In wireless networks, secure multicast protocols are difficult to implement efficiently due to the dynamic nature of the multicast group and scarcity of bandwidth at the receiving and transmitting ends. Mobility is one of the most distinct features to be considered in a wireless network. Moving users onto the key tree causes extra key management resources even though they are still in service. To take care of frequent handoff between wireless access networks, it is necessary to reduce the number of rekeying messages and the size of the messages. In this paper, we design a key management tree such that neighbors on the key tree are also physical neighbors on the cellular network. By tracking the user location, we localize the delivery of rekeying messages to the users who need them. This lessens the amount of traffic in wireless and wired intervals of the network. The group key management scheme uses a pre-positioned secret sharing scheme


By the end of the last century, the rough configuration of the Moho discontinuity beneath the Japan Islands had been revealed based on explosion surveys and natural earthquake observations. Recently, however, some researchers have pointed out that local roughness of the Moho geometry or relative location between continental and oceanic Moho might provide important knowledge about the source regions of large earthquakes.  Within the southern portion of the Kinki district, the Philippine Sea plate subducts beneath the continental plate at the Nankai Trough. We detect P-to-S converted wave energy from the Moho velocity discontinuity beneath the Kinki district with receiver function analysis, and compare the results of other recent investigations of the depth of Moho. Both oceanic and continental Moho discontinuities are detected in not only our receiver function analysis but also active-source seismic exploration survey and travel-time tomography analysis. The inferred depths of the subducting oceanic Moho beneath the Kii Peninsula, the southern Kinki district, and the continental Moho beneath the northern Kinki correspond well with each other. However, beneath the central Kinki district, no significant converted phases are observed corresponding to the Moho depth inferred from the travel-time analyses. We interpret that no sharp velocity discontinuity exists around the Moho in the central Kinki district.


Work environment is characterized as unstable and unpredictable. Accordingly, employees need to adapt to and cope with radical changes occurring in the work and social environment. Based on previous literature, leaders may play a central role in helping employees to deal with complexity and to respond to various pressures. Although the previous studies have broadly discussed the appropriateness of using different leadership styles for organizational and employee effectiveness, nonetheless the domain of employee well-being tackling it from the SCARF model perspective remains somewhat neglected. Moreover, although the number of employees working in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) jobs is growing, there is still a gap in analyzing STEM workers' well-being and the factors influencing it. The aim of the paper is to reveal the impact of the transactional and transformational leadership styles on employee well-being in terms of the way the status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness perceived by STEM workers could be enhanced or reduced by leaders. With this in mind, interviews were conducted with STEM workers. The core findings revealed the duality of both leadership styles, where both styles served as antecedents for enhancing or reducing employee well-being. The paper calls for rethinking the leadership style while striving for STEM workers' and organizational sustainability.


This paper studies the effects of stiffeners on shear lag in steel box girders with stiffened flanges. A threedimensional linear finite element analysis using STAAD.Pro V8i program has been employed to evaluate and determine the actual top flange stress distribution and effective width in steel box girders. The steel plates of the flanges and webs have been modeled by four-node isoparametric shell elements, while the stiffeners have been modeled as beam elements. Different numbers (4, 8, and 15) for the steel stiffeners have been used in this study to establish their effects on the shear lag and longitudinal stresses in the flange. Using stiffeners reduced the magnitude of the top flange longitudinal stresses about 40%, but didn't affect the shear lag.


An important pathway by which relationships influence health may involve how people cope with interpersonal tensions. This study examined whether same day and previous day avoidance and engagement in arguments are differentially associated with self-reported well-being (emotional and physical) and diurnal cortisol patterns. Participants from Wave 2 of the National Study of Daily Experiences (N = 1,512; aged 33–84, 57% women) completed daily phone interviews for eight consecutive days and provided useable saliva samples that were assayed for cortisol for four of those days at specific times: waking, 30 min after waking, before lunch, and at bedtime. Multilevel models revealed same day arguments were associated with lower well-being (higher negative affect and lower positive affect) than same day avoidance or no tension. In contrast, previous day avoidance was associated with lower next day well-being (higher negative affect and more physical symptoms) and higher next day cortisol than having no interpersonal tension the previous day. Arguments have greater same day consequences for well-being, whereas avoided arguments have greater next day consequences, which may indicate delayed effects of avoidance.


Broadly speaking, Bitcoin is a scheme designed to facilitate the transfer of value be- tween parties. Unlike traditional payment systems, which transfer funds denominated in sovereign currencies, Bitcoin has its own metric for value called bitcoin (with lowercase letter \b", and abbreviated as Btc1). Bitcoin is a complex scheme, and its implementa- tion involves a combination of cryptography, distributed algorithms, and incentive driven behaviour. Moreover, recent developments suggest that Bitcoin operations may involve risks whose nature and proportion are little, if at all, understood. In light of these con- siderations, the purpose of this paper is to provide the necessary technical background to understand basic Bitcoin operations and document a set of empirical regularities related to Bitcoin usage. We present the micro-structure of the Bitcoin transaction process and highlight the use of cryptography for the purposes of transaction security and distributed maintenance of a ledger.


This work explores different mechanisms that induce thermal rectification in the nanoscale. The presence of interacting energy channels combined with simple asymmetries is sufficient for promoting the desired behavior. We use simple quantum dot configurations, identifying the basic properties that enhance rectification for each case: the size of a quantum dot state space (which suggests the use of scaled up systems with many interacting channels), tunneling asymmetries due to coherent tunneling in a double quantum dot, or quantum interference in a triangular triple quantum dot. An efficient and tunable thermal diode is proposed using a channel capacitively coupled to a mesoscopic switch.


Objective High bile acid serum concentrations have been implicated in cardiac disease, particularly in arrhythmias. Most data originate from in vitro studies and animal models. We tested the hypotheses that (1) high bile acid concentrations are arrhythmogenic in adult human myocardium, (2) serum bile acid concentrations and composition are altered in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) and (3) the therapeutically used ursodeoxycholic acid has different effects than other potentially toxic bile acids. Methods and Results Multicellular human atrial preparations ('trabeculae') were exposed to primary bile acids and the incidence of arrhythmic events was assessed. Bile acid concentrations were measured in serum samples from 250 patients and their association with AF and ECG parameters analysed. Additionally, we conducted electrophysiological studies in murine myocytes. Taurocholic acid (TCA) concentration-dependently induced arrhythmias in atrial trabeculae (14/28 at 300 µM TCA, p<0.01) while ursodeoxycholic acid did not. Patients with AF had significantly decreased serum levels of ursodeoxycholic acid conjugates and increased levels of non-ursodeoxycholic bile acids. In isolated myocytes, TCA depolarised the resting membrane potential, enhanced Na+/Ca2+ exchanger (NCX) tail current density and induced afterdepolarisations. Inhibition of NCX prevented arrhythmias in atrial trabeculae. Conclusions High TCA concentrations induce arrhythmias in adult human atria while ursodeoxycholic acid does not. AF is associated with higher serum levels of non-ursodeoxycholic bile acid conjugates and low levels of ursodeoxycholic acid conjugates. These data suggest that higher levels of toxic (arrhythmogenic) and low levels of protective bile acids create a milieu with a decreased arrhythmic threshold and thus may facilitate arrhythmic events.


The markedly enhanced risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is well documented.1 ,2 This prompted a European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) task force to make a commendable effort in producing recommendations for cardiovascular risk management in patients with inflammatory arthritis.3 These included the application of the systematic coronary risk evaluation score (SCORE), a multiple major traditional risk factor assessment equation. In addition, the EULAR task force recommended applying a multiplier of 1.5 in patients with RA that met 2 of 3 criteria consisting of (1) a disease duration >10 years, (2) rheumatoid factor or anticyclic citrullinated peptide positivity and (3) the presence of extra-articular manifestation, thereby creating the modified (m) SCORE.

Risk factor assessment algorithms, including the SCORE and the Framingham risk equation, are recommended worldwide as part of CVD risk management in the population at large.4 ,5 These equations allow for stratifying subjects into low, intermediate, high and very high risk groups. With regard to CVD risk management, lifestyle factors should be addressed in all individuals. The use of cardiovascular drugs, particularly antihypertensive and lipid-lowering agents should be considered in those at high or very high risk as these interventions markedly reduce CVD event rates in such persons. Patients with established CVD, diabetes and chronic kidney disease are at high or very high risk and hence, risk factor equation application is not indicated.

Nonetheless, approximately a third of CVD events are not attributable to major CVD risk factors.6 Congruent with this, although multiple risk factor equations are useful in determining the overall CVD risk among different populations, they often underestimate the actual risk in individual subjects. This is particularly evident in those who are at moderate risk according to major risk factor assessment equations.4 ,5 Consequently, based on …


Although recent evidence suggests that fibronectin may be involved in the attachment of treponemes to mammalian cells, its possible role in promoting phagocytosis of Treponema pallidum has not been investigated. In the present study, we examined the antibody-independent interactions of fibronectin, C1q, and human polymorphonuclear leukocytes with T. pallidum. Binding of [125I]fibronectin was specific and saturable with an affinity constant of approximately 2 X 10(7) M-1. The number of binding sites per treponeme at 37 degrees C, irrespective of the mammalian source of fibronectin, was between 2,500 and 7,500, with a mean of approximately 4,700. Binding of [125I]C1q to T. pallidum, in the absence of antibodies to the organism, also was saturable and specific. Pretreatment of treponemes with C1q enhanced binding of soluble [125I]fibronectin two- to threefold and also increased attachment of 125I-surface-labeled treponemes to fibronectin-coated surfaces. Treatment of 125I-labeled T. pallidum with fibronectin alone, or together with C1q, however, did not enhance surface phagocytosis by neutrophils.


The fruit of Emblica officinalis (commonly known Amla) contain potent antioxidants and is most commonly used in the Ayurveda for the treatment of various diseases. Quinalphos- a organophorus insecticide is known to alter antioxidant defense system in mammals. With this premise, experiment was planned with objective to study the effect of amla fruit extract supplementation on quinalphos induced oxidative stress. Twenty-four Sprague-Dawley rats were homogenously divided into six groups of four animals each. Group I was kept as control. Group II was orally given quinalphos at the dose rate of 2 mg.kg -1 . day -1 . Group III and V were orally gavaged with amla in sugar and honey bases respectively at the dose rate of 50 μg.kg -1 .day -1 whereas group IV and VI were orally dosed with quinalphos along with amla in sugar and honey bases respectively at above mentioned dose rates from day 16-45. The various indices of antioxidant status were analyzed in major organs of treatment groups viz . Liver, kidney and brain. Sub chronic quinalphos administration produced oxidative stress in rats as evidenced by increase in lipid peroxidation, glutathione peroxidase and decline in superoxide dismutase. Oral supplementation of amla extract in sugar and honey bases provided partially amelioration against altered antioxidant status following sub chronic quinalphos exposure. Results of histopathological study were also in corroboration with blood antioxidant status validating amla in either bases was unable to provide full protection against quinalphos induced toxicity in rats.


The paper is dedicated to presentation of a new approach to joint design and verification of rule-based systems. The principal idea is that verification should be performed on-line, incrementally, during system design. This allows for early detection and handling of knowledge base anomalies and inconsistencies. The proposed approach offers also an innovative visual tool for computer-aided design. Knowledge representation is based on eXtended Tabular Trees (XTT) a very flexible and powerful knowledge representation paradigm combining the expressive power of attributive decision tables and decision trees. Design and verification process with an XTT design tool and the visual editor is discussed.


We consider active learning for binary classification in the agnostic pool-based setting. The vast majority of works in active learning in the agnostic setting are inspired by the CAL algorithm where each query is uniformly sampled from the disagreement region of the current version space. The sample complexity of such algorithms is described by a quantity known as the disagreement coefficient which captures both the geometry of the hypothesis space as well as the underlying probability space. To date, the disagreement coefficient has been justified by minimax lower bounds only, leaving the door open for superior instance dependent sample complexities. In this work we propose an algorithm that, in contrast to uniform sampling over the disagreement region, solves an experimental design problem to determine a distribution over examples from which to request labels. We show that the new approach achieves sample complexity bounds that are never worse than the best disagreement coefficient-based bounds, but in specific cases can be dramatically smaller. From a practical perspective, the proposed algorithm requires no hyperparameters to tune (e.g., to control the aggressiveness of sampling), and is computationally efficient by means of assuming access to an empirical risk minimization oracle (without any constraints). Empirically, we demonstrate that our algorithm is superior to state of the art agnostic active learning algorithms on image classification datasets.


Turkey is a main chestnut producing country in the world. Significant differences in nut production took place in the last half century mainly due to the fatal diseases e.g., ink disease (Phytophthora sp.) and chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica). The harmful effect of these diseases varied region to region. Nut export quantity also fluctuated in this period connected with the production level. Economical importance of the chestnut is not only coming from the fresh nut but various kinds of nut products have also been important. Candied chestnut is the most famous product among them. Some additional new products were offered to the taste of the society. Chestnut flour is another product of chestnut fruits which can be used. Some of these products have also been exported. Both fresh and processed materials showed increasing tendency in respect of export quantity. In the last decade nut production showed also an increasing tendency because the fatal effect of the chestnut blight gradually decreased. All of these subjects are discussed in detail in this paper.


National Semiconductor's SCAN Bridge is being used to provide an addressable, multi-drop, 1149.1-based backplane test bus. Its architecture is based upon defining two additional protocols to extend IEEE 1149.1 for use as a backplane test bus: an address protocol and a park protocol. These allow features such as the single, multicast, and broadcast address modes of P1149.5 to be included in the bridge.


q-Fourier transforms, developed by Umarov-Tsallis-Steinberg [Milan J. Math. 76 (2008) 307], mightily contribute to cement the foundations of non-extensive statistical mechanics. Recently, Hilhorst [J. Stat. Mech. (2010) P10023] investigated the feasibility of obtaining an invertible q-Fourier transformation (qFT) by restricting the domain of action of the transform to a suitable subspace of probability distributions and showed that this is impossible. Further, by explicit construction, he encountered families of functions, all having the same qFT (the q-Gaussians themselves being part of such families) and showed in that important case the non-invertibility of the qFT. In this communication we show that, although Hilhorst is right, the qFT does indeed map, in a one-to-one fashion, classes of functions into other classes, not isolated functional instances. Thus, the foundational qFT debate seems to have been resolved.


Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) is a well-recognised cause of non-immune hydrops fetalis, which is associated with a high incidence of perinatal mortality. The arrhythmia can be diagnosed accurately during prenatal life. We report here a case of fetal hydrops secondary to SVT at 20 weeks of gestation successfully treated with transplacental flecainide. The controversy on the types of drugs used and the optimal route of administration were discussed. (HK J Paediatr (new series) 2003;8:130-132)


Proceedings: AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010‐‐ Apr 17‐21, 2010; Washington, DC

Clonogenic assays are considered to be the "gold standard assay" to test for the effects of drugs and radiation on the growth and proliferative characteristics of cells in vitro. Clonogenic-based assays are considered superior to short-term cell proliferations-based assays as a clonogenic assay is insensitive to p53 status. The clonogenic assay is the measurement of a drug's cytotoxic activity against a single cell population and is the most valid in vitro approach to predict the chemosensitivity of human cancers. The traditional clonogenic assay is very time-consuming and labor-intensive. In addition, the cell disaggregation step necessary for plating in the clonogenic assay results in a loss of cell-cell and cell-substrate interactions which may be critical for the drug response. To overcome the technical challenges and limitations of the traditional clonogenic assay, a 6-well plate clonogenic assay was developed and optimized. Current 6-well clonogenic assays are initiated with a single seeding density, and then surviving cells grow over 10 to 12 days and form colonies. The data generated from this from of the assay only allows the determination of IC50s but not IC90s due to a narrow one log range of cell killing. We have developed an efficient and simple six-well clonogenic assay that yields a wider range of cell killing covering 5 logs. The key is that a series of different cell numbers are seeded in 6 well plates ranging from a density from 100 cells per well to 100,000 cells per well. After a 24 h cell attachment period, cells in each plate were treated with five different concentrations of the test compound. After incubation for the appropriate period of time at 37oC in a 95% air and 5% CO2 atmosphere incubator, drug containing medium was removed and the cells were cultured in fresh medium for additional 10-15 days until adequate colony formation. At the end of incubation, cell colonies were stained with 0.25% w/v crystal violet in 95% Ethanol. After air drying, the plates were scanned with an image-based colony counter (Alpha Innotech) and colonies with more than 50 cells were quantified. To directly compare the experimental results derived from this improved 6-well plate clonogenic assay and the traditional approach to the clonogenic assay, we ran the two forms of the assays simultaneously using cisplatin and SN-38 as the cytotoxic test agents. Cispatin and SN-38 showed comparable IC50, IC90 and IC99 values in both the improved six-well clonogenic assay and the traditional clonogenic assay. In summary, the key advantage of this 6-well clonogenic assay is that it does not involve the trypsinization and replating step after drug treatment and also that is greatly simplifies the traditional clonogenic assay and allows for its use as a moderate-throughput primary drug screening tool.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5497.


This study aimed at identifying the effect of using the "Express Plan Evaluate" Strategy in teaching science on the academic achievement and the development of the inferential thinking skills among eighth-grade students. The study was conducted on a sample of (52) students divided into two groups: a control group and an experimental group. A multiple-choice achievement test and an inferential thinking skills test were administered to the two groups as pre-post testing. The results of the study showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the achievement test between the experimental and control group, and in favor of the experimental group, who studied according to the "Express Plan Evaluate" Strategy. There were also statistically significant differences in the inferential thinking skills test between the experimental and control group and in favor of the experimental group. The study recommends using the "Express Plan Evaluate" Strategy to effectively teach other subjects of science and to hold training sessions for teachers of science on the use of "Express Plan Evaluate" Strategy in order to help them replace the traditional methods of teaching that are dependent on recall and memorization.


In recent years, the wave equation has been used extensively by both highway departments and private contractors for the analysis of pile driving problems. It has been used to predict impact stresses in piles during driving and also to estimate the static soil resistance acting on the piles at the time of driving. The purpose of the information presented herein is to assist highway engineers in understanding, use, and practical application of the computer program written to analyze piles by the wave equation. Special emphasis is placed on the solution of practical problems. Numerous example solutions, including preparation of input data, input forms, computer output and application of results are included. This manual is the fourth in a series.


Massive dense clumps in the Large Magellanic Cloud can be an important laboratory to explore the formation of populous clusters. We report multiscale ALMA observations of the N159W-North clump, which is the most CO-intense region in the galaxy. High-resolution CO isotope and 1.3 mm continuum observations with an angular resolution of ∼0.″25 (∼0.07 pc) revealed more than five protostellar sources with CO outflows within the main ridge clump. One of the thermal continuum sources, MMS-2, shows an especially massive/dense nature whose total H2 mass and peak column density are ∼104 M ⊙ and ∼1024 cm−2, respectively, and harbors massive (∼100 M ⊙) starless core candidates identified as its internal substructures. The main ridge containing this source can be categorized as one of the most massive protocluster systems in the Local Group. The CO high-resolution observations found several distinct filamentary clouds extending southward from the star-forming spots. The CO (1–0) data set with a larger field of view reveals a conical, ∼30 pc long complex extending toward the northern direction. These features indicate that a large-scale gas compression event may have produced the massive star-forming complex. Based on the striking similarity between the N159W-North complex and the other two previously reported high-mass star-forming clouds in the nearby regions, we propose a "teardrops inflow model" that explains the synchronized, extreme star formation across >50 pc, including one of the most massive protocluster clumps in the Local Group.


Aims, Objectives and Background The climate crisis is the biggest health threat facing humanity and healthcare accounts for approximately 5% of the UK's carbon footprint. To address this, the NHS has set the ambitious target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2040. This raises the question as to how emergency departments – sites of resource-intensive clinical activity – can be engaged appropriately on environmental sustainability. Can a standardised approach be developed to hasten and consolidate efforts? To test this, we developed the GreenED framework. The aim was to trial a set of actionable criteria that could be implemented by any ED seeking to measure and reduce impacts, and increase staff engagement. It is designed to be easy to implement in the context of the emergency care crisis, and administered by RCEM. To our knowledge, this is the first framework in the world specifically designed for use in EDs. Method and Design The framework is modelled on UCL's successful LEAF programme for sustainable laboratories. Criteria were drafted based on a review of literature in healthcare sustainability relevant to emergency care, and structured into bronze, silver and gold levels based on anticipated feasibility. ED staff in 8 departments across England were then recruited to pilot bronze level. Following an induction session, participants were engaged via monthly meetings, providing updates on progress and sharing approaches and challenges. Verbal feedback and written submissions were collected. Results and Conclusion Sites attempted as many actions as possible; most achieved at least 3 criteria. Identified obstacles were lack of senior support, guidance on how to implement changes, and time for sustainability work. Through both measurable impacts and qualitative feedback, this pilot has shown a clear demand for reducing environmental impacts, but significant challenges impeding progress. To continue leading in this we need to ensure senior buy-in and dedicate resources towards improving the sustainability of everyday departmental practices.


I The mechanical property degradation (295-1223 K) and microstructural/chemical evolution of CoNiCrAlY coatings and superalloy substrates in gas turbine blades operated in-service have been studied using a small punch (SP) testing technique and scanning Auger microprobe. In SP tests, coating cracks continuously and discretely propagated at 295 K and higher temperatures, respectively. The ductile-brittle transition temperature of the coatings was increased during long time expmure of gas turbine blades to oxidizing environments while that of the substrate did not change. The low cycle fatigue life of the coatings at 295 K was also reduced in-service. Oxidation and sulfur segregation near the coating surface were found to be major causes of the mechanical degradation of the coatings. .


The Barangay Nutrition Scholars (BNS) Project was created in 1977 to provide an effective means of disseminating nutrition information and providing nutrition services to the barangays through a trained community worker. The BNS project was pilot tested in 1977 in 13 municipalities and by the end of 1979 5220 BNS had been trained and deployed in their communities. BNS must have certain personal and leadership qualifications and are chosen by the barangay captain or the barangay nutrition committee. The nutrition program is based upon 4 intervention schemes: food production food assistance health protection and information education and communication. The BNS is the nutrition programs instrument for implementing these intervention schemes. The BNS on return from training makes a spot map of the community and measures and weighs preschool children to screen for malnutrition. The BNS also conducts mothers classes which dispense information on nutrition and health and distributes seeds and supplementary food packets for preschoolers to target families. Support to the BNS is provided by a van equipped with a communication worker and a video playback unit. An assessment of the BNS program indicated that about 80% of the BNS surveyed were effective implementors of their programs. Program officials expect most of the problems encountered to be solved with more effort by the BNS and increased financial and logistical support from the national and local governments.


The half-time for the degradation of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) is increased from 14 h to 37 h in Con A-treated cells, while the half-time for the degradation of [125I]BSA is increased from 5.4 h to 14.8 h. This supports prior microscopic observations which suggested that Con A pinosomes showed a marked impairment in their ability to form phagolysosomes. Artifacts due to anomalous behavior of HRP-Con A complexes, or to inhibition of lysosomal hydrolases by Con A, could be excluded. These indications of impaired phagolysosome formation, as well as those described in the preceding paper, could be reversed by postincubation of the cells in mannose, but not in galactose. This reversal is accompanied by a dissociation of Con A-FITC from the inner surface of the pinosome membrane, into the vesicle contents. These observations may be relevant to the ability of Con A to affect several membrane characteristics, and are also of interest in relation to the impaired formation of phagolysosomes which has been described in certain in vitro parasitic infections of macrophages or other cells.


Vitamin U levels were determined on 26 kinds of food plants well known to be healthy vegetables in Asian or Western countries. Spinach showed the highest level of 45.2 mg/100 g DW followed by Pak-choi (34.3 mg/100 g DW)>kale (23.4 mg/100 g DW)>Sumssukbujaengi (19.8 mg/100 g DW)>leaf mustard (19.6 mg/100 g DW)>bud of aralia (19.3 mg/100 g DW)>broccoli (18.9 mg/kg DW)>asparagus (18.7 mg/100 g DW). Among Korean wild medicinal plants, Sumssukbujaengi showed the highest value followed by Sanmanul (a kind of wild garlic) with the level of 14.4 mg/100 g DW. For Chinese and Western cabbages, the level of vitamin U differed according to the parts of the plant such as core, middle and outside leaves. In both cabbages, level in the middle parts of leaves including midribs was the highest. As stated, the level of vitamin U was dependent on the part of the plant sample. Leaf parts of turnip and white radish showed higher value of 8.5 and 12.5 mg/100 g DW, respectively, than those of roots such as white radish in which levels were in the order of middle (11.3 mg/100 g DW), top (8.5 mg/100 g DW) and bottom (8.5 mg/100 g DW) portions in the white radish. In the analysis of amino acids, we did not find either a distinctive relationship between methionine and vitamin U synthesis or a significant connection between various free amino acids and vitamin U level in food plants.


Planting the economically sustainable Cajanus cajan crop in coal gangue dump as an approach for ecological management has attracted extensive attention from scholars worldwide. Microorganisms play important roles in ecological restoration. However, there have been few reports about the microbial composition and functions of Cajanus cajan root systems planted in plateau waste dumps. In this study, the gangue dump (1,390 m above sea level) in Guizhou Plateau was covered with soil and planted with YN and JX Cajanus cajans. After one year, the Cajanus cajan root system was collected, and high-throughput sequencing was utilized to examine the bacterial and fungal biodiversity. The bacteria in all samples were assigned to six phyla and 60 genera. The unclassified_f_Enterobacteriaceae and Cedecea were the most abundant genera. The fungi were assigned to six phyla and 143 genera and Fusarium was the most abundant genus. Venn and heatmap analyses revealed differences in the dominant root species among Cajanus cajan varieties, Lactococcus and Fusarium. In JX and YN, Pseudoarthrobacter is a unique genus of bacteria; in JX, Robillarda is a unique genus of fungi; and in YN, Scytalidium is a unique genus of fungi. The endophytic fungi mainly play the roles of saprotroph, plant pathogen, and endophyte. Among the bacterial properties, L-arabinose isomerase and adenosine triphosphatase were the most abundant in all samples, while chitinase, catalase, and laccase played important roles in photosynthesis, degradation of lignin, chitin, and chitosan. This study guides the selection of reclamation plants and strategies for the migration and restriction of heavy metals in soil.


Dopamine surface chemistry has been of great interest because of its universal coating property and ability to transform nonadhesive molecules into adhesive molecules. Catechol oxidation and intramolecular cyclization underlie the unique property of dopamine (DA) surface chemistry and provide clues for developing new surface modification reagents such as norepinephrine, 5-pyrogallol-2-aminoethane, and perfluorinated DA derivatives. Based on these inspiring properties, a fast and universal surface chemistry technique using 4-(3-aminopropyl)-benzene-1,2-diol (3-catecholpropanamine, CPA) is reported herein. A single carbon insertion in the aliphatic chain of DA gives rise to the significantly accelerated intermolecular assembly and surface coating of CPA. The effect of CPA conjugation on an anticoagulant polysaccharide coating is also investigated. The use of CPA instead of DA to make polysaccharide coating materials improves the coating rate, while maintaining excellent antiplatelet performance on the coated surface.


The aim of the present study was to assess copepod species richness in groundwater habitats from the Pădurea Craiului Mountains, Transylvania (northwestern Romania). Five species richness estimators (one asymptotic, based on species accumulation curves, and four non-parametric) were compared by testing their performances in estimating copepod species richness at three hierarchical spatial scales: cave, hydrographic basin, and karstic massif. Both epigean and hypogean species were taken in account. Two data sets were used in computing copepod species richness: 1. samples collected continuously during one year (dripping water) and seven months (pools) from five caves, and 2. samples collected from pools in twelve additional caves (data gathered from literature). Differences in copepod species richness among caves and hydrographic basins suggest that local environmental features are important in determining local species richness trends.


In this randomized controlled economic evaluation we compared guided asthma self-management with usual asthma care according to guidelines for Dutch family physicians. Nineteen family practices were randomized, and 193 adults with stable asthma (98 self-management, 95 usual care) were included and monitored for 2 years. We hypothesized that introducing self-management would not compromise asthma control and cost would be equal to or lower than in usual care. Patient-specific cost data were collected, preference-based utilities were assessed, and incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) and successfully treated week gained was calculated. Self-management patients gained 0.039 QALY (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.003 to 0.075) and experienced 81 (95% CI, 78 to 84) successfully treated weeks in 2 years' time; the corresponding figures for usual care were 0.024 (95% CI, -0.022 to 0.071) and 75 (95% CI, 72 to 78). Total costs were 1,084 euros(95% CI, 938 to 1,228) for self-management and 1,097 euros (95% CI, 933 to 1,260) for usual care. Self-management patients consumed 1,680 (95% CI, 1,538 to 1,822) puffs of budesonide, usual care patients 1,897 (95% CI, 1,679 to 2,115). Mean productivity cost due to limited activity days was 213 euros lower among self-management patients. When all costs were included, self-management was cost-effective on all outcomes. The probability that self-management was cost-effective relative to usual care in terms of QALYs was 52%. We conclude that guided self-management is a safe and efficient alternative approach compared with asthma treatment usually provided in Dutch primary care.


Contemporary debate suggests that the new genetics may be changing ideas about the body and what it is to be human. Specifically, there are notions that the new genetics seems to erode the ideas that underpin modernity, such as the figure of the integrated, discrete, conscious individual body-self. Holding these ideas against the practices of genetic medicine, however, this article suggests a quite different picture; one that does not erase, but helps to keep in play, some crucial tenets of humanism. The article examines how the genetic clinic constructs clinical pictures as new forms of portraiture: assemblages in which multiple and heterogeneous images of bodies and their parts are juxtaposed. Rather than these portraits just making the distributed and hybrid nature of personhood explicit, shifts in ground mean that what is being portrayed is the possibility of a 'syndrome–genotype' relation. At first sight this appears as a straightforward geneticization of the body and the unravelling of the figure of the individual. But the article illustrates how, at the same time as the portraits of syndrome–genotypes are made up of many heterogeneous parts, the clinic still keeps in play an idea of persons that remains, unlike their bodies, much more than the sum of their parts. All the parts that make up the body of the person can still, at moments, be transcended, to refigure the human: the complex individual of humanist thought.


Pharmaceutical expenditure continues to rise driven by a number of factors including ageing populations and the continued launch of new premium-priced drugs. Increasing use of generics versus originators and patent-protected products of the same or related classes can help conserve valuable resources. However, concerns with their effectiveness and safety compared to originators as well as only limited introduction of measures to promote their demand in some countries have led to variable use among countries. Countries need to learn from each other to further enhance their prescribing efficiency. Firstly to review successful case histories from different countries, and secondly, raise awareness about potential pitfalls that could undermine the success of future measures in order to provide future guidance on conserving resources in relation to generics. A narrative review of case histories selected by co-authors using a range of different approaches. Systematic reviews are published elsewhere. Twelve case histories were selected depicting both supply- and demand-side measures. These include Croatia where the introduction of additional measures helped reduce drug expenditure as well as debt whilst improving access to new medicines, Lithuania where recent reforms decreased pharmaceutical expenditure in 2010 whilst the number of prescriptions increased by 9% versus 2009; Scotland where despite a 6.2 fold increase in statin utilisation, multiple measures limited the increase in reimbursed expenditure to just 7% in 2010 vs 2001; Sweden where the introduction of monthly auctions for generics has helped lower prices; and the US where managed care organisations actively encourage cross therapeutic opportunities for generics substitution where the safety and efficacy of a generic drug is similar to a patent-protected product in the class or related class to conserve resources. Payers across Australia, Europe, Middle East (United Arab Emirates), and US have introduced multiple measures to both enhance the prescribing of generics and obtain lower prices, with the result that they are increasingly able to take advantage of the availability of generics. However, due to growing pressures on healthcare resources, it is important that countries accelerate the sharing of lessons learned about which policies and new measures are most effective in controlling costs.


Background: Psoriasis is an autoimmune disorder with clinical manifestations scales, inflammation and dryness. The psoriatic skin behaves differently in concurrence with circadian rhythm. Cell division increases in late night and early morning hours. Enzymatic activity will be more during day time. To balance these variations a 24×7 protection is required. The objective of the present study is to find the improvement in Psoriasis condition with the Combination therapy compared to single drug usage.

Methods: A clinical trial for 4 weeks was conducted among psoriasis patients with psorolin oil vs. combination therapy (Dr. JRK's 777 oil, psorolin ointment, psorolin oil and psorolin medicated bathing bar) and the clinical relief was measured among both groups by following parameters like psoriasis area and severity index (PASI), Physician's global assessment (PGA), dermatology life quality index (DLQI), subjective self-assessment questionnaire (SSAQ) and subject investigational product feedback questionnaire (SIPFBQ).

Results: Combination therapy (1-3-2 topical therapy) of Dr. JRK's 777 oil, psorolin ointment, psorolin oil and psorolin medicated bathing bar as a treatment regimen was found to be more effective in the treatment of psoriasis.

Conclusions: 1-3-2 topical therapy is useful in severe psoriasis conditions and recommended for long term effective treatment of psoriasis.


ABSTRACT:The article attempts to broaden our understanding of faith and belief (Hebrew: emuna) in non-religious spheres in Israel, defining Israeli Jewish secular-believers as self-identified secular (Hebrew: hiloni) people who believe in "whatever may be considered as the divine". It analyzes the emuna discourse of secular-believer women, as manifested in their religious/spiritual feelings, experiences, and interpretations. Employing the theoretical lens provided by William James (1842–1910) and his contemporary successors, the analysis reveals the deep-seated role of the Western, Protestant-oriented understanding of religiosity/spirituality as an individual and therapeutic path in the emuna discourse of secular-believer women. Furthermore, it underscores the centrality of gender and Jewish symbolism in this discourse, thereby resisting the universalistic impulse characteristic of James and his followers and suggesting that social particularities originating in religion and gender (and perhaps also ethnicity, class, and the like) should be taken into account in analysis of non-religious discourses concerning emuna.


Morin modified multilayer ZnO with a cockloft-like morphology was fabricated in alcohol solution, using hydrothermally synthesized ZnO nanodisks and morin as the precursors. The samples were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffractometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy. The results show that the cockloft-like ZnO hybrid, having hexangular morphology with the diameter of 1.5–2 μm and the thickness of ca. 1 μm, is composed of a multilayer flatform stacked by numerous ZnO nanodisks in its middle and a meshlike muffle made up of countless morin nanoparticles with the diameter of ca. 40 nm. The UV emission of the as-fabricated product is obviously attenuated by morin nanoparticles assembling on the surface of the ZnO nanodisks.


Ride comfort of a vehicle is often determined by rubber bushes in suspension system. If transmission forces versus deformations across the bushes are available under operational conditions, improvement of the ride comfort could be done with more ease. Recently, the transmission forces are measured using custom-made force transducers inside the links. This study presents a feasibility study on estimation of the rubber bush deformations using vibration signals on the rigid links. Linear variable displacement transducers as well as piezoelectric accelerometers are used to expand frequency range to very low frequency, which cannot be done with accelerometers only. How to estimate the bush deformation from the two vibration signals on the links are presented together with experimental results.


BACKGROUND
Dental implants need appropriate bone volume for adequate stability in the rehabilitation after tooth loss. In the severely atrophic posterior maxilla, the clinical success of implant treatment sometimes requires a vertical ridge augmentation in the maxillary sinus floor.

PURPOSE
The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate a maxillary sinus floor augmentation technique using a replaceable bone window, elevation of the membrane, placement of implants, and injection of the patient's own venous blood to fill the voids.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Six patients with need of maxillary sinus floor augmentation participated in the study. After preparation of a replaceable bone window in the lateral aspect of the sinus and careful elevation of the Schneiderian membrane, a total of 14 Brånemark implants (TiUnite, MK III, Nobel Biocare AB, Göteborg, Sweden) were installed in the residual bone penetrating into the sinus cavity. The sinus cavity was then filled with peripheral venous blood and the bone window replaced and stabilized with a medical tissue glue (Aron Alpha A, Sankyo, Inc., Tokyo, Japan) to prevent blood leakage from the created compartment in the maxillary sinus.

RESULTS
After a healing period of a minimum of 6 months, new bone was successfully generated in all 14 implant sites as judged from radiographs. One of the 14 implants failed, corresponding to a survival rate of 92.9% after a follow-up period ranging 12 to 34 months.

CONCLUSIONS
The present case series demonstrate that the creation of a secluded space in the maxillary sinus and filling with venous blood results in bone formation at simultaneously installed dental implants over a 6-month period.


In this thesis we consider algebro-geometric aspects of the Classical Yang-Baxter Equation and the Generalised Classical Yang-Baxter Equation. In chapter one we present a method to construct solutions of the Generalised Classical Yang-Baxter Equation starting with certain sheaves of Lie algebras on algebraic curves. Furthermore we discuss a criterion to check unitarity of such solutions. In chapter two we consider the special class of solutions coming
from sheaves of traceless endomorphisms of simple vector bundles on the nodal cubic curve. These solutions are quasi-trigonometric and we describe how they fit into the classification scheme of such solutions. Moreover, we describe a concrete formula for these solutions. In the third and final chapter we show that any unitary, rational solution of the Classical Yang-Baxter Equation can be obtained via the method of chapter one applied to a sheaf
of Lie algebras on the cuspidal cubic curve.


Alzheimer's disease (AD) and bronchial asthma are common diseases in elderly patients. Untreated chronic diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, diabetes, heart failure, and asthma can be associated with declining cognitive function. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of asthma therapy performed according to Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) guidelines (GINA. Global strategy for asthma management and prevention. Report. Available online at http://www.ginasthma.com/Guidelineitem.asp??l1=2&l2=1&intId=60 last accessed Oct. 2009) on cognitive function and functional status in patients diagnosed with AD. A total of 302 participants who were diagnosed with bronchial asthma and mild or moderate AD (138 women and 164 men) with a mean age of 68.2 ± 5.1 years were included in the study. Cognitive function was assessed based on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the clock drawing test at the beginning of the study, after 6 months, and after 1 year. Results were compared with a control group of patients with AD but not asthma. Several patients (68.9%) had uncontrolled asthma (confirmed at the beginning of the study) and AD. After 1 year of antiasthmatic treatment, the mean MMSE score increased significantly from the baseline values of 17.2 ± 3.2 to 19.5 ± 2.1 (mean ± SD; p < 0.05). This change was significant compared with the control group. Significant improvement in instrumental activity was observed after 1 year of treatment in patients with asthma. Finally, 63.6% of patients met the criteria of well-controlled asthma. Adequate treatment of chronic asthma could improve some cognitive and instrumental activities. Asthma in patients with AD is commonly underdiagnosed and undertreated.


Integration of the distributed energy resources (DERs) has empowered the electric power utilities to meet the increasing load demands efficiently at the reduced cost. Despite several benefits, there are some hidden protection challenges due to the large-scale integration of DERs with unbalanced distribution networks (DNs), which have not been properly addressed in literature. This research work investigates the impacts of higher concentration of DERs on the voltage swelling of the unfaulted phases during fault events for different DERs penetration level. Increase in voltage unbalance of real DNs having unbalanced voltage profile has been analyzed for uneven allocation of single-phase rooftop photovoltaic (PV) units. Impact of the grounding strategies of DERs on the operation of different types of protection strategy has been assessed for different grounding impedance followed by the mitigation strategy.


A new family of exact solutions of the Einstein field equation s for static and axially simmetric spacetimes is presented. All the metric function s f the solutions are explicitly computed and the obtained expressions are simply written in terms of o blate spheroidal coordinates. The solutions describe an infinite family of static axially symm etric thin annular dust disks. The disk are of infinite extension but with an inner annular edge. The ener gy densities of the disks are everywhere positive functions of the radial coordinate, equals to zero at the inner edge of the disk, having a maximun at a finite value of the radius and then vanishing at in finity. The disks have finite mass and their energy-momentum tensor agrees with all the energy con diti s.


Аbstract: Pain is also one of the most frequently encountered symptoms in the primary care, representing enormous burden related to suffering on the part of the patient, deteriorated quality of life and high expenses of health care. It is admitted that the degree of the early postoperative pain is a significant predictor for the chronic one, which maintains the hypothesis that the continuous nociceptive stimuli in the perioperative period result in a change in the central nervous sensitization. The stated hereinabove determines the attention of the specialists in various spheres of medicine and psychology as well as the need of development of a complex medicalpsychological approach in the treatment of pain, as further to the big financial expenditures realized by it, it intensely deteriorates the quality of life of the person affected by it.


Wireless relay networks have caught a lot of attention recently due to their potential to enhance performance by combating fading effects. Numerous strategies have been proposed in the literature to enable cooperative diversity. Among them, decode-and-forward protocol has been well adopted because of its low implementation complexity. However, most decode-and-forward based schemes assume that the relay node has perfect error detection or has feedback information from the destination. In this paper, we design power profiles at the relay which enable diversity at the destination without any feedback or coding assumptions at the relay and source. Furthermore, the diversity orders enabled by any general power profile are quantified. We then summarize necessary and sufficient conditions on the power profiles to guarantee full diversity at the destination. The theoretical analysis is corroborated with numerical simulations.


The highly parallel workflows of modern software development have made merging of source code a common activity for developers. The state of the practice is based on line-based merge, which is ubiquitously used with "git merge". Line-based merge is however a generalized technique for any text that cannot leverage the structured nature of source code, making merge conflicts a common occurrence. As a remedy, research has proposed structured merge tools, which typically operate on abstract syntax trees instead of raw text. Structured merging greatly reduces the prevalence of merge conflicts but suffers from important limitations, the main ones being a tendency to alter the formatting of the merged code and being prone to excessive running times. In this paper, we present spork, a novel structured merge tool for java. spork is unique as it preserves formatting to a significantly greater degree than comparable state-of-the-art tools. spork is also overall faster than the state of the art, in particular significantly reducing worst-case running times in practice. We demonstrate these properties by replaying 1740 real-world file merges collected from 119 open-source projects, and further demonstrate several key differences between spork and the state of the art with in-depth case studies.


Is urban space, as a concentric agglomeration in expansion, in contraction, which duplicates itself, the solution of a dierential system ? Does urban geometry come from "chaotic" mutations, from cloning and aggregating districts ? And do they project their metrics on space ? Then where does its finality come from ? Is it central, peripherical, as it were interlocked ? Functional and territorial logics demand a new regulation : Decentralized planning. However, is this space collectively rooted in local mentalities, even if Public Economics are used as a means to achieve this purpose ? Thus, with a finality and a geometry, through all its modalities, this space becomes the theorical entity of a possible General theory.


Stapedotomy is a surgical procedure aimed at the treatment of hearing impairment due to otosclerosis. The treatment consists of drilling a hole through the stapes bone in the inner ear in order to insert a prosthesis. Safety precautions require knowledge of the nonmeasurable stapes thickness. The technical goal has been the design of high-level controls for an intelligent mechatronics drilling tool in order to enable the estimation of stapes thickness from measurable drilling data. The goal has been met by learning a map between drilling features, hence no model of the physical system has been necessary. Learning has been achieved as explained in this paper by a scheme, namely the d-/spl sigma/ Fuzzy Lattice Neurocomputing (d/spl sigma/-FLN) scheme for classification, within the framework of fuzzy lattices. The successful application of the d/spl sigma/-FLN scheme is demonstrated in estimating the thickness of a stapes bone "on-line" using drilling data obtained experimentally in the laboratory.


In order to clarify the mechanism of liver damage in hepatitis A, we studied the role of Natural Killer (NK) cells and Lymphokine Activated Killer (LAK) cells in non-specific immunological reactions using hepatitis A (HAV) infected cells (JTC-12.P3 cell) using the 51Cr release assay. No significant difference in specific cytotoxicity was observed between uninfected cells (JTC) and HAV-infected cells (JTC-HAV) to fresh and Poly I:Cor rIL-2 pretreated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from healthy donors or patients with acute hepatitis A. But in an experiment employing fresh and rIL-2 pretreated PBMC from cynomolgus monkey as effectors, a significant difference in NK and LAK sensitivity between JTC and JTC-HAV was noticed. Cytotoxicity assay was then carried out using as effectors fresh or rIL-2 pretreated cells of B, NK and T cell fractions obtained after separation of PBMC from monkey by the E-rosette formation method. Both fresh and rIL-2 pretreated B/NK cells showed significantly higher cytotoxicity for JTC-HAV than JTC, but neither fresh or rIL-2 pretreated T cells showed cytotoxicity for JTC-HAV or JTC. These results imply that both NK and LAK cells may play a part in the mechanism of hepatocellular injury.


In the present study, the prevalence of bovine cysticercosis in 190,461 animals during a three-year period (2014, 2015, and 2016) was analyzed in a refrigerator situated in the northeast region, Bahia, Brazil. The animals were supplied from the Bahia municipalities. The data were obtained from reports of daily condemnation of bovine carcasses, as a result of the presence of cysts, and viscera, especially the liver and heart, together with the tongue and head of the animals, as well as the origin of cattle. Prevalence of bovine cysticercosis was observed in 1204 animals, and the form of viable cysts was higher (0.63%) as viable cysts (0.005%), with a preference for the liver 0.46% and heart 0.14%. With this we conclude that cysticercosis is an important cause of condemnation of viscera and carcasses leading to enormous economic losses. The intervention of the veterinarian in the prevention of cysticercosis should be to interrupt the evolutionary cycle of the parasite, thus reducing, gradually, the frequency of taeniasis in man, the definitive host.


. Mulching of agricultural soils has been identified as a viable solution to sequester carbon into the soil, increase soil health and fight desertification; as such, it is an interesting option for carbon farming in Mediterranean areas. Models are used to project the effects of agricultural practices on soil organic carbon in the future for various soil and climatic conditions, and to help policy makers and farmers assess the best way to implement carbon farming strategies. Here, we 20 modify the widely used RothC model to include mulching practices and their direct and indirect effects on soil organic matter input, soil temperature changes, and soil hydraulic balance. We then calibrated and validated our modified RothC (RothC_MM) using the dataset collected in a field mulching experiment described in detail in a companying article, and used the validated RothC_MM to estimate the expected soil carbon sequestration by year 2050 due to mulching for the Valencian community (Spain). Our results show that RothC_MM improved the fit with experimental data with respect to 25 basic RothC, and was able to predict SOC and CO 2 observations taken in the field, and to model the effects of mulch on soil temperature and soil water content


Abstract Background: Prominent theories suggest that individuals with co-occurring traumatic stress symptoms (TSS) and substance use (SU) may be less responsive to SU treatment compared to those with SU only. However, empirical findings in adult samples are mixed, and there has been limited work among adolescents. This study assesses the association between TSS and SU treatment outcomes among trauma-exposed adolescents, using statistical methods to reduce potential confounding from important factors such as baseline SU severity. Method: 2,963 adolescents with lifetime history of victimization received evidence-based SU treatment in outpatient community settings. At baseline, 3- and 6-months, youth were assessed using the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs Traumatic Stress Scale and the Substance Frequency Scale. Propensity score weighting was used to mitigate potential confounding due to baseline differences in sociodemographic characteristics and SU across youth with varying levels of TSS. Results: Propensity score weighting successfully balanced baseline differences in sociodemographic factors and baseline SU across youth. Among all youth, mean SU was lower at both 3- and 6- month follow-up relative to baseline, indicating declining use. After adjusting for potential confounders, we observed no statistically significant relationship between TSS and SU at either 3- or 6-month follow-up. Conclusions: Based on this investigation, conducted among a large sample of trauma-exposed youth receiving evidence-based outpatient SU treatment, baseline TSS do not appear to be negatively associated with SU treatment outcomes. However, future research should examine whether youth with TSS achieve better outcomes through integrative treatment for both SU and TSS. IMPACT STATEMENT The results of this study provide keenly needed evidence that, among youth with prior victimization, presence and level of traumatic stress symptoms at substance use treatment initiation does not lead to significantly worse treatment outcomes for youth in outpatient treatment. This suggests that evidence-based outpatient substance use treatment modalities may be effective at improving substance use outcomes even when co-existing traumatic stress symptoms are present.


Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Using a bank 2. Following instructions about a sport 3. Leaving a message 4. catching planes and trains 5. Checking on hotel facilities 6. Being a good observer 7. Watching the weather 8. Apartment hunting 9. Finding out what's going on in town 10. Finding out about a course 11. Talking about television 12. Running errands 13. Phoning a service station 14. Moving in 15. Handling an emergency 16. Making travel plans 17. Renting a car 18. Fitting a car 19. Learning how to use a machine 20. Sightseeing.


In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in satisfying the spectrum demand for communications beyond 5G (B5G) at a global level. However, in such a large and diverse country as Mexico, the implementation of B5G wireless networks towards 6G will require new spectrum regulation policies that also take into account the particular aspects of the country, such as population density, geographic diversity, as well as social and economic issues. This paper discusses the asymmetries of the urban and rural scenarios of mobile communications and examines their relationship to the current status of the spectrum for 5G mobile communications in Mexico. Then, it explores the spectrum-related challenges that must be overcome to attain ambitious goals beyond 5G technologies. Thus showing the necessity of novel spectrum allocation mechanisms that consider the myriad of scenarios and their different demands in similar countries, in order to satisfy the requirements of B5G wireless communications and networks.


Abstract We present some results from the DRAGON simulations, a set of four direct N-body simulations of globular clusters (GCs) with a million stars and five percent initial (primordial) binaries. These simulations were undertaken with the NBODY6++GPU code, which allowed us to follow dynamical and stellar evolution of individual stars and binaries, formation and evolution of white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, and the effect of a galactic tidal field. The simulations are the largest existing models of a realistic globular cluster over its full lifetime of 12 billion years. In particular we will show here an investigation of the population of binaries including compact objects (such as white dwarfs - cataclysmic variables and merging black hole binaries in the model as counterparts of LIGO/Virgo sources); their distribution in the cluster and evolution with time.


We show that standard winner-pay auctions are inept fund-raising mechanisms because of the positive externality bidders forgo if they top another's high bid. Revenues are suppressed as a result and remain finite even when bidders value a dollar donated the same as a dollar kept. This problem does not occur in lotteries and all-pay auctions where bidders pay irrespective of whether they win. We introduce a general class of all-pay auctions, rank their revenues, and illustrate how they dominate lotteries and winner-pay formats. The optimal fund-raising mechanism is an all-pay auction augmented with an entry fee and reserve price.


We sought to establish stressors and coping mechanisms for student teachers on Teaching Practice from a Christian-related university and a government-owned teachers' college in Zimbabwe. The sample was made up of 77 participants (38 females, 39 males). Thirty-two participants were from the university and 45 were from the teachers' college. A questionnaire and an interview schedule were used to collect data. Frequencies and percentages were used in quantitative data analysis while qualitative data were thematically analysed. The main stressors revealed were problems with difficult learners, low allowances, heavy workload, and shortage of teaching and learning aids and, to some extent, supervision-related matters and the effect of the protracted industrial action by serving teachers that overlapped with the Teaching Practice period in the study. Most coping strategies were in the form of social-support networks, particularly interactions with family and friends. Student teachers suggested a number of actions to be taken to reduce the related stress. Recommendations are made.


We revisit the well-studied problem of budget-feasible procurement, where a buyer with a strict budget constraint seeks to acquire services from a group of strategic providers (the sellers). During the last decade, several strategyproof budget-feasible procurement auctions have been proposed, aiming to maximize the value of the buyer, while eliciting each seller's true cost for providing their service. These solutions predominantly take the form of randomized sealed-bid auctions: they ask the sellers to report their private costs and then use randomization to determine which subset of services will be procured and how much each of the chosen providers will be paid, ensuring that the total payment does not exceed budget. Our main result in this paper is a novel method for designing budget-feasible auctions, leading to solutions that outperform the previously proposed auctions in multiple ways. First, our solutions take the form of descending clock auctions, and thus satisfy a list of properties, such as obvious strategyproofness, group strategyproofness, transparency, and unconditional winner privacy; this makes these auctions much more likely to be used in practice. Second, in contrast to previous results that heavily depend on randomization, our auctions are deterministic. As a result, we provide an affirmative answer to one of the main open questions in this literature, asking whether a deterministic strategyproof auction can achieve a constant approximation when the buyer's valuation function is submodular over the set of services. In addition, we also provide the first deterministic budget-feasible auction that matches the approximation bound of the best-known randomized auction for the class of subadditive valuations. Finally, using our method, we improve the best-known approximation factor for monotone submodular valuations, which has been the focus of most of the prior work.


During the last decade, molecular biology has demonstrated the extraordinary heterogeneity of genetic abnormalities in Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). The main phenotypes are either of the demyelinating or axonal type, transmitted with dominant or recessive autosomal inheritance. X-linked CMT is less rare than it was initially described and is often misdiagnosed as autosomal dominant type. Linked phenotypes are Dejerine-Sottas disease, congenital hypomyelinization and hereditary neuropathy with susceptibility to pressure palsies. Each phenotype can be due to different genotypes and concerned genes are numerous. Conversely, each genotype can express different phenotypes. Molecular diagnostic strategy of CMT is mainly baised on three elements: - phenotypic expertise which is based on the analysis of the inheritance mode and on electrophysiological data, which are peculiar in CMTX - knowledge of respective occurrence of the different genotypes and phenotypes which is increasing - technical feasibility of molecular biology methods which is important to consider, even though progress are fastly coming. According to these considerations, a strategy is proposed for molecular diagnosis of CMT.


Although endoscopic hemostasis remains initial treatment modality for nonvariceal gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding, severe bleeding despite endoscopic management occurs in 5% to 10% of the patients, requiring surgery or transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE). TAE is now considered the first-line therapy for massive GI bleeding refractory to endoscopic management. GI endoscopists need to be familiar with indications, principles, outcomes, and complications of TAE, as well as embolic materials available.


Abstract Human identity is shaped not only by culture, but also by nature – the environment in which people grow up and live, the places and spaces they visit, work in, and pass on an everyday basis. This people-place bond is particularly important in case of immigrants who are forced to abandon the places they know for a new – and often hostile – environment. This connection between space, environment, and immigrant identity is explored by Kerri Sakamoto, a Japanese-Canadian writer, in her newest novel, Floating City (2018). Focusing on the family narrative of the Hanesakas – and, in particular, the story of Frankie, the oldest son of the family – Sakamoto tells the story of shaping identity through forming a connection with the environment and architecture. The aim of this article is to discuss the way in which Sakamoto presents the people-place bond and its impact on immigrant identity as represented by the connection of the Japanese-Canadians with four elements: water, air, earth, and fire. Furthermore, the article analyses Sakamoto's version of an alternative history of Toronto and the possible solutions to the current environmental crisis it brings. For this purpose, the author uses a mixture of methodological concepts stemming from postcolonial theory and environmental psychology, such as homing desire, rootlessness, place attachment, non-place, and the people-place bond.


The goal of the study was to determine the effect of a 1-h hour long forklift truck virtual simulator driving on the mechanism of autonomic heart rate (HR) regulation in operators. The participants were divided into 2 subgroups: subjects with no definite inclination to motion sickness (group A) and subjects with a definite inclination to motion sickness (group B). Holter monitoring of electrocardiogram (ECG) signal was carried out in all subjects during the virtual simulator driving. For 12 consecutive epochs of ECG signal, HR variability analysis was conducted in time and frequency domains. In subjects with a definite inclination to motion sickness after ~30 min of the driving, changes in parameter values were found indicating an increase in sympathetic and parasympathetic activity with parasympathetic dominance.


In most of the testing dataset, the images are collected from video clips or different environment conditions, which implies that the mutual information between pairs are significantly important. To address this problem and utilize this information, in this paper, we propose a graph-based unsupervised feature aggregation method for face recognition. Our method uses the inter-connection between pairs with a directed graph approach thus refine the pair-wise scores. First, based on the assumption that all features follow Gaussian distribution, we derive a iterative updating formula of features. Second, in discrete conditions, we build a directed graph where the affinity matrix is obtained from pair-wise similarities, and filtered by a pre-defined threshold along with K-nearest neighbor. Third, the affinity matrix is used to obtain a pseudo center matrix for the iterative update process. Besides evaluation on face recognition testing dataset, our proposed method can further be applied to semi-supervised learning to handle the unlabelled data for improving the performance of the deep models. We verified the effectiveness on 5 different datasets: IJB-C, CFP, YTF, TrillionPair and IQiYi Video dataset.


A general statistical description of the problem of learning from examples is presented. Learning in layered networks is posed as a search in the network parameter space for a network that minimizes an additive error function of a statistically independent examples. By imposing the equivalence of the minimum error and the maximum likelihood criteria for training the network, the Gibbs distribution on the ensemble of networks with a fixed architecture is derived. The probability of correct prediction of a novel example can be expressed using the ensemble, serving as a measure to the network's generalization ability. The entropy of the prediction distribution is shown to be a consistent measure of the network's performance. The proposed formalism is applied to the problems of selecting an optimal architecture and the prediction of learning curves. >


Objective The automation of brachytherapy is the direction of future development. This article retrospectively studied the application of deep learning in brachytherapy of cervical cancer and clarified the status quo of development. Method This survey reviewed the application of machine learning and deep learning in brachytherapy for cervical cancer in the past 10 years. The survey retrieved and reviewed electronic journal articles in scientific databases such as Google Scholar and IEEE. The three sets of keywords used 1) deep learning, brachytherapy, 2) machine learning, brachytherapy, 3) automation, brachytherapy. Results Through research on the application of deep learning in brachytherapy, it is found that the U-net model is basically based on convolutional neural networks or some attention mechanisms are added to it, and it is applied to brachytherapy of prostate or cervical cancer. The automatic segmentation and reconstruction of the mid-source applicator (interpolation needle), target area delineation, optimization in the treatment planning system and dose calculation have achieved good results, proving that deep learning can be applied to the clinical treatment of brachytherapy. Conclusion The research on the application of deep learning in brachytherapy confirmed that deep learning can effectively promote the development of brachytherapy.


Background:Among HIV-infected women, perinatal depression compromises clinical, maternal, and child health outcomes. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is associated with lower depression symptom severity but the uniformity of effect through pregnancy and postpartum periods is unknown. Methods:We analyzed prospective data from 447 HIV-infected women (18–49 years) initiating ART in rural Uganda (2005–2012). Participants completed blood work and comprehensive questionnaires quarterly. Pregnancy status was assessed by self-report. Analysis time periods were defined as currently pregnant, postpartum (0–12 months post-pregnancy outcome), or non–pregnancy-related. Depression symptom severity was measured using a modified Hopkins Symptom Checklist 15, with scores ranging from 1 to 4. Probable depression was defined as >1.75. Linear regression with generalized estimating equations was used to compare mean depression scores over the 3 periods. Results:At enrollment, median age was 32 years (interquartile range: 27–37), median CD4 count was 160 cells per cubic millimeter (interquartile range: 95–245), and mean depression score was 1.75 (s = 0.58) (39% with probable depression). Over 4.1 median years of follow-up, 104 women experienced 151 pregnancies. Mean depression scores did not differ across the time periods (P = 0.75). Multivariable models yielded similar findings. Increasing time on ART, viral suppression, better physical health, and "never married" were independently associated with lower mean depression scores. Findings were consistent when assessing probable depression. Conclusions:Although the lack of association between depression and perinatal periods is reassuring, high depression prevalence at treatment initiation and continued incidence across pregnancy and non–pregnancy-related periods of follow-up highlight the critical need for mental health services for HIV-infected women to optimize both maternal and perinatal health.


A population of >6 million people worldwide at high risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are those with Down Syndrome (DS, caused by trisomy 21 (T21)), 70% of whom develop dementia during lifetime, caused by an extra copy of β-amyloid-(Aβ)-precursor-protein gene. We report AD-like pathology in cerebral organoids grown in vitro from non-invasively sampled strands of hair from 71% of DS donors. The pathology consisted of extracellular diffuse and fibrillar Aβ deposits, hyperphosphorylated/pathologically conformed Tau, and premature neuronal loss. Presence/absence of AD-like pathology was donor-specific (reproducible between individual organoids/iPSC lines/experiments). Pathology could be triggered in pathology-negative T21 organoids by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated elimination of the third copy of chromosome-21-gene BACE2, but prevented by combined chemical β and γ-secretase inhibition. We found that T21-organoids secrete increased proportions of Aβ-preventing (Aβ1-19) and Aβ-degradation products (Aβ1-20 and Aβ1-34). We show these profiles mirror in cerebrospinal fluid of people with DS. We demonstrate that this protective mechanism is mediated by BACE2-trisomy and cross-inhibited by clinically trialled BACE1-inhibitors. Combined, our data prove the physiological role of BACE2 as a dose-sensitive AD-suppressor gene, potentially explaining the dementia delay in ∼30% of people with DS. We also show that DS cerebral organoids could be explored as pre-morbid AD-risk population detector and a system for hypothesis-free drug screens as well as identification of natural suppressor genes for neurodegenerative diseases.


Drought is one of the main causes of food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty. It is therefore important to understand the perception of farmers on socioeconomic and environmental impacts of drought and the strategies employed to manage it. Using data collected from 301 smallholder households in Thaba Nchu, Free State Province, the study contributes to three perspectives: analysing the perceived socio-economic and environmental impact of drought, examining the determinants of the perceived impact, and identifying factors affecting the intensity of drought-risk management practices used by smallholder farming households. Using 11 indicators as a measure of perceived impact, the findings from the principal component analysis (PCA) revealed three main dimensions of perceived drought impact: economic, environmental and social impacts. Different socio-economic and institutional factors have a different influence on the three dimensions. In addition, factors such as age, household size, non-farm work and extension services are significant in determining the intensity of drought-risk management strategies implemented by farmers in the study area. The study therefore recommends that climate risk management be integrated into the provision of extension services, particularly in drought-prone areas such as the Free State Province. Encouraging farmers to engage in non-agricultural economic activities is also crucial, as this can serve as insurance against events such as drought.


Graph similarity search is among the most important graph-based applications, e.g. finding the chemical compounds that are most similar to a query compound. Graph similarity/distance computation, such as Graph Edit Distance (GED) and Maximum Common Subgraph (MCS), is the core operation of graph similarity search and many other applications, but very costly to compute in practice. Inspired by the recent success of neural network approaches to several graph applications, such as node or graph classification, we propose a novel neural network based approach to address this classic yet challenging graph problem, aiming to alleviate the computational burden while preserving a good performance.
The proposed approach, called SimGNN, combines two strategies. First, we design a learnable embedding function that maps every graph into an embedding vector, which provides a global summary of a graph. A novel attention mechanism is proposed to emphasize the important nodes with respect to a specific similarity metric. Second, we design a pairwise node comparison method to supplement the graph-level embeddings with fine-grained node-level information. Our model can be trained in an end-to-end fashion, achieves better generalization on unseen graphs, and in the worst case runs in quadratic time with respect to the number of nodes in two graphs. Taking GED computation as an example, experimental results on three real graph datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach. Specifically, our model achieves smaller error rate and great time reduction compared against a series of baselines, including several approximation algorithms on GED computation, and many existing graph neural network based models. Our study suggests SimGNN provides a new direction for future research on graph similarity computation and graph similarity search.


An example of biocathode based on bilirubin oxidase (BOx) was used to demonstrate how density functional theory can be combined with docking simulations in order to study the interface interactions between the enzyme and specifically designed electrode surface. The electrode surface was modified through the adsorption of bilirubin, the natural substrate for BOx, and the prepared electrode was electrochemically characterized using potentiostatic measurements. The experimentally determined current densities showed that the presence of bilirubin led to significant improvement of the cathode operation. On the basis of the computationally calculated binding energies of bilirubin to the graphene support and BOx and the analysis of the positioning of bilirubin relative to the support and T1 Cu atom of the enzyme, we hypothesize that the bilirubin serves as a geometric and electronic extension of the support. The computational results further confirm that the modification of the electrode surface with bilirubin provides an optimal orientation of BOx toward the support but also show that bilirubin facilitates the interfacial electron transfer by decreasing the distance between the electrode surface and the T1 Cu atom.


CoPt/Pt multilayer nanowires have been successfully fabricated by a dc electrodeposition technique into anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) templates, and their chemistry and crystal structure characterized at the nanoscale. It was found that each individual multilayered nanowire had a regular periodic structure like bamboo. However, the periodicity of diverse nanowires from the same specimen varied in magnitude. The Pt layers grew to the full width of the AAO template. However, the cobalt-rich layers in each nanowire did not fully fill the template pores during growth, resulting in a repeatably oscillating nanowire diameter. The chemical composition of multilayer nanowires was measured to be (Co72Pt28/Pt)n. Both the Co72Pt28 and Pt layers were polycrystalline, consisting of fcc nanocrystals <5 nm in size. The variable nanowire periodicity and wire diameter will result in variable mechanical strength, resistance and GMR effect.


With the evolution of the field of software engineering it has adapted to component-based activity rather than developing single software systems. However, the managers involved in these projects face the issue of determining which components to include in a particular release while balancing the trade-offs. Release planning, is a vital part of any type of incremental product development. Hence, release decisions become a significant requirement for successful software engineering project management. Systematic and comprehensive release planning based on meaningful data and estimates combined with a firm reliable methodology would contribute towards solving the problems the managers are facing effectively. The thesis attempts to solve the problem of finding optimal feature subsets for release planning by applying search based software engineering. The objective of this thesis is to design and implement meta heuristic search algorithms such as Hill Climbing, Simulated Annealing, Greedy Algorithm and Genetic Algorithms and evaluate them in terms of their performance, effort making and robustness in terms of producing results and the speeds at which they produce results. In order to achieve the objective a mobile phone will be modelled as a component-based software system and its features as software components on which the algorithms will be applied. The project will be carried out using real world data specified by Motorola UK, for thirty-five mobile phone features.


The article deals with the issues of gradual formation of mental actions, maintenance of psychological operations (prevention of the content segment necessary for expression of additional meaning in the sentence; anticipation of new thought and its connection with the previous one in the text; the content of the punctuation mark, the definition of the punctuation mark and the selection of the desired punctuation mark), which underlie the discovery of the properties and features of the basic punctuation concepts, and so same formation punctuation skills; the structure of mental activity for mastering punctuation rules and the formation of literacy skills are described. The general methods of mental work, consisting of the following operations, are distinguished: recognition in the sentence of some initial syntactic elements; mental combination of elements in the rule-like semantic-syntactic blocks, which are divided by sentences into punctuated parts; determining the required punctuation marks. The concept of punctuation vigilance, which is the basis for forming the ability to punctuate correctly formulate sentences and text according to the studied punctuation rule, is distinguished. It is noted that complete mastery of the techniques of punctuation analysis is not possible without taking into account certain psychological processes. It is established that the formation and operation of punctuation skills is possible only in the presence of certain syntactic and punctuation generalizations.


A catalytic depolymerization (a reversible polymerization) of 3D-polymerized C_60 phases (including an ultrahard fullerite phase) takes place in the presence of sulfur under the conditions of a large plastic deformation at room temperature. The sulfur atoms remain in the samples of 3D C_60 polymers after catalytic synthesis using carbon disulfide (CS_2) as a catalyst (the presence of sulfur has a considerable impact on the 3D C_60 polymerization by decreasing the polymerization pressure). Raman, infrared, and transmission electron microscope studies show that the depolymerized fullerite samples have a structure typical for dimers, 1D and 2D C_60 polymers. The 3D C_60 samples with some remaining sulfur can be quenched under ambient conditions if the samples have not undergone a large plastic deformation. There is no depolymerization for pure C_60 3D-polymerized phases synthesized without a sulfur-based catalyst.


Background: The study was performed to evaluate whether intra-articular injection of A2M has better effect than current commonly used Hyaluronic Acid (HA) injection therapy to attenuate cartilage degeneration in a rat anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) osteoarthritis (OA) model.Method: In vivo effects of A2M and HA on cartilage degeneration were evaluated in rat surgery induced ACLT OA models. 100 rats were randomly divided into four groups: (a) Sham surgery + saline (Sham + S), (b) ACLT + A2M, (c) ACLT+HA, or (d) ACLT + saline (ACLT+S). The animals were sacrificed at 12 weeks after surgery. Histological staining was performed to assess cartilage damage. The concentration of MMP-13 and sGAG in synovial fluid lavages was measured using ELISA and spectrophotometric quantitative determination. OA-related gene expression was quantified by qPCR.Result: Indian ink staining showed that articular cartilage surface treated by A2M was relatively intact compared with the animals treated by ACLT with saline or HA injection. Histological staining indicated that early supplemental intra-articular injection of A2M attenuated OA pathogenesis in the rat ACLT model compared with the animals treated with saline and HA. However, supplemental intra-articular injection of HA showed no significant effect on cartilage protection for post traumatic OA compared with saline treatment. Elisa results showed A2M reduced the concentration of MMP-13 in synovial fluid compared with HA treatment group and other groups. RT-qPCR indicated that supplemental intra-articular A2M inhibits catabolism and enhances anabolic metabolism, while there was no significant difference in the expression of OA-related genes between ACLT+HA group and ACLT+S group. Conclusion: In rat model, intra-articular injection of A2M had obvious protective effects on cartilage degeneration compared with HA treatment. Major indexes of joint degeneration decreased, providing strong evidence for its intra-articular inhibitory effect. Meanwhile, we found no significant alleviation of articular cartilage pathogenesis in HA treated group, which suggests that the efficacy of HA is questionable and possibly transient, although it is extensively used to improve syndromes.


Consumption of alcohol has an impact on violent crimes and homicides. The study examines the association between aggregate level consumption of spirit and homicide rates in the State of Kerala in India. Time-series analyses were conducted by building Autoregressive Moving Average with Exogenous Variables (ARMAX) models and OLS Regression models to explain the relationship between the monthly rate of consumption of alcoholic spirits and homicide rates. The study concludes that consumption of alcoholic spirits has a statistically significant impact on the total homicide rates and the male and female homicide rates. The study has significant policy implications being one of the first studies examining the relationship between alcohol consumption and homicide rates in India and suggesting methods to address challenges of adverse public health consequences associated with alcohol consumption.


The PLUS trial does demonstrate that adding mirabegron in men who do not respond to tamsulosin improves lower urinary tract symptoms. However, several drawbacks should be pointed out in this trial. Although statistically significant, the clinical relevance of the primary outcomes could be called into question (-0.39 micturition per day) and one should note that statistical significance was not reached for any questionnaire based secondary outcomes. Most importantly, owing to the lack of a control group with mirabegron alone and a baseline (ie pre-tamsulosin) evaluation, one cannot determine the benefits of maintaining tamsulosin in these patients. This study does not prove any synergistic or at least cumulative effect of tamsulosin and mirabegron. The trial was also underpowered to detect significant cumulative side effects. Lacking these data will be a big deal in the current era of increasing skepticism about LUTS pharmacotherapy with greater awareness of the long-term cognitive effects of anticholinergics and possibly alpha blockers, as well as the risk of aggressive prostate cancer with 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors. Ultimately, combination therapy might be of value in LUTS because of their multifactorial nature by tackling several pathophysiological mechanisms. However, this approach should be restricted to selected patients. Careful initial assessment aiming to tailor the treatment approach can improve outcomes for patients with LUTS while striving to minimize the aggressiveness of medical treatment as much as we have always done for surgical treatment.


The process of bra design in the underwear industry is studied. Several important aspects of the process were identified: sizing, fabric selection, pattern development and grading, the use of CAD system, fitting and wear trials. Although the design process relies heavily on the expertise and experience of designers, the modern technology such as CAD can facilitate and optimize the design process, and the fitting process on life models is essential for the underwear design. The differences between domestic underwear companies and foreign major ones mainly lie at the lack of dress form specially used for underwear design, lack of CAD/CAM or not making full use of them, and most of all, lack of the professional bra designers or even skillful pattern designers. The prospects and future model of bra design process were also elaborated in this paper.


This paper deals with the development of decision making tools for managing catastrophic (low probability - high consequences) risks. Catastrophes produce rare and highly correlated claims, which depend on various decision variables, i.e., coverages at different locations, mitigation measures and reinsurance agreements. Joint probability distributions of these claims depicting their complex spatial and temporal interactions and effects of decision variables are analytically intractable. Spatial stochastic models of catastrophes can bypass these difficulties. Catastrophic models combine the simulation of realistic and geographically explicit catastrophic events with the differentiation of property values and insurance coverages in different locations of the region. Catastrophic models can be combined with stochastic optimization techniques to aid decision making on the spatial diversification of contracts, insurance premiums, reinsurance requirements, effects of mitigation measures, and the use of other financial mechanisms. The aim of this paper is to extend a two-stage spatial catastrophic model to dynamic cases reflecting dependencies of risk accumulation processes in time. This extension is important since it can be used for the analysis of decisions under changing frequencies of events and values of properties. It is also possible to incorporate catastrophes caused by the clustering in time of such events as rains and droughts due to persistence in climate. The model can be used by individual insurers, pools of insurers or regulatory authorities.


We aimed to identify factors that interfere in breast cancer (BC) suspected cases detected in Primary Health Care (PHC) that drive the referral to Specialized Care (SC) São Paulo and Campinas, Brazil. We interviewed 664 women (353 from São Paulo and 311 from Campinas) diagnosed with BC, referred to SC from PHC. Multilevel logistic regression analysis was used to the identification of associations between BC suspected cases by PHC and the socioeconomic and cancer care variables. The following showed a significant association: higher schooling level (OR = 0.59; 95% CI = 0.35-0.98); medical visit payment for cancer-related care (OR = 0.59; 95% CI = 0.36-0.96), continued attendance at PHC after beginning treatment at SC (OR = 0.62; 95% CI = 0.41-0.95); breast examined in PHC before referral to SC (OR = 1.61; 95% CI = 1.10-2.34) and first mammography requested in PHC (ECM) (OR = 2.81; 95% CI = 1.95-4.00). The request for mammography and the clinical breast examination is incorporated into the PHC for the early detection of BC in the cities. Continuing the care at the PHC and better socioeconomic conditions, such as having a higher education level and capacity to pay for care, can reduce the likelihood of suspected cases.


In this paper, we conduct research on E-commerce business new pattern from perspectives of SWOT and customer relationship management. E-commerce and linkage development of that industrial cluster is not yet clear, but according to the relationship between the two and interaction, we can think e-commerce and linkage development of industrial cluster is to point to in the process of development with each other, through a variety of role and depend on the each other, coordinate with each other, promote each other's joint, the dynamic development model. E-commerce is a huge and complicated social economic and technical system. The operation of a system to internal conditions and that external environment influence and restriction, so the electronic commerce risk is objective existence and e-commerce information ecosystem and the environment interaction, mutual influence, and as between system by admitting the members and update the information subject, guarantee the realization of system functions. For this initialized goal, we propose the novel perspective on the basic issues that will promote the development of the related industries.