Rare metal (HFSE such Sn, W, Ta, Nb and LILLE such Li, Rb) granite represent the most enriched magmatic rocks on Earth. This is especially true for some elements that belongs either to the European list of critical raw materials and/or the conflict minerals (eg. Li, Sn, W, Nb, Ta). Rare metal granites generally emplace in the vincinity of S-type granites during late orogenic stages. The fraction crystallisation mechanism is postulated to be the unique way to produce enriched silicate melt that later leads to ore deposits due to a combination of magmatic/hydrothermal processes. However, some problems persist in the explanation of the genesis of rare metal granite: crystal fractionation alone does not lead to the very high rare metal concentrations; field discrepancies exist between rare metal granites and their supposed parent peraluminous granites that in some cases are unknown. An alternative model - based on the integration of geochemical, experimental, paleogeographical and structural studies – suggests that low degree partial melting could be an efficient mechanism to produce critical metals enriched silicate melts enriched. To test whether this hypothesis makes sense, we present a study of the behaviour of W, Sn, Nb and Ta in metamorphic minerals from various metapelitic rocks. The selected samples do not present anomalous bulk concentrations of these elements with respect to an average continental crust. They formed at different pressure temperature conditions, in different orogenic belts. The rock collection comprises (i) amphibolite-facies staurolite bearing rocks, (ii) sillimanite-bearing rocks and (iii) granulite-facies orthopyroxene-bearing rocks. These samples represent the three main stages of the classical evolution of a collisional gradient leading to partial melting: they respectively belong to the muscovite + biotite domain, the muscovite-out reaction and the biotite-out reaction. We first estimate pressure-temperature conditions of formation of the rocks using pseudosection modelling. We then expose a set of LA-ICP-MS data to identify the critical metal carriers minerals in our samples. Meanwhile, we investigate the behaviour of W, Sn, Nb and Ta during the muscovite out reaction with two piston cylinder experiments (a partial melting experiment and a crystallization experiment). The protolith consists of a staurolite-bearing metapelite that did not suffer partial melting. In the light of these new data, we discuss the framework of the production of critical metal enriched silicate melts. We show that the main carrier of W is muscovite (up to 30 ppm) and that biotite handle Sn at high temperature (up to 40ppm). Using both the data from the natural sample and the experiments, we highlight that muscovite releases W during its destabilisation ant that Sn enters in biotite until the mineral breaks. We finally discuss the implication of multiple low degree partial melting / melt extraction as efficient way to produce enriched silicate melts.


Endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) methods are higher preferred for the treatment of patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs). Various markers, including the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio, have been used to predict the risk of contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN). In this study, we aimed to investigate the role of fibrosis-4 score (FIB-4), aspartate transaminase to platelet ratio index (APRI), and modified stress hyperglycemia ratio (mSHR) values in predicting CIN. Patients who had undergone elective endovascular infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysm repair in our clinic between January 2015 and January 2022 were included in this retrospective study. Patients who did not develop contrast-induced nephropathy after the procedure were identified as Group 1, and those who did were referred to as Group 2. A total of 276 patients were included in the study. The two groups were similar in terms of age, gender, body mass index, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hyperlipidemia, and left ventricular ejection fraction. In Group 2, the FIB-4 score, APRI, and mSHR values were significantly higher (p = 0.008, p < 0.001, and p < 0.001, respectively). In Group 2, the contrast volume and number of packed blood products used (median 1 (1–4) vs. 2 (1–5)) were significantly higher (p = 0.003 and p = 0.012, respectively). In this study, we demonstrated that we may predict the risk of CIN development with preoperatively calculated, noninvasive liver fibrosis scores and mSHR.


Organic matter in the water environment can enhance either flocculation or stabilization and, thus, controls the fate and transportation of cohesive sediments and causes seasonal variation in the turbidity of river water, determining floc morphology and settling velocity. The aim of this study was to elucidate the way that biological factors change the organic matter composition and enhances either flocculation or stabilization in different seasons. Jar test experiments were performed using a mixture of standard kaolinite and the filtered river water samples collected (bi-)weekly or monthly from April to December 2015 upstream a constructed weir in Nakdong River, to estimate the flocculation potential of the seasonal river water samples. Chlorophyll-a concentration, algae number concentration, and the fluorescence characteristics of organic matter were used to represent the biological factors. Our results revealed that flocculation potential depended not only on the algal population dynamics, but also the origins (or chemical composition) of organic matter in the river water. Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), as algal organic matter, enhanced flocculation, while humic substances (HS), as terrestrial organic matter, enhanced stabilization, rather than flocculation. Since flocculation potential reached its maximum around the peaks of algal population, algae-produced EPS likely enhanced flocculation by binding sediment particles in the flocs. This observation supports previous findings of seasonal variation in EPS production and EPS-mediated flocculation. However, when HS was transported from the surrounding basin by a heavy rainfall event, cohesive sediments tended to be rather stabilized. Supplementary flocculation potential tests, which were performed with artificial water containing refined EPS and HS, also showed the opposing effects of EPS and HS.


An asymmetric A-π-D-π-D-π-A′ tribranched organic dye (dye1) with cyanoacrylic acid and indolinum carboxyl acid as electron acceptors and triphenylamine as an electron donor was designed and theoretically investigated for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Dye1 was compared to reference well-known dyes with single electron acceptors (D5 and JYL-SQ6). Density functional theory and time-dependent density functional theory calculations were used to estimate the photovoltaic properties of the dyes. Due to the different lowest unoccupied molecular orbital levels of each acceptor and the energy antenna of the dual electron donor (D-π-D), the absorption spectra of the branches displayed different shapes. If the overall properties are considered, the asymmetric A-π-D-π-D-π-A′ tribranched organic dye exhibited a high conversion efficiency performance for DSSCs. The findings of this work suggest that optimizing the branch of electron donors and acceptors in dye sensitizers based on asymmetric A-π-D-π-D-π-A′ tribranched organic dye produces good photovoltaic properties for DSSCs.


This paper deals with an issue that has not received much attention in literature. The aim of the study is to investigate the influence of doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) reactive current injection during a voltage dip on the operation of a wind turbine circuit breaker. The study is done using a novel hardware-in-the-loop test environment constructed using two real time simulators (dSPACE and RTDS) and commercial protection relay. It is found in this study that the reactive current injection enhances the operation of wind turbine protection since the zero crossing of the circuit breaker currents is achieved earlier. This action may prevent from failed auto reclosing and other safety hazards.


Virtualization technology is becoming increasingly common in datacenters, since it allows for collocation of multiple workloads, consisting of operating systems, middleware and applications, in different virtual machines (VMs) on shared physical hardware platforms. However, when coupled with the ease of VM migration, this trend increases the potential surface for security attacks. Further, the simplified management of VMs, including creation, cloning and migration, makes it imperative to monitor and guarantee the integrity of software components running within VMs.
 This paper presents the IBM Trusted Virtual Datacenter (TVDc) technology developed to address the need for strong isolation and integrity guarantees, thus significantly enhancing security and systems management capabilities, in virtualized environments. It signifies the first effort to incorporate trusted computing technologies directly into virtualization and systems management software. We present and discuss various components that constitute TVDc: the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), the virtual TPM, the IBM hypervisor security architecture (sHype) and the associated systems management software.


Past attempts at artificial continence using a wide range of surgical procedures and devices have met with only limited success because of excessive rates of infection, rejection, incomplete continence, and technical difficulty. Presented here is a model of artificial continence using a lumen-occluding Teflon loop powered by the rectus abdominus muscle and activated by an implantable pulse generator. Eight female mongrel dogs underwent laparotomy with creation of a Brooke ileostomy and insertion of a hand-tooled Teflon band around the ileum. The free ends of the loop were sutured, under tension, to the posterior rectus sheath creating extrinsic compression of the bowel by the tightened loop. After denervation of the rectus, stimulating electrodes were implanted and connected to a transcutaneously activated pulse generator (Medtronic SE-4). Stimulation caused contraction of the muscle segment. As the free ends of the prosthetic sling approach each other, the occlusive band loosens, resulting in free drainage of intestinal contents and reduction in intraluminal pressure of the proximal ileum. Withdrawal of current allows for relaxation and return of the muscle to its resting length; this reoccludes the bowel. At 2 weeks, all dogs were continent to solid matter and all but two were continent to liquids. Two dogs developed wound infections requiring drainage. Signal attenuation across the skin resulted in total uncontrollable continence in two dogs because of an inability to transfer sufficient current to the muscle. Direct probe stimulation by an external pulse generator resulted in drainage in these dogs. Necropsy showed no evidence of bowel ischemia in any of the specimens examined at 2 weeks.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Diabetes is a global epidemic disease, which leads to multiorgan dysfunction, including heart disease. Diabetes results from the limited absorption of glucose into insulin-sensitive tissues. The heart is one of the main organs to utilize glucose as an energy substrate. Glucose uptake into striated muscle is regulated by a family of membrane proteins called glucose transporters (GLUTs). Although calcium channel blockers, including diltiazem, are widely prescribed drugs for cardiovascular diseases, including in patients with diabetes, their pharmacological effects on glucose metabolism are somewhat controversial. We hypothesized that diltiazem treatment will exhibit detrimental effects on whole body glucose homeostasis and glucose transport in the striated muscle of patients with diabetes. Healthy and streptozotocin-treated rats were randomly assigned to receive diltiazem treatment or a placebo for 8 weeks. Blood glucose was significantly increased in the untreated diabetic groups, which worsened after diltiazem treatment. Diabetes decreased protein content of both GLUT4 (the predominate insulin-sensitive glucose transporter) and AS160 (Akt Substrate at 160 kDa, the downstream protein in the signaling cascade that regulates GLUT4 trafficking) in striated muscle of diabetic rats, with a more pronounced alteration after diltiazem treatment. We additionally reported that diabetic rodents displayed marked systolic dysfunction, which was not rescued by diltiazem treatment. In conclusion, diltiazem treatment worsened the effects of diabetes-induced hyperglycemia and diabetes-induced alterations in the regulation of glucose transport in striated muscle.


Abstract Reintroduction of fire and thinning have been suggested as the main practices to regain forest health in northern Arizona ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Lawson) forests. Criteria for assessing the impact of such management practices in the forest are based on benchmark reconstructed conditions resembling pre-European forest stand structure and on the enhancement of tree vigor. A range of forest conditions currently exists including stands that have been unmanaged, thinned only, thinned plus prescribed burned and burned by wildfire. A surrogate taxon was used to assess forest condition under criteria of maintaining habitat for native species operating at the soil level. We assessed changes occurring in ground beetle assemblages at the stand scale as related to changes that had occurred in forest stands previously treated with the above treatments. A pitfall-trapping scheme was deployed during the summer months of 1998, 1999, and 2000. A total of 4,452 specimens was caught representing 15 genera and 20 species of ground beetles. We found that species diversity increased as the level of disturbance increased. The indicator species assemblage found on the wildfire treatment was represented by species in the genera Amara and Harpalus that are characteristic of dry-open habitats. Unmanaged stands generally had the lowest diversity and the assemblage was dominated by the species Synuchus dubius (Leconte). The thinned only stands did not significantly vary from unmanaged stands in species assemblage. Cyclotrachelus constrictus (Say) was indicative of the thinning plus broadcast burned stands. Stands that were thinned plus burned were richer than both unmanaged and thinned only stands without a shift toward an open-area dominant assemblage as occurred in the stands burned by wildfire.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the protective effect of total flavonoids from Dracocephalum moldavica L. (DML) on myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury in isolated rat hearts. Male Wistar rats were randomly divided into three groups, Hearts were excised and attached to Langerdorff apparatus, Fluid of perfusion was Krebs-Henseleit with mixture of 95% oxygen and 5%carbondioxide. Left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP) and maximum up/down rate of left ventricular pressure (±dp/dtmax) were recorded as myocardial function by a Power Lab system. And the level of superoxide dismutase (SOD), malondialdehyde (MDA) and GSH/GSSG ratio were analyzed to determine the oxidative stress status in myocardial tissue. The level of MDA significantly decreased (P<;0.01) in DML group compared to the IR group, as well as the SOD activity (P<;0.01) and total glutathione (P<;0.05) increased the results implied that the DML has obviously protective effects in myocardial reperfusion injury.


The environmental protection is not only an important social problem, but also an efficiency increasing factor of construction operations. This article describes the practical effect of air pollution during the construction site of buildings, which are situated in Rostov-on-Don. Nowadays the limitation of air pollution emissions from construction operations is regulated by a number of normative documents, but civil designers, unfortunately, do not always meet the regulation of emissions in full obedience in the construction operating for a number of reasons. The correct environmental impact assessment from construction is possible, taking into account the sequence and simultaneity of the operations. It is especially important for the construction taken place on the territory of cities. According to the study, a set of measures for air pollution reduction was developed. Such measures can reduce the air pollution by 1.5-2 times.


The reliable computer-aided design of narrowband dual-mode filters is usually hampered by extensive CPU-time and memory requirements of commercially available software packages. This paper introduces a new concept within the coupled-integral-equations-technique (CIET) which takes into account all edge conditions simultaneously and, therefore, permits the analysis and optimization of such filter components in a timely fashion. A 12.3 GHz four-pole dual-mode filter in rectangular waveguide is chosen as design example. Comparison with HP's HFSS shows good agreement, whereas the mode-matching technique (MMT) did not converge with up to 600 modes. The CIET routine converges with up to 23 edge-conditioned vector basis functions and up to 1750 modal summation terms. Due to its speed, the new approach can also be used for a Monte-Carlo-based tolerance analysis which shows a manufacturing accuracy of 0.02 mm for this critical dual-mode filter example.


This study's purpose was to better understand the transfer of learning by uncovering how various factors supported the integration of health information technology knowledge and skills gleaned from the Health Resources and Services Administration–funded faculty development programs into nursing education curricula. Through interviews with 20 participants from four programs, this study confirmed the importance of findings related to faculty, program, and work environment characteristics for supporting successful transfer of learning and substantiates a variety of other transfer-of-learning research. New or seldom discussed supportive individual characteristics were found, including leadership abilities, lifelong learning, ability to recognize limitations, persistence, creativity, and risk taking. The importance of networking, diversity of perspectives, postconference support, and teams in program designs were found to positively influence transfer. The variety of supportive factors and barriers in the participants' work environments strengthens the assertions that transfer may be context dependent. Findings provided insight for recommendations to improve learning transfer.


ABSTRACT Older men are becoming more visible in care-giving research but there are still few studies that focus expressly on the extent to which care-giving has made positive contributions to their life and has been rewarding. Drawing on data from in-depth personal interviews, this Portuguese study analyses the positive statements in the personal descriptions of the care-giving experience of 53 elderly men who were caring for chronically-ill wives. It also explores the differences between the positive references made by the men who were caring for a wife who had dementia and those made by men whose wives had physical impairments. Using open coding and content analysis, positive aspects were identified in 32 of the 53 care-giving situations. The most prevalent themes were 'satisfaction' and 'perceived social honour'. The findings show that positive returns from the caring experience and role were strongly associated with previous good marital relationships and the husband's good self-rated health, and manifested in both specific coping strategies and global and situational meaning-making processes. The study demonstrates that much more can be learnt about the positive dimensions of care in older men's lives, and that such understanding can inform and strengthen formal and therapeutic support.


Predictive state representations (PSR) have emerged as a powerful method for modelling partially observable environments. PSR learning algorithms can build models for predicting all observable variables, or predicting only some of them conditioned on others (e.g., actions or exogenous variables). In the latter case, which we call conditional modelling, the accuracy of different estimates of the conditional probabilities for a fixed dataset can vary significantly, due to the limited sampling of certain conditions. This can have negative consequences on the PSR parameter estimation process, which are not taken into account by the current state-of-the-art PSR spectral learning algorithms. In this paper, we examine closely conditional modelling within the PSR framework. We first establish a new positive but surprisingly non-trivial result: a conditional model can never be larger than the complete model. Then, we address the core shortcoming of existing PSR spectral learning methods for conditional models by incorporating an additional step in the process, which can be seen as a type of matrix denoising. We further refine this objective by adding penalty terms for violations of the system dynamics matrix structure, which improves the PSR predictive performance. Empirical evaluations on both synthetic and real datasets highlight the advantages of the proposed approach.


Background Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) profiles and contributions of mtDNA variants to CD4+T-cell recovery in Euramerican people living with HIV (PLWH) may not be transferred to East-Asian PLWH, highlighting the need to consider more regional studies. We aimed to identify mtDNA characteristics and mutations that explain the variability of short-term CD4+T-cell recovery in East-Asian PLWH. Method Eight hundred fifty-six newly reported antiretroviral therapy (ART)-naïve Chinese PLWH from the Comparative HIV and Aging Research in Taizhou (CHART) cohort (Zhejiang Province, Eastern China) were enrolled. MtDNA was extracted from peripheral whole blood of those PLWH at HIV diagnosis, amplified, and sequenced using polymerase chain reaction and gene array. Characterization metrics such as mutational diversity and momentum were developed to delineate baseline mtDNA mutational patterns in ART-naïve PLWH. The associations between mtDNA genome-wide single nucleotide variants and CD4+T-cell recovery after short-term (within ~48 weeks) ART in 724 PLWH were examined using bootstrapping median regressions. Results Of 856 participants, 74.18% and 25.82% were male and female, respectively. The median age was 37 years; 94.51% were of the major Han ethnicity, and 69.04% and 28.62% were of the heterosexual and homosexual transmission, respectively. We identified 2,352 types of mtDNA mutations and mtDNA regions D-loop, ND5, CYB, or RNR1 with highest mutational diversity or volume. Female PLWH rather than male PLWH at the baseline showed remarkable age-related uptrends of momentum and mutational diversity as well as correlations between CD4+T <200 (cells/μl) and age-related uptrends of mutational diversity in many mtDNA regions. After adjustments of important sociodemographic and clinical variables, m.1005T>C, m.1824T>C, m.3394T>C, m.4491G>A, m.7828A>G, m.9814T>C, m.10586G>A, m.12338T>C, m.13708G>A, and m.14308T>C (at the Bonferroni-corrected significance) were negatively associated with short-term CD4+T-cell recovery whereas m.93A>G, m.15218A>G, and m.16399A>G were positively associated with short-term CD4+T-cell recovery. Conclusion Our baseline mtDNA characterization stresses the attention to East-Asian female PLWH at risk of CD4+T-cell loss-related aging and noncommunicable chronic diseases. Furthermore, mtDNA variants identified in regression analyses account for heterogeneity in short-term CD4+T-cell recovery of East-Asian PLWH. These results may help individualize the East-Asian immune recovery strategies under complicated HIV management caused by CD4+T-cell loss.


Myoepitheliomas of salivary glands are rare neoplasms, accounting for less than 1% of all salivary gland tumors. They are classified into four cell types: epithelioid, spindle, clear, and plasmacytoid. Among them, the plasmacytoid cell type appears to have a predilection for the oral cavity, especially the palate. We presented a 32-year-old man with plasmacytoid myoepithelioma arising in the soft palate, together with a brief discussion of the clinicopathologic features and differential diagnosis in the light of the literature.


A novel mechanism of atomic transport in amorphous metallic alloys, or metallic glasses, is proposed based upon the fluctuations in the local structure. The proposed mechanism is very different from those in crystalline solids and from the free volume model, and is characterized by the bond-exchange action triggered by the local topological instability of the atomic environment. The implications of this mechanism on the liquid fragility and bulk metallic glass formation are discussed.


Steroid hormones act via a group of high affinity receptors that regulate transcription by binding to hormone response elements located in the promoters of hormone-inducible genes. Our understanding of these processes has been greatly enhanced by the use of steroid hormone antagonists in both clinical and experimental procedures. However, despite their usefulness in these applications, much about their mechanisms of action remains to be elucidated. Using in vivo analysis techniques, we investigated the influence of type I (ZK98299) and type II (RU486 and ZK112993) steroid hormone antagonists on glucocorticoid-regulated transcription from the mouse mammary tumor virus promoter. Both type I and type II antagonists substantially reduced glucocorticoid-induced expression from the mouse mammary tumor virus promoter stably maintained as chromatin. Concurrent treatment with glucocorticoid and type I or type II antagonists reduced the receptor-dependent chromatin remodeling and loading of transcription factor NF1 that are signature responses of this promoter in the context of chromatin. Treatment with either type I or type II antagonists alone did not induce chromatin remodeling or transcription factor loading. Although type II antagonist-occupied receptor can bind DNA, our results show that this binding is not functionally equivalent to that of agonist-occupied receptor, as it can not interact productively with the cellular apparatus required to open a repressive chromatin structure.


In an earlier paper, we observed that PastSet (our experimental tuple space system) was 1.83 times faster on global reductions than LAM-MPI. Our hypothesis was that this was due to the better resource usage of the PATHS framework (an extension to PastSet that supports orchestration and configuration) due to a mapping of the communication and operations which matched the computing resources and cluster topology better. This paper reports on an experiment to verify this, and represents an ongoing work to add some of the same configurability of PastSet and PATHS to MPI. We show that by adding run-time configurable collective communication, we can reduce the latencies without recompiling the application source code. For the same cluster where we experienced the faster PastSet, we show that Allreduce with our configuration mechanism is 1.79 times faster than the original LAM-MPI Allreduce. We also experiment with the configuration mechanism on 3 different cluster platforms with 2-, 4-, and 8-way nodes. For the cluster of 8-way nodes, we show an improvement by a factor of 1.98 for Allreduce.


Using a method suggested by Zhang, Carlson and Gubernatis, we have formulated an auxiliary-field method for the electron gas (jellium) in the form of a random walk through the space of Slater determinants. A calculation on a model jellium shows that this formulation removes some of the large statistical errors that have been previous calculations.


Private and public breeding programs, as well as companies and universities, have developed different genomics technologies that have resulted in the generation of unprecedented amounts of sequence data, which bring new challenges in terms of data management, query, and analysis. The magnitude and complexity of these datasets bring new challenges but also an opportunity to use the data available as a whole. Detailed phenotype data, combined with increasing amounts of genomic data, have an enormous potential to accelerate the identification of key traits to improve our understanding of quantitative genetics. Data harmonization enables cross-national and international comparative research, facilitating the extraction of new scientific knowledge. In this paper, we address the complex issue of combining high dimensional and unbalanced omics data. More specifically, we propose a covariance-based method for combining partial datasets in the genotype to phenotype spectrum. This method can be used to combine partially overlapping relationship/covariance matrices. Here, we show with applications that our approach might be advantageous to feature imputation based approaches; we demonstrate how this method can be used in genomic prediction using heterogeneous marker data and also how to combine the data from multiple phenotypic experiments to make inferences about previously unobserved trait relationships. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to harmonize datasets to improve available information across gene-banks, data repositories, or other data resources.


Daily rainfall and δ18O were observed from August to November 2001 at three stations in Thailand. Water origins were estimated using a tagged-water transport model. The temporal and spatial distributions of water origins showed a clear transition from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean as the Asian monsoon retreated from Indochina. A new definition of the withdrawal date of the Asian monsoon over Indochina is proposed that considers the transition of the origin of water vapor. The daily variability of precipitation isotopes at three stations in Thailand was reproduced at statistically significant levels using a Rayleigh-type isotope circulation model. Therefore, the atmospheric water balance in the model can be validated reliably with these precipitation isotopes. Nevertheless, the simulated δ18O values were obviously underestimated, perhaps because of uncertainties in the evaporating isotope ratios and the lack of isotope physics at small scales.


The ever-evolving field of nanotechnology has been applied over the years as an amazing potential tool in bone disorders through the development of targeted drug nanosystems. Bone diseases can be referred as any bone condition able to cause morbidity or even mortality to the host. Osteosarcoma has been most investigated condition for management and treatment by nanomedicine, and several nanomaterials such as nanoparticles, nanocapsules, nanospheres, nanodiamonds are being used for drug delivery. Likewise, other bone diseases, such as osteoporosis, osteonecrosis, osteoarthritis, bone tuberculosis have received nanotherapy with a large rate of success. The nanomedicine seems to make up a targeting lack by conventional therapy and chemotherapy, besides appointing to a trend of conservative clinical treatment, especially for severe disorders. Additionally, nanomedicine has advanced over the years, therefore, there is a strong need to accelerate its application in bone diseases reducing the mortality rate related to these conditions. This review article provides an overview on the advances of nanotechnology over the last two decades and highlights the pathways of investigations for targeted delivery nanoensembles.


Promotion of new entrepreneurial activity has been increasingly visible in many economies across the globe and is currently being shaped by an emerging literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems (see e.g. Stam 2015). In this paper we argue that within the regional entrepreneurship ecosystems approaches, entrepreneurship culture should be seen as one of the essential elements: we propose that regional entrepreneurship culture represents the glue that links the elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, entrepreneurial culture includes many facets and there is there is to date limited empirical research on how different dimensions of entrepreneurial culture (e.g. how individuals perceive and deal with opportunities, risk attitudes, status of successful entrepreneurs, media coverage etc.) connect to entrepreneurial outcomes. This paper brings together the literature on entrepreneurial culture and entrepreneurial ecosystems and comes up with regional indicators for entrepreneurship culture in European regions by combining data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the European Value Survey and the Eurobarometer Surveys on entrepreneurship. Supported by our results we argue – without being able to infer causal relationships - that entrepreneurship culture can be seen both as one of the key elements of an entrepreneurial ecosystem, as well as an essential feature that ensures optimal connections between other elements of a regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.


MicroRNAs comprise a family of small noncoding RNAs that modulate physiological processes, including adipogenesis. MicroRNA-17 (miR-17) promotes adipocyte differentiation and enhances lipid accumulation. The transcriptional regulation of miR-17 during adipogenesis remains unknown. In this study, we investigated whether miR-17 is a target of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ), which is a key regulator of adipogenesis. The levels of miR-17 and the expression of PPARγ increased after the induction of adipocyte differentiation. Three putative peroxisome proliferator response elements (PPREs) were identified in the miR-17 promoter region. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation and luciferase reporter assays, we observed the interaction of PPARγ with the miR-17 promoter. Mutagenesis experiments showed that the -677/-655 region of the miR-17 promoter could function as a PPRE site. These results suggest that PPARγ is essential for transcriptional activation of the miR-17 gene, thereby contributing to understanding the molecular mechanism of adipogenesis in adipocytes.


The magnetic phase diagram of bulk Cr100 xAlx shows interesting behaviour close to the triple point concentration of x 2. Since the magnetic properties of Cr are influenced by dimensionality, stress and strain, this study focussed on the investigation of Cr99Al1 thin films prepared on fused silica substrates with thicknesses t varying from 29 to 452 nm using sputtering techniques. Resistance measurements covering the temperature range 2 to 400 K did not show any clear anomalies that could be indicative of changes in the magnetic ordering. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) studies indicate the films are polycrystalline textured and that the 80 nm sample has the smallest grain size. In-plane stresses in these thin films were studied using the specialised XRD sin ψ-method. The results show that the stress varies with film thickness. The 29 nm sample has stress in the order of 833 MPa and with increasing film thickness the stress reaches 1471 MPa for the 80 nm layer, where after it systematically reduces for the thicker coatings to 925 MPa for the 452 nm film. The highest stress for the Cr99Al1 thickness sample series is seen in the film with the smallest grain size.


AIM
The purpose of this study was to review patient outcomes from surgical reconstruction of isolated orbital fractures, performed by the Auckland District Health Board (ADHB) Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery service (OMFS), from 2010 to 2015. In particular, we wished to assess titanium as an orbital reconstructive material and compare outcomes with the international literature.

METHOD
Hospital records for 103 adults (>18 years old) who underwent repair of isolated orbital fractures by the OMFS department at Middlemore Hospital, between 2010 and 2015, were reviewed. Information collected included patient characteristics, cause of injury, type of reconstruction material used and post-operative complications. Patients were then followed up by means of a verbal telephone questionnaire.

RESULTS
The majority of patients were male in the 18-30 year age group, with interpersonal violence being the leading cause of injury. Titanium was the preferred choice of reconstructive material. Seven patients required return to theatre to resolve post-operative complications. Sixty-four patients could be contacted by telephone (12 months to six years follow-up). Thirty patients, who could not be contacted by telephone, did attend clinic follow-up and were assessed from their hospital records (minimum of one month follow-up). Ten patients could not be contacted by telephone and had not attended clinic follow-up. Problems with diplopia, paraesthesia and cosmesis were within complication rates reported in the literature.

CONCLUSION
Patients with isolated orbital fractures, treated by the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department in Auckland from 2010-2015, were reviewed. Titanium was the most commonly used reconstructive material and proved to be well tolerated. Complication rates were within international norms.


r st Abstract A soil microorganism producing αand β-glucosidase inhibitors was identified as Bacillus lentimorbus , based on the fatty acid and morphological analyses, along with biochemical and physiological tests. The α-glucosidase inhibitor was highly produced by this strain in a culture medium containing 0.25% of sodium glutamate and 0.5% of glucose, pH 8.0 at 30 C for 2 days. The α-glucosidase inhibitor from culture filtrate of this strain was identified as water soluble, organic solvent nonextractable, and heat stable. In addition to α-glucosidase inhibitor, this strain also produced β-glucosidase inhibitor in the same culture medium and this inhibitor showed an antifugal activity against Botrytis cinerea. While the production of αglucosidase inhibitor was decreased by a glucose concentration higher than 1%, the production of β-glucosidase inhibitor was not influenced by a glucose concentration higher than 20%. The α-glucosidase inhibitor from culture filtrate of this strain was separated from the β-glucosidase inhibitor through Sephadex G-100 column chromatography.


Conventional methods that have been developed to  immobilize the mouth and tongue for  radiotherapy  (RT)  in head  and neck  cancer  (HNC)  treatment have  been unsatisfactory. We, therefore, developed three‐dimensional (3D), customizable, silicone bite blocks and examined their clinical feasibility. For HNC patients, before RT, the 3D printed bite blocks were fabricated based on primary computed  tomography  (CT) simulation  images. The placement of  the 3D bite blocks was  followed  by  a  secondary  CT  simulation  before  RT  planning  was  finalized.  Dosimetric parameters and positioning verification achieved with the propose bite blocks were compared with conventional  universal  oral  corks.  The  3D  printed  bite  blocks were  conformal  to  the  occlusal surface, ensuring  immobilization of  the  tongue without eliciting a gag reflex, and an elastic and firm  texture  that supports opening of  the mouth, with a smooth surface with  tolerable  intraoral tactility. The dosimetry of patients using the proposed bite blocks showed better coverage of the planning target volume and surface of a tumour bed along with reduction in normal tissue doses. Good concordance of positioning by 3D printed bite blocks during the RT course was verified. The 3D  printed  bite  blocks  with  silicone  might  be  a  customizable,  safe,  and  practical  advanced technology in RT for HNC.


Introduction Primary Sjogrens Syndrome (pSS) is one of the autoimmune diseases characterized by polyclonal autoantibody production. The human homologue of the mouse double minute 2 (MDM2) is an important negative regulator of p53. Our previous study indicated that autoantibody to MDM2 can be detected in systemic lupus erythematosus patients. The purpose of this study is to study anti-MDM2 autoantibody in pSS patients. Methods Anti-MDM2 autoantibody in sera from 100 pSS patients and 74 normal controls was investigated by ELISA. Positive samples were further confirmed by western blotting. Expression of MDM2 in labial gland tissue from pSS patients and normal controls was checked by immunohistochemistry. The difference in clinical characteristics and laboratory findings between anti-MDM2 positive and anti-MDM2 negative pSS patients was analyzed. Results The presence of anti-MDM2 autoantibody in pSS patients was 21.0%, significantly higher than normal controls (5.40%). MDM2 was overexpressed in labial gland from pSS patients. pSS patients with positive anti-MDM2 were characterized by longer disease duration and more lymphocytes focal gathering in labial gland. Prevalence of anemia, thrombocytopenia and anti-SSB was significantly higher in pSS patients with anti-MDM2 autoantibody. Titer of anit-MDM2 was negatively associated with hemoglobin level, platelet count, complement 3 level and complement 4 level, positively associated with European Sjogrens syndrome disease activity index (ESSDAI) and level of IgG. Conclusions Anti-MDM2 autoantibody may be used as a potential serological biomarker in pSS disease activity evaluation. Study on the role of anti-MDM2 or MDM2 in pSS may help us know the pathogenesis mechanism of pSS better.


Purpose: to test of the reliability and validity of the Disabled's Motivation for Rehabilitation Scale. which was developed in 2002.
Method: An experimental version of the scale was distributed to a sample of 441 disabled with ages above 18 and below 80 years. The subjects of the test-retest were 60 disabled.
Results: revealed a satisfactory level of test-retest and internal consistency. The overall fit of the factor model to the data was good.
Correlation among the subscales revealed a simple pattern that, in general. provides support for the self- determination continuum and the construct validity. In testing concurrent, criterion-validity, there was a positive correlation between the motivation scores for rehabilitation and the Health-Related Hardiness scores and a negative correlation between the motivation scores for rehabilitation and the Learned Helplessness scores.
Conclusion: The Disabled's Motivation for Rehabilitation Scale revealed a useful instrument with a high degree of reliability and validity. In this sense, this instrument can be effectively utilized in rehabilitative nursing for the disabled.


This essay takes as its point of departure the idea that we usually experience ourselves in relation to place. The conception of human identity as bound up with the sense of place is not a specifically romantic phenomenon. However, in romanticism place acquires a new significance: it is linked through memory to the events experienced by the self. Thus the romantic self is constituted not only through memory understood as a temporal category but also as a spatial category. Such reading of the chosen romantic texts is contrary to the well-established readings, which prioritize the mind of the writer over the material world. However paradoxical it may seem to regard Rousseau and Wordsworth as 'bodily writers', acutely aware of the significance of place, Reveries of a Solitary Walker and The Excursion reveal writers aware of man as a physical being and of his capacity to remember through the body. Therefore, through phenomenological readings of the afore-mentioned texts (drawing on Bachelard, Casey, and Malpas) I will explore the relationship between the mind and the place through such concepts as 'body memory', localization of memory, and intersubjective memory.


Objectives: To describe and investigate the value of an education program for parents of children born with an imperforate anus in order to help them cope with the new situation of having a stoma. A comparison is made with a group of parents following routine hospital. A secondary aim was to illuminate the parents' feelings and concerns in the first month after the birth of the child. Subjects and methods: The program was tested in 20 Vietnamese mothers of babies born with an imperforate anus; 10 followed an intervention comprising an education program and 10 the ordinary routine hospital. The study design is both qualitative and quantitative. The mothers were interviewed, using open-ended questions, within a week of their child's birth and then repeatedly for up to one month. Finally, the conditions of children were accessed on their return to the hospital for the second operation after one month of care at home. The qualitative data were subjected to content analysis. Results: All mothers felt sad and worried in the beginning, but this quickly changed to confidence, particularly among mothers in the intervention group who received education. While at home, mothers in both groups had financial concerns, as they were unable to work as much as expected and also had to buy equipment for colostomy care. The mothers in the control group complained about a lack of knowledge and how it affected the care of their child. The mothers in the intervention group, however, felt confident in their caring even at home. When the families returned for the second operation, the children in the intervention group were significantly healthier, had increased more in weight, and had fewer complications and emergency return visits to hospital compared to the control group. In the control group skin problems around the stoma, diarrhea, bleeding or constipation while at home were reported (p < 0.01). Conclusion: The education improved the care at home resulting in healthier children and more confident parents.


We discuss the modular anomaly equation satisfied by the the prepotential of 4-dimensional N=2* theories and show that its validity is related to S-duality. The recursion relations that follow from the modular anomaly equation allow one to write the prepotential in terms of (quasi)-modular forms, thus resumming the instanton contributions. These results can be checked against the microscopic multi-instanton calculus in the case of classical algebras, but are valid also for the exceptional E6, E7, E8, F4 and G2 algebras, where direct computations are not available.


Background: Although a large number of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have investigated the neural bases of empathy, little is known about its spatiotemporal dynamics or its modulation by the level of friendship between the observer and the agent who is being hurt. Moreover, most of the previous studies on empathy have focused on empathy for pain rather than empathy for positive emotions, such as happiness. In the present study, we addressed this question by investigating the spatiotemporal brain dynamics of two different kinds of empathy (empathy for pain, empathy for happiness) with a behavioral priming empathy task involving two different level of primes (a close friend, a stranger). Method/Principal Findings: Electrical brain activity and behavioral data were analyzed from 30 subjects (12 males and 18 females). Half of the subjects performed a behavioral task on empathy for pain task (EPT), while the other half performed a behavioral task on empathy for happiness task (EHT). In each task, participants viewed prime photographs of either: (1) a stranger; or (2) a close friend (primes) followed by target photographs showing either a hand being hurt (or not; targets in the EPT), or a hand in happy circumstances (or not; targets in the EHT). In each task, participants were asked to judge the target situation and report whether they could feel the pain (in EPT) or the happiness (in the EHT), as a function of the primes i.e., either from the close friend's or from the stranger's perspective. Although our behavioral results didn't reveal any explicit differences among the different types of primes within each task, our electrophysiological results showed variations as a function of the primes. First, a early smaller N110 amplitude for pain was observed in the anterior prefrontal cortex during the friend prime condition compared to the stranger prime condition. No similar early effects were found for happiness. On the other hand, both empathy for happiness (EHT) and empathy for pain (EPT) elicited later differences. In the EPT, the friend prime elicited a larger late positive potential (LPP) than the stranger prime. In the EHT, the friend prime elicited a larger N250, a smaller P300, and a smaller LPP than the stranger prime. Conclusions: Taking the perspective of a close friend (as a prime stimulus) does have a dual-stage effect on empathy that is characterized by an early modulation for pain and later modulations for both pain and happiness. The early differences between friend and stranger primes for pain (but not for happiness) suggest that empathy for pain is an automatic process that has been socially learned and passed among friends. On the other hand, the later differences observed between stranger and friend prime suggest that additional cognitive appraisal take place for both pain and happiness. Our results suggest that it takes more cognitive attentional efforts to judge a stranger's happiness than a friend's happiness, whereas the opposite is true for pain. These findings open new avenues toward a better understanding of the empathic mind.


Production of common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in Kenya is characterized by a large variety of beans ofdifferent cooking properties. Despite the well-known nutritional and functional benefits of bean consumption,the hard-to-cook (HTC) defect continues to be a major hindrance to the widespread consumption of beans.Pre-cooking treatments can play a major role in reducing the cooking times of the beans and thus increase theacceptability and consumption of beans. This requires innovative scientific and technological approaches foraltering the physico-chemical properties of the beans to meet certain functionalities. One such approach issoaking of the beans prior to cooking. The aim of this study was to provide quantitative information on theeffect of soaking in different brine solutions on the cooking quality of different bean varieties grown in Kenya.During this study, four common dry bean varieties were soaked in deionised water at varying temperatures(20-50oC) to determine the optimum soaking temperature. They were also soaked in solutions containingmonovalent and divalent salts, chelating agents and phytic acid. The influence of soaking solution pH (4-8.5) onthe cooking time was also determined. Soaking at high temperatures increased the hydration rate anddecreased soaking time to achieve equilibrium moisture content in the beans. Soaking in CaCl2 solution andlow pH solutions increased the cooking time of the beans while soaking in deionised water and high pHsolutions reduced the cooking time. These results indicate that soaking has significant effects on the cookingtime.


This thesis is concerned with the total synthesis of the two Aspidosperma alkaloid natural products, aspidospermidine and aspidofractinine. The two targets have a common pentacyclic molecular framework unique to this class of indole alkaloids. Aspidospermidine has previously proven an attractive target, with over 20 total syntheses completed. The hexacyclic framework of aspidofractinine has proven more challenging, with only 5 total syntheses to date. These synthetic approaches are discussed in Chapter 1 together with the pharmacological activity exhibited within the Aspidosperma alkaloid series. Chapter 3 details the challenges of installing the first 4 rings of the targets (the ABDE ring system). Ring expansion of a C3 cyclopropyl indolone with an imine, ultimately provided a quick and efficient route to the tetracyclic structure. With the model system realised, Chapter 3 details the synthetic efforts towards an elaborated imine component and its subsequent use in the ring expansion methodology to give our key precursor. Chapter 4 discusses model systems to prove our key radical translocation step can be achieved. Systems are described that show intramolecular translocation of an aryl radical to C2 of an indoline is a feasible means of elaborating this centre.


Policing in Indigenous communities is a vast topic to summarise, analyse and discuss in a few thousand words. It is an important issue on any range of measures. It is also an issue that demands attention to a range of broad political, socio-economic, cultural and historical contexts, as well as the more mundane matters of police operational concern. The political context requires us to understand the parameters in which Indigenous communities operate including the nature of Indigenous political demands and the key organisations that articulate those demands. The socio-economic context requires us to have knowledge about the position of Indigenous people in Australian society, in particular the consequences which arise from the profound level of disadvantage which many communities face and the impact that has on the relationship with the criminal justice system. The cultural context requires some knowledge about the nature of social relationships and cultural concerns in communities. Finally, the historical context is probably more important for police than any other government organisation delivering a service in Aboriginal communities, because police were an important arm in implementing government policy for Indigenous people in many parts of Australia during the much of the twentieth century.

Given the complexity of the topic, this chapter will be selective and, from necessity, concentrate relatively briefly on a few key themes. They include an analysis of the background to the contemporary relationship between police and Indigenous people; a discussion of some of the key drivers for reform including the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and more recently Aboriginal Justice Advisory Councils and the development of Aboriginal Justice Agreements; and a discussion of some of the key policing approaches specific to Indigenous communities such as Aboriginal liaison officers and Aboriginal community police.


Changing Nature of Religious Rights under International Law / Malcolm Evans, Peter Petkoff and Julian Rivers (eds.). – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. – 352 p. ISBN: 9780199684229 Th e Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981, is the only universal human rights instrument specifi cally focusing on religious intolerance and discrimination. However, recent years have seen increasing controversy surrounding this right, in both political and legal contexts. Th e European Court of Human Rights has experienced a vast expansion in the number of cases it has had brought before it concerning religious freedom, and politically the boundaries of the right have been much disputed. Th is book provides a systematic analysis of the diff erent approaches to religious rights which exist in public international law. Th e book explores how particular institutional perspectives emerge in the context of these diff ering approaches. It examines, and challenges, these institutional perspectives. It identifi es new directions for approaching religious rights through international law by examining existing legal tools, and assesses their achievements and shortcomings. It studies religious organisations' support for international human rights protection, as well as religious critique of international human rights and the development of an alternative religious 'Bills of Rights'. It investigates whether expressions of members belonging to religious minorities can be considered under the minority right to culture, rather than the right to religion, and discusses the benefi ts and shortcomings of such a route. It analyses the reach and limits of the provisions in the 1981 Declaration, identifi es ways in which the right is being eroded as a concept, and suggests new ways in which the right can be reinforced and protected.


Biosurfactants are the surfactants of microbial origin. They offer so many advantages over their synthetic counterparts due to their biodegradable and environmental friendly nature, that's why gaining much more attention in creating the era of green technology. Their applications range from cosmetic, pharmaceutical and food processes as emulsifiers, humectants, preservatives, detergents etc. The present review deals with the production, purification, characterization and applications of various fungal biosurfactants.


The judicial activities of the Taurida Mohammedan spiritual government is studied in the article on the basis of analysis of the legislation of the Russian Empire with the involvement of archival materials. The author identifying the major powers in the exercise of judicial functions by government as consideration of marriage and family cases, wills and disputes over the division inheritance. It is found that cases were heard on the basis of Muslim law and based on the rights granted by the Russian authorities.


Air pollution has become a serious problem, the pollutant mainly came from industrial and vehicle exhaustion will harm people's bodies to a different extent, cause lots of diseases like asthma, and cardiovascular disease. The system protects us are also be damaged by pollutant entering the tissue barrier, harm to immune cells and regulate cytokine secretion. This essay is mainly focused on the particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide effect on the immune system from the innate immunity to the acquired immunity, and how the immune system defense.


We compared the abundance of spiders and predaceous insects in five central California vineyards. Spiders constituted 98.1% of all predators collected. More than 90% of all spiders collected were from eight species of spiders, representing six families. Two theridiids ( Theridion dilutum and T. melanurum) were the most abundant, followed by a miturgid (Cheiracanthium inclusum ) and an agelinid (Hololena nedra). Predaceous insects comprised 1.6% of all predators collected, and were represented by six genera in five families. Nabis americoferis (Heteroptera, Nabidae) was the most common predaceous insect, with its densities highest late in the growing season. Chrysoperla carnea, Chrysoperla comanche and Chrysopa oculata(Neuroptera, Chrysopidae) and Hippodamia convergens(Coleoptera, Coccinellidae) were most abundant early in the season. The dominance of spiders may be due to their more stable position in the vineyard predator community compared to predaceous insects. We also suggest that the low per- centage of predaceous insects (e.g., lacewings) may reflect the lack of preferred prey (e.g., aphids) on grapevines.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the enabling role of accounting and reporting practices as discourses about sustainability unfold inside organizations. In particular, the authors investigate how managers attempt to connect the concept of "sustainability" to their specific experience, as they seek to make sustainability meaningful (i.e. filling it with unfolding meaning) through accounting and within particular discursive spaces.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors rely upon the case of LOGIC, a large international oil and gas company operating in more than 70 countries worldwide. The authors analyze the evolution of discourses concerning sustainability inside the company, as well as the changing accounting and reporting practices, with a particular focus on integrated reporting.

Findings
The authors show that accounting and reporting practices (such as integrated reporting within LOGIC) provide the conditions for "sustainability"—as a discursive concept—to become meaningful, while evolving themselves as they are attached to this concept. They do so by enabling individuals (the management team within LOGIC) to connect their diverse experiences and aspirations to the concept of sustainability. Rather than filling sustainability with stable meaning, the authors observed that individuals are attracted by the gaps left by accounting representations, leading to the development of new practices and unfolding meanings within specific discursive spaces.

Originality/value
Most of the literature on sustainability accounting and reporting practices concentrate on the need for these practices to mirror what companies do about sustainability. Differently, the authors add to the very few studies on "aspirational" reporting that have emphasized the enabling effects of the gap between what companies say and do about sustainability. The authors do so by demonstrating that accounting is "aspirational" not only because it stimulates corporate efforts toward an imaginary better future, but also because it attracts managers' particular aspirations through its representational gap. The authors show that this gap enables meaningful connections between individuals (their particular experience and aspirations) and "sustainability," bringing this concept into their specific discursive space and, thereby, leading to the emergence of new practices.


Wnt signaling is a major force driving colorectal carcinogenesis, but only a small number of druggable target molecules in the Wnt pathway have been found. Our recent series of proteomic studies has revealed that various classes of nuclear proteins participate in the β-catenin and T-cell factor-4 (TCF-4) complex and modulate the activity of Wnt signalling. Those included fusion/translocated in liposarcoma (FUS/TLS) (1), poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1) (2), Ku70/Ku80 (3), DNA topoisomerase IIα (Topo IIα) (4), splicing factor-1 (SF1) (5), Ran (ras-related nuclear protein), RanBP2 (Ran binding protein-2), and RanGAP1 (Ran GTPase-activating protein-1) (6), Traf2- and Nck-interacting kinase (TNIK) (7). Among these proteins, TNIK protein kinase attracted our current interest because various small-molecule kinase inhibitors have been applied successfully to cancer treatment. TNIK was an activating kinase for TCF-4, and colorectal cancer cells are highly dependent upon the expression and catalytic activity of TNIK for proliferation (7). High-throughput screening of a kinase-focused compound library (>10,000 compounds) against recombinant TNIK identified a lead candidate that inhibited the kinase activity of TNIK with an IC50 value of 8.6 nM and the transcriptional activity of TCF-4. TNIK is a feasible drug target in the Wnt signaling pathway. Citation Information: Mol Cancer Ther 2013;12(11 Suppl):A132. Citation Format: Tesshi Yamada, Mari Masuda, Masaaki Sawa. Development of a small-molecule inhibitor targeting the Wnt signaling pathway. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2013 Oct 19-23; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2013;12(11 Suppl):Abstract nr A132.


The present study investigated the effect of reinforcing contingencies on the increase in the prosocial behavior of students in the school context. Radical Behaviorism has a powerful arsenal to contribute to improvement in Education, especially the positive reinforcement principle. Twenty students, three teachers and the school co-coordinator participated in this study. The experimental conditions were: Baseline and intervention, presentation of the principles of experimental analysis to teachers and the school coordinator and the practice of activities that focus on pro-social behavior with the students. The results indicate a reduction in the frequency of anti-social behavior, an increase in pro-social behavior, increased student participation in the school's program of activities and a reduction in the frequency of aversive control by teachers. These data confirm that reinforcing contingencies were effective in strengthening pro-social behavior.


Diagnosis has been applied in several approaches in all human activities. The general approach is the construction of a model that predicts the behavior of the system in order to compare it with the observed behavior. Sometimes, additional models of the process are constructed in the presence of certain failures with the aim of identify these failures. This paper presents the utilization of a previous work developed for sensor validation, to diagnose a complete process and not only the sensors. The main advantage of this approach is the construction of a model when the process is working properly. Only one model is necessary. This is done using historical data and machine learning algorithms for Bayesian networks. Having a model of the correct process, the early detection of any deviation of the normal behavior is possible. A case study of a steam generator (boiler) of a power plant is presented.


Australia has recently amended copyright laws in order to exempt and protect parodies, so that, as the Hon. Chris Ellison, the then Minster for Justice told the Senate,'Australia's fine tradition of poking fun at itself and others will not be unnecessarily restricted'. It is predicted that there will be legal debates about the definition of parody. But if the law, as the Minister contends, reflects Australian values, then there is a precursor question. Is there anything wrong with parody, such that it should be restricted? In their efforts to define parody, Paul Jewell and Jennie Louise discover and develop a moral defence of parody. Parody is the imitation of an artistic work, sometimes for the sake of ridicule, or perhaps as a vehicle to make a criticism or comment. It is the appropriation of another's original work, and therefore, prima facie, exploits the originator. Parody is the unauthorised use of intellectual property, with both similarity to and difference from other misappropriations such as piracy, plagiarism and forgery. Nevertheless, we argue that unlike piracy, plagiarism and forgery, which are inherently immoral, parody is not. On the contrary, parody makes a positive contribution to culture and even to the original artists whose work is parodied. Read full article in the Australian Review of Public Affairs Image: Mushroom and Rooster / flickr


Effects of nine generations of 450r per generation of ancestral spermatogonial X irradiation of inbred rats on body weight were examined. After six generations of random mating (avoiding inbreeding) following the termination of irradiation, descendants of irradiated males (R) were significantly lighter than their controls (C) at 3 and 6 weeks, but not at 10 weeks of age. However, differences in growth between R and C populations were small. Among-litter and within-litter variance estimates were generally larger in the R lines than in the C lines, suggesting that selection responses would be greater in R than in C lines. In conjunction with previous evidence--obtained during the irradiation phase of the experiment--this suggested that more rapid response to selection for 6-week body weight, in particular, might accrue in the R lines.


We consider that the information provided by Kessing et al. (1) in their recent paper of this title fails to justify their conclusion. This causes us considerable concern, as we fear that it could encourage inappropriate and potentially dangerous treatments with lithium. The weaknesses in their study appear to derive from several factors. They claim that only 238 of 754 Danish patients treated with lithium suffered from bipolar disorder, but fail to identify the reason for lithium treatment in the remaining large majority. From what diseases did these other people suffer to justify treatment with this powerful drug? They furthermore provide no evidence regarding the duration of exposure of any of the patients, bipolar or otherwise, to lithium. Favourable outcomes in patients who only had brief exposure may well obscure unfavourable outcomes in others with protracted exposure. End-stage renal failure can cause patients such devastating torture that even one unnecessary case is one too many. The median lengths of follow-up of the patients whom they surveyed were less than six years, whereas evidence exists to suggest that the typically slow course of lithium nephrotoxicity makes follow-up of more than ten years necessary for meaningful assessment (2–4). The fact that the authors did not have access to detailed data on renal function has then exacerbated their difficulty in achieving a persuasive interpretation. But the authors go further. They state that 'In the larger cohorts of all patients with a first diagnosis of CKD and a history of either lithium or anticonvulsants, rates of end-stage CKD were decreased among individuals continuing versus discontinuing the mood stabiliser'. If their analysis is valid, then the logical conclusion surely is that all patients – psychiatric or not – who demonstrate any degree of renal impairment should commence lithium treatment to protect their kidneys. Such a proposal appears so outlandish as to question the validity of their analysis. Indeed why, if they are correct in suggesting that lithium treatment is so beneficial for renal function, do they then suggest that 'careful monitoring of kidney function' in patients exposed to ongoing lithium treatment is necessary? Lithium treatment surely would have rendered such monitoring redundant. We are not convinced that modern Lithium treatment within recommended blood levels has eliminated Lithium nephrotoxicity. Information that we have published (5) has led to conclusions diametrically opposite to those reached by Kessing et al. Their study does not encourage us to revise our opinions. We suggest that clinicians should replace lithium with an alternative mood stabiliser in patients who demonstrate a decrease in renal function on two consecutive and confirmed tests of serum creatinine concentration, or who have a glomerular filtration rate of <45 mL/min/1.75 m


Systemic fetal dysmorphogenesis in disorders of postsqualene cholesterol biosynthesis is thought to be caused by disruption of Hedgehog signaling. Because precholesterol sterols such as 7-dehydrocholesterol and lathosterol can replace cholesterol in the activation of Hedgehog proteins, it is currently believed that cholesterol deficiency-related Hedgehog signaling block occurs further downstream, probably at the level of Smoothened. Experimentally, such a block in Hedgehog signaling occurs at sterol levels of <40 μg/mg protein. Recently, we studied autopsy material from 2 infants with fatal cholesterol biosynthetic disorders (Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome and X-linked dominant chondrodysplasia punctata) in which the hepatic cholesterol levels were far greater. In this study, we demonstrate abnormal accumulation of sterol precursors of cholesterol in membrane lipid rafts (detergent resistance membranes) prepared from liver tissues of these 2 infants: 8-dehydrocholesterol and 7-dehydrocholesterol in lipid rafts of the infant with Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome and cholest-8(9)-ene-3β-ol in lipid rafts of the infant with X-linked dominant chondrodysplasia punctata. We suggest that such alterations in the lipid raft sterol environment may affect the biology of cells and the development of fetuses with cholesterol biosynthetic disorders.


In this paper is presented the design of detection circuit and single chip acquisition circuit for heart sound, blood pressure and pulse wave. The multi-physiological signals from single chip are synthesized and processed by master computer. The master computer acquires, analyzes and displays the multi-signals by Software LabVIEW. The three physiological signals are fused to calculate the artery stiffness index by time relation of multi-physiological signals. The experiment shows that the circuit is reliable and effective so that it can be used for human vessel function evaluation.


Professional development is relevant for the workers themselves, for the organizations, and, in a more macro view, also for the countries. In this sense, this chapter aims to discuss the influence of leadership in the professional development of subordinates, point - ing out the importance of leadership performance. To achieve this goal, research results are presented on the relationship between leadership and professional development of subordinates. Research in the field shows that professional development is directly related to the day-to-day activities of workers and should be part of a broader process of continuous learning, which results both from formal and informal learning actions. The debate proposed for this chapter considers that professional development is more directly related to the combination of cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes that involve learning than the specific results of certain formal or informal learning actions. Thus, we discuss how the relations established with the leadership in the work environ ment can influence the professional development of the subordinates besides the type of learning provided to the workers. This discussion can shift the focus of research—cur-rently centered on learning modes—to a focus on leadership practices for skills develop - ment and the consequent career progression of subordinates.


Elba Garcia speaks with an unidentified woman. Dr. Garcia is Dallas Deputy Mayor Pro Tem and a member of the Dallas City Council.


Prospection—the ability to represent what might happen in the future—is a broad concept that has been used to characterize a wide variety of future-oriented cognitions, including affective forecasting, prospective memory, temporal discounting, episodic simulation, and autobiographical planning. In this article, we propose a taxonomy of prospection to initiate the important and necessary process of teasing apart the various forms of future thinking that constitute the landscape of prospective cognition. The organizational framework that we propose delineates episodic and semantic forms of four modes of future thinking: simulation, prediction, intention, and planning. We show how this framework can be used to draw attention to the ways in which various modes of future thinking interact with one another, generate new questions about prospective cognition, and illuminate our understanding of disorders of future thinking. We conclude by considering basic cognitive processes that give rise to prospective cognitions, cognitive operations and emotional/motivational states relevant to future-oriented cognition, and the possible role of procedural or motor systems in future-oriented behavior.


We used transient biochemical and structural kinetics to elucidate the molecular mechanism of mavacamten, an allosteric cardiac myosin inhibitor and prospective treatment for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. We find that mavacamten stabilizes an auto-inhibited state of two-headed cardiac myosin, not found in the isolated S1 myosin motor fragment. We determined this by measuring cardiac myosin actin-activated and actin-independent ATPase and single ATP turnover kinetics. A two-headed myosin fragment exhibits distinct auto-inhibited ATP turnover kinetics compared to a single-headed fragment. Mavacamten enhanced this auto-inhibition. It also enhanced auto-inhibition of ADP release. Furthermore, actin changes the structure of the auto-inhibited state by forcing myosin lever-arm rotation. Mavacamten slows this rotation in two-headed myosin but does not prevent it. We conclude that cardiac myosin is regulated in solution by an interaction between its two heads and propose that mavacamten stabilizes this state. Significance Statement Small-molecule allosteric effectors designed to target and modulate striated and smooth myosin isoforms for the treatment of disease show promise in preclinical and clinical trials. Beta-cardiac myosin is an especially important target, as heart disease remains a primary cause of death in the U.S. One prevalent type of heart disease is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), which is hypothesized to result from dysregulated force generation by cardiac myosin. Mavacamten is a potent cardiac myosin ATPase activity inhibitor that improves cardiac output in HCM animal models. Our results show that mavacamten selectively stabilizes a two-head dependent, auto-inhibited state of cardiac myosin in solution. The kinetics and energetics of this state are consistent with the auto-inhibited super-relaxed state, previously only observed in intact sarcomeres.


This study complemented a large psychometric study using nurses to assess medical residents' humanistic behavior. It was designed to identify how nurses and residents defined humanistic qualities and behaviors and what factors affected their views of residents 'performance and evaluation. The study also illustrates how qualitative methods were used to complement quantitative psychometric data and thereby yield a more complete assessment of the value of a new performance evaluation form. The results indicated that nurses' definitions of humanistic behavior often differed from residents', tending to reflect a broader perspective on the physician's role and responsibility in patient care. Nurses and residents disagreed about whether nurses were qualified to evaluate residents'humanistic behavior and about what nurses actually observed on the wards. Professional respect was an issuefor both nurses and residents. The discussion section identifies some implications for resident training and nurse-resident relationships and supports the value of combining research strategies when evaluating complex human behavior.


Central Sleep Apnea (CSA) is characterized by intermittent apneas and hypopneas during sleep that result from absent central respiratory drive. CSA occurs almost exclusively during non‐rapid‐eye‐movement (NREM) sleep due to enhanced neuronal ventilatory drive during REM sleep that makes central apneas highly unlikely to form. A 45‐year‐old obese African American female presented with co‐existing Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and CSA, not in the form of mixed or complex sleep apnea. Peculiarly, her CSA occurred only during rapid‐eye‐movement (REM) sleep, which is exceedingly rare. The patient's CSA was resolved when appropriate positive airway pressure (PAP) was prescribed. Our patient remains stable and has reported significant benefit from PAP usage. We offer possible neuro‐physiological mechanisms herein, including enhanced loop gain and/or malfunction or malformation of the pre‐Botzinger nucleus or other neurological process, that could explain the unique findings of this case.


Introduction In the early evening of 28 December 1974, a magnitude 6.0 (mb USGS) earthquake occurred in a remote and mountainous region of northern Pakistan, resulting in loss of life and damage to property. The Pakistani Army Engineers involved in construction and maintenance of the Kara Korum Highway, a one-to two-lane gravel road along the Indus River valley, quickly established an efficient relief operation. Since the highway was damaged and unusable during most of the relief operation, helicopters were used to carry supplies from Besham, at the end of the usable highway, to Pattan, where a hospital camp was set up. Two seismic reconnaissance teams visited the affected area: the first arrived from Tarbela Dam on 1 January 1975, and included one of the authors (Pennington); the second team, with the other three authors (Ambraseys, Lensen and Moinfar) arrived later in January. The following report is based largely on their field studies (Ambraseys et al. 1975; Pennington 1975). The earliest known earthquakes of the Northwest Frontier Provinces (NWFP) As early as the 4th century BC, the region north of the Jhelum was reputed for its destructive earthquakes. Historians who accompanied Alexander the Great on his expedition in Swat allude to such events; they briefly state that as a result of earthquakes in this track of country even the beds of rivers are changed. Alexander must have reached Aornos (modern Pir-sar about 20 km from Besham) late in 327 BC (Stein 1927, 1929; Fig. 3).


Insulin-dependent diabetic pregnant women are at risk for magnesium deficiency, predominantly because of increased urinary magnesium losses. They also have a high incidence of spontaneous abortion, possibly related to major lethal malformations. We tested the hypothesis that adverse fetal outcome (fetal loss before 20 weeks' gestation and/or congenital major malformations) is related to magnesium status (as assessed by determining serum magnesium levels) in insulin-dependent diabetic pregnant women, even after sonographic documentation of fetal viability. Eighty-four insulin-dependent diabetic women (class B to RT) with 96 pregnancies were recruited prospectively in a program project. Serum magnesium and blood glycohemoglobin were measured at about nine weeks' gestation. Blood glycohemoglobin was higher (P = .039) and serum magnesium concentration lower (P = .05) in the 21 pregnancies that ended in adverse fetal outcome, compared with the other (75) successful pregnancies. When compared with the "successful pregnancy" group, blood glycohemoglobin was higher (P = .012) and serum magnesium lower (P = .037) in the subgroup of nine pregnancies with fetal cardiac activity present by ten weeks and ending in adverse fetal outcome, compared with the 64 equivalent pregnancies in the "successful" group. We speculate that decreased magnesium status may contribute to the high spontaneous abortion and malformation rate in insulin-dependent diabetic pregnant women.


of Doctoral Dissertation 151 Indian Institute of Finance FINANCE INDIA Indian Institute of Finance Vol. XXXIII No. 1, March 2019


Objectives To probe the safety and clinical results of percutaneous transcatheter intervention therapy in patients with combined congenital heart deformities in the same session. Methods Thirty patients (14 males and 16 females) with combined congenital heart deformities underwent simultaneous transcatheter intervention therapy, including 7 patients with atrial septal defect (ASD) and patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), 10 patients with ASD and ventricular septal defect (VSD), six patients with ASD and pulmonary stenosis (PS), 5 patients with ASD and PDA, 1 patient with PDA and PS, 1 patient with VSD, PDA and ASD. Their mean age was (17.9±13.5) years. Their mean weight was (38.8±22.0) kg. They underwent transcatheter therapy simultaneously with the sequential algorithm as balloon pulmonary valvuloplasty at first, followed by the occlusion of VSD, then the occlusion of PDA, then ASD, which can be adjusted depending on the circumstances. Follow-up with electrocardiogram (ECG) and transthoracie echocardiography (TTE) was undertaken 2 d, l m, 3 m, 6 m and 12 m after the procedures. Results 30 patients were treated successfully. In the 7 patients complicated with PS, the systolic pressure gradient across the pulmonary valve decreased from (46.1±15.1) mm Hg(1 mm Hg=0.133 kPa) to (17.6±3.8) mm Hg and the difference was significant(p<0.01). 1 patient showed incomplete right bundle branch block, one patient showed complete right bundle branch block and 1 patient showed incomplete left bundle branch block after intervention therapy, and ECG showed normal after treatment with dexamethasone. one patient with VSD and ASD, preoperative and 10 days after the procedure whose ECG showed Bifascicular block. The patient was given a permanent implanted cardiac pacemaker. Among two patients with VSD, a slight crevice shunt was detected after the procedure by TTE, they were detected disappearance of the crevice shunt by TTE at 6 months after the procedure. No patient encountered complications during follow-up. Conclusions Simultaneous transcatheter therapy of combined congenital heart deformities can obtain satisfactory effect by strict indication control and procedure manipulations.


Cardiovascular diseases and atherosclerotic manifestations have been reported to be the most common causes of death in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In the present investigation the levels of serum lipids, apolipoproteins (A1 and B100), total proteins, and albumin were studied in 35 female patients affected by active RA. Apolipoproteins A1 and B100 were significantly lower in RA patients than in controls. No significant difference was observed in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, or triglycerides. In contrast, HDL cholesterol and serum albumin were significantly lower in RA patients compared to controls. The finding of reduced apolipoproteins and HDL-cholesterol levels may represent an important factor in the etiology of cardiovascular and atherosclerotic disease in RA. Reduced levels of albumin in active RA may indicate a reduced rate of proteins like lipoproteins in the liver.


We present an empirical study of active learning for Visual Question Answering, where a deep VQA model selects informative question-image pairs from a pool and queries an oracle for answers to maximally improve its performance under a limited query budget. Drawing analogies from human learning, we explore cramming (entropy), curiosity-driven (expected model change), and goal-driven (expected error reduction) active learning approaches, and propose a fast and effective goal-driven active learning scoring function to pick question-image pairs for deep VQA models under the Bayesian Neural Network framework. We find that deep VQA models need large amounts of training data before they can start asking informative questions. But once they do, all three approaches outperform the random selection baseline and achieve significant query savings. For the scenario where the model is allowed to ask generic questions about images but is evaluated only on specific questions (e.g., questions whose answer is either yes or no), our proposed goal-driven scoring function performs the best.


Calcitonin inhibits bone-resorbing activity of osteoclasts. Expression of mRNA of calcitonin receptor (CTR) and its related proteins was examined in human osteoclasts and their progenitors. CD14-positive (CD14 + macrophages) in the monocytes prepared from human peripheral blood cells differentiated into macrophages (CD14 +) presence of macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) or into osteoclast-like cells (OCLs) in the presence of M-CSF plus receptor activator of NFkappaB ligand. CD14 macrophages expressed mRNA of CTR-like receptor (CRLR), receptor activity modifying protein (RAMP) 1, RAMP2, and RAMP3, but not CTR. In contrast, OCLs expressed mRNA of CTR but not CRLR or RAMPs. Human OCLs cultured on dentine slices formed actin rings (corresponding to clear zones) and resorption pits on the slices. Calcitonin disrupted actin rings and inhibited the pit-forming activity of OCLs. CTR is known to couple to cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) and protein kinase C (PKC). The effect of calcitonin on actin ring disruption was partially blocked by adding H-7, an inhibitor of both PKA and PKC. Both forskolin, an activator of PKA, and phorbol myristate, an activator of PKC, disrupted actin rings in OCLs. These results suggest that both PKA- and PKC-mediated signals are involved in calcitonin-induced inhibition of human OCL function.


Abstract Two series of organic–inorganic composite materials were synthesized through solvothermal imine condensation between diketopyrrolopyrrole dialdehyde DPP-1 and 5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-aminophenyl)porphyrin (TAPP) in the presence of varying amounts of either amino- or carboxy-functionalized superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (FeO). Whereas high FeO loading induced cross-linking of the inorganic nanoparticles by amorphous imine polymers, a lower FeO content resulted in the formation of crystalline covalent organic framework domains. All hybrid materials were analyzed by magnetization measurements, powder X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, IR, and UV/Vis absorption spectroscopy. Crystallinity, chromophore stacking, and visible absorption features are directly correlated to the mass fraction of the components, thus allowing for a fine-tuning of materials properties.


3465 The JAK2 mutation, JAK2V617F is frequently found in myeloproliferative disorder (MPD) patients and transforms hematopoietic cells to cytokine-independent proliferation, when expressed with specific cytokine receptors. JAK2K539L is a MPD-associated JAK2 exon 12 mutation, with similar effects as JAK2V617F. The SH2 and PH domain-containing adapter protein, Lnk, negatively regulates hematopoietic cytokine receptors through its SH2 domain. Here, we show that Lnk inhibits the constitutive activation of JAK2V617F and JAK2K539L. Lnk overexpression blocked JAK2V617F-meditated transformation of hematopoietic Ba/F3-EpoR cells, while suppression of Lnk by shRNA enhanced proliferation of JAK2V617F-postive leukemic HEL cells. Lnk was phosphorylated by JAK2V617F and interacted with endogenous wild type JAK2 and JAK2V617F. Experiments with a series of Lnk deletion constructs showed that Lnk SH2 domain binds to phosphorylated JAK2, while its PH domain interacts with non-phosphorylated JAK2, and this latter interaction is critical for inhibition of JAK2V617F/K539L constitutive activation. Our results suggest a model wherein Lnk downregulation of JAK2 mutants involves two mechanisms: indirect inhibition of the cytokine receptor utilizing JAK2, and direct suppression of JAK2 kinase activity. These data demonstrate that JAK2V617F is susceptible to negative feedback mechanisms, providing new insights into the molecular pathogenesis of MPD.


This study was aimed to investigate the relationship between abuse and suicide risk focused on the Korean elderly over 65 years old living with their families. The data for the study was collected from 1,193 people in Incheon metropolitan city, Kyunggi and Chungnam province. Among them, 711 elderly adults who experienced abuse within their families, were analysed for the study. The results were as follows: First, the group who had experienced abuse was revealed at 29.8%, and the group who had experienced suicide was revealed at 23.1%. Second, the victims of abuse at older ages affects the risk of suicide. Moreover, considering the elderly population under the control of influencing variables such as socioeconomic traits, ADL and depression, the risk of suicide for the group of being abused was higher than the group that was never abused. Third, four groups of elderly(groups without both abuse and suicide risks, the group with only abuse victims, the group with only suicide risks, and the group with both abuse and suicide risk) were divided based on the victims of abuse and the risk of suicide. The group without abuse and suicide risk was positive in subjective economic status, ADL, number of diseases and depression. On the contrary, the group with both abuse and suicide risk was negative in the above indices. The study indicated that there were some similar traits between abuse risk groups and suicide risk groups, but the group with suicide risk was lower than the group with abuse risk in ADL and depression.


The human intestinal microbiota may be considered as a post-natally acquired organ composed of a large diversity of bacteria with different functions on human health. Probiotics are widely used to improve gut functionality and immune system responses. The aim of this study was to evaluate the capability of the bacterial strains Bifidobacterium breve BR03 (DSM 16604) and Lactobacillus plantarum LP01 (LMG P-21021) to induce an in vitro immune response in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of healthy adult volunteers and to modify the state of oxidative stress and intestinal permeability of in vitro cell models. Specifically, the analysis was conducted on PBMCs after different stimulation times in order to analyze both cells involved in innate immunity and those responsible for acquired immunity and to evaluate the oxidative stress, and on Caco-2 cell line as an intestinal epithelium model.


Machine vision-based navigation in the maize field is significant for intelligent agriculture. Therefore, precision detection of the tasseled crop rows for navigation of agricultural machinery with an accurate and fast method remains an open question. In this article, we propose a new crop rows detection method at the tasseling stage of maize fields for agrarian machinery navigation. The whole work is achieved mainly through image augment and feature point extraction by micro-region of interest (micro-ROI). In the proposed method, we first augment the distinction between the tassels and background by the logarithmic transformation in RGB color space, and then the image is transformed to hue-saturation-value (HSV) space to extract the tassels. Second, the ROI is approximately selected and updated using the bounding box until the multiple-region of interest (multi-ROI) is determined. We further propose a feature points extraction method based on micro-ROI and the feature points are used to calculate the crop rows detection lines. Finally, the bisector of the acute angle formed by the two detection lines is used as the field navigation line. The experimental results show that the algorithm proposed has good robustness and can accurately detect crop rows. Compared with other existing methods, our method's accuracy and real-time performance have improved by about 5 and 62.3%, respectively, which can meet the accuracy and real-time requirements of agricultural vehicles' navigation in maize fields.


Polynucleotide phosphorylase (PNPase), a 3′-to-5′ phosphorolytic exoribonuclease, is thought to be the primary enzyme responsible for turnover of Bacillus subtilis mRNA. The role of PNPase in B. subtilis mRNA decay has been analyzed previously by comparison of mRNA profiles in a wild-type strain versus a strain that is deleted for pnpA, the gene encoding PNPase. Recent studies have provided evidence for a degradosome-like complex in B. subtilis that is built around the major decay-initiating endonuclease, RNase Y, and there is ample evidence for a strong interaction between PNPase and RNase Y. The role of the PNPase-RNase Y interaction in the exonucleolytic function of PNPase needs to be clarified. We sought to construct a B. subtilis strain containing a catalytically active PNPase that could not interact with RNase Y. Mapping studies of the PNPase-RNase Y interaction were guided by a homology model of B. subtilis PNPase based on the known structure of the Escherichia coli PNPase in complex with an RNase E peptide. Mutations in B. subtilis residues predicted to be involved in RNase Y binding showed a loss of PNPase-RNase Y interaction. Two mRNAs whose decay is dependent on RNase Y and PNPase were examined in strains containing full-length PNPase that was either catalytically active but unable to interact with RNase Y, or catalytically inactive but able to interact with RNase Y. At least for these two mRNAs, disruption of the PNPase-RNase Y interaction did not appear to affect mRNA turnover.


Inflammation is the reaction of a vascularized living tissue to local injury. At its chronic stage, inflammation displays 4 characteristic features that are all to be found in atherosclerotic plaques: lympho-monocytic infiltration; sclerosis; cellular proliferation; vascular proliferation. This view sheds new light and opens new avenues for research on atherosclerosis. That is true for pathogenesis which progressively integrates the mass of information that has accumulated about the cellular and molecular mechanisms of inflammation. That is also true fort the aetiology of atherosclerosis where the causal enigmas are approached with a more open mind, much wider than the traditional concepts of degeneration and overloading that have prevailed for so long. In the near future, some promising therapeutic clues should derive from this renewed approach of atherosclerosis.


We have utilised techniques of remote sensing in combination with ground observations in order to investigate eskers of the Vormsi and Vainameri region of northwestern Estonia. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images were the basis for recognition and regional interpretation of esker systems, and kite aerial photography was employed for detailed, low-height views of selected eskers. A special Landsat TM composite was developed to enhance the display of shallow sea floor features. On this basis, we have extended known, land-based eskers across the sea floor, and we have identified additional probable eskers marked by shallow shoals and tiny islands. The known and suspected eskers of Vormsi and surroundings demonstrate a regular pattern in their distribution, which we suggest represents a subglacial drainage network that was anastomosing in character. The esker network is located along the central pathway of the Vainameri ice lobe, and the overall direction of drainage was toward the Palivere glacial limit. We interpret eskers of the Vormsi-Vainameri vicinity as evidence for substantial meltwater discharge beneath the Vainameri ice lobe, which terminated in a proglacial lake.


This study examines the relationship between education expenditure and economic growth in Mauritius. The study employed the ARDL bounds testing methodology for the period 1976 to 2016. The study found that education expenditure Granger causes economic growth in Mauritius in the short run. In addition, the study also found that economic growth does not Granger cause education expenditure in Mauritius in the short run. However, in the long-run, the study found that there are long-run relationships between education expenditure and economic growth in both equations; and this means that an increase in either of the variables will eventually lead to an increase in the other variable. The study, therefore, found support for the hypothesis that investment in education raises economic growth. This means that Mauritius has the potential to benefit from further investments in education in the future.


Twenty herbal medicines or dietary supplements marketed as natural slimming products were analysed by diffusion ordered spectroscopy (DOSY) 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and DOSY-COSY 1H-NMR. The method allows analysis of the whole sample with the detection of both active and inactive ingredients in these complex matrices. Among the 20 formulations analysed, two were strictly herbal and four had a composition corresponding to declared ingredients on the packaging or the leaflet. The others were all adulterated. Eight formulations contain sibutramine alone at doses ranging from 4.4 to 30.5 mg/capsule. Five formulations contain sibutramine (from 5.0 to 19.6 mg/capsule or tablet) in combination with phenolphthalein (from 4.4 to 66.1 mg/capsule), and the last formulation was adulterated with synephrine (19.5 mg/capsule). Quantification of the actives was carried out with 1H-NMR. Several other compounds were also characterized including methylsynephrine, vitaberin, sugars, vitamins, etc. DOSY NMR is thus proposed as a useful tool for detection of unexpected adulteration.