Three synthetic polyamine analogs, alpha-methylspermine, and alpha,alpha'-dimethylspermine, were compared with their naturally occurring counterparts, spermidine and spermine, by two different spectral techniques. The interaction of polyamines with oligodeoxynucleotides was measured by circular dichroism in order to monitor the polyamine-induced conversion of right-handed B-DNA to the left-handed Z-form. The methylated analogs were shown to be equally effective as the natural polyamines in inducing the B --> Z transition. The pH dependence of the chemical shift of all carbon atoms in each of the five polyamines was measured by (13)C-NMR spectroscopy. With the exception of expected changes in chemical shift due to the presence of the alpha-methyl substituents, the chemical shifts and pH dependence of all carbon atoms in the three alpha-methyl polyamines were similar to the corresponding naturally occurring polyamines. The combined data indicate that alpha-methyl polyamines have physical properties that are very similar to their natural counterparts. The two metabolically stable polyamine analogs, alpha-methylspermidine and alpha,alpha'-dimethylspermine, are therefore useful surrogates for spermidine and spermine in the study of numerous polyamine-mediated effects in mammalian cell cultures and can be used in such studies without the requirement for coadministration of amine oxidase inhibitors.


The planning of the tourism is a must for the developing of this activity, which has been growing in the last years, mainly based on economic principles. However, it is correct to analyze the ways and interfaces related to the planning of the tourism according to the social, cultural and environmental contexts of each community, in face of its specialities. Theoretical presumption of communication and hospitality may help on planning, developing more efficient ways of participation, once politics and planning are interdependent terms. The National Program of Municipalization of Tourism – PNMT, implanted between 1994-2001 in Brazil, aimed at a participative community and the creation of a Council and Plans of Tourism with a rising theoretical proposal whose fundaments would be arised from bases of the society. The study of different visions about the developing of this Program, based on perspective of administrators and researchers, linked to the academic environment and to the municipality, could contribute to the understanding and improvement of planning methodologies in accordance with the Brazilian reality.


Abstract The prevalences and intensities of Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura and hookworm (probably Necator americanus) infection were measured in the young children (aged 2–10 years) living in 10 urban slums in Durban, South Africa. Re-infection was assessed at 4–6 and 12 months post-treatment. The baseline prevalences of A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura were 81.7%–96.3% and 54.5%–86.2%, respectively, and the corresponding geometric mean intensities were 960 and 91 eggs/g faeces. Most (85%) of the children found infected with A. lumbricoides and 23% of those found infected with T. trichiura had moderate–heavy infections. A few of the children investigated had intensities of Ascaris and Trichuris infection that were considerably higher than those previously recorded in South Africa. The baseline prevalences of hookworm infection (0%–20% in individual slums, with a mean of 4.7%) and intensities of such infection (geometric mean=17 eggs/g) were relatively low. Albendazole proved very effective against A. lumbricoides and hookworm but less so against T. trichiura. Re-infection by A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura reached pre-treatment prevalences by 4–6 months post-treatment in some of the slums and by 12 months in all the other slums. By 12 months post-treatment, the intensities of A. lumbricoides infection had reached their pre-treatment levels while those of T. trichiura infection were higher than at baseline. Approximately 50% of children had moderate–heavy T. trichiura infections at 12 months post-treatment compared with approximately 23% at baseline. Hookworm infections did not re-appear after treatment. The results show clearly that urban slums should be included in any future helminth-control programmes in South Africa.


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

Background:

Cancers of unknown primary origin (CUP) constitute 3%-5% (50,000 to 70,000 cases) of all newly diagnosed cancers per year in the United States. Including cancers of uncertain primary origin, the total number increases to 12%-15% (180,000 to 220,000 cases) of all newly diagnosed cancers per year in the United States. CUP is a major diagnostic and clinical challenge, since identifying the tissue-of-origin of metastases is crucial for selecting optimal treatment. MicroRNAs are a family of non-coding, regulatory short RNA molecules that are stable in clinical samples and are tissue-specific, consequently they have a great potential to be excellent biomarkers for cancer tissue-of-origin diagnosis. The goal of the study was to assess the performance of a microRNAs-based assay to diagnose the tissue of origin on a well annotated cohort of real CUP patients.

Methods: A pre-developed microarray-based test that measures the expression of 64 microRNAs was employed to identify the tissue of origin of metastatic tumors of CUP cases. A cohort of 93 resected metastatic lesions with adequate tissue sample from 92 patients diagnosed with CUP was studied. 85 samples (84 patients) were processed successfully; eight samples failed due to inadequate RNA quality. Test results were compared with clinical presentation including imaging, pathological data (histology and IHC) and therapeutic response.

Results: Overall, in 92% of the patients the assay results were fully concordant with the final clinical diagnosis based on all other clinical, pathologic and outcome data. There was a 22% improvement in agreement of the test results from the clinical Diagnosis at presentation to the final clinical Diagnosis (based on additional data gathered with patients' treatment and follow up), which is a strong indication of the degree in which the assay facilitates the diagnostic process from early stages of patient's management.

Conclusions: In a cohort of metastatic lesion samples from CUP patients, a previously developed test based on the expression profile of 64 microRNAs allowed accurate identification of tissue of origin in the vast majority of the cases. The high accuracy of this test in identifying the tissue of origin of metastasis of unknown primary has been validated by this study and demonstrates its clinical utility. The high concordance of the test results to the final diagnosis of the patient demonstrates the importance of the test to yield additional data valuable for patient's management at an early stage of patient's journey. This predictive ability could be associated with a change of clinical management, including administration of more effective chemotherapy combinations and targeted agents, in many of the patients in this study.

Citation Format: Robert Wassman, Mats Sanden, George Pentheroudakis, Anna Goussia, Eti Meiri, Katerina Stoyianni, Danit Lebanony, George Fountzilas, Karin Ashkenazi, Vassiliki Malamou-Mitsi, Nicholas Palidis. A novel microRNA-based test demonstrates 92% accuracy in the classification of metastatic tumors from patients diagnosed with carcinoma of unknown primary . [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 816. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-816


Tools and systems for content-based access to multimedia and-image., video, audio, graphics, text, and any number of combinations-has increased in the last decade. We've seen a common theme of developing automatic analysis techniques for deriving metadata (data describing information in the content at both syntactic and semantic levels). Such metadata facilitates developing innovative tools and systems for multimedia information retrieval, summarization, delivery, and manipulation. Many interesting demonstrations of potential applications and services have emerged-finding images visually similar to a chosen picture (or sketch); summarizing videos with thumbnails of keyframes; finding video clips of a specific event, story, or person; and producing a two-minute skim of an hour-long program. In order to evaluate content-based research methodologies, the article considers intended users and whether alternative solutions exist and areas of research.


Food commodity prices fluctuations have important impacts on poverty and food insecurity across the world. Conventional models have not provided a complete picture of recent price spikes in agricultural commodity markets, while there is an urgent need for appropriate policy responses. Perhaps new approaches are needed in order to better understand international spill-overs, the feedback between the real and the financial sectors and also the link between food and energy prices. In this paper, we present results from a new worldwide dynamic model that provides short and long-run impulse responses of wheat international prices to various real and financial shocks.


Optimal therapy of infections due to organisms capable of surviving within phagocytes would include use of antimicrobials that penetrate phagocytic cells and inactivate intracellular organisms. To establish those characteristics of drug and cell that mediate the antibiotic-phagocyte interaction, we have studied the uptake of radiolabelled antibiotics by rabbit alveolar macrophages (AM), human AM from smokers and non-smokers, and human polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN). Relative entries of drug groups into the three types of phagocytic cells were similar. Penicillin G and cephalosporin antibiotics were taken up poorly by phagocytes. Lipid-soluble antibiotics, such as rifampicin and chloramphenicol, were concentrated several-fold (2-5) by phagocytes. Ethambutol, erythromycin and clindamycin were concentrated many-fold (5-50) by phagocytic cells. Human AM of smokers accumulated certain antibiotics more avidly than AM of non-smokers. Clindamycin entry into phagocytes was shown to be an active, energy-requiring process, mediated by the nucleoside transport system. Ingestion of microbial particles by PMN stimulated transport of both clindamycin and nucleoside (adenosine) into the cell.


Iron group metal catalysts constitute a promising alternative to well-established noble metal catalysts in reduction reactions. However, the development of effective 3d metal catalysts has largely been hampered by their distinct coordination properties, their higher lability toward ligand exchange, redox reactions, and rapid aggregation to larger particles. The facile transition from homogeneous to heterogeneous catalysts under reducing conditions has been a major challenge in method optimization and mechanistic understanding. While ex situ-analyses of catalyst derivatives can be achieved by various spectroscopic techniques, their results have only limited value for the different conditions, concentrations, and complex kinetics of a real catalytic system. On the other hand, in situ-tools usually require highly sophisticated setups aiming at the detection of fleeting intermediates. This review advocates the use of kinetic poisoning experiments which can be easily performed in a standard laboratory and enable the distinction between homotopic and heterotopic catalysis mechanisms.


Today's world is data world because each and every people survive with data. The data produced from social media because everyone people used media. People's data is very important in the world. This data does not have good security so to overcome this issue we apply the proposed method. The proposed method has four steps; 1. Applying the commutative property of addition in matrix; 2. Applying the associative property of addition in matrix; 3. To swap the prime numbers and non negative integer in given matrix; and final step is multiply the secret key in the matrix. The proposed method provides good security while comparing with Salsa method.


Hardware evolves faster than software. While a hardware system might need replacement every one to five years, the average lifespan of a software system is a decade, with some instances living up to several decades. Inevitably, code outlives the platform it was developed for and may become legacy: development of the software stops, but maintenance has to continue to keep up with the evolving ecosystem. No new features are added, but the software is still used to fulfil its original purpose. Even in the cases where it is still functional (which discourages its replacement), legacy code is inefficient, costly to maintain, and a risk to security. This thesis proposes methods to leverage the expertise put in the development of legacy code and to extend its useful lifespan, rather than to throw it away. A novel methodology is proposed, for automatically exploiting platform specific optimisations when retargeting a program to another platform. The key idea is to leverage the optimisation information embedded in vector processing intrinsic functions. The performance of the resulting code is shown to be close to the performance of manually retargeted programs, however with the human labour removed. Building on top of that, the question of discovering optimisation information when there are no hints in the form of intrinsics or annotations is investigated. This thesis postulates that such information can potentially be extracted from profiling the data flow during executions of the program. A context-aware data dependence profiling system is described, detailing previously overlooked aspects in related research. The system is shown to be essential in surpassing the information that can be inferred statically, in particular about loop iterators. Loop iterators are the controlling part of a loop. This thesis describes and evaluates a system for extracting the loop iterators in a program. It is found to significantly outperform previously known techniques and further increases the amount of information about the structure of a program that is available to a compiler. Combining this system with data dependence profiling improves its results even more. Loop iterator recognition enables other code modernising techniques, like source code rejuvenation and commutativity analysis. The former increases the use of idiomatic code and as a result increases the maintainability of the program. The latter can potentially drive parallelisation and thus dramatically improve runtime performance.


A 48-year-old man with a history of coronary heart disease underwent a left heart catheterisation for non-ST-segment myocardial infarction. Coronary angiography revealed significant stenosis of the left anterior descending artery and right coronary artery (LAD/RCA). Transthoracic echocardiogram showed severely dilated left ventricle (LV), moderate concentric LV hypertrophy, an LV ejection fraction of 26% and elevated right ventricular systolic pressure of 40–45 mm Hg. An intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) was placed for haemodynamic support through a right femoral artery insertion site. The patient later received a saphenous vein graft (SVG) to the RCA, an SVG to the left obtuse marginal artery and a left internal mammary artery graft to the LAD. On the postoperative chest X-ray, the IABP was visualised overlying the right hilar region, thatevoked alarming concern of possible misinsertion into the superior vena cava (SVC) through an arteriovenous fistula or through the femoral vein (figure 1). Delayed access to the angiogram …


The motion of a very thin vortex filament is investigated using the localized induction equation. A family of vortex filaments which move without change of form are obtained. They are expressed in terms of elliptic integrals of the first, second and third kinds. In general they do not close and have infinite lengths. In some particular cases they take the form of closed coils which wind a doughnut. There exist a family of closed vortex filaments which do not travel in space but only rotate around a fixed axis. Our solutions include various well-known shapes such as the circular vortex ring, the helicoidal filament, the plane sinusoidal filament, Euler's elastica and the solitary-wave-type filament. It is shown that they correspond to the travelling wave solution of a nonlinear Schrödinger equation.


Wine samples from seven mango cultivars were prepared and major carotenoids compounds were investigated by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in order to follow carotenoid content from puree to wine during wine fermentation. Carotenoids were identified and quantified in puree and wine. Results showed that the percentage decrease in xanthophylls levels in wine were in the range of 69.3‐89.7%, and >80% degradation was noted in Banginapalli, Neelam, Sindhura and Totapuri and 15.3‐26.5% for b-carotene. However, significant degradation of b-carotene was observed in only Totapuri wine, indicating that lutein was more sensitive to degradation than b-carotene during fermentation. Antioxidant activity of mango wine was evaluated using in vitro models. The highest radical-scavenging activity was shown by Alphonso (91), Sindhura (90) and Banginapalli (88%), respectively, whereas Alphonso (71), Banginapalli (69) and Sindhura (68.5%) had shown higher inhibitory effect on low-density lipoprotein oxidation. The Hunter color values of the mango wines were also evaluated and the results are presented.


The ability of the Internet to function as a public sphere, where citizens can come to public agreement and make recommendations that affect government decisions, has recently come under question. The aggressive style of discourse so prevalent in online discussion has been cited as a significant barrier to the deliberative and open discussion necessary for a effective public sphere. This paper focuses on web-based discussion in a online policy consultation called the Canadian Foreign Policy Dialogue, and examines specific discourse features to evaluate whether the moderated online policy discussion was civil, and whether that civility promoted meaningful interaction among citizens, and between citizens and government. The study results revealed that citizen participants in the dialogue were successful at developing, maintaining, and enforcing norms of civil discourse, and that these norms helped to promote understanding, tolerance, and consensus-building. The study also cautions that civil dialogue alone cannot ensure effective communication between governments and citizens.


We shall refer to a diagonal Latin square which is orthogonal to its (3,1,2)‐conjugate, and the latter is also a diagonal Latin square, as a (3,1, 2)‐conjugate orthogonal diagonal Latin square, briefly CODLS. This article investigates the spectrum of CODLS and it is found that it contains all positive integers υ except 2, 3, 6, and possibly 10. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 9: 297–308, 2001


Purpose : The use of endek fabrics in creating evening clothing can increase creativity so that it can produce innovative evening dress designs with curvaceous ornaments, besides that it can be a cultural heritage.
Research methods : The stages in the process of creating evening dress designs consist of three main stages, namely the idea stage, the mindmap method stage, and the design process stage.
Findings : The creation of evening dress takes modern tradition as the concept. The traditional concept can be seen from the application of traditional Balinese ornaments, namely keketusan kakul-kakulan as a motif on endek woven fabrics with the airbrush technique. While the modern concept can be seen in the silhouette of the evening dress which is designed not out of date, unique and fashionable, and comfortable to use.
Implications : Evening dress with endek woven fabric with a kakul-kakulan motif is one of the innovative evening wear choices for women to be used on formal occasions and as a form of appreciation for Balinese cultural heritage and endek cloth weavers


This work evaluated the potential to use saw dust based bio char in the treatment of mercury contaminated gold tailings wastewater. A sample of saw dust was first pyrolysed to produce bio char at 250 ◦ for 30 minutes. The bio char was then ground to particle size of 0.5 mm so as to enhance the bio adsorption properties as well as to increase the surface area. The bio char which had a surface area of 500-700 m2/g was put in contact with the wastewater for 40 hours noting the change in mercury content using AAS. The variation in mercury content was noted for changing pH. of 4-8 and bio char loading of 2-6 g/L. Highest mercury removal of >90% were noted at pH. of 8 and bio char loading of 6 g/L. From the study it can be concluded that saw dust based bio char provides an adsorbent that can lower mercury content in gold tailings wastewater


It was the 15th of June of 2006 when the PAMELA satellite-borne experiment was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakstan. Then, for nearly ten years, PAMELA has been making high-precision measurements of the charged component of the cosmic radiation opening a new era of precision studies in cosmic rays and challenging our basic vision of the mechanisms of production, acceleration and propagation of cosmic rays in the galaxy and in the heliosphere. The study of the time dependence of the various components of the cosmic radiation from the unusual 23rd solar minimum through the maximum of solar cycle 24 clearly shows solar modulation effects as well as charge sign dependence. PAMELA measurement of the energy spectra during solar energetic particle events fills the existing energy gap between the highest energy particles measured in space and the ground-based domain. Finally, by sampling the particle radiation in different regions of the magnetosphere, PAMELA data provide a detailed study of the Earth~s magnetosphere. In this highlight paper, PAMELA main results as well as recent progress about solar and heliospheric physics with PAMELA will be presented.


Remote sensing is a source of up-to-date information. The present study relied on various approaches for gathering information, including descriptive, quantitative and quantitative analytical processes. Particularly,  we conducted the analysis of the satellite data ETM + of the satellite Landsat7 and the digital models of Digital Elevation Model of SRTM using ArcGIS9.2. The model depends on primary mathematical equations and  constitutes an essential base for GIS applications that rely on data, computer, and software, performing the processes of data entry, analysis and processing. This paper deals with the geomorphological characteristics of a selected study area in Kirkuk province. The characteristics of the water network were determined in terms of direction and the pattern of the water basin using the automated process based on the employment of the applications of the GIS. The study revealed that remote sensing is one of the beneficial techniques for monitoring the changes, geomorphological phenomena, and shapes of the earth's surface, as well as determining their dimensions and slopes through a set of analytical maps by geographic information systems for the study area.


Ovarian epithelial tumours are considered to be endocrine related. The effects of an environment with low levels of the steroid hormones 17 beta-estradiol, testosterone or progesterone on cell survival and steroid secretion were studied in primary cell cultures derived from 25 patients suffering from epithelial ovarian tumours. Tumour cells cultured in 17 beta-estradiol and testosterone showed a reduced cell survival (-10.3 +/- 2.3% and -15.6 +/- 2.7% minimum survival respectively). This reduction was inversely proportional to hormone concentrations within the range studied. No similar effect was observed in the progesterone cultures. It was found that 17 beta-estradiol was secreted from the primary cell cultures and, interestingly, the amount of 17 beta-estradiol secreted increased with increasing levels of 17 beta-estradiol in the environment. Neither progesterone nor testosterone production was observed in any of the cultures studied. It is believed that 17 beta-estradiol has an antiapoptotic effect on ovarian surface epithelial (OSE) cells. Reduction of 17 beta-estradiol in the environment may inhibit this effect, resulting in reduced cell survival. The ability of ovarian epithelial tumour cells to secrete 17 beta-estradiol suggests that epithelial ovarian tumours play an active role in altering their own hormonal environment, promoting tumour progression.


Using the lattice gas model and the transition-type-dependent Monte Carlo method, we calculated the chemical surface diffusion coefficients on a stepped surface. We assume that the step exerts an attraction or repulsion on adsorbed particles (adparticles) that occupy the up or down step sites, but no interactions between adparticles. Two kinds of activation energy, calculated from the harmonic potential and from the difference between the saddle-point and single-site energy, are used in our calculation. The calculated results show that perpendicular diffusion decreases greatly with increase in step repulsion and attraction at all coverages. However, for diffusion parallel to the steps, completely different results are obtained for these two calculation methods. If the energy barrier is calculated by the harmonic potential, diffusion parallel to the steps is both coverage and step independent. If the energy barrier is calculated by the second method, diffusion parallel to the steps is greatly enhanced with increase in the step repulsion and attraction at middle or high coverages but decreases slightly at low coverages. The calculated results explain the chemical diffusion anisotropy on a stepped surface. The results also show that the popular harmonic potential method may be not suitable for explaining the experiments where diffusion along step edges may be more rapid than on a flat surface.


G Balachandran. The controversy that surrounded the currency question in colonial India is the focus of the present paper. Relying on primary sources, the paper argues that the preservation of the gold exchange standard and the rejection of the plea for a gold standard, made by the government of India and Indian nationalists alike, had much to do with British and American interests, a crucial determinant being Britain's external liquidity crisis in the inter- war years.


Mucormycosis is a rapidly progressive disease with high mortality reported mostly in immunocompromised individuals. We report a case of Rhino-orbital mucormycosis (Lichtheimia corymbifera) in an immunocompetent individual with history of consumption of Aluminium Phosphide (ALP) tablets. We postulated the following effects of ALP poisoning that would have increased the chances of mucormycosis in this patient: 1) Metabolic acidosis; 2) Acute Kidney Injury (AKI); and 3) Liberation of free oxygen radicals.


SIR—Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond to the letter of Shah and Preciado. The effects of perioperative peritonsillar infiltration of drugs prior to tonsillectomy on postoperative analgesia have not been well evaluated. Apart from published case reports about the complications of peritonsillar space injections, there are also many studies in the literature reporting no complication related to injection of various drugs into the peritonsillar space for postoperative pain relief. In our article we did not imply that 1 ml is a small amount to inject into this space. There are several published articles, involving ting peritonsillar infiltration of various drugs with 1 ml to a maximum of 5 ml per tonsillar region in children. In our study we preferred the minimum volume which was 1 ml per side. Again in our article we did not suggest routine injection into the peritonsillar space. We compared the effects and results of i.v. and peritonsillar administration of ketamine on patients undergoing adenotonsillectomy. We found that both routes of administration of ketamine have similar effects on postoperative pain relief in children. Of course there could be serious complications of any procedure in inexperienced hands but we could not find any published material regarding complications such as pseudo aneurysms, thrombi, or mortality after injection into the peritonsillar space. In a recent publication, posttonsillectomy infiltration of 2 ml, 0.5 mgÆkg of ketamine and 2 ml of saline into the tonsillar region in 60 children were compared (1) with the results being similar to ours. Moreover in that study (1) they compared ketamine infiltration with saline infiltration, which was lacking in our study and they found ketamine infiltration easy and effective for postoperative pain relief after tonsillectomy with no side effects. According to the power analysis in our study, 30 patients in each group would have an 80% power to detect a 20% difference in the OPS (Observational Pain Scores) between the placebo and the ketamine group. We also emphasized the mechanism of action of ketamine in the limitations of our study in our article. Our results showed that there were no differences between the i.v. ketamine and peritonsillar infiltration of ketamine groups in pain relief or side effects. That is why we did not suggest a preference of one method over the other. There are many a ways of administering ketamine as shown in previous studies (2,3). As there is a risk of an unexpected complication in any new technique, patients should be observed carefully for signs of complications after such procedures. In our study peritonsillar infiltration of the drug was performed by the same experienced surgeon in all cases. All patients were followed up for at least 48 h after the surgery via phone calls. Keeping in mind the possibility of complications especially after any kind of procedure applied in children, the safest and most reliable and effective treatment modality should always be preferred. Didem Dal M D Nalan Celebi M D Elvan Gaye Elvan M D Department of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation, Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey (email: email@example.com)


Introduction Popular wisdom in the burgeoning literature on terrorism focuses on the economic motivations of terrorists. "We fight against poverty," President George W. Bush explained in Monterrey, Mexico, on March 23, 2002, "because hope is an answer to terror." Stern (2003) also draws a direct connection between poverty and terrorism. Though poverty is an attractive answer to the question of "why terrorism?", the data do not lend much support for it. Macroeconomic shifts generally fail to map on to changes in terrorist activity. For example, in the late 1990s and 2000, when terrorism reached new heights against Israeli citizens, the typical Palestinian was reporting a rosier economic forecast and unemployment was declining. Using a longer time series, Berrebi (2003) finds little correlation between economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the number of terrorist incidents against Israel. An even more perplexing problem for the poverty thesis arises on the microlevel. Several studies at the individual level of analysis have failed to find any direct connection between education, poverty, and the propensity to participate in terrorism (Russell and Miller 1983; Taylor 1988; Hudson 1999; Krueger and Maleckova 2003; Berrebi 2003; Atran 2003). If anything, those who participate in terrorism tend to come from the ranks of the better off in society. Those who claim a connection between poverty and terrorism could respond that at least on the microlevel, well-to-do citizens become terrorists out of public spiritedness for their impoverished fellow citizens, and organizations choose them to perform these tasks because of their reliability and skill.


With the extensive application of Information System in all walks of life, security analysis and assessment carried out on the IS have become quite necessary. This paper has, on the basis of the Fuzzy Synthetic Assessment method, suggested a security assessment model to the financial service IS, and applied it in the practical Information System Security Risk assessment to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The model provides a quantitative method for identifying the key ISSR components by avoiding various contrived factors in the process of subjective judgments. In practice, it will provide reliable basis for the system management departments to take appropriate means as well as adopt necessary security and technology measures, thereby posing an important practicability and applicability.


Long term intravenous antibiotic therapy is required for the treatment of selected infections. Outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy (OPAT) allows patients who require intravenous treatment to be treated outside of the hospital with equal efficacy and safety as in-hospital; prolonged intravenous antibiotic therapy is required for the treatment of selected infections. OPAT is particularly beneficial for patients. Staying at home and resuming everyday life lead to significantly higher patient satisfaction and quality of life. Furthermore, the risk of nosocomial infections can be reduced, especially through multi-resistant pathogens. Outpatient prescriptions shorten the inpatient length of stay and costs can be saved. Additionally the reception capacities of hospitals will be increased.


We present the physical layer for a broadband low-level fieldbus for industrial applications. Using discrete multitone (DMT) in combination with adaptive modulation, the system is able to deal with arbitrary network topologies as well as with narrowband interferers. Moreover, it can serve a multitude of users with high and user-specific data rates at a very low bit error probability. First, we outline the channel characteristics, and show that DMT provides a highly flexible modulation scheme for such network topologies. We then describe the system concept and provide a block diagram of the transceiver. Additionally, a frame structure is introduced and analyzed regarding all relevant parameters.


Objective The main objective of this study was to evaluate whether vaginal administration of probiotic Lactobacillus results in their colonization and persistence in the vagina and whether Lactobacillus colonization promotes normalization and maintenance of pH and Nugent score. Patients and methods The study was a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled trial. Altogether, 376 women were assessed for eligibility, and signed informed consent. One hundred and sixty eligible women with abnormal, also called intermediate, vaginal microflora, as indicated by a Nugent score of 4–6 and pH >4.5 and zero or low Lactobacillus count, were randomized. Each participant was examined four times during the study. Women were randomly allocated to receive either the probiotic preparation inVag®, or a placebo (one capsule for seven consecutive days vaginally). The product inVag includes the probiotic strains Lactobacillus fermentum 57A, Lactobacillus plantarum 57B, and Lactobacillus gasseri 57C. We took vaginal swabs during visits I, III, and IV to determine the presence and abundance of bacteria from the Lactobacillus genus, measure the pH, and estimate the Nugent score. Drug safety evaluation was based on analysis of the types and occurrence of adverse events. Results Administration of inVag contributed to a significant decrease (between visits) in both vaginal pH (P<0.05) and Nugent score (P<0.05), and a significant increase in the abundance of Lactobacillus between visit I and visits III and IV (P<0.05). Molecular typing revealed the presence of Lactobacillus strains originating from inVag in 82% of women taking the drug at visit III, and 47.5% at visit IV. There was no serious adverse event related to inVag administration during the study. Conclusion The probiotic inVag is safe for administration to sustainably restore the healthy vaginal microbiota, as demonstrated by predominance of the Lactobacillus bacteria in vaginal microbiota.


We report a facile and green method for the fabrication of hybrid microgels by the immobilization of catalytically active Au nanoparticles in α-cyclodextrin (α-CD) modified poly(N-vinylcaprolactam) (PVCL) microgels without addition of reducing agent and surfactant. It has been shown that only in the case of α-CD modified microgels metal particles were immobilized inside the colloidal gels, which is due to a coordination of the cyclodextrin molecules to the surface of Au nanoparticles. The PVCL-α-CD-Au composite particles can work efficiently as catalyst for the reduction of aromatic nitro-compounds by using the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (Nip) and 2,6-dimethyl-4-nitrophenol (DMNip) as model reactions. Most importantly, due to the selective binding ability of α-CDs to certain reagents, the synthesized hybrid microgels show different catalytic activity for the target compounds during the catalytic reactions: a significant enhancement in the catalytic activity has been observed for the reduction of Nip, while no obvious effect has been found for the reduction of DMNip.


With the expansion of AI-powered virtual assistants, there is a need for low-power keyword spotting systems providing a "wake-up" mechanism for subsequent computationally expensive speech recognition. One promising approach is the use of neuromorphic sensors and spiking neural networks (SNNs) implemented in neuromorphic processors for sparse event-driven sensing. However, this requires resource-efficient SNN mechanisms for temporal encoding, which need to consider that these systems process information in a streaming manner, with physical time being an intrinsic property of their operation. In this work, two candidate neurocomputational elements for temporal encoding and feature extraction in SNNs described in recent literature—the spiking time-difference encoder (TDE) and disynaptic excitatory-inhibitory (E-I) elements—are comparatively investigated in a keyword-spotting task on formants computed from spoken digits in the TIDIGITS dataset. While both encoders improve performance over direct classification of the formant features in the training data, enabling a complete binary classification with a logistic regression model, they show no clear improvements on the test set. Resource-efficient keyword spotting applications may benefit from the use of these encoders, but further work on methods for learning the time constants and weights is required to investigate their full potential.


We present a large-scale stereo RGB image object pose estimation dataset named the StereOBJ-1M dataset. The dataset is designed to address challenging cases such as object transparency, translucency, and specular reflection, in addition to the common challenges of occlusion, symmetry, and variations in illumination and environments. In order to collect data of sufficient scale for modern deep learning models, we propose a novel method for efficiently annotating pose data in a multi-view fashion that allows data capturing in complex and flexible environments. Fully annotated with 6D object poses, our dataset contains over 396K frames and over 1.5M annotations of 18 objects recorded in 183 scenes constructed in 11 different environments. The 18 objects include 8 symmetric objects, 7 transparent objects, and 8 reflective objects. We benchmark two state-of-the-art pose estimation frameworks on StereOBJ-1M as baselines for future work. We also propose a novel object-level pose optimization method for computing 6D pose from keypoint predictions in multiple images.


In other to find an alternative hosts of virus diseases of cowpea in Zaria area, two virus disease symptoms were observed on two wild plants growing near each other at the edge of an experimental field, Department of Biological Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The virus isolate in Talinum triangulare was found not to be sap transmissible in all the buffers used at different molarities and pH values; although the virus was found to be seed transmissible in T. triangulare, and also transmissible through grafting to healthy looking seedlings of Vigna unguiculata var. IAR-01-1006. Also symptoms were not observed in whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci ) inoculated seedlings of the test plants. The virus isolate in Desmodium tortuosum, however, was found to be sap transmissible to healthy looking seedlings of D. Tortuosum and a number of other plant diseases, especially members of Fabaceae family. Chlorotic local lesions were observed in Chenopodium amaranticolor. 0.1 M phosphate buffer, pH 7.4 was found to be suitable for isolation and purification of the virus in D. tortuosum. The present study has also shed some light on the possible propagation host (V. unguiculata var. IAR-01-1006) for T. triangulare virus isolate, a propagation and assay hosts (V. unguiculata var. IAR-01-1009 and C. amaranticolor) for D. tortuosum virus isolate. The results obtained suggested that the symptoms observed in the two wild plants were induced by two different virus isolates. It is, therefore, suggested that further studies like molecular and immunological techniques need to be carried out in order to explore more of the properties of these viruses, with the view to develop control measures; since the viruses have shown to be a potential threat to some of the most important Leguminosae crops in the area studied.


The present paper aims at confirming the influence of CSR policies on building up customer relationship through improving trust and commitment, and at the same time to study the influence of these values on satisfaction and loyalty. To achieve this purpose, a causal model that establishes the relationship between those variables has been developed and empirically tested. In order to verify the proposed hypothesis a structured survey was developed. The survey was given to a sample of 501 customers (valid responses) of modern distribution retail stores (supermarkets and hypermarkets) in Spain. All hypotheses are supported, thus confirming that the consumer perception on CSR policies carried out by the retailer influence on trust and consumer commitment to the company. As these variables affect satisfaction and loyalty, these results also confirm the indirect influence of CSR on customer satisfaction, through these relational variables. Therefore CSR is an essential tool for developing a long-standing relationship between the customer and the company. The originality is that there are very few works that address the study of the relationship between CSR and relational variables commitment and trust. The sample, consumers of retail establishments, is another originality. And the value is that CSR improves the competitiveness of retailing companies through the relational variables.


—The high Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAR) in Filter Bank Multicarrier with Offset Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (FBMC-OQAM) can significantly reduce power efficiency and performance. In this paper, we address the problem of PAPR reduction for FBMC-OQAM systems using Tone Reservation (TR) technique. Due to the overlapping structure of FBMCOQAM signals, directly applying TR schemes of OFDM systems to FBMC-OQAM systems is not effective. We improve the tone reservation (TR) technique by employing sliding window with Active Constellation Extension for the PAPR reduction of FBMC-OQAM signals, called sliding window tone reservation Active Constellation Extension (SW-TRACE) technique. The proposed SW-TRACE technique uses the peak reduction tones (PRTs) of several consecutive data blocks to cancel the peaks of the FBMC-OQAM signal inside a window, with dynamically extending outer constellation points in active(data-carrying) channels, within margin-preserving constraints, in order to minimize the peak magnitude. Analysis and simulation results compared to the existing Tone Reservation (TR) technique for FBMC/OQAM system. The proposed method SW-TRACE has better PAPR performance and lower computational complexity.


Humans are exposed to a wide variety of carcinogenic insults, including endogenous and man-made chemicals, radiation, physical agents, and viruses. The ultimate goal of carcinogenesis research is to elucidate the processes involved in the induction of human cancer so that interventions may be developed to prevent the disease, either in the general population or in susceptible subpopulations. Progress to date in the carcinogenesis field, particularly regarding the mechanisms of chemically induced cancer, has revealed several points along the carcinogenesis pathway that may be amenable to mechanism-based prevention strategies. The purpose of this review is to examine the basic mechanisms and stages of chemical carcinogenesis, with an emphasis on ways in which preventive interventions can modify those processes. Possible ways of interfering with tumor initiation events include the following: i) modifying carcinogen activation by inhibiting enzymes responsible for that activation or by direct scavenging of DNA-reactive electrophiles and free radicals; ii) enhancing carcinogen detoxification processes by altering the activity of the detoxifying enzymes; and iii) modulating certain DNA repair processes. Possible ways of blocking the processes involved in the promotion and progression stages of carcinogenesis include the following: i) scavenging of reactive oxygen species; ii) altering the expression of genes involved in cell signaling, particularly those regulating cell proliferation, apoptosis, and differentiation; and iii) decreasing inflammation. In addition, the utility for mechanism-based cancer prevention research of new animal models that are based on the overexpression or inactivation of specific cancer-related genes is examined.


This letter presents a new method for representing the mutual coupling between feeders or sections of feeders in distribution systems using a backward/forward sweep method. Two distribution systems with magnetic coupling between the feeders are used to test the method and to show the impact of mutual coupling between feeders. Features of computational convergence are also analyzed.


The existence of the House of Representatives (DPR) to the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) is an implementation of a power-sharing horizontally in order to perform the functions of state institutions in the capacity and parallel position. Parliament is an institution that state institutions have a legislative function, the function of the budget, and monitoring functions. While the Audit Board is an institution with a state institution whose primary function as a body of state financial check on the tasks of the state. In performing supervisory functions there are two state agencies that have oversight function in this field, namely the House of Representatives and the CPC, in this case the House of Representatives to supervise in politics while the CPC conduct supervision in the financial sector. The results of the financial audit conducted by the CPC in return it back to Parliament to be discussed, so that in carrying out the functions of a connection between the two.


In this paper we present a method for applying a second-order correction to the polarization data taken at the very large array (VLA). We found that the standard polarization calibration method is inadequate for obtaining a polarization angle time series with position angle constancy better than a few degrees over several hours. Even after application of a more sophisticated ionospheric Faraday rotation model than is commonly employed in VLA polarization measurements, the rms scatter in position angle exceeded 2° at 20 cm. In order to reduce this scatter, a polarization "self-calibration" method was developed to correct the data for residual instrumental polarization, here noted by the array-averaged instrumental polarization error A to be defined and discussed in section 5, and ionospheric Faraday rotation errors δθFR. Using four extragalactic radio sources with fractional polarization ranging from 1 to 4.8%, the residual errors A and δθFR were estimated. A typical value of A was 10−3 and the magnitude of δθFR was less than 2°. These residuals, however, are enough to limit the VLA polarization angle measurement to roughly 2° at 20 cm. The instrumental polarization error was found to be time variable with a timescale of a few hours. These errors were removed from the data, and the corrected data showed an improvement in polarization time series with a smaller scatter in position angle, except for the source 0010 + 005. It was close to the Sun on the day of the observation, and we believe the excess fluctuations are due to coronal plasma turbulence. We believe the technique described in this paper will be of use to observations in which the Faraday rotation varies during the course of an observing session, such as measurements of coronal Faraday rotation, or in which it is important to eliminate or minimize the Faraday rotation noise. An example of the latter type of observation would be the study of pulsar rotation measure variations over long time intervals. Of course, a result of this procedure is a precision determination of ionospheric rotation measure, in principle in various directions. Such observations might aid radio remote sensing studies of the ionosphere.


This paper presents an experiment of automatically scoring handwritten descriptive answers in the trial tests for the new Japanese university entrance examination, which were made for about 120,000 examinees in 2017 and 2018. There are about 400,000 answers with more than 20 million characters. Although all answers have been scored by human examiners, handwritten characters are not labelled. We present our attempt to adapt deep neural network-based handwriting recognizers trained on a labelled handwriting dataset into this unlabeled answer set. Our proposed method combines different training strategies, ensembles multiple recognizers, and uses a language model built from a large general corpus to avoid overfitting into specific data. In our experiment, the proposed method records character accuracy of over 97% using about 2,000 verified labelled answers that account for less than 0.5% of the dataset. Then, the recognized answers are fed into a pre-trained automatic scoring system based on the BERT model without correcting misrecognized characters and providing rubric annotations. The automatic scoring system achieves from 0.84 to 0.98 of Quadratic Weighted Kappa (QWK). As QWK is over 0.8, it represents acceptable similarity of scoring between the automatic scoring system and the human examiners. These results are promising for further research on end-to-end automatic scoring of descriptive answers.


The Fontan operation places the systemic and pulmonary circulations in series, driven by a single ventricular chamber. It has become the treatment strategy of choice for palliating single-ventricle congenital heart disease. This anatomy engenders profound changes in physiology, affecting the cardiovascular and respiratory systems with direct implications for anesthetic and intensive care. The physical basis of these changes and their sequelae are reviewed.


Proceedings: AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010‐‐ Apr 17‐21, 2010; Washington, DC

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are thought to be responsible for tumor initiation and tumor regeneration after chemotherapy. Earlier we demonstrated that chemotherapy led to the selection of CSCs and that the high malignancy of lung CSCs was associated with an efficient cytokine network. Here we propose that blocking SCF-c-kit signaling will inhibit CSC proliferation and survival. CSCs were isolated from nonsmal cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines as tumor spheres under CSC-selective conditions, and their stem/progenitor properties were confirmed. A Cellomics ArrayScan HCS Reader was applied to test the cell surface markers, the intracellular protein distribution and cell proliferation. CSCs in contrast to bulk cells expressed high levels of c-kit receptors and produced SCF. Proliferation of CSCs was stimulated by exogenous SCF and was inhibited by antibodies neutralizing SCF and by imatinib (Gleevec), a specific inhibitor of c-kit. Cisplatin treatment eliminated major of bulk cells but not CSCs, whereas imatinib or anti-SCF antibody destroyed CSCs. In combination cisplatin and imatinib or anti-SCF antibody prevented growth of both tumor cell subpopulations.

Our results elucidate the important role of SCF-c-kit signaling axis for the self-renewal and proliferation of lung CSCs. Blocking SCF-c-kit signaling by anti-SCF antibody or imatinib in combination with cisplatin could be more efficient in elimination of human tumor cells than each modality used separately.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 4272.


In this paper, an efficient key management scheme based on public key elliptic curves signcryption (ECS) scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has been proposed. The proposed algorithm is compared with the scheme given in [1]. For 250 cluster node, the saving in the total number of operations, key storage requirements, energy consumptions, and communication overhead are 75%, 96%, 23.79 m Joule, and 40% respectively compared with [1]. The proposed protocol is efficient in terms of complexity, number of message exchange, computation, and storage requirements compared with [1]. The proposed key management possesses not only provided confidentiality, authentication, integrity but also unforgeability.


The organizations are experiencing an extremely competitive epoch, consequence of the globalize economy, of the countries acting in partnership from geographical regions, of more demanding consumers, finally, as a result of a series of circumstances that, of some way, interfere in his models of management and production. Understanding the organization in its complexity re-dimensions the function of information and knowledge in that scope. Information and knowledge have a fundamental function in corporate environments, because all the activities—developed from their planning up to the execution of the planned actions, as well as all the decisive processes—are supported by information and knowledge. Information and knowledge—inputs of the organizational activity—are to be better managed. For that, the agents are to understand the macro and micro environments of information/knowledge that form the organization and interact with the society; and, as well, are to perceive the complex contexts—political, economic, social, technological and cultural—, that surround the organizations in the present world. Studying information and knowledge and its management in complex organizations is absolutely necessary, since the persons are, by means of his actions/activities, who develop organizations, doing them more competitive and, so, enabling the social and economic development of the their environment.


At the intersection of Topological Data Analysis (TDA) and machine learning, the field of cellular signal processing has advanced rapidly in recent years. In this context, each signal on the cells of a complex is processed using the combinatorial Laplacian, and the resultant Hodge decomposition. Meanwhile, discrete Morse theory has been widely used to speed up computations by reducing the size of complexes while preserving their global topological properties. In this paper, we provide an approach to signal compression and reconstruction on chain complexes that leverages the tools of algebraic discrete Morse theory. The main goal is to reduce and reconstruct a based chain complex together with a set of signals on its cells via deformation retracts, preserving as much as possible the global topological structure of both the complex and the signals. We first prove that any deformation retract of real degree-wise finite-dimensional based chain complexes is equivalent to a Morse matching. We will then study how the signal changes under particular types of Morse matching, showing its reconstruction error is trivial on specific components of the Hodge decomposition. Furthermore, we provide an algorithm to compute Morse matchings with minimal reconstruction error.


Every author and publisher is interested in adding their publications to the widely used bibliographic databases freely accessible in the world wide web: This ensures the visibility of their publications and hence of the published research. However, the inclusion requirements of publications in the bibliographic databases are heterogeneous even on the technical side. This survey paper aims in shedding light on the various data formats, protocols and technical requirements of getting indexed by widely used bibliographic databases in the area of computer science and provides hints for maximal database inclusion. Furthermore, we point out the possibilities to utilize the data of bibliographic databases, and describes some personal and institutional research repository systems with special regard to the support of inclusion in bibliographic databases.


The discovery of superconductivity in iron-based compounds with a similar, but simpler, structure to the iron-pnictides could provide an important testing ground for unconventional superconductivity.


The article is dedicated to the novel of the modern Finnish-Swedish writer Kjell Westö, "Mirage 38" (published in 2013). The action takes place in the 1930s, and an important role in the work is played by the description of the historical background, within which the storylines develop. The author could not ignore Finland's foreign policy relations, including relations with the Soviet Union. Such references are the subject of analysis in this article. The historical facts mentioned in the novel are, for the most part, genuine, since Westö takes seriously the factual preparation of his works. Nevertheless, some events are covered through the prism of perception of the protagonist, therefore, they cannot claim to be objective. Moscow in the novel "Mirage 38" appears as a bulwark of urban civilization, in which a new way of life is emerging. The main character, having been assigned to the capital of the country, experiences a dissonance of his inner attitude with what he encounters in reality. The depiction of Soviet reality in the novel bears the imprint of the knowledge available in the 20th century about the era of Stalinism, and therefore is strikingly different from the impressions that contemporaries of the described historical period had. Also, the writer's acquaintance with Russian literature could have had an impact, since the work mentions its representatives, and the main character discusses their influence on his mood. The correlation of objectively depicted historical facts with the subjective perception of Westö's characters creates a unique atmosphere that critics appreciated and later awarded the novel "Mirage 38" with a prestigious award.


In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) was signed into law. This Act, part of the broader "stimulus" legislation, represents the U.S.'s largest investment in health information technology (HIT) to date. More importantly, it sets a vision and provides a plan intended to transform the U.S. health care system to a safer, more efficient place to receive care. To that end, the Act seeks to fundamentally change the path HIT applications' adoption and implementation was taking to ensure that "meaningful use" and interoperability are achieved. However, such bold and sweeping changes will not come without unintended consequences, and their broad scope makes measuring the new public policy's success a challenge.


Configurable process models are frequently used to represent business workflows and other discrete event systems among different branches of large organizations: they unify commonalities shared by all branches and describe their differences, at the same time. The configuration of such models is usually done manually, which is challenging. On the one hand, when the number of configurable nodes in the configurable process model grows, the size of the search space increases exponentially. On the other hand, the person performing the configuration may lack the holistic perspective to make the right choice for all configurable nodes at the same time, since choices influence each other. Nowadays, information systems that support the execution of business processes create event data reflecting how processes are performed. In this article, we propose three strategies (based on exhaustive search, genetic algorithms and a greedy heuristic) that use event data to automatically derive a process model from a configurable process model that better represents the characteristics of the process in a specific branch. These strategies have been implemented in our proposed framework and tested in both business-like event logs as recorded in a higher educational enterprise resource planning system and a real case scenario involving a set of Dutch municipalities.


We study the properties of electronic circuits after linearization around a fixed operating point in the context of closed-loop stability analysis. When distributed elements, like transmission lines, are present in the circuit it is known that unstable circuits can be created without poles in the complex right half-plane. This undermines existing closed-loop stability analysis techniques that determine stability by looking for right half-plane poles. We observed that the problematic circuits rely on unrealistic elements with an infinite bandwidth. In this paper, we therefore define a class of realistic linearized components and show that a circuit composed of realistic elements is only unstable with poles in the complex right half-plane. Furthermore, we show that the amount of right half-plane poles in a realistic circuit is finite, even when distributed elements are present. In the second part of the paper, we provide examples of component models that are realistic and show that the class includes many existing models, including ones for passive devices, active devices and transmission lines.


Anthropogenic activity has a negative impact on many coastal ecosystems, compromis- ing the significant direct and indirect socio-economic benefits provided in these areas. Maintaining activities that depend on coastal zones while preserving the ecological state of the ecosystems repre- sents a management challenge. Management of coastal zones requires scientifically based knowl- edge, due to the complexity of the ecological processes which occur in these ecosystems and because of interaction with the socio-economic system. The effectiveness of coastal management instruments and programmes needs to be evaluated to determine the success of adopted measures and to estab- lish improved goals. Some of the research areas that can support coastal management include marine spatial planning, ecological modelling, development of tools to communicate science to managers, and interaction between coastal ecosystems and socio-economics. This paper reviews management instruments to address coastal zone problems and of some research areas to support management.


In the present aggressive world of competition, knowledge management strategies are becoming the major vehicle for the organizations to achieve their goals; to compete and to perform well. Linking knowledge management to business performance could make a strong business case in convincing senior management of any organization about the need to adopt a knowledge management strategy. Organizational performance is, therefore, a key issue and performance measurement models provide a basis for developing a structured approach to knowledge management. In this respect, organizations need to assess their knowledge management capabilities and find ways to improve their performance. This paper takes these issues into account when study the role of knowledge management in enhancing the organizational performance and consequently, developed an integrated knowledge management capabilities framework for assessing organizational performance. The results show that there is positive correlation between knowledge management capabilities and organizational performance. The results also show that the proposed framework can be used to assess organizational performance and also can be used as decision tool to decide which knowledge management capability should be improved.


AIM: To determine the median effective dose (ED50) of spinal anesthesia 0.75% ropivacaine for cesarean section. METHODS: Thirty-two ASAⅠ-Ⅱ parturients undergoing elective cesarean section delivery with use of combined spinal-epidural anesthesia were enrolled in this study. The initial dose of was 12.8 mg of 0.75% ropivacaine, and the dosing intervals were 98.4% of the preceding dosage. Doses for subsequent parturients were determined by the response of the previous parturient. Successful anesthesia was defined as a loss of sensation to an acupuncture stimulus at the T7 level, full motor blockade within 10 minutes after administration of the local anesthetic, analgesia of incision and the satisfaction of skelaxin evaluated by one operator. ED50 and its 95% confidence interval (CI) was determined with use of Dixon method. RESULTS: Five parturients were rejected out the study because of doubtful anesthsia. According to the rest twenty-seven parturients' data, the ED50 of intrathecal 0.75% ropivacaine was 11.97 mg (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.75-12.19 mg). CONCLUSION: The ED50 of spinal 0.75% ropivacaine for cesarean delivery under the conditions of this study were 11.97 mg.


To assess the role of androgen receptors (ARs) in the expression of androgen-dependent seminal vesicle (SV) secretory proteins, tissue recombinants were prepared with rat seminal vesicle mesenchyme plus ureter epithelium of wild-type or Tfm mice (rat SVM plus wild-type mouse URE and rat SVM plus Tfm mouse URE, respectively). After growth in male hosts, both the wild-type and Tfm ureter epithelia were induced by SVM to differentiate into a simple columnar epithelium exhibiting the complex folded morphology characteristic of the SV. In SVM plus wild-type mouse URE recombinants, epithelial ARs were induced, and the epithelium expressed the full spectrum of SV secretory proteins. By contrast, in SVM plus Tfm mouse URE recombinants, the Tfm epithelium was genetically incapable of producing functional ARs and failed to produce SV secretory proteins. These data demonstrate in vivo that the induction of SV secretory proteins by androgens is an event requiring intraepithelial ARs. In contrast, androgen-dependent epithelial morphogenesis, columnar cytodifferentiation, and probably also proliferation can be expressed in Tfm epithelium grown in association with wild-type mesenchyme, strongly suggesting that these events are indirect effects on the epithelium mediated by mesenchymal ARs.


Objectives: The present examine was going to evaluate the pain killer, anti-inflammatory, and CNS depressant activities of the methanolic extract of the Sonneratia clear leaves (MESAL). Materials and methods: By using carrageenan-induced inflamed method anti-inflammatory effects regarding MESAL were studied right here at the dose of 150 mg/kg and 300 mg/kg body mass. Analgesic activity of MESAL was evaluated by applying formalin-induced licking and gnawing at activities in mice at a dose of 200 mg/kg and 400 mg/kg body weight. The CNS depressant activity has been measured by observing typically the reduction of locomotors in addition to exploratory activities on view discipline and hole cross assessments at a dose regarding 200 and 400 mg/kg bodyweight. Results: Statistical analysis revealed that dose of 400 mg/kg displayed pct of protection (86.29%) of licking in addition to biting of formalin-induced rodents at late phase compared to diclofenac sodium (78.23%). The dose of one hundred fifty mg/kg showed sustained inhibited (17.27% and twenty-two 94%) of paw edema at the 2nd and 3rd hour compared with standard diclofenac sodium (15.93% and 17.47%). Additionally, doses of 3 hundred mg/kg caused the higher percent of sustained inhibition regarding paw edema at every single hour compared with common diclofenac sodium. Besides, the flower extract also had considerable (p<0.05) dose-dependent CNS depressant activity. Bottom line: Current study recommends that this methanolic extract of Sonneratia alba leaves has important analgesic, anti-inflammatory and CNS depressant properties.


Frequent application of the term "proxy war" indicates its prominent place in academic researches on international relations. Separate implementation of soft power and hard power proved to be unsuccessful in recent years. Accordingly, great failures in classic wars increased tendencies towards proxy wars. By the outbreak of Arab Springs in the early 2011, Syria was devastated by different opposition groups and driven into terrible violence. Obama administration, refraining from the bitter experience of Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan, avoided direct intervention and managed to afford for the largest logistic support for rebel groups in Syria. The United States this time, tried to realize its policies in Syria by means of proxy war. The research, aims at analyzing the reasons for applying proxy war in the US policy in Syria in a general framework of Offensive realism. As a hypothesis, it seems that the new approaches towards proxy war can generally be interpreted according to the brother concept and the logics of smart power.


Ten novel transition metal complexes of N,O donor ligands have been synthesized by the reaction of ligands with metal acetates in 2:1 molar ratio. These reactions were carried out under reflux in methanol for 3-6 hours. The ligands and their transition metal complexes were characterized on the basis of physical properties, elemental analysis, Infrared spectroscopy, Magnetic susceptibility, Ultraviolet and Atomic absorption spectroscopy and 1H-13C NMR spectroscopy. The FT- IR spectra of the complexes indicated that ligands behaved in bidentate manner coordinating via the nitrogen and oxygen. 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR data of the ligands in pure and complex form confirmed the formation of the complexes. Other analytical techniques demonstrated that transition metal complexes of Cu, Ni, Co and Zn are four coordinated and those of Mn are six coordinated. Furthermore, antibacterial activities have been discussed.


Previous study has shown that the anti-Hu antibody titre of serum samples from patients with paraneoplastic encephalomyelitis/paraneoplastic sensory neuronopathy (PEM/PSN) was significantly higher than that from patients with small cell lung cancer without neurological disturbances (non-PEM/PSN). The aims of this study were (1) to identify the fine epitopes on HuD recognised by the anti-Hu antibody, (2) to determine if the pattern of epitopic reactivity differed between antibodies from patients with and without PEM/PSN, and (3) to determine if the pattern of epitopic reactivity correlated with the clinical features. Recombinant full length HuD and nine deletion fragments were constructed and immunoreacted by western blot analysis with 14 anti-Hu serum samples from eight patients with PEM/PSN and six without PEM/PSN. All anti-Hu serum samples reacted with the deletion fragments containing amino acids (aa) 90–101 or aa 171–206. Some anti-Hu samples reacted with the deletion fragments containing aa 223–234, aa 235–252, or aa 354–373. There was no difference in the pattern of epitopic reactivity between patients with and without PEM/PSN. There was no correlation between the pattern of epitopic reactivity and the clinical features. The anti-Hu antibody titre from patients with PEM/PSN was significantly higher than from patients without PEM/PSN, but there was overlap of their titre concentrations. In conclusion, aa 90–101 and aa 171–206 are the major epitopes with which all anti-Hu serum samples react, and aa 223–234, aa 235–252, and aa 354–373 are the minor epitopes with which only some anti-Hu serum samples react. The analyses suggested that the pattern of epitopic reactivity of the anti-Hu antibody on HuD was not a critical factor for the development or clinical features of PEM/PSN.


This paper introduces antenna-based "smart skin" sensors that are integrated with RFIDs for wireless sensor networks. Furthermore, the paper shows wireless energy harvesting capabilities to enable battery-less, or sustainable, wireless sensor networks with "smart skin" sensor nodes. These sensors are highly applicable for industrial applications: carbon-nanotube-based gas sensor, pressure sensor, and strain sensor. The low-profile, flexible sensors can be attached to surfaces as a "smart skin" with various sensing capabilities. These antenna-based sensors have the unique property of having a dual function of sensing and communication within a single device, which thereby enables RFID functionality to be integrated. Utilizing wireless sensor networking, it is possible to increase range and area of sensing. All prototypes have been designed, fabricated, and measured, the results of which show high sensitivity.


An empirical self-heating SPICE MOSFET model which accurately portrays the vertical DMOS power MOSFET electrical and thermal responses is presented. This macro-model implementation is the culmination of years of evolution in MOSFET modeling. This new version brings together the thermal and the electrical models of a VDMOS MOSFET. The existing electrical model [2,3] is highly accurate and is recognized in the industry. The sequence of the model calibration procedure using parametric data is described. Simulation response of the new self-heating MOSFET model track the dynamic thermal response and is independent of SPICE's global temperature definition.


UML sequence diagrams (SDs) are a mainstay of requirements specifications for communication protocols. Mauw and Reniers' algebraic (MRA) semantics formally specifies a behavior for these SDs that guarantees deadlock-free processes. Practitioners commonly use communication semantics that differ from MRA, which may result in deadlocks, for example, FIFO, token ring, etc. We define a process algebra that is an extension of the MRA semantics for regular SDs. Our algebra can describe several commonly used communication semantics. Regular SDs are constructed from concurrent message flows via iteration, branching, and sequential composition. Their behavior is defined in terms of a set of partial orders on the events in the SD. Such partial orders are known as causal orders. We define partial order theoretic properties of a causal order that are particular kinds of race condition. We prove that any of the common communication semantics that we list either guarantees deadlock-free SDs or can result in a deadlock if and only if a causal order of an SD contains one of these types of race condition. This describes a complete classification of deadlocks as specific types of race condition.


With the release of the human genome sequence, there has been increasing attention given to other genetic analyses, including the detection of genetic variations and fast sequencing of multiple samples for pharmacogenomics studies. Rapid injections of samples in multiplexed separation channels by optically gated sample introduction are shown here for DNA separation. Serial separations of four amino acids are shown in less than four seconds on a microchip with four multiplexed channels. Five short oligonucleotides have also been rapidly separated in 2% LPA with four channels using this technique. In addition, multiple unique samples have been simultaneously separated and five-base resolution has been demonstrated.


Fbxw7 is a tumor suppressor mutated in a wide range of human cancers. It serves as the substrate recognition component of SCF E3 ubiquitin ligases, and intensive effort was made to identify its substrates. Some of the substrates are central regulators of the cell cycle, cell fate determination, and cellular survival. Unlike the many efforts aimed at identifying novel targets, little is known about the regulation of Fbw7 isoform expression. In this study, we examined the mRNA expression of different FBXW7 isoforms during the cell cycle and after exposure to various stress stimuli. We observed that Fbw7β is induced by all the stress stimuli tested, mostly, but not exclusively, in a p53-dependent manner. In fact, FBXW7β was found to be the most potently induced p53 target gene in HCT-116 cells. Expression of FBXWα and γ is p53-independent and their responsiveness to most stress stimuli is limited. Furthermore, their pattern of stress responsiveness is very different from that of the β isoform. Under certain conditions, the same genotoxic agent stimulates induction of β and repression of α. Analysis of FACS-sorted cells in specific phases of the cell cycle by using fluorescent ubiquitination-based cell cycle indicator (FUCCI), showed a significant repression of the γ isoform during the S phase of normal cycling HCT-116 cells. Altogether, this study suggests differential regulation of the 3 Fbw7 isoforms.


Important issues in selective adaptation research concern the relative contribution of response related (perceptual) and stimulus related (acoustic) effects of the adaptor in the adaptive process. Two response related issues pertain to the effects of the adaptor percept and verbal transformations on adaptation. This investigation systematically examined perceptual and acoustic contributions of the adaptor on the adaptation of the voicing feature. Subjects rated the degree of voicing/voicelessness of end-point VOT adaptors, i.e., 5- and 55-ms VOT, and an acoustically neutral adaptor, i.e., 25-ms VOT, during periods of repetitions. The number of adaptor repetitions during each of ten trials was either 5, 32, or 95, and the intensity of the adapting stimulus was either 50, 70, or 90 dB SPL. The major findings were as follows: (1) No significant correlations were found between ratings of voicing percept of the adaptor and magnitude of boundary shift; (2) Increases in repetitions and relative intensity level of end-point adaptors produced significantly greater phonetic boundary shifts and generally greater affects on ratings of test stimuli; and (3) The end-point adaptors produced significant shifts in rating of boundary and nonboundary stimuli. The findings indicate that neigher the adaptor percept or verbal transformations affected the magnitude of adaptation. These results and those for acoustic parameters strongly suggest an acoustic as opposed to a phonetic basis of adaptation of the voicing feature. Furthermore, the effects of end-point adaptors on boundary and nonboundary stimuli support the generalized change in feature sensitivity assumed by a fatigue model of adaptation.


An unsolved challenge in biomedical natural language processing (NLP) is detecting ambiguities in the reports that can help physicians to improve report clarity. Our goal was to develop NLP methods to tackle the challenges of identifying ambiguous descriptions of the laterality of BI-RADS Final Assessment Categories in mammography radiology reports. We developed a text processing system that uses a BI-RADS ontology we built as a knowledge source for automatic annotation of the entities in mammography reports relevant to this problem. We used the GATE NLP toolkit and developed customized processing resources for report segmentation, named entity recognition, and detection of mismatches between BI-RADS Final Assessment Categories and mammogram laterality. Our system detected 55 mismatched cases in 190 reports and the accuracy rate was 81%. We conclude that such NLP techniques can detect ambiguities in mammography reports and may reduce discrepancy and variability in reporting.


We gather survey evidence for the influence of the HEXACO personality traits on the phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting. We also consider the demographics of age, sex, income and education, and evaluate how these interact with personality and hyperbolic discounting. Due to a sampling tec hnique of "snowball , " we assembled a sample of well-educated and relatively wealthy adults from both sexes. Most respondents escaped hyperbolic discounting, and for those affected there was no "magnitude effect." Those participants showing higher conscient iousness were less hyperbolic. Moreover, those more open to experience who were more extroverted at the same time were also less hyperbolic. We also detail how such personality traits influence hyperbolic discounting mediated by the demographics of age, sex, income and educational attainment. Thus, conscientiousness, openness to experience and extraversion are traits that contribute to rational decisions in intertemporal choice in our sample, in that participants with these personality traits are less hyperbolic.


Summary In theory, hosts of avian brood parasites would benefit by modifying their egg appearance in two ways to help identify mimetic foreign eggs: (i) by laying clutches that are more uniform in appearance and (ii) by laying clutches that differ from those of other females in the population. Support for these theories is inconsistent, and few studies have used objective measures of clutch variation. Here we used reflectance spectrophotometry to quantify withinclutch and between-clutch variation of three host species of an Australian brood parasite, the pallid cuckoo (Cuculus pallidus). We used egg-swapping experiments in which subjects were presented with either a conspecific egg or a heterospecific egg to compare the egg rejection responses of a frequently parasitised host, the white-plumed honeyeater (Lichenostomus penicillatus), with two less frequently parasitised hosts, dusky woodswallows (Artamus cyanopterus) and willie wagtails (Rhipidura leucophrys). As predicted, rejection rate increased as contrast between foreign egg and host clutch increased. Further, the major host showed greater between-clutch variation than the occasional hosts, and also rejected more similar-looking eggs. Contrary to predictions however, within-clutch variation was not lower in the major host, nor was it important in predicting the rejection rate of foreign eggs by the three host species.


Subgraph-enhanced graph neural networks (SGNN) can increase the expressive power of the standard message-passing framework. This model family represents each graph as a collection of subgraphs, generally extracted by random sampling or with hand-crafted heuristics. Our key observation is that by selecting"meaningful"subgraphs, besides improving the expressivity of a GNN, it is also possible to obtain interpretable results. For this purpose, we introduce a novel framework that jointly predicts the class of the graph and a set of explanatory sparse subgraphs, which can be analyzed to understand the decision process of the classifier. We compare the performance of our framework against standard subgraph extraction policies, like random node/edge deletion strategies. The subgraphs produced by our framework allow to achieve comparable performance in terms of accuracy, with the additional benefit of providing explanations.


Objective: This article investigates whether within-domain and cross-domain buffering by family and work resources can help mitigate the negative mental health effects of work-to-family conflicts (WFC) and family-to-work conflicts (FWC).
Background: Most literature on the work–life interface stresses the need to maintain employees' health and well-being by preventing the emergence of work–family conflicts. Since such conflicts tend to be an unavoidable concomitant of role expansion, we aim to put forward the debate on the conditions that might prevent their negative health consequences instead.
Method: Fixed-effects linear regression analyses were applied to a sample of 4,920 employees in a three-wave employer–employee panel study in Germany. Using interaction analyses, we tested within-domain and cross-domain buffering of family (social support and relative bargaining power within partnerships) and work (job resources, support from direct supervisors or co-workers, formal and informal organizational support) resources in the relationship between strain-based and time-based WFC and FWC and mental health (SF-12).
Results: Family resources and work resources somewhat mitigated the health risks of WFC and FWC. Overall, within-domain resources were more effective than cross-domain ones.
Conclusion: It is important to consider resources in both the family and the work domains to determine the most effective ways of preventing the negative mental health consequences of work–family conflicts.


Technical and vocational education and training should be considered within the more comprehensive concept of human resources development. To ensure that both the human and the professional aspects of vocational education are addressed, two major dimensions should always guide the design of training and human resource development: education and work. The educational dimension caters to individual needs and human aspects, whereas the work or economic dimension caters to societal needs and labor market requirements. The challenge to vocational education practitioners is to integrate these two dimensions. Three major factors are involved in the economics of vocational education systems: funding; costs, efficiency, and effectiveness; and evaluation and assessment. The social status of vocational education in any society is, to a great extent, a reflection of the status of work values in that society. A rational and balanced approach can be realized if work activities are assessed both by their material and economic returns on the individual and society and by their social and humanizing influences. Although approaches to and systems of vocational education have developed along national lines, vocational education is no longer only a national concern. Globalized economies make the provision of vocational education a worldwide concern, and the integration of the human and market-driven aspects must be assessed in each culture. International agencies in the field of vocational education need to address the issue of the two perspectives of vocational education so that preparation of workers and citizens can be as integrated as possible. (KC) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** The Changing Demands of the 21St Century: Challenges to Technical and Vocational Education Dr. Munther W. Masri President, National Center for Human Resources Development


Solanum tuberosum lectin (STL) conjugated poly (DL-lactic-co- glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanoparticle (STL-NP) was constructed in this paper as a novel biodegradable nose-to-brain drug delivery system. The in vitro uptake study showed markedly enhanced endocytosis of STL-NP compared to unmodified PLGA nanoparticles (NP) in Calu-3 cells and significant inhibition of uptake in the presence of inhibitor sugar (chitin hydrolysate). Following intranasal administration, coumarin-6 carried by STL-NP was rapidly absorbed into blood and brain. The AUC(0→12 h) of coumarin-6 in blood, olfactory bulb, cerebrum and cerebellum were about 0.77-, 1.48-, 1.89- and 1.45-fold of those of NP, respectively (p < 0.05). STL-NP demonstrated 1.89–2.45 times (p < 0.01) higher brain targeting efficiency in different brain tissues than unmodified NP. Enhanced accumulation of STL-NP in the brain was also observed by near infrared fluorescence probe image following intranasal administration. The fluorescence signal of STL-NP appeared in olfactory bulb, cerebrum and brainstem early at 0.25 h. The signal in olfactory bulb decreased gradually after 2 h, while the obvious signal in brainstem, cerebrum and cerebellum lasted for more than 8 h. The STL-NP safety experiments showed mild cytotoxicity and negligible cilia irritation. These intriguing in vitro and in vivo results suggest that STL-NP might serve as a promising brain drug delivery system.


Background Human rotavirus A (RVA) infection is the primary cause of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) in infants and young children worldwide, especially in children under 5 years of age and is a major public health problem causing severe diarrhea in children in Thailand. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence, genotype diversity, and molecular characterization of rotavirus infection circulating in children under 15 years of age diagnosed with AGE in Thailand from January 2016 to December 2019. Methods A total of 2,001 stool samples were collected from children with gastroenteritis (neonates to children <15 years of age) and tested for RVA by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Amplified products were sequenced and submitted to an online genotyping tool for analysis. Results Overall, 301 (15.0%) stool samples were positive for RVA. RVA occurred most frequently among children aged 0-24 months. The seasonal incidence of rotavirus infection occurred typically in Thailand during the winter months (December-March). The G3P[8] genotype was identified as the most prevalent genotype (33.2%, 100/301), followed by G8P[8] (10.6%, 32/301), G9P[8] (6.3%, 19/301), G2P[4] (6.0%, 18/301), and G1P[6] (5.3%, 16/301). Uncommon G and P combinations such as G9P[4], G2P[8], G3P[4] and G3P[9] were also detected at low frequencies. In terms of genetic backbone, the unusual DS-1-like G3P[8] was the most frequently detected (28.2%, 85/301), and the phylogenetic analysis demonstrated high nucleotide identity with unusual DS-1-like G3P[8] detected in Thailand and several countries. Conclusions A genetic association between RVA isolates from Thailand and other countries ought to be investigated given the local and global dissemination of rotavirus as it is crucial for controlling viral gastroenteritis, and implications for the national vaccination programs.


Communication and protection issues play an important role when speaking about the smart grid. This paper presents possibilities of testing power system protection relays and communication concepts for smart distribution. A description of the Smart Grid laboratory hardware and the main protection devices is presented in the paper. Further use cases and functionalities provided by the lab equipment are described and the possibilities by dynamically configuring devices and system interaction are shown. Concepts for the integration of monitored and controllable decentralized energy sources are demonstrated The coupling between simulation tools and the touchable hardware is a key element for performing analysis of any user-defined scenario and the concept of this coupling is described here. Example test results of protection equipment are presented.


ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to introduce  supra bT- closed maps, supra bT-open maps, supra bT- homeomorphisms , supra * bT- homeomorphisms and study some of  their properties.


In 1979, Argentina officially recognised the need for a study of the problems of the highly-gifted child. This took the form of a study of the bibliography on this subject, the formulation of a scheme for detecting such cases, and a tentative teaching approach. Creativity is seen as an essential component of giftedness and family counselling is considered of paramount importance. The needs of the gifted are perceived as an aspect of special education with the emphasis on providing for those needs within the normal school.


Comorbidity and presence of family dysfunction in personality disorders, namely borderline personality disorder have been found commonly with bipolar affective disorder clients. Dialectic behaviour therapy (DBT) though has shown efficacy in treatment of such conditions, at times due to the socio-cultural differences of the models adopted from the western concept, there is a felt difficulty in the formulation of the therapeutic model making it necessary to collaborate with other models for smoother formulation and improvement in the overall functioning in the clients. A 21-year-old female of bipolar affective disorder with emotionally unstable personality disorder traits was referred to a psychiatric social worker for assessment and plan of intervention inclusive of DBT and family-focused therapy (FFT). Twenty sessions, each lasting for one hour were conducted with the client and family, each on an inpatient basis to (1) Assess and grade the problems in hierarchy, (2) Understand the socio-cultural constructs in sessions, (3) Teach DBT concepts and relaxation techniques to ameliorate stress and help her to improve the relationship and dynamics with her family through FFT. At the time of discharge, the client had improved nearly 30%, and the client and family were more confident in facing social situations, emotional dysregulation, interpersonal issues, distress tolerance goals which has been explained in the context of the socio-cultural factors focusing on alliance, institutions, expectations, and cultural adaptation involved in therapy and the involvement it had in the therapeutic process.


This study was aimed at developing a new sensitive approach to account for small sediment dust particles using spectral reflectance across the shortwave spectral region (1250-2400 micron). The NIRA (Near Infrared Analyses) approach was adopted in order to examine its capability to predict gravimetric weight of sediment dust particles solely from the reflectance data. In order to quantitatively characterize the dust loading process, two model composition mixtures representing homogeneity (talc powder) and heterogeneity (Environmental Protected Agency (EPA) dust) of chemical compounds were examined. A wind tunnel was constructed and used to simulate the different amounts of dust loadings over an indoor environment. Different spectral manipulations most commonly used to analyze spectral data were tested. On these manipulated spectra, a multivariate data analysis based on Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression was run and prediction modeling between NIR spectroscopy and the dust loadings was generated. For this purpose, the relationship between spectroscopic measurements and the total gravimetric weight was used. Using reflectance values in the PLS analysis was found to demonstrate the best performance in EPA dust relative to other manipulations employed (with RMSEP of 4.8%). For the talc dust, the first derivative of absorbance manipulation was found to demonstrate the best performance relative to other manipulations with RMSEP of 5.4%. Although the RMSEP might seem somewhat high, one should note that this concerns a relatively small amount of dust with a narrow gravimetric weight of ±0.0001 g. Moreover, validation and examination tests applied to the population studied have presented very significant results. This method can be further used to assess very small amounts of dust in indoor environments and accordingly to identify shade on the environmental air quality on regular non dusty-days.


Characteristics of the temporal evolution of the global solar magnetic field were found to display a 2-step cycling mode consistent with a pattern of a fundamental harmonic progression underlying all solar cycles at all times and having its seat in the fusion region of the core via nuclear magnetic resonance as part of the hydrogen and helium fusion chain. In addition to the three principal zones in the interior of the sun, core, radiative zone, and convection zone, a sub-surface layer is being suggested to take part in the processes of varying solar activity, which would be an extension of relativistic 2D hydrogen being formed throughout the plasma body under the influence of pressure waves originating in the core. The major participants confined to such a 2D layer is for the most part 2D hydrogen particularly in its form of relativistic 2D hydrogen, where the Bohratom binding energies are replaced by binding energies in the range of Eo = 0.5 MeV. For this reason it is conjectured that this condition lends itself to providing contributions to (a) the energy release including 0.5 MeV and lower energy γ-photons as well as (b) superimposing a radial component to the global dipole field.


Agroforestry can play a significant role in improving rural livelihoods and enhanced integrated management of natural resources in Uganda. To develop an agroforestry research and development strategy for eastern and mid-northern Uganda and a benchmark for measuring impact of future activities, community resource assessments were conducted in these areas between October 2002 and June 2003. The districts of Iganga, Busia, Tororo, Kumi and Katakwii were covered in the eastern lowlands agro-ecological zone, while the districts of Mbale and Sironko were covered in the eastern highlands zone. In the mid-northern agro-ecological zone, Lira district was covered. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected using rapid rural appraisals, field observations and in depth interviews through field surveys. Results obtained from the various assessments were validated through feed back workshops involving all the major stakeholders. The study identified the current tree growing practices in the zones; tree species preferred by households and their uses; tree management practices by the households; major factors affecting tree growing by households and the potential agroforestry interventions in the zones. The opportunities for research and development in the zones are also highlighted. It is concluded that agroforestry has potential to contribute to the improvement of rural livelihoods in these areas. However, for this to happen, the involvement of farmers and stakeholders in designing agroforestry interventions is paramount.