Abstract Mesoscale measurements on five Pacific cyclones are used to investigate the formation, movement, development, interaction and dissipation of warm-sector, prefrontal cold-surge, narrow cold-frontal, wide cold-frontal, wavelike and postfrontal rainbands. Warm-sector rainbands formed near the leading edge of the cold front and often moved away from the front. Prefrontal cold-surge and wide cold-frontal rainbands formed aloft and behind the surface cold front and they also advanced relative to the front. The clearest interactions between rainbands occurred when wide cold-frontal rainbands overtook narrow cold-frontal rainbands; in this case the narrow cold-frontal rainband may be either temporarily or permanently dissipated, or the wide cold-frontal rainband may be dissipated, depending on the relative strengths of the rainbands. Wavelike rainbands, with very uniform properties, were initiated primarily in the vicinity of the cold front aloft; despite their small scale, these rainbands were relativel...


Zn1−xLixO films were spin-coated on platinum substrates by using sol-gel method. The XRD pattern demonstrated that the Li doped ZnO films exhibits the hexagonal wurtzite structure. And, the 18.5 ◦ peak was found at dopant content from 0.15 to 0.2, which could be attributed to the (003) plane of Li2PtO3. The effect of Li doping and emission in relation to defects is investigated using CL. Zn1−xLixO films show two characteristic emission peaks centered at near 383 nm and near 530 nm, respectively. The peak position of the UV emission is not changed when the Li content is increased from 0.0 to 0.2. The green emission peak increase abruptly at 0.1 Li content, however, decreases gradually with increasing Li content. The dielectric constant increases with increasing Li content up to 0.15, and decreases when lithium is added at 0.2. The ferroelectric polarization was measured using a polarization-electric field hysteresis loop. At x = 0.15, the measured values of spontaneous polarization and coercive field were 0.25 μC/cm2 and 1.6 kV/cm at room temperature, respectively.


(C5H9C5H4)(3)NdBrLi(THF)(4)(1)(C5H9=cyclopentyl) was obtained from the reaction of NdCl3 with C5H9C5H4Na and LiBr (Nd:Na:Li=1:2:1 molar ratio) in THE X-ray crystallography showed that the ten-coordinated neodymium atom is bonded to three cyclopentylcyclopentadienyl(eta(5)) rings and a single bromine atom bridging a lithium which is bonded to three THF molecules. Complex 1 is triclinic, P1 space group with unit dimensions of a= 12.048(2), b= 13.498(3), c= 13.831(3)Angstrom, a = 104.16(3), beta = 104.07(3), gamma =95.96(3)degrees, V=2083.3(7)Angstrom(3), Z=2, D-c=1.35Mg/m(3) and F(000)=874. (C5H9C5H4)(3)SmTHF (2) was synthesized by reaction of anhydrous SmCl3 with C5H9C5H4Na at a molar ratio of 1:3. The structure was determined by X-ray crystallography. The ten-coordinated samarium atom is bonded to three cycloperrtylcyclopentadienyl rings and one oxygen of THF molecule to form a pseudo-tetrahedron. Complex 2 is orthorhombic, Fdd2 space group with unit cell dimensions of a =28.175(5)Angstrom, b =46.24(2) Angstrom, c =9.167(4) Angstrom(3), V=11943(8)Angstrom(3), Z= 16, D-c = 1.38Mg/m(3) and F(000)=5136.


With the widespread availability of online resources and the associated expectations from library users that these resources be easy to find, libraries must offer increasingly sophisticated and seamless access to their collections and services. As a result, much of the recent library literature, including research reports from major library associations such as OCLC's Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community; ACRL's The Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report (2010); ACRL's 2012 Top 10 Trends in Academic Libraries; and RIN and RLUK's The Value of Libraries for Research and Researchers (2011), is concerned with examining how libraries can demonstrate their value to their home institutions and communities in this new information environment. How does the value of cataloguing fit into this broader discussion of library value? By the very nature of their work, cataloguers tend to lack visibility unless they interact regularly with library users. Additionally, while technological advances and enhancements of the catalogues empower users to become more independent researchers, they make it less apparent who is behind this value-added service. At this junction, it is essential that cataloguers are active participants in the broader discussion and demonstration of library value. But how can cataloguers participate in this discussion and express the value they bring to their institutions? Value-added cataloguing holds the promise of helping cataloguers describe and provide access to increasingly complex digital resources beyond the confines of the traditional bibliographic record. The presentation will consider a definition of value-added cataloguing and analyze new developments in digital publishing that challenge us to reflect on the traditional library tasks of acquiring, describing, providing access and preserving innovative and highly dynamic forms of scholarship. Finally, the authors aim to identify areas for further research that will aid cataloguers in advocating for the importance of cataloguing within the broader context of the value of libraries.


This paper is concerned with the ℋ∞ model reduction for linear parameter-varying (LPV) systems with both discrete and distributed delays. For a given stable system, our attention is focused on the construction of reduced-order models, which approximate the original system well in an ℋ∞ norm sense. First, a sufficient condition is proposed for the asymptotic stability with an ℋ∞ performance of the error system by using the parameter-dependent Lyapunov functional method. Then, the decoupling technique is applied, such that there does not exist any product term between the Lyapunov matrices and the system matrices in the parametrised linear matrix inequality (PLMI) constraints; thus a new sufficient condition is obtained. Based on the new condition, two different approaches are developed to solve the model reduction problem. One is the convex linearisation approach and the other is the projection approach. Finally, a numerical example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design method.


Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, inflammatory, autoimmune disease, characterized by a number of immunological disturbances and synovium involvement leading to joint destruction. The etiology is unclear, since the causal factor is still unknown. RA affect all ethnic groups. The frequency of the disease, depending on population, amounted about 0,5-2% and women are affected three times more frequently then men. Genetic factors like HLA DRB1 and cytokine genes, play an important role in susceptibility and severity of the disease. In the pathogenesis of RA exist a hierarchy of cytokines expression, which favor the proinflammatory cytokines. Cytokines production is stimulated by the Th-cells. They control all phases of immune response: autocrine, endocrine and paracrine, but also play a key role in the inflammation. In the RA a pivotal role play IL-1 and TNF-α. TNF-α is responsible for the inflammatory and proliferative aspects, and IL-1 is responsible for the destructive aspects of RA. Other proinflammatory cytokines also play very important role in RA, because they are responsible for activation of enzymes in synovial fluid, which induce degradation of bone. The determination of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of proinflammatory cytokines seems to be of great importance. Since we are dramatically lacking any prognostic factors for the development of RA, there is a possibility that SNPs may serve as the markers of susceptibility and severity of the disease.


Internet of Things (IoT) security remains a challenge due to device vulnerabilities and untrusted supply chains, often limiting the benefits that organizations can obtain from integrating novel IoT devices to support business goals and enhance user experience. To that effect we developed KalKi: an IoT security platform that uses software-defined networking (SDN) concepts and constructs to create per-device defenses that enable integration of untrusted, off-the-shelf IoT devices. However, KalKi had limitations related to performance, scalability, and usability. This paper presents KalKi++, an evolution of KalKi that improves the performance, scalability and usability of the platform by orders of magnitude, with the added benefit of now being able to run on resource-limited hardware and support a larger number of use cases. We present the new architecture, enhanced threat model, and evaluation results for the new platform.


In the present health care scenario most of the health care personnel assume that the drug-drug interactions are the only interactions with clinical importance and are basically unaware of the fact that there are more potentially harmful drug interactions than drug-drug interactions. The knowledge of drug interactions that are likely to occur in the case of cigarette smoking and alcohol ingestion can empower a physician to avoid drug interactions that lead to deleterious outcomes. Both smoking and alcoholism can have several stimulatory and inhibitory effects on the several pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of a drug.


Simulation-based virtual testing has become an essential step to ensure the safety of autonomous driving systems. Testers need to handcraft the virtual driving scenes and configure various environmental settings like surrounding traffic, weather conditions, etc. Due to the huge amount of configuration possibilities, the human efforts are subject to the inefficiency in detecting flaws in industry-class autonomous driving system. This paper proposes a coverage-driven fuzzing technique to automatically generate diverse configuration parameters to form new driving scenes. Experimental results show that our fuzzing method can significantly reduce the cost in deriving new risky scenes from the initial setup designed by testers. We expect automated fuzzing will become a common practice in virtual testing for autonomous driving systems.


A supine leg extension ergometer targeting the quadriceps femoris was built to be MR compatible and dynamic 31P-MR spectroscopy was acquired during an exercise challenge in a 7 Tesla MRI system. With the higher field strength, PCr and PCr recovery could be measured with a high confidence of fit without the need for additional smoothing and filtering steps. The increased spectral dispersion at 7T shows sufficient separation between the NAD+NADH resonance in addition to increased SNR. pH estimation in the active skeletal muscle was also performed.


Digital images do not represent anatomy, they are just a reliable translation from a full-colored and three-dimensional physical world to a grayscale and two dimensions image domain. As a consequence of the imaging technologies disruption in the medical field, a vertiginous "race to see" had been seeking higher definitions. This process got closer and even exceed human naked-eye resolution and the human brain skills to decode grayscale bidimensional pictures. In the diagnostic field, as a result, the last decade showed important technological advances addressing this issue and computer-aided detection and diagnosis emerged to complement and enhance radiologist frameworks. In this new era methodologies designed to extract more information from images are a must. Radiomics addressed this item using images as datasets, focusing in the region of interest and extracting features, allowing reproducibility, and finally introducing radiology into the quantitative sciences. Technological disruption in medical imaging also found momentum in the therapeutics arena, empowering a bunch of audacious surgeons to perform less invasive procedures with more confidence and precision, finally launching and shaping the image-guided surgery (IGS) discipline. Here instead, there is no "use as data" counterpart and surgeOmics is the first proposed approach. A wide range of semantic and agnostic features can be extracted from the different phases of the IGS's workflow, like entry point coordinates, angle, distance, target location, amongst the most important ones. In summary, we are coining the surgeOmics neologism to name this approach, which holds great promises to deal with future demands. It has the potential to improve surgeonhardware interaction and its central hypothesis is that distinctive algorithms using images as data can provide valuable information for personalized and precision surgery in the era of robotics and intelligent automation. SurgeOmics has emerged from IGS, but can be applied to other wide range of medical problems. Copyright © 2019, Society of Gastrointestinal Intervention.


Self-complementary oligodeoxynucleotides have been synthesized containing O6-methylguanine (O6meG), O6-ethylguanine (O6etG), O6-isopropylguanine (O6iprG) and O4-methylthymine (O4meT). They anneal in solution to give double-stranded DNA. These double helices have been used as substrates for the DNA repair protein O6-alkylguanine-DNA-alkyltransferase coded for by the ada gene of Escherichia coli. The repair followed second-order chemical kinetics. O6meG was repaired by the 19-kd transferase at a rate of 2.54 x 10(7) M-1 s-1 which is close to the theoretical limit for a diffusion-controlled reaction; O6etG and O4meT are repaired 1,000 and 10,000 times more slowly. The 39-kd alkyltransferase (which is precursor to the 19-kd form) and the 19-kd transferase repaired O6etG at similar rates. O6iprG was not repaired. The repair of oligomers containing O6meG was only slightly inhibited by the presence of nonalkylated oligomers. Oligomers containing O6etG were only slightly more effective as inhibitors of repair than the nonalkylated oligomers, indicating that the transferase does not bind selectively to alkylated DNA. Parallel structural studies have shown that O6-alkylguanine:C and O4-alkylthymine:A base pairs have a similar geometry with the alkylated base displaced into the major groove of the DNA in contrast to O6-alkylguanine:T and O4-alkylthymine:G base pairs which retain the Watson-Crick alignment with N1 of the purine juxtaposed to N3 of the pyrimidine. Measurement of the rate of repair of these different base pairs suggests that pairs with the alkyl group exposed in the major groove may be repaired more rapidly than those with the alkyl group more deeply buried in the helix.


As pioneered by Feagin (1972), the literature on the theories of poverty focuses on individualistic, structural and fatalistic causes of poverty. The individualistic perception blames individuals themselves for their poverty situation. In contrast, the structural perception of poverty blames society for poverty, while the fatalistic perception views poverty as merely bad luck. Even although various people have different perceptions of the causes of poverty, these views typically fall into one of these three categories. People tend to ascribe to these perceptions mostly because of their ontological and cosmological views of life, which are influenced by household characteristics. The purpose of this study was to investigate the household characteristics that determine perceptions of household heads with regard to the causes of poverty. Indexes on individualistic, structural and fatalistic perceptions were calculated for each household and used as dependent variables in an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model. The study found that a household head's years of schooling, grant recipients and food insecurity were strong predictors of the structural perception while as regards the individualistic perception, the study reported a positive strong relationship with the age of the head of a household, the number of years of schooling received by the head of the household whereas there was a negative significant relationship with food insecure households, and also with female heads of household. Fatalistic perceptions were strongly predicted by food insecurity, grant recipients and years of schooling of the head of household. The implications of the results are that policy makers need to first understand the perceptions of the poor before coming up with mitigating programmes as the perceptions might influence the effectiveness of the interventions.


The rate of caesarean sections in multiple births has grown sharply worldwide. The reason for this may be the results of large retrospective cohort studies from the 1990s, which displayed an increased risk of mortality and morbidity, especially for the second twin, in the case of vaginal births. Multiple monocentric analyses have not been able to confirm this. As a prospective, multi-centre randomised study, the Twin Birth Study published in 2013, in which 105 clinics in 25 countries took part, showed that, under optimum conditions, there was no difference in neonatal and maternal mortality and morbidity if the birth was planned to be vaginal or via caesarean. Detailed analyses, which would be helpful in choosing the type of birth method and obstetric management in the event of vaginal birth, have not previously been published. Retrospective studies must be referred to for this.


It is essential to decrease the risk to the patient to an absolute minimum when prophylactic procedures are offered against a relatively unpredictable (for the individual patient) natural history risk. Very careful preoperative planning and intraoperative execution are mandatory to maximize the chances of the patient for a successful outcome.


Synopsis : The rate of transfer of manganese from slag to liquid iron was investigated by measuring the change of manganese and oxygen contents of liquid iron under MnO-(Ca0+FetO +MgO)-SiO2 slag in a magnesia crucible. Experiments were carried out with slags of basicity from 0.66 to 1.19 at 1 600•Ž. The results are as follows : 1) The equilibrium between liquid iron and slag was attained after about 30 min. 2) The rate of reaction and manganese content of final liquid iron increased with decrease of oxygen potential of the system and with increase of manganese oxide content of initial slag. 3) The experimental results were interpreted by the rate equation derived from the assumptions that the reaction rate was controlled by the transfer of Mn, 0, (MnO) and (FeO) in the boundary layers and that the distribution-ratio of manganese and oxygen varied with proceeding of the reaction. Values of mass-transfer-coefficient of (MnO) were nearly the same with those obtained in the previous study on the rate of oxidation of manganese in liquid iron at the same temperature.


The Lebanese civil war has made the study of Lebanon a difficult endeavor. The complexity of Lebanese society is the result of a unique political system and a richly diverse populace. This volume will help those who wish to delve beyond the superficial journalistic accounts of Lebanese society and culture. Entries encompass information about various subject areas, including political leaders, poets, artists, actors, writers, musicians, singers, important events and places, political parties, militia groups, foreign interests, and military elements. It is important to note that this dictionary does not exclude women, as is often the case with historical works on Lebanon. It escapes the narrow confines of a male-gendered history of Lebanon. Many of the personalities presented in this text are not presently known to English readers, and the volume easily bridges the widening gap between Arabic and English approaches to the study of Lebanese history. It also offers crucial information about rarely discussed issues such as AIDS, homosexuality, and prostitution, and delineates the ethnicities that exist in the country, making clear the balances of power that propelled Lebanon into civil war and dragged it back toward peace again. The volume includes an extensive bibliographic section with sources in Arabic, English, French, and German. An essential volume on a country that has occupied center-stage in the last decade of Middle Eastern politics.


We apply a four-body version of the continuum-discretized coupled-channels method (four-body CDCC) to 6Li elastic scattering and investigate four-body dynamics (n + p + α + T, where T is a target). Four-body CDCC reproduces the measured cross sections without introducing any adjustable parameter for 6Li + 209Bi scattering at 24–50 MeV and 6Li + 208Pb scattering at 29– 210 MeV. We confirm that 6Li breakup effects are important in a wide energy range, and then focus on the competition between four-body (6Li+T↔ n+ p+α +T) and three-body (6Li+T↔ d + α + T) channel-couplings. As an interesting property, we find that 6Li is mainly broken up into two particles d and α , and hardly into three particles n, p and α during scattering. This property is now called "dα-dominance". Following the dα-dominance, we propose an effective three-body model that simulates four-body CDCC calculations reasonably well.


The beginning of the Devonian is marked by the sudden occurrence of abundant vertebrate faunas, often associated with detritic facies of Old Red Sandstone type. A few groups, already represented in the Silurian and even in the Ordovician, pass through the Silurian-Devonian boundary and seem to undergo an important diversification at this particular moment of their history. The case of the Osteostraci, a group of fossil jawless vertebrates, is examined in detail to show whether or not its phylogenetic pattern displays a radiation that coincides with the extension of the Old Red Sandstone facies over the North Atlantic continent. It appears that this geological event may have triggered the radiation of the cornuate osteostracans, although this monophyletic group must have already begun to diversify in the Middle Silurian. A review of the analyses of three osteostracan-bearing localities (Welsh Borderland, Spitsbergen and Saaremaa) is presented, and it is concluded that the Osteostraci may have consisted of both fresh water and marine species. When marine, the environment of the Osteostraci may have been vast intertidal zones, hardly having any Recent equivalent. The difficulty in assigning the Old Red Sandstone (from Britain and elsewhere) to any clear-cut environment may be because the physical constants of the Earth or the amplitudes of the tide were not the same in early Devonian times as they are now.


The binding of 64Cu to the water-soluble form of dopamine beta-monooxygenase from bovine adrenal medulla was studied in reconstitution and exchange experiments using high-performance size-exclusion gel chromatography. The reconstitution experiments provide evidence for a specific binding of four copper atoms/enzyme tetramer using either Cu(I) or Cu(II), but some weaker copper-binding sites were observed in the presence of a large excess of copper. The exchanges of both Cu(I) and Cu(II) in this protein are so rapid that exact half-lives for the exchange reactions can not be obtained by the present method. The results indicate, however, that the half-life for the exchange of the enzyme-bound copper in the holoenzyme with a twofold excess of 64Cu(II) at pH 6.1 was about 1 min, whereas the exchange of Cu(I) measured at similar conditions with ascorbate present, was complete in 1 min. This is by far the most rapid exchange reported for any copper-protein, and the results points to a unique copper-binding site in this enzyme.


This study aimed at understanding the effects of corporate social responsibility, corporate image, customer attitude, and customer loyalty. The method used for this study was causality and non-probability sampling and purposive sampling were used as the data collection methods. The data source in this study was primary data collected using questionnaire instruments. The number of samples of the study was 100 respondents. The data analysis model in this study used path diagrams in the form of regression equations. The results of the statistical study showed that: (1) Corporate social responsibility and customer immunity both partially and simultaneously had a positive effect on customer attitude, (2) Corporate social responsibility and corporate image, both partially and simultaneously, had a positive effect on customer loyalty. (3) Corporate social responsibility, customer image, and customer attitude simultaneously had a significant effect on customer loyalty. Partially, only corporate social responsibility and customer image had a significant effect on customer loyalty, while customer attitude had no significant effect. (4) The customer attitude variable was able to mediate the effects of corporate social responsibility and customer image on customer loyalty.


Instability to storage and shipping conditions and injection administration remain major challenges in treating chronic conditions with biopharmaceuticals. Herein, formulations of poly(trehalose methacrylate) (pTrMA) were successfully optimized to stabilize insulin without appreciably increasing viscosity. Polymers were synthesized (2,400 - 29,200 Da), and added to insulin at different concentrations. pTrMA maintained >95% intact insulin against 250 rpm at 37 °C for 3 hours with at least 10 mol. eq. of 5.0 kDa, 7.5 mol. eq. of 9.4 kDa, 5 mol. eq. of 12.8 kDa, 1 mol. eq. of 19.8 kDa, and 0.5 mol. eq. of 29.2 kDa polymers, compared to 13.1% of insulin alone. The lowest pTrMA concentration formulations were more viscous than insulin alone, but the highest viscosity, U-600 with 10 mol. eq. of 5 kDa pTrMA, was only 1.43 cP at 25 °C. This data demonstrates that pTrMA is a promising low viscosity additive to stabilize the diabetes therapeutic insulin.


Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are predominantly quiescent with only a small number entering active phases of cell cycle at any time point. With such tightly regulated cell cycle kinetics, HSCs ensure preservation of the stem cell pool. Many cell cycle-related proteins, mainly tumor suppressor genes, are involved in maintenance of HSCs quiescence. Dmtf1 (Cyclin D-binding Myb-like Protein1) is a transcription factor that negatively regulates cell cycle by inducing Arf expression, and its deletion has been reported in some leukemias (Bodner SM et al, 1999). As there is no information regarding the role of Dmtf1 in hematopoiesis, we examined the impact of Dmtf1 on regulating cell cycle kinetics of hematopoietic progenitor cells. Dmtf1 mRNA was expressed in human granulocytes, lymphocytes, CD34+ cells, and in murine Sca1+lin-CD117+ (KSL) cells. Using retroviral vectors (MIEG3/IRES-GFP), we first investigated cell cycle progression in 293 cells transduced with four different constructs; GFP only control vector (−), wild type Dmtf1 (WT), and two dominant negative mutants expressing a point mutation (K319E) or a deleted myb-like repeat box (dMHR). A total of 36.0% of sorted and cultured GFP+ control (−) cells were in S/G2+M 24hr after initiation of culture. Whereas 30.8% of cells expressing (WT) were in S/G2+M at the same time point, expression of the two dominant negative mutants K319E and dMHR induced 46.6% and 45.5% of the cells into S/G2+M, respectively suggesting that loss of Dmtf1 activity results in rapid cell proliferation. Interestingly, a 2.5-fold increase in the ecxpression of Arf and p21 mesured by qPCR was detected in cells transduced with WT only whereas other transduced cells did not show any change in expression of both Arf and p21. The impact of these constructs was then evaluated in cord blood cells using CFU assays. Cord blood CD34+ cells were transduced with the four vectors mentioned above and GFP+ cells were subsequently sorted and cultured. Both K319E and dMHR induced a 25% increase in the number of clonogenic progenitors relative to (−) while a modest decrease of 10% in colony numbers was detected in the WT group. Cells cycle analysis of these cells is currently under investigation. These results demonstrate that Dmtf1 acts as a negative regulator of cell cycle control in hematopoietic cells and suggests that it may play a role in the maintenance of HSC quiescence.


Noise is character inherent. Any type of signal can be affected by noise at the time of acquisition. Signal noise can be generated from various conditions and it is difficult to avoid. ECG is a graphical structure which represents the functionality of the heart. Good quality of ECG signal will help physicians for better diagnosis. But in real situation ECG recordings are courted by noise and this noise should be removed for better clinical use. In this paper a Savitzky-Golay Filter is designed for denoising of ECG signal. An noisy ECG signal is collected from MIT-BIH Data base and then the noise is removed by using this Savitzky-Golay filter. The filter is providing a good performance result and it is presented in the result section of the paper.


Abstract Soil freeze–thaw processes lead to high nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions and exacerbate the greenhouse effect. The wetlands of the Inner Mongolia Plateau are in the pronounced seasonal freeze–thaw zone, but the effect of spring thaw on N2O emissions and related microbial mechanisms is still unclear. We investigated the effects of different periods (freeze, freeze–thaw, and thaw) on soil bacterial community diversity and composition and greenhouse gas emissions during the spring freeze–thaw in the XiLin River riparian wetlands in China by amplicon sequencing and static dark box methods. The results showed that the freeze–thaw periods predominantly impact on the diversity and composition of the bacterial communities. The phyla composition of the soil bacteria communities of the three periods is similar in level, with Proteobacteria, Chloroflexi, Actinobacteria, and Acidobacteria dominating the microbial communities. The alpha‐diversity of bacterial communities in different periods varies that the freezing period is higher than that of the freeze–thaw period (p < .05). Soil total carbon, soil water content, and microbial biomass carbon were the primary factors regulating the abundance and compositions of the bacterial communities during spring thawing periods. Based on functional predictions, the relative abundance of nitrification and denitrification genes was higher in the freezing period than in the thawing period, while the abundance was lowest in the freeze–thawing period. The correlation results found that N2O emissions were significantly correlated with amoA and amoB in nitrification genes, indicating that nitrification may be the main process of N2O production during spring thaw. This study reveals potential microbial mechanisms of N2O emission during spring thaw and provides data support and theoretical basis for further insight into the mechanism of N2O emission during spring thaw.


We evaluate the performance of the copy network under three scenarios: (1) non-buffer non-splitting copy network (NBNS), (2) shared-input buffer-non-splitting copy network (SIBNS), and (3) shared-input-buffer-splitting copy network (SIBS). For NBNS, we derived the exact overflow and cell loss probabilities instead of the Chernoff bound. Furthermore, we propose a general Markov model, a novel theoretical approach, for the performance analysis of the shared-input-buffer copy networks. This analysis method can be applied for both SIBNS and SIBS. In our work, theoretical and simulation results are presented for every scenario. The comparison shows that improved performance of lower cell loss and higher throughput can be achieved by shared-input-buffer (SIBNS and SIBS). However the tradeoff is the long cell delay. With the splitting algorithm, SIBS can provide better performance than the NBNS and SIBNS.


Given most tissues are consist of abundant and diverse (sub-)cell types, an important yet unaddressed problem in bulk RNA-seq analysis is to identify at which (sub-)cell type(s) the differential expression occurs. Single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies can answer the question, but they are often labor-intensive and cost-prohibitive. Here, we present LRcell, a computational method aiming to identify specific (sub-)cell type(s) that drives the changes observed in a bulk RNA-seq experiment. In addition, LRcell provides pre-embedded marker genes computed from putative scRNA-seq experiments as options to execute the analyses. We conduct a simulation study to demonstrate the effectiveness and reliability of LRcell. Using three different real datasets, we show that LRcell successfully identifies known cell types involved in psychiatric disorders. Applying LRcell to bulk RNA-seq results can produce a hypothesis on which (sub-)cell type(s) contributes to the differential expression. LRcell is complementary to cell type deconvolution methods.


Human Development Index (HDI) measures the average achievements from three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. This study is to investigate the impact of socio-economic variables represented by the three dimensions i.e. mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, gross domestic product, life expectancy and health expenditure on HDI in fifteen selected developing countries within a 5-year period (2010-2014). The panel data analysis tested the pooled regression model, fixed effects and random effects models. The findings indicated that the Panel Fixed Effects Model (FEM) has proven to be the best model to describe the study. From the FEM model, four predictors have shown significant positive effect on human development index which are, the mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, life expectancy and GDP per capita whereas, health expenditure is the only variable that shows insignificant relationship. Hence, it can be stated that in these fifteen selected nations despite education and higher GDP are essential to achieve a higher level of HDI, life expectancy is also perceived as a vital indicator to imply a better level of HDI.


Sustainability of water supply networks should be based on the risks of water hammer phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to provide a new approach to the analysis of water hammer phenomenon in the water supply network. By conventional methods, the damage because of water hammer is estimated based on the maximum pressure at nodes. However, during this phenomenon continuation and changing of water hammer in overtime is ignored. In this study, quantitative parameters, to evaluate the network performance will be assessed under the water hammer phenomenon. Hence, the information through the parameters of reliability, resilience, vulnerability and their composition, sustainability parameters are analyzed. However, numerical analysis of water hammer phenomenon caused by sudden pump stop was done using HAMMER software. The results showed that the sustainability parameter can be used to evaluate the efficiency of water networks. In the event of water hammer phenomenon 4.83 percent of points of the studied network had sustainability factor less than one. So that use of protective structures increases sustainability parameter in most zones and this amount are 1.11 percent of the network nodes. Moreover, increasing and decreasing of Hazen coefficient and pipe diameter increases and decreases the sustainability parameter, respectively.


The generation of shear waves from an ultrasound focused beam has been developed as a major concept for remote palpation using shear wave elastography (SWE). For muscular diagnostic applications, characteristics of the shear wave profile will strongly depend on characteristics of the transducer as well as the orientation of muscular fibers and the tissue viscoelastic properties. The numerical simulation of shear waves generated from a specific probe in an anisotropic viscoelastic medium is a key issue for further developments of SWE in fibrous soft tissues. In this study we propose a complete numerical tool allowing 3D simulation of a shear wave front in anisotropic viscoelastic media. From the description of an ultrasonic transducer, the shear wave source is simulated by using Field's II software and shear wave propagation described by using the Green's formalism. Finally, the comparison between simulations and experiments are successively performed for both shear wave velocity and dispersion profile in a transverse isotropic hydrogel phantom, in vivo forearm muscle and in vivo biceps brachii.


OBJECTIVES
In the inpatient psychiatric setting, one treatment strategy used to manage acute agitation in youth includes administration of IM antipsychotics. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness and safety of IM chlorpromazine versus IM olanzapine in treating aggression in youth.

METHODS
We conducted a retrospective chart review of patients younger than 18 years hospitalized in the inpatient psychiatric unit who received either IM chlorpromazine or IM olanzapine for acute agitation. Demographic, efficacy, and tolerability data were collected using the electronic health record EPIC. The primary outcome was change from baseline to end point in the Behavioral Activity Rating Scale (BARS) score. BARS was applied retrospectively using nursing and physician documentation to evaluate for clinical response.

RESULTS
Among 145 patients who met the inclusion criteria, 72 received IM chlorpromazine, compared with 73 who received IM olanzapine. The mean change in BARS score (before and after IM antipsychotic) was greater with olanzapine (3.58 ± 0.99) than with chlorpromazine (3.07 ± 1.18, p = 0.006). The target BARS score of 4 was achieved more frequently with chlorpromazine (45.8%) than with olanzapine (24.7%, p < 0.008). Coadministration of IM diphenhydramine occurred significantly more often in the olanzapine group than in the chlorpromazine group (71.2% vs 36.1%, p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
Management of acute agitation with IM olanzapine resulted in a greater change in BARS score, despite more youth requiring coadministration with diphenhydramine. In comparison, IM chlorpromazine demonstrated a higher likelihood of returning patients to baseline. Study results suggest tolerability of IM chlorpromazine and olanzapine.


This paper presents an analysis of delay-locked loops in direct spreading code division multiple access systems with Markovian spreading sequences. The established analysis with piecewise constant approximation is similar to the mean field analysis which estimates macroscopic characteristics of a spatially-distributed probabilistic system from the local interaction between the elements of the system with low computational complexity. The low complexity makes it possible to analyze the behavior of not only second-order archetype delay-locked loops but also higher-order non-coherent delay-locked loops in the presence of both multiple access interference and channel noise. It is found from the presented analysis that replacing i.i.d. spreading sequences with Markovian spreading sequences with non-vanishing negative autocorrelation reduces the phase tracking error of a non-coherent 1Δ delay-locked loop. The time spent for estimating the error by the presented method is about 1/1000 compared with that by the path integral method.


This quantitative study of 58 MSW I & II students was designed to explore students' participation in policy advocacy. It also examined if and how the social work program has facilitated their participation in policy advocacy and if the program impacted their confidence in and motivation for policy advocacy. The alignment of students' political attitude and ideology with NASW's policy positions on social justice was also explored. Study results indicate that keeping informed and political knowledge were the strongest predictors of MSW student's policy activity. This study concludes that incorporating skills for political action into MSW curricula may increase students' perceived efficacy, thereby enhancing the likelihood of engaging in political activities.


An acute, acetic acid induced gastric ulcer in rats is associated with increased capillary permeability and albumin leakage into the gastric wall surrounding the ulcer. This is an inflammatory reaction, and the present experiment was undertaken in an attempt to identify inflammatory mediators in the gastric wall around the ulcer. Rats were pretreated with inflammatory antagonists, and the protein leakage was estimated by means of 125I-labelled albumin 40--60 min and 4 h after ulcer induction. We found no effect on the protein leakage of mepyramine (antihistamine) deseril (antiserotonin) or indomethacin (antiprostaglandin) given separately, or of the combination of mepyramine and deseril. The combination of all three substances, mepyramine, deseril and indomethacin significantly decreased protein leakage at 4 h after ulcer induction. This indicates that prostaglandins are released in the tissues near the acute ulcer. Cimetidine (histamine-H2-antagonist) did not decrease the protein leakage either alone or in combination with mepyramine (histamine-H1-antagonist).


Background: Craniosynostosis is very heterogeneous in terms of its causes, presentation, and management. In particular, coronal synostosis evidences a higher tendency to be genetically caused, and TWIST1 and FGFR3 have been identified as major causative genes. The authors analyzed the clinical and molecular characteristics of Korean patients with coronal synostosis in this study. Methods: Forty-three Korean patients with unicoronal or bicoronal synostosis were included in this study. All samples were first screened for TWIST1 and FGFR3 mutation hot spots, and the negative samples were subsequently screened for FGFR2. The patients' clinical features were analyzed and compared. Results: Seven sequence alterations (six in TWIST1 and one in FGFR3) were identified in 11 patients (25.6 percent). Three novel TWIST1 mutations were detected, and p.P250R was the only mutation in FGFR3. Bicoronal cases evidenced a much higher mutation detection rate (52.9 percent) than unicoronal cases (7.7 percent). In the TWIST1 group, five patients had Saethre-Chotzen syndrome, and one was nonsyndromic. In the FGFR3 group, four patients had Muenke syndrome, and one was nonsyndromic. The majority of associated anomalies, with the exception of psychomotor retardation and Chiari malformation, were detected more frequently in TWIST1 patients than in FGFR3 p.P250R patients. Conclusions: This study is, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the first to illustrate the frequency and spectrum of mutations in TWIST1 and FGFR3 in Korea. Considering that molecular diagnosis techniques can prove helpful in providing adequate genetic counseling and guidance, genetic screening for TWIST1 and FGFR3 p.P250R in cases of coronal synostosis is recommended.


Flood damage processes are complex and vary between events and regions. State‐of‐the‐art flood loss models are often developed on the basis of empirical damage data from specific case studies and do not perform well when spatially and temporally transferred. This is due to the fact that such localized models often cover only a small set of possible damage processes from one event and a region. On the other hand, a single generalized model covering multiple events and different regions ignores the variability in damage processes across regions and events due to variables that are not explicitly accounted for individual households. We implement a hierarchical Bayesian approach to parameterize widely used depth‐damage functions resulting in a hierarchical (multilevel) Bayesian model (HBM) for flood loss estimation that accounts for spatiotemporal heterogeneity in damage processes. We test and prove the hypothesis that, in transfer scenarios, HBMs are superior compared to generalized and localized regression models. In order to improve loss predictions for regions and events for which no empirical damage data are available, we use variables pertaining to specific region‐ and event‐characteristics representing commonly available expert knowledge as group‐level predictors within the HBM.


:  The present study estimated the age and growth of the silky shark Carcharhinus falciformis in the Pacific Ocean. Samples and biological data were collected from Japanese tuna longline and purse seine fisheries from 1992 to 1999. Vertebra centra were picked from 145 males and 153 females for age determination. The number of annual rings observed for males and females was 0–8 and 0–13, respectively. Combined sex von Bertalanffy growth equations were obtained as follows: Lt = 216.4(1 − e−0.148(t+1.76)) where Lt is precaudal length in cm at age t. A mature size for males was considered to be approximately 135–140 cm (precaudal length), with an estimated age of 5–6 years, whereas corresponding values for females were 145–150 cm and 6–7 years, respectively. Birth size ranged from 48 to 60 cm. There was no remarkable difference in growth, birth size and age at maturity between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The life history parameters of the silky shark are approximately the same in both oceans.


Laura Esquivel9s 1989 Mexican novel Like Water for Chocolate, neither translated into English nor published in the United States until 1992, was both an American bestseller and the basis for an acclaimed motion picture. Interestingly, though, Esquivel9s work also seems to be receiving glimmers of the type of critical attention generally reserved for less "popular" works. Two particular critical studies composed in English, one by Kathleen Glenn and the other by Cecelia Lawless, have been devoted entirely to Chocolate, and both of the scholar/authors grace the faculties of reputable American institutions of higher learning. As a student whose academic experience has been replete with elitist attitudes and expressions of disdain for anything that smacks of an appeal to the masses, I was intrigued by Chocolate for this very reason; in a world where scholarly boundaries seem unalterably fixed, a work that appears capable of crossing these rigid lines is, in my opinion, both rare and admirably refreshing. In my studies, I have often hoped for more communication between "popular" and "scholarly" literature; Esquivel9s novel provides not only opportunities for this dialogue but for other cross-genre discussions as well.


The surface of polypropylene (PP) films was activated by RF plasma method with the use different gases: argon, air, water vapor, and acetic acid vapor. Plasma was diagnosed based on spectra emitted by gas plasma using the method of optical emission spectroscopy. The effectiveness of these processing gases during plasma treatment was analyzed. The effects of PP activation were assessed with the use of IR-ATR absorption spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and the analysis of the surface free energy components based on liquid contact angle. The activation of PP surface by plasma treatment resulted in the increased energy of PP surface layer to the extent being dependent on the type of processing gases and in the formation of new chemical groups on it. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011.


Over the past 2 years, the primary organ targeted for peripheral blood progenitor cell (PBPC) support after myeloablative chemotherapy or radiotherapy has shifted from the bone marrow to blood. Mobilization methods that involve chemotherapy, cytokines, or both have been identified. Optimal methods of mobilization have not yet been defined. This article reviews the studies in which recombinant human interleukin-3, recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, and recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor were used as single agents, in combination, or in sequence. The data support the conclusion that mobilization with cytokines alone is well tolerated and can be recommended as a potential method for mobilization of PBPCs. Specifically, sequential administration of recombinant human interleukin-3 and recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor for mobilization of PBPCs may contribute to rapid platelet recovery after autologous transplantation.


We undertook a study 25 patients, all clinically suspected to have vitamin B12 deficiency; they were investigated hematologically, biochemically, & by gastric biopsy and MRI. Most of the patients were more than 40 years of age, were either vegetarian or non-vegetarian; 21 patients were belonging to the middle-income group. The total number of males in the study was 22 and there were three females. The clinical features of vitamin B12 deficiency are described. Clinical evidence of pyramidal tract involvement was found in six patients (24%). MRI confirmed cord involvement in 12 of the 17 patients (70.5%): follow up MRI of two patients showed marked reductions in signals after one year of treatment. These patients showed improvement after receiving injectable vitamin b12. Nerve conduction studies (N.C.V) showed evidence of neuropathy in fifteen of eighteen (83%) patients. Gastric biopsy was abnormal in all except one in the 20 patients in whom it was conducted. Anti intrinsic factor blocking antibodies (AIFBA) were elevated in 11/24 (45.8%) and anti parietal cell antibodies (APCAB) were elevated in 19/24 patients (79%). The possible etiological factors responsible for vitamin B12 deficiency are age and pernicious anemia. As concluded in this study, diet was not found to be a contributory factor in the causation of cobalamin deficiency. We conclude that pernicious anemia is probably an important etiological factor as a cause of vitamin B12 deficiency in Indians. The male predominance is intriguing.


This paper analyses corona discharge in ambient air flow associated with laboratory-scaled wire-to-plate electrostatic precipitator (WPESP). The corona discharge is analysed by a combined iterative computational technique based on the finite element method (FEM) and charge simulation method (CSM). The phenomenon is mathematically described by Maxwell's equations in differential form. A finite element method is used to solve the Poisson's equation and the charge simulation method is used to satisfy the current continuity condition. Measurement method of the positive dc corona current density and electric field, taking into account the air flow velocity, has been introduced. The computed results are compared with experimental results to test the effectiveness of this approach.


The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of frequency-dependent soils with variable soil content on the transient voltages at transmission towers. First, a comparative analysis between the impedance of tower-footing grounding rods buried in frequency-independent and frequency-dependent soils is carried. Then, the performance of ground potential rise (GPR) subjected to two types of lightning currents (first and subsequent return strokes) is studied. In a second part, these grounding rods are connected into a single-circuit transmission tower where the admittance of the structure located on frequency-independent and frequency-dependent soil is computed. The surge voltages generated by the two lightning currents are studied for these two types of soil. The frequency-domain responses are computed using the numerical method of Moments based on Electric Field Integral Equations in a frequency range from 100 Hz up to 10 MHz. Numerical results demonstrate that the frequency dependency of soil electrical parameters results in a modification of the rod impedance, especially at high frequencies. As a consequence, when the frequency-dependent soil is considered, a reduction at the transient voltage peaks is obtained compared with those calculated for a frequency-independent soil. This reduction is more pronounced when the transmission tower is located on the soil of high resistivity and subjected to a subsequent return stroke due to its higher energy at the high frequencies.


Small mammals were trapped annually in two savanna and two forest plots in cerrado habitats of Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, for 5–10 yr. Eighteen species were captured in forest and seven species in savanna. Species numbers and total number of individuals captured were tightly correlated. In forest, species and abundance varied interannually by up to fourfold in one plot and to 100‐fold in the other, and showed alternating highs and lows as is typical for small mammals. The largest faunal differences were due not to site differences, but to year differences, with markedly different patterns in forests and savannas. Abundance was not correlated with rainfall overall, but showed correlation in exceptional years of rainfall and ENSO drought. In savanna, species and overall abundance declined without recovery during 3 yr after reaching minimum numbers in 2004. One species, Cavia aperea, became extinct on both plots, and subsequently, apparently on the entire savanna. Both herbivorous and insectivorous species declined together. Rainfall, fire, and flooding do not seem to account for savanna rodent declines. I propose the novel hypothesis that smoke from anthropogenic burning raises nocturnal temperatures and prevents dew formation, and that a decrease in nightly dry season dewfall has been instrumental in rodent declines. Anecdotal and climatic data are consistent with this hypothesis, but it cannot yet be tested.


The BSR (Buoy for Supporting Risers) concept is composed by a submerged buoy anchored to the sea bottom by tethers and intended to support risers coming from the bottom (probably SCRs — Steel Catenary Risers) and going to the floating platform (probably with flexible jumpers). For the case under analysis here, the main dimensions of the BSR prototype are 27.2 m length × 27.2 m width × 5.0 m depth. The paper describes all final full scale installation step so that the BSR may be considered a suitable technology. The installation indeed was the great challenge of this design due the size of the hull. The present work also evaluates numerically and experimentally a specific new manner to install the BSR with the support of auxiliary mooring lines among with the four tethers connected to it. One of the installation premises was to make use of Anchor Handling Supply Vessels instead of Crane Vessels. After this numerical analysis, the work went on by performing model tests that simulates the operation in a deep water model basin using 1:40 scale. The model test anticipated several problems such as the chain stopper weakness in the operation and others as discussed in this paper. As a conclusion the work was devised the most important parameters during the system installation and suggested ways to improve the methodology. In November 2009 the BSR was installed in 500 m of water depth at Congro field location, Campos Basin, offshore Brazil. The tethers were adjusted in January 2010 and in March 2010 two risers were installed. Thenceforward the last edge of this knowledge was considered over passed.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


Harmony is a process by which some property (e.g. nasality, lip rounding, tongue root position) spreads throughout some domain. Neutral segments are those that do not participate in harmony; they may block the spread of a harmonizing property or remain transparent to it. Typical analyses of neutral segments in harmony often make use of feature co-occurrence restrictions between a harmonizing feature and some feature of an intended target. However, any co-occurrence restriction responsible for blocking behavior can also be employed to induce transparency, over-generating possible patterns of transparency in harmony. Within rounding harmony and nasal harmony, the set of crosslinguistically attested transparent segments is a proper subset of attested blockers. These asymmetrical patterns of distribution are not predicted by standard approaches to neutrality in harmony in which neutral segments are the result of a single mechanism within the phonological grammar. This paper proposes that the adoption of a gestural representation of harmony accounts for the comparatively limited sets of transparent segments in rounding harmony and nasal harmony, and it does so via two distinct driving forces responsible for transparency and blocking.


There is a growing demand for bandwidth as well as mobility. Within ETSI BRAN a wireless LAN called HIPERLAN/2 has been standardized. While data rates can be as high as 54 Mbit/s for a high carrier to interferer ratio (C/I), more robust combinations of modulation and code-rate have to be used and also retransmissions do occur when interference is present. This leads to much smaller effective data rates. Interference and link adaptation are therefore important topics. In order to have a realistic co-channel interference, two radio cells are implemented which interact with each other. In both radio cells detailed implementations of the protocols are used. Data transmission between the terminals is carried out via TCP/IP. It is shown how throughput as well as delay can be improved in low and medium load conditions by reducing co-channel interference and more importantly reducing the variations in the interference situation which significantly increases the effectiveness of link adaptation.


Analyzing the seismic performance and flexural capacity of beam-column joints is crucial in structural design phase. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the seismic performance and flexural capacity of precast prestressed efficiently fabricated frame (PPEFF) joints. Reverse cyclic load tests and flexural capacity analysis are conducted. The damage modes, hysteresis curves, skeleton curves, stiffness degradation, ductility, and energy dissipation capacity of five PPEFF joint specimens with different reinforcement rates of the energy-dissipating bars and shear reinforcement are obtained. The results show that the damage pattern of the specimen is ideal, i.e., the plastic hinge region at the end of the beam is severely damaged, whereas the remainder of the beam is slightly damaged. Increasing the reinforcement rate of the energy-consuming steel bars enhances the load capacity, energy dissipation capacity, and initial stiffness of the joint but reduces the ductility performance. The maximum change in ductility was 5.31 for the reinforcement rate of energy-consuming steel bars ranging from 0.38% to 0.59%. In addition, the flexural capacity of the PPEFF joint is evaluated, considering the influence of the shear steel on the yielding and ultimate states. An equation of the flexural capacity is derived. A good agreement is observed between the experimental and calculation results, verifying the correctness of the proposed flexural capacity equation.


This study aimed at assessing community vulnerability and adaptation to the impact of climate variability and extremes on wetlands and its implication for livelihoods in Simiyu catchment, Southwest of Lake Victoria, Tanzania. The results of this study provide baseline information on vulnerability assessments and development of adaptation strategies in the country. Moreover this study will likely contribute significantly to similar future studies on other wetlands within Tanzania. Rainfall anomalies were used to characterise wet and dry seasons. Questionnaire surveys and focus group discussions were used to establish the impacts and coping strategies used during extreme events of floods and droughts. The results showed high rainfall fluctuations between seasons and from one year to the other. They further indicated that normally the October –November –December (OND) and March-April-May (MAM ) seasons do not have the same strength and sign of anomalies, that is there are seasonal variation within the same year. Communities living around the Simiyu wetlands are vulnerable to seasonal fluctuations as their socio-economic activities are highly dependent on rainfall since 87% of respondents practice rainfed agriculture. It is concluded that incidences of climate variations are increasing and have implications for livelihoods that depend on wetlands resources. The implication of these seasonal variations is the reduction in agricultural and livestock production. This has recently led to mixed croping along the wetlands and lake shores as a coping strategy. The responses of livestock keepers to seasonal variations in rainfall include holding vast and varied grazing grounds (transhumance) in order to ensure ownership of abundant grazing land.


Time-delayed neural networks (TDNNs) can be used to learn the dynamics of an unknown system from input-output data. In many cases a model of the system is also available in the form of a system of ODES, derived either from first principles or using heuristic arguments. In such cases a functional comparison can be made between the dynamic behaviour of the model with that of the trained TDNN for arbitrary inputs. We show that Volterra kernels for both the model system and the TDNN can be obtained, and thus the system responses compared, in a manner that is independent of the input. The techniques of structural bilinearisation of ODES and Volterra series expansion of a TDNN, are demonstrated by application to the Hodgkin-Huxley set of equations.


A previously isolated mutant of Salmonella typhimurium lacking hydrogen sulfide production from both thiosulfate and sulfite was shown to have a single mutation which also caused the loss of fermentative gas production and the ability to grow on nonfermentable substrates and which mapped in the vicinity of the atp chromosomal locus. The implication that F0F1 ATP synthase might be essential for H2S and fermentative gas production was explored. The phs plasmid conferring H2S production on wild-type Escherichia coli failed to confer this ability on seven of eight E. coli atp point mutants representing, collectively, the eight genes encoding the subunits of F0F1 ATP synthase. However, it did confer some thiosulfate reductase activity on all except the mutant with a lesion in the ATP synthase catalytic subunit. Localized mutagenesis of the Salmonella atp chromosomal region yielded 500 point mutants unable to reduce thiosulfate to H2S or to produce gas from glucose, but differing in the extents of their ability to grow on succinate, to perform proton translocation as measured in a fluorescence quenching assay, and to reduce sulfite to H2S. Biochemical assays showed that all mutants were completely devoid of both methyl viologen and formate-linked thiosulfate reductase and that N,N'-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide blocked thiosulfate reductase activity by the wild type, suggesting that thiosulfate reductase activity has an absolute requirement for F0F1 ATP synthase. Hydrogenase-linked formate dehydrogenase was also affected, but not as severely as thiosulfate reductase. These results imply that in addition to linking oxidation with phosphorylation, F0F1 ATP synthase plays a key role in the proton movement accompanying certain anaerobic reductions and oxidations.


A new method has been developed to determine the specificities of polyclonal rheumatoid factors (naturally occurring antibodies which react with human Fc gamma) (RF) found in sera from patients with rheumatoid arthritis. In this method, monoclonal anti-Rh(D) antibodies of known IgG isotype and allotype are bound to erythrocytes and then act as the target IgG antigen for RF in a direct haemagglutination test. Using two monoclonal anti-D antibodies of the IgG3 isotype and G3m(21) allotype, which were cloned from different donors, we found that a large number of rheumatoid sera reacted with both these G3m(21) proteins. In contrast reactivity of rheumatoid sera with polyclonal anti-D of the G3m(21) allotype in the direct haemagglutination test was rare. A strong correlation was found between reactivities to both G3m(21) monoclonal anti-D antibodies but not with a monoclonal anti-D antibody carrying the alternative allele, namely G3m(5). Haemagglutination inhibition experiments using human paraproteins of known IgG isotype and allotype provided some additional evidence that this method can detect RF with specificity for the G3m(21) allotypic determinant or a related allotypic determinant in polyclonal rheumatoid sera. When each patient's autoantibody response was related to their Gm phenotype, we found that the frequency of reactivity for G3m(21) monoclonal anti-D antibodies was significantly greater in patients negative for G3m(21) than in patients positive for the G3m(21) allotype. IgM preparations from patients' sera were dissociated at acid pH but no 'hidden' antibodies were found. We suggest trans-placental sensitization as one of several possible interpretations of this finding.


By applying a systematic literature review, this paper aims to identify the major healthcare problem domains (i.e. target areas) for lean supply chain management (LSCM) and to provide a list of the most common techniques for implementing LSCM in healthcare. Moreover, this study intends to investigate various contingency factors that may have influenced the selection of LSCM target areas or the application of LSCM techniques by healthcare organizations.,A systematic literature review was carried out following the method presented by Tranfield et al. (2003). Thereby, 280 peer-reviewed journal articles, published between 1995 and 2018, were selected, profiled and reviewed. In total, 75 papers were also selected for a qualitative analysis, known as meta-study, on the basis of high relevancy to the research objectives.,This work extracts, from previous research, a set of target areas for improving supply chain in healthcare by applying lean approaches. The work also unifies the language of lean thinking and supply chain in healthcare by defining metaphors in circumstances under which healthcare organizations pursue similar objectives from their supply chain management and lean programs (Schmitt, 2005). This paper also outlines a list of applications of lean for supply chain improvement in healthcare. Finally, a set of contingency factors in the field of lean supply chain in healthcare is found via the published literature.,This paper provides insights for decision-makers in the healthcare industry regarding the benefits of implementing LSCM, and it identifies contingency factors affecting the implementation of LSCM principles for healthcare. Implementing LSCM can help healthcare organizations improve the following domains: internal interaction between employees, supply chain cost management, medication distribution systems, patient safety and instrument utilization.,The research shows potential synthesis of LSCM with the healthcare industry's objectives, and, thus, the outcome of this research is likely to have positive influence on the quality and cost of healthcare services. The objectives of the healthcare industry are cost reduction and providing better service quality, and LSCM implementation could be an effective solution to help healthcare to achieve these objectives.,The prime value of this paper lies in conducting a systematic literature review using a meta-study to identify the major factors of implementing LSCM in healthcare. Only a few other studies have been published in the literature about LSCM in healthcare.


In this paper the power and size distortions of three representative cointegration tests, the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF), Ẑα and Stock-Watson (SW) statistics are evaluated in some large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. Consistent with previous evidence, the ADF-statistic is seen to be sensitive to the validity of the common factor restriction in the data generating process of our study. The SW-statistic is stable but not high in terms of power. The Ẑα -test shows the best balance between power and size. In the light of previous evidence, the test statistics seem to be sensitive to the DGP used more than to parametric variation of the active DGP.


The Social Adjustment Scale (SAS) was used to assess social functioning sequentially over 13 weeks in a group of 188 depressed outpatients randomized to either the noradrenergic antidepressant, nortriptyline, or the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, fluoxetine. Over the period of 13 weeks, there were no differences in total SAS scores between the nortriptyline and the fluoxetine group. In comparing the SAS subscale scores, which may measure different areas of motivation and behaviour (drive), there were differences between the two groups in only two subscales. At 13 weeks, the group randomized to fluoxetine were more impaired in marital role (p = 0.026) whereas, at 6 weeks, the group randomized to nortriptyline were more impaired in friction scores (p = 0.012). These results do not support the concept of specific augmentation of drive-related behaviour by noradrenergic medication. This challenges the earlier findings relating to drive enhancement and social adjustment using such medication.


Few reports exist regarding surgical resection of metachronous lung metastases (MLM) from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) after curative resection. To elucidate the indications for surgical resection of MLM and long-term survival, we analyzed Japanese case reports of MLM from PDA. Between 1983 and 2014, 17 Japanese case reports concerning surgical resection of MLM from PDA were published. We determined long-term survival in 16 patients (considering the published data of 15 patients and 1 of our own) by using a questionnaire survey and analyzing the relationships between background factors and long-term survival. In 16 patients with long-term survival, 4 patients were still alive without recurrence. The remaining 12 patients died of disease after recurrence. The median survival after the initial lobectomy was 37 months and the 3- and 5-year survival for all patients after lobectomy was 50% and 41%, respectively. Fourteen patients had a disease-free interval after initial resection of the primary pancreatic tumor of >20 months. These patients had a longer median survival period after lobectomy (46 vs. 25.5 mo, P=0.19). Seven patients had MLM of <16 mm. These patients had a statistically longer overall survival after lobectomy (83 vs. 16 mo, P=0.04). Three of 4 patients with primary stage I tumors were still alive without recurrence. We found that the conventional criteria for surgical resection of MLM from PDA (first disease-free interval of >20 mo with no other metastatic lesions) were appropriate. In addition, it is possible that MLM of <16 mm or primary stage I tumors are novel criteria.


This licentiate thesis is part of a Ph.D. project entitled "CDU:T43 Different methods for dust control and evaluating dust control on Nordic gravel roads". The Ph.D. project is financially supported by the Swedish Road Administration (SRA) through the Centre ofResearch and Education in Operation and Maintenance of the Infrastructure (CDU)within the Swedish Network of Excellence – Road Technology (RT). Much of the research described in this thesis has been carried out in collaboration with SRA Construction and Maintenance, which also contributed financially.One of the most significant problems associated with gravel roads is traffic-generateddust which facilitates the deterioration of the road surface and acts as a major source of particulate matter in the air, thus affecting traffic safety, public economics, and environmental quality.This work describes different programs for evaluating the effectiveness of different dust suppressants and the results obtained from completion of these experiments. Inchapter one, a general introduction into this project and its objective will be offered. The next chapter gives insight into the basic concepts of gravel roads. In the third chapter the existing literature concerning dust control of gravel roads is briefly retold. The fourth chapter gives an account of the research methodology. A field evaluation of different dust suppressants will be described in the fifth chapter. Chapter six describes methods for analysing dust suppressant residual concentration of samples taken from the different test road sections included in the above mentioned field evaluation. The objective is to investigate the longevity of these dust suppressants. Results from the analyses of the horizontal diffusion of gravel road generated dust are presented in chapter eight. The ninth chapter offers a description and evaluation of the objective method used for quantitative dust emission measurements by means of a visual method. In chapter tendust emissions are correlated to other general deformation processes on the gravel road.Chapter eleven defines laboratory trials concerning the leaching of dust suppressants from gravel wearing course material when subjected to water. Concentrations of dust suppressant as well as size distribution of gravel material were factors examined in this context. In chapter twelve, laboratory examinations of the drying rate for different combinations of aggregate gradations and chloride compounds will be presented. The thirteenth chapter gives a description of a developed laboratory equipment for evaluatingdust suppressant effectiveness, while chapter fourteen offers a conclusive summary.


Research employing the beads task suggests that people with delusional tendencies over-adjust to disconfirmatory evidence compared to low-delusion-prone individuals. This interpretation is in tension with studies using the bias against disconfirmatory evidence (BADE) task, which provide evidence that people with delusional tendencies are less receptive to disconfirmatory evidence. It has been suggested that over-adjustment on the beads task may be driven by miscomprehension of the task. The current preliminary study aimed to minimize miscomprehension on the beads task and determine how high-delusion-prone people respond to disconfirmatory evidence on both tasks. Fifty-one undergraduate participants completed the BADE task and an adapted version of the beads task. We expected that corrective feedback on the beads task would reduce miscomprehension, and that high-delusion-prone participants would be less receptive to disconfirmatory evidence on both tasks. Our results suggest this version of the beads task improved rates of comprehension relative to previous research. However, we found no evidence that the high-delusion-prone group demonstrated elevated over-adjustment or belief inflexibility in either task. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.


Ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) are currently being considered for applications in the hot-section components of aviation gas turbines owing to their favorable characteristics. Herein, a micromechanical modeling is presented for orthogonal 3 D woven CMCs under in-plane loading. The three-dimensional effective compliance of the 3 D woven composite was derived using three-dimensional laminate theory and continuum damage mechanics. The damage variables were used to describe the stiffness reduction due to the transverse and matrix cracking in each fiber bundle. The calculation method for the transverse and matrix cracking evolutions under in-plane loading was established by introducing mixed-mode damage criteria. The stress redistribution among the fiber bundles of 3 D woven CMCs due to the fiber/matrix interfacial debonding around matrix cracking was considered to capture the interaction between the matrix and transverse crack evolutions. Additionally, a mesomechanical model comprising finite element analysis and damage mechanics was established to evaluate the stress perturbation due to the geometry of the woven structure. The edge face of the 3 D woven CMC was experimentally observed to measure the transverse and matrix cracks that occurred in each fiber bundle. The transverse and matrix crack densities predicted by the micromechanical and mesomechanical models reasonably agreed with the experimental results up to crack saturation. Furthermore, the micromechanical model reproduced the nonlinear stress–strain response under tensile and shear loading using mixed-mode damage criteria.


The research is an endeavour to pay tribute to a legend "Dyal Singh Majithia" and an effort to safeguard his legacy of the crown rule in sub-continent. Dyal Singh was entitled as a proud son of Punjab due to his contributions to introduce modern education. He bequeathed assets of worth around 30 lack Indian rupees in charity to establish various institutes through a trust. Under the umbrella of this trust, Dyal Singh College, library, a hall and a mansion was constructed in Lahore. Selected case study, Dyal Singh Mansion is a master piece of colonial era and remarkable example of Indo-Saracenic architecture in the historic urban fabric of the Mall Road, Lahore during 20th century. Apart from façade, rest of the faces is in a crumbling state and illegally encroached by residents and vehicular repair workshops. Data has been collected by using desk-based studies, from relevant departments. Visual surveys have been conducted to identify causes of decay. In the conclusion, we have to formulate a policy to conserve this heritage being part of Mall road and legacy of British period Sikh heritage during colonial period.


Desalination residual brines are mostly discharged to marine environments, which can produce osmotic stress on sensitive benthic organisms. In this investigation, we performed transplantation experiments nearby desalination plants using two brown macroalgae species from a cosmopolitan genus: Dictyota kunthii (Chile) and Dictyota dichotoma (Spain). Parameters related to photosynthetic activity and oxidative stress were evaluated at 3 and 7 days for D. kunthii, and 3 and 6 days for D. dichotoma; each at 2 different impacted sites and 1 control. We observed that brine exposition at both impacted sites in Chile generated a marked stress response on D. kunthii, reflected in a decrease of primary productivity (ETRmax), light requirement (EkETR), and an excessive thermal dissipation (NPQmax), especially at 7 days. In D. dichotoma, similar impaired photosynthetic activity was recorded but only at the highest brine influence site during day 3. Regarding oxidative stress, both species displayed high levels of H2O2 when exposed to brine-influenced sites. Although in D. kunthii H2O2 content together with lipid peroxidation was higher after 3 days, these returned to baseline values towards day 7; instead, D. dichotoma H2O2 levels increased only at day 6. This easy and practical approach has proven to provide valuable data to address potential impacts of brine discharges at global scale coastal ecosystems.


We study the O(3) sigma model in D = 2 on the lattice with a Boltzmann weight linearized in β on each link. While the spin formulation now suffers from a sign-problem the equivalent loop model remains positive and becomes particularly simple. By studying the transfer matrix and by performing Monte Carlo simulations in the loop form we study the mass gap coupling in a step scaling analysis. The question addressed is, whether or not such a simplified action still has the right universal continuum limit. If the answer is affirmative this would be helpful in widening the applicability of worm algorithm methods.


Research Writing is one of the most dynamic and creative aspects of Research Methodology. It spreads human thinking capability as well as dormant qualities with a view to finding out new trends of cosmological epistemology in the field of universal science, arts and commerce. Both young teachers and novice researchers broaden their outlook through the critical analysis of Research Writing in the contexts of global significance. They can bring about a revolutionary change for the potentiality of the Global Education System of the 21 st —century age if they are properly well-conversant with practical research knowledge. This study aims to look at the motivation for the young teachers and novice researchers in the research writing. It would like to examine motivation and its theoretical framework, classification of motivation, motivational research, research writing, plagiarism in the research writing, aims with objectives, significance, research questions, complexities for the young teachers as well as novice researchers, research writing in the global perspectives, and benefits of research writing as well. It also would like to recommend the teachers and scholars so that they can find out an innovative trend of research writing honestly and conscientiously.


It was recently demonstrated [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 143908 (2003)] that the scattered electric field from highly conducting targets following a rapidly terminated electromagnetic pulse displays a universal t(-1/2) power law divergence at early time. It is now shown that for strongly permeable targets, micro(c)/micro(b)>>1, where micro(b) is the background magnetic permeability, the early-time regime separates into two distinct power law regimes, with the early-early time t(-1/2) behavior crossing over to t(-3/2) at late-early time, reflecting a spectrum of magnetic surface modes. The latter is confirmed by data from ferrous targets where micro(c)/micro(b)=O(10(2)), and for which the early-early-time regime is invisibly narrow.


To face market structure, companies in different strategic groups need to design different strategies. Especially concerning competitive oligopolies, many studies focus on large companies in the core of sectors. We consider that the analysis of strategies of companies in the margin of large companies, i.e. in the "fringe" of those markets, are also relevant, since strategic choice and performance of firms in the "fringe" influences sectorial dynamics. Based on Industrial Organization and Structure-Conduct-Performance paradigm, this papers aims to analyze how strategies of companies in the "fringe" are aligned to the market structure of non-OEM automotive battery. This qualitative descriptive research comprised semi structured interviews with managers of four non-OEM battery manufacturers. Results revealed the importance of market structure for firms' conduct: the need to compete on price make firms to combine different strategies. Besides price strategies to support price competition, typical for companies in the "fringe" of competitive oligopolies, firms set a combination of different strategies, such as innovation and quality, which indicates complexity in terms of strategies. Thus, price competition is largely supported by non-price strategies. Firms' diversity, a remarkable feature in competitive oligopolies, is also observed in the "fringe", which includes differences in terms of techniques, technologies and scale, and the existence of informal market. Thus, high competition complexity indicates the need of public policies to foment non-price strategies even for firms in the "fringe" and to reduce market failures from informal firms' competition.


The modern intrauterine contraceptive device (PPIUCD) is a safe, effective and long term reversible, coitus independent method of contraception with fewer side effects. The immediate postpartum insertion is considered to be an ideal time as patients need not have to return to the facility for the same. The aim of the study was to see the acceptance of PPIUCD and study its related complications. This is a hospital based prospective observational study done in a tertiary hospital at Eastern Nepal over a period of Six months from August 2019 to January 2020. All the women who delivered during the study period were counseled for family planning methods and those who opted for PPIUCD were enrolled. Data was validated and analyzed using SPSS version 17. Acceptance of PPIUCD in the study was only 6.3% despite the method being very effective, safe, long acting and reversible with fewer side effects. The main reason for declining the method being misbelief about the method and husband's refusal. Forty percent of the acceptors were in the age group of 21-25 years and 33.6% of them were multigravida. Insertion was high in post placental vaginal delivery (61%) as compared to trans cesarean (28%). The main reason for removal was psychosocial aspects followed by pelvic pain and abnormal uterine bleeding. Few complications like UTI (4.4%), fever (4%) were noted during hospital stay and at three month follow up pelvic pain was the most common problem reported. Though the overall acceptance of PPIUCD is in rising trend but in this study it is very low. Awareness of the method, improving health education, active participation of the partner in the counseling process will definitely change the recent scenario. It should be incorporated in the government schemes like Safe Motherhood to cover the high unmet need of contraception in Nepal.


Kerosene was instilled intratracheally into mongrel dogs of either sex weighing 10 to 15 kg and anesthetized intravenously with sodium pentobarbital (25 mg/kg). Two different doses were used: 0.3 and 0.06 ml/kg. Pulmonary mechanics, including pressure-volume (P-V) curve, thoracic gas volume (Vtg), total lung capacity (TLC), total pulmonary resistance (RL), and chord compliance (CL) were measured by using a whole body plethysmograph, before and at various time intervals during the 2 wk after instillation. Histologic studies were also performed. In the high-dose (0.3 ml/kg) kerosene experiments there were significant decreases in Vtg, TLC, and CL values by 24 h, which returned to control values at 1 wk after kerosene instillation. The RL and CL normalized for TLC did not change. In contrast, in the dogs receiving the low dose (0.06 ml/kg), there was no significant change in any of these parameters at 24 h. Histologic examination revealed an early exudative phase consisting of exudation of macrophages, red cells, and edema (at 1 and at 24 h), and a later phase consisting of proliferative bronchiolitis (at 1 and at 2 wk). Animals receiving the low dose revealed the same pattern as those receiving the high dose at 24 h, but changes were less extensive. We conclude (1) that kerosene-induced lung injury causes loss of terminal air spaces at both low and high doses, and (2) that the shift in the P-V curve is dose dependent. We hypothesize that kerosene causes two types of physiologic lesions. In areas in which terminal air spaces remained open, an increase in compliance occurred, whereas in areas in which intraalveolar exudation occurred there was "drop-out" of lung units. The final P-V curve was determined by the relative proportions of these two types of areas.


As an essential food crop, rice is often infested with diseases that can cause significant yield losses and seriously damage economic income and food health. Early identification and control of rice diseases is an effective way to alleviate these problems. However, manual identification and diagnosis of rice leaf diseases requires experienced specialists and is time-consuming. In our study, we propose the ECA-ConvNeXt model, based on the ConvNeXt network, which can identify six categories of typical rice leaf diseases and healthy rice leaves. We also established a rice leaf disease identification dataset that contains images of healthy and diseased rice leaves with complex backgrounds and their disease category labels. In the proposed ECA-ConvNeXt model, we incorporated the ECA (Efficient Channel Attention) module, which improved the feature extraction performance using only a few parameters. Transfer learning was applied to load pre-training weights and fine-tuning was used to reduce training costs and improve the model performance. We tested the performance of ECA-ConvNeXt on the rice leaf disease identification dataset. Experimental results show that the proposed model achieved an accuracy of 94.82%, a precision of 94.47%, a recall rate of 94.31%, and an F1-Score of 94.33% on the rice leaf disease identification dataset. These results suggest that the proposed network effectively identifies rice leaf diseases.


Background Temporal Arteritis (TA) is the most common systemic vasculitis in adults. Usually, the diagnosis is based on the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) classification criteria published in 1990 based on the clinical history, physical examination, laboratory information and histological findings in the biopsy. However, according to the literature, the biopsy can be negative in up to 68% of patients with TA and without it the predictive value diminishes considerably. Objectives Assess the value of Doppler Ultrasonography for the diagnosis of TA, compared with ACR criteria and biopsy, using the definitive clinical diagnosis of the patient as gold standard. Methods A retrospective observational, descriptive and analytical study was made, reviewing the clinical history of the patients who had an ultrasound scan of the temporal artery performed in our hospital on suspicion of TA. The standard exploration consists of the bilateral examination of the temporal superficial artery, with its common trunks and the frontal and parietal branches. In the case of diagnostic doubt, the exploration is extended to the occipital arteries and/or axilares. The ultrasound scans were realized and reported by the same person to avoid bias. The variables registered were age and sex, the presence or absence of ACR criteria, VSG value, the final diagnosis and the results of the biopsy and the ultrasound examination as well as the number of affected branches. The statistical analysis was realized by means of the software program SPSS Statistics version 20.0. Results Of the 451 patients studied, 399 were women and 52 men (88.5% vs 11.5%), with a mean age of 81. Two hundred fifty six patients (58,8%) had a definite diagnosis of TA while 195 (43,2%) presented other diagnoses. Two hundred forty patients (55.79%) fulfilled ACR criteria and 211 did not (46,78%). Of the 166 biopsies, 54 (32,53%) were positive. The validity (sensitivity and specificity) and security (positive predictive value [PPV], negative predictive value [NPV], Likelihood Ratio [LR] + and LR -) of diagnostic tests used were as follows: Sensitivity Specificity VPP VPN LR+ LR− ACR criteria 65.37% 62.89% 70% 57.82 1.7619 0.5506 Biopsy 42.86% 100% 100% 35.71% 0.5714 Doppler ultrasonography 91.60% 95.83% 96.62% 89.76% 21.81 0.0876 Conclusions Doppler Ultrasonography shows great validity and safety as a diagnostic test of TA, being in addition, a cheaper and less harsh technique than the biopsy.For this reason its use in clinical practice should be considered a diagnostic option of the first line in the diagnosis of this disease. Disclosure of Interest None declared


The different phenomena that take place in the core of a nuclear reactor comprise a wide variety of physical aspects, which differ both in their nature as in their complexity as well. In general, these effects can be divided into four main disciplines, namely neutronics, thermal-hydraulics, plant conditions and control. Even though neutrons interact with matter in a pretty well-known way, the equations that model how they behave in a nuclear reactor derived from basic mechanistic considerations cannot be yet—and probably ever–be solved completely. And, even more, first-principle equations for turbulent two-phase flow still are not even available. Therefore, to design and analyze nuclear reactors some kind of simplifications ought to be used, which—despite its usual meaning—may still be challenging from a computational point of view. Being the equations behind these four disciplines radically different in their mathematical characteristics, there usually exist dedicated codes that solve each problem separately, especially for the most-complex tail of the spectrum of simplifications. It is therefore desired to devise a mechanism for coupling these particular codes in such a way that the different dependencies are explicitly addressed. A shared-memory-based coupling mechanism was developed in order to perform the aforementioned tasks, which is currently being used in the nuclear industry although it may have applications in other fields as well. Mecánica Computacional Vol XXXII, págs. 1501-1517 (artículo completo) Carlos G. García Garino, Aníbal E. Mirasso, Mario A. Storti, Miguel E. Tornello (Eds.) Mendoza, Argentina, 19-22 Noviembre 2013 Copyright © 2013 Asociación Argentina de Mecánica Computacional http://www.amcaonline.org.ar


Discussions of competition and regulatory reform typically focus on price and quantity effects. But improving certain infrastructure services can also stimulate entry, and competition in user industries downstream, allowing new firms to enter, incumbent users to offer new products, and rivalry to intensify. The authors present a case study of how innovations in road freight services affect selected downstream users of those services after regulatory reform. After a period of rigid regulation, and heavy government interference, Mexico in 1989 developed a new policy framework for road transport, with free entry, and market-based price setting. The result: faster, more reliable trucking has allowed user companies to offer new, previously unavailable products, and to reach new areas with existing products. Cheaper, more customer-responsive trucking services have allowed logistical innovations in user firms, and some user firms have decided not to keep their own fleets of trucks, but to outsource trucking services on the open market, thereby converting fixed costs to variable costs. For one fertilizer company, the benefits of reform included a ten percent improvement in operating margin. Successful reform requires careful planning and execution, and political support at high levels. Regulatory reform also profoundly changes the sectoral institution formerly responsible for the regulation. Enough resources should be provided to help organizations in the reformed industry make the transition to the post-reform environment - helping with such tasks as defining the organization's new role, and facilitating the redeployment of staff. The national competition agency can help greatly in laying the groundwork for reform by making a compelling case for the reform's expected benefits. After reform, the competition agency should also help with enforcement, to ensure that the cozy, cartel-like behavior stimulated by tight entry restrictions does not persist. In Mexico, three strong interventions were required to discipline attempted anti-competitive practices in the trucking industry in the years following reform.


Abstract Objective This study aimed to find out whether nomophobia levels are higher in adolescents with internalising or externalising disorders than healthy adolescents and to investigate the correlation of nomophobia levels with externalising and internalising symptoms. Methods K-SADS (Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia) was applied to 139 adolescents (ages 13–18) and they were asked to fill No Mobile Phone Questionnaire (NMP-Q) and Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS), while the parents were asked to complete Conners Parent Rating Scale-48 (CPRS-48). Results There were no significant differences in nomophobia total scores between the three study groups. However, losing connectedness (LC) and not being able to access information (NAI) subscores were significantly higher in group with internalising disorder than healthy controls and there was no significant difference between group with externalising disorder and healthy group. Separation anxiety, social phobia, total anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and oppositional problems positively correlated with nomophobia total score. Conduct problems correlated with only LC. Total anxiety and hyperactivity predicted nomophobia total score. Conclusions Since anxiety and hyperactivity were predictors of nomophobia according to the study, adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or anxiety disorder should be examined for nomophobia as well. Key points Nomophobia levels of internalising and externalising disordered groups did not differ. Internalising group had higher scores in two sub-dimensions of nomophobia. All anxiety and depression symptoms correlated with nomophobia. Hyperactivity and oppositional symptoms correlated with nomophobia. Total anxiety and hyperactivity were predictors of nomophobia.


Abstract The structure and equation of state of low albite, NaAlSi3O8, has been determined using high-pressure single-crystal X-ray diffraction to a maximum pressure of 9.43 GPa. Low albite remains triclinic in space group C1̄ over the entire pressure range and no phase transitions were observed although the evolution of the unit-cell parameters and volume exhibit some unusual features at pressures above 4 GPa. A third-order Birch-Murnaghan equation of state fit to 6 P-V data points up to 3.4 GPa has K0 = 54.2(7) GPa and K' = 5.3(6). At higher pressures the volume-pressure curve exhibits d2V/dP2 < 0 and the entire P-V data set can be approximated with a fourth-order Birch-Murnaghan equation of state with K0 = 52.3(9) GPa, K0' = 8.8(6), and K0'' = .2.8(2) GPa-1. The anisotropy of the compression of albite is typical of that of feldspars with 65% of the volume compression accounted for by the compression of the (100) plane normal. This is due to the closing-up of the crankshaft chains of tetrahedra that are characteristic of the feldspar structure. Single-crystal X-ray intensity data sets collected at 6.4, 8.4, and 9.4 GPa also show that the four-membered rings of tetrahedra within the structure undergo significant shear at high pressures. Changes in the rate of shear of the four-membered rings with pressure are associated with changes in the variation of the unit-cell angles with pressure.