In order to construct an ethical artificial intelligence (AI) two complex problems must be overcome. First, humans do not consistently agree on what is or is not ethical. Second, contemporary AI and machine learning methods tend to be blunt instruments which either search for solutions within the bounds of predefined rules or mimic behavior. An ethical AI must be capable of inferring unspoken rules, interpreting nuance and context, possess and be able to infer intent, and explain not just its actions but its intent. Using enactivism, semiotics, perceptual symbol systems, and symbol emergence, we specify an agent that learns not just arbitrary relations between signs but their meaning in terms of the perceptual states of its sensorimotor system. Subsequently it can learn what is meant by a sentence and infer the intent of others in terms of its own experiences. It has malleable intent because the meaning of symbols changes as it learns, and its intent is represented symbolically as a goal. As such it may learn a concept of what is most likely to be considered ethical by the majority within a population of humans, which may then be used as a goal. The meaning of abstract symbols is expressed using perceptual symbols of raw, multimodal sensorimotor stimuli as the weakest (consistent with Ockham's Razor) necessary and sufficient concept, an intensional definition learned from an ostensive definition, from which the extensional definition or category of all ethical decisions may be obtained. Because these abstract symbols are the same for both situation and response, the same symbol is used when either performing or observing an action. This is akin to mirror neurons in the human brain. Mirror symbols may allow the agent to empathize, because its own experiences are associated with the symbol, which is also associated with the observation of another agent experiencing something that symbol represents.


In this paper, characteristics of the 2-bit recessed channel memory with lifted-charge trapping nodes are investigated. The length between the charge trapping nodes through channel, which is defined as the effective memory node length (Meff), is extended by lifting up them. The dependence of VTH window and short channel effect (SCE) on the recessed depth is analyzed. Improvement of short channel effect is achieved because the recessed channel structure increases the effective channel length (Leff). Moreover, this device shows highly scalable memory characteristics without suffering from the bottom-side effect (BSE).


Research methods in machine learning play a pivotal role since the accuracy and reliability of the results are influenced by the research methods used. The main aims of this paper were to explore current research methods in machine learning, emerging themes, and the implications of those themes in machine learning research.  To achieve this the researchers analyzed a total of 100 articles published since 2019 in IEEE journals. This study revealed that Machine learning uses quantitative research methods with experimental research design being the de facto research approach. The study also revealed that researchers nowadays use more than one algorithm to address a problem. Optimal feature selection has also emerged to be a key thing that researchers are using to optimize the performance of Machine learning algorithms. Confusion matrix and its derivatives are still the main ways used to evaluate the performance of algorithms, although researchers are now also considering the processing time taken by an algorithm to execute. Python programming languages together with its libraries are the most used tools in creating, training, and testing models. The most used algorithms in addressing both classification and prediction problems are; Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, Artificial Neural Networks, and Decision Tree. The recurring themes identified in this study are likely to open new frontiers in Machine learning research.


The main assignment of wafer transport automation in cluster-tools equipment is to transfer wafer between chambers and cassettes automatically. However, the operation of cluster-tools must be done in the clean room in consideration of the cleaning requirement, technology support of operator, and maintenance of equipment. With remote monitoring and e-diagnostics technology, an operator can monitor the procedures of wafer transport, the statuses of equipment, and more remote diagnosing/control of cluster-tools via Internet. Thus, it will be useful for maintenance, diagnosis, and productivity improvement. Besides, it can also use statistical process control system to predict the status of equipment. This system will know in advance whether the equipment is going to fail or not. The operator can handle the problems earlier with the prediction of the status of equipment. This research discusses the capability requirement of remote monitoring and diagnosing system for cluster-tools equipment. The CCD camera can take a picture when the arm goes into chamber. The data will be saved into SQL Server after program recognize the image and calculate the height of front arm. Then, use statistical process control to get capability of accuracy, capability of process, and process capability of the equipment. These three indexes will show the operator the status of equipment. Operator can call the engineer to check and fix the equipment ahead of time to avoid an accident when the index displayed a failing tendency. It will achieve the capability of e-diagnostics prediction.


Using general relativistic analytical treatment in Kerr metric and numerical simulations with the public HARM2D code, we consider the vertical structure and velocity field in the inner parts of a black hole accretion disk, both outside and inside the last stable orbit. Chaotic magnetic fields frozen into the accreting matter easily become the dominant pressure source inside the sonic point that allows to predict the equilibrium thickness of the flow. Numerical simulations, however, reveal instabilities in the magnetic fields leading to formation of current sheets in the super-sonic part of the flow and ultimately to accretion through thin layers (or wisps, in 3D) with the vertical spatial scale much smaller. If disk thickness is large, any consideration of its vertical structure should use some assumptions about the rotation velocity field inside the disk. The latter seems to be strongly dependent upon the presence of a regular magnetic field component near the black hole. If the magnetic flux through the black hole horizon is small, rotation close to the sonic surface conforms very well to Keplerian, and isorotational surfaces have practically cylindrical shapes (r sin θ = const). We use the assumption of Keplerian cylindrical rotation Ω(r, θ) = ( (r sin θ) + a )−1 to estimate the effects of disk thickness upon the Eddington limit and accretion efficiency in black hole accretion disks.


The amount of information available on Internet increases by the day. This constant growth makes it difficult to distinguish between information which is relevant and which is not, particularly in key areas which are of strategic interest to business and universities or research centres. This article presents an automatic system to extract social networks: a software designed to generate social networks by exploiting information which is already available on Internet through the use of common search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Furthermore, the metrics used to calculate the affinities between different actors in order to confirm the real ties which connect them and the methods to extract the semantic descriptions of each actor are presented. This represents the innovative part of this research.


The permeability of reverse osmosis membranes is limited by the diffusive transport of water across a non-porous polyamide active layer. Alternatively, fabricating a microporous active layer capable of rejecting salt ions while allowing for water transport would increase the permeability while maintaining high salt rejection. Zeolites provide a model porous network which is capable of performing this type of molecular sieve separation. However, a lack of understanding of the mechanisms that govern transport within the zeolite pore network as well as an insufficient control of membrane synthesis has limited the performance of past zeolite-based membranes. In this thesis, we seek to understand the mechanisms of water adsorption and transport in MFI-type zeolite pores through experimentation. Water adsorption on the surface and inside of the pore network was characterized by thermogravimetric analysis for varying Si/Al ratio zeolites. We estimated that the pore volume filled is -71% for a 23 Si/Al ratio MFI zeolite, -25% for an 80 Si/Al ratio MFI zeolite, and 0% for an infinite Si/Al ratio MFI zeolite. In addition, we characterized the transport of water into the MFI zeolite pore network by applying an increasing hydraulic pressure and measuring the change in volumetric displacement. We were able to corroborate the adsorbed pore volume from the TGA experiments and estimated that the pore volume filled was ~72% for a 23 Si/Al ratio MFI zeolite and ~34% for an 80 Si/Al ratio MFI zeolite. We also observed that the volumetric infiltration rate did not have an effect on the infiltration characteristics, which is distinctly different from continuum hydrodynamic behavior. Future work will focus on testing the water permeation and salt rejection of these types of zeolites. We have made significant progress in the fabrication of defect-free zeolite membranes. We also plan on investigating the adsorption and transport of water in MFI zeolite pores by using molecular dynamics simulations. Thesis Supervisor: Evelyn N. Wang Title: Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering


The magnitude of repetition suppression (RS) in the Fusiform Face Area is influenced by the probability of repetitions of faces (Summerfield et al., 2008), implying that perceptual expectations affect repetition-related processes. Surprisingly, however, macaque single-cell (Kaliukhovich and Vogels, 2011) and human fMRI (Kovács et al., 2013) studies have failed to find repetition probability [P(rep)] modulations of RS with nonface stimuli in the occipitotemporal cortex, suggesting that the effect is face specific. One possible explanation of this category selectivity is that the extensive experience humans have with faces affects the neural mechanisms of RS specifically, creating P(rep) modulatory effects. To address this question, we used fMRI to test the P(rep) effects for another well trained stimulus category, upright letters of the roman alphabet as well as for unfamiliar false fonts. We observed significant RS for both stimulus sets in the Letter Form Area as well as in the caudodorsal part of the lateral occipital complex. Interestingly, the influence of P(rep) on RS was dependent on the stimulus: while we observed P(rep) modulations for the roman letters, no such effects were found for the unfamiliar false fonts in either area. Our findings suggest that P(rep) effects on RS are manifest for nonface stimuli as well, but that they depend on the experience of the subjects with the stimulus category. This shows, for the first time, that prior experience affects the influence of contextual predictive information on RS in the human occipitotemporal cortex.


This work is in the field of multi-material compressible fluid flows simulation. The proposed scheme is eulerian and related to finite volumes methods, but in a Lagrange-Remap formalism on regular orthogonal meshes. The Lagrangian scheme is staggered and the remap phase is similar to a finite volume advection scheme. The multi-material extension uses classical VOF fluxes for sharp interface reconstruction. The originality of the scheme is in the attempt for a 9 points remap scheme without directional splitting. This strategy should allow to preserve good properties of classical multi-material staggered schemes, while saving parallel communications with the one step remap. Results will be discussed and compared to those from classical Lagrange-Remap schemes on severe benchmarks.


Recent advances in electronics and wireless communication technologies have enabled the development of large-scale wireless sensor networks that consist of many low-power, low-cost, and small-size sensor nodes. Sensor networks hold the promise of facilitating large-scale and real-time data processing in complex environments. Some of the application areas are health, military, and home. In military, for example, the rapid deployment, self-organization, and fault tolerance characteristics of sensor networks make them a very promising technique for military command, control, communications, computing, and targeting systems. In health, sensor nodes can also be deployed to monitor patients and assist disabled patients, and etc. My area of interest for the project is the survey of different routing protocols that have been developed for secure sensor networks and find their capabilities and deficiencies and suggest the most efficient among them.


: The authors present an unusual case of exsudative parafoveolar astrocytic hamartome associated with tuberous sclerosis. The spontaneous regression of the serous retinal detachment and of the hard exsudates is described.


A 42-year-old woman was referred to this institution because of persistent air leak associated with left spontaneous pneumothorax. She had undergone a radical hysterectomy with bilateral oophorectomy and left nephrectomy one year previously. The renal tumor was identified as an angiomyolipoma. This, along with the characteristic dermal lesions led to the diagnosis of tuberous sclerosis. Preoperative thin-slice chest CT showed multiple thin-walled, round and cystic air spaces in the pulmonary parenchyma bilaterally, as well as the left pneumothorax. Through a left thoracotomy, suture ligation and laser ablation of the pulmonary bullae was done. Examination of the biopsy specimen of the lung showed hamartoangiomyomatosis with multiple bullae. The proliferating smooth muscle in the walls of the bullae was positively stained by HMB45 monoclonal antibody. The patient recovered uneventfully, and was doing well three years later without medications. The prior surgical castration may have prevented progression of the disease.


The purpose of this work was to evaluate the efficacy of a plant growth regulator applied at different growth stages in coffee. The experiment was conducted in the years 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 on the Docas 1 farm, using Mundo Novo IAC 379-19 coffee cultivar, with spacing 4 meter between rows and 0.8 meter between plants and 10 plants per plot. The experimental design was in blocks at random, with two factors and three repetitions. The first factor was the dose of the product (0.25 and 0.5 liter per hectare per application) and second factor was the time of applications according to the phenological stages (pre-flowering, post-flowering and pinhead). The control treatment (control) consisted of the absence of the application of the plant growth regulator. Biometric aspects (number of internodes and length of reproductive branches in centimeters, number of fruits on the fourth and fifth node on reproductive branches) and productivity were evaluated. Collected data were analyzed using Tukey test at 0.05 of significance. The application of a plant growth regulator at different growth stages of development of coffee leads to increased biometric variables in coffee: the number of internodes, the average number of fruits on the fourth and fifth node and the length of reproductive branches. The productivity of coffee can be increased with the use of plant growth regulators, particularly at the dose of 0.5 liter per hectare per application, regardless of the application period, promoting productivity up to 46.9%. It is not possible to state that the presence of substances similar to phytohormones in plant growth regulators is responsible for the increase in productivity without making isolate application of these substances.


The major problem plaguing DNA repair and metabolic inhibitors is their lack of tumor-selectivity, resulting in unwanted toxicities. In contrast, NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1) bioactivatable drugs (e.g., s-lapachone (s-lap) and deoxynyboquinine (DNQ) and their derivatives) offer exquisite tumor-selectivity, with one form of the drug, ARQ761, currently in Phase I clinical trials against solid cancers, most of which have elevated levels of NQO1; pancreatic and nonsmall cell lung cancers (NSCLC) have the highest levels of this two-electron oxidoreductase. NQO1 levels are elevated during early steps of carcinogenesis in most solid cancers in response to activated K-Ras, c-Myc or other oncogenic drivers, as well as re-expression of human telomerase (hTERT). NQO1 catalyzes an unique futile redox cycle using either of these two unique classes of NQO1 bioactivatable drugs, resulting in super-lethal doses of hydrogen peroxide; in fact one mole of s-lap used by NQO1 produces >60 moles H2O2 in 2 mins. The elevated levels of H2O2 generates tremendous DNA lesions (e.g., 8-oxoguanine formation) that ultimately results in massive levels of DNA single strand breaks. The H2O2 generated also results in release of ERCa2+ and culminates in the hyperactivation of Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP1). GAPDH is then inhibited initially by direct suppression by H2O2 and then by posttranslational modification, resulting in accumulation of glyceraldehyde-3phosphate (GA3P). This unique, NQO1-dependent tumor-selective hyperactivation of PARP1 results in simultaneous losses of NAD+ (generated by the NQO1 futile redox cycle) and ATP, with suppressed recovery by inhibition of glycolysis (by inhibition of GAPDH) and the Krebs cycle through suppression of pyruvate production. Understanding the mechanism of action of these two classes of unique drugs has allowed tumor-selective combination therapies with DNA damaging agents, DNA repair inhibitors, and more recently metabolic inhibitors, such as agents that block NaMPt and GLS1. Addition of these inhibitors, in turn, results in a dramatic lowering of the required doses of NQO1 bioactivatable drugs-a true synergy is established with nontoxic levels of drugs combined to achieve one log or greater loss of colony forming ability. This work is supported by grants from Texas CPRIT, AACR/PanCan Action Network and NIH R01 CA102792-11 to DAB. Citation Format: Xiumei Huang, Zachary Moore, Xiuquan Luo, Gaurab Chakrabarti, Mariya Ilcheva, Rolf Brekken, Sandeep Burma, Jinming Gao, Ralph Deberardinis, William Bornmann, Paul Hergenrother, David A. Boothman. DNA repair and metabolism inhibitors are tumor-selective when combined with NQO1 bioactivatable drugs for therapy against pancreatic and nonsmall cell lung cancers. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 787. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-787


Info 2020 A small size patch antenna for replacing TP-LINK WA 701 ND access point (AP) internal antena for 2.4 GHz is proposed. Measurements are carried out on AP external antenna to get the basic parameter of the antenna i.e. return loss, bandwidth, radiation pattern, and polarization. The patch antenna is designed by using IE3D simulator on FR4 material with the thickness of 1.6 mm and the dielectric constant of 4.4. The 42×28×1.6 mm overall size of the designed antenna is printed on FR 4 substrate, measured and compared to external AP antenna. The measurement result shows good agreement between simulation and designed antenna. The printed antenna covers 2.4 GHz, the gain of 2.5 dBi, and has linier polarization. This antenna is much smaller than 190×15×15 mm conventional TP-LINK WA 701 ND AP antennas and allows it to be hidden and integrated on the AP printed circuit board. The comparation of the designed antenna and external AP antenna is also conducted by evaluating both antenna performance on TP-LINK WA 701 ND AP by accessing it on a laptop on different access


(Abstract) In many scientific communities using experiment databases, one of the crucial problem is how to assess the statistical significance (P-value) of a discovered hypothesis. Especially, combinatorial hypothesis assessment is a hard problem because it requires a multiple-testing procedure with a very large factor of the P-value correction. Recently, Terada et al. proposed a novel method of the P-value correction, called " Limitless Arity Multiple-testing Procedure " (LAMP), which is based on frequent itemset enumeration to exclude meaninglessly infrequent itemsets which never be significant. The LAMP makes much more accurate P-value correction than previous method, and it empowers the scientific discovery. However, the original LAMP implementation is sometimes too time-consuming for practical databases. We propose a new LAMP algorithm that essentially executes itemset mining algorithm once, while the previous one executes many times. Our experimental results show that the proposed method is much (10 to 100 times) faster than the original LAMP. This algorithm enables us to discover significant P-value patterns in quite short time even for very large-scale databases.


With the advent of Artificial Intelligence and new manufacturing techniques, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) have started to prevail over their manned version in terms of cost efficiency when it comes to accomplish tasks in ocean exploration, offshore platform and ship maintenance or other military missions. As progress has been made over the past years, autonomy remains a topical issue for the untethered AUVs. Drawing its inspiration from nature, this paper aims at minimizing the energy consumed by the device on a specific mission by allowing its shape, parameterized with Bezier curves, to morph throughout time. The framework is restricted to one dimensional trajectories only. A first step consisting of finding the optimal velocity and shapes added mass coefficient in surge as functions of time for a given mission is presented. Then a way of determining the succession of shapes the AUV must take so that it has the right added mass coefficient at any time is proved and used. This last part is made computationally affordable by using a Neural Network instead of a Boundary Element Method to evaluate the hydrodynamic coefficient in surge of the shape. Outliers detection and elimination are being performed on the training dataset to increase the predictive model reliability and robustness.


Objectives The clinical distinction between vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) is a key step to elaborate a prognosis and formulate an appropriate medical plan for any patient suffering from disorders of consciousness (DoC). However, this assessment is often challenging and may require specialised expertise. In this study, we hypothesised that pooling subjective reports of the level of consciousness of a given patient across several nursing staff members can be used to clinically detect MCS. Setting and participants Patients referred to consciousness assessment were prospectively screened. MCS (target condition) was defined according to the best Coma Recovery Scale-Revised score (CRS-R) obtained from expert physicians (reference standard). 'DoC-feeling' score was defined as the median of individual subjective reports pooled from multiple staff members during a week of hospitalisation (index test). Individual ratings were collected at the end of each shift using a 100 mm Visual Analogue Scale, blinded from the reference standard. Diagnostic accuracy was evaluated using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), sensitivity and specificity metrics. Results 692 ratings performed by 83 nursing staff members were collected from 47 patients. Twenty patients were diagnosed with UWS and 27 with MCS. DoC-feeling scores obtained by pooling all individual ratings obtained for a given patient were significantly greater in patients with MCS than with UWS (59.2 mm (IQR: 27.3–77.3) vs 7.2 mm (IQR: 2.4–11.4); p<0.001) yielding an AUC of 0.92 (95% CI 0.84 to 0.99). Conclusions DoC-feeling capitalises on the expertise of nursing staff to evaluate patients' consciousness. Together with the CRS-R as well as with brain imaging, DoC-feeling might improve diagnostic and prognostic accuracy of patients with DoC.


We study repeated Bayesian n-player games in which the players' privately known types evolve according an irreducible Markov chain. Our main result shows that, with communication, any Pareto-efficient payoff vector above a stationary minmax value can be approximated arbitrarily closely in a perfect Bayesian equilibrium as the discount factor goes to one. As an intermediate step we construct a dynamic mechanism (without transfers) which is approximately efficient for patient players given a sufficiently long time horizon.


Urban water systems are being stressed due to the effects of urbanization and climate change. Although household rainwater tanks are primarily used for water supply purposes, they also have the potential to provide flood benefits. However, this potential is limited for critical storms, as they become ineffective once their capacity is exceeded. This limitation can be overcome by controlling tanks as systems during rainfall events, as this can offset the timing of outflow peaks from different tanks. In this paper, the effectiveness of such systems is tested for two tank sizes under a wide range of design rainfall conditions for three Australian cities with different climates. Results show that a generic relationship exists between the ratio of tank:runoff volume and percentage peak flow reduction, irrespective of location and storm characteristics. Smart tank systems are able to reduce peak system outflows by between 35% and 85% for corresponding ranges in tank:runoff volumes of 0.15–0.8. This corresponds to a relative performance improvement on the order of 35% to 50% compared with smart tanks that are not operated in real-time. These results highlight the potential for using household rainwater tanks for mitigating urban flooding, even for extreme events.


The National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) is a unique combination of wind tunnels that allow the testing of aerodynamic and dynamic models at full or large scale. It can even accommodate actual aircraft with their engines running. Maintaining fullscale Reynolds numbers and testing with surface irregularities, protuberances, and control surface gaps that either closely match the full-scale or indeed are those of the full-scale aircraft help produce test data that accurately predict what can be expected from future flight investigations. This complex has grown from the venerable 40by 80-Foot Wind Tunnel that has served for over 40 years helping researchers obtain data to better understand the aerodynamics of a wide range of aircraft from helicopters to the Space Shuttle. A recent modification to the tunnel expanded its maximum speed capabilities, added a new 80by 120-foot test section and provided extensive acoustic treatment. The modification is certain to make the NFAC an even more useful facility for NASA's ongoing research activities. This paper presents a brief background on the original facility and the kind of testing that has been accomplished using it through the years. A summary of the modification project and the measured capabilities of the two test sections is followed by a review of recent testing activities and of research projected for the future.


The preparation of uniform large‐area highly crystalline organic semiconductor thin films that show outstanding carrier mobilities remains a challenge in the field of organic electronics, including organic field‐effect transistors. Quantitative control over the drying speed during dip‐coating permits optimization of the organic semiconductor film formation, although the kinetics of crystallization at the air–solution–substrate contact line are still not well understood. Here, we report the facile one‐step growth of self‐aligning, highly crystalline soluble acene crystal arrays that exhibit excellent field‐effect mobilities (up to 1.5 cm V−1 s−1) via an optimized dip‐coating process. We discover that optimized acene crystals grew at a particular substrate lifting‐rate in the presence of low boiling point solvents, such as dichloromethane (b.p. of 40.0 °C) or chloroform (b.p. of 60.4 °C). Variable‐temperature dip‐coating experiments using various solvents and lift rates are performed to elucidate the crystallization behavior. This bottom‐up study of soluble acene crystal growth during dip‐coating provides conditions under which one may obtain uniform organic semiconductor crystal arrays with high crystallinity and mobilities over large substrate areas, regardless of the substrate geometry (wafer substrates or cylinder‐shaped substrates).


In this paper, we look into the loading problem of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) that is made up of several identical flexible manufacturing machines (CMMs). These machines are capable of different operations as long as the required tools are provided to them. The loading problem studied in this paper is a pre-release problem that deals with the pre-assignment of parts and tools before the process of an FMS begins. There are two objectives that one would like to achieve. They include minimising the number of tool-shortage occurrences and balancing the workload between machines. Since one cannot directly minimise the number of tool-shortage occurrences at the current pre-release stage, a surrogate objective of minimising the total tool-capacity shortage (TTCS) is adopted. Furthermore, because of the 'tool movement policy' assumption, our loading problem only involves assigning parts and tools to each machine. In this paper, we propose a part-and-tool assignment method that combines fuzzy c-means, SA (simulated annealing), and an optimal tool-assignment algorithm. The proposed part-and-tool assignment method is designed to be interactive. Because of this interactive nature, human designers can experiment with different evaluation criteria or reset the parameters of SA to look for alternative solutions. An example is given which illustrates the proposed part-and-tool assignment method. From the example, one can see that the proposed method is very efficient and effective in finding good-quality solutions.


The interconnection and digitization of the physical world has increased dramatically with the widespread deployment of network communication and the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT). Application scenarios and requirements in IoT are more complex and diverse than ever before. To successfully support the design and development of complex IoT systems, a realistic evaluation platform that can accurately simulate both the physical world and network communications is necessary. Yet, most existing simulation tools are limited, simulating only specific subsets of IoT environments, such as communication network simulation or mobility simulation, rather than complete IoT scenarios. Thus, in this paper, we propose a new framework, in which several modules can work together to achieve more realistic simulation of IoT environments. Specifically, we integrate three-dimensional object motion with the OMNET++ network simulator. In our framework, we can configure and direct object movement in 3D and compute the received power of transmitted signals using ray tracing techniques. Within the framework, OMNET++ simulates the communication process based on the received power and communication protocol. As a demonstration of our framework, we conduct several experiments on two classic Internet of Vehicles (IoV) scenarios. The results indicate that our proposed framework can accurately simulate both the physical and communication aspects of IoT systems.


Community pharmacists expanded their roles and engaged in vaccination services in many countries around the world, but not in Balkan countries. This research aimed to assess the perceptions of pharmacists on involvement in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine administration in four Balkan countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia). A cross-sectional survey was conducted using an online questionnaire that was distributed to community pharmacists across these countries between February and March 2021. A total of 636 community pharmacists were included in the analysis of the survey. The willingness to administer vaccines for COVID-19 (or other vaccines well established in the practice, like a flu vaccine) in community pharmacies is significantly different among the countries: the pharmacists from Albania were more willing to administer vaccines. The factors associated with the eagerness to vaccinate are almost the same among the countries: the lack of training in the faculty classes and the lack of a special place where to administer vaccines. Additional significant factors were found in Bulgaria (pharmacists from independent pharmacies wanted more than the pharmacists working in chain pharmacies to administer vaccines) and in Serbia (male pharmacists agreed more with administering vaccines than female pharmacists). Further national reforms are needed for adopting the expanding role of community pharmacists.


We have investigated the spatio-temporal carbon balance patterns resulting from forcing a dynamic global vegetation model with output from 18 climate models of the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5) ensemble. We found robust patterns in terms of an extra-tropical loss of carbon, except for a temperature induced shift in phenology, leading to an increased spring uptake of carbon. There are less robust patterns in the tropics, a result of disagreement in projections of precipitation and temperature. Although the simulations generally agree well in terms of the sign of the carbon balance change in the middle to high latitudes, there are large differences in the magnitude of the loss between simulations. Together with tropical uncertainties these discrepancies accumulate over time, resulting in large differences in total carbon uptake over the coming century (−0.97–2.27 Pg C yr−1 during 2006–2100). The terrestrial biosphere becomes a net source of carbon in ten of the 18 simulations adding to the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, while the remaining eight simulations indicate an increased sink of carbon.


Changes in adult mortality in Italy for cohorts born between 1882 and 1953 are analysed and interpreted by means of two different statistical models. The first, an Age–Period–Early Mortality (APEM) model, is employed to analyse the possible relationships between adverse conditions during the first 15 years of life and subsequent mortality. It is shown that higher mortality early in life is associated with higher mortality up to age 45 and lower mortality at latter ages. Finally, possible links between the observed decline in early mortality and the evolution of adult mortality are analysed and discussed.


Objective to compare the inflammatory response between platelet rich plasma 20% and autologous serum 20% on cornea after sodium hydroxide exposure. Methods a true experimental study with two groups post-test design. A total of 18 rabbits were used in this study and allocated into two groups. After collecting intravenous blood samples from both group, platelet rich plasma 20% and autologous serum 20%, respectively, were obtained by centrifugation and dilution. Alkali burns were inflicted on the central cornea of each rabbit's right eye by applying a round filter paper, 7.0 mm in diameter, soaked in 1N NaOH for 60 s. Clinical outcome of the inflammation were observed everyday for seven days. On the seventh day, corneal tissue was collected for histopathological examination to evaluate amount of PMN neutrophils that infiltrate the central cornea. All data were statistically analyzed for difference between the study groups. Resuls statistical analysis shows statistically difference in clinical inflammatory feature of conjunctival hyperemia at day 3 until day 7, in which the group that received PRP 20% got lower conjunctival hyperemia grading compared to the group that received AS 20%. Other clinical features, corneal opacity and epithelial defect, shows no statistically difference between two groups. Histopathological examination shows lower amount of PMN neutrophil infiltration to the central cornea on PRP group, compared to AS group. Conclusio Platelet-rich plasma 20% eyedrop can be used as one of adjuvant therapies and has better control of inflammatory response towards alkaline injury of the cornea during acute phase.


Artificial intelligence has not yet revolutionized the design of materials and molecules. In this perspective, we identify four barriers preventing the integration of atomistic deep learning, molecular science, and high-performance computing. We outline focused research efforts to address the opportunities presented by these challenges.


The replacement of health authorities by primary care trusts in 2002 marked the beginning of a new chapter in the evolution of primary care in Britain's national health service. The explanations for these reforms include trying to improve the quality and accessibility of health services in the United Kingdom.1 How these objectives will be achieved has been intensely debated and, aside from the issue of resources, the question of how to foster the evolution of primary care in Britain remains unresolved.

Despite differences in how the United Kingdom and the United States finance health care and in the equity in the distribution of resources, the challenges in delivery of primary care are similar in the two countries. This first article in the series focuses on the current organisation of primary care in the United States. Future articles will describe the US experience with performance measurement in primary care, referrals to specialists, and innovations in delivering ambulatory care services.

#### Summary points

Although America and Britain differ in how they finance health care, many aspects of delivery of primary care are similar in the two countries

Primary care is undergoing dramatic changes in America, as in Britain

After increasing the use of gatekeepers in primary care during the 1990s, the US healthcare system is abandoning this model

Occasional activities of many primary care physicians, such as care of inpatients and management of chronic medical conditions, are being concentrated in the hands of a smaller number of more specialised providers

Strategies need to be evaluated to determine whether they in fact improve the quality and efficiency of the healthcare system.

The United States has more specialists per capita than the United Kingdom, but the proportion of primary care physicians is similar (table 1). The US workforce of primary care physicians includes the specialties of …


Part of speech (POS) taggers and dependency parsers tend to work well on homogeneous datasets but their performance suffers on datasets containing data from different genres. In our current work, we investigate how to create POS tagging and dependency parsing experts for heterogeneous data by employing topic modeling. We create topic models (using Latent Dirichlet Allocation) to determine genres from a heterogeneous dataset and then train an expert for each of the genres. Our results show that the topic modeling experts reach substantial improvements when compared to the general versions. For dependency parsing, the improvement reaches 2 percent points over the full training baseline when we use two topics.


Rationale: Reduction of infarct size by remote ischemic perconditioning (perRIC) is evident only after several hours reperfusion. Objective: To develop a potential real-time estimate of cardioprotection by perRIC, we have analyzed the time course of ST-segment elevation. Methods and Results: Anesthetized open-chest pigs were subjected to 60-minute coronary occlusion and 180-minute reperfusion (placebo; n=19). PerRIC (n=18; 4×5 min/5 min hindlimb occlusion/reperfusion) was induced 20 minutes after coronary occlusion. Regional myocardial blood flow was measured with microspheres, areas of no-reflow with thioflavin-S, area at risk with blue dye, and infarct size with triphenyl tetrazolium chloride staining. Phosphorylation of protein kinase B &agr;/&bgr;/&ggr;, extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2, and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 was determined by Western blot. ST-segment elevation was analyzed in a V2-like ECG-lead at baseline, 5- and 55-minute coronary occlusion, and 10-, 30-, 60-, and 120-minute reperfusion. Transmural blood flow at 5-minute coronary occlusion was not different between perRIC (0.029±0.015 mL/min per gram; mean±SD) and placebo (0.024±0.018 mL/min per gram) as was area at risk (perRIC: 24±6% of the left ventricle; placebo: 21±4%). Areas of no-reflow tended to be smaller with perRIC (9±12% of area at risk versus 15±14% with placebo; P=0.13). Infarct size with perRIC was 23±12% of area at risk versus 40±11% with placebo (P<0.001). PerRIC increased phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 at 120-minute reperfusion by 196±142% versus 109±120% with placebo (P=0.047). The time courses of ST-segment elevation in perRIC and placebo protocols, respectively, were different (P=0.017). With similar ST-segment elevation at 5-minute coronary occlusion (perRIC 282±34 µV; placebo 259±28 µV), partial recovery of ST-segment elevation between 5- and 55-minute coronary occlusion was more pronounced with perRIC than placebo (by 111±84 versus 15±94 µV; P=0.028). Conclusion: Infarct size reduction by perRIC is reflected in the ST-segment elevation during coronary occlusion in pigs, supporting the notion of protection from ischemic injury.


The reaction mechanism of copper(II)-mediated naphthol coupling in the presence of TMEDA (N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine) is studied using infrared multiphoton dissociation (IRMPD) spectroscopy and DFT calculations. It is shown that the coupling reaction proceeds in ad hoc formed binuclear clusters [(1-H)(2)Cu(2)Cl(TMEDA)(2)](+), where (1-H) is a deprotonated naphthol molecule (methyl ester of 3-hydroxy-2-naphthoic acid). The IRMPD spectra of the isolated cluster in the gas phase reveal that it contains two uncoupled naphtholate subunits and only the irradiation promotes the coupling reaction, which is thus observed as a genuine gas-phase reaction. The driving force for the C-C coupling is a keto-enol tautomerization of the initial coupling product, and the formation of the corresponding binol in the cluster is exothermic by 0.61 eV. In contrast, analogous C-O and O-O couplings are endothermic reactions.


Abstract Measurements of velocity and suspended sediment concentration were carried out in a saltmarsh tidal creek network in the Cumberland Basin, Bay of Fundy, Canada. The study area was located on the NW shore of the basin in part of an undyked marsh that is about 200 m wide with a simple reticulate creek network. The area is macrotidal with spring tides greater than 12 m and suspended sediment concentrations in the basin characteristically range from 150–300 mg l−1. The purpose of the study was to determine vertical and along channel variations in these two parameters over individual tidal cycles and to use these data to assess the role of the tidal creeks in the import and export of water and sediment from the marsh surface. Measurements using a vertical array of co-located electromagnetic current meters and OBS probes for measuring suspended sediment concentration were carried out over four spring tides at a cross section in the lower part of Middle Creek. Six sets of measurements were carried out at four locations along the length of the creek, a distance of about 200 m over six tides ranging from spring to neap. Maximum mean velocities measured over sampling times of eight minutes did not exceed 0.1 m sec−1 in Middle Creek and 0.15 m sec−1 in Main Creek. Transient high velocities associated with the overbank flows were weakly developed as a result of the absence of significant levees or embankments on the marsh surface. Suspended sediment concentrations in the creek generally decreased steadily over the period of inundation. Flow across the marsh margin occurred simultaneously with the achievement of bankful conditions and the creeks themselves appear to play a relatively minor role in the movement of water and sediment onto and out of the marsh. Despite the fact that the marsh surface is still low in the tidal frame and active sedimentation is still occurring, the low flow velocities and observations in the field suggest that the tidal creek network is unable to flush itself and that it is contracting.


As one travels northward and encounters lower sun angles and more nitrogen-poor soils, there is an increased dominance of plant communities by evergreens with conical canopies and a more favorable carbon balance in photosynthesis per unit nitrogen in leaves compared with deciduous species from the same environments. Despite the observed correlations between these biogeographic patterns and plant traits, there is no quantitative model that accounts for them. We derive such a model from coupled ordinary differential equations of carbon balance and nitrogen uptake, comparing qualitative equilibrium predictions of correlations among plant traits with experimental findings. The model suggests that many of the experimentally observed correlations among plant traits (e.g., photosynthesis and nitrogen content) are best viewed as constraints on plant growth rather than cause and effect. We use the model to account for some large-scale biogeographic trends in plants morphology and physiology. We also provide suggestions for experiments to test the model predictions.


Cardiovascular manifestations of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning in previous reports included pulmonary edema, heart failure, arrhythmia, and myocardial infarction. Herein, we report a 57 year old woman case of stressinduced cardiomyopathy (sCMP) related to CO poisoning with serial changes in EKGs and TTEs but delayed evolution of EKG recovery. And clinician should keep in mind that delyed recovery of EKGs could exist and serial EKG after full recovery of TTE finding.


This study explores the leadership actions-oriented behavior of school principals in Finland. Actions-orientated behavior enables the leader to appropriately articulate relations and task orientation to meet the immediate contextual demands and to accommodate followership toward change and development. The leadership actions-orientated behavior of Finnish school principals were studied in three schools. In-depth interviews with school actors (principals, vice principals, teachers, special educators, and nonteaching staff) were conducted to triangulate the analyzed data. It was found that leadership actions-oriented behavior enabled school leaders to articulate appropriate behavioral patterns to generate motivation and commitment. The results suggest that actions orientations toward high-on relations enabled leaders to achieve leadership success, while actions orientations toward high-on task enabled leadership effectiveness. Actions-oriented behavior toward high-on task enables leadership flexibility with greater leadership elasticity. The results suggest that school actors anticipated a relational approach, whose actions orientations were high-on task. The results also suggest that relations-oriented behavior is rationally applied by school leaders who have remained in the organization for a longer time to strengthen the systematic approach. It was found that leaders' actions orientation with high-on task were more effective, while leadership actions orientation with high-on relations generated social harmony. The results suggest that leadership actions-oriented behavioral flexibility and mobility can be maintained by articulating high relations to low relations and high task to low task, not necessarily from task to relations or relations to task alone. In doing so, a leader's personality is prevented from distortions and behavior dysfunction.


Machine learning algorithms operating on mobile networks can be characterized into three different categories. First is the classical situation in which the end-user devices send their data to a central server where this data is used to train a model. Second is the distributed setting in which each device trains its own model and send its model parameters to a central server where these model parameters are aggregated to create one final model. Third is the federated learning setting in which, at any given time t, a certain number of active end users train with their own local data along with feedback provided by the central server and then send their newly estimated model parameters to the central server. The server, then, aggregates these new parameters, updates its own model, and feeds the updated parameters back to all the end users, continuing this process until it converges.The main objective of this work is to provide an information-theoretic framework for all of the aforementioned learning paradigms. Moreover, using the provided framework, we develop upper and lower bounds on the generalization error together with bounds on the privacy leakage in the classical, distributed and federated learning settings.


Regional climate models (RCMs) are expected to provide better representations of the climate dynamics because of their higher spatial resolutions. Here, we generated an ensemble of decadal (2006–36) RCM predictions for the area of Israel, which spans a considerable climatic gradient and comprises complex terrain. We used the WRF Model forced by the MIROC5 global climate model (GCM). The ensemble was generated by choosing different combinations of radiation, microphysics, surface layer, and planetary boundary layer parameterizations. The simulation results were compared with meteorological station data for the first simulated decade. For the minimum surface temperature, all the RCM configurations performed better than the driving GCM, while for the maximum surface temperature, only three out of eight configurations improved the predictions. The RCM configurations had higher errors in predicting the precipitation, but four configurations had comparable errors to the GCM. For the next two decades, the ensemble average predicts an increase of 0.51° and 0.40°C decade−1 for the average daily minimum and maximum surface temperatures, respectively. No significant change is predicted in the precipitation. We found that all the parameterizations affect the predictions of the surface temperatures and precipitation [e.g., the CAM radiation scheme simulates colder temperatures than the RRTM for GCMs (RRTMG)] but the PBL and surface layer scheme has the largest effect on the errors. Spectral nudging was found to have a considerable effect on the deviations of the precipitation predicted by the WRF configurations from the predictions of the GCM and a much smaller effect on the surface temperature predictions.


This article analyzes behavior-based price discrimination in a two-period competition framework where firms endogenously collect consumer data and strategically target past customers. When firms strategically target customers: (i) they price-discriminate high valuation customers; (ii) they charge a homogeneous price to low valuation customers, even when they have precise information on them. Strategic targeting questions the main classical results of the literature: in a symmetric equilibrium firms do not compete for customer information acquisition and there is no consumer poaching. Sufficiently asymmetric data collection costs can restore previous results of the literature, and we discuss their implications for firms' data strategies and competition in digital markets.


We propose a randomized a posteriori error estimator for reduced order approximations of parametrized (partial) differential equations. The error estimator has several important properties: the effectivity is close to unity with prescribed lower and upper bounds at specified high probability; the estimator does not require the calculation of stability (coercivity, or inf-sup) constants; the online cost to evaluate the a posteriori error estimator is commensurate with the cost to find the reduced order approximation; the probabilistic bounds extend to many queries with only modest increase in cost. To build this estimator, we first estimate the norm of the error with a Monte-Carlo estimator using Gaussian random vectors whose covariance is chosen according to the desired error measure, e.g. user-defined norms or quantity of interest. Then, we introduce a dual problem with random right-hand side the solution of which allows us to rewrite the error estimator in terms of the residual of the original equation. In order to have a fast-to-evaluate estimator, model order reduction methods can be used to approximate the random dual solutions. Here, we propose a greedy algorithm that is guided by a scalar quantity of interest depending on the error estimator. Numerical experiments on a multi-parametric Helmholtz problem demonstrate that this strategy yields rather low-dimensional reduced dual spaces.


These words are completely true, however divergent series syncs exciton. The direction field concentrates plane-polarized world. Loss keeps urban world, tertium non datur. The decline, as has been observed at constant exposure to ultraviolet radiation, is a cognitive protein, the same situation justified Zh.Polti in the book "Thirty-six Current trends in dental hygiene education and practice.: An article from: Journal of Dental Hygiene [HTML] [Digital] by Elizabeth L. Brutvan dramatic situations." Supermolecule ambiguous.


B285 SNS-595 is currently under clinical investigation in acute leukemia and ovarian cancer. Clinical responses have been observed in these indications, as well as in non-small cell (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancers. SNS-595 is a replication-dependent DNA damaging agent that causes irreversible G2 arrest, and rapid apoptosis. A secondary mechanism for SNS-595 is a unique inhibition of topoisomerase II that causes highly selective DNA damage with low dependence on topoisomerase II for its potent anti-tumor activity. The identification of new anti-cancer agents to be used in combination with established cancer therapies is a key step in the development of new treatment modalities. Studies in culture have shown that SNS-595 combines synergistically with established chemotherapeutic agents (Wright et al., Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res 47: 2132, 2006). Extending these findings to in vivo studies, we have shown that SNS-595 acts synergistically with cytarabine, the standard of care in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), to ablate bone marrow (Arbitrario et al., Blood {ASH Annual Meeting Abstract} 108: 2321, 2006). These studies have led to investigation of SNS-595 in combination with cytarabine clinically in AML patients. In the current study, we examine the potential of SNS-595 to combine effectively with carboplatin, cisplatin, and gemcitabine in vivo in several solid tumor xenograft models. SNS-595, cisplatin, carboplatin and gemcitabine were administered alone or in combination to athymic nude mice bearing subcutaneous H460 NSCLC tumors or A2780 ovarian carcinoma tumors. Treatments were initiated when mean tumor volume was greater than or equal to 100 mm 3 . The animals were monitored for tumor growth and assessed for tolerability of the different treatment regimens. In the H460 NSCLC model, administration of SNS-595 (10 mg/kg IV qw x5) in combination with carboplatin at 75% of its maximum tolerated dose (MTD, 75 mg/kg IP qw x3) induced significant tumor growth inhibition (TGI) of 77% compared to 32% for carboplatin alone. Similarly, in the A2780 model of ovarian carcinoma, SNS-595 (10 mg/kg IV qw x3) combined with cisplatin at its MTD (5 mg/kg IP qw x3) resulted in a TGI of 64% compared to 49% for single agent cisplatin. The combination of SNS-595 (10 mg/kg IV qw x3) with gemcitabine at its MTD (75 mg/kg IP biw x2) results in an 82% TGI and 51 day tumor growth delay compared to 37% TGI and a 5 day tumor growth delay for single agent gemcitabine. Body weight losses of 8%, 14% and 8% were observed for the SNS-595/carboplatin, cisplatin and gemcitabine combinations, respectively, indicating that the dosing regimens were well tolerated. The results from these studies clearly demonstrate that SNS-595 combines effectively with platinum compounds or anti-metabolites such as gemcitabine, and support clinical exploration of SNS-595 in combination with these established chemotherapeutic agents.


Distributed computing systems are composed of various types of services. Providing a reliable and efficient distributed computing environment largely depends on the effective management of these services. One important aspect of managing services within a distributed computing environment is maintaining information about the services, especially at run-time. To facilitate this, much work has been done on mechanisms called Traders that provide a framework for managing and exchanging services in an open distributed computing environment. Open Distributed Processing (ODP), a proposed ISO standard, includes such a trader mechanism. This paper addresses problems associated with providing a single transparent trading service in the presence of multiple physical traders in a large distributed computing environment. The group of traders form a federation or interworking of traders which share their service offer spaces. We present the design for the interworking of traders, as well as a prototype implementation using OSF DCE, and report our experience with it to date.


It is important to perfect the enucleation technique, especially in cases of intraocular malignancy, to obtain an adequate amount of tissue for histologic analysis and to cause a minimum amount of trauma to the remaining orbital structures. This study describes the use of a new device for ocular globe enucleation. The new instrument has been employed in 16 consecutive enucleation procedures with no complications. The new device has promoted good division of the optic nerve and allowed severing of the optic nerve stump at a length of more than 10 mm.


We present DSim, a new sentence aligned Danish monolingual parallel corpus extracted from 3701 pairs of news telegrams and corresponding professionally simplified short news articles. The corpus is intended for building automatic text simplification for adult readers. We compare DSim to different examples of monolingual parallel corpora, and we argue that this corpus is a promising basis for future development of automatic data-driven text simplification systems in Danish. The corpus contains both the collection of paired articles and a sentence aligned bitext, and we show that sentence alignment using simple tf*idf weighted cosine similarity scoring is on line with state―of―the―art when evaluated against a hand-aligned sample. The alignment results are compared to state of the art for English sentence alignment. We finally compare the source and simplified sides of the corpus in terms of lexical and syntactic characteristics and readability, and find that the one―to―many sentence aligned corpus is representative of the sentence simplifications observed in the unaligned collection of article pairs.


Recent work in the field of life writing has insightfully studied texts that blur the line between fiction and nonfiction in self-reflexively constructing (narratives of) the self. One of the more productive lenses for studying life writing has been that of gender, but it has primarily focused on texts by women. Men, for centuries perceived as the "unmarked" gender, have, paradoxically, eluded academic analysis as embodied gendered beings and thus seem to call for more critical attention. The present paper seeks to do so by looking into a hybrid life narrative, T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and analyzing the way in which it, in a dialogue with Lawrence's letters, inscribes masculinity. The analysis, proceeding from the work of Gagnier (1990) and Gilmore (1994) and extending it to the study of men, focuses on what statements about the self, explicitly expressed or confined between the lines, do within the narrative and in the self-creation of the author. The main attention is given to the representations of the body and their intersection with the Victorian codes of masculinity. It is argued that the very denial of the body makes the body present throughout the text, as a narrative trope and a moral presence. Such an analysis, it is hoped, will help to reassess the multilayered presence of corporeality in men's life narratives and its relationship with discourses of masculinity.


The main contribution of this paper is the definition of the preference description language PDL. This language allows us to combine qualitative and quantitative, penalty based preferences in a flexible way. This makes it possible to express complex preferences which are needed in many realistic optimization settings. We show that several preference handling methods described in the literature are special cases of our approach. We also demonstrate that PDL expressions can be compiled to logic programs which can be used as tester programs in a generate-and-improve method for finding optimal answer sets.


Illuminant estimation algorithms are usually evaluated by measuring the angular error between the RGB vectors of the estimated illuminant and the ground-truth illuminant (recovery angular error). However, the recovery angular error reports a wide range of errors for a given illuminant estimation algorithm and a given scene viewed under multiple lights (despite the fact that when the estimated lights are divided out the reproductions are similar). Following this observation, the reproduction angular error was proposed which instead measures the angle between the RGBs of a white surface being color corrected by dividing out the estimated illuminant RGB and R=1, G=1 and B=1 (i.e. white if the illuminant is correctly discounted). In this work we look at the correlation between the two metrics for each individual algorithm applied on a set of images. We observe that where the images are from the same scene under different illuminations the recovery and reproduction errors are often uncorrelated. Whereas when the same algorithm is applied on the images of diverse scenes the two errors are highly correlated.


The discoveries of the Human Genome Project (HGP), established in 1990 at the National Institutes of Health and the United States Department of Energy, are bringing important new technologies for genetic diagnosis and treatment to nearly all areas of health care delivery. Nurses, who play an integral role in supporting health consumers as they respond to health and illness, require up-to-date genetic knowledge for conducting clinical practice, engaging in nursing research, and educating a new generation of nurses.


Aplysia californica has been extremely popular with neurophysiologists interested in understanding the neural basis of behavior. The major drawback to neuroethological work on this species has been the lack of information on its behavior. We present the first ethogram of this species and a model of the physiological organization of drives (motivational systems) in Aplysia. The ethogram of A. californica contains 45 action patterns, most of which involve relatively subtle movements or postures of the head. Some of these action patterns have been studied physiologically and we summarize that information. The action patterns are superimposable and an individual may perform several action paterns simultaneously. A. californica has five distinct "drives" or motivational systems: feeding, escape, reproduction as a male, reproduction as a female and spawning. The sequence of events involved in escape behavior in response to attack by Navanax (a natural predator) or other mechanical stimuli to the rear is described. Each "drive" activates a particular sequence of action patterns, and certain "drives" are superimposable. Aplysia can copulate as a female while copulating as a male, feeding, or laying eggs. On the other hand, escape is incompatible with female sexual behavior. The available physiological evidence suggests that neuropeptides may play an important role in the organization of drives and their interactions. We present a model which combines the available physiological and behavioral data with the classical ethological drive hypothesis to produce a testable model of the physiological organization of motivation in Aplysia.


nu-Objectives: Breast cancer shows the highest incidence and cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. Radiotherapy is used for treating different stages of breast cancer. Several polyphenols have increased the effectiveness of radiotherapy. Wogonin is a flavone compound abundant in the root of Chinese skullcap. This compound induced apoptosis and inhibited proliferation distinctively in cancer cells. We studied effect of wogonin on the response of a typical breast cancer cell line to ionizing radiation. Methods: MCF-7 cell viability was determined by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay. Cell counting and double staining apoptosis assays were also used to find suitable physiologically relevant concentrations of wogonin. Cells treated with wogonin were exposed to different doses of X-ray and clonogenic survival assay was utilized to determine the effect of wogonin on survival from radiation. Results: Wogonin treatment decreased the viability of MCF-7 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner. It decreased number of cells and increased percent of apoptotic cells dose dependently. Cells pretreated with 5 and 10 µM concentrations of wogonin 3 days before radiation showed increased radioresistance compared with cells that were not treated with wogonin. Conclusion: Treatment of MCF-7 breast cancer cells with wogonin made them more resistant to ionizing radiation.


A fully off-shell generalisation of the variable-phase method is proposed. Equations are presented for interpolating T- and K-matrix functions and an appropriate off-energy-shell unitarity relation is derived. The spatial behaviour of the on- and off-shell T-matrix functions is studied for a soft-core potential.


Linguistic borrowing is the phenomenon of transferring linguistic constructions (lexical, phonological, morphological, and syntactic) from a "donor" language to a "recipient" language as a result of contacts between communities speaking different languages. Borrowed words are found in all languages, and--in contrast to cognate relationships--borrowing relationships may exist across unrelated languages (for example, about 40% of Swahili's vocabulary is borrowed from the unrelated language Arabic). In this work, we develop a model of morpho-phonological transformations across languages. Its features are based on universal constraints from Optimality Theory (OT), and we show that compared to several standard--but linguistically more naive--baselines, our OT-inspired model obtains good performance at predicting donor forms from borrowed forms with only a few dozen training examples, making this a cost-effective strategy for sharing lexical information across languages. We demonstrate applications of the lexical borrowing model in machine translation, using resource-rich donor language to obtain translations of out-of-vocabulary loanwords in a lower resource language. Our framework obtains substantial improvements (up to 1.6 BLEU) over standard baselines.


Background: There has been a global rise in surgical amputations because of vascular complications of diabetes mellitus, among other factors. About 22% of patients usually decline or delay consent for the operation leading to poor outcomes. Objective: This study aimed to determine patients' perceptions and attitudes toward surgical amputation and amputee prosthesis. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted over 12 months during which a semi-structured questionnaire was administered to adult patients attending the outpatient clinic at Benue State University Teaching Hospital. The questions assessed the patient's knowledge, attitude, and behavior toward amputation, amputees, and amputee prosthesis. Results: Out of 400 respondents, 320 (80%) agreed that surgical amputation is beneficial, 232 (58%) agreed that it is done to remove a dead limb, whereas sixty-five (16.2%) think that amputation is done on every leg that has a fracture. The majority of 360 (90%) were willing to encourage others to have an amputation to save a life. This was found to be significantly related to religion (P = 0.000), educational status (P = 0.000), and sex (P = 0.044). Reasons for refusal of amputation were fear of losing a limb (106, 26.5%) and deformity (93, 23.2%). Three hundred and three (78.2%) respondents were aware of artificial limbs, and 342 (85.5%) regard doctors as lifesavers. Conclusion: There is a high level of awareness and knowledge of indications for surgical amputation which is significantly influenced by religious beliefs, educational status and gender. Education on preventive measures may reduce amputation rates. The provision of a functional prosthesis will hope for productivity after limb loss.


Abstract Although colesevelam hydrochloride (HCl) is indicated to reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) in patients with hyperlipidemia and improve glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes, its effects on glucose and lipids in patients with prediabetes have not been previously studied. To evaluate the effects of colesevelam HCl in patients with prediabetes, a post-hoc analysis was conducted on data from a 24-week lipid-lowering study. Using baseline laboratory safety data for fasting plasma glucose (FPG), 88 patients were identified as having prediabetes according to American Diabetes Association criteria. Fasting plasma glucose was reduced by 4.0 mg/dL with colesevelam HCl 3.8 g/day and by 6.1 mg/dL with colesevelam HCl 4.5 g/day compared with placebo. Additionally, LDL-C was reduced by 13.2% and 12.0% with colesevelam HCl 3.8 and 4.5 g/day, respectively, versus placebo. Colesevelam HCl 3.8 g/day also significantly reduced total cholesterol and apolipoprotein (apo)B levels, whereas no significant difference in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, apoA-I, or triglyceride levels was observed versus placebo. In patients with hyperlipidemia and prediabetes, colesevelam HCl improved glycemic control and the lipid profile.


The belief is thoroughly entrenched that prisons fulfil the triple function of punishing offenders, making society safer by removing dangerous individuals, and deterring potential offenders from committing crime. The fact that hundreds of years of evidence suggests that prisons do none of these terribly well has not had any effect on our belief in the utility of this institution. In this article the author suggests that we hold on to these beliefs because they serve the interests of politicians, who can appease their electorate with the clear and simple solution prisons purport to provide; and the private sector, as prisons support their commercial interests in a number of ways. What is needed, the author argues, is deeper discussion and clearer thinking about the value and function of prison.


The cross-section data of the 85Rb(n, 2n)84Rb reaction have been measured with the neutron energies of 12 MeV to 19.8 MeV using the activation technique and the relative method. The 85Rb samples were irradiated on the surface of a two-ring orientation assembly with neutrons produced from the 3H(d, n)4He reaction at the 5SDH-2 1.7-MV Tandem accelerator in China. Theoretical model calculations were performed with the TALYS-1.9 code. The present data were compared with previously obtained experimental data and the available evaluated data.


The surveillance of schistosomiasis in Sanzhou Village, a national schistosomiasis surveillance site, in Gaoqiao Town of Dantu District, Zhenjiang City from 2005 to 2009 showed that the schistosomiasis morbidity remained in a low level in the surveillance site; however, the Oncomelania snails and infected snail areas remained high. It is suggested that, in addition to snail control, comprehensive control measures should be strengthened, and the causes of infected snails in marshland should be investigated, so as to clarify the roles of various hosts in transmission of schistosomiasis.


Membranes isolated from yeasts grown in the presence of ethanol do not display the thermally induced transition in diphenylhexatriene anisotropy that is seen in control cells when they are exposed to ethanol in vitro. The total sterol content of the cells that were exposed to ethanol during growth is reduced, with no steryl esters being detected. A greater proportion of the total sterol pool is ergosterol in cells grown in the presence of alcohol. The activity of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase is reduced by ethanol in vitro. Ethanol-exposed cells take up more exogenous sterol under aerobic conditions than do control cells. The presence of ethanol during growth reduces the activity of the plasma membrane enzyme, chitin synthase, as well as increasing the thermosensitivity of this enzyme.


Specimens of silicon carbide (6H-SiC) were irradiated with 5 MeV Kr ions (84Kr19+) for three fluences of 5×1013, 2 ×1014 and 1× 1015 ions/cm2, and subsequently annealed at room temperature, 500°C, 700°C and 1000°C, respectively. The strain of the specimens was investigated with high resolution XRD and different defect evolution processes are revealed. An interpretation of the defect evolution and migration is given to explain the strain variation. The mechanical properties of the specimens were studied by using a nano-indentation technique in continuous stiffness measurement (GSM) mode with a diamond Berkovich indenter. For specimens irradiated with fluences of 5×1013 or 2×1014 ions/cm2, hardness values exceed that of un-implanted SiC. However, hardness sharply degrades for specimens irradiated with the highest fluence of 1×1015 ions/cm2. The specimens with fluences of 5×1013 and 2×1014 ions/cm2 and subsequently annealed at 700°C and 500°C, respectively, show the maximum hardness value.


The equivalent circuit in the impedance plane at port-1 of a 3-port circulator with ports 2 and 3 terminated in ideal resistive loads is a classic result. The purpose of the paper is to synthesise 1-port topology in the admittance plane in the case for which ports 2 and 3 are terminated in real resistive loads and in that for which the ports are loaded by broadband matching networks. This is done in terms of the eigenvalues of the problem region under the assumption that the in-phase eigennetwork may be idealised by a short-circuited boundary condition and an ideal 2-port gyrator circuit. The real part circuit and those at the split frequencies of the counter-rotating eigenvalues are also deduced as a preamble to realising the general circuit. The properties displayed by these circuits are compatible with existing experimental procedures for this class of device.


We compare the WMAP temperature power spectrum and SNIa data to models with a generalized Chaplygin gas as dark energy. The generalized Chaplygin gas is a component with an exotic equation of state, pX = −A/ραX (a polytropic gas with negative constant and exponent). Our main result is that, restricting to a flat universe and to adiabatic pressure perturbations for the generalized Chaplygin gas, the constraints at 95% CL to the present equation of state wX = pX/ρX and to the parameter α are −1 ⩽ wX < −0.8, 0 ⩽ α < 0.2, respectively. Moreover, we show that a Chaplygin gas (α = 1) is ruled out as a candidate for dark energy by our analysis at more than the 99.99% CL. A generalized Chaplygin gas appears much less likely as a unified dark matter candidate (ΩCDM = 0) than as a dark energy model, although its χ2 is only two sigma away from the expected value.


International trade in education services belongs to the category of international trade in services, which takes education services as its object. It has grown substantially over the past decades. Now it is a billion dollar industry including recruitment of international students, establishment of university campuses abroad, franchised provision and on line education. The education market in China is very large and still lack of development. It means opportunities to foreign suppliers of education services. WTO requires each member nation to make its own schedule of commitments in education services, and to explain its limitations on market access and national treatment as well as other limitations. Therefore, to understand China's education market, you must understand China's commitments in education services upon entry into WTO. This paper explains China's commitments in education services under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and provides rough pictures about the meaning of China's commitments to foreign suppliers of education services that are eager to either enter into China's education market or absorb more Chinese students.


Multi-label learning learns from examples each associated with multiple class labels simultaneously, and the goal is to induce a predictive model which can assign a set of relevant labels for the unseen instance. Label-specific features serve as an effective strategy towards inducing multilabel predictive model, where the relevancy of each class label is determined by employing tailored features encoding inherent and distinct characteristics of the class label its own. In this paper, a regularization based approach named REEL is proposed for label-specific features generation, which works by enriching label-specific feature representation for each class label via synergizing informative label-specific features from other class labels with sparse regularization. Specifically, full-order label correlations are considered by REEL while the number of classifiers induced for multi-label prediction is linear to the number of class labels. Extensive experiments on fifteen benchmark multi-label data sets clearly show the favorable performance of REEL against other state-of-the-art multi-label learning approaches with label-specific features.


Purpose: To investigate the benefits of patient‐phantom matching for determining skin and organ dose in interventional fluoroscopy.Method and Materials: In this study, approximately 30 CT datasets representing patients of different sizes and genders were contoured and converted into patient‐specific computational models. Each model was matched, based on height and weight, to a computational phantom selected from the UF hybrid patient‐dependent series. In order to investigate organ dose, Monte Carlo methods were used to simulate several fluoroscopic projections. Organ dose conversion coefficients were calculated for each patient‐specific and patient‐dependent phantom, and also for a reference stylized and reference hybrid phantom. The coefficients were subsequently analyzed for any correlation between patient‐specificity and the accuracy of the dose estimate. In order to investigate skin dose, a dose mapping program was developed and used to calculate local skin dose for a representative interventional procedure. Dose maps were produced for each phantom type and compared based on intensity and position. Results: In terms of organ dose, patient‐phantom matching was shown most beneficial for estimating the dose to large patients. In these cases, the improvement over using a reference stylized phantom ranged from 65–115%, and for a reference hybrid phantom from 20–40%. For smaller individuals, patient‐phantom matching was clearly superior to using a reference stylized phantom, but not significantly better than using a reference hybrid phantom for certain fields and projections. For skin dose, patient‐phantom matching was shown to increase the accuracy of both the location and value of the dose estimate. Conclusions: These results indicate that patient‐phantom matching can improve the accuracy of dose estimation, specifically for large patients. With increasing obesity rates, these patients will continue to make up a large portion of individuals undergoing interventional procedures. Thus, having phantoms that better represent the over‐weight population represents a considerable improvement over previous methods.


Bacillus sphearicus C3-41, belonging to serotype H5a5b, is ahighly toxic strain isolated from a mosquito-breeding site in China. It has been shown that it had a higher toxicity against Culex spp. than the reference strain 2362 at the laboratory and field conditions. Using synthetic oligonucleotides designed on the basis of the binary toxin gene sequence of 2362, a 1.1 kb DNA fragment was produced and the genetic library was prepared from a HindIII digest of total DNA from C3-41. One colony containing the 3.5 kb HindIII fragment was selected for further studies. Sequence analysis revealed that this 3.5 kb Hind DNA fragment was composed of 3479 nucleic acids and the sequence of the binary toxin gene of C3-41 is completely identical to that of strain 2362. The toxin genes have been transferred into a nontoxic crystal-minus strain of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis. The recombinant strains could express the binary toxin of B. sphaericus as crystaline structures during their sporulation. The expression products of the recombinants have a highly toxicity to susceptible Culex pipiens subsp. quinquefasciatus and no toxicity to resistant larvae(Culex pipiens subsp. pipiens) from France.


This paper explained that an electric field is an accelerating factor of degradation hot carriers' creation. The impact ionization phenomena in the case of NMOSFET is analyzed and, above all, one of its corollaries, the impact ionization of hot carriers. The effects study of hot carriers on the NMOS is a good basis for understanding this phenomenon. Based on RF parameter shifts the reliability of different tests was compared. The constraints impact applied in terms of RF state degradations of the power amplifier is highlighted. Physical simulation has shown that the impact ionization phenomenon plays a role in the generation mechanism of interface states by hot carriers (SiO2 / N-LDD region), which would explain why at 10° C, the degradation amounts on several electrical parameters are also significant. Finally, an analysis of the reliability of radio frequency behavior was discussed.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the issue of low yields in the packinghouses of green ornamentals and cut flowers due to the high rate of crops waste. Waste may be caused by pests, diseases and extreme weather or environmental conditions that are not under the farmer's control. Other causes may relate to work processes as follows: irrigation, spraying, harvesting, handling, transportation, sorting, bundling and packaging.

Design/methodology/approach
The farm under study is a private owned business managed by the owner's family members with growing area of 22 ha and eight daily workers. The farm produces about 2.5m units (flower stems) per year. The farm represents a typical flower farm in Israel. A costing model and decision rules were developed to identify the critical waste rate that will consider being economic to ship to the market. The model takes into account the production process, the production yield, the operational costs and sales price and calculates the breakeven point. A simulation model was developed to verify the relationships between waste rate to the total process time per stem and flow time.

Findings
Results show that the critical waste rate for Ruscus, Antirrhinum, Aralia and Aspidistra crops is 16, 74, 22 and 39 percent, respectively. The total process time per harvested stem decreases as the waste rate increases.

Originality/value
A working model was developed to determine the waste threshold rate and support the farmer in day-to-day economic decisions regarding shipment to the market and effective management of his workers.


Cooperation on nuclear issues is receiving increased attention in Asia. In Northeast Asia, where the nuclear industry is well-developed, cooperation in the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle could help deal with issues such as disposition of spent fuel and long term storage options. In Southeast Asia, where countries are just beginning to introduce nuclear energy, cooperation would be useful in developing standards for the nuclear industry. Throughout Asia, nuclear research and power activities can raise concerns about safety, environmental pollution and proliferation. The sharing of relevant information, i.e. cooperative monitoring, will be essential to addressing these issues. In fact, a number of regional interactions on nuclear issues are already occurring. These range from training exchanges sponsored by the more advanced states to participation in environmental monitoring of the East Sea (Sea of Japan). Several states are considering sharing information from their nuclear facilities; some exchanges of radiation data are already in place. The KEDO reactor project will involve close working relations between the nuclear experts of South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and the US. Areas for further regional cooperation are discussed.


Biomaterials with a wide range of tunable properties are desirable for application-specific purposes. We have previously developed a class of elastomeric poly(ester amides) based on the amine alcohol 1,3-diamino-2-hydroxypropane termed poly(1,3-diamino-2-hydroxypropane-co-polyol sebacate) or APS. In this work, we have synthesized and characterized formulations of APS polymers and studied the degradation of these polymers in vitro and in vivo. It was found that the chemical, physical, and mechanical properties of APS polymers could be tuned by adjusting monomer feed ratios and polymerization conditions. The degradation kinetics could also be greatly influenced by altering the formulation of APS polymers. In vivo degradation half-lives ranged from 6 to approximately 100 weeks. Furthermore, the dominant degradation mechanism (i.e. hydrolytic or enzymatic) could be controlled by adjusting the specific formulation of the APS polymer. On the basis of the observed in vitro and in vivo biodegradation phenomena, we also propose that the primary modes of degradation are composition dependent.


Luka Lukić, a Croatian ethnographer, melograph and folklorist, created reliable records of cultural heritage on the territory of Slavonia, between the late 19 th and mid 20 th century. During his 56-year-long career, he collected descriptions of life and customs of the inhabitants of Klakar and a wider Brod-Posavina area. His manuscripts contain over 10,000 pages. Although presented as a monograph, the manuscripts have not been sufficiently analysed in the context of psychology, sociology, politics, history, philology and other sciences. They contain folk chants, notes on social relationships, customs, beliefs, folk medicine, architecture, economy, the art of traditional clothing, folk songs, prayers, stories, short stories, incantations, fables, jokes and complex soldiers' poems which form the basis of the analysed corpus. As Lukić meticulously documented his materials and conveyed the atmosphere of his time, the soldiers' poems are an ideal indicator of a soldier's psychological microworld before and after WWI. It seems like the inhabitants of the Brod-Posavina region themselves speak through the poems honestly, as witnesses, about the events, feelings, and situations in the armed forces, and discipline and drills they had experienced before battles and during the war. They speak about relationships between the soldiers and their superiors, and soldiers' feelings and dissatisfaction caused by disrespect for human dignity. They mention fears, restlessness and uncertainty due to battles they were about to enter, and dissatisfaction with the relationships between them and their superiors. Soldiers' poems, therefore, speak for the first time about the main protagonists of WWI, from first-hand experience.


Background Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a common complication of cardiopulmonary disease. In dogs, PH commonly occurs secondary to myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD). Red blood cell and platelet indices including mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), red cell distribution width (RDW), mean platelet volume (MPV) and platelet distribution width (PDW), have previously been found to be indicators for predicting and prognosing PH in humans. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether these indices are associated with MMVD and/or PH in dogs. Methods Two hundred and forty-six dogs were retrospectively recruited for the study and classified into 4 groups: normal (n = 49), MMVD (n =102), PH (n =17), MMVD+PH (n =78). A sub-analysis was performed in dogs with MMVD without evidence of PH according to stage B1 (n =20), stage B2 (n =15), stage C (n =67). The data are expressed as median (interquartile range). Results and discussion No significant differences (p < 0.05) were found in MCV, RDW and MPV among all groups (normal, MMVD, PH and MMVD+PH). However, decreases in MCH and MCHC were found in MMVD [22.40 (20.90-23.50) pg and 35.25 (33.08-36.90) g/dL], MMVD+PH [22.25 (20.85-23.98) pg and 35.65 (33.30-37.33) g/dL] and PH groups [21.20 (20.60-22.20) pg and 33.80 (32.75-35.70) g/dL] compared to the normal dogs [24.29 (23.55-24.90) pg and 38.20 (37.50-39.05) g/dL] (p < 0.001). Decreases in PDW were found in dogs in the MMVD+PH [15.10 (14.98-15.30) %] groups compared to dogs in the normal group [15.30 (15.10-15.50) %] (p = 0.004). Sub-analysis of MMVD dogs without PH showed a decrease in MCH in dogs with stage B2 MMVD [21.00 (20.50-22.90) pg] and stage C MMVD [22.40 (20.90-23.20) pg] compared to normal dogs [24.29 (23.55-24.90) pg] (p < 0.001). MCHC of dogs with stage B1 [36.55 (33.53-37.78) g/dL] (p = 0.004), B2 [32.90 (32.00-35.00) g/dL] (p < 0.001) and C MMVD [35.30 (33.30-36.80) g/dL] (p < 0.001) were lower than those of normal dogs [38.20 (37.50-39.05) g/dL]. PDW in the stage C MMVD group [15.10 (15.00-15.30) %] was reduced compared to the normal group [15.30 (15.10-15.50) %] (p  = 0.042) and the stage B1 MMVD group [15.35 (15.23-15.68) %] (p = 0.002). MCH, MCHC and PDW were negatively correlated with the left atrial and left ventricular size. Conclusion Decreases in MCH and MCHC are related to MMVD, precapillary PH and postcapillary PH while PDW are associated with MMVD severity but not with the presence of PH.


Nils Castro offers in this essay a keen analysis of the hydrocarbon problem of our continents, ending with approaches to solutions. The search for alteraatives which diminish the dependency of our countries upon traditional sources of energy is the starting point relating to those who do not possess any oil wealth under their lands. The aspect of the ducts interconnection gives those who have it a lot of work. The topic concerning risks of atmospheric pollution for the planet should interest everybody, according to this Panamanian researcher.


Airborne dust samples from damp (n = 9) and control (n = 9) residences were analyzed for microorganisms (molds and bacteria), bacterial markers (3-hydroxy fatty acids and muramic acid), and adsorbed volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The number of mold species was greater in the damp residences than in the controls (23 vs.18) and nine mold species were found only in damp residences. The levels of 3-hydroxy fatty acids and muramic acid correlated better in damp residences than in controls, indicating that damp conditions affect the bacterial flora of airborne dust. Identifications made by culture and microscopy of the major molds found, i.e. Aspergillus, Cladosporium, and Penicillum, coincided with the identification of VOCs known to be produced by these species. A number of additional VOCs irritating to the skin, eyes, or respiratory tract were also found. The results from this pilot study illustrate the diversity of microorganisms and VOCs present in the indoor environment and suggest that analysis of airborne dust may help to assess human exposure to microorganisms and chemical compounds.


However much the extending of America's borders may have seemed like destiny at the time, much of the process was not as noble as its early proponents declared, and in the Southwest it represented at least partially a deliberate land grab. The work of one rather eccentric idealist, a Virginian named Nicholas Philip Trist, allows modern Americans to consider what happened during the years 1846-48 without what one writer called "a thorough revulsion." Nicholas Trist (1800-74) was one of those rare public figures who really live dangerously, prepared to risk everything for principle. Generally unknown today, and slighted or scorned when mentioned at all, he was a man of importance in his time, for he defied a presidential recall order and negotiated with Mexico the treaty that won for the United States the vast Southwest. Trist was closely acquainted with the great ones of his time--including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson--and was esteemed by those who really knew him. This well-written biography of Trist is also, then, a story of many of the important people and movements of his time. Trist was an idealist, more uncompromising than his idol, Thomas Jefferson (who was also the grandfather of Trist's wife). Trist was respected by many of his contemporaries and, surprisingly for a man of his unbending character, befriended by many. Yet there were many who despised him. On two unrelated occasions, eight years apart, he stood as the most controversial figure in America. In some ways, he was his own worst enemy, as Ohrt skillfully shows. An astonishing haughtiness in a man of relatively modest station enabled him to condescend to presidents, quarrel with military commanders, and hurl insults at the House of Lords. Yet the diplomats with whom he worked in Mexico admired and respected him for his unfailing patience and courtesy under the most trying conditions. Ultimately, his career was thoroughly destroyed by its one great, defining achievement: the negotiation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the peace that ended the Mexican War. Ohrt demonstrates that Trist's quintessential character can best be distilled in a tribute he paid to another: "He is . . . a true lover of justice." Only one Trist biography has appeared to date, and it does not cover the full life and relationships as this one does. Sources for this imminently readable biography include the voluminous correspondence of the Trist and Randolph families of Virginia, biographies of notables mentioned, and the most respected histories of the times and events. Those interested in the diplomacy of the era and especially of the U.S.-Mexican War will read with interest the story of the intrigues and rivalries behind the political and military activities of the war, which are vividly presented here.


BACKGROUND
It has become common practice to empirically treat infants and children who have suspected gastroesophageal reflux disease by using acid-suppressive medications. However, evidence to support the effectiveness of these medications in the pediatric population is limited. With multiple studies in adult patients indicating increased risk of infection, we reviewed the literature to determine the association between acid-suppressive medications and serious adverse effects in infants and children.

METHODS
We conducted a PubMed search on the adverse effects of H2 antagonists and proton pump inhibitors in pediatric patients. The studies selected were original research and systematic reviews with control groups and study objectives evaluating the relationship between acid-suppressive medications and serious adverse effects (namely, infections).

RESULTS
Fourteen studies met our inclusion criteria. The majority of studies found a significant association between acid-suppressive medications and the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis, sepsis/bacteremia, pneumonia, and gastrointestinal infections in infants and children.

CONCLUSIONS
Given the questionable efficacy of H2 antagonists and proton pump inhibitors and the growing evidence of increased risk of serious infections, acid-suppressive medications should be used cautiously in infants and children suspected of having gastroesophageal reflux disease.


Purpose: To assess the current status of in‐vivo dosimetry in the Canadian cancer centers. Methods: A survey on the use of in‐vivo dosimetry was performed between July and September 2010. The survey was sent to 39 Canadian cancer centers and it was composed of 16 questions including questions on the use of in‐vivo dosimetry as well as demographics of the centers. A total of 34 centers completed the survey. Results: The survey showed that the Ontario and Nova Scotia have the largest number staff per clinic (99 and 75, respectively). Alberta and Manitoba have the largest number of medical physicist per clinic (15 and 12, respectively). The majority of the centers (79%) answered that they perform in‐vivo dosimetry to some extent. However, none of the centers perform daily or weekly in‐vivo dose measurements for individual patients, except for total body irradiation and total skin irradiation treatments. Most of the centers (74%) reported that they use a tolerance level of 5% or higher in their in‐vivo dosimetry programs. The majority of the centers (85%) answered that in‐vivo dose measurements are performed by the medical physicists other than physics assistants, dosimetrists and therapists. As pointed out by the centers, the major drawbacks and difficulties involved in the use of in‐vivo dosimetry included increased treatment and staff time. Conclusion: We assessed the current status of in‐vivo dosimetry in the Canadian cancer clinics. The results of this survey will serve as a documentation of the current status of the practice of in‐vivo dosimetry in Canada. Then, in the future such results will serve as a reference to assess further changes, developments and improvements in the field of in‐vivo dosimetry in Canada.