The efficiency of millicomposting (M, with millipedes), vermicomposting (V – with earthworms), and traditional composting (C – no invertebrates) of vegetal waste was investigated statistically. Composting took place in closed systems to avoid external interferences during the experiments and allow monitoring of the main physico-chemical parameters. The experiments were replicated six times (n = 6). Quality was assessed via analysis of variance (one-way and Welch procedures) and post-hoc comparisons. Temperature profiles were similar in the three composting types. After 92 days, the compost volume produced in V (51%) decreased more than in M (43%) and C (44%) (p = 0.001). Organic carbon, nitrogen contents, and C/N ratios were also similar (all p > 0.1). Vermicomposting produced humus of higher nutritional quality, whereas M leachates yielded higher nutritional levels and maturity degrees. The Ca content was higher in V and M, while K and Mg were higher in V. pH, Ca, Mg, P2O5, and S contents were higher in V than in C (all p < 0,05). The leachate volumes, electrical conductivity, and Na+ and PO43− contents were similar in the three composting types (p > 0.05). pH, K+ and NH4+ contents were higher while the NO3− was lower in V than in M (all p < 0.005). The only difference observed in C was lower pH when compared to those of V. Although all three composting types were efficient in producing mature, high-quality organic fertilizers, the addition of detritivorous animals improved the composting efficiency and the quality of the final products. This study also attested the potential of millicomposting in producing good-quality liquid fertilizers.


ABSTRACT The gene encoding l-rhamnose isomerase (l-RhI) from Pseudomonas stutzeri was cloned into Escherichia coli and sequenced. A sequence analysis of the DNA responsible for the l-RhI gene revealed an open reading frame of 1,290 bp coding for a protein of 430 amino acid residues with a predicted molecular mass of 46,946 Da. A comparison of the deduced amino acid sequence with sequences in relevant databases indicated that no significant homology has previously been identified. An amino acid sequence alignment, however, suggested that the residues involved in the active site of l-RhI from E. coli are conserved in that from P. stutzeri. The l-RhI gene was then overexpressed in E. coli cells under the control of the T5 promoter. The recombinant clone, E. coli JM109, produced significant levels of l-RhI activity, with a specific activity of 140 U/mg and a volumetric yield of 20,000 U of soluble enzyme per liter of medium. This reflected a 20-fold increase in the volumetric yield compared to the value for the intrinsic yield. The recombinant l-RhI protein was purified to apparent homogeneity on the basis of three-step chromatography. The purified recombinant enzyme showed a single band with an estimated molecular weight of 42,000 in a sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel. The overall enzymatic properties of the purified recombinant l-RhI protein were the same as those of the authentic one, as the optimal activity was measured at 60°C within a broad pH range from 5.0 to 11.0, with an optimum at pH 9.0.


This dissertation examines forest owners' views of forest-related decision support services and knowledge use in them in private forests in Finland. Decision support services provide information through forest management planning and advice. The decision-making about and implementation of forest management take place in a multi-actor network that produces, distributes, and utilises knowledge in technical and social knowledge systems. The thesis is based on two surveys, extensive focus group data and field notes from workshops. It adopts a mixed methods approach. The results show that forest owners with timber production objectives considered the current decision support services most useful. Those who emphasised nature values or had multiple objectives were less satisfied. Forest management preferences are more versatile than what they appear based on overall ownership objectives. The majority of owners are interested in diversifying their forest management to increase other forest functions alongside timber production. Two knowledge systems, technical and social, influence knowledge use in forest management. Several points of discontinuity were identified in knowledge flows within and between forest-related actors and organisations. The codified, technical knowledge system dominates knowledge production and use. The importance of the social knowledge system has not been fully recognised. Independence from time and place, gratuitousness and ease-of-use make forest-related e-service more inviting. Lack of forest inventory data or its perceived low quality and discordance with forest owner objectives deter owners from using e-service. Forest owners expect decision support services to acknowledge their diverse and multiple forest use objectives. Information services on the management of nature values and integration of various objectives are needed. Knowledge flows are weakened by the domination of codified, forest resource-related knowledge, social structures and practices that inhibit the diffusion of knowledge within an organisation, and emphasis on the economic targets. Organisations on the forest sector are in key positions for changing the prevailing decision support practices, but so far the development of new practices has been slow.


Applications of adaptive neural network models, i.e. models that are updated while they are used, are becoming more widespread. Adjustments to an adaptive model are based on a feedback which is collected while the model is in operation. While changing model parameters in production can improve the performance, itcomes with inherent risks. In particular, any erroneous adjustment to an online model may reduce the performanceand be detrimental to control applications and costly to the business. At the same time, mistakes in feedback are sometimes unavoidable. Therefore, an adaptively trained model with old data is sub-optimal unless the new revisions are taken into account. In this paper, we investigate the effect of a faulty feedback on the performance of an e-commerce customer identification neural network model. We first investigate the impact of feedback error on an adaptive model's performance. We then examine a technique to undo the incorrect adjustments to the model by re-training the adaptive model by a corrected feedback. Our results showthe majority of lossinmodel performance due to the feedback error is recoveredby re-training the adaptive model with the new corrected data.


We consider random medium access schemes for devices that support sleep modes, i.e. turning off electronic compartments for energy saving. Due to hardware limitations, sleep mode transitions cannot occur at the medium access timescale. Each terminal can choose when to turn on/off and its probability to transmit on an arbitrary slot. Thus, we develop a two level model, consisting of a fast timescale for transmission scheduling and a slower timescale for the sleep mode transitions. We take a game theoretic approach to model the user interactions and show that the energy constraints modify the medium access problem significantly, decreasing the price of anarchy. Our results give valuable insights on the energy-throughput tradeoff for contention based systems.


Abstract Interleukin (IL)-17 have been reported to be associated with the pathogenesis of colorectal cancer (CRC). Few studies investigated the association between IL-17 gene polymorphisms and risk of CRC with inconsistent findings. Thus, we recruited 352 CRC cases and 433 controls in a Chinese population and their genotyping was done using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method. Our data showed that IL-17A rs2275913 polymorphism was associated with the increased risk of CRC, while no association was observed for IL-17F rs763780 polymorphism. Stratified analyses revealed that the significant association was also obtained in the females, smokers, drinkers and age ≥ 60 years groups for rs2275913 polymorphism. Moreover, the CC and/or GC genotype of rs2275913 polymorphism were correlated with TNM stage and lymph node metastasis. No association was shown between IL-17F rs763780 polymorphism and clinical characteristics of CRC. In conclusion, our data indicate that IL-17A rs2275913 polymorphism but not IL-17F rs763780 polymorphism contributes to increased risk for CRC patients in this Chinese population.


The main objective of this study was to examine whether operating cash flows have incremental information beyond operating net income in explaining dividend changes for a sample of Jordanian industrial firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) during the period 2010-2016 Arguments for operating cash flow information suggest that it is better than accrual net income in reflecting the firm performance and in measuring the firm liquidity. Both performance and liquidity are viewed as significant factors influencing a firm's dividend policy. To examine this, operating cash flow, operating net income and lagged dividends were incorporated in a regression model. The results of this model indicated that the only significant variables explaining dividend changes were operating net income and lagged dividends with positive and negative coefficients, respectively. An attempt was also made to address the problem of nonlinearity in the relationship between cash flow and dividend changes. The sample of the industrial firms were divided into two groups (high growth and low growth firms) based on market to book value ratio. The results of the two regression models provided evidence consistent with the superiority of accrual operating net income over operating cash flow in explaining dividend changes. The results of this study suggest that Jordanian industrial firms base their dividend policies on accrual net income rather than on cash flows. One possible consequence of this suggestion is that cash dividends are not internally financed and as a result, this would deteriorate the liquidity and solvency position of a firm.


Active silicon photonic devices, which dynamically control the flow of light, have received significant attention for their use in on-chip optical networks. High-speed active silicon photonic modulators and switches rely on the plasma dispersion effect, where a change in carrier concentration causes a variation in the refractive index. The necessary electron and hole concentration change can be introduced either by optical pumping, or by direct electrical injection and depletion. We demonstrate a fast photoinduced absorption effect in low loss hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) waveguides deposited at a temperature as low as 190°C. Significant modulation (M% ~90%) occurs with a 1 mm-long device. We attribute the enhanced modulation to the significantly larger free-carrier absorption effect of a-Si:H. The complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) compatible technology of a-Si:H could be considered as a promising candidate to enable an easy back-end integration with standard microelectronics processes.


PURPOSE
COMPARE (COMparing treatment options for ProstAte cancer) aimed to evaluate and quantify the trade-offs patients make between different aspects of active surveillance and definitive therapy.

METHODS
A Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) tool was used to elicit patients' preferences for different treatment characteristics in 34 urology departments. Patients with localised prostate cancer completed the DCE within one week of being diagnosed and before they made treatment decisions. The DCE was pre-tested (N=5) and piloted (n=106) with patients. Patients chose their preferred treatment profile based on six characteristics: treatment type (active surveillance, focal therapy, radical therapy), return to normal activities, erectile function, urinary function, not needing more cancer treatment and 10-15 year cancer-specific survival. Different tools were designed for low-intermediate (n=468) and high-risk (n=166) patients. An error-components conditional logit model was used to estimate preferences and trade-offs between treatment characteristics.

RESULTS
Low-intermediate risk patients were willing to trade 6.99% absolute decrease in survival to have active surveillance over definitive therapy. They were willing to trade 0.75%, 0.46% and 0.19% absolute decrease in survival for a one-month reduction in time-to-return to normal activities, and 1% absolute improvements in urinary and sexual function, respectively. High-risk patients were willing to trade 3.10%, 1.04% and 0.41% absolute decrease in survival for a one-month reduction in time-to-return to normal activities and 1% absolute improvements in urinary and sexual function, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
Patients with low-intermediate risk prostate cancer preferred active surveillance to definitive therapy. Patients of all risks were willing to trade-off cancer-specific survival for improved quality-of-life.Registration:clinicaltrials.gov Registration Identifier NCT01177865Funding:Medical Research Council (UK) (grant reference: G1002509).


Skrypnyk, Iryna Unstable Feature Relevance in Classification Tasks Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, 2011, 232 p. (Jyvaskyla Studies in Computing, ISSN 1456-5390;152) ISBN 978-951-39-4607-4 (nid.) ISBN 978-951-39-4608-1 (PDF) Finnish summary Diss. Over the last decade, data mining has gone through a significant transformation influenced by advanced data collection technologies. Today data mining faces the challenge of dealing with increasingly complex data structures. As a result, data often exhibits instability in measured attribute values (features). In other words, the set of relevant features is not the same through the entire set of domain examples. Considering this problem from another angle, data includes regions with local properties that, in particular, differ from each other with regard to the feature relevance profiles. Global models, therefore, cannot reflect the essential knowledge about the data structure. This thesis presents a description of the unstable feature relevance problem in classification tasks, elaborating the concept of heterogeneous classification problems and introducing different types of feature space heterogeneity. It also suggests a multi-model solution derived from the definition of a subproblem as a group of instances with easier class discrimination and lower complexity in the subspace of locally relevant features. The solution is presented within an ensemble learning framework. The search strategies, suggested for decomposition of classification problems with unstable feature relevance, express different levels of granularity with respect to classes. Evaluation of the candidate subproblems is executed through profiles of feature relevance. These profiles are vectors of weights obtained from feature merit measures and, alternatively, a result of distance metric adaptation. Additional measures of complexity, including class boundaries and density-based measures, are suggested to evaluate decomposition and to serve as preliminary heterogeneity tests. This research contributes towards reaching complementary data analysis goals on classification problems and revealing important insights on the data structure and its complexity. The effects on classification performance were studied through numerous experiments on synthetic, benchmark, and real data from a biomedical research domain. It was found that extraction of subproblems is possible in many cases and it provides meaningful data partitioning results. In many cases it also leads to improvement in predictive performance.


Studies a representative of an important class of emerging applications: a parallel data mining workload. The application, extracted from the IBM Intelligent Miner, identifies groups of records that are mathematically similar, based on a neural network model called a self-organizing map. We examine and compare, in detail, two implementations of the application: (1) temporal locality or working set size; (2) spatial locality and memory block utilization; (3) communication characteristics and scalability; and (4) translation lookaside buffer (TLB) performance. First, we find that the working set hierarchy of the application is governed by two parameters, namely the size of an input record and the size of prototype array; it is independent of the number of input records. Second, the application shows good spatial locality, with the implementation optimized for sparse data sets having slightly worse spatial locality. Third, due to the batch update scheme, the application bears very low communication. Finally, a two-way set-associative TLB may result in severely skewed TLB performance in a multiprocessor environment, caused by the large discrepancy in the number of conflict misses. Increasing the set associativity is more effective in mitigating the problem than increasing the TLB size.


Heterogeneity in persistent object systems gives rise to a range of interoperability problems. For instance, a given object-oriented database (OODB) may contain data objects originally defined, created and persistently stored using the capabilities provided by several distinct programming languages, and an application may need to uniformly process those data objects. We call such a database "polylingual" and term the corresponding interoperability problem the "polylingual access" problem. While many of today''s OODBs support multiple programming language interfaces (we term such systems "multilingual"), none provide transparent polylingual access to persistent data. Instead, present day interoperability mechanisms generally rely on external data definition languages (such as ODMG''s ODL), thus reintroducing impedance mismatch and forcing developers to anticipate heterogeneity in their applications, or depend upon direct use of such low-level constructs as the foreign language interface mechanisms provided in individual programming languages. Using such mechanisms make polylingual access painful. In this paper we introduce PolySPIN, an approach supporting polylingual persistence, interoperability and naming for object-oriented databases. We describe our current realization of PolySPIN as extensions to the TI/Arpa Open Object-Oriented Database and give examples demonstrating how our {\sc PolySPIN} prototype supports transparent, painless polylingual access between C++ and CLOS applications. (Appeared in Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Persistent Object Systems, Cape May, NJ, May, 1996)


In the near future work will no longer be a place, but a range of activities that can be conducted virtually anywhere and at any time. This paper gives a comprehensive view of the critical management issues that need to be considered when providing a responsive and effective human support service to underpin a wide variety of transient work patterns, undertaken at different venues and at dispersed locations. In the future, facilities management may need to move nearer to the core of an organisation's business in order to support the "free‐style" deployment of its human resources to working practices that are increasingly space and time flexible.


Abstract Operations with nucleic acids are among the main means of studying the mechanisms of gene function and developing novel methods of molecular medicine and gene therapy. These endeavours usually imply the necessity of nucleic acid storage and delivery into eukaryotic cells. In spite of diversity of the existing dedicated techniques, all of them have their limitations. Thus, a recent notion of using ionic liquids in manipulations of nucleic acids has been attracting significant attention lately. Due to their unique physicochemical properties, in particular, their micro-structuring impact and tunability, ionic liquids are currently applied as solvents and stabilizing media in chemical synthesis, electrochemistry, biotechnology, and other areas. Here, we review the current knowledge on interactions between nucleic acids and ionic liquids and discuss potential advantages of applying the latter in delivery of the former into eukaryotic cells.


The Chiron-1 user interface system demonstrates key techniques that enable a strict separation of an application from its user interface. These techniques include separating the control-flow aspects of the application and user interface: they are concurrent and may contain many threads. Chiron also separates windowing and look-and-feel issues from dialogue and abstract presentation decisions via mechanisms employing a client-server architecture. To separate application code from user interface code, user interface agents called artists are attached to instances of application abstract data types (ADTs). Operations on ADTs within the application implicitly trigger user interface activities within the artists. Multiple artists can be attached to ADTs, providing multiple views and alternative forms of access and manipulation by either a single user or by multiple users. Each artist and the application run in separate threads of control. Artists maintain the user interface by making remote calls to an abstract depiction hierarchy in the Chiron server, insulting the user interface code from the specifics of particular windowing systems and toolkits. The Chiron server and clients execute in separate processes. The client-server architecture also supports multilingual systems: mechanisms are demonstrated that support clients written in programming languages other than that of the server while nevertheless supporting object-oriented server concepts. The system has been used in several universities and research and development projects. It is available by anonymous ftp.


Empirical Models for the prediction of density and refractive index of optical thin film materials as a function of processing parameters during ion assisted evaporation have been developed for Ta2O5 (TiO2, SiO2 and MgF2 under way). These models have been implemented in a computer program for the simulation of evaporation processes in order to predict the spatial distribution of film thickness, film density and film refractive index on optical substrates. Good agreement between theory and experiment is achieved.


OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to demonstrate the epidemiology and risk of occupational exposure to HIV, HBV and HCV among health care workers (HCWs) and highlight areas where greater training is required.

METHODS
The study population included 13 health care workers; 5 males (38.5%) and 8 females (61.5%), mean age 34.15 +/- 6.8 years including 3 doctors (23.1%), 2 laboratory scientist (15.4%), 1 laboratory technician (7.7%), 6 medical students (46.2%) and 1 trainee laboratory assistant (7.7%). The care and follow-up provided to the health care workers in the 500 -bed tertiary health hospital that had percutaneous exposure to patient's blood between June 2002 and June 2005 were analyzed. All exposed health care workers were evaluated and offered follow up counseling. Five milliliters of blood from each of the HCWs and the source patients were screened by immmuno-enzymatic testing for HIV, HBV, and HCV.

RESULTS
Exposures were concentrated in few areas of the hospital; pediatrics (46.2%); surgery (15.4%); obstetrics and gynecology (7.7%) and laboratory unit (30.8%) (divided by 2 = 7.72, p = 0.05). Risk of exposure was significantly higher among females (61.5%) compared to males (38.5%) (divided by 2 = 29.96, p = 0.001). All exposed HCWs were seen and offered post exposure prophylaxis within 24 hours of exposure. All the exposed health care workers were sero-negative to HIV, HBsAg and anti-HCV at exposure. The source patients were known in all cases. Evidence of HIV was present in 5 (38.5%); 1 (7.7%) had HBV while none had HCV infection. Of all the HCWs who completed the follow-up, only 1(7.7%) confirmed case of HBV seroconversion occurred in a HCW who was not previously vaccinated against HBV but who received post exposure HBV vaccination. Exposure rate was significantly higher among house officers 7 (53.9%) followed by registrars 3 (23.1%) and laboratory scientist 3 (23.1) (divided by 2 = 74.79, p = 0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS
There is need to address the issue of occupational exposure in Africa by providing training on universal precaution, phlebotomy, modifying procedures that have high risk, developing institutional policy for handling of sharps and post-exposure management of health care workers, provision of protective HBV vaccine for all HCWs coupled with the provision of post exposure prophylaxis for exposed HCWs.


This paper presents work completed in order to investigate the importance of magnetic shunts in transverse flux machines. Two types of transverse flux machines with different configurations were designed and tested in the laboratory. The first type of machine is a transverse flux generator with inner rotor. This machine was designed according to one of the patents. The second type of the machine is a transfer flux generator with double coil. Both types of the generators were designed in such a way so that it was possible to implement magnetic shunts inside the machines. Finite-element method analysis and experimental results showed that transverse flux machines without magnetic shunts had a number of disadvantages compared to those with magnetic shunts. These disadvantages are: higher flux leakage in the stator cores, partial cancelation of flux linkage in the coils, higher cogging torque, and increased torque ripple. This paper showed that magnetic shunts played a significant role in the performance of transverse flux machines. As study showed, magnetic shunts complicate a manufacturing process and increase the weight of the machine. However, power to weight ratio of the machines with magnetic shunts is higher than that of the machines without magnetic shunts.


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

Radiation therapy plays an important role in controlling tumor growth in cancers, including neuroblastoma, one of the most frequent extra cranial solid tumors in children. However, tumor radioresistance remains to be a major obstacle in clinical radiotherapy. In this study, we explored titanium dioxide core-shell nanocomposites conjugated with DOPAC (DOPAC-NCs) as radiosensitizers. Human neuroblastoma SK-N-AS and SK-N-DZ cell cultures were treated with or without of increasing concentrations of DOPAC-NCs (200-3000 nM) prior to irradiation. One hour later, cells were irradiated with a single dose of gamma radiation (0 - 10 Gy). Seventy-two hours following radiation treatment, cell proliferation/viability was assessed by MTS assay. Sham-irradiated cells served as a control. We have found that treatment of SK-N-AS and SK-N-DZ cells with DOPAC-NCs affected cell survival in a dose-dependent manner. Our data also demonstrated the evidence of DOPAC-NCs radiosensitization to gamma radiation. For examples, cell survival of SK-N-AS cells irradiated with 5 Gy and pre-treated with 1000 nM of DOPAC-NCs was as low as 35.6%. Oppositely, without radiation, treatment with the same concentration of DOPAC-NCs had no effect on cell viability.

These findings provide in vitro evidence that DOPAC-NCs may be developed and employed as radiosensitizers in neuroblastoma radiation therapy.

Citation Format: Salida Mirzoeva, William Liu, James R. Bolling, Karna R. Shah, Carol Hirschmugl, Julia Sedlmair, Tatjana Paunesku, Gayle E. Woloschak. In vitro radiosensitization of human neuroblastoma cells with iron oxide - titanium dioxide core-shell nanocomposites conjugated with 3,4-Dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC). [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 4918. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-4918


Humans can communicate with each other by gestures. This paper presents a robot system with such capability. The robot detects its user by recognizing his/her face. It can accept his/her commands given by gestures. The user may use unknown gestures to the robot. If the robot does not respond to his/her gesture, the user usually iterates the same gesture. The robot detects this repetitive pattern as an intentional gesture by which the user wants to give it some order. Then it shows a little action according to the meaning of the gesture that the robot guesses. It observes the user's reaction to its action. If he/she continues the same pattern gesture, the robot considers that its understanding is right, completing the action. It also registers the pattern as a gesture of the guessed meaning. Otherwise, it iterates the same procedure by taking another action as a candidate of the meaning. We have implemented such interactive capability on our intelligent wheelchair.


Heteroepitaxy of GaP on Si(100) and GaAs(100) is investigated under organometallic chemical vapor deposition conditions using combined spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and non-normal-incidence reflectance-difference (-anisotropy) spectroscopy. Real-time monitoring greatly assists in identifying optimum starting surfaces for heteroepitaxy since prolonged exposure to PH3 results in roughening of Si(100) and GaAs(100) surfaces, in agreement with previous work. Real-time SE data of GaP on Si indicate that under our conditions GaP and Si interpenetrate as optically identifiable materials over the first 75 A, suggesting that either trimethylgallium or a reaction by-product can act as a catalyst for the formation of Si{111} facets.


Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 45, 2004

3901

We previously established that conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) has an inhibitory effect on skin tumor promotion in mice subjected to a two-stage carcinogenesis model. In addition, other recent evidence suggests that CLA prevents colon and breast cancer progression. Although the preventive effect of CLA on tumorigenesis is now well recognized, very little is known about the molecular mechanisms involved. We hypothesize that CLA may elicit its response in one of two ways, 1) inhibition of inflammatory responses and cell growth signals, and/or 2) stimulation of terminal differentiation or apoptotic events. To investigate the effect of CLA on cell growth and apoptosis, several genetically distinct colon cancer cell lines (HT-29, HCT 116, HCT-15) were treated with 100 μM CLA for 2 and 4 days. CLA decreased mRNA levels of cyclooxygenase-2 (a marker of inflammation) by 20-30% in HT-29 cells as compared to untreated cells. No changes in bcl-2 or bax protein were detected in all cell lines tested; however, there was a 2-fold increase in active caspase-3 protein. Preliminary data using immunofluorescence staining and confocal techniques, show increases in bak protein levels and cytoskeletal re-organization with CLA treatment as compared to untreated cells. We are currently investigating specific cytoskeletal proteins that may be affected by CLA. In addition, colons from S129 mice fed either standard AIN-76A diet or basal diet supplemented with 2% CLA were isolated and examined for changes in gene expression by cDNA micro-array. Results showed CLA induced genes involved in differentiation, apoptosis and anti-tumor growth. Examples include cathepsin E (3.3 fold increase) and apoptosis associated tyrosine kinase (2.4 fold increase). Consequently, CLA inhibited expression of genes involved in proliferation (BMP 15) and cell cycle progression (cyclin E1). Taken together our data suggest that the anti-tumorigenic activity of CLA may result from a combined effect of decreasing inflammation and proliferation biomarkers followed by an increase in apoptotic events. This work was supported by NIH RR-017698 and AICR 01A013.


Motivated by chemical reaction rules, we introduce a rule-based epidemiological framework for the mathematical modelling of the COVID-19 pandemic which lies the foundations for further study of this class of models. Here we stress that we do not have a specific model in mind, but a whole collection of models which can be transformed into each other, or represent different aspects of the pandemic. Each single model is based on a mathematical formulation that we call a rule-based system. They have several advantages, for example that they can be both interpreted both stochastically and deterministically without changing the model structure. Rule-based systems should be easier to communicate to non-specialists, when compared to differential equations. Due to their combinatorial nature, the rule-based model framework we propose is ideal for systematic mathematical modelling, systematic links to statistics, data analysis in general and machine learning. Most importantly, the framework can be used inside a Bayesian model selection algorithm, which can extend unsupervised machine learning technology to gain mechanistic insight through mathematical models. We first introduce the Bayesian model selection algorithm and give an introduction to rule-based systems. We propose precursor models, all consistent with our rule-based framework and relevant for the COVID-19 pandemic. We complement the models with numerical results and, for some of them, we include analytical results such as the calculation of the number of new infections generated by an infected person during their infectious period. We conclude the article with an in depth discussion of the role of mathematical modelling through the COVID-19 pandemic.


We demonstrate the fabrication of organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) with various emission colours by blending and/or doping the polymer host matrix with different dopants. We firstly present the preparation of elementary OLEDs i.e. blue, green, orange, and cool white diodes. Then, we exhibit the fabrication of light-emitting devices with particular emission colours such as magenta, red, and warm white electroluminescence. Blue emission from polyfluorene (PFO), green emission from polyfluorene-alt- benzothiadiazole (F8BT), and orange emission from polyphenylene-vinylene (MEH-PPV), together with the red emission from Lumogen F Red have been mixed in different combination to vary the emission colour in OLEDs.


The surface‐located M protein functions to protect Streptococcus pyogenes (the group A streptococcus) from phagocytosis by polymorphonuclear leukocytes. It has been suggested that this protection results from the ability of M protein to bind factor H, a serum protein that can inhibit the activation of complement. Among different serological variants of M protein, the C‐repeat domain is highly conserved and is exposed on the bacterial surface. This domain has been implicated in binding to complement factor H and in M‐protein‐mediated adherence of streptococci to human keratinocytes in the cutaneous epithelium. In this study, we constructed an S. pyogenes mutant strain which expresses an M6 protein from which the entire C‐repeat domain was deleted. As predicted, this mutant did not adhere well to human keratinocytes and was unable to bind to factor H. Unexpectedly, the mutant was able to survive and multiply in human blood. Therefore, while the binding of factor H and the facilitation of adherence to keratinocytes appear to involve recognition of the C‐repeat domain, a region of the M‐protein molecule distinct from the C‐repeat domain confers upon S. pyogenes its ability to resist phagocytosis.


There is substantial evidence for a role of dietary antioxidants in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, but evidence for a protective effect of vitamin C is inconclusive. Two recent reports add to the supporting evidence and provide some new observations. The first study, a 5-year prospective population study of Finnish men, suggests that vitamin C-deficient men may be at increased risk of myocardial infarction. The second study suggests that vitamin C may play a role in preventing manifestations of existing coronary artery disease, rather than in limiting disease progression. Although these results suffer from the limitations of observational studies, they provide impetus for further investigation.


Deep supervision, or known as 'intermediate supervision' or 'auxiliary supervision', is to add supervision at hidden layers of a neural network. This technique has been increasingly applied in deep neural network learning systems for various computer vision applications recently. There is a consensus that deep supervision helps improve neural network performance by alleviating the gradient vanishing problem, as one of the many strengths of deep supervision. Besides, in different computer vision applications, deep supervision can be applied in different ways. How to make the most use of deep supervision to improve network performance in different applications has not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive in-depth review of deep supervision in both theories and applications. We propose a new classification of different deep supervision networks, and discuss advantages and limitations of current deep supervision networks in computer vision applications.


Objective: Pediatric Crohn's disease (CD) has a more aggressive phenotype and course than in adults. Many patients develop complications that require surgery. The aim of this study was to identify the factors associated with increased risk for surgical intervention in pediatric patients with CD. Subjects and Methods: This study is a retrospective review of medical records. We analyzed the following variables: sex, age at diagnosis, presenting symptoms, duration of symptoms before diagnosis, disease location and severity, the presence of extraintestinal manifestations, and the presence of anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae antibodies. Univariate analysis using the Mann-Whitney test and Fisher's exact test was performed to detect the factors associated with surgery. Potential risk factors with p < 0.05 were further analyzed using a multivariate binary logistic regression model. Results: Fifty-seven patients (27 girls and 30 boys) were included in the analysis. More than one-fourth of them (28.1%) required surgical management. Female sex (p = 0.043), disease behavior (p = 0.012), and the presence of perianal disease at diagnosis (p < 0.001) were the variables associated with surgical intervention. Stricturing disease (B2) (odds ratio [OR], 24.944; p = 0.016), stricturing and penetrating disease (B2B3) (OR, 28.276; p = 0.011), and the presence of perianal disease at diagnosis (OR, 95.802; p = 0.001) were independent risk factors for surgery. Female sex was associated with surgery without being an independent risk factor. Conclusion: Females with B2 or B2B3 or the presence of perianal disease at diagnosis are at a higher risk for surgery and should be considered for more aggressive medical treatments.


Aim. The aim of this retrospective study was to identify the clinical, radiological, and histological characteristics of patients diagnosed with osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ) and treated at the Oral and Maxillo-Facial Surgery Clinic of the Emergency Clinical County Hospital of Targu Mures between 2017 and 2022. The study aimed to analyze correlations between patient characteristics, particularly their history of bone modifying agent use or local radiotherapy during cancer treatment, in order to identify specific patient profiles that could aid in evaluating treatment response and guide individualized treatment strategies.
Methods. Fifty-two patients diagnosed with ONJ were included in the study. The patients were divided into two groups based on their medical history: the bone modifying agent use group and the radiotherapy group. Clinical, radiological, and histological data were collected and analyzed. Statistical analysis, including p-values, was performed to compare patient characteristics between the two groups.
Results. Patients in the radiotherapy group were significantly older than those in the bone modifying agent use group (66 years vs. 56.9 years, p=0.001). There was a higher proportion of males in the radiotherapy group compared to the bone modifying agent use group (90% vs. 22%, p<0.001). Jaw involvement was more prevalent in the radiotherapy group compared to the bone modifying agent use group (95% vs. 66%, p=0.018). Histological analysis showed a similar frequency of Actinomyces species in both groups (50% vs. 34%, p=0.264).
Conclusions. The findings of this study suggest the existence of two distinct patient profiles based on their treatment history (bone modifying agent use vs. radiotherapy) in ONJ. Patients in the radiotherapy group were older, predominantly male, and exhibited a higher prevalence of jaw involvement. Histological analysis revealed no significant differences in Actinomyces species frequency between the two groups. These distinct patient profiles may indicate different responses to treatment, emphasizing the need for individualized treatment strategies tailored to specific patient characteristics. Further research is warranted to validate these findings and develop personalized approaches for managing ONJ.


The asymmetric decay of multiply charged fullerene ions C60q+ in charge states q = 5–8 has been studied by analysing the correlation between different fragments. Binary processes as well as sequential emission of several neutral or charged small particles is observed. Particularly, we observe a delayed emission of C2+ and C4+ fragments on the µs-time scale, which is competing with evaporation processes. With increasing charge q the characteristic lifetime of the fullerene ions decreases slightly, and the emission of C2+ becomes more important with respect to the C2 evaporation.


Purpose: Cervical total disc replacement (TDR) has become an alternative to fusion (ACDF) in the surgical treatment of cervical radiculopathy with the promise of preserving motion in the affected segment and of avoiding accelerated degeneration of the adjacent levels. Nowadays there are numerous prospective, randomised and controlled studies comparing the clinical outcome of patients with both therapeutical options. Since cervical prostheses are much more expensive than cages it is crucial to compare the clinical benefit of both implants on the basis of a larger amount of patient data.
Methods: A systematic data base search and study review identified 11 prospective, randomized and controlled studies that compared the clinical outcome after ACDF or TDR using at least the scores of NDI, VAS for neck pain and VAS for arm pain after a follow-up of at least 2 years. 2532 cases were included in the statistical analysis that compared the mean values of the clinical scores.
Results: There were no statistically significant difference between the ACDF group and the TDR group in the clinical outcome scores (NDI, VAS neck, VAS arm) 2 years after surgery although some of the included studies found differences.
Conclusion: ACDF and cervical TDR generate the same clinical results 2 years after surgery in regard to pain relief. Some of the included studies give proof of a better range of motion and less adjacent level degeneration in the TDR group. Thus, this more expensive option is only indicated in younger patients with soft-disc herniation.


Abstract Much African land currently has low productivity and has attracted investors leasing land as a speculative option on higher future prices or productivity. To be beneficial land deals need to induce productivity enhancing investments. Some of these will be publicly provided (infrastructure, agronomic knowledge), and some can only be provided by 'pioneer' investors who discover what works and create demonstration effects. Such pioneers can be rewarded for the positive externalities they create by being granted options on large areas of land. However, pioneers must be separated from speculators by screening and by requirements to work a fraction of the land.


This work presents the evolution of concepts in behavior analysis, especially in the writings of Skinner, from the definition of operant behavior and reinforcement contingency to processes of selection by consequences, following the development of a conceptual language that covers both the behavior of molluscs and the metacontingencies included in the constitution of a country. Skinner's first papers used the terminology developed by Pavlov in his studies of conditioned reflexes to deal with behavior in general. From Skinner's doctoral dissertation to the papers published in the 80's there was an evolution, followed by the field of behavior analysis, which today uses the same, sophisticated language to deal with complex issues like cultural practices and the survival of cultures.


First-principles calculations of two second-order optical response functions as well as the dielectric function for 4-nitro-4(')-methylbenzylidene aniline are performed. Specifically, we evaluate the dielectric function and the second-harmonic generation (SHG) response coefficient over a wide frequency range. Electronic structure obtained from the full-potential projected augmented wave method is adopted in the calculation of optical properties. The calculated results of the refractive indices and the SHG are in good agreement with the experimental values. The linear and nonlinear optical spectra are analyzed and the origins of the peaks in the spectra are discussed in terms of the calculated electronic structure. It is found that the origin of the large nonlinear optical susceptibility is the charge transfer due to the strong "push-pull" effect. The study of the contributions of different transitions to the SHG coefficients shows that the virtual electron process is main. The contribution to the largest component chi(11) ((2)) of the virtual hole process is about 30% of the total static limit of the SHG coefficient. The prominent features in the spectrum of chi(11) ((2)) are successfully correlated with the features of the linear dielectric function epsilon(omega) in terms of single-photon and two-photon resonances.


We introduce a general single index semiparametric measurement error model for the case that the main covariate of interest is measured with error and modeled parametrically, and where there are many other variables also important to the modeling. We propose a semiparametric bias-correction approach to estimate the effect of the covariate of interest. The resultant estimators are shown to be root-n consistent, asymptotically normal and locally efficient. Comprehensive simulations and an analysis of an empirical data set are performed to demonstrate the finite sample performance and the bias reduction of the locally efficient estimators.


We have developed a fluorine-free metal-organic decomposition method using acrylic acid as the solvent for the synthesis of GdBCO superconducting thin films. Commonly used propionic acid was also used to make a comparison with acrylic acid. Acrylic acid was found to be polymerized during drying, resulting in high thermal stability of the precursor solution. Due to the elevated decomposition temperature of the organic compounds in the acrylic-acid-based precursor, the formation of intermediate phases such as CuO was found delayed; therefore, the grain growth and phase segregation were suppressed. The superior quality of pyrolyzed films induced by the use of polymerizable acrylic acid is reflected in the Jc of the GdBCO films, which achieved 1.2MA/ cm2.


The major molecules associated with Alzheimer's disease, the phosphorylated protein tau and the 42 amino acid peptide, amyloid-β (Aβ), have recently been analyzed in yeast. These yeast studies have provided major new insights into the effects of tau and Aβ and, at the same time, offered new approaches to rapidly search for chemicals that may be involved in prevention of Alzheimer's disease. The following review summarizes the role of yeast and its contribution in Alzheimer's disease research, and highlights important studies that have been conducted in this model organism.


Tourism has an international market, but marketing strategies need to be build up from the basic marketing inputs used in domestic tourism. Cultural differences (language and social usages), political differences (Income and its distribution and currency regulation), and geographical differences (topography and demography) are of supreme importance in the tourism and travel market. These environmental influences and their relationship to parallel influences in a particular region facilitate relocation of promising tourist markets. Marketing strategy inputs need to be adjusted to foreign markets. The tourist products (attractions) require simplification and adjustment to local differences in taste, price and quality levels. The long distance to an overseas market requires a concern with transportation and distribution; Differences in wholesaling and retailing require the use of different marketing channels. Prices must reflect the additional Costs of transportation, customers and other controls. Promotion needs adjustment to variation in travel media, availability of sales personnel and other promotional inputs. As the level of international tourism increases, the entire organization is directed towards the tourist and travel market.


A laboratory system for studying the design of knowledge-based systems to support a manager in the development and execution of operational plans is described. The system, called ACS.1 for Automated Command Support, operates in the simulated environment of a naval air squadron, but the techniques used are believed applicable to a wide spectrum of environments requiring the planning of operations, the administration and monitoring of approved plans, and the retrospectrive analysis of completed operations. The development of ACS.1 has shown that the concept is feasible and has included the development of programming techniques to support it. The design of ACS.1 is predicated on the importance of system flexibility. This quality is considered essential to permit incremental growth of the system, to facilitate its adaptation to a changing environment or to new requirements, and to enable the manager to intervene in exceptional situations. Much of the design of ACS.1 was chosen to provide flexibility. As viewed from the top level, ACS.1 is highly modular, with coordination being achieved through a process of negotiation carried on via messages. The manager can intervene in this process in a central switching unit called the message handler. He can, for example, direct that certain messages be rerouted to new modules or to the terminal. This is a useful capability, facilitating the orderly incremental growth of the system, as well as permitting alteration of the system's behavior in preplanned ways to meet particular needs.


ABSTRACT Clinical Relevance Contact lens multipurpose solutions (MPSs) contain several components that have the potential to cause corneal epithelial cell toxicity. Evaluating the components and the toxic effect of MPS should be considered for effective eye care. Background The cytotoxic and wound healing effects of five commercially available MPSs on human corneal epithelial cells (HCECs) are is investigated. Methods The following commercially available MPSs were used: Queen's PLURISOL®, Frenz®, Boston SIMPLUS®, DL+PLUS EYE® (DL), and NEW YORK DEFINE® (NY). The proliferation of HCECs exposed to each MPS for 1, 6, and 24 h and the cytotoxicity of these solutions were analyzed using methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium-based colorimetric and lactate dehydrogenase leakage assays, respectively. The cellular morphology was evaluated by inverted phase-contrast and electron microscopy. A scratch-wound assay was performed to measure wound widths 24 h after confluent HCEC monolayers were scratch-wounded. Results The tested MPS had a time-dependent inhibitory effect on HCEC proliferation and cytotoxicity, significantly at 24 h after exposure (p< 0.05 in all MPSs). HCECs exposed to MPS detached from the bottom of the culture dishes, showed degenerative changes such as loss of microvilli, cytoplasmic vacuole formation and nuclear condensation, and decreased wound healing, compared to the controls (p< 0.001 in Boston, DL and NY). Among the tested MPS, DL and NY were more cytotoxic and showed less wound healing. Conclusion MPS has a toxic effect on HCECs, which is dependent on the concentration of the disinfecting component. Since the components that constitute the MPS are absorbed and retained in the lens, cautious scrutiny of the concentration and attention to lens cleaning are warranted to mitigate the related cytotoxicity.


This article deals with the problem of distributed filtering of periodic systems over sensor networks under event-triggered communications, based on a piecewise impulsive method. The continuous-time periodic system is approximated by several linear time-invariant subsystems through a piecewise constant method. The sensor network deployed to the periodic system is taken into account for the actual needs of monitoring or estimation. A dynamic event-triggering mechanism is designed to reduce the unnecessary data transmission over the wireless network from the sensor to the filter as well as between each filter. Distributed peak-to-peak filters with periodic time-varying parameters are designed under the event-triggering mechanism to estimate the networked continuous-time periodic systems with the bounded and local differentiable disturbance. Then, a periodic piecewise filtering error system is modeled as an impulsive periodic piecewise system, for which sufficient conditions of a guaranteed peak-to-peak performance are proposed. The gains of the filters are obtained by the method of convex linearization. The validity of the proposed results is demonstrated by a pendulum tracking system.


The results of Holt and Fidler for the summed sensitivity of RC passive networks are obtained by an alternative method which allows the results to be conveniently extended to active RC networks and gyrator-RC networks. The effect of these results on the minimum value of Schoefler's sensitivity criterion is discussed.


A systematic structure analysis of the correlation functions of statistical quantum optics is carried out. From a suitably defined auxiliary two‐point function we are able to identify the excited modes in the wave field. The relative simplicity of the higher order correlation functions emerge as a byproduct and the conditions under which these are made pure are derived. These results depend in a crucial manner on the notion of coherence indices and of unimodular coherence indices. A new class of approximate expressions for the density operator of a statistical wave field is worked out based on discrete characteristic sets. These are even more economical than the diagonal coherent state representations. An appreciation of the subtleties of quantum theory obtains. Certain implications for the physics of light beams are cited.


The aeroelastic stability of rectangular plates are well-documented in literature for certain sets of boundary conditions. Specifically, wing flutter, panel flutter, and divergence of a plate that is clamped on all sides are well-understood. However, the ongoing push for lighter structures and novel designs have led to a need to understand the aeroelastic behavior of elastic plates for other boundary conditions. One example is NASA's continuous mold-line link project for reducing the noise generated by commercial transport aircraft during landing; in order to reduce the noise generated by vortex shedding from the trailing edge flap during landing, the project proposes to connect the gap between the trailing edge flap and the rest of the wing with a flexible plate. This paper summarizes the aeroelastic theory, numerical results, and experimental results of a study on the flutter and/or divergence mechanisms of a rectangular plate for different sets of structural boundary conditions. The theory combines a three-dimensional vortex lattice aerodynamic model with a plate structural model to create a high-fidelity frequency domain aeroelastic model. A modular experimental test bed is designed for this study in order to test the different boundary conditions. The test bed is also designed to test different plate thicknesses and sizes with only a small number of modifications. The well-understood boundary conditions are used as test cases to validate the analysis results, and then results of additional configurations that have not been extensively explored are presented. The results of this paper can be used to support the design efforts of projects involving plates or plate-membranes. In addition, the paper adds to the fundamental understanding of plate aeroelasticity and provides a wealth of experimental data for comparison and future validation.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


The climatology of East Africa results from the complex interaction between major global convergence zones with more localized regional feedbacks to the climate system; these in turn are moderated by a diverse land surface characterized by coastal to land transitions, high mountains, and large lakes. The main climatic character of East Africa, and how this varies across the region, takes the form of seasonal variations in rainfall that can fall as one, two, or three rainy seasons, the times and duration of which will be determined by the interplay between major convergence zones with more localized regional feedbacks. One of the key characteristics of East Africa are climatic variations with altitude as climates change along an altitudinal gradient that can extend from hot, dry, "tropical" conditions to cool, wet, temperate conditions and on the highest mountains "polar" climates with permanent ice caps. With this complex and variable climate landscape of the present, as scientists move through time to explore past climatic variability, it is apparent there have been a series of relatively rapid and high-magnitude environmental shifts throughout East Africa, particularly characterized by changing hydrological budgets. How climate change has impacted on ecosystems, and how those ecosystems have responded and interacted with human populations, can be unearthed by drawing on evidence from the sedimentary and archaeological record of the past six thousand years. As East African economies, and the livelihoods of millions of people in the region, have been clearly heavily affected by climate variability in the past, so it is expected that future climate variability will impact on ecosystem functioning and the preparedness of communities for future climate change.


An efficient improved multi-objective differential evolution algorithm (IMODE) is presented in this paper. By utilizing an improved mutation strategy with the concept of random tournament selection, the proposed algorithm generates a well distributed Pareto optimal front. Then, the IMODE is applied in an array pattern synthesis problem in which a smaller beam width and lower side lobe level (SLL) with null in certain direction is necessary. The results show the IMODE has a better performance than NSGA-II and GDE3 in convergence to Pareto front and diversity of solutions, which indicate that the proposed algorithm is a competitive algorithm in multi-objective optimization problems.


This study investigated the occurrence and distribution of cis-eicosenoic acid (c-20:1) positional isomers in fishes from the Indian Ocean and compared to those from the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean. Lipids were extracted from the edible part of the fish and then methylated. The eicosenoic acid methyl ester fraction was separated from total fatty acid methyl esters by reversed-phase HPLC and quantitatively analyzed using a GC-FID fitted with the SLB-IL111 highly polar GC column. c14-20:1 was used as an internal standard. The results indicated that the highest levels of c-20:1 positional isomers were found in fishes from the Pacific Ocean (saury, 166.95±12.4 mg/g of oil), followed by the Atlantic Ocean (capelin, 162.7±3.5 mg/g of oil), and lastly in fishes from the Indian Ocean (goatfish, 34.39 mg/g of oil). With only a few exceptions, the most abundant 20:1 positional isomer found in fishes of the Indian and Atlantic Ocean was the c11-20:1 isomer (>50%) followed by the c13-20:1 isomer (<25%). Unusually, the c7-20:1 isomer was predominantly found in a few fishes such as the tooth ponyfish, longface emperor, and commerson's sole. The c9, c5, and c15-20:1 isomers were the least occurring in fishes from the Indian and Atlantic Ocean. In contrast, the c9-20:1 isomer was the principal isomer identified in fishes from the Pacific Ocean. The results revealed that the content and distribution of c-20:1 positional isomers varied among fishes in different oceans. The data presented in the current study are the first to report on the distribution of c-20:1 positional isomers in fishes from the Indian Ocean.


Conventional definition of homeownership is based on the share of households, which ignores the variable effects of household formation. We study whether such omission leads to a distorted assessment of trends and differentials in homeownership. In the 1990s, many groups experienced a decline in household formation, which indirectly elevated the overall homeownership rate by removing renters. Moreover, Asians have very low household formation but high homeownership rates, which are in contrast to Latinos and African Americans. We find that higher homeownership rates for Asians stems from their suppressed level of renter household formation and their greater share of adults not forming households. The overall conclusion is that, without accounting for household formation, current measures of homeownership are a deficient indicator of housing success.


The paper discusses the vector field, which is the movement of the earth's crust. This motion is recorded using various modern methods and is considered as a transformation for which the degree of mapping can be calculated. At the beginning of the paper showes the various coordinate systems and methods of recording. Then there is a description of the tables in which the coordinates and their changes over time are entered. From these data, for some regions, the table of angles can be constructed and the degree of mapping calculated. The results of calculations allow us to draw conclusions about the presence of fixed points of the vector field inside the considered region. Such points indicate the accumulation of stress in rocks in a given area, which can further lead to rupture – an earthquake.


This research was conducted in the village of Ancient Build Tangun District of Rokan Hulu in order to determine the factors that affect Adolescent drug use. Problems in this study are (1) Who are the young people who use drugs in Tangun District of Ancient Build? (2) What are the factors that cause remajadi Tangun District of Ancient Build Rokan Hulu taking drugs?.This research is a qualitative descriptive study, the research object in this study based on the police station, then Teens who use drugs. The sampling technique is snoball sampling technique dugunakan as members of the sample chosen specifically based research purposes. To collect the data the researchers used the method of observation, and in-depth interviews using an interview podoman in analyzing research data used in the analysis of qualitative and descriptive writing is described. Based on the research results of this study concluded that the factors that affect adolescents use drugs in the Village District of Build Ancient Tangun Rokan Hulu that personality factors, environmental factors, family factors, educational factors. Keywords: Youth Factor, Using Drugs


Total alkalinity (AT) is an important parameter in the study of aquatic biogeochemical cycles, chemical speciation modeling, and many other important fundamental and anthropogenic (e.g., industrial) processes. We know little about its short‐term variability, however, because studies are based on traditional bottle sampling typically with coarse temporal resolution. In this work, an autonomous AT sensor, named the Submersible Autonomous Moored Instrument for Alkalinity (SAMI‐alk), was tested for freshwater applications. A comprehensive evaluation was conducted in the laboratory using freshwater standards. The results demonstrated excellent precision and accuracy (± 0.1%–0.4%) over the AT range from 800 to 3000 μmol L−1. The system had no drift over an 8 d test and also demonstrated limited sensitivity to variations in temperature and ionic strength. Three SAMI‐alks were deployed for 23 d in the Clark Fork River, Montana, with a suite of other sensors. Compared to discrete samples, in situ accuracy for the three instruments were within 10–20 μmol L−1 (0.3–0.6%), indicating good performance considering the challenges of in situ measurements in a high sediment, high biofouling riverine environment with large and rapid changes in temperature. These data reveal the complex AT dynamics that are typically missed by coarse sampling. We observed AT diel cycles as large as 60–80 μmol L−1, as well as a rapid change caused by a runoff event. Significant errors in inorganic carbon system modeling result if these short‐term variations are not considered. This study demonstrates both the feasibility of the technology and importance of high‐resolution AT measurements.


A major effort to upgrade training programs to include microcomputer concepts is becoming necessary in many government, industrial and educational institutions. Professional and technical staff who are familiar with conventional digital logic design need to learn new techniques and new technical jargon. This paper will describe training objectives which must be kept in mind when designing or evaluating microprocessor courses. These objectives include giving the student a detailed understanding of the operation of all elements in the basic CPU-memory-I/O microprocessor system configuration. The relationship between the hardware operation and the instruction set of the machine must be emphasized, and machine level programming must be understood. Laboratory exercises are suggested.


This study examined the decision-making process involved when individuals consider being tested presymptomatically for two different diseases, Huntington's disease and HIV infection (including the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). Each disease has a long latency period between contracting the disease and developing obvious symptoms. Both illnesses follow a debilitating, catastrophic path often involving neurological and cognitive deterioration. No successful cure currently exists for either disease. Recent advances in medical diagnostic technology have presented patients with the opportunity to know if they will develop these illnesses. Positive test results may be devastating while no successful cure for the diagnosed disease is currently available. The circumstances under which an individual will choose to be tested for such an illness is examined in this study. Policy capturing techniques (PCT) were used to determine the contribution of the independent variables by covarying the five dichotomous variables to create 32 hypothetical diagnostic testing situations to assess the individual decision processes of 217 undergraduate subjects. These five independent variables were: transmission mechanism, health status of the subject, partner/parent carrier status, physician test recommendation, and reproductive plans. Results indicate significant main effects for each of the five factors for the whole group. The five variables combined to account for more than 65% of the variance in the diagnostic decisional choices from the hypothetical scenarios. Cluster analysis was performed on the Individual patterns of beta weights to determine if there were groups of subjects with similar decisions strategies. Seven clusters were found to represent different decisional patterns. Subject variables were of some use in describing the membership of each cluster. History of previous serious illness, plans for diagnostic testing, native language, and income were found to predict cluster membership and hence decision strategy. The implications of inadequate descriptors for the clusters and possible limitations in PCT are


Numerical integration schemes are mandatory to understand complex behaviors of dynamical systems described by ordinary differential equations. Implementation of these numerical methods involve floating-point computations and propagation of round-off errors. This paper presents a new fine-grained analysis of round-off errors in explicit Runge-Kutta integration methods, taking into account exceptional behaviors, such as underflow and overflow. Linear stability properties play a central role in the proposed approach. For a large class of Runge-Kutta methods applied on linear problems, a tight bound of the round-off errors is provided. A simple test is defined and ensures the absence of underflow and a tighter round-off error bound. The absence of overflow is guaranteed as linear stability properties imply that (computed) solutions are non-increasing.


In the world, human society only uses about 1/6 of the runoff, the remaining 5/6 of its rainwater has been discharged to the sea. In order to alleviate the global water stress, the conceptual strategy of coastal reservoir to harvest the stormwater has been proposed. Australia is the driest continent in the world on the whole, but a lot of the coastline is blessed with high annual rainfall, which leads to large amount of stormwater lost to the sea. Australian only manages to use 7.5% of its annual runoff, the lowest in the world. To diversify its water supply, it is suggested to harvest the stormwater using Coastal Reservoirs that are surrounded by seawater at the mouth of a river with sustainable river flow. This paper will discuss the feasibilities of coastal reservoirs to supply the 5 major cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. The currently existing inland reservoirs of these cities are well below capacity throughout the whole country, it indicates the influence of climate change - further development of inland reservoirs may not be able to quench its thirsty. The potential problems of the proposed coastal reservoirs are identified, possible solutions are provided.


Today the world is facing global warming as one of its main issues, this is mainly caused by a rise in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere. Flaring is one of the major causes of the increase in greenhouse gases, 145 billion cubic meters of natural gas was flared in 2018. Indonesia being an archipelago nation and located near the equator suffers greatly from these global warming impacts. The impacts include environmental degradation, health implications and economic effects. This study is intended to develop a power plant configuration that can be adopted at an already existing plant to use flare gas as a complementary fuel. The energy of the flare gas will be converted into mechanical energy through thermal power plant instead of being vented as presently. Two possible plant configurations were developed and simulated using Thermo-flow and the results were compared. Both configurations employ the combined cycle concept, where a gas turbine is coupled with a steam turbine. The main difference between the two configurations is that configuration 1 uses a Heat Recovery Steam Generator whilst the second configuration uses common Heat Exchangers in-between the gas turbine and the Rankine cycle. The results show that configuration 1 would generate a net power of 40.948MW whilst configuration 2 would generate 32.924MW.Today the world is facing global warming as one of its main issues, this is mainly caused by a rise in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere. Flaring is one of the major causes of the increase in greenhouse gases, 145 billion cubic meters of natural gas was flared in 2018. Indonesia being an archipelago nation and located near the equator suffers greatly from these global warming impacts. The impacts include environmental degradation, health implications and economic effects. This study is intended to develop a power plant configuration that can be adopted at an already existing plant to use flare gas as a complementary fuel. The energy of the flare gas will be converted into mechanical energy through thermal power plant instead of being vented as presently. Two possible plant configurations were developed and simulated using Thermo-flow and the results were compared. Both configurations employ the combined cycle concept, where a gas turbine is coupled with a steam turb...


Clostridium perfringens is a major human pathogen that causes gastroenteritis via enterotoxin production and has the ability to form spores and biofilms for environmental persistence and disease transmission. This study aimed to compare the disinfectant and environmental resistance properties of C. perfringens vegetative cells and spores in planktonic and sessile conditions, and to examine the nucleotide polymorphisms and transcription under sessile conditions in C. perfringens strains isolated from meat. The sporulation rate of sessile C. perfringens TYJAM-D-66 (cpe+) was approximately 19% at day 5, while those of CMM-C-80 (cpe−) and SDE-B-202 (cpe+) were only 0.26% and 0.67%, respectively, at day 7. When exposed to aerobic conditions for 36 h, TYJAM-D-66, CMM-C-80, and SDE-B-202 vegetative cells showed 1.70 log, 5.36 log, and 5.67 log reductions, respectively. After treatment with sodium hypochlorite, the survival rates of TYJAM-D-66 vegetative cells (53.6%) and spores (82.3%) in biofilms were higher than those of planktonic cells (9.23%). Biofilm- and spore-related genes showed different expression within TYJAM-D-66 (–4.66~113.5), CMM-C-80 (–3.02~2.49), and SDE-B-202 (–5.07~2.73). Our results indicate the resistance of sessile cells and spores of C. perfringens upon exposure to stress conditions after biofilm formation.


Accurate automatic liver tumor segmentation would have a big impact on liver therapy planning procedures and follow-up reporting, thanks to automation, standardization and incorporation of full volumetric information. In this work, we propose a fully automatic method for liver tumor segmentation in CT images based on a 2D convolutional deep neural network with a shape-based post-processing. We ran our experiments on the LiTS dataset and evaluated detection and segmentation performance. Our proposed method achieves segmentation quality for detected lesions comparable to a human expert and is able to detect 77% of potentially measurable tumor lesions according to the RECIST 1.1 guidelines. We submitted our results to the LiTS challenge achieving state-of-the-art performance.


In this paper, eavesdropping in parallel distributed sequential detections is considered. The privacy risk is evaluated by the minimal achievable Bayesian risk of a greedy and informed eavesdropper who is curious about the hypothesis realization. We propose a novel metric based on Bayesian risk to take the detection performance and privacy risk with different weights into account. We formulate and study the privacy-concerned parallel distributed Bayesian sequential detection problem under a finite time-horizon assumption. Solving this problem will lead to the optimal distributed sequential detection design which achieves the minimal privacy-concerned Bayesian risk. The study shows that it is not sufficient to consider a deterministic likelihood-ratio test for a remote decision maker at an active time index in the optimal privacy-concerned system design. However, properties of the optimal design indicate that the standard method can be extended to solve the proposed problem.


Background: Neonatal period is the weakest period of life as it causes high rates of morbidity and mortality due to various diseases, especially in preterm infants and those with low birth weight. Aim of the present study: assessment of the risk factors and incidence of neonatal mortality in neonatal intensive care units in Tanta city. Subjects and Methods: Multi-centric prospective Cohort study that was conduct in Neonatal Intensive Care Units in Tanta city (5 public centers and 10 private centers). The duration was 6 months from August 2017 to January 2018. Results: Incidence of neonatal mortality among the studied sample during a period of six months was 27.7%. The most common cause of neonatal deaths was prematurity (39.4%). Cesarean section was the highest maternal risk factors (64.3%) among the study sample. Positive consanguinity was found in 52% and had statistically significant on neonatal mortality. There was no statistically significant difference between survived and expired neonates, while gestational age and birth weight were statistically significant. Neonatal mortality was higher between lower gestational age and lower birth weight. Conclusion: Neonatal mortality rates were found to be significantly high in prematurity, low gestational age, low birth weight, cesarean section and positive consanguinity. Improvement of health care qualities is needed to control the preventable risk factors and decrease neonatal morality.


In our investigation on the chemical constituents of Hippophae rhamnoides L., the chloroform-soluble fraction of the 80% acetone extract of branch bark was observed to inhibit nitric oxide (NO) production in a lipopolysaccharide and recombinant mouse interferon-gamma-activated murine macrophage-like cell line, RAW 264.7 cells. Two new triterpenoids, 2-O-trans-p-coumaroyl maslinic acid (1) and 2-O-caffeoyl maslinic acid (2), and three known triterpenoids, oleanolic acid (3), 3-O-trans-p-coumaroyl oleanolic acid (4), and 3-O-caffeoyl oleanolic acid (5), and 6-methoxy-2H-1-benzopyran (6) and beta-sitosterol (7) were isolated from the branch bark extract. Their inhibitory activities on the production of NO in RAW 264.7 cells and radical-scavenging activities were examined.


The use of targeted therapeutics known as poly(adenosine diphosphate–ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors in the management of ovarian cancer is currently transforming clinical practice. The PARP inhibitor rucaparib is indicated in the UK, European Union and the United States for use in the treatment and maintenance settings for patients with relapsed ovarian cancer. Here, we discuss some of the real-world challenges and side effects that we have encountered while prescribing rucaparib, and we provide practical guidance on how the individual members of our multidisciplinary team (MDT), including a clinician, chemotherapy nurse practitioner, and clinical pharmacist, collaborate to manage these side effects. If recognized early, the side effects experienced by patients during rucaparib therapy, which include fatigue, nausea and vomiting, liver enzyme elevations, and anemia, can be easily managed. For example, providing patients with prophylactic antiemetics can help them avoid nausea, and early detection of decreases in hemoglobin levels allows for proactive interventions to alleviate anemia. The MDT should work together with the patient to identify potential side effects early and manage them effectively. The aim of this proactive approach is to maintain patients on rucaparib for optimal clinical benefit, while minimizing the potential negative impact of side effects on patient quality of life.


Methane (CH4) is the primary component of natural gas and has a larger global warming potential than CO2. Recent top‐down studies based on observations showed CH4 emissions in California's South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB) were greater than those expected from population‐apportioned bottom‐up state inventories. In this study, we quantify CH4 emissions with an advanced mesoscale inverse modeling system at a resolution of 8 km × 8 km, using aircraft measurements in the SoCAB during the 2010 Nexus of Air Quality and Climate Change campaign to constrain the inversion. To simulate atmospheric transport, we use the FLEXible PARTicle‐Weather Research and Forecasting (FLEXPART‐WRF) Lagrangian particle dispersion model driven by three configurations of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale model. We determine surface fluxes of CH4 using a Bayesian least squares method in a four‐dimensional inversion. Simulated CH4 concentrations with the posterior emission inventory achieve much better correlations with the measurements (R2 = 0.7) than using the prior inventory (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Emission Inventory 2005, R2 = 0.5). The emission estimates for CH4 in the posterior, 46.3 ± 9.2 Mg CH4/h, are consistent with published observation‐based estimates. Changes in the spatial distribution of CH4 emissions in the SoCAB between the prior and posterior inventories are discussed. Missing or underestimated emissions from dairies, the oil/gas system, and landfills in the SoCAB seem to explain the differences between the prior and posterior inventories. We estimate that dairies contributed 5.9 ± 1.7 Mg CH4/h and the two sectors of oil and gas industries (production and downstream) and landfills together contributed 39.6 ± 8.1 Mg CH4/h in the SoCAB.


Eighteen healthy volunteers of both sexes, aged 20-34, were tested in the morning while undertaking real car driving avoidance manoeuvres and during monotonous simulated driving after 1 and 3 nights of medication with triazolam 0.25 mg, nitrazepam 5 mg or placebo. The study was a double-blind, randomized, cross-over study, where a minimum of 7 days wash-out separated the 3 treatment periods. Nitrazepam was found to impair performance in the simulated task after 1 but not after 3 nights of medication. Performance in the triazolam condition was not significantly different from the other conditions on this task on either day. However, after one night of medication triazolam tended to score worse than placebo but better than nitrazepam. In real car driving a tendency was noted for nitrazepam to score worst, whereas the difference between placebo and triazolam was hardly noticeable. The same tendency appeared on both days.


The appealing advantage of using an electrospinning technique to improve the elastomeric properties of conjugated polymers is demonstrated in this study. It is revealed that the electrospinning process can strengthen the low-crystalline feature of the prepared nanofibers. By combining the use of a polymer with low glass transition temperature, extremely stretchable nanofibers can be successfully prepared. P-type poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) electrospun (ES) nanofibers show a low Young's modulus of 0.448 GPa and still exhibit a high hole mobility of >10−2 cm2 V−1 s−1 even under an external strain of 500%. Based on these prepared P3HT ES nanofibers, a fully stretchable field-effect transistor (FET) and photomemory are realized. Besides, stretchable n-type poly{[N,N′-bis(2-octyldodecyl)naphthalene-1,4,5,8-bis(dicarboximide)-2,6-diyl]-alt-5,5′-(2,2′-bithiophene)} (N2200) ES nanofibers are also successfully prepared with strain tolerance up to 400% strain, showing the general applicability of our proposed method.


Yellow lenses have long been reported to alter visual perception, including subjective impressions of brightness and discomfort glare. To date, no consensus has been reached regarding the physiological mechanism behind this altered perception, although recent research suggests a possible short-wavelength sensitive cone (S-cone) mechanism. An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that S-cones are responsible for the perceived increase in brightness and decrease in discomfort glare perception when viewing through yellow lenses. Thirty participants were asked to use neutral density filters to match perception of brightness and discomfort glare through colored filters and with no filters in low and high lighting conditions. Colored filters were selected to test the influence of S-cones versus Mand L-cone stimulation. Results show that, in a high-luminance outdoor setting, findings were consistent with decreased S-cone stimulation resulting in an increased perception of brightness. This was not found in lower luminance settings, or with the perception of discomfort glare at either luminance level. It is suggested that S-cone involvement in brightness perception through yellow lenses may be luminance-dependent and occur in opponent fashion, as has been postulated elsewhere in the literature.


In this study, we investigate the motion of particulate gravity currents in a horizontal V-shaped channel. The particulate currents consisted of particles whose size varied between 0 and 100 μm but whose mean size increased. Particles were poorly sorted as the variance of the grain size distributions varied between 50 and 200. While the phases of propagation of homogeneous currents in such a geometry have been studied in the literature, this study considers the effects of the grain size on the propagation. The distance of propagation and front velocity of full-depth high-Reynolds-number lock-release experiments and shallow-water equation simulations were analyzed as the mean grain size of the initial particle distributions, defined by mass, was increased from 19 to 58 μm. Similar to the homogeneous currents, three consecutive phases of the front velocity could be identified but their characteristics and extent depend on the particle size. The initial phase, in particular, depends on a dimensionless settling number β that is defined as the ratio of two characteristic time scales, the propagation time x0/U, where U is the scale for the front speed and x0 the lock length, and the settling time h0/vs, where vs is the scale for the settling velocity and h0 the initial height of the current. For dimensionless settling numbers less than 0.001, the initial phase is characterized by a constant velocity for over about 6-7 lock lengths that is alike the initial slumping phase of perfectly constant velocity of the homogeneous currents. For dimensionless settling numbers greater than 0.001 and less than 0.015, the initial phase is no longer characterized by a constant velocity but an almost constant velocity for over about a similar 6-7 lock lengths. For dimensionless settling numbers greater than 0.015, however, as such, this phase is no longer seen. This initial phase is followed by a continuous decrease of the front advance, which results from the sedimentation of the particles. Unlike the homogeneous currents, this phase is a non-self-similar propagation. This phase is ended by a viscosity-dominated phase appearing to vary as ∼t1/7. The good agreement between the front advance of the experiments and shallow-water equation simulations demonstrates that the mean size by mass is a fairly good proxy of poorly sorted particles.


Objective: To find out frequency of different complications in patients that has been managed by traditional bonesetters (TBS). Methods: This study was conducted from 1st October 2013 to 31st March 2014. Total 60 patients who presented at orthopedics out-patient clinic after treatment of traditional bone Setters were recruited for the study. Information about the patients' biodata, mechanism of injury, which advised them to contact TBS and complications after being managed by TBS were obtained. All the data thus obtained was put into and analyzed on SPSS version 17. Results: The mean age of 60 patients were 25.57 years with minimum 5 and maximum age was 65 years. Sixteen patients were females and 44 were male. Two (3.3%) of patients first attended Hospital and 58(96.7%) patients attended TBS. There were 51.7% mal-union, 31.7% non-union, 6.7% contracture and 6.7% gangrene and 3.3% developed infections. Conclusion: Mal-union/non-union, contractures and infections are the most common complications that patients are likely to suffer as a result of fracture treatment by TBS.Key Words: Traditional bonesetter (TBS), Treatment, Fracture, Complication.


Congenital heart surgery is among the most challenging fields in all of medicine. The unique skills and knowledge base required prompted the American Board of Thoracic Surgery (ABTS) to establish the Subspecialty Certificate in Congenital Heart Surgery (CHS). Standards for operative experience and fellowship training programs were established by the ABTS and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Since 2009, 188 Subspecialty Certificates in CHS have been granted, including 38 earned through the fellowship training pathway. Today, the overwhelming majority of congenital heart surgeons in the United States hold a Subspecialty Certificate in CHS. Recent survey data suggests those individuals who have completed Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education fellowship training in CHS were satisfied with the operative experience they received during training and the vast majority are practicing CHS. While surgical training and education will always be a work in progress, in the 7 years since its inception, the ABTS Subspecialty Certificate in CHS has achieved the goal of quality control and standardization of CHS training.


In recent years, over 5 million stroke cases in the United States and Europe have been registered in the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get with the Guideline Stroke database. In the United States and Europe, studies on the extent to which standard treatment is provided for each disease(process indicators)are increasingly being conducted. In this paper, we discuss examples of the use of big data in neurosurgical diseases and its application and future prospects, while focusing on the contents of the presentation conducted at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Japanese Neurosurgical Association.


The mobile phone is currently the most used technological device used by the population of the planet. Due to its availability and efficiency of usage, it is very popular amongst the people of both developed and developing Countries. But, alongside its benefits, it also is considered one of the main vectors for transmitting pathogenic organisms and being a reservoir of them. With this in mind, the demography of Dhaka City (North) is selected to observe the prevalence of organism amongst the cellphones of the population and isolate and identify a group of potentially diseasecausing organism. Total 100 mobile samples included in this study for isolation of bacteria. 92% of the cellphones were found to be contaminated with bacteria and 187 bacterial samples were isolated from the mobile phones. Out of these colonies, we found Staphylococcus spp (50.7%), Bacillus spp (13.2%), Micrococcus spp (11%), E. coli (14.1%) and Fecal coliforms (11%). It is found that the participants who used cellphone while eating, using the cellphone in the washroom, sharing the cellphone with other persons and using the cellphone while being sick had more potentially pathogenic microorganisms than the participants who did not. It is found that the participants who daily cleaned their cellphone with any commercially available cleaning agent such as 70% ethanol, hand sanitizer or even commonly available liquid hand wash had no microorganisms present in them. It is found that personal hand hygiene and cellphone hygiene is very important and also washing of hand before and after handling of food and phone decontamination should be adopted by people of Dhaka City to prevent cross and selfcontamination by these bacteria. Regular usage of commercially available solvents are also recommended to be used regularly as they are actively capable of removing bacteria from the surface of cellphone and keeping it clean.


This paper analyzes the optimal behavior of farmers in the presence of direct payments and uncertainty. In an empirical analysis for Switzerland, it confirms previously obtained theoretical results and determines the magnitude of the theoretical predicted effects. The results show that direct payments increase agricultural production between 3.7% to 4.8%. Alternatively to direct payments, the production effect of tax reductions is evaluated in order to determine its magnitude. The empirical analysis corroborates the theoretical results of the literature and demonstrates that tax reductions are also distorting, but to a substantially lesser degree if losses are not offset. However, tax reductions, independently whether losses are offset or not, lead to higher government spending than pure direct payments.


The purpose of this study was to find out the difference between self-actualization and value orientation among primary school teachers. The study was conducted on a sample of 100 primary school teachers of Dagana and Wangduephodrang districts in Bhutan. Equal distributions of 50 male and 50 female teachers were selected by using simple random sampling technique. Descriptive survey method was used by the investigator in the study. The tools applied by the investigators were Self-actualization scale and Value orientation scale and for analysis and interpretation of results, t-test and correlation were used.


An inter-laboratory comparison of the calibration capability for torque measuring devices (TMDs) was conducted between the National Metrology Institute of Japan (NMIJ) in the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS). Three high-performance torque transducers having rated capacities of 100 N·m, 1 kN·m, and 2 kN·m, and a bridge calibration unit (BN100A) were used as the transfer devices. The 1 kN·m and 2 kN·m transducers had one bridge, but the 100 N·m transducer had two bridges that acquired data more reliably. An identical indicator/amplifier type (DMP40) owned by each laboratory was used. All of the transducers and BN100A were transferred from NMIJ to KRISS. For the comparison, NMIJ used 1 kN·m and 20 kN·m deadweight torque standard machines (TSMs), and KRISS used a 2 kN·m deadweight TSM. In particular, the capability of the 1 kN·m TSM at NMIJ was examined after some improvements. In the calibration range from 50 N·m to 2 kN·m, relative deviations were less than 3.0 × 10 -5 for increasing torques. Sufficiently small deviations were obtained between the calibration results in the two laboratories, as compared with their calibration and measurement capabilities (CMCs), which were 3.5 × 10 -5 for the 1 kN·m TSM at NMIJ, 7.0 × 10 -5 for the 20 kN·m TSM at NMIJ, and 5.0 × 10 -5 for the 2 kN·m TSM at KRISS (as relative expanded uncertainties).


Testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) are the most commonly occurring cancers in adolescent and young adult males in the U.S. Steroid sex hormones play a central role in the development of the testis. As proposed by the testicular dysgenesis syndrome hypothesis, the origins of TGCT are likely to be in utero or early in life, and to be a manifestation of disturbed prenatal testis development. However, no studies have provided direct, empirical evidence to date. Using an innovative linkage between the California birth records and cancer registry data, we conducted a population-based case-control study of neonatal hormones levels and risk of TGCT diagnosed at 0-19 year of age. We obtained archived neonatal dried blood spot (DBS) specimens from 370 TGCT cases (276 adolescent and young adults [AYA] aged 15-19 yrs at diagnosis; 94 0-4 yrs at diagnosis), and 344 age- and race/ethnicity-matched controls, born between 1982 and 2009. Liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry was used to measure a panel of 17 sex steroids, glucocorticoids, and mineralcorticoids; 12 were present at detectable levels in the newborn DBS samples, including estrone (E1), estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), testosterone (T), dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and androstenedione (A4). Logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI), adjusting for matching factors and age (in hours) of child at blood spot collection. A4, a precursor for T and E1, was positively associated with TGCT (OR: 1.71, 95% CI: 1.09-2.69). Analyses stratified by age group showed that this association was limited to AYA, and was of stronger magnitude in this group (OR: 2.33, 95% CI: 1.37-3.97). A similar, though weaker, trend was observed for T (ORoverall: 1.37, 95% CI: 0.86-2.19; ORAYA: 1.73. 95% CI: 1.00-3.00). There was no significant association of the other measured hormones with risk. In the first case-control study of TGCT with direct measures of neonatal hormone levels, we found that higher levels of T and A4 were associated with increased risk of TCGT, particularly among males diagnosed at 15-19 years of age. These results oppose the dominant theory in TGCT etiology, that TGCT is related to androgen insufficiency in utero, and provides an important link in the etiologic pathway of this increasingly common cancer. Citation Format: Libby Morimoto, David Zava, Katherine McGlynn, Frank Stanczyk, Joseph Wiemels, Xiaomei Ma, Catherine Metayer. Neonatal hormone levels and risk of testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2263. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-2263


In this paper, we propose a new method for fuzzy adaptation of the Gap Generation and mutation parameters in Genetic algorithms to optimize Fuzzy Systems used as integration methods in modular neural networks for multimodal biometrics. The Genetic Algorithm is an optimization method inspired on the evolutionary ideas of natural selection and genetics; therefore, we propose an improvement to the convergence of the genetic algorithms using fuzzy logic. Simulation results show that the proposed approach improves the performance of Genetic Algorithms. A comparison of the proposed method using type-1 fuzzy logic for dynamic parameter adaptation with respect to the original Genetic Algorithms approach is presented. Additionally, a statistical test is presented to prove the performance enhancement in the application provided by fuzzy parameter adaptation in the genetic algorithm. The main contribution in this work is the fuzzy adaptation of parameters in the genetic algorithm using type-1 fuzzy logic and with this finding the optimal values of the parameters of the fuzzy integrators, to improve the recognition percentage of the modular neural network for multimodal biometrics.