The political changes from the late 1980s onwards have led Europe-wide to programmes for dealing with the uranium mining and milling legacies. A report drafted on behalf of the European Commission described the situation as it had developed by the end of 2005. With the EU having been enlarged since then, it appeared necessary to review the findings and conclusions of this report. The earlier report also did not provide conclusive thoughts on the long-term management of uranium mine and mill tailings. The present report — reviews the current situation in Romania and Portugal, singled out in the earlier report as needing further attention. It is concluded that Portugal has made good progress, while the situation in Romania continues to be unclear; — reviews the bearing that international regulations, such as the EC Environmental Impact Directive, and conventions, such as the Aarhus and Espoo conventions, might have on the management of uranium mine and mill tailings sites; — also develops thoughts on the long-term management of uranium mining and milling sites that are not fit for free release. These thoughts are based on the current international discussion of the subject.


Bauxite is an important mineral ore that is widely used in aluminum industry for metallurgical and refractory purposes. However bauxite contains silica as an impurity which degrades its quality. Silica forms complex with the caustic used during the processing of ore thereby forming precipitates. This leads to unnecessary wastage of caustic that contributes to the higher processing costs. Moreover, the use of excess caustic to neutralize the reactive silica during the process increases the alkalinity of the waste product so called red mud which imposes severe disposal problem. Therefore, the removal of silica from bauxite ore by a feasible and environmental friendly method is of paramount importance. The current study focuses on the beneficiation of low quality bauxite ores, through the process of bioleaching of silica. Bacterial desilication was carried out using indigenous bacterial cultures isolated from the ore. Bacterial colonies were successfully isolated and potential silica leaching strains was screened. Various process parameters such as pH, temperature, aeration time, inoculum size, age of the inoculum and bauxite percentage were studied through Taguchi method for process optimization. Optimum conditions for bioleaching of silica were obtained as pH 7.5, temperature 25oC, initial aeration time of 30 minutes, bauxite percentage of 5% using 48 hours old 5% inoculums were established by Taguchi method,. Furthermore, optimum process conditions were used for bioleaching of silica under for different lengths of time i.e. 5, 15, 20, 25 days. Biological leaching results showed a maximum of 41% silica was recovered at the end of 25 days. Further, biochemical characterization of the potential bacterial culture proved it to be of Bacillus sp.


The alternatives of a purpose-bult ambulance and a specially designed stretcher suspension system were considered and the features of the latter assessed by subjective and objective tests. The results showed a significant improvement in the quality of the ride offered to the patient.


In this study, an approach to synthesize bismuth sodium zirconate powders with the formula Na0.5Bi0.5ZrO3 by mixed oxide method was investigated. The reaction involved mixtures of reagent grade Bi2O3, Na2CO3 and ZrO2 powders. The mixtures were calcined at temperatures in the range of 700 - 850°C, and the starting composition was also subsequently changed by addition of Bi2O3, Na2CO3 or ZrO2 powder at 5, 10 and 15 wt%. The calcined powders were analyzed using X-ray diffractometry. The result revealed that BNZ/Na2CO3 powders calcined at 800°C for 2 hours produced BNZ compound with maximum purity.


We have performed an experiment on sonoluminescence in liquid heavy water. We have verified that sonoluminescence takes place with air bubbles as well as with D2 bubbles in heavy water (98.5% D2O). No radioactivity originating from the phenomenon has been observed.


: The content of two pituitary tropins (MSH and ACTH) has been determined in rats which were injected by the synthetic melanostatin to suppress MSH of the intermediate part of pituitary by radioimmune analysis. Besides, the function of the adrenal cortex according the content of corticosterone in various tissues was estimated. It has been revealed that the pituitary-adrenal complex activation is caused by the hypothalamic melanostatin suppression of the MSH secretion. All these testify the ACTH and MSH definite role in organisms adaptive reactions at different evolution steps.


We have analyzed the far-field approximation of the Green's function representation for seismic interferometry. By writing each of the Green's functions involved in the correlation process as a superposition of a direct wave and a scattered wave, the Green's function representation is rewritten as a superposition of four terms. When the scattered waves are modeled with the Born approximation, it appears that a three-term approximation of the Green's function representation (omitting the term containing the crosscorrelation of the scattered waves) yields a nearly exact retrieval, whereas the full four-term expression leads to a significant nonphysical event. This is because the Born approximation does not conserve energy and therefore is an insufficient model to explain all aspects of seismic interferometry. We use the full four-term expression of the Green's function representation to derive the generalized optical theorem. Unlike other recent derivations, which use stationary phase analysis, our derivation uses reciprocity theory. From the generalized optical theorem, we derive the nonlinear scattering matrix of a point scatterer. This nonlinear model accounts for primary and multiple scattering at the point scatterer and conforms with well-established scattering theory of classical waves. The model is essential to explain fully the results of seismic interferometry, even when it is applied to the response of a single point scatterer. The nonlinear scattering matrix also has implications for modeling, inversion, and migration.


Background: Advances in diabetes technology have led to reliance on continuous glucose monitors (CGM) for glycemic management. Insufficient wear time due to device malfunction, insertion problems, displacement or removal for imaging, medical procedures or hospitalization is common. Prescription practices that provide an exact number of sensors without redundancy fail to account for the realities of CGM use. The aim of this study is to characterize CGM disruption rates and consequences.
 Methods: A RedCap survey was completed by adults from a university based diabetes center with T1D or T2D who utilize CGM.
 Results: Of 262 surveys sent, 76 were completed. Participants had mean age 54, T1D 69%, female 72%, White 97%, and mean duration of diabetes 28 years. 100% used CGM (85.1% Dexcom, 9.5% Freestyle Libre, 5.4% Medtronic) , 61% insulin pump, and 41% HCL systems. The percent of participants reporting ≥1 CGM disruption events in 1 year: device malfunction (85.1%) , insertion problems (63.0%) , displacement (56.8%) ; removal for imaging (44.6%) , surgery/procedures (13.7%) and hospitalization (4.1%) . Adverse glycemic events attributed to disruption of CGM including hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia occurred ≥1 time in 55.4% and 45.9% of the participants respectively (Figure) .
 Conclusion: Loss of CGM use prior to the anticipated change date is common. Lack of redundancy of CGM supplies contributes to disruptions in care and adverse glycemic events.

 A.Cedeno: None. P.Krutilova: None. A.Markov: None. J.B.Mcgill: Advisory Panel; Gilead Sciences, Inc., Lilly Diabetes, MannKind Corporation, Novo Nordisk A/S, Provention Bio, Inc., Salix Pharmaceuticals, Consultant; Bayer AG, Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, Research Support; Dexcom, Inc., Novo Nordisk. A.M.Mckee: Consultant; Medtronic.


abstract :Although Emily Dickinson's papers were preserved because of her place in literary history, not her musical knowledge, her engagement with music provides an opportunity to consider pre-twentieth-century fandom. New technologies and established social networks enabled fandom for a young rural woman. For this population more than male and urban audiences, fandom carried social danger, involving not only enthusiasm but discernment and even skepticism. The marketing of Jenny Lind's mid-nineteenth-century tour depended on crafting a public image of the singer as virtuous and philanthropic. Dickinson's letter describing a Lind concert in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1851 critiques this image, transmitted into rural settings by local newspapers. Instead of the enthusiasm of indiscriminate audiences, Dickinson articulates a rurally inflected, judicious, self-selecting "Yankee" fandom.


Esophageal carcinoma (EsC) is a member of the cancer group that occurs in the esophagus; globally, it is known as one of the fatal malignancies. In this study, we used gene expression analysis to identify molecular biomarkers to propose therapeutic targets for the development of novel drugs. We consider EsC associated four different microarray datasets from the gene expression omnibus database. Statistical analysis is performed using R language and identified a total of 1083 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in which 380 are overexpressed and 703 are underexpressed. The functional study is performed with the identified DEGs to screen significant Gene Ontology (GO) terms and associated pathways using the Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery repository (DAVID). The analysis revealed that the overexpressed DEGs are principally connected with the protein export, axon guidance pathway, and the downexpressed DEGs are principally connected with the L13a-mediated translational silencing of ceruloplasmin expression, formation of a pool of free 40S subunits pathway. The STRING database used to collect protein-protein interaction (PPI) network information and visualize it with the Cytoscape software. We found 10 hub genes from the PPI network considering three methods in which the interleukin 6 (IL6) gene is the top in all methods. From the PPI, we found that identified clusters are associated with the complex I biogenesis, ubiquitination and proteasome degradation, signaling by interleukins, and Notch-HLH transcription pathway. The identified biomarkers and pathways may play an important role in the future for developing drugs for the EsC.


Deep learning has emerged as a new area of machine learning research. It is an approach that can learn features and hierarchical representation purely from data and has been successfully applied to several fields such as images, sounds, text and motion. The techniques developed from deep learning research have already been impacting the research on Natural Language Processing (NLP). Arabic diacritics are vital components of Arabic text that remove ambiguity from words and reinforce the meaning of the text. In this paper, a Deep Belief Network (DBN) is used as a diacritizer for Arabic text. DBN is an algorithm among deep learning that has recently proved to be very effective for a variety of machine learning problems. We evaluate the use of DBNs as classifiers in automatic Arabic text diacritization. The DBN was trained to individually classify each input letter with the corresponding diacritized version. Experiments were conducted using two benchmark datasets, the LDC ATB3 and Tashkeela. Our best settings achieve a DER and WER of 2.21% and 6.73%, receptively, on the ATB3 benchmark with an improvement of 26% over the best published results. On the Tashkeela benchmark, our system continues to achieve high accuracy with a DER of 1.79% and 14% improvement.


Abstract This article describes two methods of showing the distribution of temperature on the surface and inside a spoil tip (coal mine waste dump) located in Wojkowice (in the Silesian Voivodeship). Two deterministic estimation methods were tested, i.e., Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) and Radial Basis Functions (RBF). According to isotherm maps the highest temperature on the surface of the "Wojkowice" spoil tip was in the NE area, while inside the heap the highest temperature noted was in the SW area. Better results were obtained from the application of the RBF method. A three-dimensional model (3D model) was generated by the method, which visualized the temperature distribution within the "Wojkowice" spoil tip. According to the 3D model of the temperature distribution the greatest heat centre inside the heap in Wojkowice was located in the SW part with a temperature of around 300°C. As a result, it can be concluded that the material of the "Wojkowice" spoil tip is burning out in a NW direction. On the basis of the model obtained it is possible to determine the location of potentially dangerous places which are exposed to possible deformations caused by the material burning under the surface. The results of the research presented make it possible to assess the thermal state of the spoil heap located in Wojkowice, Poland.


Visual deprivation during the critical period induces long-lasting changes in cortical circuitry by adaptively modifying neuro-transmission and synaptic connectivity at synapses. Spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) is considered a strong candidate for experience-dependent changes. However, the visual deprivation forms that affect timing-dependent long-term potentiation(LTP) and long-term depression(LTD) remain unclear. Here, we demonstrated the temporal window changes of tLTP and tLTD, elicited by coincidental pre- and post-synaptic firing, following different modes of 6-day visual deprivation. Markedly broader temporal windows were found in robust tLTP and tLTD in the V1M of the deprived visual cortex in mice after 6-day MD and DE. The underlying mechanism for the changes seen with visual deprivation in juvenile mice using 6 days of dark exposure or monocular lid suture involves an increased fraction of NR2b-containing NMDAR and the consequent prolongation of NMDAR-mediated response duration. Moreover, a decrease in NR2A protein expression at the synapse is attributable to the reduction of the NR2A/2B ratio in the deprived cortex.


Several of the major theoretical perspectives within psychology can contribute to our understanding of the September 11 attacks and their aftermath. An argument derived from the psychodynamic approach suggests that terrorism may be a product of ambivalence rather than anger. From an evolutionary standpoint, the resentment that breeds terrorism, and the altruism that has arisen in its wake, may be seen as two sides of the same coin. The decision theoretic approach suggests that in the attempt to prevent future terrorist attacks, we face a seeming tradeoff between civil rights and civil liberties. Finally, the personality development approach suggests that difficult times can help forge new moral leaders.


Abstract. Recent studies have acknowledged the many benefits of including fossils in phylogenetic inference (e.g., reducing long-branch attraction). However, unstable taxa are known to be problematic, as they can reduce either the resolution of the strict consensus or branch support. In this study, we evaluate whether unstable taxa that reduce consensus resolution affect support values, and the extent of such impact, under equal and extended implied weighting. Two sets of analyses were conducted across 30 morphological datasets to evaluate complementary aspects. The first focused on the analytical conditions incrementing the terminal instability, while the second assessed whether pruning wildcards improves support. Changes in support were compared with the "number of nodes collapsed by unstable terminals," their "distance to the root," the "proportion of missing data in a dataset," and the "proportion of sampled characters." Our results indicate that the proportion of missing entries distributed among closely related taxa (for a given character) might be as detrimental for stability as those distributed among characters (for a given terminal). Unstable terminals that (1) collapse few nodes or (2) are closely located to the root node have more influence on the estimated support values. Weighting characters according to their extra steps while assuming that missing entries contribute to their homoplasy reduced the instability of wildcards. Our results suggest that increasing character sampling and using extended implied weighting decreases the impact of wildcard terminals. This study provides insights for designing future research dealing with unstable terminals, a typical problem of paleontological data.


This article contributes to a Marxist understanding of the roots of the contemporary predicament for many societies in which future economic growth is likely to be low and accompanied by mass 'structural' unemployment, increased inequality and further crises of social and political cohesion. It takes Spain as an exemplar of this 'new normal', and argues that the 'irrational rationality' of crisis in capitalism can be seen in successive cycles of crises that have resulted in the present catastrophe in that country, and also—by means of European economic and monetary union—in the delimiting of political opportunities to restore growth on any other basis than through the subordination of social reproduction to the power of money and (increasingly authoritarian) law. The article therefore supports value-theoretical, diachronic analyses of capitalist development that trace the prefiguration of contemporary forms of crisis in the formation and 'resolution' of preceding cycles of overaccumluation and devaluation.


The purpose of this study is to determine the instability of Doha stock market and develop forecasting models. Linear time series models are used and compared with a nonlinear Artificial Neural Network (ANN) namely Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) Technique. It aims to establish the best useful model based on daily and monthly data which are collected from Qatar exchange for the period starting from January 2007 to January 2015. Proposed models are for the general index of Qatar stock exchange and also for the usages in other several sectors. With the help of these models, Doha stock market index and other various sectors were predicted. The study was conducted by using various time series techniques to study and analyze data trend in producing appropriate results. After applying several models, such as: Quadratic trend model, double exponential smoothing model, and ARIMA, it was concluded that ARIMA (2,2) was the most suitable linear model for the daily general index. However, ANN model was found to be more accurate than time series models.


A stratified sample of 5684 Filipino women from the 1974 National Acceptor Survey were interviewed in an effort to determine aspects in which the interviewed subsample is unrepresentative of the original sample; to determine if an overall bias exists and the relative importance of the various Record Keeping System client characteristics in explaining that bias; and to determine if there is evidence that overreporting contributed to the observed rate of sample loss. It was learned that rural women living in remote barrios and urban women living in neighborhoods which lack systematic addresses were underrepresented. Reweighting the National Acceptor Survey data to compensate for bias is unlikely to be necessary unless biased variables were highly intercorrelated. Overreporting is a serious problem representing a minimum of 17.1% of the National Acceptor Survey respondents who denied accepting.


In this paper, our two starting points are the growing policy focus on encouraging coding or computer programming as an aspiration for young people and the entrenched gendering of participation in computing. Drawing on group and individual interviews with 148 young people across England, we argue that the 'geek celebrity' is an emerging figure in young people's imaginations, as an aspirational and inspirational 'role model'. Using discursive psychological approaches, we analyse the 'geek celebrity' as a discursive formation looking at three key patterns of meanings, or repertoires, and tracking the ways these are gendered. First, the business repertoire positions the geek celebrity as a source of social innovation, impact and initiative. These traits are viewed universally positively by young people and are normatively masculine. Second, the celebrity repertoire positions the geek celebrity as having huge wealth and status. Through their philanthropic use of these, together with their associations with business and intelligence, geek celebrities are seen as deserving of their celebrity.  Finally, the geek repertoire positions the geek celebrity as highly intelligent and socially awkward, traits that are aligned with masculinity culturally. This impacts on how young men and women speak about them.


We report the observation of a novel effect in the bilayer Pb-Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 (Pb-Bi2212) high-T(c) superconductor by means of angle-resolved photoemission with circularly polarized excitation. Different scattering rates, determined as a function of energy separately for the bonding and antibonding copper-oxygen bands, strongly imply that the dominating scattering channel is odd with respect to layer exchange within a bilayer. This is inconsistent with a phonon-mediated scattering and favors the participation of the odd collective spin excitations in the scattering mechanism in near-nodal regions of the k space, suggesting a magnetic nature of the pairing mediator.


We prove results relating to the exit time of a stochastic process from a region in N -dimensional space. We compute certain stochastic integrals involving the exit time. Taking a Gaussian copula model for the hitting time behavior, we prove several results on the sensitivity of quantities connected with the hitting times to parameters of the model, as well as the large-N behavior. We discuss the relationship of these results to certain credit derivative instruments. Relevant simulations are presented.


The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of remote telehealth evaluations of sports medicine injuries and shoulder injuries [30,35]. The improvement of web-based videoconferencing platforms has allowed for more user-friendly, face-to-face interactions between patients and clinicians [15]. Both patients and providers have been forced to welcome telehealth as an alternative because of recent required social distancing and restrictions on in-person visits. There have been several studies across various medical specialties that have shown telehealth visits have similar patient satisfaction levels compared with in-person visits. In addition, telehealth visits have shown decreased overall visit times, wait times, and health care costs [2,29,32,42,43]. While the use of telehealth had increased in some medical specialties, before the COVID-19 crisis, it had not had a significant role in most orthopedic surgery or sports medicine practices [25]. As we return to a new normal, most musculoskeletal care providers recognize telehealth as an alternative. This becomes particularly relevant because patients and providers have an increasing demand for convenience and proficiency [25,27,30,35]. A common belief among musculoskeletal clinicians is that telemedicine has a limited ability to provide accurate and through physical examination—the keystone of clinical orthopedic evaluation [8,9,17,18,38,39]. Specifically, many providers feel that in a telehealth visit, it is too difficult to perform exam maneuvers that require manual motor testing for strength, motion assessment, and provocative testing for pain. There is a recent study describing basic physical examination components [35]; in addition we have recently pubilshed an overview of the telehealth examination of the shoulder and knee elsewhere [24]. Here, we provide a basic overview. The purpose of this article is to arm clinicians with a comprehensive shoulder physical examination for the telehealth visit, including easy-to-understand verbal instructions and checklists for documentation.


Abstract. Geomagnetic storms are caused by solar wind southward magnetic fields that impinge upon the Earth's magnetosphere (Dungey, 1961). How can we forecast the occurrence of these interplanetary events? We view this as the most important challenge in Space Weather. We discuss the case for magnetic clouds (MCs), interplanetary sheaths upstream of ICMEs, corotating interaction regions (CIRs) and high speed streams (HSSs). The sheath- and CIR-related magnetic storms will be difficult to predict and will require better knowledge of the slow solar wind and modeling to solve. There are challenges for forecasting the fluences and spectra of solar energetic particles. This will require better knowledge of interplanetary shock properties from the Sun to 1 AU (and beyond), the upstream slow solar wind and energetic seed particles. Dayside aurora, triggering of nightside substorms, and formation of new radiation belts can all be caused by shock and interplanetary ram pressure impingements onto the Earth's magnetosphere. The acceleration and loss of relativistic magnetospheric killer electrons and penetrating electric fields in terms of causing positive and negative ionospheric storms are currently reasonable well understood, but refinements can still be made. The forecasting of extreme events (extreme shocks, extreme solar energetic particle events, and extreme geomagnetic storms (Carrington events or greater)) are also discussed. Energetic particle precipitation and ozone destruction is briefly discussed. For many of the studies, the Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter, Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS), Arase, and SWARM data will be useful.


It is true that the commercial applications used in architectural offices have mainly focused on CAD as a drafting tool, although the primary functions of computers in architecture have been changed from the computer-aided drafting to its 2D or 3D graphic representation and in recent years to the collaborative design among different specialists, such as architects, engineers, construction managers, acoustical experts, and so on. There are still few computer-aided tools to help a designer in selecting the best suited design strategies, in particular satisfying the design aesthetics, and in connecting the design up to the collaboration. This paper shows how the designand orderingprinciples can be joined into a CAAD system and how the data of the applied design can be integrated into product modeling environment, providing the appropriate solution to the upcoming needs of the construction industry.


Hydrogen-related donors can be advantageously used in IGBTs and power diodes with a view to creating field-stop layers and to optimising the electrical performance. In this work, the influence of hydrogen-related donors on the on-state plasma profile in field-stop IGBTs is analysed by means of free-carrier absorption measurements. For these investigations, dedicated IGBT test structures were used, which had been adapted to the specific properties of the employed measurement set-up. Two different hydrogen-related donor profiles were implanted into these IGBT samples and, subsequently, measurements with different current densities were compared to 2D TCAD numerical simulations. In the next step, the simulation models were adjusted, with respect to carrier lifetime and mobility to reflect the impact of a possible variation of these properties.


We created a comprehensive set of health-system performance measurements for China nationally and regionally, with health-system coverage and catastrophic medical spending as major indicators. With respect to performance of health-care delivery, China has done well in provision of maternal and child health services, but poorly in addressing non-communicable diseases. For example, coverage of hospital delivery increased from 20% in 1993 to 62% in 2003 for women living in rural areas. However, effective coverage of hypertension treatment was only 12% for patients living in urban areas and 7% for those in rural areas in 2004. With respect to performance of health-care financing, 14% of urban and 16% of rural households incurred catastrophic medical expenditure in 2003. Furthermore, 15% of urban and 22% of rural residents had affordability difficulties when accessing health care. Although health-system coverage improved for both urban and rural areas from 1993 to 2003, affordability difficulties had worsened in rural areas. Additionally, substantial inter-regional and intra-regional inequalities in health-system coverage and healthcare affordability measures exist. People with low income not only receive lower health-system coverage than those with high income, but also have an increased probability of either not seeking health care when ill or undergoing catastrophic medical spending. China's current health-system reform efforts need to be assessed for their effect on performance indicators, for which substantial data gaps exist.


The intention of this letter is to clarify various aspects related to the combined use of spatial diversity and multiuser diversity in a mobile network. We consider a system with one base station and K users, and study five different spatial diversity transmission modes. We show that in general, the multiuser diversity benefit is not reduced by the proper use of spatial diversity. Numerical examples are provided.


Defects are critically important for metal oxides in chemical and physical applications. Compared with the often studied oxygen vacancies, engineering metal vacancies in n-type undoped metal oxides is still a great challenge, and the effect of metal vacancies on the physiochemical properties is seldom reported. Here, using anatase TiO2, the most important and widely studied semiconductor, we demonstrate that metal vacancies (VTi) can be introduced in undoped oxides easily, and the presence of VTi results in many novel physiochemical properties. Anatase Ti0.905O2 was synthesized using solvothermal treatment of tetrabutyl titanate in an ethanol-glycerol mixture and then thermal calcination. Experimental measurements and DFT calculations on cell lattice parameters show the unstoichiometry is caused by the presence of VTi rather than oxygen interstitials. The presence of VTi changes the charge density and valence band edge of TiO2, and an unreported strong EPR signal at g = 1.998 presents under room temperature. Contrary to normal n-type and nonferromagnetic TiO2, Ti-defected TiO2 shows inherent p-type conductivity with high charge mobility, and room-temperature ferromagnetism stronger than Co-doped TiO2 nanocrystalline. Moreover, Ti-defected TiO2 shows much better photocatalytic performance than normal TiO2 in H2 generation (4.4-fold) and organics degradation (7.0-fold for phenol), owing to the more efficient charge separation and transfer in bulk and at semiconductor/electrolyte interface. Metal-defected undoped oxides represent a unique material; this work demonstrates the possibility to fabricate such material in easy and reliable way and thus provides new opportunities for multifunctional materials in chemical and physical devices.


36 male patients with genital infection by HSV confirmed by culture were each allocated to one of three treatment groups: (1) Proflavine photoinactivation, (2) 0.5 per cent. idoxuridine ointment (IDU), (3) Normal saline. They were assessed objectively at each attendance by measurement of the lesions with an operating microscope fitted with a measuring grid in one eyepiece. Material for culture for HSV was taken at each visit; the presence of symptoms (pain, discomfort, and irritation) was noted. The areas of lesions in the proflavine photoinactivation group remained larger significantly longer than in the other groups, the healing time was slower, and HSV could be isolated for longer. It is concluded that proflavine photoinactivation is of no greater value than 0.5 per cent. IDU or normal saline in the treatment of genital infection by HSV in the male.


One of the insects that feeds on pedunculate oak acorns and reduces its seed
 yield is Curculio elephas Gyll. The study of Curculio elephas Gyll is
 necessary because of the severe damages caused by this insect and also owing
 to its insufficiently investigated biology. The research was conducted in the
 common oak seed orchard at Banov Brod, forest estate "Sremska Mitrovica", and
 in the entomological laboratory. The adults emerge from the soil chambers
 from mid July till the beginning of September. The presence of adults, as
 determined by crown fogging, ranged from the end of July till the beginning
 of September with the highest number in mid August. After emerging from the
 soil, females are already fertile with the developed eggs in the ovaries.
 They start egg laying after 1 to 8 days and they lay from one to seven eggs
 per day. Egg laying period lasts from 7 to 20 days. Fertility of C. elephas
 females ranges from 5 to 40 eggs, while their fecundity ranges from 19 to 45
 eggs. At the end of the larval stage, larvae bore into the soil and stay
 there from one to three years. The species hibernates only in the larval
 stage. C. elephas has a one-year life cycle, while a minor part of the
 population has a two or three-year life cycle.


Intestinal transplantation is a viable treatment strategy for patients with irreversible intestinal failure for whom parenteral nutrition is no longer an option. Although improvements have been made in short-term post-transplant survival outcomes, long-term allograft loss, mainly to acute or chronic rejection, remains a major obstacle to successful transplantation. In all types of solid organ transplants, there is increasing evidence that antibodies directed against human leukocyte antigens, and in particular donor-specific antibodies (DSA), contribute to acute and chronic rejection as well as allograft loss. In this single-center review of intestinal transplant recipients, we report that the presence of pretransplant circulating DSA and the de novo induction of DSA posttransplant are both associated with increased risks of allograft loss. Although the cumulative incidence of acute rejection was not significantly affected by the presence of DSA, the power of this single-center study may be limited. Prospective, multicenter studies are needed to further elucidate the role of DSA in intestinal transplant recipients. In the published literature, there is a clear link between the presence of pre-formed DSA and early injury to the mucosal vasculature of the allograft. Two groups have reported an association between pretransplant DSA and the frequency of acute rejection episodes and subsequent graft loss. Similarly, studies investigating the effects of de novo DSA have demonstrated a relationship between the presence of post-transplant circulating antibodies and the occurrence of acute rejection and the risk of allograft failure. The use of a liver-containing graft appears to facilitate the clearance of pre-formed antibodies and prevents the de novo induction of post-transplant antibodies. The most recent report stated that the de novo induction of DSA is concurrently accompanied by signs or rejection, such that the detection of circulating antibodies may signify impending graft injury, and supports the potential utility of DSA as a non-invasive biomarker for rejection in intestinal transplantation.


Reduced resolution update (RRU) video coding provides a better compression performance than H.264/AVC does. It is implemented by encoding the predicted residuals after down-sampling at the encoder and at the decoder, is up-sampled to the full-resolution size while motion compensation prediction signal are still yielded in the full-resolution spatial domain. In this paper, the authors first extend the frame-level RRU to the macroblock-level to obtain better coding performance than the frame-level RRU. Furthermore, a novel macroblock-level reduced resolution coding scheme was proposed which adaptively selects the part of DCT coefficients in the zigzag scan order to obtain better coding efficiency in terms of rate distortion performance. Experimental results exhibit that the proposed methods can achieve obvious improvements in both compression efficiency and decoding complexity compared with the frame-level RRU and H.264/AVC.


Libyan health authorities have no longer effectively controlled their strategy since the beginning of the Libyan armed uprising in 2011. This lack of planning has led to the illegal trafficking of counterfeit medicines, food, etc., into the country without being subjected to the authority control. This work aims to study the effect of the Libyan post-conflict on the quality of medicines marketed in Libya. Two commonly used medicines for the management of hypertension were picked up from the Libyan market, and studied to assess their quality attributes. Various brands of atenolol, a β-blocker, and furosemide, a diuretic, were studied for their physical and chemical properties according to British Pharmacopoeia 2015. The results of this study showed that all the tested products from the Libyan market were conformed to standards. This indicates that the Libyan pharmaceutical market for drugs imported through authorized distributors has not been affected by the instability conditions in Libya since the conflict being started.


Concern has been expressed about including a cost attribute within discrete choice experiments (DCEs) when individuals do not have to pay at the point of consumption. We use eye tracking to investigate attention to cost when valuing publicly financed health care. One-hundred and four individuals completed a DCE concerned with preferences for UK general practitioner appointments: 51 responded to a DCE with cost included and 53 to the same DCE without cost. Eye-movements were tracked whilst respondents completed the DCE. We assessed if respondents pay attention to cost. We then compare fixation time (FT) on attributes, eye movement patterns and mental effort across the experimental groups. Results are encouraging for the inclusion of cost in DCEs valuing publicly provided healthcare. Most respondents gave visual attention to the cost attribute most of the time. Average FT on multi-attribute tasks increased by 44% in the cost DCE, with attention to non-monetary attributes increasing by 22%. Including cost led to more structured decision-making and did not increase mental effort. Acceptability of the cost attribute and difficulty of choice tasks were predictors of cost information processing, highlighting the importance of both motivating the cost attribute and considering difficulty of the tasks when developing DCEs.


The debate about the scope of Syariah offences in Malaysia in reality impinges on the pertinent question of the limits to legislation by the state government. Commentators have often noted that since Malaysia does not follow the doctrine of Parliamentary supremacy, the power of Parliament to enact laws is constrained by the Federal Constitution, which declares itself the "supreme law of the Federation".1 If Parliament enacts laws contrary to the constitution, the judiciary is empowered and authorized to declare such legislation unconstitutional and hence null and void.


An experiment was carried out in broiler chicks fed different doses of locally produced microbial phytase supplementation to observe their growth performance as health status, and to investigate the changes of hematological and biochemical values. A total of 144 chicks (Cobb) at one-day old were allocated to 4 treatment (T) groups with 12 cages comprising 3 replicates, each cage containing to 12 birds. Experimental formulating diets arranged with 4 levels of 0, 500, 1000 and 1500 phytase enzyme unit (FTU/kg-I) as considered as Th T2, T3, T4 respectively. They were maintained formulating diet on these dietary treatments from 1 to 42 d of age with feed and water made available for ad libitum consumption. At 1 week interval 2 birds from each treatment were weight through out experimental period for assessing the growth performance. For determining the changes of hematological (RBC, Hb, PCV, MCV, MCHC, WBC, Heterophil, Eosinophil, Basophil, Lymphocyte, Monocyte, Thrombocyte and Icterus Index) and biochemical (Albumin, Total Protein, ALT, ALP, AST, GGT, LDH, Cholesterol, Triglyceride, Glucose, Ca, P, Na, K, Cl, Urea, Creatine and Uric acid) values at the age of 6 weeks randomly selected 2 birds were slaughtered and blood were collected. Data were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) using the least significant difference (LSD) by PC-SAS software (SAS Institute, 2009). Data showed that body weight was not affected at periods of 1si and 2nd weeks of age among different treatment groups. But, at ages from 3rd to 6th weeks, weight gains at four treatment gIZ.Qupwsere increased almost sequentially and consistantly, and had been showed more different and significant (p:s 0.05) increased at 4th and 5th weeks of age from the control. No significant and constant treatments effects were observed on blood and biochemical parameters except eosinophil: Accordingly, it can be recommended to use an uncentrifuged microbial phytase in broiler diet during the period from 4th - 5th weeks of age, to achieve increased weight gain without changing hemato-biochemical parameters.


Energy efficiency is an important factor in the marine industry to help reduce manufacturing and operational costs as well as the impact on the environment. In the face of global competition and cost-effectiveness, ship builders and operators today require a major overhaul in the entire ship design, manufacturing and operation process to achieve these goals. This paper highlights smart design, manufacturing and operation as the way forward in an industry 4.0 (i4) era from designing for better energy efficiency to more intelligent ships and smart operation through-life. The paper (i) draws parallels between ship design, manufacturing and operation processes, (ii) identifies key challenges facing such a temporal (lifecycle) as opposed to spatial (mass) products, (iii) proposes a closed-loop ship lifecycle framework and (iv) outlines potential future directions in smart design, manufacturing and operation of ships in an industry 4.0 value chain so as to achieve more energy-efficient vessels. Through computational intelligence and cyber-physical integration, we envision that industry 4.0 can revolutionise ship design, manufacturing and operations in a smart product through-life process in the near future.


A total of 1599 dairy records comprised of 710 calving interval and number of services per conception, and 179 age at first calving records were used to evaluate the performance of dairy cow kept at the University of Nairobi farm, Kanyariri, from 1989 to 2001. The data were analysed using fixed models with breed, year, season, parity and lactational length. the least squares means for the calving interval, number of services per conception and age at first calving were 452+22.4 days, 1.56+0.12, and 36.2+0.51months ,444.5+ 29.3 days, 1.7+0.19 and 33.4+1.5months and 465+31.1 days,1.67+0.20, and 33.6+1.4 months for Friesian, Ayrshire, Guernsey and Jersey, respectively. Year of calving had significant effect on calving interval and number of services per conception, while year of birth and breed significantly affected age at first calving. The phenotypic trends for the traits studied showed undesirable trends, but their respective regressions on year were not significant. The results indicate breed differences in age at first calving and indicate the need to investigate the casual components of the phenotype. The Kenya Veterinarian Vol. 27 2004: pp. 106-108


We present TOTA ("Tuples On The Air"), a novel middleware for supporting adaptive context-aware application in dynamic network scenarios. The key idea in TOTA is to rely on spatially distributed tuples for both representing contextual information and supporting uncoupled and adaptive interactions between application components. The middleware propagates tuples across a network on the basis of application-specific patterns and adaptively re-shapes the resulting distributed structures accordingly to changes in the network topology. Application components can locally "sense" these structures and exploit them to acquire contextual information and carry on complex coordination activities in an adaptive way. Several examples show the effectiveness of the TOTA approach.


The author tested the hypothesis that default prediction based on financial data may be inapplicable to Russian service sector organizations by analyzing the differences in the accuracy of models based solely on financial data for service providers from Russia and developed European countries.
Logistic regression, Random Forest and K-nearest neighbors machine learning methods were used as modeling tools on a sample of 404 Russian firms and 304 firms from developed European countries.The results suggest that the prediction error is significantly higher in the case of Russian firms than in the case of firms from the control group (European service firms). Thus, the use of financial ratios for default prediction for service firms in Russia seems insufficient.
These findings can be used by organizations that provide credit scoring, and by any other market participants interested in the financial stability assessment of their counterparties.


Endemic ruminants in The Gambia, represented by the N'Dama cattle and Djallonké breeds of sheep and goats, are well adapted and productive in areas infected with trypanosomiasis. Despite these favourable attributes their contribution to farmers' livelihoods remains not well recognised. The present study characterises the specific functions they fulfil in smallholder crop-livestock production systems in the districts of Kiang West, Niamina East and Nianija in The Gambia. We collected data in nine randomly selected villages of the three purposefully selected districts. Following a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) approach, two-day group discussions were held in each selected village, comprising between 25 and 30 participants, among which cattle, sheep and goat owners, livestock product processors and vendors, herders and non-livestock owners. PRA tools used were resource mapping, wealth ranking, matrix ranking and scoring. The wealth ranking revealed that livestock ownership was distributed in a highly skewed manner across wealth categories in all districts, especially for cattle with rich households owning 20 times as many cattle as poor households. Cattle were ranked first as the species contributing the most to farmers' livelihoods, because of the multitude of their services, such as draught power, manure, milk, meat and transportation. Goats and sheep were considered very important regarding their contribution to cash income; small ruminants were more important to women than men. Cattle were scored the highest for savings and insurance. Sheep and goats were also kept mainly as a means of saving and insurance; income and ceremonial purpose were the next reasons for keeping these species. The importance of saving and insurance depict the role of endemic ruminants as a buffer to crop failure in these mixed farming systems, where the most important contribution to the farmer's livelihood was crop farming, followed by livestock rearing and forest product harvesting. Given the predominance of endemic breeds, no comparison could be made with the livelihood contribution from exotic breeds.


A1 is a major core protein of the mammalian hnRNP complex, and as a purified protein of approximately 34 kDa, A1 is a strong single-stranded nucleic acid binding protein. Several lines of evidence suggest that the protein is organized in discrete domains consisting of an N-terminal segment of approximately 22 kDa and a C-terminal segment of approximately 12 kDa. Each of these domains as a purified fragment is capable of binding to both ssDNA and RNA. We report here that A1 and its C-terminal domain fragment are capable of potent strand-annealing activity for base-pair complementary single-stranded polynucleotides of both RNA and DNA. This effect is not stimulated by ATP. Compared with A1 and the C-terminal fragment, the N-terminal domain fragment has negligible annealing activity. These results indicate that A1 has biochemical activity consistent with a strand-annealing role in relevant reactions, such as pre-mRNA splicing.


This paper shows that current operating natural language information processing systems fail to process the core properties of natural languages. While some advances have been made for the incorporation of lexical knowledge in these systems, much remains to be done. We point out at the limits of current information extraction and information retrieval systems, and suggest ways in which they can be improved.


Background: Responses have been observed in several studies of docetaxel as treatment for advanced pancreatic carcinoma. This trial was designed to determine if the addition of docetaxel to gemcitabine therapy produced responses in ≧25% of patients with chemonaive advanced pancreatic cancer. Patients and Methods: This trial involved patients with biopsy-proven, advanced carcinoma of the pancreas not amenable to surgical resection. Patients received docetaxel 75 mg/m2 i.v. over 1 h followed by gemcitabine 2,000 mg/m2 biweekly until progression or intolerable toxicity. The primary endpoint of the trial was to determine the objective response rate with secondary endpoints of progression-free survival and overall survival. Results: Out of the 32 eligible patients, 2 patients had a complete response and 2 patients had a partial response for an observed objective response rate of 12.5% (90% CI: 4.4, 26.4%). Median survival was 4.7 months. Most toxicities were hematologic, with 48% of patients experiencing grade 4 toxicity. Conclusions: The confirmed complete response rate of 6% and partial response rate of 6% is encouraging, but the toxicity of this regimen appears significant. Based upon these results, this combination of gemcitabine and docetaxel is not worthy of further study. Different schedules and dosages may be more promising.


Immature dendritic cells (iDCs) in genital and rectal mucosa may be one of the first cells to come into contact with HIV-1 during sexual transmission of virus. HIV-1 activates the host complement system, which results in opsonization of virus by inactivated complement fragments, for example, iC3b. We investigated antiviral and inflammatory responses induced in human iDCs after exposure to free HIV-1 (F-HIV), complement-opsonized HIV-1 (C-HIV), and complement and Ab–opsonized HIV-1 (CI-HIV). F-HIV gave rise to a significantly higher expression of antiviral factors such as IFN-β, myxovirus resistance protein A, and IFN-stimulated genes, compared with C-HIV and CI-HIV. Additionally, F-HIV induced inflammatory factors such as IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α, whereas these responses were weakened or absent after C-HIV or CI-HIV exposure. The responses induced by F-HIV were TLR8-dependent with subsequent activation of IFN regulatory factor 1, p38, ERK, PI3K, and NF-κB pathways, whereas these responses were not induced by C-HIV, which instead induced activation of IFN regulatory factor 3 and Lyn. This modulation of TLR8 signaling was mediated by complement receptor 3 and led to enhanced infection. The impact that viral hijacking of the complement system has on iDC function could be an important immune evasion mechanism used by HIV-1 to establish infection in the host.


We demonstrate the emergence of a non-equilibrium superradiant phase
in the dissipative Rabi-Dicke model. This phase is characterized by a
photonic steady state that oscillates with a frequency close to the
cavity frequency, in contrast to the constant photonic steady state of
the equilibrium superradiant phase in the Dicke model. We relate this
superradiant phase to the population inversion of Floquet states by
introducing a Schwinger representation of the driven two-level systems
in the cavity. This inversion is depleted near Floquet energies that are
resonant with the cavity frequency to sustain a coherent light-field. In
particular, our model applies to solids within a two-band approximation,
in which the electrons act as Schwinger fermions. We propose to use this
Floquet-assisted superradiant phase to obtain controllable optical gain
for a laser-like operation.


The fixed-line system has been the pivotal in the telecommunications industry. However, the current industrial environment is confronting tremendous changes. One of the most representative examples is the coming of the 'Smart era' being provoked by high-speed mobile telecommunications. This megatrend is summarized by the platform strategy based on the concept of business ecosystem. Therefore, this study aims to provide direction for an innovation strategy for heterogeneous industries. To be specific, we investigate the business chain and strategic status of firms focusing on the mobile industry. Methodology: we use a conceptual dynamic network model to visualize the structure of linkages between OS, device, and telecommunications service over the period 2008 to 2011. Conclusion: the results of this research show each firm's behavior depends upon the particular business combination strategy. These results reveal the central importance of architecture innovation by describing the role played by different combinations among heterogeneous products and services. Through this study, we expect firms can establish industrial platforms which achieve both high productivity and a healthy business ecosystem.


In this paper, we develop a hybrid QM/MM-MD direct dynamics method for the study of Ar and O scattering from room-temperature ionic liquids (RTIL) at hyperthermal energies, with the goal of providing an understanding of the reactivity of ionic liquids as potential hypergolic fuels. The RTIL is chosen to be 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium nitrate ([emim][NO(3)]) as the bulk properties of this have been analyzed experimentally and theoretically, and a force field has been developed. Within our simulation time of 7.3 ps, Ar collisions with the liquid surface cause 2-3 proton transfers to occur from the imidazolium ring to the anion, and a small fraction of these events leads to the desorption of neutral "emim" or HNO(3) species. These charge-transfer processes also occur for O((3)P) collisions, but in addition, there is a rich amount of chemical change at the surface leading to four main collision types, reaction with NO(3) to form species like [NO(2)] and O(2), O addition to the imidazolium ring causing ring scission, H abstractions from the hydrocarbon chains (ethyl or methyl) or imidazolium ring generating OH, and O atom inelastic scattering. Within the MSINDO model, the major scattered products (all are neutral) from the O collisions, with their probabilities in parentheses, are O (0.13), emim (0.12), HNO(2) (0.05), HNO(3) (0.04), and OH (0.04). Of these products, only OH is unique to O atom collisions; the HNO(2) and HNO(3) products also arise when the incident atom is Ar or O.


With Jianyu (LI 15), Jianliao (TE 14) and Jianzhen (SI 9) for instance, the three acupoints used to treat shoulder bi syndrome by needle knife, and through traceability and researching constant structure, the acupoint position, insertion trace, manipulation and clinical significance of needle knife medicine were discussed. Accurate position is one of the characteristics of acupoints selection of needle knife medicine. As for the acupoints selection method, the mean of body surface localization is always used. The phanerous or palpable bone processes, muscles and tendons are taken as positioning marks; pressing areas where appear sour, numb, or distensible and other sensations is considered as the principle of press positioning. So acupoints position method is the combination of observation and palpation. Different insertion methods can effectively relieve the accretive bursae synovialis, tendon, joint capsule and the compressed nerve, so that shoulder bi syndrome is relieved.


Gow's (2012) dual lexicon model suggests that the primary purpose of words is to mediate the mappings between acousticphonetic input and other forms of linguistic representation. Motivated by evidence from functional imaging, aphasia, and behavioral results, the model argues for the existence of two parallel wordform stores: the dorsal and ventral processing streams. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that the complex, but systematic mapping between sound and articulation in the dorsal stream poses different computational pressures on feature sets than the more arbitrary mapping between sound and meaning. To test this hypothesis, we created two deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs). While the dorsal network was trained to identify individual spoken words, the ventral network was trained to map them onto semantic classes. We then extracted patterns of network activation from the penultimate level of each network and tested how well features generated by the network supported generalization to linguistic categorization associated with the dorsal versus ventral processing streams. Our preliminary results showed both models successfully learned their tasks. Secondary generalization testing showed the ventral CNN outperformed the dorsal CNN on a semantic task: concreteness classification, while the dorsal CNN outperformed the ventral CNN on articulation tasks: classification by onset phoneme class and syllable length. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the divergent processing demands of the ventral and dorsal processing streams impose computational pressures for the development of multiple lexica.


The Soma power plant in western Turkey consists of six 165-MW units (B1–4 and B5-6) and two small 22-MW units (A1–2), the first four units (B1–4) of which burn Early-Middle Miocene feed coals from the lower seam in central mines (southern Soma village), two units (B5–6) use Early-Middle Miocene and Upper Miocene feed coals from the lower and upper seams in Denis mines (northern Soma village), and the later unit A burns relatively clean coals after a washing plant from the lower seam in central mines. Characterization and chemistry of fly ashes in hoppers 1 and 2 from unit B1, and hoppers 1–4 from unit B5 have been studied to determine the variation in fly ash constituents/compositions between the two units. Twenty-four fly ash samples were collected from the hoppers in an array of electrostatic precipitators at 12 h intervals in two days. Data of proximate analysis showed that the fly ash samples have very low volatile matter contents and very high ash yields, as we expected. The ash yield in unit B1 slightly increases from coarser particles (hopper 1) to finer fly ash particles (hopper 2). Lower increase has been also detected in hoppers 1–4 of unit B5. X-ray diffraction (XRD) traces of six fly ash samples selected from each hopper showed that the forming minerals and phases are glass and quartz, the major minerals and phases include lime, anorthite, mullite, anhydrite, hematite, while the minor and accessory minerals are portlandite and gehlenite. Slightly greater contents of lime, portlandite and gehlenite, and lower contents of quartz have been determined in hoppers of unit B1 than in hoppers of unit B5. Results of elemental analysis showed that unit B5 has greater concentrations of Al, Na, K, Ti, Fe, S, As, B, Ba, Be, Bi, Cd, Co, Cr, Cs, Cu, Ga, Ge, Hf, Li, Mo, Nb, Ni, Pb, Rb, Sb, Sn, Ta, Th, Tl, V, W, Y, Zn, Zr, REEs, and lower concentrations of Ca and U than unit B1. Despite these distinctions the mean values for Mg, P, Mn, Sc, and Sr do not show significant variations in the two units. In addition, the mean values for hoppers in both units indicate that some volatile element concentrations, notably As, B, Bi, Cd, Pb, Zn, increases from coarse to finer particle size fly ashes. This implies that the Soma fly ash has variations between units B1 and B5, depending on feed coals and combustion conditions.


The bandwidth of a printed antenna with a rotated rhombus slot is enhanced further by introducing 7 parasitic stripes, one of which is embedded on an edge of the rhombus slot downside while the others are on the upside. The mechanism of the wideband antenna is explained. The measured results indicate a large impedance bandwidth of 122.6% (1.59 GHz–6.63 GHz) for VSWR < 2. The radiation patterns are also measured and relatively stable throughout the whole operating band.


The numerical solution of the interior surface Helmholtz integral equation for toroidal pipes is presented. Acoustic surface pressures of various pipes in the shape of a quarter torus were calculated. Sound attenuation spectra of pipes possessing different bend sharpnesses are presented. A lower limit for the bend sharpness is determined for the attainment of a considerable level of sound attenuation.


Circannual rhythms are innately timed long-term (tau ≈ 12 months) cycles of physiology and behavior, crucial for life in habitats ranging from the equator to the Poles. Here the authors propose that circannual rhythm generation depends on tissue-autonomous, reiterated cycles of cell division, functional differentiation, and cell death. They see the feedback control influencing localized stem cell niches as crucial to this cyclical histogenesis hypothesis. Analogous to multi-oscillator circadian organization, circannual rhythm generation occurs in multiple tissues with hypothalamic and pituitary sites serving as central pacemakers. Signals including day length, nutrition, and social factors can synchronize circannual rhythms through hormonal influences, notably via the thyroid and glucocorticoid axes, which have profound effects on histogenesis. The authors offer 4 arguments in support of this hypothesis: (1) Cyclical histogenesis is a prevalent process in seasonal remodeling of physiology. It operates over long time domains and exhibits tissue autonomy in its regulation. (2) Experiments in which selected peripheral endocrine signals are held constant indicate that circannual rhythms are not primarily the product of interacting hormonal feedback loops. (3) Hormones known to control cell proliferation, differentiation, and organogenesis profoundly affect circannual rhythm expression. (4) The convergence point between photoperiodic input pathways and circannual rhythm expression occurs in histogenic regions of the hypothalamus and pituitary. In this review, the authors discuss how testing this hypothesis will depend on the use of cellular/molecular tools and animal models borrowed from developmental biology and neural stem cell research.


Indirect calorimetry with a room-size respiratory chamber provides an ideal setting to monitor energy metabolism for a prolonged period. During the last 10 years, experiments with this method have raised interesting observations such as: 1) exercise intensity has no effect on 24 h fat oxidation, 2) exercise has little, if any, effect on 24 h fat oxidation, and 3) exercise before breakfast increases 24 h fat oxidation. To some of the scientific community and general public, the first two statements may be unacceptable. But it can be factually explained that the impact of exercise on energy metabolism is not confined to the period of physical activity itself, and that fat oxidation remains elevated during the post-exercise period. The third observation seems to be insignificant, but contradicts the second one. It is premature to conclude that exercise has no effect on 24 h fat oxidation.


Abstract The wide-awake approach to hand surgery entails the use of local infiltration anesthesia using lidocaine with epinephrine and no tourniquet. The technique provides practitioners with an option to perform advanced hand surgical care in an ambulatory setting, without the need for general or regional anesthetics. We present our results using wide-awake approach in wrist surgery, both open and arthroscopic. Between June and August 2011, the wide-awake approach was used in nine elective wrist surgery cases; three arthroscopic procedures, four open triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC) repairs, and two combined arthroscopy/open surgery (eight men/one woman). The arthroscopic patients were anesthetized using dorsal infiltration of lidocaine with epinephrine (20 mL) with an additional intra-articular 5 mL injection 30 minutes before surgery. The open surgery patients received 40 mL of lidocaine with epinephrine around the ulnar aspect of the forearm, from 8-cm proximal to 3-cm distal to the distal radioulnar joint. Standard diagnostic radio- and midcarpal arthroscopies were performed, where one patient had a loose body removed and two patients underwent TFCC debridements due to central TFCC tears. The six open cases were all due to TFCC foveal disruptions, which were reinserted using osteosutures in the distal ulna. Following placement of the ligament sutures, a preliminary knot allowed active and passive motion testing of pronosupination, to determine the adequate amount of tension in the ligaments. The wide-awake approach to wrist surgery is a plausible and reliable technique that eliminates the need for general anesthesia, removes the need of a tourniquet, and provides a cost-efficient and safe approach to wrist surgery. The ability to control ligament reconstructions using active motion may additionally enhance the rehabilitation of these patients, both through early proprioceptive awareness and adequate tensioning of soft tissues.


Retailing and media platforms recommend two types of items to their users: sponsored items that generate ad revenue and nonsponsored ones that do not. The platform selects sponsored items to maximize ad revenue, often through programmatic auctions, and nonsponsored items to maximize user utility with a recommender system (RS). We develop a binary integer programming model to allocate sponsored recommendations considering dual objectives of maximizing ad revenue and user utility. We propose an algorithm to solve it in a computationally efficient way. Our method is a form of postfiltering to a traditional RS, making it widely applicable in two-sided markets. We apply the algorithm to data from an online grocery retailer and show that user utility for the recommended items can be improved while reducing ad revenue by a small amount. This multiobjective approach unifies programmatic advertising and RS and opens a new frontier for advertising and RS research. We provide an extended discussion of future research topics.


The pathogenesis of alveolitis is not well known and therefore experimental situations that mimic some features of this disease should be developed. Objective In this study, the evolution of the experimentally induced infection in rat sockets is characterized, which leads to clinical signs of suppurative alveolitis with remarkable wound healing disturbs. Material and methods Non-infected (Group I) and experimentally infected sockets in Rattus novergicus (Group II) were histometrically evaluated regarding the kinetics of alveolar healing. In addition, the characterization of the present bacteria in inoculation material and the serum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) were performed. The detected species were Capnocytophaga ochracea, Fusobacterium nucleatum ss nucleatum, Prevotella melaninogenica, Streptococcus anginosus, Treponema socranskii and Streptococcus sanguis. Results All experimentally infected rats developed suppurative alveolitis, showing higher levels of CRP in comparison to those non-infected ones. Furthermore, infected rats presented a significant delayed wound healing as measured by the histometric analysis (higher persistent polymorphonuclear infiltrate and lower density of newly formed bone). Conclusion These findings indicate that rat sockets with experimentally induced infection produced higher levels of serum CRP, showing the potential of disseminated infection and a disturb in the alveolar repair process in an interesting experimental model for alveolitis studies.


This paper investigates the influence of news agency Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP) on the coverage and diversity of political news in Dutch national newspapers. Using computational text analysis, we analyzed the influence on print newspapers across three years (1996, 2008, and 2013) and compared influence on print and online newspapers in 2013. Results indicate that the influence of ANP on print newspapers only increased slightly. Online newspapers, however, depend heavily on ANP and are highly similar as a result of such dependence. We draw conclusions relating to the gatekeeping role of news agencies in the digital age in general, and in the context of the Netherlands in particular. Additionally, we demonstrate that techniques from the field of information retrieval can be used to perform these analyses on a large scale. Our scripts and instructions are published open-source to stimulate the use of these techniques in communication studies.


Six years after the introduction of serological tests for the detection of antibodies to HCV these diagnostic procedures have been improved significantly. The ELISA's of the third generation contain 4-5 fragments of structural and nonstructural proteins which have increased the sensitivity and specificity for antibody detection. Several confirmatory assays have been established to detect non-specific reactions. Viremia in acute and chronic HCV infection can be detected by RT-PCR. However, studies on the quality of PCR results with serum panels in a large number of diagnostic labs indicate the urgent need to standardize the RT-PCR techniques. Quantification of viral genomes during acute and chronic HCV infection seem to be of major importance to predict the response rat to IFN. Quantitative RT-PCR techniques using internal standards and the branched DNA technology have been established. Techniques for genotyping HCV isolates have been introduced which also seemed to be important for prediction of IFN response. Recently serotyping of HCV isolates has been evaluated and seems to correlate well with genotyping by RT-PCI and specific probes. The detection of quasispecies in the 5'NCR may, in the future, be an additional prospective test for the prognosis of IFN treatment.


Sequential window acquisition of all theoretical spectra (SWATH) as a typical data-independent acquisition (DIA) strategy is favorable for untargeted metabolomics. It could theoretically acquire product ions of all precursor ions, including precursor ions showing chromatographic peaks of rather poor qualities. However, existing data processing methods present limited capabilities in capturing poor-quality peaks of precursor ions. Thus, although their product ions could be acquired, their precursor ions are absent. Here, we present a new strategy, chromatographic retention behavior-SWATH (CRB-SWATH), that could unbiasedly capture poor-quality peaks and provide high resolutions of multiplexed mass spectroscopy (MS/MS) spectra in SWATH datasets. CRB-SWATH monitors CRBs of SWATH-MS signals under a series of altered elution gradients. As signals of compounds differ from noise by showing CRBs, both the precursor and fragment ions are captured, while ignoring their peak qualities. Moreover, CRB-SWATH offers good chances to resolve highly multiplexed MS/MS spectra in SWATH datasets because precursor ions coeluted in a single elution gradient often present different CRBs. In the untargeted metabolic analysis of Hela cell extracts, CRB-SWATH showed the advantage in exclusively capturing 2645 ions of poor-quality peaks (i.e., tiny peaks, discontinuous ion traces, tailing peaks, zigzag peaks, etc.), accounting for 34.4% of all the untargeted precursor ions extracted. Therein, it is noteworthy that among 2116 negative ions detected in hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) mode, 1284 poor-quality ion peaks (>60%) were exclusively captured by CRB-SWATH. As CRB-SWATH automatically captures a large sum of true ion peaks of poor qualities, extracts MS/MS spectra of high purities, and provides chromatographic retention behaviors of untargeted metabolites for identification and classification, it could be a useful metabolomics tool for understanding biological phenomena better.


On September 28, 2012, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the totally subcutaneous implantable cardioverter defibrillator (S-ICD) for the treatment of life-threatening ventricular tachyarrhythmias in patients who do not have symptomatic bradycardia, incessant ventricular tachycardia (VT), or spontaneous, frequently recurring VT that is reliably terminated with antitachycardia pacing (ATP). These devices hold the promise of life-saving defibrillation without some of the known problems of transvenous defibrillator systems (TV-ICD), including limited vascular access, transvenous lead durability, hazardous lead extractions, and risks of bloodstream infections. There are trade-offs with the S-ICD devices including reports of increased infections and the inability to deliver ATP. The subcutaneous position of the electrodes requires higher energy delivery with longer charge times. In addition, sophisticated signal processing is required for accurate arrhythmia detection and diagnosis. As we consider the appropriate patient population for S-ICD therapy, it is important to review the trade-offs of this system compared with traditional TV-ICD systems.

Response by Poole and Gold on p 1251

Unlike transvenous ICDs that sense the local ventricular myocardial depolarization with an endocardial bipolar electrode, the S-ICD records a signal from 2 of its 3 subcutaneous electrodes. These are the distal sensing electrode located at the lead tip, a proximal sensing electrode located 14 cm proximal to the distal electrode, and the pulse generator itself. By their nature, the S-ICD signals are more susceptible to external and myopotential noise, as well as T-wave oversensing. Thus, sophisticated algorithms have been developed to filter noise from the true cardiac signals.1 Nevertheless, oversensing is responsible for the majority of inappropriate shocks in these systems as reported in a recent multicenter case–control study.2

The competing concern is that of undersensing true arrhythmias that can lead to delays in therapies. The best data available on S-ICD time to therapy come from …