The postmodern and post-truth world we live in might have reached its zenith. Written for the general public and not specifically information professionals, Laura A. Millar's A Matter of Facts: The Value of Evidence in an Information Age grapples with the definitions of data, facts, evidence, and truth and how these parts of information are used and abused in modern society. This volume is the first in the Archival Futures series, jointly published by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and ALA Neal-Schuman, which will demonstrate "how the preservation and stewardship of the archival record is a collective effort that underpins and supports democratic societies and institutions" (viii). Dr. Millar is an obvious choice to lead the series, given her notable career as an independent consultant and her numerous publications on creating and maintaining archives during the last 30 years. Her passion for the field and conviction in the importance of her topic are apparent throughout the text.


Objective: The amplification of systolic pressure from aorta to the brachial artery depends on many factors including age, gender, patient's height, heart rate and arterial stiffness. Non-invasive estimation of central pressure usually requires a transfer function and/or the morphological analysis of peripheral pressure waveforms (e.g., as obtained by using arterial tonometry). We have developed a new method (DCBP) to estimate central systolic blood pressure (cSBP) directly from peripheral pressure values. Design and method: The accuracy of the DCBP method was tested in the present meta-analysis in which only invasive studies with high fidelity pressure recordings at both the central aortic level and brachial level were included. Results: Five studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria with a total of 282 subjects (77.3% male). All measurements were obtained during diagnostic cardiac catheterization for suspected coronary artery disease (CAD). Mean age ± SD was 63.3 ± 13.2 years, heart rate was 67.1 ± 11.3 bpm and high fidelity invasive brachial pressures were 137.9 ± 19.9 mmHg, 70.9 ± 10.2 mmHg and 97.1 ± 11.7 mmHg for systolic, diastolic and mean pressures respectively. The measured invasive cSBP was 131.1 ± 19.9 mmHg (amplification of systolic pressure = 6.8 mmHg). The mean cSBP estimated by the DCBP method was 132.9 mmHg. The mean difference compared to invasive value was 1.8 mmHg (1.4%). Conclusions: This meta-analysis from invasive high-fidelity pressure data from the literature showed that our DCBP method may accurately estimate cSBP from peripheral pressure values, without the need to perform a pressure waveform analysis or to use a transfer function. The results pertained strictly to the studied population (patients aged 63.3 years on average and patients with a high suspicion of CAD). Further prospective studies are required to confirm our results and also to document the accuracy and precision of our DCBP method in various populations as well as the sensitivity of DCBP to the peripheral pressure measurement method.


A total of 549 epileptic children and 162 healthy children were studied dermatoglyphically. The authors found significant dermatoglyphic differences between the control subjects and patients suffering from epilepsy with a progressive and an unprogressive course. Dermatoglyphic characteristics in the epileptic patients varied in groups with different clinical characteristics (age at the onset of the disease and the duration of the latter, the daily development of paroxysms at the same time, a tendency toward a stable course, the presence of psychic states and the resistance to therapy). Statistical task-solving rules for diagnosing epilepsy in children were elaborated. The correct computer-aided diagnosis on the basis of dermatoglyphic examination was made in 70% of the epileptic patients.


Contribution and responsibility of patients in the area of patient safety is encouraged by the Dutch government. Technology has provided the means to give the patient better access to health care information. The role of the patient is changing. In the past health care providers had a more paternal approach (the patient does exactly what(ever) the doctor says), whereas nowadays the doctor and patient make decisions together. Furthermore, people are starting to organize their own health care. Health care providers offer expertise and support instead of making decisions for the patients. (VWS,2014) As an answer to this different approach, the Jeroen Bosch Hospital has developed several actions. Joost van de Mortel (2013) made it clear with a qualitative research (N=13) the hospital (community) is open to the application of patient empowerment and already applies it, consciously or subconsciously. Despite the good intentions, there are misconceptions regarding patient empowerment that obstruct proper application. In the organization the structure, applied systems and the lack of a management model in which patient empowerment is central, prevent full implementation of patient empowerment. In a consecutive study Jean Marc Reinold (2014) made an inventory which functionalities in a patient portal ("An online gateway that gives the patient control in gathering and sharing information about their health through multiple websites and / or functionalities") would contribute to 'patient empowerment'. Besides an extensive literature review, the researcher has gathered information by means of a questionnaire (168 patients, a 95% reliable sample), focus group discussion with 7 patients and the result of a Digi panel inquiry (50% of the 150 panel members i.c. patients responded) of the Jeroen Bosch Hospital (JBZ). The research made clear the patients want to have direct access to their complete medical record, including lab results, research results and imagery. The function 'inspection of medical records' makes it possible to take more control of their own treatment (patient empowerment). Besides seeing their medical records the patients of the JBZ want to be able to make several (combined) appointments themselves and to have the possibility of email correspondence with their own doctor. The real empowering ability of a patient portal has to do with the attitude of the doctor and his patient to move towards dialogue and cooperation. This means that in addition to the practical development and implementation of the portal, now in progress after the deployment of the Electronic Patient File (EPF), the strategic reasons for the use of the portal need to be promoted and spread within the organization. To implement the portal successfully within the organization some misunderstandings among the staff has to be resolved: - the abilities of the patients regarding eHealth are sufficient in general and still developing, - the exact content of the patient portal (test-results, images, diagnosis/reports, treatment plan) by using a demo, - the influence on the work processes and financial consequences . Further staff training and a helpdesk should facilitate the implementation. Direct active involvement in the development and implementation of the patient portal of motivated patients will contribute to increasing support and will have a positive marketing effect. Use of e-Health and patient empowerment is a powerful combination. Technology and most patients are ready, a lot of professionals in health care in the Netherlands are positive on patient empowerment and are using e-Health fragmented. Barriers to implement are merely the absence of a clear policy of the organization, the organizational structure, the systems, the skills and attitude of a minority of the professionals and the adjustment of the system of financial compensation (a negotiation with the insurance companies is necessary to compensate digital interaction with the patient). In a presentation the impact and outcomes of several actions to improve patient empowerment and e-Health (project Digital Working) within the Jeroen Bosch Hospital and developments on the implementation of eHealth in the Netherlands can be shared. References : 1- Reinold, Jean Marc, Zelfregie voor patienten door een patienten portaal (dutch), Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis, den Bosch. 2014. 2- Mortel, Joost van de, Patient empowerment in het Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis: realiteit of utopie? (dutch), Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis, den Bosch. 2013. 3- VWS (Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports), De maatschappij verandert. Verandert de zorg mee? Ministerie van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport. Den Haag. 2014.


3D scene understanding, e.g., point cloud semantic and instance segmentation, often requires large-scale annotated training data, but clearly, point-wise labels are too tedious to prepare. While some recent methods propose to train a 3D network with small percentages of point labels, we take the approach to an extreme and propose ``One Thing One Click,'' meaning that the annotator only needs to label one point per object. To leverage these extremely sparse labels in network training, we design a novel self-training approach, in which we iteratively conduct the training and label propagation, facilitated by a graph propagation module. Also, we adopt a relation network to generate the per-category prototype to enhance the pseudo label quality and guide the iterative training. Besides, our model can be compatible to 3D instance segmentation equipped with a point-clustering strategy. Experimental results on both ScanNet-v2 and S3DIS show that our self-training approach, with extremely-sparse annotations, outperforms all existing weakly supervised methods for 3D semantic and instance segmentation by a large margin, and our results are also comparable to those of the fully supervised counterparts. Codes and models are available at https://github.com/liuzhengzhe/One-Thing-One-Click.


Inputs of chemical fertilizers are essential in almost all intensive agricultures to reach maximum crop yield, but efficiency of use, expressed as the fraction recovered in the harvested crop, is often low. The more accurate control of quantity and better timing of application could improve efficiency, and new methods for achieving this are discussed, including computer simulation. Some species and cultivars are particularly efficient in their use of soil nutrients, partly by having a low content in their tissues, but more often by special root processes and symbionts that aid uptake. Greater use of these should be possible. More exact control of crop elemental composition can be important for quality. Plant processes which control composition via uptake rate are only now being investigated, but possible methods of modifying these are considered.


Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) has been criticized for its tendency to result in regulatory, rather than radical, agendas for change. It has also been argued that when stressing the difference between different Weltanschauungs SSM takes them at face value and does not investigate the similarities between them or seek an explanation for this in terms of the structure of society. The aim of the paper is to address these critical comments made towards SSM by incorporating a concept called qualifying function as a conceptual tool for modelling and design. The concept has the potential to help people in a particular problem situation to view the situation from new and different perspectives. It also has the potential to enrich the conceptual models by directing the transformation process. Finally, it provides an alternative technique for model validation by relating the root definition and the conceptual model closer together. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to measure the developed online shopping construct in the Indian context and to examine the impact of demographics indicators on online shopping and their product preference in online shopping. The study also analyses the mediating role of consumer attitude relationship between quality of the product, price, product delivery, website information attribute, online services, and consumer buying behavior towards online shopping in the Indian context. Design/methodology/approach: An offline survey was conducted by administrating a structured questionnaire to the online shopper in selected metro cities in India. The data was collected through a structured questionnaire by applying a purposive sampling technique. Responses are recorded on a five-point Likert scale where: one stands for strongly disagree, three stands for neither disagree nor agree, and five stands for strongly agree. Originality/value: All data are collected a single time due to cost and time constraints. Longitudinal studies are more suitable to understand the customers purchasing preference. The sample of the survey was from Indian metro cities, i.e., Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata. Managerial and Social Implications: The study helps online service providers or E-retail industries to understand customer attitudes and buying behavior in India. It also contributes to formulating the best marketing/e-marketing strategies to tap potential customers in India. Hence, the study also helps the e-retailers to provide better convenient policies to tier-1 tier2 cities and rural customers in India.


Sliding mode control has been shown to be a robust and effective control approach for stabilization of nonlinear systems. However the dynamic performance of the controller is a complex function of the system parameters, which is often uncertain or partially known. This paper presents an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control for a class of underactuated nonlinear mechanical systems. An adaptive fuzzy system is used to approximate the uncertain parts of the underactuated system. The adaptive law is designed based on the Lyapunov method. The proof for the stability and the convergence of the system is presented. Robust performance of the adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control is illustrated using a gantry crane system. Simulation results demonstrate that the system output can track the reference signal in the presence of modelling uncertainties, external disturbances and parameter variation.


Notes on Contributors. Introduction. (Bernard Crick). Options for the Referendum on the Voting System. (Martin Linton). Party Democracy and Civic Renewal. (Matthew Taylor). Reforming the House of Commons. (John Maxton). Will Scottish Devolution Make a Difference? (Joyce McMillan). After Multiculturalism. (Yasmin Alibhai--Brown). How European Can We/ Will We Be? (Neal Ascherson). Culture and Citizenship. (Anthony Everitt). The Media. (Michael Brunson). Citizenship and Schools. (Richard Pring). The Need for Lifelong Learning. (Tom Schuller). Relationships Between Work and Life. (Karen Evans). The Voluntary Sector. (Isobel Lindsay). The Community Roots of Citizenship. (Henry tam). Accountability and Responsibility of Government and Public Bodies. (Anthony Barker). Citizenship in Britain: Attitudes and Behaviour. (Patrick Seyd, Paul Whiteley and Charles Pattie). The Divine Comedy of Contemporary Citizenship. (Colin Crouch). Index.


BACKGROUND
Bisphosphonates (BPs) have been reported to reduce local recurrence in giant cell tumor (GCT) of bone because of their osteoclast-suppressing effect; however, the optimal mode of delivery and the dose and duration of treatment of BPs remain to be established. To address these issues, it is first necessary to clarify the manner of action of BPs on osteoclasts. We herein evaluated the osteoclast-suppressing effect of sodium ibandronate in vitro.

METHODS
Mouse osteoclasts (OCLs) were generated in vitro using mouse bone marrow mononuclear cells. First, various concentrations of sodium ibandronate and equal amounts of phosphate-buffered saline were added to cell culture media. The number of multinucleated cells (over three nuclei) was recorded in each group, OCL formation was compared, and the most effective concentration of sodium ibandronate was determined. Then, high concentrations of sodium ibandronate were added to the experimental cell culture media; no ibandronate was given in the control group. Comparisons were made between the two groups in terms of OCL adhesion, migration, and bone resorption.

RESULTS
OCL formation was suppressed by sodium ibandronate in vitro; the most pronounced effect was observed at the concentration of 10(-5) mol/L. OCL migration and bone resorption were significantly suppressed at this concentration, though there was no effect on OCL adhesion.

CONCLUSIONS
Sodium ibandronate was effective in suppressing OCLs and decreasing resorption in GCT. The strong anti-OCL effectiveness at a high concentration in vitro indicates a topical mode of application.


Grape et al.'s systematic review reported that sciatic nerve block confers additional postoperative analgesia within the first 12 postoperative hours compared with femoral nerve block alone for patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty, which may improve recuperation [1]. However, in addition to postoperative analgesia, enhanced recovery programs for knee arthroplasty also focus on early postoperative mobility [2]. Could we invite Grape et al. to comment on whether they think the analgesic benefits of additional sciatic nerve block administration might be outweighed by sensorimotor block of the tibial and common peroneal nerve, and so reduced postoperative mobility [3]? Did the authors consider that normal common peroneal nerve function is often a prerequisite for surgical discharge after knee arthroplasty [4]? Instead of sciatic nerve block, we suggest that the optimal balance between analgesia and motor function is better achieved by augmenting femoral nerve block using local anaesthetic infiltration [5]. However, we agree with the authors that isolated tibial nerve block reduces the rate of motor blockade [6], which requires further research in terms of mobility as part of enhanced recovery after knee arthroplasty.


In order to identify the authenticity of the industrial packaging, the solution to the current watermark technology is mainly to embed the same watermark capacity into each pixel value in the image, so that the watermark capacity is small, and the anti-distortion performance is not good. Data watermarking algorithm based on system and pixel difference. First divide the carrier image into non-overlapping sub-blocks, and calculate the pixel difference of each sub-block; introduce a hybrid system to obtain different bases. According to the pixel difference, the base selection rule is defined; considering the human visual characteristics, the pixel interval adaptive adjustment mechanism is designed to improve the coding technology and complete the watermark information embedding; finally, the watermark information extraction mechanism is established to restore the watermark. The experimental results show that compared with the current data watermarking algorithm, the proposed algorithm has ideal imperceptibility, as well as larger watermark capacity and lower distortion.


This study was intended to improve the tenth graders' quality in writing a descriptive text at Madrasah Aliyah through the Directed Writing Activity strategy. Its design was action research consisting of 4 stages, namely planning the action, implementing and observing the action, and reflecting on the action. Its subjects were class X consisting of 31 students. There were 3 instruments used to collect the data needed, i.e. fieldnotes, portfolios, a scoring guide, and questionnaire. The criteria for success of this study were (1) all students participated in the teaching and learning process, (2) all students got score of equal to or more than 3 in each aspect of writing. The findings indicated that in Cycle 1, the study did not meet the criteria of success. Concerning the first criterion, it was only 99% students following the teaching and learning process. One student was absent from the first meeting. In connection with the second criterion, 18 students (58.06%) had achieved a score of equal to or more than 3 and the rest, 13 students (41.94%) got scores below 3. Because the first cycle did not meet the criteria of success, so the researcher carried out the second cycle. All students (100%) participated in the teaching and learning process. In addition to the second criterion, all students got score equal to even greater than 3 in each aspect of writing. From the findings, it can draw the conclusion that the directed writing activity is being able to upgrade the quality in writing descriptive texts of students.


Torque boost motor torque. An intensifier tool torque for tightening and loosening threaded connectors has at least one intensifier means of torque having a box part intensifier torque, having input means and having a first output means and second means output, a mechanism operatively connected to the input means for transmitting a torque from the mechanism through intensifier means to a scraping connector, so that in one operating mode the box portion of the torque twisting together with the first and second output means turn in the same direction at the same speed and torque input means and in another operating mode the box portion intensifier torque along with one the first and second output means receives a turning force in one direction while the other of the first and second output means receives a fuer za turning same in the opposite direction at a lower speed but even higher torque than the input means, and wherein one of the first and second output means turns in the one mode and the other mode while the other first and second output means turns in the one mode and reacts in the other mode.


A short-range, compact, real-time pulsed laser rangefinder is constructed based on pulsed time-of-flight (ToF) method. In order to reduce timing discrimination error and achieve high ranging accuracy, gray-value distance correction and temperature correction are proposed, and are realized with a field programmable gate array (FPGA) in a real-time application. The ranging performances—such as the maximum ranging distance, the range standard deviation, and the ranging accuracy—are theoretically calculated and experimentally studied. By means of these proposed correction methods, the verification experimental results show that the achievable effective ranging distance can be up to 8.08 m with a ranging accuracy of less than ±11 mm. The improved performance shows that the designed laser rangefinder can satisfy on-line ranging applications with high precision, fast ranging speed, small size, and low implementation cost, and thus has potential in the areas of robotics, manufacturing, and autonomous navigation.


We reviewed medication package inserts, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports, and journal publications concerning the 10 nonbiosimilar patient-applied (PA) testosterone (T) replacement therapies (TRTs) for intraday serum T patterning and blood pressure (BP) effects. Blood T concentration is circadian rhythmic in young adult eugonadal males, being highest around awakening and lowest before bedtime. T level and 24 h variation are blunted in primary and secondary hypogonadism. Utilized as recommended, most PA-TRTs achieve nonphysiologic T 24 h patterning. Only Androderm® , an evening PA transdermal patch, closely replicates the normal T circadian rhythmicity. Accurate determination of risk for BP elevation and hypertension (HTN) by PA-TRTs is difficult due to limitations of office BP measurements (OBPM) and suboptimal methods and endpoints of ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM). OBPM is subject to "White Coat" pressor effect resulting in unrepresentative BP values plus masked normotension and masked HTN, causing misclassification of approximately 45% of trial participants, both before and during treatment. Change in guideline-recommended diagnostic thresholds over time causes misclassification of an additional approximately 15% of participants. ABPM is improperly incorporated into TRT safety trials. It is done for 24 h rather than preferred 48 h; BP is oversampled during wakefulness, biasing derived 24 h mean values; 24 h mean systolic and diastolic BP (SBP, DBP) are inappropriate primary outcomes, because of not being best predictors of risk for major acute cardiovascular events (MACE); "daytime" and "nighttime" BP means referenced to clock time are reported rather than biologically relevant wake-time and sleep-time BP means; most importantly, asleep SBP mean and dipping, strongest predictors of MACE, are disregarded. © 2022 American Physiological Society. Compr Physiol 12: 1-20, 2022.


Lumbar disc herniations remain among the most common diagnoses encountered in clinical spine practice. The incidence of symptomatic lumbar disc herniations in the American population has been estimated to be 1% to 2%1, for which approximately 200,000 lumbar discectomies are performed annually2. Yet despite the frequency with which lumbar disc herniation occurs, there is substantial controversy regarding its pathophysiology and treatment. For example, from the standpoint of basic science, mounting evidence suggests that biochemical factors—in addition to the mechanical effects of the disc material on the nerve root—underlie the development of symptomatic radiculopathy, but those factors remain to be clearly elucidated. On the clinical end of the spectrum, large (five-to-fifteen-fold) variations3 in the rates of lumbar surgery in geographically adjacent areas suggest radical heterogeneity in the application of surgical criteria to this diagnosis. In this lecture, we examine the available basic science regarding the anatomy and pathophysiology of lumbar disc herniations as well as the clinical evidence supporting nonoperative compared with surgical management of this common, yet surprisingly poorly understood, orthopaedic disorder.

Structurally, the lumbar disc has three components: the anulus fibrosus, which forms the circumferential rim of the disc; the nucleus pulposus, which composes its central core; and the cartilaginous end plates on the adjacent vertebral bodies. The anulus has a multilayer lamellar architecture made of collagen fibers. Within each layer, the collagen is oriented at approximately 30° to the horizontal. Each successive layer is oriented at 30° to the horizontal in the opposite direction, leading to a "crisscross" type pattern. This composition allows the anulus, and in particular the outer anulus, which has the highest tensile modulus, to resist torsional, axial, and tensile loads. The nucleus pulposus provides resistance to axial compression and is the principal determinant of disc height because of its …


Testing software is very important, but not done well, resulting in problematic and erroneous software applications. The cause radicates from a skills mismatch between what is needed in industry, the learning needs of students, and the way testing is currently being taught at higher and vocational education institutes. The goal of this project is to identify and design seamless teaching materials for testing that are aligned with industry and learning needs. To represent the entire socio-economic environment that will benefit from the results, this project consortium is composed of a diverse set of partners ranging from universities to small enterprises. The project starts with research in sensemaking and cognitive models when doing and learning testing. Moreover, a study will be done to identify the needs of industry for training and knowledge transfer processes for testing. Based on the outcomes of this research and the study, we will design and develop capsules on teaching software testing including the instructional materials that take into account the cognitive models of students and the industry needs. Finally, we will validate these teaching testing capsules developed during the project.


We propose a method based on a scalar second-order difference-differential equation to obtain intensity chaos from a laser diode with a nonlinear delayed feedback. The method can be used for encrypting, transmitting, and decrypting a signal in a chaos-based communication system. The core of the chaotic transmitter and receiver is formed by an electrooptic modulator that is used to generate a strong reproducible nonlinearity and chaotic waveforms of extremely high Lyapunov dimensionality. The system opens the way to ultrafast chaotic communications.


The bacteriolytic action of the sera of typhoid patients has been studied extensively by two methods: first, by determining the greatest dilution of the serum that will kill a given dose of typhoid bacilli and secondly, by determining the greatest dilution of the serum that, with the addition of rabbit or guinea pig complement, will kill a given dose of typhoid bacilli. By both of these methods the titers of the patients' sera were found to be higher than those of normal human sera; with the addition of complement the patients' sera sometimes killed typhoid bacilli at a dilution of 1/500,000 or even 1/1,000,000. Korte and Steinberg (1) say that the (bacteriolytic) amboceptor content of the serum rises during the first weeks of the disease and falls towards convalescence. Denison (2) obtained similar results. The latter found that complement remains constant throughout the disease no matter what spectacular increase or decrease the immune bodies might show.


This paper presents a transformer less hybrid series active filter is proposed to enhance the power quality in single-phase systems with critical loads. The energy management and power quality issues related to electric transportation and focuses on improving electric vehicle load connection to the grid. The control strategy is designed to prevent current harmonic distortions of nonlinear loads to flow into the utility and corrects the power factor of this later. While protecting sensitive loads from voltage disturbances, sags, and swells initiated by the power sys- tem, ridded of the series transformer, the Configuration is advantageous for an industrial implementation. This polyvalent hybrid topology allowing the harmonic isolation and compensation of voltage distortions could absorb or inject the auxiliary power to the grid. Aside from practical analysis, this paper also investigates on the influence of gains and delays in the real-time controller stability. The simulations results presented in this paper demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed topology using MATLAB software.


Ternary Zr-TM-Al (TM: Cu, Ni or Co) bulk glassy alloys were fabricated to clarify the relations between the thermal and mechanical features. These alloy systems show the distinct ternary eutectic point, and a bulk glassy phase also forms around the ternary eutectic composition. We determine the 12 standard Zr-TM-Al bulk glassy alloys in this study. In the twelve standard Zr-TM-Al bulk glassy alloys, the glass-transition temperature has large positive correlation coefficient with Young's modulus and Vickers hardness. The melting temperature has large negative correlation coefficient with Charpy impact value, fracture strain and volume change due to structural relaxation. Furthermore, in order to recognize the origin of ductility, Poisson's ratio (metallic bond nature) and volume change (free volume) were also examined.


Small-scale urban dairy farms (n = 16) in and around Jimma, Ethiopia with cross-bred (Bos indicus × Bos taurus) cows were enrolled in a double-blinded intervention study to investigate the effect of a trace element supplementation programme on trace element status and milk concentrations as well as performance [body condition score (BCS), milk yield, leptin], milk composition, antioxidant status (ferric-reducing ability of plasma (FRAP), thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS)], blood biochemistry, serum proteins and immune response (antibody titre upon rabies vaccination). The farms were allocated to a (1) placebo or (2) Cu, Zn, Se, Co and I supplementation treatment for 150 d. On days 0 and 120, four lactating cows per farm were sampled for milk and plasma, and on day 150 for serum, following primo-vaccination. Cu deficiency was present in 17% and marginal Se deficiency in 30% of initially sampled cows, while no Zn shortage was detected. Over 120 days, trace element supplementation caused a bigger increase in plasma Se and Cu concentrations, but also a larger decrease of plasma Fe concentrations. A larger increase in milk Se concentrations was observed in the supplemented group, whereas none of the other elements were affected. BCS decreased more over time in the supplemented group. None of the other parameters of performance and antioxidant status nor milk composition or blood biochemistry was affected by treatment. Antibody response to rabies vaccination did not differ between groups, whereas α1-globulins tended to be lower and β-globulins tended to be higher in the supplemented group. In conclusion, despite improved Cu and Se status and Se concentrations in milk, cows on tropical urban dairy farms did not seem to benefit from trace element supplementation, with respect to the parameters investigated.


Dizygotic twin girls with typical infantile neuroaxonal dystrophy (INAD) were studied at age 19 months with computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Both methods showed distinct atrophy confined to the cerebellum and MRI revealed diffuse signal abnormality of the cerebellar parenchyma. This neuroimaging evidence for selective early involvement of the cerebellum is consistent with both the typical presenting symptoms and the gross pathological findings in the disorder. Neuroimaging may aid in differentiation of INAD from other neurodegenerative disorders with onset in late infancy, providing impetus for diagnostic biopsy and early genetic counseling.


In intensive culture, the two species of brackish water tilapia, T. guineensis and S. melanotheron , have proved disappointing. Even under most favourable conditions, i. e . the monosex male culture of S. melanotheron, a poor growth rate (about 0.5 g.d−1 ) and a mediocre feed conversion do not presage a profitable aquaculture exploitation. On the other hand, extensive culture trials using the original "acadja-enclosure" technique have given very encouraging results. Annual fish yields of more than 8 t/ha, including 70 to 80% of S. melanotheron of marketable size, are possible without any artificial feeding.


Objective Although intracranial stents have expanded the spectrum of aneurysms amenable to coiling, closed cell design variants can be prone to incomplete stent apposition around tightly curved arterial bends. A case is presented illustrating the technical ramifications of this phenomenon during subsequent treatment. Clinical presentation A 49-year-old woman who had previously undergone Enterprise (closed cell design) stent mediated coiling of a wide necked ophthalmic carotid artery aneurysm was noted to harbor residual central filling on follow-up imaging, and was scheduled for additional embolization. Intervention During retreatment, performed with a second concentrically placed Enterprise and further coil packing using the jailing technique, the proximal portion of the second Enterprise stent failed to expand as expected. C-arm cone beam CT (CBCT) revealed the second stent to have been navigated into and out of the orphaned lumen created by the incompletely apposed first Enterprise stent at the carotid siphon. This stent entanglement resulted in the formation of a trapped proximal double-barrel lumen in the curved segment and resolution to a single barrel lumen in the distal straight segment of the parent vessel facing the aneurysm neck. Conclusion Caution is urged when navigating around curved vessel segments through previously deployed intracranial stents, which may be incompletely apposed to the vessel wall, to avoid deleterious and potentially catastrophic entanglement. CBCT imaging may be helpful in delineating the spatial relationship of previously deployed intracranial stents during subsequent endovascular navigation.


Background: The alignment of the neck and shoulder is important in people with forward head posture. However, previous studies have mainly conducted fragmentary studies on the neck and shoulders, and studies on the combined movement of the neck and shoulders are incomplete.
Objective: To investigate the effects of 6 week dynamic exercise program using Thera-band on craniovertebral angle (CVA) in adults with forward head posture.
Design: Quasi-experimental study.
Methods: The study was conducted on 24 adults with forward head posture and experimented with neck and shoulder exercises and divided them into groups of neck exercises, shoulder exercises, and neck and shoulder exercises to measure CVA values before and after the experiment. The neck exercise program included flexion and extension muscles of the neck and shoulder exercises included dynamic exercise of the upper extremities such as the trapezius muscles and serratus anterior muscle. The CVA results were measured using PA200.
Results: Following the interventions, neck exercise group showed significant improvement in CVA (P .05). However, both groups showed some positive results. Significant differences were seen in the comparisons between the three groups (P<.05), and the results of the posthoc test showed significant differences in neck exercise group and shoulder exercise, neck exercise and combine exercise group.
Conclusion: This study suggested that the Thera-band neck exercise is beneficial for foward head posture patients and is expected to be used in clinical trials.


In this thesis, we propose a multitask learning based method to improve Neural Sign Language Translation (NSLT) consisting of two parts, a tokenization layer and Neural Machine Translation (NMT). The tokenization part focuses on how Sign Language (SL) videos should be represented to be fed into the other part. It has not been studied elaborately whereas NMT research has attracted several researchers contributing enormous advancements. Up to now, there are two main input tokenization levels, namely frame-level and gloss-level tokenization. Glosses are world-like intermediate presentation and unique to SLs. Therefore, we aim to develop a generic sign-level tokenization layer so that it is applicable to other domains without further effort. We begin with investigating current tokenization approaches and explain their weaknesses with several experiments. To provide a solution, we adapt Transfer Learning, Multitask Learning and Unsupervised Domain Adaptation into this research to leverage additional supervision. We succeed in enabling knowledge transfer between SLs and improve translation quality by 5 points in BLEU-4 and 8 points in ROUGE scores. Secondly, we show the effects of body parts by extensive experiments in all the tokenization approaches. Apart from these, we adopt 3D-CNNs to improve efficiency in terms of time and space. Lastly, we discuss the advantages of sign-level tokenization over gloss-level tokenization. To sum up, our proposed method eliminates the need for gloss level annotation to obtain higher scores by providing additional supervision by utilizing weak supervision sources.


Abstract The interpretation of an observed spatially averaged coherency (SPAC) spectrum assumes spatial and temporal stationarity of the microtremor wave field. This hypothesis gains in importance when recording coherency spectra (COHs) with a limited number of sensors. SPAC observations were recorded at three separate sites in Launceston (Australia) using a pair of sensors, triangular arrays, and hexagonal arrays to study the effect of the number of sensors, length of time series, and frequency interval for evaluating the shear-wave velocity (SWV) profile. The imaginary component of the observed complex COH is separated into roughened and smoothed parts. The root mean square of the roughened imaginary COH (rms(Im)) is an expression of the statistical noise in the observed coherency, while the behavior of the smoothed imaginary COH gives some indication of the distribution of the microtremor wave field. The mean square of residuals (MSR) between observed and theoretical COHs is an indication of the confidence level on the SWV profile interpreted. MSR values evaluated at pairs of sensors of different orientations give some indication of the azimuth distribution of the microtremor wave field and provide some guidelines on the field procedure when using a limited number of sensors to record SPAC observations. Observed COHs at site KPK demonstrate the importance of recording longer time series to increase the stability of the observed COHs. The increasing level of statistical noise with increasing frequency at site DBL suggests the SPAC method can be used with a single pair of sensors by restricting its upper frequency limit to the first minimum of the COH. Low values of MSR on observed COHs from most pairs of sensors further strengthen that hypothesis. SPAC observations at site RGB give further insights into the capabilities of the SPAC method to evaluate the SWV profile in limited azimuth microtremor wave-field distribution.


openly accepting the patronage of those commercial concerns. I refer to a recent report' of the College of General Practitioners, which acknowledges acceptance of numerous valuable gifts from various well-known pharmaceutical firms. I feel it is a sad commentary on the dignity of the medical profession that such an important establishment, with a growing influence in the lives of the younger generation of general practitioners, should so compromise itself and the medical profession at large. -I am, etc.,


Blockchains have a storage scalability issue. Their size is not bounded and they grow indefinitely as time passes. As of August 2017, the Bitcoin blockchain is about 120 GiB big while it was only 75 GiB in August 2016. To benefit from Bitcoin full security model, a bootstrapping node has to download and verify the entirety of the 120 GiB. This poses a challenge for low-resource devices such as smartphones. Thankfully, an alternative exists for such devices which consists of downloading and verifying just the header of each block. This partial block verification enables devices to reduce their bandwidth requirements from 120 GiB to 35 MiB.However, this drastic decrease comes with a safety cost implied by a partial block verification. In this work, we enable low-resource devices to fully verify subchains of blocks without having to pay the onerous price of a full chain download and verification; a few additional MiB of bandwidth suffice. To do so, we propose the design of diet nodes that can securely query full nodes for shards of the UTXO set, which is needed to perform full block verification and can otherwise only be built by sequentially parsing the chain.


An important problem when moving an application to the cloud consists in selecting the most suitable cloud plan (among those available from cloud providers) for the application deployment, with the goal of finding the best match between application requirements and plan characteristics. If a user wishes to move multiple applications at the same time, this task can be complicated by the fact that different applications might have different (and possibly contrasting) requirements. In this paper, we propose an approach enabling users to select a cloud plan that best balances the satisfaction of the requirements of multiple applications. Our solution operates by first ranking the available plans for each application (matching plan characteristics and application requirements) and then by selecting, through a consensus-based process, the one that is considered more acceptable by all applications.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Differentiating pseudoprogression, a radiation-induced treatment effect, from tumor progression on imaging is a substantial challenge in glioblastoma management. Unfortunately, guidelines set by the Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology criteria are based solely on bidirectional diametric measurements of enhancement observed on T1WI and T2WI/FLAIR scans. We hypothesized that quantitative 3D shape features of the enhancing lesion on T1WI, and T2WI/FLAIR hyperintensities (together called the lesion habitat) can more comprehensively capture pathophysiologic differences across pseudoprogression and tumor recurrence, not appreciable on diametric measurements alone. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 105 glioblastoma studies from 2 institutions were analyzed, consisting of a training (n = 59) and an independent test (n = 46) cohort. For every study, expert delineation of the lesion habitat (T1WI enhancing lesion and T2WI/FLAIR hyperintense perilesional region) was obtained, followed by extraction of 30 shape features capturing 14 "global" contour characteristics and 16 "local" curvature measures for every habitat region. Feature selection was used to identify most discriminative features on the training cohort, which were evaluated on the test cohort using a support vector machine classifier. RESULTS: The top 2 most discriminative features were identified as local features capturing total curvature of the enhancing lesion and curvedness of the T2WI/FLAIR hyperintense perilesional region. Using top features from the training cohort (training accuracy = 91.5%), we obtained an accuracy of 90.2% on the test set in distinguishing pseudoprogression from tumor progression. CONCLUSIONS: Our preliminary results suggest that 3D shape attributes from the lesion habitat can differentially express across pseudoprogression and tumor progression and could be used to distinguish these radiographically similar pathologies.


Background: Abdominal pain is very common among children and adolescents. There are many causes of recurrent abdominal pain in children, but parents may find it surprising that it is very common for there to be no clear cause identified for childhood abdominal pain even though examinations and tests have been done. Objective : This study was carried out to identify the demographic profile, causes and outcomes of adolescents admitted with recurrent abdominal pain. Methods : This Retrospective descriptive study was carried out at the Adolescent Unit of Dhaka Shishu (Children) Hospital during the period from 1st October 2015 to 31st March 2017 among 102 adolescents with history of recurrent abdominal pain after following the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Collected data were statistically analyzed with the use of the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) program version 15. Results: Out of 1080 total 102 (9.44%) adolescents were admitted with recurrent abdominal pain of which majority subjects were male (57%). Urban were 61.76% and rest were rural (38.24%). The specific diagnosis pattern revealed that majority had Functional abdominal pain (44.12%) followed by Urinary tract infection (UTI) (20.59%), Peptic ulcer diseases (13.73%), Gastroesophagial reflux diseases (GERD) (11.76%), Abdominal tuberculosis (5.88%), Pelvic inflammatory diseases (4.90%), Cholecystitis (1.96%) and Abdominal migraine (0.98%). Conclusion: Recurrent abdominal pain is common among adolescents. Functional abdominal pain is the most common cause of recurrent abdominal pain. An uniform management protocol should be developed for proper investigations to minimize the cost and for judicious use of drugs in order to help these adolescents with recurrent abdominal pain. Bangladesh J Child Health 2017; VOL 41 (1) :4-8


We extend our investigation of magnetic field evolution in three-dimensional flows driven by the stationary accretion shock instability (SASI) with a suite of higher-resolution idealized models of the post-bounce core-collapse supernova environment. Our magnetohydrodynamic simulations vary in initial magnetic field strength, rotation rate, and grid resolution. Vigorous SASI-driven turbulence inside the shock amplifies magnetic fields exponentially; but while the amplified fields reduce the kinetic energy of small-scale flows, they do not seem to affect the global shock dynamics. The growth rate and final magnitude of the magnetic energy are very sensitive to grid resolution, and both are underestimated by the simulations. Nevertheless, our simulations suggest that neutron star magnetic fields exceeding 1014 G can result from dynamics driven by the SASI, even for non-rotating progenitors.


Brain tumors are experimentally inducible in adult and newborn animals and in the offspring by transplacental administration of brain-specific carcinogens, such as Methylnitrosourea (MNU) and Ethylnitrosourea (ENU). These compounds are quite reliable in producing tumors in the offspring with a well-defined pattern. These NU-induced tumors can be considered an important model-system mainly for the investigation of the early stages in the tumorigenesis of endocranic neoplasias.


This book is organized into thirteen chapters that range over the relevant approaches and tools in data integration, modeling, analysis and knowledge discovery for signaling pathways. Having in mind that the book is also addressed for students, the contributors present the main results and techniques in an easily accessed and understood way together with many references and instances. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to signaling pathway, including motivations, background knowledge and relevant data mining techniques for pathway data analysis. Chapter 2 presents a variety of data sources and data analysis with respect to signaling pathway, including data integration and relevant data mining applications. Chapter 3 presents a framework to measure the inconsistency between heterogenous biological databases. A GO-based (genome ontology) strategy is proposed to associate different data sources. Chapter 4 presents identification of positive regulation of kinase pathways in terms of association rule mining. The results derived from this project could be used when predicting essential relationships and enable a comprehensive understanding of kinase pathway interaction. Chapter 5 presents graphical model-based methods to identify regulatory network of protein kinases. A framework using negative association rule mining is introduced in Chapter 6 to discover featured inhibitory regulation patterns and the relationships between involved regulation factors. It is necessary to not only detect the objects that exhibit a positive regulatory role in a kinase pathway but also to discover those objects that inhibit the regulation. Chapter 7 presents methods to model ncRNA secondary structure data in terms of stems, loops and marked labels, and illustrates how to find matched structure patterns for a given query. Chapter 8 shows an interval-based distance metric for computing the distance between conserved RNA secondary structures. Chapter 9 presents a framework to explore structural and functional patterns of RNA pseudoknot structure according to probability matrix. Chapter 10 presents methods to model miRNA data and identify miRNA interaction of cross-species and within-species. Chapter 11 presents an approach to measure the importance of miRNA site and the adjacent base by using information redundancy and develops a novel measure to identify strongly correlated infrequent itemsets. The discover association rules not only present important structural features in miRNAs, but also promote a comprehensive understanding of regulatory roles of miRNAs. Chapter 12 presents bioinformatics techniques for protein kinase data management and analysis, kinase pathways and drug targets, and describes their potential application in pharmaceutical industry. Chapter 13 presents a summary of the chapters and give a brief discussion to some emerging issues.


This paper analyzes the bilateral ties of Kuala Lumpur-Beijing over four decades in the political, economic and socio-cultural fields. Firstly, the paper discusses the historical background of Malaysia-China informal relations from the Kingdom of Malacca; the British era; during the early stages of Malaysia's independence; as well as the Cold War era before the establishment of diplomatic ties. Secondly, the paper analyzes the beginning of Kuala LumpurBeijing diplomatic relations from 1974 until the demise of the Malayan Communist Party in 1989. Thirdly, this is followed by an examination of bilateral developments between 1990 and 2008. The section analyzes the extent to which the principle of openness in Malaysian foreign policies was followed, cooperation within the framework of regionalism as well as how the rise of China's economic power has had positive impact on bilateral relations. More significantly, the paper then extends the discussion to Malaysia-China relations under Mohd Najib Abdul Razak which began in 2008 and ended with the advent of the new government of Pakatan Harapan in Malaysia in May 2018. Presently, Malaysia's foreign policy towards China is facing a revamp under Dr. Mahathir Mohamad's leadership. Yet the paper argues that the current government's actions is seen to enhance comprehensive cooperation, particularly in the political and economic spheres.


SUMMARY Nature has always inspired engineers. This research tries to understand the contribution of snake anatomy in its locomotion from engineering point of view to be adopted in the design of snake robots. Rib design and muscular structure of snake robots will have a great impact on snake robot flexibility, weight, and actuators' torque. It will help to eliminate wheels in snake robots during serpentine locomotion. The result of this research shows that snakes can establish the required peg points on smooth surfaces by deflecting the body and ribs. The results are verified by both field observations and simulation.


A recent surge of interest in building energy consumption has generated a tremendous amount of energy data, which boosts the data-driven algorithms for broad application throughout the building industry. In addition, occupancy behaviour is an important influencer of energy consumption in building. Currently the shallow understanding of occupancy has leaded to considerable performance gap between prediction and measurements of energy use. In this work, data-driven approach, mathematical approach and blind system identification model are developed to investigate building energy consumption and indoor occupancy behavior.
As for the occupants' "active" influence in building energy, we characterize residential appliance usage utilizing the K-means clustering approach through case studies and present the complex residential electricity behaviors in Shanghai. Similarly, the occupant's "passive" role also has impact on the building performance. Among different passive occupant behaviors, window opening action and occupant profile have been deeply investigated in our research. Furthermore, in order to identify the impact of occupancy behaviors on building energy, prediction models based on the artificial neural network (ANN) are established to predict the electricity consumption of the air-conditioning system at the next time step, the superiority of the ANN model with the supplementary input of estimated current occupancy is verified by comparing the ANN model results without the input occupancy.
In summary, the proposed approaches provide a new and detailed way for engineers and building operators to better understand occupant behaviors and their impacts on building performance. Therefore, dedicated energy-prediction models with consideration of occupancy provide an opportunity to couple the electric grid and the building's control actions, and to be utilised by buildings and utility companies to simultaneously optimise their performance


With the rapid development and implementation of Internet technologies, well-designed/tuned controllers obtained from control design without network are desired, which can be further realized in remote control systems directly. Theoretically, available networked control system (NCS) designs are developed with a known system model and time delay. However, the nature of network-induced delay is unpredictable, which depends on network protocol and hardware, and available design approaches usually become impractical in real concerns. The study presents an NCS structure with the proposed perfect delay compensation (PDC) scheme, which is constructed with modified butterfly elements to deal with unknown delay effects without system model and delay information. Both analytical and simulation results prove that the proposed model-free PDC scheme effectively compensates for the unknown network-induced delays. Furthermore, the proposed PDC is carried out using Ethernet, and a well-tuned PI controller for the AC servo motor was directly networked to the remote control system. Experimental results indicate that the proposed PDC renders satisfactory and desirable design results in real NCS applications.


Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) have been defined as an acquired disorder characterized by recurrent symptoms, referable to multiple organ systems, occurring in response to demonstrable exposure to many chemically unrelated compounds at doses far below those established in the general population to cause harmful effects; no single widely accepted test of physiologic function can be shown to correlate with symptoms (Cullen MR, 1987). The etiology of MCS is hypothesized as a toxicant-induced loss of tolerance to multiple chemicals with subsequent manifestation of multiple-organ symptoms triggered by low-level exposure to such chemicals. The involvement of multiple organs might be attributed to a neurogenic switching mechanism. The final diagnosis of MCS is to rely on provocation of symptoms in a exposure chamber by a double-blind method. Relations of MCS to allergy, poisoning, psychogenic illness, chemical sensitivity, idiopathic environmental intolerances etc. are discussed in terms of case definition and etiology of these disorders.


The treatment of intrauterine masses, such as endometrial polyps and leiomyomas, has undergone a technological revolution in the past few decades. Gynecologists may now choose from a variety of unipolar and bipolar resectoscopes as well as an assortment of both mechanical and bipolar hysteroscopic morcellators. We present a comparison of these technologies to better practitioners understanding of the strengths and limitations of these devices.


The ventriculograms of patients with chronic postinfarction aneurysm of the heart were studied with the use of separate analysis of the contraction indices of the functioning and non-functioning parts of the left ventricular myocardium. Relatively high indices of the ejection fraction of the functioning part of the myocardium with low indices of the total ejection fraction were noted. A correlative dependence was found between the total ejection fraction and the ratio of the volumes of the nonfunctioning part of the myocardium during systole and diastole to the total volume of the left ventricle during the same phases, which is evidence that these indices are important in appraising myocardial contractile function in aneurysm of the heart.


Objectives : This study was designed to make beneficial proposal for clinical application on some of the most common disorders treated by Oriental medicine by analyzing treatment process and prognosis. Methods : Number of peculiar attributes pertaining to a specific disorder were analyzed and based on those attributes, patterns associated with process and prognosis were interpreted in reference with classical literatures. Results : 1. Factors which can influence the progression and prognosis include time of onset, intensity of symptoms, course of passage, effects of risk factors, condition of the patient`s righteous qi(正氣), accuracy of differential diagnosis made by the practitioner, accuracy of treatment methods, and other unexpected external influences. 2. Correlation between the condition of disorders and treatment progression is closely associated with proper treatment procedures and performances. The time of onset and intensity play critical roles in the treatment process and prognosis and showed pattern tendency with mutual interactions. 3. When there is complication of various disorders, it is ideal to give priority to more urgent illness and take care of moderate illness later. If there isn`t any correlation between disorders, treat them in the order of acute to chronic disorders. The approach is reversed when disorders are related, treating in the order of most chronic to most acute. 4. In a case of complication of various disorders, depending on the disorder being acute or chronic, intensity, and accuracy of treatments, either a domino effect or gradual fade out of symptoms were witnessed. 5. The concept of "Five Evils Theory" according to Nan Jing(Difficult Classic) is essential in grasping disease progression due to interrelationships between zangfu organs. Conclusions : Predicting of disease process and prognosis for vast array of disorders treated by Oriental medicine is a very difficult task, yet evaluating the disorder`s peculiar properties and influential factors resulted in few principles which can be effectively applied into clinical applications.


ABSTRACT THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTERAnna Caroline PeplerDoctor of PhilosophyCOCHLEAR DEAD REGIONS IN HEARING-IMPAIRED ADULTSDecember 2013Cochlear dead regions (DRs) are areas in the cochlea where inner hair cells and/or neurones are functioning so poorly that a sound that causes peak basilar membrane motion in that region is more efficiently detected via off-frequency listening. The Threshold Equalising Noise (TEN) test is a clinical test procedure for detecting DRs. Psychophysical Tuning Curves (PTCs) can be used to identify the boundary frequency of the DR although the clinical importance of doing this has yet to be determined. Some studies have suggested that the reduction of amplification well inside the DR may be beneficial; however, other studies have been unable to replicate these findings in a more typical clinical population. Three studies were completed in order to:1. determine the prevalence of DRs in a clinical sample of the UK adult population,2. investigate repeatability, agreement and clinical feasibility of the TEN-test and fast PTCs in a clinical setting, and 3. determine the benefit of high-frequency amplification in ears with and without DRs, when listening to nonsense syllable speech material in quiet and babble. In the first study, 343 hearing-impaired adults were tested for DRs using the TEN-test. In total, 36% (95% confidence interval 31-41) of these adults had a DR in at least one ear, but frequently at 4 kHz only. Only 3% (1-5) of participants had a DR spanning more than three consecutive frequencies. These findings suggest that DRs usually only span 1 or 2 clinically-relevant frequencies. In the second study, the TEN-test was completed on 70 ears at frequencies between 0.5 and 4 kHz. Fast PTCs were measured on 20 ears at ? 2 frequencies. The TEN-test and fast PTCs were highly repeatable on retest (97% and 100%, respectively). There was 87% agreement between the two procedures in terms of the presence of off-frequency listening, with the TEN-test less likely to detect a DR than fast PTCs. Compared to the TEN-test, fast PTCs had a 10% lower ?conclusive finding? rate and the test duration was typically 40 minutes longer. Therefore, the TEN-test is more clinically acceptable, but it may underestimate the extent of a DR because of its inability to precisely identify the boundary frequency. In the third study, 18 ears with a high-frequency DR and 18 matched ears without a DR were tested. Vowel-Consonant-Vowel (VCV) stimuli were presented in quiet and babble when listening with an unfiltered and three low-pass filtered hearing aid settings. Best performance was obtained in the unfiltered condition; however the DR group performed significantly poorer than the controls in babble. There was no evidence to support reducing amplification in ears with a DR. However, participants with DRs may benefit from counseling about the limitations of listening in noise. In summary, DRs are relatively prevalent in hearing-impaired adults and can be diagnosed most efficiently in a clinical setting using the TEN-test. However, DRs are often restricted to a narrow frequency range and, in the typical adult clinical population, there is no evidence to support deviating from prescription targets.


A study was conducted at the southern belt of Kaski District during August 2003 to July 2004 to identify natural enemies of honey bee Apis cerana Fab. and associated problems in beekeeping. Four species of wasps viz: Vespa velutina, V. bicolor, V. tropica and V. basalis were observed preying on Apis cerana. Six species of Ants were collected from hive attacking honey bees viz Componatus sp, Sima sp, Monomorium sp, Myrmica sp and two unidentified. Four species of spider viz Palatar indicus, Ariope areuta and the other two belonging to family Theridae and Araneidae were collected from the hives. Two species of Birds, Green bee- Eater and Drongo; One species of Beetle, One Chalcid ( Antrocephalus sp) were identified.The disease Thaisac brood, Mite, Wax Moth and pesticide damage, deforestation, absconding of bees, lack of technical knowledge were important problems for apiculture in study area.   Key words: Apis cerana F; Enemies;  Pesticide;  Absconding;  Kaski  Journal of Natural History Museum Vol. 24, 2009 Page: 89-95


The purpose of this study is to compare two methods of correcting the bias of a GCM; namely statistical correction performed a posteriori (offline) as a function of forecast length, and correction done within the model integration (online). The model errors of a low resolution GCM are estimated by the 6‐hour forecast residual averaged over several years and used to correct the model. Both the offline and online corrections substantially reduce the model bias when applied to independent data. Their performance in correcting the model error is comparable at all lead times, but for lead times longer than 1‐day the online corrected forecasts have smaller RMS forecast errors and larger anomaly correlations than offline corrected forecasts. These results indicate that the online correction reduces not only the growth of the bias but also the nonlinear growth of non‐constant (state‐dependent and random) forecast errors during the model integration.


This paper presents the performance characteristics evaluation of a carbon nanotubes (CNTs) based MEMS pressure sensor with piezoresistive gauge factor, which is much greater than polysilicon based sensors. Polysilicon is a piezoresistive material used for MEMS sensor because of one of its advantages is that much higher sensitivity to strain changes than metals. Recently, Nanotechnology is introduced to produce this material. Using the dielectrophoreti c (OEP) Nanoassembly of CNTs and a MEMS-compatible process, successfully integrated bundled strands of CNT sensing elements on arrays of Polymethylmethac rylate (PMMA) diaphragms. The piezoresistive effects of CNT were realized by measuring the pressure-resista nce dependency of the sensor and results obtained showed that the CNT-based micro sensor is capable of sensing input pressure variations. The mechanical properties of the diaphragms are investigated theoretically. In this work, Matlab environment is employed to model this sensor and accurate model is devised to study its performance. Simulation results are obtained and compared with published experimental work and full argument is obtained. The proposed model allows handling different parameters affecting the performance ofthis sensor.


The van der Waals liquid ortho-terphenyl has long been used as a model system in the study of the glass transition. Motivated by mode-coupling theory, extensive experiments have been undertaken to monitor the onset of structural relaxation on microscopic time- and lengthscales. Using in particular quasielastic neutron scattering, the decay of density and tagged-particle correlations has been measured as a function of temperature, pressure and wavenumber. A consistent picture is developed, in which the mode-coupling singularity appears as a change of transport mechanism in the moderately viscous liquid, at temperatures far above the conventional (caloric) glass transition.


Studiegángen 17-306 5-41681 Gothenburg Sweden lessdepressionin the Chinese(Xu, 1987).Excessive emotional activity of any kind may causeimbalance of Yin and Yang, blockade of Qi, malfunction of organs and henceillness. More specifically, violent anger is hurtful to Yin, and violent joy is hurtful to Yang.A person with an irascible personality is described as hou-qu-ta rather than †̃¿ borderline' amongMandarin-speakingChinese(Lin eta!, 1980). Sorrow counteractsanger, lending somecredenceto the psychoanalytic theory that anger repressedand turned againstthe selfbecomesdepression. In investigating the Korean culture-bound †̃¿ anger' syndrome of Hwa-Byung, Lin et a! (1992) recently suggestthe addition of an †̃¿ anger syndrome' in the DSM—IIIsystem.Notwithstanding the social risk of legitimising anger and aggressionas diseasestates, morbid anger deserves a fair share of the enormous and not alwaysfruitful researchefforts that Western psychiatry has elected to spend on depressive and anxiety states.


Recovery of depth information plays a key role in the micromanipulation robot system for performing micron or sub-micron orientation and measurement tasks. Based on the model of defocused optical system and combined with characteristics of frequency response curves of defocus optical transfer function (OTF), a new method of estimating the depth information for micro-manipulation is proposed. The depth information can be calculated by using the depth equation derived from a sequence of calibration images when acquiring the energy parameter of the micromanipulator in the certain position. We experiment with the choice of the high-pass cut-off frequency in order to identify the optimum filter for the specific micromanipulation tool. Experimental results show that the method is efficient, robust, and useful in practical applications.


This investigation was carried out in order to demonstrate the occurrence of carbon-phosphorus compound ( 2 -AEP) in the sixteen species of edible shellfishs. Edible shellfishs had previously been shown to contain of 2 -AEP, the present study has added a number of new edible shellfishs to the positive list. 2 -AEP has been found large amount in chloroform-methanol soluble (lipid) fraction and in the TCA-insoluble fraction. About twenty-one mg, nine mg, five mg and two mg of the 2 -AEP were isolated from the lipid of the TENGUNISHI, Hemifusus ternatanus, UCHIWAEBI, Ibacus ciliatus, GAZAMI, Portunus trituberculatus and UNI, Hygrosoma hoplacantha, respectively. The compound was purified with a combination of ion exchange column chromatography with Dowex 5 0-X 4 and Dowex 1 -X 8 resins. The infrared spectrum of the isolated compound showed an absorption band at 1180 cm-1 due to C-P bond, and was essentially identical with that of the authentic 2 -AEP. Upon hrdrolysis of the compound by strong acid, neither change in the chromatographic behaviors of this compound nor liberation of inorganic phosphate was observed. The stability of the compound to acid hydrolysis suggested the presence of a C-P bond. On comparison with synthetic compound, the aqueous hydrolysis product behaved like 2 -aminoethylphosphonic acid on thin layer chromatogram. It has been demonstrated that the sixteen species of edible shellfish used here contains high concentration of the 2 -AEP.


It is commonly stated that decoherence in open quantum systems is due to growing entanglement with an environment. In practice, however, surprisingly often decoherence may equally well be described by random unitary dynamics without invoking a quantum environment at all. For a single qubit, for instance, pure decoherence (or phase damping) is always of random unitary type. Here, we construct a simple example of true quantum decoherence of two qubits: we present a feasible phase damping channel of which we show that it cannot be understood in terms of random unitary dynamics. We give a very intuitive geometrical measure for the positive distance of our channel to the convex set of random unitary channels and find remarkable agreement with the so-called Birkhoff defect based on the norm of complete boundedness.


BACKGROUND
An increasing number of patients are requiring multiple retransplants. We assessed outcomes of third and fourth kidney transplants, to aid decision making on the most suitable donor type.

METHODS
Data were collected retrospectively for 2561 transplants, including 69 third and 8 fourth, performed from 2000 to 2017. Demographics and outcomes for the combined third/fourth group were compared to first and second transplants. Within the third/fourth kidney transplant group, comparisons were made between deceased donors (n = 39), live donor HLA-compatible (n = 23) and -incompatible (n = 13) transplants, as well as between standard (n = 25) and extended-criteria (n = 14) deceased donor transplants.

RESULTS
Patient survival did not differ significantly by transplant number (P = 0.532), whereas death-censored graft survival declined progressively, from 89% at 5 years in first, 85% in second and 74% in the third/fourth transplant group (P < 0.001). Within the combined third/fourth transplant subgroup, 5-year graft survival was found to be 100% in recipients of HLA-compatible live donors, compared to 75% in deceased donors and 53% in HLA-incompatible live donors, although this difference did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.083). No significant difference in patient survival (P = 0.356) or complication rates (P = 0.757) were detected between these groups. For recipients of deceased donors in the third/fourth transplant group, there were no significant differences between standard versus extended-criteria donors for any of the outcomes considered.

CONCLUSIONS
Despite variable functional outcomes, third and fourth kidney transplant recipients experience comparable patient survival rates to first and second transplants, regardless of the donor type. In selected patients, HLA-incompatible live donors and extended-criteria deceased donors should be considered.


BELATEDLY, American industry is recognizing the necessity for a complete and rounded medical service, physical and mental. The tensions and exigencies of the war years have pointed up the need for attacking the medical problem at its point of greatest stress-industry. Extremely valuable work has been done during 1946-1949. The articles cited in this chapter represent about one-twentieth of those reviewed to obtain a cross-section of the general thinking in the industrial world by medical men, nurses, psychologists, and management people. Despite the large number of articles and books written during this period, the literature has lagged far behind industry's awareness of its responsibilities and the achievement it has made as a result. Particularly has this been true in the field of industrial mental hygiene. There is an abundance of material based on speculation and theory but a marked scarcity of contributions to the literature of factual experience in the field.


Bidentate chelation, meso-2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), was used as a stabilizer for the synthesis of CdTe quantum dots (QDs). The bidentate chelate QDs, characterized with FT-IR, PL, and UV/Vis spectroscopy; element analysis; and high-resolution transmission electron microscope, exhibited surface traps due to the large surface/volume ratio of QD particle and the steric hindrance of the DMSA molecule. The unpassivated surface of the QDs produced a narrower band gap than the core and electrochemiluminescent (ECL) emission at relatively low cathodic potential. In air-saturated pH 7.0 buffer, the QDs immobilized on electrode surface showed an intense ECL emission peak at -0.85 V (vs. Ag/AgCl). H(2)O(2) produced from electrochemical reduction of dissolved oxygen was demonstrated to be the co-reactant, which avoided the need of strong oxidant as the co-reactant and produced a sensitive analytical method for peroxidase-related analytes. Using hydroquinone/horseradish peroxidase/H(2)O(2) as a model system, a new, reagentless, phenolic, ECL biosensor for hydroquinone was constructed, based on the quenching effect of ECL emission of QDs by consumption of co-reactant H(2)O(2). The biosensor showed a linear range of 0.2-10 μM with acceptable stability and reproducibility. This work opens new avenues in the search for new ECL emitters with excellent analytical performance and makes QDs a more attractive alternative in biosensing.


As participants in the Building Community through Social Justice Learning and Living Cohort (BCSJLLC) our goal is to advance the cause of literacy in the Miami Valley through service learning. The BSCJLLC's community partner, the non-profit organization, Project READ, trained us to tutor students in grades K-3 and young adults. Members of our group were then placed by Project READ in tutoring assignments in DECA with high school students and in Cleveland Elementary School with first and third grade students. Our mission was to help improve the student's vocabulary and ability to read. We were consistently challenged by the different ages and skill levels of the individuals we were instructing; and the challenge to encourage and not direct our students. We found that developing personal relationships with our students helped us to encourage their overall learning and specifically helped them to gain confidence in their ability to improve their reading and vocabulary skills. Working with students in Dayton's inner city schools allowed us to see firsthand the education disparities that exist in America. As students, we believe that all people in a just society should be able to read and write. In our presentation we will reflect on how the combination of our service learning, the classes we have taken in our cohort, and our training by Project READ worked to advance the common good of the students we tutored. We will also explore the importance of our work in the context of the Marianist ideals of Lead, Learn, and Serve. Fostering Literacy in Dayton City Schools A Social Justice Learning and Living Cohort Community Project Presenters: Ellie McCormick, Libby Harbaugh, John Buerschen, David Titus Advisors: Lori Phillips-Young, MonaLisa Mullins Outcomes -Deepened our realizations of the issues of literacy -Became role models to Dayton students -Made friends with the students we tutored -Learned about ourselves as teachers -Exercised our abilities to encourage and support others in something greater than ourselves -Realized how lucky we are to be literate students -Gained a greater appreciation for the education we have had -Realized the importance of being advocates against A Theory of Social Justice John Rawls Our work with Project Read utilized John Rawls' Theory of Social Justice because we emphasized a focus on the education of disadvantaged members of society. Often the education of disadvantaged students is neglected and overlooked by a hierarchal system where everyone is not always considered and included in the realm of highstandard schooling. The individuals in power of publiceducation generally assume that the structure of moderneducation will include all levels of society, when in reality, it does not. The Building Communities for Social Justice Learning and Living Community: We are a living learning community that: · engages in a process of intellectual inquiry · productively negotiates and creates space for critical listening and the free exchange of ideas · holistically integrates academic, residential, and co-curricular experiences ·deploys the particular methodologies of the Humanities disciplines, specifically those associated with the study of English, Philosophy, and Religion ·fosters an interdisciplinary approach to fundamental human concerns, e.g., what it means to be human ·focuses on apprehending and addressing issues of Social Justice, such as stewardship, solidarity with those different from us, commitment to the integrity and equality of all human life, and dedication to the common good ·encourages undergraduate research that is informed by the experience of service learning The Allegory of Cave Our service learning experience relates to Plato's "The allegory of the Cave" in many ways through what we as tutors learned during the experience. We all went outside our comfort levels, or our "caves" by tutoring and mentoring children of a different economic standing then us. We now can see that there is a different reality outside the UD "bubble" that many students get caught up in. We will take these experiences with us because we now have a different outlook on the Dayton community and people with different economic standing than us.


Most pediatric burns are 2nd degree partial thickness, and most will heal spontaneously by providing a good healing environment, though there is no standardized treatment protocol. Aquacel Ag® has shown good clinical results in reducing the need for frequent dressing changes in the pediatric population. This study's goal was to review our experience using this dressing for pediatric partial thickness burns in order to optimize and customize its use. A retrospective study included all pediatric patients suffering from burns, admitted to our institution between July 2013 and May 2018. We investigated a total of 705 dressing changes in our cohort of 276 patients. The most prevalent dressing material was Aquacel Ag®, used in 48% of cases. We examined the pattern of using Aquacel Ag® dressings. The average time until dressing change was required proved to be much longer when applied on the 1st day after burn and onward in comparison to the day of injury (4.85 vs. 2.21 days, p<0.001). Moreover, when it was applied on the 1st day after burn, a dressing used on a superficial 2nd degree burn needed to be changed less often than when it was applied on a deep 2nd degree burn (4.95 vs. 2.29 days, p=0.024). To optimize its use and cost effectiveness, dressing with Aquacel Ag® should be initiated on the 1st day after burn, or on the 2nd day when a deep 2nd degree burn is suspected; until then a standard topical preparation should be used.


INTRODUCTION
Sarcopenic obesity (SarcO) is defined as the confluence of reduced muscle mass and function and excess body fat. The scientific community is increasingly recognizing this syndrome, which affects a subgroup of persons across their lifespans and places them at synergistically higher risk of significant medical comorbidity and disability than either sarcopenia or obesity alone. Joint efforts in clinical and research settings are imperative to better understand this syndrome and drive the development of urgently needed future interventions.

AREAS COVERED
Herein, we describe the ongoing challenges in defining sarcopenic obesity and the current state of the science regarding its epidemiology and relationship with adverse events. The field has demonstrated an emergence of data over the past decade which we will summarize in this article. While the etiology of sarcopenic obesity is complex, we present data on the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms that are hypothesized to promote its development, including age-related changes in body composition, hormonal changes, chronic inflammation, and genetic predisposition.

EXPERT OPINION
We describe emerging areas of future research that will likely be needed to advance this nascent field, including changes in clinical infrastructure, an enhanced understanding of the lifecourse, and potential treatments.


ABSTRACT Ever since they first entered the European Parliament in 1979, the EU has proven to be a strong legitimising tool for far right parties, providing them with funding, visibility and a higher degree of credibility and respectability. While recent literature has explored some of these dynamics, the role of the far right's ideological positioning on Europe as a source of public legitimacy has been neglected. This paper argues that as a relatively new and contentious political issue, Europe can function as a powerful ideological resource for far right parties by allowing them to convey a more acceptable political message. This argument is illustrated through a case study of two key aspects of the Rassemblement National's ideological approach to the European Union: the party's claim to be pro-European but anti-EU and its opposition to EU integration on grounds of sovereignty.


Museums provide unique learning opportunities in soil science. The Bob Campbell Geology Museum in Clemson, SC, features an exhibit of minerals and rocks common in the state and in its geologic history. We developed a hands-on laboratory exercise utilizing an exhibit that gives college students an opportunity to visualize regional minerals and rocks from which regional soil parent materials are derived. Clemson University students from various majors had a field trip and a hands-on experience with the local minerals and rocks during FNR 204: Soil Information Systems course taught in the fall 2008, summer 2011, and fall 2011 (134 students total). Students were then asked to fill out a survey providing answers to 15 questions related to their learning experience. Sixty-six percent of the students had never visited a Geology Museum before this field trip and 40% of the students did not know about the Geology Museum's existence on campus. Ninety-three percent of the students thought the visit to the Geology Museum would be helpful with preparation for class quizzes and exams, and 92% of the students would recommend that their friends visit this museum in their free time. Overall, student responses to the questionnaire about their laboratory experience at the Geology Museum were positive. Laboratory exercises that are specifically designed to bridge university-level course material and museum collections produce learning synergy that is greater than either an independent museum visit or classroom instruction.


Official dollarization is rare; yet, many countries' banking systems are characterized by high levels of unofficial dollarization. This dissertation provides a political-economic argument for why governments allow these deposits to exist at all. I explain the timing and level of regulations over resident foreign currency (FC) deposit accounts as well as why some countries that chose partial liberalization tend to remain there and test that explanation on a new dataset I created coding IMF reports on exchange-rate controls. Similar to other forms of monetary delegation, unrestricted accounts can serve as a commitment device for credible macroeconomic policy, contingent on two factors. Politicians must be responsive to a broad audience; and, they must be credible in their protection of property rights. Thus, unrestricted accounts are most likely when: politicians are responsive to a broad population, have experienced macroeconomic instability, and are respectful of their citizens' property rights. Responsiveness is important because restricted deposits are unlikely to be useful as a commitment device. When responsiveness is broad group, politicians are more likely to provide public goods rather than targeted, private goods. Allowing FC deposits with restrictions resembles a private good, in that politicians choose which groups are allowed access to the accounts, while unrestricted deposits resemble non-excludeable public goods. Unrestricted deposits should be more likely in those countries where politicians are responsive to a broad population and face incentives to provide public goods. Second, unofficial dollarization is a strategic situation. If property rights are weak, citizens should anticipate that their deposits would be at risk, making individuals less likely to use FC accounts. Governments should anticipate this as well; if not credible on property rights, they should be more likely to adopt restricted deposits. I test this argument on a new dataset of regulations of resident FC accounts in a sample of developed and developing countries I coded from the IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions. I use both binary cross-sectional time- series analysis and a competing risks model. I find support for my central argument, although its effectiveness is limited to periods of moderately levels of macroeconomic instability


Abstract Blazar OJ287 exhibits large thermal flares at least twice every 12 years. The times of these flares have been predicted successfully using the model of a quasi-Keplerian eccentric black hole binary where the secondary impacts the accretion disk of the primary, creating the thermal flares. New measurements of the historical light curve have been combined with the observations of the 2015 November/December flare to identify the impact record since year 1886, and to constrain the orbit of the binary. The orbital solution shows that the binary period, now 12.062 years, is decreasing at the rate of 36 days per century. This corresponds to an energy loss to gravitational waves that is 6.5 ± 4 % less than the rate predicted by the standard quadrupolar gravitational wave (GW) emission. We show that the difference is due to higher order gravitational radiation reaction terms that include the dominant order tail contributions.


Abstract Phytoplankton response to a heat wave in deep prealpine Lake Mondsee, Austria, was minor overall, although temperature significantly affected the epilimnetic phytoplankton assemblage at the deepest site of the lake. We detected no significant effect of nutrients. Using 3 complementary optical methods—light microscopy (Utermöhl technique), FlowCAM, and acoustic flow cytometry (AFC)—we found relatively low horizontal variation in the epilimnion but significant changes in phytoplankton community composition integrated over the 0–20 m water layer at the central station of the lake. These changes were mainly caused by a vertical shift in the Planktothrix rubescens peak from 11 to 16 m during the heat wave. Air temperatures reaching or exceeding 30 °C were measured in the area during 6 consecutive days at the end of June to the beginning of July, the first of 3 heat waves recorded during summer 2015; in-shore surface water temperature exceeded 27 °C. We sampled 9 stations across Lake Mondsee on 4 occasions during the heat wave and analysed temperature, nutrient levels, conductivity, pH, and the phytoplankton community. In addition to reporting the implications of increasing water temperatures for the algal assemblage in a deep stratified lake, we discuss the pros and cons of the different optical methods for phytoplankton identification and counting. For future field campaigns similar to the present study, we recommend using light microscopy to assess large or rare species, such as Ceratium hirundinella, and AFC, FlowCAM, or similar semi-automated devices for abundant small- to medium-sized species.


In free viewpoint video (FVV) framework, a large number of viewpoints from limited number of views are generated to reduce the amount of transmitting, receiving and processing video data significantly. To generate a virtual view, the disparity among adjacent views or temporal correlation between different frames of the intermediate views are normally exploited. Those techniques may concern poor rendering quality by missing pixel values (i.e. creating holes) due to the occluded region, rounding error and disparity discontinuity. To address these problems recent techniques use inpainting, however, they still suffer quality degradation due to lack of spatial correlation on the foreground-background boundary areas. The background updating techniques with Gaussian mixture based modelling (GMM) can improve quality in some occluded areas, however, due to the dependencies on warping of background image and spatial correlation they still suffer quality degradation. In this paper, we propose a view synthesized prediction using Gaussian model (VSPGM) technique using the number of GMM models rather than the background image to identify background/foreground pixels. The missing pixels of background and foreground are recovered from the background pixel and the weighted average of warped and foreground model pixels respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed approach provides 0.50~2.14dB PSNR improved synthesized view compared with the state-of-the-art methods. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed synthesized view, we use it as a reference frame with immediate previous frame of current view in the motion estimation for multi-view video coding (MVC). The experimental results confirm that the proposed technique is able to improve PSNR by 0.17 to 1.00dB compared to the conventional three reference frames.


Laser-induced desorption coupled with Fourier transform mass spectrometry (FTMS) has proven to be a useful technique for the studies of chemical reactions that occur in monolayers adsorbed on solid surfaces. The high sensitivity and ultrahigh mass resolution have been extremely useful in the study of reactions in complex monolayer mixtures made up of molecular species with m/z between 15 and 1000. For studies of hydrocarbon reactions on surfaces, such as would be useful for fundamental studies of catalytic processes on transition metal surfaces, it is extremely useful to be able to detect molecular hydrogen desorbing from a surface simultaneously with higher molecular weight reactants and reaction products. However, simultaneous detection of molecular hydrogen and higher molecular weight species presents a unique challenge for FTMS, as a result not only of the high cyclotron frequency of the H2(+) molecular ion but also as a result of z-ejection and proton- and charge-transfer reactions. We characterize the issues associated with direct simultaneous detection of molecular hydrogen using FTMS and demonstrate the experimental conditions necessary for the simultaneous detection of hydrogen and larger species such as argon and cyclohexane.


Nowadays, more and more information systems are connected to the Internet and offer Web interfaces to the general public or to a restricted set of users. Such openness makes them likely targets for intruders, and conventional protection techniques have been shown insufficient to prevent all intrusions in such open systems. This paper proposes a generic architecture to implement intrusion-tolerant Web servers. This architecture is based on redundancy and diversification principles in order to increase the system resilience to attacks: usually, an attack targets a particular software, running on a particular platform, and fails on others. The architecture is composed of redundant proxies that mediate client requests to a redundant bank of diversified application servers. The redundancy is deployed here to increase system availability and integrity. To improve performance, adaptive redundancy is applied: the redundancy level is selected according to the current alert level. The architecture can be used for static servers, that is, for Web distribution of stable information (updated offline) and for fully dynamic systems where information updates are executed immediately on an online database. The feasibility of this architecture has been demonstrated by implementing an example of a travel agency Web server, and the first performance tests are satisfactory, both for request execution times and recovery after incidents.


The MINERvA collaboration is currently engaged in a broad program of neutrino-nucleus interaction measurements. Several recent measurements of interest to the accelerator-based oscillation community are presented. These include measurements of quasi-elastic scattering, diffractive pion production, kaon production and comparisons of interaction cross sections across nuclei. A new measurement of the NuMI neutrino beam flux that incorporates both external hadro-production data and MINERvA detector data is also presented.


The nitrogen content of whole rabbit brain and seven areas, thereof, i.e. frontal cortical gray, caudate nucleus, superior colliculi, medulla, paraflocculi, vermis and lateral lobes, has been determined using 230 rabbits ranging in age from 1–70 days. In general, the percentage wet weight nitrogen content of the cerebellar areas reached a higher maximum than did that for the noncerebellar areas studied. The nitrogen of whole brain rose steadily until the 50th day of age at which time it reached a plateau. In comparing the various areas it was found that with the exception of the colliculi the phylogenetically older parts reached their maximum percentage nitrogen content at an earlier age than did the more recent areas.


Guge Fengtong tablet (GGFTT) is a Chinese herbal preparation which is widely applied to treat rheumatoid arthritis. In this work, we aim to discover the main anti-inflammatory components from GGFTT based on inflammatory markers and to explore its molecular mechanism. The components in GGFTT were screened by lipopolysaccharide induced macrophage RAW264.7 cells and TNF-α induced 293 cells which co-transfected with NF-κB. Based on the results of anti-inflammatory effects, we established and validated a reliable liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method for the simultaneous determination of the 10 active compounds (10C) screened in GGFTT. The results of bioactive equivalence indicated that the combination of 10 active compounds could be considered as the bioactive combinatorial components in GGFTT. Further investigations suggested that GGFTT and 10C could significantly decrease the production of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6 and iNOS. 10C exerted comparable anti-inflammatory effect against NF-κB and MAPKs signaling pathways as GGFTT. Both of them could inhibit the phosphorylation of p65 and IκB-α, block the nuclear translocation of p65 as well as decrease the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and JNK. The results of the present study has a great potential in promoting standardization of GGFTT and could be extended to improve quality control of herbal medicines.


In order to support sustainable competitive advantages the enterprise should take into account the imperatives of strategic management, which are relevant at the time. The aim of the article is to improve scientific justification imperatives of strategic management system based on the trends transforming modern business environment. The scientific justification imperatives of strategic management are improved. The main imperatives based on the fundamental characteristics of change: continuity, cyclical, systematic, natural sequence, proactivity, uniqueness, adequacy transformations in the environment is formulated. Main transforming trends of modern business environment with the release of the nanoscale as the top priority for companies are generalized. These results provide a basis for improving the overall efficiency of strategic management and helps achieve their goals in the implementation of the strategy of trade enterprises.