Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) are among the most common rheumatic diseases. These chronic progressive inflammatory diseases lead to a reduction in physical fitness and increase in joint degeneration. Although very closely related, their symptomatology and etiology are different. In the past, AS was often diagnosed inaccurately as RA, but the two have recently been recognized as separate, distinct clinical entities. The latter has been attributed to advancing diagnostic and laboratory techniques able to differentiate the two conditions. That being said, the diagnostic differentiation still remains a challenging task for clinicians.Both RA and AS can be similarly characterized by the presenting symptoms, radiographic characteristics, and serological testing. However, RA and AS have widely different characteristics with respect to each one's pathophysiology and underlying genetic parameters. This makes the probability of a patient having both conditions rather low. Considering that the two have some similar clinical manifestation such as changes on radiography or peripheral/morning stiffness, however, the diagnosis can be a challenge, and more tests may be required to establish the correct etiology. Furthermore, authors have reported cases of coexisting AS and RA since 1976.


We report three cases of advanced gastric cancer successfully treated by combination therapy of S-1 and docetaxel (DOC). We administered S-1 orally at 80 mg/m² on days 1 to 7 and days 15 to 21, and DOC intravenously at 40 mg/m² on day 1 and 15, and evaluation was conducted every two courses. Case 1: A 73-year-old man with gastric cancer of cT4a, accompanied with bulky N2 lymph node metastasis, was treated with two courses of S-1 and DOC. Partial response was confirmed, followed by total gastrectomy, which revealed his histological grade to be 1b. Case 2: A 65-year-old man with gastric cancer of cT4a, accompanied with bulky lymph node metastasis, was treated with two courses of S-1 and DOC. Partial response was confirmed, followed by distal gastrectomy, which revealed his histological grade to be 1b. Case 3: A 76-year-old woman with gastric cancer of cT4b (panc), was treated with four courses of S-1 and DOC. After that, the main tumor was judged to be cT4a, followed by total gastrectomy, which revealed her histological grade to be 1b. Combined S-1 and DOC chemotherapy is an effective regimen for the treatment of unresectable gastric cancer.


The objective of this study is to analyze the determinants of private agricultural R&D investment in the United States and the liaison between public and private R&D sectors. The empirical analysis employs U.S. agricultural data for the 1970-1996 period. The results show that federal R&D obligations for basic research, used as a proxy for the complementary role of public R&D, have a significant and positive impact on private agricultural R&D spending. In contrast, federal R&D obligations for applied research, used as a proxy for the substitute role of public R&D, are not found to have a significant impact.


It is now established that iron (Fe) availability controls phytoplankton productivity and community structure in ca. 50% of the Pacific Ocean's surface waters and that heterotrophic bacterio- plankton may also be either directly or indirectly Fe-limited. Proxy indicators of Fe-stress are avail- able for the phototrophic community (e.g. ferredoxin/flavodoxin ratios) but are lacking for the hetero- trophic bacterioplankton. While current analytical tools provide valuable information with regard to micronutrient chemistry and speciation, they do not provide insight into the relative bioavailability of different Fe sources. We present the results of a field trial in an oceanic system of a tool that allows for the assessment of Fe bioavailability in natural systems: the Fe-responsive bioluminescent hetero- trophic bacterial reporter. Fe bioavailability was monitored with this tool at the scale of the Eastern Pacific Basin during the mature phase of the El Nino event of 2002. The results demonstrate signifi- cant spatial variance, highlighted by regions of decreased Fe availability at equatorial stations along the transect. Using this tool in combination with radiotracer studies of bacterial growth and commu- nity Fe uptake, we provide insight into system Fe chemistry and the status of the heterotrophic bac- terial community. Our results indicate that different environments with similar concentrations of total Fe can demonstrate different Fe bioavailabilities. Moreover, the small particulate size fraction (0.2 to 0.8 µm) appears to buffer artificially induced variations in Fe bioavailability, implying that studies of Fe bioavailability need to be extended beyond those in the dissolved (<0.2 µm) size class.


This paper is a state of the art review of the use of geopolymer cement for road applications. Geopolymer cement is an alternative to Portland cement and is either naturally occurring rock-based or industrial by-product-based. Geopolymer cement has been around for at least the last 30 years. In recent years it has become an attractive potential alternative to Portland cement. The main reason for this renewed interest is the issue relating to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the manufacture of Portland cement. It is estimated that 1 tonne of Portland cement produces approximately 1 tonne of CO2 during its manufacture. The use of geopolymer cement can reduce this amount by as much as 90%. It is claimed that this will have a huge potential in reducing national targets in CO2 emissions of many countries around the world. This state of the art review critically evaluates existing literature relating to these claims and focuses on the potential use of geopolymer concrete for road applications. In addition to environmental benefits, the existing literature suggests that geopolymer cement concrete has the potential to provide better mechanical properties than Portland cement concrete. Attractive properties include quicker compressive strength development, higher compressive and flexural strength, minimal shrinkage and resistance to chemical-attack and freeze-thaw cycles. The review will consider the different types of geopolymer cement, its properties and whether it can be used in road applications.


Complex adaptive agents develop strategies in the presence of competition. In modern human societies, there is an inherent sense of locality when describing inter-agent dynamics because of its network structure. One then wonders whether the traditional advertising schemes that are globally publicized and target random individuals are as effective in attracting a larger portion of the population as those that take advantage of local neighborhoods, such as "word-of-mouth" marketing schemes. Here, we demonstrate using a differential equation model that schemes targeting local cliques within the network are more successful at gaining a larger share of the population than those that target users randomly at a global scale (e.g., television commercials, print ads, etc.). This suggests that success in the competition is dependent not only on the number of individuals in the population but also on how they are connected in the network. We further show that the model is general in nature by considering examples of competition dynamics, particularly those of business competition and language death.


Over the years, Canada, like most other coastal nations, has developed an intricate set of policies and regulatory instruments focused on the management of traditional sectoral uses of the oceans. A decade ago, the necessary steps were taken to modernise the way in which Canadian authorities manage ocean-based activities. Canada did not set out to design "one" comprehensive, all inclusive oceans policy. The primary approach taken was to identify, through Canada's Oceans Act, one federal lead authority responsible for the coordination and harmonisation of existing policy and statutory instruments and to formulate a national vision and guiding principles for oceans management within which existing and emerging policies and laws would be interpreted and implemented.This chapter outlines Canada's statutory and policy instruments and implementation approach to oceans management. The political and environmental context within which a new management approach was developed will be described as well as the processes which led to the development of the Oceans Act, its policy framework, Canada's Oceans Strategy and finally, the Government of Canada's blueprint for action, Canada's Oceans Action Plan. The relationship between key ocean-related agreements and Canadian domestic law and practice is summarised. In closing, lessons learned during the past decade will be examined, as will the challenges which lie ahead.


Abstract Information retrieval (IR) aims at retrieving documents that are most relevant to a query provided by a user. Traditional techniques rely mostly on syntactic methods. In some cases, however, links at a deeper semantic level must be considered. In this paper, we explore a type of IR task in which documents describe sequences of events, and queries are about the state of the world after such events. In this context, successfully matching documents and query requires considering the events' possibly implicit uncertain effects and side effects. We begin by analyzing the problem, then propose an action language-based formalization, and finally automate the corresponding IR task using answer set programming.


This paper is concerned with a predator-prey system with Beddington-DeAngelis functional response on time scales. By using the theory of exponential dichotomy on
time scales and fixed point theory based on monotone operator, some simple conditions are obtained for the existence of at least one positive (almost) periodic solution of the
above system. Further, by means of Lyapunov functional, the global attractivity of the almost periodic solution for the above continuous system is also investigated. The main
results in this paper extend, complement, and improve the previously known result. And some examples are given to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the main results.


The operation of finding the limit of an infinite series has been one of the most fruitful operations of all mathematics. While this is not a group operation the theory of continuous transformation groups inaugurated by S. Lie has thrown much new light on this operation. The assumption that only two elements are combined at a time applies to continuous groups as well as to those which are discontinuous. Some opera.tions relating to groups of infinite order have been called group operations by some writers while others have regarded them as non-group operations. An instance of this kind is the totality of the natural numbers when these numbers are combined by multiplication. This is not a group according to the postulates noted above but it has been regarded as a group by many authors including L. Berzolari in the recent encyclopedia noted above, page 43.


Within two years 51 infections caused by Yersinia enterocolitica were diagnosed by bacteriological and (or) serological tests (Yersinia enterocolitica Serovar 03 in 48, Serovar 09 in two and Serovar 04 in one). The latter was isolated from the discharge of a badly healing superinfected wound. In the other 50 there was feverish enteritis, in 12 with arthritic complaints. Of the latter 12 nine had the antigen HLA-B27. This investigation demonstrated a slight increase in cases during the cold months. Men were more frequently affected than women and 38 were older than 16 years. In-vitro sensitivity of the isolated Yersinia strains against various chemotherapeutic agents was also tested.


Recent spectrophotometric and molecular dynamics simulation studies have shown that the physicochemical properties and structures of water in the vicinity of hydrophobic surfaces differ from those of the bulk water. However, the interfacial water acting as a separation medium on hydrophobic surfaces has never been detected and quantified experimentally. In this study, we show that small inorganic ions and organic molecules differentiate the interfacial water formed on the surfaces of octadecyl-bonded (C(18)) silica particles from the bulk water and the chemical separation of these solutes in aqueous media with hydrophobic materials can be interpreted with a consistent mechanism, partition between the bulk water phase and the interfacial water formed on the hydrophobic surface. Thermal transition behaviour of the interfacial water incorporated in the nanopores of the C(18) silica materials and the solubility parameter of the water calculated from the distribution coefficients of organic compounds have indicated that the interfacial water may have a structure of disrupted hydrogen bonding. The thickness of the interfacial water or the limit of distance from the hydrophobic surface at which molecules and ions can sense the surface was estimated to be 1.25 ± 0.13 nm from the volume of the interfacial water obtained by a liquid chromatographic method and the surface area, suggesting that the hydrophobic effect may extend beyond the first solvation shell of water molecules directly surrounding the surfaces.


People's life pass to create an identity, and around it with seeking for establishing stable partnerships. Culture, identity, and state building are intertwined processes, rising on common pains and joys. Culture or collective memory is the foundation of the identity, identity is the base of the nation. To protect cultural values is as important as to improve, and to change providing the continuity. Events such as the infestation, and the influx of population beside the internal dynamics plays a definite role for the development of culture. During the long journey on history from the Altai to the Mediterranean, The Turks have faced numerous religious, and ethnic culture. The dynamic structure that was based on continual to develop and to change has been one of the main factors, carrying them to the great states and empires. At the present time, on one hand the Turks works with the pain of the cultural changing, on the other hand they struggle with important problems such as unhealthy urbanization, identity problems, values crisis, cultural erosion, terrorism, brought of the age in XXth century. Beside these developments which caused great shock in the cultural and social life, interculturality, industrialization of culture, clash of civilization take places on the agenda. In our study, it will be tried as critically read the cultural horizons of the Turkish World on the beginning of XXIth century, in terms of threats and opportunities in the context of historical experience, and the identity search


The studies presented enable to evaluate the survival rate of the protozoa in contact with the studied polymers (foils: with polyethylene PE, polyvinyl chloride P-25, P-47, polyester E1 and irradiated collagen L7). It can also be established whether the change of certain morphodynamic parameters could be used to evaluate biological usefulness of plastics. Stereometric method and factor analysis were used in the studies. On the basis of the obtained data polyvinyl chloride P-47 was well assessed, while irradiated collagen L7 showed most negative features.


Bacteriophages may be formulated into semi‐solid bases for therapeutic delivery. This work investigated the effects of a range of preservatives on the viability of Myoviridae and Siphoviridae bacteriophages when these were formulated into a standard semi‐solid cream base. The six preservatives tested included: benzoic acid (0·1%), chlorocresol (0·1%), combination hydroxybenzoates (propyl 4‐hydroxybenzoates with methyl 4‐hydroxybenzoates) (0·1%), methyl 4‐hydroxybenzoate (0·08%), 2‐phenoxyethanol (1%) and propyl 4‐hydroxybenzoate (0·02%). These were each formulated into cetomacrogol cream aqueous to generate six individual semi‐solid bases into which Myoviridae and Siphoviridae bacteriophages were added and tested for stability. Optimal bacteriophage stability was seen when the preservative chlorocresol was used. Bacteriophage in the acidic benzoic acid were the least stable, resulting in complete loss of viability after 4–5 weeks. Of the bacteriophages tested, the Myoviridae KOX1 was significantly more stable than the Siphoviridae PAC1 after 91 days in formulations with each of the preservatives. Our results suggest the need for individual testing of specific bacteriophages in pharmaceutical formulations, as their efficacy when exposed to preservatives and excipients in these delivery forms may vary.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of culture and audit quality on managers' decisions regarding accounting accruals. It focuses on companies experiencing excessive free cash flow, as these companies have been associated with an agency problem.

Design/methodology/approach

This study measures the magnitude of discretionary accruals as a proxy for earnings management using the cross-sectional modified Jones model. Excessive free cash flow is scrutinized by the method used by Chung et al. (2005). Listed companies in nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region are represented in this study. The statistical analyses are used to examine the influence of cultural aspect, the role of external monitoring by high-quality auditors and the earnings management practice in the companies with excessive free-cash-flow.

Findings

The empirical results presented in this paper provide support for the proposition that managers of companies with excessive free-cash-flow will make investment decisions that are not always in the best interest of the shareholders and use accounting discretion to increase reported earnings. This study provides empirical evidence that these companies have been associated with an agency problem and the role of external auditor persists in a setting, where cultural differences prevail in across countries.

Practical implications

In cross-border trade and investment, the findings provide the opportunity to exploit a setting, where cultural differences prevail, whereas other potentially influential variables, including the role of external monitoring by high-quality auditors, are relatively constant across countries.

Originality/value

Previous studies (Leuz et al., 2003; and Enomoto et al., 2015) examine factors influencing earnings management internationally have concentrated on legal institutions and investor protection. Han et al. (2010) completed a cross-country study on the effects of national culture on earnings management. This study focuses on companies across countries experiencing with excessive free cash flow and examines the cultural aspect and the effectiveness of external monitoring by high-quality auditors operating in different countries in mitigating managerial opportunism.


Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are characterized by aberrant regional neural activity and disrupted inter-regional functional connectivity (FC). It is, however, poorly understood how changes in regional neural activity and inter-regional FC interact in AD and MCI. Here, we investigated the link between regional neural activity and nodal topological measures of FC through simultaneous PET/MR measurement in 20 patients with MCI, 33 patients with AD, and 26 healthy individuals. First, we assessed regional glucose metabolism identified through FDG-PET (rFDG) (as a proxy of regional neural activity), and regional FC topology through clustering coefficient (CC) and degree centrality (DC) (as surrogates of local segregation and global connectivity, respectively). Next, we examined the potential moderating effect of disease status (AD or MCI) on the link between rFDG and FC topology using hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis. Alterations in rFDG, CC, and DC were widespread in patients, and AD alters physiological coupling between regional metabolism and functional connectivity particularly in the inferior temporal gyus and supplementary motor areas. While rFDG correlated with CC in healthy subjects, this correlation was lost in AD patients. We suggest that AD pathology decouples the normal association between regional neural activity and functional segregation.


Performing risk assessment of computer networks is inevitable in the process of network hardening. To do efficient attack prevention, risk evaluation must be done in an accurate and quantitative manner. Such risk assessment requires thorough understanding of attack's causes or vulnerabilities and their related characteristics. But one major problem is that, there are vulnerabilities that are known by attackers but there is no information about them in databases like NVD (National Vulnerability Database). Such vulnerabilities are referred to as unknown or zero day attacks. Existing standards like NVD ignore the effect of unknown attacks in risk assessment of computer networks. In this paper, by defining some attack graph based security metrics, we proposed an innovative method for risk evaluation of multi-step Zero-Day Attacks. Proposed method by predicting the intrinsic features of Zero-Day attacks makes their risk estimation possible. Considering the effect of Temporal features of vulnerabilities have made our approach a Dynamic Risk Estimator


Metal nanoparticle modified boron-doped diamond (BDD) electrodes have been used in the electroanalysis of a number of inorganic and organic analytes. This simple surface modification has enhanced the sensitivity and analytical ability of BDD effectively and consistently, as reported in a number of publications overviewed herein. In this review, a number of metal nanoparticle systems that have utilized BDD electrodes will be discussed. The low capacitance of BDD makes it an ideal substrate for sensitive dynamic electroanalytical experiments. The metal nanoparticle modification of BDD offers a simple yet effective approach to enhancing the electroanalytical ability of the electrode material.


Samples of Cr(CO)4(bpy) (bpy = 2,2′-bipyridine) with natural abundance of 13CO and with 16 and 79% 13CO enrichment, respectively, were reduced to the corresponding radical anion, [Cr(CO)4(bpy)]˙– and studied by EPR and IR spectroscopies. Electron paramagnetic resonance showed a considerable coupling of the unpaired electron with 13C(CO) of 0.601 mT which occurs to the 13CO ligands bound in axial positions, i.e. cis to bpy. It indicates an interaction between the singly occupied π* orbital of the bpy˙– ligand and the σ and/or σ* orbitals of the axial C–Cr–C bonds. Coupling to the 53Cr nucleus is rather small, 0.128 mT. Infrared spectra in the ν(CO) region were used to calculate the CO stretching and interaction force constants within the energy factored CO force field approximation. The stretching force constants of the equatorial and axial CO ligands were found to decrease by 68 and 21 N m–1, respectively, on going from Cr(CO)4(bpy) to [Cr(CO)4(bpy)]˙–. It follows that the reduction strengthens significantly the π-back donation to the equatorial (trans to bpy) CO ligands.


Optic nerve hypoplasia, having once been regarded as exceedingly rare, is now regarded as one of the major causes of visual loss in infancy. Recognition of subtle forms and segmental forms of optic nerve hypoplasia are important in explaining the evaluation of subnormal vision, and have an added significance in the recognised associations of central nervous system anomalies including abnormalities of the endocrine system. These changing clinical perspectives are reviewed, together with a discussion of the pathogenesis of optic nerve hypoplasia in the light of cell death and nerve fibre degeneration seen in normal development of the neural visual system.


The research aimed to find out how far accreditation and quality assurance standards in Azal University for human development are implemented from the perspective of faculty members. To achieve this objective, to the researchers adopted descriptive analytical approach techniques. The research population was all the teaching staff at the university; and the sample consisted of (94) faculty members, (48.45 %) of the total number of the population. A questionnaire was designed to collect data relevant to the testing of the research objectives. The questionnaire consisted of two parts: the first included the personal data, while the second part included the standards of accreditation and quality assurance. The study revealed the following results:

The mean of implementing standards as a whole was (3.44), the standard deviation (0.76), and the extent of the using the standards was (high).
There were no significant differences between the research participants' responses about the extent of using the standards due to the variables (gender – Qualification – college type – years of teaching experience).

In light of the results of the study, a set of recommendations were presented, including the need to provide the necessary requirements for implementing accreditation and quality assurance standards, whether material, human or financial resources, and creating a positive conducive learning environment to be suitable and ready for a complete implementation of quality standards.
One of the main suggestions made by the research was to conduct a similar study on government and private universities and community colleges in Yemen.
Keywords: Quality Assurance and accreditation; Azal University of Human Development.


A stage hypothesis for information centers (ICs) is proposed and 26 critical success factors (CSFs) for IC managements are investigated. Based on 311 responses from IC managers, support is found for the proposed stages and information is provided about the importance of the CSFs. A principal components analysis is performed on the 26 CSFs which identifies five composite CSFs: (1) commitment to the IC concept; (2) quality of IC support services; (3) facilitation of end-user computing; (4) role clarity; and (5) coordination of end-user computing. Statistical tests show that the importance of these composite CSFs tend to vary among themselves but is relatively constant individually across the IC stages.


IN THE EFFORT to find the early changes in otosclerosis and to view otosclerosis as a manifestation of generalized disease, attention has been focused, since the beginning of this century, on well-known bony dystrophies, such as osteitis fibrosa or Recklinghausen's disease, osteitis deformans or Paget's disease, and osteogenesis imperfecta. Clinically and etiologically these diseases differ, but histologically they are similar in many respects. 1 The bony labyrinthine capsule differs histologically from other bones of the skeleton. It is well-known that the bony labyrinthine capsule is preformed of cartilage (endochondral ossification). In the normal process of ossification, cartilaginous tissue is replaced entirely by bony tissue, but in the endochondral layer of the labyrinthine capsule islets of hyaline cartilage will persist. Thus, the ossification may be said to have been arrested at too early a stage. In cases of incipient otosclerosis histological examination reveals osteoclastic destruction of the bony tissue in the


Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) occurs mostly in individuals with cirrhosis, which is why the guidelines of the most important scientific societies indicate that these patients are included in surveillance programs through the repetition of an ultrasound examination every 6 months. The aim is to achieve early identification of the neoplasia in order to increase the possibility of curative therapies (liver transplantation, surgery or local ablative therapies) and to increase patient survival. HCC nodules arising in cirrhotic livers show characteristic angiographic behavior that can be evaluated with dynamic multidetector computed tomography and dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, the use of these techniques in real life is often hindered by the lack of uniform terminology in reporting and in the interpretation of the exams reflected in the impossibility of comparing examinations performed in different centers and/or at different times. Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System® was created to standardize reporting and data collection of computed tomography and MRI for HCC. In some cases HCC arises in patients with healthy livers and, although there is evidence that angiographic behavior is not different from cirrhotic patients in this clinical situation, the guidelines still indicate the execution of a biopsy. Frequent use of palliative therapeutic techniques such as transarterial chemoembolization, transarterial radioembolization or administration of antiangiogenic drugs (sorafenib) poses problems of interpretation of the therapeutic response with repercussions on the subsequent choices that have been attempted to resolve with the use of stringent criteria such as Modified Response Evaluation Criteria In Solid Tumors.


The fundamental idea behind the three-dimensional display is to present the user with a perspective image which changes as he moves. The retinal image of the real objects which we see is, after all, only two-dimensional. Thus if we can place suitable two-dimensional images on the observer's retinas, we can create the illusion that he is seeing a three-dimensional object. Although stereo presentation is important to the three-dimensional illusion, it is less important than the change that takes place in the image when the observer moves his head. The image presented by the three-dimensional display must change in exactly the way that the image of a real object would change for similar motions of the user's head. Psychologists have long known that moving perspective images appear strikingly three-dimensional even without stereo presentation; the three-dimensional display described in this paper depends heavily on this "kinetic depth effect."


Background: Underrepresentation of students from low-income families at the Institute of Medicine in Maharajgunj (IOM) has been generally assumed. This study aims to assess the financial status of medical students at IOM to test the accuracy of that assumption. Methods: The study was conducted among 24th and 25th batch of students of IOM using pre-formed questionnaire. Results: The majority of students studying in IOM thought they have average to strong financial status and they felt little to no financial stress. Conclusion: Students from low income families are underrepresented in IOM. Keywords: Financial status, medical students The full text of this paper is available at Journal of Institute of Medicine website


Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 45, 2004

1459

Introduction: Hypoxia is a feature of many solid tumors and known to be associated with increased probability of metastatic tumor progression and adverse effect on patient survival. To examine the role of acute hypoxia induced oxidative stress in tumor progression we used two transgenic mouse models, one with mouse mammary tumour virus (MMTV) promoter-driven Neu proto-oncogene and the other with MMTV-driven polyoma virus middle T antigen (PyMT), both of which develop spontaneous, lung-metastasizing mammary tumours. Methods: Mice were treated with a previously established acute hypoxia protocol where treatment animals are sealed in a chamber flushed with 7% O2/balance N2 for 10 min, followed by flushing with air for 10 min; this cycle is repeated 12 times. The chamber of the control animals is continuously flushed with air for 4 hr. With the MMTV-Neu mice, this treatment was carried out (daily, 5x/wk, for 6 wks) during mammary epithelial duct development (from 4 to 10 wks-of-age), prior to tumour development. The MMTV-PyMT mice were treated similarly, during tumourigenesis, from 3 to 9 wks-of-age and sacrificed at the age of 88 d. In separate experiments these mice were treated with a mutagenic lipid peroxidation end product, malondialdehyde (MDA) in their drinking water from 4 to 10 wks-of age or with intraperitoneal injections (daily, 5x/wk) of a base excision repair (BER) inhibitor, methoxyamine (MT) from 5 to 11 wks-of age and sacrificed at the age of 81 d. Results: In the MMTV-Neu mice tumour development was observed between the ages of 120-325 days and this did not differ between the hypoxia and control groups. However, hypoxia-treated animals developed a greater lung metastasis burden at the microscopic level (median: 345 vs 155 arbitrary units) and a greater fraction of them developed macroscopic metastases (30 vs 17%) than the control animals. A lipid peroxidation assay on the plasma of MMTV-PyMT mice demonstrated an increase in thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS, a measure of oxidative stress) and reduced tumour growth in the acute hypoxia treated mice relative to the control animals. However, MDA treated MMTV-PyMT mice showed an increase in the number of micro- (median: 87 vs 42) and macroscopic lung metastases (median: 8 vs 2) relative to untreated mice. Treatment of the MMTV-PyMT model with methoxyamine resulted in a reduction of the median number of microscopic lung metastases from 21 to 8. Conclusions: The current results suggest a metastasis-promoting role for acute hypoxia in breast cancer. Contrary to our initial hypothesis this does not appear to be mediated through direct induction of oxidative lesions in DNA, since impairment of the BER pathway results in inhibition of metastatic tumour progression, but rather by the induction of lipid peroxidation products such as MDA. Future studies are in progress to examine HPLC-mediated analysis of mutagenic DNA lesions, such as 8-oxo-dG, in hypoxia-, MDA- and MT-treated animals.


Abstract:The human security situation in North Korea is generally poor, with food security being a primary issue, resulting in a large number of migrants from the country. For those migrants who enter China, food security is somewhat improved, although at the cost of overall insecurity in one's everyday life. For those who enter South Korea, many problems are relieved, though new problems arise. Various agencies have implemented often-conflicting plans based around the central discourse of "human rights" to address the issue of North Korean migrants. However, the concept of human security seems equally appropriate. If the many stakeholders and agents involved share the responsibility for the larger purpose of building cooperative governance, placing importance on the North Korean migrants themselves for the ultimate goal of understanding the threat and suffering they have experienced, it will allow for a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of the issue, and improve North Korean migrants' human security in a more substantial and meaningful way.


Biogeographic nodes can be characterized as sites of biological endemism, high diversity, distribution boundaries, anomalous absences, disjunct populations, taxonomic incongruence, parallelism and altitudinal anomalies. Their interpretation has depended on the evolutionary model used, in particular the mode of speciation: Croizat's vicariance or Mayr's 'peripatric' or 'founder dispersal' (=Darwin's 'chance dispersal', Hennig's 'speciation by colonization'). All authors agree that the first process, together with movement of individual organisms and diaspores, occurs, but the second is much more controversial, with panbiogeographers and many geneticists denying its importance. Although nodes have often been interpreted as centres of origin – as in refugium theory – this is not accepted here as it fails to account for their constituting both centres and margins of distribution as well as zones of absence. Instead they are interpreted as sites of vicariance related to different kinds of tectonic activity which have been shown to occur in the same locality, such as terrane accretion, subduction, regional metamorphism, granitization, volcanism, faulting, folding, uplift, subsidence and regression of epicontinental seas. It is concluded that the identification of nodes is a more productive approach to biogeographic analysis than dividing a study area into 'biogeographic regions', which are usually based firmly on current geography and represent geological and biogeographic composites.


In vivo confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) is a modern non‐invasive method for investigation of the skin that allows real‐time visualization of individual cells and subcellular structures with the highest resolution imaging comparable to the routine histopathology. Our aim was to demonstrate the potential of CLSM for non‐invasive diagnosis of difficult tinea incognito cases.


Restorative justice defines a social movement of the past three decades. First I argue for a positive evidencebased vision of restorative justice. Then I problematize that vision. Restorative justice has scrambled the eggs of criminal justice to create a new omelet that some say is clearly defined, that consistently accomplishes modest statistically significant reductions of reoffending across large enough data sets, that is highly costeffective, and that is emotionally intelligent justice (Sherman, 2003). Restorative justice is relational justice that conduces to emotional intelligence in how it serves the needs of victims in particular (Strang, 2002), but also offenders, their families, and their communities (Braithwaite, 2002). Restorative justice is also perceptually much fairer than conventional justice for all kinds of participants in justice processes and this contributes to effectiveness (Tyler, Sherman, Strang, Barnes, & Woods, 2007). One argument goes that all of this is true because restorative justice is a more evidencebased design with a more coherent theoretical foundation than alternatives. This also means that with strong standardsetting and training, the better restorative justice programs can deliver much more in all these ways than quick and dirty restorative justice by poorly trained people, of which there is a lot. Effectsizes for restorative justice do improve more strongly than for other interventions when more hours of preparation and more restorative components are invested in them (Lipsey, 2009, pp. 141–142).


A quantitative understanding of changes in water resources is crucial for local governments to enable timely decision-making to maintain water security. Here, we quantified natural-and human-induced influences on the terrestrial water storage change (TWSC) in Sichuan, Southwest China, with intensive water consumption and climate variability, based on the data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its Follow-on (GRACE-FO) during 2003–2020. We combined the TWSC estimates derived from six GRACE/GRACE-FO solutions based on the uncertainties of each solution estimated from the generalized three-cornered hat method. Metrics of correlation coefficient and contribution rate (CR) were used to evaluate the influence of precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff, reservoir storage, and total water consumption on TWSC in the entire region and its five economic regions. The results showed that a significant improvement in the fused TWSC was found compared to those derived from a single model. The increase in regional water storage with a rate of 3.83 ± 0.54 mm/a was more influenced by natural factors (CR was 53.17%) compared to human influence (CR was 46.83%). Among the factors, the contribution of reservoir storage was the largest (CR was 42.32%) due to the rapid increase in hydropower stations, followed by precipitation (CR was 35.16%), evapotranspiration (CR was 15.86%), total water consumption (CR was 4.51%), and runoff (CR was 2.15%). Among the five economic regions, natural influence on Chengdu Plain was the highest (CR was 48.21%), while human influence in Northwest Sichuan was the largest (CR was 61.37%). The highest CR of reservoir storage to TWSC was in Northwest Sichuan (61.11%), while the highest CRs of precipitation (35.16%) and evapotranspiration (15.86%) were both in PanXi region. The results suggest that TWSC in Sichuan is affected by natural factors and intense human activities, in particular, the effect of reservoir storage on TWSC is very significant. Our study results can provide beneficial help for the management and assessment of regional water resources.


Semantic Business Process Management is a recent and promising research area devoted to extending the results from Semantic Web Services -- i.e., the application of ontology-based modelling and reasoning to Web Services -- to Business Process Management, which is these days often realised using Service-Oriented Architectures. One important task for Semantic Business Process Management is the addition of corresponding semantic annotations to the business-oriented view on processes. Since, however, the Semantic Web approach, realised using ontologies, is not simply to represent conceptualisations in the style of a data model, but to embody relationships and inferences over such conceptualisations, an equally important task to realise Semantic Business Process Management is hence to relate business-oriented and IT/service-oriented views of processes ontologically.  Previous work has shown how an ontology language rich enough to encode rules can provide a relationship between an abstract ontology for business processes and a low-level ontological representation of process behaviour providing behavioural semantics for these business processes. In this paper we show how business-oriented and execution-oriented ontological representations of business processes can similarly be related.


Approximate equations for steady-state space-charge-limited current-voltage dependences in one-dimensional insulators are derived. It is demonstrated that-contrary to the situation in three-dimensional systems-the trap-filled limit should be observed as a decrease of the power in a j varies as Vn dependence.


OBJECTIVE
We followed a cohort (N = 306) of infants at well-baby visits in two suburban pediatric practices to assess the relation of exclusive breastfeeding, and other environmental exposures, to episodes of acute otitis media (AOM) and otitis media with effusion (OME).

METHODS
Detailed prospective information about the exclusiveness of breastfeeding, parental smoking, day care attendance, and family history was obtained at scheduled clinic visits. Tympanometric and otoscopic examinations were used in the diagnosis of otitis media (OM). Nasopharyngeal cultures were performed at 1-6 months, and at 8, 10, 12, 15, 18, and 24 months of age to detect colonization with middle-ear pathogens.

RESULTS
Between 6 and 12 months of age, cumulative incidence of first OM episodes increased from 25% to 51% in infants exclusively breastfed and from 54% to 76% in infants formula-fed from birth. Peak incidence of AOM and OME episodes was inversely related to rates of breastfeeding beyond 3 months of age. A twofold elevated risk of first episodes of AOM or OME was observed in exclusively formula-fed infants compared with infants exclusively breast-fed for 6 months. In the logistic regression analysis, formula-feeding was the most significant predictor of AOM and OME episodes, although age at colonization with middle-ear pathogens and day care (outside the home) were significant competing risk factors. A hazard health model suggested additionally that breastfeeding, even for short durations (3 months), reduced onset of OM episodes in infancy.

CONCLUSIONS
Modifiable factors in the onset of AOM and OME episodes during the first 2 years of life include early age at colonization (</=3 months of age), day care outside the home, and not being breastfed.


Tor is a popular network for anonymous communication. The usage and operation of Tor is not well-understood, however, because its privacy goals make common measurement approaches ineffective or risky. We present PrivCount, a system for measuring the Tor network designed with user privacy as a primary goal. PrivCount securely aggregates measurements across Tor relays and over time to produce differentially private outputs. PrivCount improves on prior approaches by enabling flexible exploration of many diverse kinds of Tor measurements while maintaining accuracy and privacy for each. We use PrivCount to perform a measurement study of Tor of sufficient breadth and depth to inform accurate models of Tor users and traffic. Our results indicate that Tor has 710,000 users connected but only 550,000 active at a given time, that Web traffic now constitutes 91% of data bytes on Tor, and that the strictness of relays' connection policies significantly affects the type of application data they forward.


The differing dynamics of the inflations of the services and goods sectors has been of major concern in Turkey. The persistence of the services sector inflation during disinflation periods hampered the efforts of the Central Bank of Turkey of hitting inflation targets in a country with long-lasting high inflation experience. In search of a possible long-run relationship between the services and goods sectors' inflations, this paper employs a method based on periodograms of the series in addition to time series tools. A periodogram-based test has pros over conventional tests; this test is model-free, seasonally robust and mean invariant. Empirical findings obtained from the methods employed in this study, Engle-Granger's and Johansen's conventional long-run time series tools as well as periodogram based test, suggest that services and goods sector inflations in Turkey are not cointegrated.


Cognitive training has been shown to increase neural plasticity and cognitive reserve, potentially reducing the risk of developing dementia. Music learning, specifically piano playing, has been shown to be an effective form of multimodal cognitive training. This pilot study explored the feasibility and efficacy of using a socially assistive robot to provide a piano learning cognitive training intervention to older adults with mild cognitive impairment. Participants (N=11) engaged in a four-week feasibility study, which included a one-hour piano lesson per week led by a remotely controlled robot. Participants experienced improved cognitive function in the verbal memory (p=0.04), executive function (p=0.01), reaction time (p=0.04), and cognitive flexibility (p=0.003) domains, as well as in the calculated neurocognitive index score (p=0.03). Socially assistive robots may have the potential to provide cognitive training in the form of piano lessons for older adults with mild cognitive impairment, especially adults who cannot access traditional services.


This paper on Nepali bio-char stove is a genuine effort to make the cooking practice in Nepal cleaner, efficient and cost effective. The main aim of the project was to develop a bio-char yielding gasifier stove so that not only user is benefited by clean, efficient and cost effective cooking also benefited by the by product of stove famously called bio-char which is reported to be a fertilizer. So, to meet the above two objectives, the stove was designed. The thermal efficiency of the stove was recorded to be 34%. The total cost of fabrication is NRs. 2500. NPV is positive, payback period is 6 months and 1 day and IRR is found to be 190%.The calorific value of charcoal obtained from the stove is found to be 6363 kcal/kg. The design, test results and analysis are presented in this paper. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jie.v10i1.10875 Journal of the Institute of Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2014, pp. 25–33


With the increasing air traffic and growth of deployed FAA equipment, high equipment availability and low outage time is also becoming more important. While the use of simulation models and simple queuing models for assessing the impact of staffing on availability has been available for more than 5 decades, it has not been widely used because of the cost and complexity of implementation. This paper presents an analytical model and software tool that can be used by non-experts to relate FAA maintenance resources including staffing, training, shift allocation, and geographical deployment to National Airspace System (NAS) facility and service downtime and availability. The analytical methodology and tool presented in this paper make it possible for any user to rapidly assess how changes in staffing, training. equipment count, and reliability will impact outage time, availability, maintenance backlog and technician utilization. It allows users to easily perform parametric studies on a variety of "what if" scenarios related to economics and capacity. The most significant benefit is that these results can now be made available to analysts and decision makers. The net result will be more informed decisions to account for the impact of maintenance resources on NAS capacity and overall economics.


Data presented in previous reports suggest that in rat liver mitochondria a "bi-trans-membrane" electron transport pathway is present which promotes the transfer of reducing equivalents directly from cytosolic NADH to molecular oxygen inside the mitochondria. Here we show that the oxidation of external NADH is stimulated by atractylate + ADP and greatly inhibited by glycerol. These two conditions have been documented to promote the increase and the decrease respectively of the frequency of "contact sites" between the two mitochondrial membranes. NADH oxidation is not affected at all by glycerol and atractylate + ADP when TMPD and endogenous cytochrome c are utilized as electron carriers. The results obtained are consistent with the proposal that the bi-trans-membrane electron transport chain might be localized at the level of respiratory contact sites having the function of promoting the oxidation of the surplus amount of cytosolic NADH. This electron transport pathway has been suggested to play a decisive role in the early stages of apoptosis [Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 246, 556-561, 1998].


The strongly swirling turbulent flow through an abrupt expansion is investigated using highly resolved LES and SAS, to shed more light on the stagnation region and the helical vortex breakdown. The vortex breakdown in an abrupt expansion resembles the so-called vortex rope occurring in hydro power draft tubes. It is known that the large-scale helical vortex structures can be captured by regular RANS turbulence models. However, the spurious suppression of the small-scale structures should be avoided using less diffusive methods. The present work compares LES and SAS results with the experimental measurement of Dellenback et al. (1988). The computations are conducted using a general non-orthogonal finite-volume method with a fully collocated storage available in the OpenFOAM-2.1.x CFD code. The dynamics of the flow is studied at two Reynolds numbers, Re=6.0×104 and Re=105, at the almost constant high swirl numbers of Sr=1.16 and Sr=1.23, respectively. The time-averaged velocity and pressure fields and the root mean square of the velocity fluctuations, are captured and investigated qualitatively. The flow with the lower Reynolds number gives a much weaker outburst although the frequency of the structures seems to be constant for the plateau swirl number.


The field of psychology is broadly perceived in a wide scope of areas, including relationship, education, wellbeing, sports, military, professional and domestic life. Individuals' behaviors depend upon their psychological thinking style. An individual performs the tasks in a better way with positive psychological thinking instead of a negative thinker. This study was conducted to measure and validate the positive psychological capital scale by using structural equating modeling. Factors analysis was done for instrument validation. A quantitative approach was used to conduct this survey study. University teachers participated in the study as a research sample. A five-point Likert-type scale was used to obtain the information from respondents. The Smart PLS software was used for data analysis. The results of the study displayed that scale is valid and reliable. Teachers' psychological thinking consisted of four factors and all dimensions have a moderate positive relationship with positive psychological thinking. The R-value of the construct is 0.947 and it is much bigger than the required value. It seems that the goodness of the model exists that confirms the validation of the instrument. Further, all values of the tests applied in SEM ensure that the questionnaire is a valid measure of the psychological capital in the Pakistani context. It is recommended to administer the questionnaire in local settings for upcoming quantitative research studies.


Background It has been shown that CARD15/NOD2 molecule has an important role in etiopathogenesis of many inflammatory diseases and provides susceptibility to diseases. CARD15/NOD2 is a cytoplasmic molecule, which recognizes some microbial components, has roles in control of apoptosis and inflammatory processes. Its relationship with spondyloarthritis and inflammatory bowel diseases are well-known. Objectives The aim of our study was to investigate CARD15/NOD2 gene mutations in Turkish patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), and to define possible relationships with disease susceptibility, disease severity and findings. Methods According to modified New York criteria, 100 patients with diagnosis of AS and 50 healthy controls were enrolled into the study. After informed consents were obtained from all patients and controls, CARD15/NOD2 (G908R, R702W, C3020ins variants) gene mutation was analyzed by PCR method. Results While a total of 9 (9%) heterozygote mutations were defined in CARD15 G908R and CARD15 R702W variants, no mutation was detected in CARD15 C3020ins. Compared to control group, there was no statistically significant difference in all 3 regions (G908R, R702W, 3020insC) (p=0.571; p=0.683 and p=0.150; respectively). In patient group there was no possible statistically significant correlation in clinical findings (uveitis, sacroiliitis, knee and hip involvements, disease activation etc.) between patients with and without mutations in all 3 regions (p>0.05). Conclusions Our results indicated that frequently encountered CARD15 variants did not have important roles in Turkish patients with AS. References Hugot JP, Laurent-Puig P, Gower-Rousseau C, Olson JM, Lee JC, Beaugerie L. et al. Mapping of a susceptibility locus for Crohn's disease on chromosome 16. Nature 1996; 379: 821–3. Lesage S, Zouali H, Cezard JP, Colombel JF, Belaiche J, Almer S et al. CARD15/NOD2 mutational analysis and genotype–phenotype correlation in 612 patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Am J Hum Genet 2002;70:845–57. Kim TH, Rahman P, Jun JB, Lee HS, Park YW, Im HJ et al. Analysis of CARD15 polymorphisms in Korean patients with ankylosing spondylitis reveals absence of common variants seen in western populations. J Rheumatol. 2004 Oct;31(10):1959-61. van der Paardt M, Crusius JB, de Koning MH, Murillo LS, Van de Stadt RJ, Dijkmans BA et al.CARD15 gene mutations are not associated with ankylosing spondylitis. Genes Immun 2003;4:77–8. Laukens D, Peeters H, Marichal D, Vander Cruyssen B, Mielants H. CARD15 gene polymorphisms in patients with spondyloarthropathies identify a specific phenotype previously related to Crohn's disease. Ann Rheum Dis 2005;64:930–935. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


Exploration and production of huge subsalt hydrocarbon accumulations in the Gulf of Mexico has been an ambitious challenge for many explorationists throughout the industry. The complexities associated with the three dimensional nature of salt structures, as well as the highly deformed tops and bottoms of salt, demand 3-D Prestack Depth Migration (3-D PreSDM) technology in order to correctly stack and position reflectivity below salt. Application of [open quotes]large-volume[close quote] 3-D PreSDM techniques has been, and will continue to be, instrumental in unraveling the structural and stratigraphic complexities of the subsalt environment. [open quote]Large-volume[close quote] 3-D PreSDM technology allows the explorationist to better assess subsalt exploration and development risk, as well as improve subsalt exploration success. In this paper, we discuss a full-volume 3-D PreSDM case study that, to our knowledge, is the largest prestack depth imaging project ever attempted, to date. The 3-D PreSDM case study is centered over the Mahogany Discovery in the Gulf of Mexico's Ship Shoal South Addition Block 349 area. Information about input and output data coverage, computer run times and 3-D depth imaging strategies will be discussed. Numerous examples of closely spaced 3-D prestack depth migrated seismic data will also be shown in order tomore » demonstrate how [open quote]large-volume[close quote] 3-D PreSDM technology improves subsalt imaging, (both structural and stratigraphic), as well as subsalt prospecting.« less


Purpose The core objective of the research is to explore the quality of services provided by the Nigerian health care sector that lead to know the satisfaction levels of the consumers. Research design, data, and methodology After a meticulous literature review, the researchers administered a two part questionnaire to know the service gaps and satisfaction levels of the customers. The research carried out with a sample of 400 respondents but received only 150 responses from the residents around Adamawa state. The collected data was edited, coded, and analyzed with the SPSS latest version with the descriptive and inferential statistical tools. Results Majority of the respondents expressed their discontentment over the responsiveness of the service providers when compared to tangibility and reliability quality variables. There is no relationship between the quality variable tangibility and overall satisfaction. Related to the overall satisfaction, 42 percent of respondents have neutral perspective indicated that they are either satisfied or dissatisfied as against the 43.3 percent of dissatisfied customers. Conclusions This research proffers invaluable information to the entire Nigerian health-care sector to review their existing delivery of services to improve patient satisfaction. This research is first of its kind concentrated to know the quality of health-care services and customers overall satisfaction in Nigeria.


In this paper, we propose a novel two-step sidelobe suppression technique for OFDM-based cognitive radios designed to minimize the amount of out-of-band emissions that could potentially interfere with incumbent licensed transmissions in adjacent frequency bands. The proposed technique combines both constellation expansion (CE) and cancellation subcarrier (CC) sidelobe reduction approaches in order to achieve lower out- of-band interference levels relative to their individual application. Being a two-step process, the first step of the proposed technique consists of performing CE, which exploits the combination of different random symbol sequences across the subcarriers in order to yield lower sidelobe levels. The second step is to insert several CCs on either side of contiguous blocks of data-bearing subcarriers such that they combine destructively with the data- bearing subcarrier sidelobe levels, yielding a reduction in out- of-band emissions. Simulation results show that with the CE of four symbols mapped to an 8-PSK signal constellation and with one CC employed on each side of a 32 subcarrier OFDM spectrum, there is a reduction of as much as 16 dB on the peak- interference causing sidelobe. From a probabilistic point of view, this translates to reducing 99.9% of the sidelobe power levels from around -5 dB to around -22 dB.


Porcine enteroviruses were isolated from weaner pigs that had nervous signs and mild non-suppurative meningoencephalomyelitis and ganglioneuritis. The clinical signs and lesions were not typical of enterovirus infection and it is believed that an organic arsenical present in feed enhanced pathogenicity of enteroviruses. Severe non-suppurative polioencephalomyelitis and ganglioneuritis were produced in gnotobiotic pigs by oral inoculation of the viruses.


SIR,-Dr. G. Macdonald's partisan letter (April 3, p. 663) really cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged. A. T. Still (the founder of osteopathy) postulated that all diseases arose from pressure on arteries and nerves as the result of vertebral displacements. If medical research has led to the recognition of spinal disk protrusion, and if this is now claimed as the "vindication of osteopathy, it must prove the opposite of Dr. Macdonald's contention. Surely it shows that the whole of osteopathic doctrine, except in that small particular, is false.-I am, etc.,


Hierarchy preserving network embedding is a method that project nodes into feature space by preserving the hierarchy property of networks. Recently, researches on network representation have considerably profited from taking hierarchy into consideration. Among these works, SpaceNE1 [1] stands out by preserving hierarchy with the help of subspace constraints on the hierarchy subspace system. However, like all other hierarchy preserving network embedding methods, SpaceNE is time-consuming and cannot generalize to new nodes. In this paper, we propose an inductive method, FastHGE, to learn node representations more efficiently and generalize to new nodes more easily. Empirically, the experiment of node classification demonstrates that the convergence speed of FastHGE is increased by 30 times in the case of the same accuracy with SpaceNE.


Objective: To identify black beans lines resistant to bean rust under field conditions, which have similar or higher yield than three commercial varieties sown in Veracruz, Mexico.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The genotypes were evaluated using a completely randomized block design. The reaction of the genotypes to bean rust was qualified using a 1-9 incidence rate, while grain yield was estimated in kg ha-1. An analysis of variance was carried out and the resulting means were divided using a 0.05 Least Significant Difference (LSD). Additionally, a correlation analysis between the incidence values of bean rust and the yield of the genotypes was carried out in each evaluation site.
Results: Nine lines were resistant to bean rust (incidence average: 1.78-3.33). Out of these lines, Jamapa Plus/XRAV-187-3-4-4 was the most productive line, with a 2,183.4 kg ha-1 average yield. This result is statistically similar to the results of the Jamapa Plus/XRAV-187-3-4-1 and Jamapa Plus/XRAV-187-3-1-2 lines and the Verdín variety. In addition, the results of Jamapa Plus/XRAV-187-3-4-4 are slightly higher than the results obtained by the rest of the genotypes.
Study Limitations/Implications: Although bean rust was recorded in three of the localities of the study area, the incidence degree and the stage when it was found were different. However, in all the cases, the infection degree was enough to evaluate the reactions of the genotypes to this disease.
Findings/Conclusions: Three bean rust-resistant lines were identified under field conditions. They had a significantly higher average yield than the Negro Jamapa and Negro Medellín varieties.


The ability of learning disentangled representations represents a major step for interpretable NLP systems as it allows latent linguistic features to be controlled. Most approaches to disentanglement rely on continuous variables, both for images and text. We argue that despite being suitable for image datasets, continuous variables may not be ideal to model features of textual data, due to the fact that most generative factors in text are discrete. We propose a Variational Autoencoder based method which models language features as discrete variables and encourages independence between variables for learning disentangled representations. The proposed model outperforms continuous and discrete baselines on several qualitative and quantitative benchmarks for disentanglement as well as on a text style transfer downstream application.


Introduction Two weeks of voluntary exercise in group-housed mice produces a reduction in anxiety-like behaviors across a number of different measures, including a reduction in the anxiety levels typically produced by the anxiogenic serotonergic drug m-chlorophenylpiperazine (mCPP), an agonist at 5-HT2C/2b receptors. We have previously demonstrated that 2-weeks of voluntary exercise blunted the anxiogenic effects of systemic mCPP, and we have also shown that mCPP infused into the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is anxiogenic. Here we follow up on these reports. Methods In Experiment 1 we infused several doses of mCPP into the BNST with or without the 5-HT2C antagonist SB242084. In Experiment 2, we administered mCPP into amygdala subregions and the dorsal hippocampus to investigate site specificity. In Experiment 4 we lesioned the BNST and subsequently infused mCPP systemically, and in Experiment 4 we used RNAscope® to assess BNST 5-HT2C transcripts following wheel running. Results BNST mCPP infusion increased acoustic startle responding, which was by 5-HT2C antagonism, while neither mCPP infused into the amygdala nor hippocampus was anxiogenic. Lesions of the BNST prevented the anxiogenic effect of systemically administered mCPP. Lastly, exercise reduced 5-HT2C transcripts in the BNST. Discussion These results suggest that the BNST is a critical site of action for the effects of exercise on mCPP. Together these data suggest that exercise may reduce 5-HT2C receptor function in the BNST, which may, in part, explain some of the anxiolytic effects associated with wheel running.


Activating mutations in KRAS represent the most frequent oncogenic driving force among the RAS homologs K-, N- and H-RAS, and are associated with poor prognosis and chemoresistance. KRAS mutations are present in approximately 30% of tumors, and at even higher frequencies in cancers of the pancreas, lung, thyroid gland, colon, and liver. In pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDAC), which carries a 5-year survival rate of less than 5%, activating KRAS mutations are present in over 90% of tumors. Moreover, these mutations have been causally linked to the initiation and progression of PDAC. Despite the mechanistic insights into KRAS-mediated oncogenesis, development of high affinity targeted inhibitors remains a formidable challenge. Here, we report the synthesis and application of hydrocarbon-stapled peptides as prototype therapeutics for blocking wild type and mutant KRAS in vitro and in cancer cells. Stabilized Alpha-Helices of SOS1 (SAH-SOS1) were generated by inserting hydrocarbon staples into SOS1 peptide sequence to recapitulate the alpha-helical structure of the native KRAS-interaction domain. SAH-SOS1 peptides, but not negative control analogs, bound to a variety of KRAS constructs with nanomolar affinity, inhibiting nucleotide exchange. This sequence-specific biochemical activity correlated with impairment of KRAS-driven cancer cell viability and signal transduction. These studies provide proof-of-concept for the utility of SAH-SOS1 peptides in dissecting and targeting the oncogenic KRAS pathway in human cancer. Citation Format: Elizaveta S. Leshchiner, Joseph Bellairs, Gregory H. Bird, Kwadwo Opoku-Nsiah, Marina Godes, Loren D. Walensky. Direct inhibition of oncogenic KRAS by hydrocarbon-stapled SOS1 helices. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on RAS Oncogenes: From Biology to Therapy; Feb 24-27, 2014; Lake Buena Vista, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Res 2014;12(12 Suppl):Abstract nr B41. doi: 10.1158/1557-3125.RASONC14-B41


This study was conducted to examine the nutritional status, quality of diet and quality of life in postmenopausal women with mild climacteric symptoms based on their food group intake patterns. The data for nutritional status were obtained using 3-day records. Quality of diet was assessed by INQ, NAR, MAR, DDS, DVS, DQI-I. Climacteric symptoms were analyzed by the questionnaire of Kupperman`s index and MENoL. The subjects were classified into the five groups, GMVDF, GMVdF, GMVDf, GMVdf, GmVDF according to their food group intake patterns. Analysis of nutrient intakes showed that the GMVDF group took significantly higher levels of kcal, carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, folate, vitamin C, vitamin E, calcium, phosphorous, sodium, iron, zinc and fiber than GMVdf group did (p < 0.05). INQ of Ca and Fe appeared to be higher in GMVDF than in GMVdf groups (p < 0.05). Analysis of NARs showed that missing milk groups took lower riboflavin, Ca and P than other groups did as the same result with MAR (p < 0.05). Analysis of DDS and DQI showed that GMVdf group had the lowest quality of diet (p < 0.05); however, no difference was found on DVS. The GMVdf group showed the worst climacteric symptoms compared with those of the other groups (p < 0.05). However, we couldn`t observe any differences in menopause-specific quality of life among the groups. In conclusion, it would be beneficial to meet all five food groups to increase the quality of diet and to reduce the climacteric symptoms in postmenopausal women. (Korean J Community Nutr 17(1) : 69~80, 2012)


Abstract This study revisits an earlier publication in this journal (Wills and Windes 1989) in which a settlement model involving seasonal mobility and limited household autonomy was outlined for Shabik'eschee Village, a Basketmaker III period (ca. A.D. 400–750) site in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. We return to that work for three reasons. First, the original interpretation has been challenged and an alternative view offered in the form of a large sedentary village. Second, the issue of Basketmaker III sedentism is central to recent efforts to identify and understand a Neolithic Demographic Transition in the northern Southwest. And third, we have obtained new field data from Shabik'eschee and Chaco that contributes to this debate. We conclude that our understanding of Shabik' eschee's history is improved by both new data and the ongoing consideration of alternative models, but the site does not contain evidence for a sedentary village.


Cerebrovascular diseases consist of a group of cerebral blood vessel disorders which affect blood flow to the brain. Consequences of cerebrovascular disease include cell death and stroke due to cerebral hypoxia. Unfortunately, stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States and the number one leading cause of disability. Carotid Artery Stenosis is one of the most common cerebrovascular disease that often leads to ischemic stroke. Carotid Artery Stenosis is typically caused by the buildup of atherosclerotic plaque, which consists of fatty substances, cholesterol, cellular waste products, calcium, and fibrin along the inner lining of the carotid artery. As the plaque grows, it protrudes into the lumen of the artery causing stenosis; subsequently, the plaque may rupture and promote the formation of a blood clot that further occludes the artery. Medical management may be effective at controlling the effects of Carotid Artery Stenosis and preventing future strokes; in certain cases of severe stenosis, however, surgical intervention is often recommended. The Carotid Endarterectomy (CEA) has been the standard surgical intervention for revascularization for almost seventy years. Until recently, no other intervention compared to it in its effectiveness and safety. However, the Transcarotid Arterial Revascularization (TCAR) technique was introduced in 2015, and studies over the past seven years have shown promising results for this novel procedure. It combines the methods of traditional stenting with a blood flow reversal neuroprotection system to create a quick, efficient, and minimally invasive revascularization option. Future studies hope to further prove its effectiveness as it becomes a more mainstream procedure to treat Carotid Artery Stenosis.


Obstacle marks are instream bedforms, typically composed of an upstream frontal scour hole and a downstream sediment accumulation in the vicinity of an obstacle. Local scouring at infrastructure (e.g. bridge piers) is a well‐studied phenomenon in hydraulic engineering, while less attention is given to the time‐dependent evolution of frontal scour holes at instream boulders and their geometric relations (depth to width, and length ratio). Furthermore, a comparison between laboratory studies and field observations is rare. Therefore, the morphodynamic importance of such scour features to fluvial sediment transport and morphological change is largely unknown. In this study, obstacle marks at boulder‐like obstructions were physically modelled in 30 unscaled process‐focused flume experiments (runtime per experiment ≥ 5760 min) at a range of flows (subcritical, clear‐water conditions, emergent and submerged water levels) and boundary conditions designed to represent the field setting (i.e. obstacle tilting, and limited thickness of the alluvial layer). Additionally, geometries of scour holes at 90 in‐situ boulders (diameter ≥ 1 m) located in a 50‐km segment of the Colorado River in Marble Canyon (AZ) were measured from a 1 m‐resolution digital elevation model. Flume experiments reveal similar evolution of local scouring, irrespective of hydraulic conditions, controlled by the scour incision, whereas the thickness of the alluvial layer and obstacle tilting into the evolving frontal scour hole limit incision. Three temporal evolution phases—(1) rapid incision, (2) decreasing incision, and (3) scour widening—are identified based on statistical analysis of spatiotemporal bed elevation time series. A quantitative model is presented that mechanistically predicts enlargement in local scour length and width based on (1) scour depth, (2) the inclination of scour slopes, and (3) the planform area of the frontal scour hole bottom. The comparison of field observations and laboratory results demonstrates scale invariance of geometry, which implies similitude of processes and form rather than equifinality.


Although low-density parity-check (LDPC) code has been proved as a powerful forward error correction code for fibre optic communication, its soft-decoding requires high quantisation resolution which is difficult to achieve for high-speed fibre-optic communication systems. A modification to LDPC decoding algorithms is proposed to effectively improve the performance at quantisation resolution as low as two-bit or one-bit. The good decoding performance of LDPC code for error correction is confirmed by experiment. Compared with the RS(255, 239) code commonly used in optical fibre communication, a Q-factor improvement of 2-dB is obtained in the experiment for an LDPC code with quasi-cyclic structure at the same redundancy as the RS code. Furthermore, the impacts of sampling phase and channel estimation using real data over the decoding performance are analysed.


In System on Chip (SoC) buses, intellectual properties (IPs) need to communicate with each other to access the required functionality. When the SoC bus is connected with more IPs, contentions occur while multiple IPs requests the bus at the same time. This makes on-chip bus based communication a major challenge for the system designer in the current SoC technology. The communication architectures must be able to adapt themselves according to the real-time requirements of the IPs. Hence, bus arbiters are proposed.The arbiter block plays important role in the SoC shared bus communication. The masters on a SoC bus may issue requests simultaneously and hence an arbiter is required to decide which master is granted for bus access. Bus Arbiter plays a vital role in handling the requests from the master and responses from slave (like Acknowledgement signal, Retry, etc). The main objective of arbitration algorithms is to ensure that only one master has access to the bus at any given time, all the other masters are forced to remain in the idle state until they are granted the use of the bus.


We study quantum entanglement between two spatially separated atoms coupled to the thermal reservoir. The influences of the initial state of the system, the atomic frequency difference and the mean number of the thermal field on the entanglement are examined. The results show that the maximum of the entanglement obtained with nonidentical atoms is greater than that obtained with identical atoms. The degree of entanglement is progressively decreased with the increase of the thermal noise. Interestingly, the two atoms can be easily entangled even when the two atoms are initially prepared in the most mixed states.


Introduction: In chronic heart failure (HF), 70% of patients are readmitted to the hospital within 12 months. At least 63% of these readmissions are for a condition other than HF. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that motivational interviewing (MI) would be effective in decreasing readmissions unrelated to HF in HF patients. Methods: Hospitalized adults with HF were enrolled if they were symptomatic (NYHA class II-IV), spoke and read English, lived in a setting where they could independently engage in self-care, and were cognitively intact. We enrolled 100 HF patients (mean age 60 ± 14.3 years; 57% Black, 33% female, 85% NYHA class III/IV symptoms, 64% were educated ≤ high school level) into a randomized controlled trial, using minimization to balance group assignment on NYHA class and gender. Participants in both groups received educational materials emphasizing self-care behavior change. The intervention group received MI emphasizing self-care (e.g. adherence, symptom monitoring) and tailored to individual goals. The intervention was provided by a nurse in a single home visit with 3-4 follow-up phone calls. Participants were followed for 3 months. For the primary outcome, readmission unrelated to HF, a multiple variable regression model was constructed using a backward variable elimination approach. Results: Over 3 months, 25% of the sample had a HF-readmission and 15% had a readmission unrelated to HF. There was an absolute difference of 21% (9 vs 30) in readmissions unrelated to HF between the MI intervention and control groups (p=0.006). The MI group had 94% lower odds of having a readmission unrelated to HF (p=0.001). Each additional unit of hemoglobin was associated with 48% lower odds of having a readmission unrelated to HF (p=0.006). For each additional year of age, the odds of having a readmission unrelated to HF were 7% lower. Participants with diabetes had 6.7 times the odds (p=0.012) of having a readmission unrelated to HF. Conclusion: An MI intervention emphasizing self-care and tailored to individual goals significantly reduced readmissions unrelated to HF in adults with HF, even after accounting for the influence of anemia, age, and diabetes.


The main aims of this contribution are first to analyse the ethical level of European socially responsible investment (SRI) funds, secondly to measure the overall performance of the European SRI mutual funds with an appropriate data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and, finally, to investigate the relationship between the ethical level of mutual funds and their financial performance. In order to do so, we build an ethical measure, based on the main socially responsible features usually taken into account by SRI mutual funds, which evaluate their ethical strategies. In the time period of economic recession considered in the analysis, the triennium June 2006-June 2009, the mean returns of most mutual funds are negative, preventing the usual DEA models from being applied. In order to overcome this difficulty, we apply a special modification of these DEA models which can be used regardless of the phase of business cycle.


Background The discourse surrounding advance care planning (ACP) has evolved from an emphasis on a 'legal, transactional' approach to incorporate a 'communications approach'. This dual emphasis has led to confusion about meaning, reflected in debates internationally. Some merge ACP with patient and family centred care; others focus on planning for incapacity and medical decision-making. A number of contemporary definitions bridge the two approaches. Generally, ACP debates are poorly informed by evidence about patients' preferences for modes of ACP or their understandings about the meaning of ACP. Aim To examine the experiences and understandings of older people and distill the implications of these for the practice of ACP with frail older people. Methods This presentation reports a synthesis of findings from a qualitative research programme with older people. The studies include participants classically considered to belong to 'minority' groups, such as black and minority ethnic groups, lesbian, gay and bisexual elders and those in very late old age. Results The presentation necessarily briefly examines cultural, practical and existential issues associated with 'future' oriented planning expressed by older people across several studies. Discussion Frail older people draw on biographical experiences of bereavement and provision of end-of life care for others, as well as expressing their expectations and concerns for their own care, when considering the meaning of ACP. Conclusion Although ACP has particular salience for frail older people, given the profound difficulties they face in accessing supportive care, ACP tends to take poor account of the 'lived' worlds of frailty.


The light actinides show a variety of lattice effects that do not normally appear in other regions of the periodic table. The article will cover the crystal structures of the light actinides, their atomic volumes, their thermal expansion behavior, and their elastic behavior as reflected in recent thermal vibration measurements made by neutron diffraction. A discussion of the melting points will be given in terms of the thermal vibration measurements. Pressure effects will be only briefly indicated.


Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) has adverse effects on the level of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in phospholipids of maternal and cord red blood cells and cord plasma. This finding was of major concern because DHA is vital for maternal wellbeing and health, and for optimal development of foetal brain and retina. GDM is also associated with increased oxidative stress. There is controversy about omega-3 LCPUFA supplementation and oxidative damage. This ambiguity needs to be explored to reveal its role as modulator of oxidative stress in GDM.

Specific Aims: To investigate if (1) GDM adversely affects the plasma omega-3 and omega-6 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LCPUFA) levels in pregnant women. (2) High BMI is associated with adverse plasma fatty acid profile in GDM women. (3) Supplementation with DHA-enriched formula, enhances the level of the nutrient in the GDM women and their neonates. (4) Antioxidant vitamins status is enhanced by DHA-enriched supplementation in GDM women and their newborns.

Methods: Women with (n = 142; 72 active-group, 70 placebo) and without gestational diabetes (n = 28; 10 active-group, 18 placebo) were supplemented from the recruitment (at Newham University Hospital, London) until delivery. Both active- and placebo-groups received 2 capsules of either DHA-enriched formula or high oleic acid sunflower seed oil respectively. Each active supplement capsule contained 300 mg of DHA, 42 mg of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and 8.4 mg of AA, and placebo 721 mg of oleic acid. Blood samples taken from the mothers at recruitment and delivery (maternal and cord) were analysed for plasma fatty acid composition and antioxidant vitamins levels.

Results: At recruitment, no significant difference was found in the DHA level in plasma phospholipids (CPG, 4.9% vs. 4.4%, P > 0.05) and neutral lipids (CE, 0.9% vs. 0.9%, P > 0.05), (TG, 0.9% vs. 0.9%, P > 0.05) between healthy pregnant and GDM women respectively. When categorized on the basis of their BMI, obese and over-weight GDM women had lower omega-3 (ALA, P 0.05), CE (1.1% vs. 1.0%, P > 0.05), TG (2.9% vs. 3.3%, P > 0.05)] DHA between GDM placebo and active-treatment groups. Though not significantly, the levels of vitamin A and β-carotene were reduced, however, the level of vitamin E was comparable between GDM and healthy pregnant women, at recruitment (P > 0.05). At delivery, no significant difference was found in maternal plasma vitamin A (21.1 µg/dl vs. 18.0 µg/dl, P > 0.05), vitamin E (1.4 mg/dl vs. 1.4 mg/dl, P > 0.05) and β-carotene (16.1 µg/dl vs. 11.1 µg/dl, P > 0.05) levels between GDM placebo- and active-treatment groups. Neonatal plasma antioxidant vitamins levels were also comparable between GDM active-treatment and placebo groups (P > 0.05).

Conclusion: The present study shows that the plasma DHA and AA levels are not compromised by gestational diabetes in pregnant women. It may be that the comparable plasma DHA and AA levels observed in the GDM women is linked to a failure to incorporate these fatty acids into the phospholipids of the red cell membrane and/or impaired placental transport. Moreover, the majority of samples were collected during the third trimester (between 28-32 weeks), so it is plausible that the duration of the diabetes was very short to produce an obvious adverse effect on the plasma DHA and AA levels. Additionally, this study shows that higher pre-pregnancy BMI is associated with higher n-6 PUFA and lower n-3 PUFA levels in GDM women. However, it is difficult to establish whether BMI causes adverse fatty acids profile, or whether the direction of this association is reversed.

This unique study also demonstrated that supplementation with a daily dose of DHA (600mg) from diagnosis until delivery was effective in enhancing the level of the nutrient in plasma of GDM women but not foetal. The inefficacy of the supplement to improve foetal status suggests that the transfer of DHA across the placenta may be impaired in the GDM women. This finding has implications for the management of neonates born to GDM women because they are born with a lower level of DHA and the condition is considered to be linked with a risk of neuro-developmental deficit. We suggest that the provision of a DHA supplement should be integrated with the antenatal care of pregnant women with gestational diabetes to optimize foetal development and avert maternal DHA depletion in pregnancy. Also, the babies of the GDM women, particularly those not sucking mother's milk, similar to those who born prematurely require formula milk containing a higher level of DHA.

This study demonstrates that DHA-enriched supplement did not improve yet not deteriorate the antioxidant vitamins status in GDM women. This may be because of small dose and short duration of supplementation. We can allude that the moderate amounts of omega-3 LCPUFA in dietary intake for longer duration may reduce the incidence and complications associated with oxidative stress in diabetic pregnancy.


The world's disease profile is changing, and chronic diseases now account for the
majority of global morbidity and mortality. The causes of chronic kidney diseases
(CKD) reflect this change. The increase in prevalence of CKD is partly due to a real
increase in its frequency (due to the increase in the average age of people surviving),
better detection of CKD, but also to the increasing incidence of diabetes and
hypertension among people today, not only within the developed world, but also
increasingly within the emerging world.
Furthermore, hypertension, smoking, hypercholesterolemia, and obesity, currently
among the World Health Organization's (WHO's) top 10 global health risks, are
strongly associated with CKD. The factors, together with increasing diabetes
prevalence and an aging population, will result in significant global increases in
chronic kidney diseases (CKD) end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients.
There are approximately 275000 patients with ESRD in the United States and it is
estimated that an additional 8 million US adults have kidney disease (defined as a
glomerular filtration rate [GFR] of 60 mL/min per 1.73 m2). Because kidney
disease often progresses to ESRD and its attendant complications, the identification
of precursors of kidney disease is important, with the belief that interventions will
prevent or delay the progression to ESRD.


This is a final treatise on generalized harmonic progressions, with an overview of all the formulae we created for them and the closed-forms of their associated partial Fourier sums. We derive an asymptotic expression for ∑n j=1 1/(j + b) (where 2b is a non-integer complex number) as a way to obtain formulae for the full Fourier series (if b is such that |b| < 1, we get a surprising pattern, ∑n j=1 1/(j+ b) ∼ −1/(2b)+π(cot 2πb+csc 2πb)/2+ H(n) + ∑∞ k=1 ζ(2k + 1)b 2k). Finally, we use the found Fourier series formulae to obtain the values of the Lerch transcendent function, Φ(em, k, b), at the positive integers k. Summary


In this paper, we report a new method of fabricating AFM (Atomic Force Microscope) probe tips at low cost. Most of previous AFM probe tips have been made of SOI wafers using back-side anisotropic silicon etch. Therefore, the wafer cost is high and the dimension control is poor because the tip length and thickness depend on wafer thickness variation and etch non-uniformity during the tip formation, respectively. In this paper we propose a new fabrication process in which probe tips are formed selfaligned to the p/sup +/ (heavily boron-doped) cantilevers from the front-side etch of a bulk silicon wafer.


FOLLOWING axotomy most medial septal neurons in the adult rat brain have dramatically reduced numbers of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) positive neurons. Since leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) promotes cholinergic expression in several neuronal populations, the aim of this study was to determine if LIF would continue to support cholinergic expression in axotomized medial septal neurons. Mini-osmotic pumps were used to infuse saline or LIF into the lateral cerebral ventricle. Counts of ChAT and low-affinity nerve growth factor (p75NGFR) immunostained neurons indicated that LIF-treated animals retained ChAT expression in > 90% of axotomized neurons whereas in saline-infused animals this was < 30%. Also, LIF was equally effective in maintaining p75NGFR expression levels in axotomized medial septal neurons.


Backward governance has been undermining the service delivery and development initiatives undertaken by majority of the countries. Many of these governments have now started using e-governance as a mechanism to engender change in their governance systems for achieving developments to ensure better service delivery to citizens and other stakeholders. The governments of almost all the countries of the world have made huge investments in implementations of e-governance projects including India. Based on review of literature, this paper focuses on the conceptualization of e-governance, its goals and e-governance initiatives in India. The framework of this paper also identifies the challenges in implementation of e-governance. The main objective of this study proved very helpful developing theoretical base.


Emphysematous pyelonephritis (EPN) is a rapidly progressive and life-threatening infection that is seen most commonly in persons with diabetes. The infecting organisms usually consist of mixed flora, including Escherichia coli (68%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (9%) and Proteus mirabilis. Females are affected twice as often as men, and mortality rates can be as high as 80%. Obstructive uropathy, urinary calculi, calyceal stenosis and neoplasms are significant predisposing factors. We report a case of EPN in a patient with the human immunodeficiency virus infection, without diabetes mellitus or urinary tract obstruction, which responded remarkably to conservative management with antibiotics alone.


This paper examines the contributions made by early modern statistical literature to the formation of the sociological imagination. Starting in the mid-seventeenth century, the fields of 'political arithmetic' and vital and moral statistics provided a discursive framework within which it became possible to identify and study aggregate dynamics and structures underlying seemingly random and episodic aspects of life (birth, death, divorce, health). Focusing primarily on developments in England, the paper identifies three significant watershed moments in the emergence of the sociological imagination: the discovery of the political and economic dimensions of life; the articulation of socio-statistical patterns underlying various life events and episodes; and the establishment of causal connections between social variables and individual choices. These developments did not amount to or directly result in the creation of the discipline of sociology, yet, they made it possible to make conceptual connections between the personal and the social.


The records of 41 patients who had carcinoma of the ampulla of Vater in the period 1952-1973, are reviewed. Palliative operations were disappointing in 16 patients since they resulted in an average survival of only a few months. The most impressive results were obtained with the one-stage Whipple procedure and, in selected cases, by simple papillectomy with survival of up to 6 years. However, not every surgeon is able to deal competently with the difficult problems of malignant jaundice. Special technical and tactical skill is a precondition and systematic diagnostic evaluation as well as modern intensive care are necessary for good results. The ampullomas have the best prognosis in the group of peripapillary tumors.


Applications running in today's data centers show high workload variability. While seasonal patterns, trends and expected events may help building proactive resource allocation policies, this approach has to be complemented with adaptive strategies which should address unexpected events such as flash crowds and volume spikes. Additionally, the limitations of current I/O infrastructures in the face of dramatic increase of data generation require, the ability to build novel abstractions and models for robust decision making regarding data layout and data locality. In this work, we present CONDESA (CONtrolling Data distribution on Elastic Server Architectures), a framework for exploring adaptive data distribution strategies for elastic server architectures. To the best of our knowledge CONDESA is the first platform that permits to systematically study the interplay between five data related strategies: workload prediction, adaptive control of data distribution and server provisioning, adaptive data grouping, adaptive data placement, and adaptive system sizing. We demonstrate how CONDESA can be used for browsing the design space of adaptive data distribution policies. We show how prediction models can be compared in terms of overhead and accuracy. We evaluate the impact of change detection on prediction accuracy and how CONDESA can be used for choosing an adequate prediction horizon. We demonstrate how adaptive prediction can be used for sizing a server system. Finally, we show how prediction models, change detection strategies, and data placement policies can be combined and compared based on server utilization, load balance, data locality, over- and underprovisioning.


Background --Malignant germ cell tumors of the mediastinum are unusual, accounting for approximately 10% of all mediastinal tumors. Histologically, the mediastinal seminomas are identical to its gonadal counterpart. We present a rare case of mediastinal seminoma negative for CD117, which is usually positive in most cases. Case --The patient is a 22 year old male who complained of a chest pain. Further evaluation with computed tomography of the chest revealed an anterior mediastinal mass. Surgical thoracotomy was performed to remove the mediastinal mass and the specimen submitted for histopathologic evaluation. Immunohistochemistry and special stains were performed. Histopathologic Findings --The mediastinal mass was received fragmented and partly encapsulated. Cut-sections showed tan-yellow, lobulated to nodular cut-surfaces. Microsections revealed a seminomatous lesion. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated a strong positive reaction of the tumor with Placental Alkaline Phospahatase (PLAP). CD117 was occasionally expressed in rare tumor cells while cytokeratin was focal and faint. Conclusions --Mediastinal seminoma is a rare, distinctive clinicopathologic entity with a wide range of treatment modalities. Its diagnosis, even in unusual sites, based on the typical histologic features is paramount given its very favorable prognosis. Phil Heart Center J 2012; 16(2):75-83


We construct a class of codes of length n such that the minimum distance d outside of a certain subcode is, up to a constant factor, bounded below by the square root of n, a well-known property of quadratic residue codes. The construction, using the group algebra of an Abelian group and a special partition or splitting of the group, yields quadratic residue codes, duadic codes, and their generalizations as special cases. We show that most of the special properties of these codes have analogues for split group codes, and present examples of new classes of codes obtained by this construction.


Although the molecular mechanisms by which plants respond to gibberellins are largely unknown, several components of the signal transduction pathway have been identified and a broad outline of how these components act in signal transduction is emerging. One component of the pathway, SPINDLY, is believed to be an O-GlcNAc transferase that post-translationally modifies cytosolic and nuclear proteins by the addition of O-linked N-acetylglucosamine. Although analysis of the properties of O-GlcNAc-modified proteins from animals has led to the hypothesis that this modification is regulatory, it has not been linked to specific signal transduction pathways.