The feed intake and reproductive performance of intensively managed West African dwarf (WAD) gravid does were investigated. Twelve does weighing 11.90-13.05kg were used for the study. The does were fed on pulverized maize-cob based diets; maize-cob/cassava peel (PMC/CSP), maize-cob/brewers' grain (PMC/BG), and maize-cob/cassava peel/brewers' grain (PMC/CsP/BG). The does were allotted to the three dietary treatments such that four individually housed animals, each serving as a replicate and were also fed with concentrate diet at 1% of their body weight. Oestrus was synchronized in the does using 1mL/10kg of Prostaglandin –Fα intramuscularly. Animals were mated with a proven buck. Dams were evaluated in a pregnancy trial while the kids born were evaluated in a pre-weaning growth trial. Dams were weighed at mating and fortnightly until kidding. Variables investigated were; feed intake, dam weight at mating, prior and after parturition, gestation length, weight gained during pregnancy, kid's birth and weaning weights, kid's daily weight gain, sex ratio. Feed intake revealed that does fed PMC/CsP recorded the highest total dry matter intake (TDMI) throughout the three trimesters (727.16, 832.85 and 637.08g/day) when compared to 339.38, 452.18 and 401.03g/day obtained for does fed PMC/BG. Weight gained was significantly (P<0.05) higher in does on PMC/CsP. Mean birth weight, weaning weight and daily weight gain were higher for kids whose dams were fed PMC/CSP/BG. It can therefore be concluded that diets used in this study may serve as alternative feed for gravid goats while goats fed PMC/CsP/BG had better reproductive performance.


The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 was fully implemented by the end of last year. The contention of this book is that the code of practice governing the Statutory Licensing Authority, and the regulations made by the Secretary of State, should be informed by knowledge gained from the closest parallel in human relationships the adoption of children by substitute parents, involving the severance of legal ties with members of the biological family. This booklet charts the historical development of adoption in our society, including the change of emphasis from adoption being regarded as largely a solution to the problems of adults to an emphasis on the importance of decisions being based on the best interests of the child. It also describes the process, the rationale and the dilemmas which have resulted in the shift in adoption philosophy and practice from confidentiality and secrecy being paramount towards carefully controlled access to information and increasing openness. It is heartening that this development stems from research and feedback from participants in adoption, not from abstract principles and unfounded assumptions. The issues which emerge are all highly relevant to the current debate about the ethics of human fertilisation by donor, and surrogacy for commissioning parents. The authors demonstrate that the conflict between a 'laissez faire' attitude, and agencies taking some responsibility for decisions regarding fitness for parenthood, is of crucial significance. Reliable findings highlight the importance of a recognition of the difference between biological and other forms of parenthood. The denial of reality has been found to have an unfavourable impact on relationships within the family. The authors furnish sound arguments for formal selection procedures, which explicitly acknowledge the responsibilities to children, and the adults they will become, inherent in direct social or medical intervention to create families, and which signify an official refusal to collude with pretence. It may be inimical to the medical profession to make judgements regarding eligibility for 'treatment', but there is ample evidence that preparation for parenthood, especially when it involves the extra dimension associated with adoption or human fertilisation, confers lasting benefits. Although this should be seen primarily as an educative process, rather than a series of hurdles, adults who were adopted as children are clear that an assessment procedure should attempt to ascertain the state of mental and physical health of prospective parents, as well as the quality of the marriage or partnership, if one exists. Damaged individuals, or couples, are unlikely to be able to cope with the extra vulnerability inherent in the highly complex set of relationships established by adoption or donor fertilisation. The authors also discuss the implications of 'genealogical bewilderment', a condition described by thousands of adopted people worldwide, whose formation of a sense of identity has been hampered by lack of information about their heredity. The establishment of a clear, integrated understanding of one's identity is a prerequisite for the development ofhealthy emotional and social maturity. This secure concept of self, based on acceptance and trust, can only be built on a foundation of honesty and knowledge. Living a lie will take its toll on parents and child alike. This places an obligation on practitioners to furnish parents with adequate, written information about a child's biological background, and to attempt to ascertain willingness and ability to communicate to the child about his or her origins. Research indicates, however, that a requirement to explain the truth is not the same as making this possible or sufficient. The amount and accuracy of information, and an atmosphere ofopen communication, whereby the meaning and implications of having two sets of parents are reiterated and explored at appropriate stages, are critical. Research in the field of adoption has revealed that parents cannot be adequately prepared for the inherently painful and on-going task of explaining in advance. Help, in the form of skilled and experienced counselling, should be available, as an entitlement, subsequently. This raises the crucial question of continuing services for families which have been created as a result of sperm or embryo donation. This lively, informative and lucid book provides convincing arguments for making a close comparison between the field of adoption and people conceived through human fertilisation techniques. It would be unethical to ignore the lessons gained from adoption about the need to balance the rights and needs of all the parties involved in those delicate transactions which involve transferring children from one set of parents to another.


Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein responsible for maintaining the ends of linear chromosomes in nearly all eukaryotic cells. In humans, expression of the enzyme is limited primarily to the germ line and progenitor cell populations. In the absence of telomerase activity, telomeres shorten with each cell division until a critical length is reached, which can result in the cessation of cell division. The enzyme is required for cell immortality, and its activity has been detected in the vast majority of human tumors. Because of this, telomerase is an attractive target for inhibition in anticancer therapy. To learn more about the biochemistry of the human enzyme and its substrate recognition, we have examined the binding properties of single-stranded oligonucleotide primers that serve as telomerase substrates in vitro. We have used highly purified human enzyme and employed a two-primer method for determining the dissociation rates of these primers. Primers having sequence permutations of (TTAGGG)(3) were found to have considerably different affinities. They had t(1/2) values that ranged from 14 min to greater than 1200 min at room temperature. A primer ending in the GGG register formed the most stable complex with the enzyme. This particular register imparted stability to a nontelomeric primer resulting in a nearly 100-fold decrease in the k(off). We have found that interactions of telomerase with primer substrates are stabilized mainly by contacts with the protein subunit of the enzyme (hTERT). Base-pairing between the primer and the template region of telomerase contributes minimally to its stabilization.


The electronic structure and optical properties of LaB6 have been calculated using the first-principle density function theory molecular dynamics method. The results of band structure show that LaB6 is a conductor material at 313K. The density of state of LaB6 is mainly composed of La 5d, 6s and B 2p with the static dielectric function e1(0) of 213.7, the reflectivity n(0) of 14.803, and the minimum absorption coefficient of 21585 cm?1 in the visible range. Moreover, the complex dielectric functions, refractive index, reflection spectra, absorption spectra, optical conductivity and energy loss function of LaB6 are analyzed in terms of calculated band structure and density of state. The transmittance of LaB6 is high in the visible range, however, it is nearly equal to zero in the UV and NIR ranges. The results offer theoretical data for the application of the insulating material for use with windows.


We embed the quantum Heisenberg manifold in a crossed product algebra. This enables us to show that, in the irrational case, all tracial states on $\dc$ induce the same homomorphism on the K_0-group. We conclude that two irrational quantum Heisenberg manifolds $\dc$ and $D^c_{\mu ' \nu '}$ are isomorphic if and only if the parameters $(\mu,\nu)$ and $(\mu ',\nu ')$ belong to the same orbit under the usual action of $GL_2(\ZZ)$ on the torus.


Large-scale biomass plantations (BPs) are often considered a feasible and safe climate engineering proposal for extracting carbon from the atmosphere and, thereby, reducing global mean temperatures. However, the capacity of such terrestrial carbon dioxide removal (tCDR) strategies and their larger Earth system impacts remain to be comprehensively studied—even more so under higher carbon emissions and progressing climate change. Here, we use a spatially explicit process-based biosphere model to systematically quantify the potentials and trade-offs of a range of BP scenarios dedicated to tCDR, representing different assumptions about which areas are convertible. Based on a moderate CO2 concentration pathway resulting in a global mean warming of 2.5 °C above preindustrial level by the end of this century—similar to the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5—we assume tCDR to be implemented when a warming of 1.5 °C is reached in year 2038. Our results show that BPs can slow down the progression of increasing cumulative carbon in the atmosphere only sufficiently if emissions are reduced simultaneously like in the underlying RCP4.5 trajectory. The potential of tCDR to balance additional, unabated emissions leading towards a business-as-usual pathway alike RCP8.5 is therefore very limited. Furthermore, in the required large-scale applications, these plantations would induce significant trade-offs with food production and biodiversity and exert impacts on forest extent, biogeochemical cycles and biogeophysical properties.


We begin with peer effects estimates from randomly assigned peer groups at the United States Air Force Academy. We then take subsequent cohorts of entering freshmen and assign half of the students to peer groups (squadrons) in a way intended to maximize the academic performance of students with the lowest incoming ability. We find a negative and statistically significant treatment effect for the students we intended to help. We explore three possible explanations for this perverse finding including the hypothesis (which we can reject) that the original findings were spurious. We show that our "optimal" assignment mechanism created bifurcated squadrons that had a social dynamic entirely different from most squadrons seen in the observational data. Our results suggest that even in a well understood and self contained environment, using reduced-form estimates to make out-of-sample policy predictions can lead to unanticipated and potentially negative consequences.


Wear is one of the main factors that hinders the performance of probes for atomic force microscopy (AFM), including for the widely used amplitude modulation (AM-AFM) mode. Unfortunately, a comprehensive scientific understanding of nanoscale wear is lacking. We have developed a protocol for conducting consistent and quantitative AM-AFM wear experiments. The protocol involves controlling the tip-sample interaction regime during AM-AFM scanning, determining the tip-sample contact geometry, calculating the peak repulsive force and normal stress over the course of the wear test, and quantifying the wear volume using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy imaging. The peak repulsive tip-sample interaction force is estimated from a closed-form equation accompanied by an effective tip radius measurement procedure, which combines transmission electron microscopy and blind tip reconstruction. The contact stress is estimated by applying Derjaguin-Müller-Toporov contact mechanics model and also numerically solving a general contact mechanics model recently developed for the adhesive contact of arbitrary axisymmetric punch shapes. We discuss the important role that the assumed tip shape geometry plays in calculating both the interaction forces and the contact stresses. Contact stresses are significantly affected by the tip geometry while the peak repulsive force is mainly determined by experimentally controlled parameters, specifically, the free oscillation amplitude and amplitude ratio. The applicability of this protocol is demonstrated experimentally by assessing the performance of diamond-like carbon-coated and silicon-nitride-coated silicon probes scanned over ultrananocrystalline diamond substrates in repulsive mode AM-AFM. There is no sign of fracture or plastic deformation in the case of diamond-like carbon; wear could be characterized as a gradual atom-by-atom process. In contrast, silicon nitride wears through removal of the cluster of atoms and plastic deformation.


The numerical accuracy of the analytical approximations elaborated in part I and of a variety of other approximations advanced to date is examined, accepting the data on the short-range order parameters obtained by the Monte Carlo method as a standard. The approximations exhibiting the most promise for description of actual alloys and other lattice systems (for instance, interstitial alloys, semiconductors and magnetics) including those with a long-range character of atomic interactions are revealed. It is stated that, in the framework of the lattice gas model within a modified thermodynamic perturbation theory, the choice of the inverse effective number of atoms interacting with one fixed atom as a small parameter of the cumulant expansion along with taking account of the contributions from only linked irreducible diagrams ensures the fastest convergence of expansion. It is demonstrated that the use of the grand canonical ensemble yields the highest numerical accuracy in the statistical-thermodynamic description within the framework of all approximations elaborated in part I.


Recommender systems evaluation has evolved rapidly in recent years. However, for offline evaluation, accuracy is the de facto standard for assessing the superiority of one method over another, with most research comparisons focused on tasks ranging from rating prediction to ranking metrics for top-n recommendation. Simultaneously, recommendation diversity and novelty have become recognized as critical to users' perceived utility, with several new metrics recently proposed for evaluating these aspects of recommendation lists. Consequently, the accuracy-diversity dilemma frequently shows up as a choice to make when creating new recommendation algorithms. We propose a novel adaptation of a unified metric, derived from one commonly used for search system evaluation, to Recommender Systems. The proposed metric combines topical diversity and accuracy, and we show it to satisfy a set of desired properties that we formulate axiomatically. These axioms are defined as fundamental constraints that a good unified metric should always satisfy. Moreover, beyond the axiomatic analysis, we present an experimental evaluation of the metric with collaborative filtering data. Our analysis shows that the metric respects the desired theoretical constraints and behaves as expected when performing offline evaluation.


Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm)-based temperature-responsive fluorescence polymer probes were developed using radical polymerization, with 3-mercaptopropionic acid as the chain-transfer agent, followed by activation of terminal carboxyl groups with N-hydroxysuccinimide and reaction with 5-aminofluorescein (FL). The lower critical solution temperatures (LCSTs) of the resulting fluorescent polymer probes differed depending on the copolymer composition, and had a sharp phase-transition (hydrophilic/hydrophobic) boundary at the LCST. The cellular uptakes of the fluorescent polymer probes were effectively suppressed below the LCST, and increased greatly above the LCST. In particular, the cellular uptake of a copolymer with N,N-dimethylaminopropylacrylamide, P(NIPAAm-co-DMAPAAm2%)-FL (LCST: 37.4 °C), can be controlled within only 1 °C near body temperature, which is suitable for biological applications. These results indicated that the cellular uptakes of thermoresponsive polymers could be accurately controlled by the temperature, and such polymers have potential applications in discriminating between normal and pathological cells, and in intracellular drug delivery systems with local hyperthermia.


ABSTRACT: In agricultural areas of Brazil, where there is no establishment of cover crops in the off-season and in fruit orchards, an increase in Chloris elata infestations, syn. Chloris polydactyla, has been observed. With the purpose to evaluate the response of three populations (Itaberaí - GO, Matão - SP e Jaboticabal - SP) of C. elata to herbicides sprayed before and after emergence, four experiments were conducted. In the first one, the differential tolerance of three C. elata populations to the herbicide glyphosate (0, 0.18, 0.36, 0.72, 0.96, 1.44, 2.88, 5.76 and 11.52 kg a.e. ha-1) was studied. In the other experiments, the control of the three populations by herbicides applied in pre-emergence (clomazone, diclosulam, flumioxazin, isoxaflutole, chlorimuron-ethyl, metribuzin, S-metolachlor, sulfentrazone and trifluralin) or in post-emergence (clethodim, fenoxaprop-p-ethyl, fluazifop-p-butyl, haloxyfop-methyl, quizalofop-p-tefuryl, mesotrione, nicosulfuron, tembotrione, glufosinate-ammonium, paraquat and glyphosate) was evaluated. The population from Jaboticabal was more susceptible to glyphosate than Itaberaí and Matão, at smaller doses. In pre-emergence, clomazone, isoxaflutole, metribuzin, S-metolachlor and trifluralin were effective in controlling the three populations. The same results were observed for clethodim, fenoxaprop, fluazifop, haloxyfop, quizalofop, paraquat and glyphosate, when sprayed on plants with 2-6 tillers. C. elata populations differed for the herbicides flumioxazin, chlorimuron-ethyl and nicosulfutron.


Myxomatosis, a viral disease of the European wild rabbit, reached Britain in 1953. Within a year it had killed tens of millions of rabbits from Kent to the Shetlands. Winston Churchill, the Archbishop of York and members of the public raised on the tales of Beatrix Potter were appalled, deploring the loss of a cheap nutritional foodstuff. Many farmers, on the other hand, welcomed the demise of a serious agricultural pest and deliberately spread the disease. The government resisted appeals to legislate against the deliberate spreading of the disease until passing the 1954 Pests Act, as a result by 1955 some 90% of the UK rabbit population had been wiped out.Britain's myxomatosis outbreak has hitherto attracted little historical attention. In the first book dedicated to this subject, Peter Bartrip examines how the disease reached and spread in the UK. He argues that it was not the government who was responsible, as many thought at the time, but for the first time Bartrip names the individual who may have deliberately brought myxomatosis from France. Bartrip tracks the response of government and other interested parties and considers the impact of rabbit de-population on agriculture and the natural environment. The cultural significance of this disease raises topical and controversial issues which are important if we are to learn lessons from more recent animal disease epidemics such as foot and mouth, BSE and H5N1 avian influenza.


The photoreduction of 10-methyl-9-phenylacridinium chloride in methanol containing K2CO3 involves the nucleophilic addition of methanol to the 9-position of the acridinium cation, the photoinduced heterolysis of the methanol adduct, and the hydride transfer from the alkoxide anion to the acridinium cation in the nonrelaxed ground states to give 9,10-dihydro-10-methyl-9-phenylacridine.


Type I interferons (IFNs) are soluble molecules that exert potent antiviral activity and are currently used for the treatment of a panel of viral infections. In the case of HIV, the use of type I IFN has had limited success, and has almost been abandoned. During the last decade, a series of studies has highlighted how HIV infection may cause overactivation of type I IFN production, which contributes to the exhaustion of the immune system and to disease progression. This review describes the transition from the proposed use of type I IFN as antiviral drugs in HIV infection, to the idea that blocking their activity or production may provide an immunologic benefit of much greater importance than their antiviral activity.


BACKGROUND
Cardiac resynchronization therapy/defibrillators (CRTD) and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) with continuous intrathoracic impedance monitoring might provide an early warning of thoracic fluid retention. In contrast, volume loss events such as dehydration and bleeding are also common events in heart failure patients treated with diuretics and anticoagulants. The correlation between intrathoracic impedance and a volume loss event is not known.

METHODS AND RESULTS
This study evaluated the association between intrathoracic impedance and volume loss events in 36 patients with chronic heart failure (New York Heart Association [NYHA] II, III and IV) who had received CRTD/ICD implantation. Elevation of thoracic impedance above the reference line was defined as a positive deviation of thoracic impedance (PDI). This study recorded 249 PDIs including 60 spike PDIs defined as over 5 ohms elevation from the reference line and 17 large PDIs as over 5 ohms elevation and continuing for at least 4 days. Clinically, 96 dehydration events and 2 bleeding events were observed over a 1-year period. The sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) for spike PDI was 31.6% and 51.7%, respectively, while those for large PDI were 17.3% and 100%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
A large PDI reflected dehydration and bleeding events with a high PPV in severe heart failure patients. The large PDI criteria might therefore be useful for predicting volume loss events in chronic heart failure patients.


been found to have a connexion with stillbirths. Having shown that, though medical and biological factors account for some of the epidemiological features of the stillbirth rate, they are insufficient in themselves to account for the observed variations in different geographical regions or for the unexpected wartime decline in the stillbirth rate, he goes on to consider social and economic influences, concentrating mainly on the immediate pre-war years, and using the established technique of multiple regression. The indices used in his regression equations were chosen to specify the age and parity distribution of the confinements and the social and economic background of each local area. He finds a positive association of the stillbirth rate with poorly-paid work, with post-natal mortality, and with unemployment, but not with the index of overcrowding. To assess the importance of such socio-medical influences as antenatal supervision and the standard of medical and obstetrical services, Sutherland adds two further indices relating to doctors and nurses available, but found no correlation with them of the stillbirth rate. In conclusion, he considers the possibilities of further reduction in stillbirths, and stresses the need for further studies and detailed enquiries to supplement the statistical surveys of whole countries, which reach only broad conclusions. Though such broad surveys as this cannot answer in detail all the questions relevant to the variations in stillbirths in different sections of the community, such studies are nevertheless essential in analysing the basic data available and in providing the foundation from which more specific studies can spring. The disentangling of the various biological, medical, social, and economic factors contributing to the annual total of deaths of the new-born and the near-born is a complex problem, to the solution of which Sutherland's study has contributed. L. STEIN


Schemes for feature tracking and relative pose estimation for the final approach of rendezvous and docking procedure is proposed in this paper. Positions of the feature points were predicted by Kalman filter proposed to reduce the searching area, which effectively increased both the calculation speed and the anti-disturbance ability. Relative pose information was retrieved from solving the 3 points problem, and was taken as input of the control loop to navigate the target spacecraft to a fixed position. A vision based RVD simulation platform was built upon the on-ground semi-physical experiment platform, and experiment results showed that the proposed algorithm successfully reduced the searching error and greatly enhanced the calculation speed.


: This text is a Lecture given in La Sabana University (Bogotá, Colombia) in August 1984. It address the topic of time from a metaphysical pers-pective, and for this considers necessary to use the modal logic. Compares between them the different positions of Leibniz, Hegel, Heidegger and Aristotle. Finally, it can be said that the best is the Aristotelian one, because he uses 4 modal notions, not three like the rest, and not identifies anyone with ano-ther, but distinguishes sufficiently everyone from the rest.


Many subfrontal and orbitofrontal craniotomy techniques have been proposed and developed for anterior cranial fossa lesions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the surgical experience with the frontolateral keyhole craniotomy through a superciliary skin incision in children. The keyhole craniotomy is a modification of the traditional pterional approach. This modified approach, a craniotomy with a 2.5 x 3-cm bone opening just above the eyebrow through a superciliary incision, has been previously described in adults for many lesions situated in the anterior cranial fossa, including tumors and aneurysms. The authors review their experience in using this approach in 27 children for a variety of intracranial lesions. This approach was used for 28 procedures in children ranging in age from 1 to 16 years (mean age 10 years). The lesions included arachnoid cysts, cerebrospinal fluid fistulas, and tumors; no vascular lesions were treated. The authors have found this craniotomy to be a safe and simple approach for treating anterior cranial fossa and suprasellar lesions in children.


Abstract Introduction. Fundamental motor skills (FMS) are a critical component of success in various sports and lifelong physical activity (PA). This study aimed to evaluate and compare the FMS proficiency levels of 7-9-year-old children from Poland and Latvia, providing insights into the current state of motor competence in these populations. Material and Methods. A cross-sectional study design was utilized, incorporating a sample of 163 boys and girls. The FUS test (Fundamental Motor Skills in Sport), a comprehensive, qualitative, and process-oriented assessment tool was used to assess FMS. The FUS test encompassed a range of movement tasks, including hurdles, jumping rope, forward roll, ball bouncing, ball throwing and catching, and kicking and stopping a ball that allows for a thorough evaluation of FMS proficiency. Results. The study revealed alarmingly low FMS proficiency levels in both countries, with 93.3% of students displaying 'insufficient FMS proficiency'. The Mann-Whitney U test showed that Latvian boys outperformed their Polish peers in jumping rope and forward roll (p < 0.05), while Polish boys exhibited superior results in kicking and stopping a ball (p < 0.05). In contrast, Polish girls achieved significantly higher scores in hurdles and kicking and stopping a ball (p < 0.05) compared to Latvian girls, who scored higher in jumping rope (p < 0.05). Conclusions. These findings highlight the urgent need for effective, evidence-based interventions to improve motor competence in both countries, emphasizing the importance of incorporating FMS development into physical education curricula and promoting regular PA for children.


Mechanical ventilation performance is a key issue related both to energy efficiency and indoor air quality. There are several techniques for measuring ventilation rates in buildings, such as blower boor tests, flow hoods, VAV box measurements and tracer-gas techniques. From several decades ago, tracer-gas techniques are recognized as the most widely employed method to estimate air exchange rate in buildings. These methods are based on the study of the temporal evolution of the concentration of an injected gas. These methods are usually expensive and do not allow the occupancy of the building during the tests. This issue also limits severely the number of buildings to be evaluated. Despite the natural presence of CO 2 in the atmosphere, there has been a growing interest in using it as a tracer gas. It has been shown recently that it is possible to estimate the ventilation rates by means of the decay method using in-situ CO 2 measurements from transmitters available on the market. On the other hand, there is a growing tendency to move to the smart paradigm, which usually implies to add more and more sensors to the buildings to achieve better controls, among other applications. Modern Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) allow the access to a high quantity of data in different formats and resolutions, such as signals from sensors and actuators, set-point temperatures, schedules, digital switches, alarms, plots or reports. In this work in-situ measurements are combined with data coming from BEMS to evaluate the mechanical ventilation performance of three different office buildings in different regions of Spain. Starting from metabolic CO 2 production from occupants of the buildings, a series of conditions are identified in to be able to evaluate the mechanical ventilation performance. Those conditions are translated into an algorithm, programmed in the Python language, which access the different sources of information to wrangle, cluster and finally calculate the mechanical ventilation performance. This operation is performed for five years of available experimental data and information in different formats, performing a search in more than 100 Gb. of information. This situation falls into the computational framework known as Big Data, as stated by the ICT community. For the first of the buildings (located at Almería) the methodology is detailed and demonstrated through the complete series of five years of data. Thanks to the application of this technique, a mechanical ventilation rate is obtained in perfect agreement with the design values in different situations. The technique is then applied in two different buildings (located at Madrid and at Valladolid) to assess their respective ventilation rates. Finally, some conclusions are summarised and possible improvements of the method are pointed out as future work.


In March 2007, the New Zealand government announced the outcome of its competitive funding round for Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships. This article traces the news controversy emerging with the awarding of a scholarship for the first author to study the everyday lives of Bogans. Across radio, newspaper and television news outlets tensions emerged regarding the (mis)use of public monies, representations of Bogans, and common understandings of academic research. The authors document their efforts to extend news deliberations beyond negative reactions to the scholarship.


Authored by an internationally recognized expert in the field, this timely book provides you with an authoritative and clear guide to the ISO/IEC 27000 security standards and their implementation. The book addresses all the critical information security management issues that you need to understand to help protect your business s valuable assets, including dealing with business risks and governance and compliance. Moreover, you find practical information on standard accreditation and certification. From information security management system (ISMS) design and deployment, to system monitoring, reviewing and updating, this invaluable book is your one-stop resource on the ISO/IEC 27000 series of standards.


Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a coprocessor for detecting platform integrity and attesting the integrity to the remote entity. There are two obstacles in the application of TPM: minimizing trusted computing base (TCB) for reducing risk of flaws in TCB, for which a number of convincing solutions have been developed; formal guarantees on each level of TCB, where the formal methods on analyzing the application level have not been well addressed. To the best of our knowledge, there is no general formal framework for developing the TPM-based protocol applications, which not only guarantees the security but also makes it easier for design. In this paper, we make fine-grained refinement on TPM-based security protocols to illustrate our formal solution on the application level by using the Event-B language. First, we modify the classical Dolev-Yao attacker model, which assumes normal entity's compliance with the protocol even without TPM's protection. Thus, the classical security protocols are vulnerable in this modified attacker model. Second, we make stepwise refinement of the security protocol by refining the protocol events and adding security constraints. From the fifth refinement, we make a case study to illustrate the entire refinement and further formally prove the key agreement protocol from DAAODV, the TPM-based routing protocol, under the extended Dolev-Yao attacker model. The refinement provides another way of formal modeling the TPM-based security protocols and a more fine-grained model to satisfy with the rigorous security requirement of applying TPM. Finally, we prove all the proof obligations generated by Rodin, an Eclipse-based IDE for Event-B, to ensure the soundness of our proposal.


We consider the rate allocation problem for data aggregation in wireless sensor networks with two objectives: 1) maximizing the lifetime of a local aggregation cluster and 2) achieving fairness among all data sources. The two objectives are generally correlated with each other and usually they cannot be maximized simultaneously. We adopt a lexicographic method to solve this multi-objective programming problem. First, we recursively induce the maximum lifetime for the local aggregation cluster. Under the given maximum lifetime, we then formulate the problem of maximizing fairness as a convex optimization problem, and derive the optimal rate allocation strategy. We also present low-complexity algorithms that a local aggregation cluster can use to determine the optimal rate allocation. Our simulation results validate our analytical results and illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.


Abstract One of the dominant error sources for single frequency GPS users is the ionosphere. The magnitude of this error can vary from a few meters to hundreds of meters, especially during severe ionospheric disturbance periods. For undifferenced processing using a single frequency single receiver unit, the ionospheric error cannot be cancelled out using a differential process. Therefore, one needs to rely on using appropriate models or algorithms to correct this delay to achieve high accuracy point positioning. This paper reports on a study undertaken to evaluate two different ionospheric error mitigation methods for single frequency Precise Point Positioning (PPP) processing. The two methods studied were ionospheric modeling and ionosphere-free combination. The feasibility of using either of these methods was assessed using four processing options: code-only processing; code and carrier phase combination; single frequency ionosphere-free linear combination employing an additive combination of code and carrier phase measurements, which was abbreviated as the quasi-phase measurements; and the code and quasi-phase combination For this study, GPS static data were collected from different latitudinal regions and during both ionospheric disturbance and benign periods. The results from this investigation have revealed that the ionosphere-free combination, in particular the code and quasi-phase combination, provided the best point positioning results and could provide decimeter-level point positioning accuracy and precision. In addition, the solutions from the ionosphere-free linear combination were more stable when compared to the code and carrier phase ionospheric modeling method. This makes the linear combination the preferred method for single frequency PPP processing.


The Schirmacher Oasis and Larsemann Hills are among the few significant ice free areas of East Antarctica that are conspicuous due to presence of more than a hundred melt water lakes each, preserving the signatures of climatic variation and deglaciation history since Last Glacial Maximum (19 to 24 ky BP) and beyond. There are evidences, recorded in the lake sediments of low lying Larsemann Hills, of marine transgression due to variation in sea level, isostatic upliftment and close vicinity of the Hills to the marine environment. The Schirmacher Oasis, on the other hand has preserved various landforms-both erosional and depositional- typical of a periglacial environment along with proglacial lakes (incorporating signals of ice-sheet dynamics) and epishelf lakes (signatures of marine influence) .


Density estimation plays a key role in many tasks in machine learning, statistical inference, and visualization. The main bottleneck in high-dimensional density estimation is the prohibitive computational cost and the slow convergence rate. In this paper, we propose novel estimators for high-dimensional non-parametric density estimation called the adaptive hyperbolic cross density estimators, which enjoys nice convergence properties in the mixed smooth Sobolev spaces. As modifications of the usual Sobolev spaces, the mixed smooth Sobolev spaces are more suitable for describing high-dimensional density functions in some applications. We prove that, unlike other existing approaches, the proposed estimator does not suffer the curse of dimensionality under Integral Probability Metric, including H\"older Integral Probability Metric, where Total Variation Metric and Wasserstein Distance are special cases. Applications of the proposed estimators to generative adversarial networks (GANs) and goodness of fit test for high-dimensional data are discussed to illustrate the proposed estimator's good performance in high-dimensional problems. Numerical experiments are conducted and illustrate the efficiency of our proposed method.


Background/Aims: Early-onset dementia (EOD) is defined as functionally relevant cognitive decline with age of onset at less than 65 years. The aim of this study was to investigate the utility of the recently validated third version of the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination (ACE-III) in predicting dementia diagnoses in EOD. Methods: ACE-III scores of EOD patients were compared to those of healthy controls (HC) and individuals with subjective memory impairment (SMI). Results: The study included 71 EOD patients (Alzheimer's disease, n = 31; primary progressive aphasia, n = 11; behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia, n = 18, and posterior cortical atrophy, n = 11); there were 28 HC and 15 individuals with SMI. At a cut-off score of 88/100, the ACE-III displayed high sensitivity and specificity in distinguishing EOD from HC (91.5 and 96.4%) and SMI (91.5 and 86.7%). Conclusions: The ACE-III is a reliable cognitive screening tool in EOD.


There is a trend in photonic circuits to move to smaller device dimensions for improved cost efficiency and device performance. However, the trend also comes at some cost to performance, notably in the polarisation dependence of the circuits, the difficulty in coupling to the circuits, and in some cases, in increased device complexity. This paper discusses a range of Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) based optical devices, and the advantages and disadvantages in moving to smaller waveguide dimensions. In particular optical phase modulators based upon the plasma dispersion effect and ring resonators are considered, together with a device for coupling to small waveguides, the so-called Dual Grating Assisted Directional Coupler (DGADC). The advantages of moving to small dimensions are considered, and some preliminary experimental results are given. In particular, progress of the DGADC is evaluated in the light of promising experimental results.


Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was one of the outstanding Jewish thinkers of the 20th century. A renowned American theologian and interpreter of tradition, he was author of such books as "Man Is Not Alone", "God in Search of Man", and "The Prophets". This book, the first of two volumes, is a comprehensive biography of Heschel. Based on interviews with Heschel's friends and family, archival documents and Heschel's previously unknown writings in Yiddish, German and Hebrew, the book traces Heschel's life from his birth in Warsaw in 1907 to his emigration to the United States in 1940. Edward Kaplan and Samuel Dresner describe how Heschel came of age in a Hasidic community and reached maturity in secular Jewish Vilna and cosmopolitan Berlin, speaking out as a religious philosopher during the advent of Nazism. They relate how he became a teacher in Berlin, in Martin Buber's education programme in Frankfurt (where his lifelong debate with Buber originated), in Warsaw, and in London, while the several Jewish cultures he had absorbed were being destroyed. They show that he was already intellectually and spiritually mature when he emigrated to the United States, fully prepared for his dual roles as interpreter of Jewish piety and social activist.


A remote controlled system to maintain polarization voltage across a silicon detector within a user defined window is described. The system regulates silicon bias voltage, caused by increased leakage current due to radiation damage, by switching external resistors to maintain a constant voltage drop across the bias load resistor, independent of leakage current. This Z80 microprocessor based system links with the host computer by a RS-232 serial port. The voltage resolution of the system is less than 0.2 V in the worst case. >


OBJECTIVE
Deprescribing is considered one of the main strategies available for  preparing an individualized therapeutic plan in patients with multiple pathologies or complex chronic conditions. However, despite the practice has been in place for some years, there is a need for studies that support the achievement of satisfactory health outcomes, as well as tools that help implement deprescribing in routine clinical practice. The  bjective of this project is to analyze the impact of reducing polypharmacy,  through the LESS-CHRON deprescribing tool, on a population  of elderly polymedicated patients with multiple conditions.

METHOD
This will be a quasi-experimental, pre-and-post intervention multicenter cohort study. The variables to be analyzed will be  divided into two large groups: those related to pharmacology and those related to health outcomes. They will be collected at baseline, at 3 and at 6-12  months. A first screening phase will be carried out to recruit candidate patients  and obtain information about the identified deprescribing  opportunities. The second phase will constitute the intervention phase, where  the LESS-CHRON tool will be applied and the actual deprescribing of the drugs  will be carried out.

DISCUSSION
LESS-CHRON has been proclaimed as a suitable deprescribing tool in clinical practice. Validation of LESS-CHRON will seek to show the results that can be achieved following the deprescribing of drugs,  in addition to demonstrating that the tool can reliably be used by clinicians in  their routine practice. On the other hand, the results of this project may  provide information leading to improving or adapting the tool itself, giving rise  to a second generation of more efficient version.


Alcohol-associated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a subtype of HCC with poor prognosis. The present study aimed to identify key biomarkers for alcohol-associated HCC. The gene data profiles and corresponding clinical traits of patients with alcohol-associated HCC were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Firstly, good genes and good samples were identified, which were subsequently used to conduct weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). Hub genes in the significant modules were selected following Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses, and from constructing a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. Real hub genes among hub genes were determined following progression, survival analysis and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), as well as reverse transcription-quantitative PCR and immunohistochemical staining of non-alcohol- and alcohol-associated HCC samples. In total, 64 good samples of alcohol-associated HCC with height score <160 were selected, from which 15,195 good genes were identified and used to conduct WGCNA; 8 gene co-expressed modules were identified using WGCNA, while 3 modules (including pink, magenta and turquoise) were significantly associated with Child-Pugh score, T-stage and body weight. Following GO and KEGG analysis and construction of the PPI network, a total of 30 hub genes were identified in the aforementioned 3 gene co-expressed modules, while 16 hub genes (including AURKB, BUB1, BUB1B, CCNB1, CCNB2, CDC20, CDCA8, CDK1, PLK1, RPS5, RPS7, RPS8, RPS14, RPS27, RPSA and TOP2A) were associated with the development of alcohol-associated HCC, and had a significant prognosis value. Among these genes, only RPS8 was highly expressed in alcohol-associated HCC, but not in non-alcohol-associated HCC, while RPS5 was not significantly associated in either alcohol- or non-alcohol-associated HCC. GSEA demonstrated that 10 pathways, including RNA polymerase and ribosome pathways were enriched in alcohol-associated HCC samples where RPS8 was highly expressed. Taken together, the results of the present study demonstrate that RPS8 may be a novel biomarker for the diagnosis of patients with alcohol-associated HCC.


This study explores the reasons why teenagers coming for professional birth control help for the 1st time choose the particular clinic in which they enrolled and the clinic characteristics which may encourage the young patients to come for contraceptive help early or contribute to a delay in seeking services. 1234 never pregnant teenagers in 31 family planning clinics of various types in 8 cities answered a questionnaire in the spring of 1980. About 44% of the respondents were white 48% black and the rest from other racial groups. Just over 14% came to the clinic before 1st coitus 36% came only because they suspected they were pregnant and the rest enrolled after they began intercourse but did not suspect pregnancy. The interval between intercourse and enrollment ranged from a few weeks to 2 years with a median interval of 11.5 months. There were 15 possible responses to the question "Why did you choose this clinic?" The 5 principal reasons given in order were: It doesnt tell their parents; the people there care about teens; it is the closest their friends come to it; and it is the only 1 they know of. Also significant was for blacks only an adult usually the mother chose the clinic. Additional information on responses to this question and others is given in charts. The questionnaire also showed a consistent but weak association between the reasons for selecting a particular facility and the characteristics of the clinic such as cost of services special teen hours teen rap sessions and outreach program. The responses indicated that many factors including age race and the time when the teenager 1st seeks clinic services affect her choice. The conclusion drawn is that a network of facilities with a variety of services is needed with the common characteristics of open caring atmosphere women clinicians available and absolute confidentiality so that the proportion of young women who appear only after they are pregnant might be greatly reduced.


We study property testing in directed graphs in the bounded degree model, where we assume that an algorithm may only query the outgoing edges of a vertex, a model proposed by Bender and Ron in 2002. As our first main result, we we present a property testing algorithm for strong connectivity in this model, having a query complexity of $\mathcal{O}(n^{1-\epsilon/(3+\alpha)})$ for arbitrary $\alpha>0$; it is based on a reduction to estimating the vertex indegree distribution. For subgraph-freeness we give a property testing algorithm with a query complexity of $\mathcal{O}(n^{1-1/k})$, where $k$ is the number of connected componentes in the queried subgraph which have no incoming edge. We furthermore take a look at the problem of testing whether a weakly connected graph contains vertices with a degree of least $3$, which can be viewed as testing for freeness of all orientations of $3$-stars; as our second main result, we show that this property can be tested with a query complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ instead of, what would be expected, $\Omega(n^{2/3})$.


Mixture of coarse aggregate, fine aggregate, binder and filler forms a bituminous mixture. A bituminous mixture where all ingredients are mixed, placed and compacted at high temperature is Hot Mix Asphalt. Hot mix Asphalt can be in the form of Dense Graded mixes (DGM) known as Bituminous Concrete (BC) or in the form of gap graded mixes known as Stone Matrix Asphalt (SMA). For the stabilization of Stone Matrix Asphalt additives composed of mineral fibres, cellulose fibers or polymers are required to prevent drain down of the mix. The present study aims to study the effects of use of a naturally and locally available fibre called Glass fibre. Glass fibre is used as stabilizer in Stone Matrix Asphalt as an additive in Bituminous Concrete. Mixes were prepared by grading the aggregates as per Ministry of Road Transport And Highways (MORTH) specification, varying binder content regularly from 4% to 6% and varying fibre content from 0%, 0.3% and 0.6% of total mix. Using Marshall Method tests were conducted and based on results Marshall Graphs were plotted. It was observed that Optimum binder content for both the mixes (Bituminous Concrete and Stone Matrix Asphalt) was 5.5%. Also it was concluded that Optimum fibre content for both the mixes was 0.3%. Then the Bituminous Concrete and Stone Matrix Asphalt mixes prepared at Optimum binder content and Optimum Fibre Content are subjected to different performance tests like Drain Down test, to evaluate the effects of fibre addition on mix performance. It was observed that by the addition of the Glass Fibre the drain down characteristics of mixtures decreases, Drain Down value of Stone Matrix Asphalt is reduced to 0.025% and there is negligible drain down of binder of Bituminous Concrete. It is observed that Stone Matrix Asphalt is better than Bituminous Concrete in respect of creep characteristics.


The development of industrial sector helps strengthen Malaysian economic growth. It is possible because of the rapid expansion in the small and medium scale industry sector (SMI) which includes craft industry. In order to promote this particular region, Malaysian Handicraft Development Corporation was developed. The corporation organizes training program that produces the skilled and
proficient workforce that one day will participate in the business sector. Though the knowledge is traditionally passed from a generation to another, craft industry
is still considered as a new sector. Very few people choose to participate in this domain. This research is to identify what factors that made them decide to be in the business. Those factors are knowledge and skill, experience, market's
demands, competitions, guidance from institution and the source of funds. The entrepreneur characteristics that are under consideration are the virtual strength of business, business attitudes and the needs of achievement. The conclusion is that every factor mentioned has a significant relationship with the criterion. The market demand, knowledge and skill have an intermediate effect on those criteria while the others have minor effect. When all factors are under consideration, they do have meaningful and strong affinity with the entrepreneur characteristics.
More than 65% of the trainees choose to involve themselves in batik, woodcraft and pottery. Most of the trainees start their business at the young age by using their own meager funds. Majority of their businesses is considered as small
potatoes although they have been operating for a long time. This situation could be improved by analyzing the intake of the trainees, and curriculum involves, developing a union for them and reorganize the marketing system for the goods
produced.


Durations in the several seconds' range are cognitively accessible during active timing. Functional neuroimaging studies suggest the engagement of basal ganglia (BG) and supplementary motor area (SMA). However, their functional relevance and arrangement remain unclear because non-timing cognitive processes temporally coincide with the active timing. To examine the potential contamination by parallel processes, we introduced a sensory control and a motor control to the duration reproduction task. By comparing their hemodynamic functions, we decomposed the neural activities in multiple brain loci linked to different cognitive processes. Our results show a dissociation of two cortical neural circuits: the SMA for both active timing and motor preparation, followed by a prefrontal-parietal circuit related to duration working memory. We argue that these cortical processes represent duration as the content but at different levels of abstraction, while the subcortical structures including BG and thalamus provide the logistic basis of timing by coordinating temporal framework across brain structures.


We propose a consistent polynomial-time method for the unseeded node matching problem for networks with smooth underlying structures. Despite widely conjectured by the research community that the structured graph matching problem to be significantly easier than its worst case counterpart, well-known to be NP-hard, the statistical version of the problem has stood a challenge that resisted any solution both provable and polynomial-time. The closest existing work requires quasi-polynomial time. Our method is based on the latest advances in graphon estimation techniques and analysis on the concentration of empirical Wasserstein distances. Its core is a simple yet unconventional sampling-and-matching scheme that reduces the problem from unseeded to seeded. Our method allows flexible efficiencies, is convenient to analyze and potentially can be extended to more general settings. Our work enables a rich variety of subsequent estimations and inferences.


Vulvar condyloma is characterized by genital warts caused by the human papilloma virus, a sexually transmitted disease. With this research we aimed to identify self-care behaviors from requisites for health deviation in women with vulvar condyloma. It is a transversal study in an attendance sample of one of the researchers from a public institution which is reference in Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Fortaleza – CE, with 30 women between August and September 2007. An interview with open and closed questions was assigned and the data were analyzed descriptively. We observed that the interviewed women have low socioeconomic and educational level. The self-care behaviors identified in this research from the requisites for health problem were lack of knowledge about the disease, emotional inconstancy, partners' lack of collaboration and financial difficulty to attend set appointments. Thus, knowing self-care behaviors for health problems in women with vulvar condyloma allowed us to notice that they present self-care deficit which are independent of their own will. Keywords: Condylomata acuminate; Vulva; Self car Papillomavirus infections.


Summer asphodel is widely found in Mediterranean Rangelands. For being poisonous, it also causes a negative impact on rangelands quality. Therefore, a study has been carried out in order to prevent the growth of this weed plant depending on the application of different herbicides at different seasons. The research was conducted in the Gerlengec village of Biga District at Canakkale Province in 2016. Since there is no selective and specific herbicide in the chemical control with this weed plant that is why this study was conducted by using the active ingredients of five different herbicides in order to determine the most appropriate herbicide and its application season. Those of chlorosulfuron, dicamba+triasulfuron and tribenuron methyl+thifensulfuron methyl herbicides are effective against broad leaves while metsulfuron methyl+lodosulfuron methyl is used for narrow leaves and glyphosate is used for all types of herbaceous weed plants as a total herbicide. In addition, the herbicides were applied in two different seasons i.e., spring (March 2015) and autumn (November 2015). The research was established according to the randomized complete block design using three replications. The total experimental area was 100 m 2 and each plot consisted of 3 m 2 of the area in the experiment. The growth of Asphodelus aestivus has been observed after the application of above mentioned herbicides during the experiment. According to overall results of this research, the applied herbicides and their application seasons have been statistically significant on the investigated characteristics (number of plants, plant height, number of leaves, leaf diameter and length) of this weed plant. Consequently, the significant achievements were obtained from the plant in terms of herbicides and their application seasons.


The load displacement curves of a suction bucket foundation under vertical, horizontal and combined loadings are studied experimentally. The effects of sand density on the bearing capacity are also investigated. It is shown that, under combined loading, the load conditions under which a foundation fails form a failure locus. The horizontal bearing capacity increases with the increase of the vertical loading if the latter is below a critical value. But the horizontal bearing capacity decreases when it exceeds the critical value. The bearing capacity increases with the increase of the sand density in the range of the experiments in this paper. For the same bucket diam, the horizontal bearing capacity increases with the aspect ratio (H/D). The vertical bearing capacity is influenced by the aspect ratio and the ratio of the height of the sand bed to that of the bucket.


Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is one of the best technologies currently being used for diagnosing brain tumor. Brain tumor is diagnosed at advanced stages with the help of the MRI image. Segmentation is an important process to extract suspicious region from complex medical images. Automatic detection of brain tumor through MRI can provide the valuable outlook and accuracy of earlier brain tumor detection. In this paper an intelligent system is designed to diagnose brain tumor through MRI using image processing clustering algorithms such as Fuzzy C Means along with intelligent optimization tools, such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The detection of tumor is performed in two phases: Preprocessing and Enhancement in the first phase and segmentation and classification in the second phase


Patient safety can only exist in a culture of patient safety, which implies it is a value perceived by all. Culture predicts safety outcomes and leadership predicts the culture. Leaders are obligated to continually mitigate hazard and take action consciously. Healthcare workers should focus on preventing and reporting mistakes with the National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) in mind. These include: accuracy of patient identification, effectiveness of communication among caregivers, improving safety of medications, reducing infections, reducing risk of falls, and encouraging patients to be involved in care. Poor performers and reckless behavior need to be mitigated. If employees recognize their roles in the process, feel empowered,and have appropriate tools, resources,and data to implement solutions, errors can be avoided and patient safety becomes paramount.


The aim of this study was to adapt the vancomycin therapeutic range to the kinetic models usually employed in clinical settings (one- and two-compartment models). Estimates of vancomycin pharmacokinetic parameters were obtained for both models in 22 hematologically malignant patients on vancomycin treatment using two serum concentrations and a bayesian algorithm. From these individually estimated pharmacokinetic parameters, an estimation of the maximum (Cssmax), 2 h postinfusion (Css2), and minimum (Cssmin) steady-state vancomycin serum concentrations for the one- and two-compartment models was made for a fixed 30 mg/kg/day dose. The linear regression equations between the predicted Css2 and Cssmin for the one- and two-compartment models do not differ significantly from the identity line, whereas the corresponding equation for Cssmax points to a 61% underestimation of Cssmax when the one-compartment model is used. From this latter regression equation, it is possible to define 20 mg/L (range of 18-21 mg/L) as a target Cssmax vancomycin serum concentration when a one-compartment model is used to monitor vancomycin therapy. Another practical approach would be to define the target concentration by a desired range at 2 h, which corresponds to a Cssmax value of 30-40 mg/L.


Background GlycA is a novel marker of systemic inflammation detected by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). It arises from the N-acetyl methyl signals from glycosylated acute phase proteins. Several glycoproteins, including α-1 antichymotrypsin, haptoglobin, α-1-antitrypsin, transferrin, and α1-acid glycoprotein (AGP, orosomucoid) contribute significantly to increase the GlycA signal during inflammation. In the general population, GlycA is correlated with inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and associated with coronary heart disease and diabetes. The utility of GlycA in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) has not been defined. Objectives To test the hypothesis that GlycA concentrations were elevated in patients with SLE and associated with other markers of inflammation and with coronary atherosclerosis. Methods We compared concentrations of GlycA in 116 patients with SLE and 84 control subjects frequency-matched for age, sex, and race. GlycA was detected by NMR. SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) and the SLE Collaborating Clinics damage index (SLICC) were calculated. Acute phase reactants [erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and C-reactive protein (CRP)], a panel of cytokines and a lipid panel were measured. Electron beam computer tomography (EBCT) was used to quantify coronary artery calcification, a measure of coronary artery atherosclerosis. Results Patients with SLE had higher concentrations of GlycA [398 (350-445)] than control subjects [339 (299-391)] μmol/L, p<0.001. In patients with SLE, concentrations of GlycA were significantly associated with ESR (rho=0.43), CRP (rho=0.59), interleukin-6 (rho=0.27), e-selectin (rho=0.28), intracellular adhesion molecule-1 (rho=0.30), HDL cholesterol (rho=-0.26), triglycerides (rho=0.45), systolic (rho=0.23), and diastolic blood pressure (rho=0.21), all p<0.05, but not with creatinine, SLEDAI, SLICC, or coronary calcium scores. Conclusions Concentrations of GlycA are higher in patients with SLE than control subjects and associated with markers of inflammation but not with SLE disease activity or chronicity scores or coronary artery calcification. Disclosure of Interest C. Chung: None declared, M. Ormseth: None declared, M. Connelly Employee of: LabCorp, A. Oeser: None declared, J. Solus: None declared, J. Otvos Employee of: LabCorp, P. Raggi: None declared, C. M. Stein: None declared


The present work studies, in detail, the unsteady wall-layer model of Walker et al. (1989, AIAA J., 27, 140 – 149) for the velocity profile in turbulent flows. Two new terms are included in the transcendental nonlinear system of equations that is used to determine the three main model parameters. The mathematical and physical feasible domains of the model are determined as a function of the non-dimensional pressure gradient parameter (p+). An explicit parameterization is presented for the average period between bursts (T+B), the origin of time (t+0 ) and the integration constant of the time dependent equation (A0) in terms of p+. In the present procedure, all working systems of differential equations are transformed, resulting in a very fast computational procedure that can be used to develop real-time flow simulators.


We prepared transparent and hard silicon oxide films having water-repellent surfaces. In the multiple-step microwave plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (MW PECVD) we developed, silicon oxide layer was prepared using mixture of tetrametylsilane (TMS) or tetramethoxysilane (TMOS) and oxygen (O2) as source gases. Next, O2 was exchanged to FAS-17 ((heptadecafluoro-1, 1, 2, 2, tetrahydro-decyl)-1-trimethoxysilane). We introduced FAS-17/Ar into the reactor using Ar as the carrier gas. The O2 supply decreased gradually, then was depleted. Al-10min water-repellent layer was deposited after TMS or TMOS partial pressure was adjusted to equal that of FAS-17/Ar. The contact angles obtained depend strongly on organosilicon compounds and substrate temperatures. Silicon oxide film surfaces treated with TMS without methoxy groups and FAS-17/Ar at 70°C had high water-contact angle of 120 degrees. The water repellency of films obtained by multistep CVD was inferior to that of single layers of water-repellent films prepared from TMS and FAS-17/Ar without O2 in the first step of film preparation. Residual oxygen in the reactor oxidized the water-repellent layer, reducing the hydrophobic properties of the surface. The ultramicrohardness of the silicon oxide films having water-repellent surfaces depended on the thickness of the water-repellent layer. The carbon concentration of films obtained in the multistep CVD gradually decreased from the surfaces to the insides, i. e., surfaces showed an organic nature even though inner regions were inorganic.


Background Patient-specific preparations have become a central therapy concept in oncological treatment. The highly potent cytostatic agents are characterised by a narrow therapeutic range. Therefore, exact dosage is important, as lower amounts reduce the effectiveness and higher doses increase the risk of severe side effects. Compound confusion can even result in fatal consequences. Missing dependent and independent controls regarding concentration and identity pose a risk for patient safety. Purpose We developed a concept for a two-stage quality control of the infusion solutions. Drug identity and concentration can be checked onsite after preparation using a combined UV- and Raman spectrometer (UV-Raman). This is complemented by an independent method using liquid chromatography coupled to UV detection (HPLC-UV). Material and methods Methods for the analysis of seven cytostatic drugs and two monoclonal antibodies were developed and validated on an i-QCRx UV-Raman system (B and W Tek Europe GmbH, Lübeck, Germany) and on an Agilent 1200 series HPLC-UV system (Agilent Technologies, Waldbronn, Germany). Sample transport and preparation were evaluated to ensure valid results. In a pilot study we analysed samples from different pharmacies in both systems. Results Method development and validation were successful for the investigated compounds in both systems. HPLC-UV is more sensitive than UV-Raman. However, due to the content of the preparations, real samples had to be diluted before applying HPLC-UV analysis. Sensitivity of the UV-Raman spectrometer fits to the required concentration range without further dilution. All methods showed reproducible results, UV-Raman varied by 0.44% in a repeated analysis (n=3) of 5-fluorouracil, while HPLC-UV varied by 0.14%. Results of the investigated samples were also equivalent. In a sample containing paclitaxel with a target concentration of 0.72 mg/mL we determined 0.73 mg/mL (101%) using UV-Raman and 0.69 mg/mL (96%) using HPLC-UV, for example. Conclusion UV-Raman and HPLC-UV are suitable for determining the content of patient-individual preparations, both with individual assets and drawbacks. The study showed that the two-stage control concept is appropriate to ensure a high-quality level for patient-individual preparations. References and/or acknowledgements No conflict of interest.


For original paper see Khalilov et al. ibid., vol.6, p.193 (1990). The authors comment on a recent paper by Khalilov and Khruslov. They show that the matrix generalization of the modified Korteweg-de Vries equation presented by them is related to simpler generalizations of the modified and unmodified Korteweg-de Vries equation given by other authors.


A study was done to determine which factors had the greatest influence on a heifer's susceptibility to heat stress. Parameters tested were breed, coat colour, coat score, hide thickness, weight gain, respiration rate and body condition score. The study was conducted in the southeastern Free State. Afrikaner, Bonsmara, Braford, Charolais, Drakensberger and Simmentaler heifers were subjected to a heat tolerance trial. A total of 60 heifers, 10 of each breed were evaluated. Rectal temperature (Tre) was used as a parameter to determine heat stress. The heifers were evaluated on 10 days, at 14:00 during the winter of 2007 and on seventeen days, at 14:00 during the summer of 2007/8 (after 1 h in the sun, no access to shade). In winter a significant difference in rectal temperature Tre between breeds was measured on seven occasions. Phenotypical factors tested for did not affect Tre in winter. In summer significant differences in Tre were measured on 12 occasions between breeds. The following factors had a significant influence on Tre in the following breeds: Afrikaner – hide thickness, Bonsmara – hide thickness, Charolais – coat score.


Introduction: The objective of this study was to assess a long-term clinical effect of Prolotherapy on chronic symptomatic rotator cuff tendinopathy.Methods: We conducted a retrospective, uncontrolled study in the outpatient setting with 12 months follow-up. Adults diagnosed clinically and radiologically with rotator cuff tendinopathy that has been persisting for a minimum of six months were included. Patients received 15% extra-articular and 25% intra-articular hyperosmolar dextrose injections, repeated at weeks 5, 9, 13, 17 and 21. Primary outcome measure was validated Shoulder Pain and Disability Index (SPADI). Secondary outcome measure was validated visual pain analogue scale (VAS 0-10). The third outcome measures were patient's satisfaction with Prolotherapy and adverse reactions after injections.Results: Twenty-one patients, 14 male and 7 female were treated with 6 sessions of hyperosmolar dextrose Prolotherapy repeated every 4 weeks. Average SPADI before starting the treatment was 73.995 ± 13.6, while 12 months after completed treatment was 20.84 ± 26.03 (P< 0.0001). Average VAS score before starting the treatment was 8.14 ± 1.2, while 12 months after completed treatment was 2.29 ± 2.8 (P<0.0001). Out of 21 patients, 18 (85.71%) would recommend Prolotherapy to other people with the similar condition, and no one participant reported any side effect that was not resolved within one week after the treatment.Conclusion: Hyperosmolar dextrose Prolotherapy may result in significant reduction of pain and disability index in adult patients with chronic rotator cuff tendinopathy, without eliciting long-lasting side effects. Results of this pilot study need to be validated in prospective controlled randomized trials.


The near-bed submarine pipeline is a widely used structure in the marine engineering. Due to the presence of the seabed resulting in an asymmetric flow, a large negative lift (attraction) can be induced on a pipeline in a horizontal current, which has significant influence on the behaviours of the pipeline. A coupled numerical approach is proposed in this paper to assess the nonlinear dynamic responses of this pipeline by combining the meshless technique and the boundary element method (BEM). BEM is firstly used to get the nonlinear dynamic fluid loading induced by the asymmetric flow. The meshless technique is used to discretize the structure of the pipeline, and the local weighted weak form using the spline weight function is employed to get the discrete system of equations for this nonlinear dynamic analysis. A numerical example for the static and dynamic analyses of a structure is firstly presented to verify the effectivity of the present method. Then, the coupled technique is used to simulate the nonlinear dynamic fluid-structure interaction problem of a near-bed pipeline. A Newton-Raphson iteration procedure is used herein to solve the nonlinear system of equations, and the Newmark method is adopted for the time integration. Our studies reveal that there exists a critical current velocity, above which the pipeline will become instable sharply. The detailed relationship between the critical velocity and the gap is given, and it has been found that the critical velocity is significantly affected by the initial gap from the pipeline to seabed. It has demonstrated that present approach is very effective to obtain numerical solutions for the nonlinear dynamic fluid-structure interaction analysis of a near-bed submarine pipeline.


Although addiction to amphetamine (AMPH) is a serious social and medical problem, the data concerning AMPH - immune interactions are still not numerous. To analyze the mechanism of AMPH-induced changes in the function of the immune system, rats were pretreated with beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol (PROP; 5 mg/kg, i.p.) prior to AMPH (1 mg/kg, i.p.) administration. Natural Killer cells cytotoxicity (NKCC) ((51)Cr-release assay), the number of LGLs (NK cells) (Timonen method), leukocytes, lymphocytes and monocytes, and plasma corticosterone level (CORT) (RIA) were evaluated in the peripheral blood and spleen. In the peripheral blood increases in NKCC (+331 Delta %), as well as in LGL (+33 Delta %) and monocyte (+65 Delta %) number observed after AMPH were partially inhibited by PROP (respectively by 30%, 19%, and 30%) in contrast to lymphopenia (-19 Delta %) and granulocytosis (+65 Delta %) which were not affected by beta-blockade. In the spleen AMPH-induced decreases in NKCC (-25 Delta %) and in all the leukocyte populations number (approximately -30 Delta %) were completely blocked by PROP. Plasma CORT level, highly elevated by AMPH (+337 Delta %), was attenuated nearly by 50% under beta-adrenergic blockade. These data indicate that AMPH-induced enhancement of cytotoxic activity of NK cell is related to beta-adrenergic mechanism.


Satire in all countries is protected as a manifestation of public mood and for this reason it is not subject to criminal liability. Caricature is a specific kind of satirical art. During an analysis of the history of the USSR and Poland, one can highlight the special role of caricature in the implementation of a state's international policy. It served as an instrument of reaching the least educated social strata with state propaganda. It is also worth noting that caricature played a smaller or a larger part for the state at different periods of history.


ABSTRACT The founding principle of attachment theory (Bowlby 1973) is that a secure attachment to a caregiver is one of the first and most basic needs in an infant's life. Through the decades attachment theory has expanded its scope to include central adult relationships, especially between romantic partners, and has provided a useful framework for exploring relationships with friends and family members. We seek to further extend the application of the standard model of adult attachment to another interaction that people value: relationships with pets. We compared participants' reports of their relationships with pets and relationships with romantic partners in a web-based survey of 192 pet owners. Our adaptations of measures originally designed to measure insecurity in human relationships—the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ; Bartholomew and Horowitz 1991) and the Avoidance and Anxiety scales from the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised questionnaire (ECR-R; Fraley, Waller and Brennan 2000)—produced reliable measures of relationships with pets. The structure of dimensions of insecurity was similar for pet and partner relationships, but ratings of pet relationships correlated little or not at all with ratings of partner relationships. Surprisingly, relationships with pets were more secure on every measure. Our results provide initial evidence that attachment measures are indeed useful tools for investigating people's relationships with their pets. It appears that pets are a consistent source of attachment security; future research with attachment measures may be useful for understanding how the relationship with a pet affects other aspects of the owner's life, perhaps by buffering the experience of negative human social interactions.


Within the educational system, the method of group tutor was developed as a teaching strategy: the tutor goes along with a group of students to field training and works with them on the systematization and analysis of the study to obtain the final report. The purpose of this paper is to recuperate the work experience of the Department of Didactics of the School of Public Health of Mexico during 1991. A relevant conclusion is that this form of work needs to be studied and developed, since it demands a greater amount of independence from the students and requires a different participation from the teacher, both as coordinator and advisor.


The authors present a numerical simulation for the calculation of ozone production in an oxygen-fed wire to cylinder ozonizer. They investigate the pressure, temperature, average flow velocity and multi-injection dependence. The results show that an oxygen-fed ozonizer can be modelled by a plug flow reactor; the thermal degradation of ozone along the z axis of the cylinder can also be observed.


Fleece weight and shedding score, a measure of premature fleece loss, were examined at first shearing and in older female sheep of three hilt breeds and their reciprocal crosses. Starting from a non-inbred base, the sheep were mated, mostly by younger-parent × offspring, for four generations, to produce inbreeding coefficients from 0·25 to 0·59. Crosses of inbred lines were also produced within breed type. The experimental design allowed the effects of inbreeding of the individual to be separated from the effects of maternal inbreeding. Inbreeding of the individual significantly and linearly reduced fleece weight. This effect was still apparent after adjustment for body weight. Maternal inbreeding significantly reduced only the weight of first fleeces, but the trends were similar at the later ages, especially among the purebreds. There was no significant interaction of purebred/crossbred status with level of inbreeding. Inbreeding did not significantly affect shedding score. The pure breeds and the crosses did not differ, on average, in fleece weights or shedding scores, but within the purebred and within the crossbred classes breed variation was significant. Fleece weight declined and the incidence of shedding increased with increasing age. The larger the number of lambs born in the year of shearing the lower the fleece weight and the greater the extent of fleece shedding. The effects of inbreeding could not be fully explained, statistically, in terms of dominance alone. Therefore, it seems probable that epistasis also plays a role in producing the observed changes with inbreeding in these traits.


The authors present some data on 288 patients with colonic and rectal cancer who were given preoperative radiotherapy, and on 145 patients with rectal cancer who underwent surgery only. In operable rectal cancer intensive irradiation at a single focal dose of 6.5 Gy and summary dose of 19.5 Gy (3 daily fractions), in operable colonic cancer 4 and 20 Gy (5 daily fractions respectively). The five-year survival rate attained during combined treatment of rectal cancer exceeded that after radical operations by 30%. Fractional-extended irradiation at a single focal dose of 4 Gy and summary dose of 40 Gy (every other day) in 44.6% of the patients permitted one to make locally disseminated rectal cancer resectable. Preoperative irradiation of locally disseminated rectal cancer with a preliminary synchronization of the tumor cell division cycle with 5-fluorouracil (a single focal dose of 6 Gy, summary dose of 36 Gy for irradiation twice a week) was well tolerated by the patients, and its effect on tumors was more noticeable as compared to radiotherapy only. Marked radiation reactions were absent in colonic cancer, radical operation (hemicolectomy) entailed no additional difficulties. Local recurrences were not noted in either of 10 patients who had been followed-up in the course of 1 year.


The potential energy surface (PES) of a molecular system constitutes a cornerstone for nearly every theoretical study of spectroscopy and dynamics. We present here AUTOSURF, our freely distributed code for the automated construction of PESs. This first release treats van der Waals systems composed of two rigid fragments. A version for reactive systems with up to five atoms is under development. The AUTOSURF suite is designed to completely automate all of the steps and procedures that go into fitting various classes of PESs and facilitates certain PES refinements aimed toward specific applications in spectroscopy and dynamics. The algorithms are based on a local interpolating moving least-squares methodology and have many advanced features such as iterative refinement and symmetry recognition. The code interfaces to popular electronic structure codes such as MOLPRO and GAUSSIAN to automatically generate ab initio PESs and is well-suited for treating highly anisotropic interactions which are challenging for traditional quadrature type expansions. The niche of these algorithms is to obtain an interpolative representation of high-level electronic energies with negligible (arbitrarily small) fitting error, requiring minimal human supervision in the entire process of selection, computation, and fitting of the ab initio data. The code is designed to run in parallel on Linux-based machines ranging from small workstations to large high-performance computing clusters.


The behavior of beams with different support condition was investigated through three-point bending test for the purpose of studying difference of maximum load and catenary action of a beam. Beams are made of SPSR400 which has 245MPa of nominal yield strength and 400MPa of nominal tensile strength. The parameters of the supports condition are simple support and rotationally semi-rigid connection with different horizontal reaction strength applied by anchors. The support boundary conditions of beams were classified into three types; (A) simply supported with no anchors, (B) embedded anchors with 50mm depth of  10mm, and (C) embedded anchors with 80mm depth of  10mm. Both ends of the beams were connected by fillet welded angles and supported on a rigid concrete wall through anchors. The test result shows how much the load carrying capacity is increased by catenary action after large deflection at the center of the beam. First peak loads from each types are the loads when first plastic hinge occurs at the mid-span. There were no significant differences among the first peak loads measured from three types. After that, tensile force at anchors due to catenary action increased the load carrying capacity by approximately 55%, which is called as the second peak load. However, second peak load happens when the anchors at a support fully resist a tensile force, therefore it doesn't happen with type (A) and (B). In conclusion, support boundary conditions of a beam don't have an effect on the first collapse load, but the second collapse load is increased as embedded length of an anchor


In vivo studies using the animals are helpful in developing the treatment strategies as they are important link between the successful in vitro testing and safe human use. Various research projects in the field of fixation of fractures, development of newer biomaterials, chemotherapeutic drugs, use of stem cells in nonunion of fractures and cartilage defects etc., have hugely depended on animal experimentation. The employment of animals in experiments is both scientific and ethical issue. There must be reasonable reasons to show that it will significantly advance the present knowledge and lead to improvement in care. The regulatory bodies exist for humane use and care of animals used for experiments e.g., International Council for Laboratory Animal Science, Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences, International Union of Biological Sciences, International Committee on Laboratory Animals. In India, Indian National Science Academy, Indian Council of Medical Research, National Centre for Laboratory Animal Sciences promote high standards of laboratory animal quality, care and health. The Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision on Experiments on Animals guidelines are well defined and is a must read document for any one interested to carry out research with animal facilities.


Summary
Indicators of ecosystem status are of increasing importance for management. Many studies infer associations between the environment and fish communities, but little is known about how fish community indicators are related to temporal variation in anthropogenic and hydroclimate drivers, and on what geographical scale, these indicators are representative.
Here, we investigate the spatial synchrony of seven indicators of coastal fish community status among eleven reference sites 2002–2014 in the Baltic Sea. At three of these sites, we study the temporal covariation between indicators and anthropogenic and hydroclimate drivers over 25 years.
The indicators (abundance of) – Perch, Large Piscivores and Non-perch Piscivores – showed spatial synchrony over the study scale (100–1000 km), whereas temporal dynamics of other indicators reflected changes at scales <100 km.
At the studied reference sites, temporal changes of indicators were mainly associated with climate-related hydrological variables, but nutrient-related variables were important in the northern Baltic Sea. Landings showed no associations with any indicator. Four of the indicators showed evident temporal autocorrelation reflecting an influence of internal population/community processes.
Synthesis and applications. Environmental status of coastal fish communities in the Baltic Sea should be assessed and managed at a local scale. The main drivers of fish community indicators of ecosystem status tend to differ between coastal areas, but among the reference sites assessed in this study, hydroclimatic variation and internal processes seem to be of greater importance for the temporal development of indicators than anthropogenic pressures. Therefore, when assessing the status of coastal fish communities and evaluating management measures in areas impacted by anthropogenic activities, it is important to account for variation in salinity, temperature and time lags.


Anthrax toxin introduced subcutaneously into white rats Fisher-344 caused specific intoxication accompanied by characteristic pathomorphological changes and, when studied by the immunoperoxidase method in histological sections, could be detected in the blood stream (in plasma) and in the cytoplasm of macrophages (in the lungs and the spleen). The content of the preparation introduced into the animals in the blood stream is directly related to its toxicity, being probably indicative of the relative functional failure of the macrophagal system.


Dynamic participation has recently become a crucial requirement for devising permissionless consensus protocols. This notion, originally formalized by Pass and Shi (ASIACRYPT 2017) through their"sleepy model", captures the essence of a system's ability to handle participants joining or leaving during a protocol execution. A dynamically available consensus protocol preserves safety and liveness while allowing dynamic participation. Blockchain protocols, such as Bitcoin's consensus protocol, have implicitly adopted this concept. In the context of Ethereum's consensus protocol, Gasper, Neu, Tas, and Tse (S&P 2021) presented an attack against LMD-GHOST -- the component of Gasper designed to ensure dynamic availability. Consequently, LMD-GHOST results unable to fulfill its intended function of providing dynamic availability for the protocol. Despite attempts to mitigate this issue, the modified protocol still does not achieve dynamic availability, highlighting the need for more secure dynamically available protocols. In this work, we present RLMD-GHOST, a synchronous consensus protocol that not only ensures dynamic availability but also maintains safety during bounded periods of asynchrony. This protocol is particularly appealing for practical systems where strict synchrony assumptions may not always hold, contrary to general assumptions in standard synchronous protocols. Additionally, we present the"generalized sleepy model", within which our results are proven. Building upon the original sleepy model proposed by Pass and Shi, our model extends it with more generalized and stronger constraints on the corruption and sleepiness power of the adversary. This approach allows us to explore a wide range of dynamic participation regimes, spanning from complete dynamic participation to no dynamic participation, i.e., with every participant online.


India will account for 20 per cent of the world's global workforce in 2020s. The average age of Indian workforce will be 29 years as compared to 37 for the US and China and 45 years for Europe. A need for skill development and skill up gradation among the labour force as a result of challenges that globalization and changing job patterns posed came in the form of increased emphasis on understandings to be developed with respect to 1. Which skills are to be developed? 2. What are the strategies adopted of skill development of rural populace? 3. Has the supply driven strategies been able to cater to market demands? 4. What is the quantum and quality difference in the two? As the emphasis concurrently is on identification of right skills and developing of the same as a bottom-up approach in order to have 500 million skill manpower in the country by 2022 (that is end of 13th five year plan) the paper is an attempt to making a critical appraisal of demand supply realities in a backward district of a backward State in India.


This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Burkina Faso covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, maps, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Burkina Faso.


A 40-year-old male presented to our outpatient department with the chief complaint of a painless mass on his right testis with gradual size increase over the past two months. Physical examination and ultrasound revealed a firm and nontender mass both on the right and on the left testis. The only elevated biomarker was b-hcG (24,7 mIU/mL) and computer tomography (CT) did not reveal any pathology. Bilateral high orchiectomies were performed, without previous frozen storage of the sperm. Histology proved typical seminoma of the left testis and embryonal carcinoma of the right testis. He received two cycles of adjuvant combination chemotherapy with bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin. Six months after the operation no residual tumor or recurrence was observed.


Recent interest in the properties of surfaces in a variety of material based industries has led to the development of instruments. The author describe a relatively inexpensive manually operated ellipsometer for student use by adapting an optical spectrometer on which are mounted a polariser, compensator and analyser. The light sensitive detector was a phototransistor and DC amplification was obtained with an FET operational amplifier in an integrated circuit form. The instrument can be used with or without phase compensation for the analysis of elliptically polarised light in the reflected beam from a specimen mounted on the spectrometer table. Results are given for the optical constants of gold and aluminium over the wavelength range 545-804 nm and for hydroxide film growth up to 130 nm thickness on commercial aluminium exposed to saturated water vapour at 90 degrees C with a radiation wavelength of 804 nm. The angle of incidence on the instrument can be varied and this provides a useful facility to demonstrate the effect of the angle of incidence on sensitivity for surface film thickness measurement.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the diagnosis and treatment of isolated celiac artery (CA) dissection and superior mesenteric artery (SMA) dissection.

METHODS
Integrating clinical data of 119 cases with isolated dissection of the visceral arteries (IDVA) reported in literature and 2 patients with spontaneous isolated dissections of both CA and SMA treated in the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, the diagnosis and treatment of IDVA were analyzed retrospectively.

RESULTS
Among 119 cases reported in the literature, 69 cases were symptomatic. All of the cases were diagnosed by contrast-enhanced abdominal CT or MRI. After IDVA was discovered, surgical treatment and endovascular stent placement was performed in 8 and 5 patients respectively, although the remaining 106 patients were managed conservatively with good results. In our 2 cases, the diagnosis of CA and SMA dissection was established by contrast-enhanced CT and confirmed by conventional angiography. One patient was treated with anticoagulation and antihypertension, and the other patient was treated with endovascular stenting. Both of the patients didn't have discomfort during the follow-up period of 12 and 3 months respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
Contrast-enhanced abdominal CT is the main tool for detection of IDVA. Most of the patients with IDVA can be managed conservatively, but close surveillance with imaging studies is necessary for early recognition of dissection progression. Patients with persistent or relapsed symptoms, and dissection progression, should undergo surgical or endovascular treatment.


&NA; Preclinical neurochemical studies indicate that buspirone and gepirone bind selectively to presynaptic (dorsal raphe) and postsynaptic (hippocampus, cortex) 5‐hydroxytryptamine1A (5‐HT1A) receptor binding sites. Furthermore, in functional neurochemical and electrophysiologic receptor studies, azapirones in general display partial agonist activity at postsynaptic 5‐HT1A receptors linked negatively to adenyl cyclase and appear to demonstrate a similar profile on hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons sensitive to the effects of 5‐HT. Through their action at presynaptic 5‐HT1A receptors, these agents have been shown to dose‐dependently inhibit cortical and hippocampal 5‐HT synthesis while inhibiting the firing of 5‐HT‐containing dorsal raphe neurons, both in vitro and in vivo. These results suggest that the efficacy seen in clinical trials of anxiety and depression may be related to buspirone's and gepirone's complex interaction with presynaptic and postsynaptic 5‐HT1A receptors, which initiate long‐term changes in central 5‐HT neurotransmission.


Despite a centuries-old debate among scientists from different countries, the question about the purposes of criminal punishment remains relevant. The criminal legislation of the Soviet period was inconsistent in formulating the purposes of punishment and repeatedly changed the list of purposes and their wording, therefore, in the criminal law doctrine there were long and fruitless discussions on this issue. They have not stopped to this day, although the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation unambiguously proclaimed the purposes of punishment to be the restoration of social justice, the correction of the convicted person and the prevention of new crimes. The discrepancy between the purposes of punishment in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the purposes of the execution of punishment in the Penal Enforcement Code of the Russian Federation to a certain extent interferes with a uniform interpretation of the purposes of criminal punishment. The paper proves the validity and comprehensive nature of the legislative decision and rejects the importance and possibility of legislative adjustment of the purposes of punishment or supplementing their list with the purposes of punishment, expiation, resocialization of the convict, his re-education, etc.