Lucifer, a fastbus module functioning as part of the Delphi track trigger hardware in the first- and second-level trigger sequences, is described. This module is designed for flexibility, ease of testing, and usage. These aims are achieved in limited area by extensive use of application-specific IC devices. Hardware implementation, control requirements, and data bus architecture are described. >


Predictive maintenance of oil and gas production pipelines has allowed tp predict operational failures. Specially due to the thermodynamic behavior of the produced fluids, contaminants present in the oil and gas such as sand, water, H2S and CO2, asphaltene deposition, high temperatures and pressures, phisicochemical characteristics of the soil, etc. that would lead to risks of the installations.In order to minimize risks of failures, we have stablish a control and monitoring preventive program of the variables that influence this conditions, such as: non-destructive testing, wall thickness measurements and two dimensional B Scan measurements to detect impurities, laminations and inclusions in the pipeline material, corrosion evaluation of pipelines, characterization of the soil corrosive potential of flow stations and compressing plants.Aditionally, we have implementede predictive control through the application of external corrosion prevention techniques such as cathodic protection and coatings. For internal corrosion, the use of corrosion inhibitors, asphaltene dispersants and material selection. Increasing the protection through preventive and predictive maintenance we can reduce the operational risks involved for the oil and gas production.Copyright © 1996 by ASME


With the complexity of network increasing steadily, it has been a significant subject for network management system innovatively. In order to fulfill the capability of learning, fault tolerance and organizing of network performance management. A multilevel control model of network performance management is discussed based on the technology of social-agents and the theory of multilevel control in this paper. Firstly, the network performance is monitored, analyzed and forecasted through the distribution and cooperation of the multi-agent. Then the network performance is controlled by multilevel method. Finally, the model proposed in this paper is implemented using Java, which implement the intelligent management for different equipments in the network. The system is applied on a certain local area network. The experimental results show that it can enhance the availability ratio of the network and realize the optimal performance of the network.


As part of a research project on ancestor veneration in the church this essay
explores the stance of biblical witness on a few fundamental issues: (a) How
important is past history for the biblical faith? (b) What is the role of the prime
ancestors of Israel in the biblical faith? (c) Can the deceased mediate between
humans and God? (d) Should the deceased exercise authority over the living?
(e) Does respect, gratitude and love for one's forebears imply dependency on them
as superiors? (f) Does the exclusiveness of the biblical faith imply intolerance and
religious imperialism? (g) Can African insights and metaphors be used to express
the message of the gospel?


The knowledge of localization uncertainties is of prime importance when the navigation of intelligent vehicles has to deal with safety issues. This paper presents a robust estimation method that is able to quantify the localization confidence based on interval analysis and constraint propagation. First, tightly coupled position domains are computed by constraint propagation on Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements and a precise 3-D map of the drivable area. Since GPS is prone to satellite masking and wrong measurements in urban areas, a second stage provides localization integrity and information availability by the use of a position and proprioceptive data history. A robust constraint propagation algorithm is employed to compute the current vehicle pose. It is able to handle erroneous positions with a chosen integrity risk. Experiments carried out in urban canyons illustrate the performance of the method in comparison with a particle filter. Despite bad satellite visibility, full positioning availability is obtained, and errors are less than 5.1 m during 95% of the trial. In opposition to the particle filter, confidence domains are consistent with ground truth, which confirms the high integrity of the method.


In this research work are approached the relations between science and technology as they emerge from the textbooks of mechanical engineering of the Vocational High School in Greece. The analysis was carried out in the light of theoretical approaches such as didactic transposition, social and professional representations, as well as didactic teaching approach based on socio-scientific questions. The main results show that the linear model, according to which technology is only an applied science as well as the socio-economic model that governs the science - technology - society relationship are the most prevalent in the textbooks analyzed. On the contrary, the occurrences of the interactive model are weak.


Amorphous/crystalline n–n-isotype Si heterojunctions are made by a pulsed Q-switched second harmonic generation Nd:YAG laser. The process includes melting and subsequently fast resolidification of a thin front layer of monocrystalline Si by laser pulses to create an amorphous layer (phase transition). Different laser energy densities are used to form the amorphous layer on a monocrystalline Si substrate, the results of the electrical characteristics of the heterojunctions are dependent strongly on the laser energy density. Optoelectronic properties such as current–voltage, capacitance–voltage, and spectral sensitivity are measured in a-Si/c-Si heterojunctions (in the absence of anti-reflecting coating and frontal grid contact) prepared by different laser energy densities. The built-in-potential values extracted from current–voltage measurements are close to the published results of (n-p) amorphous/crystalline heterojunction made by glow discharge and plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition. Furthermore, examination of the formation of amorphous pattern on Si surface is carried out with the help of optical microscopy. Best photovoltaic performance is recognized to be at 5.6 J/cm2. The photodetector shows a wide spectral response, and the peak response is at 780 nm. On the other hand, this peak is independent of laser energy.


Chinese traditional culture's development experienced interaction between Confucianism as mainstream and Buddhism as a kind of foreign idea and culture,which is not only protesting and resisting but also sympathizing and accepting,so as to interact and involve each other,tend to unification.And the idea of filial duty is the conflictive focus of the process.This article refers to Confucianism to discuss the problem about the idea of filial duty of Confucianism and Buddhism in the background of Buddhism bringing in China,try to explain the developmental condition of asking for agreement and keeping difference in their idea of filial duty by analyzing it breadth wise and lengthwise.


This survey describes the current provision of multidisciplinary Acute Pain Teams (APTs) in acute English hospitals performing adult in-patient surgery (excluding maternity). Associations between the presence of an APT and a number of organizational and clinical initiatives for the management of postoperative pain are also explored. Postal questionnaires were sent to the Clinical Director of Anaesthetics or head of the APT at every acute English hospital providing separate anaesthetic services. After written and telephone reminders, the response rate was 86% (n = 226). Eighty-four per cent (n = 190) of respondents had an APT in their hospital. The presence of an APT was associated (P</=0.05) with higher estimates of patient controlled analgesia and epidural use, regular in-service training for nurses and junior doctors, written guidelines/protocols for management of postoperative pain, routine use of postoperative pain measurement systems and audit/research in relation to postoperative pain issues. Acute Pain Teams, in which nurses play a major role, have a pivotal influence not only in relation to postoperative analgesia but also in wider service development. Since 1995, the number of hospitals offering in-patient surgery that are covered by an APT has risen. However, despite repeated endorsements from professional bodies, some acute hospitals still have no APT and recent evidence indicates that some APTs face financial problems and provide a 'token' service only. Recent policy recommendations may have little impact on the current situation.


This paper extends the club model of religion to better account for observed patterns of extremism. We adapt existing models to a multi-agent framework and analyze the distribution of agents and clubs. We find that extremism is more successful when religious groups are able to produce close substitutes for standard goods and that increased access to publicly provided goods can reduce the extremist population share. Quantile regression modeling of data from a multi-nation survey and institutional indices corresponds to the model's key results. Our findings offer a mechanism supporting research linking terrorist origination to civil liberties.


BACKGROUND
The purpose of this study is to report personal experience in laparoscopic antireflux surgery and to analyze the clinical and functional outcomes of this procedure, also in relation to the different techniques used.

METHODS
From 1996 to 2000, 20 patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease associated with hiatal hernia underwent laparoscopic surgery. The indication for surgery was failure of long-term medical therapy. All patients had severe acid reflux on 24 hrs-pH monitoring, endoscopic evidence of esophagitis and hiatal hernia, and defective lower esophageal sphincter. A Nissen fundoplication was performed in 13 patients with normal esophageal body motility, and a 270 degrees posterior fundoplication in seven patients with low esophageal motility.

RESULTS
Mortality and conversion rate were 0. Mean operative time was 135 min and mean postoperative hospital stay 5 days. Operative morbidity was 15%. All the patients were completely cured of reflux symptoms; transient mild postoperative dysphagia occurred in two patients (10%). There was a significantly improvement of the results in postoperative esophageal manometry and 24 hrs-pH monitoring.

CONCLUSIONS
This preliminary experience suggests that laparoscopic surgery represents a safe and effective procedure for the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease. Precise selection of patients and adequate surgical technique are essential.


A short review of the principles of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) in whole blood is followed by a discussion on the influence of hemolysis. The increase of free plasmahemoglobin (PHb) has a strong influence on the continuous measurement of hematocrit and oxygen saturation (O2S) by NIRS. In view of the relative stability of hematocrit values in vivo this effect may be used to detect a change of the hemolysis rate induced by blood pumps in case of malfunction. The aim of this study is, therefore, the assessment of the hemolysis rate within an in vitro mock loop comprising a rotary blood pump by means of NIRS at constant hematocrit levels compared to the photometric reference method. Reflected light is measured by an integrated optical sensor working at three wavelengths (660 nm, 730 nm, and 830 nm). The experimental results demonstrate that the increase of free hemoglobin in plasma due to mechanical pumping leads to a decrease of detected reflected light at all three wavelengths. Influencing parameters such as adhering proteins on the sensor surface and the blood flow rate are briefly discussed. Finally, the possibility of using NIRS sensors for detecting malfunctions of blood pumps in vitro and in vivo is discussed, together with the option of using these sensors for supervision of long-term implantable pumps.  2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of IPEM.


We report the influence of deposition pressure on the morphology and structural properties of the nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) particles embedded in amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiOx) using hot wire chemical vapor deposition (HW-CVD). Catalyst material Tantalum (Ta) was employed for the decomposition of source gases in the reaction chamber. X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy techniques were used to understand the thin film phase transition. Different bonds in the films, for example Si-H, were identified using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and the role of hydrogen species in inducing crystallization has been discussed. Particular pressure limit has been found to be adequate for the growth of silicon related crystalline particles. The samples deposited at substrate temperature of 200 °C, has shown photoluminescence spectra from blue to red zone, and the parts of the visible spectra has been found to be in correlation with the size of nc-Si and/or defects present in the thin film. This low temperature deposited Si based thin films using HW-CVD could be useful for a visible light emitting device production.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Due to the phenotypic and molecular diversity of hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC), it is a challenge to determine a patient's prognosis. We aimed to identify new prognostic markers of patients with HCC treated by liver resection.

METHODS
We collected 314 HCC samples from patients at Bordeaux (1998-2007) and Créteil (2003-2007) hospitals in France. We analyzed the gene expression patterns of the tumors and compared expression patterns with patient survival times. Using the coefficient and regression formula of the multivariate Cox model, we identified a "5-gene score" associated with survival times. This molecular score was then validated in 2 groups of patients from Europe and the United States (n = 213) and China (n = 221).

RESULTS
The 5-gene score, based on combined expression level of HN1, RAN, RAMP3, KRT19, and TAF9, was associated with disease-specific survival times of 189 patients with resected HCC in Bordeaux (hazard ratio = 3.5; 95% confidence interval: 1.9-6.6; P < .0001). The association between the 5-gene score and disease-specific survival was validated in an independent cohort of 125 patients in Créteil (hazard ratio = 2.3; 95% confidence interval: 1.1-4.9; P < .0001). The 5-gene score more accurately predicted patient outcomes than gene expression signatures reported previously. In multivariate analyses, the 5-gene score was associated with disease-specific survival, independent of other clinical and pathology feature of HCC. Disease-specific survival was also predicted by combining data on microvascular invasion, the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer classification system, and the 5-gene score in a nomogram. The prognostic accuracy of the 5-gene score was further validated in European and US patients with hepatitis C, cirrhosis, and HCC (overall survival P = .002) and in Asian patients with HCC with hepatitis B (overall survival, P = .02). Combining the 5-gene score with the expression pattern of 186 genes in corresponding cirrhotic tissues increased its prognostic accuracy.

CONCLUSIONS
The molecular 5-gene score is associated with outcomes of patients with HCC treated by resection in different clinical settings worldwide. This new biomarker should be tested in clinical trials to stratify patients in therapeutic decisions.


Parkinson's disease (PD) is known as the second most common neurodegenerative disease, which is caused by destruction of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra (SN) of the brain; however, the reason for the death of dopaminergic neurons remains unclear. An increase in α-synuclein (α-syn) is considered an important factor in the pathogenesis of PD. In the current study, we investigated the association between PD and serine/arginine-rich protein specific kinase 3 (Srpk3) in MPTP-induced parkinsonism mice model and in SH-SY5Y cells treated with MPP+. Srpk3 expression was significantly downregulated, while tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) decreased and α-synuclein (α-syn) increased after 4 weeks of MPTP intoxication treatment. Dopaminergic cell reduction and α-syn increase were demonstrated by inhibiting Srpk3 expression by siRNA in SH-SY5Y cells. Moreover, a decrease in Srpk3 expression upon siRNA treatment promoted dopaminergic cell reduction and α-syn increase in SH-SY5Y cells treated with MPP+. These results suggest that the decrease in Srpk3 expression due to Srpk3 siRNA caused both a decrease in TH and an increase in α-syn. This raises new possibilities for studying how Srpk3 controls dopaminergic cells and α-syn expression, which may be related to the pathogenesis of PD. Our results provide an avenue for understanding the role of Srpk3 during dopaminergic cell loss and α-syn increase in the SN. Furthermore, this study could support a therapeutic possibility for PD in that the maintenance of Srpk3 expression inhibited dopaminergic cell reduction.


Forty-eight insulindependent diabetics were interviewed by a psychologist about their experiences when changing from conventional diabetes regimen to multi-injection therapy using NovoPen (a pen-like insulin injection system). They had then used the new therapy for 1 1/2 years. Most of them had made only small changes in their eating habits, but they strongly appreciated the new possibility for flexibility in eating patterns. The most mentioned advantages were: The new therapy was practical and easy to use, gave more freedom, made social life easier and improved blood glucose control. Many, mainly women, experienced less feelings of guilt, and women also placed the social advantages highest on the list of advantages. The youngest persons thought the greatest benefit was increased freedom, and persons in middle age the possibilities for improved metabolic control. Multi-injection insulin therapy is an important advancement, and is probably not acceptable to most diabetics without a practical and reliable insulin pen.


Contemporary formulations of cosmetic and pharmaceutical emulsions may be achieved by using combined polymer/surfactant system, which can form complexes with different structure and physicochemical properties. Such complexation can lead to additional stabilization of the emulsion products. For these reasons, the main goal of this study was to investigate the interfacial properties of chitosan/sodium dodecyl sulfate complexes. In order to understand the stabilization mechanism, the interface of the oil/water systems that contained mixtures of chitosan and sodium dodecyl sulfate, was studied by measuring the interfacial tension. Considering the fact that the properties of the oil phase has influence on the adsorption process, three different types of oil were investigated: medium-chain triglycerides (semi-synthetic oil), paraffin oil (mineral oil) and natural oil obtained from the grape seed. The surface tension measurements at the oil/water interface, for chitosan water solutions, indicate a poor surface activity of this biopolymer. Addition of sodium dodecyl sulfate to chitosan solution causes a significant decrease in the interfacial tension for all investigated oils. The results of this study are important for understanding the influence of polymer-surfactant interactions on the properties of the solution and stability of dispersed systems.


The scalar–tensor theory can be formulated in both Jordan and Einstein frames, which are conformally related together with a redefinition of the scalar field. As the solution to the equation of the scalar field in the Jordan frame does not have the one-to-one correspondence with that in the Einstein frame, we give a criterion along with some specific models to check if the scalar field in the Einstein frame is viable or not by confirming whether this field is reversible back to the Jordan frame. We further show that the criterion in the first parameterized post-Newtonian approximation can be determined by the parameters of the osculating approximation of the coupling function in the Einstein frame and can be treated as a viable constraint on any numerical study in the scalar-tensor scenario. We also demonstrate that the Brans–Dicke theory with an infinite constant parameter ωBD is a counterexample of the equivalence between two conformal frames due to the violation of the viable constraint.


The purpose of the thesis is to fill a gap in the publications about Viollet-le-Duc, outlining his profile as an architect through a chronological study of his projects, whether built or not, of his theoretic writings and, when useful, of his restoration works, to achieve a full vision of his extraordinary contribution. His theoretic and practical work has been studied through a precise bibliographical and documentary research as well as the direct analysis of his architectures and the monuments he restored in various regions of France. Furthermore, his works and writings have been put back in their historical context. The thesis recounts the origin and the development of Viollet-le-Duc's rational vision of Gothic and the growing focus on construction in his conception of architecture, from his education years in France and in Italy, to his maturity. Viollet-le-Duc defines principles deriving from Gothic that act as formal and spatial qualification of the project. The fundamentals of his vision are truth of construction, of structure and of materials, focus on structure in the project process and in the definition of the sculptural and pictorial ornament, polychromy deriving from construction, expressing outside the structure and the interior functions, articulation of volumes. From these principles, Viollet-le-Duc tries to draw a method different from the Beaux-Arts, a truly modern and rational new style. While searching for an alternative to the Beaux-Arts system, Viollet-le-Duc studies the nature and scientific theories of his century. The very analogy with crystals makes it possible for Viollet-le-Duc to conceive a totally new structure in the theoretic projects in masonry and metal. From the morphology of plants and animals, Viollet-le-Duc draws references for the formal definition of metallic structures. Regarding ornament, Viollet-le-Duc pushes to extreme limits the inspiration of nature stemming from the study of medieval examples. His stylized forms with increasingly free lines open the way to Art Nouveau.


Comorbidities influence outcome in COPD, but, their role remains poorly described. We studied the impact on survival of COPD related comorbidities and developed a COPD specific comorbidity (COTE) index. We also compared COTE with the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) and BODE.

Methods: We followed 1664 COPD subjects for over 4 years. Systematically, 80 possible comorbidities were recorded including conditions listed in CCI. In a randomly selected 2/3 of the cohort we calculated their prevalence. Using Cox proportional hazard, 6 of these comorbidities were independently associated with mortality. We then assigned points to the 6 comorbidities and constructed the COTE index based on likelihood ratios for death.

View this table:

Comorbidities predictive of mortality

The COTE index was then validated in the rest (1/3) of the cohort. Finally, we compared the value of COTE,Charlson and BODE index to predict mortality in the whole population.

Results: 23 of 80 comorbidities differed in prevalence between survivors and non-survivors. The COTE index was superior to Charlson in mortality prediction: HR (95%CI) of [1.22 (1.17,1.27, p<0.001) vs 1.03 (0.99,1.07, p =0.126)] and complementary to BODE [1.32 (1.28,1.36, p < 0.001)].

Conclusion: Comorbidities are prevalent in COPD and a subset of them influences survival. The COTE is simpler and more accurate than the Charlson index to predict survival. The COTE also adds independent predictive power to the BODE index.


Background This study aims: (1) To compare cognitive and psychiatric outcomes after bilateral awake versus asleep subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery for Parkinson's disease (PD). (2) To explore the occurrence of psychiatric diagnoses, cognitive impairment and quality of life after surgery in our whole sample. (3) To validate whether we can predict postoperative cognitive decline. Methods 110 patients with PD were randomised to receive awake (n=56) or asleep (n=54) STN DBS surgery. At baseline and 6-month follow-up, all patients underwent standardised assessments testing several cognitive domains, psychiatric symptoms and quality of life. Results There were no differences on neuropsychological composite scores and psychiatric symptoms between the groups, but we found small differences on individual tests and cognitive domains. The asleep group performed better on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test delayed memory test (f=4.2, p=0.04), while the awake group improved on the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test delayed memory test. (f=4.4, p=0.04). The Stroop III score was worse for the awake group (f=5.5, p=0.02). Worse scores were present for Stroop I (Stroop word card) (f=6.3, p=0.01), Stroop II (Stroop color card) (f=46.4, p<0.001), Stroop III (Stroop color-word card) (f=10.8, p=0.001) and Trailmaking B/A (f=4.5, p=0.04). Improvements were seen on quality of life: Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39 (f=24.8, p<0.001), and psychiatric scales: Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (f=6.2, p=0.01), and Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (f=5.5, p=0.02). Conclusions This study suggests that the choice between awake and asleep STN DBS does not affect cognitive, mood and behavioural adverse effects, despite a minor difference in memory. STN DBS has a beneficial effect on quality of life, mood and anxiety symptoms. Trial registration number NTR5809.


In this paper I explore some of the inter-relations between the globalisation of production systems, the political-economic re-definition of Europe and the changing character of places within it, and the changing character of corporate (dis)investment strategies. International investment form constitutive moments in the creation of global production systems and of changing geographies of production within Europe. Whilst EU-based multinational and transnationals seek investment opportunities both in other parts of Europe beyond their national territory and further afield outside Europe, major companies based in the USA and Japan in particular have invested to varying degrees within Europe. Furthermore, there has been a shift in the balance between 'green field' investment in manufacturing and investment via acquisition and merger, often linked to growth in the number and form of strategic alliances and other forms of co-operative linkages between major firms. These flows, mediated through corporate organisational structures, raises important theoretical and practical questions about the links between the re-definition of the boundaries of the firm, increasing globalisation of production systems, changing forms of corporate strategies towards production and competition, the increasing politicaleconomic integration of the emerging macro-regions of a global economy, a process that is most developed (although still evolving and far from complete) in the EU, and the changing intra-regional economic geographies of Europe.


The purpose of the article was to identify and present the process of developing basic strategies for the formation in the early twentieth century. image of an integral Ukrainian national history in the works of professional scientists. The use of methods of historiographic analysis and synthesis, along with the comparative method, made it possible to substantiate the scientific and social relevance of the study and achieve the goals set. The main results of the work were: the identification of external and internal prerequisites for the nationalization of Ukrainian historical writing in relation to historical science; determination of the repertoire of basic texts in which the construction of the national Ukrainian historical narrative began; analysis of the genesis of strategies for the formation of a «long» Ukrainian history in the works of the classics of national historiography, who were the first to dare to accumulate regional histories of the imperial historiographic space into a new historiographic hierarchy; comparison and analysis of scientific approaches, concepts and stylistic features of «big Ukrainian history» by M.S. Grushevsky, A.Ya. Efimenko and N.N. Arkasa. Scientific novelty is determined by the fact that the first popular national narratives are considered in a comparative perspective as the basic options for current competitive strategies for representing the Ukrainian past. The conclusions point out that the causes and prerequisites for the nationalization of Ukrainian history were the social and political modernization of society in the second half of the 19th century, the politicization of social movements that demanded their historical legitimation, the growth of literacy among the general population, and their active involvement in social and political processes. The historiographic prerequisites were: the formation of a corporation of professional historians and its various institutions, the accumulation of a significant array of professional historical information, the creation in the middle of the 19th century. regional histories of ethnic Ukrainian territories Using the typology of interaction between historical writing and historical memory proposed by A. Megill, it is determined that the popular texts of M.S. Grushevsky and M.M. Arkas is vividly represented by its affirmative and didactic segments, which oriented historiography towards projects that agitated the society of that time and, with the help of historiography, constructed the historical memory desired at the moment. Unlike its competitors, the work of A.Ya. Efimenko turned out to be close to analytical historiography, separating itself from historical memory and opposing itself to it as a critical text, the author of which tried not only to understand the complexities and contradictions of the historical process, but also to bring the public closer to a professional understanding of history; noted that the prevailing at the beginning of the twentieth century. strategies for constructing an integral and continuous Ukrainian history, despite all attempts to modernize them, still remain in the arsenal of modern historical science.


The intracellular mechanism by which sepsis lowers vascular reactivity and the subsequent reversal by dexamethasone or nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitors remain unclear. We measured the sensitivity of contraction of the rat tail artery to intracellular Ca2+ in a model of polymicrobial septic shock. At 22 h after cecal ligation and puncture (CLP), rats were treated with an anti-inflammatory glucocorticoid (dexamethasone, 1 mg/kg ip), an inducible NOS inhibitor (L-canavanine, 100 mg/kg ip), or saline. At 24 h after CLP, endothelium-denuded, perfused segments of tail artery were loaded with the intracellular Ca2+-sensitive dye fura 2 in vitro. Intracellular Ca2+ concentration and perfusion pressure were measured simultaneously. The rightward shift of the perfusion pressure-intracellular Ca2+ mobilization curve after norepinephrine stimulation subsequent to CLP indicates decreased intracellular Ca2+ sensitivity of contraction. The relation was restored by dexamethasone (which also restored in vivo blood pressure and flow), but not by L-canavanine (which restored perfusion pressure by further mobilization of intracellular Ca2+). We conclude that CLP lowers vasomotion by lowering intracellular Ca2+ sensitivity, which can be restored with glucocorticoid treatment. The involvement of inducible NOS does not solely account for the sepsis-induced reduction in Ca2+ sensitivity of contraction.


This paper explores the importance of providing track crossovers in addressing the issue of replacement bus services in response to unplanned rail service disruptions by using a case study in Melbourne, Australia. Crossovers determine the point from which rail replacement bus services can operate and thus are critical in determining the scale, costs, and benefits of rail disruption management. Despite research evidence that provision for crossovers is important in managing rail disruption, the research literature gives little guidance concerning how it can be achieved and what the relative costs and benefits of providing crossovers are. Theoretical modeling evaluated passenger and operator impacts of alternative crossover plans for a case study of unplanned service disruptions on a suburban rail line in Melbourne. Results showed that an additional crossover reduced user rail disruption costs by 78% to 96%, while bus hire costs were reduced by 63% to 93%. Results suggested that only a few rail disruptions annually would make the provision of track crossovers financially viable on the basis of savings in rail replacement bus service costs. Research found that locating crossovers as close as possible to areas of major disruption provided the most benefits for users and operators. Sensitivity tests showed that even with significantly lower ridership and a lower frequency of disruption, the addition of crossovers was financially positive and generated substantial user benefits. All highlighted results are with respect to the one suburban rail line under analysis. Provision of additional track crossovers appears to be a highly positive means of reducing costs and improving services. However, research indicates that crossovers can cause disruption on some rail systems, and this factor needs to be considered in rail planning.


Abstract Despite its small size and high human population Sri Lanka is home to c. 4,400 wild Asian elephants Elephas maximus. Human–elephant conflict around agriculture is severe, with > 100 elephants and c. 50 people killed annually. Elephants appear to be able to time their raiding of paddy-fields in Sri Lanka with the harvesting of the rice, as if they are responding to an olfactory trigger. It is the elephant's sophisticated chemosensory system that may hold the key to resolving human–elephant conflict. Research is required to determine the odours associated with the various development stages of rice, using gas chromatography, and to find a suitable substance that could be used to mask the specific odour of ripening rice. The use of chemosensory-based methods, if feasible, will not be a universal panacea for the mitigation of human–elephant conflict but, in combination with other methods, could reduce conflict and make it easier for farmers to harvest their crops in safety. Such a combination of methods could be useful across the range of both Asian and African elephants.


Automated cardiac segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging datasets is an essential step in the timely diagnosis and management of cardiac pathologies. We propose to tackle the problem of automated left and right ventricle segmentation through the application of a deep fully convolutional neural network architecture. Our model is efficiently trained end-to-end in a single learning stage from wholeimage inputs and ground truths to make inference at every pixel. To our knowledge, this is the first application of a fully convolutional neural network architecture for pixel-wise labeling in cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our model is robust to outperform previous fully automated methods across multiple evaluation measures on a range of cardiac datasets. Moreover, our model is fast and can leverage commodity compute resources such as the graphics processing unit to enable state-of-the-art cardiac segmentation at massive scales. The models and code are available at https://github.com/vuptran/cardiac-segmentation.


pupil on the right side, with twitchings of the left side of the body, convinced us that a temporo-sphenoidal abscess was present. This was confirmed at the last operation. The further progress of the case was slow, and was interrupted about a month after the last operation by retention of pus in the brain abscess. This, however, was relieved by improving the drainage. The patient was a Celt from the far north and was of rather a melancholy disposition. His mental condition after the development of the brain abscess was interesting : from a shy, qviiet youth he became resistive and sometimes violent, and this maniacal tendency passed off slowly. The convulsions of the opposite side of the body quickly sub- sided after the evacuation of the abscess, but the facial contracture on the same side continued for a considerable period. The fact that the patient had a recur- rence of the symptoms of brain abscess almost five weeks after the abscess had been opened and drained points to the necessity of keeping these cases of brain abscess under observation for a very considerable period. The writer has known cases which have been operated upon and discharged as cured being brought back to hospital six months and more after the operation, with a recurrence of the symptoms of brain abscess, and dying from septic cedenia of the brain in spite of prompt opening of the old abscess-cavity. We must admit that the healing power of the brain tissue is very feeble, if, indeed, it can be said to exist at all. for five years following scarlet fever and diphtheria. Patient has had pain all these years and for the last three weeks has been off and on and has not been able to sleep on account of severe headache. No giddiness. Patient's doctor reports that the vomiting was of gastric


The world Bank states that the global economy slow down to 2,9% in 2018. Bank profitability growth in Indonesia slowed as identified through Return On Asset printed by ten large banks until Q3 2018. The aims of this research are to analyze the influence financing to deposit ratio and non performing finance into return on asset. The independent variables in this research are financing to deposit ratio and non performing finance, and the dependent variable is return on asset. The approach of this research was a descriptive quantitative. The data used are secondary data, obtained from published financial statements of  BRI Syariah Bank between 2009 – 2018. The technique to analyze the data is multiple linier regression. Based on the result of the analysis showed that financing to deposit ratio variabel has negative influence into return on asset. Based on the result of the analysis showed that non performing finance variable has negative influence into return on asset.


In this paper, the design and implementation of online virtual experiment in the area of power electronic devices for remote education is introduced. The whole system is composed of three parts: interface, server and computing nodes. XML is the data exchange format between different parts using custom protocol. Unified modeling uses Modelica language, while the simulation uses OpenModelica. Compared with traditional lab's experiments, the online virtual experiments are more friendly and convenient.


With the remarkable development of international trade, global commodity circulation has grown significantly. To accomplish commodity circulation among various regions and countries, multi-modal transportation scheme has been widely adopted by a large number of companies. Meanwhile, according to the relevant statistics, the international logistics costs reach up to approximate 30-50% of the total production cost of the companies 1 . Lowering the transportation costs has become one of the most important sources for a company to raise profits and maintain competitiveness in the global market. Thus, how to optimize freight routes selection to move commodities through the multi-modal transportation network has gained great concern of both the decision makers of the companies and the multi-modal transport operators. In this study, we present a systematical review on the multi-modal transportation freight routing planning problem from the aspects of model formulation and algorithm design. Following contents are covered in this review: (1) distinguishing the formulation characteristics of various optimization models; (2) identifying the optimization models in recent studies according to the formulation characteristics; and (3) discussing the solution approaches that are developed to solve the optimization models, especially the heuristic algorithms.


The static solution of the Fokker-Planck equation, known as the Haissinski equation and governing the longitudinal evolution of an electron beam moving in a Storage-Ring which is subject to an inductive wake field, can be expressed in an analytical form, using the Lambert W-function. We show how the use of this analytical tool allows a better understanding of the validity of the numerical solutions and the distribution normalization properties.


Hillside systems are key centers of ecological and cultural diversity, providing humanity with goods (e.g., food) and vital services (e.g., prevention of landslides) and sustaining 25% of terrestrial biodiversity. However, historical land use practices over these landscapes have contributed to their degradation. In this work, the hillside systems (i.e., slope > 5%) of the agricultural-rural landscape in the Coastal range of Central Chile (32° S–34° S) was analyzed and integrated analysis methods were used for the identification of areas that are degraded and have agricultural potential. The criteria used to identify them include morphometric parameters, current land cover/use, and legal protection status. The hillside systems represent a 74% of the study area, and while 1.2% is currently used for agriculture (13,473 ha), there are 3.2 thousand hectares that could be potentially recovered for agriculture, representing 0.4% of the hillside systems and 0.3% of the study area. In contrast, there are 773,131 ha of hillside systems with natural vegetation in need of conservation and/or protection, representing 69.4% of the study area (93.9% of the hillside systems). The last are key for the resilience of the entire landscape, helping to maintain critical processes linked to the productivity of agricultural areas, especially in the context of climate change and recurrent droughts.


Estradiol binding components in the cytosol and nuclear fractions of the ovary from immature rats (22-28 days old) were characterized by in vitro methods. Several of the biochemical characteristics of the estradiol binding components in the ovarian tissue were compared with the estradiol receptor from the uterus. The results suggest that the ovarian estradiol binding components are similar to the specific high affinity estradiol receptors in the uterus. In the cytosol of intact rat ovary a significant fraction of the total binding sites was found to be occupied, presumably by the endogenous estrogen. Following hypophysectomy there was a significant increase in the available cytosol binding sites. Evidence for translocation of cytosol receptor-estrogen (RE) complex to the nucleus was obtained for the ovary. The sedimentation properties of the RE complex of the ovary and the uterus are similar. The ovarian cytosol RE complex sediments at 7-8S in glycerol gradients at low ionic strength and at 4S in sucrose gradients at high ionic strength. Following extraction with 0.4 M KCl the ovarain nuclear RE complex sediments at 5S in sucrose gradients which is identical to that of the uterine nuclear receptor.


We develop a conceptual model for the internal structures of the photon and electron, based on the cordus model. The main differentiating feature between the photon and electron is identified as the way it deals with its field structures or hyff. The photon has a fibrillating relationship with its field, whereas the electron is a pulsating field-pump. The resulting model permits an explanation of the discrete (approximately quantised) electrostatic force, the propulsion mechanism for the speed of light, and the gravitational bending of light. These are side-effects and the larger advantage of this model is the potential to explain photon-electron interactions generally.


Listening skills, and receptive language skills as a whole, are often underappreciated, with curriculum designers and teachers choosing to focus on productive skills such as speaking and writing where the performance of students can be assessed via display; listening and reading are skills that are used only when required and are therefore more difficult to assess within course structures. Teaching students the process of listening also requires an appreciation of the meta-level processing of language to isolate and practice discreet skills, a method which requires time and control on the part of both student and teacher. This paper lays out the rationale and procedure of applying a process-based approach to the listening skills teaching in an EFL course at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, and reports on this project to improve teaching methodologies in the English program. Key terms: process-based methodology, listening skills, receptive language skills, curriculum development The writers acknowledge and appreciate the support given by faculty members during materials development, and the financial support provided by the FIP funding program during this on-going project. Introduction Listening methodology Six years of compulsory English study are completed by most Japanese students at the junior high school and high school levels. Much of this education focuses on final products in the forms of test scores and the passing of university entrance examinations. This compulsory language education continues into tertiary education where EFL classes are mandated as part of students' credits for graduation (Nunan, 2003). Recently, the excessive product-oriented nature of such course design and teaching methodology has been gaining attention (Field, 2008). Teachers and students alike are beginning to recognize that sole attention to the outcomes of language learning results in the neglect of the processes involved in the four main language skills. At university, where these students are often focused on the long-term goal of using the language in real-world contexts, a focus on product is less relevant for their study purposes (Ur, 1984). A more systematic methodology for the teaching of listening skills has long been advocated (Richards 1983; Ur 1984; Field 1998; Field 2008), but it remains an underdeveloped field of study. Many current second language listening courses are founded on a product-based approach. Such courses often involve the following cycle: students listen to a text; they answer questions based on the text; the teacher shares the correct answers. The teaching component is absent from this cycle, and there is little or no opportunity for learners to develop their existing listening skills and strategies except through exposure, which can be a tedious and lengthy undertaking and not one best supported by most university course learning environments. Therefore, when the focus is on product, students are not explicitly exposed to specific listening processes. In other words, the content in many listening classes should more accurately be termed 'testing' not 'teaching'. Field (1998) points out that instead of helping to improve listening effectiveness, many standard listening classes merely stack on more texts to a listener's experience; student are not taught how to process these texts in such classes. Inherent within EFL curriculum discussions at the tertiary level is the methodology selected as the basis of instruction in a


This paper provides a review of early gas cooled reactors including the Magnox reactors originating in the United Kingdom and the subsequent development of the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGR). These early gas cooled reactors shared a common coolant medium, namely carbon dioxide (CO2). A framework of information is provided about these early reactors and identifies unique problems/opportunities associated with use of CO2 as a coolant. Reactor designers successfully rose to these challenges. After years of successful use of the CO2 gas cooled reactors in Europe, the succeeding generation of reactors, called the High Temperature Gas Reactors (HTGR), were designed with Helium gas as the coolant. Again, in the 21st century, with the latest reactor designs under investigation in Generation IV, there is a revived interest in developing Gas Cooled Fast Reactors that use CO2 as the reactor coolant. This paper provides a historical perspective on the 52 CO2 reactors and the reactor programs that developed them. The Magnox and AGR design features and safety characteristics were reviewed, as well as the technologies associated with fuel storage, reprocessing, and disposal. Lessons-learned from these programs are noted to benefit the designs of future generations of gas cooled nuclear reactors.


Due to population aging, society is struggling with an increasing number of patients with neurodegenerative diseases. One of them is Parkinson's disease. Early detection of Parkinson's disease is very important since there is no cure and the treatment is more effective when administered early. Wearable devices can be of great help they are cheap and reachable, they can last for many days without charging, can provide long time monitoring, and are minimally invasive to human life. In the paper, we briefly describe the sensors and actigraphs suitable for the analysis of sleep disturbance in Parkinson's patients and nocturnal symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Moreover, we pointed out how to collect the data and what could have an influence on the final performance of the automatic models. Additionally, as the main aim of this paper, we have analyzed and described the machine learning algorithms used in the area of analysis accelerometer signal for sleep / awake stages recognition or diseases which manifested in changes in sleep patterns. We thought that these algorithms, because of the nature of Parkinson's patients' sleep patterns, will be simultaneously appropriate for the detection of Parkinson's disease.


High energy interplanetary proton events can jeopardize vital military and civilian spacecraft by disrupting logical circuits and by actually damaging spacecraft electronic components. Studies of solar hard x-rays indicate that high-energy proton events observed near Earth are highly associated with an uncommon type of solar flare exhibiting temporal progressively hardening hard x-ray spectra. A hard x-ray spectrometer is being developed by the Czech Astronomical Institute to provide a test bed for evaluating this phenomenon as a possible proton-storm prediction method. The instrument is designed to measure hard x-ray spectra in a high fluence, high-energy particle background environment such as that found at geosynchronous altitude. This experiment has been selected for space flight by the DoD Space Test Program and will fly aboard the Department of Energy satellite, Multi-spectral thermal Imager, scheduled for a three year mission, beginning in late 1999. The timing of this mission, fortuitously, coincides with the experiment are: 1) to evaluate the efficacy of this type of solar instrument in predicting interplanetary proton storms; 2) to study the high-energy physics of solar flares in concert with the premier flight of the NOAA soft x-ray imaging telescope, SXI, on the GOES 12 weather satellite and other solar mission. If the first goal is demonstrated by this mission, continuous monitoring of the Sun for proton events could become operational from geo-synchronous orbit during solar cycle 24.


Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) is usually characterized by uncontrolled complement activation. The recent discovery of loss-of-function mutations in DGKE in patients with aHUS and normal complement levels challenged this observation. DGKE, encoding diacylglycerol kinase-ε, has not been implicated in the complement cascade but hypothetically leads to a prothrombotic state. The discovery of this novel mechanism has potential implications for the treatment of infants with aHUS, who are increasingly treated with complement blocking agents. In this study, we used homozygosity mapping and whole-exome sequencing to identify a novel truncating mutation in DGKE (p.K101X) in a consanguineous family with patients affected by thrombotic microangiopathy characterized by significant serum complement activation and consumption of the complement fraction C3. Aggressive plasma infusion therapy controlled systemic symptoms and prevented renal failure, suggesting that this treatment can significantly affect the natural history of this aggressive disease. Our study expands the clinical phenotypes associated with mutations in DGKE and challenges the benefits of complement blockade treatment in such patients. Mechanistic studies of DGKE and aHUS are, therefore, essential to the design of appropriate therapeutic strategies in patients with DGKE mutations.


This paper describes position control of autonomous mobile robot using combination of Kalman filter and Fuzzy logic techniques. Both techniques have been used to fuse information from internal and external sensors to navigate a typical mobile robot in an unknown environment. An obstacle avoidance algorithm utilizing stereo vision technique has been implemented for obstacle detection. The odometry errors due to systematic-errors (such as unequal wheel diameter, the effect of the encoder resolution etc.) and/or non-systematic errors (ground plane, wheel-slip etc.) contribute to various motion control problems of the robot. During the robot moves, whether straight-line and/or arc, create the position and orientation errors which depend on systematic and/or non-systematic odometry errors. The main concern in most of the navigating systems is to achieve the real-time and robustness performances to precisely control the robot movements. The objective of this research is to improve the position and the orientation of robot motion. From the simulation and experiments, we prove that the proposed mobile robot moves from start position to goal position with greater accuracy avoiding obstacles.


Proceedings: AACR 104th Annual Meeting 2013; Apr 6-10, 2013; Washington, DC

The prognosis of patients with malignant glioma remains extremely poor despite surgery and improvement in radio and chemo therapies. Unfortunately few drugs cross the blood-brain barrier. Therapeutic treatment with chemotherapy agents, e.g., temozolomide, 1,3 bis (2-chloroethinyl)-1 nitrosurea carmustine wafers or tipifarnib have not significantly improved patient survival. Mifepristone has been found to provide significant palliative benefit to both mice with various types of malignancies and also humans with a wide variety of advanced cancers no longer or unresponsive to chemotherapy. The hypothesized mechanism of action is that tumor cells either directly secrete or cause gamma delta T cells in the tumor microenvironment to secrete a similar immunomodulatory protein as in normal pregnancies which inhibits natural killer (NK) cell cytotoxicity and causes a shift from thymic helper (TH)1 cytokines which stimulate cellular immune responses to TH2cytokines which evoke a humoral response. This protein is called the progesterone induced blocking factor (PIBF). The hypothesis suggests that also similar to pregnancy, progesterone or a P-like substance secreted by the tumor up-regulates PIBF response. Mifepristone has been found to down-regulate PIBF expression from human leukemia cell lines. Whether this is the precise mechanism of action or not, the progesterone receptor antagonist seems to inhibit tumor growth and provide extended and better quality of life. The objective of the present study was to determine if mifepristone may cross the blood brain barrier and provide a palliative benefit to patients with stage IV glioblastoma multiforme. A 43 year old male with a large glioblastoma multiforme grade IV malignant brain tumor arising originally from the temporal lobe with metastases to the spinal cord was told that he was no longer a candidate for anymore chemo or radiation therapy. He was advised that death should occur within 2 months. Indeed 2 months later death was considered imminent. He slept most of the day and was unable to converse. He was completely paralyzed from the neck down and his hands were in a clenched position. After 2 weeks of taking 200mg/day of mifepristone he became alert and was able to carry out intelligent conversations. He was now able to open his hand. He remained alert for 3 months, but paralysis had spread making swallowing difficult. He could not longer ingest the mifepristone. He died 2 weeks later. This case proves that mifepristone can cross the blood brain barrier and provide palliative benefits for grade IV glioblastoma multiforme. It is well tolerated with minimal or no side effects at this dosage. In view of the paucity of effective therapy for this type of cancer, mifepristone should be given consideration for treatment earlier than this extremely advanced stage.

Citation Format: Jerome H. Check, Carrie Wilson, Diane Check. Evidence that mifepristone, a progesterone receptor antagonist, can cross the blood brain barrier and provide palliative benefits for glioblastoma multiforme grade IV. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 485. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-485


Benzaldehyde lyase from the Pseudomonas fluorescens catalyzes the reaction of aromatic aldehydes with nitroso compounds and furnishes N-arylhydroxamic acids in high yields. Aromatic aldehydes and benzoins are converted into enamine-carbanion-like intermediates prior to their reaction with nitroso compounds. The kinetic resolution of rac-2-hydroxy-1,2-diphenylethanones furnished (S)-benzoins and arylhydroxamic acids with high enantioselectivities and conversions.


This study aims to evaluate the prevalence and sociodemographic factors of anemia in children <36 months old in China. In this study, data of 24 235 children were investigated from 32 primary health care (PHC) facilities in 11 province-level regions. Pearson &khgr;2-test and logistic regression model were used to estimate potential risk factors associated with anemia. The overall prevalence of anemia was 24.4%, and 32.8% children from rural areas were anemic, but no statistically significant difference was observed between male and female. Predictors of anemia are different regions of China, cesarean delivery, premature birth and neonatal asphyxia. We also found that education level and income of children's parents are important determinants of childhood anemia. In additional, feeding practice would affect anemia among children aged 6–12 months. Our results could provide some insights for prevention and control of childhood anemia in PHC facilities.


It is an important part of normal sperm transport to the oviduct as well as elimination of excess sperm from the uterus. In 10-15% of brood mares, the normal clearance mechanism fails resulting in a persistent breeding-induced endometritis with severe consequences on fertility. The cause of persistent breeding-induce endometritis is believed to be impaired myometrial activity in response to uterine inflammation. However, disruption of normal breeding activities may also contribute to the condition. Social interaction with a stallion appears to be important to normal uterine contractility after breeding. The presence of seminal plasma in an inseminate has also been shown to be of importance to normal sperm transport and elimination from the female tract, as well as in the modulation of the breeding-induced inflammation. Treatment of persistent breeding-induced endometritis has been focused on assisting the uterus to clear the inflammation in a timely fashion. Post-breeding treatments with oxytocin or prostaglandins and/or uterine lavage at 6-24 hours after breeding have been used by practitioners with good success. Alternative treatments such as the use of corticosteroids, immunostimulants, and acupuncture have recently been suggested to improve uterine clearance and fertility in mares that are susceptible to persistent breeding-induced endometritis. Regardless of the choice of treatment strategy, it is important to keep in mind that all mares develop breeding-induced endometritis after breeding, but only 10-15% of these mares develop a persistent form of the con-dition and would benefit from treatment.


We consider a partial disassembly line balancing problem with hazardous tasks whose successful completions are uncertain. When any hazardous task fails, it causes damages of the tasks on the workstation that it is performed on and all remaining tasks to be performed in the succeeding workstations. We attribute probabilities for the successful completion and failure of the hazardous tasks and aim to maximise the total expected net revenue. We formulate the problem as a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer programme where the assignment of the tasks to the workstations is decided in the first-stage, before the resolution of the uncertainty. We give the formulation for one, two and three hazardous tasks, and then extend to the arbitrary number of hazardous tasks. Our numerical results reveal that proposed stochastic programming models return satisfactory performance and can solve instances with up to 73 tasks very quickly. We observe that the number of tasks, number of hazardous tasks and success probabilities are the most significant parameters that affect the performance. We quantify the value of capturing uncertainty using the expected objective values attained by the solution of the stochastic model and that of the expected value model, and obtain very satisfactory results.


Mycobacteriosis was diagnosed in five psittacine birds: a blue-headed pionus parrot (Pionus menstruus), three grey-cheeked parakeets (Brotogeris pyrrhopterus), and a red-crowned Amazon parrot (Amazona dufresniana rhodocorytha). Signs were marked muscular wasting, anemia, recurrent diarrhea, and dulling or loss of feathers. Lesions were commonly present in the intestines, livers, and spleens, suggesting an oral route of infection. Other tissues in which granulomas were found were the oropharynx, pancreas, and kidneys. The pionus parrot had pulmonary tuberculosis involving both lungs and air sacs. One grey-cheeked parakeet exhibited no gross tubercular lesions. Microscopic lesions varied from noncaseous histiocytic foci to granulomatous "tubercles" with caseous necrosis.


Objective: To analyze the short-, medium-, and long-term benefits from and satisfaction with the Baha for patients with profound unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Design: Prospective clinical study. Setting: Head and Neck Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. Patients: Eight patients with acquired profound unilateral SNHL. Interventions: Patients underwent unaided baseline testing and aided Baha testing using laboratory and self-report measures at 6 postfitting intervals. Main Outcome Measures: Laboratory measures included the revised Speech Perception in Noise test, Hearing in Noise Test, and localization testing. Disease-specific self-report measures included the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit, Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults, and Single-Sided Deafness Questionnaire. The Medical Outcomes Study SF-36 Health Survey was used to assess health-related quality of life. Results: Based on 95% confidence intervals for unaided testing, significant improvements on aided revised Speech Perception in Noise, Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit, and Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults scores were sustained during the 18-month test interval. Variable performance was observed for the Hearing in Noise Test over time and patients. No acclimatization effects were shown for localization testing or the generic health-related quality-of-life measure. Patients reported satisfaction in a variety of situations as quantified by the Single-Sided Deafness Questionnaire in the long-term. Conclusion: The Baha is effective in reducing psychosocial consequences of unilateral profound SNHL for the long-term. Improvement in speech understanding occurred when the primary signal was spatially separated from background noise. Localization performance did not improve with Baha use. Overall, patients were satisfied with their Baha and would still elect to have this procedure if given a second chance.


The reproduciblity of experiments allows scientists to build on each other's objective results. How might we similarly share our personal experience as a public wealth? Is there a way for us to show each other how we have acquired or are acquiring our subjective experience? The Minciu Sodas online laboratory, http://www.ms.lt, serving and organizing independent thinkers, is tackling these questions in developing an online learning environment for the Wales Institute for Community Currencies. In particular, the goal is to help people understand their "money mind" (the various ways they think about money) and design community currencies for themselves that might best reflect and serve their principles. The emphasis on personal grounding of knowledge is especially important in community currency where theoretical positions may be quite removed from practical realities. To what extent are we able to find universal forms for personal outlooks? More than eighty participants of Minciu Sodas have been able to identify a "key concept" in their life which for them encompasses all other values, is the deepest value in their life, and they feel comfortable identifying themselves with. Almost forty have one or more "investigatory question" that they don't know the answer to, but intend to answer, and are interested for others to help them regarding. The key concepts and investigatory questions help people appreciate each other's vantage points and maturity, support each other directly, and recognize whose leadership is relevant where. A subsequent challenge is to foster different modes of self-learning: taking a stand, following through and reflecting. It seems that different types of support is warranted at these different stages, so that, for example, one can test one's principles thoroughly and conclusively without second guessing them. A major difficulty is that people are rarely conscious of the relationships between the modes in their learning process. Even when they can make explicit the principles they live be, they often find it difficult to illustrate their principles, and especially, how living by their principles yields outcomes which reenforce them. Currently, we are working on techniques, such as collection of personal stories and anecdotes, which would help document principles and the outcomes which validate them. The goal is to accumulate first hand material that could be studied to uncover patterns, in the sense of architect Christopher Alexander, that resolve tensions amongst sets of conflicting principles. Taken together, the principles would explain why, the patterns would explain how, and the observed outcomes would explain what we are experiencing. First hand subjective experience validates such knowledge as meaningful for one of us, hence important for all of us. Without such personal validation, many recommendations may be empty, contrived, counterproductive and even harmful. At this point, it is still unclear how to elicit and present personal experience in a format that would make clear how one personally acquired it and how others might likewise.


The capacity of wireless ad hoc networks is constrained by the interference of concurrent transmissions among nodes. Instead of only trying to avoid the interference, physical-layer network coding (PNC) is a new approach that embraces the interference initiatively. We employ a network form of interference cancellation, with the PNC approach, and propose the multihop, broadcast-relay transmission strategy in linear, rectangular, and hexagonal networks. The theoretical analysis shows that it gains the transmission efficiency by the factors of 2.5 for the rectangular networks and 2 for the hexagonal networks. We also propose a practical signal recovery algorithm in the physical layer to deal with the influence of multipath fading channels and time synchronization errors, as well as to use media access control (MAC) protocols that support the simultaneous receptions. This transmission strategy obtains the same efficiency from one-to-one communication to one-to-many. By our approach, the number of the users/terminals of the network has better scalability, and the overall network throughput is improved.


The Lexical Function Degrad is a device used in Meaning-Text Theory (MTT) to select the appropriate verb for expressing "to become permanently worse or bad" in combination with different nouns. For example, in English one says that fruit rots, milk goes off, shoes wear out, flowers wilt, and iron rusts; thus, the verbs rot, go off, wear out, etc. can all be considered "values" of Degrad. Comparing these verbs with their translation equivalents in Spanish shows that verbs in the two languages have somewhat different collocational possibilities. Are such collocational differences arbitrary or do they result from subtle meaning differences between the translation equivalents? In this study we undertake a contrastive semantic analysis of a selection of words in the Degrad domain, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) method of semantic explication. We conclude that collocational preferences are indeed semantically motivated, but at the same time we recognize that Degrad is a valuable lexicological tool for verb classification, as well as for coordinating translation equivalents across languages at an approximate level. The paper aims to encourage productive engagement between two well developed approaches to lexical semantics, while at the same time demonstrating the explanatory power of the detailed "micro semantic" analysis enabled by the NSM methodology.


The widespread application of 5G will make intrusion detection of large-scale network traffic a mere need. However, traditional intrusion detection cannot meet the requirements by manually extracting features, and the existing AI methods are also relatively inefficient. Therefore, when performing intrusion detection tasks, they have significant disadvantages of high false alarm rates and low recognition performance. For this challenge, this paper proposes a novel hybrid network, RULA-IDS, which can perform intrusion detection tasks by great amount statistical data from the network monitoring system. RULA-IDS consists of the fully connected layer, the feature extraction layer, the global attention mechanism layer and the SVM classification layer. In the feature extraction layer, the residual U-Net and LSTM are used to extract the spatial and temporal features of the network traffic attributes. It is worth noting that we modified the structure of U-Net to suit the intrusion detection task. The global attention mechanism layer is then used to selectively retain important information from a large number of features and focus on those. Finally, the SVM is used as a classifier to output results. The experimental results show that our method outperforms existing state-of-the-art intrusion detection methods, and the accuracies of training and testing are improved to 97.01% and 98.19%, respectively, and presents stronger robustness during training and testing.


This study analyses association between audit risk and audit fees and also studied the influences of industry differences on audit pricing-risk association. Strong empirical evidence has found to suggest that the inherent risk and control risk have positive influence on audit fees. The sample of empirical research comprises a total of 507 listed companies, 260 observations in the United States in 2007 fiscal year and separated into two sub-samples, financial and non-financial firms. Client financial distress factor was tested with the help of Z-score model. The analysis shows that in the similar level of total assets financials are charged lower audit fees than non-financial firms and compared with financials, the audit fees for nonfinancial firms are more sensitive to the financial indicators. It also concluded that the auditors did not seem to take financial firms business risk into consideration when decided audit fees as there is a positive relation between audit fees and companies' solvency and the possibility of bankruptcy. Auditors considered not only the non-financial firms' profitability, but also the liquidity, activity, solvency and possibility of bankrupt when they decide audit fees.


Composite materials made from two or more different components are widely used in fields ranging from semiconductor devices to mechanical structural materials. Depending on the environment, this construction material may be subjected to mechanical loads and thermal stress, and this may lead to problems such as delamination. The occurrence of such delamination is expected to be strongly dependent on the residual stress subjected to loading processes. In the present study, the influence of a repeated tensile bending load on the residual stress in the Cu film and the carbon steel in Cu-coated steel was investigated. In the absence of a Cu coating, it was shown that the residual stress in the steel changed to the compression side due to the application of a repeated tensile bending load. Furthermore, the magnitude of the compressive stress increased as the surface roughness of the substrate decreased. In the case of the Cu-coated steel under the same load, the residual stress was slightly tensile stress decreased, but its magnitude did not depend on the surface roughness. In the Cu coating itself, the residual stress was originally tensile, but its magnitude decreased under repeated loading. This decrease was much more significant when the surface roughness of the substrate was low.


The paper contains advanced statistical analysis, original methods and a significant contribution to the claim that measurement of reflexivity is possible. It is based on original empirical research using a sample of 334 students from different faculties and educational levels. It utilises a qualitative questionnaire containing a 4-level reflexivity scale, designed by Kember et al. (2000), translated into the Polish language and context. The aim of the study was to identify whether students' reflexivity levels can be associated with the level of their study, taking into account possible masking effects of their age. Differences were tested for faculty and system of training (full time or part-time). Analysis confirms the strongest relation between reflexive thinking, system of tuition and level of studies. There was no connection found between reflexive thinking and the faculty of study or the respondents' gender.


Over time, depending on their traits and preferences, people will select and enact certain roles in their jobs which may grow into enduring career roles (which are coherent and enduring sets of characteristics describing the way a person is doing his or her work; Hoekstra, 2011, p164). In this dissertation we presented a new measure for career role identification, the Career Role Identification Questionnaire (CRIQ). Making use of the Comparison Awareness Inducing Technique we were able to reduce the effects of self-presentation tactics in survey responses. Furthermore, the results in this dissertation indicate that peoples' personality traits predict which roles they prefer to have in the work context, which, in turn, predict the career roles they have or expect to have in the future. In addition, career roles may focus on exploration (targeting innovation and change) or on exploitation behavior (targeting production and results). Our results indicate that especially exploration career roles contribute towards employee employability. With this research we aim to contribute to further conceptualize and provide meaning to all career positions and pathways that are present in the current career landscape.


Legal decision-making in Albania as well as in EU countries (including Italy) concerning culture and showbiz is relatively recent. The Treaty of Rome did not contain in fact any specific chapter or paragraph for treating cultural policies. Only in the Treaty preamble was indirectly suggested that the culture is a unifying element and promoter of socio-economic development.In Albania, due to known causes, decision-making concerning culture and showbiz has been of secondary, let alone tertiary level. Shifting from a centralised and ideologised model of cultural policy that had nothing to do with the free market rules to a new model was traumatic. The absence of mentality, in particular, as well as the legal vacuum made it for many artists and individuals working in the domain of arts, the new reality to be experienced as a failure. Italy could offer a model to follow but the terrain for having it adapted, and moreover to have it applied was not one of the most compatible with this new wave of changes. Nevertheless, the great number of foreign artists having come to Albania (most of them from Italy) influenced not only the transformation of the etatist mentality of art-making and culture but also encouraged lawmakers and artists for drafting a modern legal framework on showbiz. Thus, acknowledging the great cultural and social value of the showbiz, the main objective is the verification of the current normative stage of this sector in both countries, highlighting the differences, similarities, possible legal gaps, with the aim of formulating proposals and fulfil legal gaps, considering the need for approximating the Albanian legislation to the principles of community law. This is the objective this comparative analysis aims to achieve.
 DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n2p415


Efficient federated learning is one of the key challenges for training and deploying AI models on edge devices. However, maintaining data privacy in federated learning raises several challenges including data heterogeneity, expensive communication cost, and limited resources. In this paper, we address the above issues by (a) introducing a salient parameter selection agent based on deep reinforcement learning on local clients, and aggregating the selected salient parameters on the central server, and (b) splitting a normal deep learning model (e.g., CNNs) as a shared encoder and a local predictor, and training the shared encoder through federated learning while transferring its knowledge to Non-IID clients by the local customized predictor. The proposed method (a) significantly reduces the communication overhead of federated learning and accelerates the model inference, while method (b) addresses the data heterogeneity issue in federated learning. Additionally, we leverage the gradient control mechanism to correct the gradient heterogeneity among clients. This makes the training process more stable and converge faster. The experiments show our approach yields a stable training process and achieves notable results compared with the state-of-the-art methods. Our approach significantly reduces the communication cost by up to 108 GB when training VGG-11, and needed 7 . 6 × less communication overhead when training ResNet-20, while accelerating the local inference by reducing up to 39 . 7% FLOPs on VGG-11.


Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a genetic disease that causes a reduction in the expression of dystrophin, thus, with the reduction of the levels of this protein, a progression of muscle atrophy, reduction of strength and physical impairments is identified, which culminates in death from inability to contract the respiratory muscles. Creatine is a dietary supplement that helps maintain strength and recent findings indicate a potential anti-inflammatory effect of this amine. The present study aimed to compare the progress of muscular dystrophy in terms of inflammation, presence of intramuscular glycogen and tissue fibrosis in the gastrocnemius and pectoralis major muscles of MDX mice. We selected 20 MDX mice that were supplemented or not with creatine at a dosage of 0.3 grams per kilogram of body weight, for 16 weeks. After that, the gas - trocnemius and pectoralis major were extracted for morphological and morphometric analysis. The inflammatory progress derived from Duchenne muscular dystrophy affects animals, even when supplemented, however, in a less forceful and disabling way, enabling them to have less functional damage. Nevertheless, the supplemented animals have a greater stock of intramuscular glycogen in the evaluated gastrocnemius tissue, a factor that corroborates with the survival and better quality of movement in these animals, given the availability of energy for the contraction of this musculature. Furthermore, a lower frequency and extent of tissue fibrosis is observed in supplemented animals, aspects that enable longer survival and qualify creatine, even in an experimental condition, as an auxiliary supplement in the treatment of a severe dystrophic condition, acting mainly in the maintenance of strength and reduction of local tissue fibrosis.


This study investigates human activity community in a city by conceptualizing it as a network embedding problem. In order to learn the latent representations of activity-travel patterns from individual daily trajectories, network embedding learns a vector space representation for each type of activity place as a node connected by movement links to preserve the structure of individual activities. The proposed approach is applied to mobile positioning data at the individual level obtained for a weekday from volunteers at Guangzhou City. Assessments are conducted to validate individual decision making for several types of activities by a field survey. This study contributes to a general framework for discovering individual activity-travel patterns from human movement trajectories.


This article examines the absence of meaningful judicial safeguards respecting the admission of incriminating statements procured through Mr. Big Operations. These are undercover police operations where officers masquerade as members of organized criminal enterprises seeking to recruit a suspect or accused into their organization with the objective of eliciting incriminating statements from the target of the operations. During these operations, undercover agents provide various inducements, make threats and/or engage in vigorous discussions that are the functional equivalents of an interrogation. This article argues that such operations and the means employed undermine two core values of the criminal justice system – the voluntary nature and reliability of confessions. It suggests that one way in which judges can scrutinize the admission of incriminating statements elicited from Mr. Big Operations is through the police trickery arm of the Common Law Confessions Rule. Given the highly subjective standard of the current test which assesses whether the "community" would be shocked by the conduct of the state actors in using trickery, a new test with a series of objective factors is offered. This article argues that a change in the current test is justifiable in light of the Supreme Court of Canada's attacks in recent years respecting community shock tests.


Data augmentation techniques have been used to alleviate the problem of scarce labeled data in various NER tasks (flat, nested, and discontinuous NER tasks). Existing augmentation techniques either manipulate the words in the original text that break the semantic coherence of the text, or exploit generative models that ignore preserving entities in the original text, which impedes the use of augmentation techniques on nested and discontinuous NER tasks. In this work, we propose a novel Entity-to-Text based data augmentation technique named EnTDA to add, delete, replace or swap entities in the entity list of the original texts, and adopt these augmented entity lists to generate semantically coherent and entity preserving texts for various NER tasks. Furthermore, we introduce a diversity beam search to increase the diversity during the text generation process. Experiments on thirteen NER datasets across three tasks (flat, nested, and discontinuous NER tasks) and two settings (full data and low resource settings) show that EnTDA could bring more performance improvements compared to the baseline augmentation techniques.


Conversation agents (chat-bots) are becoming ubiquitous in many domains of everyday life, including physical and mental health and wellbeing. With the high rate of suicide in Australia, chat-bot developers are facing the challenge of dealing with statements related to mental ill-health, depression and suicide. Advancements in natural language processing could allow for sensitive, considered responses, provided suicidal discourse can be accurately detected. Here suicide notes are examined for consistent linguistic syntax and semantic patterns used by individuals in mental health distress. Paper contains distressing content.


De-escalation techniques are a highly recommended set of therapeutic interventions that are frequently used to prevent violence and aggression within mental health services. A thematic synthesis literature review identified 11 international papers. Seven themes emerged from the data synthesis. The first three related broadly to staff skills, including: characteristics of effective de-escalators, maintaining personal control, and verbal and non-verbal skills. The last four relate to the process of intervening and include: engaging with the patient, when to intervene, ensuring safe conditions for de-escalation, and strategies for de-escalation (including two sub-themes, autonomy confirming interventions, and limit-setting and authoritative interventions). De-escalation techniques are an example of a complex intervention, which has been overlooked by rigorous research, and it is often assumed that staff are able to perform these techniques in clinical practice.


Simplifying production process and business practices, facilitating communication among stakeholders and saving resources are one of the basic functions of the standard. Standards used in South and North Korea are found to have increased divergence in terms of the taxonomy, forms, contents and terminology, which are believed to serve as obstacles that could impede communication and further reduce productivity. One of the most urgent task for unification of Korean peninsular is to set up common standards for infrastructure facilities. In this regard, I will compare the standards of South and North Korea in the construction sector and analyze standards documents that contain the similar or different contents. Securing the homogeneity of national standards is expected to affect the revitalization of inter-Korean economic cooperation as well as the reduction of unification costs. Securing homogeneity may start with understanding the standards that are alienated between the two Koreas.


This paper demonstrates that Prof Henry Manne's thesis that less successful companies are taken over by successful companies and that the takeover of companies through hostile bids is economically efficient is not a foregone conclusion. Instead, it demonstrates that managers of bidder companies are motivated by a range of reasons in initiating takeover bids, included in which is its value as a defensive strategy to prevent itself from being a target; as a means of getting rid of a product / services competitor; as a means of obtaining additional remuneration benefits given that size of enterprise plays a large role in the remuneration of corporate managers; as well as the possible benefits of insider trading. The need then is to develop a strategy which while facilitating takeovers, will at the same time restrict the downside that accompanies takeover activity.


We present an implementation of time-dependent density functional perturbation theory for spin fluctuations, based on plane waves and pseudopotentials. We compute the dynamic spin susceptibility self-consistently by solving the time-dependent Sternheimer equation, within the adiabatic local density approximation to the exchange and correlation kernel. We demonstrate our implementation by calculating the spin susceptibility of representative elemental transition metals, namely bcc Fe, fcc Ni, and bcc Cr. The calculated magnon dispersion relations of Fe and Ni are in agreement with previous work. The calculated spin susceptibility of Cr exhibits a soft-paramagnon instability, indicating the tendency of the Cr spins to condense in an incommensurate spin density wave phase, in agreement with experiment.


A screening method was devised incorporating a commercially available reactive disc blot ELISA for Escherichia coli 0157 antigen, into a cultural screening program for the isolation of E. coli 0157:H7 from meat and poultry products. The method includes the inoculation of a raw or cooked meat sample into an enrichment broth, incubation with shaking at 37°C for 6 to 8 h, followed by inoculation of 3M Petrifilm™ E. coli Count plates with dilutions of the enrichment culture. The Petrifilm plates were incubated at 42°C for 18 h and tested for the presence of the 0157 antigen. The enrichment cultures were reincubated static at 35°C after the initial shaken incubation. Isolation was attempted from the positive Petrifilm plates by both a direct picking and streaking method and by the 3M Prompt™ isolation method. Isolation also was attempted from the 24-h enrichment cultures by spread plating serial dilutions on 150 × 15 mm MacConkey sorbitol agar (MSA) and MSA with 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indoxyl-β-D-glucuronic acid cyclohexylammonium salt (BCIG). This fast and efficient screening procedure identifies negative and presumptive positive samples in 26-28 h. Isolation and confirmation of the presumptive positive isolates require an additional 3 to 4 d.


The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the concept of compassion fatigue in foster parents. In the past this concept has been applied to helping professionals such as social workers and therapists; however, little attention has been paid to the effect that a child's trauma has on foster parents. This study takes a quantitative approach using the Professional Quality of Life Scale, Version IV to measure the concepts of compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, and burnout. A short demographic survey was also administered that documented respondents' training, support, and experience related to their foster care role. Convenience sampling was utilized and participants (N = 35) were accessed through two foster parent associations. The findings suggest that foster parents may be at greater risk for experiencing compassion fatigue than helping professionals, particularly foster parents who have more experience. Further, burnout was found to have a positive relationship with compassion fatigue and a negative relationship with compassion satisfaction. The variables of support and training were not found to have a significant relationship with any of the ProQOL-IV constructs. This study supports the need to further examine this phenomenon in foster parents. In particular research should focus on what variables serve to mediate or enhance one's risk for compassion fatigue and what are the implications for being both at risk for compassion fatigue and burnout simultaneously.


A case of acute schistosomiasis with magnetic resonance images (MRI) of the brain suggestive of demyelinating lesions, pyramidal disorder in the lower limbs and normal cerebrospinal fluid is presented. Diagnosis could be established by detection of antibodies on blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Schistosoma mansoni involves the spinal cord more often than the brain. Praziquantel associated to prednisolone was effective in this case. There are few reports of brain involvement with S. mansoni, but its prevalence is probably greater. Due to the paucity of studies, its pathophysiology and therapeutics remain to be better clarified. The immune and MRI aspects are emphasized.


Introduction Modern materials science is based on the fundamental experience that the properties of materials are not unalterably determined by their average chemical composition but they are to a large extent influenced by their microstructure. This applies particularly for their mechanical and electromagnetic properties. Thus, modern "materials research" is often used as a synonym for "microstructure research". While the evolutionary direction of microstructure is prescribed by thermodynamics, its actual evolution path is selected by kinetics. It is this strong influence of thermo-dynamic non-equilibrium mechanisms that entails the large variety and complexity of microstructures typically encountered in engineering materials. It is an essential observation that it is not those microstructures that are close to equilibrium, but often those that are in a highly non-equilibrium state that provide particularly advantageous material property profiles. Microstructure can be defined as the totality of all thermodynamic non-equilibrium lattice defects on a space scale that ranges from Angstr0ms (e.g. non-equilibrium foreign atoms) 1 to meters (e.g. sample surface) (Haasen 1984). Its temporal evolution ranges from picoseconds (dynamics of atoms) to years (corrosion, creep, fatigue). It is one major aim of materials science to quantitatively relate macroscopic sample behavior to micro-structure. This goal imposes the task of identifying and describing those lattice defects, including their collective static and dynamic behavior, that are responsible for specific macroscopic properties. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 show that the characteristic scales which are associated with the various lattice defects establish a certain hierarchy of microstructure. This sequence, however, merely reflects a spatial rather than a crisp physical classification 2. Following this length scale hierarchy, the various levels of microstructure modeling can be roughly grouped into the nanoscopic, microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic regimes. In this context the term nanoscopic refers to the atomic level, microscopic to lattice defects ensembles below the grain scale, mesoscopic to lattice defect ensembles at the grain scale, and macroscopic to the sample geometry. Of course, this subdivision is to a certain extent arbitrary. As will be discussed later, various alternative subdivisions are conceivable. 1 In pure metals, only vacancies or certain foreign atoms provide sufficient entropy to compensate their enthalpy of formation or solution, respectively c va .c(T < T 7n ^t) ~ 10~ 4. 2 For instance, small defects, such as dopants, can have a larger influence on strength or conductivity than large defects such as preciptates. 14 ΠΠΊ μτη mrn fs ps ns μ8 ms s …


Product of experts (PoE) are layered networks in which the value at each node is an AND (or product) of the values (possibly negated) at its inputs. These were introduced as a neural network architecture that can efficiently learn to generate high-dimensional data which satisfy many low-dimensional constraints -- thereby allowing each individual expert to perform a simple task. PoEs have found a variety of applications in learning. We study the problem of identifiability of a product of experts model having a layer of binary latent variables, and a layer of binary observables that are iid conditional on the latents. The previous best upper bound on the number of observables needed to identify the model was exponential in the number of parameters. We show: (a) When the latents are uniformly distributed, the model is identifiable with a number of observables equal to the number of parameters (and hence best possible). (b) In the more general case of arbitrarily distributed latents, the model is identifiable for a number of observables that is still linear in the number of parameters (and within a factor of two of best-possible). The proofs rely on root interlacing phenomena for some special three-term recurrences.


Abstract. In the arid region of the Dead Sea, water shortage and the inability to
satisfy the increasing domestic water demand threatens sustainable
development. In such situations, domestic rainwater harvesting is considered
an efficient way to combat water poverty. This paper aims to develop domestic
water poverty (DWP) and domestic rainwater harvesting suitability (DRWHS)
maps for the West Bank, Palestine. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and
the GIS-based weighted overlay summation process (WOSP) were utilized in the
development of these maps. Results of the DWP map indicate that 57 % of
the West Bank is under high to very high poverty of domestic water. The DRWHS
map shows that 60 % of the West Bank is highly suitable for domestic
rainwater harvesting. Spatial intersection (combined mapping) between DWP and
DRWHS maps indicates that around 31 % of the total West Bank areas could
be classified as high potential locations (hotspot areas) for adopting
rainwater harvesting techniques for domestic purposes. The developed maps are
valuable to the stakeholders to better identify the best areas of rainwater
harvesting in the West Bank.


Cause/effect research paper on a social issue described in the book, "Hillbilly Elegy" by JD Vance;. Research paper on a conspiracy theory.