Background: There are several surgical techniques in literature that have been used to perform root coverage (RC). Currently, the use of a resorbable collagen membrane (RCM) as a guided tissue regenerative material is one of the highly sought treatment modalities. The present study aimed at evaluating the clinical outcome of RC in the treatment of Miller's Class I and II recession defects in maxillary anteriors and premolars by coronally advanced flap (CAF) with and without RCM. Materials and Methods: This split-mouth study (bilateral buccal recession defects) was randomized to include 15 test (CAF + membrane) and 15 control (CAF alone) sites. Clinical parameters included gingival recession depth (RD), probing pocket depth (PPD), clinical attachment level (CAL), and keratinized tissue height (KTH) measured at baseline and 9 months postoperatively. Results: Both test and control groups showed statistically significant (P < 0.05) reductions in RD (1.54 ± 0.46 mm and 1.60 ± 0.07 mm), PPD (0.53 ± 0.15 mm and 0.94 ± 0.10 mm), increase in KTH (0.67 ± 0.90 mm and 0.73 ± 0.14 mm) and CAL (1.94 ± 0.27 mm and 2.60 ± 0.19 mm) when comparing the 9-month data from baseline. The present study showed that mean improvement in RD was 1.60 ± 0.507 and 1.53 ± 0.64 mm in both test and control groups, respectively. Mean percent RC was 58.33% ±12.19% and 56.22% ±10.22% for test and control groups, respectively. However, there were no statistically significant differences between groups for RD, PPD, KTH, and CAL. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that both the groups CAF (control) and CAF and RCM (test) could be successfully used to treat Miller's Class I and II gingival recession defects and also demonstrated an overall significant improvement in all the assessed clinical parameters. However, there was a greater reduction of gingival RD with the use of RCM when compared with the group of CAF alone.


This review on early orthodontic treatment considers the latest international publications on the subject, the legal rules according to German Health Law and, especially, the guidelines of the German Orthodontic Society. In the general part, the relationship between dysfunction and malocclusion as well as Class III and II / 1 anomalies are discussed in the context of early orthodontic treatment. The indications for early orthodontic treatment are subdivided into urgent appliance treatment and early orthodontic treatment in chronic progressive malocclusions. Suitable diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for interrupting the progression of morphologic and functional abnormalities are shown for a broad spectrum of malocclusions reaching from cleft lip palate to open bite demonstrating the preventive nature of early orthodontic treatment in modern dental medicine that focuses on prevention.


The number of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices are expected to reach over 20 billion by 2020. These range from basic sensor nodes that log and report the data to the ones that are capable of processing the incoming information and taking an action accordingly. Machine learning, and in particular deep learning, is the de facto processing paradigm for intelligently processing these immense volumes of data. However, the resource inhibited environment of IoT devices, owing to their limited energy budget and low compute capabilities, render them a challenging platform for deployment of desired data analytics. This paper provides an overview of the current and emerging trends in designing highly efficient, reliable, secure and scalable machine learning architectures for such devices. The paper highlights the focal challenges and obstacles being faced by the community in achieving its desired goals. The paper further presents a roadmap that can help in addressing the highlighted challenges and thereby designing scalable, high-performance, and energy efficient architectures for performing machine learning on the edge.


Structure and time evolution of the large-scale background and an embedded synoptic-scale monsoon depression and their interactions are studied. The depression formation is preceded by a cyclonic circulation around 400 hPa. The Fourier-based scale separation technique is used to isolate large (wavenumbers 0–8) and synoptic-scale (wavenumbers 12–60). The wavelength and depression center is determined objectively. The synoptic-scale depression has an average longitudinal wavelength of around 1900 km and a north–south size of 1100 km; it is most intense with a vorticity of 20.5 × 10
−5
s
−1
at 900 hPa. The strongest cold core of −3.0°C below 850 hPa and the above warm core of around 2.0°C are evident. The depression is tilted southwestward in the midtroposphere with no significant vertical tilt in the lower troposphere. The mean maximum intensity and upward motion over the life cycle of depression are in close agreement with the composite values. A strong cyclonic shear zone is developed in the midtroposphere preceding the depression. The necessary condition for barotropic (baroclinic) instability is satisfied in the midtroposphere (boundary layer). Strong northward transport of momentum by the depression against the southward shear is found. The strong growth of the MD in the lower troposphere is due to downward transfer of excess energy gained in the midtroposphere from the barotropic energy conversion and east–west direct thermal circulation as the vertical energy flux. The baroclinic interaction contributes to the maintenance of the cold core in the lower troposphere. The diabatic heating rate is computed and its role in the genesis and growth of MD is investigated.


Visualizing time series in a dense spatial context such as a geographical map is a challenging task, which requires careful balance between the amount of depicted data and perceptual precision. Horizon graphs are a well-known technique for compactly representing time series data. They provide fine details while simultaneously giving an overview of the data where extrema are emphasized. Horizon graphs compress the vertical resolution of the individual line graphs, but they do not affect the horizontal resolution. We present two variations of a new visualization technique called collapsed horizon graphs which extend the idea of horizon graphs to two dimensions. Our main contribution is a quantitative evaluation that experimentally compares four visualization techniques with high visual information resolution (compact boxplots, horizon graphs, collapsed horizon graphs, and braided collapsed horizon graphs). The experiment investigates the performance of these techniques across tasks addressing both individual graphs as well as groups of adjacent graphs. Compact boxplots consistently provide good results for all tasks, horizon graphs excel, for instance, in maximum tasks but underperform in trend detection. Collapsed horizon graphs shine in certain tasks in which an increased horizontal resolution is beneficial. Moreover, our results indicate that the visual complexity of the techniques highly affects users' confidence and perceived task difficulty.


We introduce a new state discrimination problem in which we are given additional information about the state after the measurement, or more generally, after a quantum memory bound applies. The following special case plays an important role in quantum cryptographic protocols in the bounded storage model: Given a string x encoded in an unknown basis chosen from a set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), you may perform any measurement, but then store at most q qubits of quantum information, and an unlimited amount of classical information. Later on, you learn which basis was used. How well can you compute a function f(x) of x, given the initial measurement outcome, the q qubits, and the additional basis information? We first show a lower bound on the success probability for any balanced function, and any number of mutually unbiased bases, beating the naive strategy of simply guessing the basis. We then show that for two bases, any Boolean function f(x) can be computed perfectly if you are allowed to store just a single qubit, independent of the number of possible input strings x. However, we show how to construct three bases, such that you need to store all qubits in order to compute f(x) perfectly. We then investigate how much advantage the additional basis information can give for a Boolean function. To this end, we prove optimal bounds for the success probability for the AND and the XOR function for up to three mutually unbiased bases. Our result shows that the gap in success probability can be maximal: without the basis information, you can never do better than guessing the basis, but with this information, you can compute f(x) perfectly. We also give an example where the extra information does not give any advantage at all.


Text image super-resolution is a challenging yet open research problem in the computer vision community. In particular, low-resolution images hamper the performance of typical optical character recognition (OCR) systems. In this article, we summarize our entry to the ICDAR2015 Competition on Text Image Super-Resolution. Experiments are based on the provided ICDAR2015 TextSR dataset (3) and the released Tesseract-OCR 3.02 system (1). We report that our winning entry of text image super-resolution framework has largely improved the OCR performance with low-resolution images used as input, reaching an OCR accuracy score of 77.19%, which is comparable with that of using the original high-resolution images (78.80%). Index Terms—super resolution; optical character recogni- tion.


The goal of spoken dialogue systems (SDS) is to offer efficient and natural access to applications and services. A common task for SDS is to help users select a suitable option (e.g., flight, hotel, restaurant) from the set of options available. When the number of options is small, they can simply be presented sequentially. However, as the number of options increases, the system must have strategies for summarizing the options to enable the user to browse the option space. In this talk, we evaluate two recent approaches to information presentation in SDS: (1) the Refiner approach (Polifroni et al., 2003) which generates summaries by clustering the options to maximize coverage of the domain, and (2) the user-model based summarize and refine (UMSR) approach (Demberg and Moore, 2006) which clusters options to maximize utility with respect to a user model, and uses linguistic devices (e.g., discourse cues, adverbials) to highlight the trade-offs among the presented items.


The article deals with specialized CAD software for manufacturability assessment details of the "body", based on the definition of the main factors of adaptability to the parameters of three-dimensional model.


A frequency-tunable quasi-absorptive tunable bandstop filter covering the 12–20 GHz range with passive bandwidth compensation is presented. The design employs a dual-coupling-slot scheme that limits the filter's 3-dB bandwidth variation to less than 48% over the entire range. This is the first demonstration above 10 GHz that improves bandwidth stability by more than 4x compared to the state-of-the-art. Furthermore, the measured filter rejection level is over 40 dB from 12–20 GHz and over 20 dB from 9–20 GHz. The design is implemented with MEMS-tunable silicon micromachined evanescent-mode cavity resonators. The filter is measured with K-band connectors through a practical PCB-silicon integration scheme that adds less than 1.5 dB back-to-back insertion loss.


The dynamics of pattern formation in lateral-inhibition type neural fields with global inhibition has been extensively studied in a number of works whre it has been demonstrated that these fields are able to maintain a localized packet of neuronal activity that can for example represent the current state of an agent in a continuous space or reflect some sensory input feeding the field. Such networks most generally use excitatory recurrent collateral connections between the neurons as a function of the distance between them and global inhibition is used to ensure the uniqueness of the bubble of activity within the field. However, this full inhibitory connectivity, either implicit or explicit, is somehow problematic because the cortex, if richly connected, is not fully connected and it is the purpose of this presentation to introduce a model that perform global competition (leading to the creation of a unique bubble of activity) by only using local excitation and inhibition without the use of any supervisor or central executive. This is made possible by using a diffusion of the inhibition throughout the network. This locality yields several advantages. First, in terms of pure computational power, it is far more quicker to have a few local interactions when computing activity within the network. Second, the use of diffusion makes the model scalable to virtually any size without any change in parameters. More precisely, lateral weights do not need to be adjusted for any particular size of the network since the travelling inhibition wave ultimately reaches any neurons within a map.


Cisplatin is an antineoplastic drug that is used to treat carcinomas and osteosarcomas in dogs. However, it can cause kidney damage which in turn leads to the loss of electrolytes. Concentration of magnesium was evaluated in the blood serum of eight dogs that had undergone therapy with cisplatin. The dogs were divided into two groups. Group 1 was supply with cisplatin (70 mg/m2, iv) and to prevent nephrotoxcity, saline solution at 0.9% was administered (25 ml/kg/hour, iv in three hours). The animals in Group 2 were not supplied with cisplatin. There was no significant difference (P < 0.05) between the two groups and the results obtained indicated that the protocol used for Group 1 did not cause changes in the serum concentrations of magnesium. Therefore, it can be concluded that the administration of cisplatin does not cause variations if it is combined with the fluid therapy.


The bulk lifetime tau(n) and diffusion length L-n of minority carriers vary through the height of a cast multicrystalline silicon ( mc-Si) block. This variation is due to the segregation of metallic impurities during the directional solidification and the native impurity concentrations increase from the bottom to the top of the ingot, which is solidified last, while the ingot bottom, which is solidified first, is contaminated by the contact with the crucible floor. It is of interest to verify if a correlation exists between the bulk lifetime tau of as cut wafers and the conversion eficiency. of solar cells. In a very large ingot (> 310 kg), it was found that tau(0), in raw wafers, tau(dif) in phosphorus diffused ones and Ln in diffused wafers are smaller in the top and in the bottom of the ingot. The same evolution is observed in solar cells, however the diffusion length values L-cel in the central part of the ingot are markedly higher than those found in diffused wafers, due to the in-diffusion of hydrogen from the SiN-H antireflection coating layer. The variations of. and those of tau(0), along the ingot height, are well correlated, suggesting that the evaluation of tau(0) can predict the properties of the devices. In addition, segregation phenomena around the grain boundaries are observed at the bottom of the ingots, due to a marked contamination by the crucible floor, and at its top where impurities are accumulated. These phenomena are linked to the long duration of the solidification process and the large amount of imperfect silicon used to cast the ingot.


Laguna Lake is the largest inland freshwater body in the Philippines. Although it is classified to be usable for agricultural and recreational purposes by the country's Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), studies looking at lake ecology revealed severe fecal contamination which contributes to the deterioration of water quality. Determining the sources of fecal contamination is necessary for lake protection and management. This study utilized a library-independent method of microbial source tracking (LIM-MST) to identify sources of fecal contamination in selected Laguna Lake stations and tributaries. Genetic markers of the host-associated Escherichia coli, heat-labile toxin (LTIIA) and heat-stable II (STII), were used to identify cattle and swine fecal contaminations, respectively. Meanwhile, human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was used to identify human fecal contamination. Results identified the presence of agricultural and human fecal contamination in Laguna Lake Stations 1 and 5, Mangangate River, and Alabang River. The selected sites are known to be surrounded by residential and industrial complexes, and most of their discharges find their way into the lake. The identification of the specific sources of fecal contamination will guide management practices that aim to regulate the discharges in order to improve the water quality of Laguna Lake.


BACKGROUND
Anaemia is common among HIV-infected children and iron supplementation is prescribed routinely for the prevention and management of anaemia among children. Limited evidence suggests iron supplementation may have adverse effects among HIV-infected populations. We aimed to estimate the effect of iron supplement use on mortality, disease progression and haematological outcomes among HIV-infected children in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

METHODS
A prospective cohort study was conducted among HIV-infected children (aged 0-14 years) receiving antiretroviral treatment or supportive care between October 2004 and September 2014. Clinical data were recorded on morbidity and vital status, haematological status and prescriptions at each clinical visit. Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for time-varying covariates were used to estimate the association of time-varying iron supplementation on the hazard rate of mortality, HIV disease stage progression, tuberculosis incidence and anaemia and microcytosis persistence.

RESULTS
In all, 4229 children were observed during 149 260 clinic visits for a mean follow-up of 2.9 years. After adjustment for time-varying clinical covariates, time-varying iron supplementation was associated with a 2.87 times higher hazard rate of mortality (95% CI: 1.70, 4.87) and a 1.48 times higher hazard rate of HIV disease stage progression (95% CI: 1.10, 1.98). Iron supplementation was also associated with a lower rate of anaemia persistence (HR = 0.47; 95% CI: 0.37, 0.61). No differences in the association between iron supplementation and clinical outcomes were observed by antiretroviral therapy or anaemia status.

CONCLUSIONS
Iron supplementation may increase the risk of HIV disease stage progression and mortality among HIV-infected children, while reducing the risk of anaemia.


The mitochondrial (mt) genome of bilateral animals typically consists of a single chromosome, ~16 kb long, and contains 37 genes. Variation in mt gene sequence within an individual, i.e. heteroplasmy, is common in bilateral animals but usually occurs at very low levels. In the lineage that led to the human body louse, the typical mt chromosome has fragmented into 18 minichromosomes: each minichromosome is 3 to 4 kb long and contains 1 to 3 genes and a non- coding region. To understand the presence and the level of heteroplasmy in fragmented mt genomes, we cloned and sequenced seven copies of full-length cox1-minichromosome of a human body louse and a human head louse. We found 17 heteroplasmic sites in the coding region and 118 heteroplasmic sites in the non-coding region of the cox1- minichromosome. The level of heteroplasmy in the human lice appears to be much higher than that in other animals that have the typical mt genome. We propose that recombination between different minichromosomes of the fragmented mt genome may contribute to the high-level of heteroplasmy in the human lice.


Ever-increasing complexity in product design and the need to deliver a cost-effective solution that benefits from a dynamic approach requires the employment and adoption of innovative design methods which ensure that products are of the highest quality and meet or exceed customers' expectations. According to Bronowski (1976) science and art were originally two faces of the same human creativity. However, as civilisation advances and works became specialised, the dichotomy of science and art gradually became apparent. Hence scientists and artists were born, and began to develop work that was polar opposite. The sense of beauty itself became separated from science and was confined within the field of art. This dichotomy existed through mankind's efforts in advancing civilisation to its present state. This paper briefly examines the relationship between art and science through the ages and discusses their relatively recent re-convergence. Based on this hypothesis, this paper studies the current state of the convergence between arts and sciences and examines the current relationship between the two by considering real world applications and products. The study of such products and their successes and impact they had in the marketplace due to their designs and aesthetics rather than their advanced technology that had partially failed them appears to support this argument. This text further argues that a re-convergence between art and science is currently occurring and highlights the need for accelerating this process. It is suggested that re-convergence is a result of new technologies which are adopted by practitioners that include effective visualisation and communication of ideas and concepts. Such elements are widely found today in multimedia and Virtual Environments (VEs) where such tools offer increased power and new abilities to both scientists and designers as both venture in each other's domains. This paper highlights the need for the employment of emerging computer based real-time interactive technologies that are expected to enhance the design process through real-time prototyping and visualisation, better decision-making, higher quality communication and collaboration, lessor error and reduced design cycles. Effective employment and adoption of innovative design methods that ensure products are delivered on time, and within budget, are of the highest quality and meet customer expectations are becoming of ever increasing importance. Such tools and concepts are outlined and their roles in the industries they currently serve are identified. Case studies from differing fields are also studied. It is also suggested that Virtual Reality interfaces should be used and given access to Computer Aided Design (CAD) model information and data so that users may interrogate virtual models for additional information and functionality. Adoption and appliance of such integrated technologies over the Internet and their relevance to electronic commerce is also discussed. Finally, emerging software and hardware technologies are outlined and case studies from the architecture, electronic games, and retail industries among others are discussed, the benefits are subsequently put forward to support the argument. The requirements for adopting such technologies in financial, skills required and process management terms are also considered and outlined.


After Wise Use - The Future of Peatlands: Proceedings of the 13th International Peat Congress - Volume 2, Tullamore, Ireland, 8-13 June, 2008


Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L) is becoming an increasingly important crop in the developed world especially as a cereal grain option for patients with celiac disease, being also characterized by a high level of bioactive compounds. It is a good source of phenolic compounds, including phenolic acids, flavonoids and condensed tannins, that express antioxidant capacity and potential health benefits. A group of 210 sorghum genotypes was evaluated in terms of physical parameters and resulted to be characterized by a wide range of 1000-seeds weight (6.93 - 42.67 g) and kernel colour. A sub-set of 121 samples were selected by near infrared spectroscopy for chemical analyses, and revealed a wide range of variability for total antioxidant capacity (6.89 - 172.02 mmol TE kg-1 dm-1), phenols (0.60 - 20.73 g GAE kg-1 dm-1), condensed tannins (0 - 28,362.63 μg CE g-1 dm-1) and flavonoids (0 - 8,138.22 μg CE g-1 dm-1). A high negative correlation was observed between antioxidant compounds and the colour parameters L* and b*; on the contrary, correlation of the same parameters with a* was low and positive. The results of these preliminary analyses highlighted genotypes characterized by light-coloured grains (white or yellow), large seeds, high antioxidant properties but absence of condensed tannins, all traits which make them suitable for food industry.


Subsistence agriculture, cattle ranching, and periodical land abandonment are common land‐use practices in Amazonia. Because changes in land use affect biogeochemical cycles, secondary forests growing after land abandonment develop at varying speeds and spatial patterns, due in part to varying nutrient dynamics. Leaf and soil nutrient concentrations can provide useful information on nutrient cycling processes and strategies of nutrient use by trees that are suitable for introduction to abandoned areas. To understand nutrient dynamics in secondary forests from different regeneration stages, as well as the importance of pioneer species in the regeneration process, we measured the concentration of macronutrients in leaves of three pioneer tree species (Vismia cayennensis, Cecropia sciadophylla, and Bellucia dichotoma) in central Amazon secondary forests. We also measured macronutrients in the topsoil under the trees. We found that type of prior land use, time since abandonment, and number of fire events were significantly correlated with the concentrations of leaf and soil macronutrients, explaining between 10 and 38% of the variation in macronutrient concentrations. The observed patterns suggest that management practices affect the processes involved in N cycling and availability. Of the three pioneer species, C. sciadophylla showed the highest nutrient resorption efficiency and the highest leaf nutritional quality. We suggest that these two features determine a higher potential of C. sciadophylla for natural regeneration and restoration of abandoned lands.


Aviation pilots are trained to base cockpit decisions on strategic and analytic reasoning, while naturalistic decision-making theory suggests that experts in naturalistic settings, like pilots, make decisions based on experience. In the present study, a scenario-based questionnaire was used, to explore the effects of aviation pilots´ non-technical skills and experience-based decision-making in a cockpit decision-making situation. Also, a negative relation between non-technical skills and decisions from experience was predicted. In addition, the relation between general decision-making styles, non-technical skills and experience-based decision-making, was explored. The results indicate that pilots´ non-technical skills can be predicted by a rational general decision-making style. However, the choice of action in a cockpit decision-making situation could not be predicted by high non-technical skills or high experience-based decision-making, and the expected relation failed to appear. The results are discussed in relation to existing theory.


Southern pine pulp fibers were extracted with Na, K, and Li hydroxides at several concentrations from 0.5 to 4.0 m (molal). The amounts of extracted xylan and glucomannan increased with the swelling of the cellulose structure up to 2.0–2.5 m. The addition of H3BO3 to alkaline solutions produced the B(OH) anion, which had less swelling power than OH−. It was not effective for removal of xylan except for some very accessible xylan of holocellulose. Removal of xylan from chemical pulps depended upon OH− in molar excess over H3BO3. In the same extractions, glucomannan removal was enhanced by B(OH) alone and further increased by additional OH−. The formation of anions (carboxylate in xylan and borate complex of glucomannan) appeared to be important for the release of polymer from within the cellulose structure. Some glucomannan was more accessible in oxygen pulp than in holocellulose. The resorbed xylan of kraft pulp was less accessible than the xylans of either holocellulose or oxygen pulp.


An energy absorber using a magnetorheological (MR) bypass valve filled with ferromagnetic beads was designed, fabricated, and its performance evaluated empirically. Spherical ferromagnetic beads were randomly packed inside a hollow nonmagnetic stainless steel tube comprising the bypass valve body. A key objective was to understand the interaction of magnetic and fluidic mechanisms as the MR fluid flows through a cylinder of randomly packed ferromagnetic beads. Behavior of the energy absorber using different diameters of ferromagnetic beads was measured using a servo-hydraulic testing machine. The relationship between the damping performance of the energy absorber and the ferromagnetic bead diameter was evaluated in terms of maximum controllable damping force, damping control range, and frequency bandwidth


Problem solving in schools begins with mathematics teachers. The degree to which mathematics teachers are prepared to teach for, about and through problem solving influences on their implementation of problem solving in school. We conducted a small scale study where we examined the effect of implementation of heuristic strategies and Polya's steps in mathematics method course. We assessed pre-service teachers' knowledge and attitudes about them as problem solvers before and after the course. Moreover we assessed their beliefs of problem solving in school mathematics. Those beliefs were assessed in two occasions: right after the course and after finished teaching practice. Although students' knowledge on problem solving was improved, the results of students' beliefs show that it is important that pre-service teachers, and consequently in-service teachers, are constantly reminded on the positive effect of constructivist and inquiry-based approach on teaching mathematics.


The difference in density profiles of the contributions from different density peaks to dark matter halos results in certain expectations about the Milky Way's stellar halo. We cut our simulated halo stars into two populations: those forming before/during the last major merger, and those accreted after the last major merger. The former population are more centrally located at z = 0, while stars forming in low mass late forming proto-galaxies are spread through the halo. A difference in observed binding energy distinguishes these two populations. We look at possible chemical abundance signatures of the two populations. We also show that galaxies forming in isolated low σ peaks will form from primordial material. Thus, even though the oldest stars are centrally concentrated as they originated in the early collapsing, densest regions, primordial stars would be found distributed throughout the halo. Thus, the lack of observed metal free stars can be taken as directly constraining the Population III IMF, and the lowest metallicity observed stars can be interpreted as holding clues to the chemical yields of Pop III stars.


the effects of the used drugs. For this purpose we have investigated several drugs which were produced from natural sources. The fungicidal as well as the inhibitory effects were examined. The tests were done on human pathogenic yeast such as Candida albicans, Candida krusei, Candida glabrata and others. The fungicidal effects were tested by determining the decrease of CFU (Colony Forming Units) in time and concentrations in water solution. The development of the colonies were tested in Sabouraud glucose agar in Petri dishes. In the case of oils (eg. tea-plant oil, etc.) or volatile oil (e.g. thymol) first an alcoholic mixture was made which was diluted by water or physiological NaCI. The end-concentration of the natural agencies were 5 0 0 0 ~ or 5 0 0 ~ . In these experiments the product which was a composition of natural plant volatile oils used in foraging and veterinary medicine showed a very high fungicidal effect. In further examinations grapefruit-seed extract, lavender-oil, tea-plant-oil, geranium-oil, rosemary-oil, orange-peel extract were tested. Three of them: tea-plantoil, geranium-oil and orange-peel extract showed fungicidal effect, others had no effect on fungi. The fungistatic effects were also tested by the reduced growing of the species in growing media containing acid/alcalic indicators. The effects were visualised by colour changing depending on the produced amounts of acid(s) by yeast species. According to the in vitro results some natural drugs may be a helpful supplement in certain cases.


Bologna process has influenced enhancing studentcentered learning in Estonian higher education since 2009, but there is no information about what helps or hinders students to achieve learning outcomes and how quality of student-centered learning might be improved. The purpose of this study is to analyze two questions from outcome-based course evaluation questionnaire which is used in Estonian Entrepreneurship University of Applied Sciences. In this qualitative research, 384 students from 22 different courses described what helped and hindered them to achieve learning outcomes. The analysis showed that the aspects that hinder students to achieve learning outcomes are mostly personal: time management, family and personal matters, motivation and non-academic activities. The results indicate that students' learning is commonly supported by school, where teacher, teaching and characteristics of teaching methods help mostly to achieve learning outcomes, also learning material, practical assignments and independent study was brought up as one of the key elements. Keywords—Learning outcomes, learning quality, studentcentered learning


The notion of mode-2 knowledge production points to far-reaching transformations in science-society relations, but few attempts have been made to investigate what growing economic and political demands on research may entail for the social sciences. This case study of new patterns of social science knowledge production outlines some major institutional and cognitive changes in Danish academic sociology during 'mode-2' times, from the 1980s onwards. Empirically, we rely on documentary sources and qualitative interviews with Danish sociologists, aiming to reconstruct institutional trajectories expressive of wider changes in the field. The analysis shows this has been a period of exceptional volatility in Danish sociology, from institutional crisis in the 1980s to a gradual re-expansion since the 1990s. Drawing on a four-fold typology of professional, critical, public, and policy sociologies, we show how a particular cognitive modality of sociology — 'welfare reflexivity' — has become a dominant form of Danish sociological knowledge production. Welfare reflexivity has proven a viable response to volatile mode-2 policy conditions. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.


Editor,—Savasan et al describe the diverse immune abnormalities, limited effect of different therapeutic manoeuvres (splenectomy, steroids, intravenous immunoglobulins), and poor prognosis in patients with autoimmune thrombocytopenia and Coombs positive haemolytic anaemia (Evans' syndrome).1 Fifty five per cent of their patients (six out of 11) had hepatomegaly, some with portal triaditis. We would like to extend their findings by reporting our recent experience of a patient with Evans' syndrome who also had Coombs positive giant cell hepatitis (CPGCH). CPGCH is a rare disease of early childhood, with unknown pathogenesis and variable response to immunosuppression.2Liver transplantation is not curative, since the disease recurs in the graft.3

An Asian girl, born from consanguineous parents, was diagnosed …


The purpose of this paper is to analyze a collective decision making problem in an open, dynamic environment, such as the Internet. More specifically, we study a class of mechanism design problems where the designer of a mechanism cannot completely identify the participants (agents) of the mechanism. A typical example of such a situation is Internet auctions. The main contributions of this paper are as follows. We develop a formal model of a mechanism design problem in which false-name declarations are possible, and prove that the revelation principle still holds in this model. When false-name declarations and hiding are possible, we show that there exists no auction protocol that achieves Pareto efficient allocations in a dominant strategy equilibrium for all cases. We show a sufficient condition where the Clarke mechanism is robust against false-name declarations (the concavity of the maximal total utility of agents).


Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) related to occupational work or termed as WMSDs are the most common health issues that are experienced by many workers. Either due to the human errors or inconvenient and faulty workplaces, this illness has caused both employers and employees great economic losses. However, when observing the prevalence of MSDs among motorcyclists, again the focus was put among those that use motorcycles during their duties making it very much work-related. For example, police riders, postal delivery workers, and currently food delivery services. But how about those non-occupational motorcyclists or commuting workers or students that only use their motorcycle to commute to work, riding to class or weekend-motorcyclists going for prolonged motorcycle rides? Upon this matter, it became the motivation of this study to look into the possibilities of MSDs prevalence especially related to muscle fatigue among these groups of motorcyclists based on a survey and indoor prolonged motorcycle riding simulations that were conducted earlier. This includes how education and proper training could help them to reduce the risk of experiencing MSDs. Outcomes of this study suggested several other MSD issues that are possible to take place involving other body regions and establishing a prolonged riding guideline could educate them to be more aware of this issue. These possible MSDs were found to not being highlighted in work-related MSDs literature with respect to motorcyclists and very few detailed guidelines are available to educate motorcyclists for a much safer prolonged riding which provide gaps for further investigation and validation.


BACKGROUND
An increased demand for young physicians in Germany is causing increased competition to attract the best minds, even during their undergraduate studies. Therefore, it is the task of the university hospitals to offer their students the best possible courses in order to arouse interest in the relevant subject area. We therefore examined the impact of an ophthalmosurgical wet lab on teaching undergraduate medical students.

MATERIAL/METHODS
Undergraduate medical students were offered voluntary participation in the ophthalmosurgical wet lab during an ophthalmology block week. At the beginning and at the end of the week, as well as at the end of the wet lab, the students answered questionnaires with questions about the interest in the field of ophthalmology and the specific assessment of the wet lab.

RESULTS
The interest of the students in ophthalmology was increased by the block week and additionally by the wet lab. The wet lab enriched the block week and was rated as very good by the participants. The overall rating of the block week was significantly better among participants in the wet lab than in the group without wet lab participation. The wet lab gave the students great pleasure, enabled them to apply the acquired knowledge, gain valuable insights into ophthalmology, and was easily implemented.

CONCLUSION
The integration of a wet lab into the block week was evaluated very positively by the students and gives them a valuable insight into the field of ophthalmology.


Current and future space-based observatories such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and PLATO are set to provide an enormous amount of new data on oscillating stars, and in particular stars that oscillate similar to the Sun. Solar-like oscillators constitute the majority of known oscillating stars and so automated analysis methods are becoming an ever increasing necessity to make as much use of these data as possible. Here we aim to construct an algorithm that can automatically determine if a given time series of photometric measurements shows evidence of solar-like oscillations. The algorithm is aimed at analyzing data from the TESS mission and the future PLATO mission, and in particular stars in the main-sequence and subgiant evolutionary stages. The algorithm first tests the range of observable frequencies in the power spectrum of a TESS light curve for an excess that is consistent with that expected from solar-like oscillations. In addition, the algorithm tests if a repeating pattern of oscillation frequencies is present in the time series, and whether it is consistent with the large separation seen in solar-like oscillators. Both methods use scaling relations and observations which were established and obtained during the CoRoT, Kepler, and K2 missions. Using a set of test data consisting of visually confirmed solar-like oscillators and nonoscillators observed by TESS, we find that the proposed algorithm can attain a $94.7\%$ true positive rate and a $8.2\%$ false positive rate at peak accuracy. However, by applying stricter selection criteria, the false positive rate can be reduced to $\approx2\%$, while retaining an $80\%$ true positive rate.


This article focuses on fan fiction as a literary experience and especially on fan fiction readers' receptive strategies. Methodologically, its approach is at the intersection of literary theory, theory of popular culture, and qualitative research into practices of communication within online communities. It characterizes fan fiction as a type of contemporary reading and writing. Taking as an example the Russian Harry Potter fan fiction community, the article poses a set of questions about the meanings and contexts of immersive reading and affective reading. The emotional reading of fan fiction communities is put into historical and theoretical context, with reference to researchers who analysed and criticized the dichotomy of rational and affective reading, or 'enchantment', in literary culture as one of the symptoms of modernity. The metaphor of 'emotional landscapes of reading' is used to theorize the reading strategies of fan fiction readers, and discussed through parallels with phenomenological theories of landscape. Among the 'assemblage points of reading' of fan fiction, specific elements are described, such as 'selective reading', 'kink reading', 'first encounter with fan fiction texts' and 'unpredictability'.


This article presents a method to detect and segment mine waste deposits, specifically waste rock dumps and leaching wasted dumps, in Sentinel-2 satellite imagery using artificial intelligence. This challenging task has important implications for mining companies and regulators like the National Geology and Mining Service in Chile. Challenges include limited knowledge of mine waste deposit numbers, as well as logistical and technical difficulties in conducting inspections and surveying physical stability parameters. The proposed method combines YOLOv7 object detection with a vision transformer classifier to locate mine waste deposits, as well as a deep generative model for data augmentation to enhance detection and segmentation accuracy. The ViT classifier achieved 98% accuracy in differentiating five satellite imagery scene types, while the YOLOv7 model achieved an average precision of 81% for detection and 79% for segmentation of mine waste deposits. Finally, the model was used to calculate mine waste deposit areas, with an absolute error of 6.6% compared to Google Earth API results.


This text provides advice on making decisions about charitable giving, and its relation to reducing estate and income taxes. Topics include: the dynamics of charitable giving in the US; planned giving techniques through business and personal applications; and estate/income tax considerations.


For thousands of years man has been applying genetics to improve both foodstuffs and food products. Using selective breeding and/or spontaneous mutations, a large number of plant varieties, animal breeds and microbial strains have been produced. In fact, food biotechnology is the oldest form of biotechnology. Recently, recombinant DNA techniques have been applied in food technology, creating so-called 'genetically modified foods' (GM foods). Examples include transgenic potatoes able to act as an oral vaccine against cholera, recombinant wine yeasts that produce wine with a fruitier bouquet, and transgenic cows or ewes producing milk with high levels of pharmaceutical proteins. However, the starting date for the future of food biotechnology was the publication in 2001 of the first draft of the human genome. This paved the way for the search for the genes that are activated or deactivated in response to specifics nutrients. It is now also possible to determine the genetic differences underlying individuals' different nutritional responses. Furthermore, every day more genomes of animals, plants or microorganisms that are common components of our diet like rice, bread yeast, the probiotic bacterium Bifidobacterium bifidum or pathogens responsible for food poisoning, like Escherichia coli, are published. This provides information about key genes, making it possible to devise strategies for improvement using classical and genetic engineering techniques, demarcate defence mechanisms to combat pathogenicity, and define new physiological functions. Biotechnology's applications in food and nutrition are more advanced than many people imagine.


A new thermographic NDT technique was proposed, in which singular electrothermal field near crack tips under the application of periodically modulated electric current was measured using an infrared thermography combined with lock-in data processing technique. Experimental investigations were made on the resolution and the applicability in the identification of through-thickness artificial cracks and fatigue cracks embedded in steel and aluminum alloy plate samples. Modulated electric current was applied to the cracked sample by an induction coli. Lock-in thermal images synchronized to the reference current modulation signal were taken by the lock-in thermography. Significant singular electrothermal field was observed at the crack tip in the lock-in thermal image. The fatigue cracks as well as artificial cracks were found to be sensitively identified by the proposed technique in good resolution compared with the singular method using a conventional thermographic temperature measurement.


This study concerns the absorptive ability of the respiratory portion of the mucous membrane of the nose as it applies to nasal medication and immunization. As there is a paucity of experimental data on this subject, my deductions will be based on clinical observations as appraised in the light of the new concepts of physiology. It seems that prescribing physicians have little fear that an untoward effect might occur from the use of a sympathomimetic drug in the nose. The universal employment of nose drops containing ephedrine is significant. However, from time to time there appears in the literature a report of a toxic reaction from a nasal treatment with a vasoconstrictor. Greene and Greenspan 1 observed restlessness in children following the use of nose drops containing ephedrine: In a group of 19 normal infants and young children who were given drop doses of a 1 per cent aqueous solution of


Abstract. The lower-order moments of the drop size distribution (DSD) have generally been considered difficult to retrieve accurately from polarimetric radar data because these data are related to higher-order moments. For example, the 4.6th moment is associated with a specific differential phase and the 6th moment with reflectivity and ratio of high-order moments with differential reflectivity. Thus, conventionally, the emphasis has been to estimate rain rate (3.67th moment) or parameters of the exponential or gamma distribution for the DSD. Many double-moment "bulk" microphysical schemes predict the total number concentration (the 0th moment of the DSD, or M0) and the mixing ratio (or equivalently, the 3rd moment M3). Thus, it is difficult to compare the model outputs directly with polarimetric radar observations or, given the model outputs, forward model the radar observables. This article describes the use of double-moment normalization of DSDs and the resulting stable intrinsic shape that can be fitted by the generalized gamma (G-G) distribution. The two reference moments are M3 and M6, which are shown to be retrievable using the X-band radar reflectivity, differential reflectivity, and specific attenuation (from the iterative correction of measured reflectivity Zh using the total Φdp constraint, i.e., the iterative ZPHI method). Along with the climatological shape parameters of the G-G fit to the scaled/normalized DSDs, the lower-order moments are then retrieved more accurately than possible hitherto. The importance of measuring the complete DSD from 0.1 mm onwards is emphasized using, in our case, an optical array probe with 50 µm resolution collocated with a two-dimensional video disdrometer with about 170 µm resolution. This avoids small drop truncation and hence the accurate calculation of lower-order moments. A case study of a complex multi-cell storm which traversed an instrumented site near the CSU-CHILL radar is described for which the moments were retrieved from radar and compared with directly computed moments from the complete spectrum measurements using the aforementioned two disdrometers. Our detailed validation analysis of the radar-retrieved moments showed relative bias of the moments M0 through M2 was <15 % in magnitude, with Pearson's correlation coefficient >0.9. Both radar measurement and parameterization errors were estimated rigorously. We show that the temporal variation of the radar-retrieved mass-weighted mean diameter with M0 resulted in coherent "time tracks" that can potentially lead to studies of precipitation evolution that have not been possible so far.


After a brief reminding of the synthesis and function of coenzyme Q10, this article tries to summarise the current state of knowledge about the consequences of its deficiency and about the potential benefits of an increased intake of this coenzyme. We then describe the arguments in favour of such an increase in cardiac diseases and in Parkinson's disease.


A hot topic of current research concerns the Equation of State (EoS) of nucleons and, in particular, of hyperons in dense nucleonic media. The study of the EoS at nucleon densities far beyond saturation has been initiated several decades ago, however, the behavior of the EoS for strangeness particles is still an open issue. The strangeness part of the EoS is very important not only for the physics of exotic (hyper)nuclei, but also crucial for nuclear astrophysics, e.g., neutron star physics. Here we present our recent investigations related to the theoretical treatment of in-medium hyperon-interactions as well as first preliminary experimental results from pion-induced reactions. The theoretical study is based on the well-established Non-Linear Derivative (NLD) model, which is extended to the strangeness sector via SU(6) symmetry arguments. It turns out that the NLD-predictions are consistent with microscopic models based on the chiral-EFT theory. On the other hand, recent experimental HADES-data on hyperon and kaon production from pioninduced reactions indicate sensitivities on the underlying in-medium hyperon potentials. We thus conclude that, the recent experimental data from pion-induced reactions will definitely set stringent constraints on the still less understood hyperon-potentials in nucleonic matter.


In this paper I present the complex understanding of illness and healing in the Catholic Marian Faith Healing Ministry (MFHM) in Tanzania. The efficacy of religious healing should be understood as a social process dependent on the plausibility and attractiveness that the rituals have for the individual patients, as well as for their community. By contrasting an analysis of the publications of the leader of the group, Father Nkwera, with guided interviews among the members, I was able to develop a differentiated picture of the broad range of healing concepts within the group. While Nkwera translates local spirit beliefs into an apocalyptic worldview that associates physical healing with political critique—especially in the case of HIV/AIDS—his followers situate the healing process within a framework of personal salvation. In my study, I contextualise the MFHM within its pluralistic traditional, Muslim, Catholic, Pentecostal and biomedical environment that impact it on local and global levels.


Photoacoustic imaging (PAI), which is based on the conversion of light into sound, is an emerging, hybrid and noninvasive imaging modality with highly scalable resolution. PAI has shown tremendous potential in early tumor detection and imaging by providing structural, functional and metabolic information. But to date, most work has been focused on tumor detection at the macroscopic level (i.e. tissue, organ). For early tumor diagnosis, microscopic detection of individual cancer cells is highly desirable and of special significance. However, detection and imaging of single cancer cells using PAI is very challenging because most cancer cells are colorless, thus exhibiting little endogenous contrast. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), which have good biocompatibility, low toxicity and high optical absorption, are an exogenous contrast agent that can facilitate PAI of single cancer cells. In this study, we synthesized peptide-conjugated AuNPs to selectively target DU145 human prostate cancer cells, and employed a laser-scanning photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) to detect and image individual cells. The used AuNPs had an average diameter of 30 nm and were physically fabricated by ultrafast pulsed laser ablation of gold target in ultrapure water. Their surface chemistry was modified through a sequential conjugation process, in which a predetermined amount of thiolated PEG 5000 molecules and RGD peptides were successively bound to the AuNPs with quantitative control and high efficiency. After incubation with DU145 cells, the functionalized PEG-RGD-AuNPs were endocytosed with the help of membrane receptors and produced sharp absorption contrast. The internalized AuNPs generated strong photoacoustic signals after absorbing excitation laser and the signals were captured by a highly sensitive hydrophone to form cell images. Combing functional AuNPs and high-resolution PAM, we successfully detected and imaged single, live DU145 cancer cells. Though transparent, the cancer cells were visibly delineated by intracellular AuNPs and were clearly distinguishable. Moreover, to achieve optimum detection efficiency, we also studied the relationship between the density of RGD peptide and the amplitude of photoacoustic signal. Experimental results reveal that, although the amount of cellular uptake of AuNPs was proportional to RGD density (from radioactivity analysis using a Gamma counter), the amplitude of photoacoustic signal did not. Photoacoustic detection efficiency reached a maximum when the molar ratio of RGD peptides to AuNPs was approximately 1000. To our best knowledge, this is the first report on photoacoustic detection and imaging of specific cancer cells using peptide-conjugated AuNPs at single-cell resolution. By translating PAI from macro to micro, the work is expected to open a new avenue for early cancer detection, imaging, diagnosis and even treatment. Citation Format: Chao Tian, Wei Qian, Xia Shao, Zhixing Xie, Xu Cheng, Shengchun Liu, Qian Cheng, Bing Liu, Xueding Wang. Photoacoustic detection and imaging of single cancer cells with peptide-conjugated gold nanoparticles. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-191.


This report discusses the first year findings of a proposed three year investigation effort that focuses on the assessment and prediction of software quality. The research exploits fundamental linkages among software engineering Objectives, Principles and Attributes (the OPA framework). Process, code and document quality indicators are presented relative to the OPA framework, with elaboration on their individual roles in assessing and predicting software quality. The synthesis of an Ada code analyzer is discussed as well as proposed complementary tools comprising an automated data collection and report generation system. Key Words and Phrases: Simulation quality assessment and prediction; software engineering objectives, principles and attributes; software quality indicators, process indicators, code indicators, document quality indicators.


DAS Photonics Accordingly, in 2005, Javier and his colleagues created DAS Photonics. Their aim was to use their proprietary photonics technology, which converts radio frequency (RF) waves into photons to develop a range of niche RF photonics processing equipment more powerful and cheaper than those developed with traditional electronics. Their target sectors would be defense, avionics and space; hence the name DAS. They started developing prototypes in 2007 and launched their first products in 2012. For defense and avionics, they offered a radar signal monitoring system using photonic receivers that covered several frequency bands at the same time rather than conventional electronic sensors that sweep the electromagnetic spectrum in sections. By processing information into photons instead national technical journals in the fields of opto-microwave systems and technologies, silicon photonic integrated circuits and high-speed optical networks. In 2003 he was appointed Director of the Valencia Nanophotonics Technology Center (NTC), where he focused on securing the funding to research on nanophotonic integrated devices, microwave nanophotonics and optical processing in high-speed optical networks. As Javier recalls: "At that time, unlike other countries in western Europe, there was no tradition in Spain for government funding for high-tech, so we had to seek help from the private sector, which was difficult without a commercial product." But as it turned out, this was a blessing in disguise because the search for funding from the private sector enabled Javier to form strong links with major players in the market and to get firsthand knowledge of the opportunities Born into a family with a passion for amateur radio, Javier developed an interest in electromagnetic waves and antennas for radio communications from an early age. While still in high school, he would follow instructions from amateur radio handbooks to design and fabricate his own antennas from sheets of copper. In 1991, he graduated from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) with an MSc in telecommunication engineering and went on to study a PhD in the same subject at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPVLC). After graduating in 1994, he lectured for a couple of years at the UPC in Barcelona and then moved to lecture and pursue his passion for research at the newly created Telecommunication Engineering Faculty in Valencia. In 2000, Javier was awarded a full-professorship at UPVLC and has since co-authored over 20 patents and more than 450 papers in refereed interSo ur ce a ll im ag es : D AS P ho to ni cs


The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore how engagement in occupation affects the adaptation process for older women with visual impairment. Data were collected and analyzed for seven participants using a constant comparative method. Nine categories emerged and were grounded in the data. A theoretical model was developed with the core category of adaptation. The interactions of participants' visual impairment, concurrent issues, threats to performance, losses, getting help, methods of doing, abilities, integration of losses and abilities, and adaptation. For these participants, the adaptation process was aided by getting help and finding methods of doing their preferred occupations.


Ultramafic rocks were recovered from the lower parts of holes at four sites (567, 566, 569, 570) drilled on Leg 84. These sites are on the landward slope of the Middle America Trench off Guatemala. Harzburgites, cumulative texture peridotites, gabbros, dolerites, and amphibolite facies rocks were recognized by pétrologie and geochemical analysis (Xray fluorescence, microprobe). Some of these rocks belong to an ophiolitic sequence. They form the basement of the landward slope of the Guatemala Trench upon which lower Eocene sediments were deposited. As a whole, the ophiolitic rock has much in common with various ophiolitic massives known on land all over the world (e.g., Antalya, Oman), particularly the ophiolitic sequence of the Santa Elena Peninsula of Costa Rica. The age, the abundance of harzburgites, and the structural position of the mafic and ultramafic rocks of Leg 84 suggest that they could represent an offshore equivalent of the Santa Elena ultramafic rocks. In any case, the first ophiolites to have been recovered from the slope of an active margin are those of the drilled mafic and ultramafic rocks of Leg 84.


Peristaltic forces cause a topographic, time-dependent distribution of bolus mass during its esophageal transport. A two-dimensional spatial-temporal pattern (profile) of local transit times is constructed by computer-based double compression of scintigraphic images sampled from whole swallows. Reconstruction by Gaussian bands and modeling this pattern discloses transient ellipsoidal bolus structures. The structures studied in 10 healthy volunteers present highly reproducible quantitative parameters for marking a region-specificity of transit times, which is related to the known region-selectivity of esophageal functions. Correlation of bolus flow with the dynamics of peristalsis is essential for understanding the complex mechanisms of esophageal transport as well as for diagnostic discrimination of disturbances of bolus flow.


The academic style of study and thoughts of Neo - Confucianism in the Song and Ming dynasties improved the innovation of contemporary physicians and their recognition on the research of medical theories, and strengthened the development of determination of treatment based on the differentiation of symptoms and signs. Its related contents, such as taiji, circulation and change of vital energy, substance and functions, and congenital and postnatal etc. also were absorbed as the elements of medical theories. However, there were some negative influences from Neo - Confucianism on the development of traditional Chinese medicine.


AIMS
Polymorphous low-grade adenocarcinoma (PLGA) and adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) are malignant salivary gland tumours bearing many similar histological patterns. This study was undertaken to show how the presence and distribution of collagen IV and laminin, and their ligands (integrin alpha2beta1 and alpha3beta1 components), can reveal histoarchitectural differences which distinguish these two entities.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Five cases of ACC and five cases of PLGA from the archives of the Oral Pathology Department of the School of Dentistry of the São Paulo University were submitted to immunostaining with the antibodies to collagen IV, laminin, and integrins alpha2beta1 and alpha3beta1 using the streptavidin-biotin-peroxidase technique. Positive and negative controls were included. PLGA showed a thin line of collagen IV and laminin surrounding structures composed of a single cell layer. Integrins were expressed as a widespread and granular pattern. A thick line of collagen and laminin was observed around the neoplastic structures of ACC. Both integrins were expressed in intercellular spaces and around luminal spaces of tubular structures.

CONCLUSIONS
Collagen IV and laminin, and their integrin ligands, are useful in demonstrating that neoplastic ductal units of PLGA are composed of a single cell layer, being distinct from ACC which contains structures composed of two layers of neoplastic cells.


The objective of this study was to investigate expression of interferon regulatory factors (ICSBP/IRF8) and the potential role of DNA methylation in silencing ICSBP/IRF8 gene in multiple myeloma (MM) cell line U266 and bone marrow mononuclear cells from 10 MM patients (MM-BMMNC). The bone marrow mononuclear cells from 10 healthy persons (N-BMMNC) were collected and used as normal controls. Expression of ICSBP/IRF8 gene was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (using 2(-ΔΔCT) to calculate); DNA methylation level of the ICSBP/IRF8 gene was measured using methylation-specific PCR (using the ratio of interest gene ICSBP/IRF8 and internal reference β-actin expression as results). The results showed that as compared with N-BMMNC the lower expression of ICSBP/IRF8 gene was found in U266 cells and MM-BMMNC, the hypermethylation of the CpG island in the ICSBP/IRF8 promoter was observed, there were significant differences between N-BMMNC and MM-BMMNC or U266 cells (P < 0.05). It is concluded that the expression of ICSBP/IRF8 gene can be silenced in the MM-BMMNC and U226 cells. As the hypermethylation of CpG island in ICSBP/IRF8 promoter is a frequent event in MM cells, the ICSBP/IRF8 gene silencing caused by DNA methylation may take part in the pathogenesis and development of MM.


The study aimed to determine the effects of heat treatments applied to seeds of bitter yellow passionfruit (/Passiflora edulis/ Sims f. flavicarpa DEG) in the uniformity of seed germination. The experimental design was completely randomized blocks under a factorial scheme (3 x 2) +1, the factors being temperature (40, 50 and 60°C) and time of water immersion (10 and 15 minutes) plus a control (ambient temperature), with four replicates. The characteristics evaluated were: percentage of germination and speed of germination, being obtained both accumulated germination within 13 days and average germination velocity index. Concerning to cumulative germination percentage, treatments can be grouped into three groups as follows: first group, treatment T1D2 with 74.5%; second group with treatments T0, T1D1 and T2D2 with 55%, 53% and 52.5% respectively; third group with treatments T2D1, T3D1 and T3D2 with 35.5%, 17% and 13.5% respectively. Treatment with bitter passion fruit seed immersion in water heated to 40 oC for 15 minutes showed 75% germination and a better uniformity of seedlings.


We derive analytical expression of matrix factorization/completion solution by variational Bayes method, under the assumption that observed matrix is originally the product of low-rank dense and sparse matrices with additive noise. We assume the prior of sparse matrix is Laplace distribution by taking matrix sparsity into consideration. Then we use several approximations for derivation of matrix factorization/completion solution. By our solution, we also numerically evaluate the performance of sparse matrix reconstruction in matrix factorization, and completion of missing matrix element in matrix completion.


A basic status politics explanation of orientation toward the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is assessed in this paper. Conflicting orientations toward ERA areshown to stem from perceptions that broader personal values, and those concerning gender and parental roles, are in undesirable competition with alternative values in contemporary society. The data, drawn from a metropolitan sampling of adults, confirm the utility of the status politics perspective in accounting for who supports and who opposes the amendment. This paper puts forth and tests a basic explanation of orientation toward the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The presence of intense feelings, both among those who support the issue and those who oppose it, is shown to stem from a basic clash of values. At a more general level, this involves the perception that broader personal values are threatened; at a more specific level, this centers around the definition and legitimacy of gender and parental roles. Such cultural conflict falls under the rubric of "status politics" in the sociological literature. It arises when a set of established values appears out of joint with changing social conditions. When carried out in the political arena, this type of conflict represents an attempt to assert the cultural dominance and desirability of one set of values over the other. Hence, the status politics perspective provides a framework for explaining why conflicts of this kind emerge and, of particular interest to us here, gives an account of the correlates associated with orientation toward ERA. Status Politics and the Equal Rights Amendment The proposed Equal Rights Amendment states simply, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by *Address correspondence to the author, Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma,


Introduction: Piperaquine (PQ) is an antimalarial drug used in preventive treatment and combination therapy as a partner drug in dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DP). In young children the pharmacokinetics (PK) of PQ seem to differ from adults resulting in a lower efficacy of the drug than expected. Finger prick capillary dried blood spots (DBS) are being used more and more in PK analysis. They are simpler to collect, store and transport than plasma samples and require less blood taken from the patient. Concentrations of PQ are higher in capillary blood than in plasma. A correlation between DBS and venous plasma measurements must be defined before DBS can be used as a field-study tool. Aim: To compare PQ concentrations generated from DBS and simultaneously collected venous plasma samples and determine if DBS give reliable results and can be used in PK-PD investigations in large cohort-studies. Materials and Methods: LC-MS/MS methods for quantifying PQ in plasma and DBS were developed. Samples collected from young children receiving monthly DP treatment, in a cohort study in Uganda, were analyzed. Correlation analysis was performed with Stata® including plasma samples analyzed with the plasma method developed in 2013 and DBS samples analyzed previously with a semi-quantitative method in the pilot work in 2012. Results: 82 paired samples were used in the correlation analysis. Preliminary results from the linear regression analysis show a mean ratio of 4.08, STD of 3.37 and a R2-value of 0.37. Conclusions: The DBS method must be fully validated and used for analyzing the remaining DBS samples (~80) as well as reanalyzing the DBS samples analyzed in the pilot work (~350). A new regression analysis using all data must be done in order to assess the correlation between PQ concentrations in plasma and DBS samples.


Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is a method to obtain a representation of data using non-negativity constraints. These constraints lead to a part-based representation in the vector space because they allow only additive, not subtractive, combinations of original data. This is how NMF learns a part- based representation. This paper introduces briefly the theory and algorithm of NMF. Then a NMF ANN framework is presented to classify spontaneous EEG in five metal tasks. Several comparisons and experiments were carried out. The results showed that NMF lead more localized and sparse features than power spectrum method and principal component analysis method did, and that the NMF-ANN structure preserved the spatio-temporal characteristics of EEG signals. Its best cognition rate of five mental task pairs can achieves better than 88.0%. It may be a promising classifier for Brain Computer Interface (BCI) scheme.


We previously reported that vitamin E prevents apoptosis in neurons during cerebral ischemia and reperfusion in stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRSP). In this paper, we analyzed the effects of antihypertensives as well as vitamin E, which were added to neuron cultures after reoxygenation (20% O2) following hypoxia (1% O2). When added after hypoxia before reoxygenation, vitamin E conferred significant protection to neuronal cells. It was also shown that vitamin E conferred complete protection from neural cell death when added hypoxia and again before reoxygenation. At higher concentrations of vitamin E, strong neuroprotection was observed. Moreover, we verified that pretreatment with either amlodipine, carvedilol or dipyridamole consistently prevented cell death during hypoxia and reoxygenation (H/R). On the other hand, nilvadipine, a dihydropyridine-type calcium entry blocker, had no apparent effect on neuroprotection during H/R. The order of neuroprotective potency was vitamin E > dipyridamole > carvedilol > or = amlodipine > nilvadipine. In parallel experiments, we examined whether these antihypertensive agents were more effective when combined with vitamin E and dipyridamole. The results suggested that in our in vitro model system, antioxidants were the most important agents for the reduction of oxygen-free radical damage in cortical neurons. These findings suggest that amlodipine and carvedilol, with their antioxidant properties and antihypertensive activity, would be useful to inhibit neuronal cell death in the treatment of cerebrovascular stroke and neurodegenerative diseases in hypertensive patients.


Hybrid energy storage systems (HESSs) including batteries and supercapacitors (SCs) are a trendy research topic in the electric vehicle (EV) context with the expectation of optimizing the vehicle performance and battery lifespan. Active and semi-active HESSs need to be managed by energy management strategies (EMSs), which should be realized on real-time onboard platforms. A widely used approach is the filter-based EMS thanks to its simplicity and effectiveness. However, one question that always arises with these algorithms is how to determine the appropriate constant cut-off frequency. To tackle this challenge, this paper proposed three adaptive schemes for the filtering strategies based on the SC "ability" and evaluated their performance during the vehicle operation via an intensive comparative study. Offline simulation and experimental validation using signal hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) emulation showed that the proposed adaptive filtering EMS can reduce the battery rms current considerably. Specifically, the SC-energy-based, SOC-based, and voltage-based algorithms minimized the battery rms by up to 69%, 66%, and 64%, respectively, when compared to a pure battery EV in a fluctuating driving condition such as the urban Artemis cycle.


Abstract Particles size distribution (PSD) is introduced as a tool for analysis of bentonite aggregation and swelling kinetics. Raw Ca-bentonite was purified using a combined wet sieving and sedimentation processes, followed by thermochemical treatment with Na2CO3 to increase its swelling capacity. The detailed analysis of the PSD shows a strong correlation between the PSD and the swelling process. For the chemically treated raw bentonite, PSD revealed two different peaks representing unswelled and swelled particles along with some aggregates. The swelling is shown to be a kinetically controlled process that depends on time, temperature, and bentonite chemical composition. At the beginning of the chemical treatment, the effect of aggregates was more dominant; therefore, the viscosity did not increase much with particle size. However, the combined chemical and thermal treatment has enhanced the Na-activation process and boosted bentonite swelling. The rheological measurements have shown enhancement in the viscosity and confirmed the PSD findings. The same optimal treatment conditions are obtained from both rheological measurements and PSD analysis. A model is developed based on classical reaction rate kinetics and used to describe the conversion from unswelled to swelled particles. The PSD has a strong correlation with the physical properties of the suspension such as the viscosity. The swelling rate fits a second order model with a rate constant, k, in the range 0.002 to 0.124 h−1 and an activation energy, E, of 87 kJ/mol. PSD analysis together with the developed kinetic model are powerful tools for studying the swelling kinetics of bentonites. Graphical Abstract


The installation of PV system to the power distribution system is being increased as one of solutions for environmental pollution and energy crisis. Because the output efficiency of PV system is getting decreased because of the aging phenomenon and several operation obstacles, the technology development of output prediction and state diagnosis of PV modules are required in order to improve operation performance of PV modules. The conventional methods for output prediction by considering various parameters and standard test condition values of PV modules may have difficult and complex computation procedure and also their prediction values may produce large error. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes an optimal prediction algorithm and state diagnosis algorithm of PV modules by using least square methods of linear regression analysis. In addition, this paper presents a state diagnosis evaluation system of PV modules based on the proposed optimal algorithms of PV modules. From the simulation results of proposed evaluation system, it is confirmed that the proposed algorithms is a practical tool for state diagnosis of PV modules.


When excitons are created in a dc biased quantum well (QW), exciitons are polarized and screen the field. The ultrafast nonlinear optical responses can be expected when the excitons are virtually created Iby the below-resonance pump pulse.*,2 This .is called virtual chargeinduced optical nonlinearity (VCON). The higher order effects, :such as two photon ab~o rp t ion ,~ hide this effect, thus the direct experimental evidence has not yet been observed. In this paper we examine the VCON process and the ac Stark effect under dc bias field by pump and probe technique with small detuning condition, avoiding the higher order effects. The sample used in the experiments is a GaAs single QW iin a X/2-length cavity [AIAs( 67nm)/GaAss( 12nm)/AlAs(67nm)]. The cavity is sandwiched by a pair of distributed Bragg reflectors composed of p-doped 8.5 pairs (top) and n-doped 20 pairs (bottom) of AlGaAs and AlAs X/4 layers. We use SQW, not the multiple QWs, for the following reasons. First, it is important to avoid the inhomogeneous broadening of exciton energy caused by well width fluctuation. Second, the spatial inhomogeneity of the dc electric field is also reduced. Cavity structure increases the effective optical density, which enables the sensitive detection of nonlinear signal from SQW. The output from the cw modelocked Ti: sapphire laser (pulse duration; 170 fsec, spectral width; 7.5 meV) is divided into two beams. One is used as a probe pulse. Another is spectrally filtered and used as a pump pulse. The spectrum of probe reflection from the sample is detected by optical multichannel analyzer. The pump photon energy is tuned to the microcavity resonance, which is located below the heavy hole exciton energy. Figure 1 shows the reflection change, AR, induced by pump pullse under the low dc bias field (10 kV/cm). Under the co-circularly polarized probe and pump configuration (u+a+), the blue shift of the exciton energy is . r GaAs SQW (10K) E=lOkV/cm


Aims: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of staining by coffee and In-office bleaching by 30% hydrogen peroxide on surface roughness of two different Nano Hybrid composite and Omnichroma resin-based composite. Materials and Methods: In this in vitro experimental study, 32disc samples were fabricated from each type of the Nano-Hybrid resin composite materials, each sample measured 5 mm in diameter and 2 mm in height. The samples for each composite group were then sub-divided randomly into four sub-groups (n=8). In control sub-groups, samples were stored in artificial saliva at 37°C for 1 week. Samples of Staining sub-groups were stored in a coffee solution for 48h at 37°C. Samples of Staining Bleaching sub-groups were stained in a coffee solution for 48 h at 37°C then bleached with 30% H2O2. Samples of Bleaching sub-groups were bleached with 30% H2O2. The surface roughness measurements were taken for all samples of each sub-group; the measurements for control sub-groups considered as baseline data. Non-parametric tests were used for statistical analysis at P≤0.05. Results: The surface roughness measurements of all sub-groups for both tested materials didn't exceed the critical value (Ra< 0.2 μm) with no significant difference among all sub-groups (P >0.05). Conclusion: Surface roughness of the two tested Nano-Hybrid resin composite materials were neither influenced by coffee staining nor by inoffice bleaching with 30% H2O2.


The depletion interactions of ellipsoidal colloidal particles in a solution of long polymer chains are analyzed. Of primary concern are the limiting cases in which the ellipsoid reduces to a cylinder of infinite length and finite radius and a "needle" of finite length and vanishing radius. Relations are obtained between the polymer effects induced by a needle that is much shorter than the polymer size and by a cylinder with radius much smaller than the polymer size. These imply exact quantitative results for the orientation-dependent depletion interaction between a short needle and a wall. Qualitative differences between the needle and thin disk are discussed.


Early in the American Revolution, British and American forces in New England fought to secure natural resources more than they battled each other. By extracting wool, hay, and firewood from a hinterland that barely sustained the civilian population, the Continental Congress and Massachusetts governments exercised powers that would come to shape Americans' relationship with their environment.


Background Diarrhoeal disease remains the second leading cause of death in children under five years, being associated with about 525,000 deaths every year. The most common pathogens worldwide are Shigella spp/EIEC, rotavirus, adenovirus 40/41, ST-ETEC and Cryptosporidium spp. Public health interventions rely on estimates of pathogen-specific burden for prioritisation. Sadly, comprehensive data on the aetiology of diarrhoea in children is lacking for Gabon. This study aimed to identify the spectrum of pathogens found in Lambaréné, Gabon and provide baseline data on their prevalence, needed for implementation of effective control measures. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted at Albert Schweitzer and Georges Rawiri Regional hospitals in Lambaréné from February 2017 to February 2018. A consecutive sample of children under 5 year old with diarrhoea or a history of diarrhoea within the previous three days were prospectively studied. A single stool sample was collected from each study participant and processed using commercial rapid immunoassays to detect antigens of rotavirus, adenovirus, and Cryptosporidium spp. Multiplex PCR was used for Cryptosporidium spp., Giardia lamblia and Cyclospora cayetanensis detection, and characterisation of E. coli strains. Results Out of 188 participants who provided stool samples, one or more pathogens could be detected in 34.6% of the cases. The most prevalent parasites were Giardia lamblia (14.9%), Cryptosporidium spp. (11.7%), and Cyclospora cayetanensis (2.7%). Enteric viruses also were identified in these children: 10.6% and 1.6% of rotavirus and adenovirus, respectively. Multiple pathogens were detected in 5.3% of samples. Conclusion This analysis of the causes of diarrhoea in children under 5 years of age in our setting showed three main pathogens: Giardia lamblia, Cryptosporidium spp. and rotavirus. Our study confirms major agents of acute diarrhoeal diseases in children, highlights research needs (Cryptosporidium) and supports the introduction of new tools such as the implementation of the rotavirus vaccine in the national immunisation programme.


This paper is about the colouring of greyscale images. More specifically, we address the problem of learning to colour greyscale images from a set of examples of true colour ones. We employ Genetic Programming to evolve computer programs that take as input the Lightness channel of the training images and output the Hue channel. The best programs evolved can then be used to give colour to greyscale images. Due to the computational complexity of the learning task, we use a genome compiler system, GenCo, specially suited to image processing tasks.


The spatial dimension is an important aspect in life cycle assessment (LCA). Indeed life cycle processes, and therefore also elementary flows, are most likely to be geographically scattered due to global supply chains. The environmental impacts related to an elementary flow can be different across the globe depending on the spatial variability of ecosystem sensitivity. Integrating spatial dimension seems to be a promising way to increase LCA results' reliability by reducing spatial uncertainties. LCA regionalisation refers to the integration of the spatial variability that really exists to improve result representativeness and reduce spatial uncertainties. As regionalisation requires additional effort for LCA practitioners, it is necessary to ensure the interest of such an effort and to prioritise it. This work proposes two methodologies to prioritise the regionalisation effort in LCA depending on the decision context and the type of study. They allow the selection of impacts, processes and regionalisation aspects that LCA practitioners need to focus on. The first one is a ready-to-use methodology and the second one involves more advanced tools based on spatial uncertainty analysis. The proposed methodologies are stepwise. The ready-to-use methodology involves tools that are already used by LCA practitioners and is based on impact contribution analysis. Regarding the advanced methodology, most relevant impact categories and processes to be further investigated for regionalisation are selected according to their impact contribution and their uncertainty level by using Monte Carlo simulation and regression analysis. The regionalisation effort is estimated depending on the confidence level required for the case study. The relevance and limits of each methodologies are investigated. Results underline the importance to take into account both impact and uncertainty contributions to select processes that need to be regionalised. The proposed methodologies highlight the need to focus on the goal and scope at the early stages of a study in order to clearly identify the intended audience and its requirements regarding study quality. A dialogue with the decision maker during the study would be beneficial. Those approaches can be relevant for other types of uncertainty but should be adapted.


Global maritime transportation is responsible for around 3% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and significant proportions of SOx, NOx, and PM emissions. Considering the predicted growth in shipping volumes to 2050, greenhouse gas emissions from ships must be cut by 75–85% per ton-mile to meet Paris Agreement goals. This study reviews the potential of a range of alternative fuels for decarbonisation in maritime. A systematic literature review and information synthesis method was applied to evaluate fuel characteristics, production pathways, utilization technologies, energy efficiency, lifecycle environmental performance, economic viability, and current applicable policies. Alternative fuels are essential to decarbonisation in international shipping. However, findings suggest there is no single route to deliver the required greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Emissions reductions vary widely depending on the production pathways of the fuel. Alternative fuels utilising a carbon-intensive production pathway will not provide decarbonisation, instead shifting emissions elsewhere in the supply chain. Ultimately, a system-wide perspective to creating an effective policy framework is required in order to promote the adoption of alternative propulsion technologies.


A woman (70-years) with a history of iron deficiency anemia and chronic kidney disease presented with two weeks of abdominal pain. Upper endoscopy demonstrated the gastric and duodenal mucosa was black and speckled consistent with diagnosis of pseudomelanosis. Biopsies showed pigment-laden macrophages in the lamina propria, which stained positive for iron and Masson-Fontana trichrome stain consistent with a "melanin-like" pigment. Although an uncommon endoscopic finding, this pigment has been associated with the use of certain medications, antihypertensives and iron supplements, and systemic illnesses, including hypertension, chronic kidney disease, gastric hemorrhage, and diabetes mellitus.


"This work examines the fundamentalist controversy in Texas from 1920 until 1929. Stressing the role of J. Frank Norris as the state's fundamentalist leader, it studies the manifestations of the controversy in both the religious and the secular institutions of the state. Since the movement met little organized resistance in Texas, the fundamentalists won significant victories. The study is organized topically. The first part is a general introduction to the controversy on both the state and national level. The second part portrays Norris as the leader of fundamentalist forces. The third and fourth parts examine the conflict within the Protestant denominations especially among the Baptists and Methodists and its impact upon secular institutions. "-- leaf 1


Sixty brachiopod species are reported from the Taboumakhlouf Formation (upper Eifelian) and the Bou Dib Formation (upper Eifelian to Givetian) of Jbel Issoumour, northern Maïder, Anti-Atlas, Morocco, on the basis of collections made by Volker Ebbighausen. The stratigraphy is based on reports of co-occurring trilobite assemblages. The relatively diversified fauna pre-dates the Taghanic event and is dominated in terms of diversity by atrypides and rhynchonellides (11 species each); other frequent species include Poloniproductus varians, Aulacella prisca, Tyersella tetragona, Schizophoria schnuri, Athyris ex gr. concentrica, Yeothyris? sinuata, and Thomasaria simplex. Spinatrypa ennigaldinannae Halamski and Baliński sp. nov. from the upper Eifelian is characterised by a transverse shell, typically 16– 18 mm wide with 19 –22 ribs. Prodavidsonia ebbigahuseni Halamski and Baliński sp. nov. differs from other representatives of the genus in having nearly flat shells. Eressella coronata Halamski and Baliński, nom. nov. is proposed as a replacement name for the permanently invalid Rhynchonella coronata Kayser, 1871 (non R. coronata Moore, 1861). Thomasaria simplex is documented as being a particularly variable species (costation, tongue, interarea position), so its broad taxonomic treatment is favoured. The brachiopod fauna shows distinct Rhenish affinities (numerous species in common with the Eifel and the Holy Cross Mountains) like the coeval fauna from southern Maïder, described previously. The Middle Devonian brachiopod fauna from the whole Maïder (north, described here and south, described previously) totals 87 species.


The Company Law of 1993 is important in protecting the interests of both companies and shareholders.But on stock right,it always arouses heated debate among scholars.Before the promulgation of New Company Law of 2006,varieties of theories of this issue have been formed.Through analyzing and refuting those theories,I try to clear the ambiguous definition by explaining the essence of right and comparing related right,so as to reach the conclusion that the stock right is only the changeable form of the ownership of shareholders.


Membership change has been found to stimulate collective idea generation but to not always benefit group creativity—the generation of final outcomes that are novel and useful. Based on motivated information processing theory, we propose that membership change challenges group members to generate more ideas, but that this only contributes to group creativity when members have high levels of prosocial motivation and are willing to process and integrate each other's ideas. In a laboratory study of 56 student groups, we found that incremental, but not radical, idea generation mediated the positive effect of membership change on group creativity, and only when group members were prosocially motivated. The present study points to different roles of incremental versus radical ideas and underscores the importance of accounting for prosocial motivation in groups for reaping the benefits of membership change in relation to group creativity.


Efficiently finding maximal exact matches (MEMs) between a sequence read and a database of genomes is a key first step in read alignment. But until recently, it was unknown how to build a data structure in O(r) space that supports efficient MEM finding, where r is the number of runs in the Burrows-Wheeler Transform. In 2021, Rossi et al. showed how to build a small auxiliary data structure called thresholds in addition to the r-index in O(r) space. This addition enables efficient MEM finding using the r-index. In this article, we present the tool that implements this solution, which we call MONI. Namely, we give a high-level view of the main components of the data structure and show how the source code can be downloaded, compiled, and used to find MEMs between a set of sequence reads and a set of genomes.


Purpose: This study's primary objective was to evaluate the changes in optically derived parameters acquired with a diffuse optical tomography breast imaging system (DOTBIS) in the tumor volume of patients with breast carcinoma receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). Experimental Design: In this analysis of 105 patients with stage II–III breast cancer, normalized mean values of total hemoglobin (ctTH{b_N}$), oxyhemoglobin (ct{O_2}H{b_N}$), deoxy-hemoglobin concentration (ctHH{b_N}$), water, and oxygen saturation (St{O_2}_N$) percentages were collected at different timepoints during NAC and compared with baseline measurements. This report compared changes in these optical biomarkers measured in patients who did not achieve a pathologic complete response (non-pCR) and those with a pCR. Differences regarding molecular subtypes were included for hormone receptor–positive and HER2-negative, HER2-positive, and triple-negative breast cancer. Results: At baseline, ctHH{b_N}$ was higher for pCR tumors (3.97 ± 2.29) compared with non-pCR tumors (3.00 ± 1.72; P = 0.031). At the earliest imaging point after starting therapy, the mean change of ctHH{b_N}$ compared with baseline ({\Delta _{TP1}}ctHH{b_N}$) was statistically significantly higher in non-pCR (1.23 ± 0.67) than in those with a pCR (0.87 ± 0.61; P < 0.0005), and significantly correlated to residual cancer burden classification (r = 0.448; P < 0.0005). {\Delta _{TP1}}ctHH{b_N}$ combined with HER2 status was proposed as a two-predictor logistic model, with AUC = 0.891; P < 0.0005; and 95% confidence interval, 0.812–0.969. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that DOTBIS measured features change over time according to tumor pCR status and may predict early in the NAC treatment course whether a patient is responding to NAC.


Objective: Current western medical wisdom is that suicide is always or almost always the result of mental disorder. Our objective was to explore the public record for a relationship between suicide and gambling, in the absence of mental disorder. Method: The public record was examined for examples of individuals without stated evidence of mental disorder who completed suicide in the setting of recent gambling losses. Results: We identified a 17th century opinion suggesting gambling losses could lead to suicide, and 10 individual cases (including a decorated policeman, a professional athlete and two engineers). Conclusions: This evidence strongly suggests that in the absence of evidence of mental disorder, gambling losses may lead to suicide. Please click PDF below to download the full paper...


The paper is based on a scientific article in which the authors tested the hypothesis that when the system of health insurance has ceiling and is used as the main source of financing health care, so it has regressive effect on redistribution. This statement is verified on public health insurance in the Czech Republic in 2011. This question is very current today in the Czech Republic due to a possible re-introduction of a maximum assessment base and its potential impact on redistribution. The thesis also discusses other insured persons - self-employed persons, persons without taxable income and state insured persons. In the last part is analyzed the redistributive effect of taxes and social insurance.


Initiatives in the field of local renewable energy appear to be very successful in several
countries. Because of their activities, the share of renewable energy and the involvement
of citizens and civil society organizations in energy transition have increased. Examples
form Denmark are well known, but also in other countries such as UK, Germany,
Austria, Japan and USA these types of initiatives exist. They also lay the foundation for
innovation: changes in the organization of supply, social cohesion and new technologies.