The aim of this study is to review theoretically the internalization of the character of discipline in SDIT (Sekolah Dasar Islam Terpadu/ Integrated Islamic Primary School) students. This theoretical study originated from high public interest in SDIT. This becomes an interesting thing. Some print media said that this interest was based on several reasons. One of them is planting characters. This character planting is in accordance with Presidential Regulation No. 87 Th 2017 concerning strengthening character education. At SDIT they have carried out character education for a long time. Character education is carried out in the process of internalization in the SDIT environment, which both internalize the characters in the school environment. The character that is highlighted is discipline. Internalization of the character of this discipline can be done through five stages that are collaborated with character discipline indicators. Based on the discussion of theoretical studies that have been presented it is concluded that the process of internalizing the character of discipline in integrated Islamic elementary school students and it is occurs through five stages of the disciplinary characters developed in SDIT students. Based on the discussion of theoretical studies that have been presented review theoretically: 1) The internalization of the character in students, it is concluded that the process of internalizing the character of discipline in integrated Islamic elementary school students; 2) The process of estlabishing discipline in SDIT students, it is occurs through five stages of the disciplinary characters developed in SDIT students


This article addresses common interpretations of jinn possession among health care professionals. The author addresses the following questions: How do mental health providers interpret jinn possession? How do they view traditional healing practices, such as prophetic medicine, and folk medicine, to explain the phenomenon of jinn possession? The aim of this paper is to contribute to theoretical knowledge of existing research in this area and explore the possibility of improvement of the clinical practice with clients who claim to be possessed by jinn.


[1] Proxy records from stony reef corals are established tools for reconstructing climate features. However, validation procedures for proving the calibrations are often insufficient or even lacking. We address this problem by the establishment and validation of statistical regression models for the reconstruction of large-scale climate patterns from local coral records (upscaling). We apply the upscaling technique to the annual growth rates of two coral species from Bermuda, representing a period of about 140 years. The coral records are related to reanalyzed sea surface temperature (SST) and sea level pressure (SLP) fields. In the western North Atlantic, the correlation maps between the SSTs and the single coral records and their leading principal component show similar structures. On the basis of regression patterns for limited areas, upscaling models are established. Validation of such models for the SST yields an explained variance of 30% of the low-pass-filtered data using the first principal component of both corals. For the detrended SLP time series, representing an almost hemispheric SLP pattern, 21% of the interannual variability is explained by means of only one coral. Thus different corals from neighboring sites represent similar climate signals, however, to slightly varying degrees, leading to different reconstruction skills. Problems remain in reconstructing long-term trends. We conclude that reconstructions from multiple corals are not a priori predominant to those from single corals. A calibration to what extent a single coral represents a climate parameter should be the first step before combining multiple corals as the basis for a reconstruction.


This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the application of biochar in soil physical properties. The experiment was arranged in a randomized block design with 6 treatments: 1- without biochar (control); 2- biochar coconut; 3- sludge biochar; 4- biochar coconut + sludge (1:1); 5- sludge biochar + raw sludge (1:1); 6- biochar + coconut raw sludge (1:1). The amount of biochar was applied 30 t.ha-1, with 4 repetitions, and a total of 24 plots. The plots consisted of crop lines with areas of 1.05 m2 each. The deployment area was plowed and fenced to a depth of approximately 0.20 m. Biochar is produced in a furnace adapted based on the model developed by IBI (International Initiative biochar) and used as biomass residue of coconut production (dried coconut shells). The coconut shells were put in the oven internal chamber to the pyrolysis process. The plots consisted to sites with areas of 16 m2 each, which was grown okra. Soil moisture was monitored using tensiometers installed at depths of 10 cm and spread in the experimental area. The parameter evaluated were soil moisture. The results showed that the moisture had little variation among the treatments.


This study examined the improvements of existing food waste statistics system using a sample survey, which estimated the total food waste generation in 4 areas(High, Middle, Middle and Low, and Low population density), and a survey, which was aimed at forming a basis for modeling 112 local governments, were conducted. Currently, the methods for collecting the statistical data are summarized as five types. In high population density areas, the type based on examining the recycling facilities was found to be a more general way of estimating population centers higher than low population density areas. It was found that numerous low population density areas estimated their food waste production according to its generation per capita. It was also found that the findings of sample survey were 10%~40% higher than the existing statistical data and Non-separated collected food waste appears to be the main factor.


This book develops the fundamentals of technology cycles, technology acquisition, core technology management, and technology policy. These principles enable managers to find, acquire and develop technologies, add value to them, and make profits. Examples taken from high tech companies illustrate the application of these principles in the context of current industry issues. The book has been tested on students undertaking MBA courses at Austins Technology Incubator, Texas, and on managers and executives at Oregons Silicon Forest.The books emphasis on marketing is a distinctive feature.


The effect of the activators of protein kinase A (dibutyryl-cAMP) and protein kinase C (beta-phorbolic ether), as well as cell compression, on the rate of 22Na and 86Rb, a radioactive potassium analogue, incorporation by human and rat erythrocytes was investigated. Protein kinase A and protein kinase C activation was accompanied by the activation of Na+, K+-ATP-ase in human and rat erythrocytes as well as increased Na+, K+ cotransport rate in rat erythrocytes. Human erythrocytes responded to protein kinase C activation by a 2 or 3-fold increase in Na+/Na+-antitransport rate, and both human and rat erythrocytes exhibited a manifold increase in the Na+/H+ metabolism rate. Cell compression depressed Na+, K+-ATP-ase activity and increased the rates of Na+/H+ metabolism and the frusemide-inhibited component of potassium transport, the latter two effects being particularly obvious in rat erythrocytes. It is suggested that protein kinase C activation and/or erythrocyte compression may be a direct cause of increased plasmatic membrane permeability for univalent cations in primary hypertension.


This action research study addresses sexual health as a critical human rights issue in the disability community. Twelve participants engaged in the co-creation and editing of a series of videos about the dimensions of sexual rights as experienced and understood by persons with developmental disabilities. The participants also uploaded the videos onto digital platforms and took on the role of community educators while incorporating their videos into their larger advocacy campaign. This article begins with a brief review of the literature on sexual health and disability, noting there is a paucity of research that considers storied narratives when exploring the topic of sexual rights and disablement. Drawing on critical disability theory and Freirean pedagogy, the second section explores how a group of adults with developmental disabilities used participatory video as an advocacy tool in disrupting colonial voices through reclaiming histories and leading discussions about their sexual rights. Further implications and limitations to this study are also addressed.


Neural network augmented model inversion control is used to provide a civilian tilt-rotor aircraft with consistent response characteristics throughout its operating envelope, including conversion flight. The implemented response types are Attitude Command Attitude Hold in the longitudinal channel, and Rate Command Attitude Hold about the roll and yaw axes. This article describes the augmentation in the roll channel and the augmentation for the yaw motion including Heading Hold at low airspeeds and automatic Turn Coordination at cruise flight. Conventional methods require extensive gain scheduling with tilt-rotor nacelle angle and airspeed. A control architecture is developed that can alleviate this requirement and thus has the potential to reduce development time. It also facilitates the implementation of desired handling qualities, and permits compensation for partial failures. One of the most powerful aspects of the controller architecture is the accommodation of uncertainty in control as well as in the states. It includes an online, i.e. learning-while-controlling, neural network. Lyapunov analysis guarantees the boundedness of tracking errors and network parameters. The performance of the controller is demonstrated using the nonlinear Generic Tilt-Rotor Simulation code developed for the Vertical Motion Simulator at the NASA Ames Research Center.


We observe that the radial gauge can be consistently imposed together with the Lorenz gauge in Maxwell theory, and with the harmonic traceless gauge in linearized general relativity. This simple observation has relevance for some recent developments in quantum gravity where the radial gauge is implicitly utilized.


TD( ) with function approximation has proved empirically successful for some complex reinforcement learning problems. For linear approximation, TD( ) has been shown to minimise the squared error between the approximate value of each state and the true value. However, as far as policy is concerned, it is error in the relative ordering of states that is important, rather than error in the state values. We illustrate this point with a simple two-state system in which TD( ) abandons the optimal policy to converge to a suboptimal policy. We also observe this trait of policy degradation by TD( ) in backgammon. We then present a modified form of TD( ), called STD( ), in which function approximators are trained with respect to relative state values. We characterise the limiting behaviour of this algorithm, and present a theorem guaranteeing optimality of the limiting parameter vector for twostate BMDPs. A comparison with Bertsekas' differential trainingmethod is also presented, which highlights a significant difference between the algorithms. This is followed by successful demonstrations of STD( ) on the two-state system and the well known acrobot problem.


Tan JMP, Buot Jr. IE. 2020. Determining relevant petiole anatomy characters to delimit Eupolypods I families. Biodiversitas 21: 2721-2726. The delineation of the families under eupolypods I has been quite challenging. With that, characters that are stable and taxonomically significant are necessary. The study attempted to use petiole anatomy characters to study the taxonomy of the eupolypods I families. Fresh eupolypods I representatives were collected from the field and were fixed with formalin-acetic acid alcohol (FAA). The petioles were cut and processed into permanent mounts using alcohol dehydration series and following standard microtechnique protocols. The petiole anatomy characters of the 21 representative species of eupolypods I were first studied of their stabil ity and subjected to multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to determine the most taxonomically relevant character. The MCA biplot showed that four petiole anatomy characters were useful to describe and delineate families of eupolypods I. These petiole anatomy characters included, xylem shape, vascular bundle shape, and number of vascular bundles.


Patients can be exposed to a variety of potentially life threatening acute inflammations mainly sepsis, which accounts to 9% of all death in the US. The prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is about 30% in the general population. Fatty liver is known to be more sensitive to endotoxins. It has been reported that metabolic aspects of sepsis and endotoxemia are suppression of the fatty acid beta-oxidation pathway and severe hypoglycemia. This can be due to lipotoxic effects following accumulation of free fatty acids in the liver and suppression of gluconeogenesis. In this chapter we will review the published facts about the development of hypoglycemic effects during sepsis and the possible connection of such an effect to the dysregulation of lipid metabolism. Secondly a possible redox related antilipotoxic cellular mechanism will be suggested. Such mechanism can alleviate the endotoxic hypoglycemic effect and is related to nitric oxide signaling. Nitric oxide signaling has been demonstrated to regulate the metabolic status of cells including upregulation of mitochondrial biogenesis, promoting liver glucose production and depending on the biological setting to protect cells against accumulation of oxidative damage, all possibly protect against development of hypoglycemia following liver injury.


Aiming at the problem that the single-intensity phase retrieval method has poor reconstruction quality and low probability of successful recovery, an improved method is proposed in this paper. Our method divides the phase retrieval into two steps: firstly, the GS algorithm is used to recover the amplitude in the spatial domain from the single-spread Fourier spectrum, and then the classical GS algorithm using two intensity measurements (one is recorded and the other is estimated from the first step) measurements is used to recover the phase. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical experiments.


Acute malignant catatonia with autonomic instability developed in a previously healthy man with PCR-verified SARS-CoV-2. CT and MRI were normal, EEG showed slowing and cerebrospinal fluid showed a subtle indication of inflammation. There were no signs of pathology in other organs. 18F-FDG-PET conveyed high bilateral uptake in the striatum. While commercial tests were negative, immunohistochemical staining of mouse brain revealed anti-neuronal IgG antibodies against neuronal targets in the hippocampus, thalamus, striatum and cortex. Early treatment with plasmapheresis and corticosteroid reversed disease progression and may have prevented large-scale neurological damage. We are not aware of other types of encephalitis with such distinct pyramidal tract symptoms and raise the possibility that this may be a novel form of autoimmune encephalitis induced by infection with SARS-CoV-2.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the potential correlation between estrogen receptor (ER) texture and histologic grade in breast carcinomas.

STUDY DESIGN
Clinical material comprised 96 biopsies of infiltrative ductal carcinomas that were hematoxylin-eosin (H-E) and immunohistochemically (IHC) stained. H-E-stained specimens were used for tumor grading, and IHC-stained specimens were analyzed for ER-status estimation. Spearman's correlation test was used to estimate the relation between histologic grade and both the physician's ER-status assessment and a computer system's ER-status evaluation. Moreover, a pattern recognition system was developed that takes as input textural features extracted from ER-expressed nuclei and outputs the grade of the tumor. The system was evaluated using an external cross-validation procedure in order to assess its generalization to new cases.

RESULTS
Spearman's correlation revealed that the histologic grading was inversely related to both the physician's ER-status assessment and to the computer system's ER-status evaluation. The pattern recognition system was able to predict histologic grade with 95.2% accuracy. Important textural nuclear features were proven--the skewness, the angular second moment and the sum of entropy.

CONCLUSION
ER-expressed nuclei texture was found to contain important information related to histologic grade.


In this paper we examine methods of automatic classification applied to Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) across data sets from a live site. All sensors used are time-domain Electromagnetic Induction (EMI) sensors. We solve for target extrinsic and intrinsic parameters using the Differential Evolution (DE) and Ortho-Normalized Volume Magnetic Source (ONVMS) algorithm. This inversion provides target locations and intrinsic time-series total ONVMS principal eigenvalues. We fit these to an empirical power decay model, the Pasion-Oldenburg model, providing dimensionality reduction for a Machine Learning (ML) approach. We group anomalies by the unsupervised Weighted-Pair Group Method with Averaging (WPGMA) algorithm. After requesting Ground Truths (GT) for the central element of each cluster, we train a supervised Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), in which each class of UXO is represented by a multivariate Gaussian probability density. We request Ground Truths in rounds until we are confident there are no remaining Targets of Interest (TOI) in our survey of the site. Our system for UXO cleanup is fully automatic and expert free, and uses a priori knowledge combined with a learned algorithm.


We proposed to develop a polycation lipid nanocarrier (PLN) with higher transfection efficiency than our previously described polycation nanostrucutred lipid nanocarrier (PNLC). PLN was composed of triolein, cetylated low-molecular-weight polyethylenimine, and dioleoyl phosphatidylethanolamine. The physicochemical properties of PLN and the PLN/DNA complexes (PDC) were characterized. The in vitro transfection was performed in human lung adenocarcinoma (SPC-A1) cells, and the intracellular mechanism was investigated as well. The measurements indicated that PLN and PDC are homogenous nanometer-sized particles with a positive charge. The transfection efficiency of PDC significantly increased with the content of triolein and was higher than that of PNLC and commercial Lipofectamine™ 2000. In particular, the transfection of PLN in the presence of 10% serum was more effective than that in its absence. With the help of specific inhibitors of chlorpromazine and filipin, the clathrin-dependent endocytosis pathway was determined to be the main contributor to the successful transfection mediated by PLN in SPC-A1 cells. The captured images verified that the fluorescent PDC was localized in the lysosomes and nuclei after endocytosis. Thus, PLN represents a novel efficient nonviral gene delivery vector.


In this paper, a new reliable transport protocol called rate-control snoop is proposed for improving TCP performance over error-prone wireless links. It is implemented at a base station where it performs rate-based transmission control based on characteristics of a data path. The proposed protocol monitors every packet that passes through the path and asks the sender to reduce the transmission rate when packet losses are detected only at a wired link. The performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated by simulations and it shows better throughput than TCP Reno, TCP-Snoop, and end-to-end rate control TCP.


The purpose of this paper is to review discoveries made by air reconnaissance during the five summers 1945-9 in the Roman military districts of Northern Britain. Most of the sites described were revealed by differences in the colour or growth of vegetation above them, and during this period the exceptional drought of 1949 gave unusually clear definition, covering much of the material now under review. The cereal crops in particular responded so sensitively to buried features as to reveal not merely the outline of buildings, but finer details such as buttresses to a wall, or floors in stone or concrete. Even in pasture, the Military Way behind Hadrian's Wall could be seen for miles together as a ribbon of parched grass (pl. v); and, most remarkable of all, the foundation-trenches of timber buildings in the legionary fortress at Inchtuthill appeared as thin green lines in the parched surface (pl. viii, 2). Such conditions occur rarely; but even in a wet summer carefully planned air reconnaissance will afford plenty of information.


Video streaming services account for the majority of today's traffic on the Internet, and according to recent studies, this share is expected to continue growing. Given this broad utilization, research in video streaming is recently moving towards energy-aware approaches, which aim at reducing the energy consumption of the devices involved in the streaming process. On the other side, the perception of quality delivered to the user plays an important role, and the advent of HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) changed the way quality is perceived. The focus is not any more exclusively on the Quality of Service (QoS) but rather oriented towards the Quality of Experience (QoE) of the user taking part in the streaming session. Therefore video streaming services need to develop Adaptive BitRate (ABR) techniques to deal with different network conditions on the client side or appropriate end-to-end strategies to provide high QoE to the users. The scope of this doctoral study is within the end-to-end environment with a focus on the end-users domain, referred to as the player environment, including video content consumption and interactivity. This thesis aims to investigate and develop different techniques to increase the delivered QoE to the users and minimize the energy consumption of the end devices in HAS context. We present four main research questions to target the related challenges in the domain of content consumption for HAS systems.


Increasing numbers of seaborne tourists are visiting Antarctica, with most coming from the United States (3503 in 1996-97), Germany (777), and Australia (680; cf. 356 in 1994-95 and 410 in 1995-96). The impression among travel medicine clinicians is that, each year, more prospective travelers seek advice about the health demands of this type of adventure, mostly relating to fitness for travel, exposure to extreme cold, hazards in ice and snow, and other potential health risks. This is a recent phenomenon. While a regular shipping service had been established between the Falklands and the subantarctic islands of South Georgia and the South Shetlands by 1924, the first documented tourists accompanied an Argentine expedition to the South Orkneys in 1933.1 Commercial airline flights over these islands and the Antarctic Peninsula began in 1956, from Chile, and recreational cruises to the Peninsula began in 1958. Tourist numbers subsequently grew slowly, for what was clearly an exclusive and very expensive undertaking, with few ships available for these hazardous voyages. From 1957 to 1993, 37,000 tourists visited by sea, most seeing only the Peninsula.2 The dramatic recent growth in numbers is a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The small fleet of ice-strengthened research vessels and working icebreakers, which was made redundant by withdrawal of central government support from isolated communities and military activities along the northern coast of Siberia (and from Antarctic research bases), now accounts for the bulk of charter-cruise tourism to Antarctica, at competitive prices. According to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators,3 7322 people traveled to Antarctica on commercially organized voyages in the 1996-97 season, and a record 10,000 shipborne visitors were expected for the 1997-98 season (November-March), traveling mainly from South America to the Peninsula on 15 ice-reinforced vessels, each carrying between 36 and 180 passengers. Most tours embark from Ushuaia in southern Argentina, or Punta Arenas in Chile, although occasional cruises leave from Australia, New Zealand, or even South Africa.


How to provide service differentiation in the Internet is a hot research topic. One proposal is to provide loss rate differentiation by assigning levels of drop precedence to IP packets. This paper proposes a new Active Queue Management (AQM) mechanism, Weighted SAP (WSAP) to achieve this goal. WSAP is based on a new AQM algorithm called Simple Adaptive Proportional (SAP). WSAP can approximate proportional loss rate differentiation, while keeping high link utilization and short queuing delay. Compared with Weighted RED(WRED) and RED In and Out (RIO), WSAP is easier to configure and can provide better performance. Furthermore, an architecture for differentiated service is proposed. In the design of this architecture, more attention is paid to the characteristics of network traffic in the Internet and an attempt is made to preserve the Internet's original design principles.


Recently, subgraphs-enhanced Graph Neural Networks (SGNNs) have been introduced to enhance the expressive power of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), which was proved to be not higher than the 1-dimensional Weisfeiler-Leman isomorphism test. The new paradigm suggests using subgraphs extracted from the input graph to improve the model's expressiveness, but the additional complexity exacerbates an already challenging problem in GNNs: explaining their predictions. In this work, we adapt PGExplainer, one of the most recent explainers for GNNs, to SGNNs. The proposed explainer accounts for the contribution of all the different subgraphs and can produce a meaningful explanation that humans can interpret. The experiments that we performed both on real and synthetic datasets show that our framework is successful in explaining the decision process of an SGNN on graph classification tasks.


We have developed a comprehensive computer system to assist farmers who practice traditional farming methods and have limited access to agricultural experts for addressing crop diseases. Our system utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and provide remedies for vegetable diseases. To ensure ease of use, we have created a mobile application that offers a user-friendly interface, allowing farmers to inquire about vegetable diseases and receive suitable solutions in their local language. The developed system can be utilized by any farmer with a basic understanding of a smartphone. Specifically, we have designed an AI-enabled mobile application for identifying and suggesting remedies for vegetable diseases, focusing on tomato diseases to benefit the local farming community in Nepal. Our system employs state-of-the-art object detection methodology, namely You Only Look Once (YOLO), to detect tomato diseases. The detected information is then relayed to the mobile application, which provides remedy suggestions guided by domain experts. In order to train our system effectively, we curated a dataset consisting of ten classes of tomato diseases. We utilized various data augmentation methods to address overfitting and trained a YOLOv5 object detector. The proposed method achieved a mean average precision of 0.76 and offers an efficient mobile interface for interacting with the AI system. While our system is currently in the development phase, we are actively working towards enhancing its robustness and real-time usability by accumulating more training samples.


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

Introduction: New cancer-specific antigens are needed to fully realize the potential of antibody-based cancer therapies. Cancer cells express novel antigens that are characteristic of the transformed state and may engender an antibody response in patients. We hypothesize that some of these antibodies detect neo-antigens shared by diverse tumor types. We optimized a hybridoma method for cloning human IgG monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) by screening for binding to heterologous cell lines. Here, we describe four mAbs, isolated from cancer patients, that bind to cancer cells.

Methods: We developed immunofluorescence binding assays with the A431, MCF-7, and MDA-MB-231 cell lines, detecting cell-reactive human IgG with the Operetta (Perkin Elmer). The assays were adapted for extracellular binding as well as internalization using specific culture conditions. We tested sera from 59 lung cancer patients with diverse clinical features. 24 of the samples contained IgG reactivity with A431 cells at > 1:100 titer, and 17 had evidence of IgG internalization. We generated hybridomas using peripheral blood B-cells isolated from two of these lung cancer patients, as well as B-cells from a lymph node of a stage I, ER+PR+ breast cancer patient. We characterized the binding of four mAbs using immunohistochemistry (IHC), microscopy, flow cytometry and immunoblotting. One mAb was used to identify its cognate antigen by immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry.

Results: In a panel of 59 lung cancer patient sera, 24 had IgG that bound the A431 cell line, and 17 of these had evidence of internalization. We isolated three human mAbs from two lung cancer patients and one mAb from the breast cancer lymph node. We performed IHC with three of the mAbs in formalin fixed, paraffin embedded normal and tumor tissues and found primarily tumor cell binding to a variety of tumor types. The 5A6 (lung) bound 3 of 4 non-small cell lung, 3 of 4 colon, 2 of 4 ovarian and 1 of 4 small cell lung cancers. 19F10 (lung) bound 1 of 4 colon and 2 of 4 small cell lung. 2G4 (breast) bound 4 of 4 non-small cell lung, 3 of 4 prostate, 3 of 4 ovarian, and 2 of 4 colon cancers. Some normal tissue binding was observed, such as small intestine and distal renal tubule (2G4 and 19F10), pancreatic islet (19F10), and prostate (2G4). The 6A10 mAb (lung) bound to the constitutive heat shock protein, HSC70, which was localized in the plasma membrane of cancer cell lines.

Conclusion: We have cloned 4 human mAbs from cancer patients. This supports the hypothesis that patients with active malignancies make antibodies capable of binding cancer-specific antigens. We identified HSC70, a protein that has an altered cell localization in cancer cells, as one such antigen. The three mAbs tested by IHC bound to diverse tumor types that often differed from the tumors of the patients where the B-cells originated. The human anti-cancer antibody repertoire holds promise as a tool to identify new targets for mAb-based cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.

Citation Format: Huiwu Zhao, Jiping Zhang, Ramdev Puligedda, Cezary Swider, Paul Simon, Baron Heimbach, Sharad Adekar, Maureen Murphy, Hossein Borghaei, Scott Dessain. Tumor-specific human monoclonal antibodies isolated from cancer patients. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3625. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3625


INTRODUCTION
Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is a hereditary kidney disease that can affect several organs. The clinical course of the disease varies among patients; some never become symptomatic, and others reach end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in the 5th decade of their life.

METHODS
This historical cohort study was conducted on ADPKD patients to investigate kidney and patient survival rates and related risk factors in Iran. Survival analysis and risk ratio calculation were performed using the Cox proportional hazards model, Kaplan- Meier method, and log-rank test.

RESULTS
Among the 145 participants, 67 developed ESKD, and 20 died before the end of the study period. Developing chronic kidney disease (CKD) at the age of ≤ 40, baseline serum creatinine level (SCr) of more than 1.5 mg/dL, and cardiovascular disease increased the risk of ESKD by 4, 1.8, and 2.4 times; respectively. Patient survival analysis revealed a fourfold increase in mortality if the glomerular filtration rate (GFR) declined more than 5 cc/min annually and if CKD was diagnosed at the age of ≤ 40. Vascular thrombotic events or ESKD in the course of disease increased the risk of death by approximately 6- and 7-fold, respectively. Kidney survival was 48% by the age of 60 and 28% by the age of 70. Patient survival was 86.05% at the age of 60 and 67.99% at the age of 70. Additionally, men had a significantly better renal function and survival than women.

CONCLUSION
Elevated baseline SCr and cardiovascular disease can increase ESKD risk in ADPKD patients. A rapid decline in GFR, ESKD development, and vascular thrombotic events increase the risk of death, but early CKD can affect both.  DOI: 10.52547/ijkd.7551.


Geographic Information Systems combine geodata with other types of information and generate maps for better recognition of local problems and more effective solutions. GIS directly supports variety of local activities (land-use and urban planning, economic development, infrastructure, transportation and emergency management, educational planning, tax assessment, environmental monitoring, public information services). Being an expensive technology, GIS needs proper management and organizational support. Uses of GIS and its management were investigated in 15 biggest Polish cities and several minor. Best practices and obstacles for GIS success were presented. Introduction Although governments use a variety of information technologies, the use of the Internet has become a key component of enhanced service delivery. No wonder, after all, almost fifteen years of Internet's public exercise is enough to avail it in the comprehensive manner. However, government web sites are only façade. If this façade is to work fluently, it has to be based on firm grounds. Those are back-office applications, well-developed in public administrations with ICT long and deep experience. Where experience is short and shallow, back-office infrastructure might not fit to bold visions of e-government. In Poland, strategies of ICT policy and legal regulations determine the standards of Internet use in public information and public services delivery – they don't refer or refer in a restricted manner to conditions and standards of back-office automation. In the paper, one of the back-office applications is to be discussed. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are more "sophisticated" and less common tools that MIS (Management Information Systems). Thou, presently they are equally important in public management. GIS can also enrich set of services delivered electronically. Information resources (both data and technology) play double role in public administration. Firstly, they are strategic assets, regularly managed institutional resources. Secondly, information and ICT are important tools to manage other institutional resources (human, financial, substantial) and achieve internal and external goals. The paper distinguishes the double role of information and ICT in respect to GIS. Approximately 80% of information collected at the local level of administration is referenced spatially. Therefore GIS technology is the most effective instrument to "capture, manage, and call upon land-related data for solving complex planning and management problems". The number of local governments that are interested in acquisition of GIS for their jurisdiction is increasing. However that increase is limited by shortage of financial resources, lack of ICT professionals and sufficient knowledge how to use GIS technology in local decision-making. In the paper GIS is discussed as particular technology in reference to other ICT technologies (Management Information Systems, www technologies) exercised in local public management. Subsequently, organizational aspects of technology – institutional arrangements, cooperation with public and private institutions – will be conferred. The cores of the paper are examples of successful GIS implementation and use in selected Polish municipalities. That is supplemented by some reflections on GIS technology as issue of management. Several obstacles to GIS success are considered. 1 The paper is based on research proceeded by the author in the years 1999-2001, on 15 local administrations in the biggest cities (from 115.000 to 795.000 inhabitants) of Poland. 2 M.M. Brown (1996): "An Empirical Assessment of the Hurdles to Geographic Information System Success in Local Government", State and Local Government Review, No. 3: 194. 3 Ibidem.


Stanley et al. (Psychological Assessment, 2018, 20, 1249) examined Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF; Ben-Porath & Tellegen, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Form: Manual for administration, scoring, and interpretation, 2008/2011, University of Minnesota Press) profile configurations to predict which individuals engage in suicidal behavior using an outpatient psychiatric sample. Their results revealed that an interaction of overarousal [Hypomanic Activation (RC9) or Activation (ACT)] and shutdown [Demoralization (RCd)] indicators predicted increased history of suicide attempts. The purpose of the present study was to replicate and extend these results to a psychiatric inpatient sample in order to determine their generalizability to a clinically severe, at-risk population. The present study examined 581 valid MMPI-2-RF protocols of adult psychiatric inpatients who endorsed any level of suicide ideation on the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS; Posner et al., The American Journal of Psychiatry, 2011, 168, 1266) in the 2 weeks prior to admission. Results revealed that in four of the six models tested, shutdown (Low Positive Emotions [RC2], Helplessness/Hopelessness [HLP]) but not overactivation (RC9, ACT) indicators provided an additional prediction of suicide attempt history beyond Suicidal/Death Ideation (SUI) and the covariates. The two models containing RCd did not provide additional predictive value above Suicidal/Death Ideation (SUI) with main effects or interaction terms. Overall, our results do not replicate those of Stanley et al. (Psychological Assessment, 2018, 20, 1249). Furthermore, while SUI was the best predictor of a history of suicide attempts, results indicate the main effects of RC2 and HLP were negative predictors of prior suicide attempts. Limitations of the study and clinical implications of the results are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).


Determining if two protocols can be securely run alongside each other requires analyzing the independence of the involved protocols. In this paper we construct a canonical model of security protocols that allows us to conduct a syntactical analysis on the independence of multiple security protocols. By integrating participant knowledge in the model, we are able to detect subtle multi-protocol attacks, where the types of certain message components can not be checked, also known as type-flaw attacks. Of special interest is the construction of messages in the proposed model, which is made by mapping each message component from the regular specification to a type. We provide a theorem for analyzing the independence of security protocols and illustrate its applicability by analyzing two protocols.


We herein report the large-scale synthesis of Bi2Te3−xSex (0.6 ≤ x ≤ 0.75) nanoplatelets through a hydrothermal method and subsequent spark plasma sintering. The effect of selenium alloying and the spark plasma sintering temperature on the thermoelectric properties of the Bi2Te3 nanostructured bulk materials were investigated. The results indicate that compared to samples fabricated in an autoclave, preparing Bi2Te3−xSex in glass beaker with suitable Se alloying and appropriate sintered temperature is an efficient way to reduce the lattice thermal conductivity due to a large number of Bi2TeO5 nanodots with sizes of around 10 nm. Meanwhile, a decrease in electrical resistivity due to increase in carrier mobility and an enhancement of the Seebeck coefficient attribute to decrease in carrier concentration were observed. As a result, the thermoelectric figure-of-merit, ZT, is significantly improved and the maximum value reaches 0.96 for Bi2Te2.25Se0.75 at 490 K.


A standard method to treat fruits with 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) is to close the fruits for a relatively long time with the 1-MCP gas at the atmospheric pressure so that the gas diffuses into the fruits. In this study, 1-MCP gas was vacuum-infiltrated into the tomato fruits within a short time and the treatment efficiency was evaluated by measuring the changes of respiration and ethylene production rates. By the forced infiltration of 1-MCP, respiration rate was reduced proportional to the treated 1-MCP concentrations and inversely proportional to the applied vacuum pressures. But the 1-MCP treatment increased ethylene production, especially under the vacuum pressure of 60 mbar. At 120 mbar vacuum pressure the 1-MCP was efficiently infiltrated into the fruits. However an increase in concentration of 1-MCP was required to acquire the same level of effect as standard treatment method, presumably because of the increased ethylene production.


The availability of liquid water is the most important factor that makes a planet habitable, because water is a very effective polar molecule and hence an excellent solvent and facilitator for the complex chemistry of life. Its presence presupposes a planet with a significant mass that guarantees the presence of a substantial atmosphere, and a reasonable spinning rate to avoid overheating. It also implies that the planet is at moderate distances from its central star, a range that is called the Ecosphere or the Habitable Zone. Since the evolution of life to high intelligence seems to take billions of years, it requires also that the central star must be neither too massive, that will produce a lot of lethal UV radiation and will have too short a life-span to allow life to evolve, nor of very small mass which will be producing too feeble a radiation to sustain life. The detection of free Oxygen in the atmosphere of a planet is a very strong evidence for the presence of life, because Oxygen is highly reactive and would rapidly disappear by combining with other elements, unless it is continuously replenished by life as the by-product of the process of photosynthesis that builds food for life (sugars) from CO2 and H2O.


Peritoneal metastases occur most often in the greater omentum, where tumor implantation sites are densely distributed. We used dextran sulfate (S-Dex) as an anti-cell-adherence agent to prevent i.p. seeded malignant cells from causing peritoneal metastases. S-Dex was tested for its anti-adherent activity against B-16 melanoma cells on plastic, and was examined for its ability to prevent implantation in the omentum and to improve survival in mice after B-16 melanoma was inoculated i.p. S-Dex prevented B-16 melanoma cells from adhering to the plastic wall. S-Dex reduced the number of B-16 melanoma cells implanted into the greater omentum and improved the survival of mice inoculated with B-16 melanoma cells. We conclude that S-Dex attenuated peritoneal metastases when B-16 melanoma cells were seeded i.p.


Background Patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritia (RA) may feature significant loss of bone mineral density (BMD). early aggressive treatment and sometimes low corticosteroids doses are required; however, long term effects on bone are not extensively characterised. Objectives To assess the effects of 10 mg prednisone daily + 7.5 mg methotrexate (MTX) on BMD in patients with early active and severe RA. Methods 32 patients with active RA, with a disease duration less than 2 years, without prior treatment with any disease modifying antirheumatic drugs were randomised to receive either MTX and prednisone or sulphasalazine alone. Osteoporosis treatment was not permitted. Disease activity and BMD were monitored at baseline, 6, 12 and 24 months; BMD was determined by quantitative ultrasound at the calcis bone and was appreciated as broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA) and quantitative ultrasound index (QUI). BMD loss was calculated in% of baseline. Subgroup analysis (high and low disease activity) was performed upon ESR and CRP values. Results After 6 and 12 months of treatment mean% BUA has decreased significantly (p < 0.05) compared to baseline in both study groups, but greater in patients with high disease activity; after 24 months BMD has fallen significantly more in the combination group in patients with severe RA (- 3.5%) compared to monotherapy group in patients with mild disease (+0.07%, p < 0.05). Change in BMD correlates more closely with measure of inflammation than with administration of prednosone and MTX. Conclusion High disease activity is closely associated with bone loss in early active severe RA compared to bone loss due to aggressive therapy including MTX and low doses prednisone.


A dual frequency Ti: sapphire laser is presented in which two lines operate simultaneously with the same intensity on two TM00 longitudinal modes. This operation is obtained by means of the 127I2 molecules contained in an intra-cavity cell, pumped by a low-power laser. Its properties are interesting: the two lines lase simultaneously, they overlap spatially, their spectral width could be very narrow, their frequency is automatically locked to molecular frequencies and can serve as a frequency reference, the frequency difference is adjustable over the thousands of rotational or vibrational molecular energy gaps in the 0.1-0.9 THz and 3-6 THz domains, and it is computable with high precision. THz wave production is demonstrated as a first application.


JavaScript is an interpreted programming language most often used for enhancing webpage interactivity and functionality. It has powerful capabilities to interact with webpage documents and browser windows, however, it has also opened the door for many browser-based security attacks. Insecure engineering practices of using JavaScript may not directly lead to security breaches, but they can create new attack vectors and greatly increase the risks of browser-based attacks. In this paper, we present the first measurement study on insecure practices of using JavaScript on the Web. Our focus is on the insecure practices of JavaScript inclusion and dynamic generation, and we examine their severity and nature on 6,805 unique websites. Our measurement results reveal that insecure JavaScript practices are common at various websites: (1) at least 66.4% of the measured websites manifest the insecure practices of including JavaScript files from external domains into the top-level documents of their webpages; (2) over 44.4% of the measured websites use the dangerous eval() function to dynamically generate and execute JavaScript code on their webpages; and (3) in JavaScript dynamic generation, using the document.write() method and the innerHTML property is much more popular than using the relatively secure technique of creating script elements via DOM methods. Our analysis indicates that safe alternatives to these insecure practices exist in common cases and ought to be adopted by website developers and administrators for reducing potential security risks.


Cathodes that feature a layered structure are attractive reversible sodium hosts for ambient temperature sodium-ion batteries which may meet the demands for large-scale energy storage devices. However, crystallographic data on these electrodes are limited to equilibrium or quasi-equilibrium information. Here we report the current-dependent structural evolution of the P2-Na2/3Fe2/3Mn1/3O2 electrode during charge/discharge at different current rates. The structural evolution is highly dependent on the current rate used, e.g., there is significant disorder in the layered structure near the charged state at slower rates and following the cessation of high-current rate cycling. At moderate and high rates this disordered structure does not appear. In addition, at the slower rates the disordered structure persists during subsequent discharge. In all rates examined, we show the presence of an additional two-phase region that has not been observed before, where both phases maintain P63/mmc symmetry but with varying sodium contents. Notably, most of the charge at each current rate is transferred via P2 (P63/ mmc) phases with varying sodium contents. This illustrates that the high-rate performance of these electrodes is in part due to the preservation of the P2 structure and the disordered phases appear predominantly at lower rates. Such current-dependent structural information is critical to understand how electrodes function in batteries which can be used to develop optimised charge/discharge routines and better materials.


We take advantage of China's relationship-based institutional setting to investigate whether and how firms' disclosure decision is affected by political patronage and associated political costs considerations. Using a sample of 65 firms involved in the Shanghai Pension corruption scandal of 2006, we find that relative to benchmark firms, the connected firms are associated with lower levels of disclosure prior to the scandal. However, they significantly increased their disclosures in the year immediately following the public exposure of the scandal. A content analysis indicates that the increased disclosures are value-relevant, and are not merely used as a public relations effort to subdue public outcry in the immediate aftermath of the scandal. Cross-sectional analyses further reveal that the increase in disclosure is positively associated with the extent of firm's guanxi dependence and type/severity of involvement in the scandal. We conclude that the increased disclosures are in response to the heightened risk and potential costs of regulatory and public scrutiny in the wake of a major event involving high political and public sensitivity. The evidence is supportive of the political costs hypothesis, and has important managerial and policy implications.


BACKGROUND
Dysmenorrhoea is the occurrence of painful menstrual cramps of uterine origin and is a very common gynaecological complaint. Medical therapy for dysmenorrhoea includes oral contraceptive pills (OCP) and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) which both act by suppressing prostaglandin levels. While these treatments are very successful there is still a 20-25% failure rate and surgery has been an option for cases of dysmenorrhoea that fail to respond to medical therapy. Uterine nerve ablation (UNA) and presacral neurectomy (PSN) are two surgical treatments that have become increasingly utilised in recent years. These procedures both interrupt the majority of the cervical sensory nerve fibres, thus diminishing uterine pain. Uncontrolled studies have supported the use of these procedures for primary dysmenorrhoea however both operations only partially interrupt some of the cervical sensory nerve fibres in the pelvic area; therefore dysmenorrhoea associated with additional pelvic pathology may not always benefit from this type of surgery.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effectiveness of surgical interruption of pelvic nerve pathways as treatment for primary and secondary dysmenorrhoea, and to determine the most effective surgical treatment.

SEARCH STRATEGY
Electronic searches of the Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertility Group Register of controlled trials, MEDLINE, and EMBASE were performed to identify relevant randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Attempts were also made to identify trials from citation lists of review articles and handsearching. In most cases, the first or corresponding author of each included trial was contacted for additional information.

SELECTION CRITERIA
The inclusion criteria were randomised comparisons of surgical techniques of interruption of the pelvic nerve pathways (both open and laparoscopic procedures) for the treatment of primary and secondary dysmenorrhoea. The main outcome measures were pain relief and adverse effects.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Seven RCTs were identified that fulfilled the inclusion criteria for this review. One trial (Sutton 1994) was excluded because another treatment was given in combination with destruction of pelvic nerve pathways and the effects of these two treatments could not be separated. Of the remaining six trials, three were included in the meta-analysis (Chen 1996, Candiani 1992, Lichten 1987). The results of the other three trials (Dover 1999, Tjaden 1990, Vercellini 1997) were included in the text of the review for discussion because the data were not available in a form that allowed them to be combined in a meta-analysis.

MAIN RESULTS
For the treatment of primary dysmenorrhoea there is some evidence of the effectiveness of uterine nerve ablation (UNA) when compared to a control of no treatment. The comparison between UNA with presacral neurectomy (PSN) for primary dysmenorrhoea showed no significant difference in pain relief in the short term, however long term PSN was shown to be significantly more effective. For the treatment of secondary dysmenorrhoea the identified RCTs addressed only endometriosis. The treatment of UNA combined with surgical treatment of endometrial implants versus surgical treatment of endometriosis alone showed that the addition of UNA did not aid pain relief. For PSN combined with endometriosis treatment versus endometriosis treatment alone there was also no overall difference in pain relief, although the data suggests a significant difference in relief of midline abdominal pain. Adverse events were significantly more common for presacral neurectomy, however the majority were complications such as constipation, which may spontaneously improve.

REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS
There is insufficient evidence to recommend the use of nerve interruption in the management of dysmenorrhoea, regardless of cause. Future RCTs should be undertaken.


BACKGROUND
Despite the advantages of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) compared to fibrinolytic therapy, it holds some potential risks such as contrast related reactions and technical problems. In addition, recent studies have shown disparities in which access is more exposed to radiation.

OBJECTIVES
To analyze the clinical profile, differences between radial and femoral approach and complications presented in patients who underwent PCI performed in a hospital in the south of Brazil.

METHODS
A total of 733 patients who underwent PCI in 2016 were included and retrospectively analyzed through their clinical records. The primary outcomes analyzed were procedure approach and the presence of complications.

RESULTS
The median age was 62.5 years; 54.8% were male; 50.8% had hypertension and 18.6% were diabetic; and mortality was seen in 2.3% of the population. Femoral approach was the most exposed to radiation, as well as the most used in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Complications were seen in 16.1% of the population and cardiovascular complication was the most frequent. Different accesses or degree of urgency showed no association with complication development. On the other hand, STEMI was related to a bigger complication burden.

CONCLUSION
The femoral approach demonstrated more expressive radiation exposure, which can be explained by anatomic reasons. Femoral access represented a safe approach for interventionists in more urgent cases, such as STEMI. Different accesses or degree of urgency did not show an association with complications, as opposed to STEMI, revealing that this condition deserves more attention regarding its procedures and post-PCI care.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Intramedullary high signal intensity on T2-weighted imaging was frequently observed in patients with CSM, although this finding does not well correlate with severity or prognosis of CSM. Instead of this nonquantitative information, another measure for CSM is desired. The work was focused primarily on assessing the relationships between ADC values and clinical and radiologic severity for the diagnosis of CSM. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The relationship between ADC values measured in the spinal cord at 322 intervertebral levels of 66 patients and clinical factors were analyzed. RESULTS: ADC values in the spinal cord significantly increased with the degree of spinal cord compression and decreased with time after decompression surgery. Patients with higher ADC values had lower preoperative JOA scores and tended to show poorer clinical recovery. CONCLUSIONS: ADC values appear to indicate the severity of spinal cord compression and clinical recovery after decompression surgery, so spondylotic myelopathy may partly be predicted preoperatively by using ADC values.


Mesothelioma mortality and its socio-demographic and temporal patterns in Argentina from 1980 to 2013 were estimated using data from death certificates obtained from the Vital Statistics System of Argentina's National Ministry of Health. There were 3,259 mesothelioma deaths corresponding to an age-adjusted mortality of 3.1/1,000,000 in 1980 and 5.7/1,000,000 in 2013, an average increase of 84.1% in 34 years. This raising trend became clearer after 1997. Males had higher mortality estimates compared with women in every year of the series; these findings suggest past exposure to asbestos. It is plausible that the asbestos exposure was mostly occupational, which is more common among men. Actions related to reinforcing the asbestos ban already in place and strengthening health surveillance directed at workplaces, previously exposed workers, and the population in general are recommended.


Clinical Outcomes of 23-gauge pars plana vitrectomy for diabetic epiretinal membranes in diabetic patients Objective: To report the clinical outcomes of 23-gauge (G) pars plana vitrectomy (PPV) for epiretinal membranes (ERM) in diabetic patients. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study included 30 eyes of 29 diabetic patients who underwent 23-G PPV only or combined with phacoemulsification and intraocular lens (IOL) implantation for ERM. All patients complained low visual acuity and/or metamorphopsia secondary to ERM with or without macular edema (ME). Phacoemulsification was performed for the lack of re-operation for cataract that will develop after vitrectomy. Preoperative and postoperative values of best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), central macular thickness (CMT), intraocular pressure (IOP) and complications of surgery were analyzed. Results: Mean age was 61.8±8.2 years old and follow up time was 13±7.9 months. Preoperative mean BCVA was 0.65±0.25 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) and postoperative mean BCVA was 0.54±0.29 logMAR (p=0.29). Preoperative mean CMT was 474±81 µm and postoperative mean CMT was 295±52 µm (p<0.001). Postoperatively, in 13 eyes (43.4%), BCVA was increased. In 10 eyes (33.3%), BCVA was not changed and in 7 eyes (23.3%), BCVA was decreased at the end of follow-up. Posterior capsul opacification was recorded in 7 eyes. Glaucoma in five, macular scar formation in two, lamellar macular hole formation in three, full-thickness macular hole formation in one, rubeosis iridis in one and optic atrophy in two eyes were recorded. Conclusions: BCVA was increased in 43.4% and not changed in 33.3% eyes after PPV for diabetic ERM. Mean CMT was significantly decreased after PPV. Postoperatively glaucoma, macular side events, and posterior capsular opacification were the most frequent complications.


Abstract Background and Aim: For understanding the epidemiology of leptospirosis, the confined abundance of several species of pathogenic leptospires and knowledge on the serovar(s) prevalent in the reservoir and carrier hosts may be a useful indicator of transmission to incidental/accidental hosts in a geographical niche. The present study was carried out to ascertain the frequency distribution of Leptospira serovars and the prevalence of anti-leptospiral antibodies in small ruminants (sheep and goats) in the epidemiological units (villages) in the coastal districts of enzootic regions in South Peninsular India. Materials and Methods: A total of 1167 serum samples (sheep n=299 and goats n=868) from apparently healthy animals, randomly collected from various epidemiological units were tested in microscopic agglutination test (MAT) using 18 reference Leptospira serovars antigens. Results: The overall seroprevalence of 40% (at 95% confidence intervals [CI]: 36.82-42.43) in small ruminants (44% [95% CI: 40.49-52.26] in sheep and 38% [95% CI: 34.96-41.41] in goats) was observed with the predominance of Icterohaemorrhagiae, Javanica, Australis, Hurstbridge, and Pyrogenes serogroup anti-leptospiral antibodies in the studied region. The Chi-squared test revealed that the presence of anti-leptospiral antibodies is significantly not independent (associated) across the administrative division (Chi-square=105.80, p<0.05) as well as for sheep (Chi-square=34.67, p<0.01) and goats (Chi-square=68.78, p<0.01). Among seropositive samples (n=462 reactors), the MAT was positive for more than one serovar in 73% of sheep (95/131) and 53% of goats (177/331), representing an overall 59% cross-reactive prevalence in small ruminants. The determined frequency distribution (varied among small ruminants) of the employed serovars representing major reactive serogroup was Icterohaemorrhagiae (29.87), Javanica (20.78), Australis (20.35), Hurstbridge (16.23), Pyrogenes (15.8), Djasmin (15.58), Bataviae (15.37), Autumnalis (14.5), Canicola (14.5), Hebdomadis (14.07), Shermani (13.64), Panama (13.42), Sejroe (12.77), etc. Conclusion: This study indicates alarmingly high seroprevalence of leptospirosis in small ruminants with existing endemicity in the studied region in South Peninsular India. Further, these prevalent serovars in the administrative division may be of use in the reference panels of antigens in the MAT in both humans and animal disease diagnostic laboratories for effective and timely diagnosis of leptospirosis and to combat the challenges in public health.


Introduction: Soluble plasma fibronectin (Fn) with its inactive compact structure requires unfolding to assemble into active fibrils. Fibril formation of Fn is cell-mediated (Mao and Schwarzbauer, 2005) and depending on interactions of Fn with integrin receptors, through binding to αIIbβ3, α5β1, or αvβ3. Less is known about the contribution of biomechanical forces on the fibrillogenesis of Fn. Tension forces generated by cells via cytoskeleton could modulate Fn fibrillogenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate conformational changes of Fn, as induced by (1) platelet integrins, (2) cytoskeletal forces and/or (3) shear rates simulating venous or arterial flow conditions.

Methods: Human plasma Fn (100 μg/ml) was added to plates pre-coated with 100 μg/ml of Fn or collagen in the presence or absence of washed platelets (2.5 x 107/ml). Subsequently, the solutions were exposed to shear using a cone-plate rheometer (Haake Rheostress 1). For microscopic analysis (LSM 510, Carl Zeiss), Alexa flour 488-conjugated Fn was used. In parallel experiments, a N-terminal 70kDa fragment of Fn (70 μg/ml) was incubated with soluble Fn at room temperature for 20 min before exposure to shear. To examine the role of distinct platelet integrins on fibril formation of Fn, washed platelets were incubated with monoclonal antibodies LM609, P1D6, 10E5, or abciximab (10 μg/ml, each) for 30 min at room temperature to block αvβ3, α5β1, αIIbβ3, or both αIIbβ3 and αvβ3, prior to the addition of Fn (100 μg/ml) and subsequent exposure to shear. In parallel experiments, washed platelets were pre-incubated with actin-modifying reagents, jasplakinolide (1 μM) or cytochalasin D (10 μM). In all experiments, flow conditions were simulated by shear rates, stepwise increasing from 50 s-1 to 5000 s-1 within 5 min and subsequently decreasing from 5000 s-1 to 50 s-1 within 5 min. Viscosities (mPa's) of shear-exposed solutions were recorded over 10 min. To study the structure of Fn fibrils, solutions were examined by laser scanning microscopy after exposure to shear. To quantify the amount of fibril formation, deoxycholate solubility assays and densitometric analysis of Western blots were performed. Control experiments were conducted under static conditions.

Results: Microscopic analyses showed that exposing Fn solutions to shear resulted in fibril formation. Fn fibril diameter varied from 0.5 to 5 μm. Observed fibrils were linked with each other and varied in length (from 50 to 300 μm). Addition of washed platelets to Fn solution resulted in a higher intertwined matrix of fibrils. Treatment of Fn with the N-terminal 70 kDa fragment of Fn, which is known to inhibit Fn matrix assembly, blocked fibril formation of Fn. Western blotting and densitometric analyses revealed that, in the absence of washed platelets, fibril formation (calculated as the ratio of insoluble to soluble Fn) on plates coated with collagen were 2-fold higher than on Fn-immobilized plates (n = 4, p 0.05, n = 3 each). Incubation of platelets with jasplakinolide, which stabilizes actin, caused an increase in fibril formation by 41%, as compared to samples with untreated platelets (p > 0.05, n = 3). In contrast, disruption of actin by cytochalasin D resulted in a decrease by 86% (p < 0.05, n = 3). Under static conditions, no fibril formation was detected.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that fibrillogenesis of Fn is modulated by shear conditions in a surface-dependent manner. Furthermore, formation of fibrils is induced by platelet integrins and actin cytoskeleton. Hereby, αIIbβ3 plays a predominant role, while α5β1 has a minor part among the three examined platelet integrins in terms of Fn fibril formation.

Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have been used to solve different day-to-day problems. Recently, DNNs have been deployed in real-time systems, and lowering the energy consumption and response time has become the need of the hour. To address this scenario, researchers have proposed incorporating dynamic mechanism to static DNNs (SDNN) to create Dynamic Neural Networks (DyNNs) performing dynamic amounts of computation based on the input complexity. Although incorporating dynamic mechanism into SDNNs would be preferable in real-time systems, it also becomes important to evaluate how the introduction of dynamic mechanism impacts the robustness of the models. However, there has not been a significant number of works focusing on the robustness trade-off between SDNNs and DyNNs. To address this issue, we propose to investigate the robustness of dynamic mechanism in DyNNs and how dynamic mechanism design impacts the robustness of DyNNs. For that purpose, we evaluate three research questions. These evaluations are performed on three models and two datasets. Through the studies, we find that attack transferability from DyNNs to SDNNs is higher than attack transferability from SDNNs to DyNNs. Also, we find that DyNNs can be used to generate adversarial samples more efficiently than SDNNs. Then, through research studies, we provide insight into the design choices that can increase robustness of DyNNs against the attack generated using static model. Finally, we propose a novel attack to understand the additional attack surface introduced by the dynamic mechanism and provide design choices to improve robustness against the attack.


The fastest parallel and pipeline computers presently being designed use interleaved memory systems with more than 16 individual memory units. A common difficulty in these machines is the alignment of data before it is arithmetically processed. Usually the arithmetic unit is used to preprocess the data. This may increase the computation time by a factor of two or more. This paper proposes a programmed memory preprocessing system which aligns the data before it is passed to the arithmetic processor.


Introduction Both reactive arthritis (ReA) and undifferentiated spondyloarthritis (uSpA) belong to the group of autoinflammatory diseases called spondyloarthritis (SpA). Hypotheses have been proposed about a relationship between the intestinal mucosa and inflammation of joint tissues. The role of immunoglobulin IgA or secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA) in the inflammatory and/or clinical activity of patients with SpA remains poorly understood. Objective To evaluate the status of total IgA and SIgA, and the association among the levels of SIgA, IgA, IgA anti-Chlamydia trachomatis, and anti-Shigella spp. with the disease activity measures, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, was compared in a cohort of patients with ReA and uSpA and healthy subjects. Methods This was a cross-sectional study. The serum concentrations of SIgA, IgA anti-C. trachomatis, anti-Shigella spp., and total IgA were measured. Disease activity was measured in each patient by means of Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) and Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score (ASDAS). Statistical analysis did include as bivariate evaluation, comparisons by Student's t-test, Kruskal–Wallis test, and U Mann–Whitney test, with a multivariate evaluation by principal components analysis (PCA). A correlation analysis was carried out using the Pearson correlation coefficient and a linear regression models. All analysis were made using Stata version 11.2® for Windows, R V3.3.21. Statistical significance was defined a p-value <0.05. Results In all, 46 patients (78.2% men; mean age, 34.8 ± 12.3 years) and 53 controls (41% men; mean age, 32 ± 11.4 years) were included in the study. The mean serum levels of SIgA were higher in SpA patients than in healthy subjects (p < 0.001). Only SIgA levels correlated with disease activity: BASDAI (r = −0.42, p = 0.0046), ASDAS-CRP (r = −0.37, p = 0.014), and ASDAS-ESR (r = −0.45, p = 0.0021). The negative correlation between SIgA and all activity indices was higher in HLA-B27-positive patients (BASDAI r = −0.70, p = 0.0009, ASDAS-CRP r = −0.58, p = 0.0093, and ASDAS-ESR r = −0.57, p = 0.0083). The PCA showed three factors: the first component was constituted by variables referred as clinical activity measures, the second did include the serological activity markers, and the last component was compounded by age and symptoms time. Conclusion Elevated serum levels of SIgA were found to be related with low disease activity in patients with ReA and uSpA.


The purpose of this study is to determine whether holding company depository receipts, or HOLDRs, a recently introduced financial product, carry a premium or discount to their net asset value. An examination of daily price time series reveals that like closed-end mutual funds, the HOLDR trades at an 8% discount to its NAV, and the discount is persistent over time. The discount is explained by market friction, inherent time risk, investor sentiment risk, and high volatility of the portfolio.


The article is a companion text to the first Russian translation of the fragment of Max Weber's fundamental study The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism. The article presents a brief history of this work first published 100 years ago. Weber's book is analyzed as an integral part of his study of the genesis of Western rationalism. The author puts the thesis forward that the publication of a theoretical work on Confucianism marks a shift in Weber's research interest, from the study of Protestant sectarian ethics in Europe to the universal, historical research of world civilizations. Furthermore, author demonstrates the close connection between the problems of the sociology of religion and the sociology of domination within Weber's conceptual framework. The article also shows that the latter, in its turn, forms the sociology of rationalism because its main cognitive interest constantly revolves around the question of the extent to which religious and ethical worldviews are influence, through the practical orientation of their agents, the socio-structural evolution of societies, whose rationality is so different from Western capitalist and legal rationality. In the main section of the paper Weber's reconstructed understanding of Confucianism is outlined as a type of practically-oriented secular rationalism which is not properly a "religious ethic" because of the absence in it of such ideas as sin, radical evil, and the related problem of theodicy. The article concludes with the thesis of persisting heuristic importance of Weber's study of ancient Chinese doctrines which formed a unique rational and practical attitude to the world as a form of adaptation to it.


In recent years field-scale applications of image-based velocimetry methods, often referred to as large scale particle image velocimetry (LSPIV), have been increasingly deployed. These velocimetry measurements have several advantages—they allow high resolution, non-contact measurement of surface velocity over a large two dimensional area, from which the bulk flow can be inferred. However, visiblelight LSPIV methods can have significant limitations. The water surface often lacks natural features that can be tracked in the visible and generally requires seeding with tracer particles, which creates concerns regarding the fidelity with which tracer particles track the flow, and introduces challenges in achieving sufficient and uniform seeding density, in particular in regions with appreciable velocity accelerations such as turbulence. In LSPIV, image collection is generally limited to daylight hours, and can suffer from non-uniformity of illumination across the camera's field of view. Due to these issues LSPIV often requires spatio-temporal averaging, and as a result is generally able to extracting the mean, but not the instantaneous, velocity field, and hence is often not a suitable tool for calculating turbulence metrics of the flow.


The global economy is creating substantial changes for organizations and industries throughout the world. These changes make it necessary for business firms to carefully examine their purposes and to devote a great deal of attention to selecting strategies. These strategies pursue the levels of success that are highly probable to satisfy multiple stakeholders. In response to hyper-globalized changing economic environment, many established companies have restructured their operations in meaningful ways. This research gap induces the authors to undertake the present study. For primary data some companies have been selected randomly in Chittagong, Bangladesh with the sample size of forty. We used the sophisticated statistical model Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Results of this analyzed study based on factor analysis, indicate the four important factors considered by the respondents when developing intrapreneurship such as: (1) Technically skilled labour force, (2) Layout of the organizations, (3) Knowledge of the market and (4) Availability of Secrecy.


Neorepublicanism may be defined as the attempt by current political scientists, philosophers, historians, lawyers, and others to draw on a classical republican tradition in the development of an attractive public philosophy intended for contemporary purposes. Three main ideas have been especially prominent in the neorepublican literature. First and most important is the conception of a free person as one who does not live under the arbitrary will or domination of others. Second is the associated conception of a free state as one that attempts to promote the freedom of its citizens without itself coming to dominate them. And third is the conception of good citizenship as consisting in a vigilant commitment to preserving the state in its distinctive role as an undominating protector against domination. The aim of the neorepublican research program is to rethink issues of legitimacy and democracy, welfare and justice, public policy and institutional design, from within the framework that these basic ideas pr...


The clinical records of ten premature infants with nephrolithiasis were reviewed. The probable mechanism of stone formation was hypercalciuria due to furosemide therapy (nine patients) and congenital hyperparathyroidism (one patient). The relatively high rates of urinary excretion of calcium from immature kidneys predisposed these neonates to the development of calcium stones. Renal calculi in neonates are complications of distinct, treatable conditions, and premature babies receiving furosemide treatment should be screened by ultrasonography for renal calcifications.


A defensive driving course (DDC) comprising four two-hour lectures has been administered by the Queensland Road Safety Council since 1969. An evaluation of DDC road accident records for the 12 month periods before and after course attendance indicates that the DDC is not effective for reducing for 17-19 year olds or for females aged over 20 years. Significant accident reductions were found for male drivers aged 20-39 years who drive as part of their work but a benefit-cost analysis for this group concludes that the benefits of the accident reductions do not exceed the cost of the program. Based on this analysis there is no economic justification for either the extension of such courses in Australia or for continuing the program in Queensland. (Author/TRRL)


The paper examines the connection between income inequality and globalisation in the case of Romania. Using World Bank data and the KOF globalisation index we document that in Romania the increasing globalisation process has led to the growth of income inequality, during 1992-2011. Increasing dimensions of globalisation process has led to the deepening the gap between individuals' and households incomes in Romania.


Abstract We analyze the central features of economic policies to mitigate climate change. The basic structure of Pigouvian "carbon pricing" is shown to follow from a standard Hotelling problem for the intertemporal pricing of an exhaustible resource. We extend this analysis to consider the strength and timing of research incentives, the costs of implementation delay and the impact of anticipated future technologies on current carbon prices. We study a variety of issues related to the valuation of climate investments, including uncertainty as to the future timing and distribution of climate impacts and the appropriate social rate of discount for valuing policies. Under reasonable circumstances the insurance properties of climate investments may warrant unusually low discount rates. We use the same framework to argue that policy makers in developing countries will discount the expected returns from climate investments more heavily, because such investments have weaker insurance value in the developing world.


Zirconium oxyfluoride thin films of varying composition and refractive index were made by ion beam assisted deposition and concurrent O+2 ion bombardment of thermally deposited ZrF4. The oxygen ion bombardment parameters control the index of refraction over the range 1.52–1.8. The composition of the ZrOxFy films, as determined by Rutherford backscattering and x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, varied from ZrO0.4F3.6 to ZrO2F1. Below 300 eV there is little change in oxygen content or refractive index, but at 600 eV the bombardment flux controls the material properties. Low loss (1 dB/cm) optical wave guides were fabricated using this technique.


This study aims to determine the citrus nursery business in siem banjar Banjarbaru City of grafting on the economic aspects, namely cost, revenue, profit, and the feasibility of the breakeven point. This study used a survey method. Sources of data in this study were obtained from the primary data and secondary data. Method of data collection in census., Who were respondents in this study were all citrus seed breeder in grafting siem banjar Banjarbaru City totaling 19 breeder. The results of the study in the production period is as follows: 1) Costs incurred an average of Rp 21,734,273.50 / breeder (equivalent to Rp 314,338,666.32 / ha.; 2) Gained revenue breeder average of Rp 37,378,684.21 / breeder (equivalent to Rp 540,600,804.69 / ha.; 3) Gains profit by breeders during the production period by an average of Rp 15,644,410.71 / breeder (equivalent to Rp 226,262,138.43 / ha); 4) Feasibility RCR value or an average of 1.72 which means worthy to be pursued.; 5) Breakeven point on citrus breeding siem Banjar in grafting is Rp 2063.72.


A 63-year-old man suffered from a cardiogenic shock. Upon echocardiography vegetations on the tricuspid valve were seen. As fever was absent, marantic endocarditis was diagnosed.


In this study, the effect of calcium (Ca) and erbium (Er) on the microstructure, mechanical properties, and corrosion behavior of magnesium-zinc alloys is reported. The alloys were prepared using disintegrated melt deposition (DMD) technique using the alloying additions as Zn, Ca, and Mg-Er master alloys and followed by hot extrusion. Results show that alloying addition of Er has significantly reduced the grain sizes of Mg-Zn alloys and also when compared to pure magnesium base material. It also has substantially enhanced both the tensile and the compressive properties by favoring the formation of MgZn2 type secondary phases that are uniformly distributed during hot-extrusion. The quaternary Mg-Zn-Ca-Er alloy exhibited the highest strength due to lower grain size and particle strengthening due to the influence of the rare earth addition Er. The observed elongation was a result of extensive twinning observed in the alloys. Also, the degradation rates have been substantially reduced as a result of alloying additions and it is attributed to the barrier effect caused by the secondary phases.


Analysis of engineering approach to the operational life forecasting for constructional elements with respect to the low-cycle fatigue is carried out. Applicability limits for a hypothesis on existence of generalized cyclic-deforming diagram in case of complex low-cycle loading (deforming) are shown.
 It is determined, that under condition of plane-stress state and piecewise-broken trajectories of cycle loading with stresses and deformation checking the cyclic deforming diagram is united in limits of deformations, which are not exceeded 10 values of deformation corresponding material yield point. Generalized kinematic equation of material damageability is described.
 The method of damageability parameter utilization for increasing of accuracy calculation of structural elements low-cycle fatigue by using the effective coefficients of stresses and deformations taking into account the damageability parameter is given.


PurposeThis paper intends to examine and evaluate the implementation and delivery of a discharge to assess pathway based on the UK Department of Health and Social Care Hospital Discharge Policy in relation to the quadruple aim of healthcare improvement: improving patient experience, reducing costs, benefiting the wider population and improving the work life of staff.Design/methodology/approachUsing a place based partnership in the south of England, 18 staff involved the delivery of discharge to assess and four patients who had recently been through the pathway were interviewed and the narratives analysed using a framework method.FindingsAll four dimensions of the quadruple aim were felt to be positively impacted by the discharge to assess pathway in varying degrees. Staff described improvements to working lives; patients described a positive experience. There was no evidence of reduced costs and wider benefit through reduced length of stay was suggested rather than demonstrated. The study showed a need to ensure both information flows and discharge process are smooth, that there is sufficient community capacity and capability, a need for strong relationships and shared goals, for clarity of pathway and empowered staff, and for an avoidance of the over prescription of care.Originality/valueThe revised discharge to assess pathway in England has been in place since 2020 and no other assessments of the pathway were found that related the changes to the quadruple aim framework.


"Hand a person a custom made rod," says expert rod maker Dale P. Clemens, "and in almost every instance one of the first things he looks at is the decorative thread work," because a handsome rod is more desirable to own and fish. Clemens guides his readers through the organizational process of threading, illustrates the uses of patterns and replicas, explains how to wrap and weave, and gives his personal tips on how to make every rod "a never ending kaleidoscope of form, shape and color." Offering a sound introduction to the essentials of thread work on round surfaces and more than one hundred rod art patterns suitable for both advanced hobbyists and professionals, Custom Rod Thread Art is the authoritative work on the subject.


The field of Environmental Education (EE) or conservation have been in existence since time in memorial but environmental crises keep getting worse.Van Matre(1990)argued that EE had failed and is a mission which has gone astray. The failure has been attributed to EE being too concerned with the cognitive approach of creating environmental awareness than educating learners on ways of addressing root causes of environmental problems. The book provides an evaluation of the methodology of imparting environmental education in selected environmental management providers in Zambia,Southern Africa.These included; the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF),Wildlife and Environmental Conservation Society of Zambia (WECSZ), Curriculum Development Centre (CDC), Conservation Lower Zambezi (CLZ) and the Environmental Council of Zambia (ECZ). The prospects of EE in Zambia are bright. Institutions are doing a commendable job in raising environmental awareness among the public. Efforts were being made to engage the public and formal education sector by restructuring curricula and public awareness.


In this paper we present a notion of expansion of a term in the lambda-calculus which transforms terms into linear terms. This transformation replaces each occurrence of a variable in the original term by a fresh variable taking into account non-trivial implications in the structure of the term caused by these simple replacements. We prove that the class of terms which can be expanded is the same of terms typable in an Intersection Type System, i.e. the strongly normalizable terms. We then show that expansion is preserved by weak-head reduction, the reduction considered by functional programming languages.


Abstract The Be star phenomenon is related to fast rotation, although the cause of this fast rotation is not yet clearly established. The basic effects of fast rotation on the stellar structure are reviewed: oblateness, mixing, anisotropic winds. The processes governing the evolution of the equatorial velocity of a single star (transport mechanisms and mass loss) are presented, as well as their metallicity dependence. The theoretical results are compared to observations of B and Be stars in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds.


Landry Guillain–Barre syndrome is a disorder which is caused by the body's immune system attacking its own peripheral nervous system. The syndrome afflicts about one person in 100,000. Either gender can be affected in any age group especially between ages 30 and 50, however risk increases with age.  It often follows a minor infection Most of the time, signs of the original infection have disappeared before the symptoms of Guillain-Barre begin. Guillain-Barre syndrome damages parts of nerves. This nerve damage causes tingling, muscle weakness, and paralysis. Guillain-Barre syndrome most often affects the nerve's covering (myelin sheath). Such damage is called demyelination and it causes nerve signals to move more slowly. Damage to other parts of the nerve can cause the nerve to stop working altogether. It is a paralyzing syndrome which can have dire consequences if not managed by an informed medical team. This article will explain how this disorder begins, how it is managed in Ayurveda by taking help of the PANCHKARMA procedures such as basti, Abhayanga etc.


Topographic mapping with spotlight synthetic aperture radar (SAR) using an interferometric technique is studied. Included is a review of the equations for determination of terrain elevation from the phase difference between a pair of SAR images formed from data collected at two differing imaging geometries. This paper builds upon the systems analysis of Li and Goldstein in which image pair decorrelation as a function of the "baseline" separation between the receiving antennas was first analyzed. In this paper correlation and topographic height error variance models are developed based on a SAR image model derived from a tomographic image formation perspective. The models are general in the sense that they are constructed to analyze the case of single antenna, two-pass interferometry with arbitrary antenna line of sight, and velocity vector directions. Correlation and height error variance sensitivity to SAR system parameters and terrain gradients are studied. >


For many computer vision and machine learning problems, large training sets are key for good performance. However, the most computationally expensive part of many computer vision and machine learning algorithms consists of finding nearest neighbor matches to high dimensional vectors that represent the training data. We propose new algorithms for approximate nearest neighbor matching and evaluate and compare them with previous algorithms. For matching high dimensional features, we find two algorithms to be the most efficient: the randomized k-d forest and a new algorithm proposed in this paper, the priority search k-means tree. We also propose a new algorithm for matching binary features by searching multiple hierarchical clustering trees and show it outperforms methods typically used in the literature. We show that the optimal nearest neighbor algorithm and its parameters depend on the data set characteristics and describe an automated configuration procedure for finding the best algorithm to search a particular data set. In order to scale to very large data sets that would otherwise not fit in the memory of a single machine, we propose a distributed nearest neighbor matching framework that can be used with any of the algorithms described in the paper. All this research has been released as an open source library called fast library for approximate nearest neighbors (FLANN), which has been incorporated into OpenCV and is now one of the most popular libraries for nearest neighbor matching.


Iron homeostasis and macrophage physiology are tightly intertwined. In the present study, we evaluated the influence of iron loading on the constitutive and interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) plus lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced functional and secretory properties of microglial cells, using the in vitro established murine cell line BV-2. We demonstrate that iron augments the basal and IFN-gamma plus LPS-enhanced anti-Candida albicans activity exerted by BV-2 cells and that the phenomenon occurs with no enhancement of phagocytic activity. Furthermore, when the secretory properties of IFN-gamma plus LPS-treated BV-2 cells were assessed, we found that tumor necrosis factor remains unchanged while nitric oxide production is significantly reduced in iron-loaded cells. The addition of the iron chelator deferiprone (L1) reverts the effects of iron on BV-2 functional and secretory properties. These data suggest that iron differently affects secretory and effector functions of BV-2 microglial cells, thus implying that iron interferes with murine microglial cell physiology.


ABSTRACT The present study investigates the effect of air flowrate on the adsorption systems both numerically and experimentally. Tests are performed with Zeolite 4A adsorbent. The size of test desiccant channel section is 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm, and three test sections in series connections are used as the test section during adsorption and desorption. During adsorption, the inlet pressure is kept at 9 bar while it is reduced to 1.16 bar during desorption. The simulation is first validated with the experimental data. The simulation indicates though a higher airflow during adsorption can produce dry air quickly but may not be able to attain a prescribed very low dew point temperature. Yet lower airflow can dehumidify more moisture and attain much lower dew point but requires substantial time. For the required energy to generate the same dry air flow volume in cyclic operation, it was obvious that a lower flowrate like 150 standard liter per minutes (SLPM) is about 4% lower than that of a higher flowrate of 400 SLPM. For effective regeneration during desorption, a non-uniform heating provided at the first section is proved to be much effective than the uniform heating. It is found that the desiccant loading for only heating at the first section outperforms other arrangements, giving 10% lower desiccant loading than the uniform heating.


Distance uncertainties plague our understanding of the physical scales relevant to the physics of star formation in extragalactic studies. The planetary nebulae luminosity function (PNLF) is one of very few techniques that can provide distance estimates to within ∼10%; however, it requires a planetary nebula (PN) sample that is uncontaminated by other ionizing sources. We employ optical integral field unit spectroscopy using the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer on the Very Large Telescope to measure [O iii] line fluxes for sources unresolved on 50 pc scales within the central star-forming galaxy disk of NGC 628. We use diagnostic line ratios to identify 62 PNe, 30 supernova remnants, and 87 H ii regions within our fields. Using the 36 brightest PNe, we determine a new PNLF distance modulus of 29.91 − 0.13 + 0.08 mag (9.59 − 0.57 + 0.35 Mpc), which is in good agreement with literature values, but significantly larger than the previously reported PNLF distance. We are able to explain the discrepancy and recover the previous result when we reintroduce SNR contaminants to our sample. This demonstrates the power of full spectral information over narrowband imaging in isolating PNe. Given our limited spatial coverage within the Galaxy, we show that this technique can be used to refine distance estimates, even when IFU observations cover only a fraction of a galaxy disk.


The transcription factor signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) contributes to cell proliferation, apoptosis and motility in human cancer cells. We aim to elucidate the function of STAT3 in esophageal carcinogenesis process and molecular mechanisms. We showed that hyperactivated STAT3 in esophageal carcinogenesis tissues correlated with the overexpression of octamer transcription factor-1 (Oct-1). High STAT3 phosphorylation correlated with shorter survival compared with low STAT3 phosphorylation. STAT3 and Oct-1 expression levels affected the proliferation and colony formation of Eca-109 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cells by altering Erk and Akt activation. Nevertheless, STAT3 regulated the migration and invasion of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cells independent of Oct-1. In conjunction with Oct-1, STAT3 inhibited apoptosis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cells. Constitutively activated STAT3 in normal human esophageal epithelium cells (HET-1A) elevated Oct-1 expression,and promoted proliferation and decreased apoptosis. STAT3 activated HET-1A cells to form tumors in vivo, suggesting that overactivated STAT3 is sufficient for carcinogenesis. We further confirmed the colocalization of STAT3 and Oct-1 in the nucleus and found that STAT3 regulates the transcription and expression of Oct-1 by directly targeting its promoter. Activated STAT3 also upregulated many genes associated with Oct-1. Together, our results indicate that STAT3 plays a crucial role in esophageal carcinogenesis by regulating the cell proliferation and apoptosis in conjunction with Oct-1.


Abstract We studied the vegetation of Kasatochi Island, central Aleutian Islands, to provide a general field assessment regarding the survival of plants, lichens, and fungi following a destructive volcanic eruption that occurred in 2008. Plant community data were analyzed using multivariate methods to explore the relationship between pre- and post-eruption plant cover; 5 major vegetation types were identified: Honckenya peploides beach, Festuca rubra cliff shelf, Lupinus nootkatensis–Festuca rubra meadow, Leymus mollis bluff ridge (and beach), and Aleuria aurantia lower slope barrens. Our study provided a very unusual glimpse into the early stages of plant primary succession on a remote island where most of the vegetation was destroyed. Plants that apparently survived the eruption dominated early plant communities. Not surprisingly, the most diverse post-eruption community most closely resembled a widespread pre-eruption type. Microhabitats where early plant communities were found were distinct and apparently crucial in determining plant survival. Comparison with volcanic events in related boreal regions indicated some post-eruption pattern similarities.


Abstract:  Emerging evidence suggests that individuals who receive morphine while hospitalized demonstrate a decrease in symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the mechanisms of effects are not yet well understood. The goal of the current study was to examine three possible mediators for this effect. Sixty‐one injured (burns, motor vehicle accidents, falls, and assaults) children were assessed during hospitalization and again 3 months post discharge. Assessment included acute and follow‐up child report measures of pain, PTSD, and anxiety symptoms, as well as a medical record review for medication administration and pulse during hospitalization. Pathway analyses were conducted to test the potential mediating roles of pain reduction, noradrenergic attenuation, and separation anxiety on the association between morphine and PTSD. Results suggest that a reduction in separation anxiety may mediate the association between morphine administration and PTSD symptom reduction at 3 months. These findings have implications for our understanding of morphine's effects on psychological functioning following an acute injury and for direct clinical care.