Asset management is an increasing concern for wastewater utilities and companies. Criteria are developed for supporting the definition of investigation and rehabilitation programs. Dysfunction indicators contribute to the calculation of criteria, using expert rules. These indicators are mostly based on visual inspections, which provide major information. However, difficulties remain in the translation of visual inspection survey into dysfunction indicators. This article presents a methodological approach aiming to fill this lack. In the framework of the French RERAU program (Rehabilitation of urban sewer networks) a methodological approach has been developed in order to convert visual inspections of sewer segments into four possible condition grades {1, 2, 3, 4}, grade 4 corresponds to the worse condition. Three complementary procedures are thus executed: (a) expert rules based on sequences of observation codes, (b) comparison of single score to threshold and (c) rules based on analysis of segment profiles (scores distribution). An experiment lead in the Bas-Rhin (France) illustrates the different steps of the methodological approach and the applicability of the RERAU methodology on CCTV data. Moreover, confrontation between expert assessment of sewer segments (condition grade) and calculated scores has demonstrated the necessity of considering diagnosis imperfection, which may lead to misclassification in some cases. The algorithm proposed in this article aims to minimize a cost function with costs assigned to false positive diagnosis test (segment classified in worse condition than experts' opinion) and false negative diagnosis test (segment classified in better condition than experts' opinion). The algorithm is described in detail and applied to an example. Thus imprecision of assessment is taken into account: the threshold is chosen as to be the most efficient (in term of cost). This approach is generally applicable to numerous domains, when levels of performance need to be defined.


Background: Electronic cigarettes ("e-cigarettes") have altered nicotine use trends, and their impacts are controversial. Given their reduced risk profile relative to conventional cigarettes, e-cigarettes have potential for harm reduction. The current study presents a simulation-based analysis of an e-cigarette harm reduction policy. Methods: A system dynamics simulation model was constructed, with separate aging chains for cigarette smokers and e-cigarette users. These structures work together with a policy module to close the gap between actual (simulated) and a goal number of cigarette smokers, chosen to reduce the nicotine-attributable death rate to the accidental death rate. The policy is two-fold, first removing existing regulations on e-cigarettes (e.g. flavor bans) and second providing an informational campaign promoting e-cigarettes as a lower-risk alternative. Realistic practical implementation challenges are modeled in the policy sector, including time delays, political resistance, and budgetary limitations. Effects of e-cigarettes on conventional smoking occurs through three mechanisms: 1) diversion from ever initiating conventional smoking; 2) reducing smoking behavior and thus progression to established smoking; and 3) increasing smoking cessation. An important unintended effect was included, which increases the nicotine-related mortality accordingly with an increase in nicotine users due to e-cigarettes.Results: The base-case model replicated the historical exponential decline in conventional cigarette smoking and the exponential increase in e-cigarette use since their introduction circa 2010. The ideal-case policy was able to reduce conventional smoking to the goal level approximately 40 years after implementation. Policy scenarios that included realistic, practical obstacles to implementation delayed and weakened the effect of the policy by up to 95% in the worst case, relative to the same time point in the ideal-case scenario; however, these discrepancies substantially decreased over time in dampened oscillations. Conclusions: Current findings demonstrate that the promotion of e-cigarettes as a harm-reduction policy is a viable strategy, given current knowledge of e-cigarettes' effects on conventional smoking. Given the strong effects of implementation challenges on policy effectiveness in the short term, accurately modeling such obstacles is essential in policy design. Ongoing research is needed with forthcoming data on e-cigarette use prevalence and possible effects on cigarette smoking.


When an aerocolloidal suspension flows through a fibrous filter, particles deposit on the fibers and form dendrites. Similar phenomena are observed with collectors other than fibers, provided that the characteristic dimension of the collector does not exceed that of the particles by more than one to two orders of magnitude. This deposition pattern leads to marked increases in capture efficiency and pressure drop, as particles accumulate within the filter. In previous publications, theoretical models of this process were developed for the cases of deposition by interception alone and of deposition by combined inertial impaction and interception. Consequently, those works apply to aerosol particles with diameters of 1 μm or larger. Here we extend the model to the case of submicron particles, where the main transport mechanism is Brownian diffusion. To keep things specific, we consider fine fibers as collectors, but the model can be easily converted to other geometries. We present solutions for the cases of nonslip flow around the fiber and nonslip, slip and free molecular flow around particles. Unlike deposition by inertial impaction and/or interception, convective Brownian diffusion forms dendrites over the entire fiber surface.


The recent emergence of swine-origin H1N1 (swl) influenza virus that have transmitted to and spread among humans has fueled concerns that the outbreak is the start of a new pandemic. Many H1N1 swl influenza outbreaks have been registered internationally during the May–July 2009. In this paper, we investigate relations between the evolution of reported cases number and the effectiveness of pandemic control measures. Ten topics were considered representative from the first three months of pandemic spreading in Europe and the lessons were compared with the US response to the H1N1 (swine) flu outbreak. We analyze the latest developments and examine what things we can learn from the present situation and what might be done to combat the threat. The lessons may only be valid for a few months if major changes (e.g., vaccine technology and availability, antiviral stockpile size, antiviral resistance) occur, but some of the parameters can still help guide pandemic planning measures and will continue to have relevance.


Active Ingredient: All Clarithromycin Formulations Clarithromycin is a semi-synthetic macrolide antibiotic obtained by substitution of a CH3O group for the hydroxyl (OH) group at position 6 of the erythromycin lactonic ring. Specifically clarithromycin is 6-O-methyl erythromycin A. The white to off-white antibiotic powder is bitter, practically odorless, essentially insoluble in water, and slightly soluble in ethanol, methanol, and acetonitrile. Its molecular weight is 747.96.


Innocence in South Block G P Deshpande THE annual report of the Ministry of External Affairs for 1969-70 had proclaimed that "the foreign policy of India could not stand still and remain rigid and inflexible". It one read the latest report of the Ministry for 1970- 71, one would find precious little evidence of this flexibility. The Ministry could well have reprinted the 1969-70 report and added 'ditto'. Of course, whereas the 1969-70 report had 13 chapters, the latest report has 15. The additions are chapters on "cultural centres" and "protocol matters" which give the valuable information that diplomatic missions in New Delhi now number 75 and that the administrative control of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations has been transferred to the Ministry of External Affairs, As for the rest, little seems to have changed.


Although population-based studies suggest that a high-fat diet may increase the incidence of diabetes, the mechanism of this association is not clear. Controlled metabolic studies indicate that changes in fat content of the diet within the range that people normally consume have little or no effect on insulin-mediated glucose disposal. Thus, the effects of a high-fat diet on the incidence of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) may be mediated by inducing obesity, a known cause of insulin resistance and a risk factor for NIDDM. More research is needed in this area.


Education is one of the most critical areas for the development and growth of a country, for this reason it is important to innovate in teaching methodologies and leave behind traditional teaching. In this context, this work proposes the development of a dynamic game that uses the accomplishment unit of the Octalysis framework based on gamification to improve the teaching-learning process in children. As a result, the use of a dynamic game with gamification for teaching improves the learning capacity since it encourages children to pay more attention to the class.


The Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) effect of galaxy clusters is characterized by three parameters: the Compton parameter, the electron temperature and the cluster peculiar velocity. In the present study we consider the problem of extracting these parameters using multi-frequency SZ observations only. We show that there exists a parameter degeneracy which can be broken with an appropriate choice of frequencies. As a result we discuss the optimal choice of observing frequencies from a theoretical point of view. Finally, we analyse the systematic errors (of the order μK) on the SZ measurement introduced by finite bandwidths, and suggest a possible method of reducing these errors.


1. Hadennia purifascia sp. n. ♂ 24 mm. Antenna with ciliation well over diameter of shaft, thickened on inner side by a tuft of scales, probably at about two-fifths shaft (both antennae are broken just beyond the thickening). The broad thickened fold on costa beneath (which is present in all Hadennia ♂♂) extends along costa almost to the origin of postmedial line and reaches, at its broadest, to just behind middle of cell, fringed behind with long hair. Palpus strongly upcurved, the 3rd segmeut laid backward over thorax, but only about 11/3 mm. in length, much shorter than in hypenalis Wlkr. (the genotype), not broadened, flattened and hollowed out (as in hypenalis) nor half buried in the scaling of thorax, as is often the case in hypenalis. Head, body and wings predominantly deep benzo-brown (or pale fuscous), the wings with an oblique whitish band from about middle of discocellulars and behind vein 6 on fore wing to hindmargin of hind wing at about 3 mm., the band about 1 mm. in breadth but not quite equal throughout; ground-colour slightly darker on each side of the white band; fore wing with a linear blackish discal lunule and a similar but rather larger and blacker postmedial lunule almost on distal edge of anterior end of the white band; apex with a broad oblique buff streak, which may, however, be due to discoloration; fringe whitish chequered with fuscous; hind wing without distinct discal lunule but with traces of a buff postmedial line, excurved at about veins 4 and 3. Underside paler, more reticulated than above, the white band interrupted by a double dark discal lunule on fore wing, by a linear discal lunule and dark irroration


BACKGROUND
Neoadjuvant chemotheropy can improve the survival rate of patients with stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), whose chemotherapy is valid. The value of P53 expression in stage III NSCLC has not been reported. This study is to investigate the value of P53 expression on neoadjuvant chemotherapy sensitivity and prognosis in stage III NSCLC and to investigate the relationship between P53 expression and the result from thoracic CT examination.

METHODS
By immunohistochemical technique, the expression of P53 in 51 patients with stage III NSCLC who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy was determined in contrast with 49 patients with stage III NSCLC without neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Every patient who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy was examined by thoracic CT before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

RESULTS
(1) There was no significant difference in the positive rate of P53 and the median survival time between neoadjuvant group and control group (48.98% vs 49.02% and 18 months vs 19 months). In neoadjuvant chemotherapy group, the median survival time was significantly different between P53 positive patients and P53 negative ones (13 months vs 31 months). (2) The expression of P53 was related to the neoadjuvant chemotherapeutic response by the results from thoracic CT examination (r=0.537, P < 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS
(1)Detection of P53 expression might be helpful to predict the effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. (2)The expression of P53 and the neoadjuvant chemotherapeutic results from thoracic CT examination are correlated.


The adsorption of a metal ion to a polycyclic aromatic molecule such as helicene is the object of our study. The latter could function as a chiral molecular clamp for the cationic alkali metal. The main contribution of this work is to attribute new microscopic interpretations for the adsorption of potassium and cesium ions onto a thin layer of helicene achieved by the QCM technique. Throughout the grand canonical ensemble and some theoretical considerations, statistical physics processing has been used for modeling of experimental adsorption isotherms. A new model has been developed and chosen as an appropriate one to present a good correlation with experimental isotherms. Six physico-chemical parameters are obtained from the fitting of the experimental adsorption isotherms. Thanks to the steric parameters, we have found that an increase in temperature promotes a rise in the numbers of ions per site n1 and n2 and raises the adsorption capacities NM1 and NM2. The two energetic parameters c1 and c2 allow deduction of the adsorption energies at four temperatures. It is found from the calculated energies that physical adsorption takes place; the helicene can function as potassium and cesium captor and the K+–helicene complex is more stable than the Cs+–helicene complex.


Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) elementary analysis were used to investigate the environmental effects of lead blood serum levels on the life metal ions (Cu2+ and Zn2+), protein secondary structure and DNA structure in epileptic patients. By increasing the lead concentration an increased intensity of the band at 1744 cm-1 was observed due to induced oxidative stress. The shifts of the amide I and amide II bands of the peptide group, -CONH- from 1655 cm-1 and 1550 cm-1, respectively, to lower frequencies is due to the change of protein molecular structure from α-helix to β-sheets. An important change in the spectral region between 1200-900 cm-1, where the phosphates and phosphate-ribose groups of DNA and RNA are absorbing, is suggesting an attack on the DNA backbone as a function of the increase of lead concentration. The characteristic band at 1170 cm-1 could be used as a "marker band" for the damaged DNA backbone structure upon lead exposure. The ICP-MS elementary analysis showed a decrease of the ratio [Cu/Zn] by increasing the lead levels in blood serum is linked to oxidative stress and is confirming the FT-IR data.


The purpose of this study was to determine the Effect of Shallot Price Fluctuations on Farmers' Welfare Improvement in Pekalobean Village, Anggeraja District, Enrekang Regency. This type of research is quantitative with a simple linear regression analysis. The research data were obtained from the results of distributing questionnaires to shallot farmers in Pekalobean Village, Anggeraja District, Enrekang Regency, as many as 50 respondents. The results of this study indicate that the fluctuations in the price of shallots affect the welfare of farmers in Pekalobean Village Anggeraja District Enrekang Regency by 12% with a tcount of 2.520 greater than the table of 2.010 with a significance of 0.015 less than 0.05.


Early work by Sauvage revealed that mechanical bonding alters the stability and redox properties of their original catenane metal complexes. However, despite the importance of controlling metal ion properties for a range of applications, these effects have received relatively little attention since. Here we present a series of tri-, tetra-, and pentadentate rotaxane-based ligands and a detailed study of their metal binding behavior and, where possible, compare their redox and electronic properties with their noninterlocked counterparts. The rotaxane ligands form complexes with most of the metal ions investigated, and X-ray diffraction revealed that in some cases the mechanical bond enforces unusual coordination numbers and distorted arrangements as a result of the exclusion of exogenous ligands driven by the sterically crowded binding sites. In contrast, only the noninterlocked equivalent of the pentadentate rotaxane CuII complex could be formed selectively, and this exhibited compromised redox stability compared to its interlocked counterpart. Frozen-solution EPR data demonstrate the formation of an interesting biomimetic state for the tetradentate CuII rotaxane, as well as the formation of stable NiI species and the unusual coexistence of high- and low-spin CoII in the pentadentate framework. Our results demonstrate that readily available mechanically chelating rotaxanes give rise to complexes the noninterlocked equivalent of which are inaccessible, and that the mechanical bond augments the redox behavior of the bound metal ion in a manner analogous to the carefully tuned amino acid framework in metalloproteins.


Willingness to communicate (WTC) is a key concept in English language learning and communication. The literature has shown that WTC in a non-native English speaking environment is influenced by a multiplicity of factors, one of which is English proficiency. However, findings on its effect on WTC have been inconclusive. Therefore, this study investigated whether there was a statistically significant difference in WTC levels among students with different English proficiency levels and the ability of proficiency to predict WTC. The participants were 375 twelfth-grade Thai EFL students from two Southern Thailand government secondary schools. They responded to an adapted WTC scale which had been translated into the Thai language. The one-way ANOVA followed by a Tukey HSD test were used to analyse significant differences, while a simple linear regression assessed the ability of proficiency to predict WTC inside and outside the classroom. The results revealed that there were statistically significant differences in WTC between low, moderate and high proficiency students. It was also found that English proficiency could predict students' WTC inside and outside the English classroom, but it only accounted for a small percentage of the variance. Findings of the study have implications for English language teaching and WTC research.


Proposed and studied the effects on the dynamic and static models of applied research within an innovation project, taking into account the schedule of research funding.


A comparison was made between the results of acetylator phenotyping by isoniazid (INH) half-life measurements based on samples taken for 6 h after a single oral dose (200 mg), and by determination of the ratio of acetylisoniazid (Ac.INH) to isoniazid in the 3 h samples. In the 32 subjects, examined, there was complete agreement about classification of the subject as a fast (t1/2 less than 130 min; Ac.INH/INH greater than 1.5) or slow acetylator (t1/2 greater than 130 min; Ac.INH/INH less than 1.5). The single sample test appears to be as reliable as the more time-consuming isoniazid half-life method.


An agent often has a number of hypotheses, and must choose among them based on observations, or outcomes of experiments. Each of these observations can be viewed as providing evidence for or against various hypotheses. All the attempts to formalize this intuition up to now have assumed that associated with each hypothesis h there is a likelihood function µ h , which is a probability measure that intuitively describes how likely each observation is, conditional on h being the correct hypothesis. We consider an extension of this framework where there is uncertainty as to which of a number of likelihood functions is appropriate, and discuss how one formal approach to defining evidence, which views evidence as a function from priors to posteriors, can be generalized to accommodate this uncertainty.


This paper uses a recent panel data set from New Zealand to examine the link between academic performance and the decision of teenagers to leave school. These choices have significant lifetime economic impacts, since early school leaving in many cases closes pathways to further education. We address the potential endogeneity and error correlation of academic performance and later school-leaving choices. The results show that schooling decisions largely represent personal choice, and that they are influenced by factors that are at work for a long period of time. Personal ability, parental education and income during early and later childhood years influence the demand for education, exerting their influence directly and through academic performance. These results point to the role that academic performance could play in breaking cycles of disadvantage.


The growing use of mobile applications in almost every aspect of modern life, from banking to office systems, is making it is quality increasingly necessary. Thus, software testing activities have been increasingly in demand in this domain. However, mobile application testing imposes several new challenges and several peculiarities, such as limited power, interface adaptation, and privacy of user data. Most of these peculiarities are related to Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) and conventional software testing approaches are ineffective. Based on this, the Metamorphic Testing (MT) is an approach that has been applied in many domains as a strategy for generating new test cases and an alternative to alleviate the oracle problem. Through the generation of Metamorphic Relations (MRs), generated from characteristics of the System Under Testing (SUT), it is possible to evaluate the presence of flaws. Recently, studies have been conducted to evaluate the applicability of MT to reveal performance flaws. The goal of this Ph.D. project proposal is to propose an approach to automate the verification of compliance of NFRs on mobile applications through MT. Also, we intend to develop a tool for applying the approach, and a set of criteria to improve the process of verifying NFRs through MT. Finally, we expect to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach on real mobile applications.


While working in Scandinavia for a year during my first spell of economicmigrancy, I was told by locals that the Danish calendar had 14 months owing to the recurrent "November, November, November"dan indication of the inevitably damp, cold and prolonged Copenhagen winter characterised by the desertion of all but themost hardened of drinkers from the hostelries and coffee shops of this picturesque city. No such bleak offerings in this, the penultimate issue for 2011 of the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health however, where we present the same eclectic collection of reports that have come to define the journal since its inception as the British Journal of Social Medicine in 1947. Divided into three invariably overlapping themesdageing, lifecourse, cancerdthis trichotomy of content is rather arbitrary on occasion but serves to make sense of our particular branch of science which, like all others, is increasingly voluminous to the point of overwhelming. As always, our contributing authors have wide geographical reach, so maintaining the international flavour of the journal. In each of their papers you will find exposures and outcomes that cover the full gamete of psychological, social, behavioural, physiological indices as we seek to make sense of the world around us. A section dedicated to ageing in any self-respecting epidemiology journal would not be worth its salt if we did not give a vigorous nod towards normal cognitive decline and its pathological extreme, dementia. The long-held suggestion that cognitive impairment and dementia may be the product of vascular processes has found support in correlations with established cardiovascular disease risk factors (raised blood pressure, smoking, obesity, elevated blood cholesterol), so raising the possibility that a normalisation of their levels through pharmacological intervention may delay failing cognition. The apparent differential protective effects of statin usedwidely used to treat hyperlipidaemiadon dementia but not mild cognitive impairment is surprising. Given the heavily confounded nature of the association in this observational studyeusers of, and adheres to, medication are fundamentally different in their characteristics from those who are less compliantefurther investigation using that gold cadillac of research designs, the randomised controlled trial by further piggy-backing of statin trials that may have been designed only with cardiovascular disease outcomes in mind is warranted. Mendelian Randomisation, where a gene variant for hyperlipidaemia is used as a (hopefully) unconfounded proxy, would also have utility in this scenario. Elsewhere, but along the same theme, there was a suggestion that remaining in employment rather than retiring may be more beneficial for cognitive performance. This partial support for the 'disuse' hypothesis will provide a soupcon of solace for those academics whose universities have declared that there is now no official age for retirement. Unsurprisingly given the journal's roots, socio-economic status is a spine running through other papers under the ageing rubric, and those in the themes of cancer and lifecourse. It certainly reflects the weight of current submissions to the Journal. Favourable social circumstancesd often assessed across several decades in the featured studiesdwould also appear to confer protection against low quality of life, hip fracture, allostatic load (a proxy for accumulated damage to system integrity), low self-rated health (twice ), partner violence, reduced walking speed, advanced breast cancer, cancer survival (if one considers the English North-South divide to be a proxy for poverty), suicide, and an array of other health indicators. As Sander Greenland reminded us at the 2011 International Epidemiology Association Congress in Edinburgh, and as featured in the proceedings sponsored by this journal, any investigator has bias, and it is through my tainted spectacles and my work in cognitive epidemiology that I gravitate to the role that educationdand by association, IQemight have in the aetiology of suicide. That people with basic education had an elevated risk of completed suicide relative to better performing students in a study comprising close to one million members, places in stark relief the findings of early studies showing that students at esteemed UK universities had higher suicide rates than the general population. Also brought into question is the observation from grouplevel studies that IQ assessed across nations using a variety of tests is somehow of use in understanding suicide aetiology at the level of the individual. The latter is a useful teaching illustration of the ecological fallacy. The hefty collection of papers herein in the realm of socio-economic status certainly help to further define the nature of 'the gradient' as it has come to be known to social epidemiologists, and crystallises how poverty 'gets under the skin' to generate health inequalities. However, as has been noted in other fields of epidemiology, the study of socioeconomic variations in health has largely become occupational therapy for social scientists and epidemiologists, me doubtless included. Surely enough is known now, and in truth has been for some years, to hope for a more substantial evidence base from trials or natural experiments which aim to reduce this differential. When I relocated to Scotland in 2004 after sampling those Novembers in Copenhagen there was simultaneously a call for funding from the Scottish Chief Scientist's Office and a call to arms in this very journal for more experimental evidencedquasi or otherwisedof what actually worked in ameliorating poverty differentials. The former, I was told some time later, yielded effectively zero response from the research community, and the latter has little altered the landscape of this journal and that of others. We will shortly announce a call for papers describing the methods used in intervention studies that aim to narrow the gap, and we hope that you will contribute. Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, University College London, London, UK; Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK


Background and Objectives : Poorly delivering a cancer diagnosis to patients can cause psychological harm and worse clinical outcomes. Good communication skills help improve patient satisfaction and psychological adjustment. This study aimed to determine factors that were associated with patient satisfaction regarding the way a cancer diagnosis was delivered to cancer patients in Srinagarind hospital. Methods : Analytical and descriptive research methodology were used in this study.The study population were adult cancer patients in Srinagarind hospital. Structured interviews were used to collect data. Statistical data analysis was performed using SPSS statistical software (version 19.0.) Results : The analyzed data collected from 79 patients (98.75%of the study population) show that there are some factors that were statistically significantly associated to patient satisfaction.The factor most strongly related was showing empathy to patient [OR=7.89 (95%CI: 1.60, 38.89)]. Giving patient opportunities to ask questions [OR=3.75 (95%CI:1.06, 13.24)] and explaining disease process to patient [OR=3.08 (95%CI: 1.02, 9.32)] were also the important factors. However, analyzing data using logistic regression in order to control confounding factors did not show any statistical significant factor. This might be due to too small number of subjects to demonstrate the effects. The study showed 43 patients [54.43% (95%CI = 43.45%, 65.41%)]) were completely satisfied with the way the doctors delivered bad news to them and 36 patients [45.57% (95%CI:  34.59%, 56.55%) were not completely satisfied. Conclusion : Approximately half of patients were completely satisfied with the way a diagnosis was delivered. Showing empathy to patient, giving patient opportunity to ask questions and explaining disease process to patient were the most important factors that were associated with patient satisfaction.


Kepivance is a keratinocyte growth factor (KGF) that stimulates the growth of cells in the skin, mouth, stomach, and colon. It has been suggested that Kepivance may reduce the incidence and severity of oral mucositis in patients receiving a total body irradiation (TBI) conditioning regimen followed by autologous stem cell rescue. Very few studies have shown the effect of Kepivance on chemotherapy-induced mucositis in patients receiving allogeneic/autologous stem cell transplantation. We analyzed retrospectively the charts of all patients who underwent stem cell transplantation in 2005-2006 at Texas Tech University Health Science Center. The charts of 36 patients were reviewed, of which 21 received Kepivance. The decision to receive Kepivance was judged by the treating physician. Patients with a high risk of developing mucositis from intensive chemotherapy, older patients, type of conditioning regimen, and type of transplant dictated which patient should receive Kepivance. Conditioning regimens in the Kepivance group were as follows: high-dose melphalan (10); TBI, VP-16, and cyclophosphamide (1); BCNU, VP-16, and cyclophosphamide (2); fludarabine and melphalan (1); melphalan and VP-16 (1); busulfan and fludarabine (6). Conditioning regimens in the non-Kepivance group were as follows: melphalan and busulfan (1); melphalan and fuldarabine (2); BCNU, VP-16, and cyclophosphamide (4); high-dose melphalan (8). Of 21 patients who received Kepivance, 12 patients received autologous transplant and 9 patients received allogeneic transplants. Of the 21 patients who received Kepivance, 8 experienced grade II-III mucositis compared with 3 of 15 patients in the non-Kepivance group. No patients in both groups experienced grade IV mucositis. In both groups, 50% of the patients required total parenteral nutrition (TPN). The average length of stay in patients who received kepivance was 31 days versus 36 days in patients who did not receive Kepivance. Day 100 mortality in the Kepivance group was five, all of whom received allogeneic transplant, whereas there was only one death (who received allogeneic transplantation) in the non-Kepivance group. We concluded that Kepivance reduces the hospital stay in patients undergoing stem cell transplantation; however, there were no noted benefits of Kepivance in TPN requirement or the incidence of mucositis. This may be due to physician bias in selecting patients who should receive Kepivance. High-risk patients received Kepivance. A randomized clinical trial is needed to confirm these results.


Quotient regularization models (QRMs) are a class of powerful regularization techniques that have gained considerable attention in recent years, due to their ability to handle complex and highly nonlinear data sets. However, the nonconvex nature of QRM poses a significant challenge in finding its optimal solution. We are interested in scenarios where both the numerator and the denominator of QRM are absolutely one-homogeneous functions, which is widely applicable in the fields of signal processing and image processing. In this paper, we utilize a gradient flow to minimize such QRM in combination with a quadratic data fidelity term. Our scheme involves solving a convex problem iteratively.The convergence analysis is conducted on a modified scheme in a continuous formulation, showing the convergence to a stationary point. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in terms of accuracy, outperforming the state-of-the-art QRM solvers.


We track the trade-by-trade transaction histories of futures traders over a period of 33 months and separately analyze their tendency to offset their positions to realize gains and losses on the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX). We demonstrate that there exist great variations among the traders in the disposition effect. Specifically, we demonstrate how a trader's innate characteristics, such as gender and age, as well as external microstructure factor, such as the product traded, are statistically significant in explaining the variations in the disposition effect. We show that women and mature traders, compared with their male and younger counterparts, exhibit a higher tendency of the disposition effect. We also show that the effect is stronger among traders who trade the financial sector futures contract than those who trade the electronic sector futures contract. These results contribute to the behavioral finance in that they offer further explanation on the disposition effect. They also add to the evidence that microstructure matters in explaining behavioral variations among investors.


This thesis focuses on the synthesis of compounds expected to inhibit telomerase and provide potential for the treatment of cancer. Telomerase is a reverse transcriptase enzyme, which codes for telomeres and define the ends of chromosomes. Abnormal telomerase activity occurs in 85% of cancer cells and consequently has gained considerable interest as a target for cancer therapy. A natural product known as telomestatin can target G-quadruplexes and is shown to be very potent with activity at 5 nM. The aim of this thesis was to synthesise analogues of Telomestatin which contain a polyoxazole macrocycle. Chapter 1 discusses the enzyme telomerase and describes compounds which are able to inhibit its activity a literature survey on 2, 4-disubstituted oxazole chemistry is also described. Chapter 2 describes the attempted synthesis of a dipyridyltrisoxazole and a dipyridyl macrocycle. The synthetic approach involved the Hantzsch method to form oxazoles from amides and bromoketone. The Hantzsch method proved largely ineffective for obtaining the required oxazoles. A second approach involving the Willams-Wipf reaction was carried out to synthesise oxazoles. The procedure involved the cyclisation of L-serine methylester derived compounds with diethylaminosulfur trifluoride, followed by an oxidation reaction with 1,8- diazabicyclo 5.4.0 undec-7-ene and bromotrichloromethane. The Williams-Wipf approach helped to synthesise the half fragment required for the macrocycle. Chapter 3 involved the synthesis of a tetraoxazolylbipyridyl system. The Williams-Wipf approach was successful in delivering the half fragment of the desired system. However, the palladium cross coupling was ineffective in forming the tetraoxazolylbipyridyl system. Chapter 4 the aim was to synthesise a symmetrical octaoxazole ring system. The Willams-Wipf approach helped to develop the core structure to telomestatin which consists of five consecutive oxazole rings. A novel hepta oxazolyl ring system was also synthesised however, owing to insolubility of key intermediates the desired target could not be made.


Context. As an interferometric technique, sparse aperture masking (SAM) is capable of imaging beyond the diffraction limit of single telescopes. This makes SAM an important technique for studying processes such as planet formation at Solar System scales. However, it comes at the cost of a reduction in throughput, typically by 80–90%.
Aims. We report on the design, construction, and commissioning of a prototype aperture masking technology implemented at the Keck OH-Suppressing Infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (OSIRIS) Imager: the holographic aperture mask. Holographic aperture masking (HAM) aims at (i) increasing the throughput of SAM by selectively combining all subapertures across a telescope pupil in multiple interferograms using a phase mask, and (ii) adding low-resolution spectroscopic capabilities.
Methods. Using liquid-crystal geometric phase patterns, we manufacture a HAM mask that uses an 11-hole SAM design as the central component and a holographic component comprising 19 different subapertures. Thanks to a multilayer liquid-crystal implementation, the mask has a diffraction efficiency higher than 96% from 1.1 to 2.5 micron. We create a pipeline that extracts monochromatic closure phases from the central component as well as multiwavelength closure phases from the holographic component. We test the performance of the HAM mask in the laboratory and on-sky.
Results. The holographic component yields 26 closure phases with spectral resolutions between R ∼ 6.5 and R ∼ 15, depending on the interferogram positions. On April 19, 2019, we observed the binary star HDS 1507 in the Hbb filter (λ0 = 1638 nm and Δλ = 330 nm) and retrieved a constant separation of 120.9 ± 0.5 mas for the independent wavelength bins, which is in excellent agreement with literature values. For both the laboratory measurements and the observations of unresolved reference stars, we recorded nonzero closure phases – a potential source of systematic error that we traced to polarization leakage of the HAM optic. We propose a future upgrade that improves the performance, reducing this effect to an acceptable level.
Conclusions. Holographic aperture masking is a simple upgrade of SAM with increased throughput and a new capability of simultaneous low-resolution spectroscopy that provides new differential observables (e.g., differential phases with wavelength).


Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is primarily known worldwide as the first Asian poet to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, in 1913. He lived and died in colonial India as a British subject. However, any engagement with studies of Tagore would reveal that, despite his outstanding achievements in creative writing and music, he deserves to be remembered as the only poet of international standing who not only founded a self-funded university, but also designed a curriculum which radicalized traditional institutionalized education in colonial India. This essay endeavours to explore Tagore's re-imagining of the process of institutionalized instruction and the objectives of education. Undoubtedly, the concepts and models of the teaching-learning process outlined by Tagore bear the stamp of a poet-philosopher who tried to distance himself from the public educational sector, epitomized in colonial times as the formidable University of Calcutta, under British administration. Historically, Tagore's Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, obviously a private sector enterprise, is regarded as a unique experiment in inclusive education that debunks rote learning and fragmented knowledge, though its viability in the 21 st century is open to debate.


While it is advisable to chronicle our successes in diagnosis and treatment, I think it is equally necessary for us occasionally to look back and see where we have failed to make an accurate diagnosis before operation, or to critically review our judgment in a given case to ascertain if, in a subsequent and similar case, we could not do better. From a perusal of the literature one is often led to believe that the exact nature of abdominal tumors is easily determined before operation. While this is undoubtedly true in the greater number of cases, yet it is well to remember that in a goodly number of instances, before operation, it is only possible to determine that the operation is necessary, the exact nature of the malady only being ascertainable when the abdomen is opened. From the accompanying group of cases, which I report in detail, the surgeon who


Based on chromatographic theory, the moment method and the time-domain fitting analysis were applied to measure and evaluate the adsorption equilibrium constant and mass transfer properties (axial dispersion coefficient and effective intra-particle diffusivity) for toluene and p-dichlorobenzene on silica gel adsorbent in the subcritical and supercritical CO2. An apparatus based on supercritical fluid chromatography was established and the experiments were performed at temperatures of 298.15-318.15 K and pressures of 7.5-17.8 MPa. The two methods have been compared. The results show that for the systems studied here the moment method can give reasonable values for both adsorption equilibrium constant and mass transfer properties, but the time-domain analysis only can obtain the adsorption equilibrium constant. The dependence of adsorption equilibrium constant and mass transfer properties on temperature and pressure was investigated.


Abstract. In this work, we have used a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) and a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) to estimate the effective density of aerosol particles. This approach is tested for aerosolized particles generated from the solution of standard materials of known density, i.e. ammonium sulfate (AS), ammonium nitrate (AN) and sodium chloride (SC), and also applied for ambient measurement in New Delhi. We also discuss uncertainty involved in the measurement. In this method, dried particles are introduced in to a differential mobility analyser (DMA), where size segregation is done based on particle electrical mobility. Downstream of the DMA, the aerosol stream is subdivided into two parts. One is sent to a condensation particle counter (CPC) to measure particle number concentration, whereas the other one is sent to the QCM to measure the particle mass concentration simultaneously. Based on particle volume derived from size distribution data of the SMPS and mass concentration data obtained from the QCM, the mean effective density (ρeff) with uncertainty of inorganic salt particles (for particle count mean diameter (CMD) over a size range 10–478 nm), i.e. AS, SC and AN, is estimated to be 1.76 ± 0.24, 2.08 ± 0.19 and 1.69 ± 0.28 g cm−3, values which are comparable with the material density (ρ) values, 1.77, 2.17 and 1.72 g cm−3, respectively. Using this technique, the percentage contribution of error in the measurement of effective density is calculated to be in the range of 9–17 %. Among the individual uncertainty components, repeatability of particle mass obtained by the QCM, the QCM crystal frequency, CPC counting efficiency, and the equivalence of CPC- and QCM-derived volume are the major contributors to the expanded uncertainty (at k = 2) in comparison to other components, e.g. diffusion correction, charge correction, etc. Effective density for ambient particles at the beginning of the winter period in New Delhi was measured to be 1.28 ± 0.12 g cm−3. It was found that in general, mid-day effective density of ambient aerosols increases with increase in CMD of particle size measurement but particle photochemistry is an important factor to govern this trend. It is further observed that the CMD has good correlation with O3, SO2 and ambient RH, suggesting that possibly sulfate secondary materials have a substantial contribution in particle effective density. This approach can be useful for real-time measurement of effective density of both laboratory-generated and ambient aerosol particles, which is very important for studying the physico-chemical properties of particles.


We introduce Delay Pruning, a simple yet powerful technique to regularize dynamic Boltzmann machines (DyBM). The recently introduced DyBM provides a particularly structured Boltzmann machine, as a generative model of a multi-dimensional time-series. This Boltzmann machine can have infinitely many layers of units but allows exact inference and learning based on its biologically motivated structure. DyBM uses the idea of conduction delays in the form of fixed length first-in first-out (FIFO) queues, with a neuron connected to another via this FIFO queue, and spikes from a pre-synaptic neuron travel along the queue to the post-synaptic neuron with a constant period of delay. Here, we present Delay Pruning as a mechanism to prune the lengths of the FIFO queues (making them zero) by setting some delay lengths to one with a fixed probability, and finally selecting the best performing model with fixed delays. The uniqueness of structure and a non-sampling based learning rule in DyBM, make the application of previously proposed regularization techniques like Dropout or DropConnect difficult, leading to poor generalization. First, we evaluate the performance of Delay Pruning to let DyBM learn a multidimensional temporal sequence generated by a Markov chain. Finally, we show the effectiveness of delay pruning in learning high dimensional sequences using the moving MNIST dataset, and compare it with Dropout and DropConnect methods.


This article assesses the perception of undergraduate students about social responsibility activities implemented by micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in Peru. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding on how to implement programs about social responsibility in universities. To achieve this objective, a scale was built and applied to 506 college students at five universities. From the results of the study, in general terms, it can be concluded that college students have a low perception about activities of social responsibility applied by the MSES. This conclusion highlights the importance of introducing courses of social responsibility on the curricula of universities to enrich the education and new research on this topic. In consequence, it is recognized the need for an interdisciplinary approach at the theoretical level and an intradisciplinary approach at the practice level. This may ensure the creation and application of new knowledge about social responsibility towards sustainable development.


A common situation encountered by an engineer is heat transfer to fluid flowing through a tube. This can occur in heat exchangers, boilers, condensers, evaporators, and a host of other process equipment. The study of heat transfer can be done either in laminar flow or in turbulent flow. Both conditions show different performance characteristics of the heat transfer. In this paper, comparative study of heat transfer in both conditions is done. Under turbulent flow conditions, the increase in heat transfer rate is more significant than that under laminar flow conditions. This is due to the increase in the Reynolds number of the flowing fluid in turbulent flow. The turbulent effects become a dominant factor over secondary flow at higher Reynolds number.


Based on ab initio calculations, it is shown that the energy gap of pure monatomic carbon chains can be changed from 0.27 up to 1.42 eV when the chain is stretched by 10%, and the chains can be turned into n-type or p-type semiconductors by doping (B, N, Si, P) atoms or into rectification device by doping the BN molecule. The doping process was proved by Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics, and the lifetime of the doped chains is predicted to be about 1070 years at room temperature. The results suggest that short monatomic carbon chains are a good candidate for tunable laser medium.


Summary

1
According to the handicap principle of sexual selection, colourful ornaments honestly signal absolute quality only if they entail fitness costs. The degree of melanism often covaries positively with aspects of individual quality, and hence melanin-based coloration should be costly to produce or to maintain in a good shape. This is, however, unlikely because melanin-based coloration is often strongly heritable and in birds the rate of feather wear decreases with the amount of melanin pigments packed in feathers.

2
The hypothesis that melanin pigments reduce the cost of maintaining colourful ornaments in a good shape predicts a negative correlation between the degree of melanism and both the size of the uropygial gland that produces preening secretions and the intensity of preening behaviour.

3
Using a correlative approach, I evaluated these two predictions in the barn owl Tyto alba in which the body underside varies from immaculate to heavily marked with black spots, a eumelanin-based trait, and from white to reddish-brown, a phaeomelanin-based trait. I correlated plumage traits with preening behaviour in nestlings and with the size and mass of the uropygial gland in dead adults. I also weighed nonornamental wing and tail feathers to assess whether the quality of nonornamental feathers is positively correlated with the degree of melanism of an ornamental plumage trait.

4
The degree of phaeomelanism was neither associated with preening behaviour nor with the size and mass of the uropygial gland. In line with the two predictions, individuals with more and larger black spots had a lighter uropygial gland and preened less frequently. Because nonornamental wing and tail feathers of spottier individuals were heavier per unit of surface area, the entire plumage of eumelanic individuals may be more robust and in turn require less care than the plumage of nonmelanic conspecifics.

5
In conclusion, the degree of eumelanism can be associated with aspects of individual quality even if eumelanic ornaments are neither costly to produce nor to maintain in a good shape.


Neutrophils are usually among the first immune cells present at a site of inflammation, and are critical for bacterial elimination. While neutrophils produce a variety of cytokines and chemokines, the local regulation of this activity, and its contribution to inflammation, remain unclear. To determine whether neutrophil cytokine production is affected by local cues, we studied neutrophils from various inflammatory sites. Here, we show that neutrophils elicited in the presence of ligands for C-type lectin receptors (CLR) can produce high levels of several pro-inflammatory cytokines, while naïve neutrophils or neutrophils elicited in the absence of CLR ligands are poor cytokine producers. Interestingly, this increase is not mediated by a transcriptional increase in cytokine mRNAs, but rather by a direct increase in protein production. Furthermore, we demonstrate that increase of cytokine production does not require direct sensing of CLR ligands, but is instead mediated by paracrine signals delivered by neutrophils themselves. Altogether, our results show that specific local cues influence the ability of neutrophils to produce cytokines. Identifying these signals may provide us with new tools to modulate the functions of neutrophils during infections and inflammatory diseases.


Scintigraphy with 99mTc-labeled red blood cells was performed in five patients for demonstration of normal anatomy and in 18 patients for evaluation of suspected or apparent space-occupying adbominal lesions. In 14 cases of abdominal lesions, the study demonstrated the extent, vascularity, and relation of the lesion to neighboring organs. We found the method was primarily useful for evaluating cases of retroperitoneal tumor and vascular malformation.


The Commodity Approach in agricultural project support in the Western Cape and the revitalisation of extension aims to ensure improved project success with progressing farmers. Against this backdrop a coordinated / programmed approach to red meat project development and support is followed in the Eden district. The process is coordinated by an established multi-disciplinary Red Meat Work Group consisting of members from the public and private sector as well as the red meat commodity organisations.


In the last decade, significant efforts have been made to reduce the false positive rate of approximate membership checking structures. This has led to the development of new structures such as cuckoo filters and xor filters. Adaptive filters that can react to false positives as they occur to avoid them for future queries to the same elements have also been recently developed. In this paper, we propose a new type of static filters that completely avoid false positives for a given set of negative elements and show how they can be efficiently implemented using xor probing filters. Several constructions of these filters with a false positive free set are proposed that minimize the memory and speed overheads introduced by avoiding false positives. The proposed filters have been extensively evaluated to validate their functionality and show that in many cases both the memory and speed overheads are negligible. We also discuss several use cases to illustrate the potential benefits of the proposed filters in practical applications.


This article analyzes how Mexican American author María Cristina Mena's short magazine fiction boldly illustrates the emerging U.S. beauty industry as effectively producing whiteness for sale in the neocolonial marketplace. Her representations of Mexican women's use of cosmetics articulate how the beauty industry both lends structure to and is structured by the idea of race; at the same time, she reminds her audience that the impact of beauty products and services is in large part determined by the political and economic context of the goods themselves. Through the techniques of role reversals, character development and dramatic irony, Mena's stories portray the U.S. beauty industry as a dynamic trade that exports new forms of whiteness across its southern border. Far from depicting Mexican women as passive consumers in the neocolonial marketplace, however, Mena shows how beauty products and services can be appropriated as limited yet potent acts of resistance.


Musculoskeletal symptoms (MSSs) are common among professional musicians; however, most of the research has focused on orchestral/classical musicians. In some countries orchestral and classical musicians are in the minority; hence targeting research towards these specific sub-groups of musicians is unlikely to address the overall burden of musicians' MSSs, unless the research is generalizable to other types of musicians. This multidisciplinary narrative review seeks to answer the question: "why do we need to examine the MSSs of non-classical groups of performing musicians in order to reduce the burden of musicians' MSSs?". There are differences in the education, posture, tasks (e.g. military training for military band musicians, dancing for those in musical theatre), venues and management of MSSs for different types of musicians. Future research should compare classical and non-classical musicians in order to determine which specific sub-groups (e.g. military band musicians) have the greatest MSS burden, such that further research into the risk factors of and interventions for MSSs can be targeted towards the sub-groups of musicians with the greatest MSS burden. In doing so, we maximise the likelihood of being able to introduce interventions, policies and practice that reduce the burden of musicians' MSSs.


Abstract . This study aims to describe parental support for the implementation of online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic at Karangasem 1 elementary school , Surakarta. This research is a qualitative study using a phenomenological research design. The sampling technique used was purposive sampling technique. Data collection techniques using interviews and observations. The data validity test technique used triangulation of sources. Data analysis is obtained from the results of data collection using interactive analysis which includes data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results showed that parents fully supported online learning, forms of parental support included parental involvement in learning and facilities provided by parents for online learning. Obstacles in the implementation of online learning according to parents include stubborn children, using learning facilities other than for learning, and discipline.


Five micrograms per milliliter of aristeromycin, a nucleoside antibiotic, completely inhibited the growth of Xanthomonas oryzae at all growing stages. When cells of Xanthomonas oryzae were treated with the antibiotic at the beginning of cultivation and transferred to a growth medium without antibiotic, the lag phase was prolonged without the change in the length of the log phase. Incubation of Xanthomonas oryzae with the antibiotic, reduces the viable cell count without affecting the optical density of the cell suspension. It was assumed that aristeromycin inhibited the growth of Xanthomonas oryzae by its bacteriocidal action. Ten to a hundred-fold amounts of either of adenosine, adenine, deoxyadenosine and inosine reversed the growth by aristeromycin. Complete reversal of the cell growth was not seen in the presence of these compounds because of their own growth inhibitory activity. Adenosine exhibited the strongest competitive activity with the antibiotic. It was suggested that the antibiotic acted on the metabolic pathway of adenylic acid, adenosine and adenine.


An angular-shaped naphthalene tetracarboxylic diimide (NDI) was designed and synthesized as a new building block for n-type conjugated polymers to tune their energy levels. Three n-type copolymers incorporating this angular-shaped NDI as the acceptor moiety were obtained by Stille coupling reactions and had number average molecular weights of 18.7–73.0 kDa. All-polymer bulk-heterojunction solar cells made from blends of these polymers with poly(3-hexylthiophene) gave a power conversion efficiency up to 0.32% and exhibited an open-circuit voltage (Voc) up to 0.94 V due to their relative high-lying lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels. The high Voc of 0.94 V is higher than that of solar cells based on linear-shaped NDI-containing polymers (<0.6 V). The results indicate that the angular-shaped NDI is a promising building block for constructing nonfullerene polymer acceptors for solar cells with high open-circuit voltages. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2013


The increasing growth of technology affects all aspects of life, including the system of education, and requires the implementation of a new education system. Since Electronic-learning (E-L) is a new and mutated form of education in Iran, its professional functions approach is different from that of traditional education. The present article aims to explain the concept and dimensions of professional functions in this field. Through a qualitative study, method and data source triangulation were used. To do so, the data sources were the professors, scholars, students, and graduates of this educational system in the field of medical sciences. To triangulate the methods, in-depth semi-structured interviews as well as focus groups, note-taking and reminders were used. The purposeful sampling consisted of 10 professors and scholars. Fifteen students and graduates participated in the four-session focus group discussions purposeful, and the sample consisted of 10 professors and scholars as well as seven students and graduates, and a total of 15 students and graduates were willing to participate in the focus group discussions. Inductive content analysis was used for the analysis of data. Three themes arose from the study as follows: E-learning prerequisites, E-Leaning enabling factors, and E-Learning obstacles. Each of the themes is explained along with the relevant categories and subcategories. Discovering the dimensions and elements affecting professional functions in the E-Lsystem of medical sciences, this study provided documented meanings and dimensions of this phenomenon beyond the conventional sense. These dimensions can have direct or indirect impacts on professional functions in this field.


This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2008, held in Tokyo, Japan, in September 2008. The 18 revised full papers and 28 revised short papers presented together 42 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on motion and empathy; narrative and augmented reality; conversation and negotiation; nonverbal behavior; models of culture and personality; markup and representation languages; architectures for robotic agents; cognitive architectures; agents for healthcare and training; and agents in games, museums and virtual worlds.


Abstract Objective: To evaluate the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) rule that allows a meat/meat alternative to replace the breakfast grain requirement three times per week. Design: A 5-week menu including breakfast, lunch and snack was developed with meat/meat alternative replacing the breakfast grain requirement three times per week. Menu nutrients based on the minimum requirements were compared with reference values representing the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range for fat and a range of reference values representing two-thirds the Dietary Reference Intake for 3-year-olds and 4–5-year-olds. The meal pattern minimum requirements were compared with two-thirds of those recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). Setting: Evaluation took place between April and June 2019. Participants: Human subjects were not utilized. Results: The CACFP minimum grain requirement is well below the DGA reference value (0·5–1·5 v. 3·33 ounce-equivalents). Energy (2208·52 kJ) was below the reference values (3126·83–4362·53 kJ). Protein (34·43 g) was above the reference values (9·87–10·81 g). Carbohydrate (76·65 g), fibre (7·46 g) and vitamin E (1·69 mg) were below their reference values of 86·67 g, 10·46–14·60 g and 4–4·76 mg, respectively. Fat (22·57 %) was below the reference range (25–40 %). Conclusions: The CACFP rule which allows a meat/meat alternative to replace the breakfast grain requirement three times per week may result in meal patterns low in energy, carbohydrate, fat, fibre and vitamin E, while providing an excessive amount of protein.


A method for the construction of pyrroles bearing a 2-keto or formyl group through the intramolecular oxidative aza-annulation of enynyl azides is reported for the first time. It involves a sequential carbon-nitrogen/carbon-oxygen bond formations, and the combination of AuCl3 with AgSbF6 was identified as a suitable reagent system to promote the present reaction. The required enynyl azides are readily prepared from Morita-Baylis-Hillman (MBH) acetates of acetylenic aldehydes.


The authors review the growing body of behavioral literature in real estate. The emerging view of real property experts as problem solvers bounded by cognitive limitations is reviewed. Normative versus descriptive processes are presented as are potentially biasing heuristics and the role of feedback. In separate sections, the authors explore avenues of potential real estate research and methodologies in finance and traditional economics, expert decision making, marketing and markets, spatial analytics, organizational behavior and development, and the legal and regulatory environment.


On the 12th November, 2015, City University published independent academic research on British Jewish attitudes towards Israel. Funded by Yachad, 1,131 adult British Jews were surveyed on their views on Israel by Ipsos Mori between March and June of 2015. The research design, analysis and interpretation of the data was carried out by a research team comprising: Stephen Miller, Emeritus Professor of Social Research in the Department of Sociology at City University London; Margaret Harris, Emeritus Professor of Voluntary Sector Organisation, Aston University, and Visiting Professor at Birkbeck, University of London; and Colin Shindler, Emeritus Professor of Israel Studies, SOAS, University of London.

The research found that Israel plays a central role for British Jews, with 93% saying the Jewish state plays a "central", "important" or "some" role in their Jewish identity, and 90% supporting Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. It reflected significant concerns about the security situation in Israel with many respondents ambivalent about withdrawal from the West Bank because of security concerns (50% vs 33% support the proposition that "Israeli control of the West Bank is vital for Israel's security"), despite commitment to a two-state solution.

In addition:

75% stated that settlement expansion formed a "major" obstacle to peace. 68% endorsed the statement "I feel a sense of despair every time Israel approves an expansion of the settlements".
73% felt that Israel's current approach to the peace process has damaged its standing in the world.
There is strong support for Israel to "cede territory" in order to achieve peace (62% for, 25% against). But if withdrawal is seen as posing a risk to Israel's security, the majority then oppose withdrawal (50%:33%).
61% felt that the Israeli government's first priority should be "pursuing peace negotiations with the Palestinians. 64% felt they had the right to judge Israel's actions though they do not live there.
58% agree with the statement that Israel "will be seen as an apartheid state if it tries to retain control over borders that contain more Arabs than Jews" (22% disagree).
Almost 80% of respondents consider that, in the context of the conflicts raging around the world, those who condemn Israel's military actions "are guilty of applying double standards".
"Hawks" on Israel significantly overestimated how widely their views were shared by a factor of two while "doves" underestimated theirs by 10%. British Jews who believe Palestinians have no claim to own land think their views are shared by 49% of British Jewry, despite the actual figure being 14%.
Hannah Weisfeld, director of Yachad said of the findings of the report:

"The community is shifting. Feelings of despair, conflict between loyalty to Israel and concern over policies of the government are mainstream not marginal positions. The research shows we are more willing to speak out on these issues than ever before. Members of Anglo-Jewry who have previously been afraid to give voice to their concerns over Israeli government policy, should realise that they are in fact part of the majority.

This is against the backdrop of a Jewish community that remains fully committed to Israel and its centrality to Jewish identity."


Finding optimal strategies for the game of Tetris is an interesting NP-complete problem that has attracted several AI researchers. Their approaches display subtle variations in the implementation details, with unclear relationships between these details and Tetris performance. This, combined with the absence of confidence intervals in most published results, makes the evaluation and comparison of Tetris strategies and optimization methods very difficult. To look furhter into this unclear relationship, we would re-create every environnment described in several publications. An evolutionary algorithm was executed within each environment to create an AI and their performance compared against each other. The scores differed \textit{substantially}. This suggests that some aspects of the Tetris environment greatly affects the potentially obtainable performance of an AI. We come to the unfortunate conclusion that nearly no results of existing publications can be used to compare optimization methods against each other in terms of suitability for Tetris due to this reason.


Originally a feature only found in high-end cars, the automotive radar market for safety and driver assistance applications is exploding. Systems like automotive cruise control, collision avoidance, automatic braking, pedestrian detection, line change assistance, blind spot detection and parking assistance are being used in an ever increasing number of vehicles. As these sensors find their way into lower cost vehicles, the pressure on module cost is getting ever higher. This requires the use of lower cost base materials and constructions that are easier to manufacture and result in higher yields. Traditionally, highly ceramic filled hydrocarbons and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) materials were used in these applications. But the high material cost, combined with more complex PCB processing and lower yield makes them a poor choice in 24GHz and 77GHz automotive radar modules. A new class of thermoset base materials was introduced, which support the needed low loss characteristics, but have a far lower BOM cost, easier processing and support a higher manufacturing yield. The new materials are compared to the traditional materials in this paper and data is presented, showing their advantages.


This article shows one of the most important aspects of the Mozambican writer Mia Couto: the fusion of the cultural and linguistic Portuguese element with the African one. His literature is a mix between Portuguese language and specific terms used by different Mozambican people around the country; Mia Couto knows, in his novel, how to achieve a wise mix between African essence and his Portuguese roots


Social monogamy is a rare mating system among animals, occurring commonly only in birds. In long-lived birds, pair bonds may persist for several seasons in some species, while in others mate change occurs even when both partners are still alive. Here, we test predictions from the adaptive hypotheses for divorce, using long-term data (15 years) on mate change and reproductive success in a long-lived shorebird, the dunlin Calidris alpina. We found that about one quarter of the pairs divorced (23% of 126 breeding attempts). Among the divorcing females, six changed partner more than once (one female changed partner three times). Following divorce, females dispersed longer than males. Start of egg-laying (presumably reflecting arrival time to the breeding ground), previous breeding success, and male age or size did not seem to influence the occurrence of divorce. However, females that changed mate between consecutive breeding attempts achieved higher reproductive success. Moreover, this improvement appeared independent of breeding experience. Since we were unable to detect any effect of divorce on male reproductive success, our results suggest that divorce in the dunlin is best explained by the better option hypothesis.


Abstract Introduction: It was retrospective analysis of prenatal echocardiography findings in fetuses with congenital heart defects, who died in our institution and had an autopsy exams in years 2010 - 2015. Material and methods: Among total 115 deaths the pulmonary hypertension based on histopathology criteria was present in 83 cases (72%) as a leading cause of their deaths. Out of 83 neonates 40 underwent prenatal echo, 43 did not, however in both groups there were similar types of heart defects. Results: The prenatal echo findings from study group (n=40), from the last echo before the delivery were compared with control group and group of HLHS who did survive neonatal surgery and were discharged from hospital. There were statistical differences between pulmonary artery/aorta ratio in fetuses in control group and fetuses in study group ("pulmonary hypertension" after birth) (p=0,044). There were statistical differences between pre-delivery pulmonary artery/aorta ratio in fetuses in study group (with "pulmonary hypertension" after birth) and in group of fetuses with HLHS, alive & well after first surgery (p=0,027). There were no differences between pulmonary artery/ aorta ratio fetuses in control group and fetuses with HLHS, alive & well after first surgery (p=0,38) Conclusion: 1) Pulmonary hypertension was a frequent cause of neonatal deaths among our series of congenital heart defects 2) Dilatation of pulmonary artery (and increased pulmonary/artery ratio ) in fetal echo just before delivery may be an important risk factor for poor neonatal outcome in congenital heart defects.)


Ensemble Kalman Inversion (EnKI) and Ensemble Square Root Filter (EnSRF) are popular sampling methods for obtaining a target posterior distribution. They can be seem as one step (the analysis step) in the data assimilation method Ensemble Kalman Filter. Despite their popularity, they are, however, not unbiased when the forward map is nonlinear. Important Sampling (IS), on the other hand, obtains the unbiased sampling at the expense of large variance of weights, leading to slow convergence of high moments.
We propose WEnKI and WEnSRF, the weighted versions of EnKI and EnSRF in this paper. It follows the same gradient flow as that of EnKI/EnSRF with weight corrections. Compared to the classical methods, the new methods are unbiased, and compared with IS, the method has bounded weight variance. Both properties will be proved rigorously in this paper. We further discuss the stability of the underlying Fokker-Planck equation. This partially explains why EnKI, despite being inconsistent, performs well occasionally in nonlinear settings. Numerical evidence will be demonstrated at the end.


Various studies on lighting energy savings are conducted, given that lighting energy consumption accounts 23.5% of building energy consumption. Especially, external type light shelf's efficiency is acknowledged; however, its application is limited in Korea, where high rise building ratio is high, due to high wind pressure. This study delves into natural lighting system to cope with wind pressure, and proposes the punching plate-installed light shelf. This study actually draws lighting energy output, according to whether the punching plate is applied through the test-bed, and verifies the effectiveness of the punching plate-installed light shelf. The conclusion is presented below: First) The result of performance evaluation of light shelf with the punching plate in winter solstice showed that the awning area decreased as the opening ratio increased so that the indoor distributed illumination tended to increase, and -40° which was advantageous for awning was determined as the proper angle. Second) The light shelf with the punching plate in spring/autumn equinox shows improved lighting according to the angle, and the appropriate angle of light shelf with the punching plate has increased to 15˚ and 20˚ according to the opening ratio in comparison to 5˚ which is the appropriate angle of light shelf with no punching plate due to the reflection area reduced by the reflecting plate with holes. Third) The result of performance evaluation of light shelf with the punching plate in summer solstice showed that the lighting performance tended to decrease as the opening ratio increased. 4) The light shelf with the punching plate incurs a 50% energy loss in comparison to the light shelf with no punching plate. However, its effectiveness has been proven in the aspects that it can bring a 50% energy saving in comparison to the case with no installation of light shelf and that it can be designed in response to wind pressure on the high floors.


In 71 subjects (23 atopic patients, 22 hyperreactive patients and 26 normal test subjects) the authors twice performed a nasal provocation test with formaldehyde in three different concentrations. The test proved to be very much reproducible. There existed no clear-cut significant difference in the threshold for rhinorrhea, sneezing, tearing and pain in the three different groups. The difference in threshold for nasal blockade was very significantly different for the atopic and hyperreactive patients on one hand, and for the normal test subjects on the other hand. After the provocation a small increase in the mucociliary transport time was observed.


The paper suggests a non-cooperative simultaneous game, with a number of potential deviators is a parameter of the game. A definition of the game embeds mechanism design. The game has an equilibrium in mixed strategies. The equilibrium encompasses intra and inter group externalities and individual payoffs that make it different from a strong Nash, coalition-proof equilibrium and some other equilibrium concepts. We offer a non-cooperative stability criterion to describe a robustness of an equilibrium strategy profile to an increase in a number of deviators. The criterium may serve as a way to measure trust for the equilibrium in terms of a number of potential deviators.


Abstract The study of identities struggles to capture the moments and dynamics of identity change. A crisis moment provides a rare insight into such processes. This paper traces the political identities of the inhabitants of a region at war – the Donbas – on the basis of original survey data that cover the four parts of the population that once made up this region: the population of the Kyiv-controlled Donbas, the population of the self-declared "Donetsk People's Republic" and "Luhansk People's Republic," the internally displaced, and those who fled to the Russian Federation. The survey data map the parallel processes of a self-reported polarization of identities and the preservation or strengthening of civic identities. Language categories matter for current self-identification, but they are not cast in narrow ethnolinguistic terms, and feeling "more Ukrainian" and Ukrainian citizenship include mono- and bilingual conceptions of native language (i.e. Ukrainian and Russian).


The onset of the financial crisis in September 2008 and the subsequent 'Great Trade Collapse' (Baldwin 2009), many countries actively used trade policy instruments as part of their response to the global recession. Governments pursued a mix of trade liberalization, trade promotion, and trade restrictions. The choice of trade policy has varied, with limited use of tariff hikes or antidumping and safeguard actions. Sector-specific support to industries dominated initial responses to the crisis, and there has been increasing resort to nontariff measures. Recent research suggests that vertical specialization the growth in global supply chains has played a significant role in limiting the use of traditional protectionist instruments. Pressures on governments to support domestic economic activity may increase, given current gloomy economic prospects and more binding macroeconomic policy constraints, and the number of protectionist measures has recently risen. Open trade cannot be taken for granted, thus the need for monitoring persists.


This study aims to explore the effects of participant motive, system integration, and value-added services on supply chain performance, and the role of E-Procurement Value as a mediating role. We collected data via a cross-industry questionnaire, with total 127 survey instruments available. We analyzed our data using regression model. The results show that participant motive, system integration, and value-added services have a positive effect on E-Procurement Value and further affect the supply chain performance.


Increasing demand for palm oil and palm oil derivative products has triggered demand for oil palm fruit. This phenomena has been responded by Indonesian oil palm growers by increasing oil palm production through land expansi on. Land expansion has been claimed as the source of deforestation, land degradation, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emission, and land conflicts. The Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil has been established to promote sustainable oil palm production. However, the implementation of the certification program face various problem, especially at the smallholder levels. The objective of this study is to analyze the performance of independent oil palm smallholders, to assess the application of good agricultural practices in relation with the ISPO standards and to analyses prospects and chalenges toward certification ISPO. The study use agribusiness income analyses, scaling method to measure the smallholders practices based on the ISPO standard and descriptive method to analyze prospects and chalenges faced by smallholders to obtain ISPO certification. The result shows that the oil palm smallholder profits on average are above the regional wage standard. However, the smallholders compliance to the ISPO standards is only 43.5%. Certification ISPO would promote better acces to independent smalholder in market acces, financial acces and endorse sustainable production of oil palm. However, independent oil palm smallholers face various chalenges to obtain certificate of ISPO.  This figure shows that there will be lots of effort to be done to get the ISPO certification. Keywords : Oil palm, ISPO certification, smallholders' performance, independent smallholders


A case of small bowel leiomyosarcoma in a 75-year-old woman is reviewed. The patient had an unexplained anaemia with occult blood in the faeces for at least 15 years. The value of different radiological investigations in patients with suspected gastrointestinal bleeding is discussed. The possible significance of calcifications visible on plain abdominal films is emphasized.


Polylactic acid (PLA) nanoparticles coated with Gd(III)-based metallosurfactants (MS) are prepared using a simple and rapid one-step method, flash nanoprecipitation (FNP), for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications. By co-assembling the Gd(III)-based MS and an amphiphilic polymer, methoxy poly(ethylene glycol)-b-poly(ε-caprolactone) (mPEG-b-PCL), PLA cores were rapidly encapsulated to form biocompatible T1 contrast agents with tunable particle size and narrow size distribution. The hydrophobic property of Gd(III)-based MS were finely tuned to achieve their high loading efficiency. The size of the nanoparticles was easily controlled by tuning the stream velocity, Reynolds number and the amount of the amphiphilic block copolymer during the FNP process. Under the optimized condition, the relaxivity of the nanoparticles was achieved up to 35.39 mM-1 s-1 (at 1.5 T), which is over 8 times of clinically used MRI contrast agents, demonstrating the potential application for MR imaging.


Regional and overall left ventricular contraction reserve was studied in 14 patients with coronary heart disease, in 5 healthy subjects and in 4 patients before and after aorto-coronary bypass surgery. Quantification of overall contraction was based on ventricular volumes and ejection fraction. Regional contraction reserve was calculated with the hemiaxis method and a ventricular score. Contraction reserve under nitroglycerin and in postextrasystolic beats was compared. For routine quantification of contraction reserve the ventricular score is recommended. For research purposes the hemiaxis method is to be preferred. Postextrasystolic beats are better suited for analysis of contraction reserve than are angiograms following administration of nitroglycerin. This is due to the minor expense of the procedure, furthermore, postextrasystolic beats allow better differentiation between contracting and non-contracting areas. Left ventricular contraction reserve is larger in patients with coronary heart disease, angina pectoris and ischemic reactions in the exercise ECG than in control patients. These findings are based on overall and on regional volume parameters. A quantitatively greater improvement in contraction could be provoked in the anterior wall than in the posterior wall. Regional contraction improved significantly in most cases either in the anterior wall or in the posterior wall; rarely it improved simultaneously in both left ventricular regions. In a few cases contraction deteriorated in one area with a simultaneous improvement in the opposite area. Overall and regional ventricular function, as assessed preoperatively by contraction reserve determinations could not be completely regained in normal beats after successful bypass surgery. Differences in the regional contraction reserve seemed to be mainly due to varying degrees of ischemia and scarring.


Integrations of coupled climate models with mixed-layer and fixed-current ocean components are used to explore the climatic response to varying magnitudes of ocean circulation. Four mixed-layer ocean experiments without ocean heat transports are performed using two different atmosphere‐land components—the new GFDL AM2 and the GFDL Manabe Climate Model (MCM)—and two different sea ice components, one dynamic and one thermodynamic. Both experiments employing the dynamic sea ice component develop unstable growth of sea ice while the experiments with a thermodynamic sea ice component develop very large but stable ice covers. The global cooling ranges from modest to extreme in the four experiments. Using the fixed-current climate model, a trio of 100-yr integrations are made with control currents from a GFDL R30 ocean simulation, same currents reduced by 50%, and same currents increased by 50%. This suite is performed with two coupled models again employing the two atmosphere‐land components, AM2 and MCM, for a total of six experiments. Both models show a large sensitivity of the sea ice extent to the magnitude of currents with increased currents reducing the extent and warming the high latitudes. Low cloud cover also responds to circulation changes in both models but in the opposite sense. In the AM2-based model, low cloudiness decreases as ocean circulation increases, reinforcing the sea ice changes in reducing the planetary reflectivity, and warming the climate. This cloudiness change is associated with a reduction in lower-atmospheric stability over the ocean. Because the AM2-based model is able to simulate the observed seasonal low cloud‐stability relationship and the changes in these quantities with altered ocean circulation are consistent with this relationship, the AM2 interpretation of the cloud changes is favored.


Background: Low back pain is a state of distress to the lumbar spine with or without manifestations to the distal points whose cause is often unknown. Spinal decompression is an advanced modification of traction, a technique used to reduce disc pressure, to increase the intervertebral space and to regain the normal position and height of the disc. Objective: The objective of this research was to determine the effects of Lumbar Decompression therapy in patients of low back pain by using Oswestry pain scale questionnaire. Methodology: It was a longitudinal study and data was gathered from population in Lahore and completed at KKT Orthopedic Spine Center Lahore. Total 136 patients were surveyed before the treatment (baseline) and after the treatment (6 sessions). Results: Total score on baseline was 42.7and total score after 6 sessions was 27.33. So, according to total Mean score after 6 sessions i.e 27.33, decompression is statistically effective. Conclusion: Total mean score after six sessions of treatment were less than at baseline. So lumbar decompression therapy is very effective in treating low back pain.


The present study describes a culturally relevant approach to introductory psychology textbook selection for students attending a historically Black college/university (HBCU). The following multistage procedure was used: (1) a survey of HBCU psychology departments was conducted to ascertain how they selected their introductory psychology textbooks; (2) a review of the literature on introductory psychology textbook selection was performed to identify criteria; and (3) rating criteria were developed; used in the actual selection of a textbook for HBCU students; and were subjected to psychometric analysis. The psychometric analyses of 240 ratings (10 criteria X 4 raters X 6 books) involved both reliability assessment of the scale with the selection criteria as items and interrater reliability in evaluating introductory psychology textbooks. The survey of HBCU faculty yielded no consensus or systematic process from the respondents. Both internal consistency reliability and agreement among faculty were adequate on the rating instrument for the total scores and subscale scores of Quality of Learning Resources and Learning and Comprehension. However, the subscale scores for Cultural Relevance yielded mixed results by type of reliability: Interrater agreement was adequate but internal consistency reliability was poor. Future research using multiple methodologies must address the relevancy of cultural diversity for introductory psychology courses


We introduce a systematic approach for automatically creating a visual diagram, akin to a SCADE model, from a Lustre program. This not only saves tedious manual drawing effort but also allows the creation of different views for the same program. Furthermore, we present an extension of the SCCharts language with data-flow constructs that adhere to the Lustre semantics, which in turn permits a translation from Lustre to graphical SCCharts. This allows to use the SCCharts simulation and code synthesis machinery as an alternative to existing Lustre compilation techniques. Finally, we investigate how the sequentially constructive model of computation underlying SCCharts can be used to conservatively extend Lustre, thus providing a deterministic semantics to some Lustre programs that would be rejected under its original semantics. We have implemented and validated this work with the Eclipse-based open-source KIELER framework.


Field trials were conducted with 10 improved clones of cassava to study the effect of ACMD on their morphological characteristics. The clones used were: 97 / 4763, 97/2205, 91/02324, 98/0505, M98/0068, 96/1089A, 96/1632, M98/0040, 99/2123 and 97/0162. The parameters measured were plant height, leaf area, number of branches and petiole length. The research revealed differences within the clones for the parameters studied, these differences seemed to be mainly genetic, as they were not positively correlated to the disease incidence and severity. Based on the findings in this research the following recommendations were made. On the basis of their branching pattern, highly branched clones 97 / 2205, 97/4763 and 98 /0505 are recommended for selection. The heavy branches bear a lot of leaves or produce a thick canopy which helps to reduce the need for weeding, and also reduce the effect of loss of leaves that occur due to disease incidence. However, for industrial / mechanized agriculture, clones that are less branched should be selected as they are easier to harvest mechanically. Though there is disadvantage with their small leaf areas; the crops would have to be highly resistant to fungal attack which tends to cause leaf drop that will reduce leaf material for food / starch production (examples of less branching clones are, M98 / 0068, 96/1632,91/02324). Key Word : African Cassava Mosaic Disease (ACMD), Cassava Mosaic Virus.(CMV)


Abstract NKX2.5 is a transcription factor that plays a key role in cardiovascular growth and development. Several independent studies have been previously conducted to investigate the association between the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) 606G >C (rs3729753) in the coding region of NKX2.5 and congenital heart disease (CHD). However, the results of these studies have been inconsistent. Therefore, the present study aimed to reveal the relationship between NKX2.5 SNP 606G >C and the risk of CHD as possible in the Chinese population through meta-analysis. After retrieving related articles in PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of science, Cochrane, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang DATA, and VIP database until August 2021, a total of eight studies were included in the present meta-analysis. The qualified research data were then merged into allele, dominant, recessive, heterozygous, homozygous, and additive models. Overall results of the current meta-analysis showed that 606G >C was not associated with CHD of the Chinese population in any model. In addition, subgroup analysis based on CHD type gave the same negative result. Results of sensitivity analysis showed that there was no significant correlation after the deletion of each study. Furthermore, it was noted that the results were negative and the heterogeneity was not significant. In conclusion, it was evident that NKX2-5 SNP 606G >C may not lead to the risk of CHD in Chinese population.


Abstract A long history of research documents that McCall Glacier, Arctic Alaska, USA, continues to lose mass at a rate that is likely increasing with time. We present a photo comparison (1958-2003) that visually documents these volume changes, along with survey measurements that quantify these losses. Measurements of longitudinal profiles initially acquired from airborne laser altimetry, and repeated by ground-based surveys, indicate that the areally averaged rate of thinning increased between 1956-93 and 1993-2002, from 0.35 ± 0.07 m a-1 to 0.47 ± 0.03 m a-1, respectively; total volume loss was (8.3 × 107) ± (1.7 × 107) m3 and (2.7 × 107) ± (0.2 × 107) m3 (all in water equivalent) for these two time periods. These profiles also indicate that a 1 km stretch of the mid-ablation area is behaving differently from this trend, with a rate of thinning that is not changing with time. Lastly we present a comparison of several methods for calculating volume change and assess their relative errors.


microRNA is a subset of endogenous non-coding RNA. It binds to partially complementary sequences in mRNAs and inhibits mRNA translation by either blocking translational machinery or degrading mRNAs. It is involved in various cellular processes including cell cycle, development, metabolism, and synaptic plasticity. Dysregulation of miRNA expression and function is reported in various diseases including cancer, metabolic disorders as well as neurological disorders. In nervous system, miRNA related pathways play a very important role in development and function of neuronal cells. Moreover, numerous evidences suggest that dysregulated miRNA related pathways contribute to pathology of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Here, we review current knowledge about the role of miRNAs in motor neuron disorders, especially about two common diseases: SMA and ALS.


The iconic potential of sign languages suggests that the establishment of a conventionalized set of form-meaning pairings should be relatively easy. However, even an iconic form has to be interpreted correctly for it to conventionalize. In sign languages, spatial modulations are used to indicate real spatial relationships (locative) and grammatical relations. The former is a more-or-less direct representation of how things are situated with respect to each other. Grammatical space, in contrast, is more abstract. As such, the former would seem to be more interpretable than the latter, and so on the face of it, should be more likely to conventionalize in a new sign language. But in at least one emerging sign language the grammatical use of space is conventionalizing first. We argue that this is due to the grammatical use of space being easier to understand correctly, using data from four experiments investigating hearing non-signers interpretation of spatially modulated gestures.


Electrical impedance plethysmography (EIP) is a cost effective and power efficient physiological measurement method that could potentially be applied for measuring pulse waves along limbs in ambulatory conditions. The pulse wave information could be utilized to determine the heart rate or other relevant parameters such as heart rate variability or cardiac rhythm. We compared three electrode configurations for EIP at the forearm, with the focus on assessing its utility in a wearable device. The evaluation included EIP measurements with ten healthy participants using adhesive gel electrodes. The evaluated electrode configurations were tetrapolar configuration along the forearm and tetrapolar and bipolar configurations around the wrist. For each electrode configuration, the measurements were performed in stationery condition and during finger movement. The collected data was evaluated for finding out differences in the signal to noise ratio (SNR) between the configurations during the two conditions. The results show that pulse wave signal with adequate SNR for heart rate estimation is obtained from the wrist area while stationary and mostly also during the presence of mild movement. There was no significant difference in the data quality between wrist area and conventional configuration along the limb.