To the Editors: Infection of humans with the larvae of Toxocara canis leads to toxocariasis, one of the most common ascariases. The prevalence in humans ranges between 1 and 4% of the adult population in Western Europe and 60% of children in developing countries. Playground sandboxes and domestic canines represent major sources of infection. Geophagia is an important risk factor in children, documented to be etiologic in 10–30% of cases. Visceral larva migrans is the clinical term for Toxocara infection associated with major organs. Generally, it is considered a self-limited disease. Previous reports have demonstrated varied presentations, including chronic hypereosinophilia, pyogenic liver abscesses, hepatic granulomas, abdominal lymph node enlargement, pulmonary involvement, myocarditis, and thrombocytosis. Central nervous system involvement in toxocariasis is extremely rare and takes several distinct forms, including encephalopathy, meningoencephalitis, meningitis, seizures, motor dysfunction, and neuropsychiatric disturbances. Magnetic resonance imaging alterations have been described in a few patients with central nervous system toxocariasis that include vasculitic areas identified by angiography, focal lesions, and nonspecific T2-weighted areas of increased signals. The case of a male child diagnosed with congenital asplenia at 5 years of age in the context of pneumococcal septic shock is presented. Relevant facts in the patient's history include exposure to various domestic canines (the patient's father was a hunter), psychomotor development impairment with onset at 1 year of age, autistic-like behavior, and ataxia. The medical evaluation has been inconclusive. At 6 years of age, the patient was admitted to this hospital with fever and an associated leukemoid reaction. Laboratory studies showed a WBC count of 65,200/ L (65% eosinophils); normal renal and hepatic studies, and a negative C-reactive protein. Bone marrow morphology was not compatible with eosinophilic leukemia. Additional studies demonstrated a marked hypergammaglobulinemia (26.4 g/L) with markedly increased IgG (2800 mg/dL), IgE (8415 U/mL), and titers of isohemagglutinins (anti-A1, 1/8192; anti-A2, 1/4096; and anti-B, 1/256), the presence of Ascaris lumbricoides eggs in fecal samples, and a positive serologic test for Toxocara canis (passive hemagglutination test: 1/160 and ELISA: 0.662), confirmed by Western blot analysis. Ophthalmologic examination, chest radiograph, an echocardiogram, and an EEG were normal. An abdominal CT scan revealed hepatomegaly with nodules dispersed throughout the liver parenchyma; a biopsy confirmed the presence of a granulomatous hepatitis with intense eosinophilia and fibrosis consistent with parasitic infestation. Cerebral magnetic resonance imaging revealed a moderate bilateral peritrigonal hypersignal. Treatment began with mebendazole, but because of persistent eosinophilia it was changed to albendazole and prednisolone, that resulted in hematologic, radiographic and behavior/neurologic improvement. Serum values of eosinophils, immunoglobulins, and isohemagglutinins returned to normal, hepatic nodules disappeared and Toxocara antibody titers were reduced. Despite implementation of measures aimed at preventing reinfection, the patient died at 9 years of age from pneumococcal meningitis. No association has been reported between toxocariasis and asplenia. It has been suggested that bacterial or viral meningitis may be enhanced by helminthic larvae that migrate to the central nervous system. Additionally, it has been speculated that splenectomizated patients may be predisposed to a more rapid or severe infection by free-living parasites, as noted for Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense. The diagnosis of toxocariasis requires a high level of suspicion and delayed treatment may result in pulmonary, hepatic, and neurologic lesions and sequelae. Ana Rita Araújo, JD Idalina Maciel, MD Department of Pediatrics Centro Hospitalar do Alto Minho Viana do Castelo, Portugal Licı́nia Lima, MD Isabel Chacim, MD Department of Pediatrics Barcelos Hospital, Portugal


The fisheries industry has led the Korean economy, and has been achieving high-level position in the world. However, this industry meets aging, low growth and profit. In order to overcome this critical situation, it is needed to understand the overall status of industry. In industry level, most of previous researches focused on ocean industry rather than fisheries. In addition, scholars have been getting a lot of attention about fisheries cooperatives, fishing-ports, methods of fishery, and manufacturing process in fisheries sector. The aim of this research is analysis of domestic fisheries industry's managerial performance using data envelopment analysis(DEA) considering operating and scale view. Furthermore, the comparative analysis is performed by firm size, and industry type. In results, fisheries industry's managerial performance is not high, overall. In more detail, most of big size firms are under decreasing returns to scale(DRS) status. Fishery processing industry's performance is low, and fishery distribution industry has the best performance. This paper suggests that transferring operating capability from big firms to small firms, and policy supports and firm's activities should be accompanied for high-value added in fisher, and fishery processing industries.


Controlled fabrication of 45 nm width nanowire using simulated emission depletion (STED) direct laser writing with a rod-shape effective focus spot is presented. In conventional STED direct laser writing, normally a donut-shaped depletion focus is used, and the minimum linewidth is restricted to 55 nm. In this work, we push this limit to sub-50 nm dimension with a rod-shape effective focus spot, which is the combination of a Gaussian excitation focus and twin-oval depletion focus. Effects of photoinitiator type, excitation laser power, and depletion laser power on the width of the nanowire are explored, respectively. Single nanowire with 45 nm width is obtained, which is λ/18 of excitation wavelength and the minimum linewidth in pentaerythritol triacrylate (PETA) photoresist. Our result accelerates the progress of achievable linewidth reduction in STED direct laser writing.


Since 2002, the Marine Advanced Technology Center (MATE) has sponsored a nation-wide remotely operated vehicle (ROV) competition. This year's competition consisted of two mission tasks based on ocean observing systems, to be completed in less than 30 minutes at a depth of 12.2 meters. Taking a different approach from previous years, the MIT ROV team designed our main ROV, MTHR, not only to compete in the MATE competition, but also to be used afterwards for both didactic and practical purposes. To this end, the team did not design MTHR specifically for the competition, but instead set out to design a robust ROV that was capable of competing in the MATE competition. The team set priorities on keeping MTHR easy to operate and the sub-systems modular so that they could be improved or expanded upon, allowing MTHR to act as a test bed for new technology in the future. On top of this, the team also placed size constraints, in order to keep it maneuverable and easy to transport, and monetary constraints, in order to keep it affordable. These design considerations led our team to build a small, battery-powered ROV that operates off a single strand of passively spooling fiber optic cable. MTHR is equipped with team-designed countrarotating propellers and a flexible control system. Though a spatially controlled, 5 degree-of-freedom manipulator was designed and built for the ROV, it was not ready to integrate in time for the competition so a simpler gripper was installed. In addition to MTHR, a second ROV, JR, was built to act as a flying-eye to aid in navigation during the competition. Working together, these two ROVs create a powerful system capable of completing complex tasks and providing a valuable research and teaching platform


Feature selection has become the cornerstone of many classification problems. It has been applied in many domains such as web mining, text categorization, gene expression microarray analysis, image analysis, and combinatorial chemistry. One type of well-studied feature selection methodology is filtering, which is typically divided into ranking and subset evaluation. This work provides an empirical study regarding one type of feature ranking for which very limited research exists, namely wrapper-based feature ranking. Nine performance metrics are evaluated, and while these metrics are commonly used in data mining to evaluate classifier performance, they are rarely used as feature ranking techniques. Moreover, five different learners, 5-Nearest Neighbors (5NN), Logistic Regression (LR), Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP), Na¨ıve Bayes (NB), and Support Vector Machines (SVM) in conjunction with two different methodologies, 3-Fold Cross-Validation (CV) and 3- Fold Cross-validation Risk Impact (CVR) are used in this study to evaluate feature relevancy and to determine ranking similarities among the different ranking techniques.


This study considers the possibility of using atmospheric rainwater for business purposes in the city of Durres, Albania with a population of 205 thousand inhabitants living in an area of 432 m2. Untreated rainwater which is used for business purposes, was analysed for water quality based on twelve months of monitoring data. From May 2021 to May 2022, rainwater samples were taken by analysing the quantity and quality parameters. Samples were collected from different points within a rainwater harvesting systems we had installed in a business serving as a vehicle service. In order to evaluate the quality of atmospheric water were measured physic - chemical and bacteriological parameters of rainwater. Also, with the help of water meters we measured the amount of rainwater precipitation for a year collected in water tanks that we have installed in this business. From the measurements has result that the average amount of rainwater collected was 46 500 litres/year of water. This amount does not meet all needs of this business, but facilitates a lot their requirement for technological and sanitary usage. The performed physic - chemical and bacteriological analyses showed that the parameters were within the standards. Faecal Coliforms, Escherichia coli (E. coli) and faecal Streptococcus were not found in any sample. Results show that the untreated rainwater could be used directly for technological and sanitary purposes.


Male Gambusia affinis spend more time courting stationary females or those swimming slowly than those swimming at a faster speed. During courtship there is considerable interaction with the other fish, and this causes each male to spend only brief periods with each female. Males are highly aggressive toward each other and are submissive to the usually larger females. Aggression between males is significantly reduced in the absence of females.


Photosensitive amphiphilic linear polyoxazolines (CoumC11–POxn) bearing alkyl chain decorated by a UV-active coumarin end group have been synthesized by cationic ring-opening polymerization (CROP). Using DLS and DOSY NMR experiments, their self-assemblies in water were compared with those of homologous photo-unreactive amphiphilic polyoxazolines (Cm–POxn). In both cases, spherical nanoparticles with DH-values around 10 nm were observed. The CoumC11–POxn nanoparticles were illuminated upon λ = 300 nm inducing the photo-dimerization of the coumarin units located in the inner compartment of the nanoparticles. Finally, the pros and the cons of the photo-dimerization of linear copolymers related to the photo-crosslinking of graft copolymers were discussed.


Abstract This paper defends the view that we have special relationship duties that do not derive from our moral duties. Our special relationship duties, I argue, are grounded in what I call close relationships. Sharing a close relationship with another person, I suggest, requires that both people conceive of themselves as being motivated to promote the other's interests. So, staying true to oneself demands being committed to promoting the interests of those with whom we share a close relationship. Finally, I show that the proposed account of special relationship duties circumvents two problems facing self-conception accounts of special relationship duties.


The unique physicochemical properties of nanomaterials (NM) and engineered nanomaterials (ENM) have pushed their use in many applications ranging from medicine to the food industry, textiles, and many more fields. Thus, human exposure to NM and ENM is growing by the day. However, the current toxicity tests do not reflect the special characteristics of ENM and are not developed for ENM risk assessment. Here we propose a high-throughput cell-based assay using human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) that can monitor the effects of NM and ENM on cytotoxicity and innate immunity. The proposed assay is fully automated and miniaturized, with excellent assay performance parameters (Z'-score >0.5), amenable for large screening campaigns in industrial setting. Immunotoxicity data for ENM safety assessment are collected in dose-response format. At different states, multiparametric readouts for cytotoxicity, and innate immunity are conducted in a combinatorial method, avoiding ENM-induced bias by endotoxin contamination. Integrating this high-dimensional data, allows (i) holistic safety assessment of immunotoxicity effects caused by ENM, classifying safe and toxic ENM phenotypes, and (ii) to deconvolve mode of action of the ENM effect on the PBMCs. As added value the data obtained can be used to troubleshoot ENM or for a safe-by-design approach in product development.


Optical see-through head-mounted displays are currently seeing a transition out of research labs towards the consumer-oriented market. However, whilst availability has improved and prices have decreased, the technology has not matured much. Most commercially available optical see-through head mounted displays follow a similar principle and use an optical combiner blending the physical environment with digital information. This approach yields problems as the colors for the overlaid digital information can not be correctly reproduced. The perceived pixel colors are always a result of the displayed pixel color and the color of the current physical environment seen through the head-mounted display. In this paper we present an initial approach for mitigating the effect of color-blending in optical see-through head-mounted displays by introducing a real-time radiometric compensation. Our approach is based on a novel prototype for an optical see-through head-mounted display that allows the capture of the current environment as seen by the user's eye. We present three different algorithms using this prototype to compensate color blending in real-time and with pixel-accuracy. We demonstrate the benefits and performance as well as the results of a user study. We see application for all common Augmented Reality scenarios but also for other areas such as Diminished Reality or supporting color-blind people.


Participatory sensing (PS) is an emerging socio-technological paradigm in which citizens voluntarily participate and contribute to a distributed information system using applications installed in their hand-held devices. It can be found in a number of real-life applications, viz. traffic monitoring, air/sound pollution, garbage monitoring, social networking, commodity pricing, and so on. In these systems, information sensed by the user helps the peers in decision making. Present work considers vehicular participatory sensing systems, where registered user senses (perceives) the traffic incident and submits its report(s) to a PS application server. PS application server in turn, broadcasts those reports as alerts to its subscribers. To promote the participation, the PS systems used to have incentive schemes for the participants. However, a common problem in participatory sensing is the generation of false reports either due to wrong perception of an event or to maliciously increase the degree of participation to gain undue incentives. Such false reports make the usage of the PS system unreliable and vulnerable to the illusion attack. This work proposes a novel approach to make PS applications more reliable by identifying and filtering out the falsely reported event through automated confidence assignment based on a probabilistic model. Waze traffic alerts have been used as the dataset to validate the proposed filtering mechanism. Finally, simulation-based experiments and performance evaluation have been done to demonstrate that the proposed approach is relatively accurate.


In this study a theoretical approach allows estimating the ablation mass flux of copper from a corrected Hertz-Knudsen flux. The influence of the copper vapours coming from the anode electrode to an SF6 plasma is studied in a simplified 2D configuration. Depending on the plasma pressure an ablation or a diffusion state is considered. The amount of copper versus time is presented. An RMS current I = 10 kA is applied leading at t = 10ms to an amount of copper equal to 0.55mg. The vapours change the plasma properties mainly the electrical conductivity and radiation and so the plasma behaviour. At time t = 5ms the electrode erosion leads to a copper plasma. This simple case shows the necessity to well consider the copper erosion in plasma modelling as in High Voltage Circuit Breaker (HVCB) where higher current are considered.


Multicore platforms are such that have one physical processor chip with multiple cores interconnected via a chip level bus. Because they deliver a greater computing power through concurrency, offer greater system density multicore platforms provide best qualifications to address the performance bottleneck encountered in PC-based control systems for parallel kinematic robots with heavy CPU-load. Heavy load control tasks are generated by new control approaches that include features like singularity prediction, structure control algorithms, vision data integration and similar tasks. In this paper we introduce the parallel task scheduling extension of a communication architecture specially tailored for the development of PC-based control of parallel kinematics. The Scheduling is specially designed for the processing on a multicore platform. It breaks down the serial task processing of the robot control cycle and extends it with parallel task processing paths in order to enhance the overall control performance.


The physics of sawtooth oscillations in plasmas produced by the Alcator C-Mod machine is discussed by identifying the regimes that characterize these oscillations, which occur in the central value of the electron temperature, as measured by X ray and/or ECE diagnostics. Sawteeth are generally present in ohmic as well as in RF heated plasmas. It is shown by numerical analysis that these plasmas are stable to ideal internal, pressure driven modes. Hence, the modes responsible for the crash phase of the sawteeth have to be resistive in nature. This is confirmed by numerical computations using a resistive code. The role of energetic ions, produced by ion cyclotron heating, is also discussed.


Recently, the morbidity and mortality of pancreatic cancer have been increasing year by year. Because of its deep anatomical location and because most presented patients often suffer from abdominal pain or jaundice, it is difficult to diagnose pancreatic cancer at an early stage, leading to late clinical stage and poor prognosis. integrated positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MRI) fusion imaging not only has the characteristics of high resolution and multi-parameter imaging of MRI, but also combines the high sensitivity and the semi-quantitative characteristics of PET. In addition, the continuous development of novel MRI imaging and PET imaging biomarkers provide a unique and precise research direction for future pancreatic cancer research. This review summarizes the value of PET/MRI in the diagnosis, staging, efficacy monitoring, and prognosis evaluation of pancreatic cancer, and prognosis for developing emerging imaging agents and artificial intelligence radiomics in pancreatic cancer.


Aim. To determine the incidence of premature ovarian failure (POF) and early menopause with regard to reproductive status in carriers of the pathogenic variant of the BRCA1 gene. Materials and methods. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, out of 90 carriers of pathogenic variants of the BRCA1 gene, 38 females were included in the study group, and 110 females without these pathogenic variants were included in the control group. The reproductive status, age of menopause onset, history of pelvic surgeries, and palliative care were evaluated in the study groups. Results. The incidence of POF in the group of carriers of pathogenic variants of the BRCA1 gene was significantly higher compared to the control group ( p <0.004), while the incidence of early menopause showed no significant differences in the studied groups (13.2% vs. 4.5%, respectively; p <0,069). No significant differences were found in the analysis of reproductive status. Conclusions. Females with and without pathogenic variants of the BRCA1 gene did not differ significantly by the main indices of reproductive status. Carriers of pathogenic BRCA1 gene variants have a significantly higher incidence of POF vs. controls. Adverse effects of pathogenic BRCA gene variants on women's ovarian reserve and reproductive potential cannot be excluded. Healthy carriers of pathogenic variants of the BRCA1 /2 gene are recommended to plan pregnancy in the early reproductive period.


We introduce a two-parameter approximate counter-diabatic term into the Hamiltonian of the transverse-field Ising model for quantum annealing to accelerate convergence to the solution, generalizing an existing single-parameter approach. The protocol is equivalent to unconventional diabatic control of the longitudinal and transverse fields in the transverse-field Ising model and thus makes it more feasible for experimental realization than an introduction of new terms such as non-stoquastic catalysts toward the same goal of performance enhancement. We test the idea for the $p$-spin model with $p=3$, which has a first-order quantum phase transition, and show that our two-parameter approach leads to significantly larger ground-state fidelity and lower residual energy than those by traditional quantum annealing as well as by the single-parameter method. We also find a scaling advantage in terms of the time to solution as a function of the system size in a certain range of parameters as compared to the traditional methods.


The potential capabilities of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) compared to traditional tools and equipment have led to increased attention and use of underwater vehicles in various commercial, military, and research fields. The manufacture and development of an offshore operational platform require the design of a complete and expensive system of a maritime laboratory in order for evaluating and validating the characteristics and performance of the integrated system and its subsystems. Modeling can be a cost-effective tool for conducting tests, verifying and certifying components and performance of hardware and software, performing missions, and thus reducing potential errors in marine tests and missions. These goals can be achieved through a relatively accurate dynamic simulation and modeling of equipment and environmental conditions inside the hardware in the loop (HIL) laboratory. The purpose of this paper is to provide real-time modeling and implement a physics-based depth environmental simulator for an AUV to equip the HIL laboratory. Validation of the performance of the depth environmental simulator in the dynamic bed of six degrees of freedom of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle crawler has been done in real-time. The results indicate that the output of the depth environmental mechanism matches the measured depth of the field experiment at sea and there is no delay and bias between the real and simulated signal.


BACKGROUND
Chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are serious conditions in which patients are predisposed to viral and bacterial infections resulting in potentially fatal acute exacerbations. COPD is defined as a lung disease characterised by obstruction to lung airflow that interferes with normal breathing. Antibiotic therapy has not been particularly useful in eradicating bacteria such as non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) because they are naturally occurring flora of the upper respiratory tract in many people. However, they can cause opportunistic infection. An oral NTHi vaccine has been developed to protect against recurrent infective acute exacerbations in chronic bronchitis.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effectiveness of an oral, whole-cell, non-typeable H. influenzae (NTHi) vaccine in protecting against recurrent episodes of acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis and COPD in adults. To assess the effectiveness of NTHi vaccine in reducing NTHi colonising the respiratory tract during recurrent episodes of acute exacerbations of COPD.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched the following databases: CENTRAL (2014, Issue 6), MEDLINE (1946 to July week 3, 2014), EMBASE (1974 to July 2014), CINAHL (1981 to July 2014), LILACS (1982 to July 2014) and Web of Science (1955 to July 2014). We also searched trials registries and contacted authors of trials requesting unpublished data.

SELECTION CRITERIA
We included randomised controlled trials comparing the effects of an oral monobacterial NTHi vaccine in adults with recurrent acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis or COPD when there was overt matching of the vaccine and placebo groups on clinical grounds. The selection criteria considered populations aged less than 65 years and those older than 65 years.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data from original records and publications for incidence and severity of bronchitis episodes and carriage rate of NTHi measured in the upper respiratory tract, as well as data relevant to other primary and secondary outcomes.

MAIN RESULTS
We identified six placebo-controlled randomised controlled trials with a total of 557 participants. They investigated the efficacy of enteric-coated, killed preparations of H. influenzae in populations prone to recurrent acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis or COPD. The vaccine preparation and immunisation regime in all trials consisted of at least three courses of formalin-killed H. influenzae in enteric-coated tablets taken at intervals (for example, days 0, 28 and 56). Each course generally consisted of two tablets taken after breakfast over three consecutive days. In all cases the placebo groups took enteric-coated tablets containing glucose. Risk of bias was moderate across the studies, namely due to the lack of information provided about methods and inadequate presentation of results.Meta-analysis of the oral NTHi vaccine showed a small, non-statistically significant reduction in the incidence of acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis or COPD by 2.048% (risk ratio (RR) 0.97, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.12, P value = 0.68). There was no significant difference in mortality rate between the vaccine and placebo groups (odds ratio (OR) 1.62, 95% CI 0.63 to 4.12, P value = 0.31).We were unable to meta-analyse the carriage levels of NTHi in participants as each trial reported this result using different units and tools of measurement. Four trials showed no significant difference in carriage levels, while two trials showed a significant decrease in carriage levels in the vaccinated group compared with placebo.Four trials assessed severity of exacerbations measured by requirement for antibiotics. Three of these trials were comparable and when meta-analysed showed a statistically significant 80% increase in antibiotic courses per person in the placebo group (RR 1.81, 95% CI 1.35 to 2.44, P value < 0.0001). There was no significant difference between the groups with regards to hospital admission rates (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.13 to 7.04, P value = 0.97). Adverse events were reported in all six trials with a point estimate suggestive that they occurred more frequently in the vaccine group, however, this result was not statistically significant (RR 1.43, 95% CI 0.70 to 2.92, P value = 0.87). Quality of life was not meta-analysed but was reported in two trials, with results at six months showing an improvement in quality of life in the vaccinated group (scoring at least two points better than placebo).

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
Analyses demonstrate that NTHi oral vaccination of patients with recurrent exacerbations of chronic bronchitis or COPD does not yield a significant reduction in the number and severity of exacerbations. Evidence is mixed and the individual trials that show a significant benefit of the vaccine are too small to advocate widespread oral vaccination of people with COPD.


This study aimed to assess the timing of sexual maturation (breast development and menarche occurrence) among sub‐Saharan African adolescent girls from rural areas. In the framework of a longitudinal study of growth at puberty, the stages of pubertal development (Tanner classification) and menarche occurrence were recorded at intervals between 1995 and 2000 in a sample of 406 Senegalese adolescent girls from a rural area. Nutritional status was estimated during infancy, childhood, and adolescence within this sample, and body composition was estimated only during adolescence. At the beginning of the study (1995), the adolescent girls were 11.4 years old (SD = 0.6). At the end of the study, they were 16.5 years old (SD = 0.6). Median and quartile ages at entry into each maturity stage and its confidence limits were estimated by a lognormal parametric survival model. These adolescent girls were shorter and thinner than girls of the same age from developed countries. Median age at the onset of breast development was 12.6 years (95% CI = 12.5–12.8). Median age at the end of sexual maturation and median age at menarche were estimated respectively at 15.8 years (95% CI = 15.7–15.9) and 15.9 years (95% CI = 15.7–15.9). These adolescent girls were less mature than other adolescent girls of the same age from other developing countries. Their puberty was extremely delayed compared to that of adolescent girls of the same age from industrialized countries. Puberty in these Senegalese adolescent girls is delayed by about 3 years. This may be due to malnutrition, significant energy expenditure, and poor diet and living conditions, and possibly to genetic control. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 17:718–730, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Note: Abstracts: 59th Annual Assembly of Swiss Society for Microbiology, Zurich, March 23-24, 2000 Reference LBE-POSTER-2000-014 Record created on 2005-03-02, modified on 2016-08-08


Repetitive Processes are a special class of dynamical systems which involve propagation of information in two independent directions that are having theoretical importance and practicalrelevance. Discrete Sylvester systems have applications in control theory, optimal filters, system theory, differential games, power systems and signal processing. So considering repetitive processes described by discrete Sylvester systems is an interesting problem because of applicability. These sys-tems can not be controlled by conventional system theoretic approach. Long wall cutting problems, metal rolling operations, Iterative learning control (ILC) schemes and iterative algorithms for solving non linear optimal control problems are some of the important applications of Repetitive Processes. This paper characterizes controllability properties to design control schemes based on linear matrix inequality (LMI) for Discrete Linear Sylvester Repetitive Process.


We describe the behaviour of grafted polymer mushrooms compressed by finite-size particles. Compression of single fixed mushrooms can lead to a first-order escape transition or, in certain circumstances, hysteresis. These transitions or hysteresis can be seen either in the chain radius or in the compressional force law. In the many-mushroom regime the force law is modified by the presence of escaped chains. For surface mobile chains the chains can evacuate from under the particle leading to a force law with a maximum at about 3/4 of a mushroom size. This maximum implies that the system undergoes a collapse transition above a critical pressure or yield stress Pc ≈ kTσ0RF3−1, where σ0 is the grafting density and RF3 is the unperturbed mushroom size.


We study permutation groups in which all normal subgroups are transitive or semiregular. The motivation for such investigations comes from universal algebra. This paper focuses on solvable groups.


DISCLOSURES
This supplement was funded by Novo Nordisk. McGill has received grants and personal fees from Novo Nordisk; grants from AstraZeneca, Novartis, Lexicon, and Pfizer; and personal fees from Intarcia, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Janssen, Mannkind, Bayer, and Merck.


The application of a simple lag-time assay for antioxidant capacity using myoglobin and 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) or ABTS has been studied for its general application conditions. In the presence of an antioxidant, the ABTS(*+) radical-cation-forming chromogenic reaction, catalyzed by myoglobin and initiated by hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)), has a lag period, and its duration is linearly correlated to the concentration of that antioxidant. The high linearity between the lag time and the antioxidant concentration remained unchanged regardless of the assay conditions. It was also found that the linearity was better for antioxidants at lower concentrations. The change of assay condition could significantly affect the relative antioxidant value of a chemical to the standard (ascorbic acid), although not to a large extent. Most of antioxidants investigated were found suitable to be assayed using this method. Some antioxidants, e.g., genistein, however, were not, probably due to their low reactivity toward ferrylmyoglobin or ABTS(*+). In conclusion, the lag-time assay is a reliable method for measuring the antioxidant capacity, provided caution is taken for antioxidants that mainly act through lowering the rate of the chromogenic reaction.


This article reports on a smoking cessation programme across two local health and social care groups in Northern Ireland: two community projects, and two hospitals. The overall aim of the project was to reduce the prevalence and incidence of smoking among clients, carers and staff within mental health settings.

Smoking cessation advice and support was offered weekly over a ten-week programme, either on a one-to-one basis or in a group. The results found that the project not only achieved a reduction in the incidence and prevalence of smoking among clients with mental health problems, it also found that people with mental health problems do want, and can stop smoking.


Sargassum fusiforme has traditionally been widely consumed in Asia as a food, and it has gained much attention due to its high nutritional, pharmaceutical, and industrial value. This study aimed to examine the promotional effects of ethanol extract (ET) and fraction obtained from ethyl acetate (FR) of S. fusiforme on hair growth in C57BL/6 mice and HaCaT cells. Five-week-old mice were used to compare hair regrowth during application of ET and FR for 21 days. Hair regrowth was evaluated by macroscopic observation and verified by hematoxylin-eosin tissue staining. Levels of mRNA expression of factors relevant to the hair growth cycle such as keratinocyte growth factor (KGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-β1) were examined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Our results showed that ET and FR successfully promoted hair regrowth in shaved C57BL/6 mice at a dose >20 mg/kg. Moreover, ET and FR were effective in stimulating expression of KGF and VEGF mRNAs in a dose-dependent manner, whereas TGF-β1 was not activated. These results indicate that ET and FR of S. fusiforme effectively promoted hair growth and gene expression relevant to hair growth cycles in both in vitro and in vivo models.


Purpose: Frameless stereotactic navigation has been widely adopted in multiple surgical specialties and has been increasingly used by oculoplastic surgeons. The authors report their preliminary results using navigation guidance with a registration mask for orbital decompressions. Methods: Stereotactic navigation with an adhesive autoregistration mask was used to guide consecutive orbital decompression surgeries for Graves' orbitopathy performed by 1 surgeon at the authors' institution from January 2014 to September 2014. Decompressions performed were 1 or 2 sided with medial, lateral, or balanced techniques. Navigation-guided operating technique and operating parameters are reported and compared with non–navigation-guided decompressions performed by the same surgeon in 2013. Results: Eleven decompressions were performed in 7 patients. The median age of the cohort was 60 years, and 5 patients were female. No intraoperative or late complications occurred with the registration mask or with the navigation system. Although initially longer than in decompressions performed without navigation, actual operating times consistently decreased with each sequential case until they were 8, 40, and 24 minutes shorter than surgeries performed without navigation for balanced, lateral, and medial decompressions, respectively. Conclusions: An autoregistration mask enables intraoperative navigation guidance that is associated with no complications in this small case series. Benefits include improved anatomical localization and shorter actual operating times after overcoming initial learning curve, especially for lateral wall decompressions. Navigation guidance may be useful for deep orbital procedures. They may also have utility in surgical training. Wider adoption of the technology will be driven by both efficiency and patient safety. Additional studies are warranted.


We report on a 24-year-old female patient with posttraumatic migration of a bony fragment from the site of the fracture to the bladder. The foreign body was removed from the bladder by endoscopy. The etiopathogenic mechanism, clinical signs, diagnostic method and therapeutic management are discussed.


As energy efficiency is becoming a subject of utter importance in today's societies, the European Union and a vast number of organizations have put a lot of focus on it. As a result, huge amounts of data are generated at an unprecedented rate. After thorough analysis and exploration, these data could provide a variety of solutions and optimizations regarding the energy efficiency subject. However, all the potential solutions that could derive from the aforementioned procedures still remain untapped due to the fact that these data are yet fragmented and highly sophisticated. In this paper, we propose an architecture for a Reasoning Engine, a mechanism that provides intelligent querying, insights and search capabilities, by leveraging technologies that will be described below. The proposed architecture has been developed in the context of the H2020 project called MATRYCS. In this paper, the reasons that resulted from the need of efficient ways of querying and analyzing the large amounts of data are firstly explained. Subsequently, several use cases, where related technologies were used to address real-world challenges, are presented. The main focus, however, is put in the detailed presentation of our Reasoning Engine's implementation steps. Lastly, the outcome of our work is demonstrated, showcasing the derived results and the optimizations that have been implemented.


Paenibacillus spp. are Gram-positive, facultatively aerobic, bacilli-shaped endospore-forming bacteria. They have been detected in a variety of environments, such as soil, water, forage, insect larvae, and even clinical samples. The strain 139SI (GenBank accession No.: JF825470.1) from three strains of Paenibacillus isolates investigated here was chosen as the type strain of the proposed novel species. The other two similar strain isolates investigated were 140SI (JF825471.1) and 141SI (JQ734548.1). These strains were identified as members of the genus Paenibacillus on the basis of phenotypic characteristics, phylogenetic analysis and 16S rRNA G+C content. Surprisingly, these strains exhibited a strong hemolytic activity on 5% sheep blood agar. Their crude extracts also showed positive growth-promoting activities in colon cancer and Vero cell lines. To our knowledge, this is the first Paenibacillus with hemolytic and growth-promoting activities reported, and the name Paenibacillus hemolyticus for this novel species is proposed. The capability of this novel species in hemolytic and cell growth activities suggests its potential in both clinical and pharmacological implications.


New developments of a novel 2-D LWA with maximum gain at broadside have been presented. By the design of an array of SWLs the SW field distribution on the substrate can be controlled and thus broadside beam steering can be observed at a single frequency. Such SWLs can also be used in the design of novel planar circuit structures for guided and radiated applications at millimeter-wave frequencies.


Acute sensorineural hearing loss is a common pathology in the human population due to impaired sound perception. Along with the widespread systemic use of glucocorticosteroids in recent years, there has been a keen interest in their local delivery via intratympanic injections or through a previously installed shunt in the eardrum. The experience of treating 40 patients with ASNHL is presented. Patients of the 1st group received a systemic course of dexamethasone, and patients of the 2nd group received dexamethasone through the superimposed perforation in the eardrum using a current frequency of 4 MHz. Audiological examination was performed before treatment, 1, 2 weeks, 1 and 6 months after treatment. Local treatment of ASNHL is as effective as their systemic use and can be used as the main one. The method of radiofrequency myringotomy is safe and convenient in treatment by intra-implantation of glucocorticosteroids into the tympanic cavity.


This paper investigates whether male soccer tradition can predict the success of female soccer. Different from the existing literature, this paper utilizes panel data covering 175 countries during the 1991-2011 period, capturing country heterogeneity effects and time trends. An instrumental variable approach is further employed in order to identify causal relation. My findings do not support the widespread perception that male tradition determines female soccer attainments. On the other hand, my results indicate that women's empowerment can be a driving force for the success of female soccer.


Both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are required for immunity protective against the protozoan parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi. The unique T. cruzi trans-sialidase (TS) antigen can induce both mucosal and systemic protection. BALB/c mice develop CD8 responses directed against the H2-Kd-restricted TS epitope IYNVGQVSI (aa 359-367). We have used overlapping peptides (18mers with 15 aa overlaps) spanning the TS amino-terminus (aa 33-275) to identify an H2-IAd-restricted CD4 epitope that induces potent TS-specific Th1 responses (KVTERVVHSFRLPALVNV; aa 58-75). Here we demonstrate that dendritic cells (DC) pulsed only with KVTERVVHSFRLPALVNV and IYNVGQVSI can induce potent protective immunity. DC generated in vivo with flt3-ligand were pulsed with 50 ug/ml of each peptide and injected intravenously into BALB/c mice (1 million/mouse) 3 times at 2 week intervals. One month later these mice were challenged with 5000 Tulahuén blood form trypomastigotes. Controls included unvaccinated mice and mice given DC only. Both parasitemia and mortality were significantly reduced (p<0.05) in mice receiving DC pulsed with the TS peptides. These results indicate that monospecific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells can protect against a complex parasitic pathogen. We are preparing transgenic mice expressing TCR specific for these two epitopes with the goal of assessing in detail the mechanisms involved in the development of protective T. cruzi immunity.
 This work was funded by NIH RO1 #AI040196 awarded to DFH.


Distributed systems paradigm gained in popularity during the last 15 years, thanks also to the broad diffusion of distributed frameworks proposed for the Internet plat form. In the late '90s a new concept started to play a main role in the field of distributed computing: the Grid.
This thesis presents a study related to the integration between the BaBar's framework, an experiment belonging to the High Energy Physics field, and a grid system like the one implemented by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), the INFNGrid project, which provides
support for several research domains. The main goal was to succeed in adapt an already well established system, like the one implemented into the BaBar pipeline and based on local centers not interconnected between themselves, to a kind of technology that was not ready by the time the
experiment's framework was designed. Despite this new approach was related just to some aspects of the experiment, the production of simulated events by using MonteCarlo methods, the efforts here described represent an example of how an old experiment can bridge the gap toward the Grid computing, even adopting solutions designed for more recent projects.
The complete evolution of this integration will be explained starting from the earlier stages until the
actual development to state the progresses achieved, presenting results that are comparable with
production rates gained using the conventional BaBar's approach, in order to examine the potentially benefits and drawbacks on a concrete case study.


This article tries to analyze the meaning and relevance of the concept of solidarity as compared to the concept of justice. While 'justice' refers to rights and duties (Moralität), the concept of solidarity refers to relations of personal commitment and recognition (Sittlichkeit). The article wants to answer the question whether solidarity and liberal justice should be seen as mutually exclusive or whether both approaches should be regarded as complementary to each other. The paper starts with an analysis of liberal theories of justice which are followed by an analysis of the descriptive and a moral understanding of the concept of solidarity. The importance of solidarity lies in its relational aspects, particularly its emphasis on cooperation and commonality. The paper argues that while solidarity is more fundamental than justice, both concepts are important for the arrangement of health care practices. The paper gives special attention to the concept of decent care, reflective solidarity and humanitarian solidarity which is seen as fundamental for all health care policies and care practices.


Large nuclear explosions in the solid earth, the hydrosphere, and the lower and upper atmosphere have generated seismic waves of periods greater than about 5 seconds which have been detected at great distances from the source.


The authors describe two patients with endogenous uveitis. When investigating the aetiology of the inflammation systemic sarcoidosis was diagnosed. The authors emphasize the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration during care of patients suffering from this disease.


Ungrammaticality is a phenomenon that is not associated with the use of the mother tongue. This is because the mother tongue is naturally  acquired in the environment of its domain. This paper sets out to provide evidence of the possibility of ungrammaticality in the mother tongue. But this exists as result of interference from dialectal varieties of the Igbo language. The research work identifies some of the ungrammaticalities observed in the standard Igbo which represent dialectal features. The data for the research were collected through observation of native speakers' speech event, and the analysis was done using the approved principles for the standard Igbo. The errors identified include: personifying inanimate things, impersonifying man, improper application of plural markers, indirect repetitions otherwise known as tautology, improper use of the first person singular pronoun and wrong use of some diction, among others. The researcher recommends that native speakers should adhere to the principles of the standard form of the language because any native speaker is a potential informant to linguists and language learners. This paper therefore contributes immensely to the goal of better teaching and learning of the standard Igbo.


Phytocystatins (PhyCys) comprise a group of inhibitors for cysteine proteinases in plants. They play a wide range of important roles in regulating endogenous processes and protecting plants against various environmental stresses, but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, we detailed the biological functions of MpCYS4, a member of cystatin genes isolated from Malus prunifolia. This gene was activated under water deficit, heat (40°C), exogenous abscisic acid (ABA), or methyl viologen (MV) (Tan et al., 2014a). At cellular level, MpCYS4 protein was found to be localized in the nucleus, cytoplasm, and plasma membrane of onion epidermal cells. Recombinant MpCYS4 cystatin expressed in Escherichia coli was purified and it exhibited cysteine protease inhibitor activity. Transgenic overexpression of MpCYS4 in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and apple (Malus domestica) led to ABA hypersensitivity and series of ABA-associated phenotypes, such as enhanced ABA-induced stomatal closing, altered expression of many ABA/stress-responsive genes, and enhanced drought tolerance. Taken together, our results demonstrate that MpCYS4 is involved in ABA-mediated stress signal transduction and confers drought tolerance at least in part by enhancing stomatal closure and up-regulating the transcriptional levels of ABA- and drought-related genes. These findings provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms by which phytocystatins influence plant growth, development, and tolerance to stress.


The studio-based method of teaching has been used for almost 100 years to teach product and architecture design. With ever increasing pressure on HCI to teach competence in designing interactive objects, new ways of teaching need to be explored. This article begins with a review of the studio-based teaching concept and how it has been used in architecture, science/engineering, and computer science education. We then present and discuss the evaluation of an HCI design studio course which we created and taught in spring 2002 in the Computer and Information Science Department of the University of Oregon. This course was based on our observations and study of studio courses in the School of Architecture. Finally, we review general issues about studio teaching including the promises and challenges that it presents to widespread acceptance in the computer science curriculum.


Securing cyber infrastructures has become critical because they are increasingly exposed to attackers while accommodating a huge number of IoT devices and supporting numerous sophisticated emerging applications. Security metrics are essential for assessing the security risks and making effective decisions concerning system security. Many security metrics rely on mathematical models, but are mainly based on empirical data, qualitative methods, or compliance checking, and this renders the outcome far from satisfactory. Computing the probability of an attack, or more precisely a threat that materialises into an attack, forms an essential basis for a quantitative security metric. This paper proposes a novel approach to compute the probability distribution of cloud security threats based on a Markov chain and Common Vulnerability Scoring System. Moreover, the paper introduces the method to estimate the probability of security attacks. The use of the new security threat model and its computation is demonstrated through their application to estimating the probabilities of cloud threats and types of attacks.


Noise can cause digital circuits to switch incorrectly and thus produce spurious results. Noise can also have adverse power, timing and reliability effects. Dynamic logic is particularly susceptible to charge-sharing and coupling noise. Thus, the design and optimization of a circuit should take noise considerations into account. Such considerations are typically stated as semi-infinite constraints. In addition, the number of signals to be checked and the number of sub-intervals of time during which the checking must be performed can potentially be very large. Thus, the practical incorporation of noise constraints during circuit optimization is a hitherto unsolved problem. This paper describes a novel method for incorporating noise considerations during automatic circuit optimization. Semi-infinite constraints representing noise considerations are first converted to ordinary equality constraints involving time integrals, which are readily computed in the context of circuit optimization based on time-domain simulation. Next, the gradients of these integrals are computed by the adjoint method. By using an augmented Lagrangian optimization merit function, the adjoint method is applied to compute all the necessary gradients required for optimization in a single adjoint analysis, no matter how many noise measurements are considered, and irrespective of the dimensionality of the problem. Numerical results are presented.


We present a comprehensive study of the free-exciton and exciton-polariton photoluminescence in wurtzite GaN. Using polarization-dependent measurements we were able to resolve the fine-structure energy splittings in the n51 state of theA exciton and to determine the energy separation between the 1 S and 2P61 states as 19.760.2 meV. For then51 state, the evolution of the emission from two transverse polariton branches G5T1 andG5T2, the longitudinal excitonG5L , and the dipole-forbidden exciton G6 in magnetic fields up to 15 T have been studied in Faraday configuration. We have estimated the value of the parallel effective g factor of the hole mixed into the 1S state of theA exciton asgA,1S i 52.2560.2. To describe these data a theory is developed for the exciton energy structure in hexagonal semiconductors with wurtzite symmetry in zero and in weak external magnetic fields which takes into account the effect of the hexagonal lattice anisotropy and the coupling of all excitonic states belonging to different valence subbands. The effect of the exciton interaction with polar optical phonons is considered. The theory is very successful in describing the free-exciton emission and magnetoluminescence in wurtzite GaN. The effective mass parameters and the magnetic Luttinger constant as well as the effective Rydberg numbers and binding energies of the A, B, andC excitons are determined from a comparison of the theory with experimental data.


This paper presents an approximate formula for the determination of local axis temperatures of an inhomogeneous, axisymmetric, optically thin, local thermodynamic equilibrium plasma column without using the Abel inversion technique. The proposed method is straightforward and is based on recording the spatially integrated radiances of spectral lines. The formula is useful for high gradients thermal plasma columns of the type found in DC electric arcs or plasma jets of gaussian shaped temperature profile. The formulation permits a simple experimental arrangement for rapid monitoring or control of parameters in industrial plasma devices or for the determination of emissivities and line transition probabilities. We also show that the method can be applied to spatially unstable arc discharges, where traditional techniques are difficult and cumbersome to apply.


The melting process for an intermetallic compound Ni3Al is modeled with the use of two molecular dynamics (MD) methods, i.e., classical MD and ab initio MD. In the first case, we have a good statistics; however the results of modeling significantly depend on the choice of an interatomic interaction potential model. In the second case, any fitting parameters are not necessary, but a great computational power is required. The ab initio MD results are in better agreement with experiment. However, using this method, it is impossible to receive good statistics because of a small number of atoms. The two methods are mutually complimentary and allow to obtain valid results in the modeling of new materials as well.


Abstract. Array antennas are used in science as well as for commercial and military purposes. The used element antennas act in accordance to their desired uses, for example radars or stationer GPS satellites. Typical components are for example slotted waveguides, patches, yagi-antennas and helix-antennas. All these elements do stand out with their own characteristics based on their special applications. If these elements are formed into an array configuration, the effectiveness can be improved immensely. There is a relation between the array functions and the physical array properties like the element alignment (linear, planar, circular), distances between the elements and so on. Among the physical properties there are other attributes like phase or amplitude coefficients, which are of great significance. The aim of this study was to provide an insight into the problem of array design, as far as the antenna element phase is concerned. Along with this, array radiation characteristics effects are presented. With the help of the extracted cognitions beam forming behaviour can be shown and the array phase behaviour can be analysed. One of the main applications is to simulate the array characteristics, like the radiation characteristic or the gain, for displacements of the array feeding point. A software solution that simulates the phase shift of a given array pattern is sought to adjust the feeding point.


Lapa do Santo rockshelter, a Paleoindian site located in Eastern-Central Brazil, presented two main occupations; one during Early Holocene (12,460 to 8700 cal BP), and a latter in Middle Holocene (5100 to 4200 cal BP). In spite of this 3600 year gap, the stratigraphy and general characteristics of the material culture did not indicate any visible discontinuity. This led us to hypothesise a reoccupation of the rockshelter by the same cultural group, tested by means of statistical analyses comparing lithics, bone artifacts, and faunal remains from early and middle Holocene layers. No significant differences were found, and our results indicate the presence of a cultural tradition that persisted for 8240 years, or roughly 412 generations.


Visualizations of actual run-time data support the comprehension of programs, like examples support the explanation of abstract concepts and principles. Unfortunately, the required run-time analysis is often associated with an inconvenient overhead that renders current tools impractical for frequent use. We propose an interactive approach to collect and present run-time data. An initial shallow analysis provides for immediate access to visualizations of run-time information. As users explore this information, it is incrementally refined on-demand. We present an implementation that realizes our proposed approach and enables developers to instantly explore run-time behavior of selected code entities. We evaluate our interactive approach by measuring time and memory overhead in the context of ten different-sized projects. Our empirical results show that run-time data for an initial overview can be collected in less than 300 milliseconds for 95% of cases.


Abstract:
 The Brown Tree Snake (Boiga irregularis) has caused ecological and economic damage to Guam, and the snake has the potential to colonize other islands in the Pacific Ocean. This study quantifies the potential economic damage if the snake were translocated, established in the state of Hawai'i, and causing damage at levels similar to those on Guam. Damages modeled included costs of medical treatments due to snakebites, snake-caused power outages, and decreased tourism resulting from effects of the snake. Damage caused by presence of the Brown Tree Snake on Guam was used as a guide to estimate potential economic damage to Hawai'i from both medical- and power outage—related damage. To predict tourism impact, a survey was administered to Hawaiian tourists that identified tourist responses to potential effects of the Brown Tree Snake. These results were then used in an input-output model to predict damage to the state economy. Summing these damages resulted in an estimated total potential annual damage to Hawai'i of between $593 million and $2.14 billion. This economic analysis provides a range of potential damages that policy makers can use in evaluation of future prevention and control programs.


This report presents the preliminary findings of a research study to determine the factors which enable a manufacturing plant to simultaneously achieve high labour productivity, fast, reliable delivery and high quality consistency. The conclusions are based on analysis of a database containing details of 953 manufacturing plants in the UK. Based on the performance measures mentioned above, a composite performance measure was calculated for each plant in the database. The plants were then divided into groups of high performers, medium performers and low performers. Using statistical analysis, those differences between the high and low‐performing plants that were significant were identified. The main factors differentiating high‐performing plants from the rest were those associated with low process variability, high schedule stability and more reliable deliveries by suppliers.


In an effort to advance measurement analysis in marketing research, the authors propose three extensions of the current scale development paradigm. First, the authors focus attention on the trait-state distinction and present a model that separates stable sources of substantive variation in a construct from transient sources. Second, the authors develop a classification of measurement error that distinguishes six types of error on the basis of (1) whether the error is stable or transient and (2) whether the error affects individual items, subsets of items, or all items in a scale. They also show how these errors can be modeled using a factor-analytic specification. Third, the authors argue that marketing researchers should make the means of scale items an explicit component of measurement analysis and should test for the invariance of item loadings and intercepts as a prerequisite for meaningful comparisons of scale means across samples and over time. To illustrate the benefits of the proposed procedure, the authors present an extended application of the model to the constructs of brand loyalty and deal proneness.


1. Factors determining the convective flow patterns around the human head in 'still' conditions are discussed in relation to body posture. 2. The flow patterns have been visualized using a schlieren optical system which reveals that the head has a thicker 'insulating' layer of convecting air in the erect posture than in the supine position. 3. Local convective and radiative heat transfer measurements from the head have been using surface calorimeters. These results are seen to be closely related to the thickness of the convective boundary layer flows. 4. The total convective and radiative heat loss from the head of a subject in the erect and supine position has been evaluated from the local measurements. For the head of the supine subject the heat loss was found to be 30% more than when the subject was standing.


The Politics of Aristocratic Empires is a study of a political order that prevailed throughout much of the world for many centuries without any major social conflict or change and with hardly any government in the modern sense. Although previously ignored by political science, powerful remnants of this old order still persist in modern politics. The historical literature on aristocratic empires typically is descriptive and treats each empire as unique. By contrast, this work adopts an analytical, explanatory, and comparative approach and clearly distinguishes aristocratic empires from both primitive and more modern, commercialized societies. It develops generalizations that are supported and richly illustrated by data from many empires and demonstrates that a pattern of politics prevailed across time, space, and cultures from ancient Egypt five millennia ago to Saudi Arabia five decades ago, from China and Japan to Europe, from the Incas and the Aztecs to the Tutsi. Kautsky argues that aristocrats, because they live off the labor of peasants, must perform the primary governmental functions of taxation and warfare. Their performance is linked to particular values and beliefs, and both functions and ideologies in turn condition the stakes, the forms, and the arenas of intra-aristocratic conflict--the politics of the aristocracy. The author also analyzes the roles of the peasantry and the townspeople in aristocratic politics and shows that peasant revolts on any large scale occur only after commercial modernization. He concludes with chapters on the modernization of aristocratic empires and on the importance in modern politics of institutional and ideological remnants of the old aristocratic order.


The mutagenicity of 3-nitroperylene (nitroPer), a nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) has been extensively studied using the Ames Salmonella test. In accord with previous work, nitroPer proved to be a potent frameshift mutagen which requires activation by mixed function oxidases (MFOs) in the microsomes of rat liver S9 preparations. The concentration of S9 required for optimal activation of this mutagen is several times lower than that recommended for routine screening by the Ames test. Studies with the MFO inducers Aroclor 1254, phenobarbital, 3-methylcholanthrene and beta-naphthoflavone, as well as with some MFO inhibitors indicate that both P450b and P450c appear to be involved in the activation of nitroPer. Two non-mutagenic PAHs (perylene and benzo[e]pyrene) inhibited the mutagenicity of nitroPer in a competitive fashion. The mutagenic activity of nitroPer was greatly decreased in a strain of bacteria (TA98/1,8-DNP6) that lacks an acetyltransferase needed for the activation of many nitroarenes. Incubation of nitroPer with microsomes from Aroclor-treated rats plus appropriate cofactors led to the formation of several metabolites which could be separated from one another and from nitroPer by h.p.l.c. Three of these were direct-acting mutagens with Salmonella typhimurium strain TA98, while another required microsomal activation. We postulate that the metabolic activation of nitroPer requires three steps: (i) metabolism by MOF enzymes to yield a ring-oxidized compound which is absorbed by the bacteria; (ii) reduction of this compound to the hydroxylamine by a bacterial nitroreductase; and (iii) O-acetylation of the hydroxylamine to yield a reactive ultimate mutagen.


Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) is an index-based data structure that allows spatial item retrieval over a large dataset. The performance measure, ρ, has significant effect on the computational complexity and memory space requirement to create and store items in this data structure respectively. The minimization of ρ at a specific approximation factor c, is dependent on the load factor, α. Over the years,α = 4has been used by researchers. In this paper, we demonstratethat the choice ofα = 4does not guarantee low computational complexity and low memory space of the data structure under the LSH scheme. To guarantee low computational complexity and low memory space, we proposeα = 5. Experiments on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program imagery datasethave shown thatα = 5saves more than 75%on memory space; cuts the computational complexity by more than 70%andanswers query two times faster on the average compared to that ofα = 4. General Terms Nearest Neighbor, Search Algorithm, Locality Sensitive Hashing


The present study aimed to investigate the effects of lycopene on hepatic metabolic- and immune-related gene expression in laying hens. A total of 48 25-week-old White Leghorn hens were randomly allocated into four groups consisting of four replicates of three birds: control (basal diet), T1 (basal diet + 10 mg/kg of tomato powder-containing lycopene), T2 (basal diet + 10 mg/kg of micelles of tomato powder-containing lycopene), and T3 (basal diet + 10 mg/kg of purified lycopene). Chickens were fed ad libitum for 5 weeks, and then total RNA was extracted from the livers for quantitative RT-PCR analysis. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor ? (PPAR?) expression was decreased in the liver of chickens after lycopene supplementation (P<0.05). Micellar lycopene supplementation decreased the expression of PPAR? target genes including fatty acid binding protein 4 (FABP4) and fatty acids synthase (FASN) in the T2 group (P<0.05). Sterol regulatory element-binding protein 2 (SREBP2) and C/EBP-? were also downregulated in hens fed with micellar lycopene (P<0.05). Glucose transporter 8 (GLUT-8) was upregulated in the T2 and T3 groups (P<0.05). However, the expression of carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 (CPT-1) was not changed by lycopene supplementation. Pro-inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor ? (TNF-?) and interleukin 6 (IL-6) were downregulated by lycopene supplementation (P<0.05). These data suggest that the type of lycopene supplementation is critical and that micelles of tomato powder-containing lycopene may play an important role in the modulation of lipid metabolism and immunity in chickens.


Background Fatigue is a very common and debilitating symptom in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), even among those with a mild or inactive disease. The objective of this study is to define fatigue determinants and describe the impact of fatigue on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and illness perception in a monocentric cohort of patients with SLE. Methods This is a cross-sectional study. Adult patients with SLE were included. For each patient, demographics, medications, comorbidities, organ damage (Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics Damage Index), active disease manifestations and Systemic Lupus Disease Activity Index scores were collected. It was evaluated if each patient met the definitions of remission and low disease activity. At enrolment, each patient completed the Short Form-36 (SF-36), Functional Assessment Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue (FACIT-F), Lupus Impact Tracker (LIT), Systemic Lupus Activity Questionnaire (SLAQ) and Brief Index of Lupus Damage (BILD). The FACIT-F questionnaire was also administered to a group of healthy controls. Results 223 patients were included (mean age 44.9±13.2 years, median disease duration 13 years). 18.2% had an active disease, 43.5% met the definition of remission on treatment, and 11.8% had a concomitant fibromyalgia. The median FACIT-F score of our cohort was significantly lower compared with that of healthy controls (40 vs 47; p<0.001). FACIT-F scores were irrespective of age, disease duration, disease activity and damage. FACIT-F score was significantly lower in patients with fibromyalgia (p<0.01). FACIT-F scores demonstrated a significant correlation with all other patient-reported outcomes: SF-36 (r=0.53–0.77), LIT (r=−0.78), SLAQ (r=−0.72) and BILD (r=−0.28). Conclusions Fatigue in patients with SLE has a strong negative impact on HRQoL and patient perception of the disease burden. Fatigue seems irrespective of disease activity but significantly influenced by the presence of fibromyalgia.


The Benzenoid Generation Problem (BGP) aims at generating all benzenoid molecules that satisfy some given properties. This problem has important applications in chemistry, and Carissan et al (2021) have shown us that Constraint Programming (CP) is well suited for modelling this problem because properties defined by chemists are easy to express by means of constraints. Benzenoids are described by hexagon graphs and a key point for an efficient enumeration of these graphs is to be invariant to rotations and symmetries. In this paper, we introduce canonical codes that uniquely characterise hexagon graphs while being invariant to rotations and symmetries. We show that these codes may be defined by means of constraints. We also introduce a global constraint for ensuring that codes are canonical, and a global constraint for ensuring that a pattern is included in a code. We experimentally compare our new CP model with the CP-based approach of Carissan et al (2021), and we show that it has better scale-up properties.


Three different formulations of the coupled-mode theory for parallel dielectric waveguides are derived by substituting proper polarization vectors into a very general, unconjugated form of the reciprocity theorem. It is shown that the origins of errors of the three formulations can be clearly perceived through the derivation process. Power transfer characteristics predicted by the three coupled-mode theories are compared with the exact numerical results to show the relative accuracy of these theories. >


This paper presents a fast and computationally efficient algorithm based on the combination of both zoom-MUSIC and zoom-FFT methods for gear tooth localized fault detection in induction machine-based systems. This method relies mainly on the zoom-MUSIC technique for rotor speed estimation at a primary stage and the application of the zoom-FFT to notch filtered instantaneous frequencies of the stator current space vector for the computation of a fault index. It computes the energy of fault-related frequencies in a predefined bandwidth. It will be demonstrated that the fault can be well detected by using only 100 data samples associated with one second data collection of three stator currents. A test-rig based on a 250W three-phase squirrel-cage induction machine shaft-connected to a single-stage helical gearbox has been used for experimental verifications.


The purpose of this study was to describe and compare the assessed cognitive level of instruction in agricultural courses taught at a distance to findings from previous research involving on-campus courses and to professors' perceptions of a n appropriate level. The populations for the study consisted of all Iowa State University College of Agriculture distance education courses (N=13) and their instructors (N=11) during a two -year period. Instructors desired to achieve practically identical cognitive level outcomes in on - and offcampus versions of their courses. Results of this study and previous studies of on -campus courses showed that instructors' actions did not match their aspirations. They surpassed their aspirations related to lower level (remembering and processing) cognitive outcomes and fell short of their aspirations related to higher level (creating and evaluating) cognitive outcomes. It was concluded that instructors teach to the same levels of cognition in on- and off-campus courses. In addition, results of this study show a relationship between the cognitive level of instruction and the delivery method used. The cognitive level of instruction in off-campus courses delivered by the Iowa Communications Network (ICN) was assessed to be higher than the other three delivery methods studied (i.e., videotape, ICN and videotape, videotape and live). Rival explanations for the ICN advantage were acknowledged.


STUDY OBJECTIVE The decline in cardiovascular mortality in Denmark during the 1980s has been greatest in the highest socioeconomic groups of the population. This study examines whether the increased social inequality in cardiovascular mortality has been accompanied by a different trend in cardiovascular risk factors in different educational groups. DESIGN Data from three cross sectional WHO MONICA surveys conducted in 1982–84, 1987, and 1991–92, were analysed to estimate trends in biological (weight, height, body mass index, blood pressure, and serum lipids) and behavioural (smoking, physical activity during leisure, and eating habits) risk factors in relation to educational status. SETTING County of Copenhagen, Denmark. PARTICIPANTS 6695 Danish men and women of ages 30, 40, 50, and 60 years. MAIN RESULTS The prevalence of smoking and heavy smoking decreased during the study but only in the most educated groups. In fact, the prevalence of heavy smoking increased in the least educated women. There was no significant interaction for the remaining biological and behavioural risk factors between time of examination and educational level, indicating that the trend was the same in the different educational groups. However, a summary index based on seven cardiovascular risk factors improved, and this development was only seen in the most educated men and women. CONCLUSION The difference between educational groups in prevalence of smoking increased during the 1980s, and this accounted for widening of an existing social difference in the total cardiovascular risk.


A rare case of malignant melanocytic schwannoma in the nasopharynx is presented. Light microscopy showed proliferation of spindle-shaped tumor cells with mitoses. The essential histological hallmark was melanin deposition. Electron-microscopic examination confirmed the schwannian differentiation of the tumor cells. The patient has remained well without evidence of metastasis or local recurrence of the tumor 18 months after the excision of the neoplasm.


approach K.Suneeta1, J.Amarnath2, S.Kamakshaiah2 1C.V.S.R College of Engineering, Hyderabad Mail: firstname.lastname@example.com 2J.N.T.U.H College of Engineering, Kukatpally, Hyderabad-85, Mail: email@example.com Abstract:The aim of this paper is to approach to analysis the electrical transfer capability among different electricity markets using repeated power flow technique. Instead of minimizing the total cost in the conventional problem, in the paper, the transfer capability between two markets or two electricity supply and generation areas is maximized. To reduce the time required to compute transfer capabilities and also in order to take advantages of the superior speed of artificial neural network (ANN) over conventional methods, the radial basis function network (RBFN)-based approach also has been proposed in this paper. Artificial neural networks have been able to capture this nonlinearity and give good approximation of the relationship. For complete analysis, transfer capability is computed using the proposed algorithms of repeated power flow module under various operational conditions. This data is then used to train artificial neural networks to provide real term evaluation on transfer capability of that particular power system. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is investigated on a three area 30 bus system with a comprehensive set of operational limits and controls.


This paper is about reducing the cost of building good large-scale 3D reconstructions post-hoc. We render 2D views of an existing reconstruction and train a convolutional neural network (CNN) that refines inverse-depth to match a higher-quality reconstruction. Since the views that we correct are rendered from the same reconstruction, they share the same geometry, so overlapping views complement each other. We take advantage of that in two ways. Firstly, we impose a loss during training which guides predictions on neighbouring views to have the same geometry and has been shown to improve performance. Secondly, in contrast to previous work, which corrects each view independently, we also make predictions on sets of neighbouring views jointly. This is achieved by warping feature maps between views and thus bypassing memory-intensive 3D computation. We make the observation that features in the feature maps are viewpoint-dependent, and propose a method for transforming features with dynamic filters generated by a multi-layer perceptron from the relative poses between views. In our experiments we show that this last step is necessary for successfully fusing feature maps between views.


To study the evolution of phenotypic plasticity in the field, six populations of the hoverflyEristalis arbustorumwere sampled along two parallel North–South transects over a maximum daily temperature gradient. Three populations were sampled per transect. Egg batches were collected and the offspring were reared in a split family set up over three different pupal temperature regimes in the laboratory to produce population reaction norms of colour pattern, pupal development time, wing length and thorax length. Wing length and colour pattern were corrected for body size. All four characters showed plasticity in response to rearing temperature and significant differences in height, slope and shape of the reaction norms were found. Only male colour pattern showed variation in reaction norms along the North–South gradient. Most other characters showed variation in reaction norms from West to East. The two populations lying in the middle of the transects were frequently different from the others. Within the populations, significant genotype-environment interactions were frequently found for wing length and colour pattern, indicating that genetic variation for plasticity was present. The results suggest that the populations may have evolved plastic responses to suit local environmental conditions.


Treatment with aromatase inhibitors (AI's) is highly effective against breast cancer in ER positive postmenopausal women. However, some patients eventually become resistant to AIs. Tumor initiating cells (TIC's) represent a subpopulation of tumor cells, which show self-renewal capacity. We are focused towards discovering strategies to reduce the growth of breast cancer TICs, which may result in resistance. We have developed a xenograft model that mimics post-menopausal hormone responsive breast cancer. In this model, aromatase transfected human hormone sensitive MCF-7 cells (MCF-7Ca) are inoculated in ovariectomized athymic nude mice and allowed to grow in presence of D4A (aromatizable substrate of estrogen). Results obtained using this model have been confirmed by numerous clinical trials. Using this model, we have established that single agent AI is better than tamoxifen in controlling tumor growth. We also observed that although, AI letrozole provides a longer control over tumor growth, tumors eventually began to grow. In the current study, we investigated the effect of ATRA (All-trans Retinoic acid) (125μg/day, ip) and a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor entinostat (SNDX- 275) (50μg/day, po) with or without letrozole on letrozole resistant tumors in a xenograft model system. Ovariectomized athymic nude mice bearing xenografts of MCF-7Ca cells, were treated with letrozole till they became resistant (15 weeks). At this time, the mice were grouped to receive ATRA, entinostat plus ATRA or the combination of ATRA plus entinostat plus letrozole till week 23. The mice treated with entinostat plus ATRA letrozole showed a significant decrease in tumor growth rate compared to mice treated with single agents or entinostat plus ATRA (p<0.0001, p = 0.02). On week 20 weeks, 2 mice from each treatment group were euthanized and tumors were harvested. The tumors were digested enzymatically with collagenase and hyaluronidase and freed of debris using centrifugation and filtration. Mammosphere forming ability of TICs in the tumor tissue was measured by seeding 10,000 viable cells from each treated tumors under non-adherent conditions to access the self-renewal capacity. Quantitative PCR analysis of tumors cells showed a significant downregulation of the known TIC molecular markers, BCRP, ALDH, BMI-1 and Nanog compared to letrozole treated tumors. Similar results were also obtained when LTLT-Ca (long term letrozole treated MCF-7Ca) cells treated with ATRA and entinostat in combination with letrozole and then seeded in non-adherent conditions. The combination of ATRA plus ENT plus letrozole significantly (p<0.01) reduced number of mammospheres formed compared to single agents alone. We have shown previously, that LTLT-Ca cells have higher percentage of side population (cells expressing higher level of efflux pumps such as BCRP) compared to MCF-7Ca cells. The treatment of LTLT-Ca cells with the combination of ENT and ATRA with letrozole drastically reduced the percentage of side population. Overall, these studies indicate that the combination of ATRA, entinostat and letrozole is effective in reducing tumor recurrence in letrozole resistant tumors.

Citation Information: Cancer Res 2013;73(24 Suppl): Abstract nr PD5-2.


We study triage decisions in emergency departments (EDs) and provide a general procedure for determining when to apply provider triage (PT) based on operational and financial considerations using a steady-state many-server fluid approximation. We then apply the proposed method in the setting of a teaching hospital's ED and obtain closed-form expressions for the range of arrival rates for which PT outperforms the traditional nurse triage economically. We show that the proposed solution methodology based on this approximation procedure is asymptotically optimal under a many-server asymptotic regime. We also demonstrate via simulation experiments that the proposed policy performs within 0.82% of the best solution obtained via a computationally intensive total enumeration method.


The objective of this thesis is to examine more closely the effect of parental income on individual education outcomes. The first paper (Chapter 2) identifies the causal effect of parental income on education. Parental job losses that occur when youth are completing high school have significant negative effects on the university attendance of youth, and increase early school dropout behaviour. This provides evidence of an alarming impact of labour market displacement receiving little prior attention, and of a significant causal parental income effect. Job losses have persistent negative effects on parental income. I estimate a full year-to-year grade transition model to uncover the immediate and lagged effects of parental shocks on the education attendance outcomes of youth, and to test that these shock measures are exogenous. The second paper (Chapter 3) examines the effect of tuition fees on the post-secondary education attendance of youth from different parental income backgrounds. Universities and community colleges in several Canadian provinces increased tuition markedly over the 1990s, while some provincial governments instituted tuition freezes. I employ this fee variation to identify tuition effects. I also estimate the effect of factors influencing the level of rationing of university and community college places on attendance, namely government funding and cohort size, on attendance. Tuition increases markedly lowered the university attendance of low income youth but affected attendance of youth from middle and high income backgrounds much less. Cohort crowding also affected low income youth more negatively than other youth. I employ information on Canadian youth from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) in these first two papers. The third paper (Chapter 4) examines the effect of individual high school principals on high school graduation probabilities. My co-authors and I employ a unique administrative data set of all grade 12 students in the province of British Columbia in the 1990s. In this province, there was significant turnover of high school principals within schools, from both rotation of principals from school to school, plus from quits and new hires. This rotation permits the isolation of the effect of the school principal from the effect of schools, student peers and the school neighbourhood. The results suggest that principals, and thus schools, can affect graduation rates. We focus particularly on the effect of school principals on youth from low income backgrounds, as identified by family welfare receipt.


This paper deals with the governance of the 'nomad camps' in Rome during the recent implementation of the so-called 'Emergenza Nomadi' (Nomad Emergency). While focusing on the city of Rome, where fieldwork was conducted in 2011 and 2012, this study provides an investigation of the interactions between Romanies, local institutions and civil society organisations (CSOs1). The major contribution of this study is that it reveals the existence of a deeply rooted mechanism of marginalisation - the 'camps system' - in which corruption, lack of transparency and accountability, inefficiencies and antagonisms between a variety of competing actors have contributed, to differing degrees, to reify and crystallise the Romani condition. This paper argues that 'nomad camps' became a huge business in which everyone plays their part.


Background: Medical Certificate of Cause of Death is a vital document, important scientific tool issued by the doctors. It is the physician's primary responsibility to complete the medical certificate of cause of death correctly.  Incorrect filling up of the certificate will result in gross errors in legal scrutiny in medico-legal deaths. Method:  At the beginning the self-designed, pretested questionnaire open ended was distributed to participants, immediately after distribution pre-test was conducted. After the pre-test an interactive workshop was conducted on the MCCD. After the workshop post test was conducted. Result: There was an increase in the knowledge about who issues death certificates, long form of MCCD, who issues death certificate, maximum period within which you have to inform the registrar office about death in your clinic/hospital, detent dead body until your bills paid, what matter you are going to write on 1a. column and version present available in medical students from 0% to 61%, 30% to 100 %, 0% to 91 %, 0% to 91 %, 70 % to 96 %, 26 % to 87 % and 39 % to 100 % respectively. Conclusion: In the present study there is an improvement in knowledge and awareness in post graduates students after an interactive workshop on the MCCD.


The composites have drawn considerable interest in the mould processes. The vibrations and fatigue stresses induced in the moulds made evident to characterize the composite HexTOOL™ under fretting conditions. Fretting is a small-amplitude oscillatory motion between contacting surfaces. The running conditions fretting maps (RCFM) of composite at ambient conditions were established. The influence of different fiber orientations of HexTOOL™ composite on the wear kinetics was shown. An energy wear approach was developed. According to results of dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), the viscoelastic properties of composite material were obtained.


A ChatGPT-like system for drug compounds could be a game-changer in pharmaceutical research, accelerating drug discovery, enhancing our understanding of structure-activity relationships, guiding lead optimization, aiding drug repurposing, reducing the failure rate, and streamlining clinical trials. In this work, we make an initial attempt towards enabling ChatGPT-like capabilities on drug molecule graphs, by developing a prototype system DrugChat. DrugChat works in a similar way as ChatGPT. Users upload a compound molecule graph and ask various questions about this compound. DrugChat will answer these questions in a multi-turn, interactive manner. The DrugChat system consists of a graph neural network (GNN), a large language model (LLM), and an adaptor. The GNN takes a compound molecule graph as input and learns a representation for this graph. The adaptor transforms the graph representation produced by the GNN into another representation that is acceptable to the LLM. The LLM takes the compound representation transformed by the adaptor and users' questions about this compound as inputs and generates answers. All these components are trained end-to-end. To train DrugChat, we collected instruction tuning datasets which contain 10,834 drug compounds and 143,517 question-answer pairs. The code and data is available at \url{https://github.com/UCSD-AI4H/drugchat}


BACKGROUND
The causes of recent increases in the prevalence of overweight in the United States are perplexing because national survey data do not show clear patterns of change in energy intake or expenditure.

OBJECTIVE
Ecologic data regarding the quantities and types of foods and nutrients available in the United States between 1970 and 1998 were reviewed to provide an alternative perspective on trends in energy intake.

DESIGN
Literature searches in agriculture, business, and medical library databases were conducted to identify data regarding the quantities and types of foods and nutrients available in the United States between 1970 and 1998.

RESULTS
Per capita energy availability estimates from the US Department of Agriculture, US Food Supply Series, indicate that energy availability increased by 15% between 1970 and 1994. Data regarding trends in food purchasing and preparation suggest that Americans are eating more meals outside the home, relying more heavily on convenience foods, and consuming larger food portions. Americans appear, in some cases, to be selecting lower-fat foods over higher-fat alternatives. In addition, availability and sales of reduced-energy and reduced-fat products have increased.

CONCLUSION
Consistent with trends in overweight, most of the ecologic data reviewed suggest that energy intake has increased over the past several decades and is likely a major contributor to increases in average body weight.


The authors present the use of nicardipine to control mean arterial pressure (MAP) in a 19–month‐old boy who required venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation for 11 days for treatment of hydrocarbon aspiration. Nicardipine is an intravenously administered dihydropyridine calcium channel antagonist whose primary physiological action includes vasodilatation. Unlike other calcium channel blockers, it has limited effects on the inotropic and dromotropic function of the myocardium. Nicardipine was started at 5 μg·kg−1·min−1 and within five min lowered the MAP from a maximum value of 108 mmHg back to the baseline range of 60 to 80 mmHg. Once the MAP had returned to baseline values, infusion requirements varied from 1 to 3 μg·kg−1·min−1 to maintain the MAP at 60 to 80 mmHg during the 11 days of ECMO. No increase in dose requirements were noted during the 11 days.


In A Theory of Justice (1971) John Rawls attempted to solve the problem of distributive justice by combining self-interest, ignorance and risk-aversion. He argued that if self-interested persons in a situation of uncertainty imposed by a veil of ignorance were choosing principles for the basic structure of society, then they would be risk-adverse and choose two principles – The Principle of Equal Liberty and the Difference Principle. Critics have argued against this risk-adverse element of Rawls' theory but those critics as well as Rawls made certain presuppositions about risk-aversion, risk-taking and gambling. This thesis also examines the risk-aversion in Rawls' theory but addresses the previous shortfall by exploring the issue of risk and gambling in two interrelated ways. It applies a Foucauldian approach to the history of risk and gambling in order to contextualise the current views and then investigates the contemporary meaning by drawing on research leading up to the UK Gambling Act 2005. Drawing on these findings it argues that not only might risk-taking occur in the original position but that different types of participants could show different degrees of risk-taking behaviour. By exploring the theoretical debates between essentialism and anti-essentialism, it further argues that it is unlikely that the veil of ignorance would be able to screen out those differences. It then employs theories of identity and difference in the work of Heidegger, Deleuze and Lyotard in an attempt to overcome that weakness in Rawls' theory but finds that this may not be possible. After highlighting a connection between impartiality and gambling, it concludes, in contrast to Rawls, that risk-taking rather than risk-aversion lies at the heart of social justice. The implication of this reversal is that it may have an impact on policy-decisions in other areas of the justice system.


The review presents the state of the art in the atherosclerosis modelling. It begins with the biological introduction describing the mechanisms of chronic inflammation of artery walls characterizing the development of atherosclerosis. In particular, we present in more detail models describing this chronic inflammation as a reaction-diffusion wave with regimes of propagation depending on the level of cholesterol (LDL) and models of rolling monocytes initializing the inflammation. Further development of this disease results in the formation of atherosclerotic plaque, vessel remodelling and possible plaque rupture due its interaction with blood flow. We review plaque-flow interaction models as well as reduced models (0D and 1D) of blood flow in atherosclerotic vasculature.


A single-shot-imaging thin scintillator film was developed for an online Thomson parabola (TP) spectrometer and the first analysis of laser accelerated ions, using the online TP spectrometer, was demonstrated at the JAEA-Kansai Advanced Relativistic Engineering Laser System (J-KAREN). An energy spectrum of ~4.0 MeV protons is obtained using only this imaging film without the need of a microchannel plate that is typically utilized in online ion analyses. A general-purpose Monte Carlo particle and heavy ion-transport code system, which consists of various quantum dynamics models, was used for the prediction of the luminescent properties of the scintillator. The simulation can reasonably predict not only the ion trajectories detected by the spectrometer, but also luminescence properties.