studies However, there is little information in the nursing literature that emphasizes how to evaluate informed consent documents for appropriateness. The authors present an instructional project for critiquing informed consent documents for content, clarity, readability, and conciseness.


This paper studies the problem of achieving watermark semifragility in watermark-based authentication systems through a composite hypothesis testing approach. Embedding a semifragile watermark serves to distinguish legitimate distortions caused by signal-processing manipulations from illegitimate ones caused by malicious tampering. This leads us to consider authentication verification as a composite hypothesis testing problem with the watermark as side information. Based on the hypothesis testing model, we investigate effective embedding strategies to assist the watermark verifier to make correct decisions. Our results demonstrate that quantization-based watermarking is more appropriate than spread-spectrum-based methods to achieve the semifragility tradeoff between two error probabilities. This observation is confirmed by a case study of an additive Gaussian white noise channel with a Gaussian source using two figures of merit: 1) relative entropy of the two hypothesis distributions and 2) the receiver operating characteristic. Finally, we focus on common signal-processing distortions, such as JPEG compression and image filtering, and investigate the discrimination statistic and optimal decision regions to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate distortions. The results of this paper show that our approach provides insights for authentication watermarking and allows for better control of semifragility in specific applications.


Purpose: Cancer mortality is worse among people with psychiatric disorders. The purpose of this study was to compare facilitators and rates of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening between people with and without mental illnesses. Design: We conducted a secondary analysis using data from a general population cohort study (N = 92 445) that assessed effects of 2 types of CRC screening test kits—guaiac fecal occult blood testing (gFOBT) and fecal immunochemical testing (FIT)—on CRC screening completion. Setting: The setting was a health system that served approximately 485 000 members in urban and suburban Oregon and Washington. Participants: Participants were health system members, categorized by mental illness diagnosis (psychotic disorders, non-psychotic unipolar depression, and no mental illness), who were age-eligible, at average risk of CRC, and were at least 366 days past their last gFOBT with no evidence of other CRC screening. Measures: The outcome was time until completion of CRC screening. Analysis: We used Cox proportional hazard models. Results: FIT reduced CRC screening barriers for all the groups. Compared to people without mental illness diagnoses, those with psychotic disorders were equally likely to screen using FIT (hazard ratio [HR] = .95, p = .679) and those with depression were more likely (HR = 1.17, p = .006). Conclusions: FIT can improve CRC screening rates among people with mental illnesses, particularly depression.


The results of the research showed that the forest of Wosi Rendani protection has slope 21.9% (score 60), soil type podsolic/ ultisol (Score 60) and 12.86 rain intensity (score 10), altitude 210 m asl,  with a total score of 130 as a buffer zone.  Perceptions of respondents unanimously positive 64.17% and 75% attitude towards local community-based management. This is due to the location of protected areas that are near human settlements and local immigrant who feared if the protected forest next to landslides and people lack of clean water.  Inside the forest, there is an object HLWR areas and attractions such as waterfalls, caves, springs, pools that can be used as the establishment of protected forest.  Protected forest of Rendani Wosi area has considerable potential to support regional management efforts such as the potential for flora and fauna, water, waterfalls and springs and caves as well as the support of the community around the area, but the legality of the area there has been no major obstacles in the management of this protected forest


• A nonparametric reliability estimator based on multistage ranked set sampling is developed. It is shown that the estimator is unbiased and its efficiency relative to the simple random sampling rival is increasing in the number of stages. Numerical experiments are used to illustrate the theoretical findings. The suggested procedure is applied on a sport data set. Key-Words: • Covariate information; Judgment ranking; Stress-strength model. AMS Subject Classification: • 62N05, 62G30. 2 M. Mahdizadeh and Ehsan Zamanzade Reliability estimation in multistage ranked set sampling 3


Free-space gestural systems are faced with two major issues: a lack of subtlety due to explicit mid-air arm movements, and the highly effortful nature of such interactions. With an ever-growing ubiquity of interactive devices, displays, and appliances with non-standard interfaces, lower-effort and more socially acceptable interaction paradigms are essential. To address these issues, we explore at-one's-side gestural input. Within this space, we present the results of two studies that investigate the use of side-gesture input for interaction. First, we investigate end-user preference through a gesture elicitation study, present a gesture set, and validate the need for dynamic, diverse, and variable-length gestures. We then explore the feasibility of designing such a gesture recognition system, dubbed WatchTrace, which supports alphanumeric gestures of up to length three with an average accuracy of up to 82%, providing a rich, dynamic, and feasible gestural vocabulary.


We present our experiment in integrating semantic web services in the existing semantic web server architecture used by the ACACIA team to implement corporate memories. We rely on CORESE, a semantic web search engine, to provide web applications based on the semantic web services it can identify. Thus, CORESE is used as a semantic UDDI registry and allows us to automatically discover and invoke corporate applications wrapped into semantically annotated web services. Using rules and an extension to the existing semantic web service frameworks, we also demonstrate how (i) to compose the web services with queries on the knowledge stored in the corporate memory to automatically populate the service inputs and (ii) to turn CORESE into a composable service of the memory.


Family planning in the old Soviet Union was administered through roughly 100 Family and Marriage Centers scattered across the hugh country. Unfortunately they only provided abortions and help for infertile couples, and not much else. The old Soviet government gave contraceptives a low priority and as a result they were only available as imports on the black market. The result is a lot of ignorance and misinformation about oral contraceptives, IUDs, and sexuality in general. The average Soviet women has 4-6 abortions in a life time. The USSR's infant mortality rate in 1991 was 23/1000. In 1988 its maternal mortality rate was 43/1000. The contraceptive prevalence rate in 1988 was 13.7%. There are some small, encouraging signs of change. The abortion rate fell 15.4% between 1975-1988 according to JOICFP. In 1989 the Soviet Family and Health Association (SFHA) was established in order to improve these horrible statistics. The biggest obstacle to the success of the SFHA is the political instability currently being experienced as the Commonwealth is being formed. The IPPF helped raise $14,000 dollars to purchase 15.5 million Malaysian condoms. UN aid is only in the form of technical assistance since the Commonwealth is considered a developed nation. This is the same problem currently facing the Eastern Block nations. The Commonwealth is really like 2 different countries in terms of its family planning needs. The states of the South and East have a population growth rate of 2.5% annually. While the states of the North and West have a population growth rate of 0.6%. Until political stability is achieved in the new Commonwealth, donor nations are going to be unwilling to offer a great deal of assistance. Ultimately the Commonwealth is going to have fund its own family planning system aided by the technical advice from the West.


Lateral grading of beach sediments can he achieved by downdrift attrition and/or longshore drifting. Chesil Beach (England) is graded from small to large pebbles and cobbles south-eastward in the direction of increasing wave energy. Attrition is very slow, and grading seems to have been achieved by alternations of longshore drifting with selection of coarser from finer particles by the stronger south-eastward movement. Wave energy gradients may have contributed by moving smaller particles westward, and by conserving the lateral gradation. Hawke Bay beach (New Zealand) is graded in the reverse direction. It is fed with sand and gravel by the Mohaka River, near the western end, and lateral grading has been attributed to downdrift attrition eastward. Longshore sorting has probably also contributed, and a method of separating attrition from sorting is proposed. The two systems are compared as a basis for elucidating the causes of lateral drifting, which can evidently develop in different ways.


This study presents impedance characteristics of single walled carbon nanotube/vinylester (SWCNT/VE) glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) composites. The impedance measurements were carried out as a function of the frequency over range of 10-2 and 107 Hz at various temperatures between 300 K and 420 K. Bode and Nyquist plots of real and imaginary parts of complex impedance (Z*) were obtained and Cole–Cole approach was used to interpret the impedance characteristics. The results indicated that the bulk resistance of the material decreases significantly as the temperature increases. The frequency-dependent AC conductivities were calculated using the complex impedance data and dimensions of specimen. It has been observed that the alternating current values are compatible with the Jonscher's power law. The behavior of dielectric constant and loss factor at the various temperatures were analyzed as a function of applied frequency. While the sample exhibited high dielectric permittivity in the low frequency region with the Maxwell-Wagner-Sillars (MWS) effect, it was observed that the permittivity decreased as a result of the dipoles' inability to rotate themselves in the field direction at high frequencies. No dielectric relaxation peak was observed in the loss spectra in our limits. From the results, it can be said that the contribution to the dielectric relaxation is due to the interface polarization and DC conductivity. Electric modulus formalism was also used to describe the conductivity and dielectric relaxation processes of SWCNT/VE binary composite. It was found that the obtained peak maximums shifted to higher frequencies as the temperature increased. It is concluded that the frequency regime below the peak maximum defines the range of mobile charge carriers, and in the regime above the maximum, the charge carriers are limited to short distance potential wells.


Nuclear hormone receptors, such as the estrogen receptors (ERs), are regulated by specific kinase signaling pathways. Here, we demonstrate that the p38 MAPK stimulates both ERalpha- and ERbeta-mediated transcription in MCF-7 breast carcinoma, Ishikawa endometrial adenocarcinoma, and human embryonic kidney 293 cells. Inhibition of this potentiation using the p38 inhibitor, RWJ67657, blocked estrogen-mediated transcription and proliferation. Activated ERs promote gene expression in part through the recruitment of the p160 class of coactivators. Because no direct p38 phosphorylation sites have been determined on either ERalpha or beta, we hypothesized that p38 could target the p160 class of coactivators. We show for the first time using pharmacological and molecular techniques that the p160 coactivator glucocorticoid receptor-interacting protein 1 (GRIP1) is phosphorylated and potentiated by the p38 MAPK signaling cascade in vitro and in vivo. S736 was identified as a necessary site for p38 induction of GRIP1 transcriptional activation. The C terminus of GRIP1 was also demonstrated to contain a p38-responsive region. Taken together, these results indicate that p38 stimulates ER-mediated transcription by targeting the GRIP1 coactivator.


With the increasing use of hands-free audio terminals in communication systems, the realization of a high quality hands-free function still remains a challenging research topic. The use of fast QR least-squares algorithms, combined with a multirate structure, have been proposed in Capman et al. (1995) for good performance and reduced complexity. In this paper, we propose to modify QR least-squares adaptive algorithms in order to control the adaptation process in the context of acoustic echo cancellation. This modification is based on a similar idea developed for fast transversal filters (Slock and Kailath 1991; and Benallal and Gilloire 1989). Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of this modified adaptation process for QR-LS adaptive algorithms.


Overall and disease free survival for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has continued to improve such that there are now subsets of patients with ALL who have a greater than 98% chance for cure, while some have significantly poorer outcomes and remain refractory to conventional treatments. Prognostic factors are refined sufficiently to allow risk-directed categorization and disease treatment allocation, which for some patients may mean less intensive therapy and the potential for fewer short- and long-term side effects, while advances in molecular and genomic diagnostics are increasingly being used to consider alterations in primary therapy for higher risk patients. Recent developments in therapies for childhood ALL such as those presented at this meeting have altered the landscape of available options for the treatment of relapsed ALL in particular, and increasingly, practicing pediatric oncologists are challenged to place these new treatments into the context of currently established therapies and prioritize the options for relapsed patients specifically. Immunotherapy and strategies using chimeric antigen T-cells, virus-specific T-cells, bi-specific antibodies (T-cell engaging and otherwise), and immunotoxins have greatly increased in availability and sophistication, and are now more widely available, with ever-increasing potential applications, although to date, they have not been applied to newly diagnosed patients. Simultaneously, the number of available new therapeutic options is large enough that meaningful clinical trials can be difficult to conduct based on the proportion of agents to the number of available patients eligible for such trials. A pressing challenge to the field is to begin to place these therapies in the context of more conventional approaches to the currently highly successful treatment of ALL for a large majority of affected patients, and to continue to evaluate both the short- and long-term consequences of newer treatments both alone and in combination with other more conventional agents. Discussion about what constitutes a truly novel therapy and examples of currently available experimental therapies for childhood ALL will be reviewed. The context of these treatments to future strategies and trial opportunities for both single agent and combination explorations will be discussed. Citation Format: Lia Gore. Use of novel treatments for childhood ALL. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Pediatric Cancer Research: From Mechanisms and Models to Treatment and Survivorship; 2015 Nov 9-12; Fort Lauderdale, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(5 Suppl):Abstract nr IA09.


An online version of a graduate-level research methods course was developed in 1998 to be equivalent to an existing lecture-based version of the course that had been delivered on-campus in a live format for many years. The purpose of this study was to (a) document the amount of instructor time and resources required to develop the equated lecturebased online version of the course, (b) determine the degree to which test data from 18 sections of the online course compared to test data from 18 matched on-campus sections of the course, and (c) compare the amounts of time devoted by instructors to the delivery of these matched on-campus and online sections. The online course required in excess of 700 hours of instructor and staff time to develop. Of these hours, 166 were devoted to producing lecture-like slideshows with voiceover to simulate live classroom lectures. As expected the two venues produced almost identical test scores, however, the online sections required 30% more instructor time to deliver than their matched on-campus sections. Our conclusion is that the similarity in levels of student learning within the two venues has been achieved at a considerable cost to instructors in amounts of extra time required to develop and deliver the online coursework.


In 2004, the 30-year update to the 1972 report 'The Limits to Growth' has reiterated the Malthusian proposition that current industrial practices could lead to a sudden and uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity. Today, rising sea levels, biological extinction rates and soil degradation all point towards the world being in a state of overshoot. The most vulnerable cities are those on coastlines, which face flooding risks. As such, it is imperative that coastal cities develop into coastal eco-cities, which aim to reduce environmental impact, improve human well-being and life, and stimulate growth through a harmonious relation between the land and the sea. Dover is the focus of coastal eco-city development in this book due to its role as one of the UK's main trade gateways with continental Europe. As a busy international commercial port, Dover produces significant carbon emissions, arising from high levels of transportation activity. In addition, a flood risk assessment concluded that Dover port has low risk of flooding due to geological protection from the white cliffs. Therefore, the focus is to work towards a carbon neutral Dover. In this respect, this book looks at solutions using biomimicry, the practice of developing sustainable human technologies inspired by nature. This book identifies two most significant means of reducing Dover's carbon footprint, namely through the use of renewable energy and carbon management. The development of a 2.4 MW near-shore marine energy harvesting plant using the Oyster Wave Power
technology at the port leads to estimated savings of 3200 tonnes of CO2 per year. This offsets the port's carbon emissions by about 25%. A 40 MW Oyster farm along the white cliffs also protects the cliffs from coastal erosion on top of providing energy. In terms of carbon management, the eco-cement concept produces calcium carbonate from carbon emissions and seawater at the CEMEX Dover plant. Calculations show that 0.5 tonnes CO2 is sequestered per tonne of eco-cement, while CEMEX emits 0.612 tonnes CO2 per tonne of conventional cement. This implies that eco-cement could possibly reduce the industry's effective CO2 emissions to 0.112 tonnes CO2 per tonne of cement.
Indeed, the transition to a carbon neutral Dover is a challenging long-term process. It requires an active decision to switch to systems thinking and re-design society's way of living. Nonetheless, it is of utmost importance that leaders in politics, industry and academia collaborate to bring about a world that is not only functional and sustainable, but also deeply desired by all.


This study aimed at evaluating the effects of the micro-immunotherapy medicine (MIM) 2LEID, both in vitro and in vivo, on several components of the innate and adaptive immune system. MIM increased the phagocytic activity of macrophages, and it augmented the expression of the activation markers CD69 and HLA-DR in NK cells and monocytes/macrophages, respectively. The effect of MIM was evaluated in a model of respiratory infection induced by influenza A virus administration to immunocompetent mice in which it was able to improve neutrophil recruitment within the lungs (p = 0.1051) and slightly increased the circulating levels of IgM (p = 0.1655). Furthermore, MIM stimulated the proliferation of CD3-primed T lymphocytes and decreased the secretion of the immunosuppressive cytokine IL-10 in CD14+-derived macrophages. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells were finally used to explore the effect of MIM on endothelial cells, in which it slightly increased the expression of immune-related markers such as HLA-I, CD137L, GITRL, PD-L1 and ICAM-1. In conclusion, the present study suggests that MIM might be a promising nonspecific (without antigen specificity) immunostimulant drug in preventing and early treating respiratory infections, but not only exclusively, as it would gently support several facets of the immune system and host defenses.


ABSTRACT Huff, T.P. and Feagin, R.A., 2017. Restoring tidal equilibrium: Removing a hydrologic barrier and lowering salinity at the Magnolia Inlet, Texas. In: Martínez, M.L.; Taramelli, A., and Silva, R. (eds.), Coastal Resilience: Exploring the Many Challenges from Different Viewpoints. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 77, pp. 97–103. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. A large area of salt marsh located between Magnolia Beach and Indianola, Texas had rapidly degraded over the last few decades due to a hydrologic barrier. Sediment and shell debris in the main tidal channel had greatly reduced flow between interior sections of marsh and the adjacent open bay, blocking all hydrologic exchange except for extreme tides. As a result, the impounded waters were often hypersaline, the vegetation was dying, and access to habitat was restricted for aquatic nekton. Our overall objective was to identify the cross section of debris that would need to be removed from the channel in order to restore hydrologic flow. Using numerical modelling, the first goal was to identify the cross-section of the channel that would allow equilibrium with the potential tidal prism of the impounded water basin. Using a STELLA modelling approach, the second goal was to identify the length of time that it would take to restore normal salinity levels. Based on both these models and observed historical trends, a removal option of 13.5 m2 inlet cross-section was selected, such that maximum water velocities (~0.8 m/sec) were predicted to reduce the probability that the channel would revert back to a blocked state and that salinities would equilibrate in less than 12 days. Approximately 780 m3 of shell and mud debris was removed, and field-measurements of both tidal flow and salinity generally verified the modelled predictions. Afterwards, the community began recovering with vegetation colonizing previously flooded areas and fish accessing the marsh as the barrier no longer blocked fish movement.


The age-hardening is enhanced with the high cooling rate since more vacancies are formed during quenching, whereas the stable beta phase is formed with the slow cooling rate just after solid solution treatment resulting in lower increase of hardness during aging. Meanwhile, the nanoclusters are formed during natural aging in Al-Mg-Si alloys. The formation of nanoclusters is enhanced with increasing the Si amount. High quench sensitivity based on mechanical property changes was confirmed with increasing the Si amount. Moreover, the nano-size beta" phase, main hardening phase, is more formed by the Si addition resulting in enhancement of the age-hardening. The quench sensitivity and the formation behavior of precipitates are discussed based on the age-hardening phenomena.


OBJECTIVE
Tetrodotoxin and its analogues (TTXs) were responsible for the poisoning incidents associated with snail Nassarius spp. We studied bacteria isolated from toxic snails as well as their habitat to probe into the relationship between bacteria and toxicity of nassariid gastropod.

METHODS
Two snail samples were collected from Sheyang, Jiangsu Province on June 13 and 19, 2006, and the toxicity of the snail samples was tested with mouse bioassay method. Bacteria were isolated from the snail samples and from their habitat. A part of isolated bacteria were then cultured in the lab, and TTX in bacteria were screened with an ELISA method.

RESULTS
The snails collected were identified as Nassarius semiplicatus, and the toxicity of the 2 samples were 247 mouse unit (MU) and 270 MU / 100 g tissue (wet weight), respectively. TTX was detected in 9 strains among the 14 strains of bacteria isolated from the snail samples and their habitat. TTX content in the toxic strains was very low, which ranged from 15 ng/g to 96 ng/g. Partial of the 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) of the toxic strains were then sequenced after PCR amplification, and the toxic strains of bacteria were tentatively identified based on the alignment of these sequences with published data. Toxic strains were closely affiliated with Vibrio, Shewanella, Planococcus, Marinomonas, Photobacterium.

CONCLUSION
These findings suggested that TTX-producing bacteria may play an important role in TTX production or accumulation in nassariid gastropod.


A series of novel catalytic materials were synthesized by changing the chemical compounds in the impregnation solutions. A rigid, aromatic and bidentate molecule 1,10-phenanthroline (PhN) was used as a ligand to bind Ni2+ species prior to impregnation into a mesoporous KIT-5 support. The in situ synthesized coordination compounds were impregnated into KIT-5 and the resulting materials exhibited better dispersion of metal species, being the best at a molar ratio Ni : PhN = 1 : 1. The materials were tested in the hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of palmitic acid. We found that highly active and stable catalysts were obtained when using PhN as a chelating agent in the impregnation solution. The selectivity of these materials is remarkable since only O-free molecules were detected in the HDO products. Therefore, Ni–PhN complexes in combination with mesoporous SiO2 can be further exploited for the catalytic transformation of biomass feedstocks.


25th International Congress of Pediatrics will take place on August 25–30, 2007, in Athens, Greece. Late registration Deadline: June 10, 2007. Opening Ceremony: August 25, 2007. Closing Ceremony: August 30, 2007. Contact us and we will be happy to assist you! 25th International Congress of Pediatrics Professional Congress Organizer AC&C INTERNATIONAL S.A. 1A Pierias str, 14451, Metamorfossi, Athens, Greece. Phone: +30 210 6889 130. Fax: +30 210 6844 777. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com. Website: http://www.icp2007.gr.


Earthworms can be used as bioindicators of soil management as they are easy to classify and very sensitive to changes of both physical and chemical soil parameters. The aim of this work was to study relations between earthworm species (richness and density) and the physicochemical soil properties such as pH, organic matter, soil moisture, and texture (percentages of sand, silt, and clay) under different farming practices (organic and conventional) in olive groves in central Greece. The data revealed significantly greater values of earthworm species richness, density, soil organic matter, and moisture in the organic olive groves than in the conventional ones. Furthermore, total earthworm density was positively correlated to earthworm Shannon diversity index, soil moisture, organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in organic olive groves. However, total earthworm density was negatively correlated to soil pH and silt in conventional olive groves. It can be concluded that species richness and density of earthworms in olive groves can be considered as sensitive indicators of management practices.


Neural machine translation (NMT) models have recently been shown to be very successful in machine translation (MT). The use of LSTMs in machine translation has significantly improved the translation performance for longer sentences by being able to capture the context and long range correlations of the sentences in their hidden layers. The attention model based NMT system (Bahdanau et al., 2014) has become the state-of-the-art, performing equal or better than other statistical MT approaches. In this paper, we wish to study the performance of the attention-model based NMT system (Bahdanau et al., 2014) on the Indian language pair, Hindi and Bengali, and do an analysis on the types or errors that occur in case when the languages are morphologically rich and there is a scarcity of large parallel training corpus. We then carry out certain post-processing heuristic steps to improve the quality of the translated statements and suggest further measures that can be carried out.


The major research objective of this study was to develop an 'appreciative learning organization'—an organization that practices appreciative, innovative and holistic learning from its strengths, successes, and potentials. It was done a private IT solution provider in Thailand using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as an organizational development intervention (ODI). This study employed an action research as the core research methodology with nonrandomized control group pre-test & post-test techniques. The research findings showed that AI as an ODI is an effective approach for developing an 'appreciative learning organization'. The enhancement in AI competencies and the two key practices of a learning organization prompted the focal organization to start its transformation into an 'appreciative learning organization'. The Four crucial elements of the success of this intervention are: 1) well -thought-out design of the ODI, 2) opportunities for participants to learn through experiential learning, 3) reinforcement of behaviors practiced, supported, and coached by the researcher, and 4) understanding and consideration of the personal traits and thinking preferences of the participants


This paper presents an approach for extracting 3D outlined planar clusters of street facades. Terrestrial laser data are acquired using a Mobile Mapping System (MMS). Mapping of street facades is of great interest in various digital mapping and robotic research topics. After a filtering step of the 3D point cloud, the dominant hypothetical facade planes are detected using an adapted Progressive Probabilistic Hough Transform (PPHT). The corresponding planar clusters are extracted using a priori geometric knowledge of street. The clusters are horizontally and vertically delimited using heuristic approaches. The adapted PPHT allows the automatic extraction of georeferenced planar clusters of facades with a fine detection of dominant facade lines and a low computation time. The adopted approach has been tested on a set of point cloud acquired in the city of Paris under real conditions. Examples and experimental results show the efficiency and the potential of the proposed approach.


Abstract : The purpose of this feasibility study was to determine whether an analytical model capable of calculating the dynamic motion and loads in the tracks and suspension of a tracked vehicle could be developed. Such a model could be used to evaluate causes of track vibration and associated energy dissipation. An analytical model for the dynamic analysis of tracked vehicles has been developed and a computer program incorporating the model has been written. The vehicle suspension and track geometry are variables specified in the input to this program. The analytical model provides details of the track motion using a time history solution. Dynamic track tension, which can be correlated with the energy dissipated in the track, is determined as a function of time for each track link. Damping in the track/pin rubber bushing interface may be varied in separate analyses to study the effects of damping on dynamic tension and resulting energy dissipation in the track. The analytical model was configured to represent the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier. Sample analyses of this configuration were completed and tabulated results appear to be reasonable.