We empirically investigate the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the delivery of country-level public health. Our underlying hypothesis is that ICTs can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public health delivery mechanisms. In our framework, we include the ICT factors of accessibility, quality, affordability, applications, and institutional efficiency and sustainability. The public health delivery is represented by the changes in the indicators of immunization coverage, TB infection, sanitation, undernourishment, life expectancy, mortality rate, and health care expenses. Results indicate in most cases ICT factors have a significant correlation to a country's delivery of public health over and above a country's income level. The ―Accessibility‖ ICT factor contributes to improved delivery for nearly all of the public health indicators. This is followed by ―ICT Applications.‖ Increased ICTs usage leads to increased health care expenditure. Our findings are useful at the country level for informing policy decisions regarding the nature and extent of investment in ICT infrastructure for the delivery of public health. We do caution that merely investing in more ICTs does not imply an automatic improvement in public health. Rather, ICTs have the potential to improve the delivery process.


Cells of the monocyte-macrophage lineage have been thought to play a role in bone resorption. We examined the effects of in vivo administration of parathyroid hormone and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 on the ability of monocytes to degrade bone in vitro. Administration of parathyroid hormone for 4 d resulted in sustained hypercalcemia and a transient 1-d increase in plasma 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3. Parathyroid hormone significantly stimulated bone degradation by monocytes 2.6 times more than that of pretreatment controls. Parathyroid hormone treatment significantly enhanced (threefold) release of superoxide anion by monocytes stimulated with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate and increased migration of monocytes to bone particles in vitro. Continuous 7-d infusion of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (50 micrograms/d) elevated plasma 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 until infusions were discontinued. Increased 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 was associated with hypercalcemia, which continued for several days postinfusion. In vivo administration of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 did not affect in vitro ability of monocytes to degrade bone. We concluded that in vivo administration of parathyroid hormone enhanced in vitro responsiveness of isolated monocytes in a manner consistent with a role for monocytes in bone remodeling. Furthermore, these data suggested that circulating monocytes could be a useful experimental model for further studies on parathyroid hormone responsiveness and bone resorption for the cow with milk fever.


Molecular techniques are revealing increasing numbers of morphologically similar but co-existing cryptic species, challenging the niche theory. To understand the co-existence mechanism, we studied phenologies of morphologically similar species of fig wasps that pollinate the creeping fig (F. pumila) in eastern China. We compared phenologies of fig wasp emergence and host flowering at sites where one or both pollinators were present. At the site where both pollinators were present, we used sticky traps to capture the emerged fig wasps and identified species identity using mitochondrial DNA COI gene. We also genotyped F. pumila individuals of the three sites using polymorphic microsatellites to detect whether the host populations were differentiated. Male F. pumila produced two major crops annually, with figs receptive in spring and summer. A small partial third crop of receptive figs occurred in the autumn, but few of the second crop figs matured at that time. Hence, few pollinators were available to enter third crop figs and they mostly aborted, resulting in two generations of pollinating wasps each year, plus a partial third generation. Receptive figs were produced on male plants in spring and summer, timed to coincide with the release of short-lived adult pollinators from the same individual plants. Most plants were pollinated by a single species. Plants pollinated by Wiebesia sp. 1 released wasps earlier than those pollinated by Wiebesia sp. 3, with little overlap. Plants occupied by different pollinators were not spatially separated, nor genetically distinct. Our findings show that these differences created mismatches with the flight periods of the other Wiebesia species, largely 'reserving' individual plants for the resident pollinator species. This pre-emptive competitive displacement may prevent long term co-existence of the two pollinators.


Students commencing an A-level revision course in physics were asked to draw a concept map for `energy'. Their subsequent comments on the task were generally very positive, and related to both their feelings about the work and their thoughts about their own learning. These important aspects of the student learning experience should not be ignored.


The efficient allocation of bandwidth in a cellular network with integrated heterogeneous ATM traffic poses a challenging problem, as the exact traffic mix or other detailed traffic descriptions are typically unknown in these networks. We present a an efficient solution that uses traffic parameters consisting only of the aggregated average traffic load in each cell and the available total bandwidth for each cluster of cells. We demonstrate that the proposed "Fair Share" algorithm can do significantly better than the intuitive load proportional bandwidth allocation. Furthermore, while for practicality the proposed method uses only aggregated traffic information, the solution provides a performance guarantee for even the most congested cells. The solution, built on nontrivial mathematical results, is simple, robust and well suited for practical implementation.


This study examiiied the linkages between parental intervention into sibling conflict and the quality ofchildren's sibling relationships.The potentialmoderating effects ofchild temperamentand each child's relationship with his/her parent(s)were also examined.Ninety-three parents with atleasttwo children between 6-12 years ofage served asthe voluntary participants forthe study.There wasasub-sample of13 child sibling pairs as well.Parents completed five questionnaires on sibling relationships, parental intervention,child temperainent,and parent-child relatidnships;the sub-sample ofsiblings were interviewed by the researchers regarding the same variables. It was predicted that parents >yould use less intervention with older siblings;however,this hypothesis was notsupported.Indeed/results showed no sigmficant relationship between the children's age and the type ofparental intervention used.Furthermore,while child temperamentand each child's relationship with his/her parents were significantly related to the quality ofthe children's sibling interactions,they did notserve as moderators ofthe relatiohship between parental intervention and the quality ofthe sibling relationship. Discussion ofthe findings focuses on the importance ofexamining differenttypes of parental intervention in sibling research,methodological concerns regarding the study, and issuesfor future research.


Chikungunya fever is an acute disease caused by an alphavirus from the Togaviridae family and transmitted by Aedes species mosquitoes, mainly Aedes aegypti. It is recognized as an acute disease characterized by fever, arthralgia, arthritis, and rash, and multiple complications during the chronic phase have been described1. These complications may manifest in a variety of organs and systems, including the skin, eyes, and neurological, genitourinary, and cardiac systems2,3. The complete range of chikungunya-induced manifestations is not completely known. Among psychiatric disorders, an increase in mood disorders, such as depression, has been experienced by some patients during the chronic phase of chikungunya4. It is believed that inflammatory biomarkers affecting the central nervous system may be involved in this process. An increase in the levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and other cytokines during the acute phase of chikungunya can be related to depression. The fact that IL-6 level remains elevated during the chronic phase is associated with chronic pain, leading to behaviors that may be responsible for the increased risk of mood disorders5. The potential of chikungunya fever to cause psychiatric disorders warrants investigation of an organic etiology in cases of mental illness. Studies have shown that chikungunya virus infection exacerbates prior comorbidities, and conditions such as chronic kidney and autoimmune disease may be exacerbated during the acute phase6,7. However, no large-scale studies have investigated the relationship between the presence of previous psychiatric conditions and their exacerbation by chikungunya virus infection. Some case reports have suggested that decompensation of prior psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder8 occurs, but this relationship remains poorly understood. Currently, the best evidence is from a 34-patient Indian study by Bhatia et al.4, in which patients manifested a myriad of mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, sleep disorder, panic disorder, somatoform disorder, and neurasthenia. Studies regarding other arboviruses such Zika virus and Dengue virus are scarce, although they do not represent diseases with a chronic component as with chikungunya9. Chikungunya fever has been a public health problem in Latin America since the first registered cases in 2013, followed by a 2016-2017 outbreak with more than 200,000 confirmed cases in Brazil10. Since then, cases have been reported annually in the Latin American region, including Brazil. In Brazil, the virus still remains in circulation, which creates an opportunity for new research and understanding of the disease, as well as its relationship with psychiatric disorders. A possible study design would involve retrospective studies to analyze patients' medical records for the acute phase and follow-up of symptomatic patients with chronic disease, while seeking to understand the mental health sequelae. The need for new research is urgent. To our knowledge, little information has been published on the relationship between chikungunya disease and mental illness in the last 5 years, and chikungunya-related mental illness disorders need to be understood. More studies are necessary to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms, risk factors, epidemiologic characteristics, clinical aspects during chikungunya phases, correct management, and treatment.


This paper focuses on the use of a technique of Space Mapping (SM) for the optimization of a Permanent Magnet Machine (PMM) used as an Integrated Starter Generator (ISG). To demonstrate the benefits of such a design approach, it has been applied in the context of a realistic and very constrained application, particularly from the thermal point of view. Thus, this actuator is considered to function in start mode during which the rotation speed is low and thermal sources (mainly copper losses) are very high for a short time. Indeed, it is necessary to consider temperature increases versus time, as if several consecutive starts were imposed to the machine (car). To realistically simulate the operation of the motor, significant efforts were made to improve the quality of multi-physical modelings, especially regarding thermal aspects. Finite Element Analyses (FEA) are used for the evaluation of the electromagnetic behavior. Temperature distributions are computed by the use of equivalent lumped parameter networks, while mechanical considerations are taken, through analytical relations, to ensure the mechanical holding of rotating parts. Finally, physical couplings (between models) constitute important considerations. They are essentially related to mechanical, copper and iron losses. SM techniques operate on two (multi-physical) modelings of the same machine. Hence, using this optimization approach requires the definition of two sets of magnetic-electric-mechanical-thermal descriptions of the PMM to be dimensioned. This paper presents the choices made for their building, and the results obtained.


Plant-based natural products serve as a source of medicine for curing many diseases and ailments since the existence of life. As per the recent investigation, approximately 25000 products from plants have been obtained which are being used in various diseases. Plants are recently being used in different biological activities due to their efficacy to treat serious diseases. So the study present has been planned to elucidate the chemical profiling and antimicrobial activity of Oleoresin from Chir-pine from Narendranagar forest division under Garhwal Himalaya. Oleoresin obtained from Chir-pine has been tested against Escherichia coli, Listea monocytegenes, and Staphylococcus aureus at three different concentrations Viz. 50 mg/ml, 100 mg/ml and 200 mg/ml. It was recorded that Oleoresin was active against all three tested bacterial cultures. We have tested all the Oleoresin extract in 50 mg/ml, 100 mg/ml, and 200 mg/mlof DMSO against the Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Listea monocytegenes which showed significant activity. High activity was recorded in 200 mg/ml concentration with an inhibitory zone of 2.0± 0.34 mm against Staphylococcus aureus whereas minimum activity was recorded against Listea monocytegenes with an inhibitory zone of 1.2±0.30 mm.


Afriat (1967) showed the equivalence of the strong axiom of revealed preference and the existence of a solution to a set of linear inequalities. From this solution he constructed a utility function rationalizing the choices of a competitive consumer. We extend Afriat's theorem to a class of nonlinear budget sets. We thereby obtain testable implications of rational behavior for a wide class of economic environments, and a constructive method to derive individual preferences from observed choices. In an application to market games, we identify a set of observable restrictions characterizing Nash equilibrium outcomes.


Eric Salmon contends that modern theatre is artistically endangered. This book is his evaluation of the present state of English-speaking theatre and an examination, through examples of twentieth-century plays, both good and bad, of the reasons for it. Salmon's method is critical-argumentative. He is as much concerned with staging methods and playing as with the plays themselves, though he regards the playwright as the primary artist in the theatre and the actor as an interpretor.


Thermal structure of a flat plate turbulent boundary layer diffusion flame has been investigated experimentally. Measurements of fluctuating temperature and fluctuating velocity have been made, using an electrically compensated fine wire thermocouple and a laser-Doppler velocimeter respectively. Results show that a profile of turbulent intensity of temperature fluctuation has two maxima and one minimum. The minimum is located at the station where the gradient of mean temperature is zero. On the other hand, gradients of mean temperature at stations of two maxima are very high. In the region between the flat plate and the flame, the thermal structure is characterized by low frequency fluctuations, which are mainly attributed to fluctuations of the reaction rate at the reaction zone. In the region between the flame and the edge of the thermal boundary layer, the thermal structure is characterized by high amplitude and high frequency temperature fluctuations, which are mainly caused by the mixing of hot and cold gases.


Blood brain barrier (BBB) damage is an important pathophysiological feature of ischemic stroke which significantly contributes to development of severe brain injury and therefore is an interesting target for therapeutic intervention. A popular permanent occlusion model to study long term recovery following stroke is the photothrombotic model, which so far has not been anatomically characterized for BBB leakage beyond the acute phase. Here, we observed enhanced BBB permeability over a time course of 3 weeks in peri-infarct and core regions of the ischemic cortex. Slight increases in BBB permeability could also be seen in the contralesional cortex, hippocampus and the cerebellum at different time points, regions where lesion-induced degeneration of pathways is prominent. Severe damage of tight and adherens junctions and loss of pericytes was observed within the peri-infarct region. Overall, the photothrombotic stroke model reproduces a variety of features observed in human stroke and thus, represents a suitable model to study BBB damage and therapeutic approaches interfering with this process.


Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a complex metabolic disease inducing an important rise of the cardiometabolic risk. Medical care must therefore be targeted to multiple risk factor reduction and address all modifiable risk factors (high LDL-cholesterol, low HDL, hypertension, hyperglycaemia, tobacco), as well as sedentarity and obesity. Glycaemic control aimed to achieve HbA1C < 7% is associated with a reduction in microvascular and macrovascular complications. Unfortunately, many patients do not reach these therapeutic targets. This progressive disease correlates with an inexorable destruction of the beta cells, therefore the therapeutic options must regularly be upgraded. The use of injectable drugs (GLP-1 agonists and insulins) are part of the general practitioner's therapeutic arsenal.


AbstractFinger millet (Eleusine coracana L.) is also known as African millet and is commonly called "ragi" in India. It has excellent nutritional value and is even superior to other common cereals. It is a richest source of calcium (344 mg) and magnesium (408 mg) than other millets. Predominant fatty acids of this millet are oleic (49%), linoleic (25%), and palmitic acids (25%). Finger millet contains both water-soluble and lipo-soluble vitamins. Emerging bakery products prepared from this millet are pasta, noodles, vermicelli, and bread. Being gluten free, it is suitable for individuals suffering from celiac disease. Finger millet grain is a rich source of several phytochemicals. Finger millet possesses blood glucose lowering, cholesterol lowering, and antiulcerative, wound healing properties as indicated by in vitro and in vivo studies. Commonly used processing techniques for this millet are milling, malting, popping, and decortications.


Slovenia is embarking on an ambitious health sector reform program, a small part of which involves implementing the categorization of acute inpatients by DRG for payment purposes. I summarise the leading DRG variants, and describe the process of selecting one of them. I argue that the Slovenian decision to use the Australian DRG variant as a starting point was sensible in terms of cost, speed of implementation, and usefulness of the resultant information. More time and effort could have been spent on the appraisal process, but I suspect it would not have led to a different outcome.


If women have different economic preferences than men, then female economic and political empowerment is likely to change policy and household decisions, and in turn macroeconomic outcomes. We test the hypothesis that female enfranchisement leads to lower government budget deficits due gender differences in preferences over fiscal outcomes. Estimating the impact of women's vote on budget deficits in a differences-in-differences regression for Swiss cantonal panel data, we find that including women in the electorate reduces average per capita budget deficits by a statistically significant amount.


Recent experimental data provide evidence for a hierarchical structure of many solid cancers including breast cancer. Using surface markers, a small population of highly tumorigenic breast cancer initiating cells (CICs) has been prospectively identified, which exhibited a cancer stem cell phenotype, thus being able to self-renew and to give rise progeny of multiple different lineages of differentiated cells. We previously demonstrated that this population of cells was relatively resistant against ionizing radiation if compared to their non-tumorigenic counterparts. Furthermore, we reported that this population of CICs increased during the course of fractionated irradiation. The extent of the remaining self-renewing capacity and multi-lineage potency of these CICs after fractions of radiation is currently unknown. However, this information is crucial for evaluating the significance of radiation resistance of CICs.In the present study, we hypothesized that CICs not only survive fractions of ionizing more likely than their non-tumorigenic counterparts but also retain the CSC phenotype as defined by operational means and may even become more aggressive than populations of non-irradiated control CICs.Using CD24, CD44, ESA, and lack of proteasome function to identify breast cancer CICs we investigated their response to fractionated radiation and showed that CICs cells are more resistant to radiation (from 2Gy to 8x2Gy) than non-tumorigenic cells. At 2Gy, the stem cells population CD44high/CD24-/low in monolayer increased 3 times (from 0.25% at 0Gy to 0.74% at 2Gy). The analysis of CICs population after 8x2Gy demonstrated than the CICs containing population was not affected at higher total doses (0.25% at 0Gy and 0.28% at 8x2Gy). A sphere forming capacity assay demonstrated self-renewal capacity of the survivig CICs after irradiation (2Gy: +93% or 8x2Gy: +105%).Using low proteasome to identify stem cells and membrane labeling (PKH26) we analyzed the effect of fractionated irradiation treatment (0, 3Gy, 2x3Gy, 3x3Gy 4x3Gy and 5x3Gy) on CIC and non-tumorigenic cell proliferation. We demonstrated that CSCs irradiated with 3Gy or 2x3Gy lost the PHK26 dye faster than the control indicating recruitment of these cells into the pool of cycling cells (mean division of CSCs; 0Gy: 2.6, 3Gy or 2x3Gy: 3), while an treatment with 5x3Gy still enriched for CSCs but the reduction of proliferation rate of CSCs indicated that this enrichment is essentially due to their radioresistant phenotype (mean division; 5x3Gy: 1.9). Tumorigenicity of double positive and double negative cell was tested in limiting dilution assay using a mouse model (Rag2-/-IL2Rγc-/-).We conclude that radiation resistant CICs not only survive fractionated radiation but retain their CSC phenotype. This indicates that radiosensitizing CICs could be a reasonable approach to improve treatment outcome. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(24 Suppl):Abstract nr 1153.


BACKGROUND
Family violence covers a range of abuse including child abuse and neglect, intimate partner violence and elder abuse. Each form of abuse has a significant negative impact on health and wellbeing, and patients present to general practice with varying physical and psychological issues. General practice is unique in that it often works with an entire family, which can be challenging and needs to be actively managed.

OBJECTIVE
This article aims to address clinical questions that general practitioners (GPs) may have in identifying and responding to patients experiencing family violence. It takes into account the different types of abuse victims experience and how to respond to perpetrators. The recommendations in this article can also apply to same-sex relationships.

DISCUSSION
Managing family violence requires a whole-of-practice approach to encourage a safe environment in which families can dis-close abuse and where GPs can respond appropriately. Abuse can be inter-generational and GPs have a role in identification, management and referral.


A global approach to hand gesture vocabulary design is proposed which includes human as well as technical design factors. The human centered desires of multiple users are implicitly represented through indices obtained from ergonomic studies representing the psychophysiological aspects of users. The main technical aspect considered is that of machine recognition of gestures. We review and classify three approaches to this problem: ad hoc, rule based, and analytical. It is believed that this is the first conceptualization of the optimal hand gesture design problem in analytical form. A mathematical dual objective model is developed, which reflects the psychophysiological and technical performance measures upon which a gesture control system is judged. The mathematical program solves a quadratic assignment problem embedded within a heuristic search tree. The quadratic problem, whose solution is a gesture vocabulary GV, (a command-gesture matching) is solved through simulated annealing. A useful feature, included in the formulation, is the priorities given to the matching of complementary pairs of gestures (say thumb up - thumb down) to complementary pairs of commands (say up - down). To validate the procedure an example is solved for the design of a medium size robot command GV


The labor of our nationalists reaps in liberal democratic country securing its citizens the fundamental right to express their legitimate thought, which was once deprived in the country .Regardless of sedition as a ground for restriction of freedom of speech and expression is deliberately been omitted by the members of constitutional assembly, it finds its place in the statute book as an offence under section 124-A of IPC. Apex court allows disapprobation as legitimate interests in line with the decision of federal court in Niharendu Dutt Majumdar v The King Emperor. Howsoever there has been a wide discord between Higher judiciary ; executive and lower judiciary in approaching the section .The blatant use of the section 124-A to repress the voice of individuals when it goes against the political interests or agenda of the government established by law in an alarming rate , shifts us back to colonial regime .As rightly enunciated by Justice Balbir Singh Chauhan ,the chairman of 21st Law commission of India, the application of this section needs reconsideration. Though in accordance with current scenario, it does not need to be struck off from statute book, yet blatant use of the section needs to be halted and the balance between article 19(1)(a) and section 124-A deserves to be achieved.


Surtsey and the older islands in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago offer a unique possibility to study how
sub-Arctic ecosystems develop from unvegetated mineral substrate that lacks soil cover to grasslands with
thick Brown Andosol soils. The present study was carried out on Surtsey, Heimaey and Elliðaey in 2013
and involved an incubation of resin membranes in the 0-10 cm topsoil layer in different ecosystems, which
were either inside or outside seabird colonies. We compared the effects of seabird presence on soil nutrient
availability as well as the importance of time for soil development (at least ca.1600 years vs. 50 years).
Further we looked for build-up of Cd and Pb within the seabird colonies. Seabird presence enhanced the
availability of most nutrients (N, P, K, Mg, Ca, S, Fe, Mn and Zn) except B and Cu, irrespective of the
age of the islands. Soil age was also a significant factor for nutrient availability for all macro- and micronutrients except B. Nutrient ratios indicated that N was the most limiting nutrient in all ecosystems, except
in the thicker tephra soils on Surtsey where low P availability may lead to co-limitation. The role of P in
ecosystem function on Surtesy warrants a futher study. No accumulation of Cd and Pb was found within
the seabird colonies.


Complex simulator-based models with non-standard sampling distributions require sophisticated design choices for reliable approximate parameter inference. We introduce a fast, end-to-end approach for Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) based on fully convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The method enables users of ABC to simultaneously derive the posterior mean and variance of multi-dimensional posterior distributions directly from raw simulated data. Once trained on simulated data, the CNN is able to map real data samples of variable size to the first two posterior moments of the relevant parameter's distributions. Thus, in contrast to other machine learning approaches to ABC, our approach allows to generate reusable models that can be applied by different researchers employing the same model. We verify the utility of our method on two common statistical models, namely a multivariate normal distribution and a multiple regression scenario, for which the posterior parameter distributions can be derived analytically. We then apply our method to recover the parameters of the Leaky Competing Accumulator (LCA) model and compare our results to the current state-of-the art technique, the Probability Density Estimation (PDA). Results show that our method exhibits lower approximation error compared to other machine learning approaches to ABC. It also outperforms PDA in recovering the parameters of the LCA model.


Gas transmission companies are sometimes disappointed with the results of efforts to control noise from reciprocating and centrifugal compressor packages, including new compressor station designs and retrofit programs. In an effort to begin to standardize noise control equipment specifications and performance testing procedures, the PRCI undertook a project to develop a series of Guidelines for implementing engineering noise control designs for compressor station equipment. The project was sponsored by the PRC International (PRCI). The intent of the Guidelines is to maintain traditional vendor/sub-vendor roles between compressor packagers and component manufacturers while maintaining the practice of vendor design-vendor guarantee. The noise control requirements can be verified by pre-establishing field performance testing methods. The Guidelines are structured to draw a distinction between mechanical equipment components which are noise generators, sound attenuators or acoustic radiators, as each requires a different specification format. To fulfill this aspect, a high temperature microphone probe was researched, developed and tested. This piece of hardware, along with the developed measurement methodology, allows optional diagnostic testing of the engine exhaust noise component of compressor station noise. These diagnostics can assist in isolating the noise generated by the engine versus the attenuation provided by the exhaust silencer. The measurement proceduresmore » do not require silencer removal from the package or equipment shutdown to test, which thus reduces testing costs.« less


Fortunately — perhaps more than at any other time in history — there are investors willing to accept a reduced financial return, as long as they also get the "warm glow" that comes from doing good. And these ready investors are growing in number.
The benefit corporation — a hybrid business organization between a nonprofit corporation and a for-profit corporation — is positioned to accept those investment dollars, and use them to pursue good, whether helping the homeless like ArtLifting, PBC, or helping the environment like Patagonia, Inc.
Unfortunately, benefit corporations are being held back by one serious flaw: a patchwork of unworkable disclosure rules. The existing rules fail to inform investors what their financial and social return will be (and thus have the perverse impact of discouraging investment by socially conscious investors), and likewise fail to inform the broader public whether the corporation is living up to its stated benefit purpose.
This Article proposes a uniform disclosure regime that will apply to all benefit corporations. The proposed regime standardizes disclosure, and thus allows stakeholders (both investors and the broader public) to compare and contrast competing firms. Further, the proposed regime has an enforcement mechanism that would allow both investors and the broader public to ensure that benefit corporations are providing the required disclosure.
Finally, the proposed regime is narrowly tailored to avoid overly burdening the growth of benefit corporations, many of which have limited resources. In fact, this regime may actually save benefit corporations time and money, because it replaces the current patchwork (often chaotic) of state-by-state disclosure requirements with a single, simple regime.
As the title of this Article suggests, the proposed uniform disclosure regime will help benefit corporations rise to their full potential.


The analysis of fluid flow near the wellbore region of a hydrocarbon reservoir is a complex phenomenon. The pressure drop and flow rates change in the near wellbore with time, and the understanding of this system is important. Besides existing theoretical and experimental approaches, computational fluid dynamics studies can help understanding the nature of fluid flow from a reservoir into the wellbore. In this research, a near wellbore model using three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations is presented for analyzing the flow around the wellbore. Pressure and velocity are coupled into a single system which is solved by an algebraic multigrid method for the optimal computational cost. The computational fluid dynamics model is verified against the analytical solution of the Darcy model for reservoir flow, as well as against the analytical solution of pressure diffusivity equation. The streamlines indicate that the flow is radially symmetric with respect to the vertical plane as expected. The present computational fluid dynamics investigation observes that the motion of reservoir fluid becomes nonlinear at the region of near wellbore. Moreover, this nonlinear behavior has an influence on the hydrocarbon recovery. The flow performance through wellbore is analyzed using the inflow performance relations curve for the steady-state and time-dependent solution. Finally, the investigation suggests that the Navier–Stokes equations along with a near-optimal solver provide an efficient computational fluid dynamics framework for analyzing fluid flow in a wellbore and its surrounding region.


of cultural encounters in Europe in the 1920s. The aim to restore peace and to solve the problems caused by the war—such as the problem of refugees when millions of people were left without their countries and citizenship—became the main aim of the international actors. The First World War was both a military disaster and a humanitarian catastrophe confronting the League of Nations and individual actors. In the process, neutral Scandinavian countries had a role to play. Neutrality in Twentieth-Century Europe is an enlightening contribution to the international and transnational interaction of scientists, organizations, and smaller states in the interwar period. By analyzing themes such as neutrality, objectivity, impartiality, and internationalism in the context of a divided world, the volume sheds valuable light on themes that resurfaced during the Cold War. The book is well worth reading for those interested in Cold War–era developments in the fields of science, culture, and politics.


Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) systems allow the acquisition of images displaying the contents of the underground. Hence, GPR is used everywhere, where structures underneath the visible surface have to be investigated. Consequently, typical application fields are archeology and civil engineering, especially the detection of cables, pipes or other manmade objects. GPR sensors can consist of one channel or of multiple channels, placed side by side. In the latter case, it is possible to acquire a two-dimensional image for each measurement, where the number of channels represents the number of columns in the image matrix. Since a typical track of measurements often contains multiple of thousands GPR images, a visual analysis with focus on the detection of buried objects might be uneconomically. Moreover, due to its noisy characteristic in relation to the specific underground, it is often not easy to interpret GPR images immediately. In this study, an unsupervised approach is presented, that provides both help for the visual analysis of GPR images and for the detection of potential buried objects. Therefore, it is usable to quickly generate or enlarge training datasets for machine learning approaches aiming at the analysis of GPR data. As test data, several measuring tracks acquired by the multi-channel Stream C system at the site of Frankfurt University (GER) are available. The workflow consists of two central processing steps: Change detection and data augmentation.


Intravenous (iv) pretreatment of muscimol, a GABAA receptor agonist, inhibited the convulsive effect of bicuculline but not that of picrotoxin, whereas phenobarbital, a Cl ion channel blocker, exhibited both effects. These results suggest that the bicuculline-induced convulsion may be due to Cl ion channel blockade secondary to the direct inhibition of GABAA receptors. CPP and MK-801, competitive and noncompetitive NMDA antagonists, respectively, inhibited both the bicuculline- and picrotoxin-induced convulsion, suggesting that these convulsive effects may also involve activation of the NMDA-Ca ion channel complex, which might link to the GABA-Cl ion channel system. Anticonvulsants phenytoin, carbamazepine and diazepam as well as phenobarbital inhibited the convulsive responses of bicuculline and picrotoxin. Therefore, the anticonvulsive effects of these drugs may involve an activation of the GABA-Cl ion channel function. On the other hand, neither the GABA agonist nor anticonvulsants affected NMDA-induced convulsion. These results also provide evidence that the convulsive effects of bicuculline and picrotoxin may be mediated by indirect activation of NMDA systems through their Cl ion channel-blocking action, whereas the convulsive effects of NMDA may involve the activation of NMDA-Ca ion channel function without the GABA-Cl ion channel activities.


Given the rapid growth of the population of cancer survivors, increased attention has been paid to their health problems. Although gastric cancer is one of the most common cancers, empirical evidence of survivorship care is limited. The objectives of this study were to describe the health care status of gastric cancer survivors and to report the experience of using the shared-care model during a one-year experience at the cancer survivorship clinic in Seoul National University Hospital. This is a descriptive, single-center study of 250 long-term gastric cancer survivors who were referred to the survivorship clinic. The status of their health behaviors, comorbid conditions, secondary cancer screenings, and survivorship care status were investigated through questionnaires and examining the medical records. Among the survivors, 7.2% were current smokers, 8.8% were at-risk drinkers, and 32.4% were physically inactive. Among the patients who did not know their bone density status, the majority were in the osteopenic (37.1%) or osteoporotic range (24.1%). Screening among the eligible population within the recommended time intervals were 76.3% for colorectal cancer, but only 13.6% for lung cancer. All of the survivors were provided with counseling and medical management at the survivorship clinic, as appropriate. In conclusion, Long-term gastric cancer survivors have various unmet needs. Shared-care through survivorship clinics can be an effective solution for providing comprehensive care to cancer survivors.


Job accessibility is an important factor of urban transition as it influences the residential location choices made by inhabitants and the location of new residential development projects by developers. Spatial interaction models allow for the assessment of the urban transition potential of localities based on the accessibility of various urban activities. In this way they provide valuable information for Smart city governance. This paper presents the Job Accessibility Model (JAM) which is based on principles of spatial interaction. JAM estimates the potential accessibility of individual locations to job activities in the Prague Functional Urban Area (Prague FUA). The job accessibilities are based on job activity distribution and transportation network data. Up until now, spatial interaction modelling in the Czech Republic has been limited by the quality of data on the spatial distribution of jobs. This paper presents a new approach that benefits from highly disaggregated data on buildings and their use. This approach may significantly improve the validity and reliability of urban models. The paper illustrates the evaluation of the planned road network improvement in terms of job accessibility. The paper concludes with a discussion on the potential use of improved data in urban modelling.


A cohort of 101 male carbaryl production workers with at least 1 yr experience in the carbaryl area was selected from employment records. Of these individuals, 47 provided satifactory semen samples for analysis; 36 of the 47 provided blood for hormone assay. There were no major age or employment-status differences between those who agreed to participate and those who did not. In the absence of sufficiently detailed industrial hygiene exposure data, a subjective exposure classification was developed. No apparent relationships were found between sperm count and exposure category or years worked in classifications based on carbaryl exposure. Also, no relationship was found between fathering children and exposure to carbaryl. When the sperm-count distribution of the carbaryl-exposed workers was compared with a distribution of sperm counts representing a nonexposed (control) population, no overall differences were observed that could be related to carbaryl exposure. There was a small excess in the number of sperm counts less than 20 million per milliliter among the carbaryl-exposed men, but the excess was not significant at alpha = 0.05.


1. It has been claimed that geographical variability could alter conclusions from some studies examining the impacts of prescribed moorland burning, including the Effects of Moorland Burning on the Ecohydrology of River basins (EMBER) project. We provide multiple lines of evidence, including additional analyses, to refute these claims. In addition, new findings from EMBER study catchments highlight previously unconsidered issues of burning adjacent to and over watercourses, contrary to guidelines.

2. A systematic review confirms the EMBER conclusions are in line with the majority of published UK studies on responses to prescribed burning of Sphagnum growth/abundance, soil properties, hydrological change, and both peat exposure and erosion.

3. From this review, we identify an association between sponsor identity and some recent research conclusions related to moorland burning. This additional variable, which has not previously been incorporated into moorland burning policy debates, should be given greater consideration when evidence is being evaluated. We also show that sponsorship and other perceived conflicts of interest were not declared on a recent publication that criticised the EMBER project.

4. Policy implications. Effects of Moorland Burning on the Ecohydrology of River basins (EMBER) findings still suggest multiple environmental impacts associated with prescribed vegetation burning on peatland. Non‐compliance with guidelines for heather burning alongside/over watercourses merits closer attention. Policy communities might need to consider potential influences associated with funder identity when evaluating studies.


We study multi-robot caravanning, which is loosely defined as the problem of a heterogeneous team of robots visiting specific areas of an environment (waypoints) as a group. After formally defining this problem, we propose a novel solution that requires minimal communication and scales with the number of waypoints and robots. Our approach restricts explicit communication and coordination to occur only when robots reach waypoints, and relies on implicit coordination when moving between a given pair of waypoints. At the heart of our algorithm is the use of leader election to efficiently exploit the unique environmental knowledge available to each robot in order to plan paths for the group, which makes it general enough to work with robots that have heterogeneous representations of the environment. We implement our approach both in simulation and on a physical platform, and characterize the performance of the approach under various scenarios. We demonstrate that our approach can successfully be used to combine the planning capabilities of different agents.


What's out there? That simple urge - to explore the limits of knowledge - has changed our understanding of history countless times. Now "TIME" puts on its Indiana Jones hat to tell the fascinating tales behind history's greatest discoveries. Join us to explore prehistoric painted caves of France, the undersea tomb of the Titanic, and the sources of the Nile. Share the adventure as we enter the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamen and the lost city of Machu Picchu - and re-live the discovery that Jupiter has moons, that Saturn has rings, that the continents are slowly moving beneath our feet. This beautifully illustrated volume celebrates our capacity to wonder, to explore, and to discover. It's for everyone who loves the thrill of exploration and discovery.


The leadership of people with lived experience of mental health problems is underdeveloped, when it comes to leadership in one's own recovery, at the service level, and at the systemic level. Unlike the mental health system, the user/survivor movement has a values base of empowerment and equality. But the movement has not yet created an explicit model of leadership based on these values. Conventional models of leadership have little to offer but critiques of it provide a good framework for users and survivors to build its own model of leadership upon. If user/survivor leadership is to thrive, new roles, practices and competencies need to be developed. At a deeper level, there needs to be philosophical, psychological and political shifts in service systems if user/survivor leadership is to ever take root. Furthermore, the leadership of empowerment and equality should pervade all the leadership in service systems and beyond.


Background Despite advances in evidence-based pharmacotherapy, the latest National Heart Failure Audit (NHFA) has shown that in-hospital mortality of heart failure (HF) remains high with large interhospital variations. University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire, a tertiary cardiac centre, received a mortality alert of excess HF deaths based on a high Dr Foster hospital standardised mortality ratio (HSMR). This conflicted with our local NHFA data which showed lower than national average mortality rates. Objective To review various systemic and individual processes of care in patients admitted with HF and examine the validity of HSMR in HF. Design, setting, patients A retrospective case note analysis was performed on a random sample of 100 HF deaths identified by Dr Foster from 2010 to 2016. Measures Case record reviews were performed on the following aspects of care: admission to appropriate wards, resuscitation status, palliative care input and National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death classification. Primary diagnosis coding, diagnostic accuracy and actual causes of death were examined to assess limitations of HSMR. Results Despite evidence of lower mortality on cardiology wards, only 28% of patients with acute HF were admitted to a cardiology-ward. Sixty four per cent were considered palliative but only 4.6% were referred to palliative care. The Do Not Attempt Resuscitation order was appropriate in 91% patients but only 74% had this in place. The primary diagnosis of HF was incorrectly coded in 34% while three cases were misdiagnosed. Conclusion HF may be coded as a cause of death in some cases where the cause is uncertain and misdiagnosed. Although HSMR has many limitations, it is a smoke alarm that should not be ignored.


An analysis of diffusivity of composites is described in which an electrical resistance analogy is used. This leads to an expression for diffusivity, which takes into account the contributions of fiber diffusivity, matrix diffusivity, and the diffusivity of the interphase, when this is different from that of the polymer matrix. The case involving the interphase requires numerical integration for its solution. However, the effect of the interphase can be very accurately simulated in a more approximate model; a closed form expression for composite diffusivity is obtained that agrees with the numerical analysis within better than 1% if an appropriate adjustment for interphase width is made. The same approach was used for including voids in the analysis, and it is shown that, in some experiments described previously with glass and carbon fiber pultrusions, the results can be explained on the basis of the voids in the composite providing an enhanced diffusion path for water. This "void path" apparently has a diffusivity of 15 times that of the polymer. Since the results obtained using the interphase diffusion model do not agree so well with the experimental data as does the void path model, it is concluded that, at least for carbon-epoxy and glass-epoxy pultrusions, the most important conducting path for water is provided by the voids.


The safety and efficacy of the two most widely used fixed-dose artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT), artesunate-amodiaquine (ASAQ) and artemether-lumefantrine (AL) are well established for single episodes of uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria, but the effects of repeated, long-term use are not well documented. We conducted a 2-year randomized, open-label, longitudinal, phase IV clinical trial comparing the efficacy and safety of fixed-dose ASAQ and AL for repeated treatment of uncomplicated malaria in children under 5 years at Nagongera Health Centre, Uganda. Participants were randomized to ASAQ or AL and all subsequent malaria episodes were treated with the same regimen. 413 children were enrolled and experienced a total of 6027 malaria episodes (mean 15; range, 1–26). For the first malaria episode, the PCR-corrected-cure rate for ASAQ (97.5%) was non-inferior to that for AL (97.0%; 95% CI [−0.028; 0.037]). PCR-corrected cure rates for subsequent malaria episodes that had over 100 cases (episodes 2–18), ranged from 88.1% to 98.9% per episode, with no clear difference between the treatment arms. Parasites were completely cleared by day 3 for all malaria episodes and gametocyte carriage was less than 1% by day 21. Fever clearance was faster in the ASAQ group for the first episode. Treatment compliance for subsequent episodes (only first dose administration observed) was close to 100%. Adverse events though common were similar between treatment arms and mostly related to the disease. Serious adverse events were uncommon, comparable between treatment arms and resolved spontaneously. Anemia and neutropenia occurred in <0.5% of cases per episode, abnormal liver function tests occurred in 0.3% to 1.4% of cases. Both regimens were safe and effective for repeated treatment of malaria. Trial Registration Current Controlled Trials NCT00699920


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the effect of adenoviral-mediated exogenous HGF (Ad-HGF) gene transfer on lung angiogenesis in the rabbit lung in rabbits with hyperkinetic pulmonary artery hypertension.

METHODS
A thoracotomy was performed through a midsternal incision in 1-month-old immature rabbit and an anastomosis between the left innominate artery and the pulmonary trunk was made to establish a chronic patent left to right shunt. Three months later, animals were randomly assigned to receive either Ad-HGF (2 x 10(9) Pfu in 0.2 ml PBS, H1 group), repeated administration of Ad-HGF after one week (H 2 group), Ad-GFP (2 x 10(9) Pfu in 0.2 ml PBS, G group), or PBS (0.2 ml, C group) by the intratracheal method of gene transfection. After two weeks, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemical examination was performed to identify HGF mRNA and HGF protein expression. The capillary density and small pulmonary artery density were determined by immunostained with antibodies against factor VIII and alpha-SMA. After 1 month, the collateral vessels were evaluated by angiogram under digital subtraction angiography (DSA).

RESULTS
Two weeks after Ad-HGF transfection, 484 bp bands could be found by RT-PCR in H1 and H2 groups, but not in other groups. The expression of HGF protein could be detected on alveolar epithelium and pulmonary vessel endothelium by immunohistochemistry examination. The number of factor VIII-positive pulmonary capillaries was also significantly increased in the H1 and H2 groups compared with the C and G groups (P < 0.05). The capillary density reached (17.0 +/- 3.3) mm(2) and (19.7 +/- 2.8) mm(2) in the H1 and H2 group, respectively, whereas it remained (13.2 +/- 3.2) mm(2) in the C group and (13.5 +/- 2.4) mm(2) in the G group (P < 0.05). One month after Ad-HGF transfection, the number of small pulmonary arteries was significantly increased in H1 and H2 group compared with control groups (P < 0.05). The collateral vessels were more abundant in HGF transfection groups than that in the two control groups reviewed by angiogram under digital subtraction angiography (DSA).

CONCLUSION
In vivo gene transfection with HGF by means of the intra-tracheal injection could induce pulmonary angiogenesis in the early stage and small pulmonary arterial angiogenesis in later stage.


Among the genes of Rhizobium meliloti SU47 that affect nitrogen-fixing symbiosis with alfalfa are nod genes, in which mutations block nodule induction, and exo genes, in which mutations allow nodule formation but block rhizobial exopolysaccharide production as well as nodule invasion and nitrogen fixation. To investigate whether an exo+ bacterium can "help" (that is, reverse the symbiotic defect of) an exo mutant in trans, we have coinoculated alfalfa with pairs of rhizobia of different genotypes. Coinoculant genotypes were chosen so that the exo+ helper strain was nif while the exo "indicator" strain was nif+, and thus any fixation observed was carried out by the exo coinoculant. We find that a nod exo+ coinoculant can help an exo mutant both to invade nodules and to fix nitrogen. However, a nod+ exo+ coinoculant cannot help an exo mutant: Few exo bacteria are recovered from nodules, some bacteroids differentiate into bizarre aberrant forms, and the nodules fail to fix nitrogen. In a triple coinoculation, the effect of nod+ helper supersedes that of nod helper. Implications of these results for interaction of nod and exo gene products are discussed.


'Anarchy is one of the most vague and ambiguous words in language.' George Coreewall Lewis, 1832. In much current theorizing, anarchy has once again been declared to be the fundamental assumption about international politics. Over the last decade, numerous scholars, especially those in the neo-realist tradition, have posited anarchy as the single most important characteristic underlying international relations. This article explores implications of such an assumption. In doing so, it reopens older debates about the nature of international politics. First, I examine various concepts of 'anarchy' employed in the international relations literature. Second, I probe the sharp dichotomy between domestic and international politics that is associated with this assumption. As others have, I question the validity and utility of such a dichotomy. Finally, this article suggests that a more fruitful way to understand the international system is one that combines anarchy and interdependence.


Cyclojet flotation is an alternative technique of jet flotation. It essentially has a mechanism for bubble formation with pulp jet spouting from the apex of hydrocyclone. The size of the bubbles formed with pulp jet in the cyclojet cell is very small, and the quantity of bubbles produced also limits its potential to produce high bubble-particle collision. This is particularly efficient in beneficiation of fine-grained ores. In this study, the performance of the cyclojet flotation cell was tested for removing iron-oxides from silica sand ore. Whether it can be used as an alternative to conventional mechanical cells was studied. The findings obtained from the cyclojet cell were compared with findings obtained from the conventional cell. It was seen that the cyclojet cell produced slightly better results than the conventional cell. Under the best conditions, while the cyclojet cell reduced the iron-oxide content in silica sand from 0.41% to 0.08%, the conventional cell reduced it to 0.10%. While iron removal efficiency was 80.49% for the cyclojet flotation, it was calculated as 75.61% for the conventional cell. These findings showed that cyclojet flotation can be used as an alternative method to conventional flotation for the removal of iron oxides from silica sand.


MCA serum levels were determined in 196 patients with benign breast disease (BD) and in 371 patients with breast cancer. MCA values were abnormal in 30.6% of the patients with BD. In breast cancer patients, significant increases were only found in metastatic disease (89.1%). MCA levels were not correlated with tumor size; on the contrary, the tumor marker showed a strict relation to axillary lymph node involvement. Moreover, the location of metastases and the number of sites involved seem to increase MCA concentrations. The MCA antigen seems to be a promising tool only for monitoring patients with advanced breast cancer.


To study the effects of energy and dietary fiber on breast development in gilts and its possible mechanisms, 32 gilts (Landrace × Yorkshire) were randomly allocated into a 2 × 2 factorial design to receive a diet with low or high energy [LE: 33.37 MJ/d digestible energy (DE); HE: 41.87 MJ/d DE] and low or high fiber (LF: 0.3 kg/d dietary fiber, HF: 0.6 kg/d dietary fiber). The weight of breast tissue was recorded. The mammary glands were collected for further analyses. The high energy intake increased the relative weight of breast tissue (p < 0.05) and the content of breast fat (p < 0.05). At the same time, the oil red staining of breast slices also showed an increase in breast fat content in high-energy treatment. High energy intake increased the DNA concentration in breast tissues (p < 0.05). In addition, high energy intake increased the concentration of triglycerides, free fatty acids, and total cholesterol in the blood of gilts (p < 0.05), and the supplementation of high fiber tended to reduce free fatty acids, total cholesterol, and estradiol (p < 0.1). Proteomic analysis suggested that there were notable differences in the cytoskeleton, intracellular non–membrane-bounded organelle, apoptosis, receptor activity, and endopeptidase inhibitor activity in molecular function between the energy and fiber effects (p < 0.05). High fiber intake also decreased the mRNA expression of 5-HT7, Bax, and caspase-3 in the breast tissue of gilts (p < 0.05), which further confirmed the importance of fiber in regulating breast development in gilt. Our results indicate that increasing gilt energy intake improved breast weight and fat deposition and increased breast cell apoptosis. Increased fiber intake reduced breast fat deposition and breast cell apoptosis at high energy intake in gilts. These results provide a potential strategy for dietary intervention against high energy intake in gilts and even in humans.


Many real-world social networks are decentralized in nature, and the only way to analyze such a network is to collect local views of the social graph from individual participants. Since local views may contain sensitive information, it is often desirable to apply differential privacy in the data collection process, which provides strong and rigorous privacy guarantees. In many practical situations, the local view of a participant contains not only her own connections, but also those of her neighbors, which are private and sensitive for the neighbors, but not directly so for the participant herself. We call such information beyond direct connections an extended local view (ELV), and study two fundamental problems related to ELVs: first, how do we correctly enforce differential privacy for all participants in the presence of ELVs? Second, how can the data collector utilize ELVs to obtain accurate estimates of global graph properties? This paper points out that when collecting ELVs, it is insufficient to apply a straightforward adaptation of local differential privacy (LDP), a commonly used scheme in practice, to protect the privacy of all network participants. The main problem is that an adversarial data collector can accumulate private information on a specific victim from multiple neighbors of the victim; even though the data collected from each neighbor is perturbed under LDP, their aggregate can still violate the victim's privacy. To prevent this attack, we formulate a novel decentralized differential privacy (DDP) scheme, which requires that each participant consider not only her own privacy, but also that of her neighbors involved in her ELV. The stringent privacy requirement of DDP, however, makes it challenging to design an effective mechanism for data collection. Towards this goal, we design a novel multi-phase framework under DDP that enables an analyst to accurately estimate subgraph counts, an important property of social graphs. The main idea is that instead of collecting subgraph counts directly, which would require excessively noise, the analyst first asks individuals about their respective minimum noise scale, which is private information since it depends on the local graph structure, and, thus, must be performed under DDP. For some types of subgraphs, this process is applied recursively, i.e., the analyst asks about the necessary noise to be injected into the private information on the minimum local noise scale required to protect subgraph counts under DDP. As case studies, we instantiate the proposed framework for three common subgraph patterns: triangles, three-hop paths, and k-cliques. Extensive experiments using real data demonstrate that the proposed scheme leads to accurate estimates of global subgraph counts, whereas baseline solutions fail to obtain meaningful result utility.


A striking observation of the U.S. and other labor markets is the weak position of women in terms of job attachment, employment, and earnings relative to men. We develop a model of fertility and labor market decisions to study the impact of fertility on gender differences in labor turnover, employment, and wages. In our framework, individuals search for jobs and accumulate general (experience) and specific (tenure) human capital when they work. They can also increase their wage by moving to a job of higher quality. Labor market decisions (e.g., job acceptance and job mobility) may differ across genders: females that give birth may decide to interrupt their labor market attachment in order to enjoy the value of staying at home with their children. The model economy is successfully calibrated to match aggregate statistics in terms of fertility, employment, and wages. We find that fertility decisions generate important gender differences in turnover rates, with long lasting effects in employment and wages. These differences in labor turnover account for almost all the U.S. gender wage gap that is attributed to labor market experience by Blau and Kahn (2000, Journal of Labor Economics 15 (1), 1-42). The model also implies a very small role of tenure capital in accounting for wage differences between males and females (gender gap), and between females with and without children (family gap). (Copyright: Elsevier)


Fast inference speed is an important goal towards real-world deployment of speech translation (ST) systems. End-to-end (E2E) models based on the encoder-decoder architecture are more suitable for this goal than traditional cascaded systems, but their effectiveness regarding decoding speed has not been explored so far. Inspired by recent progress in non-autoregressive (NAR) methods in text-based translation, which generates target tokens in parallel by eliminating conditional dependencies, we study the problem of NAR decoding for E2E-ST. We propose a novel NAR E2E-ST framework, Orthros, in which both NAR and autoregressive (AR) decoders are jointly trained on the shared speech encoder. The latter is used for selecting better translation among various length candidates generated from the former, which dramatically improves the effectiveness of a large length beam with negligible overhead. We further investigate effective length prediction methods from speech inputs and the impact of vocabulary sizes. Experiments on four benchmarks show the effectiveness of the proposed method in improving inference speed while maintaining competitive translation quality compared to state-of-the-art AR E2E-ST systems.


Although widely used in policy debates, the literature on children's outcomes when raised by same-sex parents mostly relies on small selective samples or samples based on cross-sectional survey data. This has led to a lack of statistical power and the inability to distinguish children born to same-sex parents from children of separated parents. We address these issues by using unique administrative longitudinal data from the Netherlands, which was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. These data include 2,971 children with same-sex parents (2,786 lesbian couples and 185 gay male couples) and over a million children with different-sex parents followed from birth. The results indicate that children raised by same-sex parents from birth perform better than children raised by different-sex parents in both primary and secondary education. Our findings are robust to use of cousin fixed effects and coarsened exact matching to improve covariate balance and to reduce model dependence. Further analyses using a novel bounding estimator suggest the selection on unobserved characteristics would have to be more than three times higher than the selection on observed characteristics to reduce the positive estimates to zero.


A prospective study of 136 patients submitted to elective surgery for benign digestive tract pathology, submitted to elective surgery, has been done to evaluate the influences of the nutritional state and the perioperative transfusions on the development of postoperative infections. All patients were given a nutritional evaluation protocol based on anthropometric parameters, analytical data and delayed-type hypersensitivity skin tests (DHST). The criteria for undernourishment were a standard weight percentage lower than 90% and/or an albumin level lower than 3.5 g/dl. Transfusion indication was established at hemoglobin levels lower than 10 g/dl and/or hematocrit values below 30% with perioperative transfusion being considered as that which took place within three weeks prior to the surgery, that taking place during the surgery, and that which took place within the first 48 postoperative hours. The infections were qualitatively evaluated as wound infection, intraabdominal infection and respiratory infection, and quantitatively by means of the Elebeute and Stoner index. 32 of the patients (23.5%) presented undernourishment, and 18 of the patients (13.2%) were transfused. A total of 20 patients (14.7%) presented a postoperative infection. A significant association between under nourishment and infection has been shown (p =), as between transfusion and undernourishment (p < 0.001). Finally, we confirm that the combination of the factors undernourishment and transfusion leads a significance increase (f = 28,462, p < 0.001) of infectious complications.


The mechanism of overvoltage formation in the breaking process of a dry-type air-core shunt reactor (DTACSR) is studied in this paper. In addition, the effect of the overvoltage on the interturn insulation characteristics of the DTACSR is also discussed. Based on the actual working condition of a 66 kV DTACSR used in the Chinese power system, a three-phase simulation model and an equivalent circuit are proposed. The maximum chopping overvoltage and reignition overvoltage are obtained through the combination of theoretical analysis, simulation, and data fitting. An overvoltage accumulation test of the interturn insulation specimens is carried out with our established test platform, and the characteristic parameters of the interturn insulation specimens of the DTACSR in different stages of aging are measured. The results show that the combined method is very effective in evaluating the switching overvoltage of the DTACSR. Compared with the traditional single-phase circuit model, the proposed three-phase circuit model obtains a more accurate overvoltage equation. During the breaking process of a DTACSR, a chopping overvoltage with an amplitude greater than 5 p.u. and a reignition overvoltage with an amplitude greater than 8 p.u. may form. The cumulative effect of the overvoltage causes aging of the interturn insulation, and the degree of aging becomes more serious as the amplitude of the overvoltage increases.


Electron-microscope autoradiography has been used to investigate the synthesis and localization of sulphated mucopolysaccharide in megakaryocytes and blood platelets. Following 10-min incubation of bone marrow with 35 S-sulpahte in vitro the majority of the activity in megakaryocytes was associated with the Golgi apparatus, but a substantial proportion was associated with other cytoplasmic organelles, suggesting either rapid transport or sulphation of mucopolysaccharide outside the Golgi apparatus. Three hours after the intravenous injection of 35 SO 4 only a small proportion of the total activity was associated with the Golgi apparatus, most being associated with demarcation membranes and dense granules, while 12 h after injection almost all the activity was associated with demarcation membranes and granules. A rising proportion of activity localized solely on the demarcation membranes suggested that they may possess some activity of their own. Autoradiographs of blood platelets prepared 72 h after the injection of 35 SO 4 were analysed. It was shown that most of the activity was associated with the α-granules, but there was strong evidence that the platelet membrane possessed a low level of activity.


Concurrent engineering (CE) is implemented through a variety of tools, which facilitate the key CE strategies of multi-disciplinary teamwork, concurrent parallel and integrated processes, and upfront consideration of lifecycle issues. Since this concept was first considered as a viable proposition integrating the construction process, various attempts have been made to develop enabling tools for CE in construction (CEC) This paper discusses various enablers for CEC. Organizationand technology-based tools are considered, and the extent to which they provide an enabling environment for CEC both with respect to the principles of CE, and the various levels of support required, is also assessed. The analysis revealed that there is broad support (to varying degrees) for CE in construction, but that this is mostly project-centric. There is therefore need for support at the organization level, and also for individuals. Issues relating to the wider implementation of CE identified by the analysis of various enablers suggest that although much progress is being made, there is still more ground to cover. It is also concluded that the role of clients should not be overlooked as they are key to the successful implementation of CE in construction.


In 1999, J.C. Mattingly and Ya. G. Sinai used elementary methods to prove the existence and uniqueness of smooth solutions to the 2D Navier-Stokes equations with periodic boundary conditions. And they were almost successful in proving the existence and uniqueness of smooth solutions to the 3D Navier-Stokes equations using the same strategy. In this paper, we modify their technique to obtain a simpler proof of one of their results. We also argue that there is no logical reason why the 3D Navier-Stokes equations must always have solutions, even when the initial velocity vector field is smooth; if they do always have solutions, it is due to probability and not logic.


Weathering processes on Martian surface are among the essential issues for both understanding landform evolution and exploring water availability on Martian surface. Studies are reviewed on various weathering processes on Martian surface based on images, data collected by rovers, and laboratory approaches. Recent explorations by the Mars Exploration Rovers reveal that chemical weathering occurs on the surface of basaltic regolith. Dissolution of olivine and oxidation of Fe produces weathering rinds on basaltic surface regolith. Rock interiors also show vugs and veins filled with light-toned efflorescence indicative of chemical weathering. In partic-ular, in high-latitude areas the two Viking landers and the Mars Pathfinder observed honeycomb weathering, angular rock fragments, and polygonal cracks in bedrock. Most of these features are also observed in the Antarctica and other cold deserts on Earth, and are generally attributed to physical weathering such as salt crystallization, thermal weathering, and/or frost weathering. Some studies successfully estimate periods and rates of weathering on the Martian surface, which promote a further understanding of environmental changes and landform evolution.


No drug therapy is completely risk free, and the costs associated with non‐response and adverse effects can exceed the cost of the therapy. The ultimate goal of pharmacogenetic research is to find robust genetic predictors of drug response that enable the development of prospective genetic tests to reliably identify patients at risk of non‐response or of developing an adverse effect prior to the drug being prescribed. Currently, thiopurine S‐methyltransferase (TPMT) deficiency is the only pharmacogenetic factor that is prospectively assessed before azathioprine or 6‐mercaptopurine immunomodulation is commenced in patients with Crohn's disease (CD). As yet no other inherited determinant of drug response has made the transition from bench to bedside for the management of this disease. In this review we summarize what is known about TPMT deficiency and explore whether there is evidence to support a role of other genetic polymorphisms in predicting the response of CD patients to thiopurine drugs, methotrexate, and anti‐tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) therapy.


The infrared S=O stretching absorptions of several simple sulfoxides have been measured. Some sulfoxides show one absorption maximum, whereas others show two. These results may be attributed to the rotational isomerism about the S–C axis. Convincing evidence for this conclusion has been obtained by the measurement of the spectra of methyl isopropyl sulfoxide at various temperatures.


This research project was carried out to investigate the biochemical effect of Sarcocephalus latifolius leaf extract in alloxan induced diabetic rats. The study was carried out for about 12 months in the department of Biochemistry University of Jos, Jos, Nigeria and Prestige medical Laboratory, Jos, Nigeria. Twenty four rats were divided into six groups of four animals each (3 male groups and 3 female groups). The male and female rats in group 1 and 2 were induced with alloxan monohydrate (as negative controls and diabetic treated animals respectively) while the third groups were used as positive controls and were given distilled water. The phytochemical constituent of Sarcocephalus latifolius leaf extract shows the presence of secondary metabolites such as Tannins, Flavonoids and cardiac glycosides. The weight of negative control groups were significantly (P<0.05) reduced when compared to other groups. Both the male and female rats treated with Sarcocephalus latifolius leaf extract, showed significant decrease (P<0.05) in blood Original Research Article Ndukwe et al.; JAMPS, 14(4): 1-7, 2017; Article no.JAMPS.34311 2 glucose level compared to the untreated rats. Liver biomarkers (ALT, AST and ALP), significantly decreased (P<0.05) in both male and female diabetic rats after treatment with Sarcocephalus latifolius leaf extract compared to the untreated rats. Sarcocephalus latifolius leaf extract has hypolipidemic effect and thus can be used in the management of diabetes. The result above shows that the ethanolic leaf extract of Sarcocephalus latifolius can be used in the management and/or control of diabetes and other related complications.


Blockchains have shown great promise as peer-to-peer digital currency systems over the past 10 years. However, with increased popularity, the demand for processing transactions has also grown leading to increased costs, confirmation times, and limited blockchain utility. There have been a number of proposals on how to scale blockchains, such as Plasma, Polkadot, Elastico, RapidChain, Bitcoin-NG, and OmniLedger. These solutions all propose the segmentation of every function of a blockchain, namely consensus, permanent data storage, transaction processing, and consistency, which significantly increases the complexity and difficulty of implementation. BlockReduce is a new blockchain structure which only segments consistency, allowing it to scale to handle tens of thousands of transactions per second without impacting fault tolerance or decentralization. Moreover, BlockReduce will significantly decrease node bandwidth requirements and network latency through incentives while simultaneously minimizing other resource demands in order to prevent centralization of nodes.


One of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis has been the development of proximity tourism in outdoor spaces being less conducive to the spread of the virus. From a study preceding this pandemic, this article seeks to better understand the experiences lived by domestic tourists from when they visited two typical protected natural parks as specific experiential contexts (extraordinary versus ordinary) providing different experiences. Each experiential context enables the distinction of actual visitors' experiences inside each park—education, esthetics, entertainment, escapism, physical activity—differentiated, on one hand by the visitors' participation axis and, on the other hand, by the absorption-immersion axis influencing the visitors' arousal and memory. A structural equation model tested the data collected (n = 1000) in both experiential contexts and shows their moderator effect. The results underline the link between the experiential context and the actual experiences and highlight the interest of a new global framework including the visitors' participation and a bodily axis relative to the specific context. This research could help managers of protected natural parks adjust their domestic tourists' experience offer during pandemic crises by implementing specific sustainable and sanitary strategies.


Locally led adaptation is increasingly promoted as an important strategy for addressing the impacts of climate change. However, the understanding of rural realities in the Global South is still limited by insufficient information about the complex and dynamic relationships between rural communities and their environment. These relationships are influenced both by the material aspects of place and by the social and cultural dynamics that shape identities. This paper seeks to address this gap by providing an in-depth examination of how older and younger people are living with environmental change in two rural areas in Vietnam. Recognizing the lack of attention given to older people as important environmental actors, this paper will make three key contributions: move from a focus on the vulnerability of older people to one which highlights their capabilities; introduce an intergenerational approach that builds an inclusive understanding of rural communities; and embrace a complex appreciation of environmental change that looks beyond the usual framings of climate change and impact upon livelihoods' to other aspects of people's relationship with a changing environment. In doing so, this paper calls for an increased appreciation for the multiple values of nature, particularly how different community members engage with and appreciate their environment, to support more relevant and sustainable approaches to addressing local environmental challenges.


Knowledge of the rheological properties is crucial for the numerical modeling of technological processes. The main objective of this study was to conduct an analysis of the rheological properties of A380.0 (AlSi9Cu3(Fe)) aluminium alloy in the semi-solid state. The results could be used for identification of temperature range of the alloy, where thixoforming processes could be executed. Another purpose of the experimental work could be development of the mathematical models of the alloy apparent viscosity. The significant achievement of this particular study is an application of a viscometer which was specially designed for material tests executed at high temperatures, such as the measurement of liquid or semi-liquid aluminium viscosity. This paper presents the results of a rheological analysis of aluminium alloy.


A new optical contrast agent has been developed by exposing dye-loaded microbubbles to a rapidly-cooled thermal treatment to homogenize the dye distribution across the surface. Ultrasound causes these microbubbles to oscillate in size which changes the self-quenching efficiency of the dye molecules creating a "blinking" signal. We demonstrate for the first time that these microbubbles can reproducibly generate second, third, and even fourth harmonic fluorescence intensity modulations, in addition to the fundamental frequency of the driving ultrasound. Detecting these harmonic signals could produce a higher signal-to-noise ratio for fluorescence imaging in medical applications by allowing fundamental frequency interference and artifacts to be filtered out.


For a single fermionic field, an interpretation of the Fierz identities (which establish relations between the bilinear field observables) is given. They appear closely related to the algebraic class (regular or singular) of the spin 2-form S associated to the spinor field. If S ≠ 0, the Fierz identities follow from the 3 + 1 decomposition of the eigenvector equations for S with respect to an inertial laboratory, which makes this interpretation suitable for fermionic particle physics models. When S = 0, the Fierz identities reduce to three constraints on the current densities associated with the spinor field, saying that they are orthogonal, equimodular, the vector current being time-like and the axial one being space-like.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review recent developments in online marketing strategy which demonstrate the growing power of online communities in building brand reputations and customer relationships.Design/methodology/approach – The work draws upon the results of an ongoing research project which is investigating the use of new technologies by entrepreneurial businesses in the London area. A range of examples from our 30 case study businesses are drawn upon to illustrate some of the opportunities and threats associated with these new marketing priorities.Findings – We conclude that social networks will play a key role in the future of marketing; externally they can replace customer annoyance with engagement, and internally they help to transform the traditional focus on control with an open and collaborative approach that is more conducive to success in the modern business environment.Research limitations/implications – Further research should aim to track this activity as it integrates with...


As an important area of reserve land resources, the Yellow River Delta is faced with the problem of soil salinization. Grasping the characteristics of soil salinity as well as its spatial variation patterns is an important foundation of prevention, control and utilization of saline soil. This study selected Kenli County of the Yellow River Delta, obtained soil salinity data through field survey and lab experiment, and used statistical, GIS interpolation and buffer analysis methods to analyze the characteristics of soil salinity and its spatial variation patterns. Our results showed that the general soil salinity in the study area was mainly moderate and there was a significant positive correlation between different soil layers of 0 - 15 cm, 15 - 30 cm and 30 - 45 cm and soil salinity increased with the increase of soil depth. The areas with high soil salinity in each soil layer mainly distributed in the east near the Bo Sea in the county, while the areas with lower soil salinity mainly distributed in the southwest, centre and the two sides of the Yellow River in the northeast. Soil salinity showed a trend of decrease with the increase in distance to the Bo Sea, while stretching from the Yellow River, it showed increase tendency with the increase in distance to the Yellow River. The order from high soil salinity to low of different vegetation types was naked land → suaeda glauca → tamarix → vervain → reed → couch grass → paddy → cotton → winter wheat → maize; the order for different geomorphic types was depression → slightly sloping ground → slow hillock → high flood land. This study preliminary delineated the characteristics of soil salinity as well as its spatial variation patterns in the study area, and provided scientific basis for soil resource sustainable utilization in the Yellow River Delta.


Our lab is developing a novel device, the convection-enhanced thermo-chemotherapy catheter system (CETCS), to improve drug dispersal around a glioblastoma. To help prepare the device for clinical trials, we were advised to first prepare and receive 510(k)-clearance. The 510(k)-clearance process includes proving the novel device is substantially equivalent to a previously cleared predicate device. For the CETCS device, we have identified the Cleveland Multiport Catheter (CMC) as our predicate device. In this work, we test infusion pump flow rate, high-pressure flow rate, and microneedle tip deflection; each with respect to infusion and aspiration. The CMC's 510(k) summary sheet provided guidelines for the test protocols to follow. If the CMC's 510(k) summary did not state a metric, we set the metric based on the CETCS device specifications. Replicating or exceeding the threshold passing criteria set by the CMC device or the CETCS specifications demonstrates that CETCS is substantially equivalent to the predicate device for those specific metrics.


Warlords are charismatic leaders who exploit weak authorities to gain control of subnational areas. Nevertheless, warlords do in fact participate in state formation, and this book considers the dynamics of warlordism within the context of such debates. Antonio Giustozzi begins with aspects of the Afghan environment that are conducive to the fragmentation of central authority and the emergence of warlords. He then accounts for the phenomenon from the 1980s to today, considering Afghanistan's two foremost warlords, Ismail Khan and Abdul Rashid Dostum, along with their political, economic, and military systems of rule. Despite the intervention of Allied forces in 2001, both of these leaders continue to wield considerable power. Giustozzi studies the similarities and differences between their administrations and compares them against the ascendance of a third warlord, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who incorporates similar elements of rule. Giustozzi identifies prevalent themes in the emergence of warlordism, particularly the role of local military leaders and their gradual acquisition of "class consciousness." He then tracks the evolution of this strategy into a more sophisticated state-like, or political-party-like, structure.


A method for controlling a data recording area for recording data with a recording medium and a method of controlling the data recording area of the control data of the data recording area for recording. The data recording method includes a data area in the data recording area is divided into a non-silent recorded portion and a silent recorded portion, and the end of the data recorded in the data recording area Then, based on the discrimination result, the non-silent recorded portion and the silent behind the front portion of the control data portion of the temporarily stored on a boundary portion between the recording portion of the recording in the data recording area divided into a data record temporarily stored.


An important link exists between cancer, autoimmune diseases and immune deficiency. This presentation will review some data concerning clonal growth in B lymphocytes, with focus on the occurrence of autoantibody f2p4vity in the monoclonal proteins, which are the products of the clonally expanded lymphocyte plasma cell population. The role of antigen in causing or promoting monoclonal B cell growth is considered for several different forms of monoclonal gammopathies benign, malignant, and secondary. There is recent demonstration of M-proteins and clonal growth complicating HIV infections and some autoimmune conditions which illustrate well the link between cancer, autoimmunity and immune deficiency.


The aim of this paper is to present weighted versions of some Gruss-type inequalities on time scales, using weights that are allowed to take some negative values, these are Hermite-Hadamard weights, the Steffensen-Popoviciu weights and the Gruss-Popoviciu weights. The notions of weighted integral mean, weighted variance and weighted covariance are expanded according to these weights. Some applications of these inequalities are presented.


Verification is an essential step of the hardware design lifecycle. Usually verification is done at the gate level (Boolean level). We present verilog2smv, a tool that generates word-level model checking problems from Verilog designs augmented with assertions. A key aspect of our tool is that memories in the designs are treated without any form of abstraction. verilog2smv can be used for RTL verification by chaining with a word-level model checker like NUXMV. To this extent, we present also some experimental results over Verilog verification benchmarks, using verilog2smv+NUXMV as a tool-chain.


Firms selling products overseas may do so in a wide variety of ways, such a s through trading companies, foreign distributors, brokers, direct sales, license arrangements, and foreign direct investment. Many firms employ a portfolio of arrangements for each of their products. Using a share equation model, we examine the factors influencing food processing cooperatives' foreign business arrangements. Particularly important are the cooperative's financial resources and structure, risk exposure and risk preferences, information resources, and product types. Compared to investor-owned firms, we find that cooperatives have distinct disadvantages in investing or selling directly abroad, although the disadvantages are tempered by some equalizing considerations.


Caviomorph rodents have been diverse and abundant components of South American mammal communities since the late Eocene. We describe herein the octodontoids of Pampa Castillo, a Lower Miocene site in southern Chile (Aysén Region). Six genera and seven species of octodontoids are present, two of which are new: Dudumus berggreni sp. nov. and Caviocricetus guenekko sp. nov. The octodontoids from Pampa Castillo support assignment of this fauna to the Santacrucian South American Land Mammal Age (SALMA), which is consistent with previous studies. We conducted similarity analyses on 11 Early–Middle Miocene Patagonian rodent faunas using hierarchical clustering. Faunas generally fell into the three SALMAs to which they were traditionally assigned: Colhuehuapian, Santacrucian and 'post‐Santacrucian'. The 'Pinturan' is a proposed biochronological interval between the Colhuehuapian and Santacrucian. At the genus level, Pampa Castillo clustered with 'Pinturan' faunas, while at the species level it clustered with the 'typical' faunas on which the Santacrucian SALMA is based (from outcrops of the Santa Cruz Formation along the Atlantic coast and Río Santa Cruz). The Pampa Castillo rodent fauna resembles both 'Pinturan' and 'typical' Santacrucian faunas in taxon distributions, reflecting complex temporal and palaeoenvironmental influences. Geochronological data indicate that some 'Pinturan' sites overlap temporally with Pampa Castillo and the upper Pinturas Formation, which both clustered with 'typical' Santacrucian faunas. These results indicate that the 'Pinturan' does not represent a distinct biochronological interval, but that the differences between it and 'typical' Santacrucian faunas are attributable to geographic or palaeoenvironmental differences.


Mode selection and modal coupling analysis are important to estimate wind-induced structural response of long-span roof structures. This article presents a framework for predicting wind-induced structural response of long-span roof structures based on modal analysis. This framework first identifies the dominant modes according to the correlation between the mode shape and the wind load spatial distribution on the structure as well as a proposed "modal participation coefficient." Second, the concept of modal strain energy is introduced and a modal coupling coefficient is defined, based on which the dominant coupling modes are determined. A modified square root of the sum of the squares methodology is then developed to account for the modal coupling effects of the background and the resonant response components. The total responses can be obtained by combining the contributions of the dominant coupling modes and the square root of the sum of the squares results from the dominant modes. This avoids the use of the computation expensive complete quadratic combination method. Finally, an illustrative example of wind-induced response analysis of the China National Stadium roof structure is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.


It is known that a message can be transmitted safely against any wiretapper via a noisy channel without a secret key if the coding rate is less than the so-called secrecy capacity $C_S$, which is usually smaller than the channel capacity $C$. In order to remove the loss $C - C_S$, we propose a multiplex coding scheme with plural independent messages. In this paper, it is shown that the proposed multiplex coding scheme can attain the channel capacity as the total rate of the plural messages and the perfect secrecy for each message. The coding theorem is proved by extending Hayashi's proof, in which the coding of the channel resolvability is applied to wiretap channels.


The immunotherapeutic ablation of lymphoma is a conceptually attractive treatment modality that is the subject of intense translational research activities. One approach being piloted through the City of Hope Lymphoma SPORE is the application of cellular immunotherapy employing cytolytic T-lymphocyte (CTL) grafts genetically engineered for CD19-specific effector functioning. This has been achieved by the construction of a chimeric T-cell antigen receptor (CAR) composed of a CD19-specific single chain immunoglobulin variable fragment (scFv) extracellular targeting domain molecularly coupled to the CD3 complex zeta chain. Cytolytic T-cells that are genetically modified to express this CAR display HLA-independent CD19-specific recognition and killing of lymphoma target cells. Using clinically applicable plasmid gene transfer/selection systems our group has demonstrated that anti-CD19 CAR+/HyTK+ CD8+ effectors can be generated from CTL precursors present in the peripheral blood and expanded to clinically relevant cell doses. We have designed an FDA-authorized (BB-IND#11411) clinical trial in which patients with recurrent/refractory follicular lymphoma undergo leukapheresis and a polyclonal CTL product derived that a.) expresses the anti-CD19 CAR, b.) kills CD19+ lymphoma targets, c) remains dependent on exogenous IL-2 for survival and proliferation, and d.) is sensitive to ganciclovir ablation by virtue of co-expression of the selection-suicide transgene HyTK. The trial is designed to assess the safety of intra-patient dose escalation beginning at a cell dose of 100x106 cells/m2 escalating to a dose of 2,000x106 cells/m2. In addition, this trial employs the use of rituximab to clear circulating B-cells prior to the first T-cell dose and fludarabine following the first T-cell infusion to both induce temporary lymphopenia and limit anti-transgene rejection responses. The protocol employs low-dose subcutaneous rhuIL-2 to support the numerical and temporal persistence of transferred CTLs. Treated patients are monitored with immunologic correlative studies that include Q-PCR for tracking persistence of transferred CTLs, RT-QPCR for following the levels of CD19+ B-cells in the peripheral blood, bone marrow, and lymph nodes, as well as, CT and PET imaging studies to follow disease responses. Here, we report on our initial clinical experience treating patients on this trial.


No more striking evidence can be adduced of the intellectual advancement characteristic of modern times, than the general recognition among men of the universal reign of law. It is true that this general recognition has not yet become quite universal. There are not wanting many, even in our enlightened age, to whom the advent of a comet still brings feelings of dismay, and in whose belief the wind literally bloweth where it listeth, every day. The belief in lucky and unlucky days has by no means disappeared, and among even the well educated there are yet some who would not willingly put to sea on the brightest Friday morning that ever shone. It is difficult to disabuse the mind of impressions which almost inevitably find a place there in the infancy of individuals and of peoples. Every event of which the causes are obscure, is naturally attributed by the ignorant or inexperienced, either to blind chance or to the purposed interference of some supernatural power; and such is the strength of the imagination that the feeling often survives long after reason has exploded the error.